Somalia

“Model” Foreign Aid Recipient Uses Foreign Aid to Repress Its Citizens

by Hans Bader on November 23, 2010 · 8 comments

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, International, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Property Rights, Sanctimony, Trade, Zeitgeist

Ethiopia is considered a model recipient of foreign aid by international aid agencies, since it uses much of the aid on its people, rather than just to fill the Swiss bank accounts of its rulers (as is often the case with foreign-aid receiving countries). But it uses the aid to promote political repression, by giving – or denying – such aid to hungry villagers based on whether they support the ruling party, as a recent article in the New York Review of Books explains. By solidifying the Ethiopian government’s control, foreign aid gives the government the ability to put off doing things that would expand economic growth — like letting farmers own their own land.

Most Ethiopians are subsistence farmers, and 85 percent of all Ethiopians live in the countryside. Land was collectivized in the 1970s during the Red Terror of the Marxist Mengistu regime, and today, Ethiopian peasants lease rather than own land.

Ethiopia is one of the world’s hungriest counties. In its percentage of chronically malnourished people, it’s edged out in Africa only by a few war-torn countries like the Congo and Liberia, and its misgoverned neighbors, Eritrea (which is governed by a Stalinist control-freak) and Somalia, which is in a state of anarchy. Ethiopia is also the most populous country in Africa after Nigeria, with more than 80 million people.

On paper, Ethiopia’s backward economy supposedly grows by 10 percent or more per year. In reality, those statistics are cooked, and its economy probably grows by no more than 5% annually — barely enough to keep pace with a population growth rate of at least 3.3%.

Ethiopia’s economy is more government-controlled than most of Africa (with government monopolies over things like telecom), although admittedly its government is not as incompetent as many Third World governments in running what it does control. Billions in foreign aid allow the government to artificially achieve modest economic growth despite outmoded, state-controlled development policies and a stunted private sector. In the absence of the aid, the government might be forced to liberalize the economy to create genuine economic growth — the way countries in East Asia like South Korea that were once incredibly poor became rich after they pursued a free-market path.

Ethiopia is also the home of teff, a nutritious, drought-resistant, high-protein grain that could easily be exported and marketed to health nuts and greenies if the country had a decent transportation system or modern trade infrastructure. (Health nuts will eat even things that aren’t grain, like quinoa, if you call them “organic whole grain cereal” and trumpet the fact that they are grown by Third World peasants). Because of its economic backwardness, Ethiopia is missing out on this kind of marketing. So are fat people, who could perhaps lose weight if they ate the teff grown in the Ethiopian highlands, rather than starchier, less nutritious grains.

Photo Credit: WikiMedia User Andro 96

Sacrificing Safety and Freedom for “International Law”

by Hans Bader on April 14, 2009

in Economy, International, Legal, Trade

Piracy has flourished in the crucial shipping lanes off the coast of Somalia partly due to a treaty that the U.S. has not ratified yet — but which is often described as “customary international law” binding on all nations. Partly as a result of the LOST Treaty, billions of dollars worth of cargo, and human lives, have been lost due to piracy. Harold Koh, nominated by Obama to be the State Department’s chief lawyer, argues that “customary international law” like LOST is binding on the U.S., even when it is reflected in treaties that the U.S. has refused to sign. (European human-rights conventions and an indecisive White House also play a big role in thwarting action against the pirates).

That’s just one reason U.S. policymakers should think twice before following vague “international norms.”

Since customary international law is vague, liberal lawyers invariably use that ambiguity to claim that it dictates a host of controversial requirements that few countries would voluntarily adopt on their own, like banning Mother’s Day as sexist, and mandating quota-based affirmative action. For example, the CEDAW equal-rights treaty has been construed by an international committee as requiring “redistribution of wealth,” “affirmative action,” “gender studies” in academia, government-sponsored “access to rapid and easy abortion,” “comparable worth,” and “the application of quotas and numerical goals and measurable targets aimed at increasing women’s political participation.”

But they only adopt expansive interpretations of international law when it is ideologically convenient. When looking to foreign court rulings or international law would actually result in a conservative outcome, they cheerfully ignore international law or pretend it doesn’t exist. A classic example of that is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who claims that the Supreme Court should pay more attention to foreign court rulings, but ignores those rulings when they contradict her political preferences, even in those atypical cases where foreign court rulings actually deserve to be given careful consideration (like when they are interpreting a commercial treaty that also applies in the U.S.).

People who claim to care about foreign court rulings or “international law” cheerfully ignore them when they result in “conservative” outcomes, like limiting taxation or punitive damages against businesses.

Liberal Bootlicking

by Hans Bader on April 10, 2009

in International, Legal, Politics as Usual

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus recently visited Cuba and licked Casto’s boots, calling him an “inspiring” visionary and an “amazing human being.” (Never mind that racism against people of African heritage is far more pervasive in Cuba than here. Much of Cuba’s population is black. But how many of Cuba’s Communist leaders are black? Almost none. It’s no accident.)

The Obama Administration has broken campaign promises repeatedly and lied about a Supreme Court case that it made a big campaign issue.

Now, as Charles Krauthammer notes in the Washington Post, Obama is going through Europe, badmouthing the U.S. to try and curry favor with the European public. European leaders have responded by stiffing Obama and giving him none of what he asked for (like assistance in Afghanistan). Obama said there must consequences, not just empty words, against North Korea for shooting a missile over Japan, even as he voiced only empty words (“Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something,” he said). The only concrete defense proposal Obama made is to cut the U.S.’s stockpile of nukes and eliminate Alaskan missile defense systems that might be useful against North Korean missiles. As Obama explains, only the U.S. has ever used nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, in a gaffe that most of the press chose not to report, Vice President Biden thanked Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero for his support in Iraq — even though Zapatero is anti-American and not only pulled Spain’s troops out of Iraq, but called on other European leaders assisting the U.S. to stop doing so.

With the U.S. government unable to even remember who its friends and enemies are, it’s perhaps not surprising that Somali pirates have been emboldened to kidnap American seamen and seize our ships in the crucial shipping lanes leading to the Suez Canal. CEI’s Eli Lehrer has come up with a creative solution for the pirate problem.

LibertyWeek 25: The Silver Lining to the News

by Richard Morrison on January 13, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Welcome to LibertyWeek’s Silver Anniversary with your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist and Special Guest William Yeatman. Our 25th episode starts with timely events from years past in The Day in Wikipedia, and then moves quickly into the latest, newest New Mexican news about Gov. Bill Richardson’s bondage municipal bond scandal. We return to the salty seas to see some Somali pirates get their karmic comeuppance, listen to the bailout blather du jour coming out of Washington and New York and stand strong against attempts to demonize those violent video games we love so well. With that down, we congratulate the winners of the Golden Globes and finally turn to our Special Guest for a discussion of the President-Elect’s energy and environment team. We round out the show, as always, with an encouraging bit of Olympic News.

Listen here!