Filed under: Canada | Tags: Africa, Aid, Bob Dylan, Poverty, Stephen Harper, Trade
You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins
the Canadian government has just announced that it will be changing the way it distributes foreign aid (link) … aid will now be focused on the americas … as they are our ‘backyard’ … and as we work to increase trade within our landmass, aid money can be used as a powerful tool for diplomacy …
stephen harper proves again at how good he is at being a politician …
but it strikes me that what we are talking about here is not politics … or perhaps more accurately … that maybe foreign aid could be one small shining star where politics don’t need to matter so much … i mean sure, it is likely the ’smart’ decision to use our ‘giving’ to ‘get’ … so to speak … but isn’t the point of giving and generosity and charity … to help without strings attached … to help because help is needed … and because it is the right thing to do ??? …
and yet … the poorest people in the world … in the poorest countries in the world … on the poorest continent in the world … are about to find out that Canada really doesn’t care how much they suffer … Canada really doesn’t care about schools with no water or half-built hospitals with half-trained nurses … Canada doesnt even care about its own integrity or doing what we said we would do …
Canada, it turns out, only cares about what it can do for itself … and so, as hundreds of projects across Africa lose funding in mid-stride, and thousands of Africans lose jobs that support whole communities … our aid money will go to the Carribean, and Peru, and Bolivia … where by most measures, the citizens are better educated, healthier and richer than their brothers and sisters in Africa … it is tragic irony that, once again, the only mistake made by the African child was to be born on the wrong continent …
and … so, as the wheel of time spins … here once again, the message from the developed world to the people of Africa is the same … ‘we would like to help you, but we can’t, because there is nothing to gain by saving your life’ …
i suppose i should stop being so negative and look on the bright side …
it won’t matter so much that the school isn’t completed, as malaria and hiv and diarhea will take care of the additional students it was destined to serve …
it won’t matter so much that there will be no more support for the small group of single mothers who banded together to create an economic co-operative, so as to feed their families and strengthen their community … as the children it would have allowed to live to the age of 5 would have now found themselves without teachers or school books anyway …
it won’t matter that we have stolen hope from so many who saw a beacon of light in our flag and in our name and in our words … as those africans so foolish as to hope for integrity and honesty from the rich … will die young and illiterate and never understand the betrayal of trust which our prime minister has cursed us all with on this day …
shame on you prime minister, you destroyer of dreams … shame on you …
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
- Bob Dylan
