AFF Sentinel Vol.6#36

Imagine you are some dictator of a poor African country. You have a palace, a guard and an army and the West sends you a steady supply of food and medical aid but you really need a new source of cash flow. What do you do?

You may remember or have read about Eisenhower's warnings about the Military Industrial Complex taking over the running of the U.S. He meant the interests of our post-WWII "immense military establishment and a large arms industry" dominating American politics and the economy.

Well, we think globally now. And the emphasis has shifted. Now it's the Western Capitalism Guilt Complex. And all a poor African dictator has to do is dial up the current list of offenses committed by the West on the world in general and Africa in particular and demand compensation. President Obama has furthered the cause of American guilt admission by apologizing for us all over the world in his first ten months in office.

One of the key proposals that was to be a part of the discussion in Copenhagen was a $10 billion fund to be funded by the developed countries - who invented pollution and global warming and, therefore, have a head start in bringing down the planet - to help defray the costs for poorer developing nations to cope with the effects of global warming and develop clean energy.

Going in, the only complaint from developing nations was that the amount of money proposed was far too small, especially compared to the trillions spent globally to rescue the world's financial system. And while many Americans have begun to see the UN as a politically correct global body in charge of transferring wealth from the West to all the poorer countries of the world, they are now getting a glimmer that the global warming scare is just another mechanism the Western Capitalism Guilt Complex can use to extract money from the West. The fact that Western governments themselves are using the same mechanism to extract money from capitalists and taxpayers to fund whatever the left fancies is a whole other branch of the tree.

So imagine the outrage this week in Copenhagen at the UN's climate change summit when a compromise draft leaked. You see, up to now, the guilt money was to be put up by the Western countries and they were to meet emissions targets. The developing countries' duties were to take the money and not bother with any emissions targets. And the developing countries included not only our hypothetical poor African dictator but also China and India. With a burgeoning economy, high growth rate and a coal-fired power plant opening every few days, China didn't sign the Kyoto Treaty and they weren't about to sign up for Copenhagen either.

So when a draft leaked indicating that soon the developing nations would have to start signing on to emissions limits, the poor nations were very unhappy. Sudan's Lumumba Stanislas Dia Ping heads the Group of 77 bloc of developing countries. He reacted by saying the poor nations would not walk out of the talks.

"However, we will not sign an inequitable deal. We can't accept a deal that condemns 80 percent of the world population to further suffering and injustice."

Ooookay. Add that quote to the list at the Western Capitalist Guilt Complex.

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