The Wretched Of The Earth

It is desperately sad to see that those poor people in Haiti are now at risk from cholera, what must be one of the easily preventable of all major diseases. Infrastructure makes it go away. This can only really be developed by government, the one thing that Haiti, for whatever reason, seems to have lacked for many years.

I would not be surprised if some damnfool economist talking hairdo pops up soon on TV to explain, with all the charisma of a wind-up talking doll, why the privatisation of Haiti's water supply will be the surest way of preventing a similar outbreak; that is, if it hasn't been privatised already. Those on the American right who seem to feel the need to trumpet that they have higher IQs than Congolese pygmies or New Guinean aboriginals, in a very modern outing for the very old and very stale ideology of American racial supremacy, will no doubt find the makings of many, many articles in this catastrophe, leading them to conclude, with a tedious inevitability, that the reason why Port-au-Prince is not like Hong Kong or New York City is because of the colour of its inhabitants' skins. That it might have been very much more poorly governed will not occur to them.

It was in one sense disappointing to see that the recent cuts to other departments notwithstanding, the Department for International Development has had a major budget increase. The apparently arbitrary, and certainly ostensibly cruel, nature of these cuts should not be surprising - the Conservatives in our coalition government give every indication, in my opinion, of being thoroughly cruel people, cruel and vicious to the point of semi-feral wickedness, while the soi-disant 'Liberal Democrats', are, in my opinion, just the biggest whores in British politics, desperate to gain and hang on to power by any means necessary; not lap dogs, but lapdancers, only with a different type of bill being shoved into their knickers.

Yet a budget increase for DfID should be something to celebrate; but it might not be. In his book 'Freedom Next Time', John Pilger wrote,

"'DfID' is required by British law not to spend money other than for the purpose of poverty reduction. It breaks this law constantly, for it is, in reality, a privatising agency. In 2004, the minister, Hilary Benn, admitted giving £6.3 million to the Adam Smith Institute, an extreme right-wing lobby group, for proposals to 'reform', the 'public sector' in South Africa" (p. 327).

What I believe to be the Adam Smith Institute's corporate hypocrisy in taking public money when its message seems to be that others should not have it isn't really surprising. Yet how much better it would be for that money which has been taken from the British poor in the name of aid to go to those poor souls in Haiti without clean water, for there but by the grace of God go we, rather than to some rich bastard who can deal but cannot heal, can pay but will not pray.

Given the current decline of the United Kingdom, its civilisation, its culture, its institutions and its people, I wouldn't be surprised if we see an outbreak of something similar here within the next 20 years. If the lights haven't all gone out by that point, we will, at least be able to adopt a suitably phlegmatic, suitably British solution.

We'll stick the kettle on.