From Reuters:
LONDON - Britain, seeking to salvage its planned debt relief deal for Africa ahead of next month's rich nations' summit, is to ask oil-rich Arab states to contribute more, the Observer newspaper said on Sunday.The current holder of the G7 presidency, Britain has declared 2005 a make-or-break year for Africa but its proposals for easing the burden of African debt have been coolly received by its partners including the United States.
"It is critical that all wealthy countries, including the richer, oil producing states join in," Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown wrote in the newspaper.
Despite their oil wealth, the Gulf states have had little tradition of donating overseas aid...
A YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph newspaper on Saturday found 83 percent of Britons were not confident that money given to Africa would be spent wisely.
Finally! Surely the Arabs will give generously!
Look what I found:
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_TERRORISTS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
And if they don't their refusal will speak volumns. They will, of course, point to all the money they do send, and forget to specify that it is all for madrassahs and indoctrination with zakat for Moslems only.
83 percent of Britons were not confident that money given to Africa would be spent wisely
They're right. Half a trillion dollars of aid to Africa in the past few decades and it's still in the toilet. Money sent there goes to pay for arming militias for dictator's war machines, and for the dictator's Swiss bank accounts. Live Aid paid for Mengistu to continue his war in Ethiopia and the food sent there fed his militia. The next celebrity ego-stroking session, Live 8, will be just as useless.
If the Arabs don't give, I don't blame them. People are just tired of throwing money at Africa and seeing nothing in return.
Fat chance the fatcat sheikhs will even move a finger (unless its the middle finger) to do anything here. The fatcats have no public democratic or social constitutiecy to impress after all. Besides, empirical evidence overwhelmingly points to the arabs being miserly in spending on aid and relief.
Is Tony blair naive or what? Is this mere political posturing by an astute politician who knows the arab fatcats are worthless dregs or does blair actually have genuine hope the jihad financiers will respond??
THe Arab "culture" has no concept of providing charity for altruistic and secular purposes.
All charity is geared towards the furtherment of Islam and conversion to their cult. The West doesn't
seem to realize that when it comes to providing
aid, their (Western) belief is not shared by
the Arab world. Has there ever been a SINGLE
case of the Arab world providing humanitarian
aid of any significant amount beyond a token
contribution ?
Why are the Western governments so ignorant. Moslems do not give charity to the kafir. Everyone knows Muslims consider them superior to the infidels, and it is forbidden to give charity to them. Is Blair as clueless as Bush? I didn't think he was that stupid.
reset, That's right. In the last tsunami disaster in Asia, when everyone was donating to help the victims, any victim, the muslims held back their giving because they were afraid their aid might go to non-muslim victims.
These people don't belong on the planet.
Brilliant ide. Why not also ask foxes to help chickens. And while we're at it, why not suggest that Bin Laden Construction rebuild the World Trade Center.
Be careful of what you ask for.The only aid that will come from the arab world ,if they give any aid at all will only go to fellow muslims.The aid will be use for the funding of madrasa,da'wa,buliding mosques and arms and training to kill afican non-muslims.
If they give Korans, these can be used to kindle cooking fires and save trees in the area.
Eco-friendly!
If they build mosques, these can be used as shelters for cattle, sheep and pigs.
PETA friendly!
If they send clerics, these can be eaten in hard times.
"Truly giving of themselves"!
A Win -Win -Win outcome.
It is very important to constantly bring the world's attention to the fabulous unearned wealth of the Arab oil states. Never should that wealth -- the result of an accident of geology, not of entrepreneurial flair, nor of hard work by anyone, but purely the result of sitting on top of millions of barrels of oil discovered, and lifted, by Westerners, who also found ways to use such oil.
What is most important is for the entire Infidel world to cease completely to transfer any of its wealth to Arab or Muslim states. It has become a kind of accepted notion that Infidels, and above all the Americans, should be locked into supplying foreign aid to every Muslim and Arab state that does not have oil wealth. Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Palestine Authority (for the "Palestinian" Arabs) are all receiving enormous sums from the United States, though every single one of these polities contains populations that are permanently and murderously anti-American. It makes no sense.
Egypt and the P.A. should be cut off at once, and their corrupt rulers told to seek their money from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the U.A.E. The money will either be forthcoming or it will not. To those who say that it will increase "Wahhabi" influence, one may reply: But Egypt and the P.A. are as viciously islamist as it is possible to be. The Saudis cannot make it worse. And if recipients of aid tend not to be grateful to their donors, why not let the Egyptians and the "Palestinians" be ungrateful to the Saudis, the Kuwaits, the denizens of the Emirates?
If the money is not forthcoming, that too will result in intra-Arab and intra-Muslim resentment. Let the poor Arabs resent the rich Arabs. They should. If all that pan-Islamic and pan-Arab (pan-Arabism being simply a subset of, not a real alternative to, pan-Islamism) is not reflected in a sharing of the wealth, then what is it? Put the rich Arabs to the test.
And never let anyone in the world forget the sizae of that bonanza: since 1973, the yearly take has varied for OPEC. As high as $800 billion, as low as $120 billion. By my estimates, some $10 trillion dollars has gone to the OPEC states, and 10 of the 11 are Muslim states. And not one has created anything like a modern economy. Not one has produced a literature, an art, a science, a cultural figure worth remembering. Armaments, call girls, millions of foreign slave-workers from domestic slaves to the wage-slaves who run the economies -- and that is it. That is all they have to show for their $10 trillion. This should be emphasized every time any Infidel leader gets up at any international gathering. Tell everyone exactly what the take has been. Tell everyone how it is spent -- on those arms, those call girls, those estates in the Home Counties, apartments on Avenue Foch and Marbella, those yachts with names like Noor and Nabia. Build up swelling resentments among poor Arabs and Muslims everywhere. Let them see what the rich Arab states are taking in, and how little they share with their "Arab and Muslim brothers."
This will have several effects.
The first effect is to cause growing fissures born out of the resentments of the poor for the rich Muslims.
The second effect is to make the poorer non-Muslims, both in the Third World and within Infidel countries, less inclined to believe that preposterous notion that Islam represents "social justice." This kind of claim, made for example in American prisons by such proselytizers as one Muhammad Ali (not the boxer, but rather an Egyptian living in New Jersey, who specializes in converting prisoners), can be easily refused by looking at the behavior of the richer Arab countries.
The third effect is to soak up some of that Saudi and other Arab oil wealth which would otherwise go directly to fund mosques and madrasas and bribes of Westerners (diplomats, intelligence agents, journalists, academics) -- and just as the Western world must work to diminish Muslim revenues in the long run, in the short run it must work to divert as much of those revenues from Jihad-financing to other activities, such as paying for all those things for which, absurdly, Infidels and especially Americans are now paying -- Egyptian infrastrcture, the "viability" of the over-populated and unviable "Palestine" that can only exist if it receives outside aid (but let its unviability be demonstrated, and everything be done to force the Arabs to leave, not to remain on the Infidel dole, staying only to act as the shock troops against the infidel state of Israel).
A good start -- though about 33 years late.
Just One muslim country helping anyone, would prove kt's point... too bad they won't, not one muslim government, anywhere on the planet.