Nobel Prize Winner Gets It...and you, gentle aid agents?

"Mr. Deaton is a strong critic of foreign aid. He believes that the approximately $5 trillion given by governments of rich countries to poor countries over the past 50 years has undercut good governance by making poor countries’ leaders less accountable to their own citizens." --excerpt from piece by David Henderson, The Wall Street Journal

Angus Deaton, 2015 Nobel Prize winner in Economic Sciences, gets it. How about you gentle aid agents? With all due respect, please be sensible and awaken to the reality of the stifling effects of aid despite decades of good intentions.

Unfortunately, aid tends to endow (knowingly and most often unknowingly) dysfunctional elements of the status quo including ruling gangs with unearned status and leverage. That perpetuates and prolongs the very problems that aid is endeavoring to solve and dis-empowers people. Despite the best of intentions (which are not in doubt), the people endure chronic poverty and its lethal effects.

For once, will the aid industry at least consider that they might be doing some harm? This question is not unreasonable, especially when hundreds of millions of people are suffering every day and have been suffering for decades upon decades for want of progress, health and opportunity. Might intervention be causing harm? Should not that be the first question of all before an aid entrepreneur packs his/her bags to effect change in a distant foreign land?

Until then, until we see clear, transparent, and objective proof worthy of trillions of dollars and years and years of critical time gone--lost time and lost opportunity borne by an impoverished people--people without a defender, without an advocate, without a champion, without representation--then, I will continue to believe the aid machine is generally misguided and tends to abet the very people keeping the poor undeveloped and paralyzed in failed governance and failed aid folly.

If foreigners truly want to assist and cannot resist trying; if they believe that they can effect change in a far-flung land (typically, enjoying high salaries that put them in the 1% of the very people that they aim to ‘aid’), then the best thing imaginable for development and progress would be to free the people from oppressive and corrupt governance including unethical bureaucrats from top to bottom and entitled gangs with unearned privileges. Without state and foreign interference, then the people could pursue their own dreams and ambitions with their own talents and capabilities.

Wall Street Journal - VIDEO (most interesting from 2:30)

Structural representation of the folly of aid? photo © Alonzo Lyons, all rights reserved 

#Angus, #Deaton, #NobelPrize, #Economics, #AidRiddenNepal, #DonorDarlings, #FreeNepal, #DambisaMoyo, #AidBully, #AidEntrepreneur, #Corruption, #DeadAid, #HowtToRobAfrica, #LetMyPeopleGo, #Nepal, #YellFire, #UNDPNepal, #SNVNepal, #USAIDNepal, #DFIDNepal, #WorldBankAsia

'Soul-stirring Mourning'

Doing my darnedest to hold aid workers' feet to the fire of greater awareness, awareness of their profound effects in Nepal and beyond. With all due respect, this link is suggested reading for the foreign cohort intervening at all levels in Nepal. From my humble experience, intervention often supports (directly, and most often, indirectly) a dysfunctional and overpowering status quo and contributes to the endless political bandh (closure) that Nepal endures with prolonged economic strife and deathly suffering.

The country is filled with aid workers rushing in and around to cover for the government and inadvertently funding establishment goons with unmerited entitlements.

With external support and endowments, the ruling gang does not have to be accountable to the general population as they would have to be in a liberal democracy.

The country and majority of her people face crippling economic stagnation and dire poverty, and because of a lack of opportunity, the tragic option that many impoverished citizens turn to is to escape the frying pan of the motherland for the fires of work in faraway nations -- often, nations with dismal human rights records -- emigrant workers from Nepal to The Gulf and Malaysia have virtually no legal status and no representation...a grisly recipe for exploitation and suffering.

A migrant worker's journey ends with a coffin and soul-stirring mourning

#freeNepal, #donordarlings, #Bandh, #Nepal, #exploit, #modernslavery, #YellFire, #AidRiddenNepal, #AidBully

"Is your Love enough or can you Love some more?"

Michael Franti -- perhaps as close as it comes to a modern day 'prince of peace'.

He and bandmates Spearhead made a journey to war zones in Western Asia including Iraq, Israel and Palestine to witness the 'human cost of war' with their own senses, and the experience totally informed the writing of the album Yell Fire!

The material was too heavy, and the band went off to Jamaica to record and lighten it up.

That's the hearsay as I know it. Yell Fire! is one of my all-time favorite albums. 

Here is Franti yellin' fire...totally inspirational -- 'Power to the Peaceful'

The following is the studio version with a soul-stirring chorus with reggae artist Gentleman, 

Documentary, I know I'm Not Alone -- Franti and friends in West Asian war zones.
"Ring the alarm, we come to wake up the snorin' ...Yell Fire..."

#Franti, #YellFire, #IsLoveEnough?, #IsYourLoveEnough, #WestAsia, #princeofpeace, #Iraq, #Israel, #Palestine, #powertothepeaceful