Squandering taxpayers' hard-earned money on Third World is ridiculous. It's not yours to give! There are many reasons for the failure of foreign aid. Foreign aid has a widespread record of waste, fraud, and abuse. Aid programs have built tennis courts in Rwanda, sent sewing machines to areas without electricity, and constructed hospitals in cities where a dozen similar facilities already sat half empty. http://venitism.blogspot.com
Eurocommissar Piebalgs is on a junket to Pakistan squandering taxpayers' hard-earned money. Piebalgs says Pakistan is the subject of very close attention from the European Union. First of all it's a very huge country and there is very substantial power in this country. Also the human development index is rather low in Pakistan.
Kleptocrats are often taking very expensive junkets, taking advantage of their positions and access to public funds to undertake pleasure trips thinly disguised as being of political importance. For example, a keptocrat might travel to Greece, claiming to attend a conference there, but leaving plenty of days to explore the Greek islands and Greek delights at leisure. http://venitism.blogspot.com
Pakistan is a terrorist nation. From the very beginning, the partnership between the US and Pakistan has been a marriage of convenience. Pervez Musharraf asserts it was a forced marriage. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage warned Pakistan shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to be prepared to be bombed, to be prepared to go back to the Stone Age! http://venitism.blogspot.com
Piebalgs thinks the main issue is really fighting the poverty. But the second point regards its location in a very particular region. Pakistan borders Afghanistan. The purpose of our engagement in Afghanistan is, today, to have stability and security. But Piebalgs doesn't believe you could address the Afghanistan issue without really also working with Pakistan because these are border regions, and also the political context today between Afghanistan and Pakistan is very important.
The military budget of this country is roughly 24 percent of its overall size. This definitely leaves social sectors with far less. In the fall of 2001, Americans toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Pakistan had previously helped to install the Taliban in power because it viewed it as an ally against its archenemy, India. So the end of the Taliban also meant the collapse of Pakistan's defensive strategy. Since then, Islamabad has worried that the US could hand over Pakistani intelligence to India.
Pakistan's strategy is supporting terrorists that attack India. Pakistan's nebulous position toward the Taliban led to circumstances in which the world's most wanted terrorist could reside safely under the nose of the military for six years. Al-Qaeda has links to the Taliban and to terrorists that target India. Thus Pakistan's soft stance toward these groups ends up facilitating al-Qaeda and its agenda. Indeed, bin Laden struck a deal with Pakistan's military leadership to ensure his safety in the country. This speaks volumes about the Pakistan's dual policies on terrorism.
Piebalgs announced a 225 million grant to go primarily to the areas of education, primary education and quality education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which is the most affected province. So Piebalgs believes that it's right that we also try to work territorially. The second part of the grant goes to the same province and tribal areas for rural development. These are basically agriculture support programmes. And the third, smaller part is for governance: support to the parliament, support for elections, support for public finance management, tax collection.
Pakistan is a society based on tribal groups. Each clan maintains a complicated network of relations, like a mafia. Under these conditions, it hardly seems imaginable that Osama bin Laden could have spent years living unnoticed just a stone's throw away from Pakistan's most elite military academy, an institution as assiduously guarded as the US's West Point or Great Britain's Sandhurst. Pakistani Intelligence officers knew about bin Laden's home, but they got kickbacks to keep it secret! http://venitism.blogspot.com
