Consultants are creaming off a staggering $20 billion from hard-won global aid budgets. The $20bn total is 40 per cent of the international communities' overseas development pot of $50bn - money that is meant to relieve poverty in developing countries.
The World Bank has confirmed the figure for the first time: ... it admitted that money spent on 'technical assistance' and consultants had increased by $2bn on last year's $18bn total.

We estimate that a massive $37 billion (47%) of the $79 billion in headline aid in 2004 was ‘phantom’, while real aid stood at only $42 billion. There was some improvement from 2003, with nearly all the increase in aid – otherwise known as Overseas Development Assistance or ODA – between 2003 and 2004 counting as real aid. However, even with this increase, our analysis suggests donors still contributed an average of only 0.14% of gross national income in real aid in 2004, or only one fifth of the UN target level. On average, donors give only $48 for each of their citizens in real aid each year – less than $1 a week.

In India, DFID spent US$40m on TA [technical assistance] from Credit Suisse First Boston over just six months, in the course of advising the state government of Orissa on energy privatisation. The total bill for foreign consultants on this programme eventually rose to US$110m, with most of the TA provided by Price Waterhouse Coopers. In Vietnam, one DFID official estimated that they typically pay foreign experts between US$18,000 and US$27,000 per month, compared to US$1,500-$3,000 for local experts.

In Cambodia, donors spent between $50m and $70m on 700 international consultants in 2002 - equivalent to the wage bill for 160,000 Cambodian civil servants. In other words, donor-financed consultants working in the Cambodian government are paid upwards of 200 times what their Cambodian counterparts receive.

... estimates using International Panel on Climate Change assumptions show that stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at 1990 levels would have implied a global, equal carbon entitlement of about 0.43 tons per person. Yet in 2000, actual per capita emissions in the rich countries were about 3.4 tons, meaning that each person in the rich world was over the limit by approximately 3 tons. According to the UK government, the damage cost of carbon emissions is US$56 to US$223 per ton of carbon. Using a mid range estimate of US$140, each person in the rich world owes US$420 annually through excessive use of carbon. In total, this results in a South-North flow of around US$400 billion.

According to [Reporters without Borders], 105 journalists were murdered over the year. Iraq, where at least 62 were killed, was the most dangerous place, followed by Mexico (8), Somalia (7), Pakistan (4), Afghanistan (4), Sri Lanka (2) and Eritrea (2). It would be no surprise if these countries ended up with the lowest scores. However, with the exception of Eritrea ranking 169th, this is not the case...
How is it that Eritrea, where only two journalists were murdered, ended up ranked below Iraq (157), Mexico (136), Somalia (159), Pakistan (152), Afghanistan (142) and Sri Lanka (156)? Perhaps because that nation is on Washington’s black list and RSF receives funding from the CIA front National Endowment for Democracy, NED?
Likewise what is the explanation for Cuba ranking 165 when not one journalist has been killed there since 1959? Why is this nation ranked below Iraq, Mexico, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Brazil (84), China (163), United States (48), Haiti (75), Nepal (137), Paraguay (90), Peru (117), Democratic Republic of the Congo (133), Turkey (101) and Zimbabwe (149), where at least one journalist has been killed? RSF explains that Cuba’s poor ranking is due to journalists being imprisoned. Just supposing the organization is correct on this point –which is actually far from being the case-, wouldn’t killing journalists still be more serious than imprisoning them?

In 2003, developing countries transferred a net US$210 billion to the rich world – that is, it paid out US$210 billion more than it received in new inflows... Interest payments alone continue to take US$95 billion of developing countries’ resources, almost three times the value of what they receive in grant aid.

* One quarter of the aid [provided by rich countries] – $20bn a year – funds expensive and often ineffective western consultants, research and training.
* In the UK, for example, almost half of TA spending goes on consultants and other experts, the vast majority of them British.
* A typical cost of an expatriate consultant will be in the region of $200,000 a year. According to the OECD, in typical cases more than one third of this is spent on school fees and child allowances – spending which would not be needed if local consultants were used.

the sheer amount of aid the U.S. gives to Israel [is] unparalleled in the history of U.S. foreign policy. Israel usually receives roughly one third of the entire foreign aid budget, despite the fact that Israel comprises less than .001 of the world's population and already has one of the world's higher per capita incomes. In other words, Israel, a country of approximately 6 million people, is currently receiving more U.S. aid than all of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean combined when you take out Egypt and Colombia.

Our definition of phantom aid includes aid that is:
- not targeted for poverty reduction, estimated to be worth US$4.9 billion
- double counted as debt relief, totalling US$9.4 billion
- overpriced and ineffective Technical Assistance, estimated at US$13.8 billion
- tied to goods and services from the donor country, estimated at US$2.7 billion
- poorly coordinated and with high transaction costs, estimated at US$9 billion
- spent on excess administration costs; totalling US$0.4 billion.
In total, at least 61% of all donor assistance is phantom aid.

Invaded and occupied Iraq has been made to pay out U.S. $200 million ($270 million) in "reparations" for lost profits to corporations such as Halliburton, Shell, Mobil, Nestlé, Pepsi, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Toys R Us.

ActionAid said that although Britain had abandoned tied aid, at least 80% of contracts awarded by [the Department for International Development] in 2005-06 were to UK firms. A total of £101m was awarded to the so-called big five consultancy firms - PWC, KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst and Young and Accenture. Adam Smith International received contracts worth £22m, mostly for Iraq and Afghanistan.

To say that the civilian deaths from aerial bombardment are unintentional is sophistry, because if there is a probability that the bombs will hit civilian targets, then ipso facto the civilian deaths are not unintentional. This is tantamount to saying that a drunk driver who did not intend to kill someone in an "accident" should be set free for good motives; US law prosecutes drunk drivers regardless of whether they have been in an accident, because it recognizes that drunk driving is an inevitable accident. The same must be said of aerial bombardment. It always already intends to kill civilians, despite the best intentions of the military planners.

[At Nuremberg] the bombing of urban concentrations was not considered a crime. The bombings of Tokyo, Dresden, and so on—those aren’t crimes. Why? Because we did them. So, therefore, it’s not a crime. In fact, Nazi war criminals who were charged were able to escape prosecution when they could show that the Americans and the British did the same thing they did. Admiral Doenitz, a submarine commander who was involved in all kinds of war crimes, called in the defence a high official in the British admiralty and, I think, Admiral Nimitz from the United States, who testified that, ‘Yeah, that’s the kind of thing we did.’ And, therefore, they weren’t sentenced for these crimes. Doenitz was absolved.

According to the official case record, Supreme Court Justice Morrison Remick Waite simply pronounced before the beginning of argument in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886) that:
The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.

Every little helps says Tesco – especially now that they’re planning to reduce the number of plastic bags customers use. This global catastrophe-avoiding scheme will mean that only 75 billion bags will be used by their customers next year. If you’re thinking that 75,000,000,000 placcie bags is still quite a lot, Tesco is quick to point out that the bags will be sunlight-degradable (although not bio-degradable), so no worries there as they sit under mountains of landfill never seeing daylight.

Q: Why doesn’t Hamas recognise Israel’s right to exist?
A: The Israel that the UN created and the international community wishes Hamas to recognise is not recognised by Israel itself (Tel Aviv has a much larger Israel in mind). And the Israel that Israel itself recognises (the one that includes land grabbed through war) is not recognised by the international community. So why is Hamas being singled out for not recognising the UN drawn Israel (the one with the pre-1967 Green Line borders)? Couldn’t it mean that Hamas has learnt a thing or two from Israel?

...in addition to the much trumpeted $100 million Billg has donated to India's fight against HIV, he's funding the Microsoft jihad against Linux to the far more impressive tune of $421 million. That means that Linux is more than four times worse than AIDS to Billg and his happy Redmond family.

"How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis." [George Bush, December 2005]
As it happens, the White House has had something of a predilection for the pleasantly round number of 30,000. In 2003, before the invasion of Iraq, in the President's State of the Union Address, he used that very number for Saddam's mythical stock of "munitions capable of delivering chemical agents"; and, post-invasion, for police put back on patrol in the streets of Iraq. In 2005, that number was cited both for "new businesses" started in Iraq and new teachers trained since the fall of Baghdad. In 2006, in the President's "Strategy for Victory," that was the number of square miles Iraqi forces were by then primarily responsible for patrolling.

McDonalds is planning a campaign to remove the word ‘McJob’ from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The word has become synonymous for a job with little satisfaction and low wages. The official OED definition of a McJob (added to the dictionary in March 2001) is: "McJob (noun): An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector."

MP Richard Bacon: "Mr Wooley are you a chartered accountant ?"
Woolley: "I am not"
Bacon: "Are you a qualified financial person of any kind? do you have any financial qualifications ?"
Woolley: "I do not have any financial qualifications"
Bacon: "What is your job ?"
Woolley: "I am the Finance Director of the MOD"

Alicja Ziemowit, one resident of Lodz, Poland, arrived back home to discover that the local council had built a new road complete with traffic island in her back garden.
When she complained she was told that a change in the law meant that local council officials could now use private land for road building without consent or compensation. A council spokesman said, "I don't know why she is complaining, it is not a busy road, and she can still get to the back of her garden quite easily." She will surely enjoy relaxing on the hard shoulder and could now perhaps open a roadside stall to sell cappuccinos to workers at the new computer factory down the road.
Lodz council added, humourlessly, "She still owns the land, it just has a road on it now."

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

you have this business where TV won't show what we see, for reasons of so-called 'bad taste.' I remember once being on the phone to a TV editor in London when Al Jazeera were asked to feed some tape of children killed and wounded by British shell fire in Basra, and the guy started saying, 'there's no point feeding us this, we can't show this.'

"The first excuse was, 'people will be having their tea, so we can't put it on,' then it was, 'this is sort of pornography, we don't show this.' And ... the last thing was, 'we have to show respect for the dead.' So we don't show any respect for them when they are alive, we blow them to bits, and then we show respect for them.

Recently, I heard a rather sinister story, which sadly tends to be illustrative, about a project for health education for Romani children. This project, probably funded by European money, wanted to educate Romani children how to properly wash their hands and use soap. The only problem encountered in that project was the total absence of water supply in those settlements, the first pre-condition for Roma to be able to wash their hands.

A woman was threatened with arrest for wearing a T shirt which had pictures of Brian Haw’s banners on it, calling for an end to war. According to the police wearing the T Shirt near Downing St was an unauthorised protest. When she pointed out that the T Shirt advertised the Mark Wallinger exhibition of Brian’s placards in Tate Britain the police kindly deemed her T shirt legal.

On 25 October 2005, [Milan] Rai was arrested opposite Downing Street with vegan chef Maya Evans, after the pair read out the names of Iraqis and British service personnel who had been killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. Mr Rai was subsequently convicted of organising an "unauthorised" demonstration within 1km of Parliament, fined £350 and ordered to pay £150 in costs.
In May 2007 the pair were convicted again, this time for organising and participating in an "unauthorised" demonstration within 1km of Parliament, namely the "No More Fallujahs" weekend of nonviolent resistance marking the 2nd anniversary of the US/UK onslaught on the Iraqi city of Fallujah. At least 550 women and children are believed to have been killed during the latter attack, during which US forces used white phosphorus - a substance that burns down to the bone on contact with human flesh - as a weapon.

Many are quick to point out that we cannot inherit our ancestor’s sins. Indeed. But how then can we be entitled to the fruits of these sins: to our huge inherited advantage in power and wealth over the rest of the world?

...if the whole world wished to consume at the level of the United States - a consumption pattern which has been fuelled, incidentally, by the credit binge which led to the current economic crisis - we would need, conservatively, over 5 planets like earth to support them. But, under the current pattern of unequally distributed benefits from growth, to lift everyone in the world onto a modest $3 per day, would require the resources of around 15 planets like ours. Where, you might ask, will the other 14 come from?

...we live in a society with 42 brands of washing powder available at most supermarkets, 93 different personal bank account options, 72 family saloon car models available, 17 celebrity magazines, 56 brands of mp3 player in the shops (not counting the internet) and 541 different types of telephone you can install for your landline.
Cheap airlines go to 423 destinations from Britain, but domestic rail transport is unaffordable by most people! In return for all this, people work longer and harder, have less secure pensions and a more difficult old age...

Keynes compared the stock market to a competition in which the participants have to pick several pretty girls from a hundred photographs: ‘It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one’s judgement, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligence to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.‘ We are forced to make choices without having the knowledge that would enable us to make them; or, as John Gray has put it: ‘We are forced to live as if we were free.’

the statistics [in Russia] were sobering: with efficient capitalism replacing moribund and decadent communism, output was supposed to soar. In fact GDP declined 40 % and poverty increased tenfold. And the results were similar in the other economies making the transition who followed the advice of the US Treasury and the IMP.

All over Latin America, there is disillusionment with the policies that the United States and the IMF had pushed. Growth under liberalisation is just over half of what it was under the old pre-reform regime... Unemployment is up 3 percentage points; poverty... is up even as a percentage of the population. Where growth has occurred, the benefits have accrued to those at the upper part of the income distribution.

In 2006, the blessed great britain...
* imported 586 tonnes of sweet biscuits, waffles and wafers, gingerbread, and exported 669 tonnes.
* sent 1,445 tonnes of sugar confectionery to Sweden, and brought in 1,632 tonnes from the same country.
* imported 14,137 tonnes of chocolate covered waffles and wafers and exported 15,856 tonnes.

Since 1990, the energy and natural resources sector (mostly coal, oil, gas and electricity) has given $418m to federal politicians in the US. Transport companies have given $355m... The big polluters favour the Republicans, but most of them also fund Democrats. During the 2000 presidential campaign, oil and gas companies lavished money on George Bush, but they also gave Al Gore $142,000, while transport companies gave him $347,000. The whole US political system is in hock to people who put their profits ahead of the biosphere.

GDP can estimate or approximate the money value of the products and services sold in this country during the year, but gives no clue as to the amenity of life or the welfare of the nation. A view of mountains that has given pleasure to generations enters the calculation of GDP only when it is concreted over at such and such a price. The value of silence is recognised only at the point when it is abolished by a new airport runway ... Let us deafen ourselves with new airports, blind ourselves with street light, choke ourselves with traffic, lest the economy suffer!

Brussels sprouts grown in Norfolk are harvested by machines with incredible wastage and efficiency, taken by lorry to a packing department in the Midlands, sent to a factory where they are washed, cleaned, sorted by size, packaged or frozen and finally sent back again to Norfolk to appear in the supermarkets, wrapped in cellophane or a dinky little net bag... A study conducted by the SAFE alliance in 1995 showed that food was travelling 50% further before it reached the supermarket than it did in the late 1970s.

The free trade agreements, in effect, make unlawful all statutes and regulations that restrict private capital in any way. Carried to full realization, this means the end of whatever imperfect democratic protections the populace has been able to muster after generations of struggle in the realm of public policy. Under the free trade agreements any and all public services can be ruled out of existence because they cause “lost market opportunities” for private capital. So too public hospitals can be charged with taking away markets from private hospitals; and public water supply systems, public schools, public libraries, public housing and public transportation are guilty of depriving their private counterparts of market opportunities...

Acting as the supreme global adjudicator, the WTO has ruled against laws deemed “barriers to free trade.” It has forced Japan to accept greater pesticide residues in imported food. It has kept Guatemala from outlawing deceptive advertising of baby food. It has eliminated the ban in various countries on asbestos, and on fuel-economy and emission stan­dards for motor vehicles. And it has ruled against marine-life protection laws and the ban on endangered-species products. The European Union’s prohibition on the importation of hormone-ridden U.S. beef had overwhelming popular support throughout Europe, but a three-member WTO panel decided the ban was an illegal restraint on trade.

One Wrexham woman found herself on the wrong side of the law when she helped herself to four plastic garden chairs from a privatised council tip. The Waste Recycling Group - instead of lending her a hand for helping push towards their target of 65% of all rubbish being recycled - phoned the cops.

One house search later and the chairs have been returned to their rightful place: a landfill, and the would-be Womble is waiting to see if the CPS is going charge her under the Theft Act.

The two pillars of the Mali economy are cotton in the south and cattle in the north, and both are in trouble because of the way that Western powers violate the same rules that they impose so brutally on Third World nations. Mali produces cotton of the highest quality, but the US government spends more money to support its cotton farmers than the entire state budget of Mali, so it is small wonder that Mali can’t compete. In the north, the European Union is the culprit: the EU subsidises every single cow to the tune of five hundred euros a year. The Mali minister for the economy said: we don’t need your help or advice or lectures on the beneficial effects of abolishing excessive state regulations; just, please, stick to your own rules about the free market and our troubles will be over.

Subsidies for one crop alone, cotton, that went to 25,000 mostly very well off US farmers, exceeded in value the cotton that was produced, lowering the global price of cotton enormously. American farmers...gained at the expense of the 10 million African farmers who depended on cotton for their meagre livings. Several African countries lost between 1-2% of their entire income, an amount greater than what these countries received in foreign aid from the United States. Mali, for instance, received $37 million in aid but lost $43 million from depressed prices.

... for the poor to get slightly less poor, the rich have to get very much richer, implying patterns of consumption which, in a world facing climate change, cannot be sustained. It now takes around $166 worth of global growth - made up of all those energy-hungry giant flat screen TVs and sports utility vehicles - to generate a single dollar of poverty reduction for people in absolute poverty, compared with just $45 dollars in the 1980s.

the WTO ruled that the U.S. corporation RiceTec has the patent rights to all the many varieties of basmati rice, grown for centuries by India’s farmers. It also ruled that a Japanese corporation had exclusive rights in the world to grow and produce curry powder.

Dr Robert Hare, a psychologist and internationally renowned expert on psychopathy ... told us that many of the attitudes people adopt and the actions they execute when acting as corporate operatives can be characterised as psychopathic. You 'try to destroy your competitors, or you want to beat them one way of another,' said Hare, 'and you're not particularly concerned with what happens to the general public as long as they're buying your product.' Yet, despite the fact that executives must often manipulate and harm others in pursuit of their corporation's objectives, Hare insists they are not psychopaths. That is because they can function outside the corporation... Businesspeople should therefore take some comfort from their ability to compartmentalise the contradictory moral demands of their corporate and noncorporate lives, for it is precisely this 'schizophrenia'... that saves them from becoming psychopaths.

During the 1980s - what was called the lost decade of development - from every $100 worth of global economic growth, around $2.20 found its way to people living below the absolute poverty line. A decade later that had shrunk to just $0.60c, and the actual mean income of those living under $1 per day in Africa also fell.

The standard ‘trickle-down’ argument against redistribution (through progressive taxation etc) is that instead of making the poor richer, it makes the rich poorer. However, this apparently anti-interventionist attitude actually contains an argument for the current state intervention: although we all want the poor to get better, it is counter-productive to help them directly, since they are not the dynamic and productive element; the only intervention needed is to help the rich get richer, and then the profits will automatically spread down to the poor. Throw enough money at Wall Street, and it will eventually trickle down to Main Street. If you want people to have money to build, don’t give it to them directly, help those who are lending it to them.