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Facts on Foreign Aid

President Carter, the same who supervizes elections for the implementation of Democracy throughout the Americas and some other regions in the world concluded in 1979 a 1.5 billion economic aid package to the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, where arms and training go to combat growing resistance to a regime whose policies have led to grain consumption per person falling to the lowest of all Asia.

2- To get the approval of the IMF, a country is usually obliged to: devaluate its currency so as to boost exports and limit imports, cut back public spending programs, introduce wage controls, lift price controls on even the most essential food items, raise interest rates, and remove barriers to foreign investment and Free Trade. Free trade means that luxury items are still allowed to enter even when scarce foreign exchange should be going for the more neede basic items. These measures benefit foreign agribusiness and other corporations extracting cheap labor and resources; the burden falls mainly on all working people and squarely on the poor. The United States holds the largest voting block and veto power in the IMF just as in the World Bank.

3- Recipients government of Development aid are chosen on the basis of their supposed importance to the United States than on their poverty or genuine commitment to development. In fact looking back at U.S aid policy a few decades ago one can easily notice that U.S. policy has been to cut off aid when genuine agrarian reforms are underway for example in Chile and Thailand . Whereas when governments often through the introduction of martial law dictatorships, actively undermine the well being of the majority and abolish civil liberties in order to deal with those who protest, U.S aid seems to get vastly stepped up. Aid to Thailand and the Philippines increased severalfold after martial law dictatorships brutally attack peasant groups and all others organizing for reforms.

Where are we today? Are those inconsistencies still prevailing in the case of Haiti?

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