Yemen Beware! Gordon Brown has plans to save you
For decades now our skeptical doctor has detailed the absurdities of foreign aid programs, beginning with a first-hand account (in his second book) of the World Health Organization's incompetent forays into the Gilbert Islands. Today he addresses Gordon Brown's brave and generous offer to save Yemen. A withering putdown of foreign aid...
there isn’t a single Third World country that foreign aid has rescued from poverty
...and a clever characterization of Brown...
an insensate urge to do good combined with a lack of imagination or wide experience of life and a complacency about his own abilities, his disastrous record notwithstanding.
Difficult to read. Someone got sloppy with the "replace" function. Last I checked, it was simply "Yemen", not "the Yemen".
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Yes, that grated a little on me, too. Although I noticed that the Yemeni President called it "the Yemen" in his quote, so maybe that's the correct title.
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On that matter of pointless aid to Africa (and elsewhere), I'd recommend Dambisa Moyo's book "Dead Aid" - a real eye-opener.
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I've been wanting to read that book. I watched an interview with her on the Charlie Rose show (in the U.S.), and her views clearly irked and confused Mr. Rose, so I liked her immediately.
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This part felt very Mark Steyn-y:
The answer, according to Mr Brown, is therefore more aid to the Yemen: more community centres, perhaps, or ping-pong tables, à la Moss Side in Manchester or Toxteth in Liverpool. Give those Al Qaeda chappies a social security system and something to do when they are unemployed and they will stop sending the sons of rich Nigerian bankers to blow up planes over Detroit.
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