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International-UN-NGOs

Oxfam: Free trade may drain Arabs

2005-11-28

Oxfam, the global anti-poverty organisation, has cautioned the EU against seeking rapid free trade in agriculture with Arab nations around the Mediterranean, saying it will drive people there deeper into poverty.

Better to manage the economy, y'know. They're not competitive, so that way they never will be, so they won't have to make any effort. The natives just aren't capable of it.

Oxfam said on Saturday that Europe must not force Mediterranean countries to open their agricultural markets too fast under any Euro-Mediterranean free trade agreement but urged them to accept more goods from northern Africa and the Middle East. The group staged a small protest in downtown Barcelona early on Saturday, depicting a scene in which a few activists dressed like African farmers are stopped by a European Union (EU) customs barrier. In a report to the leaders of the 25 EU nations, Israel and its Arab neighbours - which open a two-day summit in Barcelona on Sunday - Oxfam said 68 million people in the Middle East and North Africa survive "on less than $2 a day, compared with 50 million people in 1990". Three-quarters live in rural areas, making their living from agriculture, it added. The two-day Barcelona summit is to reaffirm a goal, first set in 1995, to establish a Euro-Mediterranean free trade zone by 2010.

Posted by:Fred

#4 Perhaps I wasn't entirely clear in my previous post, but the homeless shelter executives were all your usual liberal do-gooder types who, nonetheless, when forced to rub shoulders with the objects of their limitless compassion got all squeamish about actually coming in contact with humanity's flotsam.

Some ten years ago, I personally catered their employee appreciation dinner for 60 people. One of the family shelter's occupants was in the midst of (literally) saving my bacon when a dish started to go off of the rails and arriving execs essentially looked down their noses at her as if to ask, "what is your type doing in here?"

That experience helped to start at ripping the mask from the do-gooder mentality I had so often encountered.

Posted by: Zenster 2005-11-28 18:15

#3 Not just you, reeks like a dead skunk on the side of the road, hold your breath and hope you can get away from the stench before you have to breathe again.

Posted by: Redneck Jim 2005-11-28 15:54

#2 While working as chef for a homeless shelter I was appalled at the condescending and enabling attitudes exhibited by their executive staff.

Is it just me or does the above article reek of that old "we must help our little brown brother" mentality?

Posted by: Zenster 2005-11-28 11:36

#1 a scene in which a few activists dressed like African farmers are stopped by a European Union (EU) customs barrier

Oxfam thinks international trade is street theater?

Posted by: Seafarious 2005-11-28 07:46

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