1998-12-31
While Americans pour billions of dollars, through charities, into foreign aid, American banks rake back more than ten times as much, in interest payments on loans negotiated with illegitimate military dictatorships. Most of these loans were used to line the pockets of the generals and their cronies, or buy weapons from U.S. and European manufacturers. The weapons were used to put down rebellions by their own people. The people were rebelling against governments that squandered their money on weapons instead of schools, agricultural development, roads, and hospitals.
This is an unbelievable fact but it is absolutely true: the so-called "third world", the poorest countries on the globe, pour billions of dollars into the economies of the rich West, while receiving barely a trickle back in foreign aid. Their schools, hospitals, and transportation systems are starving for funds. Their people are literally starving. Yet we shamelessly continue to demand that they pay us back every last penny of the money borrowed by scumbag generals who seized power illegally, ruled by force, and tortured and exploited their own people.
Any person with common sense can see that if a bank chooses to lend money to a dictator, they have no right to expect the oppressed victims of that dictator to repay the loans. First our banks raped these countries; now they demand that they make us dinner.