It's probably pretty kyule at the moment to support the cancellation of Third World Debt. If Bono's supporting it, then it must be roit awn at the very least. He's not alone. There are some pretty powerful people who are in favour of such a humanitarian move - such as British Aerospace, Fabrique Nationale, and the Colt Division of General Motors.
Why are Third World Countries facing starvation and infrastructural calamity? Because those big bad banks, white, Western and wicked, are squeezing the lifeblood out of them, because that is the way banks behave? Or because they have been run into the ground by cruel, incompetent and corrupt ruling elites, who have freely borrowed money from anyone who would give it, in order to buy themselves Mercedes to drive up and down the 15-mile motorway built by East German engineers 20 years ago, and which connects their capital with a termites' nest in the middle of nowhere?
Relic of imperialism
That the West is somehow responsible for global ills informs almost every decent conversation about "The Third World". But that assumption is merely a relic of imperialism, with a comically obsolete terminology. There is no Third World anymore. The Second World, communism, has vanished, and its components have migrated to the two available worlds remaining.
One is where there's a rule of law, harsh as in China or liberal as in Scandinavia, but at least predictable; where political leaders do not confiscate the greater part of the GNP; where the political culture promotes economic activity by its citizens, who in turn see the benefits of working hard and saving because it makes sense. Then there's the world without a predictable rule of law, but governance by tyrannical whim; where corrupt leaders loot the national treasury; where the political culture discourages enterprise and where citizens accordingly resort to philosophical inertia and feckless improvidence because it makes sense.
Just as the Victorians were driven to improve the lot of "the lesser breeds", so the modern uplifter of the Third World thinks it is the white man's burden to do for Africa (for which Third World is a code name) what the native cannot do himself; although of course that sort of racist, sexist language is not employed by the roit-awn, the kyule. So forget the language; we're talking ideas here, and the idea basic to all the roit-awn, kyule assumptions about that misnamed planet the Third World is that it needs special rules which contravene rules elsewhere and special economic models which ignore the oh so expensively acquired lessons learnt elsewhere.
The result? Take your pick: Sierra Leone, Uganda, Congo, Tanzania, Uganda, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia. Maybe soon Kenya, Namibia, KwaZulu Natal - who knows? What have they in common? One thing is that they have been repeatedly misgoverned by slovenly despots or serial killers; the other is that they would almost certainly welcome a cancellation of national debts by the World Bank. Such a move, the UN declares, could save the lives of 7 million children a year across the continent.
Fighter planes
Why? What on earth makes the UN, Bono or any of the kyule or the roit-awn think that the elites of those countries are suddenly going to start thinking about the infants whose lives they have been so careless of so far? Is not more likely that whatever money is saved in debt repayment will be spent on Mercs, and that their armies will find an excuse to buy fighter planes (only to rust in hangars for want of proper maintenance) and assault rifles to keep the citizenry in its place? Big smile on the faces of British Aerospace and Colt Firearms Manufacturing Co Inc, no smile at all on the faces of dysenteric children in sun-seared villages without wells.
Addicted gambler
Of course, it sounds kindly, this business of cancelling debts; as it does to cancel the debts of an addicted alcoholic or gambler. But the payment of debt is perhaps the only discipline such people, such countries, have in their lives; the certainty of foreclosure is more likely to concentrate their minds on being grown-up than would an absolution from the consequences of reneging on those debts. We know this for certain in Ireland. So recklessly had we been governed for over a decade that 12 years ago, the IMF nearly moved in. We were obliged to place our affairs in order, to pay our debt, and to live in the real world. We grew up.
In other words, a simple cancellation of debt is the worst service we can do the hungry of the earth and their debt-addicted governments; it would guarantee that their children would grow up in a world as vile as the one they inhabit.
Furthermore, banks do not lend their own money. Never. Bankers are hard, ruthless bastards who lend the money of eejits (aka their depositors) impartially either to the masters of Kinsealy or of Kenya. But no doubt Bono would be quite delighted if one morning his bank manager cried: Good news! We've lent all your savings to that nice man, CJH! And as a decent, humanitarian gesture - after all, the poor fellow's getting on - we've just cancelled the debt! Hello? Mr Hewson?