A group of African farmers and souvenir hawkers have given
Greenpeace and other NGOs an award for helping to preserve African poverty.
African and Asian farmers, and hawkers from across South Africa handed over a "Bullshit Trophy" (yes, that is the trophy’s real name) to Greenpeace, the Third World Network and BioWatch for their contribution to the "preservation of poverty" in developing countries.
The trophy comprises of a piece of wood on which two heaps of dried cow-dung – "unfortunately not elephant dung" – are mounted.
Barun Mitra of the Sustainable Development Network (SDN), a coalition of non-governmental organisations which believes, among other things, that sustainable development is attainable only through free trade, officiated at the symbolic handing-over in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
Mitra denounced the three NGOs as parasites which "prey on the blood of the poor" and did not help to improve agricultural productivity in the Third World.
“They are not interested in famine or poverty. This lot is concerned only about their own interests.
"They sit here at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in their rich man’s hotels and romanticise everything," he said.
These are the people who are supposed to be "victims of globalization" – but rather than wanting the UN to swoop in and protect them from the big bad invisible hand of capitalism they want to – gasp – make some money.
Of course they do. Who wouldn’t. Given the choice between subsistance farming and living in a mud brick hut, and drinking a Coke in an air-conditioned home and eating steak for suppoer, it’s pretty damn clear what anyone sane would choose. (Except for the Greenpeace folks, who seem to think that the former is the only "sustainable" way for people to live. Or at least people who aren’t members of Greenpeace.) These people know that the way out of backbreaking poverty and a life of constant drudgery that would make Hobbes look like an optimist is through a good dose of capitalism.
Then again, the EU would rather throw more worthless development aid that way and assuage their conscience rather than actually open their markets to Third World imports. Which is why the EU and most NGOs are the last people you’d want trying to solve the Third World’s problems – it’s their line of thinking that caused most of them in the first place.
(Via InstaPundit)
