How Wall Street banksters are like third-world kleptocratic dictators
In America we tend to look down on Third World autocrats who siphon their country's wealth into their personal Swiss bank accounts at the expense of their citizens. But I would argue we have our own class of kleptocrats that in many ways behave the same way -- and often with the same result.
I was recently at a seminar in Africa that focused heavily on human rights.
One of the most insightful participants made a powerful argument that autocratic leaders who violate their people's human rights by restricting their freedom of speech and assembly were even more culpable for human rights violations when they siphon off millions of dollars into Swiss bank accounts and deprived their country's children of decent health care, education and an opportunity to make a prosperous life.
In fact, every day African children go to bed hungry and are prevented from attending school so they can engage in child labor - while in some countries their leaders live in luxury and personally expropriate profits from the sale of their country's bountiful natural resources to foreign corporations.
Of course, this is far from true in many African countries. In fact, the gross domestic product in many emerging African countries has been exploding - and the fruits of these increases are being shared with average people through massive new health care programs, new roads to take their products to market, and new educational opportunities. The U.S. HIV-AIDs program has been a huge success - dramatically reducing the prevalence of the disease and giving millions new hope with ant-retroviral drugs.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/is-there-a-difference-bet_b_3794626.html