Corruption and oil wealth have combined to create one of the world’s most unequal societies

[Newsjock]

Source: The Globe and Mail

... Transparency International, an anti-corruption organization, has cited Angola as one of the 20 most corrupt countries in the world. While the government is sometimes praised for spending 30 per cent of its $35-billion budget on health and other social programs, much of Angola’s immense oil revenue has never been accounted for, and much of it has gone into the pockets of a small elite.

Angola’s oil exports have generated as much as $44-billion in annual revenue for the national government in Luanda. Yet almost two-thirds of Angola’s 18 million people are subsisting on less than $2 a day. Most have no access to clean drinking water, and their life expectancy is among the lowest in the world.

The contrast between the homeless families of Lubango and the wealthy elite of Luanda is staggering. While the 3,000 evicted families in Lubango search for bits of wood or metal to fend off the rain, the privileged of Luanda are living in $15,000-a-month apartments, shopping at luxury boutiques, kite-surfing in the ocean or cavorting at beach clubs with names like Coconuts, Miami Beach and Café del Mar, where a single meal can cost the equivalent of two months of income for the poor.

... Rafael Marques, an investigative journalist in Luanda, often takes his visitors on what he calls a “corruption tour” of the city. He points to the beauty salon where the wives of the political elite get their $90 manicures. He gestures to an oil company’s $450-million office tower, built by a developer in private partnership with a government official. He shows the reclaimed harbour land where officials will profit from luxury hotel deals. He talks about the business contracts in which a government official will sign on both sides of the deal: on behalf of a government agency and on behalf of a private corporation.

“There is no boundary between private and public,” he says. “The elite has set up a system of wealth distribution for itself. The system has become so corrupt that everyone is just waiting for their turn. The more they steal, the more they want to steal. It’s become a disease.”

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/homeless-in-a-land-of-riches/article1528337/

[Bitwit1234]

1. And because of these oil companies

we do not have any alternative energy. There is no way they are going to put themselves out of business by allowing any research into finding this energy. And rest assured, when they do stumble upon this energy THEY will do everything in their power to control it, and put a strangle hold on the American public again. Independent companies should get their butt in gear and find one.