U.S. Jobs Shape Condoms’ Role in Foreign Aid (Jeff Sessions)

[rodeodance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/world/29condoms.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print

October 29, 2006
U.S. Jobs Shape Condoms’ Role in Foreign Aid
By CELIA W. DUGGER

EUFAULA, Alabama — Here in this courtly, antebellum town, Alabama’s condom production has survived an onslaught of Asian competition, thanks to the patronage of straitlaced congressmen from this Bible Belt state. Behind the scenes, the politicians have ensured that companies in Alabama won federal contracts to make billions of condoms over the years for AIDS prevention and family planning programs overseas, though Asian factories could do the job at less than half the cost.

In recent years, the state’s condom manufacturers fell hundreds of millions of condoms behind on orders, and the federal aid agency began buying them from Asia. The use of Asian-made condoms has contributed to layoffs that are coming next month.

But Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, has quietly pressed to maintain the unqualified priority for American-made condoms and is likely to prevail if the past is any guide. “What’s wrong with helping the American worker at the same time we are helping people around the world?” asked the senator’s spokesman, Michael Brumas.

That question goes to the heart of an intensifying debate among wealthy nations about to what degree foreign aid is about saving jobs at home or lives abroad. Britain, Ireland and Norway have all sought to make aid more cost effective by opening contracts in their programs to fight global poverty to international competition. The United States, meanwhile, continues to restrict bidding on billions of dollars worth of business to companies operating in America, and not just those that make condoms......

[1932]

1. If the US legislature is voting on how to spend US dollars on helping

foreign governments, then it's understandable that you'd want those dollars spent in a way that helps US workers.

HOWEVER, the real question isn't whether Britain, Ireland, Norway or the US should be manufacturing things like condoms.

The real question to me is, why, when the West has argued to foreign governments that they need to elect Wall Street-friendly, neoliberal leaders because that's the way to get foreign investment into their developing economies, and they did that for years, are there no condom factories in developing countries?

These countries wouldn't need the aid if the west weren't ripping them off of their natural and labor resources, extracting all their wealth from them, and if foreign investment had actually let them build value-adding industries that employed people in developing countries and that allowed them to build wealth. If they had their own condom factories, the west wouldn't be fighting over which wealthy western country should be selling them condoms.

It just shows how even humanitarian aid becomes part of a big project of perpetuating dependence to make rich people richer (and, no doubt, a lot of that is made easier by manipulating the desires of people in the west to help poor people).

[Ian David]

2. Many of those condoms are melted-down in India and used to build roads.

Many of those condoms are melted-down in India and used to build roads.

We're kidding ourselves if we think Bush is actually using those condoms to save lives.

Bush, The GOP, and The Vatican are doing everything they can to spread poverty and disease.