>The west is not the scapegoat for the many countries who refuse to deal with poverty in their own backyard. That argument is old and a copout Dragan.

The refusal of the West to deal with it in appropriate manner (not with more robbery, usury and propping up pliable regimes) is equally old. The "this is old" argument is also getting old.

I didn't mean that the West needs to empty their collective pockets and give it all to Africa or whatever. Only to stop taking away from them. Leave them alone. No more coups, no more tricks, no more contracts where they sell their oil for peanuts, no more making sure that what money stays in the country goes to corrupt their politicians, no more covert operations, no more WTO/MMF/WB enforcement... I'm imagining a nice 20-year moratorium to get these countries off the hook. They'd receive zero aid, or only humanitarian aid, from the West for the time, too. No investment, no loans.

I figure they'd be better off.