Development

Jeter, Jon. "Awash in Oil, Mired in Poverty," The Guardian Weekly, October 5-11, 2000, Vol. 163/No. 15, p. 33.

Offshore oil fields have lined the pockets of the government in Angola, enabling them to recapture the country's provincial capitals from rebels. Producing 800,000 barrels of crude oil per day, Angola surpasses Kuwait in its oil export; however, the wealth from this natural resource does not reach the majority of the population. Why? Jeter remarks, "A civil war that is closing in on its 26th year sops up most of the oil windfall, and corruption eats away much of what remains, leaving most of the population with nothing." Another journalist remarked, "The government has created a stateless state here in Angola."

Elliott, Larry. "Why the Poor Are Picking Up the Tab," The Guardian Weekly. May 17, 1998. p. 14.

The crippling cost of debt repayments has returned many of the poorest African nations to the slavery of poverty, hunger and disease, writes Larry Elliott. Elliott reports: "According to the United Nations Human Development Report, about a quarter of the world's population…are living on incomes of less than a dollar a day." Elliott explores reasons for this harsh reality, including the West's encouragement of developing nations to borrow "recklessly," the "corrupt post-colonial elites who squandered money from loans," and the lack of "good government."
Burke, Jason. "World Bank Says No to Chinese Plan," The Guardian Weekly, July 2000, Vol. 163/No. 3, p. 7.

The World Bank denied funding for a plan - called the China Western Poverty Reduction Project - that would have settled "nearly 60,000 Chinese farmers on land used for grazing by Tibetans." Observers and Tibetan activists hail this move as an important precedent.

Chomsky, Noam. "The Poor Always Pay Debts of the Rich," The Guardian Weekly
May 24, 1998, Vol. 158/No. 21, p. 15.

In this essay, Noam Chomsky argues that the masses have not been the ones historically to borrow or lend, but nonetheless suffer because of elite decision-making and the capitalist system.

Denny, Charlotte. "NGOs balk at World Bank's Gateway to Development," The Guardian Weekly, September 7, 2000, Vol. 163/No. 11, p. 24.

The World Bank set up a "one-stop website" to field all facets of development issues. Proponents say it is a visionary approach to use the information technology available to vet alternative perspectives. Opponents argue that the Global Development Gateway (as it is called) will "reinforce the Bank's dominant position in development thinking" and urge that rather than one web site offering everything that Internet users have the choice of a variety of web sites that deal with similar development issues.