Bush Out With The Begging Bowl

Originally posted by icebreaker@Sep 3 2005, 08:14 AM
And Indonesia isn't a Third-World country the last time I looked.
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This is the type of ridiculous comment that really pisses me off about the forum. People just make random statements to back up an arguement. Icebreaker, you are either a half-wit or a liar if you are seriously trying to claim that Indonesia isn't a Third World country. And if one of the moderators wants to take that comment off the board, they can feck off.

140 million people in Indonesia were below the poverty line in 2000, just after the Indonesians felt the brunt of the Asian economic crisis. The World Bank has described the reversal in Indonesia?s fortunes as "the most dramatic economic collapse anywhere in 50 years". And all of this was before the tsunami.

I was in Indonesia for a month in April, and the level of poverty is staggering. Note that I spent most of my time in Java, which was unaffected by the tsunami. Around half the population lives on $2 a day or less, according to figures released this year. There are far more beggars than other countries I have visited recently (Mongolia, Peru and China amongst others).

According to the latest available data from the World Health Organization (WHO), healthcare spending in Indonesia stood at just 2.4% of GDP in 2001. Spending is low by regional standards: health spending in Thailand amounts to 3.7% of GDP and 3.1% of GDP in the Philippines (also for 2001).
 
I must have missed that comment - I agree absolutely that Indonesia is, without a doubt, a third world country. I know it was 10 years ago now but I did a lot of study into Indonesia at school as my Geography teacher & her husband took a few months out to travel around Indonesia. The poverty there is rife, and shocking.
 
Whoa, BtB, you don't need to accuse someone of being a half-wit or a liar just because they're ignorant of the facts! BrianH is constantly putting us right on here without recourse to personal insult, though I know he despairs of ever getting us through our GCSEs.

I think that many people would be genuinely surprised that Indonesia should be in such a poor way - but there is quite a lot of geographical and demographical ignorance, and you have to remember that there's always a point at which we don't know something, and one at which we do. Travelling around helps us to see the situation truly, of course. I think people tend to confuse Indonesia with places like Malaysia, which is stunningly wealthy now. I agree, it's best to contribute on the basis of known fact rather than conjecture or bias, but now we're all much better-informed by you. And that's part of being on a forum, I've found - you can learn from others.
 
15,000 Volts duly delivered Bar. There is a rumour circulating that Kri is a member of The E. Dead Group.
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I have just noticed the additional postings to this thread ................ apologies for the delay in reply.

Bar the Bull .......... I had assumed that reference to "Third World" would have been understood as in the comparative context of sub-Saharan Africa. While I salute your on-the-ground experience of the Far Eastern region I wonder if it is possible had you travelled as widely in Niger or the Dharfur province if you would infer that an equivalent level of destitution existed in Indonesia.

With specific reference to Indonesia I find it hard to rationalize your local observances with the hard factual statistics relevant to the that area. In contrast to truly appaling levels of poverty in Africa, Indonesia has the benefit of being an oil exporting country in addition to having access to mineral deposits of gold copper and tin. Indonesia is sufficiently financially entrenched to be able to support a standing army of over two hundred thousand soldiers and commit that army to an agressive campaign of offence and occupation in East Timor. An GDP-per capita of $3,500 compares far more favourably than many countries in Africa and certainly does not indicate a State in the death-throes of financial ruin. Any reasons for the country not being more prosperous than it is can be blamed on endemic corruption and a fall-out from the Asian financial crisis of a few years back. Certainly, a poverty level of 27% does seem alarming until you consider that this is actually a lower figure than that applicable to the coloured underclass of New Orleans. I'm sure during your time in Indonesia you have spent some time in the capital Jakarta. What lasting impressions were you left with? I have been informed on more than one occasion that the infrastructure and avenues of Jakarta would put the capital city of the country in which I live to shame.

At the end of the day, the remark regarding Indonesia was only an appendage to the main thread discussion but I did feel compelled to reply. I'm hoping that this side-tracked aspect can be now rested.
 
I would have been happy that the topic were rested, but I feel I must pull you up on a couple of points from your most recent posting.

Being an oil exporting country is absolutely no guarantee of a country's wealth. Iraq exports oil, for instance.

The size of a country's army has very little bearing on a country's wealth. In fact, I believe it stands to reason that a country's people are poor if it spends a significant proportion of its GDP on defence.

I did indeed visit Jakarta. To say that the infrastructure would put the capital city in which you live to shame is ridiculous. There are people literally hanging out of trains and most people forego the carriages to travel into the centre on top of the train at rush hour.

What lasting impressions were you left with?
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I was left with the lasting impression of a city with a dramatic discrepancy between rich and poor. If one stays in fancy hotels and gets chauffered around in fancy cars, one misses the real Jakarta, with street kids, violence and appalling hygiene.

And besides, what relevance does Jakarta have to the tsunami-affected areas? About as much as Washington does to New Orleans. Trust me on this one; five years from now, New Orleans will be more affluent than the tsunami-affected regions of Sumatra.

And finally, I never claimed that Indonesia is poorer than sub-Saharan Africa. I am absolutely positive that it is not. However you claimed that Indonesia isn't a Third World country. It is.
 
If I were going for discrepancies between rich and poor, I'd put India very close to the top of the list. It is so not a poor country, with its fabulous gem deposits and rich, fertile farmlands and rivers. To see small children, deliberately maimed so that they could beg more effectively, the running gutters in almost every major city (except in Delhi, where the real poor are effectively policed out of sight of visiting diplomats) which thousands of families call 'home', and to watch rich Indian wives trying on yet more ruby bracelets to go with their emeralds and sapphires, brushing aside the beggars with disdain and disgust, is something of an eye-opener. Being offered first marijuana, then on polite refusal cocaine, and then, in desperation, heroin, by a perhaps 9 y.o. street runner when trying to absorb 'local colour' in Mumbai (then Bombay) was also an alternative experience. Yet we're still informed by charity organizations that India is a desperately poor country, based on demographics. If the wealth trickled down a bit, if Indians gave up their wretched caste system and their obsession with status and position, then perhaps it wouldn't be.
 
Originally posted by Bar the Bull@Sep 5 2005, 05:57 PM

Being an oil exporting country is absolutely no guarantee of a country's wealth. Iraq exports oil, for instance.
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Am I to infer that you consider Iraq (both prior to the Gulf War and post-Saddam) to be a thrid-world country?

BtB, I quess in the final analysis it boils down to the interpretation of what constitutes a third-world country. It is a relativistic thing I suppose .......... a concept rather than an easily definable measure of a country's health.

But it is clear that your interpretation differs greatly to mine. You refer to the imbalance between rich an poor as a signature of a third-world country, but, choose to forget that such an imbalance exists in the richest of countries. That there are street urchins eking an existence on the streets of Jakarta is an irrelevance to the issue -- street kids get shot by the forces of State in Brazil weekly but that does not make Brazil a TWC by any reasoning. In the inner cities of the richest country in the world (USA) you will find some are obliged to shelter in doorways at nightime often going to sleep hungry.

Not being facetious, but, at least they have trains in Jakarta. Overcrowded maybe ........... I understand that city trains are often overcrowded in Tokyo also to the extent that "pushers" are employed to squeeze more on board. So, evidently, crowded trains cannot be offered as a criterion to guage TWC status. In the capital city of the country in which I live city centre trams (electrified) were only introduced last year!

Now I appreciate that I should offer my opinion on what conditions would constitute a TWC. Perhaps one example may be having to walk five miles for water. Or living in an environment where starvation and famine stalk the land. Or a country which is ruled by a despotic tyrant where human rights and decency is trampled into the dry and arid ground where no crops will grow because of drought and pestilence.

I'm afraid, in my book, Indonesia according to these criteria does not have the dubious distinction of qualifying as a Third World Country. Maybe not "First-World" but however nothing on the scale of misery of a Third World African country.
 
For those who don't know where, why, when and how the meaning of 'Third World' originated, or what it now stands to mean, may I suggest this link, prior to continuing the debate on what constitutes, or does not constitute, a 'Third World country': http://www.answers.com/topic/third-world.

And for those who can't be arsed to look, as a developing Asian country, Indonesia is indeed still part of what is currently defined as the Third World. Key words to define 'Third World' are DEVELOPING, plus 'Asia', or 'Africa', or 'Latin America'. Nothing to do with the visitation of natural disasters, or despots and death squads (remember Germany?).
 
Thank you Krizon for that link.

Well, I see that according to "answers.com" definition both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are Third-World countries. I find this extraordinary and incongruous .......... but it does appear that my own heretofore notion of what constitutes a TWC has been erroneously constructed on considerations of poverty, backwardness etc.
 
So President Bush has set up an investigation into what went wrong with the handling of the results of Katrina. It is very unlikely that the investigation's report will attach any blame to the White House.

How do we know this?

The investigative committee is to be headed by none other than President George W Bush!
 
In truth, icebreaker, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are probably adjudged to be 'Third World' because they're still developing their infrastructures - there are still many villages without, for example, electricity, mains sewers and water, schools and even clinics. What you get are - say, in Saudi as an example - barely a handful of well-developed towns and cities such as Riyadh (the capital), Jeddah (Red Sea), and the ports of Al-Khobar and Dammam (Arabian Gulf).

Both Kuwait and Saudi are very heavily dependent on other Arab countries to supply their teachers, while medical staff at all levels is drawn from anywhere they can get it, professional-level employees underpinning all the development of the country's infrastructure (goods and services, oil, buildings, roads, desalination plants, airports, THE railway, etc.) are again hugely non-Saudi and non-Kuwaiti.

One problem to national development is the small indigenous population of either country; in Saudi the stubborn refusal to allow women to take up public sector jobs or to mix with men in any job or business they currently have; another is the extreme conservatism of many Saudi families in educating their daughters beyond (and sometimes to) High School levels - none of these progress a country to its full potential, and so, to all intents and purposes, being non self-reliant, their development will be a continuing process for at least a couple more generations. There are, in fact, still beggars in Saudi Arabia, although it's most likely that these are 'imports' - Muslims who've come from other countries on the Hajj (annual pilgrimage to Makkah, previously Mecca), and overstayed to make a few riyals.
 
Absolutely no possibility of any lack of objectivity there, then. :brows: He belongs in 'The Mikado' - he's a pantomime prez, a cartoon character of a leader. If he ruled any country of brown-skinned people, he'd be termed a deranged despot, an autocrat, etc. He's an evangelical Christian, but if he were an evangelical Muslim, we all know he'd be viewed as highly dangerous and not to be approached without a stun gun to hand. And someone, somewhere, would be suggesting sanctions against him, or invading his poor, oppressed country to save the people.
 
Watching his announcement yesterday about the investigation it struck me that Bush's performance was ever so similar to that of a five year old's first performance in a school play - he couldn't stop grinning & he appeared to be looking about him for praise for what he said. What a total clown.
 
I recall one of my favourite descriptions of that well know Bush facial expression - "Like a toddler who has successfully done his first poo in the pottie"
 
Going back to New Orleans, I have just read this on the BBC website ..

The official death toll stands at 83 in the city, including 30 elderly people found in a flooded nursing home. But thousands are feared to have died.
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I find this utterly shocking.
 
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