Corruption

Those religious-gangsters at Hamas (theothugs?) must really have done it this time, since even the EU has decided to cut them off:

On Sunday, the European Union stopped paying for fuel to power generators that produce electricity for at least half of Gaza’s population of 1.4 million. On Monday, it said the payments would not resume because it had received word that Hamas was “diverting” electricity revenues.

(The quoted AP report by Ibrahim Barzak is almost a comedy of bias.)

Reading the article reminded me of a conversation I had the other night at the BlogWest event in San Francisco. I’m assuming it was a confidential conversation, so I won’t go into detail that would identify anyone, but the substance was this person had spent many years working for NGOs, etc. in Third World countries. Not surprisingly, the countries were riddled with the typical corruption at every level but what depressed me was what happened to the idealistic young Americans who went to those places, as described by this person. Their superiors – at the State Department and in the NGOs – told them to accept the corruption – that was the “culture”of the Third World and would be forever thus. I guess I don’t have to tell you what a racist world view that is masquerading as multi-culturalism. The idealistic young Americans, this person said, would become depressed and reclusive. Essentially, they would give up.