In the run up to the recent UK General Election there was a very interesting report on the BBC.

Tony Blair's New Labour Party had an answer to the hole it was in.

The problem? Blair & Co. had not just alienated large numbers of ordinary voters (don't forget, less people finally voted for Blair in 2005 than voted for Labour when it lost to Margaret Thatcher!), they'd also alienated large numbers of Labour's own members - sickened by a leadership in hock to Lord Sainsbury, hellbent on a destructive lovefest with Dubya, and too arrogant to bend an ear to anyone other than the rich and powerful.

The answer? The BBC journalist explained that Blair & Co. had come up with a winning formula which they were going to use to rebrand - not, you understand, by fundamentally changing their agenda, but by adding an element which their research showed would appeal both to many of their unhappy supporters and to many of their critics outside the Party. The magic ingredient? Placing a big emphasis on development.

Post-election it has unfolded like a dream and it now seems highly likely that Bush and Blair, and the other G8 leaders, may soon be bestriding the international stage in the guise of the saviours of Africa to the accompanying blaze of publicity generated by the Live8 concerts.

As public relations goes, it's about as good as it gets. But when it comes to development both Bush and Blair have established and disturbing agendas. In the case of GM, for instance, one only has to look to the roles taken by USAID and Britain's Department for International Development to see how aid is deliberately being used to promote a corporate strategy of GM entry.

As a recent report from GRAIN shows, U.S. financial help and agricultural support are used to steer governments into opening their countries to GM crops. "USAID is not the neutral international aid agency looking to help countries assess the implications of GM crops. Instead, they're out to spread GM crops for the benefit of US corporations - pure and simple," GRAIN reported.

Look too at how the Bush administration wrapped itself in the cloak of African hunger when it launched its WTO complaint over GM on behalf of its hungry, erm... corporations. Just as with Blair and Bush, association with Africa helps achieve a better profile. This in turn can be used globally to lessen market barriers to GM products.

None of the following articles have a word to say about GM but they're all useful reminders of the problems presented by the entrancing global spectacle of the "saving" of Africa.

More on USAID:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=165

More on DfID
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=204

1.A truckload of nonsense
2.Bards of the powerful
3.The myth of Saint Bob, saviour of Africa
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1.A truckload of nonsense
The G8 plan to save Africa comes with conditions that make it little more than an extortion racket
George Monbiot
The Guardian, June 14, 2005

An aura of sanctity is descending upon the world's most powerful men. On Saturday the finance ministers from seven of the G8 nations (Russia was not invited) promised to cancel the debts the poorest countries owe to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The hand that holds the sword has been stayed by angels: angels with guitars rather than harps.

Who, apart from the leader writers of the Daily Telegraph, could deny that debt relief is a good thing? Never mind that much of this debt - money lent by the World Bank and IMF to corrupt dictators - should never have been pursued in the first place. Never mind that, in terms of looted resources, stolen labour and now the damage caused by climate change, the rich owe the poor far more than the poor owe the rich. Some of the poorest countries have been paying more for debt than for health or education. Whatever the origins of the problem, that is obscene.

You are waiting for me to say but, and I will not disappoint you. The but comes in paragraph 2 of the finance ministers' statement. To qualify for debt relief, developing countries must "tackle corruption, boost private-sector development" and eliminate "impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign".

These are called conditionalities. Conditionalities are the policies governments must follow before they receive aid and loans and debt relief. At first sight they look like a good idea. Corruption cripples poor nations, especially in Africa. The money which could have given everyone a reasonable standard of living has instead made a handful unbelievably rich. The powerful nations are justified in seeking to discourage it.

That's the theory. In truth, corruption has seldom been a barrier to foreign aid and loans: look at the money we have given, directly and through the World Bank and IMF, to Mobutu, Suharto, Marcos, Moi and every other premier-league crook. Robert Mugabe, the west's demon king, has deservedly been frozen out by the rich nations. But he has caused less suffering and is responsible for less corruption than Rwanda's Paul Kagame or Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, both of whom are repeatedly cited by the G8 countries as practitioners of "good governance". Their armies, as the UN has shown, are largely responsible for the meltdown in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has so far claimed 4 million lives, and have walked off with billions of dollars' worth of natural resources. Yet Britain, which is hosting the G8 summit, remains their main bilateral funder. It has so far refused to make their withdrawal from the DRC a conditionality for foreign aid.

The difference, of course, is that Mugabe has not confined his attacks to black people; he has also dispossessed white farmers and confiscated foreign assets. Kagame, on the other hand, has eagerly supplied us with the materials we need for our mobile phones and computers: materials that his troops have stolen from the DRC. "Corrupt" is often used by our governments and newspapers to mean regimes that won't do what they're told.

Genuine corruption, on the other hand, is tolerated and even encouraged. Twenty-five countries have so far ratified the UN convention against corruption, but none is a member of the G8. Why? Because our own corporations do very nicely out of it. In the UK companies can legally bribe the governments of Africa if they operate through our (profoundly corrupt) tax haven of Jersey. Lord Falconer, the minister responsible for sorting this out, refuses to act. When you see the list of the island's clients, many of which sit in the FTSE 100 index, you begin to understand.

The idea, swallowed by most commentators, that the co