Published: 8 Nov 11 08:03 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/37220/20111108/
Sweden's foreign aid minister has criticized the use of taxpayer money to fund a “one-sided” report on the conflict in the Middle East entitled “Colonialism and apartheid – Israel's occupation of Palestine”.
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How the hell an anti Israeli or an anti Palestinian report can change anything when tens of UNSC resolutions are ignored by Israel and Gunillah is not there to say anything!
I wonder what their findings will be ...!!! :-O
Global Warming - Oh My God We're All Going To Die
How Capitalism Will Destroy The World
Windmills - The Only Option
The Moderates - Right Wing Nazi Scum
Bankers - May They Rot In Hell!
Sadly the report:
Investigation into idiot MP Wasting Taxpayers Money Commissioning Useless Report had to be abandoned due to lack of funding.
You have missed the point. The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) asked Forum Syd to provide them with unbiased information in report form, they wanted to use when making important decisions about aid to Palestine. They got back a useless pile of propaganda entitled "Colonialism and apartheid - Israel's occupation of Palestine", written by a pro-Palestinian NGO. I'm sure the Palestine Solidarity Association of Sweden's report is jolly interesting, but it's not what Sida asked for or paid for, and that's 700,000 crowns of taxpayer's money down the drain.
Now the Sida is going to have to commission a new report (hopefully done properly) that will bring the taxpayer's bill to over a million.
If a government department wants the Palestinian's view of things, I'm sure the Palestine Solidarity Association of Sweden will be one of the first groups they ask to write it. As you say, it's always nice to know how different sides are thinking; but that was not the purpose of this exercise.
A report with some novel suggestions about how to solve the Israel/Palestine mess would be worthmore 700 000.
A good start would be for each side to understand that the other side's position, that both groups have contributed to the problem and that short of killing millions of people the other side is not going to vanish.
Sure but my point here is asking exactly what was biased: the choice by Forum Syd in their contract of the research, or the research itself?
Clearly the majority of an allocation of funding to produce research for policy making should not go to an NGO with clearly vested interests. I think there are certainly grounds to argue that smaller portions of such funding could be used in this way but I assume thats not what happened here and Forum Syd actually spend big on a biased NGO, as you say.
However the content of the research is another matter. Research funded or undertaken by lobby groups can still be completely "informative and knowledgable when it comes to foreign aid" but it appears SvDs intent is to trash not only Forum Syd's disastrous contracting practice but also the (miss-funded) research itself.
So while they rightly point out that bias in funding is not on, suggesting that policy-making research should never bias one side in a conflict (especially in a siege) is way beyond the mark, as is climbing this research is not 'informed and knowledgable' and indeed useful to policy making as the view of an involved (yes-biased) NGO.
How about a "read here" -link in such cases?
It can't be more psycho than whatever zionist popaganda in the net. Weird stuff, something seriously wrong in some peoples heads.
There is something seriously wrong in some peoples heads, just read the hamas charter.
It just doesn't get any more "psycho" then that.