A Predatory Aid Regime

For those of you unfamiliar, it's well worth reading regularly (use RSS feeds for this) Der Spiegel's English online version. They do quite a lot of in-depth, sensible reporting — such as the following — which you'll never find in the mainstream U.S. press. Highly recommended, despite the occasional neuralgic twitch. Now, here's a story that's been fluttering in the back of my mind for some time, laid out very simply and to the point: Western practices of subsidizing and protecting internal agricultural (and other) markets, while forcing open developing markets as a condition for "aid", so-called, is rank exploitation that means economic ruin for vast swaths of the third world. As an aside, in this context is it any wonder, then, that people like Wolfowitz get put in charge of the World Bank?