Mabel Criticizes President Bush on AIDS: December 2005

[Genevieve]

Originally Posted by Maxie

It's about whether Mabel is stupid or not by mingling in this kind of business and being a princess at the same time... :o

I don't think Mabel's comments were stupid as long as she didn't position the comments as coming from a Dutch princess. As long as her comments came from her role within her organization then I think that everything is on the level.

I wonder what members think is worst? Margarita's comments about the royal family such as how Johan would wave with one hand and give the finger with the other or Mabel's comments for a valiant cause?

By far I think that Margarita's comments were worst as they portrayed the royal family in a very negative light and that is something hard to recover from since it came from one of their own. It wasn't a former butler saying that Johan was a jerk, it was his own cousin.

While Mabel's comments were critical of a political leader, that political leader won't always be in that position. So even if her comments ruffled his feathers (which it did not seem to have) in a few years he'll be out of office and she could start fresh with the next person.

[Charlotte1]

Originally Posted by m67345

In response to GNP percentages (sorry, I know this might be off topic), quoting GNP percentages makes no sense because its money that buys aid, not percentage points.
Percentage of GNP is an inaccurate measure of 'generosity' and is used only because calculations involving GNP are the most disparaging to the U.S.

On the contrary, quoting what percentage of GNP is given in aid is the fairest and most equitable way of making a statement as to what country has the most generous aid programs. Those percentage points translate directly into money and generousity, a country with a small population who gives 1% of their GNP in aid compared to a country with an enormous population who gives a very small percentage in aid is far more generous as it's more of a sacrifice to give what they do in aid.
As far as being disparaging to the US, the first article I ever read on what percentage of GNP was given in aid by various countries was written by an Australian journalist critical of Australia's contribution. Both the US and Australia are lower down on the list of generous donors.

To get this back to Mabel's speech, US aid is not always without "strings attached" that was one of her major points. US policy for AIDS funding is conditional on following the Bush Administration line. In other words, "if you want the money you must do and say this" If you don't you won't get any aid. With some research it's possible to find many other examples where US aid funding is tied up with "follow our retoric or you won't get any" as well as "here's the money but you must buy everything you need in the US" often at inflated prices.

Mabel is a very intelligent woman who throughout her life has had a strong sense of social justice. She's a lawyer and made the decision to work in the area where she can globally make a difference, in the area of Human Rights. For that she should be universally commended.

[Genevieve]

Originally Posted by Charlotte1

Mabel is a very intelligent woman who throughout her life has had a strong sense of social justice. She's a lawyer and made the decision to work in the area where she can globally make a difference, in the area of Human Rights. For that she should be universally commended.

I wasn't aware that Mabel was a lawyer. Where did she study law and has she ever practiced?

I think it's great that Mabel went out on a limb and did something that royals aren't supposed to do for something she believes in. It takes a lot of courage to do that and that makes Mabel all the more admirable in my eyes.

[m67345]

The weirdest thing about Mabel's stance is that she resents that Bush advocates abstinence before condom use to prevent AIDS because she claims that in Africa most women's first sexual experience is 'involutary' and worldwide this apparently applies to 20-50% of women. But this seems irrelevant because no amount of policy changes are going to change that - how many rapists are going to use condoms? And how successful can this lawsuit be? Surely a government administration has the right to determine to whom and in what manner its own aid funds will be distributed. A Republican government is obviously going to pursue Republican values. That's the essence of government and democracy.

(Response to Charlotte1): %GNP statistics are unreliable because they completely ignore private donations. Europeans give most of their help through governments, Americans do so privately, eg. in 2000, the U.S. gave $53 billion in foreign aid - $33 billion of that came from the private sector.No other country comes close to this kind of system.
Secondly, it is based on a selective and expedient definition of 'aid', and while you may have read an article by an Australian, the stats you are referring to come from a French study. The U.S. contribution will only appear small if you very carefully exclude the areas I previously referred to. Since these are the areas America contributes to most massively, and most European countries have comparably negligible contributions in these areas, the stats become skewed in favour of European countries.
Most importantly, America's GNP is vastly greater than that of any other nation. This standard contends that a poor man with a net worth of $10 does more good when he donates a dollar, than does a millionaire who donates $9,000, and then claims the millionaire is stingy. Let's not pretend the poor man will provide more food or blankets.

[Charlotte1]

Originally Posted by Oppie

I have a question. When she is "working" what name does she use. If she referring to herself and introducing herself as Princess Mabel of Oranje-Nassau.

Last June Mabel spoke at the World AIDS conference in Bangkok, also criticising the Bush Administration's stand on AIDS prevention. There she was billed as Mabel van Oranje, I gather she doesn't use the princess title in her working life.

[Charlotte1]

Originally Posted by Genevieve

I wasn't aware that Mabel was a lawyer. Where did she study law and has she ever practiced?

I think it's great that Mabel went out on a limb and did something that royals aren't supposed to do for something she believes in. It takes a lot of courage to do that and that makes Mabel all the more admirable in my eyes.

According to the official Dutch royal family site. Mabel graduated cum laude from the University of Amsterdam in 1993. While still at university she did work experience with the UN Secretariat in New York, Shell in Malaysia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague and ABN AMRO Bank in Barcelona.

Graduating from university she became a Director of "European Action Council for Peace in the Balkans" in 1994. She co-founded "War Child Netherlands" in 1995 ( a charity that works with children in war zones)

In 1997 she became director of the Open Society Institute in Brussels
In 2003 she became director of EU affairs for the Open Society Institute.

Mabel has spent her entire working life working in the area of Human Rights, it's not something she's started doing since she married in the DRF.

[Maxie]

Originally Posted by tenngirl

So far, I think relations between the Netherlands and America are still okay. We are not sending in the Marines yet!

LOL! Let's hope not, indeed!
Of course the relations between the Netherlands and the US are still okay. That's what diplomacy is about. :)

[Charlotte1]

Originally Posted by m67345

The weirdest thing about Mabel's stance is that she resents that Bush advocates abstinence before condom use to prevent AIDS because she claims that in Africa most women's first sexual experience is 'involutary' and worldwide this apparently applies to 20-50% of women. But this seems irrelevant because no amount of policy changes are going to change that - how many rapists are going to use condoms? And how successful can this lawsuit be? Surely a government administration has the right to determine to whom and in what manner its own aid funds will be distributed. A Republican government is obviously going to pursue Republican values. That's the essence of government and democracy.

" (Comment by Charlotte.[I don't know how to break up the quotes])So therefore it’s acceptable that a woman whose first sexual encounter was involuntary and then became infected with HIV/AIDS be denied medical aid and support by an agency who has to follow the Bush Administration policy to receive funding? Or be condemned by that same agency as its funding is dependent on US government aid. As far as the merit of the law suit, until a Judge gives a ruling we don’t know if it has merit or not. The OSI is challenging the Bush Administration’s way of allocating aid as unconstitutional, it’s for the Judges to decide if it is or not."



(Response to Charlotte1): %GNP statistics are unreliable because they completely ignore private donations. Europeans give most of their help through governments, Americans do so privately, eg. in 2000, the U.S. gave $53 billion in foreign aid - $33 billion of that came from the private sector.No other country comes close to this kind of system.
Secondly, it is based on a selective and expedient definition of 'aid', and while you may have read an article by an Australian, the stats you are referring to come from a French study. The U.S. contribution will only appear small if you very carefully exclude the areas I previously referred to. Since these are the areas America contributes to most massively, and most European countries have comparably negligible contributions in these areas, the stats become skewed in favour of European countries.
Most importantly, America's GNP is vastly greater than that of any other nation. This standard contends that a poor man with a net worth of $10 does more good when he donates a dollar, than does a millionaire who donates $9,000, and then claims the millionaire is stingy. Let's not pretend the poor man will provide more food or blankets.

I agree with the standard that a poor man whose net worth is $10 and donates a dollar is more generous that the millionaire who donates a mere $9,000. The millionaire’s donation is not generous at all particularly if he is capable of donating much more. If that same millionaire adds the condition that the village he donates money too must buy the necessary equipment from his company. Now the villagers could get the well parts cheaper from his competitors with the money left over they could be able to reroof the school or provide the school with more educational materials or provide basic health care. But as they are obliged to buy from the millionaire they have to pay more, now the village does get its well but nothing else. The millionaire goes away feeling good, he provided money, his company also made some money, the village got a well but no new roof for the school, no books, no basic health care. The materials for the well weren’t bought locally so local people didn’t benefit and there was no industry set in place to employ locals.
Given the statistics about how much money the US gives that comes from the private sector actually demonstrates how little money compared to other countries the US government actually does give in aid. The US has the largest GNP and I do believe that for it to be considered a generous aid provider a larger amount should be given in aid.
Now you did point out other ways the US provides aid but the value of those ways I would subtract from the fact that the US has strong protectionist tariffs and subsidies ( yes the EU does too! But Australia doesn’t) Poor countries, particularly in Africa can’t compete with countries that have protectionist tariffs and subsidies, poor countries need to trade their way out of poverty. At the G8 summit earlier this year, the lobby group behind Live8 did manage to get the leaders to agree to debt forgiveness but none of the countries there were prepared to even talk about removing tariffs or the subsidies they have. So they will continue to provide aid but no real way of making sure people from aid dependent countries can successfully trade their way to some sort of prosperity.

The US does provide large amounts of money in aid, but it’s not a generous aid provider. The aid also comes with ‘strings attached’ Hence the comments by Mabel were valid. ( Before I’m accused of anti-US bias I’ll point out that Australia is also not a generous aid provider as a low percentage of its GNP goes to provide aid. Much of Australian aid also comes from the private sector. The aid that Japan gives comes totally from the government sector and it does give a high percentage of its GNP in aid. But Japan also stipulates that the money it provides all has to be spent in Japan)

[m67345]

'Given the statistics about how much money the US gives that comes from the private sector actually demonstrates how little money compared to other countries the US government actually does give in aid.'

I take your meaning, but the whole point is that that stat (after subtracting private sector) reflects stats used to calculate %GNP, which is misleading. It's not a coincidence that both Australia and the U.S. give lower levels of government aid as %GNP and high levels from the private sector, because those countries have similar economic structures, as opposed to supposedly super-generous Scandinavian countries, which are socialist welfare states. The problem with your analysis is that it assumes that all goverments are created equal. When comparing the amount of aid given by a country, it makes much more sense to generate statistics relative to a countries total budget, rather than its GNP. For instance, Sweden's GNP (from CIA world factbook) is $238.3 billion with total government revenue at $177.7 billion. The United States, on the other hand, has revenues of $1.78 trillion, though its GNP is just under eleven trillion dollars. That means Sweden has *75%* of its country's wealth to work with when doling out aid, while the United States has only 16%. And super-generous Norway? 76%. No suprise then that these goverments are more generous with the total wealth of their respective countries; they control five times as much of it as the United States. Given that, you would be more justified asking why Scandinavia doesn't give more, not the U.S. And the first thing one notices when looking at the big foreign aid contributors is that they all spend very little on national defense, the average probably being aroung 1.5%. By contrast, the U.S. spent 3.4% BEFORE the Iraq war, it is now much higher. It's easy to be generous with foreign aid when another country is essentially providing your defense for free.
One could also claim that the vastly larger amount of private donations from America indicate the true level of compassion from that country compared with EU countries whose 'charity' is coerced from taxpayers and controlled by the government. Europe claims that it wants the U.S. to stay out of other countries' business, until they need its cash, when they will turn around and claim it's not doing enough to help other countries. By the way, many people who are anti-American are also anti-Australian for the same reasons so this isn't the best way to prove you're not anti-American. Not that I assume that you are.
Sorry, I've seriously hijacked this thread.

[ysbel]

Any type of aid-even from private corporations-has strings attached. Corporations are told to make sure their contributions eventually help the bottom line. They don't just give the money away. The days of freely giving money away just because its a worthy cause are sadly long dead and gone.

It behooves the agency looking for money to look closely at the strings attached. If the money is not worth the strings, its better to turn it down. Unfortunately some agencies don't have the intestinal fortitude to do that and they accept the money anyway. American public schools come to mind.

I think Mabel may have been in her right to speak out but if her point was important enough to her organization, she may not have been the best person to deliver it. Americans are going to look at the princess title then maybe her past associations and say, What does she know? when in fact, she may know a lot. Her title could hurt the cause rather than help it.

[pollyemma]

hey guys!

the dutch royalty program "blauw bloed" had an item on Mabel and World Aids day. it didnt show her comments about Bush but it does have some other excerpts of her speech and it shows her doing the "white palm print" thing in Amsterdam.

http://www.eo.nl/portals/programs/ho...rogram=5457689

click on "bekijk de video" and a real player window should open and the episode will begin playing.

the item about mabel begins about 3 minutes into the program.

[Maxie]

Thanks for the video, pollyemma! I always watch the programme, but yesterday I wasn't feeling to well, so I was in my bed, working on my French by reading some Emile Zola... :o

[Marengo]

Originally Posted by ysbel

I think Mabel may have been in her right to speak out but if her point was important enough to her organization, she may not have been the best person to deliver it. Americans are going to look at the princess title then maybe her past associations and say, What does she know? when in fact, she may know a lot. Her title could hurt the cause rather than help it.

I don't think Mabels speech was intended to be picked up by americans anyway. The previous week was a week in which money was collected for AIDS foundations in which youngsters were made (more) aware of AIDS. She was asked by the dutch AIDS foundation to hold a speech, which she did. Her speech had the effect they wished for it created media attention (more media attention then when another person would be holding a speech there).

People here wonder if she was using her title or not (she was not) but I would like to stress that it does not matter the least if she uses it or not. She is a private person, HH (not HRH) Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau, who is free to do and say what she wants, wherther she uses her title or not. In The Netherlands there is no controversy in her critisizing the Bush administration, I assume that would have been more likely if she had praised that administration.

[Roxsteve]

Originally Posted by Marengo

I don't think Mabels speech was intended to be picked up by americans anyway. The previous week was a week in which money was collected for AIDS foundations in which youngsters were made (more) aware of AIDS. She was asked by the dutch AIDS foundation to hold a speech, which she did. Her speech had the effect they wished for it created media attention (more media attention then when another person would be holding a speech there).


People here wonder if she was using her title or not (she was not) but I would like to stress that it does not matter the least if she uses it or not. She is a private person, HH (not HRH) Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau, who is free to do and say what she wants, wherther she uses her title or not. In The Netherlands there is no controversy in her critisizing the Bush administration, I assume that would have been more likely if she had praised that administration.

Good for the Dutch people then! I think she is a nobody here or over there. Peer pressure then...if she would have agreed with Bush, she would have been the target so it was better to say what she said? I get it!

[Marengo]

I firmly believe that Mabel believes in what she was saying and she did not say it to 'score' with the dutch public. In her carreer she was always very dedicated to her causes and was even listed as one of Europe future leaders (long before Friso was in sight). She worked for Radio Free Europe, was involved in the Dayton agreements, co-founded the dutch branch of the charity organisation war-child etc.

I added the last remark to show that there is NO controversy in her critisizing the american administration here whatsoever, especially as most people here do not hold that administration in a high regard and NOT to imply that Mabl has opportunictic motives (which again I do not believe).

[susan alicia]

Mabel only wants to score with herself, she is a career woman

Originally Posted by Marengo

I firmly believe that Mabel believes in what she was saying and she did not say it to 'score' with the dutch public. In her carreer she was always very dedicated to her causes and was even listed as one of Europe future leaders (long before Friso was in sight). She worked for Radio Free Europe, was involved in the Dayton agreements, co-founded the dutch branch of the charity organisation war-child etc.

I added the last remark to show that there is NO controversy in her critisizing the american administration here whatsoever, especially as most people here do not hold that administration in a high regard and NOT to imply that Mabl has opportunictic motives (which again I do not believe).

[Smilla]

Originally Posted by m67345

By the way, many people who are anti-American are also anti-Australian for the same reasons

I can assure you that in all my life I've never ever met a European who was Anti-Australian for the simple reason that Australia is too far away for us to get concerned about it. Until I read your post I even wasn't aware of the concept that one could be "Anti-Australian": this just proves that you learn something new on this forum every day!

[Marengo]

Originally Posted by susan alicia

Mabel only wants to score with herself, she is a career woman

I fail to see what enhancing effect this speech will have on her carreer.

[m67345]

Originally Posted by Smilla

I've never ever met a European who was Anti-Australian for the simple reason that Australia is too far away for us to get concerned about it.

Lol. I wish we could say the same for much of Europe. I didn't really mean that there is an entire anti-Australian phenomenon. Only that if a person resents certain political elements of America, those are likely to exist in Australia too.

[Smilla]

Originally Posted by m67345

Lol. I wish we could say the same for much of Europe. I didn't really mean that there is an entire anti-Australian phenomenon. Only that if a person resents certain political elements of America, those are likely to exist in Australia too.

Well, since both states have their roots in English history, there are bound to be similarities. I hope I haven't offended you Australians - it's a shame that we can ignore the fact that there is a whole continent out there, unless we want to go there on holiday.