| Topic: |
Science > Abortion |
| User: |
"james g. keegan jr." |
| Date: |
02 Jan 2005 07:46:38 PM |
| Object: |
Bush Fails a Global Test |
Bush Fails a Global Test
12/30/2004 @ 09:43am
George Bush ended 2004 on a sour note.
But at least he maintained his record as the most disingenuous president
since Richard Nixon.
When other world leaders rushed to respond to the crisis caused by last
Sunday's tsunamis in southern Asia, George Bush decamped to his ranch in
Texas for another vacation. For three days after the disaster, the only
formal response from the White House was issued by a deputy press
secretary. Finally, after a United Nations official made comments that
seemed to highlight the disengaged nature of the official U.S. reaction
to one of the worst catastrophes in human history, the president
appeared at a hastily-scheduled press conference to grumble about how
critics of his embarrassing performance were "misguided and ill-
informed."
Bush bragged about the U.S. commitment of $35 million to help respond to
a tragedy that has cost more than 100,000 lives and displaced millions
of people in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Somalia and other
countries.
What the president did not say is that this initial commitment is less
than the planned expenditure for his Jan. 20 inauguration: $40 million.
It was, as well, less than the immediate commitment by smaller and less
wealthy nations such as Spain, which moved immediately to guarantee a
$68 million line of credit for relief and rebuilding efforts.
The president's missteps have been noted by the rest of the world, and
by diplomatic observers at home. Leslie Gelb, the president emeritus of
the Council on Foreign Relations, said Bush had missed an opportunity to
display humanitarian, moral and diplomatic leadership in the world.
Reflecting on the administration's response, Derek Mitchell, an expert
on Asian affairs at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and
International Studies, said, "I think politically they've done poorly."
At a time when the U.S. image abroad has been battered by the
president's unilateral decision to order the invasion and occupation of
Iraq, the Bush administration should have been sensitive to the need to
respond quickly and effectively to a disaster of this magnitude. But
that did not happen. Bush failed to engage at the critical point and
then peddled the lie that the U.S. is in the forefront of providing
humanitarian aid.
Thirty other developed nations commit greater proportions of their gross
domestic products to humanitarian projects than does the U.S. In fact,
the entire U.S. commitment for humanitarian aid in 2004 -- $2.4 billion
-- was about the same amount as the U.S. spends every ten days to
maintain the occupation of Iraq. The contrast between the Bush
administration's spare-no-expense approach to Iraq and its penny-
pinching response to the crisis in southern Asia is devastating for
America's image abroad.
But it is not too late to respond in a more appropriate manner.
U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, a longtime advocate for a more
responsible U.S. policy regarding humanitarian aid, has suggested that
the U.S. should rescind a portion of the reconstruction aid that has
been budgeted for use in Iraq. Of an estimated $18.4 billion allocated
for that purpose through December, only about $2 billion has been spent.
Leahy has already attracted some interest in his proposal from
Congressional Republicans. Hopefully, this will influence the
administration to dramatically increase its commitment to emergency
relief and redevelopment aid.
What is the appropriate commitment? Over the critical period of the next
several months, the U.S. should provide at least as much money to
rebuild southern Asia as it does to maintain the occupation of Iraq – a
figure Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last year put at roughly
$3.9 billion a month but that is, in reality, much higher. Committing as
much to aiding southern Asia as is now being spent to occupy Iraq would
signal that the U.S. wants to rejoin the world community.
Committing dramatically less – as appears to be the president's intent
-- will confirm the impression that the U.S. is more interested in
spending money on a military misadventure than on a necessary
reconstruction.
--
"A post edit is not a forgery. The entire post is
under my name. I can post whatever I want. I even
documented my correction to your post."
-Gactimus <gactimus@xrs.net> explaining why he forged
text and falsely attributed it to me.
<yOCdnRiVUdGQwUXcRVn-iQ@rcn.net>
news:yOCdnRiVUdGQwUXcRVn-iQ@rcn.net
.
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| User: "kingfish" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
03 Jan 2005 12:03:22 PM |
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"james g. keegan jr." <keegan@nycap.rr.com> wrote in message
news:Xns95D2D35C5E5E0keegannycaprrcom@24.24.2.165...
Bush Fails a Global Test
12/30/2004 @ 09:43am
George Bush ended 2004 on a sour note.
But at least he maintained his record as the most disingenuous president
since Richard Nixon.
When other world leaders rushed to respond to the crisis caused by last
Sunday's tsunamis in southern Asia, George Bush decamped to his ranch in
Texas for another vacation. For three days after the disaster, the only
formal response from the White House was issued by a deputy press
secretary. Finally, after a United Nations official made comments that
seemed to highlight the disengaged nature of the official U.S. reaction
to one of the worst catastrophes in human history, the president
appeared at a hastily-scheduled press conference to grumble about how
critics of his embarrassing performance were "misguided and ill-
informed."
Bush bragged about the U.S. commitment of $35 million to help respond to
a tragedy that has cost more than 100,000 lives and displaced millions
of people in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Somalia and other
countries.
which at the time was more than any other country had offered.
What the president did not say is that this initial commitment is less
than the planned expenditure for his Jan. 20 inauguration: $40 million.
paid for with private funds, planned and paid for since election day, before
this wave happened. Not a cent of taxpayer money.
It was, as well, less than the immediate commitment by smaller and less
wealthy nations such as Spain, which moved immediately to guarantee a
$68 million line of credit for relief and rebuilding efforts.
*****. When our offer was made, it was the highest. It is now at least
350 million.
How much has George Soros sent? (multi-Billionaire) How about the Kerry's?
(Billionaires) The Clintons? Where's the love?
The president's missteps have been noted by the rest of the world, and
by diplomatic observers at home. Leslie Gelb, the president emeritus of
the Council on Foreign Relations, said Bush had missed an opportunity to
display humanitarian, moral and diplomatic leadership in the world.
Reflecting on the administration's response, Derek Mitchell, an expert
on Asian affairs at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and
International Studies, said, "I think politically they've done poorly."
no matter what Bush would have offered there would have been an article like
this for a monkey like you to copy and paste.
At a time when the U.S. image abroad has been battered by the
president's unilateral decision to order the invasion and occupation of
Iraq,
unilateral means one sided. We had the support of 35 nations. this article
is complete *****.
the Bush administration should have been sensitive to the need to
respond quickly and effectively to a disaster of this magnitude. But
that did not happen. Bush failed to engage at the critical point and
then peddled the lie that the U.S. is in the forefront of providing
humanitarian aid.
we've been at the forefront the entire way through.
Thirty other developed nations commit greater proportions of their gross
domestic products to humanitarian projects than does the U.S. In fact,
the entire U.S. commitment for humanitarian aid in 2004 -- $2.4 billion
-- was about the same amount as the U.S. spends every ten days to
maintain the occupation of Iraq. The contrast between the Bush
administration's spare-no-expense approach to Iraq and its penny-
pinching response to the crisis in southern Asia is devastating for
America's image abroad.
I thought you liarbrals said Rummy was being cheap in Iraq with armor and
all that? I guess now that we've anteed up there we are "sparing no
expense."
But it is not too late to respond in a more appropriate manner.
U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, a longtime advocate for a more
responsible U.S. policy regarding humanitarian aid, has suggested that
the U.S. should rescind a portion of the reconstruction aid that has
been budgeted for use in Iraq. Of an estimated $18.4 billion allocated
for that purpose through December, only about $2 billion has been spent.
Leahy has already attracted some interest in his proposal from
Congressional Republicans. Hopefully, this will influence the
administration to dramatically increase its commitment to emergency
relief and redevelopment aid.
we will be increasing aid as the relief effort gets more organized. the
question is a matter of logistics right now - there is TONS of money waiting
to be spent, tons of food ready to go, and lots of organizing to be done.
What is the appropriate commitment? Over the critical period of the next
several months, the U.S. should provide at least as much money to
rebuild southern Asia as it does to maintain the occupation of Iraq - a
figure Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last year put at roughly
$3.9 billion a month but that is, in reality, much higher. Committing as
much to aiding southern Asia as is now being spent to occupy Iraq would
signal that the U.S. wants to rejoin the world community.
We need to send no such signals. We need to continue to be what we are. How
is France responding? Debt relief - big deal for these poor countries that
haven't made payments in years anyway.
Committing dramatically less - as appears to be the president's intent
-- will confirm the impression that the U.S. is more interested in
spending money on a military misadventure than on a necessary
reconstruction.
U.S. announces $350 million in tsunami aid
Pledge will deflect criticism, provide major boost to relief effort
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 9:08 p.m. ET Dec. 31, 2004
The United States is pledging $350 million to help tsunami victims, a
tenfold increase over its first wave of aid, President Bush announced
Friday. The U.S. aid contribution could rise even beyond that, if needed,
Secretary of State Colin Powell said later in the day.
That sum will provide a substantial boost to the overall international aid
effort to areas stricken by Sunday's tsunami. As of Thursday, nations had
donated about $500 million toward the world's largest-ever relief effort,
including $250 million from the World Bank, but U.N. chief Kofi Annan said
even more was needed.
The increase in U.S. aid will likely silence criticism of Washington's
initial offer, seen by many as meager in light of the enormity of the
disaster and the wealth of the United States.
"Initial findings of American assessment teams on the ground indicate that
the need for financial and other assistance will steadily increase in the
days and weeks ahead," Bush said Friday in a statement released in Crawford,
Texas, where he is staying at his ranch.
"Our contributions will continue to be revised as the full effects of this
terrible tragedy become clearer," he said. "Our thoughts and prayers are
with all those affected by this epic disaster."
The White House announced Thursday that it would be sending a delegation led
by Powell to Indian Ocean coastal areas ravaged by earthquake and tsunami to
assess what more the United States needs to do. The president's brother,
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, will travel with him.
As the scale of the disaster became clear, other countries, including Spain
and China also sharply increased their offers of aid, to $68 million and $63
million, respectively.
Military backup
As fund-raising proceeded, militaries across the globe also geared up to
help. A U.S. aircraft carrier battle group was steaming to Indonesia's
Sumatra island, which was closest to last Sunday's quake and is home to most
of the casualties.
C-130 cargo planes touched down there Friday with blankets, medicine and the
first of 80,000 body bags. New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Pakistan and
scores of other nations also had planes in the air, rushing aid to victims.
"This is an unprecedented global catastrophe and it requires an
unprecedented global response," Annan said, as aid agencies warned that 5
million people lack clean water, shelter, food, sanitation and medicine.
Relief flights headed to the region from Britain and France carrying bottled
water, tarpaulins, cooking sets and medical supplies. Russia sent a third
relief plane to Sri Lanka carrying military-issue tents, drinking water,
water purification stations and disinfecting supplies.
Coordinating efforts
On Thursday, World Bank President James Wolfensohn announced release of $250
million for tsunami relief by telephone during a meeting at U.N.
headquarters convened to plan the next steps in the unprecedented global
relief effort, U.N. chief spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
Representatives of 18 U.N. agencies and private aid groups or coalitions
participated in the meeting, either in person or via a telephone or video
link, the United Nations said.
Thursday's meeting was the first in a series scheduled at the world body's
New York offices to focus on how to quickly gear up the aid campaign and
prepare for an initial emergency fund-raising appeal to be launched by the
United Nations next week.
Annan also held a videoconference with representatives of a four-country
coalition announced by President Bush on Wednesday that will serve as "the
core group" in relief coordination efforts, U.N. officials said.
Coordination appeared to be desperately needed in the chaotic aftermath of
the tsunami. Survivors fought over packs of noodles in quake-stricken
Indonesian streets Wednesday while relief supplies piled up at the airport
for lack of cars, gas or passable roads to move them.
The United Nations will launch an international appeal Jan. 6 for money to
cover the emergency response phase, but U.N. officials have said billions of
dollars will be needed to rebuild the shattered countries.
Debt relief mulled
Meanwhile, there was a growing call among European nations, led by Germany
and France, for the Paris Club group of 19 creditor nations to consider
granting a debt moratorium for countries hit by the tsunami, to bolster
economic recovery and rebuilding.
On Thursday, Canada announced it had taken such a move unilaterally and that
it would urge other creditor nations about offering relief to the stricken
nations.
Indonesia, which suffered the worst devastation, would likely be the
greatest beneficiary of debt relief. It owes the Paris Club around $40
billion and is the largest debtor in the disaster zone, according to the
World Bank.
A moratorium would mean little to countries such as Somalia and Myanmar,
which stopped paying their debts to the Paris Club years ago.
Celebrities do their bit
International agencies reported an unprecedented surge in individual
donations for disaster relief. The British-based relief agency Oxfam raised
$1.2 million in three days from private donors.
Hong Kong Red Cross said it received $3.3 million in donations from the
public and various organizations. Asia's richest man, Li Ka-shing, who heads
a global commercial empire, pitched in $3.1 million to disaster relief
efforts.
Movie star Jackie Chan donated $64,282 to UNICEF, the agency said, and actor
Chow Yun-fat, gave $25,600 to a disaster relief fund set up by Hong Kong's
Apple Daily, the mass-market paper reported Wednesday.
In Thailand, the royal family, mourning the death of 21-year-old Poom
Jensen, the Thai-American grandson of King Bhumipol Adulyadej, led
nationwide calls for help for the survivors.
In the United States, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $3 million
and Amazon.com said it raised more than $3.5 million in online donations to
aid South Asian countries devastated by tsunamis.
.
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| User: "* US *" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
03 Jan 2005 03:14:49 PM |
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Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Not only is the USA notoriously stingy, both in public and private
levels of philanthropy, but the 'help' only comes with strings attached:
"Now Bush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers"
http://society.guardian.co.uk/disasterresponse/story/0,1321,983243,00.html
"What Mr Egeland said about international aid for disasters was that
rich nations had become stingy in helping poor nations in times of
calamity, which, for most of them, is all the time. As the records
show, he was absolutely right..."
http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughley01012005.html
"Private donations, especially large philanthropic
donations and business givings, can be subject to
political/ideological or economic end-goals
and/or subject to special interest."
“Private charity is an act of privilege, it can never
be a viable alternative to State obligations...”
"Makes you wonder who the real beneficiary
of charity is here."
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp?p=1
"...a Johns Hopkins study shows that the United States lags behind other
countries in terms of private philanthropy..."
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/508690/
Ponder the factors involved in US "foreign aid":
Quality ...
GNI per capita ...
Percent of GNP or GDP ...
Compared to agricultural subsidies which further impoverish agrarian nations ...
Compared to military aid ...
As distributed ...
"USA's aid, in terms of percentage of their GDP is already lowest of any
industrialized nation in the world. ...
Among the big donors, the US has the worst record for spending its aid budget on
itself - 70 percent of its aid is spent on US goods and services. And more than half
is spent in middle income countries in the Middle East...
The estimated annual cost of Northern trade barriers to Southern economies is over US
$100 billion, much more than what developing countries receive in aid...
Aid has been a foreign policy tool to aid the donor not the recipient...
The US has also cut back monetary obligations to the United Nations, which is the
largest body trying to provide assistance in such a variety of ways to the developing
countries. Furthermore, the US has often reduced or held back its required
contributions to the U.N., even though it is already the "stingiest" of all
industrialized nations providing aid...
....two-thirds of US government aid goes to only two countries: Israel and Egypt. Much
of the remaining third is used to promote US exports or to fight a war against drugs
that could only be won by tackling drug abuse in the United States...
"Many in the first world imagine the amount of money spent on aid to developing
countries is massive. In fact, it amounts to only .03% of GNP of the industrialized
nations. In 1995, the director of the U.S. aid agency defended his agency by
testifying to his congress that 84 cents of every dollar of aid goes back into the
U.S economy in goods and services purchased. For every dollar the United States puts
into the World Bank, an estimated $2 actually goes into the U.S. economy in goods and
services. Meanwhile, in 1995, severely indebted low-income countries paid one billion
dollars more in debt and interest to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) than they
received from it. For the 46 countries of Subsaharan Africa, foreign debt service was
four times their combined governmental health and education budgets in 1996. So, we
find that aid does not aid." -- Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Eyes of the Heart; Seeking a
Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization, (Common Courage Press, 2000), p. 13
...."
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp
As for food humanitarian aid, too often it's contaminated food unacceptable
to anyone else.
"Highly mechanized farms on large acreages can produce units of food cheaper than
even the poorest paid farmers of the Third World. When this cheap food is sold, or
given, to the Third World, the local farm economy is destroyed. If the poor and
unemployed of the Third World were given access to land, access to industrial tools,
and protection from cheap imports, they could plant high-protein/high calorie crops
and become self-sufficient in food. Reclaiming their land and utilizing the
unemployed would cost these societies almost nothing, feed them well, and save far
more money than they now pay for the so-called "cheap" imported foods.
World hunger exists because: (1) colonialism, and later subtle monopoly capitalism,
dispossessed hundreds of millions of people from their land; the current owners are
the new plantation managers producing for the mother countries; (2) the low-paid
undeveloped countries sell to the highly paid developed countries because there is no
local market [because the low-paid people do not have enough to pay] ... and (3) the
current Third World land owners, producing for the First World, are appendages to the
industrialized world, stripping all natural wealth from the land to produce food,
lumber, and other products for wealthy nations.
This system is largely kept in place by underpaying the defeated colonial societies
for the real value of their labor and resources, leaving them no choice but to
continue to sell their natural wealth to the over-paid industrial societies that
overwhelmed them. To eliminate hunger: (1) the dispossessed, weak, individualized
people must be protected from the organized and legally protected multinational
corporations; (2) there must be managed trade to protect both the Third World and the
developed world, so the dispossessed can reclaim use of their land; (3) the currently
defeated people can then produce the more labor-intensive, high-protein/high-calorie
crops that contain all eight (or nine) essential amino acids; and (4) those societies
must adapt dietary patterns so that vegetables, grains, and fruits are consumed in
the proper amino acid combinations, with small amounts of meat or fish for flavor.
With similar dietary adjustments among the wealthy, there would be enough food for
everyone.
- J.W. Smith, The World's Wasted Wealth 2, (Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994),
pp. 63, 64....
The United States lent governments money to buy this food, and then enforced upon
them the extraction and export of their natural resources to pay back the debt...
Not only is much U.S. food exported unnecessary, but it results in great harm to the
very people they profess to be helping. The United States exported over sixty million
tons of grain in 1974. Only 3.3 million tons were for aid, and most of that did not
reach the starving. For example, during the mid-1980s, 84 percent of U.S.
agricultural exports to Latin America were given to the local governments to sell to
the people. This undersold local producers, destroyed their markets, and reduced
their production.
Exporting food may be profitable for the exporting country, but when their land is
capable of producing adequate food, it is a disaster to the importing countries.
[Note that many of the poor nations today are rich in natural resources and arable
land.] American farmers would certainly riot if 60 percent of their markets were
taken over by another country. Not only would the farmers suffer, but the entire
economy would be severely affected.
Imported food is not as cheap as it appears. If the money expended on imports had
been spent within the local economy, it would have multiplied several times as it
moved through the economy contracting local labor (the multiplier effect) ...
This moving of money through an economy is why there is so much wealth in a high-wage
manufacturing and exporting country and so little within a low-wage country that is
"dependent" on imports. With centuries of mercantilist experience, developed
societies understand this well.
.... [S]ubsidies, tarrifs and other trade policies eliminate the comparative advantage
of other regions to maintain healthy economies in the developed world. ... The result
of these First World subsidies [for export] are shattered Third World economies.
- J.W. Smith, The World's Wasted Wealth 2, (Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994),
pp. 66-67...."
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty/FoodDumping/Intro.asp
"As Western countries have got richer in the past ten years, the proportion of their
wealth spent on humanitarian aid has gone down by 30%. ...
Humanitarian assistance should not substitute for effective political and economic
responses to non-strategic areas of the globe where some of the worst humanitarian
crises occur. Sustained international action is necessary to address the underlying
causes of conflicts and to reduce vulnerability to natural disasters. Furthermore,
humanitarian aid by itself is rarely solely responsible for saving lives, but rather
a vital complement to people’s own efforts to help themselves. The wrong kind of aid
can sometimes do more harm than good. At times, warring parties’ action to deny
people access to humanitarian assistance is a more significant factor than lack of
funds. ...
The plight of civilians in Afghanistan was ranked by the 1999 World Disasters Report
as the world’s worst emergency, yet only once in seven years has the CAP been more
than 50 per cent funded. Similarly, Somalia has averaged only 40 per cent funding
over five UN Consolidated Appeals. Other countries have fluctuating fortunes in the
funding stakes: the 1994 appeal for Angola was 87 per cent funded, by 1997, barely 50
per cent of the requested amount had been received. Liberians in need did relatively
well in 1995, but in 1998 received less than half what they needed according to the
revised CAP. The average response to the Great Lakes crisis was 80% of requirements
over six years, although this obscures the disparity between high levels of support
in the wake of the genocide and a fall to 42 per cent funding in 1998. At a donor
meeting in Tokyo in December 1999, pledges of support for the appeal for East Timor
reached 75 per cent of the requested amount. The average of the responses to CAPs for
complex emergencies each year between 1992 and 1999 never rose above 75 per cent, and
are actually in decline. If this broad trend continues, 'forgotten emergencies' will
be even more neglected. ...
Despite the increasing demand for international engagement and assistance, over the
last decade, there has been a steady decline in the flow of official development
assistance to developing countries from the world’s richest countries. This has
knock-on effects on levels of humanitarian assistance. An increase in development aid
through the 1980s reached its peak in 1992 at US$60.8bn, 0.33 per cent of the GNP of
the world’s richest countries forming the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development, the OECD. From then on, Official Development Assistance (ODA) has
declined, reaching 0.22 per cent of GNP in 1997. G7 donors - the world’s largest
economies - were disproportionately responsible for this, accounting for practically
all of the real fall in ODA in recent years. Although there was a slight upturn in
1998 to 0.23 per cent of GNP spent on ODA, this falls far short of international
commitments to devote 0.7 per cent GNP to official development aid. It also contrasts
starkly with real terms growth in GNP in OECD countries from US$11,000 per capita in
1960 to nearly $28,000 in 1997, while ODA per capita grew very slowly – US$47 in 1960
and US$59 in 1997. Increasing affluence has not brought increasing generosity, and
the richest countries have been the meanest....
The USA also falls down on this burden-sharing measure. Although the USA is the
largest single donor of humanitarian assistance, contributing US$900m in 1998 and 30
per cent of the bilateral total, this falls short of the 38.6 per cent that is the
USA share of DAC GNP. ...
Once an undisputed symbol of solidarity with those struck down by misfortune and
adversity, humanitarian assistance is now vilified by many as part of the problem:
feeding fighters, strengthening perpetrators of genocide, creating new war economies,
fuelling conflicts and perpetuating crises..."
http://www.pcpafg.org/news/NGOs/index.shtml
"A report by the Washington-based arms-control group, Council for a Livable World
Education Fund asked ''does the United States invest more in militarisation than in
development globally?'' In its findings, the report ''Foreign Aid and the Arms Trade:
a Look at the Numbers'' declares the answer is a resounding 'yes'.''
At a time when Washington spent only about 1.25 dollars per U.S. citizen on
development and humanitarian aid and peacekeeping abroad, it exported weapons worth
more than two dollars per citizen to foreign countries, often the same nations to
which it provides the bulk of its aid.
The United States accounted for roughly half of all arms exports worldwide from 1993
through 1995, the last year for which reliable estimates are available. Most US
weapons exports went to U.S. allies in the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East,
and East Asia.
''We sell weapons; we give weapons away; we provide financing to buy weapons,'' says
Joan Whelan, the report's author. ''And then once the weapons are used, we spend
billions of dollar to try to clean up the aftermath.'' ..."
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/02/115761.php
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| User: "Gactimus" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
03 Jan 2005 04:49:19 PM |
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* US * wrote in news:7qcjt05i3k787p8mqkdtr3nheeun6vov0g@4ax.com:
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Quitcherbitchin. Beggars can't be choosers.
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| User: "james g. keegan jr." |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
03 Jan 2005 05:33:48 PM |
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Gactimus <gactimus@xrs.net> wrote in news:BOKdnVlzKdxyVkTcRVn-rA@rcn.net:
* US * wrote in news:7qcjt05i3k787p8mqkdtr3nheeun6vov0g@4ax.com:
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Quitcherbitchin. Beggars can't be choosers.
typical neocon ignorance.
--
"A post edit is not a forgery. The entire post is
under my name. I can post whatever I want. I even
documented my correction to your post."
-Gactimus <gactimus@xrs.net> explaining why he forged
text and falsely attributed it to me.
<yOCdnRiVUdGQwUXcRVn-iQ@rcn.net>
news:yOCdnRiVUdGQwUXcRVn-iQ@rcn.net
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| User: "* US *" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
03 Jan 2005 06:58:34 PM |
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On 3 Jan 2005 23:33:48 GMT, "james g. keegan jr." <keegan@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
Gactimus <gactimus@xrs.net> wrote in news:BOKdnVlzKdxyVkTcRVn-rA@rcn.net:
* US * wrote in news:7qcjt05i3k787p8mqkdtr3nheeun6vov0g@4ax.com:
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Quitcherbitchin. Beggars can't be choosers.
typical neocon ignorance.
To the bushkultie, avarice and violence aren't faults.
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| User: "* US *" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
03 Jan 2005 07:25:23 PM |
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On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 16:49:19 -0600, Gactimus <gactimus@xrs.net> wrote:
Quitcherbitchin...
Your anti-American distaste for freedom of expression is noted.
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Not only is the USA notoriously stingy, both in public and private
levels of philanthropy, but the 'help' only comes with strings attached:
"Now Bush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers"
http://society.guardian.co.uk/disasterresponse/story/0,1321,983243,00.html
"What Mr Egeland said about international aid for disasters was that
rich nations had become stingy in helping poor nations in times of
calamity, which, for most of them, is all the time. As the records
show, he was absolutely right..."
http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughley01012005.html
"Private donations, especially large philanthropic
donations and business givings, can be subject to
political/ideological or economic end-goals
and/or subject to special interest."
“Private charity is an act of privilege, it can never
be a viable alternative to State obligations...”
"Makes you wonder who the real beneficiary
of charity is here."
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp?p=1
"...a Johns Hopkins study shows that the United States lags behind other
countries in terms of private philanthropy..."
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/508690/
Ponder the factors involved in US "foreign aid":
Quality ...
GNI per capita ...
Percent of GNP or GDP ...
Compared to agricultural subsidies which further impoverish agrarian nations ...
Compared to military aid ...
As distributed ...
"USA's aid, in terms of percentage of their GDP is already lowest of any
industrialized nation in the world. ...
Among the big donors, the US has the worst record for spending its aid budget on
itself - 70 percent of its aid is spent on US goods and services. And more than half
is spent in middle income countries in the Middle East...
The estimated annual cost of Northern trade barriers to Southern economies is over US
$100 billion, much more than what developing countries receive in aid...
Aid has been a foreign policy tool to aid the donor not the recipient...
The US has also cut back monetary obligations to the United Nations, which is the
largest body trying to provide assistance in such a variety of ways to the developing
countries. Furthermore, the US has often reduced or held back its required
contributions to the U.N., even though it is already the "stingiest" of all
industrialized nations providing aid...
....two-thirds of US government aid goes to only two countries: Israel and Egypt. Much
of the remaining third is used to promote US exports or to fight a war against drugs
that could only be won by tackling drug abuse in the United States...
"Many in the first world imagine the amount of money spent on aid to developing
countries is massive. In fact, it amounts to only .03% of GNP of the industrialized
nations. In 1995, the director of the U.S. aid agency defended his agency by
testifying to his congress that 84 cents of every dollar of aid goes back into the
U.S economy in goods and services purchased. For every dollar the United States puts
into the World Bank, an estimated $2 actually goes into the U.S. economy in goods and
services. Meanwhile, in 1995, severely indebted low-income countries paid one billion
dollars more in debt and interest to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) than they
received from it. For the 46 countries of Subsaharan Africa, foreign debt service was
four times their combined governmental health and education budgets in 1996. So, we
find that aid does not aid." -- Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Eyes of the Heart; Seeking a
Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization, (Common Courage Press, 2000), p. 13
...."
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp
As for food humanitarian aid, too often it's contaminated food unacceptable
to anyone else.
"Highly mechanized farms on large acreages can produce units of food cheaper than
even the poorest paid farmers of the Third World. When this cheap food is sold, or
given, to the Third World, the local farm economy is destroyed. If the poor and
unemployed of the Third World were given access to land, access to industrial tools,
and protection from cheap imports, they could plant high-protein/high calorie crops
and become self-sufficient in food. Reclaiming their land and utilizing the
unemployed would cost these societies almost nothing, feed them well, and save far
more money than they now pay for the so-called "cheap" imported foods.
World hunger exists because: (1) colonialism, and later subtle monopoly capitalism,
dispossessed hundreds of millions of people from their land; the current owners are
the new plantation managers producing for the mother countries; (2) the low-paid
undeveloped countries sell to the highly paid developed countries because there is no
local market [because the low-paid people do not have enough to pay] ... and (3) the
current Third World land owners, producing for the First World, are appendages to the
industrialized world, stripping all natural wealth from the land to produce food,
lumber, and other products for wealthy nations.
This system is largely kept in place by underpaying the defeated colonial societies
for the real value of their labor and resources, leaving them no choice but to
continue to sell their natural wealth to the over-paid industrial societies that
overwhelmed them. To eliminate hunger: (1) the dispossessed, weak, individualized
people must be protected from the organized and legally protected multinational
corporations; (2) there must be managed trade to protect both the Third World and the
developed world, so the dispossessed can reclaim use of their land; (3) the currently
defeated people can then produce the more labor-intensive, high-protein/high-calorie
crops that contain all eight (or nine) essential amino acids; and (4) those societies
must adapt dietary patterns so that vegetables, grains, and fruits are consumed in
the proper amino acid combinations, with small amounts of meat or fish for flavor.
With similar dietary adjustments among the wealthy, there would be enough food for
everyone.
- J.W. Smith, The World's Wasted Wealth 2, (Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994),
pp. 63, 64....
The United States lent governments money to buy this food, and then enforced upon
them the extraction and export of their natural resources to pay back the debt...
Not only is much U.S. food exported unnecessary, but it results in great harm to the
very people they profess to be helping. The United States exported over sixty million
tons of grain in 1974. Only 3.3 million tons were for aid, and most of that did not
reach the starving. For example, during the mid-1980s, 84 percent of U.S.
agricultural exports to Latin America were given to the local governments to sell to
the people. This undersold local producers, destroyed their markets, and reduced
their production.
Exporting food may be profitable for the exporting country, but when their land is
capable of producing adequate food, it is a disaster to the importing countries.
[Note that many of the poor nations today are rich in natural resources and arable
land.] American farmers would certainly riot if 60 percent of their markets were
taken over by another country. Not only would the farmers suffer, but the entire
economy would be severely affected.
Imported food is not as cheap as it appears. If the money expended on imports had
been spent within the local economy, it would have multiplied several times as it
moved through the economy contracting local labor (the multiplier effect) ...
This moving of money through an economy is why there is so much wealth in a high-wage
manufacturing and exporting country and so little within a low-wage country that is
"dependent" on imports. With centuries of mercantilist experience, developed
societies understand this well.
.... [S]ubsidies, tarrifs and other trade policies eliminate the comparative advantage
of other regions to maintain healthy economies in the developed world. ... The result
of these First World subsidies [for export] are shattered Third World economies.
- J.W. Smith, The World's Wasted Wealth 2, (Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994),
pp. 66-67...."
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty/FoodDumping/Intro.asp
"As Western countries have got richer in the past ten years, the proportion of their
wealth spent on humanitarian aid has gone down by 30%. ...
Humanitarian assistance should not substitute for effective political and economic
responses to non-strategic areas of the globe where some of the worst humanitarian
crises occur. Sustained international action is necessary to address the underlying
causes of conflicts and to reduce vulnerability to natural disasters. Furthermore,
humanitarian aid by itself is rarely solely responsible for saving lives, but rather
a vital complement to people’s own efforts to help themselves. The wrong kind of aid
can sometimes do more harm than good. At times, warring parties’ action to deny
people access to humanitarian assistance is a more significant factor than lack of
funds. ...
The plight of civilians in Afghanistan was ranked by the 1999 World Disasters Report
as the world’s worst emergency, yet only once in seven years has the CAP been more
than 50 per cent funded. Similarly, Somalia has averaged only 40 per cent funding
over five UN Consolidated Appeals. Other countries have fluctuating fortunes in the
funding stakes: the 1994 appeal for Angola was 87 per cent funded, by 1997, barely 50
per cent of the requested amount had been received. Liberians in need did relatively
well in 1995, but in 1998 received less than half what they needed according to the
revised CAP. The average response to the Great Lakes crisis was 80% of requirements
over six years, although this obscures the disparity between high levels of support
in the wake of the genocide and a fall to 42 per cent funding in 1998. At a donor
meeting in Tokyo in December 1999, pledges of support for the appeal for East Timor
reached 75 per cent of the requested amount. The average of the responses to CAPs for
complex emergencies each year between 1992 and 1999 never rose above 75 per cent, and
are actually in decline. If this broad trend continues, 'forgotten emergencies' will
be even more neglected. ...
Despite the increasing demand for international engagement and assistance, over the
last decade, there has been a steady decline in the flow of official development
assistance to developing countries from the world’s richest countries. This has
knock-on effects on levels of humanitarian assistance. An increase in development aid
through the 1980s reached its peak in 1992 at US$60.8bn, 0.33 per cent of the GNP of
the world’s richest countries forming the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development, the OECD. From then on, Official Development Assistance (ODA) has
declined, reaching 0.22 per cent of GNP in 1997. G7 donors - the world’s largest
economies - were disproportionately responsible for this, accounting for practically
all of the real fall in ODA in recent years. Although there was a slight upturn in
1998 to 0.23 per cent of GNP spent on ODA, this falls far short of international
commitments to devote 0.7 per cent GNP to official development aid. It also contrasts
starkly with real terms growth in GNP in OECD countries from US$11,000 per capita in
1960 to nearly $28,000 in 1997, while ODA per capita grew very slowly – US$47 in 1960
and US$59 in 1997. Increasing affluence has not brought increasing generosity, and
the richest countries have been the meanest....
The USA also falls down on this burden-sharing measure. Although the USA is the
largest single donor of humanitarian assistance, contributing US$900m in 1998 and 30
per cent of the bilateral total, this falls short of the 38.6 per cent that is the
USA share of DAC GNP. ...
Once an undisputed symbol of solidarity with those struck down by misfortune and
adversity, humanitarian assistance is now vilified by many as part of the problem:
feeding fighters, strengthening perpetrators of genocide, creating new war economies,
fuelling conflicts and perpetuating crises..."
http://www.pcpafg.org/news/NGOs/index.shtml
"A report by the Washington-based arms-control group, Council for a Livable World
Education Fund asked ''does the United States invest more in militarisation than in
development globally?'' In its findings, the report ''Foreign Aid and the Arms Trade:
a Look at the Numbers'' declares the answer is a resounding 'yes'.''
At a time when Washington spent only about 1.25 dollars per U.S. citizen on
development and humanitarian aid and peacekeeping abroad, it exported weapons worth
more than two dollars per citizen to foreign countries, often the same nations to
which it provides the bulk of its aid.
The United States accounted for roughly half of all arms exports worldwide from 1993
through 1995, the last year for which reliable estimates are available. Most US
weapons exports went to U.S. allies in the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East,
and East Asia.
''We sell weapons; we give weapons away; we provide financing to buy weapons,'' says
Joan Whelan, the report's author. ''And then once the weapons are used, we spend
billions of dollar to try to clean up the aftermath.'' ..."
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/02/115761.php
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| User: "Frank Dwyer" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
03 Jan 2005 04:53:11 PM |
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* wrote:
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it domestically.
Not only is the USA notoriously stingy, both in public and private
levels of philanthropy, but the 'help' only comes with strings attached:
What are we, DSS?
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| User: "Ray Fischer" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
03 Jan 2005 09:24:54 PM |
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Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote:
* wrote:
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it domestically.
Better than spending $170 million per day in Iraq.
--
Ray Fischer
rfischer@sonic.net
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| User: "james g. keegan jr." |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
07 Jan 2005 12:54:26 AM |
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Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote in news:r1kCd.2211$G23.998
@news01.roc.ny:
* wrote:
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it domestically.
typical pettiness from a right-wing neocon, and a forger, as well.
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| User: "* US *" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
07 Jan 2005 08:39:37 AM |
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On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 06:54:26 GMT, "james g. keegan jr." <keegan@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote in news:r1kCd.2211$G23.998@news01.roc.ny:
* US * wrote:
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it domestically.
typical pettiness from a right-wing neocon, and a forger, as well.
Indeed.
One pities Frank "Liar" Dwyer, for his hatred of others.
Real Americans will step in to protect him from himself.
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| User: "james g. keegan jr." |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
07 Jan 2005 09:54:38 AM |
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* US * wrote in news:gg2tt0tkpiuk57jon635dnms2v4qpmsllo@4ax.com:
On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 06:54:26 GMT, "james g. keegan jr."
<keegan@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote in
news:r1kCd.2211$G23.998@news01.roc.ny:
* US * wrote:
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it
domestically.
typical pettiness from a right-wing neocon, and a forger, as well.
Indeed.
One pities Frank "Liar" Dwyer, for his hatred of others.
Real Americans will step in to protect him from himself.
it is sad to see how far forger franky has fallen.
--
"A post edit is not a forgery. The entire post is
under my name. I can post whatever I want. I even
documented my correction to your post."
-Gactimus <gactimus@xrs.net> explaining why he forged
text and falsely attributed it to me.
<yOCdnRiVUdGQwUXcRVn-iQ@rcn.net>
news:yOCdnRiVUdGQwUXcRVn-iQ@rcn.net
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| User: "* US *" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
07 Jan 2005 10:09:36 AM |
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On 7 Jan 2005 15:54:38 GMT, "james g. keegan jr." <keegan@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
* US * wrote in news:gg2tt0tkpiuk57jon635dnms2v4qpmsllo@4ax.com:
On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 06:54:26 GMT, "james g. keegan jr."
<keegan@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote in
news:r1kCd.2211$G23.998@news01.roc.ny:
* US * wrote:
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it
domestically.
typical pettiness from a right-wing neocon, and a forger, as well.
Indeed.
One pities Frank "Liar" Dwyer, for his hatred of others.
Real Americans will step in to protect him from himself.
it is sad to see how far forger franky has fallen.
I don't know, he probably started out pretty low.
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| User: "james g. keegan jr." |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
07 Jan 2005 11:57:44 AM |
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* US * wrote in news:a1dtt012cmksme2ut4mrvap7io81i0q0b6@4ax.com:
On 7 Jan 2005 15:54:38 GMT, "james g. keegan jr."
<keegan@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
* US * wrote in news:gg2tt0tkpiuk57jon635dnms2v4qpmsllo@4ax.com:
On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 06:54:26 GMT, "james g. keegan jr."
<keegan@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote in
news:r1kCd.2211$G23.998@news01.roc.ny:
* US * wrote:
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it
domestically.
typical pettiness from a right-wing neocon, and a forger, as well.
Indeed.
One pities Frank "Liar" Dwyer, for his hatred of others.
Real Americans will step in to protect him from himself.
it is sad to see how far forger franky has fallen.
I don't know, he probably started out pretty low.
you may be right. i began thinking he was not so bad; certainly not so
bad as to forge, but i was wrong.
--
"A post edit is not a forgery. The entire post is
under my name. I can post whatever I want. I even
documented my correction to your post."
-Gactimus <gactimus@xrs.net> explaining why he forged
text and falsely attributed it to me.
<yOCdnRiVUdGQwUXcRVn-iQ@rcn.net>
news:yOCdnRiVUdGQwUXcRVn-iQ@rcn.net
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| User: "* US *" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
07 Jan 2005 02:15:09 PM |
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On 7 Jan 2005 17:57:44 GMT, "james g. keegan jr." <keegan@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
* US * wrote in news:a1dtt012cmksme2ut4mrvap7io81i0q0b6@4ax.com:
On 7 Jan 2005 15:54:38 GMT, "james g. keegan jr." <keegan@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
* US * wrote in news:gg2tt0tkpiuk57jon635dnms2v4qpmsllo@4ax.com:
On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 06:54:26 GMT, "james g. keegan jr." <keegan@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote in news:r1kCd.2211$G23.998@news01.roc.ny:
* US * wrote:
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it
domestically.
typical pettiness from a right-wing neocon, and a forger, as well.
Indeed.
One pities Frank "Liar" Dwyer, for his hatred of others.
Real Americans will step in to protect him from himself.
it is sad to see how far forger franky has fallen.
I don't know, he probably started out pretty low.
you may be right. i began thinking he was not so bad; certainly not so
bad as to forge, but i was wrong.
Hey, he's a bushkultie. Don't expect much from him.
He supports raping, torturing, maiming, and murdering
innocent little children. What's forgery to someone such
as that?
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| User: "* US *" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
03 Jan 2005 06:59:35 PM |
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On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 22:53:11 GMT, Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote:
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it domestically.
No, we should stop letting Bush and Cheney plunder our treasury
and we'll be able to afford to take care of ourselves and others.
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Not only is the USA notoriously stingy, both in public and private
levels of philanthropy, but the 'help' only comes with strings attached:
"Now Bush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers"
http://society.guardian.co.uk/disasterresponse/story/0,1321,983243,00.html
"What Mr Egeland said about international aid for disasters was that
rich nations had become stingy in helping poor nations in times of
calamity, which, for most of them, is all the time. As the records
show, he was absolutely right..."
http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughley01012005.html
"Private donations, especially large philanthropic
donations and business givings, can be subject to
political/ideological or economic end-goals
and/or subject to special interest."
“Private charity is an act of privilege, it can never
be a viable alternative to State obligations...”
"Makes you wonder who the real beneficiary
of charity is here."
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp?p=1
"...a Johns Hopkins study shows that the United States lags behind other
countries in terms of private philanthropy..."
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/508690/
Ponder the factors involved in US "foreign aid":
Quality ...
GNI per capita ...
Percent of GNP or GDP ...
Compared to agricultural subsidies which further impoverish agrarian nations ...
Compared to military aid ...
As distributed ...
"USA's aid, in terms of percentage of their GDP is already lowest of any
industrialized nation in the world. ...
Among the big donors, the US has the worst record for spending its aid budget on
itself - 70 percent of its aid is spent on US goods and services. And more than half
is spent in middle income countries in the Middle East...
The estimated annual cost of Northern trade barriers to Southern economies is over US
$100 billion, much more than what developing countries receive in aid...
Aid has been a foreign policy tool to aid the donor not the recipient...
The US has also cut back monetary obligations to the United Nations, which is the
largest body trying to provide assistance in such a variety of ways to the developing
countries. Furthermore, the US has often reduced or held back its required
contributions to the U.N., even though it is already the "stingiest" of all
industrialized nations providing aid...
....two-thirds of US government aid goes to only two countries: Israel and Egypt. Much
of the remaining third is used to promote US exports or to fight a war against drugs
that could only be won by tackling drug abuse in the United States...
"Many in the first world imagine the amount of money spent on aid to developing
countries is massive. In fact, it amounts to only .03% of GNP of the industrialized
nations. In 1995, the director of the U.S. aid agency defended his agency by
testifying to his congress that 84 cents of every dollar of aid goes back into the
U.S economy in goods and services purchased. For every dollar the United States puts
into the World Bank, an estimated $2 actually goes into the U.S. economy in goods and
services. Meanwhile, in 1995, severely indebted low-income countries paid one billion
dollars more in debt and interest to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) than they
received from it. For the 46 countries of Subsaharan Africa, foreign debt service was
four times their combined governmental health and education budgets in 1996. So, we
find that aid does not aid." -- Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Eyes of the Heart; Seeking a
Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization, (Common Courage Press, 2000), p. 13
...."
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp
As for food humanitarian aid, too often it's contaminated food unacceptable
to anyone else.
"Highly mechanized farms on large acreages can produce units of food cheaper than
even the poorest paid farmers of the Third World. When this cheap food is sold, or
given, to the Third World, the local farm economy is destroyed. If the poor and
unemployed of the Third World were given access to land, access to industrial tools,
and protection from cheap imports, they could plant high-protein/high calorie crops
and become self-sufficient in food. Reclaiming their land and utilizing the
unemployed would cost these societies almost nothing, feed them well, and save far
more money than they now pay for the so-called "cheap" imported foods.
World hunger exists because: (1) colonialism, and later subtle monopoly capitalism,
dispossessed hundreds of millions of people from their land; the current owners are
the new plantation managers producing for the mother countries; (2) the low-paid
undeveloped countries sell to the highly paid developed countries because there is no
local market [because the low-paid people do not have enough to pay] ... and (3) the
current Third World land owners, producing for the First World, are appendages to the
industrialized world, stripping all natural wealth from the land to produce food,
lumber, and other products for wealthy nations.
This system is largely kept in place by underpaying the defeated colonial societies
for the real value of their labor and resources, leaving them no choice but to
continue to sell their natural wealth to the over-paid industrial societies that
overwhelmed them. To eliminate hunger: (1) the dispossessed, weak, individualized
people must be protected from the organized and legally protected multinational
corporations; (2) there must be managed trade to protect both the Third World and the
developed world, so the dispossessed can reclaim use of their land; (3) the currently
defeated people can then produce the more labor-intensive, high-protein/high-calorie
crops that contain all eight (or nine) essential amino acids; and (4) those societies
must adapt dietary patterns so that vegetables, grains, and fruits are consumed in
the proper amino acid combinations, with small amounts of meat or fish for flavor.
With similar dietary adjustments among the wealthy, there would be enough food for
everyone.
- J.W. Smith, The World's Wasted Wealth 2, (Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994),
pp. 63, 64....
The United States lent governments money to buy this food, and then enforced upon
them the extraction and export of their natural resources to pay back the debt...
Not only is much U.S. food exported unnecessary, but it results in great harm to the
very people they profess to be helping. The United States exported over sixty million
tons of grain in 1974. Only 3.3 million tons were for aid, and most of that did not
reach the starving. For example, during the mid-1980s, 84 percent of U.S.
agricultural exports to Latin America were given to the local governments to sell to
the people. This undersold local producers, destroyed their markets, and reduced
their production.
Exporting food may be profitable for the exporting country, but when their land is
capable of producing adequate food, it is a disaster to the importing countries.
[Note that many of the poor nations today are rich in natural resources and arable
land.] American farmers would certainly riot if 60 percent of their markets were
taken over by another country. Not only would the farmers suffer, but the entire
economy would be severely affected.
Imported food is not as cheap as it appears. If the money expended on imports had
been spent within the local economy, it would have multiplied several times as it
moved through the economy contracting local labor (the multiplier effect) ...
This moving of money through an economy is why there is so much wealth in a high-wage
manufacturing and exporting country and so little within a low-wage country that is
"dependent" on imports. With centuries of mercantilist experience, developed
societies understand this well.
.... [S]ubsidies, tarrifs and other trade policies eliminate the comparative advantage
of other regions to maintain healthy economies in the developed world. ... The result
of these First World subsidies [for export] are shattered Third World economies.
- J.W. Smith, The World's Wasted Wealth 2, (Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994),
pp. 66-67...."
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty/FoodDumping/Intro.asp
"As Western countries have got richer in the past ten years, the proportion of their
wealth spent on humanitarian aid has gone down by 30%. ...
Humanitarian assistance should not substitute for effective political and economic
responses to non-strategic areas of the globe where some of the worst humanitarian
crises occur. Sustained international action is necessary to address the underlying
causes of conflicts and to reduce vulnerability to natural disasters. Furthermore,
humanitarian aid by itself is rarely solely responsible for saving lives, but rather
a vital complement to people’s own efforts to help themselves. The wrong kind of aid
can sometimes do more harm than good. At times, warring parties’ action to deny
people access to humanitarian assistance is a more significant factor than lack of
funds. ...
The plight of civilians in Afghanistan was ranked by the 1999 World Disasters Report
as the world’s worst emergency, yet only once in seven years has the CAP been more
than 50 per cent funded. Similarly, Somalia has averaged only 40 per cent funding
over five UN Consolidated Appeals. Other countries have fluctuating fortunes in the
funding stakes: the 1994 appeal for Angola was 87 per cent funded, by 1997, barely 50
per cent of the requested amount had been received. Liberians in need did relatively
well in 1995, but in 1998 received less than half what they needed according to the
revised CAP. The average response to the Great Lakes crisis was 80% of requirements
over six years, although this obscures the disparity between high levels of support
in the wake of the genocide and a fall to 42 per cent funding in 1998. At a donor
meeting in Tokyo in December 1999, pledges of support for the appeal for East Timor
reached 75 per cent of the requested amount. The average of the responses to CAPs for
complex emergencies each year between 1992 and 1999 never rose above 75 per cent, and
are actually in decline. If this broad trend continues, 'forgotten emergencies' will
be even more neglected. ...
Despite the increasing demand for international engagement and assistance, over the
last decade, there has been a steady decline in the flow of official development
assistance to developing countries from the world’s richest countries. This has
knock-on effects on levels of humanitarian assistance. An increase in development aid
through the 1980s reached its peak in 1992 at US$60.8bn, 0.33 per cent of the GNP of
the world’s richest countries forming the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development, the OECD. From then on, Official Development Assistance (ODA) has
declined, reaching 0.22 per cent of GNP in 1997. G7 donors - the world’s largest
economies - were disproportionately responsible for this, accounting for practically
all of the real fall in ODA in recent years. Although there was a slight upturn in
1998 to 0.23 per cent of GNP spent on ODA, this falls far short of international
commitments to devote 0.7 per cent GNP to official development aid. It also contrasts
starkly with real terms growth in GNP in OECD countries from US$11,000 per capita in
1960 to nearly $28,000 in 1997, while ODA per capita grew very slowly – US$47 in 1960
and US$59 in 1997. Increasing affluence has not brought increasing generosity, and
the richest countries have been the meanest....
The USA also falls down on this burden-sharing measure. Although the USA is the
largest single donor of humanitarian assistance, contributing US$900m in 1998 and 30
per cent of the bilateral total, this falls short of the 38.6 per cent that is the
USA share of DAC GNP. ...
Once an undisputed symbol of solidarity with those struck down by misfortune and
adversity, humanitarian assistance is now vilified by many as part of the problem:
feeding fighters, strengthening perpetrators of genocide, creating new war economies,
fuelling conflicts and perpetuating crises..."
http://www.pcpafg.org/news/NGOs/index.shtml
"A report by the Washington-based arms-control group, Council for a Livable World
Education Fund asked ''does the United States invest more in militarisation than in
development globally?'' In its findings, the report ''Foreign Aid and the Arms Trade:
a Look at the Numbers'' declares the answer is a resounding 'yes'.''
At a time when Washington spent only about 1.25 dollars per U.S. citizen on
development and humanitarian aid and peacekeeping abroad, it exported weapons worth
more than two dollars per citizen to foreign countries, often the same nations to
which it provides the bulk of its aid.
The United States accounted for roughly half of all arms exports worldwide from 1993
through 1995, the last year for which reliable estimates are available. Most US
weapons exports went to U.S. allies in the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East,
and East Asia.
''We sell weapons; we give weapons away; we provide financing to buy weapons,'' says
Joan Whelan, the report's author. ''And then once the weapons are used, we spend
billions of dollar to try to clean up the aftermath.'' ..."
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/02/115761.php
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| User: "Frank Dwyer" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
03 Jan 2005 09:01:12 PM |
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* wrote:
On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 22:53:11 GMT, Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote:
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it domestically.
No, we should stop letting Bush and Cheney plunder our treasury
How do you propose we do that?
and we'll be able to afford to take care of ourselves and others.
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Based on what criteria?
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| User: "james g. keegan jr." |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
03 Jan 2005 09:15:32 PM |
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Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote in
news:YFnCd.2252$uj3.284@news01.roc.ny:
* wrote:
On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 22:53:11 GMT, Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net>
wrote:
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it
domestically.
No, we should stop letting Bush and Cheney plunder our treasury
How do you propose we do that?
just keep watching jerry springer. others will handle it for you.
--
"A post edit is not a forgery. The entire post is
under my name. I can post whatever I want. I even
documented my correction to your post."
-Gactimus <gactimus@xrs.net> explaining why he forged
text and falsely attributed it to me.
<yOCdnRiVUdGQwUXcRVn-iQ@rcn.net>
news:yOCdnRiVUdGQwUXcRVn-iQ@rcn.net
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| User: "* US *" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
04 Jan 2005 08:09:07 AM |
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On 4 Jan 2005 03:15:32 GMT, "james g. keegan jr." <keegan@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote in news:YFnCd.2252$uj3.284@news01.roc.ny:
[...]
How do you propose we do that?
just keep watching jerry springer. others will handle it for you.
Good one.
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| User: "Frank Dwyer" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
04 Jan 2005 05:15:25 PM |
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james g. keegan jr. wrote:
Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote in
news:YFnCd.2252$uj3.284@news01.roc.ny:
* wrote:
On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 22:53:11 GMT, Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net>
wrote:
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it
domestically.
No, we should stop letting Bush and Cheney plunder our treasury
How do you propose we do that?
just keep watching jerry springer.
Who?
others will handle it for you.
LMFAO! You're pathetic, Jimmy.
.
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| User: "james g. keegan jr." |
|
| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
04 Jan 2005 05:45:08 PM |
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Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote in news:hsFCd.2370$7T3.918
@news01.roc.ny:
james g. keegan jr. wrote:
Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote in
news:YFnCd.2252$uj3.284@news01.roc.ny:
* wrote:
On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 22:53:11 GMT, Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net>
wrote:
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it
domestically.
No, we should stop letting Bush and Cheney plunder our treasury
How do you propose we do that?
just keep watching jerry springer.
Who?
*smirk*
others will handle it for you.
LMFAO! You're pathetic, Jimmy.
glad to see you feel inferior. you should
--
"A post edit is not a forgery. The entire post is
under my name. I can post whatever I want. I even
documented my correction to your post."
-Gactimus <gactimus@xrs.net> explaining why he forged
text and falsely attributed it to me.
<yOCdnRiVUdGQwUXcRVn-iQ@rcn.net>
news:yOCdnRiVUdGQwUXcRVn-iQ@rcn.net
.
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| User: "* US *" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
04 Jan 2005 08:09:07 AM |
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On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 03:01:12 GMT, Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote:
How do you propose we do that?
Impeach Bush/Cheney, and send them and their traitorous
cohort to the Hague for trial for their war crimes. Bring
our troops home to protect US soil. Cease all contractual
arrangements with Halliburton, KBR, and the other firms
which have proven to be corrupt.
"Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance."
Based on what criteria?
You didn't read what I wrote for comprehension, or you'd know.
Someone with a thousand dollars who gives you one isn't as generous
as someone with ten dollars who gives you one.
Learn some arithmetic if you can.
On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 22:53:11 GMT, Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote:
Then perhaps we should withdraw our "pittance" and spend it domestically.
No, we should stop letting Bush and Cheney plunder our treasury
and we'll be able to afford to take care of ourselves and others.
Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance.
Not only is the USA notoriously stingy, both in public and private
levels of philanthropy, but the 'help' only comes with strings attached:
"Now Bush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers"
http://society.guardian.co.uk/disasterresponse/story/0,1321,983243,00.html
"What Mr Egeland said about international aid for disasters was that
rich nations had become stingy in helping poor nations in times of
calamity, which, for most of them, is all the time. As the records
show, he was absolutely right..."
http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughley01012005.html
"Private donations, especially large philanthropic
donations and business givings, can be subject to
political/ideological or economic end-goals
and/or subject to special interest."
“Private charity is an act of privilege, it can never
be a viable alternative to State obligations...”
"Makes you wonder who the real beneficiary
of charity is here."
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp?p=1
"...a Johns Hopkins study shows that the United States lags behind other
countries in terms of private philanthropy..."
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/508690/
Ponder the factors involved in US "foreign aid":
Quality ...
GNI per capita ...
Percent of GNP or GDP ...
Compared to agricultural subsidies which further impoverish agrarian nations ...
Compared to military aid ...
As distributed ...
"USA's aid, in terms of percentage of their GDP is already lowest of any
industrialized nation in the world. ...
Among the big donors, the US has the worst record for spending its aid budget on
itself - 70 percent of its aid is spent on US goods and services. And more than half
is spent in middle income countries in the Middle East...
The estimated annual cost of Northern trade barriers to Southern economies is over US
$100 billion, much more than what developing countries receive in aid...
Aid has been a foreign policy tool to aid the donor not the recipient...
The US has also cut back monetary obligations to the United Nations, which is the
largest body trying to provide assistance in such a variety of ways to the developing
countries. Furthermore, the US has often reduced or held back its required
contributions to the U.N., even though it is already the "stingiest" of all
industrialized nations providing aid...
....two-thirds of US government aid goes to only two countries: Israel and Egypt. Much
of the remaining third is used to promote US exports or to fight a war against drugs
that could only be won by tackling drug abuse in the United States...
"Many in the first world imagine the amount of money spent on aid to developing
countries is massive. In fact, it amounts to only .03% of GNP of the industrialized
nations. In 1995, the director of the U.S. aid agency defended his agency by
testifying to his congress that 84 cents of every dollar of aid goes back into the
U.S economy in goods and services purchased. For every dollar the United States puts
into the World Bank, an estimated $2 actually goes into the U.S. economy in goods and
services. Meanwhile, in 1995, severely indebted low-income countries paid one billion
dollars more in debt and interest to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) than they
received from it. For the 46 countries of Subsaharan Africa, foreign debt service was
four times their combined governmental health and education budgets in 1996. So, we
find that aid does not aid." -- Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Eyes of the Heart; Seeking a
Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization, (Common Courage Press, 2000), p. 13
...."
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp
As for food humanitarian aid, too often it's contaminated food unacceptable
to anyone else.
"Highly mechanized farms on large acreages can produce units of food cheaper than
even the poorest paid farmers of the Third World. When this cheap food is sold, or
given, to the Third World, the local farm economy is destroyed. If the poor and
unemployed of the Third World were given access to land, access to industrial tools,
and protection from cheap imports, they could plant high-protein/high calorie crops
and become self-sufficient in food. Reclaiming their land and utilizing the
unemployed would cost these societies almost nothing, feed them well, and save far
more money than they now pay for the so-called "cheap" imported foods.
World hunger exists because: (1) colonialism, and later subtle monopoly capitalism,
dispossessed hundreds of millions of people from their land; the current owners are
the new plantation managers producing for the mother countries; (2) the low-paid
undeveloped countries sell to the highly paid developed countries because there is no
local market [because the low-paid people do not have enough to pay] ... and (3) the
current Third World land owners, producing for the First World, are appendages to the
industrialized world, stripping all natural wealth from the land to produce food,
lumber, and other products for wealthy nations.
This system is largely kept in place by underpaying the defeated colonial societies
for the real value of their labor and resources, leaving them no choice but to
continue to sell their natural wealth to the over-paid industrial societies that
overwhelmed them. To eliminate hunger: (1) the dispossessed, weak, individualized
people must be protected from the organized and legally protected multinational
corporations; (2) there must be managed trade to protect both the Third World and the
developed world, so the dispossessed can reclaim use of their land; (3) the currently
defeated people can then produce the more labor-intensive, high-protein/high-calorie
crops that contain all eight (or nine) essential amino acids; and (4) those societies
must adapt dietary patterns so that vegetables, grains, and fruits are consumed in
the proper amino acid combinations, with small amounts of meat or fish for flavor.
With similar dietary adjustments among the wealthy, there would be enough food for
everyone.
- J.W. Smith, The World's Wasted Wealth 2, (Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994),
pp. 63, 64....
The United States lent governments money to buy this food, and then enforced upon
them the extraction and export of their natural resources to pay back the debt...
Not only is much U.S. food exported unnecessary, but it results in great harm to the
very people they profess to be helping. The United States exported over sixty million
tons of grain in 1974. Only 3.3 million tons were for aid, and most of that did not
reach the starving. For example, during the mid-1980s, 84 percent of U.S.
agricultural exports to Latin America were given to the local governments to sell to
the people. This undersold local producers, destroyed their markets, and reduced
their production.
Exporting food may be profitable for the exporting country, but when their land is
capable of producing adequate food, it is a disaster to the importing countries.
[Note that many of the poor nations today are rich in natural resources and arable
land.] American farmers would certainly riot if 60 percent of their markets were
taken over by another country. Not only would the farmers suffer, but the entire
economy would be severely affected.
Imported food is not as cheap as it appears. If the money expended on imports had
been spent within the local economy, it would have multiplied several times as it
moved through the economy contracting local labor (the multiplier effect) ...
This moving of money through an economy is why there is so much wealth in a high-wage
manufacturing and exporting country and so little within a low-wage country that is
"dependent" on imports. With centuries of mercantilist experience, developed
societies understand this well.
.... [S]ubsidies, tarrifs and other trade policies eliminate the comparative advantage
of other regions to maintain healthy economies in the developed world. ... The result
of these First World subsidies [for export] are shattered Third World economies.
- J.W. Smith, The World's Wasted Wealth 2, (Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994),
pp. 66-67...."
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty/FoodDumping/Intro.asp
"As Western countries have got richer in the past ten years, the proportion of their
wealth spent on humanitarian aid has gone down by 30%. ...
Humanitarian assistance should not substitute for effective political and economic
responses to non-strategic areas of the globe where some of the worst humanitarian
crises occur. Sustained international action is necessary to address the underlying
causes of conflicts and to reduce vulnerability to natural disasters. Furthermore,
humanitarian aid by itself is rarely solely responsible for saving lives, but rather
a vital complement to people’s own efforts to help themselves. The wrong kind of aid
can sometimes do more harm than good. At times, warring parties’ action to deny
people access to humanitarian assistance is a more significant factor than lack of
funds. ...
The plight of civilians in Afghanistan was ranked by the 1999 World Disasters Report
as the world’s worst emergency, yet only once in seven years has the CAP been more
than 50 per cent funded. Similarly, Somalia has averaged only 40 per cent funding
over five UN Consolidated Appeals. Other countries have fluctuating fortunes in the
funding stakes: the 1994 appeal for Angola was 87 per cent funded, by 1997, barely 50
per cent of the requested amount had been received. Liberians in need did relatively
well in 1995, but in 1998 received less than half what they needed according to the
revised CAP. The average response to the Great Lakes crisis was 80% of requirements
over six years, although this obscures the disparity between high levels of support
in the wake of the genocide and a fall to 42 per cent funding in 1998. At a donor
meeting in Tokyo in December 1999, pledges of support for the appeal for East Timor
reached 75 per cent of the requested amount. The average of the responses to CAPs for
complex emergencies each year between 1992 and 1999 never rose above 75 per cent, and
are actually in decline. If this broad trend continues, 'forgotten emergencies' will
be even more neglected. ...
Despite the increasing demand for international engagement and assistance, over the
last decade, there has been a steady decline in the flow of official development
assistance to developing countries from the world’s richest countries. This has
knock-on effects on levels of humanitarian assistance. An increase in development aid
through the 1980s reached its peak in 1992 at US$60.8bn, 0.33 per cent of the GNP of
the world’s richest countries forming the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development, the OECD. From then on, Official Development Assistance (ODA) has
declined, reaching 0.22 per cent of GNP in 1997. G7 donors - the world’s largest
economies - were disproportionately responsible for this, accounting for practically
all of the real fall in ODA in recent years. Although there was a slight upturn in
1998 to 0.23 per cent of GNP spent on ODA, this falls far short of international
commitments to devote 0.7 per cent GNP to official development aid. It also contrasts
starkly with real terms growth in GNP in OECD countries from US$11,000 per capita in
1960 to nearly $28,000 in 1997, while ODA per capita grew very slowly – US$47 in 1960
and US$59 in 1997. Increasing affluence has not brought increasing generosity, and
the richest countries have been the meanest....
The USA also falls down on this burden-sharing measure. Although the USA is the
largest single donor of humanitarian assistance, contributing US$900m in 1998 and 30
per cent of the bilateral total, this falls short of the 38.6 per cent that is the
USA share of DAC GNP. ...
Once an undisputed symbol of solidarity with those struck down by misfortune and
adversity, humanitarian assistance is now vilified by many as part of the problem:
feeding fighters, strengthening perpetrators of genocide, creating new war economies,
fuelling conflicts and perpetuating crises..."
http://www.pcpafg.org/news/NGOs/index.shtml
"A report by the Washington-based arms-control group, Council for a Livable World
Education Fund asked ''does the United States invest more in militarisation than in
development globally?'' In its findings, the report ''Foreign Aid and the Arms Trade:
a Look at the Numbers'' declares the answer is a resounding 'yes'.''
At a time when Washington spent only about 1.25 dollars per U.S. citizen on
development and humanitarian aid and peacekeeping abroad, it exported weapons worth
more than two dollars per citizen to foreign countries, often the same nations to
which it provides the bulk of its aid.
The United States accounted for roughly half of all arms exports worldwide from 1993
through 1995, the last year for which reliable estimates are available. Most US
weapons exports went to U.S. allies in the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East,
and East Asia.
''We sell weapons; we give weapons away; we provide financing to buy weapons,'' says
Joan Whelan, the report's author. ''And then once the weapons are used, we spend
billions of dollar to try to clean up the aftermath.'' ..."
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/02/115761.php
.
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| User: "Frank Dwyer" |
|
| Title: Re: Bush Fails a Global Test |
04 Jan 2005 05:18:50 PM |
|
|
* wrote:
On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 03:01:12 GMT, Frank Dwyer <fdwyer@XcitlinkX.net> wrote:
How do you propose we do that?
Impeach Bush/Cheney,
Fine... on what grounds?
and send them and their traitorous
cohort to the Hague for trial for their war crimes.
Impossible. No American president will EVER be tried in the Hague.
Bring our troops home to protect US soil.
From what?
Cease all contractual arrangements with Halliburton, KBR, and the other firms
which have proven to be corrupt.
That would be every firm on the planet.
"Even at $350 million, the US offer of aid is a relative pittance."
Based on what criteria?
You didn't read what I wrote for comprehension, or you'd know.
Someone with a thousand dollars who gives you one isn't as generous
as someone with ten dollars who gives you one.
Learn some arithmetic if you can.
How much did you donate?
.
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