Ldl

I am wondering just how much the Islamic countries are putting into the
relief.

In one newspaper the PR of China gave only USD $2.5 Million and they are a
super power.

Maybe people should also look elsewhere instead of constantly pointing the
finger at western countries.

"Omni Tofu" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected] m...
    > From:
    > http://www.straitstimes.com.sg/sub/r...93438,00.html?
    > International relief aid has been impressive so far. Calls have come
    > from all quarters, including Singapore, that the UN should coordinate
    > this gigantic effort.
    > However, funds from international bodies and extra- regional
    > governments should not be allowed to come with strings attached.
    > ---
    > The above concern is a valid one, as most of G7 rich nations
    > [especially US, Japan, Germany, France] not only under-fulfill their
    > developmental aid promises, they attach strings to their "generous
    > help" which furthur burden the already suffering poor nations with
    > draconian conditions such as "buy US/Japan only goods and services",
    > local subsidies and protectionist policies.
    > Here's these not so generous Rich nations' STRINGS ATTACHED HELP
    > legacy:
    > *Disclaimer: Government's foreign aid policies don't always reflect
    > the compassion and true generosity of individuals of these nations -
    > American Bill Gates or Chinese Li Ka Shing.
    > Excerpt from: Now Bush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers
    > http://society.guardian.co.uk/disast...983243,00.html
    > [...] On May 21 in Washington, Andrew Natsios, the head of USaid, gave
    > a speech blasting US NGOs for failing to play a role many of them
    > didn't realise they had been assigned: doing public relations for the
    > US government.
    > [...]From now on, NGOs had to do a better job of link ing their
    > humanitarian assistance to US foreign policy and making it clear that
    > they are "an arm of the US government".
    > [...]For aid workers, there are even more strings attached to US
    > dollars. USaid told several NGOs that have been awarded humanitarian
    > contracts that they cannot speak to the media - all requests from
    > reporters must go through Washington.
    > Excerpt from: 45 Million Children to Die in Next Decade
    > Due to Rich Countries' Miserliness
    > http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/...04/1206oda.htm
    > [...] Despite the fact that Group of Seven (G7) countries Germany,
    > France, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States, and Canada are
    > richer than they have ever been, they are spending only half as much
    > in real terms in development assistance as they did in 1960
    > [...] While Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg
    > have reached and sustained that target for some time, none of the G7
    > members is even close, although France and Britain have at least set a
    > timetable for reaching it.
    > *Britain has recently met that target, while Sweden continues to lead.
    > [...] At only 0.14 percent of GDP, U.S. foreign aid in 2003 ranked
    > dead last among all wealthy nations. In fact, its entire development
    > aid spending in 2003 came to only ten percent of what it spent on the
    > Iraq war that year.

Gem

"Padraig Breathnach" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > " BruceB" <[email protected]> wrote:
    > >Plus, the OP is off topic and ought to review the FAQs. This NG is about
    > >TRAVEL.
    > >>
    > I see.
    > 1. You participate in an off-topic discussion, and only after that do
    > you make your objection about the matter being off-topic.
    > 2. You refer to "this NG" in a post that goes to five newsgroups, four
    > of which have nothing much to do with travel.
    > --
    > PB
    > The return address has been MUNGED

GADS! That sounds painful.

My sincere apologies if any of my rants or other posts have reached
destinations I'd not intended they go. I am not a techie, and sadly, I learn
most of what I learn by doing something wrong first a few times and
eventually something goes click.

I've been so pre-occupied with my own convictions that I have indeed failed
to take note of where anything I've said actually went, for a couple of
years now.

I use the ngs for a sort of self-awareness exercise - I discover what I know
by stating what I think. Its a logics exercise sort of. Its pretty selfish.

My bad.

Please feel free to block, censor or otherwise prevent my posts in future,
from any newsgroup that considers it to be off topic, etc., with my
blessings.

A link to some good "layman" newsgroup destination choosing instructions
would be helpful, I'm certain.

(What are all these "unresolvable newsgroup names" I gotta constantly erase
before my software will let me post?)

In reparation, please visit my non-tracking, commercial-free, all-age
website, www.gemsgallery.org , and select some 3DRendered, high-resolution
imagery for your desktop, or website, or just take a wander through the
galleries and let your eyes have some fun.

All the images are copy-free to one and all, for any purpose whatsoever,
without permission from, or credit to, the artist - me.

Take as many as you like. Use them for anything you like.
You can even abuse them as long as the end result is legal.

IE users just right click on the image and select 'Save Picture As', from
the Windows popup menu. (I've no idea how other browsers save pictures.)

There are hundreds of images in the 3D Freebie Galleries

That's a real "No-Strings-Attached" offer folks.

Again my apology.
I shall endeavour to edit out obviously extraneous newsgroups in future.

GEM

Ardeedee

Agree with you the logistics and operational problems etc are the main
problems to overcome which with the proper equipment as they have now will
mean reducing the access time to zero.
I wonder why no one is bringing in Bailey bridges etc.


"Go Fig" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:010120051259331013%[email protected]...
    > In article <[email protected]>, ardeedee
    > <[email protected]> wrote:
    > > The US is more generous than your own countryn - they pledged $350
million
    > > and more from their citizens.
    > Perhaps most important is the unique huge airlift to remote regions and
    > desalinization assests, USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Force is now on
    > station w/ more than 50 helicopters and LCATs... as well as the 18th AF
    > (Air Mobility Command) and its Hercules and C-130s (and those C130s of
    > other countries like, Australia).
    > You must have already made this huge capital investment, these assets
    > takes years of development.
    > Withstand that, Sweden has set the mark for those who primarily lending
    > cash aid... very generous, but they do have quite a few nationals
    > missing in the region.
    > jay
    > Sat Jan 01, 2005
    > mailto:[email protected]
    > > What did Singaporeans give - their used inner pants?
    > >
    > > <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > > news:[email protected] ups.com...
    > > > USA can brag about how much they give, but IN REALITY it remains the
    > > > STINGIEST of the rich nations...
    > > >
    > > > Excerpt from: http://www.worldrevolution.org/article/1677
    > > >
    > > > The United States led all donor countries in the total amount of both
    > > > its foreign aid program and its population assistance for which it
    > > > provided nearly $1 billion in 2002. When the size of the U.S. economy
    > > > is considered, however, its overall foreign aid program placed dead
    > > > last among all major donors, accounting for only 0.13 percent of its
    > > > total GDP.
    > > >
    > > > *Disclaimer: USA government's stinginess and spending policies do not
    > > > necessarily reflect certain compassionate and generous American
    > > > individuals.
    > > >
    > >
    > >

Ardeedee

For a small population base country the loss is indeed great and we
sympathise.But Thailand still beckons and tsunamis are not expected to recur
in a 100 years.


"Lennart Petersen" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > "Go Fig" <[email protected]> skrev i meddelandet
    > news:010120051259331013%[email protected]...
    > > In article <[email protected]>, ardeedee
    > > <[email protected]> wrote:
    > >
    > >> The US is more generous than your own countryn - they pledged $350
    > >> million
    > >> and more from their citizens.
    > >
    > > Perhaps most important is the unique huge airlift to remote regions and
    > > desalinization assests, USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Force is now on
    > > station w/ more than 50 helicopters and LCATs... as well as the 18th AF
    > > (Air Mobility Command) and its Hercules and C-130s (and those C130s of
    > > other countries like, Australia).
    > >
    > > You must have already made this huge capital investment, these assets
    > > takes years of development.
    > >
    > > Withstand that, Sweden has set the mark for those who primarily lending
    > > cash aid... very generous, but they do have quite a few nationals
    > > missing in the region.
    > 3559 missing according to the last report. Several airplanes loaded with
    > injured have arrived back.
    > And 19 children missing their parents have arrived back.....
    > Today Jan 01 was a national mourning day.

Ardeedee

Betcha you donated nothing but your used socks?
Pray tell me I am wrong?



"Gummo" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > "ardeedee" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > news:[email protected]...
    > >
    > > The US is more generous than your own countryn - they pledged $350
million
    > Very generous indeed, considering it's the same as the combined budget of
    > the movies, 'Waterworld' and 'The Wild Wild West'.
    > Gummo

Gummo

"ardeedee" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
tsunamis are not expected to recur in a 100 years.

Where'd you get that information?

Gummo

Gummo

You're as wrong in that as in the faith you have in the USA's generosity.

Gummo

"ardeedee" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > Betcha you donated nothing but your used socks?
    > Pray tell me I am wrong?
    > "Gummo" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > news:[email protected]...
    >> "ardeedee" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    >> news:[email protected]...
    >> >
    >> > The US is more generous than your own countryn - they pledged $350
    > million
    >> Very generous indeed, considering it's the same as the combined budget of
    >> the movies, 'Waterworld' and 'The Wild Wild West'.
    >> Gummo
    >

Go Fig

In article <[email protected]>, Gummo
<[email protected]> wrote:

    > You're as wrong in that as in the faith you have in the USA's generosity.

What would you say would be a generous figure for the U.S. gift ?

jay
Sat Jan 01, 2005
mailto:[email protected]

    >
    > Gummo
    >
    > "ardeedee" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > news:[email protected]...
    > > Betcha you donated nothing but your used socks?
    > > Pray tell me I am wrong?
    > >
    > >
    > >
    > > "Gummo" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > > news:[email protected]...
    > >> "ardeedee" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > >> news:[email protected]...
    > >> >
    > >> > The US is more generous than your own countryn - they pledged $350
    > > million
    > >>
    > >> Very generous indeed, considering it's the same as the combined budget of
    > >> the movies, 'Waterworld' and 'The Wild Wild West'.
    > >>
    > >> Gummo
    > >>
    > >>
    > >
    > >
    >

*

On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 17:44:39 -0800, Go Fig <[email protected]> wrote:

    >What would you say would be a generous figure for the U.S. gift ?

To be "generous" it'd have to be more per person,
more relative to wealth, more relative to income,
or something of that nature.

It certainly isn't anything of that sort, for the USA.


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/TradeRel...ping/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

Go Fig

In article <[email protected]>, * US * wrote:

    > On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 17:44:39 -0800, Go Fig <[email protected]> wrote:
    >
    > >What would you say would be a generous figure for the U.S. gift ?
    >
    > To be "generous" it'd have to be more per person,
    > more relative to wealth, more relative to income,
    > or something of that nature.
    >
    > It certainly isn't anything of that sort, for the USA.

Do you have a bigotry to governmental direct aid, the kind that is most
often misappropriated to the pockets of warlords, verses private
individual contributions to organizations that deliver help ?

Americans are among the most generous in the world.

jay
Sat Jan 01, 2005
mailto:[email protected]


    >
    >
    > 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/TradeRel...ping/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

Truth

Communist China US$63 mio.
Japan US$500 mio.


"LDL" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    >I am wondering just how much the Islamic countries are putting into the
    >relief.
    > In one newspaper the PR of China gave only USD $2.5 Million and they are a
    > super power.
    > Maybe people should also look elsewhere instead of constantly pointing the
    > finger at western countries.
    > "Omni Tofu" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > news:[email protected] m...
    >> From:
    >> http://www.straitstimes.com.sg/sub/r...93438,00.html?
    >> International relief aid has been impressive so far. Calls have come
    >> from all quarters, including Singapore, that the UN should coordinate
    >> this gigantic effort.
    >> However, funds from international bodies and extra- regional
    >> governments should not be allowed to come with strings attached.
    >> ---
    >> The above concern is a valid one, as most of G7 rich nations
    >> [especially US, Japan, Germany, France] not only under-fulfill their
    >> developmental aid promises, they attach strings to their "generous
    >> help" which furthur burden the already suffering poor nations with
    >> draconian conditions such as "buy US/Japan only goods and services",
    >> local subsidies and protectionist policies.
    >> Here's these not so generous Rich nations' STRINGS ATTACHED HELP
    >> legacy:
    >> *Disclaimer: Government's foreign aid policies don't always reflect
    >> the compassion and true generosity of individuals of these nations -
    >> American Bill Gates or Chinese Li Ka Shing.
    >> Excerpt from: Now Bush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers
    >> http://society.guardian.co.uk/disast...983243,00.html
    >> [...] On May 21 in Washington, Andrew Natsios, the head of USaid, gave
    >> a speech blasting US NGOs for failing to play a role many of them
    >> didn't realise they had been assigned: doing public relations for the
    >> US government.
    >> [...]From now on, NGOs had to do a better job of link ing their
    >> humanitarian assistance to US foreign policy and making it clear that
    >> they are "an arm of the US government".
    >> [...]For aid workers, there are even more strings attached to US
    >> dollars. USaid told several NGOs that have been awarded humanitarian
    >> contracts that they cannot speak to the media - all requests from
    >> reporters must go through Washington.
    >> Excerpt from: 45 Million Children to Die in Next Decade
    >> Due to Rich Countries' Miserliness
    >> http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/...04/1206oda.htm
    >> [...] Despite the fact that Group of Seven (G7) countries Germany,
    >> France, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States, and Canada are
    >> richer than they have ever been, they are spending only half as much
    >> in real terms in development assistance as they did in 1960
    >> [...] While Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg
    >> have reached and sustained that target for some time, none of the G7
    >> members is even close, although France and Britain have at least set a
    >> timetable for reaching it.
    >> *Britain has recently met that target, while Sweden continues to lead.
    >> [...] At only 0.14 percent of GDP, U.S. foreign aid in 2003 ranked
    >> dead last among all wealthy nations. In fact, its entire development
    >> aid spending in 2003 came to only ten percent of what it spent on the
    >> Iraq war that year.
    >

*

On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 18:44:41 -0800, Go Fig <[email protected]> wrote:

    >Americans are among the most generous in the world.

That's false. Even though they're more wealthy than others,
they're more stingy.

"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/

The US public philanthropy status is even worse, too.

On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 17:44:39 -0800, Go Fig <[email protected]> wrote:

    >What would you say would be a generous figure for the U.S. gift ?

To be "generous" it'd have to be more per person,
more relative to wealth, more relative to income,
or something of that nature.

It certainly isn't anything of that sort, for the USA.


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/TradeRel...ping/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

Hitler

the commists took money from their citizens
the japs made money from third world sweathouse

"LDL" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    >I am wondering just how much the Islamic countries are putting into the
    >relief.
    > In one newspaper the PR of China gave only USD $2.5 Million and they are a
    > super power.
    > Maybe people should also look elsewhere instead of constantly pointing the
    > finger at western countries.
    > "Omni Tofu" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > news:[email protected] m...
    >> From:
    >> http://www.straitstimes.com.sg/sub/r...93438,00.html?
    >> International relief aid has been impressive so far. Calls have come
    >> from all quarters, including Singapore, that the UN should coordinate
    >> this gigantic effort.
    >> However, funds from international bodies and extra- regional
    >> governments should not be allowed to come with strings attached.
    >> ---
    >> The above concern is a valid one, as most of G7 rich nations
    >> [especially US, Japan, Germany, France] not only under-fulfill their
    >> developmental aid promises, they attach strings to their "generous
    >> help" which furthur burden the already suffering poor nations with
    >> draconian conditions such as "buy US/Japan only goods and services",
    >> local subsidies and protectionist policies.
    >> Here's these not so generous Rich nations' STRINGS ATTACHED HELP
    >> legacy:
    >> *Disclaimer: Government's foreign aid policies don't always reflect
    >> the compassion and true generosity of individuals of these nations -
    >> American Bill Gates or Chinese Li Ka Shing.
    >> Excerpt from: Now Bush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers
    >> http://society.guardian.co.uk/disast...983243,00.html
    >> [...] On May 21 in Washington, Andrew Natsios, the head of USaid, gave
    >> a speech blasting US NGOs for failing to play a role many of them
    >> didn't realise they had been assigned: doing public relations for the
    >> US government.
    >> [...]From now on, NGOs had to do a better job of link ing their
    >> humanitarian assistance to US foreign policy and making it clear that
    >> they are "an arm of the US government".
    >> [...]For aid workers, there are even more strings attached to US
    >> dollars. USaid told several NGOs that have been awarded humanitarian
    >> contracts that they cannot speak to the media - all requests from
    >> reporters must go through Washington.
    >> Excerpt from: 45 Million Children to Die in Next Decade
    >> Due to Rich Countries' Miserliness
    >> http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/...04/1206oda.htm
    >> [...] Despite the fact that Group of Seven (G7) countries Germany,
    >> France, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States, and Canada are
    >> richer than they have ever been, they are spending only half as much
    >> in real terms in development assistance as they did in 1960
    >> [...] While Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg
    >> have reached and sustained that target for some time, none of the G7
    >> members is even close, although France and Britain have at least set a
    >> timetable for reaching it.
    >> *Britain has recently met that target, while Sweden continues to lead.
    >> [...] At only 0.14 percent of GDP, U.S. foreign aid in 2003 ranked
    >> dead last among all wealthy nations. In fact, its entire development
    >> aid spending in 2003 came to only ten percent of what it spent on the
    >> Iraq war that year.
    >

BlackWater

There are ALWAYS 'strings' ... or at least ulterior motives ... in
State-sponsored 'charity'.

Go Fig

In article <[email protected]>, * US * wrote:

    > On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 18:44:41 -0800, Go Fig <[email protected]> wrote:
    >
    > >Americans are among the most generous in the world.
    >
    > That's false. Even though they're more wealthy than others,
    > they're more stingy.
    >
    > "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/

Nice stat that conforms to your POV.

Do you have a bigotry to religious groups helping other religious
people in need... excluded from this contrived data.

jay
Sat Jan 01, 2005
mailto:[email protected]

    >
    > The US public philanthropy status is even worse, too.
    >
    > On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 17:44:39 -0800, Go Fig <[email protected]> wrote:
    >
    > >What would you say would be a generous figure for the U.S. gift ?
    >
    > To be "generous" it'd have to be more per person,
    > more relative to wealth, more relative to income,
    > or something of that nature.
    >
    > It certainly isn't anything of that sort, for the USA.
    >
    >
    > 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/TradeRel...ping/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