[Liamj]

I'm glad many amerikans posting here are fine with end to food aid, it'll make turning THEM down in 1/3/5yrs much easier. Those who think Foriegn Aid has something to do with charity or goodwill have alot of history to catchup on.

Wonder tho how the usual development-at-gunpoint will go without the food aid?
Traditionally you'd force the locals off their land (to grow beef/soy/palm oil, mine gold/oil/gems, cut timber) and into the towns & cities (if slavery unfashionable) where at least they'd have a chance of being fed.
But with no food aid, and a whole lot of new resource theft operations (e.g. oil in Western Africa), wont the locals get a little restless?

Starvation has a way of squeezing out rhetoric about peace, development and democracy, and ppl might forget that the theft is in their best interests.
It'd be just another classic Bush/Cheney f***up if they triggered opposition/sabotage in Africa just as access to that continents oil became crucial to US.
Maybe they're aiming to depopulate, but haven't got all the depleted uranium that came in so handy in Bosnia, Afghanistan & Iraq?

(PS. don't think the USA is the great Satan, but some attitudes here provoke me. It wasn't my fault officer, really, s/he said...)

[bart]

Foreign aid is an instrument of foreign policy. You can spend $100 million on well-conceived foreign aid, or you can spend billion on foreign wars.

Tsunami Toll Nearly 70,000 and Rising -- Where's Bush? by Juan Cole.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Juan Cole', 'A')s John F. Harris and Robin Wright of the Washington Post cannily note, US President George W. Bush has missed an important opportunity to reach out to the Muslims of Indonesia. The Bush administration at first pledged a paltry $15 million, a mysteriously chintzy response to what was obviously an enormous calamity. Bush himself remained on vacation, and now has reluctantly agreed to a meeting of the National Security Council by video conference. If Bush were a statesman, he would have flown to Jakarta and announced his solidarity with the Muslims of Indonesia (which has suffered at least 40,000 dead and rising).

[Jack]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bart', 'F')oreign aid is an instrument of foreign policy. You can spend $100 million on well-conceived foreign aid, or you can spend billion on foreign wars.

[JoeW]

The US needs to stop sending food and money, and instead send real aid. How about helping them establish enough agriculture to sustain their people?

To those who have used this thread to blame others, and speak of the continent of Africa being abused...yes. I think the majority of us here are educated individuals, and we understand the history. The question is, what happens going forward?
Is there ever going to be justice? The slavemasters and slavetraders of the 1800's are probably all dead.
If someone really wanted to start trading in slaves again, I'm sure they could load up the starving Africans in a boat right now with promises that they would be fed, clothed, and housed for the rest of their days.
Would it be right? No. It's the haves & the have-nots. It has been happening for thousands of years, it's happening right now, and it will happen again.
As an American, I don't feel ashamed of what was done back then. I didn't do it. It's not my shame. Those people should be ashamed of how they treated their fellow man. If there is an afterlife, maybe they are now paying for it.
I am far more ashamed of recent actions by the U. S. in world events. At least with these, I had opportunities to make a difference by getting more involved in my community, get people to contact their congressman, etc. and I didn't do it. That's my fault, and I am ashamed of my lack of action.

As far as peak oil is concerned, maybe those who have been denied the fruits of cheap oil (like those that are starving) will be least affected by it. Perhaps there is that silver lining.
In the end, we all may starve. Who is to know?
But one way or another, we will all surely die. In that one way, we are definitely equals on earth.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Liamj', '
')Starvation has a way of squeezing out rhetoric about peace, development and democracy, and ppl might forget that the theft is in their best interests.

[Eustacian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jack', '
')We live in an era of limits, hence of hard choices. The money you give A is money you cannot give B. So, in giving money to Africa, you will take it from someone else.

Shall we tell our own American elderly to hurry up and die so they no longer drain the treasury? Or would it be better to saddle our young 24 year olds with more debt and taxes? Shall we eliminate health care for our own American poor? Would it be better to delete aid to schools?

You see the problem. We cannot afford it. Those who wish to see America poorer and weaker are getting their wish, and we haven't got the money to provide such aid to Africa or anywhere else.

[diceman99]

Sending food aid artificially raises the population.
Reduce to Nil the aid and the population will stabilise to what it should be.

If you are going to give them them aid, dont truck in water, give them a drilling pump and show them how to use it.

Dont sell arms to both sides and let foreign people fight in your proxy wars or let them fight and send in the corporations, to exploit whats left.

Our democracy spread throughtout 3000 years with the Greeks, followed by the Romans this idea flowing through to the British who with the Commonwealth Empire spread Democracy throughout the world. Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, Sinagapore, USA, New Zealand, South Africa. What the British were good at were making and sticking to their rules, and the idea of seperation of powers.

What we in west now do is setup puppet regimes in these undeveloped countries and exploit the people.

[MonteQuest]

Most Americans when asked say that the government should spend about 10% of it's budget on foreign aid. Voter polls in the recent election said it should be reduced to 10%. From recent polls, Americans seem to be under the impression that the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

[savethehumans]

Soon, we won't have the money to send for either foreign OR domestic aid, and this whole argument will be moot.

Given that Africans haven't been very allowed to rise above the kind of existence they've known for centuries, if not millennia, I think they'll adjust to the post-peak world a LOT easier than we will! As to us, we'll soon know what the so-called Third World has known all along...and most of us won't survive it.

Aid? Give it, by all means! We should all help one another. And it's great practice for giving aid to your post-peak community....

[bart]

Good column by economist Paul Krugman about foreign aid at:
http://www.pkarchive.org/column/122501.html
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hy bother? You might say that the United States has a selfish interest in helping the world's poor. The Sachs commission argues that there would be large collateral benefits from improved health care in the world's poorest nations. Disease, it argues, is a major barrier to economic growth, and economic growth in developing countries would make the world as a whole a richer and safer place.

You might also say that reducing the disconnect between America's words and its deeds would give us a better claim to the moral leadership we think we deserve.

But the key argument here is surely a moral one. A sum of money that Americans would hardly notice, a dime a day for the average citizen, would quite literally save the lives of millions. Can we really say to ourselves, this Christmas Day, that this gift is not worth giving?

[Liamj]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('savethehumans', 'G')iven that Africans haven't been very allowed to rise above the kind of existence they've known for centuries, if not millennia, I think they'll adjust to the post-peak world a LOT easier than we will!

[savethehumans]

Liamj, that was NOT meant as a "humorous aside." I was serious. People who live at or below sustanance level will handle what is coming better than we who have all the advantages of The Oil Economy/Society. Why? Because nothing will change for THEM; we are the ones who must adapt. Your point about THEM having a lot to teach US is valid. But no country will have to import Africans to teach them...every nation has people living at the "eke out" survival level.

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('savethehumans', 'W')hy? Because nothing will change for THEM; we are the ones who must adapt.

[savethehumans]

smallpoxgirl: Middle class people are greener than Martians when it comes to the scrounging arts (shopping skills at the Mall notwithstanding). The poor and homeless have mastered these skills; it is an art form with them. And they know how to fight for their share! Even with better weapons, the middle classers are dead meat. (Heck, they'll probably die of food poisoning, not knowing spoiled garbage from edible!)

The middle class would be better off learning how to plant small gardens and preserving their crops. But try telling them that!

[jato]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd they know how to fight for their share! Even with better weapons, the middle classers are dead meat.

[bart]

Animated cartoon about US foreign aid at:

http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=18337

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