If we spent some of the magical Bail-Out money feeding the hungry peeps of the planet, would making a better world buy us any street cred?

POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Thursday, October 8, 2009 03:41
VIEWED: 7088
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KWICKO

Saturday, October 3, 2009 2:01 AM

Hell, Rue, we're just being patriotic! We have to make sure that ending starvation begins here at home!

GEEZER

Saturday, October 3, 2009 2:05 AM

Okay. I consider posting cites or attributions for quotes and little-known facts to be a courtesy to the folks who'll be reading my post. Apparently several of you don't consider this type of courtesy necessary.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

KWICKO

Saturday, October 3, 2009 2:13 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Okay. I consider posting cites or attributions for quotes and little-known facts to be a courtesy to the folks who'll be reading my post. Apparently several of you don't consider this type of courtesy necessary.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

Well, it does tend to get a bit carried away with at times...

(and that's not aimed just at you, either).

It's handy and nice when cites are provided, but it kind of undercuts things when the provided cites are dismissed out of hand. Just sayin'.

GEEZER

Saturday, October 3, 2009 2:19 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
So, doing some simple math:

If the EU provides roughly 90% of its food aid as money, and it provided 1.5M tons of food, that would mean that the EU provided the money equivalent of 150M tons of food, for a total of 151.5M tons of food aid equivalent.

If the US provides 90% of its aid as food, and it provided 4M tons of food, that would mean that the US provides the money equivalent of 0.4M tons of food, for a total of 4.4M tons of food aid equivalent.

EU 151.5M tons of food aid equivalent
US 4.4M tons of food aid equivalent

But the contributions to the WFP are money, with the Programme, run out of Rome, doing the purchasing. Most of the purchasing is done in low or middle income countries.
http://www.wfp.org/procurement/food-procurement-map

The U.S. contributed around $1.15 billion in 2009 as opposed to the EU's $238 million, so your simple math doesn't hold up.
http://www.wfp.org/node/9243

"Keep the Shiny side up"

ANTHONYT

Saturday, October 3, 2009 2:20 AM

Hello Geezer,

Don't be that way.

Come now, I think that if you and I are completely honest with one another, we will agree that sometimes...

and let's be honest here...

sometimes when we say 'cites please' it is in an attempt to invalidate an argument without having to deal with the logic of the argument itself.

I mean, if we had a counter-argument, it wouldn't matter what cites the poster had, would it? We'd have evidence of our own- and cites too if we needed them- to refute the illogical argument of the original poster.

And then we'd look better for it.

Also, saying, 'cites please' in response to an opinion is, quite frankly, balderdash. And I think you know it, and were just twisting the knife a bit in response to Rue's unsupported opinion.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

SIGNYM

Saturday, October 3, 2009 2:23 AM

To go back to the issue of food aid... There's a huge article about it in The Nation, delving into what Rue has already mentioned: Food aid from the US is tied to purchasing food from US agribusiness, which receive huge subsidies. 90% of US food aid is so tied, only 10% of EU food aid is tied.

One picture they paint in the 2003 Ethiopian famine: As trucks laden with 1 million tons of US corn, wheat, peas, beans and lentils rolled into Nazareth, a city of around 230,000 people in central Ethiopia, they passed warehouses stuffed with 100,000 metric tons of Ethiopian grains, beans and peas--the surplus from a bumper crop two years earlier Farmers in Ethiopia and the agricultural infrastructure have been devastated, thanks US agribusiness subsidies and pressure from the IMF. It would have been better to have paid Ethiopian farmers for their surplus crops and distributed them to the starving. But US food aid is just a big, wet blow job to USA agribusiness.

It's complicated. Educate yourself.

www.thenation.com/doc/20090921/cunningham/2

GEEZER

Saturday, October 3, 2009 2:29 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
sometimes when we say 'cites please' it is in an attempt to invalidate an argument without having to deal with the logic of the argument itself.

When I ask for cites for a quote, it's because I want to know where it came from; whether it's from an expert in world food aid, say, or Zeppo the anti-something blogger.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

ANTHONYT

Saturday, October 3, 2009 2:31 AM

Hello Geezer,

I'm sorry if I misattributed your intentions.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

SIGNYM

Saturday, October 3, 2009 2:45 AM

GEEZER: HINT Quotes have "quotation marks" around them, are written in italic to distinguish them from surrounding text,

Quote:
or are formatted with the QUOTE instruction.

And now, back to the regularly scheduled program...

GEEZER

Saturday, October 3, 2009 2:59 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
To go back to the issue of food aid... There's a huge article about it in The Nation, delving into what Rue has already mentioned: Food aid from the US is tied to purchasing food from US agribusiness, which receive huge subsidies.

Think I found it. Is it this one? http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090921/cunningham
I'll have to read it.

edit to add: Oh, I see it is. Thanks.

As noted above, the UN's World Food Programme says it gets cash from donors and buys around 80% of it's food in low or middle income countries, which would let the U.S. out as a seller. Conflicting data, what?

I'd just as soon lose agricultural subsidies.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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