“The hair on the back of my neck stands up when any government says a thing needs doing to protect the 'national interest': The vast majority of War
The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. When it only garners 75 %, then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. Before you know it, "investors" are getting a 200 % return and we have trashed another culture and raped another country of its resources, under the flag of Democracy.”
Major General Smedley Butler of the US Marine Corps
Do you want to know some more about this guy? Try these websites…
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
http://www.grunts.net/legends/butler.html
http://hqinet001.hqmc.usmc.mil/HD/Historical/Whos_Who/Butler_SD.htm
Yes, it's always about money...sad to say, but we don't spend very much on foreign aid, despite a prevailing notion that we are the the most philanthropic. T'aint so! I believe Japan is the leader currently...but I might be wrong.
ReplyDeleteMar 14th 2002
From The Economist print edition
Judging by his silence on the way America itself allocates its aid, Mr O'Neill has not bothered to acquaint himself with these findings. Not only is the United States the stingiest of all rich-country aid donors (spending only 0.1% of its national income on foreign aid, compared with the European average of 0.3%), its aid is particularly inefficient. Most of the money goes, for strategic reasons, to middle-income countries such as Egypt and Colombia. America spends only 40% of its aid on poorer countries, compared with the rich-country average of approaching 60%, which is itself too low. And American aid is not concentrated on countries with good economic policies: its measly African aid budget is scattered across numerous countries, many of them badly governed.
America may be the most egregious hypocrite in the aid debate, but it is not the only villain. For all their fine words, many rich countries—with a few notable exceptions such as the Netherlands, Norway and, increasingly, Britain—focus more on foreign-policy concerns than on reducing poverty when designing their aid budgets. Around 70% of foreign aid is still spent bilaterally, even though the studies show that multilateral organisations, particularly the World Bank, reach the poor more accurately. The result of this bilateral bias is that many international aid efforts that could make a big difference—for example, the attempts to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other infectious diseases—are often grossly underfunded. Even today, America spends much more on aid for Egypt than it does on battling AIDS in Africa.