( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Due to the soaring prices of food, especially wheat, corn, rice and other cereals, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is drafting plans to reduce the number of nations receiving food aid as well as the amount of food supplied.
Please allow me to intrpret the Administrations words, in plain English.
Due to the price of the War in Iraq and the graft being paid to officials in Pakastan, Iraq, and various other shady dealings that are going on under the cover of “state secrets”, we will be unable to continue sending food to starving people in other countries. Our greed is such that the rising cost of food is cutting into our personal profits, and that will never do!
From the Washington Post:
USAID officials said that a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months has generated a $120 million budget shortfall that will force the agency to reduce emergency operations. That deficit is projected to rise to $200 million by year’s end. Prices have skyrocketed as more grains go to biofuel production or are consumed by such fast-emerging markets as China and India.
Officials said they were reviewing all of the agency’s emergency programs — which target almost 40 countries and zones including Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia, Honduras and Sudan’s Darfur region — to decide how and where the cuts will be made.
Once again, as usual, the Republicans have decided that making personal profits is far more important than the lives of people who are less fortunate than themselves. No matter if those people are here in this country, in places such as New Orleans or whether they are in countries with populations of brown people elsewhere, profits are just too important to worry about death and famine.
“We’re in the process now of going country by country and analyzing the commodity price increase on each country,” said Jeff Borns, director of USAID’s Food for Peace, the organization’s food aid arm. “Then we’re going to have to prioritize.”
The reductions, international relief agencies say, will seriously complicate already strained efforts to combat global hunger, particularly in Africa, Central Asia and Latin America. Poor countries in those regions are struggling to cope with record food price surges, which have made it difficult for aid groups to sustain their operations in some countries.
The cuts will likely have a direct impact on major USAID partners, including aid groups and the United Nations World Food Program, the largest international provider, which counts on U.S. food aid for 40 percent of its distribution.
Let me surmise.
War in Iraq for oil and profit – priceless. Personal profits for the 1% of Americans that own 90% of America – priceless. Humanitarian aid – is for suckers.
Your tax dollars at work. Or something.
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Each new day brings some new ruinous plan from these guys. Please, oh please, can we fast forward to January, 2009?
A large part of the respect the world held for the US, that cheney/bush have destroyed, was generated by the foreign aid programs instituted by Truman and Eisenhower. So much of the food that was sent abroad was a win-win arrangement. The farmers got subsidized by price supports and government purchasing, a good thing back when our nation’s farmers were families, not multinational conglomerates. And starving people the world over got to eat. The US was seen as a benevolent leader, concerned about the well being of those not so fortunate.
Now we spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined and we are despised, and feared. Although with the failure of our leaders vis-a-vis Iraq, and the sub sequential deadly debacle it has become [I AM NOT DENIGRATING OUR TROOPS HERE, ONLY THE MALADMINISTRATION THAT HAS PUT THEM IN HARMS WAY], the fear generated by the American Military isn’t what it once was.
You feed a starving people, and you make friends forever. You slap people around and they will find a way to make it stop. The only option poor people have is small guerrilla actions taken at home and abroad, like the US used in our Revolutionary War. And oh, BTW, that is now called terrorism.
I too hope and pray for January 2009 to come as swiftly and safely as possible. However, I am still of the opinion that it will make no difference, the elections will either be suspended or the President-elect, providing it is a Democrat, will not be seated. My personal doomsday clock is now set at 82.5% against a Democratic President being seated.
Impeachment proceedings against richard cheney is the only solution. Only by opening impeachment proceedings against cheney will the secrets come out and the American people become aware of what all of us are aware of here. Call your Congress Critter regularly demanding impeachment, it really is the only answer to so many things.
From The Guardian
Add to that oil and George W. Bush.
Oil was at $20 a barrel when Bush seized the White House. Oil is now at $100+ a barrel. And it ain’t just the rising demand of India and China that drove up the cost.
I’m sure Bush and Cheney could have done more to harm the United States than they have, and they’ve got 324 more days to do it.
Oh yeah, according to that article:
With climate change and perpetual drought in America’s grain belt, I don’t expect to see a “surge” in wheat stockpiles any time soon. Just another way how Bush has squandered America’s resources.
We once helped feed the world. After Bush, we might not be able to feed ourselves.