Posted on 06/24/2005 8:11:21 PM PDT by motorola7
Edited on 06/24/2005 8:19:46 PM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
But of course. When has it ever been different?
The USA has thrown away BILLIONS of our dollars in "aid" that today line a bunch of fat cats' pockets.
Oxfam has upset alot of little and big Pacific Island politicans. There has always been corruption...and Oxfam simply said it wouldn't play. They had vehicles come into one country (Sri Lanka I think), and the dimwits at the port wanted customs tax paid on all the vehicles...which would add up to well over $150k. Oxfam grumbled about this, paid it, but made public notice throughout all the major newspapers in the region...and they got their money back. You can't change these societies...they are rooted into corruption and can't change.
seems like a lot of people have done well for themselves in politics over the years, doesn't it? well, at least to my mind , the Republicans haven't institutionalized it the way the Democats have.
I was thinking about giving something to a charity when the tsunami hit, so I looked into some of the big ones. I looked at Oxfam's website, and sure enough--tons of socialist and outright communist verbage. Just as I did for 9/11 I decided not to enrich the rich and kept my money. I'm glad I did now that reports are pouring in about food, water and supplies sitting on docks while foreign customs officials wait for their payoffs.
Anybody surprised?
"A couple of days later I read that Oxfam had paid the best part of a million bucks to Sri Lankan customs officials for the privilege of having 25 four-wheel-drive vehicles allowed into the country to get aid out to remote villages on washed-out roads hit by the Boxing Day tsunami. The Indian-made Mahindras stood idle on the dock in Colombo for a month as Oxfam’s representatives were buried under a tsunami of paperwork. Aside from the ‘tax’, they were charged £2,750 ‘demurrage’ for every day the vehicles sat in port.See Mark Steyn: Action stations for the entire article [on Africa, G8, UN, etc].This was merely the latest instalment in what’s becoming a vast ongoing Tsunami Tshakedown Of The Day retrospective — you can usually find it at the foot of page 37 in your daily paper, if at all. Fourteen Unicef ambulances sent to Indonesia spent two months sitting on the dock of the bay wasting time, as the late Otis Redding so shrewdly anticipated. Eight 20ft containers of Diageo drinking water shipped via the Red Cross arrived at the Indonesian port of Medan in January and are still there, because the Indonesian Red Cross lost the paperwork. Five hundred containers, representing one quarter of all aid sent to Sri Lanka since the tsunami hit on 26 December, are still sitting in port in Colombo, unclaimed or unprocessed. At Medan 1,500 containers of aid are still sitting on the dock.
The tsunami may have been unprecedented, but what followed was business as usual — the sloth and corruption of government, the feebleness of the brand-name NGOs, the compassion-exhibitionism of the transnational jet set. If we lived in a world where ‘it’s what you do that defines you’, we’d be heaping praise on the US and Australian militaries who in the immediate hours after the tsunami struck dispatched their forces to save lives, distribute food, restore water and power and communications."
That's a very true statement. A lot of Americans don't see it because they're on the tourist side of a foreign country, but if you've ever done business around the world it's a real eye-opener. I done a fair amount of world business travel, and it's my observation that the health and wealth of a nation is inversely related to how much corruption they tolerate.
"maybe your tagline tells the tale on Bush favors to Clinton"
Hope not and still think not. Bush's natural inclination is to try to bring people together. Obviously, when it comes to Putin and Clinton, this impulse led him astray.
But yeah, your thought needs to be considered---though I am reluctant to do so. Right now I contemplate more obvious likely targets of Hillary-control, like Newt, DeWine, McCain. Even there, I don't know too much.
Anybody that thinks the rich don't get their's even from natural disasters is just plain stupid. I quit giving to any charity because the chances of the money going to somebody who doesn't need it or deserve it IS EXCELLENT. Unfortunately, the greedy on this planet always prosper. Unfortunately, they prosper from the monies given by generous people like AMERICANS who think the money is going to the needy.
NUKE THE UN.
Well DUHHHHHH, this is why I never give the money Uncle Sam doesnt steal from me away.... TO ANYONE!
There are many good charities out there. Salvation Army, Catholic Relief Services, which is where we sent our money. They have been in that region for years.
Didn't Bush give the billion plus to his precious UN to disperse? I guess that means that the billions he gave to the UN for AIDS in Africa didn't get to them either. The UN is a criminal organization and they have no intention of stopping with their criminal activity. Bush needs to take some of the blame for allowing them to continue with their criminal actions by giving them money after they have been caught stealing in the Oil for Food scandal!! His judgment leaves something to be desired.
I tried telling every FReeper not to give a single dime to the Tsunami Shakedown. I hope people listened. I told my fellow workers too and was met with much anger and name-calling. But they have now seen this and are MAD.
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