Posted on 09/21/2004 11:06:36 AM PDT by dead
More than 100 countries have endorsed a campaign to raise an additional $US50 billion ($71 billion) a year in development aid to combat global hunger, but the United States has poured cold water on the project.
"The greatest scandal is not that hunger exists but that it persists, even when we have the means to eliminate it. It is time to take action," read a declaration signed by 110 nations and adopted at the close of a summit on hunger on Monday.
It urged governments to consider a report for the conference, setting out a series of options for raising the extra money.
These included a global tax on financial transactions, a tax on the sale of heavy arms, an international borrowing facility and a credit cards scheme that would direct a small percentage of transaction charges to the cause.
President Jacques Chirac of France said the report set out technically realistic and economically rational solutions.
However, the leader of the US delegation, the Agriculture Secretary, Ann Veneman, dismissed it. "Economic growth is the long-term solution to hunger and poverty," she told the meeting.
"The report should give more attention to practical steps to sustained growth. There is too much emphasis on schemes such as global taxes to raise external resources. Global taxes are inherently undemocratic. Implementation is impossible."
The US President, George Bush, did not attend the summit although he is due to address the General Assembly today.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, who organised the summit, said after the meeting that Washington had made it clear earlier that it would not participate.
Mr Chirac predicted the US position could change after the November 2 presidential elections. "Let's see when things settle down what their position will be," he said. "However strong the Americans may be, you cannot in the long run emerge victorious by opposing an idea that is backed by 100 countries and which will probably be approved by 150, creating a new political situation."
More than a billion people around the world live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than $US1 a day. They include 300 million in sub-Saharan Africa.
At a summit four years ago, United Nations members pledged to halve the number of people in deep poverty by 2015.
"Right now, however, we are falling short," said the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan.
Reuters
Socialism and Communism have starved more people than the UN could even imagine helping...
Bush to UN:
STFU!
A Conservative America will never sign that!!!
That's outrageous! To think that the world leaders think they'll actually collect the money, and a pity that some people think this is anything but a way for corrupt UN officials to replace their cash cow, the Oil for Food program.
" 'Economic growth is the long-term solution to hunger and poverty,' she told the meeting."
And so is killing off corrupt leaders who take aid money and use it to buy planes and limousines for themselves.
Yeah, the UN did such a great job running Oil For Food, we should just hand them 71 billion a year...
Oh, the mean President Bush throwing cold water on the U.N. plan to replace the revenue stream they lost from Oil-for-Food when he invaded Iraq. Now, how will the hard-working bureaucrats at the U.N. ever get to be rich?
ping
The United States gives more food to the 3rd world than all these countries put together. 'nuff said.
Why don't they just abolish dictatorships? That would solve most of the global hunger problem right there.
Socialism and Communism have starved more people than the UN.
You should have stopped at that.
Go Bush! Don't tax my credit card transactions to give a free ride to some dictator who doesn't care if his people starve.
These euro-trash countries are something else (I won't say what -- don't want to get banned!!) They are always whining for the USA to give money, money, money to their schemes and/or to come to the aid of one country or another. Yet, when we need their help, i.e., Iraq, they give us the middle finger salute. I'm tired of it! Good for Bush for standing up to these moochers!
Sounds like a French agricultural export subsidy scheme.
I've got an idea. You guys start. Goa head spend away. If you abolish half the poverty in the world. We'll do the rest. Deal?
Let us compile a list of countries, including these morally smug ones, and the corresponding amount each contributes to world hunger ---- or any humanitarian aid of any type.
Then let's talk again.
Until then, dear Euro-eunuchs, high-horse moralizing twits, buzz off!
It's the replacement for Food for Oil. Call it Food for Oil II.
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