So instead of trading food for empty promises, we've decided to trade food for nothing at all. That's an interesting strategy.
When will the White House state dinner honoring the Chia Pet Head NK Dear Leader occur? Soon I imagine.
I vote for dirt. Dirt is the simplest of all the agricultural commodities. And maybe 1 million gallons of water to go with it, another valuable agricultural commodity.
Once again we demonstrate the crass and gross stupidity of the American government.
Any food sent there will go to feed the military machine and party elites.
We are dumb and getting dumber.
Wednesday June 22, 2005 8:46 PM
AP Photo MDCG102
By BARRY SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States will provide more than 50,000 tons of food to North Korea in what the Bush administration says is a humanitarian decision unrelated to efforts to get Pyongyang to end its nuclear weapons program.
The kind of food provided is to be determined in consultation with the World Food Program, said State Department spokesman Adam Ereli. He also said seeds and small tools might be provided, as well.
U.S. efforts to meet the needs of the North Korean people and to halt the weapons program are not linked, Ereli said Wednesday in announcing the program. ``Our decisions are made on humanitarian considerations solely,'' he said.
The administration made a similar decision to provide 50,000 metric tons (about 55,000 tons) of food assistance last July. In 2003, the administration donated 100,000 metric tons. All of these donations were made as the United States and North Korea jostled over the weapons issue, as they still do.
North Korea indicated earlier this month that it was ready to resume talks with the United States and four other countries - Russia, China, Japan and South Korea - but no date has been set.
At the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan said: ``We've been a big supplier of food to the North Korean people and the president has said that he does not believe that food should be used as a diplomatic weapon.''
``We have always had concerns, though, that that food is getting to the people who need it: the people who are starving, the people who are hungry,'' McClellan added. ``We want to make sure there are assurances that that food is going to those who need it, not to the government and not to the military in North Korea.''
In a statement issued later, the State Department said the World Food Program ``has informed us that it is attempting to implement a new food monitoring system to reduce the risk of diversion.''
Two private U.S. experts on North Korea said this week that leader Kim Jong Il had sent a message to President Bush in November 2002 saying the United States and North Korea ``should be able to resolve the nuclear issue in compliance with the demands of the new century.''
``If the United States makes a bold decision, we will respond accordingly,'' Kim said in a written personal message to Bush that he sent through Donald Gregg and Don Oberdorfer. Gregg is a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and key aide to Bush's father. Oberdorfer is a Korea expert at the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
Gregg and Oberdorfer wrote about their trip to Pyongyang in an opinion piece in Wednesday's Washington Post.
The message appeared to reflect a persistent North Korean demand for direct talks with the United States, in preference to the six-party format.
The administration has offered assurances U.S. and North Korean diplomats could confer against the six-nation backdrop. And yet, with these and other signs of a breakthrough in the making, no date or place for negotiations has been announced.
Two months ago, faced with a published report that the administration had decided to halt food aid to North Korea, the State Department said the North's needs were being weighed against hunger in other countries.
``We don't calibrate or decide on food assistance based on political factors,'' said Richard Boucher, the department's spokesman at the time.
A metric ton, which weighs 2,205 pounds, is a commonly used measure outside the United States.
South Korea, meanwhile, has begun providing 200,000 tons of fertilizer to North Korea in a move designed to help overcome food shortages.
The International Crisis Group, a private organization, said in a recent report that North Korea was undergoing the most profound economic change in its 57-year history as a state.
Semiprivate markets, shops and small businesses are spreading through the country, the report said. ``The international community has an opportunity to increase the chances that North Korea will make a successful transition from a Stalinist command economy to one that is more market-driven,'' it said.
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Well, that should keep the army fed for a few months....
Americans are such chumps.
This country is such a failure, we don't have that much food to spare. Doesn't anyone listen to the queerbait, turban head democRATs? They are so wise, ya know?
This is stupid!
Complete waste of a perfectly good food.
Scuse me? There are people HERE in THIS country that could use 'free food'. (me being one of them, since the cost of groceries these days is through the roof)
Explain why we would be sending our commie enemies ANYthing 'free' (other than free/at our expense rides straight to hell).
Great, keep giving them food so that Kim can keep pouring all his money into nuclear missiles.
If we had any sense, we'd deliver it to their capital via Tomahawk missles or ICBM's.
Watch out...UPS got their lawyers to send us a letter about using the UPS symbol...
Oxfam pays $1m tsunami aid duty (posted 6/18/05)
6/17/05 BBC Added to 'Tsunami Tyranny' and 'Causes of Poverty in Developing Nations'.
British charity Oxfam has had to pay the Sri Lankan government $1m in import duty for vehicles used in tsunami reconstruction work.
Paperwork had kept the 25 four-wheel drive vehicles idle in the capital, Colombo, for a month. <.> Britain's Daily Telegraph said Sri Lankan customs had charged $5,000 a day while the vehicles were processed. Oxfam was given the choice of handing over the vehicles to the government, re-exporting them or paying the 300% import tax. <.> Some aid workers have expressed anger that reconstruction is being slowed by red tape and inefficiency. What is happening in Sri Lanka is outright theft. The government holds Oxfam's vehicles for a month, charges $5,000 a day, and then says, "well, if you don't want to pay us 1 million dollars, we'll just keep the vehicles!" These are the actions of a mafia, not a government. This, of course, has been a central point I've been trying to make throughout this website. All governments act like mafias, some are just worse than others. The richest countries have smaller governments, with less corruption, the poorest have larger governments with more corruption. This is the difference between rich and poor countries. It is that simple. We should all be thankful that our founders had the wisdom to craft the most limited government ever created in the history of the world.
Why do incumbents have something like a 90% re-election rate here in the United States? Because they shake down businesses in their districts for cash. If you're not buddy buddy with your congressmen, or support his rival, he might try to ruin your business. After all, the congressmen needs money to spend repaying all of his extra generous supporters and it has to come from somewhere. Might as well come from his enemies, or non supporters. Additionally, his next opponent might have trouble challenging him with his support base ruined.
Untangling a Lobbyists Stake in a Casino fleet
5/1/05 Washington Post The dead man was Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, a volatile 51-year-old self-made millionaire, a Greek immigrant who had started as a dishwasher in Canada and ended up in Florida, where he built an empire of restaurants, hotels and cruise ships used for offshore casino gambling. Boulis's slaying, still unsolved four years later, reverberated all the way to Washington. Months earlier he had sold his fleet of casino ships to a partnership that included Republican superlobbyist Jack Abramoff.
What it looks like happened was that government passed laws and regulations making Boulis's prosperous businesses illegal and then demanded Boulis sell a stake in the business to their cronies in order for it to remain operational. They then ruined his business and he ended up dead in murky circumstances. Government was able to do this because the apathetic people give it the power to pass these sorts of laws and regulations, enabling a mafia to exist within the law.
So, don't think we're all that different from Sri Lanka. If this is what Sri Lanka does to a charity, can you imagine what they would do to a business? If you were an entrepreneur and started up a company in Sri Lanka and created wealth and employment guess what would happen? The thieving government would come in and threaten to steal everything you've created. You'd probably have to pay them heavy bribes in order to prevent this. The government of Sri Lanka causes more deaths, more misery, and more destruction than was caused when the Tsunami hit, yet, no one seems to care about this. People would rather give money, and therefore power, to the government that is responsible for the misery of its people.
Why the West's billions may end up in the Wrong Hands
6/9/05 Times Online Details how the much ballyhooed Blair/Bush debt relief plans for Africa will most likely just prop up the thieves that rule those countries. However, we're in a for a little surprise. Guess who is an advocate for debt relief?:
Anna McDonald, campaigns director for Oxfam, said: “The world's poorest countries need full cancellation of their debts now to pay for the hospitals, the medicines, the schools that will enable them to pull out of poverty in the long term.
Oxfam is just as just as guilty as Sri Lanka because, besides acquiescing to the thievery of it's donors' property in Sri Lanka, they appear to have no clue as to what really defeats poverty! The solution to poverty is not giving government more power to control education, health etc...! How can a charity, whose specialty is, ostensibly, poverty reduction, be so misguided? Perhaps because its donors are misguided, fed all this rot in the media about how Western Governments are to blame for Third World poverty and believe by throwing money at a problem they can assuage their guilt and do some good. Again, just like education reform and welfare reform, money is not the problem. We could give 10 times, 100 times, more aid and money to Africa and Sri Lanka and the people of those countries would, in all probability, suffer MORE, not less!
So, you ask, what can we do to help the people of these desperately poor countries? Well, we have a few options:
1. Do nothing. When the corrupt and thieving governments realize that they must let their citizens create some wealth in order to have a tax base to steal from, then their economies will begin to grow.
2. Donate money to pro-democracy type organizations that work on educating people of impoverished countries and lobby for political reform. These organizations often establish freedom promoting media and occasionally aid revolution.
3. Donate money to religious charities/evangelical groups. Generally these charities operate outside the role of government and take power from government. Churches often illustrate that morality trumps legality. Just because thievery is legal in a country doesn't make it right. In fact, Churches can become quite powerful political movements. In Africa, the thriving Christian communities are playing important roles in challenging government thievery and regulatory tyranny. This is why non state controlled religions are discriminated against or outlawed in most of the corrupt countries of the world.
4. Donate to politicians that 'get it'. Work to elect those that comprehend history, economics, and human nature, and understand, ideologically, the causes and solutions to poverty. A dollar given to the Club For Growth surely does more to make the world a better place than a dollar given to Oxfam. Also, the more donations a politician receives from regular folk, the less he/she will rely on the corrupting special interests (who often advocate government expansion for their benefit).
5. Write letters to the editor, contact your representatives, talk to friends, become more informed yourself. Maybe even start a blog... :)
6. Donate weapons and ammunition to freedom loving people in order to help them overthrow their governments. (Gasp!) What kind of right wing extremist would advocate starting a war in an impoverished country? But is it really that 'extreme'? What do you do if you find a thief breaking into your house? You shoot him before he steals your stuff and attacks you and your family. If you let him go, you are encouraging burglary. Most burglars will continue robbing until they get caught, or are killed. Shoot a burglar and you might be saving the life of a future victim. Now, what if your neighbor is getting his home pillaged on a weekly basis? If you have an extra gun would you not give it to him, or even come to his defense? So why would you not do the same for other poorer and desperate people throughout the world?
The governments of these countries keep their citizens disarmed and are deathly afraid of revolts, often creating external enemies in order to keep the population thinking it needs them for 'protection'. Instead of shipping grain to North Korea (to be distributed by the now empowered Communists killers), why not airdrop arms and weapons? Why not setup a charity that smuggles in weapons from China? When will a charity stand up to the thugs and dictators of the world? When will a charity shout, "Stop the killing, the raping, the stealing, or we will do it for you!"
No, instead, sadly: A spokesman said: "Clearly Oxfam would have preferred not to pay this tax on the vehicles and we did everything we could to have the tax waived. "However the government has turned down our request and the laws of the country dictate that we must now pay the normal import tax." The spokesman said the incident would not affect the way Oxfam worked in Sri Lanka.
Or, the other possiblity is that Bush just plain cares about human life.
Nah...that couldn't be it.
Better than sending cash aid - but how do we know this food would ever get to the people? They could claim we poisoned it or something.
Why are we feeding his Army? Are we f*cking nuts?
Very good, American running dogs. Now, I want Scarlet Johansen too.
What happened with the quote, "teach the people how to feed themself and not just give the people the food".
First things first. Kim Jong IL has got to go. Then we start teaching.