[FoxNews] OPEC Stands Silent While Oil Prices Spark Food Riots In Neighboring Egypt

Just surround the oil fields, tell them that it is the WORLD'S Oil and give them a percentage if it lies under their land.

See how quickly all those Oil Barron leaders last then.



DD

 

Man, I wonder how the US would be if they stopped giving aid to the rest of the world. (not saying I want them to....just wondering)

 

Couple of related links which actually add some meat the bone...

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/24/africa/ME-GEN-Egypt-Bread-Crisis.php

"The subsidized bread is sold only at certain bakeries."

"Egypt is the second highest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel, getting some $2 billion a year from Washington, mostly in military aid. It has also long been one of the top importers of American wheat, using about $54 million of that aid to buy it. But its U.S. purchases have been falling — from about 4 million tons in 2001 to 1.6 million in 2006 — as it searches for cheaper sellers."


http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2008/05/egypt-bread-riots-and-mill-strikes.html

"This developed into a call for a nationwide strike to protest against the sharp increase in the prices of many basic foods, especially bread, and to demand a rise in the minimum wage from $21 a month, set in 1984, to $222. Between 2005 and 2008 food prices rose by 33% for meat and as much as 146% for chicken, and this March inflation reached 15.8%. Severe shortages of subsidised bread, the main source of calories for most Egyptians, have made things worse – low-paid government inspectors often sell subsidised flour on the black market. Rows in long bread lines caused injuries and even deaths. The cost of unsubsidised bread has nearly doubled in the past two years."



Seems to be a bit more to this than a shortage of and increase in price of wheat...

 

Many other nations, especially Mid-East countries, feel they don't have to feed the poor because the U.S. always has and always will. It's time to disabuse them of that notion. That aid should be going to U.S. families, both for the poor and to ease rising food prices here.

At the same time we should be drastically curtailing the money we put into United Nations programs and use that money to improve our own infrastructure.

 

I'd agree, except that I would demand we stop wasting 3 trillion on useless wars and an additional bajillion/year on an unnecessesarily large department of defense. then we can talk about lowering our aid to people in foreign countries.

 

U.S. foreign aid has been a boogeyman for years. When you really count the cost, it's more than worth it. That said, of course I don't agree with every country we give aid to.

 

This interview speaks for itself.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html

I'm not suggesting we let anyone starve, but besides disaster relief, I don't give to handout groups anymore. I feel like my donations to Kiva are doing a lot more good, and whatever money I give, I get back to give again in a few months.

 

The above is incredibly simplistic, when viewed through a global lens. US foreign aid, not military aid (Egypt is the second highest recipient of US aid, over $2 billion a year, and spends about $50-60 million of that on wheat, their staple food... the rest goes to buy yet more missiles, bullets, tanks, jets... for the military, and they are having food riots! absurd.), but the rest of our aid does a tremendous amount of good. Many of the countries that are leaving the undeveloped world behind and becoming successful are doing so in part because of US aid programs, often through USAID. If anything, we should change the priorities of our foreign aid and increase the amount we budget for that purpose. As a percentage of our annual budget, our foreign aid is far less today than it once was. That needs to change. Cut way back on military aid to oppressive regimes and boost aid for education, infrastructure, and agriculture.



Impeach Bush.

 

No, the simplistic idea is the view that more aid will help anyone. I posted an especially thorough paper from Cato about it a couple of days ago in the Burma thread, but it was completely dismissed because of the source.

The guy whose views on foreign aid matches your own.

 

I don't know why you are intent on making me laugh this morning, wes, but thanks!



Impeach Bush.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax

 

Foreign Aid supports the rotten regimes in the middle east even the weapons they buy is not used to protect the country, but rather to protect the regime and often used against it own people.

 

There is no one more qualified to speak in this thread than EGYPT.

 

Care to give an example?

 

Egypt is a hopelessly corrupt state with helpless peoples. The Mubarak regime has successfully created a 'national security force' that would squash any and all forms or resistance or even minor disturbances inside its own borders, thanks in no small part to the United States and Israel (simple, really: the David Camp accords basically set a precedent of 'bribing' the Egyptians in exchange for 'peace' with Israel, and that bribe is -- overwhelmingly -- in the form of military aid and state-of-the-art weaponry/military force that's entirely utilized and directed at the 80 million citizens under the grip of that utopian police state). The Egyptian regime pretty much wrote the Counterterrorism 101 book on successfully dealing with Islamic fundamentalists, only problem is state-sponsored terrorism and an overwhelmingly powerful national security force is the recipe.

As for other Arab states, I think their overwhelming disinterest in playing any positive role in Iraq (I say positive because they do, in fact, play and finance a negative role, and happily so) speaks volumes. Pan-Arabism died along with Nasser. The Arab world right now is little more than a bunch of 'principates' merely interested in survival (regime survival, that is).

But the real travesty here is that Egypt is one of the world's leading wheat importers. That's the real shame and it falls in line with pretty much the general 'state' of the Arab world: "unfulfilled potential."

Let them starve, let them riot, that region is in need of a major shakeup, one that isn't sponsored by us for a change. And what's a better place to start, traditionally and historically speaking, than in Egypt?

 

I can give India as an example. With the help of the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, and India's own researchers, India was able to go from being on the verge of famine, to becoming a food exporter. This was an incredible transformation that enabled India to devote resources to develop other sectors of its economy. India can largely feed itself.



The term "Green Revolution" was first used in 1968 by former USAID director William Gaud, who noted the spread of the new technologies and said, "These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution."

In 1961 India was on the brink of mass famine. Norman Borlaug was invited to India by the adviser to the Indian minister of agriculture M. S. Swaminathan. Despite bureaucratic hurdles imposed by India's grain monopolies, the Ford Foundation and Indian government collaborated to import wheat seed from CIMMYT. Punjab was selected by the Indian government to be the first site to try the new crops because of its reliable water supply and a history of agricultural success. India began its own Green Revolution program of plant breeding, irrigation development, and financing of agrochemicals. [5]

India soon adopted IR8 - a rice variety developed by the International Rice Research Institute that could produce more grains of rice per plant when grown properly with fertilizer and irrigation. In 1968, Indian agronomist S.K. De Datta published his findings that IR8 rice yielded about 5 tons per hectare with no fertilizer, and almost 10 tons per hectare under optimal conditions. This was 10 times the yield of traditional rice.[7] IR8 was a success throughout Asia, and dubbed the "Miracle Rice."

In the 1960s, rice yields in India were about two tons per hectare; by the mid-1990s, they had risen to six tons per hectare. In the 1970s, rice cost about $550 a ton; in 2001, it cost less than $200 a ton. India became one of the world's most successful rice producers, and is now a major rice exporter, shipping nearly 4.5 million tons in 2006. [6]

Famine in India, once accepted as inevitable, has not returned since the introduction of Green Revolution agriculture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Indian_success



Impeach Bush.

 

Whoops. How can that be an example of helpful governent aid?

"The Virtue of Selfishness" by Ayn Rand, the libertarians and also their Cato Institute have proved that any sort of government aid or services are bad even to help people starving to death.

.