Is France "stingy"?

we have been over & over the same territory so many times [..] ... We just go round & round in circles & end up right back where we started.

Ticomaya wrote:

U.N. muckety-muck Jan Egeland recently claimed that the US and other "rich" Western nations are "stingy" when it comes to providing money for humanitarian crises. He has now claimed his comment has been "misinterpreted."

Just looking at the pending tsunami disaster in Asia, the US has already pledged $35,000,000 in "preliminary aid" to the region. UK, Japan ($30 mil), Australia ($27 mil), Saudi Arabia ($10 mil), Germany ($2.7 mil), and Canada, have all pledged large sums. France has pledged $135,000.

Isn't France missing a couple of zeros in that sum? Not that it much matters, but they have lost 14 countrymen to this disaster, which is more than the 12 US citizens confirmed dead. Of course many are still missing, and the death toll is at 80,000 now and rising.

Are there any Francophiles out there who can explain this?

Your post is deep, dude. Deep like the Great Wall of China is unimpressive and Spanish. The answer is yes, France is stingy.

This, however, doesn't make America any less stingy, which begs the question: what is the point of this thread?

Incidentally, France is one of the less magnanimous nations in the world. They still come up far, far ahead of the United States in most aid-related areas.

Which is sad.

Incidentally, France is one of the less magnanimous nations in the world. They still come up far, far ahead of the United States in most aid-related areas.

You will find that in terms of dollar amount of overall foreign aid and relief, The US is well ahead of the pack, and historically has been.

timberlandko wrote:

You will find that in terms of dollar amount of overall foreign aid and relief, The US is well ahead of the pack, and historically has been.

You must be talking about absolute numbers? Because per capita, I dont believe that for a second. That would be counter to any numbers I've ever seen. And as percentage of national income it works even less.

nimh wrote:

timberlandko wrote:

You will find that in terms of dollar amount of overall foreign aid and relief, The US is well ahead of the pack, and historically has been.

You must be talking about absolute numbers? Because per capita, I dont believe that for a second. That would be counter to any numbers I've ever seen. And as percentage of national income it works even less.

That's what he said, .... "...in terms of dollar amount...." What's wrong with nice big round numbers?

If you do it by percentage of women with hairy armpits and bars of soap used per annum it doesn't work either.

my comment should really have related to "the royal house of saudi" contribution.

Lol - and we shall enjoy his amusement and chuckles when the next gross anti-American stuff is posted, no?

After all - I am sure McG is consistent in his logic and beliefs...

TRB FROM WASHINGTON
Distant Shores
by Peter Beinart
TNR Online

Post date 01.06.05 | Issue date 01.17.05

Give the Bush administration a B. Its initial reaction to the tsunami was awful: A pathetic $15 million in aid and four days of presidential silence while the death toll mounted. But, when the pressure grew strong enough, the Bushies--as they sometimes do [..] reversed course and did the right thing. And, since then, America's humanitarian and symbolic response has been good.

More disturbing, and more revealing, has been the response of the conservative intelligentsia. On December 28, in its first editorial on the catastrophe, The Wall Street Journal attacked liberals for politicizing the event. "One might think that a disaster of this scale would transcend normal national or political considerations," its editors wrote. "But in the world of environmental zealotry, even an event such as this is seen as an opportunity to press the agenda." The next day, the Journal, never one to use tragedy to "press the agenda," published an editorial titled "death by environmentalist," which blamed environmentalists for exacerbating the threat of malaria in tsunami-stricken areas. Two days later, the Journal used the tsunami to attack the United Nations, Western Europe, and taxes, (and, in its web edition, to defend America's military presence in Asia).

The Journal was symptomatic. In general, the right has been fairly quiet about the tsunami. (As of this writing, The Weekly Standard's website had yet to devote a single article to the topic. A Nexis search of "tsunami" as The New Republic went to press revealed 417 discussions on CNN and a mere 116 on Fox.) But, even when they have written about it, conservatives have focused (with notable exceptions, such as Michael Fumento's article on National Review Online) on the U.S. response. On January 3 alone, National Review Online devoted three articles to rebutting charges that the Bush administration had been "stingy." On Fox's flagship Sunday show, the panel discussion focused on--you guessed it--whether President Bush had done enough.

Almost entirely absent from conservative commentary has been any discussion of how the tsunami will affect South and Southeast Asia. Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, is emerging from decades of military rule. Now its military is overseeing disaster relief in the very region where, a month ago, it was putting down an armed rebellion. In the months before the tsunami, Muslim-Buddhist violence in Thailand had been threatening to spiral out of control. Sri Lanka has a religiously and ethnically based civil war as well. For all three fragile democracies, the tsunami's social and political consequences will likely prove profound. The newspapers have devoted considerable space to those consequences. Why don't conservatives seem to care?

Because the tsunami has uncovered a dirty little secret about the right today: Conservatives are fascinated by American power, but they are not all that interested in the world. [..]

msolga wrote:

we have been over & over the same territory so many times [..] ... We just go round & round in circles & end up right back where we started.

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