Is France "stingy"?

OCCOM BILL wrote:

FreeDuck wrote:
Our foreign aid dick is bigger than your foreign aid dick.
My comment was a tongue-in-cheek Homer Simpson impression... but: Can you think of a better contest at a time like this? The result seems to be countries digging deeper and deeper to provide aide for the people who need it. That guy who cocked off at the UN is a frigging genius. Obviously, contributions were going to grow anyway but who knows how many extra millions his comments raised? He should do it again.

I agree with your sentiment, but would it be indelicate for me to continue to consider him a ninny?

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I love the French.

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Ticomaya wrote:

OCCOM BILL wrote:
FreeDuck wrote:
Our foreign aid dick is bigger than your foreign aid dick.
My comment was a tongue-in-cheek Homer Simpson impression... but: Can you think of a better contest at a time like this? The result seems to be countries digging deeper and deeper to provide aide for the people who need it. That guy who cocked off at the UN is a frigging genius. Obviously, contributions were going to grow anyway but who knows how many extra millions his comments raised? He should do it again.

I agree with your sentiment, but would it be indelicate for me to continue to consider him a ninny?

Not at all! My knee-jerk response is to tell the ninny to kiss my ass, as I would any ninny who derives a paycheck from the charitable donations of the very people he slights. However, since the world is chuck-full of ninny's who will respond with more donations, if only to consider themselves more righteous in the eyes of other ninnies, I say go nuts because the result of all this ninnyness is more donations to a cause I wholly believe in.

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That may well be, but the French don't love you Kick--it's nothing personal, though, they don't like anybody. These days, at least when the criticism comes from the United States, i don't blame them.

Walter's information makes all of this moot, and suggests that the information which Tico originally provided was somehow skewed, or taken out of context. I know Wlater well enough by now to trust his sources of information, and i frankly think that he has provided better information than Tico's Reuters link.

Walter's Source wrote:

Jean-Pierre Raffarin a annoncé 20 millions d'aide supplémentaires pour les pays d'Asie du sud-est.

Cette aide supplémentaire est destinée à la prévention des épidémies, a précisé jeudi le Premier ministre français.

Le ministère des Affaires étrangères avait déjà annoncé mercredi une aide française de 22,16 millions d'euros, à laquelle s'ajouteront les aides offertes par les ONG, les collectivités locales et les entreprises.

Sur la première tranche de 22,16 millions, 15 millions seront donnés aux agences de l'Onu et à la Croix-Rouge internationale, auxquels s'ajouteront notamment 5,6 millions d'euros pour la quote-part française à l'aide de l'UE.

Cette aide sera répartie entre cinq pays: le Sri Lanka, la Thaïlande, les Maldives, l'Inde et l'Indonésie, a précisé le Quai d'Orsay.

In English, it reads:

Jean-Pierre Raffarin has announced 20 million in supplementary aid for the nations of southeast Asia.

The French Prime Minister specifically noted on Thursday that this supplementary aid is earmarked for the prevention of epidemics.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs already announced Wednesday that there would be 22.16 million Euros in French aid, to which would be added the aid offered by non-governmental organizations, local collections and businesses.

Of the original allocation of 22.16 million Euros, 15 million will be given to United Nations agencies and the International Red Cross, to which, it should be noted, will be added the 5.6 million Euros pledged by France to the European Union aid package.

The Quai d'Orsay [the home of the French foreign office] specified that this aid will be divided between five countries: Sri-Lanka, Thailand, the Maldives (Islands), India and Indonesia.

So, it seems that above and beyond whatever funds are raised by businesses and private collections in France, and additional to any monies raised by non-governmental organizations in France, the French have pledged a little more than 27 and three quarters million Euros.

So whence the lust to besmirch the French? Well, them bad boys wouldn't back the Shrub in his dirty little war, so now, they're the people we love to hate.

This sort of crap just makes me sick. This is disgusting.

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Speaking of Relief Funds and Relief Efforts...
let us all hope that the funds collected are disbursed wisely and promptly.

( Whatever happened to all the relief money collected to help the WTC victims?
Was it all disbursed?
How long did it take them to distribute the funds?)

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You might want to step back a little, Set: Tico's numbers were widely reported before the announced numbers that you're providing there were known by a lot of news agencies. NOW, I think your numbers are all much lower than the actual commitments because every nation is upping its allocation as the enormity of this horror continues to grow.

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Agreed with O'Bill. I mean, when you can't quote Reuter's, you just need to call it a day.

This thing is changing incredibly rapidly.

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OCCOM BILL wrote:

You might want to step back a little, Set: Tico's numbers were widely reported before the announced numbers that you're providing there were known by a lot of news agencies. NOW, I think your numbers are all much lower than the actual commitments because every nation is upping its allocation as the enormity of this horror continues to grow.

The 5.6 million Euros which is mentioned in Walter's link which France pledged to the European Union aid effort was not mentioned by Reuters in Tico's article. Lash's snippy little comment notwithstanding, it is entirely possible for Reuters to get a story wrong, as in this case, in which it seems that they simply missed something, or did sloppy work. What disgusts me here is how quickly people are willing to pile on the French, and it all derives from the refusal of the French to sign onto the dirty little war by the Shrub and his Forty Theives. You can deny it to your heart's content, but even a casual perusal of the threads here for the last two years show an obsession on the part of Americans with proving just how vile the French are.

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Damn, Set, there wasn't anything 'snippy' about what I said. I can understand certain media sources being questioned, but I can't imagine Reuter's or AP descending to that category.

That is all I was trying to communicate.

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Set--

Reviling the French has been an American pasttime LONG before Bush was out of college.

For the last forty years, at least. We've just been a lot more open about it since the war.

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Well, Lash, Reuters or the AP can be wrong. Despite conservative paranoia, The New York Times is still considered to be the newpaper of record in this country, and they get it wrong all the time. Look at any issue, each one has a corrections section.

Imagine, if you will, the person at Reuters who wrote this story, not for a moment considering how the haters of France in the United States would leap on a story such as this. It is entirely possible that the person who wrote the article was referring to the amount of money which the French had earmarked for rescuing the 14 French citizens then known to be missing, and that this was by no means a statement of the total aid effort which France intended to make.

If all you want to do is lambaste the French, something like this, with the context skewed, is a god-send.

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I gather you missed this post then Set, because I don't see you raining down your furious resentment on your political bedfellows for using this disaster to do the exact same thing to the United States. Confused

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The whole thing STARTED because of criticism of the States not sending more.

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No O'Bill and Lash, the whole thing started with a thread entitled "Is France stingy?" The person slamming the United States to whom you object would have had no opportunity to do so if a thread slamming France had not first been started.

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No, Set. It was the idiot at the UN who said/inferred the day after the tsunami that US' donation was stingy.

It hasn't gone over well.

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I'd mentioned that before - I belive, so - the original quoted article/source left out completely e.g. Spain and very first donator at all: the United Kingdom, as well.

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By the way, O'Bill, you have no way of judging whether or not i am furious. All i have admitted to is being disgusted. That sort of histrionic trick which attempts to raise the temperature of debate is far less likely to work with me, Bubba, than with many of the wingnuts (right or left) in the political threads. When i am furious, you'll know, because i'll write something such as: "I am furious."

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No, Set. It was the idiot at the UN who said/inferred the day after the tsunami that US' donation was stingy.

It hasn't gone over well.
--------------
U.N. official slams U.S. as 'stingy' over aid

By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Bush administration yesterday pledged $15 million to Asian nations hit by a tsunami that has killed more than 22,500 people, although the United Nations' humanitarian-aid chief called the donation "stingy."

"The United States, at the president's direction, will be a leading partner in one of the most significant relief, rescue and recovery challenges that the world has ever known," said White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy.

But U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland suggested that the United States and other Western nations were being "stingy" with relief funds, saying there would be more available if taxes were raised.

"It is beyond me why are we so stingy, really," the Norwegian-born U.N. official told reporters. "Christmastime should remind many Western countries at least, [of] how rich we have become."

"There are several donors who are less generous than before in a growing world economy," he said, adding that politicians in the United States and Europe "believe that they are really burdening the taxpayers too much, and the taxpayers want to give less. It's not true. They want to give more."

In response to Mr. Egeland's comments, Mr. Duffy pointed out that the United States is "the largest contributor to international relief and aid efforts, not only through the government, but through charitable organizations. The American people are very giving."

Wonder how much of his OWN money this bast@rd has coughed up.

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Huh? The U.S. bashing parallel thread is a day older, Set... It is the double standard you are now perpetuating that I object to, not the poster. Sorry about substituting fury, for disgust... I guess my impression was incorrect. I hereby retract it.

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Is France "stingy"?

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