From: Kai Becker (kmb@kai-m-becker.de)
Date: Mon Dec 17 2001 - 11:21:24 MST
Am Montag, 17. Dezember 2001 01:50 schrieb Robert J. Bradbury:
> > You may then wonder, why such a small state as Israel still stands and
> > seems to be the only flourishing country in the region. One of the
> > reasons are billions of dollars, mostly from people in the US. Without
> > this money, Israel would have seized to exist thrirty years ago or so.
>
> Kai, this is what could be called a "strong assertion". From an
> Extropian list perspective you have to back up "strong assertions" with
> facts. How much money did they receive? Whom did they receive it from?
> What was/is the ratio of U.S. aid to Israel vs. Egypt? What is the level
> of GDP/individual in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait vs. Isreal, etc.?
Israel Afghanistan Egypt
Population 6,173,000 22,474,000 69,080,000
GDP (Mio. US$) 110,331 21,000 96,047
GDP (US$/person) 18,440 800 3,420
Development aid (Mio. US$) 906 279 1,579
Development aid (US$/person) 146.7 12.4 22.8
Development aid does not include money send by foreign workers or so.
My question: When Israel has such a high standard of living (GDP/person)
and can afford[1] a large military service[2] with modern high-tech
weapons, why does it receive 6.43 times more development aid per person
than Egypt and 11.8 times more than Afghanistan? What is paid from this
money? Food? Houses? Education? Weapons?
To the official amount come the donations from jewish communities. The head
organization in the USA writes: "United Jewish Communities represents 189
Jewish federations, 400 independent communities and 700,000 people across
North America, who contribute more than $2 billion every year to help
repair the world." (http://www.uja.com/aboutus_home.html)
Please don't get me wrong, I find it amazing what Israel has achieved since
1948 in terms of turning desert into acres. I just find that development
aid should be spend first, where people need it most.
[1] Israel: 20.7% of the national budget, USA: 16.2%.
[2] 172.500 persons = 2.8% of the population, compared to the USA
(1.365.800p = 0.4% of the population)
> So? The U.N. from where we sit in the U.S. has been known to promote the
> agendas of "small" powers against the "large" powers for many years.
> In the general assembly it is 1 country = 1 vote;
You are right, but I didn't write about the general assembly but about the
security council.
> *My* reaction (in the archives) to the 911 attacks was "knee-jerk".
> The U.S. response has been quite measured IMO.
... much to the astonishment of most of the worlds population, I'm afraid
to say.
But Samantha and I didn't write about the reaction on the terror attacks,
but about the unconditional support for only one side (Israel), while
mostly ignoring the rest.
> I think you, Samantha, et al should read how the Jordanian government
> last dealt with an extremist group within its country. If my reading
> of the NY Times is accurate, they shelled it into dust. So their methods
> are certainly not any more extreme than U.S. methods.
A crime can not be justified by another. This is a simple rule of modern
law. Otherwise we would have many bad examples in history to justify almost
everything.
What I was trying to explain was that there is already a war-like situation
in the middle east for years now, which Mr. Jones apparently didn't know. I
don't think that the US government didn't know that. I must therefore
assume, that the actively ignored it. Pres. Bush even tried to step outside
the discussion, until he found out that the others won't let him escape.
> The $ amount ($40B) sounds quite high. But whether it could buy
> Afghanistan bears some examination. The Y2000 Afghanistan GDP was $21 B.
> Typically one purchases assets based on productivity over time (this is
> how the stock market values companies). So assuming something like a 10%
> ROI it would have required an investment of $210 billion to "purchase"
> Afghanistan "productively".
I apologize. I have overstressed my rethoric... So, you are right, the
money spend to bomb the rest of Afghanistan into pieces, scatter thousands
of refugees across the land to find a single villain is only twice the GDP
of this land or 26 times the development aid it received in 2000. (you
might detect a little irony here...)
Don't you think that a small part of this money spent in 1995/96 would have
been sufficient to guide this country towards stability and democracy? Do
you understand my point now?
> Given the major export of Afghanistan is opium,
Afghanistan has large resources of natural gas, coal and copper. The
license for the planned gas pipeline alone would bring over $150Mio per
year. Establish an economics where the afghan people can exploit these
resources and really earn that money (instead of Exxon or Shell). This
would eliminate the wish to produce opium.
Kai
-- == Kai M. Becker == kmb@kai-m-becker.de == Bremen, Germany == "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced"
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