From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Jun 15 2002 - 04:03:43 MDT
This should really be overturned. It is ridiculous to poor such
a subsidy on some of the richest agricorps in the world. There
can be only two purposes: political payback/bribery and
destroying the economies of many third world nations. So much
for our claims we are interested in making these countries
self-sufficient. We sure are lucky in the US that there was no
country as powerful and "generous" as us around when we were
getting our start.
Try this article on the recent World Food Summit for the flip-side:
http://alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13355
Hopefully, people here will not all be inclined to say it is
their own bloody fault if they are starving or that we should
apply complete IMF and WTO free trade laws to flood their
countries with outside produce that they cannot afford unless
they get more IMF loans that they can't afford, not even the
interest, and even then they don't get any local food stability
out of it.
- samantha
Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> The NY Times had an interesting article on the U.S. increasing
> farm subsidies:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/15/international/europe/15FARM.html?pagewanted=print
>
> In reading this, the amazing thing in my mind was the
> degree to which this legislation was completely off
> the radar. [Contrast the press for ~$30 billion in
> compensation for 911 vs. a $180 billion farm bill.]
> We vote an 80% increase in subsidies (no political
> motivation at work I presume...) whose ultimate consequence
> seems to be to impoverish 3rd world farmers. [And according
> to the inserts in the non-print version of the article the
> U.S. has 11% of the world share of rice exports!?! How much
> of California are they flooding to get this?]
>
> If we presume I pay fairly close attention to the news
> how did this slip by beneath my radar screen? Particularly
> when the U.S. is moving into a budget deficit paradigm!
>
> Is the only way to reform U.S. politics to push for a 1-term
> ammendment to the constitution? Confine the president to
> 4 years -- thats all you get to sink or swim in the history
> books. There is no second act. So you have to play the
> first one rationally (at least one can hope).
>
> Robert
>
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