Earth to Jan Egeland: Talk to France
Thursday, December 30th, 2004A few days back, you might remember a certain U.N. staffer saying this about American Aid for the Tsunami victims:
“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.”
On the heels of this pronouncement, we are now finding out that the French have also pledged their “support” to the victims:
Paris has earmarked 100,000 euros ($135,400) for initial rescue efforts in Thailand. Earlier on Monday, it sent a plane with about 100 rescue workers and five tonnes of humanitarian aid to Sri Lanka.
The humanitarian organisation Secours Populaire Francais said it was providing emergency aid of 100,000 euros and sending two teams to India and Sri Lanka to help with rescue efforts.
Right at the outset, America says that for starters, we are going to send $35 million for aid, and we get called stingy. France says that they will send $135,400 and they say nothing. Nada.
I don’t think that I need to tell most of you guys that whenever a disaster strikes anywhere in the world, the first people to show up with cash and food and supplies are Americans. Indeed, if America were not to show up at these disasters, most countries would probably never recover or be able to rebuild. In 2004 alone, America spent over $2 billion in foreign aid. That’s about 40% of all money spent by all countries on such aid.
Never mind that the organization to which this guy belongs in plagued by their own aid scandal right now, this guy obviously has no idea about world events and the United States’ impact on them. If only he would look outside of his America-hating worldview and examine the facts, this guy would have saved himself, as well as the U.N., a lot of embarrassment.
Maybe we sould just let these guys handle all of this stuff by themselves. We should let the U.N. go to nations like France for their requests for millions and millions of dollars of aid. Let’s see what they get then.
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January 3rd, 2005 at 11:06 pm
And there are Froggies running around wondering why they can’t get no respect from the U.S. (http://www.ambergnat.com/archives/2005/01/why_do_american.html)
AG