Posts in "foreign aid"

By Jihan Huq at 3:25PM

Aug 22, 2010

More Peace and Harmony Brought to You By Our Tax Dollars

This video is more proof of why we need to completely stop funding foreign governments and their criminal acts with our tax dollars. Countless incidents like this occur everyday within the occupied territories and too often they are not reported by the lame-stream media.

I don't care how "conservative" or "liberatrian" you are. If you still think we should send billions of dollars to other countries/governments, well then you basically advocate for a foreign aid style redistribution of wealth. It's time we put an end to this. It's hurting both Palestinians, the Israelis and of course it's hurting our credibility in the Middle East -- not that most of our elected officials care or anything.

Also, many of our elected officials are at times valiant and will attack other lobbying groups, but are too chicken to even mildly criticize AIPAC. AIPAC, the Saudi lobby, and many other foreign government endorsed lobbying groups have significant consequences to our foreign policy. Therefore, wouldn't it be the best thing to just end all foreign aid (and intervention) so these lobbying groups will not be as influential in our country and politics? I think so.

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By Matt Cockerill at 6:02AM

Apr 22, 2010

Another UN Ripoff?

Two thirds of the UN's $732 million budget for Haitian "earthquake relief" has gone not to suffering Haitians, but to the pockets of UN employees. Reports George Russell of Fox News:

The United Nations has quietly upped this year's peacekeeping budget for earthquake-shattered Haiti to $732.4 million, with two-thirds of that amount going for the salary, perks and upkeep of its own personnel, not residents of the devastated island.

The world organization plans to spend the money on an expanded force of some 12,675 soldiers and police, plus some 479 international staffers, 669 international contract personnel, and 1,300 local workers, just for the 12 months ending June 30, 2010.

Some $495.8 million goes for salaries, benefits, hazard pay, mandatory R&R allowances and upkeep for the peacekeepers and their international staff support. Only about $33.9 million, or 4.6 percent, of that salary total is going to what the U.N. calls "national staff" attached to the peacekeeping effort.

Read the whole piece here.

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By Roy Antoun at 1:52PM

Jan 29, 2010

Globalized Socialism: Yemen's Road to Serfdom

US-Foreign-Policy There is a lesson we can all learn about Yemen and what has happened to this little country south of Saudi Arabia. With the recent events of the Christmas bomber and Hillary Clinton’s call for Yemen to “demonstrate that it can reduce corruption… and use foreign aid effectively,” we learn how dependency both domestically and internationally can often lead to disaster.

Yemeni Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Mujawar of late claimed that Yemen has “widespread unemployment, and this is the environment in which extremism flourishes.” This tiny state depends heavily on its oil exports for revenue; however, this revenue is still insufficient to stabilize its 35% unemployment rate and the 45.2% of the country under the poverty line. Prime Minister Mujawar’s answer to fixing this problem is more aid from neighboring Arab countries.

Understanding that poverty and unemployment often lead to localized extremism, foreign dependency can only lead to more disaster.

The Face of Aid in Haiti

Carel Pedre, a DJ from Haiti, captured this video of heavily armed UN troops overseeing food distribution in Port-au-Prince.

Reuters later reported that troops fired tear gas at the crowd.

Not the warm and fuzzy image of foreign aid portrayed on TV, is it?

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By Preston Mui at 10:48PM

Jan 19, 2010

The Other Disaster in Haiti

All this week I've seen my YAL Facebook friends asking for donations to the humanitarian aid efforts in Haiti. I have nothing but praise for this. People doing good through their free will is the only moral way to give to charity. But I can't help but wonder why the crisis was so bad. Below, Wall Street Journal columnist Mary O'Grady explains why.

As O'Grady explains, the reason why Haiti is so poor is that we in richer countries have propped up bad regimes in Haiti. Besides that, we've stifled free trade through tariffs on their sugar, among other things. Imagine how many people would be alive today if Haiti was rich enough to have sturdier buildings, a more efficient police force, an honest government, and better medical services?

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By Matt Cockerill at 7:19AM

Jan 15, 2010

Opposing ALL forced wealth transfers is key to achieving societal peace

Though President Obama will almost certainly carry out a large-scale human rights intervention in Haiti, I still hope the US government decides to play no role whatsoever in response to the tragic earthquake that ravaged that country.

It is immoral to redistribute wealth by force en masse, even if one calls it "foreign aid" or "disaster relief." As Mary Ruwart points out, and the miserable record of foreign aid to develop 3rd world countries confirms, utilizing immoral means leads to a bad ends.

Human beings can do so much better than this sort of thing. In a prosperous society without institutionalized aggression, imagine how much more willing people would be to give money and help others. Instead of lazily concluding that the government would take care of the poor, and that they had already done their part by paying taxes, responsible, decent people would, upon achieving success, feel an obligation to directly help poor countrymen AND foreigners.

Should the US Try the "Theory of Second Best?"

Yes, we should. And it should be done immediately. Quick withdrawal from Afghanistan would force Karzai and his opium dealing warlords to govern their country by themselves. This would likely result in the collapse of the corrupt government that calls Kabul its home. Sounds vicious, doesn't it? It would paint a far rosier picture than would staying our current course. Peter Leeson and Claudia Williamson argue in a paper that,

Many predatory governments do more to damage their citizens’ welfare than to enhance it. In light of this, we show that conditional on failure to satisfy a key institutional condition required for ideal political governance—constrained politics—citizens’ welfare is maximized by departing from the other conditions required for this form of governance: state-supplied law and courts, state-supplied police, and state-supplied public goods. Since departing from these conditions produces anarchy and fulfilling them when government is unconstrained producers predatory political governance, anarchy is a second best.

10/2/09 Roundup

Rachel Maddow blasts Jim DeMint, accusing him of treason for heroically opposing the establishment on Honduras ...
And since the Zalaya situation just won't go away, educate yourself with Don Rassmussen's earlier post about what's really going on in Honduras.
Don Boudreaux explains that true free-market economists don't (and shouldn't) rely on rote mathematics to explain economic reality.
William Kamkwamba, an enterprising Malawian teenager who didn't wait around for foreign aid, is now an international hero ...
And William Easterly explains why government and other aid providers should look to entrepreneurs like William for guidance.

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By contributor at 7:12PM

Apr 2, 2009

More From Dambisa Moyo: the Dead Aid Firestorm Begins

Dambisa Moyo's new book "Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa" is now out and available at amazon.com and other fine retailers near you.

Moyo has been called the 'Anti-Bono' (though she detests the nickname) for her stance on government-based foreign aid; she believes that development in African and other countries in the global south would be best accomplished by allowing those countries' markets to grow unhindered by foreign dependence. She is a strong advocate both of the free market and of government accountability in developing countries -- government accountability not to foreign donors, but to its own people.
Read more here

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