Re: Arab World Stunned by Baghdad's Fall

From: Brendan Coffey (bmc@section9.net)
Date: Fri Apr 11 2003 - 19:09:37 MDT

  • Next message: Damien Sullivan: "Re: [ECON] US income tax summaries"

    I've been reading extropians for about... 2yr? Something like that.
    Here goes my first post...

    I'm kind of alarmed at how I see figures of US foreign military aid
    being factually confused and contextually misrepresented.

    >From http://www.fas.org/asmp/profiles/aid_db.htm :

    FMF Budget Request FY 2001: Total budget request: $3.54 billion
      Budget request for Israel: $1.98 billion
      Budget request for Egypt: $1.3 billion

    $1.3B is not a "tie" with $1.98B. That's a 52.3% difference. The US's
    aid to Israel in 2003 will be $2.1B. And $12B is over 3x the US'
    total foreign military aid allocation. Damien is conflating total
    foreign aid figures with foreign military aid figures. Confusion aside,
    Israel's military strength is, in fact, the single largest item on the US'
    foreign military aid agenda. Our military aid to Israel represents 20%
    of their $9.8B military budget which is, in turn, almost 10% of their GDP.
    Pretty crazy. There are really some heads in need of busting over there,
    apparently.

    But it sure beats adding the cost of military presence in the oil-
    producing region to OWN military budget, that'd really clue people
    in. But wait, we just DID add the cost of military presence in the
    oil-producing region to our own military budget!

    It's cute that people think this isn't about oil, economy and empire.

    -Brendan <bmc@section9.net> 

    ---
> Damien Sullivan
>
> >
> > On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 02:15:10PM -0400, matus wrote:
> >
> > > Egypt is the single biggest recipient of Foriegn aide from the US,
some 12
> > > billion per year, yet it is also a totalitarian.  It was one of the
first
> >
> > Where'd you get *that*?  $12 billion is close to the USA's total
> > foreign aid
> > budget, and Israel is always described as the largest recipient.
> > With Egypt
> > second: $3 billion for Israel to $2 billion for Egypt.  Some web
searching
> > seems to confirm all this.
> >
>
> You are correct, it appears I was off by a factor of ten, with
> Egypt getting around 1.2 billion, which about ties it with Isreal.
> My apologies, still waiting for my nueral upgrades, momentary lapses of
> reason should be reduced then.
>
> Michael Dickey
>

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Apr 12 2003 - 12:25:52 MDT