From: Brendan Coffey (bmc@section9.net)
Date: Sat Apr 12 2003 - 15:30:21 MDT
Quoth Damien:
> > $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,
>
> I thought we were *talking* about total foreign aid.
>
But the individual figures being quoted (1.3B, 1.98B) were military
aid figures. So, there was confusion in one direction or the other.
> > > > 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
>
> See? Biggiest recipient of foreign aid, then I talk about total foreign
> aid, with the numbers of Israel and Egypt which I've always heard.
> The later numbers seemed low, which I guess is explained if people
> switched to only talking about military aid.
>
Yes, that would make the numbers appear low.
Spike thinks we should include expenditures on toppling popularly-elected
governments and installing dictatorial puppet regimes (Iran, anyone?).
I can't see that this counts as "aid." But, if my experience with
individual humans (myself included) is at all applicable to international
relations (heh), simply giving people money is rarely helpful, as they
don't know what to do with it.
-Brendan <bmc@section9.net>
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