International Affairs: December 2004 Archives

I'm surprised there aren't more photos of the tsunami itself. Yahoo News has some pictures of the aftermath, but I can't find any of the wave. You'd think that in such touristy areas there would have been more people armed with cameras. FoxNews had some amature video clips posted, but I can't find them anymore, and they weren't that great anyway. Does anyone have any good links? I'm surprised The Daily Recycler isn't all over this, but he hasn't posted anything for over a month!

Update:
Tsunami photos and videos! Thanks, TheFreak.

Just when I thought the UN was doing something vaguely useful by organizing relief efforts for the decimated coastlines around the Bay of Bengal, some UN spokeswoman uses the disaster to lecture the United States on the evil of low tax rates.

"The United States, at the president's direction, will be a leading partner in one of the most significant relief, rescue and recovery challenges that the world has ever known," said White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy.

But U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland suggested that the United States and other Western nations were being "stingy" with relief funds, saying there would be more available if taxes were raised.

There's plenty more of one thing available for you anyway, Jan (oops, he's a man!): my fist to your face. I will elbow you straight in the nuts without even thinking about it. You're obviously unaware that private international assistance makes up more than 60% of America's contribution to developing countries -- that's right! We're so freaking generous that our government doesn't need to take our money at gunpoint through taxation -- we like helping people.

At $9.9 billion, ODA accounts for just 18 percent of total U.S. assistance-public and private-to developing countries (table 6.1). Private international assistance, by contrast, is $33.6 billion-60 percent of the U.S. contribution, and projected to grow to 65 percent by 2010. Every year the publication of the DAC report results in press reports and statements by academics and opinion leaders disparaging America’s "stinginess," asserting that U.S. foreign policy will be ineffective without more ODA, and claiming that U.S. foreign aid programs collapsed after the Cold War. But ODA is a limited and outdated way of measuring a country’s giving. Given the enormous growth in the private sector around the world, donors should reevaluate the measure.

I betcha Jan the Man isn't even taking into account the non-monetary contributions the United States is providing -- and that only we are capable of.

Money and food are not the only types of aid being sent by the Bush administration. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) also is sending a 21-member disaster-relief team to the region.

Also, the Pentagon has dispatched military patrol planes from the Pacific Fleet. President Bush has written letters of condolence to seven of the affected nations — Bangladesh, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, the Maldives and Malaysia.

Yes, that's right, only the United States of America can send letters of condelence from President Bush -- so suck it, Jan (who is a man, despite his name).

Oh, plus we've got military assets to ensure security in the aftermath of the disaster and prevent China from just sweeping in and pushing the survivors into the sea. Yeah, China, you know, that huge country right next door that hasn't yet offered to assist at all? They've got plenty of taxation, since they're communist and all, and yet they don't seem to be measuring up to Jan's ideal. Maybe he should publically denigrate them and see how far he gets.

So to the Man-Jan and the UN: screw off. My sufficiently high taxes pay a quarter of your salary, so don't lecture me on being generous towards the less capable.

Update:
The UN spokeswoman has decided to back-pedal in response to my comments.

Additionally, Israel is sending relief supplies to the majority Muslim victims even though some of their help is being rejected. No word yet on how much assistance Muslim nations are planning to send.

It looks like the new Afghan government is finally ready to start tackling one of the most insidious evils facing their country: opium.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — From March to August, the United Nations says, almost 90 percent of the world's opium is grown in the fields of Afghanistan. The U.N. says cultivation of opium poppies, which can be made into heroin, is up 64 percent over last year in Afghanistan.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai (search) says that's humiliating. "We should fight poppy with the same zeal as we fought the Russians. If we do not, our homeland ... will face danger again."

It would have been nice for the US to firebomb poppy fields during the invasion, but it would have been self-destructive and would have hindered the coalition of warlords that helped us overthrow the Taliban. We couldn't accomplish every type of good all at once, but let this serve an an example to people who think we should do nothing just because we can't do everything. Give us time.

Japanese who move to Paris (that's in France) with dreams of elegance and luxury quickly become disillusioned -- apparently the French aren't very friendly! Who knew?

After a relatively short period of only three months or so, Japanese immigrants expecting to find a haven of civilisation and elegance instead discover a tougher existence with many problems dealing with the French.

"They make fun of my French and my expressions", "they don't like me" and "I feel ridiculous in front of them" are common refrains heard by the doctors.

The article doesn't mention one of the most striking differences between the two cultures: the Japanese don't surrender until you drop a pair of nukes on them.

Emperor Misha brutally fisks an article by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey in -- of all places -- Pravda criticising the rich of the world for starving the poor during the Christmas season. (If there's anyone who knows about starving the poor, it's the Russians.)

While hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on weapons, war, killing and destruction and countless more billions are spent on Christmas, the number of people starving in the world is increasing, instead of decreasing.

How is that even possible? Don't starving people eventually, you know, die? It doesn't seem like someone who's starving could survive long enough to reproduce, so unless there's some sort of rotation going on I don't understand how the number of starving people could actually be going up. Unless, of course, the pravda is that the use of the word is mere hyperbole.

While certain nations spend billions, not tens of billions but hundreds of billions of dollars on the destruction of the State of Iraq (and tens of thousands of its citizens, including innocent women and children), the number of starving in the world has increased by nearly 20 million since the mid 1990s, according to the report.

Is a certain newspaper advocating that a certain nation instead use its weapons to reduce the number of starving people?

Anyway, I don't need to go into more details about the article: the Emperor handles it quite nicely on his own. Let me just point out that the vast majority of foreign aid goes straight into the pockets of dictators and contributes nothing to the welfare of its intended recipients. Rather than helping the poor, most foreign aid actually props up the tyrannical regimes that spend every waking moment enriching themselves by oppressing the most miserable among us. Maybe Mr. Bancroft-Hinchey should consider that this Christmas millions of people in Iraq and Afghanistan will be finally free from the crushing yoke of fascism which was nurtured for years by his pathetic appeasement and that of his ilk.

History will judge you; indeed, it has already done so, though you fail to recognize it.

Is it just me or are the Islamofascists and their various appeasers really beginning to sound like South Park's depiction of Saddam Hussein?

Secretary-General Kofi Annan opened the first U.N. seminar on confronting Islamophobia Tuesday with a plea not to judge Muslims by the acts of extremists who deliberately target and kill civilians. ... Seyyed Hussein Nasr, professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, said Islamophobia was a question not only of fear but also of hatred -- often by people who know little about the religion. ... Fighting Islamophobia, Nasr argued, requires swift action from those in the West who understand that hatred breeds more hatred. Muslims must also take the lead in speaking out against extremism - steps that should be complemented by educational reforms and more effective use of the media. ... R. Scott Appleby, director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame, said that in the United States and much of Europe, terrorism had created anxiety about the vulnerability of Western societies, drawn unwanted attention to Muslims, and elicited intolerance and hatred among some Americans. This is what terrorists wanted, he said. In the United States, Appleby said, patriotism should require a willingness to recognize differences and honest self-criticism, not condescension towards people cast as "the other."

Thanks to Wretchard for the pointer to the latest Kofi Annan absurdity, and he's also got other examples of how the villains among us continually try to avoid identification and elimination.

For my second post on the new site I want to write a little bit about "yearning for freedom" -- the concept behind much of President Bush's international policy and his vision for the future. Basically, he believes that everyone, from every culture, whether they know it or not, is imbued by God with certain unalienable rights that cannot be justly or morally violated. People who live in oppression yearn to be free and deserve to be free, regardless of lines drawn on maps or UN representation.

The rational counter to this position is pretty simple: look around -- there are plenty of oppressed people who don't appear to be yearning for freedom. There are many cultures that seem to be quite content with their repressive thugocracies. To that I say: maybe so! Maybe there are people who long for their kids to strap on bombs and blow up buses. Maybe they like their rulers to steal their wealth and spend it on fancy palaces. Maybe they like their princes to drive around, grab girls off the street, and rape them. Maybe they like flying planes into buildings. Maybe there are women who think burkas are the height of fashion and who adore genital mutilation... but guess what? They're wrong. They may not know it, but they're wrong.

Who am I to judge? What, are you telling me you'd trade your culture for theirs? Please. As the left loves to frequently intone, think of the children. Maybe the parents love it, but think of the children who have yet to be born, who will never have a chance to know anything else before they're brainwashed by evil. Would you send your litle boys and girls to live in Iran or Saudi Arabia? Not likely. Iraq and Afghanistan, however, and sure looking up.

So rather than get into some sort of existential debate over how we objectively judge the quality of various cultures, why notjust see how people vote with their feet? That's easy: everyone in the world want to come to America. Ergo, we have the superior culture, and the majority of the world agrees on that. They may not like everything about us, but given the choice the vast majority of the people would want to live here rather than wherever they are now. As the acknowledgedly superior culture, we can evaluate other cultures based on their similarity to us; given the unalienable rights granted to all mankind by God, we have a moral justification (if not a duty) to do what we can to reform cultures of evil and remake them for good.

My sources tell me that Iraq is getting ready to unveil a new Iraqi Homeland Security Advisory System to help keep its citizens informed of the terror threats they face on a daily basis. Whoever the new Homeland Security chief here is (yes, I could look it up, but I'm lazy) should look into implementing something similar in America.