U.S. Aid to Israel
"Total U.S. aid to Israel is approximately one-third of the American foreign- aid budget, even though Israel comprises just .001 percent of the world's population and already has one of the world's higher per capita incomes."
zonder,
Re: Total cost to US taxpayers seem to be about USD 135 bn as at 1 Nov 1997.
If you have other resources that you can share on the topic I'd be very delighted to get them into my files. :)
The WRMEA report makes very clear how little the American public understands the foreign aid regime of the U.S. government. In this country, we continually hear howls from the Know Nothing right wingers who rail against the waste of taxpayer dollar on foreign aid. But they only are concerned about money sent to South America and Africa and other "Southern" nations (LDCs, or lesser developed countries). There's never a peep from this anti-internationalist crowd about aid to Israel, which is seen as a bastion of democracy in a sea of despotism.
When I first read this passage from WRMEA, I was shocked:
"Total U.S. aid to Israel is approximately one-third of the American foreign- aid budget, even though Israel comprises just .001 percent of the world's population and already has one of the world's higher per capita incomes."
Source: wrmea.com
The U.S. corporate media whores have done a fabulous job of burying this fact in a blizzard of disinformation about the true nature of our foreign aid schemes, and the purposes to which foreign aid is put. If the American public were given the true facts, they'd be scandalized, as more and more of us are.
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Topic #2:
I want to thank you for your referral to Lord Kinross's "Ataturk". I'm about 2/3 through the text and am marvelling at how little I knew previously about the birth of Turkey and the tumult at the end of WW I that was the death knell of the Ottoman Empire. How fitting an image of the fall of that Empire that Vahid ed-Din, the last (and utterly useless and discredited) Sultan, skulked out of Constantinople with chests full of jewels and gold, an obliging British exchequer to process the cash and securities and a British Navy destroyer to deliver the man to a decidedly sumptuous retirement on San Remo.
It makes one wonder what role the Brits and the U.S. government are playing in the reassignment and relocation of an old ally and asset of the CIA and MI6 like Saddam Hussein. <g>
WHERE'S OSAMA? Seems no one cares to ask any longer...
WHERE'S THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION? Hans Blix had some fun today rubbing the poodle dog's and Crawford Cowboy's noses in the dirt at the UNSC. Jolly good fun! |
