Posts Tagged ‘United States’

Mumbai, picking up the pieces, or picking apart the pieces?

December 1, 2008

The atrocity committed by Islam’s extremist’s in Mumbai is on the front page of websites and newspapers all over the world. People are screaming for accountability there, just as they screamed here in the United States after the World Trade Center attacks. That is a normal, and human reaction. But it really does nothing but make people feel better.

So then what might be a better way of going about things? For one thing, don’t trash the people that are the best that you have. Granted, there are times when a brand new approach is the way to go. However when you are in the classic conundrum of limited resources with outstanding demand why, I ask, get rid of what few resources you have? Did those people make mistakes? Most likely. They are also in the best position to evaluate those failures and place new procedures in place to address those weaknesses. Sure, get some new blood in those places at some point in time. However, when your nation is reeling with grief, and running on emotion is not the time to change the only person, or people that know how to steer the vehicle.

India is looking beyond it’s borders for assistance, and that is indeed a good thing. This is a problem that the entire civilized world faces, not just India. Information is the first principle of warfare. Shared information brings strength that a single entity simply cannot possess. After all, the well known story of the quarreling brothers, and the father that taught them that as individual arrows leaves them weak, but joined together they are strong truly applies here.

It appears that many nations do realize that and that India is allowing it’s friends to help them in their time of need. Mass casualty planning is far from an easy thing to do. The various contingencies involved can be mind boggling. This is where nations can be greatly enabled by one another. Terrorism is no different than any other disaster situation. With one very big difference. It is wholly human caused. Humans are easier to figure out than earthquakes for example. They (humans) are much more predictable.

I submit that many nations working in concert will be much more effective at combating terrorism than single nations, or small groups of nations can, or will ever be. Both India and Pakistan need to work together to help fight this cancer called terrorism.

It is not simply a thing of tracking Muslims either. There are several groups in the general region that have their own agendas. The rattling of nuclear sabers will not do anything but make a few blowhards feel better.

Israel, a thorn in our foot? Or in our very soul?

November 16, 2008

Israel is always on my mind. For one, or another reason. I myself love Israel having been there on several occasions. I love the courage of the people there. The sheer tenacity for life that the people possess after centuries of being flattened by so many other peoples from all over the world.

When things get really, really bad Israeli’s have much in common with Americans. After all, who the hell else gets so much flak just for being who, and what they are, than Israeli’s, or was that Americans..? Hell, I get so confused about those things.. After all, most Israeli’s are from the former Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany. Sort of like the Irish and Scot Irish in America. They are strangers in a desperate land. Hence, I think, that there is a kinship between the two nations.

I have met many Arabs as well as other Muslims while traveling in the mid east. I have met Jews in most parts of the world. Introduced individualy there have been many fine and just people from both groups. Then, there are those that are so stuck on the Ugly American theme that they cannot get their collective heads extricated from their asse’s. From both groups.

Who the hell has come to the aide of either group when the feces hits the rotating occilator device?

The United States of America. That is who. Call us what you want. Deride us at every opportunity. I simply do not care. I am an AMERICAN!

Read this, and just perhaps you will begin to get a glimmer about what I speak of…


American Independence

May 5, 2008

Sometimes we as Americans need to just tell the whiners of the world to just plain shut the hell up. No other country has fed more people from other countries than the United States. No other country can even come close to what we Americans have done rendering humanitarian assistance after natural disasters. The following was stolen from my friend Texas Fred’s blog, pleas click the link at the bottom to see full commentary.

Here are some excerpts from articles this week that should make anyone frightened. When it comes to our national sovereignty, our safety and our food supply should be number one! But it looks like the U.N is well on its redistributive way to take what’s left of our food.According to USA Today, Surplus U.S. food supplies dry upBecause of the current economics of food, and changes in federal farm subsidy programs designed to make farmers rely more on the markets, large U.S. reserves may be gone for a long time.Could the global food crisis impact America?

 

Worldwide, food prices have risen 45% in the past nine months, posing a crisis for millions, says the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

 

The upshot: USDA has almost no extra food to supplement the billions in cash payments it spends to combat hunger at home and in developing nations.

 

NEW YORK (FinalCall.com) – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, in a recent meeting here with Bretton Woods Institution organizations, called for immediate and long-term measures to tackle a growing global food crisis.

The rapidly escalating crisis of food availability has reached emergency proportions,” Secretary-General Ban said April 14. He was referring to food riots taking place in different parts of the world, from Italy to Yemen and Mexico to the Philippines. Tanks were deployed in parts of Yemen April 4 after five days of protests by 1,000 people, mostly youth, angry about the rising price of food. Wheat prices have doubled since February, while rice and vegetable oil jumped 20 percent…

While international leaders gathered to find solutions to the world food crisis, analysts in the United States braced for the April 16 Consumer Price Index Report. Analysts say the U.S. is wrestling with the worst food inflation in 17 years because of sharply higher costs for wheat, corn, soybeans and milk as well as higher energy and transportation costs…“It’s hard for most Americans to even conceive of the idea that food could become scarce in this country,” said Raj Patel, a writer, activist and former policy analyst with the advocacy group Food First and analyst for the World Bank, World Trade Organization and the United Nations. “Few of us are paying attention to the close relationship between bio-fuel, grain crops and price inflation,” Mr. Patel told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman. He was appearing on her Pacifica Radio show, to push his new book, “Stuffed & Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System.” The book is due out April 25. Competition between corn and other crops for planting acres has driven up the price of food in the U.S., as the government mandates more acreage for corn, wheat and soybeans, ingredients needed for ethanol production…

“We are studying ways to communicate to people in the U.S. that they have to change their behavior.”Americans are too complacent, believing there never would be a food shortage, which could be caused by a drought,” he said. “From my academic position, I can say that people are having a hard time finding food in America, so we have to change our thinking.”

 

This from What is Running Through Our Minds

. . .President Bush in mid-April drew $200 million from the Emerson Humanitarian Trust, named after former congressman Bill Emerson, a Missouri Republican. Bush’s action followed a desperate plea from the United Nations for food aid. Thursday, the president announced he would ask Congress for $770 million in separate, additional funding to meet international needs.But Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, at a recent food aid conference, says his agency faces tough decisions about managing the rest of the reserve in times of widespread hunger. “How far do we draw down?” he asked. “Do we take it down to zero because we need it? Do we hold some in there, because who knows what’s going to happen, for emergency purposes later?”Proudly Stolen From: Maggie’s Notebookhttp://texasfred.net/archives/1116/trackback/

 

 

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