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£7 billion boost for Afghanistan



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AFGHANISTAN'S fragile leadership was yesterday bolstered by pledges of billions of dollars in aid.
President Hamid Karzai won more than £7 billion at an international conference being held in Paris, including a pledge of £5 billion from the United States.


The full article contains 45 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 12 June 2008 10:08 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
  • Related Topics: Afghanistan
 
1

American,

13/06/2008 02:41:32
How much are arab countries giving to their afghani brothers?
2

Browards,

13/06/2008 04:28:06
Wow! That's very generous of the USA, everyone else combined on put in 2?
3

Miss Pixie,

formerly of Dinleyhaughfoot Cottage, Roxburghshire 13/06/2008 11:59:42
Charity MUST begin at home for chrissake! Tornados, floods, hurricanes...the USA needs immediate aid for its own disasters!
4

Bemused and above it all,

13/06/2008 12:15:08
Mad idea but why not sell the £225million worth of cannabis that was destroyed to countries where its legal?
Then instead of destroying the poppy crop, buy it and use it for medicinal purposes? Given that theres a shrotage of it worldwide? Might raise another say £50billion?
5

57Nomad,

california 14/06/2008 00:17:05
#3 MissPixie

Thanks for the kind thoughts. However there are a couple of things that should be noted. None of the disasters you mention come close to what we lost on 9/11. Since Afghanistan was where the attacks originated what we are doing there actually falls in line with your thinking.

You have mentioned tornadoes, floods, and hurricanes. You left out a couple: huge fires and earthquakes. But, as it happens the response to those are the purview of the individual states and not the federal government. So the 5 billion will not reduce responses to those calamities by a single cent.

Furthermore, those acts of God that you mention happen all the time in the US. There are huge fires that consume hundreds of homes and kill people ever year. There are hurricanes every year. There is some river overflowing its banks all the time. There are nearly continuous earthquakes in California, Nevada, and even the mid-west.

What is common in these cases, as it is no doubt every where, is that the primary responses are from strictly volunteer groups like the Salvation Army, Red Cross, Boy scouts, and ad hoc groups of private citizens. The citizen's groups can always react faster than the government at any level because there is no red tape involved. Here is an example.

In 1994 there was an earthquake in Northridge California. Northridge is a suburb of Los Angeles. I live in San Diego and we felt it here and strongly even though the epicenter was about 100 miles away. As soon and the size of the damage was clear every local television station, about 9 in total set up collection centers and made an appeal to their viewers to take relief goods to a location the stations had selected. The need for transporting the goods was made public. Here is what happened.

Within hours 56 semi-truck and trailers (I don't know what they are called where you are but they are bigass trailers usually with 18 wheels pulled by a butch looking cab) had been filled with goods and w
6

57Nomad,

california 14/06/2008 00:18:07
#5 contd

Within hours 56 semi-truck and trailers (I don't know what they are called where you are but they are bigass trailer usually with 18 wheels pulled by a butch looking cab) had been filled with goods and were on their way to LA. Every single truck, the drivers, the diesel to run them, everything, was donated and the cost to the government for this relief was zero.

Those trucks arrived in Northridge before the sun went down and beat the government relief effort by a day. So we thank you for your concern but these disasters are a very common occurance in the US, it is ceaseless. We have learned to care for ourselves and do so very, very quickly with no strain on the public purse.
7

Taz,

Texas 04/07/2008 20:33:20
And that is what a brit can't understand. He would wait sitting on the rubble for a civil servant to come by and take him by the hand.

 

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