Going back nigh 30 years, I have always been deeply pained when people accuse me of being cynical about U.S. foreign aid. At least my breakfast was nicely spiced this morning by a Washington Post front page story – “After billions in U.S. investment, Afghan roads are falling apart.” The highways that the U.S. spent billions […]
Tag Archives | Foreign Aid
Bradley Manning Verdict & WikiLeaks Movie
Bradley Manning got nailed today by a military judge for exposing the truth. The folks who committed war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq have almost all walked scot-free. The folks who made the policies that led to the abuses have never faced federal charges. Dreamworks has a movie on Wikileaks that will be coming out […]
IMF Guilty of “Aggravated Pimping” of Third World?
Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been charged with “aggravated pimping” by the French government. I thought “aggravated pimping” was the job description for the IMF – at least in its function as a bill collector for the banks. Or maybe it is simply screwing the Third World after invoking the proper econometric formulas (with […]
Richard Ebeling Amidst Soviet Crackdown
This is a photo of Ludwig von Mises’ historian Richard Ebeling “near the TV Tower in Vilnius, Lithuania, January 13-14, 1991, (Soviet tank and crew member in background) after the Soviet military seized government buildings and communication centers in an attempt to crush the Lithuanian freedom movement. Thirteen people killed that night resisting Soviet power,” […]
Wall Street Journal Publishes Food for Peace Retort
Responding to my piece last week – in tomorrow’s Letters to the Editor in the Wall Street Journal – Food for Peace is an international aid program that has been successful domestically and abroad since its inception in 1954 (“How ‘Food for Peace’ Hurts Foreign Farmers” by James Bovard, op-ed, April 30). It has fed the […]
MP3 of Scott Horton Show Interview on Food for Peace
Scott Horton and I had fun yesterday discussing the twisted history of U.S. foreign aid on his radio show. The show was spurred by yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article on Food for Peace, but farm subsidies took a thrashing across the board. There was also enough time to kick the stuffing out of ethanol. Okay, […]
My WSJ piece: “Food for Peace” Hurts Foreign Farmers
Wall Street Journal April 30, 2013 [alternative WSJ link – not blocked by paywall] How ‘Food for Peace’ Hurts Foreign Farmers For a half-century the program has done more to feed special interests than help the hungry. By JAMES BOVARD The United States government is the world’s largest food donor but its aid consistently wreaks havoc abroad. […]