Foreign Aid

The EU has decided that it should double it's foreign aid packages to assist in undeveloped countries with their massive social and cultural issues.

In Brussels, Louis Michel, the EU's development commissioner, told reporters: "If we lead the way, if we show that we are committed and ambitious to this extent, then other international partners will be obliged, I think, to follow suit and mobilise additional resources."

In London Mr Brown spoke of a "once in a lifetime opportunity to make a huge difference", but warned that it must be followed through at international meetings on aid, debt relief and fairer trade.

Bill Gates has doubled his contributions to his AIDS foundation to help stop the tidal wave of infection from occuring in India.

Director of the programme Helen Gayle said the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India was reaching "a critical juncture" with the level of infection rising by as much as 20 percent per year.

"We only have a small window of opportunity to prevent a widespread epidemic," she said.

Imagine if America decided it could double its Foreign Aid spending? While the US' contribution in 2004 was nearly $19 billion, it was also a trifling 0.16% of our GNP. The US Consistently falls last on lists of industrialized nations spending in foreign aid, and first in terms of military spending. If the US doubled its foreign aid packages wisely, it would contribute $38 billion, while upping its percentage of GNP still to only 0.32%, which would rank it as a median international donor by percentage. This would, of course, still compete with the huge nearly $420 billion military spending budget, which increases rapidly each year in proportion to the hole in Iraq that is dug beneath our feet.

Also- the discrepency between a culture of military spending and trifling foreign aid breeds discontent, ignorance, and denial of the many negatives that come with it. See: the previous post and this Global Issues site on the US' historical assistence to those who perpetrate human rights abuses.