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american exports of food too often undercut the ability of poorer countries to develop anything like a self-sustaining agricultural infrastructure.

the main reason for this is that american agricultural subsidies amount to dumping.

when you combine this with neoliberal "free trade" ideology enforced by the imf as conditions for loans prevents these countries from using tarrifs as ways to protect local agriculture from their markets being flooded with cheaper, often much less beneficial, american products.

and much of what the americans export is shitty quality. in the example of jamaica, american powdered milk imports have nearly crushed the jamaican dairy industry. and it is not at all obvious that powdered milk offers any nutritional advantage, is it?

the policy of exporting food, then IS NOT simply a nice act by nice people.
you cannot view food exports in isolation.

God forbid the US does anything out of the goodness of its own heart. If we donate food we're destroying lives and are horrid people. If we throw that food away we're destroying lives and are horrid people.

Give me a fucking break. When the US donates food to countries it's because their government has asked for food aid. Would you rather have a farmer have to change trades or a homeless man watch his wife and kids die the horrible slow death of starvation?

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Originally Posted by Cynthetiq

worst quality available? maybe in the lower rungs of county and community hospitals which is subsidized by the government, but if you have the $ you have the best that money can buy.

Yes, exactly. In most other countries that have healthcare, they don't pay anything for it. You can walk into any hospital, anywhere, and get whatever you need fixed for free or for very little out of pocket expense, all paid for by the state.

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Originally Posted by Cowman

Anytime you refer a MOVIE starring Josh Hartnett in a serious debate, no matter how much of the movie may be "based on real incidents", your entire posts validity gets thrown out the window.

I referred to the incident, not the movie. Josh Hartnett is actually good in that movie anyway. :thumbsup:

-Lasereth

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Originally Posted by nothingx

And the government gets the money from where exactly?

seaver:

programs of food exportation are not--ARE NOT--done out of the goodness of any collective heart--they are very much about dealing with the american agricultural overproduction--which has lots to do with techological regimes, patterns of increasingly centralized ownership/organization, monocropping, etc...overall choices about how agriculture is organized that use economies of scale to wipe out other types of production.

i dont really care if you find something superficially annoying about what i am saying--do some research----dont take what i am saying at face value or as definitive----this is a board----obviously the complete story will not be jammed onto it--but you can try to figure it out.

with reference to the southern hemisphere (and food aid always involves particular geopolitical situations at the least), there is no way--no way--to separate food aid from the imf/world bank/structural adjustment/neoliberal ideology context.
try it and you will hamstring yourself, see nothing, argue about nothing except sad little illusions generated by the idea that everyone and everything can be understood on the basis of indivudal motivations--a particularly bourgeois american tic---which is maybe interesting as a reflection of a particular psychological comportment on your part, but which says nothing--nothing at all---about what you purport to address.

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Originally Posted by Seaver

Excactly!

As far as the largest burrito goes, I think it's just a waste of food.