Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 12:51:20 -0400
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: Comments on US Food Aid Propaganda
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"

[Note from Matthew Gaylor:  The food packages in question each 
provide roughly 2200 calories and are dropped from around 10,000 feet 
with a parachute like device attached to prevent injury when they 
land.  Bill Walker, Peter Trei and Danny Yee below have the best 
commentary.]

From: WalkerBill@aol.com
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 09:09:40 EDT
Subject: Re: US Food Aid Propaganda
To: <freematt@coil.com>

   yeah, what is 37,000 food packages? 20 tons? less than one 
planeload... meanwhile the food aid that was supporting 5 million 
Afghans is cut off.

###

Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 21:52:39 -0700
From: Phil Agre <pagre@alpha.oac.ucla.edu>
To: freematt@coil.com
Subject: Re:  US Food Aid Propaganda

i think one of the british articles mentioned the point.
at least i'd heard it somewhere in the last day. but another
possibility is they're telling the truth, and 37k packages
is simply the first installment

###
From: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@rsasecurity.com>
To: cypherpunks@lne.com, "'Matthew Gaylor'" <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: RE: US Food Aid Propaganda
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 10:16:59 -0400


This is one of those things where you can run the numbers.

      ...37500 meals dropped on Sunday. The packages don't
look like they weighed much more than a pound. Lets be very
generous, and say 1 kilo.

That's 37.5 metric tons in one night, max. Sounds like a lot?

According to the World Food Program website (www.wfp.org),
the UN is trying to truck in 52,000 tons a month. Assuming a
30 day month, that's 1733 tons/day.

The US bombing shut down the UN aid delivery for a few days,
(it's now going ahead again, even under fire, because the
need is so critical).

The US airdrops replaced, at the very maximum, less then
2.5% of the food whose delivery was prevented by the
bombing.

I'm reminded of the recent corporate ad from RJ Reynolds,
where they made of deal of delivering some amount (less
then 10 tons, I think) or aid to Kosovo. That amounted to
a single truckload. They then spent many times the cost
of the aid on airtime to trumpet their humanitarian efforts.

Peter Trei

###

Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 22:53:09 -0700
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
From: David Theroux <DTheroux@independent.org>
Subject: Re: US Food Aid Propaganda

Dear Matt,

Great for you to point out this important aspect of the U.S. war campaign.

Considering the altitude at which these drops are being made on 
pallets, the further question is whether such drops might actually be 
viewed by the Afghani people as the U.S. dumping garbage since that 
is likely what the cargo will be upon impact.

Best regards,

David

David J. Theroux
Founder and President
The Independent Institute
100 Swan Way
Oakland, CA 94621-1428
510-632-1366 Phone
510-568-6040 Fax
DTheroux@independent.org
http://www.independent.org

###

Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 01:27:12 -0500
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
From: "Leon F." <leonf@perspicuity.net>
Subject: Re: US Food Aid Propaganda

Why has the news media not noticed that a similar program is not 
available to Iraq? I thought we were starving the Iraq citizens in 
order to inspire them to throw out their worthless leader. I'm very 
confused now.

Leon Felkins

###

Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 02:29:14 -0400
Subject: Matt, this is unfair>  Re: US Food Aid Propaganda
From: Dwight Hines <dwighthines@mindspring.com>
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>

This is lowballing.  Look at how the folks gave time and money and supplies
to the people and their families who were wiped out in NYC.   That was not
propaganda.

Look at what is planned, not just by Bush and Blair, but Chretien, and
others, to help rebuild, including lots and lots of food (like 8 million
tons to move in as soon as it is stable there).  The food drop is obviously
of psyops value, but at 4 bucks a package, plus transport costs, it is a far
cry from leaflets and radio announcements.

Just to be fair, put it into context of what the USA did for Japan when
McArthur said send me bread or send me rifles.  We sent lots of bread, as
well as medical and construction crews.

dh

###

Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 16:47:47 +1000
From: Danny Yee <danny@staff.cs.usyd.edu.au>
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Cc: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: Re: US Food Aid Propaganda
Mail-Followup-To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>,


Air drops of food aid are a resort of last desperation; most of it will
never be found or used.  So dropping 40 000 food packages is definitely
just a media stunt -- I can't see it having any real effect at all on
the Afghan population it's supposed to be feeding.

Danny.



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