ROME – The U.S. State Department announced it was moving quickly to rush emergency aid to Italy in the wake of that country’s devastating 6.3-magnitude earthquake about 60 miles east of Rome. State Department spokesman Robert Wood confirmed the U.S. had presented Italy with $50,000 earlier today.

“Because of the urgency of this matter, we had to move fast,” said
Wood. “But we still managed to put some careful thought into it. As it
turns out, Italy has the seventh-largest GDP output in the world,
compared to say, Indonesia, which is only ranked 20th.

There are many earthquake-prone regions in Italy

“Naturally, we want to make our foreign policy conform with the
socialist agenda we’ve adopted at home, so we had to adjust our aid to Italy by removing a substantial success penalty from our base
allocation. It’s all part of our plan to reward failure and punish
success.”

Wood also pointed out that Italy is largely pro-Western, Christian and
generally supports the United States’ foreign policy efforts in Iraq,
Afghanistan and elsewhere. “Contrast that with Indonesia, for
example,” he continued. “Indonesia is teeming with millions of
disenfranchised Islamic youth who dream every day of seeing the
imperialist pigs – that would be us – brought to ruin within their
lifetimes. I don’t think I can make it any clearer why Italy should
receive only a fraction of the aid we offered Indonesia after their
own 6.3-magnitude quake back in 2006.”

“It’s all about the winning of hearts and minds,” he added. “We’ve won the hearts and minds of Western Europe, so why pay them?”

The U.S. provided at least $5 million in aid after the Indonesian
earthquake in 2006, in which about 6,000 died and 36,000 were injured.

“Broken down into unit costs per victim, the U.S. aid to Indonesia
translated to $119.05, and to Italy it comes to $30.67. That 288%
premium for exotic anti-American lives vs. boring old pro-American
lives sounds about right on course for this administration,” noted
Boning Barker, chief largesse analyst for Calyon, a corporate and
investment banking leviathan based in London.

Although Wood wouldn’t confirm the exact method of computing the
premium, he acknowledged the numbers “pretty much reflect our formula going in,” adding that Western countries could still qualify for big U.S. payouts. “If it were a country with more volatility, more poverty – preferably both with a strong dash of anti-Americanism – you’d see more robust numbers – maybe an Albania, maybe a Moldova, maybe even a Turkey,” he added.

Originally posted 2009-04-06 21:26:01. Republished by Blog Post Promoter