Privately Americans gave $241 billion to charity, with roughly a 10th of it going overseas. Microsoft’s Bill Gates has given billions for disease relief in the developing world. Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, set up a Web site to invite worldwide input on how to give away his $10 billion fortune. America’s openness lets the world’s poor earn money here and then send it home. In many poor countries (e.g., Mexico, India and the Philippines), foreign aid is dwarfed by remittances sent from family members working in America.

That’s money, some roughly $18 billion a year from the United States — that goes directly to households that need it, from somebody who directly understands their needs. It doesn’t flow through government hands, subject to rake-offs and politically inspired diversions to worthless projects.

The obsession with redistributing wealth misses the importance of creating it. The countries that prosper are those that want investment, not giveaways. Afghanistan’s, Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani recently said the best things that could happen in his country would be for Western multinationals to begin investing in the region. “Trade, not aid,” is a slogan adopted universally in the last few years by emerging democratic governments in the developing world. Trade tends to start the “virtuous cycle” of job opportunities, education and upward mobility in ways the pork-barrel aid has largely failed to achieve.

Collin Levey of the N.Y. Post points out, “Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries on earth and hard hit in the latest disaster. Last year, it had to fork over roughly $300 million in tariffs for the privilege of making clothes for Americans and selling them here. Agriculture and textiles are traditionally the first rungs on the trade ladder. Yet to protect labor unions and farmers in America and Europe, we destroy these opportunities with various domestic subsidies and import quotas. This is an abomination, helping to keep countries poor and therefore more vulnerable to disasters like last weekend’s tsunami than they would otherwise be.”

The Vatican in its newspaper yesterday mistakenly scolded Israel for not offering aid to Sri Lanka when in fact the anti-Semites in the island nation refused entry to the Israeli aid delegation. In the language it used to issue its judgment on the only nation in Southwest Asia that allows Christians unfettered religious freedom, the Vatican revealed a bias that calls into question Pope John Paul II’s famous outreach to Jews.

The official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, denounced what it called a decision by the Israel Defense Forces to deny emergency help to disaster victims in Sri Lanka. The publication calls for “a radical and dramatic change of perspective” among people “too often preoccupied with making war.”

However, contrary to the Vatican report, the Israelis were all too anxious to assist the victims of the tsunami. An Israeli plane carrying 80 tons of food and medical supplies worth $100,000 was set to depart for Sri Lanka yesterday morning – but Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry denied entry to 150 Israeli medical and security personnel that planned to render assistance to the victims. Israel sent the food and medicine despite the insult.

Oops! I guess the Vatican doesn’t take its mission to provide the truth to the world too seriously these days. As Ed Morrissey at CaptainsQuartersBlog states,

“It’s yet another shortsighted and pointless example of anti-Semitism that hurts the haters more than it could ever hurt the Jews bearing the aid the Sri Lankans need. It didn’t take much for the official newspaper of the Catholic Church to judge Israelis as a group as warmongers who lack the heart and decency to assist the needy. This reaction plays dangerously close to the stereotypes of Jews that have passed through the centuries as stingy, greedy miscreants who work to undermine civilization – stereotypes that the Catholic Church, unfortunately, helped to fan for centuries.”

Time rolls on, centuries pass but the hateful stereotype still exists in Rome. Pre-Occupied with making war??? If terrorists were attacking the Vatican maybe the rich and fancy lifestyle would end and the affuent of the church would be more pre-occupied with saving their skin. Oh! I forgot. Pope Pious XII turned the other way while Hitler was busy exterminating Jews. It’s apparent anti-Semitism runs deep in Rome as well as the rest of Europe. Some things never change!

Move over Jane Fonda and John Kerry…..Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General for President Johnson (who brought us the Vietnam War), is on the Saddam Hussein Defense team. The quote today sums up years of “anti-war” rhetoric from the left.

“This is the illogic that animated a significant segment of the anti-war leader ship. They think America’s elected leaders are guilty of war crimes, but that Saddam Hussein – the dictator who invaded Kuwait, gassed the Kurds, massacred the Iraqi Shiites, and dealt with his political opponents by feeding them into wood-chippers and raping their wives – is innocent.”