{"id":184653,"date":"2012-02-23T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-24T00:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/02\/23\/we-are-a-nation-of-fing-ingrates\/"},"modified":"2012-02-23T19:30:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-24T00:30:00","slug":"we-are-a-nation-of-fing-ingrates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/02\/23\/we-are-a-nation-of-fing-ingrates\/","title":{"rendered":"We Are a Nation of F%$#ing Ingrates"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the latest episode of this, we have farmers complaining because the Iraqi people have decided not to buy their overpriced rice<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The talk of the day among Ray Stoesser and other rice farmers is Iraq’s decision not to buy U.S. rice, a stinging move that adds to a stressful year punctuated by everything from drought to unusual heat.<\/p>\n

Stoesser and other farmers know Iraqis struggled during the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation. They know most countries , and people , buy based on price.<\/p>\n

But at the moment, with production costs rising, export markets shrinking and rice prices dropping, it’s difficult to be rational and suppress emotions so intimately intertwined with their land and livelihood.<\/p>\n

“That’s just not right,” the 63-year-old Stoesser fumed. “If we’ve got some rice to sell, they ought to pay a premium for it just because this is the country that freed them.”<\/p>\n

Iraq imports most of its rice, about 1 million metric tons per year, making it a significant player in the global market. In the past decade, about 10 percent to 15 percent of that total came from the United States. But Iraq hasn’t bought any U.S. rice since late 2010.<\/p>\n

“You would think with all that we’ve done over there, there would be a way to get them to do business with us,” said Ronald Gertson, who grows rice in Lissie, Texas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, we invade their country, setting off massive ethnic cleansing, a collapse of their infrastructure, a retreat to reactionary religious oppression, daily violence, and a political leadership who take their orders from Tehran.<\/p>\n

And that’s ignoring the fact that we caused over 100,000 deaths, and over a million refugees.<\/p>\n

And they are supposed to be grateful<\/b> that we broke<\/b> their country and are in the process of stealing their oil?<\/p>\n

What the f%$# is wrong with these farmers?<\/p>\n

H\/t Atrios<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the latest episode of this, we have farmers complaining because the Iraqi people have decided not to buy their overpriced rice: The talk of the day among Ray Stoesser and other rice farmers is Iraq’s decision not to buy U.S. rice, a stinging move that adds to a stressful year punctuated by everything from …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1029,1063,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-iraq","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}