World Affairs


Photos, Videos and More Photos

Steve Verdon asks:

A video was released on a militant islamic websitie supposedly showing the beheading of an American.
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Now for those who are clamoring for the full disclosure of all the pictures and videos of the Iraqi prisoners…do you favor releasing this video? If not, how do you explain your hypocrisy?

As one who advocates full disclosure at all levels of government I’d be happy to answer.
Yes, release the video. And, release pictures of the coffins both leaving Iraq and arriving home; release pictures of the dead and wounded in situ (be they American, British, Iraqi, or other); release pictures of everything.


Who Is to Blame?

For you being overweight?
Too many would like to foist the blame on corporations and governments. For example:

This Westernization — in some circles, Americanization — of the global culinary landscape no doubt contributed to the fattening of the world. But many obesity experts say it’s hard to know where to place the blame.
“What we’re looking at is not solely an American phenomenon, but a transnational corporation phenomenon,” Rigby said.

Rigby is policy director for the International Obesity Task Force.
Then there is this:

Choice also applies to foreign governments, which Paul Zimmet, director of the International Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, said have played an equal role in allowing poor diets to become a health crisis.
Governments haven’t done enough to make healthy foods affordable and physical fitness accessible, he said.

Just when did these things become governmental functions?
Zombyboy places the focus right where it belongs:

It is much easier to blame international corporations and America instead of focusing responsibility on the choices individuals make, though. It also takes responsibility for the effects of choices away from those individuals–instead of changing lifestyles and making hard choices, there’s a possible payday from the latest round of lawsuits against the people selling the food.
Eating healthy and getting exercise aren’t things that are forced on us, they are simple choices that we make on a daily basis. That many of us tend to make those choices poorly is not an indictment of an industry or a nation, it’s an indictment against us.

Folks, put the fork down and take a walk!


End the Dole

I’m not a big fan of the WTO. Amongst other issues I have the WTO seems to operate behind a mask of secrecy that might even make the bush administration blush. However, there may be some positives:

When the US government gives away some $4 billion to American cotton farmers in return for a crop that’s valued at only $3 billion, something’s amiss.

And cotton subsidies are just a portion of the $19 billion that the federal government pays to boost US agriculture and its exports each year.
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This week, the Geneva-based World Trade Organization made a preliminary ruling that the United States must end cotton subsidies because they distort global trade.
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The WTO, which the US helped create as a way for consumers to benefit from open markets, has dealt a blow to the biggest stumbling block to expanded trade. Governments in rich nations need to use this ruling to persuade domestic farm lobbies that they can no longer delay the inevitable: no subsidies, only free competition.

It should not need WTO rulings to help persuade farm lobbies that the time for subsidies have ended. The people funding the subsidies should just say no!
Yep, that’s you and me paying these subsidies via taxes.
Update (4/29): Jane Galt has some good words about this ruling.


Freedom’s Just Another Word

In his remarks at the Republican National Committee Presidential Gala on October 8, 2003 bush says:

But the war on terror is more than just chasing down the killers or holding tyrants to account. The war on terror — our security comes in the war on terror from the spread of human liberty. (Applause.) See, free nations do not develop weapons of mass destruction. (Emphasis added) Free nations do not intimidate their neighbors. Free nations are peaceful nations.

bush claims to mean what he says so just how does he explain this:

Yet the Department of Energy is spending an astonishing $6.5 billion on nuclear weapons this year, and President Bush is requesting $6.8 billion more for next year and a total of $30 billion over the following four years. This does not include his much-cherished missile-defense program, by the way. This is simply for the maintenance, modernization, development, and production of nuclear bombs and warheads.

I still looking for definitions of “free” and “weapons of mass destruction” that eliminate the dissonance.
bush quote found via Dubya Speak and the Slate article is via Niall Kennedy.