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| September 2003 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ISSUE #54 - 14th September 2003 [133+301=434]
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The WTO and Pernicious Agricultural Subsidies The spectacle of people protesting, and often rioting, wherever leaders from Western governments gather has become a regular spectacle. Right now, it's the turn of the World Trade Organization, comprising 146 rich and poor member countries plus 30 observer countries. The WTO is meeting in the Mexican holiday resort of Cancun. This is part of the round of trade negotiations that began in Doha in 2001, named the “development round” because it is meant to focus on helping developing countries, unlike the previous Uruguay round. If that is the genuine goal of delegates, in particular from the richer parts of the world, and if at the same time they want to increase the wealth and health of the folks back home, there is but one area to attack. Agriculture. The EU pays its farmers a subsidy of $2 a day for each cow in Europe. Yet as World Bank boss John Wolfensohn recently remarked, more than 2.7 billion people in the developing-world have to live on this figure or less and they face a mountain of trade barriers that keep them poor. Agriculture alone constitutes a double-barrier.
And it isn't just the developing-world producers who suffer twice. So do rich-world consumers.
What the rich-world gives developing countries in aid is only one-sixth of the $300 billion they give their own farmers in subsidies. So imagine the burst in wealth across the globe if, for example, all subsidies were eliminated and aid from the rich-world were, for example, trebled. Or indeed reduced to zero. As for those rich-world farmers and other agricultural workers unable to compete in the new, open marketplace, there will still be billions left over to retrain them into other, profitable pursuits. Subsidies in support of commercial production of any sort are intrinsically wicked. They are paid to enterprises and individuals who are by definition unsuccessful, and there is no other way to fund them than by taxing enterprises and individuals who are profitable. In other words,
The net result, every time, is, if not wealth reduction, then a brake on wealth creation. That is why it is incompatible to campaign against third-world poverty and against globalisation. Globalisation - meaning free, open markets, whereby any willing seller can freely sell anything to any willing buyer at any price, without subsidy or tariff - is the solution to poverty. People - and governments - have no right to insert themselves, as they currently do, between the willing buyer and the willing seller in order to remove money. It is curious and contradictory, therefore, that demonstrators will protest
And sometimes the same individuals will protest against all four simultaneously. Nevertheless, if the WTO meeting results in even a minor reduction in existing agricultural subsidies, it will rightly be seen as a resounding success in terms of boosting, instead of constricting, the prosperity of developing-world and rich-world alike. Moreover, even a minor reduction would set the precedent for meatier reductions in the future. Have a look at the KickAAS campaign - Kick All Agricultural Subsidies - launched last month by the Guardian.
Nine-Eleven Remembered with Hatred
Is there no end to French glee and depravity ? Mind you, it may have been inspired by the New York Times' editorial on September 11th which begins, “Death came from the skies. A building — a symbol of the nation — collapsed in flames in an act of terror that would lead to the deaths of 3,000 people. It was Sept. 11. But the year was 1973, the building Chile's White House, La Moneda, and the event a coup staged by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.” On September 12th, Blog-Irish made a devastating review of hatred and resentment of America in the wake of nine-eleven, in the Irish media in particular. This merited a mention from Andrew Sullivan, which generated something of a blogstorm. The widespread scorn of what seems to be a majority of Irish men and women towards the US is a constant source of bemusement to me. If there is one country you would think Ireland would admire,
it is America. Meanwhile, if you want to be reminded of just what Le Monde and others are making light of, take a look at these photos of real (though no longer live) people leaning and jumping out of windows on September 11th 2001. Let us never forget.
Last week the Daily Telegraph started a BeebWatch service to illustrate the left-wing bias of the State-owned BBC, funded by an hypothecated tax of £116 a year called the licence fee. The BBC's mental assumptions are those of the fairly soft Left -
(Actually, this is not a bad shopping list against which to measure comment within the media in general - ie how Leftward or Rightward it is.) BBC leftish bias is undeniable and has for some time been regularly monitored by bloggers and others. There are even websites dedicated to monitoring BBC bias. Similarly, there are campaigns to put a stop to the licence fee in this age of multiple channels, most notably by Sunday Times journalist Jonathan Miller who claims it breaches his human rights (yes, really). Then has come the exposure by the Lord Hutton Enquiry of the disgraceful reportage of Andrew Gilligan and the support he has received from the BBC's governors. With all this, surely the demise of the BBC in its current form must be imminent. Unless there is a total and obvious and immediate change of behaviour and culture within the BBC (almost inconceivable), my money will be on a privatisation announcement by the end of this year. This would look like the British Government's most elegant way -
Many years ago, when I lived in Nigeria, I was once pulled over in Lagos by a large and very irate traffic cop. “What colour am I ?” he demanded. I stammered in embarrassment, and mumbled something like, “Black” or “Dark Brown”. “No I am not,” he cried, without a hint of humour. “When I am like this” - and he raised his right palm above his head - “I am red”. And then, waving his palm backwards over his shoulder, he added, “and when I am like this I am green.” “Do not drive past me again when I am red.” ***** We all have different personalities but (based on work by a Dr Carl Gustav Jung in the 1920s)
they can apparently be accuratley expressed in just
four colours - red,
green, blue
and yellow
- or combinations of them.
You can find out your own colour(s) by taking a simple quiz, which will also provide you with a thumbnail sketch of your personality. It's fun, but you will be astonished (and perhaps a little uncomfortable) at how close it is to the truth. The quiz was developed so that people would not only learn about their own personalities, but, by wearing a badge containing their colours they would let each other. This should make it easier to work together. To do the quiz, click here.
What is it about New Yorkers and boxes lately ?
Then there's New Yorker Charles McKinley whose
idea of a holiday is to pack himself into a wooden
box, put an address on it, call the Hardship is a function of the size of the box (bigger is easier) and length of stay (shorter is easier). On this basis, David's stunt scores 3.3 cubic feet per day which is more than twice as tough as Michael's 7.5. Still, they're both crazy, and David thinks he'll get a lot crazier before his 44 days are up on 19th October. As he said, “The first three weeks of this I am pretty sure I can handle. It is the last three that are going to be insane.”
I was intrigued by last week's news that “Lucky” Lord Lucan, who faked his own death and disappeared in 1974 after murdering his nanny, lived out his life in comfort in Goa under the pseudonym Barry Halpin. A new book, “Dead Lucky - Lord Lucan : the Final Truth” has revealed that he became quite a musician, if not a mystic, amusing the local Indians and visitors from 1991 until his death in 1996. Photographs of the original Lord Lucan and of the mystic appear on the cover, and the author notes the “distinctive aristocratic forehead” on each. Not
so, cry others. The man with the wispy beard is actually the real
Barry Halpin, musician, storyteller and Good-Time Charlie of the 1960s
folk revival in Liverpool, Manchester, who went to live in India in
1968. Clearly Lord Lucan the musician was very busy after his original fake death in 1974, for Barry Halpin was not his first reincarnation followed by faked death. It was, in fact, his second reincarnation and third faked death.
But look at those three distinctive aristocratic foreheads. Photographs don't lie !
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Quote : “All revolutions have succeeded around the world, except for the Palestinian revolution, because it is led by you”. Nasser Yousef, to his long-term patron Yasser Arafat,
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ISSUE #53 - 7th September 2003 [147]
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The Dilemmas of Anti-Abortionism
Nevertheless the Paul Hill case highlights a difficult dilemma. Not the execution, which is pretty straightforward in the US. You murder, you die. And if your local governor is Florida's Jeb, brother of Texas executionist Dubya, don't expect a last-minute reprieve. But what should you do if you genuinely believe - as most anti-abortionists surely do - that abortion is the premeditated killing of human individuals, albeit unborn, and that this is an intrinsically evil act ? As Edmund Burke famously remarked, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing”. Paul Hill reckoned that for him to do nothing was to allow the evil killings of babies to triumph, and so he murdered the abortionist John Britton and his bodyguard.
In a democratic society we have abrogated the individual's right to violence to the State's civil authorities, who exercise it on a monopoly basis via the national police (for internal matters) and army (external matters). But people tend to take the law into their own hands when the State's organs of violence fail or are perceived to fail, or people think they will fail. Such failures, real or imagined, are due to either
In the case of Paul Hill, you could argue that his vigilantism arose as a result of the State's unwillingness to stop abortions (because they are not illegal). The peaceful alternative for anti-abortionists such as he, is to campaign to change the law and desist from violent action pending a satisfactory outcome. But this is to allow the “baby-killing” to continue while you continue with your gentlemanly discourse over the merits of outlawing abortion. You can see the lack of appeal. Yet only a fool can seriously think that the slaughter of doctors who conduct abortions will result in the overturning of abortion laws in a free, democratic country. Paul Hill was just such a fool. Of all the civil issues that divide Western democratic societies, nothing is so directly related to life and death. And none generates such emotion and temptation to violence. It is almost impossible to see rational and satisfactory answers to the abortion conundrum. On another front, the anti-capital-punishment movement found it hard to mobilise demonstrators outside Florida State Prison in the usual large numbers to protest against Paul Hill's execution by lethal injection. Just fifty showed up, and they dispersed quickly. Apart from the anti-abortionists, the objectors objected mainly on grounds that Hill's execution might spawn further attacks on abortion-doctors rather than against capital punishment per se. Moreover, the media did not devote their usual attention to the the anti-death-penalty cause. This highlights another strange paradox.
People who are opposed to killing babies and adults seem to be in short supply. I am one.
Someone who read last week's leading post, “Chopping Bits Off Babies” reminded me that until recent years there has been another barbaric procedure - as heinous an assault on the person as male circumcision, female genital mutilation and infant oral mutilation - practiced here in Ireland upon women, without their prior consent or even knowledge, and for primarily religious reasons. Symphysiotomy is a surgical operation in which the pubic bone is sawn apart and then re-set so as to dramatically increase the size of the pelvic outlet to permit delivery of a baby. It is an alternative to a Caesarian section, but frequently results in dreadful after-effects, such as
Between 1950 and 1983, up to a thousand such operations were conducted on women in Irish maternity hospitals, when in the vast majority of cases the baby could have been safely delivered by Caesarian section. The medical need for a symphysiotomy is very rare. The Irish obstetricians' (perverted) reasoning for embracing the procedure so enthusiastically was as follows.
Those holy Catholic doctors therefore performed symphysiotomies simply to remove the enticement to sin. And they told their patients neither that they were going to do it nor that they had done it. Nor did they bother to warn them about the awful side-effects that could follow. Many women, after suffering from these for 40 years, are only now learning the reason for their perpetual poor health. Ireland, long the most Catholic nation in Europe, was unique among European countries in terms of the number of procedures carried out. Unwarranted symphysiotomy is as brutal as the other three forms of coerced mutilation carried out solely for reasons of religion or tradition. Though symphysiotomy is not banned, the medical profession nowadays has been shamed into adopting it only when medically necessary and with the informed consent of the woman. Sorry the same can't be said for circumcision, FGM and IOM.
As Britain's Hutton enquiry into the tragic suicide of weapons expert Dr David Kelly progresses, a fairly mundane picture of events seems to be emerging.
Frankly, nearly everyone seems to come out of this rather creditably; they simply did their jobs professionally. Andrew Gilligan is the exception because he clearly misbehaved, and the BBC Governors made a grave mistake in backing him. No doubt these events will end both his career and that of Gavyn Davies, Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors. Mr Hoon is probably also history for his buck-passing. But there was another major miscreant. It has emerged that Dr Kelly himself was constantly chattering to whichever reporter would listen to him, and there were many on both sides of the Atlantic. Part of his job was indeed to brief the Media, but in a controlled pre-agreed fashion. He regularly went way beyond this,
To that extent, Dr Kelly brought himself into disrepute, and when he was found out, he was sadly unable to deal with the consequences. But do not expect the Hutton report to say as much. Criticising Dr Kelly has become taboo. He has become something of a sainted martyr. He was not.
Last week I illustrated how some Irish charities, notably Trócaire and Concern, are not to be trusted because of the amount of energy, and thus donors' funds, they devote to political matters, including the defense of kleptocratic regimes such as Uganda's and to dishonest anti-American behaviour. This has prompted Blog-Irish to do a devastating Fisking of Trócaire, its director Justin Kilcullen and its chairman John Kirby who is bishop of Clonfert. Called “Chronicle of a Pious Fraud”, it is long but a must-read. It shows that far from Trócaire trying to reform its behaviour to better reflect the charitable organization devoted to good works that most people think it is, it is irremediably political and partisan. Personally, I had no idea how deeply embedded are Trócaire's (loony left-wing) political activity and its vitriolic anti-Americanism, nor that the Irish government regularly gives it huge dollops of cash and expenses. Quite extraordinary. No wonder Trócaire slavishly adulates the same government's action such as the doubling of aid-money to Uganda. Anything to stay sweet with the guys holding the purse-strings. I say it again. Don't give money to Trócaire or Concern.
You have once again demonstrated your mastery in not only retaining power, but in ensuring that your personal power takes precedence over the well being of the Palestinian people whose interests you say you represent. When the prospect of peace and a future Palestine state threatened your personal power at Camp David in 2000 when Israel offered you 98% of the land you said you were seeking, you stormed out of the talks without making a single counter-offer. You then launched the intifada that has killed 3,000 of your own countrymen, while not advancing their cause one iota. When, under pressure from the UN, EU, US and Russia, you appointed as your Prime Minster Abu Mhazen, that great hope of the Palestinian people,
Abu Mahzen has resigned in disgust. Your personal position is secured. You have shown the world, once again, that you care not a whit for the Palestinian people.
Mike May, who is 49, was blinded aged 3 after an accident, but went on to lead a fulfilling and successful life. Married with two sons, his accomplishments while blind include
Then suddenly, new stem-cell technology arose which miraculously restored his sight in March 2000. “Holy Smokes” were his first words. His vision was - and remains - poor, but his biggest challenge has been for his brain to interpret the signals coming from his eyes, to understand what he is looking at. Using
a huge chunk of our brain, this is a massive computing task which we learn
as young children, and become unaware of. Mike has had to learn all
this as a grown man, and just as learning a language is much harder for
adults than children, so it is taking him a long time. He initially
took ten seconds to work out whether an upright shape was a
It's an uplifting story. You can read his bio here. But it's his guide-dog Josh I feel sorry for. He's now frequently left sitting at home or in the car.
Payfinder is a great site to generate personal discontent by comparing your pay with your peers in the UK. Though in my case, it is no surprise to learn that I am right in the middle of the average earners in the profession of blogging. My income ? Zero, just like everyone else. By the way, according to blogcensus.net, there are currently some 1.2 million blog sites out here in cyberspace,
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This cartoon is France's
tasteless commemoration of September 11th, from the
prestigious Le Monde, no less. 
Last
week, pro-lifer Paul Hill was executed by lethal injection. Much of
the media 