no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics

Category Archives: World Politics

We Don’t Need Celebrities or Politicians Telling Us to Donate to Haitie

January 21st, 2010

On the radio the other day, some of the talk jockeys were complaining about Haiti. They were literally saying things like, “I’m already sick of seeing commercials asking for donations of aid to Haiti” and “Why should we be giving aid to these foreign countries when we can’t take care of our own? There are starving and homeless people in America and people without health care and …” I understand that their job is to stir up controversy so people call-in and listen and they can sell advertising and such, but it was purely nonsensical.

And so on. You get the drift. I agree that it’s very disingenuous for millionaire celebrities to come on TV or radio and starting pimping for donations when they’re not doing a damn thing themselves (some of them are, some of them aren’t) and I’ll be the first person to take the side of complaints raised against the government doling out taxpayer money (isn’t it all taxpayer money?) for foreign aid*. Every time there is some major calamity in the world, like the tsunami in 2004 or the hurricanes in 2005 or earthquakes or whatever, Americans give in spades. And celebrity marketing, give me a freaking break.

Could we give more? Probably. In my estimation, the biggest impediment to charitable giving in the U.S. is the already onerous tax rates, which the government uses ostensibly to provide the citizens with things they would otherwise provide for themselves. Like health care. Insurance. Food. Housing. Education. The list is endless.  If we don’t give “enough” it’s clearly not because we’re greedy and selfish.

I don’t want “my” government donating to the rest of the world. I don’t want “my” government spending money on anything. Truth. But that’s not the argument they were making.

What I really took issue with on this fine radio program was the spirit of their argument. The douche-nozzles were seriously equating a “poor” American (who probably has cable TV and air conditioning and eats fast food, etc.) with third-world Haitians who have lived their entire lives under brutal political regimes and civil war and who have now suffered the wrath of nature, and suggesting that as Americans, we have no business giving money to destitute brown people in third world countries as long as there are Americans who can’t buy luxury items.

No matter how shitty you think life is in America, it’s way f*cking worse for a pretty substantial proportion of the rest of the world.


*The U.S. government probably spends more money on foreign aid already than does the entire rest of the world combined. And on top of all that, Americans pay more than $1 Trillion to charitable organizations every year — more than the US government collects in income taxes.

Climate Scandal: Story of the Century, Ignored by Mainstream News

November 30th, 2009

Today these are all front page news stories: Tiger Woods crashed his car, rumored to be be cheating on his wife. The daughter of a former president is engaged to be married. Black people are disproportionately impacted by the current economic depression. Dubai World is bankrupt. Obama vows to continue war in Afghanistan. Some guy shot and killed a few cops near Seattle.

news front page stories, November 30, 2009

But all of the news outlets are ignoring* the story of the century.

Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

Which is enough, in itself, to cast doubt on every single conclusion drawn from these data. It means there is no way to test them. No way to validate or invalidate them. It doesn’t mean that the conclusions are wrong, it means that we have no evidence to suggest that the conclusions are right. Coupled with the thousands of leaked e-mail correspondences released last week, I think there’s a good case to be made that the researchers were involved in deliberate misrepresentation of their findings.

“Climategate” (did I mention I hate the use of ‘-gate’ as a suffix?) should be the story of the century. One comment at the Times explains:

this global warming email disclosure, and now the incredible loss of raw data relating to science about the alleged destruction of the earth…. should be one of the biggest stories of the last 100 years, bigger than the Pentagon Papers or Watergate or any other…because the entire world was being manipulated into action based on the premise that the world might come to an end on science that was supposed to be unimpeachable

For twenty years or more, the entire world has been duped into action based on faulty, flawed, incomplete, exaggerated or untestable “science”. Governments have enacted policies to combat the “effects” of a phenomena the existence of which has never been proven, and the validity of which has just been destroyed.

But nobody’s talking about it.  They don’t need censorship, just misdirection, distractions.

*In fairness, this story was mentioned on the Fox News homepage. But it was buried, as they say in the print industryy, well “below the fold”.

Pax Obama: War is Peace

October 9th, 2009

The news lines are buzzing with reports that Obama was just handed the Nobel Peace Prize.  Seriously.  This is not a joke.  The accomplishment worthy of Nobel, according to the Prize Committe, is “Diplomacy” lolwut?  The full citation from the Nobel committee includes such gems as:

Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations.

There is nothing exceptional or extraordinary about a Statesman practicing “diplomacy”. So it seems that Obama has been literally handed the Nobel Peace Prize for the singular virtue of not being George W. Bush.

Since the deadline for nominations was only about two weeks after Obama took office earlier this year, we can surmise that he was nominated based on what he was trying to do.  Up until that point, (other than order drone missile attacks on some goat-herders in rural Pakistan) he hadn’t done a goddamn thing.  Never you mind, though.

Thorbjorn Jagland, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee and a former prime minister of Norway, said the president had already contributed enough to world diplomacy and international understanding to earn the award.

“We are not awarding the prize for what may happen in the future, but for what he has done in the previous year. We would hope this will enhance what he is trying to do.” [NYT]

With no respect due this mockery, Mr. Jagland’s two sentences here are at odds with one another, and with reality. Let’s consider Obama’s record.  During the course of the past nine months, Obama has presided over the following reality:

  1. Afghanistan has not been liberated after nine years of U.S. intervention (with no end in sight).
  2. Obama’s “diplomacy” involves giving Afghanistan back to the Taliban.
  3. Obama has been escalating American commitment in Afghanistan, and today, the morning on which his Peace Prize is announced, he is scheduled to commit another 40,000 soldiers to that godforsaken quagmire.
  4. Approximately 3,000 civilians have been killed by U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan between February and August, 2009.
  5. Obama has increased the number of drone missile attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan; ordering his very first murders via drone attack in Pakistan, a mere three days after assuming the Presidency. 
  6. Obama protects war criminals, sanctioning war crimes and violating the Geneva Convention rules.
  7. The U.S. still maintains and staffs approximately 700 military bases throughout the world. [wiki]

This is by no means an all-inclusive list of actions and records, any one of which I would think, ought to remove one from consideration for any prize named after peace.  Welcome to 1984.

no third solution

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