fighting for peace
Once during Mood I, IIT Bombay's* famed college festival (famed in India that is) I remember reading a graffiti that said 'Fighting for peace is like f*ing for virginity' and smiled. In true Orwellian fashion the Bush administration has repeatedly exhibited this twisted logic, and this latest one is simply astounding in its imbecility. In this October 4 article, the Tri-Valley Herald reports, (via Illruminations)

The Bush administration is proposing far-reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries.

Giving Americans access to endangered animals, officials said, would both feed the gigantic U.S. demand for live animals, skins, parts and trophies, and generate profits that would allow poor nations to pay for conservation of the remaining animals and their habitats.

This and other proposals that pursue conservation through trade would, for example, open the door for American trophy hunters to kill the endangered straight-horned markhor in Pakistan; license the pet industry to import the blue fronted Amazon parrot from Argentina; permit the capture of endangered Asian elephants for U.S. circuses and zoos; and partially resume the international trade in African ivory. No U.S. endangered species would be affected.

Richly in the tradition of unnecessary wars, this also brings back to mind an article on logging and forest fires. By the administration of a President who wrote this (yes, I just can't let go, will you just read it?) we have these justifications, from here,

Responding to the rash of wildfires that have swept the West this summer, President Bush wants to ease restrictions on logging in national forests.

Bush, on the eve of a visit to a fire site in Oregon, late yesterday proposed changes to environmental laws to make it easier for timber companies to get approval to thin out federal forests and remove fire-prone dead trees and undergrowth.

"Needless red tape and lawsuits delay effective implementation of forest health projects," said a White House fact sheet on the initiative. "This year's crisis compels more timely decisions, greater efficiency and better results to reduce catastrophic wildfire threats to communities and the environment."

Amazingly enough, they have the gall to name it the 'Healthy Forests Initiative'.
This is also the administration that modified the Clean Air Act into something dirty and called it the 'Clear Skies Initiative'. George Orwell may not have imagined Newspeak would ever so completely apply to an American administration.

* Mood I(ndigo) is the annual college festival of IIT Bombay, one of the world's finest engineering schools, and a shining star of India's otherwise very broken education system
posted by ubaid - Friday, October 24, 2003 at 12:52 AM - 0 comments - post anonymously