They're Just Evil

washingtonpost.com: U.S. May Expand Access To Endangered Species: "U.S. May Expand Access To Endangered Species

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 11, 2003; Page A01


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 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 habitat.

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 trade in African ivory. No U.S. endangered species would be affected.

Conservationists think it's a bad idea. 'It's a very dangerous precedent to decide that wildlife exploitation is in the best interest of wildlife,' said Adam Roberts, a senior research associate at the nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute, an advocacy group for endangered species.

Killing or capturing even a few animals is hardly the best way to protect endangered species, conservationists say. Many charge that the policies cater to individuals and businesses that profit from animal exploitation.
"

Mind Blowing

remember the Iraqi Information Ministry? The Guardian is reporting:

"They are not the only apparatchiks deemed worthy of rehabilitation. Almost all of the bureaucrats at the information ministry have done very nicely for themselves since the war. The government minders who spent their days reporting to the intelligence services on foreign reporters or doing their best to obstruct their work have gone on to well-paid jobs - for the same foreign news organisations they once hounded.

The second-in-command at the information ministry, who spent his days reading the reports the minders wrote about visiting foreign journalists, has been employed by Fox News. "

Fox news. Figures.

Huh?

After hearing about the White House's PR offensive to "report" the good news about all we're doing for Iraq, I had this strange flow of inof this morning:

ABC News reporting on the Red Sox win: "Comming up, the war in Iraq seems to be going the way of the Red Sox!"

1 minute letter, I turn of the TV and turn on NPR to hear that a suicide bomber killed 8 in Baghdad.

Did the Red Sox win by sending an explosive-laden Manny Ramirez diving into the Yankee's dugout? If not, what's up with ABC reading the White Houses' press releases? Pretty common, sadly.