A quick glance at various stories that seemed to slide by over the last few days would suggest that we are not. By “we” I mean more than the usual suspects in this worst of all administrations. I also mean all the rest of us, from corrections officers in the US to poachers in Congo.
In the US, we are going to wreck the bi-partisan anti-proliferation policy of the last three decades, start closing our eyes in space, keep letting the rich get richer while shackling imprisoned women during childbirth.
In the Congo, we are eating our closest cousins to extinction.
To top it all off, a cabbie suggested to me that if the only way to contain bird flu was to kill all the birds then we should do it.
Links and excepts below the fold.
Wreck the anti-proliferation policy. link.
Presidents from both parties — from Richard Nixon through Bill Clinton — had refused to make this deal, which India has wanted for more than three decades.
“It’s a terrible deal, a disaster,” said Joseph Cirincione, the director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment. “The Indians are free to make as much nuclear material as they want. Meanwhile, we’re going to sell them fuel for their civilian reactors. That frees up their resources for the military side, and that stinks.”
Closing our eyes in space. link
Budget cuts and poor management may be jeopardizing the future of our eyes in orbit — America’s fleet of environmental satellites, vital tools for forecasting hurricanes, protecting water supplies and predicting global warming.
Rich get richer. Worth reading the rest if you can find it. Krugman is always great. link
Between 1979 and 2003, according to a recent research paper published by the I.R.S., the share of overall income received by the bottom 80 percent of taxpayers fell from 50 percent to barely over 40 percent. The main winners from this upward redistribution of income were a tiny, wealthy elite: more than half the income share lost by the bottom 80 percent was gained by just one-fourth of 1 percent of the population, people with incomes of at least $750,000 in 2003.
Shackled childbirth. link
America regards itself as an eminently civilized country, but in many states female prisoners who give birth are required to be held in shackles during labor. Besides being grotesquely inhumane, this appalling practice is medically dangerous.
Eating our cousins. link
As few as 5,000 may now remain in Congo, down from an estimated 100,000 in 1984, said Ino Guabini, a primatologist with the World Wildlife Fund.
snip
But for poor villagers, bonobos can be lucrative business, with much of the meat heading for expensive, clandestine meals at restaurants in the cities.
One bonobo can earn $200 for Richard Ipaka, a 50-year-old part-time poacher who lives in the provincial capital, Mbandaka.
“That’s enough money for two months,” he said.
Like many Congolese, he said he did not know bonobos are found in the wild only in his country. And like many others, he was skeptical that the ape is endangered.
“Our ancestors have been eating bonobos for centuries. How could they disappear?” Ipaka said.
But the peace-loving bonobos are increasingly difficult to sight, and not just because they’re good at hiding, suspended from the high branches of trees or swiftly traversing the lattice of thick, muddy roots strewn over the forest floor.
Even though it is a silly AP article entitled “‘Hippie Chimps’ Fast Dissappearing” you should read it all and much more. The really sad thing about losing the bonobos is that they, at least, have found a non-violent way to live. Some people have suggested that we are so close to chimpanzees that we should be reclassified as Pan Sapiens. It is the “sapiens” part that I always have trouble with.
Sorry to use Times Select sources but Krugman et al deserve to be read even behind a wall –
