angela wrote
<<didn't someone mention clinton's (or was it blair's) attachment to genetically modified foods, etc>>
Yeah, they are both big boosters of genetically modified foods but Clinton has it fairly easy in the USA on this issue while Blair has been very much in the news because of the very wide opposition in the UK, which the tories are trying to capitalize upon.
<>
Wow! Did the invasion actually occur? Were the effects on the Australian ecosystem severe or was the invasion somehow repelled or at least coped with?
<<btw, what does the k stand for?>> Kelly
Paul Henry Rosenberg wrote
<<It's a bit hard for some folks to comprehend, since, for example, here in California one of our most characrteristic trees is the euclyptus, first imported from Australia in the 1850s. Most Californians would think it utterly silly to try to get rid of Eucalyptus. But the underlying principle is still important, regardless of some exceptions we may be quite fond of. >>
I see, the underlying principle is important, except for the examples of it which are utterly silly. And I guess that <<you don't have to be a biologist>> to know when to apply the principle and when to make exceptions if you belong to a Californian nature-loving organization.
<<Humans move things around very rapidly. This can lead to disasterous results. Kudzu, anyone? >>
And this can lead to very beneficial results. Penicillin, anyone? What's your point? That people should be more risk averse? Avoid messing with Mother Nature?
As Angela noted in her reply, "various govt. agencies also know that in order to get more funds they have to present their tasks in implicitly racist terms." And you said that
<<Of course you WILL find nativists who will try to make such connections, just as you found nativists trying to get the Sierra Club to become an anti- immigration organization. >>
But you, however, seem to think that pointing this out amounts to <<AGREEING with the simple-minded equivalences they draw>> Should we just let this sort of political language go unchallenged? Do you think it has no effect and can be safely ignored?
We seem to be agreed that the sort of things Monsanto is doing pose much greater potential threats than the problems being addressed by the three musketeers of Clinton's cabinet but you accuse me having an X-Files mentality and putting a paranoid gloss on the political project. The Clinton administration has shown itself , in the dispute over bananas, as willing to risk destabilizing the economies of much of the Caribbean and provoking an extremely destructive confrontation with the EU on behalf of Chiquita Brands. I am willing to entertain the thought that the administration may be just as wrong-headed in fronting for Monsanto. I may be wrong, but I don't think I'm delusional.
And BTW I don't agree that it is<<just plain silly>> to examine similarities in the consequences, whether inadvertent or intentional, of various kinds of exports.
K. Mickey