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TSUNAMI-struck Thailand has been told by the European Commission that it must buy six A380 Airbus aircraft if it wants to escape the tariffs against its fishing industry.
While millions of Europeans are sending aid to Thailand to help its recovery, trade authorities in Brussels are demanding that Thai Airlines, its national carrier, pays £1.3 billion to buy its double-decker aircraft.
[…]
As the world’s largest producer of prawns, Thailand has become so efficient that its wares are half the price of those caught by Norway, the main producer of prawns for the EU.
To ensure the Thais cannot compete, EU officials five years ago removed its shrimp industry from the EU’s generalised system of preferential tariffs - designed to share Western wealth with developing countries by trade.
The tariffs are bad enough (and something the USA is quite guilty of as well), but the Airbus deal - that’s salt in the wound. It would also seem an admission that there’s not a lot of confidence in the A380.
No Illusions has a good roundup on the problem with math test scores in a particular school district. The basis is that three years ago a new math cirriculum was adopted and for three years math test scores have been dropping. The administrators can’t figure out any connection. The key point that has been cleared up is that the new math cirriculum has as its stated goals anti-racism, with not a mention of mathematics. It’s important to be clear that the anti-racism isn’t a component of an overall educational program but specifically for the math program. I guess the concept of teaching math to boost math scores is beyond some people.
P.S. This post is an excellent resource for just how bizarre the academic backstory for this kind of thing is.
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An Associated Press article describes the execution of two Iraqi electoral officials by insurgents in a Baghdad street.
A series of pictures taken by an AP photographer show three pistol-wielding gunmen, who had earlier stopped a car carrying the election officials and dragged them into the middle of Haifa Street in the midst of morning traffic.
Even with today’s proliferation of compact photographic equipment, a legitimate photojournalist rarely gets the opportunity to capture an execution. Apart from the beheadings which are purposely recorded on video by the jihadis and from gun camera film, most footage of people actually being shot are taken by photographers in company with combatants who are ready to film an ambush. Those individuals are combat cameramen for their armies or embedded reporters.
Clearing up some old notes and I didn’t want this example of Old Media acting a propaganda arm for the caliphascists to disappear down the memory hole.
U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, visiting the United Nations, cautioned his Congressional colleagues to “take a deep breath” before making a political football out of the world body by withholding dues.
Leahy’s right. Instead of making a political stink over withholding dues, we should just withdraw and kick the UN out of New York City.
The purpose of electing UKIP MEPs is to cause as much trouble as possible among the corrupt, extreme, clapped out or incompetent denizens of the European Parliament.
This account by Dan Hannan (aka the one good Tory MEP) of proceedings is priceless:
It fell to a man called Nigel Farage, capo of the UK Independence Party, to inform the chamber of [French European Commissioner] Mr Barrot’s conviction [for embezzling party funds]. The pro-EU parties had not looked into his background because, deep down, they didn’t want to find anything… The way MEPs reacted to Farage’s revelation was horrible. One by one they rose to threaten him with legal action. The Liberal leader, Graham Watson, likened him to the football hooligans who had disgraced Britain in Europe. A fomer colleague of Barrot’s, Jacques Toubon, rushed up and down the aisle, apparently looking for someone to punch (Robert Kilroy-Silk, recognising him as the minister who had tried to ban the English language from French airwaves, told him mischievously that no one would understand him unless he spoke English, which sent him into a choking fit). All this because Farage was doing the job that the rest of us ought to have done.
It’s clearly a waste of effort to plot against the EU.
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We say to our lefty “friends” if you genuinely believe in the UN, now’s your chance to put your filthy lucre where your pie hole is. Please respond generously to the UN Sec-Gen’s Humanitarian Appeal, known as the “Consolidated Appeals Process,” or CAP. Give the UN your money. See where it goes. Where, you ask? Hey, Lefty, don’t take The Diplomad’s word that it will be wasted, go and see what the UN is asking and for what. Go to the Overview page and see what the UN lists as its pre-tsunami priorities and then go to the Funding page and see who is the biggest donor by far. Surprise! The number one priority, well ahead of caring for suffering tens-of-millions of Africans is UNRWA!
It can hardly be surprising that the UN’s number one recipient of aid are open supporters of terrorism.