The Right to Food

John Amato posted a blog on the 24th that stopped me in my tracks.

Seems that some people in the world think that it is a bad thing that 6 million children die every year of hunger (and related-illness) before they turn five. So these people got together at the United Nations and passed a resolution to try to do something about this.

The good news is that it passed - 180 to 1.

The bad new? We're the one .....

By a vote of 180 in favour to 1 against (United States) and no abstentions, the Committee also approved a resolution on the right to food, by which the Assembly would “consider it intolerable” that more than 6 million children still died every year from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday, and that the number of undernourished people had grown to about 923 million worldwide, at the same time that the planet could produce enough food to feed 12 billion people, or twice the world’s present population. (See Annex III.)

You can read the entire thing here.

I don't know how this administration can do this....
Maybe they don't understand the reason for the season.
I'm pretty sure God's plan does not include letting 6,000,000 children just die.

Just to recap:

In favour:

Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia (Federated States of), Monao, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Against:

United States.

Proud to be an American?

So I'm listening to NPR the other day. They're doing a series on immigration and they profiled a 40year old 'illegal immigrant' in Mexico who had just been deported. He was waiting to cross over again.

"HOW COULD HE?" I hear the anti-immigrants cry as they start talking about the horrible 'criminal behavior' he's planning. But then there is the story. He came to the states when he was 5. His folks brought him over - yes, 'illegally' - but here's the crazy thing, he's not a criminal. He's actually a home owner in southern California where, for the last 35 years of his life, he's lived and worked. He raised a family there. What kind of family? One where two of his sons (American because they were born here) are fighting in Iraq.

But fate was against this 40 year old man. He got picked up and it was discovered he didn't have the right papers. So his American wife and children watched him get deported. Two of his children hear about it while they are in a combat zone.

I have to wonder how that makes them feel.... Do they think:
a) Thank god SOMEONE is enforcing the very rule of law I'm risking my life for... or
b) How could my country, the country I'm risking my life for, deport my dad?

And then... 60 Minutes has done a nice piece on another aspect of our broken immigration system. Deporting widows. Yep, that's the rule of law for you. These women just didn't stay married long enough to clear the paperwork before their husbands died...

Watch the story and then tell me, does this make you proud to be an American?

Watch CBS Videos Online

Who knew? Matthew Alexander knew

A while ago I blogged "Who knew?" about how waterboarding is torture. In yesterdays Washington Post an Air Force interrogator wrote about how his team got Zarqawi without torture and how al-Qaeda actually used US torture as a recruiting tool...


I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq

By Matthew Alexander
Sunday, November 30, 2008; B01

I should have felt triumphant when I returned from Iraq in August 2006. Instead, I was worried and exhausted. My team of interrogators had successfully hunted down one of the most notorious mass murderers of our generation, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind of the campaign of suicide bombings that had helped plunge Iraq into civil war. But instead of celebrating our success, my mind was consumed with the unfinished business of our mission: fixing the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the U.S. military conducts interrogations in Iraq. I'm still alarmed about that today.

I'm not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me -- both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn't work.

Read the rest here....