James5

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or to email alerts. Thanks for visiting!

This news is just insane. Back in the 1960sw the United States asked the Australian government if it could test some nerve gas, VX and Sarin, on 200 Australian diggers in Queensland. They had even already scoped out test sites! This is insane.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Interesting press release from Austrade on the growing Indian market for Australian food products. It seems the Indian Silicon Valley’s rising middle class is buying our goods. I thought it was interesting to see how globalisation has so many interconnected beneficiaries. American businesses cut costs by outsourcing business to India. India gets jobs and expertise built up which leads to a middle class developing. That middle class as a variety of good results for India, but also helps Australian producers by creating new markets to buy their goods. We are all connected.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Mankiw has an article over at the New York Times advocating a cut in the corporate tax rate. I’m highly skeptical about this “trickle-down economics”, but I like his idea of funding it with a petrol tax.

Popularity: 5% [?]

The US has ‘disengaged’ from the UN Human Rights Council. The UN HRC is a pet favourite target for showing up the UN (and often rightly so!), but I don’t think disengagement is the answer. The HRC provides a crucial monitoring tool for human rights, as well as contributing to an on-going international human rights law jurisprudence.

Popularity: 4% [?]

The New York Times has a good article on the peculiarly American practice of electing judges. I’ve never understood how this can be a good thing, for example this quote:“all judges, even the most punitive, increase their sentences as re-election nears”.

Popularity: 4% [?]