"What effect must it have on a nation if it learns no foreign languages? Probably much the same as that which a total withdrawal from society has upon an individual." --G.C. Lichtenberg
via DeLong, from the New York Times, this on Bush administration trade strategery:
The most glaring example here of going-it-alone tendencies was the United States' last-minute refusal to sign off on an agreement that would help poor nations buy generic medicines through exemptions from trade rules.
Developing nations had pinned their hopes on this agreement to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases. But the United States, with the strong approval of the American pharmaceutical industry, exercised the veto that every nation possesses and destroyed the deal.
They can find time to do this while prosecuting an unjust war? I'm speechless. They had said they were ok with keeping people from dying, and then they decided not to, to make their rich friends richer.
