Rodger, great example of policymakers blithely tossing around a concept for political purposes! (You often see similar abuses of the term 'genocide'.)
One of the key elements of "crimes against humanity" is the intent component. This is why DU munitions are likely to be illegal under the laws of war, not under the concept of crimes against humanity. They violate IHL not because they always involve intentional harm to civilians, but because their effects can't be controlled.
What Ziegler and others are probably grasping for is some international human rights concept that captures not intentional harm but rather wilful disregard for foreseeable side-effects.
Ugh, I hate it when people suck all potential life and legitimacy out of a concept through overuse...It is like the use of 'fascist'--a term applied to everything and therefore meaning nothing these days...
Given Ziegler's ideological record as an apologist for radical tyrannies, the "sucking the legitimacy out of " the concept of "crimes against humanity" may not be entirely unintentional on Ziegler's part.
When everything is regarded as a "crime" then real crimes go unremarked.
I doubt that this man Zeigler, learned much about agriculture as Che Guevera's chauffeur in 1964. I can find little or no record of this man's involvement in agriculture. Since his days in Paris, he has awarded himself the Muammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize...more
It seems to me that this argument -- which my conservative students make with glee -- fails a basic test of economic behavior. It assumes, among other things, that cropland put to use for biofuel research would otherwise (a) be put to use growing food (as opposed to laying fallow via subsidies) and (b) that the produce would go to the world food program. Two strong, and I think, rather untenable assumptions.
Most of the corn that is used for bio-fuel is also used for feeding live-stock as the distillery has a very close relationship with the neighboring farms and each purpose uses a different part of the grain. Farms that make their own ethanol get both benefits, food and fuel. Consider the proberb from a time when live-stock pulled the plow;
Dont' muzzle the ox that trods the grain.
Gas guzzling tractors actually consume less grain ( in the form of ethanol ) than draft animals of previous years. Modern farming is in fact far more efficient.
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