08/17/06 U.S. not to blame

The U.S. is not responsible for WTO breakdown. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Outgoing Under Secretary of Agriculture J.B. Penn says the United States is not to blame for the suspended world trade talks. PENN: I simply don't accept the statement that the U.S. is to blame for the talks being stalled. In October 2005, we put on the table the most ambitious proposal that anyone has put forward to date, both in terms of domestic support, in terms of market access, in terms of export competition. Nobody has yet matched the offers that we have put on the table so to say that the U.S. is the reason for the talks being stalled is just simply not true and I don't accept that. Penn discusses what the U.S. expected to happen at WTO talks. PENN: In terms of their role in the multilateral trade talks of course it's our view that after we tabled our proposal in October 2005 we full well expected that they would come along with a very ambitious market access proposal and that would be followed by a proposal in the non-agricultural market access and services areas by the G20, led by Brazil and India, and then the whole round would come together but the Europeans simply haven't moved. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Susan Allen. I don't know why hypocrisies rear their ugly head so poignantly in my life but they do and because they do I feel called to share them. It constantly amazes me how readily news consumers gobble up anything from the mainstream media regarding health, food and farming. This is especially troubling in light of the fact the 21st century media has sadly morphed into a bias, agenda promoting machine. Take the Mel Gibson incident, the press that raked Mel over the coals day after day for his anti- Semitic remarks gleefully published "doctored" war photos that promoted the cause of the Israel -hating Hezbollah's? Where is the outrage from Hollywood's Jewish community? Is it an irony or a coincidence that the art section of the New York Times featured yet another article about Gibson's remarks next to a piece titled the "Islamic World as an Oasis, Not a caldron?" If we can't hold our media accountable to fairly cover war how the heck can we trust them to tell the truth about mad cow, the organic industry or the avian flu. It's simple, we can't. Thanks Susan. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.