American Elephants

— The Wall Street Journal reports — on the same day two weeks ago, Ohioans saw these headlines:

In the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

In the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Republic Steel to add 450 jobs to Lorain as oil and gas exploration booms.” This story reported Republic Steel’s announcement of new jobs in one of Ohio’s hardest-hit counties, to manufacture products in support of the state’s growing oil and gas industry.

In the Marion Star:

“Ohio national forest halts sale of drilling rights.” This story reported the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision to suspend the auction of leases for oil and gas drilling on more than 3,000 acres of federal land in the most economically depressed region of Ohio.

Washington blocks drilling at the same time that Ohio manufacturers are adding jobs to support the state’s growing oil and gas exploration. The Ohio leases would have included parcels in three counties hurting for jobs.  Two of the counties have unemployment rates at 10,7% and 9.8%. Aggressive and responsible exploration of Ohio’s Utica shale, and continued mining of more than 20 million tons of coal her can revolutionize Ohio’s economy. A September study found that the Utica shale has the potential to create 200,000 jobs by 2015.  Cheaper energy prices, Lots of spin-off jobs, US Steel building a plant, more manufacturing. That’s all very nice, lots of jobs, but Obama has to appease his environmentalist supporters who prefer that Mother Earth remains undisturbed.

—From the Australian News.com.au website:

The Red Cross is investigating whether 600 million gamers are violating the Hague and Geneva conventions when they kill and blow stuff up for fun.

Delegates at the 31st International Conference of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Red Crescent raised the concerns over the potential “International Humanitarian Law” violations – which can constitute war crimes – during a workshop in Geneva.

The Red Cross said if it finds the conventions have been violated, they may ask game  developers to conform to international laws or encourage governments to create laws that regulate the gaming industry, Kotaku reported.

But international law professor at the University of New South Wales Anthony Billingsley told news.com.au the Red Cross risked trivialising the conventions of warfare.

Mr Billingsley also said there is no way the conventions could apply to individuals because they were state-based.

“There are concerns about the blurring of fantasy and reality,” he said.

Remember that 1) the Hague Convention applies to states, not individuals.  2) The First Amendment trumps everything and 3) This is about video games. 

The International Committee of the Red Cross is empowered by the Geneva Conventions to protect victims of international and domestic armed conflicts.