Day: September 6, 2001

Slashdot Sort of Makes Amends

Slashdot still doesn’t get it, but it did modify the text on its Department of Justice to read,

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had been instructed by the Bush Administration to cease its drive to break up Microsoft, which has already been found guilty of violating U.S. anti-trust law in a complaint filed by the Federal Government and 19 states.

Better than the first time around, but it doesn’t any sense at all to say the Bush administration ordered the Department of Justice to do something, because the DOJ is part of the Bush administration.

That makes about as much sense as saying that the Clinton administration ordered the Department of Justice to proceed with the Microsoft case in the first place.

Still, at least they’re not claiming that the decision came from Bush personally.

More Slashdot Lies

Slashdot is back to simply inventing news when the reality doesn’t fit it’s world view. An item on the front page of the site about the Department of Justice’s decision to not seek a breakup of Microsoft says,

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had been instructed by President Bush to cease its drive to break up Microsoft, which has already been found guilty of violating U.S. anti-trust law in a complaint filed by the Federal Government and 19 states.

The problem is that there’s not a single sentence in any news story that even hints that President George W. Bush had anything at all to do with the announcement. Of course, if you’re Slashdot whether or not something is accurate seems to be largely irrelevant.

The one advantage of traditional media is that people who make egregious errors like that do tend to get fired pretty quickly.

Oh, and, I told you so! Dan Gillmor, Dave Winer, etc. were all crowing about how the Appeals Court ruling was a devestating loss for Microsoft and Bill Gates attempts to put a positive spin on it weren’t fooling anybody. Not!

Racism Conference, Round 2

Yahoo! is carrying an Associated Press article describing the inane behind-the-scenes jockeying for position at the World Conference Against Racism.

Among other things, the AP reports that Turkey is blocking efforts by Kurds to describe Turkey’s war against its Kurdish population as racist. Why? Despite killing almost 40,000 Kurds, Turkey insists that the Kurds are not really an ethnic minority (they’re just Turks who think they’re a separate culture).

There’s a lot of debate and consternation over whether to refer to “indigenous people” or “indigenous peoples.” The natives concerned fear for the worst if “peoples” is not approved, but the whole matter seems moot since the draft proposal ultimately gives countries the final say in dealing with indigenous people/s.

India’s minister of state for foreign affairs is still outraged at the idea that anyone would consider India’s caste system to be racist. As Omar Abdullah put it, that would equate “casteism with racism, which makes India a racist country, which we are not.” Hopefully Abdullah won’t be teaching Logic 101 in India anytime soon.

Any sort of real protections for refugees fleeing from racism was quickly written out of the draft document, which should reassure Australia’s fears that a few hundred oppressed Afghanis will ruin their country.

Not that I think everything proposed by the conference is bad. In fact, I have long thought that reparations for colonialism and slavery are potentially workable, though so far I’ve found few people who like my particular plan.

The only real legal entity left to sue (at least for my country) would be the United States government. Sure there are some corporations around who ultimately can trace their origins back to previous companies that were tangentially linked to slavery, but realistically the only entity still alive and kicking is the U.S. government.

Now, it just happens that the U.S. government is also one of the largest landowners in the world. My proposal is that the United States should sell off every speck of land that it owns which is not used for conducting government business, and set the money up in an international fund to go to nations victimized by slavery and colonialism.

This kills two birds with one stone, simultaneously getting the complaints from the developing world taken care of once and for all, as well as doing something productive with the land that is just sitting there at the moment. It is a real win-win proposition.

Israel’s the Only Racist Country Left

The results of the World Conference Against Racism pretty much confirm that the United States was right to pull out of it, and it will probably be joined shortly by the European Union countries. The amusing part is that the conference has prepared a draft statement that condemns exactly one country for its racist practices: Israel.

It is also a bit odd to see Zimbabwe and Namibia leading the cause for slavery reparations, when both of those countries also actively use not only racist but homophobic policies as a matter of course (a couple years ago Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe claimed there were no homosexuals in Zimbabwe because homosexuals are the product of degenerate Western cultures).

It is a bit like being lecture by China about the horrors of capital punishment.

African Nations form African Trade Insurance Agency

Nothing illustrates the enormous problems that Africa has to overcome than the recent agreement by several AFrican nations to form the African Trade Insurance agency which will underwrite insurance policies to reduce the risk for investors wanting to move capital into Africa.

Why would such an agency be needed in the first place? According to the BBC, investments in Africa have an extremely high rate of return that approaches 30 percent. But by the time that rate of return is adjusted for risks such a military coups, government confiscation of assets, etc., the real rate of return is closer to 10 percent.

The new insurance agency will essentially compensate investors if their capital is wiped out by government actions. As Ugandan president Yoweri Musevini said, “The ATI is a scheme that is telling investors, ‘please go ahead and trade,’ and if a coup d’etat occurred, you will not lose because we shall cover you.

The seven countries initially putting up $100,000 each to start the bank (along with a $105 million loan from the World Bank) are Burundi, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia. This is an important, necessary first step, but a better long term solution would be stable liberal democracy (foreign investors in developed countries rarely are forced to take out insurance protecting their assets from military coups or illegal government confiscation).

Source:

African risk scheme aims for trade boost. The BBC, August 21, 2001.

Hunt of a Lifetime/Young Scouts Outfitters Fulfill Hunting Wish of Seriously Ill Young Man

The Ottawa Citizen recently reported that Hunt of a Lifetime and a Canadian outfitter, Young Scouts Outfitters, are teaming to help seriously ill 17-year-old Jacob Brubaker fulfill his dream of hunting in Canada. Brubaker has a congenital heart condition which has required four open heart surgeries so far.

Hunt of a Lifetime was created after the Make A Wish Foundation announced it would no longer sponsor any activities involving hunting or firearms.

There were a number of oddities in the Ottawa Citizen story. The most egregious was the repeated description of Hunt of a Lifetime as a “controversial organization.” for example, the paper notes that Hunt of a Lifetime is “a controversial organization that arranges hunting and fishing trips for youngsters…” When did arranging hunting and fishing trips become “controversial”?

The Citizen repeats a perplexing quote from Canadian Make A Wish co-founder Robb Lucy who said, “it just seems like an anathema to try to do something for a child and the family and the extended family that provides some joy, but then also takes another life.”

So, if a dying child’s dream was to work with a world class chef, is Lucy going to insist that they prepare a vegan meal? If a child wants to visit Disney, is Make A Wish going to make sure they’re not paying for any hot dogs or hamburgers?

The problem is it is absurd for Lucy to compare a dying child with a deer, which he implicitly does.

Finally, the article notes that Brubaker lives in “southern Pennsylvania,” but avoids saying what city he lives in. The reason for this is explained in the very last paragraph of the article,

Ms. [Tina] Pattison [of Hunt of a Lifetime] now asks the media not to reveal the exact location of where the children live because “the kids are getting mean and nasty calls from animal activists.”

Imagine that.

Source:

Outfitter to grant child’s last wish that others wouldn’t — a deer hunt. Kelly Cryderman, The Ottawa Citizen, August 25, 2001.