Month: January 2002

Africa and War

The London-Based International Institute for Strategic Studies released a report last October estimating that about 60,000 people were killed in the first six months of 2001 in various wars around the globe. Fully half of those killed were in sub-Saharan Africa.

Despite the fact that many countries in sub-Saharan Africa routinely have trouble feeding their citizens, the IISS reported that,

There has been a general increase in military spending by regional governments, which has been helped, at least among the oil-producing countries, by higher oil revenues, resulting mainly from increased production rather than rising prices.

Military spending in sub-Saharan Africa was $9.4 billion in 2000. An astounding amount of money for such a poor region.

Sources:

The Military Balance 2001/2002. International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2001.

Report highlights Africa war toll. The BBC, October 18, 2001.

Honor Killings Come to Sweden

As the daughter of Kurdish refugees from Turkey, 26-year-old Fadime Sahindal had to balance the traditional beliefs of her family with the ideas she was exposed to in Sweden. After four years of harassment from family members who were angry that she dated a white Swedish boy and was pursuing higher education, her father shot her execution style as she was preparing to leave on a trip to Kenya.

Several years ago, Sahindal was in the news in Sweden over her boyfriend. After her father ordered her to stop seeing the boy, Sahindal’s father and 17-year-old brother threatened to kill her. Sahindal went to court seeking protection, and her father received a fine and a suspended sentence.

Sahindal had been living in Sweden under an assumed name, but her father managed to track her down. Sahindal had gone to her sister’s house to say goodbye before her trip to Kenya, where her father shot her dead.

According to The Daily Telegraph, spokesmen for the Kurdish community in Sweden were “generally understanding of a patriarch’s dilemma in dealing with changing family values in a liberal country.”

The Telegraph quoted Kamaran Shwan, chairman of the Kurdish association in the town of Malmo as saying, “If a girl goes out with a boy without being married then she’s a whore.”

Source:

Protests over father’s ‘execution’ of daughter. Julian Isherwood, The Daily Telegraph (UK), January 29, 2002.

Lennox Lewis vs. The Punching Bag

I do not like boxing — not because of any philosophical objections to two men trying to assault each other in a ring, but rather because I’ve seen so much fake boxing in movies that the real thing is boring (not to mention crooked). But on the other hand, boxers are fun to read about because unlike in most sports where most athletes are expected to show some respect for their opponents, in boxing it is pretty much the reverse.

For example, Lennox Lewis said one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard a sports star say. Asked about a rematch with Mike Tyson, Lewis said he still wanted to go through with the fight adding that, “Mike Tyson is a biter, but Lennox Lewis is a fighter.” Okay, not quite Ali-esque, but then again Lewis isn’t running around calling for the death of people in interracial relationships like Ali did either.

ESPN had a story on the fight where somebody asked Lewis if he felt he had any sort of moral obligation one way or another in regard to going through with a fight with Tyson, and Lewis said, “The moral obligation is to go in and give him a whipping.”

On the other hand, the bizarre thing is that this whole debacle shows that boxing is even more fake than professional wrestling. In any other sport, a Lewis/Tyson match would never happen because Tyson is such a joke these days he has no shot at actually beating Lewis. Lewis apparently wants the fight just so he can say he beat Tyson. That may have meant something a decade ago, but it will be a meaningless victory. That’d be a bit like the St. Louis Rams saying they want to face the Detroit Lions in the Super Bowl. Yeah, that’d really show the critics.

Norman Borlaug Awarded The NAS’s Public Welfare Medal

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences announced this month that Norman Borlaug will receive its prestigious Public Welfare Model for his work in agriculture that sparked the Green Revolution.

Borlaug won the Nobel Prize for creating a dwarf variety of wheat that is now regularly planted in countries that previously had difficulties raising enough food to feed their entire population. Stephen Barry, who chaired the selection committee for the prize, said,

Early in his career, Dr. Borlaug realized that food production is basic to human existence in a healthy and peaceful world. People all over the globe are indebted to him and the endless energy he devoted to their most basic needs. Dr. Borlaug continues to advise numerous governments and agencies, yet he keeps his ties to the country and the scientific and educational system that have underpinned his lifelong efforts.

Borlaug spent years creating the hybrids that today play a key role in preventing starvation in much of the world. It is good to see his efforts recognized.

Source:

Norman E. Borlaug To Receive Public Welfare Medal, Academy’s Highest Honor. National Academy of Sciences, Press Release, January 22, 2002.

Green revolutionary wins NAS medal. Larry O’Hanlon, BioMedNet News, January 24, 2002.

Enron and the Social Security Lockbox

Andrew Hofer is the first person I come across to note that the way Enron ran its business was very closely modeled on the way the Social Security Administration runs its ship.

Consider, for example, one of the more outrageous deals concocted by Enron to bloat is balance sheet. Enron entered into a deal with Blockbuster to rent movies over the Internet. The joint venture eventually went bust and Enron made no money off of it. But that did not stop it from claiming a profit.

To pull that off, Enron contracted with a second company that loaned Enron in excess of $100 million with the money to be paid back from the revenues that would be earned from the Blockbuster deal. So even though it never made a cent off the deal, Enron could report back to shareholders a $100 million in additional revenue.

These sort of shenanigans have rightly been criticized by many in the liberal and left wing press, but this is similar to the sham claim that the Social Security Administration has more than enough money to keep up with its benefit requirements — a sham which many liberal and leftist commentators have bought in to wholeheartedly.

In the case of Social Security, the SSA long ago lent that money to the U.S. Treasury to use on buying things like military jets and pork barrel projects for Trent Lott’s home state. In return all the Social Security Administration has is an IOU saying that at some point in the future, the U.S. Treasury will pay the money back.

As Hofer puts it,

The Lockbox, or social security surplus, is a fictional accounting entity full of I.O.U.s both from and to the U.S. Government that somehow increases its net worth and keeps nasty truths out of its financial statements. Same idea, huh?

One of the best first steps in making companies use honest accounting methods would be for the federal government to lead the way, and dispense with useful fictions like the Social Security “lockbox,” which make it appear like the program is far more solvent than it really is.

Source:

Lockbox Accounting. Andrew Hofer, MoreThanZeroSum.Com, January 28, 2002.