Day: September 30, 2002

Europeans Cannot Even Enforce Their Own Travel Ban

In response to the increasingly dictatorial nature of the Zimbabwe regime, the European Union early this year enacted a number of sanctions against Zimbabwe, including a ban on travel by members of Zimbabwe’s government.

But, of course, they didn’t mean it. This month Zimbabwe’s Trade Minister was allowed to travel to Brussels, Belgium — which houses the headquarters for the European Union — for a series of talks related to issues in developing nations (previously Zimbabwean officials made trips to France and Italy). An article on the row in the British newspaper The Independent noted that,

Zimbabwe’s élite has already taken advantage of a loophole in the EU’s travel ban to attend UN-sponsored or international meetings in Italy and France. However critics argue that, by travelling to the EU’s headquarters in Brussels, the minister is exposing the sanctions to particular ridicule.

Something making a mockery of the EU? Imagine that!

Source:

Anger over visa for Zimbabwe minister. Stephen Castle, The Independent, September 26, 2002.

Washington, DC Keystone Kops

The Associated Press reports that police in Washington, DC are once again looking at Ingmar Guandique as a possible suspect in the murder of Chandra Levy. Guandique was arrested and convicted for attacking two female joggers in the same general area that Levy’s remains were found.

The scary thing is that DC police had ruled him out as a suspect apparently based largely on the fact that he passed a lie detector test. Now the police want him to take another lie detector test because they think the first one was faulty.

What is really faulty here is that a pseudoscientific process like a lie detector test is used to rule suspects in or out. Why don’t they just bring Uri Geller and a bunch of kids with dowsing rods in to tell them whether or not Guandique killed Levy. They’re likely to be as accurate as their lie detector test.

Source:

D.C. Police Probing Man in Levy Murder. Associated Press, September 29, 2002.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend on Affirmative Action

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is running for governor of Maryland. At a recent debate with her opponent, Robert Ehrlich, Townsend pointedly accused Ehrlich of opposing race-based affirmative action. Here’s her stunning defense of such initiatives,

He opposes affirmative action based on race. Well, let me tell you, slavery was based on race. Lynching was based on race. Discrimination is based on race. Jim Crow was based on race., and affirmative action should be based on race.

And she thinks that’s a defense of affirmative action. Oy.

Source:

Gloves come off at political debate. Associated Press, September 27, 2002.