Month: July 2001

House Approves $670 million “Plan Colombia” Budget

On July 25, 2001 the U.S. House of Representatives approved the $670 million ‘Plan Colombia’ spending package designed to fight the drug war in Colombia. Democrats in the House of Representatives wanted to divert some of the money to drug treatment programs in the United States, but that proposal failed to garner enough votes. Meanwhile, new evidence is emerging that even if you accept that Plan Colombia’s methods are ethically justifiable, they simply are not working. In fact Plan Colombia is backfiring in dangerous ways.

The main focus of the plan is to eradicate coca crops in Colombia by spraying herbicides on large patches of crops. The plan has created a number of controversies. Aside from the repugnancy of spraying toxic chemicals on the land of peasants struggling to get by, the United States is using mercenaries to carry out the risky spraying operations.

A recent audit of the spraying by the United Nations Drug Control Program found that the spraying was, in the words of The BBC, “inhuman and ineffective” since spraying occurred even only small plots of land where only a very small amount of illegal crops were being grown. Of course the United Nations hardly has its hand clean since it accepts the right of the United States and Colombian governments to spray herbicides on larger plantations where coca crops are being grown (so much for the “freedom to farm” promised by Republicans so many years ago).

Meanwhile, the spraying is not nearly effective as it was originally claimed to be, except perhaps at creating outrage among farmers.

In an analysis for the Cato Institute, Ted Galen Carpenter reports that the United States claims there are about 340,000 cares of coca under cultivation, and that spraying that began in December has occurred over about 75,000 of those acres.

But a new study by the United Nations suggest that there are far more than 340,000 acres of coca under cultivation, and that U.S. estimates of Colombian cocaine production ere far too low. Whereas the United States estimated that about 780 tons of cocaine were produced ever year, the United Nations reports estimates that as many as 900 tons of cocaine come out of Colombia each year.

The upshot is that despite claiming to have fumigated 22 percent of all farmland growing coca, there has been absolutely no movement in cocaine prices within the United States. If the spraying were really eliminating coca plants, there should have been a rise in cocaine prices as coca became more scarce. As Carpenter writes, “The fact that not even a modest price spike has occurred clearly indicates that Plan Colombia is having now meaningful impact on the supply of cocaine.”

What it is having an effect on, however, are Colombians’ attitudes toward their government and the United States. Carpenter reports that at a recent trip by Colombian President Andres Pastrana to a drug-producing region, Pastrana was met by demonstrators carrying signs showing a Colombian flag being subsumed by the American flag with the caption, “Plan Colombia’s Achievements.” According to Carpenter,

Given the political situation in Colombia, the outpouring of such sentiments is cause for great concern. The Pastrana government already confronts a three-decade-old insurgency being waged by two left-wing guerilla armies. The last thing Bogota should be doing is giving in to U.S. pressure to wage a drug war against its own population. That course of action is certain to produce more recruits for the radical leftist insurgencies.

It won’t stop the drug flow, it will alienate Colombians, and it is going to cost American taxpayers $672 million. Only in Washington, DC, could such a plan stand even a chance — but there, of course, it will flourish.

Source:

Plan Colombia: Washington’s Latest Drug War Failure. Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato Institute, July 27, 2001.

US congress approves anti-drugs aid. The BBC, July 25, 2001.

US backs Colombia drugs fight. The BBC, July 25, 2001.

A Pyramid Scheme with a Feminist Twist Hits Great Britain

The Sunday Times recently ran a story about a pyramid scheme that has tricked thousands of women out of their money in Great Britain. The pyramid scheme uses semi-feminist rhetoric about women’s empowerment to sell its get rich quick message.

According to the Times the scheme originated with a 57-year-old businesswoman named Theresa Hammer who joined a group known as Women Empowering Women, which apparently had its start in the United States. Literature for the WEW scheme claims,

It is the belief of the WEW gifting groups that there is plenty for everyone. When we are open tot give, receive and encourage each other, emotional and financial benefits will follow.

We are literally creating a new economic experience. The old belief of having to work hard for anything worthwhile in life is now changing and shifting with this process … the process is strong and continues to grow stronger with each participant, created through the wisdom of Women Empowering Women.

Of course what is really going on is that money is simply changing hands without any productive work taking place in a scheme that is unsustainable and quickly burns out — but not before thousands of people lose everything they put into the scheme.

It wouldn’t be a feminist-tinged pyramid scheme, however, if there wasn’t a blame-the-men angle to it. The Times reports that it contacted friends of Hamer who claimed she was getting a raw deal from her critics,

They denied, however, that she had made money out of other people’s misfortune. Her intentions and actions had been entirely charitable, they said, but the WEW ideal had been hijacked by men who had transformed it into money-making schemes. They also denied that Hamer, now in America again, had fled there with funds made by exploiting other women.

The really shocking thing about this is that more than 80 years after Charles Ponzi invented the pyramid scheme and pulled off one of the biggest con jobs in history, all con artists need to do is dust off the scam, add a twist such as “women empowering women,” and people will still fall head over heels to give their money away.

Source:

Crackdown on feminist pyramid scheme. Tom Robbins and Rachel Dobson, The Sunday Times (UK), July 29, 2001.

Massachusetts Parole Board Acts Quickly on Amirault Parole Request

At the beginning of July the Massachusetts state Parole Board gave Gerald Amirault new hope that his long nightmare might be finally coming to a close, after it recommended commuting his sentence.

Amirault was a victim of the 1980s hysteria that claimed Satanic cults were responsible for widespread sexual abuse of children. Amirault was convicted in 1986 of molesting and raping eight children at the Fells Acre Day Care Center, which his family owned.

About 40 children from the day care center claimed they had been grossly sexually abused — including having been sexually penetrated with knives. The problem was that there was no corroborating physical evidence for these claims — none of the children who claimed to be violated with knives, for example, ever showed any sort of injury.

The children were subjected to grossly inadequate interrogations, including being bribed with candy and other gifts to describe the alleged sexual encounters. The transcript of the interviews shows that whenever a child would try to say that some allegation didn’t happen or that one of the other children was lying, the interviewers would use leading questions to lead the children back to asserting the truth of the allegations.

What happened in the Amirault case was a tragic miscarriage of justice for which Gerald Amirault has already wasted 15 years of his life in jail. The governor should act quickly to set this wrong right again.

Source:

Massachusetts parole board votes to free convicted child molester. Leslie Miller, Associated Press, July 6, 2001.

Two-Child Policy Proposed for Indian State of Gujarat

The BBC reported that the western state of Gujarat in India has proposed an expansive set of new laws that would provide special services for families with two or fewer children, while denying many common benefits to families with more than two children.

Gujarat’s population tops 50 million, and over the last ten years the state’s population grew by 22 percent. It would become the first state in India to penalize parents for having more than two children, though the northern state of Rajastahn is considering a similar proposal that would only apply to government workers.

Under the proposed legal changes, families with two or fewer children would have access to special facilities and benefits, while couples with more than two children would lose benefits including subsidized food, free education and health care. There is even speculation that maternity leaves and medical benefits might be denied for pregnancies in families that already have two or more children.

Women’s groups and some voluntary agencies opposed the law saying improved access to health care, education and an emphasis on family planning would do more than the proposed punitive measure.

Source:

Gujarat proposes to limit family size. The BBC, July 26, 2001.

Dead Cow Dropped From Helicopter in Germany

This story is bizarre on a number of levels. Austrian “artist” Wolfgang Flatz recently gave a performance consisting of his assistants dropping a dead cow from a helicopter 130 feet in the air while Flatz was suspended naked from a crane, all the while striking a crucifixion pose.

Such a performance deserved to be protested for passing itself off as art, but instead animal rights activists sued to stop the performance on animal welfare grounds. Patrizia Strunz, 13, told a Berlin court that the spectacle of watching a dead cow plummet from a helicopter would induce “spiritual shock.” A small group of protesters showed up to the performance and unfurled a banner reading, “Animals have rights too.”

An unnamed city official quoted by Reuters had the most sanguine comment noting that nothing could be done to stop the cow drop because, “Throwing food around is not illegal.” The cow did have to be gutted and tested for mad cow disease, however.

Animal activist Claudia Pfister, however, insisted that the cow drop could lead to copycat animal droppings, with people mesmerized by Flatz’s “art” deciding to throw their dogs and cats out of windows and calling it art. Personally, I suspect the average pet owner has enough sensibility not to confuse Flatz with a genuine artist (in another stunt, Flatz was suspended upside down inside a bell, with his head bashing against the bell until he fell unconscious).

Source:

Berlin teen fails to stop flying cow spectacle. Alexander Scrimgeour, Reuters, July 20, 2001.

A Google Search Could Have Saved Woman’s Life

The media has often trumpeted the fact that there is a lot of health misinformation and downright quackery on the Internet, but today’s New York Times features a tragic story about a woman whose life might have been saved if medical researchers had only run a Google or other Internet search engine search.

Ellen Roche, 24, died while she was volunteering for a study on asthma being conducted at John Hopkins University. Researchers there wanted to test a theory that in asthmatics signals from the brain telling the lungs to expand get blocked somehow, keeping the lungs constricted.

To test this theory, on May 4, 2001 researchers had Roche inhale one gram of hexamethonium to cause her lungs to constrict. Shortly afterward Roche developed a cough, a runny nose, and fatigue. By May 12, Roche’s lungs were so damaged she had to be put on a ventilator. On June 2, her family gave approval to withdraw Roche’s life support and allowed her to die.

Of course it is standard procedure when designing a test like this to do a literature search for background information on the drug, but the researchers’ literature search turned up no studies on the risks of hexamethonium to lungs, even though a Google search turns up plenty of links to 1950s-era studies indicating problems with the compound (which was originally used to treat high blood pressure before being abandoned).

The third link that comes up, for example, is a bibliography of papers on the drug with titles like, “Hildeen T, Krogsgaard A R. Fatal pulmonary changes during the medical treatment of malignant hypertension. Lancet 1958; ii: 830-832.”

The review board that approve the experiment claims the 1950s studies wouldn’t have changed anything, which might be true but only because the review board failed to come close to fulfilling its due diligence to do a thorough review.

In fact so many different things were done illegally in this case, that when Roche’s family eventually wins the inevitable lawsuit against John Hopkins, hopefully administrators there and at other research facilities will get the message that skimping on review boards is lousy ethics and lousy economics.