Category: Uncategorized

The Proper European Response to Zimbabwe

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group has the right take on how the United States and Europe should handle members of Zimbabwe’s government who travel abroad — they should be arrested and charged with crimes against humanity.

A recent report by the ICG said,

The EU and the US should use the International Convention Against Torture to arrest senior members of Zanu PF responsible for Zimbabwe having one of the highest rates of torture in the world if these individuals do travel into their jurisdiction without the benefit of international legal immunity.

. . .

The international response is still characterised by too much bark and too little bite. More credible targeted sanctions, wider, deeper and better enforced than those presently in place in the US and the EU are a necessary start.

The situation in Zimbabwe, meanwhile, keeps devolving on a daily basis. When food aid is not being outright blocked by the ruling party, an ongoing fuel crisis is making it difficult to distribute aid.

In just five years, Zimbabwe’s total economic output has declined by 25 percent. Zimbabwe is going to be feeling a lot of pain for many years to come, even once Mugabe is out of the picture.

Source:

Arrest Visiting Zanu Pf Officials, Urges Think-Tank. Luke Tamborinyoka, The Daily News (Harare, Zimbabwe), November 12, 2002.

Wynona Ryder Treated Unfairly?

For the most part, I tried to ignore the Wynona Ryder trial. Because of her celebrity status, her shoplifting trial received coverage way out of proportion to what it deserved. But what to make of the results of a poll in which women said Ryder was treated unfairly because she was a woman,

A new the polling company?, inc/WomanTrend poll conducted September 23-25, 2002 of 800 American women across the nation found that 75% believe successful women are more likely to receive negative attention when accused of improper conduct than men who are accused of the same, and 87% say that while women are ridiculed and criticized for doing something bad, or unfavorable, men earn a ?cool? or ?humorous? image from acting in the same form of behavior.

Right, because news coverage of Robert Downey Jr.’s drug problem has been filled with laughs and insinuation that Downey was “cool” for waking up in a drug addled stupor in his neighbor’s house.

WomanTrend CEO Kellyanne Conway inanely added,

Their celebrity status does not exonerate them from being treated as a woman in times of crisis. Seventy-six percent (76%) think Winona Ryder is the most recent case study illustrating this point. Like others, Kathie Lee Gifford, Martha Stewart, Drew Barrymore, Halle Berry and Jennifer Capriati, to name a few, women generally like Winona, and empathize with her, feeling that she is being treated improperly.

Okay, she’s got a point there. Male executives at companies like WorldCom, Enron, and ImClone got a free pass from the media, leaving them to focus exclusively on Martha Stewart.

The reason Ryder and Stewart are front page news is not because they receive special treatment, but precisely because they do not receive any special favors from the media. Instead, celebrity status guarantees obsessive examination of even minor missteps regardless of sex.

Source:

Women denounce double standard applied to the sexes by law enforcement, media, public. The Polling Company, September 27, 2002.

Faking Out the Referees

In its game Saturday, the University of Southern Mississippi had the ball third-and-goal on the 2-yard line. So quarterback Micky D’Angelo faked a handoff to the running back and then rolled left and into the end zone.

The only problem was the line judge completely bought the fake handoff and when the running back entered the end zone (without the football), the line judge blew the play dead and signaled touchdown — all a second or two before D’Angelo ended up, who actually had the football, rolled into the endzone.

I love the quarterback’s perspective from The Clarion Ledger (Mississippi),

“I was at the 4-yard line, and I looked over and there was the ref with his hands up,” said D’Angelo, who wound up plowing into Scherrens, sending the official sprawling to the turf and prompting a call for medical attention.

“I was thinking, ‘Wait a minute, I’ve got the ball.'”

Ultimately, the play was negated and USM was given the ball at the 2-yard line and forced to run a third down play again. USM failed to score a touchdown and ended up settling for a short field goal. Bizarre.

Source:

Odd play: Fake so good it cost TD Tim Doherty, November 10, 2002.

Michigan’s Proposal 4

One of the more bizarre election year campaigns here in Michigan centers around Proposal 4. This is an initiative that would alter the state constitution to restrict how the state can spend the money it receives as part of the tobacco company settlement.

Of course the legal theory behind the tobacco settlement was that states had paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in extra health care costs for smokers, so the tobacco companies should compensate them for this.

In Michigan, like most states, little of the tobacco settlement money has gone into the health care system or into initiatives to lower smoking rates. Instead it goes to fund thing like scholarships for college students and a large part of the settlement gets kicked backed to cities to use however they please.

Proposal 4 would essentially change that, forcing the state to spend the money on health-related issues.

So what we have in Michigan is a war of words between hospitals and doctor on the one side and college students and municipalities on the other. It’s kind of funny to see anti-Proposal 4 commercials referring to hospitals as “rich special interests.” Yeah, hospitals are really rolling in the dough.

But what’s absurd is that both sides are wrong. The money shouldn’t be spent on smoking cessation programs or college scholarships or the pet projects of Michigan cities. If tobacco use really increased state expenses, then that means that taxes in Michigan were artificially high to pay for the health problems of smokers. The tobacco settlement, then, should be given back to taxpayers either directly in the form of refunds for past taxes that subsidized smokers or in the form of a tax cut.