Jun 23, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
At a shareholder meeting earlier this month, Walmart CEO Lee Scott announced a new strategy for revamping the vilified company's public image: institutionalize racism and sexism.
Under the Grand Dragon's plan, executive bonuses will be cut by up to 7.5% if Walmart's "diversity goals" are not met by the end of the year. By next year, cuts could go as deep at 15%.
Instead of ignoring factors irrelevant to a potential employee's ability to perform (such as gender), executives will be encouraged to apply corporate-wide bigotry standards during the hiring process. Interviewers may optionally wear white sheets during candidate evaluations.
"If 50 percent of the people applying for the job of store manager are women," Scott promised, "we will work to make sure that 50 percent of the people receiving those jobs are women."
Earlier rumors that Walmart is changing its company slogan to, "all races are equal, but some races are more equal than others," have not been confirmed.Jun 23, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
Writes William Safire in the New York Times on the inner workings of the U.N.'s Iraq Program:
"This was the biggest cash cow in the history of the world," says one of the insiders familiar with the $10 billion U.N. oil-for-food scandal. "Everybody -- traders, contractors, banks, inspectors -- was milking it. It was supposed to buy food with the money from oil that the U.N. allowed Saddam to sell, but less than half went for that. Perfume, limos, a shipment of 1,500 Ping-Pong tables, for God's sake."
...Well-connected international traders -- called "the usual suspects" by low-level U.N. staff, who knew they often fronted for sellers of luxury products -- would make their deals, including kickbacks, in Baghdad. Letters of credit, as many as 150 a day, would be issued in New York by the U.N.'s favorite bank, BNP [Banque Nationale de Paris] Paribas. But before the sellers, called "beneficiaries," could be paid (at Saddam's request, in euros, harder to trace than dollars) the bank required a C.O.A., "Confirmation of Arrival," from the U.N.'s contracted inspector, Cotecna of Switzerland. "The key was Cotecna," says my graveyard source. "Ships were lined up at the port of Umm Qasr, stacks of containers already onshore waiting for inspection. You won't believe the grease being paid. The usual suspects got preferential treatment when the U.N. bosses in New York called the BNP bank to get Cotecna to issue a C.O.A. to release the money."
From Cox and Forkum:
Jun 23, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
CNN reports: Saudis offer terrorists month to surrender."We are announcing for the last time that we are opening the door to repentance and for those to return to righteousness," said Crown Prince Abdullah in a televised address. ... "To everyone who has gone out of the righteous way and has committed a crime in the name of religion and to everyone who belongs to that group that has done itself a disservice, everyone who has been captured in terror acts is given the chance to come back to God if they want to save their lives, their souls," Abdullah said. "If they give themselves up without force within one month maximum from the date of this speech, we can promise them that they are going to be safe." Abdullah said all such people would be dealt with fairly, in accordance with Islamic law." If they are wise and they accept it, then they are saved. And if they snub it, then God is not going to forbid us from hitting them with our force, which we get from our dependence on God." He added that Saudi forces would not hesitate to act.
"Not hesitate"? Almost three years after 9/11? I'm sure the terrorists are quaking in their suicide vests. As we've noted before (e.g., here and here), the Saudis didn't really care about Islamic, anit-western terrorism until their own people started getting killed and their oil business was threatened. Their amnesty offer simply demonstrates the religious sympathy they have for the terrorists' cause.
Robert Tracinski writes under "Saudi Pseudo Civil War":The good news: the Saudis are threatening to fight a civil war that has been declared against them by the Islamic fanatics they spawned. The very bad news (for the Saudi regime and for oil prices): the prelude to this fight indicates that the Saudis don't have the nerve to attack their own offspring -- since they have begun by boldly offering to let their opponents off the hook in a general amnesty for the Kingdom's terrorists. [TIA Daily]
Jun 22, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum: 
Former President Bill Clinton's autobiography hits the stands today. CNN reports:
Crowds line up for Clinton book; Knopf has printed 1.5 million hardcover copies
Critics bored, booksellers buzzed by Clinton book
Review: Clinton book big but shallow; With little insight, book is a daily grind
And Andrew Sullivan notes that Clinton inadvertently admits to perjury in this new book:
Maybe he didn't mean to. But here's a fascinating nugget culled by the Washington Post:Clinton's own legal battle with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr accounts for one of the book's more peculiar revelations. In his August 1998 grand jury testimony, Clinton said he began an inappropriate sexual relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky in "early 1996." His testimony, as was widely noted at the time, was in conflict with Lewinsky's story: She testified the relationship began on Nov. 15, 1995, in the midst of a government shutdown. Starr's prosecutors, in their report to Congress, accused Clinton of lying about the date of their relationship in order to avoid admitting that he had sexual relations with an intern, as Lewinsky still was in the fall of 1995 before being hired for a paying job in the winter. Without explanation, in his memoir Clinton departs from his grand jury testimony and corroborates her version: "During the government shutdown in late 1995, when very few people were allowed to come to work in the White House, and those who were there were working late, I'd had an inappropriate encounter with Monica Lewinsky and would do so again on other occasions between November and April, when she left the White House for the Pentagon."
CNN has posted an article on Clinton's perjury, though they manage to put the best possible spin on it with the headline: Clinton revises timeline of Lewinsky affair.Jun 22, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
The Left's Christopher Hitchens (columnist for Vanity Fair) on Michael Moore's latest movie: http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/?GT1=3584#correct
The money quote:
Moore's movie is "a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of 'dissenting' bravery."
On Moore and his admirers:
"To [Moore], easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything."
On Moore's 'history' of Iraq:
"We are introduced to Iraq, 'a sovereign nation.' (In fact, Iraq's 'sovereignty' was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism...I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term 'civilian casualty' had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003..."
On debating Moore:
"...I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that 'fact-checking' is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers--get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of."
On Moore's documentary standards:
"But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your 'narrative' a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. ... At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer."
Jun 21, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
The first privately funded manned space flight occurred today (June 21, 2004). The space craft and mother ship were designed by Burt Rutan (of Voyager fame), while funding was provided by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The cost of the program was about $20 million dollars, compared to around $0.5 billion per space shuttle launch.
From the Scaled Composites website:
The world witnessed the dawn of a new space age today, as investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen and Scaled Composites launched the first private manned vehicle beyond the Earth's atmosphere. The successful launch demonstrated that the final frontier is now open to private enterprise.
Under the command of test pilot Mike Melvill, SpaceShipOne reached a record breaking altitude of 328,491 feet (approximately 62 miles or 100 km), making Melvill the first civilian to fly a spaceship out of the atmosphere and the first private pilot to earn astronaut wings.
This flight begins an exciting new era in space travel," said Paul G. Allen, sole sponsor in the SpaceShipOne program. "Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites are part of a new generation of explorers who are sparking the imagination of a huge number of people worldwide and ushering in the birth of a new industry of privately funded manned space flight."
The historic flight also marks the first time an aerospace program has successfully completed a manned mission without government sponsorship. "Today's flight marks a critical turning point in the history of aerospace," said Scaled Composites founder and CEO Burt Rutan. " We have redefined space travel as we know it."
"Our success proves without question that manned space flight does not require mammoth government expenditures," Rutan declared. "It can be done by a small company operating with limited resources and a few dozen dedicated employees."
A large crowd watched the momentous flight live from the grounds of the Mojave Airport, joining millions of others around the world who tuned in by television, radio, and the internet. Dignitaries attending the event included U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, the Commanding Officer of Edwards Air Force Base, General Pearson and the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center, Admiral Venlet; former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and Konrad Dannenberg, one of Werner Von Braun's lead scientists on this country's original space development effort. Hundreds of media representatives were also on hand to record history in the making.
Writes CM reader Christopher Lewis Baines:
I had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Rutan speak last year at the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) 2003 AirVenture airshow. Mr. Rutan gave his speech in an ailing aircraft hanger during a thunderstorm.
Needless to say, the room was packed with people eager to hear about his plan for space exploration. Rutan talked about the need for private enterprise in space travel, and he made it clear to the audience that the government's monopoly on space travel must end if they ever wish to visit space in their lifetimes.
Rutan blamed the government's bureaucracy in space travel for the slow pace of private development. He stated that the profit motive was needed in order to make space travel for the masses a reality. Rutan believes we should visit space for fun and think of practical applications and safety later, as the great aviators did with aviation during the early 20th Century. Rutan worries that young people today no longer have heroes to look up to.
Feeling synergy with the audience, Rutan proclaimed "We don't care about those Liberals do we".
The audience cheered.
From Cox and Forkum:
Recommended Reading:
A Radical Solution to America's Moribund Space Program by Robert Garmong
After years of declining budgets, public apathy, and failed missions, NASA has gotten a big boost from the Bush Administration's recent promises of extravagant missions to permanently settle the moon and eventually explore Mars. No one knows what it would cost, but a similar idea in 1989 was estimated to cost up to $500 billion.
Privatize the Space Program by Robert Garmong
The space program is a political animal, marked by shifting, inconsistent and ill-defined goals.
