Battleangel

First the child play with the issue of the international court a couple of days ago .. If you remember the US didn’t want their citizens to be judged by an international court. The recent events with Taliban “POWs” (really?) has indicated that the US would like to have it the other way around – so that they could force an extradition of foreign citizens so that they could be prosecuted on their home turf. Gotta love that attitude.

Now the US government has issued legally binding fines totalling 5,8 billion dollars to a number of corporations that are said to have been in business with Taliban counterparts. This is possible because of a law that passed in 1998 that allows for financial penalties in the case of dealings with countries hostile to american interests. As you can imagine that list of countries is pretty long nowadays …
The big news however is what kind of companies are on the list and what their offences are. Swedish furniture giant IKEA is on this list because they purchased 150(!) hand woven carpets from Afghanistan. The truth of the matters is that the region from whence they originated was not under Taliban control at the time the order was placed. This shifted as the the order was being filled, but hey, I suppose they should have been able to foresee that? Maybe the US could lend IKEA a couple of CIA intelligence officers to ensure that they do not come in conflict with american interests in the future. *heavy irony*
Likewise, the Los Angeles Dodgers got burned because they contracted two Cuban baseball players. Now that is a real threat to national security I mean, how did they come to that last conclusion anyway? If the Dodgers hired Cuban players they must have had a good reason for doing so (i.e. the players were skilled, right?) and using this fine they are now told by Uncle sam that what they did was wrong. Wouldn’t this hurt the Dodgers -> the state of California -> ultimately the US as a nation. For a country that is so caught up in that stupid sport of theirs maybe they should have given this law a look-over.
For those of us with a memory for details, the passing of this law came pretty close after pres. Clintons infamous visit to China (the one where he gave away military satellite technology as a way of saying thanks for the nice campaign contributions). What hypocrisy.

You never get anywhere with punishment or threats of punishment. In the end you only inflict pain on yourself and increase isolation. I wish the US government had taken “psychology basics” instead of “doctrines that worked well during the dark ages” or “how the crusades were won lost”.