IBM, Royal Dutch Shell and sundry other filthy multinationals are being sued for nefarious doings in South Africa. What doings? Well, providing jobs for black South Africans, who would surely have been far better off if the executives of said companies had stood around the quad demanding to free Nelson Mandela instead. Time was you actually had to cause the tort to pay damages. Now apparently it’s enough to be caught loitering in the vicinity of the tort. Sounds like a job for Wally Olson. (And thanks to RocketKnowledge for bringing this to my attention.)
UPDATE: Wally took my advice. (Which is more than I can say for Mickey Kaus. The back button still doesn’t work.) How bad is the lawyer behind this, one Edward H. Fagan? So bad The New York Times called him “media-savvy!” (Bad, worse, media-savvy.) Finally, Wally was kind enough to link to me, giving me a temporary Sullivan Number of 2.
Suffer the poor multinationals and their CEOs. When not arranging hits on political protestors or snorting coke off hookers, they should be expected to actually read a newspaper too?
What? There’s no law yet in this region of the world to dump toxic waste? Go for it. We can test drugs here too because these dumb villagers don’t have pharmaceutical testing statutes! Huzzah!
If proof can be provided that your actions facilitated destruction or oppression, then you should be held accountable.
Although CEOs are notoriously effective at feigning ignorance (although sometimes it’s not really feigning), it should not exculpate them from engaging in activities they know to be wrong.