Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, an active supporter of the United States on Iraq, on Monday linked the ''material interests'' of France, Russia and China in Iraq to their opposition to the use of force there.Spain, currently on the U.N. Security Council, has joined the United States and Britain in backing a tough new resolution giving Iraq little time to disarm or face military strikes.
''We don't have any material interests in Iraq...France has material interests in Iraq. Russia has material interests in Iraq. China has material interests in Iraq. We don't have any,'' Aznar told Telecinco television in drawing a distinction between governments on opposing sides within the U.N. Security Council.
Secretary General Kofi Annan warned today that if the United States fails to win approval from the Security Council for an attack on Iraq, Washington's decision to act alone or outside the Council would violate the United Nations charter."The members of the Security Council now face a great choice," Mr. Annan said in The Hague, where he was trying to broker a United Nations deal on Cyprus. "If they fail to agree on a common position and action is taken without the authority of the Security Council, the legitimacy and support for any such action will be seriously impaired."
Mr. Annan's remarks drew a sharp response from Washington, where the Bush administration, like its allies overseas, was engaged in a strong lobbying effort to win the necessary nine votes to pass a resolution this week authorizing war.
The White House spokesman Ari Fleischer in a strongly worded retort said that "from a moral point of view," if the United Nations fails to support the Bush administration's war aims, it will have "failed to act once again," as it did in Kosovo in the face of persecution of the ethnic Albanians by Serbia and earlier in Rwanda in the face of genocidal massacres by Hutus against Tutsis. [...]
Responding to a question on the United Nations Charter, Mr. Annan said the charter is "very clear on circumstances under which force can be used. If the U.S. and others were to go outside the Council and take military action, it would not be in conformity with the charter."
"Nobody can predict in advance the results of a war. They are seldom positive." So said President Jacques Chirac on TV this evening, when being questioned by journalists from the two main national TV networks here.
Within a month, we should know whether Tony Blair stands comparison with Winston Churchill, or with Ramsay MacDonald. Will his resolution ensure that Britain can successfully take part in a war, renew the most important alliance in its history and rise above the carping short-sightedness of our two main EU partners?Or will an unpopular war break his hold over his party, offer an opening to the Conservatives and leave Britain friendless in a Europe that has decisively thrown off the American yoke?
In 1931, the first Labour prime minister was thought to have capitulated to the needs of capitalism in the slump. Will the latest, and hitherto most successful, of Labour prime ministers be dismissed for having slavishly prosecuted capitalism's war?
There seem to be many in the Labour Party who regard their leader as a traitor in MacDonald's mould. There is nothing about the coming war that they like. It is to be started by America and, worse, by a Republican president who, they believe, stole the election.
It is against a dictator who, though nasty, has the inestimable merit, in their eyes, of being Left-wing and anti-Israel. It is likely to take place without the support of that elusive "international community" of which they are such keen members.
It is opposed by UN panjandrums and Europhiles and bishops and Muslims and feminists and the BBC. And yet a Labour government is supporting it.
It is almost as if a Tory government were advocating the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party - it doesn't come naturally.
Once in a Lifetime (1984) (Talking Heads)And You May Find Yourself Living In A Shotgun Shack
And You May Find Yourself In Another Part Of The World
And You May Find Yourself Behind The Wheel Of A Large Automobile
And You May Find Yourself In A Beautiful House, With A Beautiful Wife
And You May Ask Yourself-Well...How Did I Get Here?Letting The Days Go By/let The Water Hold Me Down
Letting The Days Go By/water Flowing Underground
Into The Blue Again/after The Money's Gone
Once In A Lifetime/water Flowing Underground.And You May Ask Yourself
How Do I Work This?
And You May Ask Yourself
Where Is That Large Automobile?
And You May Tell Yourself
This Is Not My Beautiful House!
And You May Tell Yourself
This Is Not My Beautiful Wife!Letting The Days Go By/let The Water Hold Me Down
Letting The Days Go By/water Flowing Underground
Into The Blue Again/after The Money's Gone
Once In A Lifetime/water Flowing Underground.Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...
Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...
Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...Water Dissolving...and Water Removing
There Is Water At The Bottom Of The Ocean
Carry The Water At The Bottom Of The Ocean
Remove The Water At The Bottom Of The Ocean!Letting The Days Go By/let The Water Hold Me Down
Letting The Days Go By/water Flowing Underground
Into The Blue Again/in The Silent Water
Under The Rocks And Stones/there Is Water Underground.Letting The Days Go By/let The Water Hold Me Down
Letting The Days Go By/water Flowing Underground
Into The Blue Again/after The Money's Gone
Once In A Lifetime/water Flowing Underground.And You May Ask Yourself
What Is That Beautiful House?
And You May Ask Yourself
Where Does That Highway Go?
And You May Ask Yourself
Am I Right?...Am I Wrong?
And You May Tell Yourself
MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE?Letting The Days Go By/let The Water Hold Me Down
Letting The Days Go By/water Flowing Underground
Into The Blue Again/in The Silent Water
Under The Rocks And Stones/there Is Water Underground.Letting The Days Go By/let The Water Hold Me Down
Letting The Days Go By/water Flowing Underground
Into The Blue Again/after The Money's Gone
Once In A Lifetime/water Flowing Underground.Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...
Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...
Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...
The United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil a day. Eleven million of those barrels are imported, but 9 million are from domestic oil production. Oil is oil, and when events -- a war in the Middle East or an OPEC ministers' meeting in Vienna -- affect the price of oil we import from Saudi Arabia and Iraq, they have the same effect on the oil produced in the United States.In recent months, as America has threatened and prepared for war against Iraq, the price of oil has gone from the low $20s to the high $30s a barrel. American consumers, therefore, are paying an extra $15 a barrel, or $300 million a day, or more than $100 billion a year as a "war premium" on the oil they consume. It's like a tax -- imposed as a result of government policy -- except that the government doesn't get the money. That's before the war even starts, and it is in addition to the $300 billion or so they're saying that prosecuting the war is going to cost directly. Of that $100 billion, $55 billion pays for the oil we import. But $135 million a day -- a day -- or more than $45 billion a year (minus some taxes) goes into the pockets of domestic oil producers.
"Producer" is a misleading term for people who pull oil out of the ground and sell it. "Oil extractors" would be more accurate. The oil is there, produced from leftover dinosaurs that God or nature has tossed into the recycle bin. This oil costs something to extract, but that something is less than $25 a barrel, or no one would have been extracting it before the war buildup started. So the extra $15 is a gift from Hussein and Bush.
I don't believe that Bush is prosecuting a war against Iraq in order to enrich -- or, more accurately, further enrich -- his oil-patch cronies. But we all are happier when we can make our friends happy. All this happiness among his buddies must at least make a man like Bush, who is not plagued by self-doubt or second thoughts in any event, even more confident as he marches forward.
MORE:
The Incoherent Embryophile: Bush's position on cloning makes no sense. (Michael Kinsley November 29, 2001, Slate)
Reason, Faith, and Stem Cells (Michael Kinsley, August 29, 2000, Slate)
A do-it-yourself quiz to test a marriage's chances of surviving is being published today by Relate, the marriage guidance service.The quiz, the first undertaken by Relate, is aimed at couples contemplating marriage, but the group emphasises that it is only a guide to the chances of finding marital bliss, not a guarantee.
"Our counsellors find predictive tests can be very useful in helping couples work out how to get their relationship to work long-term," says Angela Sibson, the group's chief executive. "Taking time to identify possible problems can go a long way to help couples thrive." [...]
Elizabeth Martyn, 50, a relationship adviser who wrote the book, said: "Often people don't talk enough about how well their relationship is working. By working through simple questionnaires together, couples could "get a new perspective on their relationship".
"This is invaluable in revealing how a couple may be avoiding talking about problem areas and give them a good idea of areas they might need to focus on to maintain a good relationship."
4. The marriage vows have real meaning for me
12. I'm happy with the frequency and variety in our sex life
20. We're good at sorting out our differences fairly
23. We recognise the importance of talking about our feelings, and can do so openly
Consider this experiment in temporal ingenuity. You are holding your mother's left hand. At the same time, she clutches her own mother, your grandmother, with her right. Your grandmother then holds her mother's hand, and so on into the past.With each individual allocated a yard of private space, your ancestral queue snakes off into the Industrial Revolution, through the Middle Ages and on into prehistory, until, 300 miles down the line, it eventually reaches the missing link, the common ancestor that humans shared with chimpanzees six million years ago.
Now imagine a similar, parallel queue emerging from that common ancestor, this time following the chimpanzee side of her family - until it reaches the present day. 'You are now face to face with your chimpanzee cousin, and you are joined to her by an unbroken chain of mothers holding hands,' Dawkins observes.
The crucial word in this sentence is, of course, 'unbroken', for at no point on Dawkins's seamless chain of primates does one link differ in any substantive way from the next. There is only imperceptible change, one species eliding effortlessly into the next. There are no jumps in which one animal abruptly turns into a totally different kind of creature, no sudden hurdling of species barriers, an idea that so bothers opponents of natural selection. There are only tiny, unnoticeable transformations.
It is a typically deft piece of Dawkins imagery that not only illustrates the relentless power of evolutionary process, but reveals the dangers of the 'discontinuous mind', the thinking of the priest, lawyer or politician who seeks to compartmentalise our minds and inflict arbitrary concepts - soul, race, even species - on mankind. These are all villains in Dawkins's world, particularly the priests, individuals who have inflicted the 'the most inflammatory, enemy-labelling device in history' -religious affiliation - and who have been responsible for civilisation's worst horrors.
It is an old myth about Plato that he was the proponent of a mad scheme to institute the rule of "philosopher-kings" in Greek cities, and that his "Sicilian adventure" was a first step toward realizing his ambition. When Martin Heidegger returned to teaching in 1934 after his shameful tenure as Nazi rector of Freiburg University, a now forgotten colleague, meaning to heap shame on his head, quipped, "Back from Syracuse?" As a bon mot this can hardly be bettered. But Plato's aims could not have been more different from Heidegger's. As Plato recounts in his Seventh Letter, he once dreamed of entering political life but was disheartened by the tyrannical rule of the Thirty in Athens (404 - 403 B.C.). He then renounced politics altogether when the democratic regime that succeeded the Thirty put to death his friend and teacher Socrates. He concluded, much as the character Socrates concludes in Plato's Republic, that once a political regime is corrupt there is little one can do to restore it to health "without friends and associates" -that is, without those who are both philosophical friends of justice and loyal friends of the city. Short of a miracle, in which philosophers would become kings or kings would turn to philosophy, the most that can be hoped for in politics is the establishment of a moderate government under the stable rule of law.. . . Dionysius is our contemporary. Over the last century he has assumed many names: Lenin and Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini, Mao and Ho, Castro and Trujillo, Amin and Bokassa, Saddam and Khomeini, Ceausescu and Milosevic-one's pen runs dry. In the nineteenth century optimistic souls could believe that tyranny was a thing of the past. After all, Europe had entered the modern age and everyone knew that complex modern societies, attached to secular, democratic values, simply could not be ruled by old-style despotic means. Modern societies might still be authoritarian, their bureaucracies cold and their workplaces cruel, but they could not be tyrannies in the sense that Syracuse was. Modernization would render the classical concept of tyranny obsolete, and as nations outside Europe modernized they, too, would enter the post-tyrannical future. We now know how wrong this was. The harems and food tasters of ancient times are indeed gone but their places have been taken by propaganda ministers and revolutionary guards, drug barons and Swiss bankers. The tyrant has survived.
The problem of Dionysius is as old as creation. That of his intellectual partisans is new. As continental Europe gave birth to two great tyrannical systems in the twentieth century, communism and fascism, it also gave birth to a new social type, for which we need a new name: the philotyrannical intellectual. A few major thinkers of that period whose work is still meaningful for us today dared to serve the modern Dionysius openly in word and deed, and their cases are infamous: Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt in Nazi Germany, Georg Lukacs in Hungary, perhaps a few others. A great many joined Fascist and Communist parties on both sides of the Iron Curtain, whether out of elective affinities or professional ambition, without taking great risks; a few played soldier for a time in the jungles and deserts of the third world. A surprising number were pilgrims to the new Syracuses being built in Moscow, Berlin, Hanoi, and Havana. These were the political voyeurs who made carefully choreographed tours of the tyrant's domains with return tickets in hand, admiring the collective farms, the tractor factories, the sugarcane groves, the schools, but somehow never visiting the prisons.
Mainly, though, European intellectuals stayed at their desks, visiting Syracuse only in their imaginations, developing interesting, sometimes brilliant ideas to explain away the sufferings of peoples, whose eyes they would never meet. Distinguished professors, gifted poets, and influential journalists summoned their talents to convince all who would listen that modern tyrants were liberators and that their unconscionable crimes were noble, when seen in the proper perspective. Whoever takes it upon himself to write an honest intellectual history of twentieth-century Europe will need a strong stomach.
The common strain that binds together the attitudes and ideas which I call anti-intellectual is a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition constantly to minimize the value of that life.
More than 3000 children are dying every week in Iraq as a result of the decade long embargo that was enforced on the country after its invasion of Kuwait, a new report says.It puts the total increase in the number of children who have died as a result of the embargo at around 1.6 million since 1990, with year on year increases. [...]
The report, written by a paediatrician at the Saddam College of Medicine in Baghdad, adds, "In Iraq, social and economic circumstances have deteriorated, and in particular the health services; thus child mortality followed by infant mortality have increased." The report shows that in the first three months of last year the increase in the total number of child deaths put down to the embargo was in excess of 44, 000. [...]
Rosemary Hollis, director of the Middle East programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, one of the world?s leading centres for the analysis of international issues, criticised the balance of the article.
She said, "I don't think it washes to put all the blame on the Iraq government or to put it all on the sanctions themselves. It is miserable combination which is the result of disastrous policy failure.
"Unwittingly by setting up a sanction regime that was run through the Iraqi regime in terms of the food distribution, the UN Security Council cemented in power what had been a rather shaky government system."
The war has already started: Anglo-American commandos and airplanes are now operating inside Iraq, laying the groundwork for the conventional forces that will follow soon. As President Bush made clear in his press conference last Thursday, coalition forces will act against Saddam Hussein, with or without the UN's approval.
The Security Council does not seem to have got the message. On Friday, it reconvened for another endless round of palaver over the pace of weapons inspections, presided over by the resplendently-robed foreign minister of Guinea. No doubt his countrymen would have been mighty proud of François Fall's star turn on the world stage. If only they had seen it.Unfortunately, The New York Times reports from Guinea's capital, Conakry, that "electricity is available only every fourth day, and then only between
midnight and 6am". Not that CNN would be on even if there were power for TV sets. General-turned-president Lansana Conte, who has ruled with an iron fist since 1984, strictly regulates the flow of information to his subjects.This is what the UN "process" comes down to: a country that keeps its own people in the dark, literally and figuratively, is asked to shed light on what America and Britain should do with regard to Iraq. Gaining the imprimatur of Guinea - and of such other global giants as Angola, Chile and Syria - is supposed to confer "international legitimacy" on the actions of two of the oldest and most successful democracies in the world.
That, at least, is the logic of those, such as France, Russia and China, who demand another UN resolution before Saddam Hussein is finally punished for failing to comply with the previous 17. Their sincerity in suggesting that the world body must be the final arbiter of all military actions is pretty suspect, however. France did not seek UN approval when it sent 3,000 soldiers into Ivory Coast. Russia did not seek sanction for its bulldozing of Chechnya, nor China for its brutalisation of Tibet. In private, the leaders of these nations would chortle at the notion of giving Guinea a veto over where they can send their own forces - yet they expect America to do just that.
From the standpoint of the rest of the world, there is a realpolitik logic to this: they think that the UN and other international institutions can be instruments of containing US power. "I like very much the metaphor of Gulliver, of ensnarling the giant," Jorge Castenada, Mexico's former foreign minister, explained in November. "Tying it up, with nails, with thread, with 20,000 nets that bog it down: these nets being norms, principles, resolutions, agreements, and bilateral, regional and international covenants."
The Supreme Court is revisiting its landmark 1966 ruling that led to the familiar refrain, "You have the right to remain silent." Justices said Monday they would consider an appeal by a man who claims he was duped into talking to officers.John J. Fellers' case gives the high court a chance to clarify when officers must recite "Miranda rights" to suspects they've come to arrest. [...]
Fellers was barefoot and sipping a mug of what appeared to be tea when he sat on his couch talking to officers who came to his door in Lincoln, Neb. One officer was familiar to Fellers because they both worked as hospital volunteers. Fellers talked freely about getting into drugs after the breakup of his marriage and business problems.
He had been indicted on drug charges before officers went to his house, but they did not specifically tell him they were there to arrest him. Fellers was sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison after being convicted of conspiring to distribute methamphetamine.
University of Texas law professor Susan Klein said the scene in Fellers' den is played out around the country as officers try to elicit a confession from an off-guard suspect.
If Fellers wins, Klein said, "police officers can no longer intentionally circumvent Miranda by questioning first, getting a statement, then saying 'Oh by the way, now that you've spilled the beans, here's your rights.'"
If Fellers loses, officers will have more freedom to question suspects without bringing up Miranda, she said.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon praised the determination of US President Bush and his administration in its drive to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. "If, in the 1930's," Sharon said at a Likud Knesset faction meeting today, "there had been a leadership so determined to fight dictatorial regimes, it is likely that we, the Jewish Nation, would not have had to pay [the price of the Holocaust]. At times like these, it is important to realize that."
Norwegian black metal band Mayhem is known for hurling animal parts into its concert audiences, but things went wrong at a performance last week. A 25-year-old fan in Bergen landed in the hospital after getting hit by a sheep's head.Per Kristian Hagen is recovering from emergency surgery and taking the incident in good humour, but he's filed a police report against Mayhem even though he otherwise enjoyed their show.
"If it turns out I've got permanent injuries after this, it's important to have some sort of record to refer to," Hagen told local newspaper Bergensavisen. "I'll have to file a claim for lost income, since I can't work for awhile."
Hagen concedes he must be one of the unluckiest Mayhem fans in the country. He'd heard rumors that the band dismembered dead animals on stage and threw their body parts into the audience. He found out the rumors were true.
The band usually is said to dismember pigs, but last week it opted for a sheep. "I was standing near the mixing board and talking with a friend," Hagen recalls. "Suddenly I was hit in the head and knocked out. I don't remember seeing the sheep's head flying at me. I just remember I woke up on the floor."
Harriet Klausner . . . can plow through a book in just an hour or two - and she typically reads two or three a day - so when she worked at a Pennsylvania library in the '70s, she started writing brief reviews of all the new books for the library's newsletter. The habit stuck, and she's been writing brief book reviews ever since. A few years ago, Amazon.com started allowing people to submit reviews to the site, and suddenly Klausner found herself labeled the No. 1 reviewer. . . .Klausner just wants to introduce people to lesser-known authors. She confesses her own favorite is Patricia Cornwell ...
In related news, Brothers Judd blog has been rated a Slimy Mollusc in the blog ecosystem. Say, do these two creatures have orange beards?
American interrogators are barred by international convention from torturing prisoners. That means no "extreme pain or suffering, whether physical or mental." Extreme irritation is a different matter."The idea is to make the prisoner talk, not to hurt him," says X. "Harsh physical pain produces bad results. Hurt someone enough, and he'll tell you his mother shot JFK if that's what it takes to stop the torture. But if his mother didn't really shoot JFK, what's the point? You want to break a suspect psychologically. That's how you get real information."
Orrin raised the issue of the use of Mohammed's children.
In the case of Mohammed, interrogators have another means of coercion - his two small children. The U.S. reportedly has been holding them for more then six months."Nobody will hurt them," says X. "But he doesn't know that. You bring the kids in, show them to him through a window. That's all you really need."
Mohammed went to college in North Carolina. Will he really believe that American interrogators are prepared to torture his children?
"Right now he doesn't even know what country he's in, or who's in charge," says X. "He may think he's dealing with a Third World intelligence service that does torture kids. He's in the red room, exhausted and confused. And he's got his own imagination to contend with. He's thinking what he would do if the situation was reversed and he was holding the children of his enemies. And that's going to be a terrifying thought."
One of the dark and bloody oaths OJ made me swear when he offered to loose me upon you was that I would not do the blogdance: hey, look at Instapundit's riff on Vodkapundit's fisking of Calpundit's post about Andrew Sullivan. Nevertheless, I am linking to a Mark Steyn column about a Mark Kingwell column, rather than directly to Kingwell, because, first, I'd much rather read Steyn and, second, he highlights exactly what I want to talk about. Steyn quotes Kingwell as follows:
"For generations, we [Canada] have been busy creating, in your shadow, a model of citizenship that is inclusive, diverse, open-ended and transnational. It is dedicated to far-reaching social justice and the rule of international law. And we're successfully exporting it around the world not by bucking the UN, but by seeing it for the flawed but necessary agency it is."Now, Steyn does a splendid job making fun of this, but I did want to focus on the idea of "a model of citizenship that is . . . transnational." I'd like to top it off with a model of ice cream that is hot and a model of black that is pink. How, exactly, do you run a country if your citizens think of themselves as transnational? What is transnational citizenship? I've never been much of a Marxist, but I wouldn't be that surprised if Canada's state was the first to actually wither away or, at least, convert itself into an HMO.
The Democrats are talking themselves to death in their filibuster against the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the federal bench. The more they talk, the more it is clear that they have nothing to say and no reason to block the nomination of one of the few Hispanics to be nominated to the senior levels of our judiciary.There is no ethical problem here. No rash statements. No imputed bias. Not even any clear indication of a strong right wing or left wing political philosophy. The burden of the Democratic argument seems to be that Estrada has not ruled, in advance, on all the cases that will come before him. What many would take as a refreshing lack of prejudice and the indication of an open mind, the Democrats assume is evidence of a great conspiracy of silence.
Liberals see the Estrada filibuster as providing a precedent for a new level of disclosure for all nominees to the federal bench. Rather than nominate and confirm good people and let them decide cases, the Democrats are now asking for clear commitments on each area of judicial decision-making that a new judge is likely to confront. The independence of the judiciary is at stake in this new assertion of legislative prerogative.
But the Democrats should realize that they have chosen a terrible target for their new level of scrutiny. By filibustering an Hispanic nominee and going to such lengths to block his confirmation, even when there is no clear reason to do so, they are asking the Hispanic voters to turn against them in droves.
When you're a writer for CBS' "Everybody Loves Raymond," a hard night at home usually means an easy day at the office."A lot of times, we'll be arguing with our spouses and you're sad that you're in the argument, but then you think, 'This could be 18 grand,' " said Steve Skrovan, one of the executive producers.
"That's not entirely true," supervising producer Mike Royce interrupted. "You also get 10 [grand] for the repeat."
"My wife will accuse me of getting this look in my eye," Skrovan said, "and she's going, 'This is not for the show!' "
Ah, but it almost always is, and the hit sitcom's creator and executive producer Phil Rosenthal (not to be confused with your favorite TV critic, though we also share a middle name) told moderator David Wild and an audience at the recent U.S. Comedy Arts Festival that he and his staff have the black and blue marks to prove it.
That's why even the most absurd of plots on the series have the ring of truth to them. More often than not, they have actually happened.
"I read that Carl Reiner ran ['The Dick Van Dyke Show' writers] room by saying, 'What happened at your house this week?' " Rosenthal said. "I thought that's the perfect model for how to do a show about real life, about a real family, so that's what we do."
The US paid an al-Qa'eda foot soldier a £17 million reward for the capture of third-in-command Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - including a £1.2 million bonus to relocate to Britain, it has been reported.The Egyptian radical, who has not been named, agreed to tell his captors the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant after he was arrested in Pakistan last month, according to Newsweek.
France's position is, therefore, quite clear.
- Opposition to inspections
- Opposition to ending inspections
- Opposition to continuing inspections
- Categorical opposition to military option
- Clear support for military option
- Opposition to sanctions
- Need for a timetable
- Refusal of any deadline
- Opposition to any Iraqi noncompliance
- Permission of various types of Iraqi noncompliance
Ours is a corporate age. Yet, amid the fertile arguments on how to tame and transform today's corporations, there is a curious absence, a sense that the current era of business dominance is somehow unique. For there was a time when corporations really ruled the world, and among the commercial dinosaurs that once straddled the globe, Britain's East India Company looms large. At its height, the Company ruled over a fifth of the world's people, generated a revenue greater than the whole of Britain and commanded a private army a quarter of a million strong.Although it started out as a speculative vehicle to import precious spices from the East Indies--modern-day Indonesia--the Company grew to fame and fortune by trading with and then conquering India. And for many Indians, it was the Company's plunder that first de-industrialised their country and then provided the finance that fuelled Britain's own industrial revolution. In essence, the Honourable East India Company found India rich and left it poor.
But visit London today, where the Company was headquartered for over 250 years, and nothing is there to mark its rise and fall, its power and its crimes. Like a snake, the City seems embarrassed of an earlier skin. All that remains is a pub--the East India Arms on Fenchurch Street. Cramped, but popular with office workers, the pub stands at the centre of the Company's former commercial universe.
The absence of any memorial to the East India Company is peculiar. For this was not just any corporation. Not only was it the first major shareholder owned company, but it was also a pivot that changed the course of economic history. During its lifetime, the Company first reversed the ancient flow of wealth from West to East, and then put in place new systems of exchange and exploitation. [...]
The war, known simply as the 'Indian Mutiny', lasted for almost two years, and was characterised by extreme savagery on both sides. When the Company retook Cawnpore, where rebel troops had slaughtered European women and children, captured sepoys were made to lick the blood from the floors before being hanged. The reconquest of Delhi by the Company's troops was followed by systematic sacking, and the surviving inhabitants were turned out of its gates to starve. Bahadur's two sons and grandson were killed in cold blood, and the old Mughal was stripped of his powers and sent into exile in Rangoon.
Yet the Company that had grown in a symbiotic relationship with the Mughal Empire could not long survive its passing. The uprising itself and the massacres of Europeans had generated a ferocious bloodlust in British society. Even the mild-mannered Charles Dickens declared that 'I wish I were commander-in-chief in India [for] I would do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested.' On 1 November 1858, a proclamation was read from every military cantonment in India: the East India Company was abolished and direct rule by Queen and Parliament was introduced. Firework displays followed the proclamation
The Company's legacy was quickly erased. East India House was demolished in 1861. India was no longer ruled from a City boardroom, but from the imperial elegance of Whitehall.
Many would argue that the Company was no worse and in some respects somewhat better than other conquerors and rulers of India. What sets the Company apart, however, was the remorseless logic of its eternal search for profit, whether through trade, through taxation or through war. The Company was not just any other ruler. As a commercial venture, it could not and did not show pity during the Bengal famine of 1769-1770. Shareholder interests came first when it dispossessed Bengal's peasantry with its 'permanent settlement' of 1794. And the principles of laissez-faire ensured that its Governor-General would note the devastation of India's weavers in the face of British imports, and then do absolutely nothing.
Many institutions have justifiably disappeared into the anonymity of history. But in a country like Britain that is so drenched in the culture of heritage, the public invisibility of the East India Company is suspicious. Perhaps a single Hindi word can now help to explain this selective memory, this very British reticence: loot.
[Khalid Shaikh ] Muhammad is not talking. Yet, if he can be forced to talk, the information could save thousands. It was said to be two weeks of torture that broke the Al Qaeda conspirator who betrayed the plot to blow up those airliners. And if ever there was a case for torture, this excuse for a human being, Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, is it.Thus, the question: Would it be moral to inflict pain on this beast to force him to reveal what he knows? Positive law prohibits it. However, the higher law, the moral law, the Natural Law permits it in extraordinary circumstances such as these.
Here is the reasoning. The morality of any act depends not only on its character, but on the circumstances and motive. Stealing is wrong and illegal, but stealing food for one's starving family is a moral act. Even killing is not always wrong. If a U.S. soldier had shot Muhammad to save 50 hostages, he would be an American hero.
But if it is permissible to take Muhammad's life to save lives, why is it impermissible to inflict pain on him to save lives?
Is the deliberate infliction of pain always immoral? Of course not. Twisting another kid's arm to make him tell where he hid your stolen bicycle is not wrong. Parents spank children to punish them and drive home the lessons of living good lives. Even the caning of that American kid in Singapore that caused a firestorm was not immoral. [...]
In short, while the instant recoiling that decent people exhibit to the idea of torturing Muhammad may mark them as progressive, it may also be a sign of fuzzy liberal thinking.
Many of these same folks are all for war on Iraq. Why? To rid the Middle East of a tyrant and his weapons of mass destruction. When John Paul II argues that, with inspections underway, such a war does not seem necessary, or thus moral, Ari Fleischer instructed the Holy Father that this war has to be fought to keep Saddam from giving horrible weapons to terrorists.
But if it is moral to go to war and kill thousands to prevent potential acts of terror on U.S. soil, why cannot we inflict pain on one man, if that would stop imminent acts of terror on U.S. soil? There is no evidence Saddam has murdered Americans, but there is a computer full that Muhammad has and has hatched plots to slaughter more.
What will history say about people who hold Harry Truman to be a moral hero for dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but recoil in horror from painfully extracting the truth out of one mass murderer to stop the almost certain slaughter of their own people?
Neither side wants to admit the obvious: that American and European interests and perspectives are diverging on an array of issues. With the demise of the Soviet Union, there is no longer a focal point of unity in the Western alliance. It has taken more than a decade, but transatlantic relations are beginning to return to their normal pattern - the pattern that existed during the century or so before the second world war and the cold war. US and European interests may still overlap on some issues, but we are likely to find more and more instances where they do not coincide.Both the US and the leading European powers need to adopt a more realistic and mature attitude about these developments. Too often, Europeans want an activist US that will be responsible for global security and take a leading role in resolving Europe's specific security problems, such as the Balkan crises of the 1990s. At the same time, many of those same Europeans want the US to follow the wishes of its allies passively on key policy issues. They seek a US that is powerful enough to be a hegemon, but humble enough not to exercise that awesome power unilaterally.
In essence, the European allies want the US to be a tethered hegemon. But that is an inherently contradictory and unrealistic concept. If the European countries want to be taken seriously by Washington, they must forge a cohesive foreign and security policy and back it up with serious military resources. And, if necessary, they must be willing to challenge US policy and not back down. Beyond those steps, they must ask the US to do less in the security arena while demonstrating their willingness to do more.
US policymakers and opinion leaders harbour their own illusions about the country's allies. They expect the prosperous and proud European countries to act as obedient clients of the US whenever Washington pursues an initiative. They apparently expect such deference even when the Europeans disagree with the substance of US policy and when European interests may not be served by that policy. Such expectations may have been plausible at the dawn of Nato, when a war-ravaged western Europe faced a powerful threat to its security and desperately needed the US as a protector. They are, however, woefully out of touch with reality in the 21st century.
The engines rumbled and the red sand swirled as the cargo plane roared onto the dirt airstrip. One by one, the dazed and impoverished refugees climbed from the belly of the plane into this desolate wind-swept camp.They are members of Africa's lost tribe, the Somali Bantu, who were stolen from the shores of Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania and carried on Arab slave ships to Somalia two centuries ago. They were enslaved and persecuted until Somalia's civil war scattered them to refugee camps in the 1990's.
Yet on this recent day, the Bantu people were rejoicing as they stepped from the plane into the blinding sun. They were the last members of the tribe to be transferred from a violent camp near the Somali border to this dusty place just south of Sudan. They knew their first trip in a flying machine was a harbinger of miracles to come.
Over the next two years, nearly all of the Somali Bantu refugees in Kenya--about 12,000 people--are to be flown to the United States. This is one of the largest refugee groups to receive blanket permission for resettlement since the mid-1990's, State Department officials say. [...]
Back in the classroom, the students spent the next few hours learning about the refrigerator, ice cubes and strawberry jam. They watched eagerly as Mr. Adan washed dishes in a sink and admired the bathtub and shower. One woman demurred, however, when he invited her to step into the tub.
"It is so clean," she said shyly. "Can I really step in it?"
Some students grumbled that the American appliances seemed more complicated than their ordinary ways of living. Why worry about cleaning a toilet, some refugees said aloud, when the bushes never need to be cleaned?
But Mr. Saidali said he was thrilled to learn about modern toilets after years of relying on smelly pit latrines.
"This latrine is inside the house," marveled Mr. Saidali, a lean man in tattered sneakers. "It's better than what we are now using. It has a seat for sitting and the water goes down.
"Even this sink--it's my first time," he said. "This sink is for washing. It cleans things very nicely."
Even with the lessons, some Bantu are worried about how they will cope in America. They know that blacks and Muslims are minorities there. Will Americans be welcoming? Will they learn English quickly enough? Will they find jobs and housing and friends? Some officials here worry, too.
"These people are from rural areas," Mr. Adan said. "They don't know much about modern life."
But the refugees who arrived on the plane here said they were eager for the challenge.
Uncertain of what might be needed in the United States, they carried most of their precious possessions--broken brooms, chipped mugs, metal plates--as they boarded a rattling bus that roared deep into the camp as the sun sank beyond the horizon.
The refugees knew they would be sleeping on the ground again and going hungry as they have often done. But they also knew that this was only the first phase of an incredible journey.
First stop, Kakuma. Next stop, America.
IS there a future for the Republican Party in New York City? Jay Golub and Robert Hornak think so.At a recent fund-raiser, Golub and Hornak officially unveiled the Urban Republican platform - five principles and reform ideas that they hope will
inspire forward-thinking GOPers to run for City Council seats. [...]Thus, the Urban Republican Platform and its five "Statutes of Liberty":
* Place Parents Before Bureaucrats: Empower individual schools, parents and students, with particular emphasis on giving parents the ability to choose the school best suited to their child's needs.
* Place People Before Government: Implement both tax and spending cuts to "fundamentally change how government views the taxpayers."
* Remain Vigilant in the Fight Against Crime: Continue the downward crime trend of the last few years.
* Abolish Barriers to the Creation of New, Affordable Housing: Streamline the process of, and eliminate the barriers to, building new housing, and encourage new construction with a guarantee that rents on these buildings will not be regulated by government bureaucrats.
* Fight for Good, Responsible and Responsive Government: Reform how the city is run.
[A] very senior member of the government of the United Kingdom told me last summer that there would be no problem on the Labour back-benches or in the EU if Russia or China were leading the coalition against Iraq. . . .I had occasion to say in the Iraq debate in the House of Lords two months ago that this notion of the relationship of the United States and the UN Security Council was an attempt to treat the United States as a great St. Bernard dog which would take the risks and do the work, while others, and not necessarily allies, would hold the leash and give the instructions. One of my noble friends leapt excitedly at the metaphor and asked if I had ever tried to restrain a St. Bernard bitch in heat. Another said the United States was not a St. Bernard but a rotweiler. . . .
The French, Russians, and Chinese are at the poker table; the Germans are on the psychoanalyst's coach. . . .
France has had the policy . . . of purporting to be America's . . . foul-weather friend, while spending almost all of its energies attempting to undermine the Americans. . . .
It is precisely because the United States has been so undemanding that some varieties of anti-Americanism have become so vigorous. The legitimate application of strength generally has a sedative effect, and that is what we are about to observe. . . .
When the students and dissidents of Eastern Europe were dismantling the Soviet empire, their public readings were of Jefferson and Lincoln, and the occupants of Tienanmen Square built a replica of the Statue of Liberty. Our satirists and intellectuals and leftist journalists may prattle as they will, but there has never been anything like the rise of America . . .
I put it to you that it is preferable to continue to be envied because of our success and attachment to principle, than to fall any further into the company of those governments for which cowardice is wisdom, ingratitude is olympian serenity, and the spitefulness of the weak is moral indignation.
