How to Judge Globalism
Globalization is often seen as global Westernization. On this point, there is substantial agreement among many proponents and opponents. Those who take an upbeat view of globalization see it as a marvelous contribution of Western civilization to the world. There is a nicely stylized history in which the great developments happened in Europe: First came…
Medicine as a Luxury
It’s generally recognized that people have the right to eat. When famine breaks out, relief agencies rush food to the hungry. Politics and war may get in the way (indeed, they are often the causes of the famine). Sometimes relief efforts are too small or come too late. But the advanced industrial world usually acts…
The Mirage of Progress
Everyone knows that the past 20 years have been an era of rapid overall economic progress for the vast majority of countries, especially in the developing world. Tariffs have collapsed and countries have flung open their borders to international trade and investment. Technology has progressed as never before, we are told, with revolutions in such…
Free Markets and Poverty
For better than two decades, the orthodox recipe for global growth has been embodied in the so-called Washington Consensus. This approach, advocated by the United States and enforced by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), holds that growth is maximized when barriers to the free flow of capital and commerce are dismantled…
Globalism’s Discontents
Few subjects have polarized people throughout the world as much as globalization. Some see it as the way of the future, bringing unprecedented prosperity to everyone, everywhere. Others, symbolized by the Seattle protestors of December 1999, fault globalization as the source of untold problems, from the destruction of native cultures to increasing poverty and immiseration.…
A Deal Built on Sand
Pulled along by the war on terrorism, the multinational corporate campaign to deregulate the global economy seems back on course–at least for the moment. By shrewdly buying votes and appealing to patriotism, the Bush administration engineered the jump start of a stalled new round of trade talks at the World Trade Organization in mid-November. Three…
Justice for Refugees
Ahmad Hussein is 12 years old. “My greatest wish,” he says, “is to learn to read and write, to have warm shoes, and eat as much as I want to.” But Ahmad’s wish has long been thwarted. He is one of more than 3.6 million Afghan refugees–the largest refugee population in the world–who are presently…
Starved for Attention
As the aftermath of September 11 prompts questioning about anti-Western rage, a good starting point is a statistic: 800 million. That’s the number of people in the developing countries who lack “food security”–who don’t have enough food to perform the basic tasks of daily living. Of course, every American knows that there are millions of…
The Costs of Orthodoxy
“En este país está todo mal hecho, pero está tan bien hecho que es indestructible.” (Everything in this country is made badly, but it is so craftily done as to be indestructible.) –Argentine President Arturo Frondizi (1960) What a time Argentines had in the nineties, that age of economic marvels. Long-standing corruption and mismanagement seemed…
A Politics of Denial
On the sidewalk outside the Durban International Convention Center last September, members of India’s lowest “untouchable” castes staged a hunger strike. They were protesting their government’s refusal to let the issue of caste come before the United Nations’ World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (WCAR). On the terrace of the nearby…
Globalism and Poverty
Just as Watergate became a metaphor for the Nixon era and Whitewater the right’s symbol for Clinton, Enron is the emblem of the Bush administration’s way of life. Enron is to George W. Bush what Teapot Dome was to Warren G. Harding. Its demise should also signal the collapse of a whole economic paradigm, in…
Homegrown Horror:
When the first post- September 11 anthrax cases were revealed, speculation about who was responsible focused immediately on associates of Osama bin Laden or the government of Iraq. Now, though, it’s widely believed that the anthrax attacks are homegrown, the result of an individual or a small domestic terrorist group. It also seems that the…
Controlling Pakistan’s Nukes:
Battalions of reporters and analysts who have been scouring the tinderbox region of South Asia and Central Asia since October 7–the start of the bombing of Taliban and al-Qaeda hideouts–have missed the significance of one of the biggest stories unfolding right under their noses in Pakistan. There is a good deal of circumstantial evidence that…
Suddenly Serviceable:
For years, Charles Moskos has been churning out impassioned arguments for creating an American system of compulsory civilian and military service. The Northwestern University sociologist is widely recognized as the intellectual guru behind the national-service movement. But until recently, his idea seemed doomed to remain one of those noble proposals with almost no political appeal.…
Play Dead:
The hardcore fans of Aibo, a popular robotic pet, are a creative, if geeky, bunch. Since 1999, when the lifelike toys first appeared beneath Christmas trees, hundreds of Aibo enthusiasts have programmed their charges to perform tricks unimagined in the boardrooms of Sony, the robot’s creator. By expertly tweaking Aibo’s code, hobbyists have enabled the…
First Step or Last Gasp?
There is widespread agreement that the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States ushered in a new stage of world history, one distinct from the last 50 or 100 years. Secretary of State Colin Powell has referred to the period since 9-11 as the “post-post-Cold War.” NewYork Times columnist Thomas Friedman has described it…
Wunderkinder: A Royal Shame
A young man named Anthony, inmate of an Arizona mental hospital, says a friendly good-bye to his psychiatrist and then prepares to shin down the wall on a rope of knotted sheets. Anthony’s stay at the hospital has been voluntary; but, as he explains to his psychiatrist, he must pretend that he is escaping for…
Onward, Christian Moguls
Vision is a favorite topic of Dr. Garth W. Coonce, a minorChristian-broadcasting magnate from Marion, Illinois. In his monthly newsletter,Partnership, he often muses on the sacred visions that have inspired him to amass 16 television stations, creating a 24-hour network that beams charismatic preachers like Creflo Dollar and Benny Hinn into devout homes. Coonce also…
The Roots of Treason, Explained;
The Roots of Treason, Explained From Shelby Steele, writing on American Taliban John Walker on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal (December 10, 2001): Walker came out of a self-hating stream of American life. Yes, alone in Yemen and later in Pakistan, he may have been seduced by charismatic people. But he was…
Enron’s End
The spectacular fall of the house of Enron would have been a huge news story were it not for the terror war. Just a few months ago, Enron Corp. ranked number seven on the Fortune 500. But in little more than 15 months, it managed to lose over 99 percent of its equity. As the…
Free Flight
Free Flight: From Airline Hell to a New Age of Travel By James Fallows. Public Affairs, 256 pages, $25.00 Breaking Gridlock: Moving toward Transportation That Works By Jim Motavalli. Sierra Club Books, 304 pages, $23.00 If ever there were a time for top-to-bottom reassessment of the U.S.transportation system, now is that time. James Fallows’s Free…
Solidarity Strikes Out
Three Strikes: Labor’s Heartland Losses and What They Meanfor Working Americans By Stephen Franklin. Guilford Press, 308 pages, $23.95 Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit ofLabor’s Last Century By Howard Zinn, Dana Frank, and Robin D.G. Kelley. Beacon Press, 174 pages, $23.00 From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: A Short,…
Food: My Dinner with Derrida
In the 1960s, when my husband and I first traveled inEngland as students, we would have starved without the Chinese. From Brighton toDurham, from Bath to Norwich, the only inexpensive restaurants open at night wereserving sweet-and-sour pork. Even Indian food was exotic and scarce–and pub foodwas inedible. A decade later, living in London on our…
War and the Constitution
The media are awash in disinformation about military tribunals. Since November 13, when President George W. Bush issued his controversial executive order mandating the use of military commissions to prosecute suspected terrorists, one far-fetched claim of law has followed another. The president’s lawyers have every right to put the best possible light on their plans…
Ashcroft’s Hypocrisy
Three years ago, John Ashcroft–then a senator from Missouri, now the U.S. attorney general–opened a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on gun control by declaring that “a citizenry armed with both the right to possess firearms and to speak freely is less likely to fall victim to a tyrannical government than a citizenry that is disarmed…
Tradecraft
The quality of most American movies released lately has been so low that Spy Game stands out as a significant pleasure. This Robert Redford-Brad Pitt vehicle is not a film for the ages–I may well have forgotten all about it by next year–but it does its self-assigned job very well. It is an example of…
Freeh’s Reign
Washington had rarely seen such urgency and bipartisan resolve. On a warm September day, the president and his handpicked Federal Bureau of Investigation director laid out a new vision for what Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy has called the “crown jewel” of law enforcement agencies. “Today’s FBI,” the president said, “operates in a new and challenging…
Ignorant Bliss
In the locker room, two women are discussing the war against terrorism. They agree that Attorney General John Ashcroft is right not to reveal information about the 1,000-plus people detained since September 11. The trouble is, “we’re too soft” on the detainees, one opines. “No, the trouble is that a lot of people detained are…
Our Democratic Lords
Fast track has gone to the Senate, where its passage, alas, is assured. “I don’t think we stand a chance of defeating it,” says one dispirited union official. Indeed, labor lobbyists aren’t even focusing on the trade legislation itself, but on an expansion of assistance for displaced workers that they hope the Senate will muster…
Comment: The Enron Economy
Just as Watergate became a metaphor for the Nixon era and Whitewater the right’s symbol for Clinton, Enron is the emblem of the Bush administration’s way of life. Enron is to George W. Bush what Teapot Dome was to Warren G. Harding. Its demise should also signal the collapse of a whole economic paradigm, in…
