Trading With a Low-Wage Tiger
When Robert Mao describes the fantastic manufacturing opportunities his company sees in China, he speaks with mixed feelings. “For the first time in the modern era,” he marvels, “we have an inexhaustible reservoir of good, trainable labor.” But Mao, who as president and CEO of Nortel Networks China has worked in the region for 20…
A Charged Atmosphere
If the proposals for privatizing Mexico’s nationalized electrical system bear an eerie resemblance to California’s disastrous experiment in deregulation, it should come as no surprise. The proposals, after all, share some of the same authors. In fact, as Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay were setting up shadow corporations to hide Enron’s huge U.S. losses in…
Who’s Right Now?
Several months ago, American journals — mainstream and progressive both — were filled with alarm about the rise of the far right in Europe. But recent election results in Germany, Sweden, Austria and elsewhere make clear that the panic button was pushed prematurely. In Germany, the coalition of Social Democrats and the Greens eked out…
A Tale of Two Cities
Two political movements representing distinct visions of the global economy will hold their annual conventions the last week of January. The World Economic Forum — an organization of some 1,000 multinational corporations — will meet in Davos, a picture book ski resort in the Swiss Alps. The forum was organized 30 years ago to provide…
The ABCs of Smallpox
Medicine depends on probability: the probability of a disease occurring, the likelihood that it will spread or can be prevented, the odds of a side effect resulting from a tool of treatment or prevention. A risk-benefit analysis evaluates the risk of a disease versus what doctors can do to prevent or treat it. With smallpox,…
We Disport. We Deride.
“FOX NEWS ALERT,” screams the screen, in red. “FOX NEWS LEARNS OF POSSIBLE THREAT TO NY HARBOR.” Do we have your attention now? Who cares if FOX’s reporter goes on to say that the New Year’s Eve threat is “uncorroborated, noncredible [sic] and suspect”? Attention will be paid. Attention is television’s everyday grail — its…
Books in Review
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature By Steven Pinker. Viking Press, 509 pages, $27.95 Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom By Paul H. Rubin. Rutgers University Press, 256 pages, $25.00 Among the calamities of the 20th century were vast social experiments that tried to transform humanity with disastrous consequences. The Nazi…
The Rove Machine Rolls On
It’s no accident that Karl Rove was one of Richard Nixon’s moles. Using techniques developed by his first mentor, dirty-tricks strategist Donald Segretti, Rove infiltrated Democratic organizations on behalf of Nixon’s infamous 1972 campaign. Rove’s formidable talents came to the attention of George Bush Senior, then incoming Republican National Committee chairman, and the rest is…
New Year, New Fear
Shortly after the Republican sweep of Congress in November, President Bush said he looked forward to working with lawmakers to “make our country a better and more compassionate place.” And when Sen. Bill Frist was elected majority leader in December, the Republican from Tennessee promised to “listen, to diagnose, to treat … to heal,” and…
Tilting on the Axis (of Evil)
I never thought I’d hear “Hotel California” in the bleak desert landscape of Iran. Don Henley’s tale of a bad trip was a big hit with our guide, Reza, however, and he’d turn up the volume whenever the song looped around on his tape player. “This could be heaven or this could be hell,” Don…
The Write Stuff
There is a long, slow line. The queue of narrow-shouldered boys in thrift-store shirts and black-tighted girls with Emily Dickinson stares is blocking aisles in a Washington bookstore. The faithful look to be just out of college or just past 30. They thread through the door and onto the sidewalk. They are waiting for Dave…
The Taxonomist: Evildoer
If, like our president and vice president, you strongly believe that cutting taxes leads to higher tax revenues, the past year and a half must have been very disappointing. Despite the huge tax cut enacted in the spring of 2001, personal income-tax collections have plummeted since George W. Bush took office, dropping from 10.1 percent…
Scorsese’s Low Score
Let us hearken back to a time when gangs ruled the world. Gangs sizing each other up, puffed with pride, wagging their weaponry, painstakingly stylized in diction and dress. There were the Bowery Boys and the Forty Thieves, the Plug Uglies and the Dead Rabbits, the riders of Rohan and the Uruk-hai, the hobbits, the…
Comment: Never Mind
One of the most astonishing recent events is the spectacle of Bill Richardson, formerly Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations, literally mediating between the Bush administration and the North Koreans. Even weirder is how this anomalous piece of freelancing came about. The North Koreans had enjoyed a constructive relationship with Richardson, who was recently…
Where Are the Hawks on North Korea?
Does George W. Bush actually believe his own foreign-policy pronouncements? A year ago he made North Korea a charter member of the “axis of evil” and vowed not to “permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.” The National Security Strategy he issued last September warned that the…
Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!
The House of Justice on Madison Avenue between 124th and 125th streets in New York City may not look like the epicenter of a movement that could wreak havoc within the Democratic Party. The unremarkable, somewhat dilapidated edifice sits on a block bookended by a restaurant and the A & M Deli, where you can…
John Zogby’s Creative Polls
In a recent New York Times Magazine cover story about animal rights, journalist Michael Pollan reported that 51 percent of Americans believe that “primates are entitled to the same rights as human children.” It was a surprising finding, but one that Pollan simply attributed to a “recent Zogby Poll.” When Pollan’s article came out, you…
Dr. Frist to the Rescue
Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn., whom The New York Times has taken to calling Dr. Frist), the Senate majority leader and President Bush’s new fair-haired boy, wants to fix Medicare. This is the same Bill Frist whose father founded a for-profit hospital chain, Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). Headed by Frist’s brother, HCA merged with another…
