The corruption obsession also crowds out debate on other crucial problems. A country’s bankrupt educational system, malfunctioning hospitals, or stagnating economy cannot compete with headlines about the latest corruption scandal Critics fear new rules may undermine fight against corruption
Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Bad Medicine
The war on corruption is leaving the world worse than we found it.
About a decade ago, the world witnessed a corruption eruption. As democratic winds swept the world, the dirty deals of once unaccountable dictators and bureaucrats came out into the open. During the Cold War, kleptocratic dictatorships often traded their allegiance to one of the two superpowers in exchange for its countenance of their thievery. With the superpower contest over, such corrupt bargains dried up. And, thanks to the information revolution, the slightest hint of corruption at the highest levels quickly became global news
Once people learned so many politicians had been on the take—often in cahoots with business leaders—it was only natural that there would be a public outcry for a “war on corruption.” Countries enacted anti-corruption legislation, corporations adopted stern codes of conduct, and nongovernmental organizations such as Transparency International were launched to “name and shame” countries into action
• Much was done, but not much was accomplished. What we are doing is not working. In fact, it may be hurting [ Ach, As politicians pad their pockets, will the electorate wake up? ; The Bohemian Sussexers ]
• · It's an open secret that the US intelligence community has its own classified, highly secure Internet We Need Spy Blogs ; An era of serial war, Rawls, Habermas and Bobbio as theorists of a perpetual peace. Jurisprudence and force in three parallel philosophical constructions of the present international order, and the unsettled afterthoughts—American, German, Italian—that accompanied them Arms and Rights: Rawls, Habermas and Bobbio in an Age of War
• · · Last fall, the race to stop terrorists from acquiring a nuclear bomb passed through Tashkent, Uzbekistan. There, on the morning of September 19, a Russian Antonov 12 cargo plane touched down carrying two nearly indestructible steel canisters. Under the watch of elite security forces armed with machine guns, Uzbek officials unloaded the canisters and drove them to a remote, wooded area about 20 miles from the Central Asian capital. Waiting there at the Institute of Nuclear Physics, which houses a small nuclear reactor used for scientific research, was a team of Americans, Russians and officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency Can Terrorists Build the Bomb? ; The Unionization of Nontenure-Track Faculty Fighting to be Fired (But Only with Just Cause)
• · · · Has exile been overstated, by Edward Said and others, as a characteristic condition of the modern artist? Darko Suvin suggests a more fine-grained typology of displacement, distinguishing between exiles, émigrés, expatriates and refugees, and proposes the category of ‘border intellectuals’ as a better understanding of figures like Said himself. Reflections on the inner phenomenology of each condition, and the historical forces that have produced them. Some reflections on exile and border intellectuals: Displaced Persons; The Prophet Outcast The Impermanent Revolution
• · · · · Bush's Feb. 24 speech in the center of Bratislava would have been unthinkable just seven years ago, when Slovakia was blackballed by the European Union, dubbed a "black hole" by a U.S. secretary of state, and embarrassed by the brief kidnapping of a president's son Slovak glory days ; Social issues are supposed to set young people on fire
• · · · · · After 9/11, it was all over the news. For months, snatches of cellphone conversations in Karachi or Tora Bora routinely made the front page The New Hows and Whys of Global Eavesdropping ; The Next Big Race After nuclear arms, is energy next?