Friday, April 29, 2005
Bahrain will lack e-Freedom and Anonymity (AP)
By ADNAN MALIK, Associated Press WriterThu Apr 28, 9:29 AM ET
All Web sites operating in Bahrain must register with the country's Information Ministry under a new government mandate that has provoked protests from an international watchdog for press freedom.
The move comes two months after the government detained three Bahrainis who were linked to an Internet forum that it viewed as hostile.
Web sites have six months starting this Monday to register. They must give the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the operators, said Jamal Dawood, the ministry's director of publications. Web sites will then get an ID number they must post.
The media watchdog Reporters Without Borders criticized the move, saying it will intimidate Web publishers, including operators of personal Web journals such as blogs, and pressure sites to cut back on message boards and other interactive features for fear they will be held responsible for what visitors post.
"This does not happen in any democratic country and is a threat to press freedom," the Paris-based organization said in a statement.
Dawood, who helped draft the regulation, denied the requirement was a restriction of press freedom or freedom of expression.
He said nobody will be refused registration on grounds of their site's content.
The government had not yet decided what would happen to those who fail to register, Dawood said.
The three Bahrainis detained in February were released last month, but their passports have been confiscated. They may yet be prosecuted for running a site accused of criticizing the royal family, inciting hatred against the government and spreading false information that could destabilize the nation.
Bill Gates: US High Schools are OBSOLETE! (Friedman)
April 29, 2005
'What, Me Worry?'
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One of America's most important entrepreneurs recently gave a remarkable speech at a summit meeting of our nation's governors. Bill Gates minced no words. "American high schools are obsolete," he told the governors. "By obsolete, I don't just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed and underfunded. ... By obsolete, I mean that our high schools - even when they are working exactly as designed - cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.
"Training the work force of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today's computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. ... Our high schools were designed 50 years ago to meet the needs of another age. Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting - even ruining - the lives of millions of Americans every year."
Let me translate Mr. Gates's words: "If we don't fix American education, I will not be able to hire your kids." I consider that, well, kind of important. Alas, the media squeezed a few mentions of it between breaks in the Michael Jackson trial. But neither Tom DeLay nor Bill Frist called a late-night session of Congress - or even a daytime one - to discuss what Mr. Gates was saying. They were too busy pandering to those Americans who don't even believe in evolution.
And the president stayed fixated on privatizing Social Security. It's no wonder that the second Bush term is shaping up as "The Great Waste of Time."
On foreign policy, President Bush has offered a big idea: the expansion of freedom, particularly in the Arab-Muslim world, where its absence was one of the forces propelling 9/11. That is a big, bold and compelling idea - worthy of a presidency and America's long-term interests.
But on the home front, this team has no big idea - certainly none that relates to the biggest challenge and opportunity facing us today: the flattening of the global economic playing field in a way that is allowing more people from more places to compete and collaborate with your kids and mine than ever before.
"For the first time in our history, we are going to face competition from low-wage, high-human-capital communities, embedded within India, China and Asia," President Lawrence Summers of Harvard told me. In order to thrive, "it will not be enough for us to just leave no child behind. We also have to make sure that many more young Americans can get as far ahead as their potential will take them. How we meet this challenge is what will define our nation's political economy for the next several decades."
Indeed, we can't rely on importing the talent we need anymore - not in a flat world where people can now innovate without having to emigrate. In Silicon Valley today, "B to B" and "B to C" stand for "back to Bangalore" and "back to China," which is where a lot of our foreign talent is moving.
Meeting this challenge requires a set of big ideas. If you want to grasp some of what is required, check out a smart new book by the strategists John Hagel III and John Seely Brown entitled "The Only Sustainable Edge." They argue that comparative advantage today is moving faster than ever from structural factors, like natural resources, to how quickly a country builds its distinctive talents for innovation and entrepreneurship - the only sustainable edge.
Economics is not like war. It can always be win-win. "But some win more than others," Mr. Hagel said, and today it will be those countries that are best and fastest at building, attracting and holding talent.
There is a real sense of urgency in India and China about "catching up" in talent-building. America, by contrast, has become rather complacent. "People go to Shanghai or Bangalore and they look around and say, 'They're still way behind us,' " Mr. Hagel said. "But it's not just about current capabilities. It's about the relative pace and trajectories of capability-building.
"You have to look at where Shanghai was just three years ago, see where it is today and then extrapolate forward. Compare the pace and trajectory of talent-building within their population and businesses and the pace and trajectory here."
India and China know they can't just depend on low wages, so they are racing us to the top, not the bottom. Producing a comprehensive U.S. response - encompassing immigration, intellectual property law and educational policy - to focus on developing our talent in a flat world is a big idea worthy of a presidency. But it would also require Mr. Bush to do something he has never done: ask Americans to do something hard.
Article PageThursday, April 28, 2005
Do you like it Hawkish, semi-Hawkish or Dovish?
April 27, 2005
The Best Man for the U.N.
My biggest problem with nominating John Bolton as U.N. ambassador boils down to one simple fact: he's not the best person for the job - not even close. If President George W. Bush wants a die-hard Republican at the U.N., one who has a conservative pedigree he can trust, who is close to the president, who can really build coalitions, who knows the U.N. building and bureaucracy inside out, who can work well with the State Department and who has the respect of America's friends and foes alike, the choice is obvious, and it's not John Bolton.
It's George H. W. Bush, a k a 41. No one would make a better U.N. ambassador for Bush 43 than Bush 41.
Look, John Quincy Adams went back to Congress after he served as president. Why shouldn't George H. W. Bush take another spin around the diplomatic dance floor he loved so much and where he left his biggest mark? He's already demonstrated with his parachute jumps that he has the stamina for the job, and his performance as a tsunami relief ambassador was a great success.
But there is actually an even better reason to prefer 41 over Mr. Bolton. The White House claims it needs the pugnacious Mr. Bolton at the U.N. to whip it into shape and oversee real reform there. I have only one thing to say in response to that pablum: Give me a break. We do not need a U.N. ambassador to "reform" the U.N. That is not what America needs or wants from the U.N. You want to reform the U.N.? You want to analyze its budgets and overhaul its bureaucratic processes, well, then hire McKinsey & Co. - not John Bolton. (Everyone knows he prefers to torch the place.)
"Reforming the U.N." is without question one of the most tired, vacuous conservative mantras ever invented. It is right up there with squeezing "waste, fraud and abuse" out of the Pentagon's budget. If the White House is concerned about waste, fraud and abuse, let's start with Tom DeLay and our own House.
Sorry, but we don't need a management consultant as our U.N. ambassador. What we need is someone who can get the most out of what the U.N. does offer to America. There is no secret about the U.N. - at its worst it is a talking shop, where a lot of people don't speak English and where they occasionally do ridiculous things, like appoint Libya to oversee human rights, and even mendacious things, like declaring Zionism to be racism.
But at its best, the U.N. has been, and still can be, a useful amplifier of American power, helping us to accomplish important global tasks that we deem to be in our own interest.
The U.N. still represents the closest thing we have to a global Good Housekeeping seal of approval for any international action. Whenever the U.S. is able to enlist that U.N. seal on its side, America's actions abroad have more legitimacy, more supporters and more paying partners.
If we had engineered more of a U.N. seal of approval before going into Iraq, we would have had more allies to share the $300 billion price tag, and more legitimacy, which translates into more time and space to accomplish our goals there. It's not a disaster that we went into Iraq without the U.N., but life would probably have been a lot easier (and cheaper) had we been escorted by a real U.N. coalition.
In short, I don't much care how the U.N. works as a bureaucracy; I care about how often it can be enlisted to support, endorse and amplify U.S. power. That is what serves our national interest. And because that is what I want most from the U.N., I want at the U.N. an ambassador who can be a real coalition builder, a superdiplomat who can more often than not persuade the U.N.'s member states to act in support of U.S. interests.
I can't think of anyone better than George H. W. Bush, with his diplomatic Rolodex and instincts, or worse than John Bolton. Mr. Bolton's tenure overseeing U.S. antiproliferation efforts at the State Department is a mixed bag: success with Libya, utter failure with North Korea and Iran. But no one can miss the teacher's note at the bottom of his report card: "Does not play well with others who disagree with him."
I have no problem with Mr. Bolton's being given another job or being somehow retained in the job he already has. He's been a faithful public servant. But why would you appoint him to be ambassador at an institution he has nothing but contempt for to do a job he has no apparent skills for?
President 43 only needs to call home to find the right man for the job in President 41. And if 41 isn't available, well, then maybe he should try his sidekick, 42.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
The Interpreter (NYT)
April 22, 2005
Her Mission: Save the World Without Offending Anyone
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Silvia Broome is not just an employee of the United Nations, where she works as an interpreter. She is also a passionate believer in its goals and ideals, and holds fast to the conviction that it offers the best hope for addressing the violence and corruption running rampant across the globe. When she explains this to Tobin Keller, a Secret Service agent assigned to protect her from a sinister conspiracy (and also to investigate her possible involvement in it), he responds with a smirk. "You've had a tough year," he says.
And that is pretty much the only contact that "The Interpreter," a glossy new picture directed by Sydney Pollack, makes with the world as we know it. This kind of movie, stuffed with intimations of faraway strife and people in suits talking frantically on cellphones and walkie-talkies, is conventionally described as a political thriller, but "The Interpreter" is as apolitical as it is unthrilling. A handsome-looking blue-chip production with a singularly impressive Oscar pedigree, it disdains anything so crude, or so risky to its commercial prospects, as a point of view.
The role of the United Nations in the face of shifting geopolitical alliances and ferocious ethnic conflicts is a rich and complicated topic, as a glance at the past few weeks' newspapers will confirm, but none of that complexity troubles the shiny surface of this film, which is mainly interested in the United Nations as a piece of architecture. It should be said that the organization's headquarters building on First Avenue at 44th Street in Manhattan is beautifully shot, both from without and within. Darius Khondji's cinematography captures the clean, elegant modernism that at once expresses the building's idealistic purpose and places it in a bygone era of internationalist optimism. Making the United Nations look good is easy compared to the movie's main imaginative ambition, which is to turn Nicole Kidman, apotheosis of all that is blond in Hollywood today, into the embodiment of African suffering. Silvia, Ms. Kidman's character, may have a European education, but her roots are in the troubled (and fictional) African nation of Matobo, where her parents were white farmers.
Lest we think that she was therefore aligned with apartheid or colonial oppression - "The Interpreter" is not, after all, Mr. Pollack's sequel to "Out of Africa," or at least not quite - we see old photographs of Silvia and her brother bearing arms in a noble multiracial cause. She is fond of quoting the wisdom of the Ku, a tribe whose views on vengeance and mourning are at odds with the grim state of her country. (The moral of "The Interpreter" is, in effect, do as the Ku say, not as the Ku do.)
Matobo is ruled by one Dr. Zuwanie (Earl Cameron), a vaguely Mugabe-like figure who followed a familiar path from liberator to genocidal maniac, and who has squandered both the hopes of his people and the respect of the United Nations member states. It is a measure of just how bad he is that both French and American diplomats agree that he should face some kind of justice, and also that his two main rivals - an old-school socialist (Curtiss I' Cook) and an apostle of capitalist development (George Harris) - have put aside their differences to oppose him more effectively. As it happens, the dictator is on his way to New York to address the General Assembly, and Silvia, returning to the office to retrieve her African flutes, overhears someone plotting to kill him when he makes his speech.
This strikes Tobin (Sean Penn) as too convenient to be entirely coincidental, and as he digs into Silvia's background he begins to suspect that she is more deeply enmeshed in Matobo's intrigue than she lets on. The great disappointment of the script is that it fudges the question of her involvement, leaving some gaping holes you can discuss with your friends at your favorite Matoban restaurant after the movie.
More thought has gone into addressing the challenge of giving Mr. Penn something to do that couldn't be done by a second-string cop-show actor on television. To ensure that Silvia does not suffer alone, Tobin is provided with his own back story of grief and loss, which Mr. Penn must relate in tearful moments when the plot takes a break from third world misery.
At first, Mr. Penn and Ms. Kidman, his brow as dramatically furrowed as hers is smooth, promise some interesting chemistry. Their first scene together has a brisk, parry-and-thrust rhythm, as Silvia, hiding behind a lock of hair gone strategically astray, frustrates Tobin's attempts to figure her out. But after that, nothing much happens. Ms. Kidman, as ever, nimbly switches between vulnerability and clever toughness while adding another unusual accent to her roster of achievements.
Mr. Penn seems a bit more uncertain, burrowing with his characteristic earnestness into a role that hardly exists. From time to time, you may detect a wink of Brandoesque detachment, but more flagrant subversion would have turned this character from the pedestrian confection of a screenwriting committee into someone worth watching.
That committee - which included Steven Zaillian, who won an Oscar for "Schindler's List," and Scott Frank, nominated for "Out of Sight" - failed to come up with either a diverting whodunit or a plausible moral melodrama. Mr. Pollack's direction walks the line between competence and complacency. As the day of Dr. Zuwanie's arrival approaches, the pace of the narrative accelerates, the action moves from Turtle Bay to Crown Heights and something blows up. The two principals are driven by their respective hardships into a chaste moment of snuggling, and Tobin's partner, Dot, fires off some impatient wisecracks.
Dot is played by Catherine Keener, a wonderful, underused actress who, if there is any justice in Hollywood, will someday have her own chance to embody the sufferings of the African continent.
"The Interpreter" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has violence and some profanity.
The Interpreter
Opens today nationwide.
Directed by Sydney Pollack; written by Charles Randolph, Scott Frank and Steven Zaillian, based on a story by Martin Stellman and Brian Ward; director of photography, Darius Khondji; edited by William Steinkamp; music by James Newton Howard; production designer, Jon Hutman; produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Kevin Misher; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 123 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.
WITH: Nicole Kidman (Silvia Broome), Sean Penn (Tobin Keller), Catherine Keener (Dot Woods), Earl Cameron (Zuwanie), George Harris (Kuman-Kuman) and Curtiss I' Cook (Ajene Xola).
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