Features
The view from Kukes: Listening to the refugees
How could it happen in Europe? And how could it happen in Europe at the end of the 20th century? And how could it happen that Europe did not see what was occurring and intervene sooner? And, most important, what can be done now, to stop even more killing?
Why we need the International Criminal Court
This has been a good century for tyrants. Stalin killed millions but was never even charged with a crime. Pol Pot slaughtered well over 1 million but never saw the inside of a prison cell. Idi Amin and Raoul Cedras are comfortably retired. Despite recent legal complications, Chile's General Augusto Pinochet, too, will probably escape trial. Ditto for Slobodan Milosevic, who has chosen to close out the century by brutalizing Kosovo.
Immodest proposal: Cutting military spending
Every gun that is made," said Dwight Eisenhower, "every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists and the hopes of its children."
Voices
Miroslav Volf
Negative externality
Why shouldn't parents be treated as badly as smokers?" asked the writer rhetorically. After all, "children, just like cigarettes or mobile phones, clearly impose a negative externality on people who are near them." Recent events at Columbine High reminded me again of these comments, which appeared in an editorial in the Economist. At first I thought that it was written tongue in cheek by a person who had just suffered through a nine-hour flight with a screaming baby in the next seat. But half way through the article I stopped smiling.