Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

We ceased publishing P-S-sourced articles at the end of February. Webdiarists interested in following the writings of messrs Singer, Sachs, Stiglitz, Rogoff, Nye, DeLong and others can do so at the Project Syndicate site.

"The fundamental problem with the ICJ’s decision is its unrealistically high standard of proof for finding Serbia to have been legally complicit in genocide.": Antonio Cassese, the first President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

"Health care research over the next decade will integrate advances in biology, material sciences, and chemical and bioengineering to create a revolutionary new generation of medical devices and drug delivery systems. The main challenge facing researchers in these diverse fields may be a shortage of adequate interdisciplinary training.": Robert Langer

"The ultimate challenge is to prevent drug abuse and to treat and rehabilitate drug users successfully. Sweden is a good example of how to do it right. Drug use there is a third of the European average – the result of decades of consistent policies that combine tough punishment of dealers and comprehensive treatment for users.": Antonio Maria Costa, UN Office on Drugs and Crime

"Rural protectionism in rich countries seems to have killed the Doha Round – and, with it, potentially the whole multilateral trading regime.": Malcolm Cook, Lowy Institute

Informal learning implies a messy, unruly, and potentially subversive process. But it also promises to nurture the creative ferment in which great science thrives.

China’s courtship of resource-rich Third World tyrannies and its recent step toward the weaponization of outer space undermines its carefully crafted new image as a paragon of “harmonious” social development. So to continue to give China “exceptional” treatment given today’s Chinese behavior will undermine its ability to become a nation capable of exercising responsible global leadership.

Can using US funding to reopen Iraqi state-owned enterprises get young men to abandon the insurgency and sectarian militias?

"No amount of finger pointing can obscure the fact that, 50 years after the European Community’s creation, Europe badly needs a new political framework, if not a new project, to shore up its unity.": Bronislaw Geremek

"What China needs most is a financial sector capable of harnessing the forces of liberalization and globalization to drive economic growth in the decades ahead. The time has come to cast off the burden of building financial centers, and focus instead on advancing the modernization of Chinese finance.": Zhang Jun

The war in Iraq has been exceptionally bloody. For now, that is about all that statistics can safely tell us.

"What good are Europe’s treaties aimed at ensuring the legal equality of all citizens when entire groups face systematic discrimination? That is the question that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) faces this week." Robert Badinter

"A dictator’s sudden death almost always triggers political instability. But it is doubly dangerous when it poses a risk of region-wide destabilization and a scramble for influence among the world’s greatest military powers – the United States, Russia, and China." F Stephen Larrabee

"Given all the effort that the world’s "emerging markets" have devoted to shielding themselves from financial volatility, they have reason to ask: where in the world is the upside of financial liberalization? That is a question all of us should consider.": Dani Rodrik

"It is our obligation as Japan’s most influential newspaper to tell our readers who was responsible for starting the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War." So writes Tsuneo Watanabe, Editor-in-Chief of Japan’s (and the world’s) most widely circulated newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, in the introduction to the book From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor: Who Was Responsible.

"Today’s biomedical research is a collaborative research enterprise, requiring the contributions of patients, universities and industry. Today’s laws, however, allow only universities and industry, which supply basic knowledge and technology, to profit from their contributions; patients, who supply tissue, may not be compensated. Some consider this unfair, as it allows tissue donated by patients to be wholly appropriated by universities and industry. Others consider this wise, as compensating individual tissue donors could block scientific progress and technological development. Is there a way to redress the double standard in biomedical research that is both fair and wise?" Jasper Bovenberg

"There is an urgent need to change government policies so that providing services for people with mental disabilities in the community is the norm rather than the exception. Such services must be accessible to everyone who needs them. And governments must reallocate resources from institutions -- and the bureaucracies that have a vested interest in preserving their positions -- to organizations that support community-based living." Dragan Lukic and Judith Klein

"For a few hundred years, when science and mathematics were enjoying a period of great invention, one region of the world stood out. Masters of these disciplines were revered there, medicine advanced quickly, and the average person was curious about how nature worked. Not surprisingly, this region was globally respected. In the other half of the known planet, scientists were punished, even killed. Mathematics was outlawed as irreligious and alien, and was later made subservient to religion.": H T Goranson

"Looking back, it is ironic that the Chinese government’s draconian "one-child" policy, imposed in 1979, was implemented at the same time as the "open door" policy, aimed at capturing labor-intensive foreign manufacturing investment. While both policies must be regarded as successes, over the years the family planning program has contributed to an aging population that may diminish China’s attractiveness as a low-cost, labor-intensive manufacturing hub.": Friedrich Wu

"From climate change to volatile oil prices, all signs point to a looming global energy crisis. Confronting the growing challenge means that humanity can no longer afford to ignore the inexhaustible resource found in the organic material that the sun provides each day through photosynthesis.": Jean-Michel Severino

"Although local Muslim leaders have since criticized Hilaly’s attitude, the incident again raises the question of attitudes regarding sex in "orthodox" communities, and how they can be reconciled with prevailing norms in the West. Meanwhile, in the United States, the controversy over government spying on its citizens seems to have died down, mostly because people are now convinced that their government will only look at the really bad guys. What do these two issues have in common?" H T Goranson

"Sheikh Yamani, Saudi Arabia’s former oil minister and a founding architect of OPEC, once said, 'The stone age came to an end not for a lack of stones, and the oil age will end, but not for a lack of oil.' Humans stopped using stone because bronze and iron were superior materials. But will we really stop using oil when other energy technologies similarly provide superior benefits?": Karuna Raman

"Studies showed that there are hundreds of regions of the genome that could have more or less than the expected two copies. This alerted scientists to the existence of a larger source of genetic variation than was previously understood, and forced us to speculate on the implications of this discovery.": Jennifer L. Freeman and Charles Lee

"China is dangerously near a crisis point. The country’s enormous environmental debt will have to be paid, one way or another. China must exercise the foresight needed to begin paying this debt now, when it is manageable, rather than allowing it to accumulate and, ultimately, threaten to bankrupt us all.": Pan Yue, China State Environmental Protection Administration

 

"We cannot afford to fail in Afghanistan. Recent history has given us graphic evidence of what would happen if we do. But any solution in Afghanistan depends on eliminating its opium.": Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime

"China’s remarkable growth has been financed recently by a rapid expansion of money and bank credit that is producing an increasingly unsustainable investment boom. This renews concerns that the country may not be able to avert a replay of the painful boom–and-bust cycle such as the one it endured in the mid-1990’s. ": Marvin Goodfriend and Eswar Prasad

"Within today’s booming world economy, most developing countries have been growing rapidly. Yet this has not diminished the pressure to reduce the yawning gap in income between developed and developing countries that has shaped global debates for over a half-century. International inequalities, while large three decades ago, have worsened ever since. But there is another international income divergence that demands attention. Since 1980, the world has witnessed a widening income gap among developing countries.": José Antonio Ocampo

"Oxytocin is active in evolutionarily old areas of our brain, outside of our conscious awareness. We simply have a sense that sharing with someone who has trusted us is the right thing to do. ... Our evidence suggests that bastards’ brains work differently. Their character traits are similar to those of sociopaths. They simply do not care about others the way most people do, and the dysfunctional processing of oxytocin in their brains appears to be one reason for this. Because bastards are out there, we still need government and personal enforcement of economic exchange.": Paul J. Zak

"Taiwan’s Public Prosecutor has indicted the wife of President Chen Shui-bien for embezzling public funds. Chen, as a sitting president, cannot be indicated even though the prosecutor says that he has evidence to prove his guilt. But Chen’s legacy was already in tatters.": Sin-ming Shaw

"Antarctic krill must not be fished to feed the fish farms of the world while starving the penguins, seals, whales, and other species whose survival depends on these tiny, but vitally important, creatures.": Virginia Gascón González and Rodolfo Werner Kinkelin, Antarctic Krill Conservation Project.