Questions for Study and Writing - Where Do We Go From Here?
1. William Greiders November 12, 2001 article in The Nation was titled "Pro Patria, Pro Mundi." (see link below) The Latin phrase means, "For the country, for the world." In the article, Greider notes that corporations like Citibank oppose more oversight and regulation of international banking not because they want to help terrorists hide and transfer funds, but "because they recognize that policing terrorist money can lead to tougher enforcement aimed at their own activities." He argues that it has become the responsibility of corporations to submit to greater oversight and regulation in face of the current terrorist threat. At the end of his article, Greider writes: "One might describe these measures as 'homeland security.'" Discuss. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011112&s=greider
2. In "Letter to George Kennan," (see link below) Oxford scholar Isiah Berlin recalls a scene in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. In the scene, Ivan Karamazov says that if he could buy the happiness of all of mankind with the torture to death of one innocent child, he would not do so. He would, as Berlin says, "return the ticket." Berlin goes on to say that no promise of eternal harmony in the future...will make us accept ...the use of human beings as mere means -- the doctoring of them until they are made to do what they do, not for the sake of the purposes which are their purposes, fufilment of hopes which however foolish or desperate are at least their own, but for reasons which only we, the manipulators, who freely twist them to our purposes, can understand. Berlin was referring to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Why do you think a magazine would choose to post it now? What do you see as its relevance today? Is it only terrorists who might have something to learn from Berlin's letter? <http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020128&s=berlin20020128>
