World of OpinionINS iron fist tarnishes American ideals:
Immigration and Naturalization Service has no business throwing men like San Jose resident Faramarz Farahani in jail for five days, treating him worse than it would a convicted felon. Felons at least get due process and a cot to sleep on. Farahani had neither. An Iranian-born systems analyst, Farahani, 42, is a Canadian citizen and the father of two. He is one of about 400 men – the INS won’t say exactly how many – detained in California the week before Christmas under a bizarrely enforced post-Sept. 11 immigration regulation.
Farahani and others made the mistake of trying to comply with the rule. Other men from Mideast countries could be subjected to similar abuse, unless the INS changes its approach.
Farahani is one of thousands of males 16 and over born in five countries – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Sudan – who were required to register with the INS by Dec. 16. All hold temporary visas, which permit study, vacation or work for specified times.
The basis for the rule, keeping track of individuals from nations suspected of sheltering or backing terrorists, was sound. But the INS didn’t anticipate the last-minute rush in registration. In what has become typical under Attorney General John Ashcroft’s oversight, the agency executed the policy without regard for individual circumstances or collective rights. Many of those detained apparently had minor visa violations or had overstayed their visas. Others had already applied for green cards as permanent residents, a process often delayed by INS bungling. Farahani and others from Canada with high-tech work visas committed the sin of registering two days late. The majority of those jailed apparently were Iranians living in Southern California. Farahani and 20 or so others were immediately handcuffed and hauled off after registering at INS offices in San Jose and San Francisco. What happened next, say their lawyers, was a harrowing journey in a blur: a cross-country trip in search of empty cells in three states before being dispatched to a crowded detention center in San Diego. Released on his own recognizance on Christmas Eve, Farahani faces a hearing to decide if he’ll be deported.
Individuals like Farahani, who voluntarily submit to fingerprinting, make unlikely terrorists. Humiliating them doesn’t make the nation safer. Intimidating them doesn’t encourage their cooperation. …
On what drives us to clone humans?
Questionable credibility of the claim notwithstanding, it is hard to cast the idea that a group has successfully cloned a human being as a positive achievement for mankind. …
There is the statement made by Brigitte Boisselier, a chemist and head of Clonaid, the company that did the experiment: “I do believe that it is the choice of every parent to choose the child they want, even if they don’t have any infertility problem,” she said. That statement almost smacks of “master race” thinking.
Clonaid was founded in the Bahamas in 1997 by Claude Vorilhon, a former French journalist and leader of a sect called the Raelians. Raelians believe aliens visited Vorilhon in the 1970s, revealing they had created all Earth life via genetic engineering. …
While the Raelian effort lacks confirmation, scientists know that cloning, while possible, comes with serious risks of abnormalities. Sheep, mice, cows, pigs, goats and cats have been cloned, yet the old-fashioned way of reproducing those species seems to have worked just fine for centuries. The advancement of science should be tempered by some realization of the effects of the discoveries. Is society willing to create new life at the expense of children who might otherwise be available for adoption? In a world still debating the morals of ending pregnancies via abortion, what substantial cultural demand is there for initiating a new controversy about how life should be started?
With an almost endless list of other advancements needed – ranging from a cure for cancer to a cure for the common cold – the push for human cloning appears to be fueled more by self-aggrandizement than pursuit of legitimate science.
On rising from the ashes:
It’s a fitting tribute that the newest of the Navy’s amphibious assault ships will be named USS New York to honor the sacrifice that that city made on Sept. 11. But now the Navy has done itself one better by pulling 10 tons of twisted World Trade Center steel beams out from the rubble of a Staten Island landfill and shipping them to Pascagoula to become part of the New York.
Northrop Grumman unloaded the beams recently. If the steel passes tests for suitability for ship construction, the shipyard plans to melt them down and use them in the ship’s stem casting – the leading edge of the ship’s bow. …
When the New York sets out to sea in 2007 with a full complement of Marines, cold steel and hard resolve will sail with it.
On the outlook for 2003:
2003 is a normal year … we don’t have to get used to the euro this time, there is no (soccer) World Cup. The year 2003 is free of spectacular prospects. If, in 365 days’ time, that turns out to have been accurate, we would be lucky …
There is no shortage of political and economic risks hanging over the coming 12 months, at home and abroad; but there is a shortage of chances that 2003 will end up better than expected.
The pessimistic scenario almost forces itself upon us – at the beginning of February, the U.N. Security Council, chaired by Germany, will give in to pressure from Washington and give George W. Bush a blank check for his campaign against Saddam Hussein.
America will lead the campaign and win – militarily, at any rate. But politically, the second Gulf war will have fatal effects.
Even if it is possible to put in place a post-war Iraqi government that is more or less accepted internally and is diplomatically predictable, there will not be more political stability in the Middle East, but less. The world won’t become safer, rather the reverse.
Political instability brings with it economic instability. When the first missile is fired against Iraqi positions, it won’t just hit a few old Russian air-defense missiles, but also the heart of the Western economy. War is not good for business. War is a heavy burden for the economy.On the new year:
Seldom since the Second World War has a new year promised to be as grim for Britain as this one. The long-threatened war against Iraq now looks almost certain to start in the spring. The risk of attack by terrorists has never been greater. Share prices seem likely to go on falling, while taxes and water levels rise. Nobody sees any hope of improvement in the public services.
What comfort can we offer our readers, as we wish you all a happy, peaceful and prosperous 2003? Only this: that new-year predictions almost always prove to be wrong. And at least 2003 cannot be much worse than we all expect.
Daily Telegraph, London
On may 2003 be tolerable:
Happy New Year. Seasonal greetings are offered more in hope than conviction these days (but hope had better spring eternal). The United States-Iraq confrontation is being framed by the US in pious hues of light shaded by darkness. But the world at large is right to be troubled as the major players remain in denial about the economic reverberations that a questionable war could bring. Might it not be smarter to consider other means of dealing with one murderous dictator than to incinerate whole swaths of economies for disproportional reasons? This is the big imponderable of 2003.
Then there are the will-o’-the-wisp terror attacks. Mombasa and Grozny have been early sequels to New York, Bali and Moscow. Countless other attempts have been thwarted, security services claim. While governments have a duty to their citizens to not take chances, what the world does not need is to have provincial politicians hawk terror as Gotterdammerung. It may be safe politics to cover one’s hide, but that also abets terrorists.
Straits Times, Singapore
On the use of foreign oil:
If you think our dependence on foreign oil is a problem now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Imported oil accounted for 55 percent of total U.S. oil demand in 2001, up from 37 percent in 1980 and 42 percent in 1990, according to the Energy Information Administration, an office of the Department of Energy. By 2025, the information administration forecasts that imports will make up 68 percent of petroleum demand, as U.S. energy consumption increases more rapidly than domestic energy production.
Since his own administration is telling him that consumption will continue to outpace production, why does the Bush administration believe that production – rather than conservation – is the way to end our dependence on foreign oil? That belief is especially puzzling when most of the world’s oil reserves are in the Middle East.
Maybe that’s why the administration fought so hard to keep secret the names of the folks who advised Vice President Cheney’s energy task force. Who would want to take credit – at least publicly – for such a wrongheaded policy?
The Buffalo News, New York