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ContactAllen said he made the name up, then said he recalled that he had a niece nicknamed 'Maca Maca.' " [Los Angeles Times;8/24/06]
January 21, 2010
My Two Bits on Google in China
Last Saturday, the Sacramento Bee ran my op-ed on Google's leadership in China. I begin:
While most American companies are rushing into China, why are so many Americans cheering Google pulling out?
This week Google announced it had discovered attempts to hack into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. This prompted Google to declare it was ready to leave China if it could not provide honest search results to the people of China.
At the same time that Google was boldly threatening to pack its bags, General Motors was announcing that its sales of cars in China had nearly doubled last year. Yet, few people urged GM to pull up stakes even though it is doing business in a society that lacks political freedoms.
What explains this divergent reaction?
Posted by Anupam Chander on January 21, 2010 at 02:14 PM in Digitization, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 17, 2009
Where Are the Jobs in International Law?
The National Jurist carries a cover story on the subject in its November issue, available in full online.
It includes some startling information (apparently, 82% of Baker & McKenzie's lawyers work outside the United States).
The "Top International Law Firms" chart is misleadingly titled, however. A more accurate title might be "Law Firms With Highest Foreign Presence."
Posted by Anupam Chander on November 17, 2009 at 09:58 AM in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 22, 2009
Will Standard Chartered Be the First Foreign Company to List on an Indian Exchange?
According to the Wall Street Journal:
U.K.-based financial-services company Standard Chartered PLC is expected to file paperwork with Indian securities regulators as soon as this week to become the first foreign company to list its shares on an Indian stock exchange, according to people familiar with the matter.
Posted by Anupam Chander on September 22, 2009 at 08:53 PM in Globalization, International Finance | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 13, 2009
George Allen Offers Yet Another Explanation for Macaca: "Alliteration"
The Washington Post describes a "humble" George Allen's effort to rehabilitate his image for reentry into the public sphere. Along the way, Allen offers yet another, in the long list of ever-shifting explanations for the term:
"It was alliteration or something," he says. "I don't know the word. I should not have called him anything aside from the fellow in the yellow shirt. . . . It was a mistake. That was not intended to insult anyone. It's not my nature. I'm a generally jovial, happy person. Nonetheless, it was a mistake on my part and I apologize for it even if it was unintentional."
The alliteration hunt here might make for a good, if frustrating, third grade exercise:
Looking at Sidarth, Allen said: "This fellow here over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent... Let's give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."
My favorite of the earlier explanations (which are helpfully cataloged here by Media Matters, in their full dizzying glory):
Apparently, Allen happened to alliterate--twice--in referring to the Indian-American Virginian college student.
The Washington Post photograph of Allen in his office accompanying its story has a poster with the word "Consistency" proudly emblazoned.
Posted by Anupam Chander on August 13, 2009 at 01:57 PM in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 06, 2009
Who Owns Saddam's Pistol?
The New York Times reports that it is likely that the handgun found in the "spider hole" where Saddam Hussein hid is likely to go on display at the President George W. Bush Library.
The Times reports this chain of custody of the weapon:
The odyssey of the gun began on Dec. 13, 2003, when Mr. Hussein was discovered in the 8-foot-deep hole on a farm near Tikrit. Delta Force soldiers did not see the gun at first, said Steve Russell, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who helped lead the mission and is now a Oklahoma state senator.
Mr. Russell said Mr. Hussein had been crouched on all fours, the gun on the floor. The soldiers kept the rare pistol, which can fire bullets automatically, with two AK-47s found in the farmhouse, he said.
In early 2004, one of the soldiers came up with the idea of presenting the gun to Mr. Bush. On March 1 that year, the Delta Force men surprised the president with the pistol at an Oval Office meeting.
Weapons uncovered during combat operations should rightfully be put out of commission by troops, but should those weapons automatically belong to the victor? The weapons certainly are not the property of the victorious soldiers themselves, no matter how much we appreciate their service. Perhaps the Government of Iraq properly transfered the weapon to the United States. There is certainly international law on this issue, and I hope that the United States has followed that law closely.Perhaps the Iraqi museums, who lost many of their artifacts during the invasion, might have wanted to display this trophy. After all, the people who suffered most under that gun were the people of Iraq. From ancestral relics to Elgin Marbles to jewels, countries newly-freed often keenly feel the loss of national treasures. Perhaps that feeling might extend even to objects of infamy.
Posted by Anupam Chander on July 6, 2009 at 10:34 AM in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 23, 2009
Defining Transnational Legal Process
Much of the criticism of the
nomination of Dean Harold Koh for the position of Legal Advisor to the State
Department has been directed at Dean Koh’s views of the relationship between
international law and domestic law. Much of this criticism has been based on a misunderstanding
of the concept of “transnational” law. Unfortunately, popular media accounts
have contributed to this error.
The New York Times “Opinionator” blog
defined “transnationalism” on April 14, 2009 by relying on a blog post
by Ed Whelan on the National Review Online website. Whelan states, and the New
York Times repeats: “Transnationalists aim in particular to use American courts
to import international law to override the policies adopted through the
processes of representative government.” This characterization of the
transnationalist scholars’ objective is wrong, as I will explain below. Ed
Whelan, it should be noted, is hardly a neutral observer: a former law clerk
for Justice Scalia, Whelan served as the principal deputy in the Office of
Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration from 2001 to 2004. This is of course
the office that produced the infamous torture memos, thought by many to flout
international and domestic law. Whelan offers that, while he was at the Justice
Department, “[h]is portfolio did not include national security matters.” Justice
Scalia, Whelan’s former boss, has long complained that his fellow Justices have
undermined the democratic process by reference to international or foreign law.
The Wall Street Journal blog entry on transnational law also mistakenly suggests that transnationalism threatens democracy:
Let us introduce you to a new phrase in international law (or at least one that’s new to us): “transnational juri[]sprudence.” In regard to Koh, it’s this theory that apparently has conservatives worried.
“Harold Koh has a reputation as being the leading scholar on transnationalist jurisprudence,” said Robert Alt, deputy director of legal and judicial studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “Particularly among conservatives, that school of thought is disturbing insofar as it seems to suggest transnational law trumps constitutional rights, and thereby may be a threat to American sovereignty.”
In other words, if Koh becomes the chief legal adviser to American diplomats, he would give undue influence to foreign legal opinions, perhaps limiting American options in matters of national security.
Indeed, as the Globe chronicles, Koh has repeatedly contended that such activities as “helping forge international agreements, participating in the United Nations, and supporting international war crime tribunals are in the best interests of the United States.”
Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal thus unwittingly repeat the right wing attack on international law.
But what is the transnational legal process? The term refers to the process where a variety of actors interact in various fora to interpret and internalize rules of international law. (To hear Koh himself describe transnationalism, watch Koh’s lecture a few years ago titled “Transnational Legal Process After September 11,” available on YouTube.)
Does this threaten democracy? Transnationalists do not seek deference to some kind of global nose count. The transnational legal process ultimately remains democratic exactly because of the “norm internalization” process, which transforms a rule from an “external sanction” to an “internal imperative.” “That,” Justice Breyer observes, “is the democratic process in action.” Transnational norm entrepreneurs and issue networks frequently have no more power than that of persuasion and the authority that comes from moral standing and cogent argument. Even authoritarian states often observe this process, internalizing international law norms that they find necessary to participate in the international political and economic process.” Anupam Chander, Globalization and Distrust, 114 Yale L.J. 1193, 1229-30 (2005) (citing Harold Hongju Koh, How Is International Human Rights Law Enforced?, 74 Ind. L.J. 1397, 1400 (1999); Stephen Breyer, Keynote Address, 97 Am. Soc’y Int’l L. Proc. 265, 268 (2003)).
As Koh explains:
There is nothing antidemocratic about academics, nongovernmental organizations, judges, executive officials, Congress, and foreign governments interacting in a variety of private and public, domestic and international fora to make, interpret, internalize, and ultimately enforce rules of transnational law. To the contrary, it is precisely through this transnational legal process that interlinked rules of domestic and international law develop, and that interlinked processes of domestic and international compliance come about. In this transnational legal process, the several states, foreign governments, and international bodies do not represent competing sovereigns, all vying for the right to control America's judicial destiny. Rather, a transnationalist jurisprudence suggests, the United States expresses its national sovereignty not by blocking out all foreign influence but by vigorous ‘participation in the various regimes that regulate and order the international system.’
Id.
Posted by Anupam Chander on June 23, 2009 at 09:46 AM in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 25, 2009
Memorializing the Fallen
Google engineer Sean Askay has produced a data overlay onto Google Earth that memorializes each of the American (and other Coalition) soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It lists 5,679 Coalition deaths, as of March 2009.
It links to information about each individual, and includes a picture of the person in uniform. Lines trace their hometown to their place of death on the other side of the earth.
Rest in peace.
Posted by Anupam Chander on May 25, 2009 at 06:51 AM in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 07, 2008
Guantanamo Detainees May Find Refuge in U.S.
A federal judge ordered the release of a small group of Chinese Muslims from Guantanamo Bay into the U.S.In a landmark decision, U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said it would be wrong for the Bush administration to continue holding the detainees, known as Uighurs, since they are no longer considered enemy combatants.
They have been in custody for almost seven years and have been cleared for release since 2004. Although the Chinese government has demanded custody of the Uighurs, supporters and the Bush administration fear they would be tortured if turned over to Beijing.
... In Beijing, the government demanded that all Uighurs held at the naval prison in Cuba be repatriated to China.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the Uighurs are suspected of being members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which the U.S. lists as a terrorist organization.
... The Uighurs have been at Guantanamo Bay since the U.S. military took custody of them in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001. Efforts by the Bush administration to find a home for the detainees has been complicated by fears in many countries of diplomatic reprisals by China. In 2006, Albania gave refuge to five Uighurs from Guantanamo amid Chinese protests.
Posted by Anupam Chander on October 7, 2008 at 09:18 AM in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 11, 2008
The global journey of a metal part--North Carolina to Italy, back to U.S., and then exported yet again
The globalization of industries, which rely on production networks that often stretch across borders, means that products often ping-pong among countries, getting counted as exports, imports and exports again at various stages.
Global Journey
A good example is the global journey that occurs when Cyril Bath Co., a small aerospace manufacturer in Monroe, N.C., just outside Charlotte, exports roughly shaped metal ribs for framing the shells of airplanes to a factory in Italy. The Italian plant machines them into finished metal forms, which it ships back to Charleston, S.C., where they are used to build sections of fuselage. Those sections are then flown to Boeing factories in the Pacific Northwest for final assembly. After all that, many of the finished planes are sold for export.
Posted by Anupam Chander on September 11, 2008 at 07:52 AM in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 04, 2008
Solzhenitsyn, Literary Giant Who Defied Soviets, Dies at 89 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com
Link: Solzhenitsyn, Literary Giant Who Defied Soviets, Dies at 89 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com.
Posted by Anupam Chander on August 4, 2008 at 04:02 PM in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
