War

Today I saw the movie “Kabul Express”. A few days ago I read the book “Hitler's Peace”.

(see my Recommendations page, December 2006).

Coincidentally, there has also been significant media coverage about Ahmedinajad's Holocaust conference. I do not deny the Holocaust and unequivocally condemn it. We must remember the Holocaust because it shows how evil and depraved man can be. My thoughts when reading Hitler's Peace was that the Holocaust has left little space in public memory for the hundreds of thousands of other victims -- the Poles who suffered at the hands of both the Germans and the Soviets, (the Chinese at the hands of the Japanese before the 2nd World War) the PoWs that suffered under the Soviets and the Japanese and many other instances of indivdual cruelty that the war brought out in human beings.

As I left the theatre after watching Kabul Express today I was thinking “When a man murders another man or rapes a woman, he gets the life sentence. What about he who does the same to hundreds of thousands of men and women and makes himself President or is elected President of a Nuclear Weapons state ? We mere mortals have this foolish belief in God and God's justice. What worse punishment that God can give to those who cause war and suffering that our human courts of justice and democratic institutions cannot bring down on them ?”

Economic Crimes or The Excesses of Capitalism Taken Too Far

This week comes news that the US SEC has voted to relax the requirements under Section 404 of the Sarbanes Oxley Act such that management's internal assessment of controls would be given more credence (at least that is how I interpret the SEC's note). Quoting some lines from the editorial page of The Eonomist, 25-Nov-06, {unfortunately, the Economist Web Site requires subscription to access the online copy}, “.. With regulators soon expected to announce rule changes that will lighten the burden, the battle against Sarbanes-Oxley's excesses look well on the way to being won. This should mean efforts can be directed elsewhere. Towards shareholders, to start with. On the one hand, they have too few rights in their dealings with company boards; they have less powers than their British equivalents. On the other, American shareholders (or rather the lawyers who purport to represent them) wield too much power in securities litigation. Lawsuits brought because of failling share prices make a mockery of both the principle of caveat emptor and the honourable New York tradition of never giving a sucker an even break. Sadly, this is tied up in the much broader tort-law problem that bedevils American capitalism”. I had made similar observations on 12-Jun-05.