The meaning of globalization

GLOBALIZATION means many different things. The phenomenon it seeks to describe has been called by several different names — among them globalism, internationalism, the emergence of a global village. No matter which term is used and no matter how loosely the process is described, the meaning of it is clear. The world’s many parts are rapidly coming together in several different ways. What happens in one part of the globe affects, in different ways, the other parts. This quick communication of effects is the result, in part, of the revolution in information and communication technology.

Just to take one example: hundreds of millions of people watched the second plane hijacked by a group of terrorists hit the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001. Glued to their television sets, these people saw in horror as the Twin Towers collapsed right before their eyes in real time.

Globalization as we know it, did not happen overnight. The stage for it was set by the development of a new economic paradigm that redefined the role of the state and provided greater opportunity for the markets to operate within countries and across national borders. The lifting of constraints on markets allowed for a larger flow of capital and goods from the capital-surplus industrial countries to the capital-short countries in the developing world.

However, globalization has meant more than the movement of large amounts of capital from capital-rich to capital-poor countries, or the greater flow of goods and services among nations. The movement of capital and goods has been helped by the revolution in information technology and telecommunications that has reduced the distance among economic actors all over the world. These actors are able to communicate in real time and exchange views and information on any subject of interest to them. Globalization has also meant an enormous increase in the size and power of transnational corporations (TNCs).

This increased presence of TNCs, controlled mostly by the managers in the industrial world, is profoundly transforming the structure of production in the emerging markets. The growing presence of the TNCs has brought technology, management practices and access to markets for producers in the developing world. This increased presence has also posed challenges for domestic enterprises, particularly in the developing world. For a thorough analysis of the revolutionary changes occurring, it is important to understand how these five aspects of globalization are changing the nature of the global economy, how they are impacting the developing world, and what should be the response of the global institutions to the challenges thus posed.

These five visible manifestations of globalization — subscription to a new paradigm of development, large flows of private capital to emerging markets, enormous expansion in global trade and a change in its composition, the revolutionary change in information and telecommunications, and the growth in the power of transnational corporations (TNCs) and their penetration into the emerging markets — were aided and, in turn, contributed to, by three additional developments, all related to the issue of governance.

These included the articulation by the community of nations of agreed norms of behaviour by which all states and their citizens are now expected to live, the growth in the power of civil society to influence state policies on a wide variety of subjects, and the evolution of the international institutional structure in response to the growing demands of civil society.

To these eight aspects we should add two more to complete the picture of the process of globalization. The first is a profound demographic change in the industrial world as well as in many parts of the developing world, which had already produced economic, social and political consequences that are, at best, only dimly understood. A good way of describing this phenomenon is to speak of demographic asymmetry produced by a sharp drop in the rates of fertility and hence in the rates of growth in the populations of the developed world while the populations of most developing countries have continued to grow rapidly. Populations of developed countries are aging rapidly while those of developing countries remain young.

It became clear that the economies of rich countries needed new workers in numbers that could only be provided by migration from poor countries. That migration was changing the demographic profile of most developed countries was well known. The extent to which that had happened was revealed clearly by the Population Census of 2000 in the United States. The results surprised most demographers. They showed the rapid increase in the proportion of foreign-born citizens in America’s population.

It is important to factor in these developments into the discussion of globalization. It is also necessary to incorporate into a description of the process of globalization the increasing interest on the part of developing countries to organize themselves into regional trading arrangements. This trend began with the spectacular failure of the Seattle trade talks in late November and early December 1999 and gathered pace in later years with several industrial countries — the United States in particular — putting greater emphasis on bilateral trading relations than on multilateral agreements.

The “battle in Seattle” — as the abandoned trade talks in that city came to be called — brought together most of the forces that opposed the developments identified above: the increase in global trade; the increased power of multinational corporations; the new instruments of international governance — in this case the World Trade Organization; the evolving norms of behaviour on the part of states and their citizens; and the presence of regional trading blocs promoting supra-national interests.

When it happened, “Seattle” was seen as a case study of the working of the evolving global system. “Seattle” was not a random event. It was the beginning — the first long step — towards the emergence of a new global order in which numerous actors — not just the states of the world and their official representatives, but also private citizens working in the institutions of civil society or speaking on behalf of multinational corporations — were set to play an increasingly important role.

In the late 1990s these new sets of forces were acting on their own in defining a new global economic order. They were also influencing one another as they did in Seattle and in several other protests against globalization that followed that event. At that time it appeared that for a thorough analysis of the revolutionary changes that were then occurring, it was important to understand how these ten aspects of globalization were changing the nature of the global economy, how they were impacting the developing world, and what should be the response of the global institutions to the challenges thus posed.

In retrospect, it appears that those of us who were interested in this subject should have added another element to the process of globalization: the progressive erosion in the power of nation states. In a way this aspect of globalization was related to the emergence of consensus on norms of behaviour expected of individuals, organizations and nation states. The definition of some of these norms had happened at the various international conferences that had met continuously over a period of four decades to first debate and then target hoped for developments in a number of economic and social areas.

In the late 1960s, for instance, the world’s rich countries had agreed to increase the amount of development assistance provided to poor nations so that by the end of the 1970s they were contributing at least 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product for this purpose. In 1974, meeting in Rome under the auspices of the Food and Agricultural Organization, nations of the world agreed to work together to eliminate world hunger by the year 2000.

A number of other conferences were held in the quarter century that followed the making of these two sets of pledges. They culminated in 2000 with a conference held in New York at which the world’s nation states, represented mostly by heads of state or heads of government, agreed to remove poverty and misery from the globe. They decided to make strenuous efforts to achieve what were dubbed the millennium targets — a significant reduction in the incidence of poverty, a sharp increase in school enrolment rates, particularly for girls, a sharp reduction in the rates of infant, child and maternal mortality.

This movement towards targeted global welfare was premised on two assumptions: one, considerable generosity on the part of the world’s rich nations towards those which were relatively poor; second, some surrender of national sovereignty to international institutions. It transpired that some small movement was possible in a bipolar world when competition between two superpowers forced them to be mindful of other nations, particularly those that were small and poor. Once the world was reordered dramatically by the collapse of European communism and the break-up of the Soviet Union, there was no longer any compulsion for the United States, the remaining superpower, to be greatly concerned about any interest other than its own.

Some numbers will help underscore the enormous power the United States currently wields. With a population of less than five per cent of the world total, the US now produces nearly a third of global output, is responsible for more than a third of world defence spending and more than two-fifths of the global expenditure on research and development. What really irks the French is the growing penetration of American culture. For instance, the films produced or financed by America claimed 83 per cent of the total box-office revenues in 2001. In other words, the United States now dominates the world economy, spending as it does in military and expenditure on research and development, and has seen its culture penetrate the four corners of the globe.

In the midst of great excitement about globalization and the emergence of what appeared to be a new global order, a handful of terrorists guided two planes into the world Trade Centre in New York and a third into the Pentagon near Washington. The fourth plane was also headed towards Washington, presumably aimed at the US Congress, when it was deliberately brought down by some of its passengers in an act of extraordinary heroism. Progress on some of the processes associated with globalization were halted as the world, led by America, pondered the meaning behind the attacks of September 11, 2001.

“The process of globalization has not been put into reverse, either by the demands of security or by disenchantment with open markets,” wrote The Economist in the leading article titled “Remember” in the issue that looked at “September-eleven” on the first anniversary of that event. That may be so, but I have reached a different conclusion which I will explain in some articles to follow in the next few weeks.

How far ahead of 1935 Act?: ELECTION WATCH

THE right to vote and the right to represent the electorate are the foundations of any order based on democratic values. These rights have been in debate in our society for nearly 100 years, both before and after independence. Let us take a look back at the Government of India Act of 1935 to have an idea of the progress we have made in respect of these fundamental rights.

The 1935 Act serves as a good reference point because it forms the final chapter in the evolution of constitutional norms during the colonial period. It was also considered a good enough framework to be used, with some modifications, as the constitution of the independent state of Pakistan for almost nine years, and the authors of the subsequent basic laws in Pakistan have never failed to draw upon its provisions.

The question regarding the right to vote was generally believed to have been settled in Pakistan when the principle of adult franchise was adopted at the beginning of 1950s. About two years earlier the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had defined periodic direct elections on the basis of adult franchise as the sole means of determining the will of the people, from which all states have to derive their authority.

But if we take into account the voices still occasionally raised in derision of adult franchise, voices that are likely to become louder if conservative clerics can increase their political strength, and the derogation of the people’s right to vote implicit in the graduation condition applied to candidates for representing the electors, the debate cannot be deemed to have ended.

That Pakistan has moved far ahead of the 1935 Act by discarding the system of indirect elections based on a restricted franchise is obvious. Yet, it may be useful to examine the 1935 franchise scheme to understand the effort to place electoral issues in the context of social reality.

To begin with, two features of the Act may be noted. An attempt was made to put most of the matters relating to elections in the Act itself, and thus plug the possibilities of confusion by a multiplicity of laws. Secondly, the formulation of a single measure to determine eligibility to vote was avoided because the various parts of the colony had not reached a uniform level of development.

The eligibility to vote was determined on a provincial basis and different criteria were applied to different provinces for qualifications based on residence, payment of taxes, property, and education. What was common was the grant of the voting right to all ex-servicemen and each spouse of a person qualified to vote. (If a male voter had two or more wives, only one of them got the right to vote and retained this right even after she became a widow, until she made the mistake of taking a new husband who was not entitled to vote).

Some of the variations made in the provincial franchise schemes merit special attention. The minimum educational qualification for a voter in the older provinces (Madras and Bombay) was matriculation or equivalent certificate but a lower test, such as final vernacular examination, could also be prescribed. The situation in the territories now constituting Pakistan was different.

For instance, in Sindh the minimum educational qualification was the same as in Bombay — matriculation, and if any other examination was prescribed it could not be lower than vernacular final.

In the NWFP, middle school certificate was the minimum qualification for voters in urban constituencies while in rural constituencies those who had passed the primary (fourth class) examination could vote.

Punjab was considered more backward or more privileged than Sindh and the NWFP as a person who could prove to have attained the primary educational standard could become a voter.

The qualifications based on property in the provinces of Punjab, Sindh and the NWFP took note of tenants beside landowners.

In Punjab, those entitled to vote included an occupancy tenant assessed to five rupees per annum in land revenue; a tenant cultivating six acres of irrigated land or 12 acres of unirrigated land in a particular constituency. In case a tenant cultivated both irrigated and unirrigated lands, the sum of the irrigated land and half of the area of the unirrigated land had to be six acres.

In the NWFP, a tenant cultivating six acres of irrigated or 12 acres of unirrigated land during the whole of the preceding fasli year, in any part of the province (constituency was not mentioned) could be enrolled as a voter:

In Sindh, those entitled to enrolment as voters included: a permanent tenant occupying land a the constituency on which eight rupees had been paid in land revenue in any one of the five preceding revenue years; a Hari (perhaps the only time Hari has been mentioned in a constitutional document) cultivating alienated or unalienated land in a constituency on which land revenue in the preceding year amounting to Rs 16 had been levied or would have been levied if the land had not been alienated.

Since every voter, subject to qualifications of age and freedom from conviction on a criminal charge, could contest election to the federal or a provincial legislature, the right to represent the electors was available to those who had studied up to the primary level or were tenants and Haris (always presumed to be illiterate) cultivating relatively small pieces of land. Of course, demobilized soldiers could represent the people even if they were illiterate or were neither landowners nor tenants / Haris. And that has something to do with the objective a state pursues while prescribing eligibility tests for voters and candidates in elections.

Let us now look at the relationship between the right to vote and the right to represent the electorate in the 1935 Act.

To be able to contest election a voter was required to satisfy only citizenship and age conditions. The qualifying age for the upper chamber, both at the centre and in the province, was 30 years and for the lower houses (the federal and provincial assemblies) it was 25 years.

In the main body of the Act no section was devoted to qualifications for membership of legislatures, while there was one that laid down a broad framework for disqualification.

A person could be disqualified for being chosen as, and for being, a member of a legislature: a) if he held an office of profit; b) if he was of unsound mind and stood so declared by a competent authority; c) if he was an undischarged insolvent; d) if he was serving a sentence of transportation or of imprisonment for a criminal offence; e) if he had been disqualified by an election tribunal (for a specified period only); f) if he had been sentenced to transportation or to imprisonment for not less than two years and if the period since his release was less than five years; g) if a member of a legislature became disqualified as a result of a decision by an election tribunal or conviction on a criminal charge, his seat did not become vacant for three months after that decision, and if within those three months an appeal / petition against disqualification / conviction had been filed, he retained his seat until that appeal / petition was disposed of but he could neither sit in the legislature nor vote in it during the pendency of the appeal / petition.

Where do Pakistan citizens stand today as compared to the right to represent the people provided for in the 1935 Act? That is a question every Pakistani must put to herself/himself. Perhaps, it is not a meaningless question.

Doublethink: ALL OVER THE PLACE

ONE accepts the utter futility of writing about the looming war in Iraq. The minds are made up in Washington DC. When the Pentagon speaks, the case is closed. Why then do some of us continue to write?

I see it as a kind of catharsis, getting it off our chest, purging the anger one feels at the prospect of hundreds of thousands people being killed, a country destroyed, an entire region destabilized. For what? To rid the world of Saddam Hussain, the most dangerous man in the world, in some such words of Tony Blair, who no doubt will mount a white steed and lead the charge to Baghdad.

Actually, he won’t. He will stay snug at 10 Downing Street as will Dick Cheney in his safe, secret hideaway, speeding “glum heroes up the line of death” (Siegfried Sassoon). In more chivalrous times, the knights in shining armour went themselves to battle. Now they only send in the armour, though this is not likely in Iraq, there will be no ground-battles. The Yanks will be coming from the air, B-52s and Stealth bombers and if boldness is required, helicopter gun-ships, a high-tech version of the flying carpets.

John Dillinger was one of the most notorious gangsters in the rich and varied history of mob-crime in the United States. He was on the ‘most wanted’ list. Herbert Hoover’s G-Men did everything possible to hunt him down. The option was not then available to bomb Chicago to the stone-age in order to kill or capture him. Though the United States did mount a full scale invasion of Panama in order to get one of its former agents, Manuel Noreiga.

It was during that invasion that the Stealth bomber made its debut. It seemed a safe enough war to put this billion dollar aircraft through its paces. For good measure, the United States also invaded Grenada, no doubt for reasons of self-defence, the reported presence of some Cuban advisers constituting a clear and present danger.

As if to demonstrate that Britain and the United States were two hearts that beat as one or not to be upstaged by Reagan, Margaret Thatcher took Britain into war against Argentina over the Falkland Islands. One of the benefits of this war was that many Britishers were given a geography lesson. Most didn’t know where or what the Falkland Islands were. A salad dressing?

In all this war merry-making, the United Nations was an on-looker as it had been during the Vietnam war. In his speech to the United Nations, George Bush Jr. had asked: “Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding or will it become irrelevant?” The United Nations has been irrelevant since it came into being, as had been the League of Nations.

The League of Nations had been founded after World War-1 with the avowed objective to make the world safe for democracy. It watched, helplessly, as Japan invaded China, it remained silent when Mussolini invaded Abbyssinia and was powerless as Hitler tore up the Versailles Treaty and went on a binge in Europe. The League of Nations was impotent because collective security did not suit the ambitions of those major powers who could have prevented World War-2.

Not having learnt any lessons, the United Nations came into existence at San Francisco in 1945 with an even loftier objective, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” It’s a pretty gloomy record, the United Nations does not deserve to be called even ‘a paper tiger.’

George Bush Jr. made it perfectly clear that the United States would do what it thought was in its best interests and the United Nations could tag along and any resolutions that the Security Council came up with would have no bearing on the plans to invade Iraq. What the United States was asking the United Nations to do was to provide it with the fig-leaf of multilateralism. The United States wants Iraq to surrender unconditionally and to hand over the head of Saddam Hussain on a silver platter or in a gunny-bag. It does not matter which.

Saddam Hussain has weapons of mass destruction and would not hesitate to use them. As I wrote in a previous column, weapons of mass destruction per se do not pose a threat. It depends on who has them. Saddam Hussain used chemical weapons in the Iraq-Iran war and ‘gassed’ his own people. Clearly barbaric acts.

In the Vietnam war, US planes dropped more than bombs. C-123 transport planes destroyed thousands of acres of forest and crops by spraying them with chemical herbicides, also known as defoliants. The most commonly used defoliant was Agent Orange which contained dioxin, a highly poisonous substance.

Neil Sheehan in his Pulitzer Prize winning book A Bright Shining Lie discloses that “after the war scientific tests indicated that the Vietnamese of the South had levels of dioxin in their bodies three times higher than inhabitants of the United States.”

One can understand the concerns about chemical weapons by those who have used them and have first-hand knowledge of their effects. There is speculation that Iraq may have nuclear weapons. There is no speculation about Israel. It is a confirmed fact that Israel has them. But Ariel Sharon is a man of peace. The Star of David on the Israeli flag is really an olive branch. Welcome to doublethink.

Big drug makers’ tactics

CYNICS say that rich drug companies fight sound medical reforms by lobbying Congress relentlessly. This is half true. The full story is that rich drug companies fight sound medical reforms by lobbying Congress and lobbying other companies.

The hottest fight now concerns the rules on the duration of drug patents. Under existing law, drug companies can extend patents for 30 months beyond their normal expiration dates by asserting that makers of cheap generic copies are violating some rule or other.

The extension is automatic, however weak the assertion; what’s more, the drug companies can make such assertions more than once for the same drug if it’s protected by more than one patent. The Senate has passed a bill to restrain this practice; it would allow only one automatic 30-month stay per drug and would require patent holders to convince a judge of the merits of their case in order to secure a second one.

This is an eminently reasonable reform. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would save consumers $60 billion over 10 years by making generics more widely available; it would do this without compromising drug companies’ rights to defend their patents in court.

But the drug companies paint the Senate bill as an attack on the idea of intellectual property, and they have gone beyond the normal practice of making their argument to Congress and the public. They also have taken their case to companies that, hoping to reduce the cost of employee health plans, lobbied in favour of the Senate legislation.

This month Georgia-Pacific, a paper company, asked that its name be withdrawn from the Web site of Business for Affordable Medicine, the coalition of state governors and corporations that supports the Senate bill. E-mails between company officials, described in The Wall Street Journal, suggest that Georgia-Pacific’s decision reflected pressure from Eli Lilly, a drug company that is one of Georgia-Pacific’s big customers.

Georgia-Pacific has been hoping to conclude a three-year sales deal with Eli Lilly, making this a particularly bad time for Georgia-Pacific to annoy its client.—The Washington Post

Higher education reforms

THERE has always been consensus on the need for reform not just in higher education, but in various other sectors as well. However, a distinction has to be made between advocates of reform and those who end up being “reformists”, more because of the latter’s influence in policy-making corridors rather than a genuine belief in reform.

Since the two are not necessarily the same, one would like to know how many representatives of public sector universities — academics, scholars, and intellectuals — actually sat in on the Steering Committee on Higher Education (SCHE). The composition of SCHE alone speaks volumes for the predispositions of the “reformists.” Are university academics, mostly accomplished in their respective fields or disciplines, not good enough for the purpose? If the answer is in the negative, then it does not require a whole lot of intelligence to appreciate the uproar against the higher education reforms proposed by the SCHE.

The claim made by the SCHE that participation of the key stakeholders of the universities was ensured needs elaboration. Who in the opinion of the SCHE were the “key stakeholders” if not accomplished university staff, academics and scholars? It has been wisely accepted by the SCHE that no reform can be implemented unless the university community has the motivation and the will to do so. Now that the upshot is hidden from none, it is about time that a fresh look is taken of what has been christened as “higher education reform” by those distant from life in public sector universities.

The SCHE itself accepts that there could be a divergence of views in the areas of governance and management structures, this divergence cannot be given short shrift as it is these areas that will make or break the organizational climate. Faculty involvement here is imperative as what is to be governed is an environment that should foster freedom of thought and expression, openness and a spirit of enquiry.

All of this requires a management capable and self-confident enough that it does not feel threatened by processes of intellectual fermentation — hallmark of centres of excellence at the tertiary level — without which a nation cannot possibly determine its path in a world where global powers will be all too eager to even control our thought processes as they did during the cold war by influencing even tertiary-level education policy. This could be done through generous funding tied to a predetermined world view donors would like to be promoted in consideration of the funds.

This would imply that those to the left or the right of a prescribed thought process would be sidelined or marginalized further or, worse still, weeded out. This would be diametrically opposed to what a university is expected to promote — freedom of thought and inquiry along with the courage to live with the research findings, whatever they may be.

So, if the mission of universities is to aim at national development in all spheres and is to be accomplished by promoting freedom of inquiry, then academic and administrative policy needs to be chalked out through intense involvement of a wide range of academics as they alone can determine the implications of various policy decisions.

Restricting participation to a few favourites will lead to many difficult questions that thinking minds in universities cannot help asking. Bulldozing pet solutions in a thinking environment will either boomerang or dissent will continue to simmer beneath the surface.

Obtaining increased funding may not be a very valid indicator of success. What is important to know is whether or not additional funds will be utilized to attain organization goals. While the goals are defined afresh either too broadly or vaguely for higher education, their specific definition will again be the function of the governing bodies in which the chosen few academics might be reduced to pieces of furniture if the external financiers are either over-represented or carry an over-weight by virtue of their wealth or some other power. In environments where the size of coffers and their contents gain primacy over what the mission should be, professional and academic capability stands discounted.

Also, all areas will require equal emphasis as it is not just science and technology (their importance notwithstanding) that will be able to do the needful without commensurate emphasis on the social sciences which ought to be guiding thought processes and attitudinal and behavioural disposition. Higher PhD allowance for science and technology is already a discrimination against the social sciences which is expected to aggravate. We need philosophization as much as we need other fields or disciplines that supposedly provide “market-oriented” education. For, “market-oriented” education in a country where markets are disappearing fast will not help us achieve our goals.

Instead, we will be providing low-cost training grounds for job markets elsewhere in the world which is a reason why our best graduates find themselves lining up for foreign visas. Are we then equipping education for national development or for the development of the cores of the world? It is through our education policy that we must determine whether we aspire to be amongst the world’s cores or keep ourselves resigned to the fate of being a periphery of the world. The education policy is always a crucial determinant of this.

Requirement for funding irrespective of the source is being sold with the promise of salary revision. While none can deny the importance of a significant salary revision for university staff and faculty, it needs to be understood that salary is not a motivator. It is a satisfier whose absence would cause dissatisfaction but whose presence may not necessarily motivate. Motivation requires fulfilment of higher-order needs of self-esteem and self-actualization so as to move the soul which alone can impel the human spirit in the direction of accomplishment. Having bypassed some lower-order needs linked with adequate pecuniary compensation, most university academics are already in the self-actualization mode.

Can such self-actualizing individuals strongly committed to their professional, academic, and/or ideological goals be dissuaded to keep away from their chosen paths? Can their existing beliefs be replaced by an ersatz ideology simply by pricing it higher? The answer is never if the higher price is tagged with a view that is out of sync with what they believe in.

Emphasis on need-based financial aid further implies that the tertiary education sector is also likely to be restricted for the underprivileged segments of society, thus aggravating our chronic dualism. This would further imply that the less capable of the affluent will have wider access to higher education whose zone would be narrowed for the more capable-but-disadvantaged as the latter will have difficulty “buying” tertiary education in the “market place.” Capability and merit are then likely to be reduced to even more hollow slogans. It will then become the birthright of all those born in affluence to procure whichever higher education they will like as more space will be vacated for them by pushing out the meritorious-but-poorer through a higher price tag on education.

While only the brightest of the underprivileged will be funded, the average of the elite will graduate in droves to rule the roost. As the elitist structures of power will thus be cemented even further, we will have a nation growing even more in the image of the financiers rather than in an image we ought to be determining ourselves through independent thought and action.

It is, therefore, imperative that a fresh look be taken of higher education reform which should be driven by ideological considerations first and foremost with the issue of funding subsumed under the above overarching one.

We need answers, Mr Bush

PRESIDENT Bush continues to crank up the pressure against Saddam Hussein and America’s equivocal allies. On Thursday he asked for authority to use every means he deemed appropriate, “including force,” against Iraq. He was speaking to Congress, but he knew full well that the world, including the U.N. Security Council, was listening.

Bush is pressing that body to draft a new, hard-edged resolution against Iraq, while making it clear that he’ll go it alone if the United Nations doesn’t come through. The U.S. Constitution of course says nothing about steamrolling past the United Nations, but it couldn’t be more clear in insisting that Congress act as a check on the commander in chief.

Here are a few questions that demand full and complete answers from the president:

—If, as some hawks claim, Hussein’s army is a feeble pushover, much weaker than the forces he fielded during the Gulf War, what immediate danger does he pose?

—Weapons of mass destruction? Where’s the concrete evidence that the arsenal we’ve always known he had has significantly changed? And be specific, please. We know, for instance, that Iraq has attempted to import thousands of high-strength aluminium tubes of a sort used for nuclear weapons construction. But the independent Institute for Science and International Security is skeptical; it says those pipes aren’t anything like conclusive evidence that Iraq is close to possessing nuclear weapons. Do you know otherwise? What else have you got? —Los Angeles Times