The Global Village, as anticipated by Marshall McLuhan, is here. However, our village is far from the idyllic world some of us imagined.

      We still haven't found effective ways to deal with the village bullies. Though the trials in international courts of Milosevic and Hussein did not proceeding as smoothly as did the Nuremberg Trials, they may have created a chill among dictators. It is no longer inevitable that they can, like Baby Doc of Haiti and Idi Amin of Uganda, live out their lives in luxury with money they stole from their people. The book and subsequent documentary on Pinochet's Last Stand about the attempt to detain Pinochet in England and extradite him to Spain was revealing. He finally weaseled out of it by feigning sickness and was able to return to Chile and die in his bed at a ripe old age. However, in the interval, it was argued that heads of state are above the law. Margaret Thatcher made a point of visiting Pinochet while under house arrest, complaining about being inconvenienced. Thus no one is responsible for the torture and murder of thousands of people. The person who gives the orders is above the law and the people who carry out the orders are just doing what they are told.