Petro-Piracy: Oil and Troubled Waters

West Africa piracy is the most profitable in the world. Well-organized gangs steal refined oil in contrast to Somali pirates who hold crews and ships for ransom. Like piracy elsewhere, the origins and potential solutions to West African piracy are found ashore—largely in Nigeria. This article argues that oil states in the developing world are shielded from the domestic and international pressures that can bring down their non-oil neighbors. The current international system which makes international recognition, not internal legitimacy or functionality, the key to state authority works to their benefit. It encourages those parts which are valuable to industrialized powers—and to the domestic elites who facilitate and benefit from international legitimization—to function well enough for resource extraction to continue. The security of the state generally matters less than the security of key enclaves— including ships and offshore platforms—which support elite interests.     

On the Choice of Remedies

At a time when misuse of the power to zone seems to be increasing—some say rampant—when such misuse is frequently ignored even sanctioned by the courts, e.g.; Belle Terre v. Boraas, Steelhill v. Sanbornton, U.S. v. Black Jack (lower federal court), it is heartening to find a powerful court unite behind an articulate and powerfully worded opinion which strikes down an exercise of the police power (zoning) which legislates local biases and unreasonably excludes low income housing. There is an appropriateness too in that it is Justice Hall, some 12 years after his classic dissent in the Vickers case, who rationalizes a long line of often misunderstood New Jersey cases and the case law of other jurisdictions and concludes: “that every … municipality must, by its land use regulations, … make realistically possible an appropriate variety and choice of housing.” A strong concurring opinion further notes; “the use of the zoning power by municipalities to maintain themselves as enclaves of affluence or of social homogeneity … [is] improper and to be strongly condemned.”     

Sport diplomacy between the United States and Iran

America and Iran have not had diplomatic relations for two decades. In May 1997 the election of Mohammad Khatami, a reformist, to Iran's presidency provided an opening for a cautious rapprochement. Khatami advocated people-to-people contacts between the two nations to break the ice, and the United States agreed. After critically evaluating the idea of people-to-people contacts and discussing the role of the large Iranian diaspora in America as a mediator between the peoples of the two countries, this article examines the sports diplomacy that resulted from Khatami's initiative. It concludes with a comparison with the ping pong diplomacy that heralded the thaw in US-Chinese relations.