For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Locksley Hall” (1842)
In the first week of September 2001, the kindly earth, lapt in universal law, was gathered in South Africa, yakking incessantly, shrieking hysterically, but slumbering nonetheless. In a novel or a movie, it would have seemed too pat, the juxtaposition too obvious. But real life is not so squeamish as the professional scenarist, and so the weekend of September 8, 2001 found the representatives of the civilized world locked in intense negotiations with the planet’s preeminent thugs over what recompense the West should make for its evil legacy.
Underneath the surface controversy, the United Nations Conference Against Racism, Racial Intolerance, Xenophobia and/ or Related
