TheNextReport

SHEHERAZADE, SOLOZZO AND THE BIG KHAN By Paul Schwartz Last weekend in an interview on CNN, a spokeswoman for a company that is a front for the Dubai government described the sophisticated safety procedures in place at the port of Dubai. In a comforting tone, she told the story of her organization and urged Americans to remember that a deal that would put the firm in control of operations at six major American ports “is just for the sake of business.” Hearing this I couldn’t help but being reminded of a similar line uttered by Virgil “The Turk” Solozzo in “The Godfather” when he was planning to move in on the Corleone family empire. I remembered then that the best way to judge the value of any story is to lift the veil of its words and closely examine the characters. It is safe to say we live in an age when assurances about the benign nature of business and business ethics have lost much of their meaning. Nobody knows this better than those who sit in the U.S. Congress. The uproar sur