Work with me on this. A California legislator is trying to pass a law that would extend the three-strikes principle to corporations. Multiple offenders would be barred from doing business in the not-so-Golden State anymore.

California State Senator Gloria Romero recently introduced a bill that would hold California's law-breaking corporations to the same standard to which the state holds its law-breaking citizens. Three strikes and you're out. If a corporation commits three major violations that result in a fine of at least $1 million or a death, the California Attorney General will revoke the corporation's charter. For companies incorporated in other states, three strikes means that they will lose their right to transact business in California.

But I don't think that goes far enough. I think the goes far enough. I think we should emulate the British. The courts there are in the midst of extending criminal law to corporations and their executives in a way long past due. The Network Rail company and six of its executives are being charged with criminal manslaughter in a recent tragic wreck.

It is the first time individuals and companies have been charged with manslaughter following a rail crash. Charges brought against Great Western Trains after the 1997 Southall rail disaster were dropped when the CPS failed to persuade the courts that the common law offence of manslaughter could be applied to corporations without a named individual.

If criminal laws of this sort were more diligently applied against corporate scofflaws in this country, it might work as a deterrent. Maybe.

But America has long been a save haven for corporate and government miscreants. India is still looking for a few Bhopal Union Carbide executives. And indicted war criminal Henry Kissinger roams free when he's in New York for a business lunch.

Truth is, only the little guys are likely to get punished, even in England where action is being taken, the law being what it is.

Only small companies, where it is easier to establish the lines of responsibility, have been convicted of corporate manslaughter.

Warfare and honor -- back when there was some, Part I, according to Henry C. K. Liu.

Western military prowess, with its arsenal of smart bombs and weapons of mass destruction ready for deployment to impose its will on others, is not a march toward modernity, but a retreat toward barbarism. A civilization built on militarization of the peace remains a barbaric civilization. What Western militarism has done is to abduct modernity as synonymous with Western civilization, depriving human civilization of an evolving process of cultural diversity. The effect of this abduction of modernity had been profound and comprehensive.

Artistes, arise! You have nothing to lose but your plum jobs, public acclaim and the month of August on the Cote d'Azure!

France's entire summer season of festivals - more than 700 events - faces collapse unless a solution is found to the week-old, nationwide dispute over special unemployment rights for about 75,000 freelance workers in the performing arts, cinema and television. Several small festivals have already been canceled. A big opera festival in Aix and the "Francofolies", a celebration of traditional French popular song in La Rochelle, are struggling to open and may not survive the week.

Turnabout is fair play. But then when was the government ever fair? Go here to file your observations of, say Congressman Wally Herger, or Mayor Willie Brown.

Gonads goners? Maureen Dowd of the NYT and some very smart women hope so.