Our Tunnel Vision
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/15/AR200701150=
0966.html
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, January 16, 2007; Page A19
Some years ago, I accompanied John McCain to Vietnam. For him, it was
yet another trip to the place where he had been a prisoner of war, but
for me it was a first. After we visited Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (the
former Saigon), McCain and the rest of his party went home. A colleague
and I stayed behind to visit the famous Cu Chi tunnels. To the
Vietnamese, they are a monument to a lesson they taught us. To us, they
are a monument to a lesson we never seem to learn.
Experience -- reporting, we call it in my business -- can be vastly
overrated. I went to Bosnia and Croatia during the war there and came
away convinced that NATO, which was to say the United States, should
stay out of that conflict. I was intimidated by the terrain and
horrified by the ethnic enmity. I came away with precisely the wrong
lesson. NATO went in and ended the killing.
A Dark Horse's War Edge
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/15/AR200701150=
0965.html
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007; Page A19
Mike Huckabee, who just stepped down as Arkansas governor, is the
brightest star among Republican presidential dark horses.
It's not just because he, like a certain other Arkansan, has ties to a
town called Hope, or because he lost 105 pounds and has written a
popular diet book. And it's not only because he is mastering a
conservative form of triangulation blending religious conservatism with
policy pragmatism.
Iraqi Hangings Bring More Denunciations
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/15/AR200701150=
0401_pf.html
Head of Hussein's Half Brother Is Severed
By Joshua Partlow and Muhanned Saif Aldin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 16, 2007; A01
BAGHDAD, Jan. 15 -- By the time the corpses of Saddam Hussein's half
brother and another top official, hanged before dawn Monday, arrived in
the village of Auja for burial, the word had spread among the mourners:
The head of Hussein's brother had been severed from his body.
Many of the people who had gathered considered the decapitation of
Barzan Ibrahim to be a calculated insult, another act by the
Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to
humiliate followers of the executed former president and all his fellow
Sunni Arabs. A doctor inspected the remains to assess the government's
explanation that the noose inadvertently took off the head after
Ibrahim dropped through the trapdoor of the scaffold.
Energy Time
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/opinion/16tue1.html
We cannot continue to hold our national security and the health of the
planet hostage to our appetite for fossil fuels.
Tracking Outsourced Bonanzas
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/opinion/16tue2.html
Few Bush administration spending programs are more in need of scrutiny
and daylight than the outsourcing of government programs to private
contractors.
'Little Mosque' Defuses Hate With Humor
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/world/americas/16canada.html?ref=3Dworld
By CHRISTOPHER MASON
When it came to funny television shows in Canada, producers had a
reliable stable of topics; Islam was not one of them, until now.
Humble Brass Was Even Better Than Gold to a 16th-Century Tribe in Cuba
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/science/16cuba.html?ref=3Damericas&pagewa=
nted=3Dall
By JENNIFER PINKOWSKI
Because of its otherworldly brilliance, the 16th-century Ta=EDno Indians
of Cuba called it turey, their word for the most luminous part of the
sky.
Hong Kong and Shanghai Duel for Financial Capital
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/business/worldbusiness/16hong.html?ref=3D=
asia&pagewanted=3Dall
By KEITH BRADSHER and DAVID BARBOZA
The battle over economic dominance in China is partly a contest between
traditional power and international influence.
With New Urgency, U.S. and South Korea Seek Free-Trade Deal
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/business/worldbusiness/16won.html?ref=3Da=
sia
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Talks resumed amid growing skepticism that the two governments can
narrow their differences before President Bush's authority to move an
agreement quickly through Congress expires.
Ruins in Northern Syria Bear the Scars of a City's Final Battle
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/science/16batt.html?ref=3Dmiddleeast
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Excavation of ruins at Tell Hamoukar reveals ancient weapons of mass
destruction.
Democrats Seek the Middle on Social Issues
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/us/politics/16dems.html?ref=3Dus&pagewant=
ed=3Dall
By ROBIN TONER
Democrats in Congress say they are committed to governing from the
center, even on divisive social issues.
The price of belonging
AC Grayling
January 16, 2007 11:30 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ac_grayling/2007/01/looking_east.html
One reason why human beings are nowhere near as happy as other animals,
according to Schopenhauer, is that whereas the latter live entirely in
the present moment, humans are constantly carrying the past on their
backs and planning, often anxiously, what to do in future. Animals
enjoy their perpetually iterating present moments if these are
pleasant, and endure them more easily if they are unpleasant because
they have no expectation that they will continue being so, or might
worsen.
One can grant that it is a - the? - human tragedy to have memory and
foresight in a life of difficulty, but it is relevant to point out that
difficult lives tend to be those that remember the wrong things and are
not very good at foresight. Present moments are the richer for being
freighted with good memories and enticing plans; that is why one
imagines that the present moment of a cow chewing its cud in the shade
lacks the depth, height and texture of a human equivalent pondering,
let us say, a move to Los Angeles on the back of a $250m deal.
Financial freedom
Mark Braund
January 16, 2007 09:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mark_braund/2007/01/post_917.html
As recently reported in the Observer, a coalition of organisations
including Liberty, Charter 88, the Tories and the Lib Dems will next
month launch a campaign for a new bill of rights. Going under the
banner Future Britain, the new grouping hopes to encourage debate about
what rights should be included in the bill and, crucially, how those
rights, once enshrined in law, will be upheld in practice.
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