Senate Measure Puts Spotlight on Fund-Raising
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/us/politics/20ethics.html?ref=3Dpolitics&=
pagewanted=3Dall
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
The measure would require lobbyists to disclose money they raise from
clients and deliver as sheaves of checks.
Bush to Visit Democrats' Retreat
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/us/politics/20bush.html?ref=3Dpolitics
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
President Bush has accepted an invitation from House Democrats to
travel to Williamsburg, Va., in February to speak at their annual
issues conference.
Senators to Offer Centrist Proposal on Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/washington/20cong.html?ref=3Dpolitics
By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY
The proposal on Iraq policy is an effort to provide an outlet for
lawmakers uneasy with an increase in troops but unwilling to back a
toughly worded resolution opposing the new strategy.
Justices Revisit Campaign Finance Issue
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/washington/20scotus.html?ref=3Dwashington
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
The Supreme Court announced an expedited review of a ruling last month
that substantially narrowed the application of a major provision of the
McCain-Feingold federal campaign law.
Big Media's Crush on Social Networking
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/business/yourmoney/21frenzy.html?ref=3Dbu=
siness
By RICHARD SIKLOS
With a wink and a flirt, big media companies have developed a full-bore
teenage crush on social networking businesses.
Furor Over 12-Year-Old Actress's Rape Scene
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/movies/20dako.html?ref=3Darts&pagewanted=
=3Dall
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
A rape scene in Dakota Fanning's latest film, "Hounddog," is
causing controversy at the Sundance Film Festival and beyond.
In Virginia, More to 'Get Over' Than Slavery
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/19/AR200701190=
1542_pf.html
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, January 20, 2007; A23
On last Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Frank D. Hargrove, a
Republican lawmaker in Virginia's House of Delegates, said that instead
of seeking a formal apology from the commonwealth for slavery, "black
citizens should get over it." Hargrove also reportedly wondered how far
such apologies should go. "Are we going to force the Jews to apologize
for killing Christ?"
Frank Hargrove is one reason that young African Americans should never
take their hard-won rights for granted. His outlook is also a wake-up
call to some of my Jewish friends who think they have it made.
Jimmy Carter's Jewish Problem
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/19/AR200701190=
1541.html
By Deborah Lipstadt
Saturday, January 20, 2007; Page A23
It is hard to criticize an icon. Jimmy Carter's humanitarian work has
saved countless lives. Yet his life has also been shaped by the Bible,
where the Hebrew prophets taught us to speak truth to power. So I
write.
Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," while exceptionally
sensitive to Palestinian suffering, ignores a legacy of mistreatment,
expulsion and murder committed against Jews. It trivializes the murder
of Israelis. Now, facing a storm of criticism, he has relied on
anti-Semitic stereotypes in defense.
Missing in Antiwar Action
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/19/AR200701190=
1619.html
By John McMillian
Saturday, January 20, 2007; 12:00 AM
Recently I finished teaching a freshman seminar at Harvard called "From
Reform to Revolution: Youth Culture in the 1960s." When I built the
syllabus, I asked students to ponder a single, overarching question:
"How did the youth rebellion of the 1960s happen?" That is, what caused
millions of young people to pierce the bland and platitudinous din that
characterized the early Cold War years? Why did so many youths -- many
of them affluent and college-educated -- suddenly decide that American
society needed to be radically overhauled?
But as the semester progressed, my students frequently turned the
question around: Why is there no rising protest movement among young
people today? At the very least, they asked, shouldn't we be seeing
more antiwar activity? According to a CNN poll this month, 67 percent
of Americans oppose the war in Iraq, and more than half would like to
see all U.S. troops home by year's end. Given that it was not until
August 1968 that a majority of Americans began calling the Vietnam War
a "mistake," this is a remarkable statistic. By 1968, of course,
antiwar teach-ins, sit-ins and marches were commonplace on many
campuses; demonstrators had violently clashed with soldiers on the
steps of the Pentagon; and the Democratic National Convention had
descended into chaos over the war.
Martinez Takes Over as Leader of RNC
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/19/AR200701190=
1557.html
Florida Senator Aims to Reach Out To Minority Voters
By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 20, 2007; Page A04
Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, who arrived in the United States as a
teenage Cuban refugee, took his party's helm yesterday as general
chairman of the Republican National Committee, vowing to reach out to
minority voters and restore "the principles that have made us great."
Martinez was handpicked for the job by President Bush, and his
ascendance was not without controversy. A small group of conservative
RNC members had announced their opposition to the first-term senator
because they viewed him as overly tolerant of illegal immigration.
In the shadow of prosperity
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8548661
Jan 18th 2007 | GALAX, VIRGINIA
From The Economist print edition
Hard truths about helping the losers from globalisation
NESTLED among the wooded Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia's far
south-west, Galax is a town of bluegrass music, barbecue and
hardscrabble living. It is home to an annual fiddlers' convention and,
less happily, a huddle of textile and furniture factories. Over the
past few years, globalisation has hit hard.
Unable to compete with Mexican and then Chinese competition, the town's
old industries have withered, taking thousands of jobs with them. Last
year brought the biggest single blow. Three big factories closed their
doors within months. More than 1,000 people, around one-sixth of the
town's workforce, lost their jobs.
On the march
http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8559882
Jan 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Intelligence agencies see worrying signs of al-Qaeda's revival
AS THEY watch Iraq spiralling into civil war and Taliban attacks in
Afghanistan increasing, Western leaders have until recently consoled
themselves with one thought: at least the campaign against al-Qaeda has
gone quite well. "Absolutely, we're winning. Al-Qaeda is on the
run," said President George Bush in October.
After the West toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, in 2001, and
arrested or killed many of al-Qaeda's leaders, officials believed it
was largely broken up. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, his
deputy, sent video and audio messages from their hiding places, but did
not appear to control operations, which were "franchised" to local
groups. In Europe, the jihadist cause was taken up by home-grown
extremists. But their outrages, such as the London bombings on July 7th
2005, could not match al-Qaeda's spectaculars.
Rich man, poor man
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8554819
Jan 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition
A poisonous mix of inequality and sluggish wages threatens
globalisation
GLUERS and sawyers from the furniture factories in Galax near the
mountains of Virginia lost their jobs last year when American retailers
decided they could find a better supplier in China. At the other end of
the furniture industry Robert Nardelli lost his job this month when
Home Depot decided it could find a better chief executive in his
deputy. But any likeness ends there. Mr Nardelli's exit was as
extravagantly rewarded as his occupation of the corner office had been.
Next to his $210m severance pay, the redundant woodworkers' packages
were mean to the point of provocation.
That's the way it goes all over the rich world. Since 2001 the pay of
the typical worker in the United States has been stuck, with real wages
growing less than half as fast as productivity. By contrast, the
executive types gathering for the World Economic Forum in Davos in
Switzerland next week have enjoyed a Beckhamesque bonanza. If you look
back 20 years, the total pay of the typical top American manager has
increased from roughly 40 times the average-the level for four
decades-to 110 times the average now.
Europe's huddled masses
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8559830
Jan 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Millions of Europeans are on the move. Does it matter?
ROBERT, the Polish-born head of a group of British removal men, can
read and write English easily, unlike his British colleagues who after
packing their cardboard boxes label them as "clovs" and
"shuse". Two years ago, when he moved to Britain, Robert lugged
heavy loads like them. He still lives worse than they do, in a shabby
rented house crammed with compatriots. But the remittances he sends
home are paying for his family, a car, a house and-eventually-his
own business there.
That dream, of hard work abroad leading to success at home, has
inspired millions of people to move across Europe since the collapse of
communism-a peacetime migration exceeded only by the upheavals that
followed the end of the second world war. But remarkably little is
known about the nature of this movement of people one way, and money
the other, not least because so much is undocumented or illegal. Now a
new report* from the World Bank attempts to fill some gaps and explode
some misconceptions.
Why can't they just make peace?
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8559692
Jan 18th 2007 | JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition
A back-channel peace plan between Israel and Syria may be more hype
than substance but optimists say it could be a harbinger of
negotiations to come
IF ONLY Israel could make peace with Syria, the optimists muse: it
could be the key to peace in the whole Middle East. No longer sensing
enemies on every side, Syria could relax, stop backing insurgents and
radicals in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, and join the West in isolating
Iran. So the news that broke this week in an Israeli newspaper,
Haaretz, of a secret back channel that ran for two years and even
produced an outline of a possible peace deal, caused quite a stir.
Could peace talks still be round the corner?
The sticking point has always been the Golan Heights, which Israel
captured from Syria in the war of 1967. Talks dragged on through the
1990s but finally collapsed at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, in 2000.
Israel's then prime minister, Ehud Barak, wanted to keep a
ten-metre-wide strip of the Golan bordering the Sea of Galilee, to
guarantee Israel's control of the source of 40% of its fresh water.
Syria's president, Hafez Assad, demanded the right to swim in the lake
as he had done in the days when Syrians controlled the eastern shore.
Fit to serve
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D85=
59767
Jan 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Looks can win votes-but being too pretty can lose them
NAMED last week as his party's candidate for the French presidential
election, Nicolas Sarkozy faces an opponent, S=E9gol=E8ne Royal, who has
the press drooling. "Dazzling" and "radiant", she has been
likened to a work of art ("Mona Lisa") and a mythological figure (a
"siren").
How grue is your valley?
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8548630
Jan 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Psychologists are learning more about how colour builds language and
language builds colour
LANGUAGES divide the spectrum up in different ways. Welsh speakers use
"gwyrdd" (pronounced "goo-irrrth") as a general word for green.
Yet "grass" literally translates as "blue straw". That is
because the Welsh word for blue ("glas") can accommodate all shades
of green. English-speaking anthropologists affectionately squish
"green" and "blue" together to call Welsh an example of a
"grue" language. A few of them think grue languages are spoken by
societies that live up mountains or near the equator because
ultraviolet radiation, which is stronger in such places, causes a
progressive yellowing of the lens. This, the theory goes, makes the eye
less sensitive to short wavelengths (those that correspond to the green
and blue parts of the spectrum). Unfortunately, though the Welsh do
live in a hilly country, it is hardly mountainous enough-let alone
sunny enough-to qualify.
The ultraviolet theory, however, is just one idea among many in the
debate about the psychology of colour. Like many debates in psychology,
this one pits congenital, fundamentally genetic, explanations against
explanations that rely on environmental determinism. Psychologists in
the former camp think people are born with ingrained ideas about how
hues are grouped. They believe the brain is preconditioned to pick out
the six colours on a Rubik's cube whatever tongue it is taught to think
in. The other camp, by contrast, thinks that the spectrum can be
chopped into categories anywhere along its length. Moreover, they
suspect that the language an individual learns from his parents is the
main explanation for where that chopping takes place.
Another mouse in the house
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/techview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=
=3D8575016
Jan 19th 2007
From Economist.com
The computer industry targets the living room
LAST week's headlines were grabbed by Apple's gorgeous iPhone; a
nifty high-definition video disc from Warner: and a high-definition
video-disc player from LG Electronics that can cope with two rival
formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray. But at the big trade shows where these
were unveiled-the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and
Macworld in San Francisco-the big preoccupation was the computer
industry's quest to take over the living room.
A falling star
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8554769
Jan 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Condoleezza Rice is not the woman she once was
A COUPLE of years ago ***** Morris, an estranged former Clinton adviser,
published "Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race",
which argued that Condoleezza Rice was the only person who could save
America from a Clinton restoration. Since then Mrs Clinton has gone
from strength to strength, and is preparing to announce her
presidential candidacy any day now. Ms Rice has taken a relentless
battering.
The secretary of state spent this week on a tour of the Middle East
before touching down in Germany and Britain. Her aim is to encourage
Arab moderates to side with America in stabilising Iraq and the wider
Middle East. Her bait is a promise to the Arab world that she will put
more American muscle behind the creation of a Palestinian state. All
worthy goals. But few people think that she can make much difference.
Dr Strangelove saves the earth
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/greenview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=
=3D8542549
Jan 15th 2007
From Economist.com
How big science might fix climate change
FEW scientists like to say so, but cutting greenhouse-gas emissions is
not the only way to solve the problem of global warming. If man-made
technologies are capable of heating the planet, they are probably
capable of cooling it down again. Welcome to "geo-engineering", which
holds that, rather than trying to change mankind's industrial habits,
it is more efficient to counter the effects, using planetary-scale
engineering.
This general approach has been kicking around for decades. A paper on
climate change prepared for President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 made no
mention of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. It nonchalantly proposed
dealing with the results by dumping vast quantities of reflective
particles into the oceans, to increase the amount of sunlight reflected
into space.
The past is unpredictable
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/europeview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=
=3D8551972
Jan 18th 2007
From Economist.com
Conflicting views of Soviet history
DEPENDING on your sympathies, your education and your historical
experience, a giant bronze Soviet-era soldier in Tallinn, Estonia, may
celebrate the liberation of the Estonian capital from fascism; or it
may depict the "unknown rapist" in Soviet uniform whose arrival
marked the end of one occupation and the start of another.
In Kiev, the capital of Ukraine (or Kyiv-even spelling can be
controversial), the church of St Cyril is to some a precious symbol of
Kievan Rus', the fabled medieval principality from which both
Ukraine and Russia claim descent; to others an obscure museum that
badly needs a new coat of paint and proper management.
Road runners
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8565029
Jan 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition
The popularity of infrastructure investing
WHEN the Pennsylvania turnpike opened on October 1st 1940, motorists
queued for hours to travel on what was called "America's first
superhighway". Now investors are waiting in line for the toll road,
which may become the next bit of American infrastructure to be
privatised. Forty-eight firms expressed an interest in leasing the
road, after Governor Ed Rendell floated the idea.
Unusually, America is catching up with a trend that was pioneered
elsewhere-in this case as far away as Australia. Infrastructure has
become the most fashionable of asset classes, as governments desperate
for cash link up with pension funds desperate to diversify out of
shares and bonds.
Close call
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/asiaview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=
=3D8545744
Jan 17th 2007
From Economist.com
ASEAN talks of integration
"NEW Dawn for ASEAN", trumpeted Tuesday's Manila Times dutifully.
And indeed, for those who like to talk up a European model of
integration as a way forward for South-East Asia, the past weekend's
summit of the Association of South-East Asian Nations, in the
Philippine city of Cebu, made all the right noises.
Leaders approved a blueprint for a new fundamental charter for ASEAN,
meant to be ready for signing at a 40th-anniversary summit later this
year. Member states would have to obey ASEAN's decisions, or risk
being punished or expelled. Majority voting might be introduced in some
areas of policy. A target-date for creating a regional free-trade zone
would advance five years, to 2015.
Spiritual and temporal
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8548480
Jan 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition
An Oxford historian's attempt to compare two wildly differing
cultures-Rome and Jerusalem-meets with only partial success
IN THE Year of Our Lord 70, as it was later called, a place that had
been associated for a thousand years with supreme holiness-the Temple
in Jerusalem-underwent an orgy of destruction. Four years into a
revolt by local Jews who were enraged by an imperial governor pilfering
their Temple's funds, the Roman army burst into the courts of the
sacred building and set it on fire, destroying it so thoroughly that
disputes have raged ever since over where precisely it was.
The sacking of the Temple (pictured above in an 1867 painting by
Francesco Hayez) was the biggest milestone, though not the only
dramatic moment, in a series of military engagements between the Jews
and Romans. These ranged from the conquests of Pompey, who about 130
years earlier had turned Judea into a vassal kingdom, to the final
Jewish revolts that broke out at the start of the second century.
Waves of fear
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8516034
Jan 11th 2007
From The Economist print edition
In a controversial new book a British economist asks why so many people
are against the free movement of labour
FOR years now, free trade and free movement of capital have been
respectable economic tenets, espoused-if sometimes reluctantly-by
most politicians. But no sane politician in the rich world would
advocate free movement of labour. As a result, most people are trapped
in their native lands, never likely to have a legal opportunity to see
the world outside.
Philippe Legrain, a liberal economist who once worked for The
Economist, has already written a book stoutly defending globalisation.
Now he takes on an even more emotive subject. There is not a shadow of
doubt about his own views. He wants open borders. He believes that they
will, on balance, enrich both sending and receiving countries; he
thinks diversity generally makes life more interesting; and he detests
bureaucratic restrictions on human freedoms. "Immigrants are not an
invading army," he points out. "They come in search of a better
life. They are no different to someone who moves from Manchester to
London, or Oklahoma to California, because that is where the jobs are.
Except that a border lies in the way."
Head-to-head in the clouds
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8516126
Jan 11th 2007
From The Economist print edition
THE struggle over the world market for big jet aircraft makes for epic
narrative. Involving billions of dollars and a great deal of national
pride, the story of two industrial giants fighting each other-Boeing
from the new world, Airbus from the old-is so gripping that there is
nothing quite like it in global business. The cost of developing the
product is astronomical, it takes years to come to market and is then
in the air for just a generation. Coke versus Pepsi, Sony versus
Samsung, Unilever versus Procter & Gamble-none of those battles has
quite the same grandeur nor the same high stakes. Only Big Oil in its
desperate search for new reserves comes close, but in that business
there are several players, and the rules are mostly set by a producers'
cartel.
Hijacked by history
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8486143
Jan 4th 2007
From The Economist print edition
WHAT happens when the leaders of a powerful nation arrive at the end of
a long and bloody war and try to give shape to the world beyond it?
This question ultimately lies at the heart of two new historical
studies, one by Geoffrey Roberts, an associate professor at University
College Cork, and the other by Wilson Miscamble, a historian at the
University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Both look backward and forward from
the bloody fulcrum of 1945 to see how wartime experiences shaped the
cold-war world.
Mr Roberts provides the more colourful account. His telling of the
basic narratives of the Hitler-Stalin pact, the Nazi betrayal of it and
the long gruelling combat on the eastern front is, if familiar,
nonetheless highly readable. Where Mr Roberts deviates from the
standard is in his assessment of Stalin as a military leader. While
admitting that he was a mass murderer, Mr Roberts nonetheless finds a
surprising (and not entirely convincing) amount to admire in Stalin's
wartime leadership and its consequences for the post-war world.
In praise of mess
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8486150
Jan 4th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Why keeping tidy can be inefficient
THIS book may not change your life. But if you have a tendency to be
messy and have already broken your new year resolutions to be neater in
future, it will certainly make you feel better about your natural
inclinations. Untidiness, hoarding, procrastination and improvisation
are not bad habits, the authors argue, but often more sensible than
meticulous planning, storage and purging of possessions.
That is because the tidiness lobby counts the benefits of neatness, but
not its costs. A rough storage system (important papers close to the
keyboard, the rest distributed in loosely related piles on every flat
surface) takes very little time to manage. Filing every bit of paper in
a precise category, with colour-coded index tabs and a neat system of
cross-referencing, will certainly take longer. And by the end, it may
not save any time. Your reviewer's office is easily the most untidy in
The Economist (not entirely his own work, it should be said, thanks to
the heroic efforts of his even untidier office-mate). But when it comes
to managing information, there seems to be no discernible difference in
the end result.
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