Why do the Amish ignore reality?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1890309,00.html
Cristina Odone
Sunday October 8, 2006
The Observer
The quaint clothes, primitive farmer's tools and the horse- drawn
buggies: the tragedy of a school massacre seems all the more gruesome
against the backdrop of the old-fashioned and enclosed Amish community.
In our romantic vision, these bearded men and apron-clad women offer
the possibility of etching out a distinct path, removed from the ugly
materialist world of big business and commercialism.
The families' tragedies is unbearably moving, yet the way this
community is dealing with a gunman killing five young schoolgirls (and
then himself) is disturbing.
Jack Straw should be praised for lifting the veil on a taboo
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1890310,00.html
A virulent minority of Muslims is turning its face against the values
of liberal democracy all over western Europe
Henry Porter
Sunday October 8, 2006
The Observer
Jack Straw was right to make the simple human point that it is rather
hard to conduct a conversation with someone wearing the full veil. He
was also right to make the further point that the full veil does not
help relations between different communities.
He didn't quite say that the veil has no place in a liberal secular
society, but if that was his intention I agree with it. This is not to
persecute Muslims for their beliefs or deny them rights: it is simply
to say that the veil, like it or not, has become increasingly regarded
as a symbol of separatist aspiration and of female subservience. Many
wear it voluntarily, but it does not stop this being a symbol of
women's oppression which stretches back to the times of classical
Greece.
Veiled comments
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1890393,00.html
Faz Hakim, the senior advisor to Trevor Phillips, chairman of the
Campaign for Racial Equality, provides an analysis of Jack Straw's
comments on the wearing of the niqab
Sunday October 8, 2006
Observer.co.uk
If anyone thought that Ramadan would have British Muslims too busy
fasting to be in the news, the last week must have been a shock.
There's been no let up in the flow of comment and debate about the
place of Muslims in British society, from the Queen's decision to
provide space to pray for her Muslim employees at Windsor (good news)
to the BNP's latest provocation, a leafleting campaign painting all
Muslims as potential terrorists (sick-making news). From where I sit as
a senior adviser to government on how to respond on these issues it's
clear that though the relationship between Muslim and other Britons is
on the whole good, finding a sensible way to deal with our diversity
has never been more important.
'Yes, that's me with the spade.' How top judge turned convict
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,1890314,00.html
In a unique experiment, Lord Phillips ditched his wig and rolled up his
sleeves on a 'payback project' beside convicted criminals. His aim, he
tells Mary Riddell in an exclusive interview, was to prove that
non-custodial punishments work
Sunday October 8, 2006
The Observer
Soon after dawn on a sunny Thursday, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers
set out for the strangest day's work ever done by a Lord Chief Justice.
In place of wig and robes, he had been told to wear blue jeans and
trainers and to report on time for his stint of hard manual labour. He
had been warned he might be frisked to ensure he had no mobile phone,
iPod or alcohol, and that he must obey orders. For seven hours, he
would be treated as a convict.
In a first in British legal history, Lord Phillips had asked to do a
day's unpaid work as part of a community order under which offenders
avoid jail by doing 'payback' projects. He wanted to prove that
non-custodial sentences are the right alternative for many to prisons,
now so overcrowded he considers it 'difficult or impossible' for them
to rehabilitate offenders and prevent re-offending.
The secret of success? Kindness
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,1890311,00.html
Are ruthlessness and greed the way to the top? No, says a new book -
putting people before cash can reap huge rewards. Amelia Hill reports
Sunday October 8, 2006
The Observer
When Meryl Streep first met Anne Hathaway, she embraced her co-star in
The Devil Wears Prada and exclaimed: 'I think you're perfect for the
role and I'm so happy we're going to be working on this together.' The
established Hollywood star then drew back, fixed the young actress with
a gimlet eye, and added: 'I warn you, that's the last nice thing I'm
going to say to you.' And, according to Hathaway, it was.
It was a neat dovetailing of fiction and reality. The unique selling
point of Miranda Priestly, Streep's character, is that she goes out of
her way to say nothing even closely approximating 'nice' for the entire
duration of the film.
Colonialism: was it so bad?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1889984,00.html
Heather Stewart
Sunday October 8, 2006
The Observer
Colonialism may have been morally bankrupt, but it was good for
business, according to US academics whose research suggests that the
longer the 80 islands they studied were under the yoke of a European
power, the healthier their economies are today.
James Feyrer and Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth College, used historical
data to show a positive link between the number of years an island
economy was colonised and current GDP per head. 'Time spent as a colony
is strongly positively correlated with modern economic outcomes,' they
say.
Assassin's bullet kills fiery critic of Putin
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1890481,00.html
The woman who exposed the Kremlin's dirty war in Chechnya is found dead
near her Moscow flat
Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Sunday October 8, 2006
The Observer
Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who did most to uncover the
Kremlin's dirty war in Chechnya, was shot dead close to her Moscow
apartment yesterday in a killing that sent shock waves across Russia.
Her body was found slumped in a lift next to a pistol and four bullets.
Politkovskaya, 48, was a constant critic of the Kremlin and her murder
will throw suspicion on the security services and the pro-Moscow regime
in Chechnya. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called the killing
'a grave crime against the country, against all of us'.
Sleaze row engulfs Republican hopefuls
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1890284,00.html
The Democrats look likely to make midterm gains as Bush tries to
recover from scandals
Paul Harris in New York
Sunday October 8, 2006
The Observer
The White House has been rocked by the resignation of a top aide to
political guru Karl Rove after the official was implicated in the Jack
Abramoff lobbying scandal.
The revelation comes at a disastrous time for President George Bush as
crucial mid-term elections have already been hit by sleazy sex
allegations that Republican Mark Foley was sexually preying on young
congressional pages.
Hidden victims of a brutal conflict: Iraq's women
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1890260,00.html
Abduction, rape and murder are the punishments for any woman who dares
to hold a professional job. A month-long investigation by The Observer
reveals the terrible reality of life after Saddam
Peter Beaumont in Baghdad
Sunday October 8, 2006
The Observer
They came for Dr Khaula al-Tallal in a white Opel car after she took a
taxi home to the middle class district of Qadissiya in Iraq's holy city
of Najaf. She worked for the medical committee that examined patients
to assess them for welfare benefit. Crucially, however, she was a woman
in a country where being a female professional increasingly invites a
death sentence.
As al-Tallal, 50, walked towards her house, one of three men in the
Opel stepped out and raked her with bullets.
Far right strives to disguise its roots in bid for national power
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1890248,00.html
From the ashes of a party banned for inciting hatred, a new force is
emerging in Belgium, reports Jason Burke in Antwerp
Sunday October 8, 2006
The Observer
It is market day in Deurne. Beside the church, behind the row of pubs
on the high street, under two dilapidated tower blocks, shoppers bustle
around the sausage stand, the ground coffee stall, Morocco Dried Fruit
and Nuts and Waffles of Flanders.
Jan van Wesembeeck, a 39-year-old engineer, watches activists in the
yellow and blue of his party work the crowds and smiles broadly. 'We
speak with the authentic voice of the people. We say out loudly and
proudly what they are thinking, and we'll be in power soon.'
String theory: Is it science's ultimate dead end?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1890340,00.html
For decades, physicists have been sure they could explain the universe
in a handful of complex equations: now many are starting to fear they
have been led down a cul-de-sac
Robin McKie, science Editor
Sunday October 8, 2006
The Observer
The most ambitious idea ever outlined by scientists has suffered a
remarkable setback. It has been dismissed as a theoretical cul-de-sac
that has wasted the academic lives of hundreds of the world's cleverest
men and women.
This startling accusation has been made by frustrated physicists,
including several Nobel prize winners, who say that string theory -
which seeks to outline the entire structure of the universe in a few
brief equations - is an intellectual dead end.
The other side of Auschwitz
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1890036,00.html
Jonathan Beckman takes issue with the publisher's presentation of
Auschwitz Report by Primo Levi with Leonardo De Benedetti
Sunday October 8, 2006
The Observer
Auschwitz Report
Primo Levi with Leonardo De Benedetti
Verso =A39.99, pp97
The exploitative packaging of Auschwitz Report is misleading. This
48-page document, with preface, introduction and postscript desperately
swelling it to book length, is basically a report by two survivors of
medical care in the Buna- Monowitz, a satellite camp of the Auschwitz
complex. It is clear that this was written by Leonardo De Benedetti
with the assistance of Primo Levi, not the other way around. Internal
evidence also suggests De Benedetti as the main author. When discussing
the selection of people for gassing, the report spends a page on the
procedure for choosing invalids (events experienced by De Benedetti
alone). When the report was published in 1946 in an Italian medical
journal, it was almost certainly as a result of De Benedetti's
influence, and named the authors as 'Leonardo De Benedetti and Primo
Levi'.
But De Benedetti's name does not sell books. So Verso has dolled this
up as the work of Levi, blazoning his name on the front of the book, at
least five times bigger than the words 'with Leonardo De Benedetti '.
Levi alone merits a photo and biographical note on the dust jacket.
Unforgivably, the only illustration on the cover is Levi's distinctive
bottle-lensed glasses, guaranteeing the reader the 'authentic'
experience with an A-list Holocaust survivor. Piggybacking sales on
Levi's name is tasteless, but to misrepresent the Holocaust's
historical record is insidious, when absolute fidelity to truth is the
only bulwark for sustaining remembrance against the gainsayers. The
contortions of the introduction, which attempts to connect the
Auschwitz Report and Levi's later work, are spurious and crass.
Straw blamed for 'racist' backlash
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1819668.ece
By Marie Woolf, Francis Elliott and Lauren Veevers
Published: 08 October 2006
Jack Straw was last night looking increasingly isolated over his
disclosure that he would prefer Muslim women not to wear the veil, as
Cabinet colleagues publicly distanced themselves from his remarks.
Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, said she saw wearing the veil as
a " personal choice" and would not ask a woman who sought her advice to
remove it.
Robert Fisk: The Age of Terror - a landmark report
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1814843.ece
With chaos stretching from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, we have
never lived in a more dangerous time. Over the next 15 pages and 7,000
words, our man in the Middle East looks back over a lifetime of
covering war and death, and lays out a bleak future for all of us - one
that even those living in the comfort of the Home Counties cannot
escape
Published: 08 October 2006
A few days after Lebanon's latest war came to an end, I went through
many of the reporter's notebooks I have used in my last 30 years in the
Middle East. Some contained the names of dead colleagues, others the
individual stories of the suffering of Arabs and Kurds and Christians
and Jews. One, dated 1991, is even splashed with a dark and viscous
substance, the oil that came raining down on us from the skies over the
Kuwaiti desert after Saddam blew up the wells of the Emirate. It was
only after a few minutes that I realised what I was looking for: some
hint, back in the days of dangerous innocence, of what was going to
happen on 11 September 2001.
And sure enough, in one notebook, part of a transcript of an interview
I gave in Toronto in the late 1990s, I see myself trying to discourage
the Middle East optimism of my host. "There is an explosion coming in
the Middle East," I tell him. What was this explosion I was talking
about? I find myself writing almost the same thing a couple of years
later in The Independent - I refer to "the explosion to come" without
locating it in the Middle East at all. What was I talking about? And
then, most disturbingly, I re-run parts of a film series I made with
the late Michael Dutfield for Channel 4 and Discovery in 1993. Called
From Beirut to Bosnia, it was billed as an attempt to record "Muslims
growing anger towards the West."
Hamish McRae: The black stuff is being brought to heel but China keeps
the engine running
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/comment/article1819564.ece
It would be reasonable to expect world inflation to fall
Published: 08 October 2006
The price mechanism does work for the oil market after all - if in a
lumpy, uncertain, disjointed way. The huge run-up in the cost of the
black stuff has eased and the talk of "on to $100" has faded. Oil
slipped a bit further on Friday despite the continuing troubles of BP
in Alaska and suggestions that Opec would get an agreement to shade
back production.
It seems that the high price through the summer has indeed trimmed
demand a little, that the prospect of a global economic slowdown has
helped too, and that the quite small increases in production by Opec
have helped turn sentiment.
Nuke Jitters
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15162754/site/newsweek/
How will Beijing handle the threat posed by North Korea? A bold
Sino-Japanese summit could give some clues.
Web-Exclusive Commentary
By Melinda Liu
Newsweek
Updated: 8:29 p.m. ET Oct. 6, 2006
Oct. 6, 2006 - North Asia's diplomatic landscape could be about to look
wildly different. It's about something more than North Korea's imminent
threat to detonate its first known nuclear test device-perhaps as
soon as Sunday, Oct. 8, the anniversary of Kim Jong Il's ascension to
leadership of the ruling Workers Party in 1997. There's another force,
far more quiet, that could turn the region upside down. Hu Jintao is
finally making his big move.
'He Was Like a Brother To Me'
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15169723/site/newsweek/
On the 25th anniversary of Anwar Sadat's assassination, Jimmy Carter
discusses the Mideast conflict.
Web Exclusive
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Updated: 3:03 p.m. ET Oct. 7, 2006
Oct. 7, 2006 - The Camp David accords that U.S. President Jimmy Carter
negotiated in 1978 between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli
Prime Minister Menachem Begin were supposed to be the beginning of the
end of the Middle East's terrible conflicts. Yet the killing goes on,
and the situation in the region continues to deteriorate. In his book,
"Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" (Simon and Schuster), to be
published next month, Carter takes a tough look at the reasons why.
Last week, on the 25th anniversary of Sadat's assassination, the
82-year-old former president spoke by telephone with NEWSWEEK's
Christopher Dickey about the critical turning points in the long
struggle to build on the accords, and where the process might go from
here.
A Political Limbo
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15167150/site/newsweek/
How low can the Republicans go?
Web Exclusive
By Marcus Mabry
Newsweek
Updated: 10:54 p.m. ET Oct. 7, 2006
Oct. 7, 2006 - Come hell or high water-ran the conventional
wisdom-Republicans could rely on two issues to win elections: the war
on terror and values. Then came Mark Foley. The drip-drip-drip of
scandal surrounding the former Congressman from Florida, which became a
deluge this week, now threatens to sink Republican hopes of keeping
control of Congress, says the NEWSWEEK poll out today.
For the Faithful, A Trying Time
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15178114/site/newsweek/
By Howard Fineman
Newsweek
Oct. 16, 2006 issue - In Florida, you drive North to reach the South.
The "I-4 Corridor" is a Mason-Dixon Line in reverse. I crossed it the
other day headed north out of bland, Disney-fied Orlando on a state
road with four numerals-past the BBQ shack with palm trees in the
dusty parking lot and the Brazilian "ground fighting" school, past
orange groves and cow pastures, to the turnoff for the dog track.
Across the street stood the Northland Church Distributed; "distributed"
because it conducts services at myriad sites simultaneously via the
Internet. It is the kind of fast-growing, interdenominational
megachurch that is a key to Republican hopes of avoiding electoral
disaster next month.
Iraq's Dark Day Of Reckoning
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15177998/site/newsweek/
If you were a Shiite, having suffered through a brutal insurgency and
an incompetent government, would you give up your weapons?
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek
Oct. 16, 2006 issue - When Iraq's current government was formed last
April, after four months of bitter disputes, wrangling and paralysis,
many voices in America and in Iraq said the next six months would be
the crucial testing period. That was a fair expectation. It has now
been almost six months, and what we have seen are bitter disputes,
wrangling and paralysis. Meanwhile, the violence has gotten worse,
sectarian tensions have risen steeply and ethnic cleansing is now in
full swing. There is really no functioning government south of
Kurdistan, only power vacuums that have been filled by factions,
militias and strongmen. It is time to call an end to the tests, the
six-month trials, the waiting and watching, and to recognize that the
Iraqi government has failed. It is also time to face the terrible
reality that America's mission in Iraq has substantially failed.
American Elections and the Grand Old Tradition of Disenfranchisement
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/opinion/08sun3.html
By ADAM COHEN
Poll taxes and literacy tests are unconstitutional today, but the
forces of disenfranchisement have come up with creative new methods.
How the Democrats Can Win
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/opinion/08demhead.html
Prominent Democrats and political analysts offer their advice for how
the party can regain control of Congress.
How the Republicans Can Win
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/opinion/08rephead.html
What should be the Republican strategy during the crucial final month
of the campaign?
Spain's Dilemma: To Toast Franco or Banish His Ghost?
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/world/americas/08spain.html?ref=3Dworld
By RENWICK McLEAN
A new proposal would ban all tributes to Gen. Francisco Franco, saying
they are offensive to those who suffered during his 40-year
dictatorship.
One Man Leads Often Dangerous Quest to Quell Violence in Yemen
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/world/middleeast/08yemen.html?ref=3Dworld
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
Abdelrahman al-Marwani's goal to bring peace to Yemen shows the
difficulty of changing the country's mind-set, one person at a time.
The Global Coffee Trade, a Bitter Brew for the Poor
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/movies/06gold.html?ref=3Dafrica
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
A documentary by the English filmmakers Nick and Marc Francis that
examines the worldwide coffee market.
As Exemptions Grow, Religion Outweighs Regulation
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/business/08religious.html?ref=3Dus&pagewa=
nted=3Dall
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
Religious organizations enjoy an abundance of exemptions from
regulations and taxes. And the number is multiplying rapidly.
How the Democrats Would Rule the Hill
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/weekinreview/08toner.html?ref=3Dpolitics&=
pagewanted=3Dall
By ROBIN TONER
In the final weeks of this bruising campaign, the debate, in many ways,
comes down to this: What would happen if the Democrats win?
Labor Goes Door to Door to Rally Suburban Voters
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/us/politics/08labor.html?ref=3Dpolitics&p=
agewanted=3Dall
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The A.F.L.-C.I.O. plans to spend $40 million nationwide on voter
education and turnout, focusing on wages, benefits and pensions.
How the Democrats Would Rule the Hill
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/weekinreview/08toner.html?ref=3Dpolitics&=
pagewanted=3Dall
By ROBIN TONER
In the final weeks of this bruising campaign, the debate, in many ways,
comes down to this: What would happen if the Democrats win?
Labor Goes Door to Door to Rally Suburban Voters
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/us/politics/08labor.html?ref=3Dpolitics&p=
agewanted=3Dall
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The A.F.L.-C.I.O. plans to spend $40 million nationwide on voter
education and turnout, focusing on wages, benefits and pensions.
Democrat Poised to Become First Muslim in Congress
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/us/politics/08muslim.html?ref=3Dpolitics&=
pagewanted=3Dall
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Keith Ellison, the Democratic candidate for Congress in Minneapolis,
would also be the first black representative from Minnesota.
Foley Case Upsets Gay Republicans' Tough Balance
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/washington/08culture.html?ref=3Dpolitics&=
pagewanted=3Dall
By MARK LEIBOVICH
The Mark Foley scandal has put gay staff members and others under what
one describes as "siege and suspicion."
The Big-Sky Dem
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08governor.html?ref=3Dpolitics&p=
agewanted=3Dall
By MARK SUNDEEN
Brian Schweitzer, the governor of Montana, is a rancher, a gun lover, a
talk talker - and a Democrat. Does the party's future lie in a
Rocky Mountain strategy?
Despite Ruling, Voters Are Told to Provide ID
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/us/politics/08voter.html?ref=3Dpolitics
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tens of thousands of Georgia voters recently received letters telling
them they must show a photo ID to cast a ballot on Nov. 7, even though
a judge recently struck down the requirement.
Oh, for the Simple Days of the Big Bang
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/weekinreview/08johnson.html?ref=3Dscience
By GEORGE JOHNSON
Since a Nobel-winning discovery, cosmology has gotten more complicated.
Inside Hezbollah, Big Miscalculations
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/07/AR200610070=
1054_pf.html
Militia Leaders Caught Off Guard By Scope of Israel's Response in War
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 8, 2006; A01
BEIRUT -- The meeting on July 12 was tense, tinged with desperation. A
few hours earlier, in a brazen raid, Hezbollah guerrillas had
infiltrated across the heavily fortified border and captured two
Israeli soldiers. Lebanon's prime minister summoned Hussein Khalil, an
aide to Hezbollah's leader, to his office at the Serail, the palatial
four-story government headquarters of red tile and colonnades in
Beirut's downtown.
"What have you done?" Prime Minister Fouad Siniora asked him.
The Holocaust's Arab Heroes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR200610060=
1417_pf.html
By Robert Satloff
Sunday, October 8, 2006; B01
Virtually alone among peoples of the world, Arabs appear to have won a
free pass when it comes to denying or minimizing the Holocaust.
Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah has declared to his supporters that
"Jews invented the legend of the Holocaust." Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad recently told an interviewer that he doesn't have "any clue
how [Jews] were killed or how many were killed." And Hamas's official
Web site labels the Nazi effort to exterminate Jews "an alleged and
invented story with no basis."
Such Arab viewpoints are not exceptional. A respected Holocaust
research institution recently reported that Egypt, Qatar and Saudi
Arabia all promote Holocaust denial and protect Holocaust deniers. The
records of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum show that only one Arab
leader at or near the highest level of government -- a young prince
from a Persian Gulf state -- has ever made an official visit to the
museum in its 13-year history. Not a single official textbook or
educational program on the Holocaust exists in an Arab country. In Arab
media, literature and popular culture, Holocaust denial is pervasive
and legitimized.
Fear and Loathing In the GOP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR200610060=
1414_pf.html
By Byron York
Sunday, October 8, 2006; B01
Even in the grand tradition of scapegoating in American politics, J.
Dennis Hastert's current plight stands out. The former high school
coach-turned-accidental speaker of the House spent last week as the
unlikeliest of fall guys for a sex scandal that involved a closeted gay
Republican congressman, underage male House pages and unseemly instant
messages. As fear and loathing spread through panicky preelection
Republicans, Hastert looked like a goner, then a survivor, then a goner
again and then, well, who knows.
"I was inclined at first to believe that Denny Hastert should resign,"
conservative activist Paul Weyrich told me on Wednesday.
North Korea: A Nuclear Threat
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15175633/site/newsweek/
Is Kim Jong Il ready to provoke a regional crisis? An exclusive account
of what Pyongyang really wants.
By Selig S. Harrison
Newsweek International
Oct. 16, 2006 issue - On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely
heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China,
Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to "abandon all
nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs." In return, Washington
agreed that the United States and North Korea would "respect each
other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to
normalize their relations."
The Cold Peace
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15176445/site/newsweek/
The 1979 Egyptian-Israeli treaty endures, 25 years after Sadat. But can
it last much longer?
By Christopher Dickey and Zvika Krieger
Newsweek International
Oct. 16, 2006 issue - The anniversary went almost unnoticed. There were
no major commemorative events. Only a few perfunctory articles appeared
in the Egyptian, Israeli and American press. A quarter century after
the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat on Oct. 6, 1981,
the shooting spree that took his life during a military parade has come
to seem just another blood-soaked footnote in the long chronicle of
Middle East violence and despair.
The Chinese Are Coming
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15175629/site/newsweek/
Expanding Chinese companies have finally discovered the Old World.
By William Underhill
Newsweek International
Oct. 16, 2006 issue - The battlements are authentically medieval, the
food distinctively Tuscan. But wander into the industrial district of
Prato and the culture switches abruptly. The language of the caf=E9s
isn't Italian, it's Chinese. So too for many street signs and
newspapers. In the past few years, the city's Chinese population has
surged from just a few hundred to some 10,000. More than 2,000
Chinese-owned enterprises have helped revive Prato's flagging textile
industry.
Companies: Cultural Confusion
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15175635/site/newsweek/
What goes around, comes around. It's China's turn.
By Stefan Theil
Newsweek International
Oct. 16, 2006 issue - When they first entered China, many Western
companies made costly mistakes. Not knowing the ropes, they
underestimated the complexity of operating in such a huge domestic
market, were blissfully unaware of the nuances of Mandarin bureaucracy
and flew in Western bosses often accused of arrogance.
Cowboys and Indians
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15175636/site/newsweek/
For many artists, painting America's Wild West did notrequire actually
seeing the place with their own eyes.
By Stefan Theil
Newsweek International
Oct. 16, 2006 issue - The American West has always been a great canvas
for the imagination-not just America's own but much of the world's.
White Americans, naturally, still see themselves in the settler or
cowboy, national icons for freedom, adventure and Manifest Destiny.
Europeans, on the other hand, tend to identify more with the American
Indian-who to them symbolizes an existence that is at once noble,
natural and uncorrupted by modernity. Both views, of course, are
idealized clich=E9s that have long had lives of their own.
(Native) American Beauty
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/08liarts.html?r=
ef=3Darts
By BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO
An exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton showcases
Indian-influenced works by Roy Lichtenstein.
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