Roundup: Media's Take

Aleh Tsyvinski and Sergei Guriev: That ’70s Show in Russia

[Aleh Tsyvinski is professor of economics at Yale University, and Sergei Guriev is rector of the New Economic School in Moscow.] Can Russia escape the “resource curse” implied by high oil prices, or will it succumb to what we call a “70-80” scenario? That is the question confronting Russians today, and we fear that their fate will be the “70-80” scenario. If oil prices remain at $70 to $80 per barrel, Russia is likely to relive key features of the Brezhnev era of the 1970s and 1980s

Aristotle Tziampiris: Athens Meets Israel

[Aristotle Tziampiris is an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Piraeus. The views represented herein are his own.] Despite recent economic challenges, Greece still has a constructive role to play—in the Middle East, acting as a bridge between Israel and Europe. Such efforts should be actively facilitated and supported by Washington. Today, the state of Israel is becoming ever more isolated: it faces an existential threat from a potential

Ron Wilkins: The Other Side of Shirley Sherrod

[Ron Wilkins is a former organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1974, under an assumed name, he hired-on at New Communities Inc. The Emergency Land Fund, an Atlanta-based black land retention organization, which shared oversight responsibility for NCI’s progress, wanted to know the basis for NCI’s continued poor performance. Presently he is an Africana Studies professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. ] Imagine farm workers doing back breakin

Bernard Weiner: Come the Revolution: Are We There Yet?

[Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers.] It may well be time for a kind of revolution. For those too young to remember, or for those who believe history still has much to teach us, here's a primer before we get to our shared 2010 reality. Back in "The

Harold Meyerson: Farmworkers, Overtime and Days Off: A California Shame

[Harold Meyerson is editor at large of the American Prospect and a columnist for the Washington Post. He begins a six-week guest columnist stint on our the LA Times op-ed page.] ...Still, one bill that made it to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk last week, only to be killed by his veto, is worth looking at for what it tells us about how hard it is to clean out even antiquated moral rot, so long as powerful interests profit from it. The bill, written by San Joaquin Vall

Stephen M. Walt: Rethinking the "Nuclear Revolution"

Ever since graduate school, I've been a firm believer in the "nuclear revolution." The term refers to the belief that the invention of nuclear weapons constituted a fundamental shift in the nature of warfare, and conceivably in international relations itself. As Bernard Brodie put it in The Absolute Weapon (1946): "Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them." (Hmmm. Given that we've fought

Brad Johnson: Meet the Man Who Predicted Global Warming

On Aug. 8, 1975, geoscientist Wallace Smith Broecker published "Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" in the journal Science, the first time the iconic phrase "global warming" was used in a scientific paper. Broecker -- known by all as Wally -- was already a prominent scientist by then, having served on Columbia University's faculty for 16 years. Today, at age 78, Broecker is recognized as one of the fathers of climate science, with more than 450 journal public

James Doty: Obama-FDR Parallel Should Make Dems Shiver in '10

[James Doty is a writer and lawyer living in New York.] Comparisons between President Obama and Franklin Roosevelt often assume that Obama’s electoral fortunes will rise the closer he hews to FDR. A look at past election results, though, suggests that Obama is indeed heading down a path trod by FDR -- one that bodes ill for Democrats’ hopes this fall. Obama’s tenure has frequently been likened to the first few years of the FDR administration, but the better comparison i

Bill McKibben: We’re Hot as Hell and We’re Not Going to Take It Any More

[Bill McKibben is founder of 350.org and the author, most recently, of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Earlier this year the Boston Globe called him “probably the country’s leading environmentalist” and Time described him as “the planet’s best green journalist.]Try to fit these facts together:* According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adm

Dorothy Rabinowitz: Liberal Piety and the Memory of 9/11

[Dorothy Rabinowitz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American conservative journalist and commentator.] Americans may have lacked for much in the course of their history, but never instruction in social values. The question today is whether Americans of any era have ever confronted the bombardment of hectoring and sermonizing now directed at those whose views are deemed insufficiently enlightened—an offense regularly followed by accusations that the offenders have violated the most sacre

Sunny Hundal: Neocons are hypocrites on WikiLeaks

[Sunny Hundal is editor of the left-wing blog Liberal Conspiracy and other online magazines.] As soon as the WikiLeaks Afghanistan exposé came to light, it was obvious the usual suspects would start attacking the messenger than discussing the message. David Aaronovitch was quick off the mark, with others following soon enough – implying WikiLeaks was seriously damaging the war effort in Afghanistan. The rhetoric has now reached absurd levels. The US defence secretary sa

Matthew Norman: Obama ... an enigma instead of a leader

[Press Awards Columnist of the Year 2008, the political commentator Matthew Norman also writes The Independent’s media diary.] In a race on which a small fortune rests, fellow compulsive gamblers will confirm, there is often a moment of doubt when your horse comes under pressure and for an agonising while, it's unclear whether what looked a magnificent beast in the paddock is the thoroughbred you took it to be or yet another arthritic mule. With Barack Obama, that momen

Anne Applebaum: America's Peculiar Amnesia

[Anne Applebaum is a Washington Post and Slate columnist. Her most recent book is Gulag: A History.] ...Alas, historical amnesia appears to have affected some readers, many of whom are under the impression that President Bush believed in small government and that recent Republican congressional leaders opposed federal spending. Here is a more accurate assessment: "President Bush increased government spending more than any of the six presidents preceding him, includ

Noemie Emery: Neither Roosevelt nor Reagan

[Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.] When he signed the health care reform bill earlier this year, Barack Obama gave progressives the prize they had aimed at for seven-plus decades, an event they compared to the passage of civil rights and of Social Security. At the same time, he destroyed the best chance the Democrats had for enduring center-left governance since the mid 20th-century, shattered the coalition that brought him to power, and dealt his party

Jonah Goldberg: Nostalgia for Buckley Et Al is Misplaced

[Jonah Goldberg writes a column for the LA Times.] Conservatives, being conservatives, have a soft spot for the good old days, but this is getting ridiculous. It seems every day another colleague on the right wants to click his ruby red slippers — or Topsiders — and proclaim, "There's no place like home" — "home" being the days when conservatism was top-heavy with generals but short on troops. The latest example comes from my old National Review coll

William McGurn: WTC Mosque, Meet the Auschwitz Nuns

[William McGurn is a columnist for the WSJ.] With every passing day, the dispute over the planned Islamic Center near Ground Zero grows more acrimonious. These feelings will probably only get worse today, when the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission is expected to remove another hurdle by ruling against landmark status for the undistinguished old building the center will replace.... In the 1980s, Carmelite nuns moved into an abandoned building on the edge of

Rachel Schneller: Iraq and the American Pullout ... Separate We Must

[Rachel Schneller, Foreign Service Officer, US State Department, currently International Affairs Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations. The views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Government or State Department.] The United States has dug its military into the landscape, requiring enormous sums of taxpayer dollars to maintain its presence. It justifies its Iraq addiction by claiming only its soldiers can prevent Iraqis from killing

Vladimir Kozin: 6 Obstacles to Nuclear Zero

[Vladimir Kozin is chief of the foreign journalists’ accreditation section of the Foreign Ministry’s press center. The opinions reflected in this comment are his own.] Sixty-five years ago, on July 16, 1945, in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first nuclear device was tested. This marked the beginning of the nuclear age. After that, it didn’t take long for leading scientists and world leaders to start lobbying for a nuclear-free world. As far

Ben Lerner: The Other Lockerbies

[Ben Lerner is a Vice President at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C.] Senators Menendez and Lautenberg of New Jersey took to the microphone this week to express disappointment that witnesses from the British government and BP -- including outgoing CEO Tony Hayword -- were unavailable to appear before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing convened last week. The purpose of the hearing was to explore BP's alleged role in the release last year by the Scottish go

Editorial in the WSJ: Rewriting Fannie Mae History

If you want proof that the Washington establishment has learned nothing from the 2008 financial panic, look no further than the nearby letter from former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines. Our old antagonist is signaling where the debate is heading as Congress finally begins to consider what to do about Fannie and its failed sibling, Freddie Mac. Mr. Raines writes that "the facts about the financial collapse of Fannie and Freddie are pretty clear." So let's review those facts