Roundup: Media's Take

Gavan McCormack & Nagata Minoru: Love Your State, Love Your Boss: Whither Japan?

Gavan McCormack: Talk of love, beauty, and hope filled the air in Tokyo as 2007 dawned. It is not that Japanese people were suddenly smitten with such romantic sentiments, but that their leaders were demanding it of them. The country’s political and economic leadership was insisting that the Japanese love their country and their corporations. It is the phenomenon described by Japanese critic Sataka Makoto as that of a “stalker state,” to which now, in light of the documen

Marc S. Ellenbogen: The Polish Archbishop's dirty little secret

[UPI Columnist Marc S. Ellenbogen is chairman of the Global Panel Foundation and president of the Prague Society. A venture capitalist with seats in Berlin and Prague, he sits on the National Advisory Board of the U.S. Democratic Party. He may be reached at Ellenbogen@globalpanel.org] The most despicable aspect about the resignation of Poland's Archbishop-designate Stanislaw Wielgus is that he almost got away with it. Not only did he l

Sidney Blumenthal: Ford's posthumous condemnation of the Iraq war shows that the struggle for the soul of the GOP begun in the Nixon years is as relevant now as ever.

During the holiday interregnum between the election of the new Congress and its swearing in, the death of former President Gerald R. Ford at the age of 93 evoked nostalgia for his interim "time to heal" (the title of his memoir) after the resignation of President Nixon. Like all nostalgia, it was distorting and disabling. Surprisingly, the one shattering the false mood was none other than Ford himself, speaking from the grave. Beyond the River Styx he could hardly silence the broadcast

George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn: A World Free of Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear weapons today present tremendous dangers, but also an historic opportunity. U.S. leadership will be required to take the world to the next stage -- to a solid consensus for reversing reliance on nuclear weapons globally as a vital contribution to preventing their proliferation into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world. Nuclear weapons were essential to maintaining international security during the Cold War because they were a means

Michael Currie Schaffer: How Gerald Ford shaped the Bush administration

There is a passage, toward the end of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's The Final Days, where a group of aides to Gerald Ford present the vice president with a set of suggestions for his transition. As Richard Nixon floundered, the group had conducted its business in secret, lest Ford appear to be campaigning for the president's ouster. But now, with a resignation all but certain, they offer their plans to the man who is about to become the leader of the free world. On a limousine ride from his

Peter W. Klein: My Father's Red Scare

[Peter W. Klein is an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.] THIS week the United States government will begin automatically declassifying hundreds of millions of documents from the cold war, under a law meant to streamline the cost and hassle of keeping secret files that are more than 25 years old. Among the dossiers bearing names like Alger Hiss, Theodore Hall and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg will be one labeled “Frigyes Klein”: m

John Junkerman: Is Japan militarizing? Yes. But slowly.

[John Junkerman is an American documentary filmmaker, based in Tokyo. His recent film, “Japan’s Peace Constitution,” has been screened widely in Japan by groups dedicated to defending Article 9. Most recently he edited “Gai Shanxi and Her Sisters,” a film by Chinese director Ban Zhongyi about “comfort women” in Shanxi Province; the film will premiere in Tokyo on February 17. Information on both films can be found at www.cine.co.jp. “Japan’s Peace Constitution”

Adam Cohen: 100 Years Later, the Food Industry Is Still ‘The Jungle’

Nothing in “The Jungle” sticks with the reader quite like what went into the sausages. There was the rotting ham that could no longer be sold as ham. There were the rat droppings, rat poison and whole poisoned rats. Most chilling, there were the unnamed things “in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.” Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle” as a labor exposé. He hoped that the book, which was billed as “the ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ of wage slavery,” would lead to improvements for

Brendan Miniter: How to avoid a repeat of Vietnam, and why it's crucial to do so

[Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. ] Sometime in the next few weeks President Bush is expected to unveil a new strategy for moving forward in Iraq. Let's hope he first takes a serious look at the missteps that tripped up this nation in its last drawn out, intractable war: Vietnam. It's startling that today there are few parallels being drawn between Iraq and the conflict that ended in Southeast Asia some three decades ago. When President Bush moved

John Collins: CNN and the New York Times Execute a Denial of History

[John Collins is Associate Professor of Global Studies at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. He is the author of Occupied by Memory: The Intifada Generation and the Palestinian State of Emergency (NYU Press, 2004) and the co-editor of Collateral Language: A User's Guide to America's New War (NYU Press, 2002).] An existential question: If journalism is the first draft of history, then what is journalism that denies history? Is it still journalism? The question came

Norman Finkelstein: The Ludicrous Attacks on Jimmy Carter's Book

[Norman Finkelstein's most recent book is Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history (University of California Press). His web site is www.NormanFinkelstein.com.] As Jimmy Carter's new book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid climbs the bestseller list, the reaction of Israel's apologists scales new peaks of lunacy. I will examine a pair of typical examples and then look at the latest weapon to silence Carter. Apartheid Analogy No aspect of

Roger Pulvers: Ongoing Vietnam tragedy revives ghosts of a Christmas past

Christmas brings to mind many wonderful memories for most of us. But history has bequeathed to some of us a most awful little two-word phrase blackening those memories like a stain. That phrase is "Christmas bombing." From Dec. 18 until Dec. 30 in 1972, the United States conducted a campaign of intensive aerial bombing, using massive B-52s, over North Vietnam. In the approximately 4,000 sorties flown in what was termed Operation Linebacker II, American pilots concentrated on the ma

Bill Moyers: A Parable for Our Times

[ Bill Moyers is president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. The center's senior fellow, Lew Daly, was his accomplice in this essay, written exclusively for TomPaine.com.] The Christian story begins simply: A child is given, a son. He grows up to be a teacher, sage, healer and prophet. He gains a large following. To many he is a divine savior; to the rich and powerful he is an enemy. They put him to death in brutal fashion, befitting his humble beginnings in peasant G

David Horowitz: Jimmy Carter: Jew-Hater, Genocide-Enabler, Liar

[David Horowitz is the author of numerous books including an autobiography, Radical Son, which has been described as “the first great autobiography of his generation.” It chronicles his odyssey from radical activism in the ‘60s to his current position as the head of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and who one journalist has called "the left's most articulate nemesis." His book, The Art of Political War was described by White House political strategist Karl Rove as “The perfect guide

Michael Judge: The Oldest Mosque in America (It's in Iowa!)

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa--Not far from the banks of the Cedar River and the concrete silos of the Quaker Oats plant, in a working class neighborhood adorned with Christmas lights and American flags, sits the oldest mosque in North America. Founded in 1934, and admitted to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996, it's not what you think of when you think of a mosque. There is no lofty minaret, no balcony for the muezzin to call the faithful to prayer. There is, however, a place of worship that

Abraham Sofaer: A Reagan Strategy for Iran and Syria

[Mr. Sofaer, George P. Shultz senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, was legal adviser to the Department of State from 1985 to 1990.] The Iraq Study Group's recommendation that the Bush administration drop its preconditions and negotiate with Syria and Iran has been praised as a "no-brainer" -- and condemned as an improper effort to reward rogue regimes. Neither reaction is correct. Negotiating with enemies can be a useful aspect of effective diplomacy. But succes

John Graham: Iraq Is Vietnam - And You'd Better Believe It

[John Graham shipped out on a freighter when he was sixteen, took part in the first ascent of Mount McKinley's North Wall at twenty, and hitchhiked around the world at twenty-two. A Foreign Service officer for fifteen years, he served in Libya during the revolution and in the war in Vietnam. In the mid-seventies, he planned nuclear war strategies for NATO, then served as a foreign policy advisor to Senator John Glenn.] I was a civilian advisor/trainer in Vietnam, arriving just as US

George Beres: As carols get overlooked, the sounds of Christmas can become strange

Half-a-century again I started having misgivings over what was described as Christmas music. Where, I wondered, did "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" fit in? It has grown worse with the years. Now there's Yule music from Southern rap called "crunk" and dance hall reggae with Santa on stage. That was the focus of a recent Wall Street Journal feature called "Santa's Greatest Hits." It's a

Rebecca Solnit: The First 25 Years of the 21st Century ... A Look Back

[Rebecca Solnit lives in and loves the peninsular republic of San Francisco, where she is working on a new book. Her most recent books are still Hope in the Dark and A Field Guide to Getting Lost.] [For Solomon Solnit (b. Oct. 18, 2006)] The View from the GrassI've been writing the year-end other-n

Paul Rogat Loeb: How Democrats can keep the youth vote

[Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time, and Generation at the Crossroads: Apathy & Action of the American Campus. See www.paulloeb.org To receive Loeb's monthly articles email sympa@lists.onenw.org with the subject line: subscribe