Roundup: Media's Take

January 21, 2005

Condoleeza Rice At Stanford

Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times, 1/16/05 [Editor's Note: This is a longer than normal piece.] She helped lead the nation to war and in the process became one of President Bush's closest friends and most intimate advisors. But even before she headed the National Security Council, Condoleezza Rice held a job that required grit, skill, political savvy and a sublime degree of self-confidence: running Stanford University. Her years as provost le

January 21, 2005

Presidential Inauguration Snubs And Flubs

Joacqueline Trescott, The Washington Post, 1/15/05 Inauguration Day is a grand public time for the new president and his family. These are not perfect days, however, as history shows. While much of the ritual is scripted and runs tightly on military time, the unpredictable happens. There are tiffs, there is politics, there are families, and then, for the newly elected, there is just the settling in at a new house. Things can happen that make this day a singular

January 21, 2005

Who Is Deadlier: Man Or Mother Nature?

Janadas Devan, The Straits Times (Singapore), 1/15/05 Many articles have appeared, both in these pages and elsewhere, suggesting that the Indian Ocean tsunamis show that terrorism, compared to the devastation nature can inflict, is an exaggerated threat. The suggestion is misleading. Natural disasters can indeed be horrendous, but most of them are one-off events and their effects can be contained, although with considerable difficulty. S

January 21, 2005

Presidents Are Not Known For Being Rational

Rop Zone, The Seattle Times, 1/13/05 Let's face it, you have to be a little different to get elected president. Normal people just don't want the job. Remember how Lyndon Johnson used to insist aides meet with him while he was sitting on the john? That was a little weird. So I wasn't too surprised by the title of a round-table discussion at the annual American Historical Association convention, held here last week. The program was titled"Hubris and t

January 21, 2005

An Analysis Of Sir Mark Thatcher's Failed Coup

David Leigh and Rory Carroll, The Guardian (London), 1/13/05 Sir Mark Thatcher's South African Christmas was infuriating for him by all accounts. On bail and forbidden even to travel to the airport to greet his ever-loyal mother, he asked the rightwing British historian Andrew Roberts to join the pair of them for quiet drinks on Christmas Day. His reward was to be described as"the world's most famous mummy's boy" in a diary column by Roberts' partner

January 21, 2005

Prince Harry And The History Of British Royals' Nazi Encounters

Allan Massie, The Independent (London), 1/14/05 It's almost inconceivable that anyone in the public eye - even a member of the Royal family - could be so silly. That will be the response of most sensible people to the photograph of Prince Harry wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party. The fact that it was a private party makes, sadly, no difference, and not only because, the world being as it is, someone was bound to alert the press. The Prince may not be the brightest

January 19, 2005

Michael Radu: The Geneva Accords Are Out-of-Date

Michael Radu, at frontpagemag.com (1-14-05): [Michael Radu is Senior Fellow and Co - Chair, Center on Terrorism and Counterterrorism, at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.]For international bureaucrats and United Nations diplomats, the city of Geneva, Switzerland is a lakeside paradise. Lately, Geneva has come to the attention of ordinary Americans -- at least, those following the war in Iraq and the confirmation hearings of Alberto Gonzales, Preside

January 14, 2005

Attorney General's Present Power Evaluated In Light Of Past Responsibilities

Brooke A. Masters, The Washington Post, 1/12/05 [Editor's Note: Warning, this is a longer than normal piece.] Are drug companies using deceptive marketing? Connecticut is investigating. Did mortgage financing giant Fannie Mae mislead investors? Ohio has filed suit alleging securities fraud. Did mutual funds make improper payoffs to brokers? California brought a complaint against giant broker Edward D. Jones & Co. last month.

January 14, 2005

Dan Voiculescu's Tainted Past Dogs Humanist Party In Romania

Christopher Condon, Financial Times (London, England), 1/10/05 Dan Voiculescu, head ofthe Romanian Humanist party, summons an underling to bring an important piece of paper. It is a letter from the state agency charged with studying the archives of the Securitate, Nicolae Ceausescu's secret police. Complete with the requisite eagle stamps, it states that Mr Voiculescu was not an agent or collaborator of the Securitate. Mr Voiculescu is practised at producing the

January 14, 2005

IRA, Crime, And History

Fintan O'Toole, The Irish Times, 1/11/05 In 1923, shortly after it had won the civil war, the Free State government had a 40-foot-high Celtic Cross erected on Leinster Lawn, between Merrion Square and Leinster House. It was the official monument to the two founders of the State, Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, who had died during the war. From a distance, it looked ugly but impressive. Close up, though, its shoddiness was obvious. What looked like stone was

January 14, 2005

Iraq, Guerilla Insurgents, And Foreign Policy

Bruce Wilson, The Mercury (Australia), 1/8/05 They might have gone almost unnoticed by a world understandably preoccupied with the horror of the tsunami but this week there were two very significant messages about Iraq which should have other alarm systems ringing. The first was from a senior Iraqi interim government security chief who estimated there were 200,000 insurgents active within that country -- or rather more than the combined total of foreign troops se

January 14, 2005

Suburbs And The Poor: An Historical View

Childs Walker, The Baltimore Sun, 1/7/05 As New Deal dollars filtered into every corner of America in the 1940s, a dozen public housing centers rose in the poorest areas of Baltimore. Almost none rose in the counties surrounding the city. The contrast raised few eyebrows in a time when segregation was the norm and limited transportation meant housing for the poor needed to be near the highest concentrations of those who would use it. But even as the

January 14, 2005

Fred Hiatt: Fortunately Jefferson Can't See the Barriers Outside His Monument

Fred Hiatt, in the WSJ (1-10-05):Fortunately, Thomas Jefferson can't see the ugly concrete barriers and metal fences impinging on his monument; he is facing the other way, looking out across the Tidal Basin. The barriers were shoved into place about two years ago, closing off the Jefferson Memorial parking lot. Now, as Spencer S. Hsu recently reported in The

January 14, 2005

Renato Redentor Constantino: So We Want Praise for Our Efforts in Asia?

Renato Redentor Constantino, at www.tomdispatch.com (1-12-05): [Renato Redentor Constantino worked for a number of years with Greenpeace in Southeast Asia and most recently with Greenpeace in China. Constantino still works with Greenpeace campaigns, including documenting the impact of global warming and dirty energy as well as securing beachheads for the massive uptake of renewable energy in Asia. Constantino writes a

January 12, 2005

Gregory Kane: Would Schwerner Have Died in Mississippi Had He Not Been in Baltimore First?

Columnist Gregory Kane, in the Balt Sun (1-12-05):IF MICHAEL Schwerner had never come to Baltimore in 1963, would he have died in Mississippi in 1964? In the summer of 1963, Schwerner was among the hundreds of demonstrators who sought to desegregate the Gwynn Oak Amusement Park. "It was the first demonstration he ever participated in," sa

January 12, 2005

The Tsunami that Lisbon Never Recovered from

Daniel Silva, in Qatar's Peninsula: (January 2005):THE SCENES of death and destruction caused by last month’s Asian tsunami are stirring thoughts, as well as fears of a repeat, in Portugal of a similar disaster which wiped out Lisbon 250 years ago. The worst European tsunami in recorded history occurred on November 1, 1755 when a powerful earthqua

January 12, 2005

The French Need to Confront Their Own History of Anti-Semitism

Robert Goldman, in Jewish Week (1-7-05): [Robert Goldmann is a journalist with extensive experience in Europe and in American-Jewish organizations.]The “new anti-Semitism” — a major topic last year — is not all that new, nor is postwar “European anti-Semitism” a helpful or accurate synonym. Most of the hundreds of attacks on Jews and their institutions in

January 11, 2005

Interview with Dore Gold: Why the UN Has Failed

From FrontPageMag (1-7-05):Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dore Gold, Israel’s U.N. ambassador from 1997 to 1999. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Hatred’s Kingdom and of the new book, Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos. FP: Mr. Gold, welcome to Frontpage Interview. It is a privilege to have you with us.

January 11, 2005

Ray Takeyh: What We Need to Promote in the Middle East Are Political Parties

Ray Takeyh, in the National Interest (Winter 2005): Washington must realize that unless Arab regimes allow pluralism, power-sharing and judicial independence, liberal autocracy--not democracy--will be the result.September 11 and its aftermath caused many American policymakers, both D

January 6, 2005

Ukraine: We've Forgotten that for Hundreds of Years Parts of Eastern Europe Were Self-Governing Republics

Jacek Rostowski, in the WSJ (1-6-05):[Mr. Rostowski is professor of economics at the Central European University, Budapest and a trustee of the CASE Foundation, Warsaw.]The massive demonstrations on the streets of Kiev, which forced President Leonid Kuchma to concede free and fair elections in Ukraine, and which have now been crowned by Viktor Yushchen