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Archive: Jul 2008

Six Questions for Jane Mayer, Author of The Dark Side

In a series of gripping articles, Jane Mayer has chronicled the Bush Administration’s grim and furtive dealings with torture and has exposed both the individuals within the administration who “made…

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Worldwide Strategic Shakedown Partners

Make sure to read through all of the documents posted by the Sunday Times relating to the journalism sting it pulled on lobbyist Stephen Payne, which I linked to yesterday.…

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The Professor of Repression and China

Two years ago, I wrote a story about Professor S. Frederick Starr of Johns Hopkins University’s Central Asia Caucasus Institute and his indecently close ties to dictators in that region.…

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Six Questions for Arvind Ganesan on the Beijing Olympics, the Media and Human Rights

Arvind Ganesan has been at Human Rights Watch as the Director of the Business and Human Rights Program and is involved in research, advocacy, and policy development. His program has…

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D’Alembert – Happiness and the Duty to Fellow Humans

Mais ce qui appartient essentiellement et uniquement à la raison, et ce qui en consequence est uniforme chez tous les peuples, ce sont les devoirs dont nous sommes tenus envers…

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Sunday Times Video Catches Lobbyist Selling White House Access

The Sunday Times carried out an undercover sting, in which lobbyist and former Bush administration official Stephen Payne thought he was meeting “Eric Dos,” a man seeking to arrange meetings…

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Boileau – Nothing is Beautiful but the True

Rien n’est beau que le vrai : le vrai seul est aimable ; Il doit régner partout, et même dans la fable : De toute fiction l’adroite fausseté Ne tend…

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Obama’s Reaganesque Foreign Policy?

From Eli Lake: Of course, the Obama counterterrorism policy is still a work in progress. As his recent zigzags illustrate, he still hasn’t figured out his stance on some of…

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The Manchurian Men’s Convention

From Jeff Stein at CQ: My friend said his patients described training with drugs and other mind-control techniques to perform the mission — then forget them, like the Manchurian Candidate.…

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Zzzzzzzz: Get Ready for CNN’s Exciting Convention Coverage

From Lisa de Moraes of The Washington Post: Blitzer stays up nights wondering whether Clinton will be introduced by her daughter, Chelsea, and when, if at all, her husband, former…

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Montesquieu – The Corruption of Principles and the Decline of the State

La corruption de chaque gouvernement commence presque toujours par celle des principes… Lorsque les principes du gouvernement sont une fois corrompus, les meilleures lois deviennent mauvaises, et se tournant contre…

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Weekend Read: “A gigantic figure”

Meaningful art—however long it might take—always reaches its audience. Writers or painters who work in obscurity and struggle to get an agent or gallery to give them a shot will,…

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On the Peace Born of Faith

Max Blumenthal reports last week in The Nation on a hushed meeting convened on June 10 in the plush conference room of a Chicago law firm. The presumptive Democratic presidential…

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Iran’s Culpability Conclusively Established: Country Guilty of Bad Photoshopping

From the New York Times: As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared…

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Is Fareed Zakaria the $75,000 Man?

Soon after posting my recent articles about the large speaking fees commanded by top journalists and pundits, I was contacted by someone who had once hoped to book Newsweek’s Fareed…

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“I wanted and didn’t want to ask”

In my most recent post, I wrote about Lamed Shapiro (1878–1948), a writer whose work was unknown to me before last week (and remains unknown to Wikipedia). Looking at a…

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And the Nobel Prize for Best Swiss Bank Accounts Goes To…

From ABC News: “Two U.S. lawmakers are pushing for a Nobel Peace Prize to go to a politician accused of taking bribes, abusing human rights, and profiting from widespread and…

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Congress and Soils Professionals: A Very Dirty Relationship

Taxpayers for Common Sense has released a list of the “Top 10 Congressional Resolutions of the 110th Congress.” These include: —A resolution recognizing soil as an essential natural resource, and…

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Oregon Fraudster Backing McCain

From Willamette Week: Former Oregon Republican Party chairman and one-time gubernatorial candidate Craig Berkman owes millions to some of Portland’s wealthiest investors—but that hasn’t stopped him from making generous political…

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Uzbek Dictator’s Daughter: Harvard grad’s “wishes are orders”

Northern Italy’s leading daily, La Stampa of Turin, reports on the “Unavoidable Rise of the Beautiful Gulnara,” on Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbekistan’s autocrat-for-life Islam Karimov. When daddy rules…

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Six Questions for Steve LeVine, author of Putin’s Labyrinth

Less than a year ago, Steve LeVine, the chief foreign affairs writer for Business Week published The Oil and the Glory, a penetrating examination of the post-Soviet oil industry and…

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Laurie Coleman’s “Blo & Go”: The “whole key is suction”

The Washington Post reports that Laurie Coleman, wife of Republican Senator Norm Coleman, has invented a tool for hands-free hair drying called the “Blo & Go.”: Against the backdrop of…

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Weekly Review

Colombian military commandos infiltrated a settlement operated by the guerilla group FARC and freed 15 hostages, among them three U.S. contractors and the Colombian-French politician Ingrid Betancourt. President George W.…

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Senator Cornyn’s Friend at the Scooter Store

A reader notes: It’s really convenient to have a Leadership PAC when the CEO of a company that’s recently reached a $4 million dollar settlement with the Justice Department for…

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Thomas Powers on the Iran Threat

Good piece from the New York Review of Books: At a moment of serious challenge, battered by two wars, ballooning debt, and a faltering economy, the United States appears to…

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From Where? Whither?

How does one best write about horrible things? By “best” I mean how does one write truthfully about horrible things? By “horrible,” I mean any experience that, because of its…

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Washington on the Threat of Partisan Entrenchment

I have already intimated to you the danger of Parties in the State… Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against…

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