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Writing at the New York Review of Books blog page, Princeton professor Perry Link enumerates the seven deadly secrets that China’s octogenarians want to keep from the public at all…

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As a young lawyer, Obama represented a whistleblower; as a presidential candidate, he pledged to “strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority…

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In a typically wry observation about revolutionaries, Joseph Conrad warns the observer not to be so attached to the romantic incendiaries, the “narrow-minded fanatics” who capture the headlines when the…

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There is another sky, Ever serene and fair, And there is another sunshine, Though it be darkness there; Never mind faded forests, Austin, Never mind silent fields – Here is…

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Toute race, tout art a son hypocrisie. Le monde se nourrit d’un peu de vérité et de beaucoup de mensonge. L’esprit humain est débile; il s’accommode mal de la vérité…

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It was the most expensive barbecue in all history, writes Berlin’s Tageszeitung today about a fete arranged by German Chancellor Angela Merkel for George W. Bush and his entourage in…

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Today’s Washington Post offers a follow-up to yesterday’s Times story about the senior Afghan national security official who is the target of a U.S. driven anti-corruption probe while being on…

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The current issue of The National Interest contains Ahmed Rashid’s exhaustive and provocative essay on the current state of affairs in Pakistan. It’s a must-read for anyone trying to come…

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In another significant piece datelined Kabul, Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti reveal that the man in the eye of the storm of an Afghan-American corruption scandal, Mohammed Zia Salehi—the chief…

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With the kind permission of C.H. Beck Verlag, former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and Columbia University historian Fritz Stern, we present here the third in a series of excerpts from…

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Perhaps you understood that the Anti-Defamation League exists to promote tolerance. According to its website, the ADL “fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry in the U.S. and abroad through…

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In 2008, Barry Nolan, then the host of a Boston-area cable television show, criticized the New England Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for its decision…

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This weekend, the controversies surrounding WikiLeaks took another strange turn. Late on Friday, the Swedish newspaper Expressen disclosed that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was the subject of an arrest warrant…

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In “The Forfeiture Racket,” an essay in the February issue of Reason, Radley Balko took a close look at the use of civil asset forfeiture cases. He starts with the…

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The Associated Press reports: The CIA has tapes of 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in a secret overseas prison. Discovered under a desk, the recordings could provide an unparalleled…

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Schmeichelnd hold und lieblich klingen unsres Lebens Harmonien, und dem Schönheitssinn entschwingen Blumen sich, die ewig blühn. Fried und Freude gleiten freundlich wie der Wellen Wechselspiel. Was sich drängte rauh…

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Worin könnte mehr das Innere einer philosophischen Schrift angesprochen seyn, als in den Zwecken und Resultaten derselben, und wodurch diese bestimmter erkannt werden, als durch ihre Verschiedenheit von dem, was…

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In March 2007, U.S. Attorney Alice Martin charged Axion Corp., a small business in Huntsville, Alabama, with illegally giving technical drawings for a Blackhawk helicopter part to manufacturers in China.…

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The military commissions are back underway at Guantánamo, and so far the Obama Administration proceedings look an awful lot like the end-phase proceedings under Bush. The process started with the…

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Glenn Greenwald has a must-read essay at Cato Unbound surveying America’s governmental surveillance industry. Millions of Americans supported Barack Obama with the understanding that he would begin to rein in…

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One of the creepier weapons in the arsenal of the national-security state is the “national-security letter” or NSL. It’s no ordinary letter, and it travels postage-free, but at enormous expense…

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NYU historian Tony Judt died last week. I knew him only vaguely as a participant at academic seminars and conferences, but over the last months I have read with complete…

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Experts now often talk about a “new front” in the Afghanistan war: one targeting the corruption that is causing the cost of the war effort to spiral. Although special efforts…

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The biggest Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prosecution of all time, United States v. Giffen, just fizzled out. The Associated Press reports: A businessman once accused of paying tens of millions…

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Here’s an AP investigative story that reveals in good detail the Bush Administration’s attitude to the law and the Supreme Court. As the Supreme Court began to take steps that…

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Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung takes a look at what makes WikiLeaks tick and finds that it rests on the in-kind contributions of supporters, who tend to be young computer geeks who…

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On Wednesday, President Barack Obama, acting on the advice of the Department of Defense, asked Congress to restore the rank and benefits of John Daniel Lavelle, an Air Force general.…

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In a San Francisco courtroom yesterday, the chief judge of the federal district court, Vaughn R. Walker, handed down his long-awaited ruling in the challenge to the constitutionality of California’s…

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