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Seven Secrets that China Would Like to Keep

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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Obama’s War on Whistleblowers

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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Letter from Bishkek

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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Dickinson – There is Another Sky

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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Rolland – The Truth Behind National Exceptionalism

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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BBQ of the Century

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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More on the CIA Paymaster in Kabul

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 Anarchic Republic of Pakistan

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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America’s Corruption Racket in Central Asia

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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Our Century: A Dialogue with Helmut Schmidt and Fritz Stern (III)

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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Crazy Like a Foxman

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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How Bill O’Reilly Got a Critic Fired

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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False Charges Ricochet in the War on WikiLeaks

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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A License to Steal

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 Amazing Disappearing and Reappearing CIA Torture Tapes

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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The Choral Fantasy

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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Hegel – Purpose, Results and the Philosophical Essence

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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DOJ Pays Damages in Axion Case

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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Prosecutorial Flim-Flam at Gitmo

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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Greenwald on Digital Surveillance

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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Tales from Stasiland: The letter that makes you disappear

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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Tony Judt’s Liberalism

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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In Afghanistan, A War on Corruption Falters

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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Kazakhgate Ends With a Whimper

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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Three-Card Monte at Gitmo

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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Financing WikiLeaks

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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The Scapegoating of General Lavelle

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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Proposition 8 Overturned

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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