Mahler's Prodigal Son

Credit to Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah

When millions would have done anything to get out, one remarkable British soldier smuggled himself into Auschwitz to witness the horror so he could tell others the truth. Believable? Yes, as this report on BBC Magazine shows.

James Fallow, writing on The Atlantic Monthly , makes out a justified case against former VP, Dick Cheney: "The former vice president, Dick Cheney, has brought dishonor to himself, his office, and his country. I am not aware of another former President or Vice President behaving as despicably as Cheney has done in the ten months since leaving power, most recently but not exclusively with his comments to Politico about Obama's decisions on Afghanistan. (Aaron Burr might win the title, for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, but Burr was a sitting Vice President at the time.) Cheney has acted as if utterly unconcerned with the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people now trying to make difficult decisions. He has put narrow score-settling interest far, far above national interest." Read the full piece here .

Stephen Walt, writing his blog on FP : "Tom Friedman had an especially fatuous column in Sunday's New York Times, which is saying something given his well-established capacity for smug self-assurance. According to Friedman, the big challenge we face in the Arab and Islamic world is "the Narrative" -- his patronizing term for Muslim views about America's supposedly negative role in the region. If Muslims weren't so irrational, he thinks, they would recognize that "U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny." He concedes that we made a few mistakes here and there (such as at Abu Ghraib), but the real problem is all those anti-American fairy tales that Muslims tell each other to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions." And: "Here's my back-of-the-envelope analysis, based on estimates deliberately chosen to favor the United States. Specifically, I have taken the lo...

The world is changing - in no small measure because of the wide-spread use and access to computers and the internet. A good example emerges from this piece from FP [Foreign Policy]: "The world’s next great thinkers may well be just as brilliant as the ones on this list, but they’re likely to come to our notice in very different ways. Take William Kamkwamba, a 22-year-old from Malawi who already exemplifies a new generation of global leaders. A few years ago, he came upon an illustration of a windmill in an old textbook in a language (English) he barely understood and built one for his family so their house could have electricity. Soon he was thinking of ways to mass-produce his invention for distribution as ready-made kits. Twenty years ago, Kamkwamba’s story might have stayed local. But instead he had the fortune of colliding with today’s Web-enabled global structure of intellectual intermediaries. In 2006, an innovation-focused blog called Hacktivate stumbled upon a write-up ab...

Credit to Patrick Corrigan of The Toronto Star

There can be little doubt that Malalai Joya is one of the bravest women in Afghanistan. Writing in The Guardian's Comment is Free , she makes a plea to Obama - which will be ignored as the heavy-hitters in the military and the neo-cons cheer the president on: "I have said before that by installing warlords and drug traffickers in power in Kabul, the US and Nato have pushed us from the frying pan to the fire. Now Obama is pouring fuel on these flames, and this week's announcement of upwards of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will have tragic consequences. Already this year we have seen the impact of an increase in troops occupying Afghanistan: more violence, and more civilian deaths. My people, the poor of Afghanistan who have known only war and the domination of fundamentalism, are today squashed between two enemies: the US/Nato occupation forces on one hand and warlords and the Taliban on the other. While we want the withdrawal of one enemy, we don't believe ...