Economist, April 30 A special report surveys the volatile romance between oil and the global economy and finds both heartening news and cause for panic. The report’s lead item argues that high oil prices are merely one crisis in an industry plagued by the long-term menaces of unpredictable global demand, a shrinking buffer surplus, and the over-reliance of OPEC welfare states on oil receipts. Another piece suggests that incomplete information and alarmism have always instigated oil fears, and that today’s worrywarts ignore “new discoveries, changes in prices and technological advances” that “invariably add to the reserve base.” A sidebar asks, “Does the oil price matter any more?” The answer: Not much now, and who knows about later. … In its last issue before British elections May 5, the magazine endorses Tony Blair and his Labor government, “for want of a better option.”—D.W.W.
Rolling Stone, May 5 A piece reveals that Bakersfield, Calif., District Attorney Ed Jagels has maintained such a “tough on crime” stance in his five terms that he sent his wife to prison on drug charges. Perhaps he’s been too tough: With 24 pedophilia convictions overturned after revelations of suppressed evidence and coached testimony, he now faces wrongful imprisonment suits that could end his career. “Wrongful prosecutions are so commonplace that a used-records dealer in town hands out bumper stickers that read ‘Ed Jagels Hates me, too,’” writes Kimberly Sevcik. … An item in President Bush’s budget would appoint a ”sunset commission” to review and discontinue federal programs that are not “producing results,” says a piece by Osha Gray Davidson on the mechanism that could allow the president to disband federal agencies from the EPA to the SEC. “The commission would enable the Bush administration to do what Ronald Reagan only dreamed of: the end of government regulation as we know it.”—J.S.
New York Times Magazine, May 1
In a profile, super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is being investigated on extensive corruption charges, calls the experience of reading about himself in the press “Kafkaesque,” and refuses to discuss the specifics of his intensely scrutinized relationship with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Claiming that he sometimes finds himself “speaking to people in the language they speak,” Abramoff compares himself to Jacob in the Old Testament. He says that Jacob wore his brother’s clothes as “a more effective means of communicating with Esau [his brother].” But, as the article points out, “[I]n fact, Jacob’s goal was to deceive his father.” … And the cover focuses on an Iraqi counterinsurgency unit made up of ex-members of Saddam’s Republican Guard. Pointing out that the unit’s American adviser, James Steele, honed his skills in 1980s El Salvador, the piece asserts that insurgencies throughout the world “have lasted at least 5 to 10 years” and have been “without exception, dirty wars.”—B.B.
Domino, Spring/Summer 2005 Condé Nast’s newest baby aims to be the Lucky of home-decorating magazines. Domino (whose editor, Deborah Needleman, is married to Slate editor Jacob Weisberg) is filled with glossy photos of home accessories and advice about comparison shopping and mixing-and-matching. The magazine adores chartreuse: It shows bookshelves painted that color inside, and a feature on vases urges shoppers to “think of chartreuse as nature’s beige, the yellow green of early spring that flatters every color flower.” In “Can this outfit be turned into a room?” a style director outfits an entire dining room based on a 1970s-era dress and accessories, and another feature suggests “buying art the same way you would buy an expensive pair of shoes.” Throughout, the magazine’s trademark faux-handwritten notes make sassy asides: “Like a La-Z-Boy gone to finishing school!” and “use once before guests arrive so they’re not afraid to touch them,” referring to linen hand towels.—B.B.
Sierra, May/June 2005 A piece argues that Urenco, the company whose nuclear secrets were stolen to provide the backbone of Pakistan’s weapons program, should not be allowed to build a centrifugal uranium enrichment facility in New Mexico. The proposed facility is being reviewed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but no mentions of past “security lapses” by Urenco are allowed in the hearings, despite U.N. concerns that plans for centrifugal plants, if stolen, could be easily reconfigured to produce bomb-grade uranium. … Author Jared Diamond is interviewed regarding his new book, Collapse, which examines ancient cultures to see how societies “choose to fail,” by making poor choices. “The most difficult values to jettison are those that have helped you in the past,” says Jared warning that America’s faith in its seemingly “infinite resources” may constitute such a choice.—J.S.
The New Yorker, May 2 One article focuses on Harvard Medical School’s use of a high-tech mannequin that can simulate patients suffering from a variety of diseases. Noting that “health care is unique among high-risk fields in that learning takes place largely on human beings,” the piece points to proof that such machines significantly help doctors-in-training, but, because they’re expensive and require retraining, fewer than half of American medical schools currently use them. … In the second of a three-part series about global climate change, Elizabeth Kolbert tells stories about civilizations that disappeared because of shifting weather patterns, noting that they set an “uncomfortable precedent.” She reveals how scientists model climate change and talks to scientists who hold climate directly responsible for the fall of the Akkad (in the Near East) and Mayan civilizations. One expert tells her, “I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that by 2100 most things were destroyed.”—B.B.
Weekly Standard, May 2 An editorial in support of the new pope rails against Western Europe: “It cannot summon the will to reproduce itself. It has aborted and contracepted its birthrate down toward demographic disaster: perhaps 1.4 children per couple across the western end of the continent, when simple replacement requires a rate around 2.1. It can discover neither how to absorb nor how to halt the waves of Islamic immigrants swamping its cities, and it has proved supine in the face of those immigrants’ anti-Semitism, anti-Christianism, and even anti-Europeanism.” Noting that Benedict XVI may well be the “last European Pope,” the piece takes aim at Benedict’s liberal detractors and points out “in all the raging from liberal commentators since his election, his mild and sentimental socialism has somehow escaped notice.” … And ABC News’ Jonathan Karl writes about Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick’s recent visit to Khartoum, Sudan, to discuss how to end the ethnic cleansing in Darfur.—B.B.
Mother Jones, May/June The cover package examines how American skeptics of global warming have blocked decisive action for 15 years, even as scientific consensus that the phenomenon exists has mounted. Pointing out that ExxonMobil spent at least “$8 million between 2000 and 2003” on 40 influential public policy groups that go against the scientific grain on global warming, a piece singles out the American Enterprise Institute, TechCentralStation.com, and FoxNews.com columnist Steven Milloy. A sidebar also indicts the Congress of Racial Equality, once a leading force in the civil rights movement, which has become critical of the environmental movement since right-wing leader Roy Innis took power in 1968. The group has accepted $40,000 from ExxonMobil. The article also notes that, “ExxonMobil forwarded the White House a list of federal scientists it wanted ‘removed from their positions of influence.’ ” It goes on to wonder “why the company would even need such pseudo-scientific cover,” given ExxonMobil’s pull with the Bush administration.—B.B.
Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report, May 2 Pope Benedict XVI: The former Cardinal Ratzinger graces the covers of all three newsweeklies. Newsweek claims that the new pope has “been training all his life for this particular mission: the re-evangelization of the West.” After weighing his notorious doctrinal conservatism and penchant for ideological attacks, the magazine points out that Benedict has been more accepting of other religions since assuming his new role and may well cultivate a more “pastorly posture.”U.S. News points out that while most cardinals supported him, the Italian press reported that 10 percent of the cardinals at the conclave “supposedly did not attend the evening celebration in honor of the new Pope Benedict.” And Time disputes Ratazinger’s claim that he’s always had the same views about theology. After speaking with sources such as his former friend Hans Kung, the magazine suggests that Ratzinger was a young progressive until the Marx-influenced 1968 student protests in Germany, which “convinced him that even fellow Catholics might abuse reform to rationalize worldly fads and pathologies.”
Bolton: Both Time and Newsweek use the unexpected delay in John Bolton’s confirmation process to scrutinize the administration’s choice for U.N. ambassador more closely. Time says it has corroborated parts of Melody Townsel’s story. Townsel, a Democrat, claims Bolton “proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel—throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and generally behaving like a madman.” The magazine also reports that shortly after his nomination, Bolton asked to see the résumés of every American working for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, a move that may have been “presumptuous.” And Newsweek notes that the British don’t like Bolton either. When the U.S. and Britain were talking Libya into giving up its nukes in 2003, the attempt “succeeded only after British officials ‘at the highest level’ persuaded the White House to keep Bolton off the negotiating team.”
Odds and ends:Newsweek examines the strange case of Zayead Christopher Hajaig, a Nigerian-born Brit who is wanted by the FBI. He’s been indicted on gun charges, but what the feds really want to talk to him about is a potential link to terrorism. Earlier this month, Hajaig spiked the FBI’s curiosity when they heard he was an illegal alien who became angry when he couldn’t upgrade his piloting credentials. Hajaig high-tailed it back to England, where he’s under the watchful eye of Scotland Yard but remains a free man. … U.S. News asserts that outsourcing to India isn’t just about “call centers, software writing, and back-office operations” anymore. The magazine claims that Indian companies are increasingly snagging more complicated work—like research and development of products. … And in a piece about how people react to disasters, Time points out that people who haven’t mentally prepared themselves for emergency evacuations often freeze and wait to be told what to do. An airline safety expert stresses that “better, more detailed safety briefings could save lives” however, “airline representatives have repeatedly told him they don’t want to scare passengers.”—B.B.
New Republic, May 2 and 9 Andrew Sullivan explores why “Republicans now support institutions they previously vilified.” He claims that there’s an increasing rift between “conservatives of faith,” whose reading of the Bible leads them to embrace increased government intervention into people’s lives, and the “conservatives of doubt,” who eschew moral absolutes and support “restraint of government.” Using the Schiavo case as a touchstone, the piece says that “the conservative coalition as we have known it cannot long endure” if the religious right holds on to its fundamentalism. Sullivan calls for “not merely a reformed liberalism,” but also “a conservatism that does not assent to its own corruption at the hands of zealots.”… Another piece condemns Colombian president Álvaro Uribe’s attempt to change the constitution so that he can run for a second term: “Uribe’s reelection would be bad news for Colombia, breeding an inadvisable authoritarian tradition in a country that has never had one.”—B.B.
