Slate's Bizbox
other magazines: Summaries of what's in Time, Newsweek, etc.

Ahmad Chalabi, Rising StarPlus, will it be more of the same in Ukraine under Yushchenko?

By Bidisha Banerjee and David Wallace-Wells
Updated Friday, Jan. 28, 2005, at 2:17 PM ET

Economist, Jan. 27
A piece about the Iraqi elections notes that Ahmad Chalabi is flourishing after being ditched by the neocons. Calling him the "most notable and surprising new star" among Shiites, the article concludes, "Once excoriated by his Iraqi rivals as an American and (worse) an Israeli stooge, Mr Chalabi is an astute fixer who may well play a part in post-election coalition-building." (Read Christopher Hitchens' Slate piece on the re-emergence of Chalabi.) … Another piece says that newly inaugurated Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko has appointed a prime minister, Yulia Timoshenko, who has been accused of fraud. She has opposed giving more power to the parliament, a constitutional reform that the previous regime had agreed to. "Having come to office as legitimately as, in the circumstances, he could, it would be a shame if Mr Yushchenko were now to cling on to powers that he had earlier agreed to relinquish," the piece opines. ... "Can a bordello really be sold as a resort destination?" asks another article about a businessman's plan to build a sex village in Nevada.—B.B.

New Republic, Feb. 7
Daniel Libeskind, the architect charged with designing the new Wold Trade Center "fails to recognize that we cannot be told how to think about September 11," notes a review of Libeskind's "self-promotional, megalomaniacal, and pathologically narcissistic" new memoir. Pointing out that he has allowed his original design for the site to be almost completely undermined, the piece argues that Libeskind doesn't respect architecture "as an art in itself rather than a vessel for allegory." ... Lawrence Kaplan, a leading hawk, visits Iraq and finds that local opinion no longer supports civil liberties or a secular state, and concludes that the hope of a liberal democracy has "all but evaporated." ... A dispatch from Indonesia claims that the tsunami relief effort in the Aceh province is "tainted" because "it's operating in one of the most corrupt and military-dominated places on earth": The provincial governor is on trial for grafting and refugees are pleading for foreign soldiers to stay and protect them from the Indonesian military.—B.B.

New York Times Magazine

New York Times Magazine, Jan. 30
A profile of Andy Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union, outlines his plans to revolutionize the labor movement by consolidating small, disparate unions into bigger unions. He believes such consolidation will give them all greater power. Such radical thinking is not without opposition. "Stern's plan has incited fury within a lot of smaller unions, whose members don't seem to think the movement needs a self-appointed savior." One union president, saying organizations just need to voice their concerns more loudly, suggests a cable network geared toward labor news. … For 40 years, the medical community has generally considered Alexander Shulgin, the creator of a panoply of psychedelic drugs, including Ecstasy, "at best a curiosity and at worst a menace." He may be vindicated yet, however, as researchers study whether Ecstasy can benefit cancer patients and those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.—B.B.

Atlantic Monthly

Atlantic Monthly, January/February
Former antiterrorism chief Richard Clarke, in the cover package, draws upon existing information about terror plots to outline several chilling scenarios, including low-tech attacks on casinos, theme parks, shopping malls, and subways. Clarke also predicts attacks on the computers that control electric grids, gas pipelines, and financial markets by 2008. His forecast for the government's responses to terror threats? A national biometric identity card by next year, and an intensely restrictive Patriot Act III. He concludes the government is already turning the clash of cultures into a self-fulfilling prophecy and perpetuating an ongoing war that will make "America less wealthy, less confident, and certainly less free." ... James Fallows criticizes our constrained public discourse about how to control terrorism. He suggests that Americans maturely accept the threat of terrorism, that flocks of Muslim students be invited to study in the United States, and he advises the government to help secure the 30,000 loose nukes floating around the former Soviet Union.—B.B.

Weekly Standard, Jan. 31
One piece argues that, in "the most philosophical inaugural address ever," President Bush showed he was more Thomas Jefferson than the "impossible combination of Dr. Evil and Forrest Gump" that puzzled pundits have made him out to be—a Christian philosopher in the long tradition of civic interpreters of natural law. ... In another article, presidential adviser Edward Green laments the dwindling support among American aid agencies—both federal and nongovernmental—for abstinence advocacy in the fight against AIDS in Africa. Green points to the example of Uganda, where abstinence-based sex education has helped reduce the rate of HIV infection from 15 percent to a remarkable 4 percent since 1991. Similar programs have produced encouraging results in Kenya and Senegal, but these trends have been ignored, Green believes, "because they contradict the image of the hypersexed African that Western AIDS experts have been selling since the beginning of the AIDS pandemic."—D.W.

Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 31
Inaugural fire sermon. Time and U.S. News hem and haw over Bush's inaugural address, while Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria expresses the most clear-cut criticism. Pointing out that "we live in a world that is mostly free," he asks, "Is ending Burmese tyranny the urgent requirement of America's security? Is battling Cuba's decrepit regime the calling of our time?" U.S. News focuses on Bush's use of the phrase "we have lit a fire in the minds of men." The magazine announces that Bush is a "revolutionary president" in the line of Lincoln and Roosevelt. Although the article notes that the fire quote comes from Dostoyevsky's The Possessed, it misses the fact that, in the book, the fire was actually lit by terrorists. Only Time discusses the protesters, noting: "The satirical Billionaires for Bush auctioned off Social Security and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before moving on to their Re-Coronation Ball (its code: "Dress to oppress")."

Iraqi elections and the war on terror: Livestock analysis. A U.S. News piece about how the government uses informants to track down terrorists says that the State Department has shelled out almost $48 million to 19 different tipsters since Sept. 11 and goes on to address a special problem: Since "sheepherders in Afghanistan often don't understand the value of $25 million," officials "are looking into offering other forms of compensation." Referring to the stable of heavenly virgins that Bin Laden promises to followers who die in holy war, one official says, "We can't come up with 70 virgins, but we can come up with goats." ... Time, meanwhile, casts doubt upon U.S.-darling Iyad Allawi's popularity. "This," says a man in a Baghdad street while beheading a sheep with a knife in the traditional 'Id al-Adha ritual, "is what we want to do to Allawi and the Americans."

Congressional powerbrokers. U.S. News profiles Norm Coleman, the chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, who has aggressively investigated the U.N.'s oil-for-food scandal. Comparing his hearings to the legendary ones led by Truman and McCarthy, the piece wonders "just how does a Jewish kid from Brooklyn who loved the Dodgers and led student protests in college, who served as Bill Clinton's state campaign cochair in 1995, end up as a conservative, antiabortion Republican senator from Minnesota with a Hollywood-actress wife?" … Newsweek looks at why Washington state, with women in the governor's mansion and both U.S. Senate seats, is so friendly to female candidates. … Time profiles Bill Thomas, staunch Bush ally and the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, who thinks that Bush should raise taxes instead of making payroll cuts in order to change Social Security. The article concludes that Thomas could stymie Bush's plans.—B.B.

Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Bidisha Banerjee is a former Slate editorial assistant. David Wallace-Wells is a writer living in New York.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES
Washington Post
The Washington Post
OPINIONS
Assessing Sarah Palin
| Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, John Podesta and others weigh in.
Colbert King: She's No HillaryEditorial: Is She Ready for This?
PLUS » PostPartisan: Quick Takes from Opinions