Baithak World June 03: NYT's Op Ed, Amartya Sen, Naipaul, Key to Kissinger, Eric's World, Headlines, RealNews

Clark Hoyt, the New York Times’ public editor, did some reporting (“interviewed five Islamic scholars, at five American universities, recommended by a variety of sources as experts in the field”) and couldn’t find one who agrees with the interpretation of Islamic law presented in a May 12 Times’ op-ed by Edward Luttwak. Hoyt writes: “Op-Ed writers are entitled to emphasize facts that support their arguments and minimize others that don’t. But they are not entitled to get the facts wrong or to so mangle them that they present a false picture.” Hoyt: Times’ Op-Ed Presented “False Picture” By Liz Cox Barrett


WILL the food crisis that is menacing the lives of millions ease up — or grow worse over time? The answer may be both. The recent rise in food prices has largely been caused by temporary problems like drought in Australia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Though the need for huge rescue operations is urgent, the present acute crisis will eventually end. But underlying it is a basic problem that will only intensify unless we recognize it and try to remedy it.
It is a tale of two peoples. In one version of the story, a country with a lot of poor people suddenly experiences fast economic expansion, but only half of the people share in the new prosperity. The favored ones spend a lot of their new income on food, and unless supply expands very quickly, prices shoot up. The rest of the poor now face higher food prices but no greater income, and begin to starve. Tragedies like this happen repeatedly in the world. The Rich Get Hungrier – Amartya Sen

'For Naipaul, being disagreeable is a way of being alive; he likes to wind people up - and he generally succeeds. Illustration by Andy Friedman

Depending on where you stand, VS Naipaul is either a grand old man of letters or a grand old grump. Rightly famed for his steady literary output, Naipaul is also infamous for his provocations. Whether he’s saying something nasty about Muslims or defending snobbery, when Naipaul speaks, you can almost guarantee there will be an uproar. The world is not enough


To say that Henry Kissinger is the most controversial of twentieth-century American Secretaries of State would be an understatement. No other holder of that office has inspired opprobrium of the sort heaped on Kissinger by journalists such as Seymour Hersh and Christopher Hitchens. The latter’s polemic, The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2002), for example, accuses Kissinger of having “ordered and sanctioned the destruction of civilian populations, the assassination of inconvenient politicians, the kidnapping and disappearance of soldiers and journalists and clerics who got in his way”. Hitchens offers no explanation of his subject’s alleged record of “promiscuous violence abroad and flagrant illegality at home”. The reader is merely left to infer that Kissinger must be a terribly wicked man. The Jewish key to Henry Kissinger


Kuhne is an architect and civic planner, but neither description does justice to the massive scale on which he works. His London-based firm, CivicArts, famous for having designed Bluewater, the largest and most financially successful mall in Europe, is today building entire cities from scratch: Madinat Al Hareer (City of Silk), a 750,000-person port city in Kuwait; Mohammed Bin Rashid Gardens, a 200,000-person canal city to be built on 88 sq km of desert adjacent to Dubailand; and a not-yet-announced city somewhere in Bahrain. In Dubai, he is overseeing the International Financial Centre’s expansion into a massive enclosed “urban village” where over 60,000 people will live and work. In Kazakhstan, he is erecting 14 casinos and a presidential retreat around a lake. Eric’s world

Headlines

Losers’ Last Hurrah: Abbas and Olmert set for talks
Hagee: The Antichrist Is Gay, "Partially Jewish, As Was Adolph Hitler"
Iraq's Real Death Toll "Above Highest Estimates"
Haaretz.com promotes website advocating genocide and terrorism
Six Reasons Why Women Are the Most Important Audience for Changing the World
From bad to verse: Vandals get classroom penance
Kennedy brain surgery 'a success'
Who found Machu Picchu? How a German may have beaten the Americans to lost Inca city
Bush: The invisible impeachment
REMEMBERING MODERN HISTORY’S GREATEST CRIME
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Carbon Footprints By City
Palestinian Walks
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Faithbook launched on Facebook
Natasha By Vladimir Nabokov
Dymaxion Man The visions of Buckminster Fuller by Elizabeth Kolbert
SPIEGEL ONLINE Interview with UN Expert: 'We're Only at the Beginning' of the Food Crisis
Paul Krugman: A Return of That '70s Show?
Bill Clinton's critique of the Vanity Fair piece about him starts strong and then collapses. Purdum's Suggestive Piece
A Poet of the Commonplace

Giant Fortress's Remains Found in Egypt

Archaeologists have found more remnants of the ancient fort of Tharu in the Sinai Peninsula, bolstering theories of its political and strategic importance.

Photos: Egypt Turns Desert Into Farmland

To ease the burden of its exploding population, Egypt is reclaiming millions of acres of the Sahara and converting them into farms and fields

Doonesbury@SLATE

Paul Jay presents RealNew

Katrina: Solutions are news Danny Glover visits New Orleans school to promote Algebra Project view