Sunday, March 20, 2011

Commentaries, Opinions, And Editorials -- March 20, 2011



Japanese Aftershocks: A Nation Bears The Unbearable -- Evan Osnos, New Yorker

The afternoon of Friday, March 11th, was cool and partly cloudy on the northeast coast of Japan’s main island, a serene stretch once known as the nation’s “back roads.” At 2:46 P.M., as schools were beginning to let out, the ground began to shake. It was violent even by Japan’s standards—the thundering went on for five minutes—and before long Japanese television was warning of a wave charging west across the Pacific Ocean at the speed of a jet. Kicked up from the seabed, the tsunami amplified in size and slowed in speed as it moved into the shallows beside the Japanese coastline, and by the time it touched land it was a wall of water, black and smooth. It was as tall in places as a three-story building, moving at fifty miles per hour. It flicked fishing trawlers over seawalls, crunched them against bridges. It sent fleets of cars and trucks hurtling from parking lots, and turned homes into chips of wood and tile, before heading deeper into Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures across a span of six miles. Rampaging through former farming and fishing villages, and the cosmopolitan city of Sendai, the wave slowed, but remained too fast for most people to outrun on foot.

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Commentaries, Opinions, And Editorials

The Small Tunisian Town that Sparked the Arab Revolution -- Mathieu von Rohr, Spiegel Online

The Islamist who does not want power
-- Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star

Bloody Days in Sanaa, Yemen -- Barak Barfi, Foreign Policy

Safety last, for Lebanon -- Michael Young, NOW Lebanon

Led by Al Jazeera, Arabic media come of age covering revolutions -- Mark Seddon, The National

Analysis: Afghan security handover more signal than real change
-- Reuters

How Egypt's historic referendum could now bolster Islamists -- Kristen Chick, Christian Science Monitor

Can an election heal Haiti? -- l.A. Times editorial

Tibet’s Quiet Revolution -- Pico Iyer, New York Review Of Books

Washington vs. the Merciless -- Thomas Friedman, New York Times

Is a new UN “principle” now guiding US foreign policy and intervention? -- Bruce McQuain, Hot Air

A peacemaker’s case against the U.S. Institute of Peace -- Colman McCarthy, Washington Post

Shutting America's Military Out of the Combat Theater
-- Zbigniew Mazurak, American Thinker

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