Newsweek International articles from June 2009

Newsweek International archives from June 2009

Bigger Than Ever.(financial market of New York and London amidst the financial crises)
June 1, 2009... Why the crisis will only help NyLon. Financial crises tend to trigger overwrought predictions of major economic shifts--and then debunk them. Today's global economic meltdown is no different. In recent months, it has become popular to...

Mail Call.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2009... Obama On Obama: An Exclusive Interview May the pragmatist always carry the day. Barack Obama's track record looks pretty good so far. Since Obama's "time for change" campaign, the political world is more connected to citizens by using...

We Do Not Trust Machines.(electronic voting )
June 1, 2009... Byline: Evgeny Morozov The people reject electronic voting. When Ireland embarked on an ambitious e-voting scheme in 2006 that would dispense with "stupid old pencils," as then-prime minister Bertie Ahern put it, in favor of fancy...

A New Look For Japan's Musicians.(acceptance of racially mixed singers in Japan)
June 1, 2009... Byline: Rob Schwartz; Schwartz is the Billboard correspondent for Japan. Additional translation by Benny Rubin. Japan's indigenous music scene is known for breeding cute, superplastic stars like Ayumi Hamasaki and Ayaka--uber-pop princesses...

Washington's Pyramid Scheme.(USA's economic assistance to Egypt)
June 1, 2009... Byline: Steven A. Cook; Cook is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Spending money on democracy promotion in Egypt only made matters worse. Here's how to help. Early next month, Barack Obama...

'It's Going To Be Bumpy'.(Business)(economy of United States )(Interview)
June 1, 2009... Byline: Jon Meacham President Barack Obama has said that Tim Geithner, whose job coincided with a credit crisis, faces more challenges than any Treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton, the first to hold the post. Geithner chatted with...

When The Shoe Fits.(The Good Life)
June 1, 2009... Byline: Nick Foulkes The psychology of the shoe is a fascinating field of study. In the female pantheon, the shoe's quasi-magical ability to empower and embolden is well rehearsed. For women, just hearing the name Jimmy Choo or Manolo...

Perspectives.(Perspectives)
June 1, 2009... "Every single person in combat today, I sent there. And I never forget that for a second. So, no, I don't enjoy my job." U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, on the difficult task of being "secretary of war in a time of war." "Out...

Lessons From the Tiger Defeat.(International)(Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam)
June 1, 2009... Byline: Christian Caryl Can insurgencies be crushed by purely military means? Many counterinsurgency -theorists doubt it, arguing that guerrilla wars are won and lost primarily on the political front. It will be interesting, then, to see...

Greed is Their Game.(International)(political corruption)(Brief article)
June 1, 2009... Byline: William Underhill These should be dark days for David Cameron, Britain's Conservative Party leader. A spending scandal has revealed some spectacularly shameful details about expenses claimed by his legislators. Among the...

To Drone or Not To Drone.(International)(use of unmanned aerial vehicles in military operations)(Brief article)
June 1, 2009... Byline: Adam B. Kushner It's clear that predator drones are revolutionizing the way America fights battles: the flying robots, piloted from thousands of miles away, stand watch while soldiers sleep, kill terrorists from afar and patrol for...

The Teflon Prime Minister.(International)(Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi withstands various scandals and stays in power)(Brief article)
June 1, 2009... Byline: Barbie Nadeau If you believe Italy's billionaire Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, he's the most popular leader in the world--a claim he "proves" using his own media and his influence over state television. According to certain...

Twenty Years After Tiananmen.(International)(Tiananmen Square Incident, 1989)
June 1, 2009... Byline: Bao Tong; Bao, 85, is a democracy and human-rights activist living in Beijing. In March, I received a letter from my daughter-in-law in America. It was sent four years ago, and I just received it. Ever since I was released from...

NO HEADLINE.(International Edition)
June 1, 2009... Tamil Tigers (DOWN) Sri Lanka obliterates last of the rebels. World mourns civilian casualties, but not so much the Tigers and their suicide bombers. Taliban (SIDEWAYS) Pakistani Army makes headway in pitched battles--but huge toll...

Defeat in the Drug War.(International)(drug trafficking)
June 1, 2009... Byline: Adam B. Kushner Not so long ago the only people who called for decriminalizing drugs were extremists on the left and right who distrusted the state. Now heads of state are making the call, led by those on the front line of the...

Who's a Bad Mother?(Books)(Bad Mother)(Brief article)
June 1, 2009... Byline: Katie Baker In her new book, Bad Mother, Ayelet Waldman explores how women face undue pressure to live up to a cultural ideal that's impossible to achieve: that of the Good Mother, a June Cleaver-esque madonna who "remembers to...

Keeping Facebook Nice and Clean.(Technology)(Facebook Inc. filters information posted by users)
June 1, 2009... Byline: Nick Summers It's just before lunchtime in the sunny, high-tech headquarters of Facebook in Palo Alto, California, and Simon Axten is cuing up some porn. A photo of a young couple sloppily making out pops onscreen. It's gross, but...

The Quiet Revolutionary.(World Affairs)(Rahul Gandhi's political activity)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Sudip Mazumdar A revolution is underway in India. The man leading the charge is neither a fiery ideologue nor a gun-toting guerrilla. Instead, he is the scion of one of the world's most famous political families. But Rahul Gandhi,...

Between Delhi and D.C.(International Edition)(India and the United States)
June 8, 2009... Since the Congress Party's huge win in India's elections was announced on May 16, pundits across the country and in the United States have predicted that the warming relations between Delhi and D.C. are now sure to grow even closer. After all,...

How Kim Affords His Nukes.(World Affairs)(Kim Jong-Il)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Takashi Yokota The myth of a failing economy. North Korea, with its malnourished populace, frequent famines and obsolete conventional weapons, is as famous for its poverty as it is for its provocations. That has many observers...

How the Left Can Rise Again.(Business)(social democrats)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Denis MacShane; MacShane is a Labour M.P. and former Minister for Europe in Britain. This should be the left's big chance in Europe. Capitalism is in crisis. Growth is collapsing. Unemployment is rising, and the state is back in...

Rescued From the Nazis.(Music)(Felix Mendelssohn's music)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Michael Levitin Reviving Mendelssohn When the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn conducted Bach's Saint Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829, it caused a national sensation. In those days, when a composer died his contemporaries...

Where Cuba Doesn't Belong.(World Affairs)(membership in Organization of American States)
June 8, 2009... The OAS Is for Democracies Only. In 1962, at a special meeting of the Organization of American States, the Uruguayan resort of Punta del Este became famous for something more than just luxury condos, restaurants and hotels, and catering to...

The Iran Push Backfires.(World Affairs)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Alon Pinkas; Pinkas is the Director of the U.S.-Israel Center at the Rabin Center in Tel Aviv. How Netanyahu failed in Washington. Even by the frenzied standards of Israeli politics, the recent meeting between Benjamin...

Germany Retreats.(International Edition)(national election influences reform in Germany)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Stefan Theil With national elections this fall, reform has stopped, and may now start to reverse. in germany, as in so many other countries, the biggest political casualty of the financial crisis has been the easy distinction...

Germany Retreats.(Business)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Stefan Theil With national elections this fall, reform has stopped, and may now start to reverse. In Germany, as in so many other countries, the biggest political casualty of the financial crisis has been the easy distinction...

Reform Amid The Fatwa Chaos.(Books)(The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday)(Book review)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Adam B. Kushner Neil MacFarquhar's new book does what every reporter aspires to: it sneakily delivers social science (history, anthropology, political theory) to the reader in the guise of a hack's memoir. The Media Relations...

Franco Frattini: 'Solidarity With America'.(World Affairs)(Interview)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Daniel Klaidman and Barbie Nadeau Now in his second stint as foreign minister under Silvio Berlusconi, Franco Frattini is easily Italy's most serious politician. From his suite in Rome, Frattini chatted with NEWSWEEK's Daniel...

The Finer Things.(The Good Life)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Jonathan Tepperman In 1942, a little-known Michigan-born journalist living in Europe decided to write a cookbook of sorts. Her name was M.F.K. Fisher, and the result, How to Cook a Wolf, was less a collection of recipes than a...

Can China Topple The Dollar?(Business)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Daniel Drezner To hear some tell it, China is campaigning to topple the dollar as the world's reserve currency, and just might get the job done soon. In March, China's central-bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, proposed the creation of...

Drinking Liberally In Baghdad.(World Affairs)(Nuri al-Maliki's policies)(Brief article)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Larry Kaplow After Saddam Hussein's overthrow, the dream of a secular Iraq faded as Iran's influence grew, headscarves for women became a must, liquor stores closed and religious parties and militias grew in power. Now some...

Pakistan's Other Nuclear Threat.(World Affairs)(Brief article)
June 8, 2009... Byline: John Barry As the Taliban battles Pakistan's military just 96 kilometers from Islamabad, one question frightens experts around the world: what about the country's nukes? The good news is that Pakistan's warheads, estimated at about...

Voting In The Radicals.(Business)(Brief article)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Christopher Werth State power is rising as governments scramble to stop the global financial crisis, so why are Europeans so indifferent to who runs the European state? Just 34 percent of citizens plan to vote in European...

By The Numbers: Backing Up Barack.(World Affairs)(Barack Obama)(Brief article)
June 8, 2009... The most recent polls show that a majority of Americans agree with President Obama's decision to put more troops in Afghanistan. This level of support for a U.S. military increase is unrivaled since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001: 61:...

The More Things Change.(Books)(The American Future)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Katie Baker Obama's America is facing some worrisome questions: whether to encourage the globe's best and brightest to flock to our shores, or to save American jobs for American workers. Whether the military should focus on bombing...

How To Send Energy Across a Continent.(Science and Technology)(use of superconducting power lines)
June 8, 2009... Byline: Michael D. Lemonick; Lemonick is senior writer at Climate Central. Remember the Woodstock of physics? Probably not. Back in the spring of 1987, though, headlines were trumpeting it as the most exciting scientific meeting in...

Singh.(International)
June 15, 2009... Byline: Jason Overdorf and Sudip Mazumdar He may be shy, but his 100-day plan for India is strikingly bold. For much of the past 15 years, Indian politics were so chaotic that a prime minister would spend most of his first 100 days...

India's Goldilocks Globalization.(International)
June 15, 2009... Byline: Arvind Subramanian; Subramanian is a senior fellow at The Peterson Institute for International Economics. The Congress Party's big win in the recent Indian election was a double surprise. Recent Indian politics have featured a...

Tiger By The Tales.(Books)(Between the Assassinations)(Book review)
June 15, 2009... Byline: Susan H. Greenberg Like a South Asian sister city to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, the fictitious town of Kittur, India, is full of anguished, solitary souls trying to figure out their place in the world. They fight,...

Pavilion Power.(Society)(Interview)(Brief article)
June 15, 2009... Steve McQueen takes Venice. The artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen, who represents Britain in the 53rd Venice Biennale, is best known for his film Hunger, about the hunger strikes in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. Now he's turned his lens...

Shanghai Surprise.(Business)(China's economy)
June 15, 2009... Byline: Rana Foroohar; Foroohar Is International Business Editor. China backs its own global market. There has been buzz lately in Asia that Hong Kong may become a has-been. As the global financial crisis gathered speed last year, Hong...

'Not The Same America'.(World Affairs)(Interview)
June 15, 2009... The day after President Barack Obama's speech in Cairo offering a "new beginning" in relations between the United States and the Muslim world, NEWSWEEK'S Christopher Dickey sat down with the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, Prince Saud...

Western Brands Face Competition From The Upstarts.(The Good Life)
June 15, 2009... Byline: Sameer Reddy One hallmark of newfound wealth in the developing world has been the embrace of Western luxury labels. But since the global economy fell apart last fall, the moneyed classes in India, the Middle East, China, Brazil and...

The Youth Bulge.(World Affairs)(relation of youth population and civil war in Sri Lanka)(Brief article)
June 15, 2009... Byline: Stefan Theil And The Coming Rebel Defeats Colombo touted its anti-insurgency tactics as the force that finally ended Sri Lanka's civil war. But demographics may have played an even larger part, according to Gunnar Heinsohn, a...

Defectors Without The Cheery U.S. Spin.(World Affairs)(Brief article)
June 15, 2009... Byline: Tracy McNicoll Paging all turncoats: Nicolas Sarkozy is reshuffling his cabinet again. Over the past two years, the conservative French president has offered high-profile jobs to leading Socialists and other prominent lefties, and...

Why Brazil Is The Odd BRIC.(World Affairs)(Brazil, Russia, India and China)(Brief article)
June 15, 2009... Byline: Mac Margolis Brazil, Russia, India and China have been slow to embrace the BRIC acronym, coined in 2001 to describe the four giant emerging markets. But now they're trying to convert their shared bulk into clout--and none more so...

Overstaying Their Welcome.(World Affairs)(term limit of government officials)
June 15, 2009... Byline: Adam B. Kushner Critics of former president Bush's democracy-promotion agenda say he confused liberal ends (good government) with liberal means (elections). After all, leaders can use elections to perpetuate bad governments. In...

Born To Show Off.(Culture)(consumer behavior)(Brief article)
June 15, 2009... Byline: Katie Baker Marketers understand that humans, like other animals, have evolved finely tuned mechanisms for competing for status--and that our choice of a consumer brand is less about the material item itself and more about...

The Spy In Your Hand.(Science and Technology)(spy phone software)
June 15, 2009... Byline: Benjamin Sutherland Don't talk: your cell phone may be eavesdropping. Thanks to recent developments in "spy phone" software, a do-it-yourself spook can now wirelessly transfer a wiretapping program to any mobile phone. The programs...

Letters: The Quiet Revolutionary.(Letters)
June 15, 2009... Rahul Gandhi and his reshaping of the Congress party will take India up, up, up. Mayawati would have taken India down, down, down. Rakesh B. Dass, New Delhi, India As his party commands an immense popular mandate, the charismatic Rahul...

Why Brown is Too Big for Britain.(International Edition)(Gordon Brown)
June 22, 2009... Byline: Stryker McGuire; McGuire is a NEWSWEEK Contributing Editor. In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been all but consumed by a wildfire of parliamentary scandal, Labour Party infighting, domestic-policy missteps and profound...

The N Word.(International Edition)(nuclear proliferation in Japan)
June 22, 2009... Byline: Takashi Yokota Why Japan won't go nuclear. North Korea's recent nuclear test has spawned many nightmare scenarios, including the possibility that pacifist Japan will go nuclear, triggering a new arms race. Both U.S. Secretary...

What Japan Got Right.(International Edition)
June 22, 2009... Byline: Robert Alan Feldman; Feldman is a Managing Director of Morgan Stanley Japan Securities Co., Ltd. The economic news isn't all bad. Interest in Japan among global investors and policymakers is abysmal. Indeed, in many...

The Germans Are Toxic Too.(International Edition)(bank capital )
June 22, 2009... Byline: Stefan Theil Claims of safer banks now ring false. German leaders have long boasted about the stability of their financial system, and lately have been blaming the global credit crisis on American irresponsibility. German...

This One's For the Girls.(International Edition)(Asian literature)
June 22, 2009... Byline: Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop Asians embrace chick lit The man who grace thinks is the One has finally given her The Ring! She is so blinded by love, she barely registers that he is moving overseas for work and hardly has time to...

Daring Filipinos Not To Look Away.(International Edition)(the film, Kinatay, portrays life of underclass)
June 22, 2009... Byline: Jessica Zafra Brillante Mendoza's film Kinatay (Slaughtered) is so grim and gruesome that it didn't even divide audiences and critics when it screened at Cannes last month; it united them in hatred and disgust. Shot on film and...

Khrushchev in the Land of Lincoln.(International Edition)(KaBlows Top)
June 22, 2009... Byline: Adam B. Kushner Nikita Khrushchev was the face of the Soviet Union for 11 years, yet to this day he is defined in the West by one image: banging his shoe furiously upon a U.N. delegate's desk. Was he a short-tempered but...

The Havana Obsession.(International Edition)(United States-Cuba relations)
June 22, 2009... Byline: Moises Naim; Naim is Editor in Chief of Foreign Policy magazine. Why all eyes are on a bankrupt island. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush recently had a face-to-face debate in Canada to discuss current affairs. The only Latin...

The Empire Burden.(International Edition)(occupation of foreign lands)
June 22, 2009... Byline: Christopher Dickey; With Tracy McNicoll in Paris When George Orwell was a young man in the 1920s, he served as a British policeman in the colony of Burma. On duty there he saw, as he put it, "the dirty work of empire at close...

Seeing the World From on High.(The Good Life)(Thailand)
June 22, 2009... Byline: Barbara Koh Riding through a thicket outside Luang Prabang, I had the best seat in the house: high enough to finger a vivid green bamboo canopy, roomy and flat enough that I could put my notebook down and write. In the middle of a...

The Greatest Rivalry in Sports.(International Edition)(Rafael Nadal versus roger Federer)
June 22, 2009... There have been some extraordinary rivalries in the annals of men's tennis. Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe. McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras--although -every player including me knew that on their best day Sampras would be...

Google the Target.(International Edition)(Google Inc.'s market)
June 22, 2009... Byline: Daniel Lyons We all know how an auction works. The auctioneer sits up front and keeps calling for higher bids until there's one bidder left--and that person wins. Now imagine an auction where the auctioneer won't let you see the...

Letters: 'The Capitalist Manifesto'.(International Edition)
June 29, 2009... Fareed Zakaria reminds us that no economic system is perfect, so we cannot always expect a bump-free ride. Katherine Mancuso, Incline Village, Nevada After reading Fareed Zakaria's cover story on capitalism's return, I believe it is...

Afghanistan's 'Predatory' State.(International Edition)(Interview)
June 29, 2009... Byline: Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai Former Afghan finance minister Ashraf Ghani is one of President Hamid Karzai's most articulate and vociferous critics, and a chief contender against the incumbent in the upcoming August presidential...

Russia on the Walls.(International Edition)(Russian women running art galleries)
June 29, 2009... Byline: Ginanne Brownell When Dasha Zhukova, the glamorous girlfriend of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, opened her Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in a converted bus depot in Moscow last autumn, art connoisseurs scoffed. What...

Free Sculpture With a Night's Stay.(The Good Life)(Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich, Switzerland)
June 29, 2009... Byline: Sana Butler "Don't touch that," i thought to myself as I watched a toddler stumble across the park of the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich, Switzerland. His father called his name; the boy laughed and kept going, wobbling at an...

Interior Design.(The Good Life)(hotel interior and collections)
June 29, 2009... Byline: Zachary Kussin It used to be that a hotel was simply a place to stay to recover from a tiring day of museum-hopping. But a number of hotels offer spectacular indoor gallery space of their own for displaying surprising collections...

A Troubled Pipeline.(International Edition)(natural-gas pipeline Nabucco)
June 29, 2009... Byline: Owen Matthews Nabucco, the natural-gas pipeline running from Central Asia to Austria via the Balkans and Turkey, has run into trouble from an unexpected quarter. The European Union hopes Nabucco will help break its dependence on...

Forgive Us Our Debts.(International Edition)(public debt)
June 29, 2009... Byline: Rana Foroohar Public debt is rising at its fastest rate since World War II, as nearly all major governments seek to stimulate their shaky economies. Who's most at risk from the ballooning debt bubble? It's an important question,...

The Twilight of a Power Couple's Era.(International Edition)(Nestor and Cristina Kirchner)(Brief article)
June 29, 2009... Byline: Brian Byrnes The Kirchners have reigned supreme as Latin America's most glamorous power couple for six years, but Argentina is turning on them now. Polls show Cristina will likely lose her congressional majority in 'Paulson's...

How Not to Catch a Thief.(International Edition)(Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud)(Brief article)
June 29, 2009... Byline: Ron Moreau The element of surprise is a tried-and-true tactic to catch enemies off guard. But that doesn't seem to be Pakistan's strategy in its manhunt against public enemy No. 1: Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who allegedly...

Run to Mexico?(International Edition)(international runners)(Brief article)
June 29, 2009... Byline: Alexis Okeowo A growing number of international runners are leaving their homelands for an unlikely destination: Mexico. Though the U.S. still boasts more foreign transplants, Mexico's high altitude, easier visa process and cheaper...

Blowing the Whistle On Kenya.(International Edition)(Brief article)
June 29, 2009... Byline: Mohammed J. Herzallah In 2005 Kenya's anti-corruption czar, John Githongo, became a man on the run. For years he'd been compiling evidence to implicate incumbent president Mwai Kibaki's government in some of the most shameless acts...

The Coming Oil Crisis.(International Edition)
June 29, 2009... Byline: Mohammed J. Herzallah Canadian economist Jeff Rubin has a somewhat oracular reputation. Since 2000, he has predicted a massive oil-price spike, and he was among the first in 2007 to prophesy that oil would soar over $100 per barrel...