National Post

Peter Bergen in National Post | 'Robespierre's Path'

Communications — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:34:00 -0400

New America in the News:

National Post readers eager for good news in the war against terrorism, rejoice. On the pages that follow, authors Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank outline a stunning phenomenon: In the prisons of Cairo and the mosques of London, on the blogosphere and the airwaves of Arabic cable TV channels, militant jihadis are turning away from al-Qaeda's nihilistic agenda. Personal attacks against Osama bin Laden, once taboo, are now common in jihadi circles...

"Encoded in the DNA of apocalyptic jihadist groups like al Qaeda are the seeds of their own long-term destruction," conclude Bergen and Cruickshank. "Their victims are often Muslim civilians; they don't offer a positive vision of the future; [and] they keep expanding their list of enemies." LINK

Len Nichols in Reuters, the Guardian, National Post | 'U.S. Health Insurers Pitch Policy Changes'

Communications — Thu, 29 May 2008 06:07:00 -0400

New America in the News:
..."I think the important lesson is - they get a range of savings that is reasonable. It suggests there is a growing consensus that these elements are what are needed for change to happen," said Len Nichols, a healthcare economist at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research group...LINK

'Oil on the Brain' Reviewed by National Post

Communications — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 16:41:00 -0500

New America in the News:

For weeks, drivers in central Canada have been worrying about their next fill-up, lining up at the pumps to pay skyrocketing prices for fuel when they can find it. For the first time in years we have seen stations run dry and rationing in those with supplies. Although the shortage was temporary and caused by a freakish combination of events -- problems at two refineries coupled with a train workers' strike -- it nonetheless should serve as a long overdue wake-up call: We can't go on like this.

All this provides new pertinence to Oil on the Brain, Lisa Margonelli's timely examination of how the stuff we use to fuel our cars gets from producer to consumer, and the price we pay, in every sense of the word.

Her jumping-off point is the place where most people encounter gasoline -- the service station. Then she works backward through the refinery to the drill site and the offshore platform. There are visits to the New York Mercantile Exchange and producing countries Venezuela, Chad, Iran and Nigeria. A chapter on China looks to the future as millions of people vie for the right to own four wheels, not just two.

Like a novel that starts in the present and progresses backward and forward, it's a device that seems counterintuitive, but it works.

Ms. Margonelli, a former columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, now a fellow at the New America Foundation, knows how to spin a tale and has an eye for the surprising detail. In addition, she can take reams of arcane information and transform it into informative prose that keep readers turning the pages...

For the complete review, please visit the National Post website.

The National Post Quotes Anatol Lieven on Afghanistan's Drug Trade

Communications — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:41:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Five years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan remains hooked on opium. The drug trade has become the country's largest employer, its biggest export and the largest source of income and credit in a land devastated by decades of war...

So pervasive is the trade that Afghanistan is at risk of becoming a lawless narco-state where drug dealers will determine who holds power. Even now it is a major source of corruption that undermines the fledgling government of President Hamid Karzai and is the chief source of funds for regional warlords and Taliban terrorists.

Without cash from opium, says U.S. Marine General James Jones, the former supreme commander of NATO, the Taliban could not afford to continue their insurgency.

"I think the Achilles heel of Afghanistan is the narcotics problems," he testified recently in Washington. "I think the uncontrolled rise of the spread of narcotics, the business that it brings in, the money that it generates, is being used to fund the insurgency, criminal elements and anything to bring chaos and disorder."

The drug trade is so pervasive in rural Afghanistan some experts insist it will be impossible to stamp it out simply through crop eradication programs.

Destroying the only cash crop impoverished farmers can rely on to feed their families will drive them into the Taliban camp, says Anatol Lieven, a researcher with the New America Foundation in Washington.

"You can't simply cut that off without reimpoverishing much of the population and, of course, risking political disaster," he says. "It's a complex problem."

Short-term, quick-fix strategies, including outright bans, forced eradication and aerial spraying, won't work, he warns. They could also provide the Taliban with a recruiting strategy...

For the complete article, please visit The National Post website.

But for King and Tea

Articles — Sat, 03 Jul 1999 00:00:00 -0400

Equality at the legislative level, not individual rights, was the cause of the American Revolution. What the colonists sought is not unlike the Commonwealth of today and would have changed history. more

Regionalism-Who Needs It?

Articles — Wed, 03 Mar 1999 00:00:00 -0500

A specter is haunting the world at the turn of the twenty-first century: the specter of regionalism. The experiments in confederation of the European Union—of which the most important is the adoption of the Euro as a pan-European currency—are thought by many to signal a movement from national sovereignty to regional integration, a trend which is both inevitable and desirable. Contrary to popular belief, however,… more