The Kensington Review

8 August 2005

Latest Commentary: Volume IV, Number 94
Cindy Sheehan Wants the President to Explain Her Son's Death in Iraq -- Army Specialist Casey Sheehan of Vacaville, California, was killed in the Sadr City district of Baghdad on April 4, 2004. His mother, Cindy, is spending her summer waiting outside Mr. Bush’s Texas Ranch, where this month the president is going to spend the longest presidential vacation in 37 years. Mrs. Sheehan figures since he has all that free time, he could find a few minutes to look her in the eye and explain why her son died in a place even hotter than Texas in August. While her effort is noble and was inevitable, one expects she has a long, hot wait ahead of her.

Netanyahu Resigns to Protest Israeli Withdrawal from Gaza -- Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu resigned as finance minister after the cabinet voted to approve the first stages of the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Resignation on a matter of principle one of the most noble and decent things a politician can do (and it has become terrifyingly rare). One would be more impressed with Mr. Netanyahu’s decision had he done it when it might have done his backers some good.

PM Suffers Defeat in Privatizing Japan’s Post Office -- Junichiro Koizumi has been one of Japan’s more effective prime ministers. After a decade of non-growth, the economy started to move forward under his care. And he has managed to keep demilitarized Japan involved in foreign policy at a time of American adventurism which demands allies put up or shut up. But it seems he went one step too far in trying to privatize the Japanese Post Office. After a defeat in the upper house of parliament, he has dissolved the lower house and called a snap election, inauspiciously for September 11.

Peter Jennings Files Last Report -- Peter Jennings lost his battle with lung cancer last night. At the age of 67, he was in many ways still a young man, and in the world of journalism, he had begun the long slow slide from top form to merely exceptional – a journey made by Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner and John Chancellor a generation before him. What is truly depressing about his passing, in addition to the loss of an incredibly urbane human being, is the fact that there seems to be no one about whom the same will be said a generation from now.

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

Google

Comprehensive Media Web Directory

WWW Kensington Review

Search:
Keywords:






Links

Contact us

Back Issues