In recent months the private Consumers' Foundation has been making an increasingly embarrassing spectacle of itself.

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When we're all old and cranky, we'll look back at China's distant days of economic glory and say: Never in the field of human self-aggrandisement was so much covered up by so few to so many. WHO is responsible? You bet, but that's only part of what's on China's plate.
By Johnny Neihu
I was going to write a column about the Martial Law era this week to mark the 20th anniversary of its formal conclusion.

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By Lu Chun-wei 盧俊偉
Discussion and research on "development" emerged in the middle of the 20th century. Since World War II the focus of international attention has been development in developing countries. And since the implementation of the "First UN Development Decade" by the UN General Assembly in the 1960s, development has become a prominent research topic. However, the concept has shifted from concentrating on GDP growth to more comprehensive social, environmental and economic conditions.

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The rise of Tehran has petrified Arab capitals-- and intensified debate in the US and Israel about the use of force
By Jonathan Freedland
As the good book says, God loves the sinner that repenteth even if he repenteth late -- so US President George W. Bush will probably win a smile from heaven for his belated call for a Middle East peace conference before the year is out. Sure, it's a bit late now for the president to be scrabbling to make amends for six-and-a-half years of at best intermittent attention toward the Israel-Palestine conflict.

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Every government in the world has a stake in the future of Iraq and the Middle Ease, for their violence can spread everywhere
By Richard Haass
Many people around the world are indulging in what the Germans call schadenfreude: pleasure at the suffering of others. The pleasure appears to be derived from the suffering the US is enduring after four years of efforts to stabilize Iraq.

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By Shlomo Avineri
Every week, it seems, brings another backward step for Palestine. President Mahmoud Abbas' failure to convene the Palestinian Legislative Assembly due to a Hamas boycott may lead inexorably to the final breakdown of the political structures created under the Oslo Accords. Sadly, this is only the latest chapter in the Palestinians' tragic history of failed attempts to create a nation-state.

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Give your bile-bellowing faculties a trial run by linking to a splendid Chicom Web site. One courageous reader did so, and lived to tell ... so far.
Click and puke [ FULL STORY ]