What the World is Reading

This week8217;s international magazines have launched themselves in different directions.

This week8217;s international magazines have launched themselves in different directions. Time has a special issue on the topic of the moment8212;the environment. Newsweek reports on the death trap that is Pakistan. Economist8217;s lead story analyses the waning powers of USA8217;s Federal Bank and Vanity Fair looks at the cost of American involvement in Iraq.

A Death in the Family sees Mark Daily Vanity Fair go to war in Iraq, die in a moment8217;s action, and leave behind a moral dilemma for Christopher Hitchens: how do you react when your articles in support of the Iraq war, convince someone to fight-and die? Hitchens writes a story of suppressed self-criticism; but this largely, is a war poem to a soldier. Using Shakespeare, George Orwell and W.B.Yeats to raise Daily8217;s tragic death to iconic status, Hitchens wonders who8217;s to blame for his death. 8220;Was Mark Daily killed by the Ba8217;thist and bin Ladenist riffraff? Or by the Rumsfeld doctrine..? Or by the Bush administration? Or by the previous Bush administration?8221;

In The People vs. the Profiteers, David Rose meets Alan Grayson. He wages a lonely legal campaign to redress colossal frauds against American taxpayers by private contractors operating in Iraq. 8220;One of the basic reasons, maybe even the basic reason, why the war has gone badly is war profiteering,8221; says Grayson in the piece. Rose encounters Americans working in Iraq for the infamous Halliburton Vice-President Dick Cheney has links to it subsidiary KBR., who initiate suits against the giant military contractor. However, they didn8217;t bargain for the American Department of Justice: 8220;In four years, the total False Claims Act damages from Iraq amount to just 14 million, the result of four cases that were settled out of court. Nine other cases have been unsealed, but the D.O.J. decided not to intervene in any of them8230;8221;

Time8217;s cover story is a salute to individuals, each of whom has waged ecological warfare to save the world. Over 40 people and companies are profiled from the politics M. Gorbachev, A.Gore, Germany8217;s Angela Merkel, President of Palau, the arts David Attenborough, Robert Redford and even royalty who else but Prince Charles?. From the subcontinent there8217;s D.B.Dabhol who measures glacial mass with a bamboo stake, Abul Hassan whose iron, sand and charcoal filter cleanses poisoned water and Tusli Tanti, who harnesses windpower for industrial use.

Where Jihad Lives Now is Pakistan, says Newsweek. Alongwith its nuclear capabilities, this makes India8217;s neighbour the most dangerous country in the world. Citing the bloody welcome Benazir Bhutto received on her return, Jon Moreau writes 8220;Pakistan8217;s leaders have created an Islamist monster8221; that could swallow it whole. Tracing Pakistan-militant history, Moreau says, 8220;Militancy is woven into the fabric of Pakistani society. The country8217;s whisky-swilling founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah used Islam to forge a sense of national identity. Since then various military dictators have found jihad to be a convenient means of distracting their citizens and furthering their foreign-policy aims.8221; Moreau visits Peshawar where militants prosper openly and freely. He concludes: 8220;Few Pakistanis have any desire to live under the militants8217; rule.8221;

Economist is sanguine about Benazir Bhutto8217;s chances 8212;or President Musharraf8217;s8212;to win people8217;s backing. Both are enormously unpopular and have to manufacture consent. In Exterminate! Exterminate!, the magazine however, is more optimistic about a new vaccine developed by breeding Anophelese mosquitoes and infecting them with malaria which was successfully tested on infants in Mozambique. A new drug, Artemesinin, is also scoring victories. So malaria may finally have lost its bite.