Word: whether
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...every artist has the stomach for strident dissent and, having been banned in the past, Mo Yan has nothing to prove. But these days, says Abrahamsen, Mo Yan "knows exactly where the lines are and doesn't cross them." Discussion about the drawbacks of the one-child policy, and whether it should be rolled back, is now permissible in China, for example. "I think the reason the book got published now is because it's not controversial anymore," says Abrahamsen. (See photos of the making of modern China...
...more immediate question is whether Benedict can resist pressure to directly address the abuse scandals. Gibson, his biographer, says that's just not in the Pope's character: "He's not the type who opens up for self-reflection, hashing out the past and past mistakes." At best, he says, there will be an oblique reference to the Europe-wide uproar in the pastoral letter to the Irish. (See people finding God on YouTube...
...those private moments, might be a little bewildered - and defensive - about the way their handling of the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial has turned out. Obama rejected military tribunals during his presidential campaign and suspended them soon after he took office. By July, Obama had asked Holder to decide whether it was feasible to prosecute KSM in a civilian court. Holder chewed on that question for weeks. Meanwhile, Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who opposed civilian trials, asked Holder to meet with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a key centrist vote on matters of counterterrorism. Graham told...
...Confident ProsecutorThose talks are now under way, and it's anyone's guess whether they were Emanuel's idea or something the President quietly asked his chief of staff to launch. Holder and his supporters continue to argue that military tribunals are slow and unreliable and send a repressive signal about American values overseas. They also doubt that Graham can deliver the votes needed to close Gitmo even if the talks are successful. Still, it is increasingly clear that everyone would like to find a way out of the stalemate. One compromise might involve trying KSM and other 9/11 conspirators...
...Israeli author and Jerusalem expert Schmuel Berkowitz suspects that it may already be too late. There are currently about 200,000 Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem, but the government doesn't regard them as settlers, as Netanyahu emphasized in Washington this week. It is doubtful whether any Israeli government could muster either the electoral mandate, or the manpower, to remove them, because there's a broad consensus among Israelis that at least the Old City should remain in their hands. And there are Israelis now so deeply settled in the middle of Arab neighborhoods, sometimes sharing the same building, that...