The New Republic

To anticipate Argentina versus Germany or Brazil versus Holland is to again hear World Cup history whisper ever more urgently as the tournament approaches its conclusion. The coaches and players will insist that such talk is nonsense; a distraction. The game must be won on the pitch in South Africa. Eleven against eleven. The future scripts are yet to be written. What's past is irrelevant. So said the English, to a man, on the eve of being knocked out by Germany yet again. READ MORE >>

Films Worth Seeing Before Tomorrow. Imperfect film-making but a warm and interesting experience. Life among the Intuits in their Arctic homeland as it was before the white man came. Ice and snow and harpooning and primary eating never seemed so congenial. (12/30/09) READ MORE >>

Officially, the only news coming out of Dubai on Sunday was that the central bank of the United Arab Emirates, the seven-state federation of which Dubai is a part, will extend ample credit to banks in Dubai. That should avert a series of runs now that it's pretty clear Dubai's banks have piles of bad loans sitting on their balance sheets.    READ MORE >>

  The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 By Saul Friedlander (HarperCollins, 870 pp., $39.95) READ MORE >>

Ordinarily, a witness who changes her story in a way that makes herself an object of ridicule or disgrace is viewed as more credible rather than more suspicious: the law of evidence calls this a statement against interest. But, in May, on the basis of just such a statement, Julie Hiatt Steele will become the first and perhaps the only person to be tried for crimes arising out of Kenneth Starr's investigation of President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. READ MORE >>

I am acting out a fantasy and so is Eastern Europe. A psychiatrist once told me how dangerous it is to act out fantasies and I am beginning to see what he meant. --George Soros READ MORE >>