Word: argumentative
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...Benedict's summation that turned the tide. A tweedy, silver-haired George Plimpton type who shuns the limelight, Benedict was soft-spoken for most of the trial. (At one point a member of the jury even had to ask him to speak up.) But his closing argument was a tour de force. Orchestrating a barrage of tapes, photographs and flashing transcripts, Benedict wove dozens of disparate facts into a simple scenario as chilling as any thriller: Skakel, jealous because Moxley flirted with Tommy, beat her to death in a drunken rage, masturbated over her body, then crept back...
...Arafat's compound was a bit like being angry at your spouse and therefore kicking the dog. Beyond that, the Israelis insist that Arafat is responsible for all Palestinian terrorism, not just the attacks carried out by the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is part of his Fatah organization. Their argument is that Arafat does not seriously go after terrorism's practitioners and that his rhetoric has tended to condone their actions. Since the Israelis released Arafat from de facto house arrest in the Muqata'a on May 2, his Palestinian Authority has consistently condemned attacks on Israeli civilians...
...Marcia Reynders Ristaino's aptly named book, Port of Last Resort (Stanford University Press; 380 pages) traces the story of two of the communities?the White Russians and Jews?that gave the city its reputation. The decadence of old Shanghai has attracted many writers, but Ristaino's argument is that most have concentrated on the Western ?lites, or the Chinese communities they ruled, overlooking the rich contribution made by the waves of refugees who pitched up on its hostile shores. No visa or passport was required to enter Shanghai and that fact above all others gave the city its character...
...many observers that argument is harder to believe because of the Mahathir-Mokhtar connection, which looks very much like the so-called "crony capitalism" that stained Malaysia's economic credentials in the first place. In the 1990s, Mahathir's administration showered huge government contracts and favorable loans on a select few businessmen. The policy, which was designed to create a group of model entrepreneurs among the country's majority ethnic Malays, was criticized at home and abroad as opaque, unfair, hugely wasteful and largely ineffective. The 1997 crisis hit Mahathir's handpicked favorites particularly hard; their inefficiently run and deeply...
...manages to win an absolute majority, it won't need him any longer. The Prime Minister has largely accepted this gradual decline. His great ambition on gaining office was to do for India-Pakistan relations what Nixon did for China and the U.S.: only a right-winger, went the argument, could take the country into a peace deal with the archenemy. And this Vajpayee wanted to do, to secure a place in the history books. Friends say this ambition is now dead. Much of the Prime Minister's energy is now devoted to the business of weight rather than weighty...