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...people who make similarly "crazy" choi-ces are by and large dismissed as extremists, anachronisms or lunatics irrelevant to China's political development, or as quaint idealists tragically out of step with the progress of their nation. Ian Buruma's Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing (Random House; 367 pages) deftly refutes this increasingly widespread belief, by subjecting the group he refers to as "China's awkward squad" to the same probing scrutiny he has applied so effectively to other Asian topics. Buruma makes a strong case that dissidents are indeed relevant, both for the ways they...
...spite of this sophisticated structure, Clowes keeps the focus on characterization. The various inhabitants include Random Wilder, the eccentric would-be poet laureate; Violet Van der Platz, the insecure, love-lorn teenage girl; Charles, the hyper-articulate and aware sixth-grader; and Mr. Ames, the mono-maniacal private investigator. Each has their own story to tell, along with half a dozen other characters, including "Rocky" the town's inhabitant in 100,000 B.C. "There goes Ogg," he thinks, "'Mr. Sunshine' - what's his secret? I'll kill him." Between them all Clowes builds another of his hilariously slightly off-center...
...washed dishes at Windows on the World will get close to half a million dollars in aid, while the family of a guy who washed dishes at the local diner before being stabbed to death in a mugging gets absolutely nothing. Why? Each death is absolutely random, and each family will weep in the same...
...attacks and China expressing undying support for Islamabad. But a bold op-ed in the same paper demands that Pakistan extricate itself from all direct involvement in Kashmir and take a strong stand against terrorism there. "A war of national liberation is essentially based on a premise of morality. Random killings of innocents in Kashmir - by our so-called liberation fighters - sullies the moral basis of the Kashmiri struggle," the author suggests. He adds that Pakistani zealots involved in Kashmir are fueling extremism there, much the way as the al-Qaeda elements did to the Taliban...
...weeks is critical, not just to the future of President Megawati Sukarnoputri and the country's 210 million people but to Indonesia's neighbors. The ramifications might be felt thousands of miles away in London and New York City. For the villagers' agony was not the result of a random explosion of religious resentment and hatred but part of a carefully calculated campaign conducted by trained, disciplined troops?the fighters of Laskar Jihad, Indonesia's most feared militant Islamic group...