The national media watch group
The Washington Post's Howard Schneider asks, "In Europe's grand battle over growth vs. austerity, has Ireland proved that austerity works?" If so, keeping unemployment more than 10 percentage points above pre-recession levels is an odd sort of "working."
With an unemployment rate at just over 26 percent and regular street protests against government austerity policies, it's hard to imagine anyone holding up Spain as a model. But Howard Schneider, writing in the Washington Post, does just that–warning France that it had better shape up and be more like Spain:
The Israeli government's near-total blockade of the Gaza Strip has been roundly criticized by international human rights groups as a harsh form of collective punishment. Some U.N. investigations have labeled it much worse–that Israel's actions amount to crimes against humanity. Back in medialand, the Washington Post's Howard Schneider has a story today (12/15/09) comparing life in Gaza with the West Bank. While the latter is still under Israeli occupation, its economy is (predictably enough) much stronger, and its standard of living relatively higher. This is a somewhat familiar theme in the press–noting that while Hamas' rule in Gaza is a [...]
The big news out of the Middle East yesterday was the Israeli government's decision to approve an expansion of the Gilo settlement near Jerusalem. The White House's muddled position on settlement expansion has been a key part of Israel-Palestine negotiations. Many headlines framed the news as you'd expect (New York Times: "Plan to Expand Jerusalem Settlement Angers U.S.", for example). The Washington Post, though, went with this headline today: "Housing Plan for Jerusalem Neighborhood Spurs Criticism." The article by Howard Schneider refers to a "disputed neighborhood of Jerusalem," the "Jewish neighborhood of Gilo," a place "annexed to the city in [...]
