Issue 21
July 1997
Contents
A light in the Congo
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Half of Africa is heading for hell, while in the rest life is improving surprisingly fast. Under Laurent Kabila, the new Democratic Republic of Congo could become the continent's dynamic heart
Tung Chee-hwa
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
On 1st July, Tung Chee-hwa, a little known businessman with a marine engineering degree from Liverpool University, becomes Hong Kong's first chief executive. Philip Bowring considers what made Beijing choose Tung to manage the transition to Chinese sovereignty
The idea of India
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
As India prepares for economic take-off, its post-independence elite is leaving the political stage. But it bequeathes a rich democratic heritage in which traditional and modern ideas compete to define Indian identity
The anti-China syndrome
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
For 50 years, the cold war provided the US with a moral purpose. Now American conservatives are looking for a new enemy. Owen Harries argues that they are wrong to pick on China. Although increasingly a competitor, China is not an enemy
Disunity is strength
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Geography, not biology ultimately accounts for the ascendancy of Europe in the modern world. Its fragmented terrain prevented political unity and provided the competition which gave it the lead over the Fertile Crescent, China and India
The myth of rescue
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Historians have argued that the allies did little or nothing to rescue Europe's Jews. In a new book, William Rubinstein challenges the view that indifference and anti-Semitism were responsible for their fate. The Jews who died in the Holocaust were prisoners who could not be rescued
The philosopher clown
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Jean Baudrillard, the high priest of post-modernism, meets Marina Benjamin at the Ritz, and tells her that news has destroyed reality and that history is running backwards
Wrestling blancmange
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Tony Blair has chosen to speak out on the moral crisis of the welfare state but he may have raised expectations that he cannot fulfil. Roderick Nye considers the trouble ahead
The next move
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Amid the uproar over Garry Kasparov's defeat by Deep Blue, we forgot one thing. It is not the machines which are brilliant, but the human beings who make them
EMU's irrevocable mess
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Recent events make more likely a "soft" Emu incorporating Spain and Italy. But this will make it more vulnerable to currency speculation during the transitional period 1999-2001
Gasping for Europe
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
If Europe cannot agree on the small issues of defence and foreign policy, how can it do so on the big ones, such as the use of military force? The answer is that it does not even want to
French disconnection
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
For the first time this century France and Britain will be governed from the left for the same five year stretch. Yet London power brokers are disdainful of Lionel Jospin. This is no time for Francophobia
Guilt by association
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
European integration is not a cover for German hegemonic ambitions. It is the only alternative to the destructive power politics of the past
Looking back at Godot
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and not John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, was the greatest mid-century influence on British theatre
Hands off Superman
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Walt Disney has turned "Beauty and the Beast" into a parable about socialising masculinity without lessening its appeal. But Celia Brayfield thinks Superman and Lois Lane are unlikely to live happily ever after
Chaps doing things
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Herb Greer goes to Oxford to hear Nigel Kennedy play Elgar and Beethoven with a student rchestra. As long as he plays like this, we can forgive him his mannered eccentricity
Russian bodies and souls
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Some of the greatest literature of the Soviet era is only now becoming available in fine English translations. Sally Laird finds similar themes reverberating in new Russian writing
Norman Davies is innocent
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
The historian Norman Davies is attacked for being "rightwing" and "anti-Semitic." His only crime is to contest the Allied Scheme of History
Babel
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Martin Bell's "journalism of attachment" is a muddled restatement of the old liberal BBC ethos
Modern manners
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Jeremy Clarke will no longer be making his way to the altar for the laying on of hands
The prisoner
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Peter Wayne meets Michael Howard's wife and proves to be a gentleman and spin doctor
Digest
20th July 1997 — Issue 21
Vivian Rothstein describes the painful-and doubt-ridden-battle to let her mother die from her self-inflicted wounds. The Boston Review is on 617 253 3642