Remembering a Jailed Opposition Leader

Recounting moment still brings tears.

But this won't be achieved by invoking past glory.

Second honeymoons rarely, if ever, recapture the zest of lost love.

The thought of pushing the stranger off the footbridge elicits these responses.

It will not do much for good for developing countries to raise the specter of protectionism each time such concerns are voiced.

LONDON Kosovo s recent unilateral declaration of independence brought back memories.

But, even without invoking the ghosts of Munich, there are occasions when military force is the only way to deal with a tyrant.

In 2006, the capture of Somalia s capital, Mogadishu, by the Islamic Courts raised the specter of a jihadist state.

Bush s invocation of democracy to justify the invasion of Iraq implied that democracy could be imposed at the barrel of a gun.

Trichet went on to appeal for inspiration from other disciplines physics, engineering, psychology, and biology to help explain the phenomena he had experienced.

Silvio Berlusconi's ally in government, the Lega Nord (Northern League), is continuously conjuring up schemes to embarrass the national government with threats to the concept of national unity.

At the convention, he seemingly hoped to summon the old Obama, to charm and soar, but that man was simply no longer available.

Unfortunately, Israeli leaders are unable to summon the statesmanship required to manage the strategic readjustment occurring in the region.

The post World War II invocation of national security as the legitimizing rationale for an economically active state extended America s leadership.

Pakistan is worth invoking when assessing whether the sanctions now imposed on Iran will force it to surrender its nuclear program.

In many statements, Palin seems intent on invoking God in her judgments about war, an ominous sign for the future if she is elected.

The result is widespread invocation by governments of religious norms, and to a lesser extent references to tradition, in order to legitimize the continuation of patriarchal rule.

T hus far, this fund has provided only limited resources for mostly earmarked activities, which include covering the cost of bringing representatives from developing countries and other countries requiring assistance to official meetings.

I brought up my past because I think that fact checking is the single best training not just for journalism, but for life in general. It teaches you to think skeptically.

But what a liberating thing to realize that our problems, in fact, are probably our richest sources for rising to this ultimate virtue of compassion, towards bringing compassion towards the suffering and joys of others.

But if Europe fails to respond, Obama will look elsewhere for the partners he needs, unconstrained by anxious European invocations of special relationships or the Atlantic community of values.

But instead of trying to find a way to cushion the possible impact of such a shock, the ECB is rejecting out of hand any sort of restructuring. Indeed, it is raising the specter of a chain reaction by invoking the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, and threatening to punish any restructuring by cutting banks access to liquidity.

When weapons of mass destruction were not found, the US and its small (and dwindling) coalition of the willing conjured up a new rationale the struggle for democracy.

Bombings in London and Turkey have brought to the fore the old ideas that authoritarian regimes are better equipped than democracies to combat terrorism, and that such attacks are the price we pay for liberty.

The children of Chernobyl are all grown up their interests, and those of their own children, are best served not by continually evoking the nightmare of radiation, but by giving them the tools and authority they need to rebuild their own communities.

The response to 9 11 and to Dominique Strauss Kahn s recent encounter with an African chambermaid in a New York hotel have very little in common, except for one thing once again, cultural conflict was invoked in a misleading way.

The invocation of the chimera of Greek mythology a monstrous, fire breathing amalgam of lion, goat, and dragon makes the term all the more appropriate, given that Chimerica has generated massive and terrifying distortions in the global economy that cannot be corrected without serious consequences.

And I realized so clearly in bringing my own life experience, from working with dying people and training caregivers, that any attachment to outcome would distort deeply my own capacity to be fully present to the whole catastrophe.

HONG KONG A recent trip to Berlin brought back memories of an earlier visit in the summer of 1967, when I was a poor student who marveled at the Wall that would divide and devastate an entire society for another two decades.

India has been doing it, with great success, for a decade, timed to recall the return to India of the most famous Indian expatriate of them all, Mahatma Gandhi, who alighted from his South African ship in Bombay on January 9, 1915.

Our era is probably much more religious than the eighteenth century ever was. To invoke Voltaire is one thing, I thought at the time, but to act responsibly may presuppose refraining from insulting what is most sacred to others, whether it be Christ, Muhammad, or the Shoah.