Council on Foreign Relations

Age (Australia)

• Zimbabwe Fears: In an editorial, the paper says that everything that is known about Robert Mugabe indicates that he would not shrink from instigating genocide, and that it is increasingly likely that the campaign will indeed escalate into mass slaughter.

Arab News (Saudi Arabia)

• Inept: In an editorial on the Philippines ferry disaster, the paper says these largely unnecessary deaths at sea tend to incriminate authorities who are too inept or corrupt to take proper care of their people.

Australian

• Too Timid: The Australian criticizes the West’s stance on Zimbabwe, in an editorial. For too long, Western leaders were afraid of criticizing Mugabe for fear of being branded colonialists, the paper says, adding that the time for such timidity has passed.

Christian Science Monitor

• Biofuels mania: In an editorial, the paper expresses concern at the political power of the corn-ethanol lobby in the United States. Before farmers plow up every fence row, wetland, and prairie to join the gold rush to corn, government needs to reverse this biofuels mania, it says.

Daily Star (Lebanon)

• Deadly Clashes: In an editorial, the paper says the deadly clashes that continue to plague Tripoli are underlining the very real and very pressing need for Lebanon's squabbling political parties to put the country's interests above their own.

Daily Telegraph

• Difficult Summer: In an editorial, the Telegraph warns of a difficult summer ahead for Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, as he tries to keep wage demands below inflation. The unions, it says, are not going to submit meekly to the Chancellor's blandishments.

Financial Times

• Hard Measures: Columnist Gideon Rachman calls on Britain, the United States, and the European Union to cut off Zimbabwe’s access to hard currency and international banks. But, he adds, the biggest source of pressure has to come from Robert Mugabe’s southern African neighbours.
• African Action: In an editorial, the paper says African leaders should suspend Zimbabwe from the African Union and endorse Morgan Tsvangirai’s call for properly observed and supervised elections.
• Bad Brown: Columnist Philip Stephens examines Gordon Brown’s first year in office as British prime minister. He concludes that of his two political personalities.

Guardian

• Green Gordon: Irwin Stelzer of the Hudson Institute writes of Gordon Brown’s environmental policies that he understands that efforts to clean the environment must be balanced against the need to maintain a decent rate of economic growth.
• Propaganda Coup: Knox Chitiyo of the Royal United Services Institute says Morgan Tsvangirai’s decision to withdraw from the election run-off in Zimbabwe, while not entirely unexpected, is a propaganda coup for Zanu-PF, which can now portray him as weak and vacillating.
• Hand Wringing: In an editorial on Zimbabwe, the paper says if the hand-wringing African Union and awfully worried SADC cannot ensure that an election is held freely on their patch, the very least they should do is to refuse to recognise its results, and deny Mr Mugabe the legitimacy he seeks.

Independent (UK)

• Suffer And Fight: Richard Dowden of the Royal African Society writes that if Morgan Tsvangirai wants power and the people of Zimbabwe want rid of tyranny and an end to impoverishment, they will have to suffer and fight for it. Taking refuge in the Dutch embassy, he says, is not the mark of great leadership.

International Herald Tribune

• Cool It: John Bellinger, an adviser to Condoleezza Rice, calls for cool heads on the subject of a new treaty for the Arctic region and says the United States should, instead, sign on to the Law of the Sea Convention, to which Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia are already parties.

New York Times

• Postpone Vote: In an editorial, the paper says the United States, Zimbabwe’s African neighbors, and the rest of the international community must immediately press for a postponement of Friday’s presidential ballot.
• Invisible Wounds: Op-ed Columnist Bob Herbert is concerned about the psychological toll being taken on American servicemen and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Bush Paradox: Op-ed Columnist David Brooks considers the paradoxical nature of George Bush, but says, on the surge in Iraq, he got it right, against the advice of other experts. Some people might even concede that if the United States had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today, he says.

New Zealand Herald

• Tepid Diplomacy: The paper is critical of South African President Thabo Mbeki’s stance towards Zimbabwe, in an editorial. He clings to the notion that tepid diplomacy will fashion some sort of compromise, perhaps a unity government, it says.

Philippine Star

• Business As Usual: In an editorial on the latest ferry disaster in the Philippines, the paper says there are indications that the disaster will again be written off as an accident that could not have been prevented. Meaning, it says, no one will pay for all the lives lost, and the maritime industry can go on with business as usual.

Sydney Morning Herald

• No Hero: In an editorial, the paper says Africa's black majority governments must call Robert Mugabe on his contemporary record; gross human rights abuses and appalling economic mismanagement and corruption do not make an African hero, it says.

Times of India

• No Quick Fixes: In an editorial on oil price inflation, the paper welcomes the fact that firms have become more energy and cost-efficient. Now, it says, people must follow suit. The fact is that there are no quick fixes to reverse the rising cost of living caused by high oil prices.

Times of London

• Going In: Columnist David Aaronovitch writes that intervention in Zimbabwe is the only solution. The idea that Robert Mugabe will cave to diplomatic pressure or sanctions is absurd, he says.
• Gleaming China: Jonathan Fenby, author of a new history of China, writes that the past needs to be understood to grasp the deeper currents beneath the gleaming modern China.

Wall Street Journal

• Nightmare: In an editorial on Zimbabwe the paper says outside intervention, preferably by the Africans themselves, now appears the one remaining way to end the political nightmare in Zimbabwe.
• Creative Thinking: James Glassman, under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, writes that we need to think creatively about how to keep young Muslims away from extremism.
• Asia Loves America: In an editorial in the paper’s Asia edition, the Journal notes a recent poll which it says shows that Asians embrace America. China, it says, has a long way to go before it unseats America's preeminence in the region.
• Fixing Cyprus: Hugh Pope of the International Crisis Group writes that this year, the best chance in decades to end the conflict in Cyprus has quietly crept up on local and international policymakers, and the European Union now has one last opportunity to undo past mistakes.

Washington Post

• Risky Move: Op-ed Columnist Eugene Robinson writes about the reemergence of race as an issue in the U.S. election campaign, and says that Obama now dragging the  issue into the sunlight is  a move that has to be considered both risky and inevitable.
• Inflation Alert: Op-ed Columnist Robert Samuelson is concerned about resurgent inflation, which he says may be the real economic menace today.
• No Hope: In an editorial on Zimbabwe, the Post says there is no hope of political peace or economic recovery there until Mr. Mugabe leaves office. That, it concludes, must remain the starting point of U.S. policy.

Washington Times

• Criminal Exposure: Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy writes that many financial institutions are now promoting themselves as “Shariah-compliant,” apparently unaware, he says, of the civil and criminal exposure to which they are subjecting themselves.

Zimbabwe Herald

• Zimbabwean Altruism: Reason Wafawarova writes in the government-run newspaper that Morgan Tsvangirai’s announcement of his intended withdrawal from the run-off set for Friday is dressed in altruism and an omnifarious assortment of pretences designed at creating the impression of popularity and humanitarianism as part of Tsvangirai’s political personality.