NEWSWEEK: Cover: Becoming McCain

The February 11, 2008 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, February 4), "Becoming McCain" provides an in-depth look at Sen. John McCain's military and political careers, as well as his campaign's dramatic turnaround. Plus: an exclusive report on how Taliban inmates are buying their freedom from Afghanistan's jails. A look at how emotions play a big part in how voters select candidates; the backlash against happiness; and Elizabeth Hasselbeck on her baby blog, Rosie and being mean.
John McCain's campaign has moved past an apparent meltdown early on, and has gone on to win the New Hampshire, South Carolina and the Florida primaries, and most recently, got the endorsement from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. In an interview for Newsweek's February 11 cover, "Becoming McCain" (on newsstands Monday, February 4), McCain, the Republican frontrunner going into Super Tuesday, tells Editor-At- Large Evan Thomas and White House Correspondent Holly Bailey, that "There are always difficulties in campaigns, and the successful campaigns are the ones that fix the problems ... I would hope that one of the lessons from this campaign is that you stick to what you believe in, you tell people the truth, you outcampaign your opponents, and even when you go through some very difficult times, you are steadfast."

When asked what he plans on doing about conservatives who are against him he said, "I've just got to continue to send the message that I believe in a big-tent party, and that the major concern that conservatives have is the threat of radical Islamic extremism, and that I'm best-qualified to keep the nation safe. We all need to join together and unite as we meet the challenge of November."
McCain, who's been dubbed "Senator Hothead," also admits to having a temper. "I'm a man of many failings," he says. "I make no bones about it. That's why I'm such a believer in redemption. I've done many, many things wrong in my life. The key is to try to improve." Still, the Arizona senator says that his temper is part of who he is and that he has had "strong disagreement with appropriators from time to time." But he rattled off a list of senior Republicans who respect him, including Sen. John Warner of Virginia and former senator Trent Lott of Mississippi. "You don't get the support of these people if they don't respect you," he says. "That's really what the Senate is about, not friendship. Was I angry when I saw the abuse that [Jack] Abramoff committed and his friends and members in Congress? Of course I was."
Although McCain has reportedly learned to control his temper, there are moments when he cannot or does not. Thomas recounts the story from last spring when at a closed-door meeting of senators and staff, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas tried to amend the immigration bill to make ineligible convicted felons, known terrorists and gang members. Agitated that any attempt to amend the bill would jeopardize its slim chance of passage, McCain snapped, "This is chickens---." Cornyn shot back that McCain shouldn't come parachuting in off the presidential-campaign trail at the last minute and start making demands. "F--- you," said McCain, in front of about 30 witnesses.
As part of the cover package Thomas provides an in-depth look at McCain's military career, which includes a 5-year-long detention as a prisoner of war, and how his background, family, struggles and accomplishments have influenced who he is today. McCain, who comes from a long military tradition, shares his thoughts on one of the leading issues for most voters, the War in Iraq. He says that despite once being a strong supporter of the military surge, he and other veterans like him "hate war." He adds, "we were proud to serve, but I don't think that any of us who encountered war think that it's anything but the worst thing, or the next to worst thing."

NEWSWEEK: International Editions: Highlights and Exclusives Nov. 26, 2007 Issue

COVER: Books Aren't Dead. (They're Just Going Digital.) (All overseas editions). Senior Editor and Columnist Steven Levy explores how technology is poised to change the way people read, write and publish works. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos believes he can improve upon one of humankind's most incredible device. This week Bezos will be releasing the Amazon Kindle, a handheld e-book device that can store hundreds of books in its memory. He hopes the device will leapfrog over previous attempts at e-readers and become the turning point in a transformation toward Book 2.0. While literary critics are bemoaning a possible demise of print culture, book lovers on the Internet are waiting for a chance to refurbish the dusty halls of literacy. "If you're going to do something like this, you have to be as good as the book in a lot of respects," says Bezos. "But we also have to look for things that ordinary books can't do." Levy also reports on other initiatives underway to digitize libraries. Also part of the cover package, as the first journalist to get his hands on the device, Levy reviews the Amazon Kindle, available Monday, November 19 at www.Newsweek.com.
Baghdad Comes Alive. Chief Foreign Correspondent Rod Nordland writes that for the first time in years, Baghdad is showing signs of life. "For someone who has returned periodically to Baghdad during these past four and a half years of war, there has been one constant: it only gets worse. The faces change, the units rotate, the victims vary, but it has always gotten worse ... For the first time, however, returning to Baghdad after an absence of four months, I can actually say that things do seem to have gotten better, and in ways that may even be durable," he writes. But the calm is all too fragile, and it's an opportunity that the government cannot afford to miss.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/70990

Condi's Southern Strategy. Senior Editor Michael Hirsh writes that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice worries that the corrosive power of hopelessness has taken a hold in the Middle East. Palestinians and Israelis both know by now, she says, "that even ordinary people can be driven to violence if there's no hope." Rice draws a connection between the plight of the Palestinians and her history as a black woman in white America, a clear sign of how personally she's taking the mission to create a Palestinian state- a task that has obsessed and defeated many a secretary of State before her. "There is an image of the United States' frenetically trying to get the two sides to an agreement. It hadn't worked. So with all due respect I'll try it my way," she says.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/70992

The Italian Love Affair. Guest columnist Mauro Suttora, a senior editor at Oggi, Italy's largest weekly magazine, writes that Italians have adored America for 60 years. "Ever grateful for liberation from the Nazis-and for introducing them to rock and roll, disco, 'Sex and the City' and the iPod. Rome was once the world's capital, but Italians are happy to acknowledge that the power has shifted to America."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/70959

'A Freeway to Europe.' Special Correspondent Benjamin Sutherland reports on Croatia's progress since the wars that tore it apart more than a decade ago. Now this nation of 4.4 million people is on track to become the newest member of NATO and the European Union. Croatia's new A1 highway- built in six years, at a cost of ¤3 billion- winds 416 km from near the capital, Zagreb, south, and has been hailed as a "national pride," a "masterpiece" and the "freeway to Europe." The A1, however, is more than just a pretty highway. It is a symbol of everything that has gone right in the Balkan country.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/70952

China's Secret Growth Engine. Contributing Editor Stephen Glain reports on Zhejiang province and why the once neglected region has always been ahead of the rest of Chinese business. Economists now hail the Zhejiang province for its bottom-up model of development and fearless regard for the global economy. It's also being watched as a bellwether for the Chinese economy.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/70954

Dangerous Liaisons. Investigative Correspondents Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff report on the speculation that former FBI and CIA employee Nada Nadim Prouty, who pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States in a federal courtroom, is a "Hizbollah mole" with terrorist ties.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/71107

PROJECT GREEN: Feeling the Cool Breeze. Hong Kong Bureau Chief George Wehrfritz reports that building Asian cities on environmental principles is the fastest and cheapest way to reduce its demand for energy-and cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/70956

'It's All About Energy, Stupid!'. San Francisco Bureau Chief Karen Breslau reports that the presidential candidates, it seems, have figured out what venture capitalists and entrepreneurs have known for years: green is Topic A.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/69535

Toyota's Green Problem. Midwest Bureau Chief Keith Naughton reports that the environmental community has turned on Toyota, riding high not long ago as the auto world's green leader, for siding with Detroit in opposition to tougher new gas-mileage laws.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/69534

GLOBAL INVESTOR: Fly East for the Winter. Guest columnist Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, writes that Central and Eastern Europe is in the middle of a growth miracle that parallels East Asia in the 1970s and '80s. "For a long period of time in East Asia, the continent's small-to midsize economies fed off each other's success, growing quickly ... The CE4 countries of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia have averaged growth rates of 5 percent, the Balkan nations of Romania and Bulgaria have grown at nearly 7 percent, and the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have expanded at 10 percent," he writes.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/70962

WORLD VIEW: America the Unwelcoming. Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria writes that despite the Bush administration and Congress's measures to improve air travel, data and anecdotal evidence suggest travelers looking to come to the United States still encounter problems. "The United States is the only major country in the world to which travel has declined in the midst of a global tourism boom," Zakaria writes. "And this is not about Arabs or Muslims. The number of Japanese visiting the United States declined from 5 million in 2000 to 3.6 million last year. The numbers have begun to increase, but by 2010 they're still projected to be 19 percent below 2000 levels. During this same span (2000-2010), global tourism is expected to expand 44 percent."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/70991

LAST WORD: Imran Khan Pakistani Opposition Politician. Shortly before his arrest, Imran Khan, the Pakistani cricket legend and opposition politician who spent 11 days in hiding after President Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule, told Newsweek that he is frustrated by the Bush administration's continued support for Musharraf. "George Bush is creating anti-Americanism in Pakistan ... Militancy and radicalization in Pakistan are increasing at such a phenomenal rate now that we actually think that our future is at stake. All thanks to Musharraf. And for this one man, Bush is going to sacrifice 160 million Pakistanis as if they were sheep? He is worse than the Shah of Iran," he says.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/70374

NEWSWEEK: COVER: 1968: The Year That Made Us Who We Are

"There was at the end of 1968 an event that remains an inspirational symbol for the challenges ahead. For the Sixties were also the glory years of the American space program, and of astronauts such as Captain Jim Lovell," writes former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, in his forthcoming book, "BOOM! Voices of the Sixties," which is excerpted in the current issue of Newsweek. "The big goal was leaving Earth's atmosphere and landing on the moon, to keep the pledge President Kennedy had made at Rice University on September 12, 1962."

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20071111/NYSU004 )

Brokaw writes that the three astronauts of Apollo 8 trained all year for the mission, which would have the spacecraft orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve, 1968. "When I met Lovell at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago-where he helped organize an elaborate exhibit commemorating the flight-I asked if the astronauts had been aware of all that was going on outside of NASA that year- the riots, the assassinations, the antiwar protests. 'We were all senior military people,' he said, 'and we were so intent on our project we put all of that aside. We did talk about the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and we worried the cost of the war would eat into the space program.'"

"Lovell says that even though he wasn't paying too much attention, he thought the culture was disintegrating. 'My background,' he says, 'was more patriotic. Listening to your elders, taking direction, trying to be a leader. The hippie movement sort of soured me'," Brokaw writes.

The excerpt is part of the November 19 cover package, "1968: The Year That Made Us Who We Are" (on newsstands Monday, November 12). Senior Writer and Political Correspondent Jonathan Darman reports that while the 1968 election is four decades old, we're still rehashing that moment-that era-in the 2008 contest. Barack Obama was born in the 1960s, but is not of them. Such is the constant promise-I am not the '60s-of his presidential campaign-heartfelt, but ultimately hard to believe. Just look at the gray-haired '60s idealists inside the senator's own brain trust who see him as the fulfillment of 40 years' worth of hard work. John McCain is also the '60s. McCain knows what Obama should have learned by now: the '60s are impossible to escape. They will define the 2008 presidential election, just as they have defined American politics, and American culture, for the past 40 years, he writes.

Also in the cover package, Newsweek looks back at one of the defining years of the 1960s-1968-a turbulent period in American history:

  *  Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas writes that in a year of tumult, one five
    day span in early spring 1968 was disorder distilled. Lyndon Johnson's
    presidency was collapsing. Robert Kennedy had openly announced his
    intention to reclaim the throne in the memory of his brother. The year
    culminated in the assassination of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
 *  Contributing Editor Ellis Cose's essay recounts the personal impetus
    " ... that shook my world, upended my life and turned me into a
    writer," from the July 1966 Chicago Riots to the April 1968
    assassination of Dr. King.
 *  Senior Editor Jerry Adler writes that 1968 wasn't the only year that
    changed everything in America. Other years, like 1908-this was
    America's year of destiny-were equally significant and are jostling for
    starring roles in history.
 *  Science Columnist Sharon Begley writes that in the spring of 1968 the
    Beatles traveled to the Maharishi's ashram in northern India to mediate
    and brought Eastern worship back to the West, most markedly the
    practice of meditation. Now, some four decades later, meditation is
    widely accepted within the scientific community as a beneficial
    practice.
 *  Senior Editor Barbara Kantrowitz explores feminism and sexual politics
    of 1968 when women dumped symbols of female oppression-girdles, steno
    pads, and stilettos-into a "freedom trash can." Bras went in, too, but
    none were burned, in the midst of the infamous and symbolic protest
    staged outside the Miss America pageant. Kantrowitz examines where the
    fight stands now, talks with the lead protester and Miss America 1968.
 *  Senior Editor David Gates writes that although the times they were a
    changin', in the arts, only music kept pace. Despite all the
    potentially rich tension and upheaval, 1968 didn't produce much
    fiction, film or art worth remembering.

The package also includes a photo essay by photographer Nigel Parry featuring people who spoke out-and stood out-in the monumental events of 1968.

  (Read complete cover story at www.Newsweek.com.)

 http://www.newsweek.com/id/69637 - 1968: The Year That Everything Changed
 http://www.newsweek.com/id/69585 - Tom Brokaw Book Excerpt

Mukesh Ambani on cover of Newsweek

Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Industries, says he will trigger a second green revolution in the country -- with synergies between farming and energy -- by involving his group in agriculture in a big way.

In an interview with Newsweek magazine, he says his company's involvement with the farm sector "has the potential to change the world" and adds that he views India's billion-plus population not as a problem but as billion-plus customers.

Here are some excerpts from the interview that was printed in the Newsweek edition that hit the stands on Monday:

Q: You say India's competitive advantages are globalisation, democracy, the ability to adapt to technology, and demography. Starting with democracy, doesn't it slow growth?

A: Sure, but increased aspirations are also driving growth. Politicians used to tell me: 'We sell dreams to people that we knew we'd never be able to fulfil'. Today, the mindset of these politicians has changed. They genuinely believe we have an opportunity to substantially alleviate poverty by 2030.

Q: How does technology fit in?

A: We are using new technologies in meaningful ways. To build our new refinery in 60 per cent of the time it took to build our first, we are training 20,000 people in a new generation of welding technology in six months. This is where demographics come in. We have 650 million people who are below their early 30s, while the US and Europe face a shortage of skilled workers.

A billion people used to mean lots of problems. Today I see a billion people as a billion potential consumers, an opportunity to generate value for them and to make a return for myself.

Q: How do you motivate poor farmers to join your new farm-to-retail network?

A: We will work with farmers to get them to increase their productivity and produce the right products of the right quality. This also requires a major investment in technology because there are minimum import standards [overseas]. We are also creating something that is totally missing in India: an efficient distribution system, linked to supermarkets across the world. This will generate up to one million new jobs and make us the largest private-sector employer in India.

Q: What drives you?

A: In my father's language: "To create something out of nothing." That possibility exists in India even in old-world sectors like agriculture.

Q: Is this an agrarian revolution?

A: Absolutely. Reliance is involving itself in agriculture in a big way. This will help to create a second green revolution at a time when energy and agro are converging. Oil is now at $70 a barrel, [but it's] a finite asset. We need a fallback position. We are looking for more gas and oil but we are also trying to grow our own energy. We think this has the potential to change the world.

Q: How disruptive and dispiriting was the feud with your brother?

A: Fundamentally we had different approaches. My view is to give everyone the space to grow in his own way. When you see restructuring or separations in a family [firm], value has almost always been destroyed. This is the first case where value has been enhanced. In that way it has been a win-win ending.