SOUTH AFRICA

SOUTH AFRICA
This Day, Johannesburg, June 8: The route to greater prosperity, Ronald Reagan insisted, was to cut taxes, reduce government spending and free business from the burden of regulation.
The money companies saved on taxes would be ploughed into new investment, and the economy would grow so fast as a result that the federal budget -- helped by cuts in wasteful social programs -- would remain in balance.
All the while, though, cash was being poured into defense as the Cold War stuttered into its final phase.
Depsite his often-stated commitment to balanced budgets and small government, Reagan doubled the U.S. deficit from $74 billion to $155 billion during his eight years of rule.
If Reagan truly has a legacy, Bush Junior is its mascot.
Structural imbalances
The economic stimulus provided by tax cuts and massive spending is what created the Reagan boom, not rigorously applied supply side economics. The approach bequeathed structural imbalances that are still around, and George W. Bush is doing his best to deepen them as he looks for a boom of his own. ...
Bush is fighting the "axis of evil," where Reagan fought the "evil empire," and he shares not only the outlines of Reagan's policy approach, but his blithe confidence that everything will turn out for the best.
In the coming months we will see just how much power it has to move voters.
BRITAIN
The Daily Telegraph, London, June 5: It would be a mistake for U.S. President George Bush to assume George Tenet's resignation as director of the Central Intelligence Agency will in itself correct past intelligence lapses, or disperse the political acrimony which is currently undermining confidence in the Bush administration's ability to defeat the global terrorist threat.
It is important that the correct lessons be learnt from Mr. Tenet's departure. The lead-up to the war in Iraq exposed the danger of relying too heavily on surveillance systems at the expense of having human intelligence agents on the ground, as was the abiding principle during the Cold War.
General complacency
The reasons for this were partly operational, but also political, for a general complacency set in during the 1990s after the Cold War was won. The CIA will be criticized in coming weeks for its lack of preparedness pre-September 11, but Gen. Colin Powell and other senior members of the administration deserve condemnation, too, for publicly blaming the intelligence services for failures that go far beyond simple shortcomings in the CIA's performance. The buck stops, not with the spymasters, but with the politicians.
SOUTH KOREA
JoongAang Daily, Seoul, June 9: The outline of the government's plan to move the administrative capital out of Seoul is unveiled. Now the grand plan of moving 85 government offices together with 23,000 employees to the Chungcheong region from 2012 until 2014 has been launched.
An appeal to review the constitutionality of the plan was sent to the Constitutional Court. The government's one-sided promotion is the reason. And, while the government said only the administrative capital will be moved, the plan now includes important offices of the legislature and the judiciary.
Defense burden
The cost of the move was quoted as 4 to 5 trillion won ($3.4 to $4.3 billion) during the campaign, but has swollen to 45 trillion won and even over 100 trillion won. We will suffer from a heavy defense burden arising from the reduction of the U.S. forces in Korea. How can we finance the cost for the capital move?
If necessary, a referendum must be held. However important it may be to solve the population concentration and promote balanced development of our territory, the capital move shouldn't be forced.