| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
19 Aug 2007 09:34:01 AM |
| Object: |
OT: But what about our housing bubble? |
But what about our housing bubble?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2151810,00.html
The fallout from the collapse in the American homes market will have
consquences here, too
John Calverley
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
Last week, many in the financial markets stared into the abyss as
stocks and currencies plunged. The origins of this current financial
crisis lie in the collapse of the US housing bubble. Homeowners and
speculators in California, Florida, Michigan and a host of other
states are starting to default on their mortgages as house prices fall
and mortgage rates rise. 'How far will house prices fall?' was the
question being asked. 'How many borrowers will mail in the keys to
their bank or be made homeless by foreclosure?'
Zimbabwe's delivery from tyranny is far from certain
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2151808,00.html
Chris McGreal
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
The shelves are bare except for what Zimbabwe's limping factories
produce - baked beans at the cost of a month's salary, crisps rationed
to two packets per shopper and all the cleaning fluid you want.
The petrol pumps dried up a month ago. Water and electricity are off
more often than they are on. The national currency has an expiry date
of July 2007 stamped on it but it's worth hardly anything anyway, so
nobody seems to care.
Loathe thy neighbour. Whoever they are
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2151820,00.html
Cristina Odone
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
There is a kind of British woman who fares much better as an export:
Cherie Blair, Fergie, Jane Seymour. They are stars in America,
regularly feted on chat-show sofas and the White House lawn. At home,
though, they're subject to almost universal loathing.
For Jane Seymour, aka Dr Quinn: Medicine Woman and ex-Bond girl,
things have grown even more sticky recently. The actress has been
hiring out her elegant Tudor manor in Somerset for private parties and
corporate events. Her neighbours claim that these gatherings are often
loud, drunken and keep them up all hours. They're dragging her to
court.
'It's bleak and ferocious, but is it still winnable?'
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,2151830,00.html
Mark Townsend has spent three weeks with British troops in Helmand who
are fighting for their lives - and sometimes losing them - in a
conflict that grows more gruelling by the day. He found them facing
fresh enemies, as well-trained jihadists from around the world arrived
to confront the Nato forces
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
As usual, the conversation turned towards the same simple question.
'Do you think it is winnable?', the British commanders, officers and
soldiers of Helmand would ask. It was a tough call. Talk would then
veer towards the intractability of fighting, the miasma of tribal
politics, terrorism and the deaths of British men.
The obstacles were piled high. Progress, by comparison, seemed
stunted. Few who asked seemed sure of success. Some sensed it was
possible, others wondered at what cost. One officer simply exhaled
sharply and gazed at his desert combat boots.
Cluster bombers face City boycott
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2151537,00.html
Nick Mathiason
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
Leading UK institutions have told The Observer they are about to
withdraw hundreds of millions of pounds from firms linked to the
manufacture of controversial cluster bombs.
The move will be seen as a major breakthrough for campaigners such as
Handicap International, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines
and Human Rights Watch.
Last month French insurer Axa announced it was pulling its investments
from companies that manufacture cluster bombs, which can lie
unexploded for decades and have a devastating effect on civilians in
war zones. Now a number of fund managers in Britain have indicated
that they view the issue as a pressing ethical concern on a par with
investment in Sudan and Burma.
Oil giants rush to lay claim to Iraq
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2151542,00.html
Saeed Shah and Alex Brett
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
The world's oil majors will descend on two key conferences about Iraqi
oil next month, seizing their last chance to jockey for position
before the expected passing of the country's hydrocarbon law sets off
a scramble for its vast energy resources.
Iraqi officials, including oil minister Hussein Shahristani, will
attend the gatherings in Dubai in September to meet international oil
executives. All the big players will be there, including BP, Shell,
Exxon and Chevron, as well as minnows such as Addax Petroleum, some of
which have operations in Iraq.
No salvation for lending in God's name
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2151553,00.html
America's evangelical banks find that faith cannot move debt
mountains. James Doran reports
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
The credit crisis gripping America is so bad that not even God is safe
from bankruptcy. Evangelical Christian banks and lenders have
ballooned in number all over the US in recent years, offering the
country's 120 million born-again Christians the opportunity to invest
and borrow, safe in the knowledge that the bank they choose shares
their religious values.
Now, Homebanc Corporation of Atlanta, Georgia, one of the pioneers of
this expanding area in the financial services market, has filed for
bankruptcy - the latest victim of a crisis sparked by overzealous
lending to borrowers without the means to pay back their loans.
Homebanc Corporation of Atlanta, Georgia folded last week as the
global credit crunch forced bigger banks to cut off its funds.
Now Dubai aims to corner the markets
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2151554,00.html
A bid for the OMX exchange opens a new front in the emirate's rapid
expansion. By James Sustins
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
Unlike the traffic on its ever-congested highways, business moves fast
in Dubai - and sometimes too fast for its own good. The Gulf emirate
now boasts the world's tallest building, and, given its =A32bn cash
takeover bid for Nordic stock exchange operator OMX, seems to have
similarly lofty ambitions as a global finance hub.
Last year it emerged that the Dubai International Financial Exchange
(DIFX) had built up a 3.5 per cent stake in Euronext, the exchanges
operator now owned by the New York Stock Exchange. And Dubai has
repeatedly been linked to a possible stake in the London Stock
Exchange.
Watch it, or surveillance will take over our lives
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2151557,00.html
Simon Caulkin, management editor
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
Some radical friends didn't share the enthusiastic reception for Lives
of Others, the haunting recent film about life under the Stasi, the
East German secret police. It wasn't the acting or even the Big-
Brother type plot of hidden manipulation and control that they
objected to: what got up their noses was the complacent implicit
assumption that the West wasn't an equally enthusiastic user of
similar surveillance techniques, even if mostly (so far as we know)
for commercial rather than political ends.
Iran hangs 30 over 'US plots'
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2151798,00.html
Surge in public executions is a push to silence political activists,
say critics
Robert Tait in Tehran
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
Iran has hanged up to 30 people in the past month amid a clampdown
prompted by alleged US-backed plots to topple the regime, The Observer
can reveal.
Many executions have been carried out in public in an apparent bid to
create a climate of intimidation while sending out uncompromising
signals to the West. Opposition sources say at least three of the dead
were political activists, contradicting government insistence that it
is targeting 'thugs' and dangerous criminals. The executions have
coincided with a crackdown on student activists and academics accused
of trying to foment a 'soft revolution' with US support.
School deaths that stunned black America
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2151747,00.html
After four model students were gunned down in a playground, outrage
spread: if the brightest and best are not safe, then who is? Paul
Harris in New York reports on the killings that have galvanised a
community
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
Newark is a 25-minute train ride across the Hudson River from the
skyscrapers of Manhattan. But its tough streets, scarred by violence
and drugs, feel a world away.
Now, after a brutal multiple murder in a school playground, Newark is
at the centre of a bout of national soul-searching about life in urban
America and the violence that marks so much of the experience of inner-
city black youth.
The crime has caused shock across the nation not because the victims
were involved in a tit-for-tat piece of ghetto violence, but because
they were not. They were four young black Americans who had done
everything right to grow up unscathed by Newark's social problems.
Beating the odds, they had emerged with clean records, bright futures
and university degrees ahead of them. But even they could not succeed.
Terror law puts Britons at risk of surveillance by US agents
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2151942,00.html
Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
A new law swept through Congress by the US government before the
summer recess is to give American security agencies unprecedented
powers to spy on British citizens without a warrant.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was approved by Congress
earlier this month to help the National Security Agency in the fight
against terrorism. But it has now emerged that the bill gives the
security services powers to intercept all telephone calls, internet
traffic and emails made by British citizens across US-based networks.
Lebanese await the inevitable return of war
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2151730,00.html
Mitchell Prothero in Beirut
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
In one of Beirut's trendier bars, four European photographers relax
over cold beers. Their presence is alarming Ghassan, the barman. 'Why
are there so many journalists in Beirut right now?' he asks me. "Has
there been some change in 'The Situation?"'
The Lebanese can be forgiven for seeing a new slew of foreign press as
a harbinger of doom, for the year since last summer's war between
Hizbollah and Israel has seen crisis after crisis pummel this tiny,
fractious nation with the bad luck to exist in a very tough
neighbourhood.
=A3100m UK aid, but Malawi's nurses are still overworked and underpaid
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2151732,00.html
Alex Renton in Lilongwe
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
Mary Luliyazi is falling asleep at her desk in the post-natal ward of
Lilongwe's Bwaila Hospital. She sat down to find her pay slip, but
even a moment's rest is fatal on the third of three consecutive 24-
hour shifts in intensive care. 'I do feel very tired,' says Mary. 'I
don't have to do the extra shifts, but you feel you should. There are
not enough nurses. And I need the money.'
Indian teenager wins dream education on reality TV
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2151742,00.html
Arvind, 18, has beaten thousands for the chance of a place in a
British university
Anushka Asthana, education correspondent
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
When Arvind Aradhya sent a text message to enter India's newest
reality television show he was not dreaming of fame or fortune: all
the 18-year-old craved was to be well educated. Last night his wish
was granted when he was crowned the first champion of the most unusual
concept to be seen on Indian TV: Scholar Hunt, Destination UK
Forget Pop Idol or Fame Academy. In India teenagers queued in the
streets for the chance to study at one of five British universities:
Warwick, Leeds, Cardiff, Sheffield or Middlesex. Television executives
were so confident that the format would prove a success that they
scheduled it for prime time: 7pm on Saturday. The programme is best
described as The Apprentice meets The Weakest Link with a little of
America's sleeper hit Spellbound thrown in.
The day reality hit home
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2151530,00.html
The writer Andrew Anthony was a committed member of the liberal left -
until the attacks of 11 September, 2001. A veteran of CND and
Nicaraguan solidarity campaigns, he was astonished at the liberal
left's anti-American reaction. And so he began to question other basic
assumptions about race, crime and terror - a political journey he
charts here, in these exclusive extracts from his compelling new book
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
On the afternoon of 11 September 2001 I was sitting in a Soho
screening room watching a preview of a film called Greenfingers. At
the end of the film, the credits were interrupted by a flickering
image of a burning skyscraper. Yet another Hollywood clich=E9, I
thought. The picture was presented as if it was newsreel but, due to
an apparent problem in the projection room, there was no sound. It was
a little odd to see another feature played immediately after the
previous one had finished. Was this one of those guerrilla advertising
campaigns? A preview of a forthcoming attraction?
No middle way in the Middle East
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2151501,00.html
Two fine, powerful books explore the intractable relationship between
Israel and Hizbollah, says Tom Templeton
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
Summer Rain by Annette Levy Willard. Psychology News Press =A39.99,
pp192
The 33-Day War by Gilbert Achcar and Michel Warschawski. Saqi Books
=A312.99, pp136
Annette Levy Willard, a senior reporter with the French newspaper
Liberation, kept a diary of life in Israel during last summer's month-
long conflict with the Hizbollah militia of Lebanon. The result,
Summer Rain, is an immediate and intimate portrait of a tiny country
at war: militarily mighty, hated and feared by its neighbours and
living in a permanent state of fear itself.
Bolognese to that
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2151502,00.html
John Dickie's Delizia! explores the conservative relationship between
Italians and food, says Paul Levy
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
For us in the 21st century, Italian food is the cuisine of affluence.
As John Dickie, reader in Italian Studies at UCL points out: 'Italy
has become the model to imitate when it comes to making ingredients,
cooking them and eating them.' There are now trattorias for those who
can afford them in Bangkok and Beijing . The ingredients most prized
by rich gastronomes are Italian - white truffles, Manni olive oil,
Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, aged balsamic vinegar, Amalfi lemons - as
are today's fashionable foodstuffs, such as buffalo mozzarella,
ricotta, polenta ... the list is a long one. Yet we think of most of
these as having a peasant provenance.
All roads lead to Brick Lane
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2151503,00.html
Rachel Lichtenstein's On Brick Lane is the fascinating story of east
London's most famous street and mirrors changes across the country,
says Hilary Spurling
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
On Brick Lane
by Rachel Lichtenstein
Hamish Hamilton =A320, pp352
The key to this book is a famous story about a wartime firefighter who
watched a bomb fall on the Jewish cemetery in Whitechapel, east
London, opened the gates and saw to his astonishment a party of
elderly prophets seated in the early morning mist at the far end of
the burial ground: 'The bomb had blown people out of their graves and
their body parts had scattered everywhere.'
Here's something to crow about
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2151506,00.html
Mark Cocker's paean to all things corvine, Crow Country, is a triumph
of writing and observation, says Will Buckley
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
Crow Country
by Mark Cocker
Jonathan Cape =A316.99, pp216
If you live by figures, you must suffer by them. One of the more
malign side-effects of the middle managers' power grab in the arts is
that subjective judgment has been replaced by the brute objectivity of
numbers. Assessments of quality are otiose and elitist; viewing
figures and numbers of sales are all. Books are published for people
who don't read, television programmes made for people who have lost
the remote, films are sequels. It is disheartening.
The great stitch-up
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2151507,00.html
The ambivalent position of Catholics in Britain is examined in The
Plot Against Pepys by James and Ben Long, says Rafael Behr
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
The Plot Against Pepys
by James Long and Ben Long
Faber =A317.99, pp322
Shortly before Tony Blair stepped down as Prime Minister, a rumour
that had been circulating at Westminster for ages made the front
pages. The PM, it was reported, was about to convert to Catholicism.
(He didn't. At least, not as far as we know.)
If Blair's inclination to change his preferred brand of Christianity
in retirement was deemed newsworthy, a decision to convert while still
in office would have been scandalous. An Establishment prejudice holds
that Catholics can't be trusted to run the country. They are legally
debarred from the monarchy. If the job of Prime Minister had existed
in the late 17th century, Catholics would have been banned from that,
too.
Fortune favours the braves
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2149236,00.html
Forty years ago the last members of the Pequot tribe were scraping a
living selling pizzas. Today their casino brings in $1bn a year. But
with infighting breaking out on rival reservations, will the Native
American spirit survive the stampede of the 'new buffalo'?
Paul Harris
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
It is called Indian Country and it exists in tiny patches and
forgotten reservations dotted across the face of America. It is home
to 2.8m people. One part of Indian Country lies on the prairie behind
Bob Lone Elk's trailer home. There, at the end of a dirt road that
rides over South Dakota's undulating grasslands, Lone Elk has built a
prayer field. It is a simple, private place of a few wooden huts and
logs lashed together to provide shade for dancers and singers.
Plus =E7a change in Cuba
Tom Fawthrop
August 19, 2007 12:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/tom_fawthrop/2007/08/plus_a_change_in_c=
uba.html
President Fidel Castro's 81st birthday marks a year of transition, of
change but no change. No longer at the helm, the government still pays
reverential homage to the spirit of Fidel, while the physically frail
81-year-old leader has stopped all public appearances during his
prolonged recuperation in a secret medical facility.
His younger brother, 76-year-old Ra=FAl Castro, defence minister and now
acting president, makes far fewer and much shorter speeches than his
brother, but his economy of words has raised hopes, because he has
focused on tackling bread-and-butter issues. He has spelt out a simple
basic truth: that state salaries are inadequate. Most Cubans
officially earn less than $20 a month, totally out of synch with
prices for cooking oil and other basics, forcing many Cubans to
moonlight, pilfer and barter to make ends meet.
Hard sell, soft soap
Edward Pearce
August 19, 2007 10:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/edward_pearce/2007/08/hard_sell_soft_so=
ap.html
In an obituary, as I like to think of it, of Karl Rove, he is credited
with suggesting that Ann Richards, liberal Democrat governor of Texas
and Bush obstacle, "was a lesbian". He is also accused of having it
put about that John McCain, Republican opponent in a primary election,
was "mentally unstable" and the illegitimate father of a mixed-race
child.
Nice fellow, but let's not linger over Karl Christian Rove. Leave him
to heaven and biography. What matters is that he was successful: what
he said to sell the draft-dodging, retrieved alcoholic, death warrant
fancier and friend of Tony Blair, worked. The great American public
bought the smears and lies along with that uplifting talk - do you
remember, oh best-beloved - of "compassionate conservatism"?
Wake up to reality - and sense
Andrew Anthony
August 19, 2007 1:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/andrew_anthony/2007/08/by_happy_coincid=
ence_comment_i.html
By happy coincidence Comment is free started up shortly after I set
out to write my book, The Fallout: How a Guilty Liberal Lost His
Innocence. My first reaction to the site's arrival was that its
debates vindicated my decision to write the book, insofar as they
focused on many of the same issues that were at the core my argument:
the political fallout from 9/11, multiculturalism, race, America,
Iraq, ideological Islam, crime, and the crisis of liberalism that
appeared to be splitting apart the left.
My second reaction was that if I looked at the site for too long I'd
never get the book written. But I saw enough before I retreated into
disciplined seclusion (reading the sports pages, roaming on youtube)
to confirm my conviction that a large section of liberalism had become
contorted by a reluctance to entertain reality. And also that this
reluctance very often stemmed from guilt or, closely related, a fear
of raising doubts about certain orthodoxies.
No sweat
Tim Dowling
August 18, 2007 3:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/tim_dowling/2007/08/no_sweat.html
Now they tell us: the scientists who developed the fitness guidelines
for adults, the guidelines adopted by the World Health Organisation,
have decided to "clarify" their advice. They would like to point out
that when they where they said "moderate" exercise, they meant
"vigorous", and that where they implied that a minimum level of
fitness could be maintained through one's normal daily routines, they
now wish to include "in addition jogging and two weight-training
sessions a week". If you're not regularly breaking a sweat, they say,
you're not doing enough.
This new advice come just days after the release of a study that said
that even low levels of physical activity - say, three brisk walks a
week - could lower the risk of heart disease in people who took no
other exercise. What are we supposed to believe?
Give us wings!
Brendan O'Neill
August 18, 2007 1:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brendan_oneill/2007/08/celebrate_the_fr=
eedom_of_fligh.html
As green protesters at Heathrow delay families setting off on summer
holidays, the Manifesto Club - a pro-human campaigning network of
which I am a founding member - is launching a campaign webpage to
celebrate the freedom of flight. Here is our statement:
The vast expansion of flight over the past few years - particularly
cheap flight - has been experienced as a liberation for millions of
people. It is no longer only the well-to-do who can glimpse the canals
of Venice or the pyramids of Egypt, or relax on the beaches of Greece.
The option of a weekend away in Prague or New York means foreign
travel can now easily be fitted into the working week.
Americans are flocking to a hi-tech Creation Museum where man and
dinosaurs frolick happily together
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2872252.ece
Published: 19 August 2007
Dinosaurs of all kinds abound here, from the stegosaurus silhouettes
rearing atop the iron gates as you first reach the parking lot to the
numerous and impressively convincing animatronic pterosaurs wagging
their giant tails and chewing plastic cud inside. At America's newest
public museum dedicated to exploring the origins of man and our
planet, dinos are big box office, especially with kids.
Yet, there is something askew about the exhibits here and it doesn't
take long to see. It's not just the "Thou shalt not touch" signs or
the biblically named Noah's Caf=E9, offering respite for lunch. How
about a stroll down the Trail of Life, first stop, the Garden of Eden
with faux cypress trees and gurgling streams? Look, there are Adam and
Eve taking a dip, and not far away another dinosaur lurks, and a lion
too.
Birth of two nations: India and Pakistan: a parting of the ways
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2876497.ece
Looking to the future after 60 years of independence
By Andrew Buncombe
Published: 19 August 2007
Any anniversary is as much about looking forwards as it is about
remembering the past. For India and Pakistan, which this week both
celebrated the 60th anniversary of their independence from Britain,
their vantage points for such consideration appear very different.
India is a country whose middle classes and political elite are
brimming with confidence as their wallets are brimming with money.
With a growth rate of 9 per cent, India's image as a country on its
way to super-power status has never been more positive.
Mobs ransack shops and aid trucks in Peru's quake zone
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2876555.ece
By Frank Bajak in Pisco, Peru
Published: 19 August 2007
Desperate victims of the earthquake on Peru's southern coast looted
markets and blocked aid trucks, forcing President Alan Garcia to send
200 navy officials to the area in an attempt to restore order.
In the wake of the disaster that has so far killed 510, television
images showed hungry survivors leaving pharmacies and markets with
bags full of food and other items. Some people ransacked a public
market, while mobs looted a refrigerated trailer.
A symbol of the desolation of Iraq
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2876550.ece
By Raymond Whitaker
Published: 19 August 2007
When British troops arrived at Basra Palace after weeks of fighting in
2003, it seemed like another world after the blood, dust and squalor
they had been through.
Built for Saddam Hussein on what used to be a public park on the banks
of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, the main building alone had 18 huge
halls, five staircases and 12 balconies. There were 14 other rooms
with equally sumptuous appointments, including gold-trimmed bathroom
fittings. Ornate stone bridges spanned the many pools and channels
filled by the river. Yet it is believed that Saddam, who did not trust
the Shias of the south, never visited the complex.
Business View: A financial disorder that could infect the world
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/comment/article2876469.ece
Andrew Murray-Watson, Business Editor
Published: 19 August 2007
For some reason big drops in the market always come with little or no
warning. This time round is no exception and the current slump has the
makings of a full-blown bear market.
Periodic corrections in the FTSE are not that uncommon. In 1998, the
Federal Reserve took 50 working days from the date markets began to
fall to intervene to reduce borrowing costs for banks. This time round
it has only taken it 27 days. I hope that this is because the Fed is
more on its toes this time round, but I fear that the real reason is
because the current credit crunch is significantly worse than last
time.
Harold Meyerson: The President's brain is missing
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2876502.ece
The resignation of George Bush's political consigliere has gripped
America. But how will Karl Rove be remembered?
Published: 19 August 2007
Karl Rove, who announced his resignation last week as President George
Bush's political and domestic policy consigliere, was always a man on
a mission: he wanted to be the man who engineered a Republican
realignment of American politics.
By their very nature, genuine realignments - the process by which
political parties win and maintain a dominant majority of voters over
several decades - are rare in the US. The classic example is that of
1932-36, when the combination of the Great Depression and Franklin D
Roosevelt dispatched the previously ascendant laissez-faire
Republicans to the political hinterlands and established a period of
Democratic dominance that lasted until 1968, when the New Deal
coalition was sundered by issues of race, the Vietnam War, and
cultural upheaval.
Agn=E8s Poirier: Protest and survive
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2876503.ece
Britons are taking to the streets to vent their anger, over Heathrow
expansion, the floods, or war in Iraq. Nothing could more gladden the
French demonstrator's heart
Published: 19 August 2007
What a rare, pleasant and healthy sight: angry British citizens
protesting. At Heathrow against a third runway, at Parliament Square
against the war in Iraq (and against the police trying to dislodge
them as a health hazard) and in Gloucestershire against the
carelessness of public authorities who intend on carrying building
homes on flood plains.
In my 10 years as a French woman living in Britain, I have often
wondered what could really make the British angry. Nothing it seemed:
not poor public services, nor Blair's foreign policy, nor serious
social injustice. I heard, for the first time in my life, the most
preposterous reasons for hours of delays in the tube or on the rail
network: "The train service is stopped because of heavy rain", or
"because of leaves on the tracks". I'd look around and wait for a cue
to join a vocal public outrage or an improvised demo, but nobody ever
stirred, nobody even sighed.
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Our recovery program always has the final say when it comes to our peace. We can always have hope for the future, but for success, we must accept how things are in the here and now. As the famous late Buddhist lecturer Alan Watts said, "It is not wha
| OT: It's only a movie, but it could teach Blair a lot, actually
The Plight Of Israeli Women: They Can Shoot Palestinians, But Can't Pray To A Wall
At sea-level NOBODY has gone faster than 600KPH, but you believe that they reach 1200KPH, don't you?
It's life, but not as God planned it
Bush Said He Lacked Intelligence on 911 (But Then What DOES He Intlligence In?)
Liberals HATE Success, but LOVE Class Warfare!
Kerry offers up an Iraq plan, but it is secret. Liberals Hate America!
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