Religions > Atheism > OT: Enough of the superiority. Life can be so much better in France
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Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
06 May 2007 05:46:26 AM |
| Object: |
OT: Enough of the superiority. Life can be so much better in France |
Enough of the superiority. Life can be so much better in France
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2073515,00.html
Nicolas Sarkozy is urging his expats in London to come home, but
they'll have to find a place among all the Brits flocking south
Martin Newland
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
My brother-in-law, who lives in Paris, told me last week that the
televised debate between the French presidential rivals Segolene Royal
and Nicolas Sarkozy, watched by 20 million people, appeared to
electrify the city even more than last year's World Cup final, where
France lost to Italy. 'Politics here is far more of a spectator sport
and many even use sporting terminology to describe a particular verbal
sally by one candidate or another,' he told me. 'The next day, when I
dropped the kids off at school, all the parents were clustered around
the gates, staying for hours discussing the great debate. The French
love a verbal punch-up.'
America loves us. And so it should
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2073517,00.html
Cristina Odone
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
Once upon a time, Americans viewed this country as a Cotswolds village
where they could swagger among twee tea-shops, delighting in quaint
customs such as cricket and bus queues. At its head stood the Queen
and Margaret Thatcher; its soul was connected to a stiff upper lip and
deeply felt patriotism. This is the Britain that Americans were
saluting last week on Her Majesty's tour.
In the same week, Americans also honoured another Britain. Time
magazine compiled a list of the 100 most influential people in the
world. Sacha Baron Cohen, Kate Moss, Richard Dawkins, Richard Branson,
Simon Fuller and David Mitchell - all British - rank among them (the
Queen too).
The crash is coming and it could be soon
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2073503,00.html
The Bank of England must act decisively and swiftly to curb the
current house price madness
Will Hutton
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
It is crazy and it defies logic. The continuous rise in house prices
over the last five years has become one of the facts of British life.
It divides the generations: parents often sit on hundreds of thousand
of pounds of equity propped up by their children's willingness, as
first-time buyers, to incur mortgage debt on a scale never before
dreamt of. It has made millionaires many times over of those who have
plunged into the buy-to-let market. We are obsessed by house prices.
The day I thought would never come
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2073495,00.html
This week, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness will astonish those who
experienced the Troubles
Sean O'Hagan
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
Back when I was a teenager and the Troubles were just beginning, I was
allowed to attend one of the first civil rights marches, on 30
November 1968. I can remember the excitement and trepidation as the
marchers set off from the Killylea Road towards the town centre, their
ranks swelled by coachloads of protesters from across the province.
The source of that trepidation was one man, the Rev Ian Paisley, a
Free Presbyterian firebrand, who, having been born in Armagh in 1926,
had returned with a vengeance to haunt the city. Convinced that the
Northern Irish Civil Rights Association was 'a front movement for the
IRA', he had called for 'every Loyalist in Ulster' to assemble in
Armagh that same day and 'take control of the city'. This they duly
did, though only in their hundreds, assembling in the town centre,
where, according to the rumours that sped though the marchers, they
had armed themselves with crowbars and cudgels, and, according to
local sources, with pick-axe handles provided free by a Protestant-
owned hardware shop.
Salmond says he'll go it alone. Let him
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2073564,00.html
A weak SNP administration could be just the thing to invigorate the
process of devolution
Ruaridh Nicoll
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
There will be more than a few politicians around Scotland who woke up
and thought what ***** Tuck, a Californian state senator, once said out
loud: 'The people have spoken ... the bastards.' Still, start digging
around in the results of Thursday's elections and it's hard not to
acknowledge how smart voters - if it's possible to see the electorate
as a cognisant whole - actually are. Far smarter than those who
managed the mechanics of the election. Thursday seems like a good day
for Scotland, if a very bad day for the authorities who ran it.
Blu-ray's secret key: now showing at websites everywhere
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2073249,00.html
John Naughton
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
What's in a number? Quite a lot, it turns out, if it's a 16-digit
hexadecimal (base 16) number that begins '09 F9'. (That's '9' followed
by '249' in normal - base 10 - numbering.)
Why the fuss? Well, it appears that the 16-digit number in question is
the cryptographic key for unlocking the copy protection on the new
generation of DVD discs. It was discovered a while back and posted in
obscure parts of the web, where it languished.
Why fearless leaders are something to dread
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2073241,00.html
Simon Caulkin
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
The painful unravelling over the last year of the public and private
lives of one of the UK's most iconic businessmen, Lord Browne, is a
sobering example of the pitfalls of the cult of leadership. Raising
expectations far beyond the capacity of one human to fulfil them -
neither BP's successes nor its more recent failings were ever down to
Browne alone - hero leaders often end up destroying themselves and
wounding the companies that helped to make them.
Sarkozy set to unleash new French revolution
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2073489,00.html
The right's candidate could canter home in today's election -but that
will do little to heal deep divisions still raging in France. As hope
for Socialist Segolene Royal slips away, Jason Burke finds a nation
polarised
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
The scruffy streets outside the campaign headquarters of Nicolas
Sarkozy, the right-wing candidate apparently set to sweep to power in
elections today, were calm. The multi-coloured, multi-ethnic market on
the Rue Strasbourg Saint Denis nearby was not. Amid the shoppers
hunting the perfect brie, warm pain de campagne or fresh okra, a lone
activist broke the official ban on campaigning this weekend to
distribute leaflets for Segolene Royal, the Socialist candidate, in
Paris yesterday. 'It's more in hope than in anticipation,' she
admitted glumly.
The riots will begin when he is elected
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2073494,00.html
Nabila Ramdani
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
A bright spring morning on Paris's Left Bank and les flics are already
out in force. You can glimpse the red bands on their kepis as they
lurk behind bushes waiting to trap another speedster. Here's one now,
accelerating as he sees the path opening up in front of him.
Faster, faster and then a sharp blast from a whistle as he's pulled
over by at least three stationary policemen. They know offenders will
come quietly, offering names and addresses in expectation of a
caution, or even a fine.
Behind the billboard lies the true struggle for Turkey
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2073773,00.html
Headscarf vs bikini is just one of the conflicts causing political
turmoil. Power and class count too, reports Peter Beaumont, Foreign
Affairs Editor, in Istanbul
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
On busy Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul's Beyoglu district, the paradox of
Turkey in the 21st century is played out. Two women - one in early
middle age, one younger - emerge from a shop with a provocative
lingerie window display. Both wear the headscarves and long skirts
denoting them as conservative and observant followers of Islam.
In the suburbs of featureless apartment houses that radiate for tens
of kilometres out from the city centre, five-storey-high billboards
depict models in underwear and bikinis. A steady stream of women with
covered hair pass beneath the hoardings clutching shopping bags and
children, oblivious to the half-naked women.
Bush tested by royal etiquette and a white tie
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2073778,00.html
Americans have greeted the Queen with respectful curiosity
Suzanne Goldenberg in Louisville, Kentucky
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
For a president who would really rather serve guests a burrito or some
other Tex-Mex favourite and still be in bed by 10pm, tomorrow night's
state banquet for the Queen could be a trying time for George Bush.
There is the attire - white tie and tails - the first time his
administration has risen to such formality. There are the constraints
of etiquette - no swigging water out of plastic bottles, or wolfing
down food. And then, perhaps most of all, there is the conversation.
Mormons' darkest day in spotlight
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2073481,00.html
Film about the 1857 slaughter of a wagon train draws parallels with
modern religious conflicts
David Smith
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
The date was 11 September. A group carried out an act of religious
terrorism on American soil, raining indiscriminate death on innocent
people. It remains a scar on the country's collective memory.
This was the 'other' 11 September, in 1857, when fundamentalist Mormon
settlers opened fire on a wagon train, leaving more than 120 men,
women and children dead in a flowery field. The Mountain Meadows
Massacre, which happened about 300 miles south of Salt Lake City in
Utah, is an episode often left out of history books in Britain and
even in the United States.
Galloping into the past
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2073651,00.html
Paul Harris
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
Manhattan has long prided itself on being the real thing. This is not
Theme Park America. This is not Strip Mall America. This is the
beating heart of the Big Apple, where rich and poor rub shoulders on
canyon-like streets, where immigrants flock for a chance of a better
life and where starving artists have made it big.
But sadly the self-image of this crowded island is increasingly at
odds with the reality. Manhattan's vibrancy is being lost at a rate of
knots, replaced by a monoculture that is often affordable only to the
wealthy (or tourists).
African cancer patients to get newest drugs
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2073761,00.html
Jo Revill, Whitehall editor
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
The rising death toll from cancer in Africa has led to pharmaceutical
companies opening talks with health experts on how new vaccines might
become available for the continent.
Viral infections and increasing smoking across Africa is leading to a
cancer epidemic, with the number of patients diagnosed each year
predicted to increase from 10 million to 15 million by 2020.
Emerging cancer vaccines open up the possibility of preventative
treatment for thousands of people who now have little access to basic
medicines. At a conference to be held in London this week, cancer
experts will sit down with African health ministers and pharmaceutical
companies to talk about how new drugs and vaccines could be delivered.
India's untouchable millionaire
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2073476,00.html
Entrepreneur who escaped the rigid caste system warns that it is
becoming more divisive as India grows richer
Amelia Gentleman in Agra
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
As a child, Hari Pippal slept alongside his six sisters and eight
brothers on a stretch of pavement. As a teenager, he pedalled a
bicycle rickshaw to help feed the family. Now the owner of a large,
profitable private hospital, a shoe factory, a motorbike dealership
and a successful restaurant, Hari Pippal has become a symbol of the
enormous possibilities available in new India to anyone with
entrepreneurial flair.
The fact that this self-made millionaire has risen to the top despite
being a Dalit (an untouchable) has prompted some to promote his
achievements as proof that, as India races towards economic
transformation, a more egalitarian society is emerging. Magazines
feature him as a Dalit success story. Pippal, however, is uneasy with
his status as poster boy for a casteless modern India. He believes his
triumphs have come in spite of his caste and warns that, as India
becomes richer, caste divisions are becoming ever more pronounced. At
the headquarters of his business empire, he said: 'As a rule India's
economic boom is only enjoyed by high-caste people. This is a great
tragedy for India, because so much talent is being excluded. I feel
real despair.'
An innocent old man, yet they shot him
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2073472,00.html
So far US forces in Iraq have paid out $32m for 'wrongful deaths'.
Karzan Sherabayani went back to Kirkuk to ask why his uncle had to
die
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
One cold London morning in January, I received a phone call from one
of my brothers. Uncle Kakarash was dead, killed by American soldiers
at a checkpoint. He was my mother's brother, 75, and like most Kurds
had suffered greatly under Saddam and welcomed the Americans as
liberators.
Civilians in Iraq face everyday hazards beyond the snipers and the
insurgents' bombs - hundreds have been run over by tanks or hit by
stray bullets or shot at checkpoints. There are no records kept of the
numbers of civilians killed during the war or by coalition troops.
Better God-fearing than sneering
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2073188,00.html
In attacking religion, AC Grayling's Against All Gods and Sam Harris's
Letter to a Christian Nation, do little more than show an ignorance of
basic human needs, says Stephanie Merritt
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
Against All Gods, by AC Grayling. Oberon Books =A38.99, pp64
Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris. Bantam Press =A310, pp96
For some years, AC Grayling and Richard Dawkins have been the good cop/
bad cop of anti-religious thought. Dawkins publicly fights fire with
fire, while Grayling has opted for a gentler advocacy of humanist
values. But now, in Against All Odds, a little collection of his
reworked newspaper essays, a distinct note of exasperation has crept
in. 'If the tone of the polemics here seems combative,' Grayling
writes, 'it is because the contest between religious and non-religious
outlooks is such an important one, a matter literally of life and
death, and there can be no temporising.'
A true Islamic voice
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2073191,00.html
Ed Husain's story of how a young London Muslim was turned into a
potential jihadist, The Islamist, is a wake-up call for Britain, says
Anushka Asthana
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside
and Why I Left
by Ed Husain
Penguin =A38.99, pp304
Launched in the week of the verdicts in Britain's longest terror
trial, The Islamist could not be more timely. Operation Crevice
revealed an underworld of young Muslim men ready to kill. Ed Husain's
memoir exposes some of the mind games that led them there.
His journey from theatre-loving schoolboy to Islamic fundamentalist
begins in primary school in the 1980s, where he plays with 'Jane,
Lisa, Andrew, Mark, Alia, Zak' and learns about Islam from his family
and a spiritual guide he called 'Grandpa'. His father, a devout Muslim
opposed to Islamist views, ignores the advice of Husain's teachers not
to send his son to Stepney Green, an all-boy, all-Muslim secondary
school, a decision he will later regret.
War without end
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2071381,00.html
At 7.10am on 5 June, 40 years ago, Israel attacked Egypt. The fighting
lasted barely 130 hours. Thousands lost their lives, but the
repercussions of the Six-Day War have been bloodier and far longer
reaching than anyone could have imagined. Ned Temko describes the
build-up to the conflict and traces its reverberations through four
decades of terror
Sunday May 6, 2007
The Observer
The sirens sounded, gasped into silence as if some giant animal were
catching its breath, then sounded again. It was a familiar dirge amid
the weathered blocks of flats on the Mediterranean seafront of Tel
Aviv in the early months of 1967. Air-raid drills were just one sign
of escalating tension between the precarious, teenage state of Israel
and a coalition of surrounding Arab neighbours led by President Gamal
Abdel-Nasser's Egypt.
The long, long wait for justice
Tom Fawthrop
May 5, 2007 4:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/tom_fawthrop/2007/05/the_long_long_wait=
_for_justice.html
The Khmer Rouge nightmare that terrorised Cambodia during the 1970s
ended nearly 30 years ago. In Rwanda and Sierra Leone, the wheels of
justice turned quickly, with tribunals investigating events that
kicked off within a few years of the mass killing.
For Cambodians, it has been an agonisingly long wait for justice.
Since the Khmer Rouge tribunal was finally established in Phnom Penh
in 2006, they have been kept waiting again, with legal squabbles over
rules of evidence delaying the indictment stage, when some senior
leaders of the Khmer Rouge would be formally charged under
international law with crimes against humanity and genocide.
Flavourless fare
Ilana Bet-El
May 5, 2007 3:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ilana_betel/2007/05/flavourless_fare.ht=
ml
Food and competition should not really go together: food is about
comfort and sharing, while competition is the exact opposite. This
does not mean that food is not about quality and finesse and know-how
and all the attributes that make for a good competition - but at the
end of the day the purpose of food is eating: feeling complete,
healthy and happy.
At another level, food is about identity: you are what you eat not
only for diet purposes, but because it is the most persistent way of
relating to yourself as a social, ethnic and national being. Refugees
and immigrants are the best reflection of this fact: they will always
try to find or make the food they know as a way of re-establishing
their self identity - and they will persist in making the dishes from
their past long after their new world becomes home.
A year of despair
Penny Lawrence
May 5, 2007 2:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/penny_lawrence/2007/05/darfur1yr.html
When I visited Darfur last month, I met Hamida, a mother whose son had
died of thirst. Three years ago, she fled an attack on her village
with nothing except her children, but her son died as they ran because
he did not have enough water to drink. Now living in a camp on the
edge of El Fasher town, she told me that what she wants most of all,
after three years relying on aid to survive, is to be independent
again.
Her independence will only happen if there is a comprehensive
political solution to the Darfur crisis. A year ago today, the Darfur
Peace Agreement was signed, in an effort to resolve this brutal
conflict that has destroyed millions of lives like Hamida's. But
today, peace in Darfur seems further away than ever. In the last 12
months, the UN estimates another 400,000 people have fled their homes
and the conflict has spread into Chad and Central African Republic.
Church cover-ups
Rosa Davis
May 5, 2007 1:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/rosa_davis/2007/05/church_child_abuse.h=
tml
The cases of child abuse by Church clergy that have come to light in
recent weeks raise a number of highly worrying questions for our
society. It has become clear that the Church was not only aware of
these actions, but that it covered them up and allowed these men to
continue to work with children and teenagers. The protection of the
abusers as opposed to the victims raises serious questions not only of
the religious institution, but also of our society as a whole.
Children are the future of our society and also one of the most
vulnerable groups within it. Children have neither a vote nor a voice
in political situations. Children are forced to live within familial
structures unless (or until) the state deems such an environment
unsuitable. Children are the weakest members of our society -
physically, emotionally and vocally. As such they are in need of
protection by the adults around them.
Righting or renewing wrongs?
David Beresford
May 5, 2007 12:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_beresford/2007/05/righting_or_ren=
ewing_wrongs.html
South African intellectuals are in ferment over affirmative action.
The controversy has drawn in at least four professors and a senior
aide to former state president FW de Klerk. The issues they are
squabbling over include the racial composition of the South African
cricket team recently hammered by Australia in the World Cup.
The controversy was started by Professor David Benatar in his
inaugural lecture as head of the department of philosophy at the
University of Cape Town. The lecture was particularly provocative,
because the university has pursued a policy of racial quotas in the
selection of students and affirmative action in the appointment of
staff since 1996. Long considered one of the great English-language
and liberal campuses in South Africa, the selection process is based
on the system of race classification, which was fundamental to
apartheid.
Fox TV accused over Miss America's paedophile trap
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2516750.ece
Outcry grows as beauty queen defends posing online as 14-year-old to
snare potential offenders for real-life crime show
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 06 May 2007
As a way of catching would-be paedophiles, it is not exactly orthodox:
asking the reigning Miss America to go online and pretend to be 14
instead of 20, all the better to lure unsuspecting men to a meeting
place and clap them in handcuffs.
That, though, is exactly what happened on New York's Long Island a
couple of weeks ago, provoking a nation-wide storm of controversy.
British oil worker kidnapped in Nigeria as rebels step up campaign
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2516751.ece
By Dulue Mbachu in Lagos, Nigeria
Published: 06 May 2007
Gunmen seized a British oil worker from a rig off Nigeria yesterday.
The attackers, who boarded the Trident 8 rig, left 23 other people
aboard unharmed, said Guy Cantwell, a spokesman for Houston-based
Transocean Inc. He said the man worked as a subcontractor for the
Nigerian oil company ConOil.
Such kidnappings are rife in the area. The total number of foreigners
kidnapped in the Niger Delta is at least 94 so far this year, more
than for the whole of last year. In 2006, more than 80 foreigners were
seized in the region. In the past week, 27 have been kidnapped, eight
of whom have been released.
Sexism in the City: The last bastion of prejudice
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2516757.ece
The testosterone-charged atmosphere of City firms creates a world
where prejudices long since cast aside elsewhere can thrive. Lord
Browne is not its only victim. By Susie Mesure and Sophie Goodchild
Published: 06 May 2007
From the choice of canap=E9s to the guest speakers, BP made a special
effort to ensure that their guests felt welcome. For this was not the
type of business reception that the oil giant usually hosted at its
grand London offices. The event earlier this year was laid on to
reassure gay and lesbian recruits they had nothing to fear from being
"out" at work.
The firm, a giant in an industry notorious for its macho attitudes and
executives, was anxious that the evening be a success. For more than
two hours, John Manzoni, BP's highly respected second in command,
chatted with staff, telling them how important they were to the
success of the company. Notably absent, however, was Lord Browne, then
BP's chief executive, who last week stood down over his relationship
with his ex-lover, Jeff Chevalier.
The world according to President Sarko
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2516755.ece
The likely occupant of the Elys=E9e Palace sees himself as a new De
Gaulle, determined to reshape France's economy and international
standing. John Lichfield sees trouble ahead
Published: 06 May 2007
Le Petit Nicolas is about to become the Next Big Thing across the
Channel. Failing a hand-brake turn by the electorate, or monumental
simultaneous blunders by half a dozen polling organisations, Nicolas
Sarkozy will be elected President of France today.
He will be the youngest man to occupy the Elys=E9e Palace for 29 years.
He will be the first French leader to be born after the Second World
War. And at 5ft 5ins, he will be, by far, the shortest man to be
President during the Fifth Republic.
Biofuels: The great green con
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/analysis_and_features/article2516619=
..ece
So by blending crops such as sugar and corn with petrol, biofuels will
slash carbon emissions and save the planet. Right? Not when the price
is escalating food prices and the clearing of the rainforests
By Tim Webb
Published: 06 May 2007
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, uses it in one of
his Hummers. Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin boss, wants to fuel his
planes with it. American President George Bush hopes it can wean his
country off oil imports from the Middle East. And next year, if tough
new targets are met, it will be in every other litre of petrol sold at
the pumps in this country.
Biofuel is the latest green craze. It is made from crops such as
wheat, rapeseed, corn and sugar, and less commonly, waste products
such as used cooking oil and tallow (animal fat). According to
biofuel's many fans, blending conventional petrol and diesel with
these crops or waste reduces the amount of crude oil needed and the
overall amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.
Leading article: From loyalty came tragedy
http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2516659.ece
Published: 06 May 2007
More and more, it seems that Al Gore's failure to win a few hundred
more votes in Florida in November 2000 was a fateful moment of world
history. Indeed, it could be said that the opening of the 21st century
was decided by a single vote. As Bill Clinton once said, George Bush
won the 2000 election "fair and square, five to four at the Supreme
Court".
The consequence of that decision is still being played out in the
daily carnage of the death squads and suicide bombers in Iraq, and for
us in Britain, more parochially, in the ruin of Tony Blair's once-
great promise.
Leo Docherty: We soldiers once assumed our political bosses would not
lie to us. That is over
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2516654.ece
We realised the actual issue was about long-term access to oil
Published: 06 May 2007
Four years ago, I watched, with other young officers, the invasion of
Iraq on TV in the mess. We were sick with envy. Our brother officers
were having the most exciting time of their lives, at the centre of
history, while we, on ceremonial duties in London, marched about in
red tunics and bearskin hats.
The invasion, it seemed, was a necessary evil to be redeemed by the
creation of a free, democratic Iraq. The WMD issue was a pretext, we
all concurred, an honourable white lie to knock an evil dictator off
his perch and breathe new hope into the lives of a brutally repressed
people.
The world goes to town
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9070726
May 3rd 2007
From The Economist print edition
After this year the majority of people will live in cities. Human
history will ever more emphatically become urban history, says John
Grimond (interviewed here)
WHETHER you think the human story begins in a garden in Mesopotamia
known as Eden, or more prosaically on the savannahs of present-day
east Africa, it is clear that Homo sapiens did not start life as an
urban creature. Man's habitat at the outset was dominated by the need
to find food, and hunting and foraging were rural pursuits. Not until
the end of the last ice age, around 11,000 years ago, did he start
building anything that might be called a village, and by that time man
had been around for about 120,000 years. It took another six
millennia, to the days of classical antiquity, for cities of more than
100,000 people to develop. Even in 1800 only 3% of the world's
population lived in cities. Sometime in the next few months, though,
that proportion will pass the 50% mark, if it has not done so already.
Wisely or not, Homo sapiens has become Homo urbanus.
In terms of human history this may seem a welcome development. It
would be contentious to say that nothing of consequence has ever come
out of the countryside. The wheel was presumably a rural invention.
Even city-dwellers need bread as well as circuses. And if Dr Johnson
and Shelley were right to say that poets are the true legislators of
mankind, then all those hills and lakes and other rural delights must
be given credit for inspiring them.
Long-haired radicals seize power
http://www.economist.com/daily/diary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9098919
May 4th 2007
From Economist.com
Our Asia editor finds old friends in high places
Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday
Friday
IT IS always good to find old acquaintances doing well. When I used to
visit him in Taipei in the late 1980s and early 1990s Chiou I-jen
seemed the epitome of Taiwanese radicalism. A long-haired, scruffy and
rather intense young man, he would work out of the cramped, chaotic
offices of the then newly-legal opposition Democratic Progressive
Party, and he would shock me with the fervour of his pro-independence
views-still, at that time, tantamount to sedition.
Today I call on him in the eerily empty caverns inside Taipei's
massive red-brick presidential palace. He is the president's secretary-
general, having served previously as national security adviser, and he
is a big behind-the-scenes figure in Taiwan's politics. People are
gratifyingly impressed that he has spared time to talk to me.
A cagey game
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9135517
May 5th 2007 | NEW YORK
From Economist.com
America and Iran spar over Iraq
AT THIS week's meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, an Egyptian resort, a group
of representatives from Middle Eastern and other countries gathered to
talk about Iraq. But the buzz was not directly about that troubled
country. Instead, eyes were on the interaction between two big
players. Whether Condoleezza Rice, America's secretary of state, would
converse with her counterpart from Iran, and whether she would take
the chance to raise the issue of Iran's nuclear programme, were the
big questions of the gathering.
In the end, the drama fizzled. America taunted Iran about avoiding a
face-to-face meeting. An American ambassador spoke to an Iranian
official-for about three minutes, they said-and kept the discussion on
Iraq. Ms Rice exchanged only brief formalities with Manouchehr
Mottaki, Iran's foreign minister. According to American officials, she
planned to talk to him more substantively at a dinner. But he left
before eating, claiming that an entertainer's dress was too revealing.
An American spokesman said he was really afraid of another woman-Ms
Rice. Mr Mottaki, for his part, delivered a scathing speech attacking
America's occupation of Iraq.
A bargain
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D91=
35283
May 4th 2007
From Economist.com
About 0.1% of world GDP would do it
THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up under the
auspices of the United Nations to establish a consensus on global
warming and what to do about it, has now completed its fourth
assessment report. The first two parts, published earlier this year,
about the science and the impacts of climate change, were designed to
spread gloom. Change was happening, they said; it was mankind's fault;
and it was going to be damaging. The third part, released on Friday
May 4th in Bangkok, is about mitigating climate change, and is
designed to spread hope. Just as mankind caused the problem, it says,
so mankind can stop it-and at a reasonable cost.
In some areas of economic activity, emissions could be cut with no
cost to consumers or taxpayers. The heating and lighting systems of
many buildings, for instance, are startlingly inefficient. Improving
this would cut both emissions and bills. Economists are troubled by
this, for it implies that people and businesses are not maximising
their economic self-interest; yet the low take-up of energy-efficient
lightbulbs suggests this is indeed the case. Governments are therefore
beginning to tighten regulations on the energy efficiency of
buildings, and to talk about, for instance, banning incandescent
lightbulbs. The IPCC reckons that such measures could cut 30% of
projected emissions from this sector at no extra cost.
The battle for Turkey's soul
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9116747
May 3rd 2007
From The Economist print edition
If Turks have to choose, democracy is more important than secularism
AT A time when Muslim fundamentalism seems to be on the rise all
around the world, the sight of somewhere between half a million and a
million people marching through Istanbul in defence of secularism is a
remarkable one. But then Turkey is a remarkable place. As a mainly
Muslim country that practises full secular democracy, it is a working
refutation of the widespread belief that Islam and democracy are
incompatible.
That's not the only reason why Turkey matters. It is a big and
strategically important country, has the largest army in NATO after
America's, offers a crucial energy route into Europe that avoids
Russia and is the source of much of the water in the Middle East. If
the negotiations under way for its entry into the European Union
succeed, it will be the EU's biggest country by population. But the
reason that the world's eyes are fixed on it this week is the
possibility that the army might intervene to limit Islam's role in
government (see article). For if Turkey cannot reconcile Islam and
democracy, who can?
A battle at the checkout
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9122582
May 3rd 2007 | MOUNTAIN VIEW AND SAN JOSE
From The Economist print edition
PayPal dominates electronic payments, but Google's growing checkout
service may prove a vigorous challenger
IN HIS celebrated book, "The PayPal Wars", Eric Jackson described how
in its early years the internet firm had to battle crotchety
regulators, identity thieves, volatile markets, scrappy rivals and
even scheming Mafiosi. It has since gone on to become the undisputed
master of online-payments processing. Now, however, to stay on top, it
must leap from being merely big to ubiquitous. And it will have to do
so while fending off new competitors-especially Google.
PayPal was founded in 1998 as a way of moving money between Palm
Pilots. It soon became a popular way to pay for goods on eBay. So
successful was it that in 2002 the auction site ditched its own
payments service, Billpoint, and paid $1.5 billion to bring PayPal
under its wing. It now boasts 143m accounts, double the number it had
two years ago. Already international-35m of the accounts are in
Europe, 15m of those in Britain alone-it is striving to become truly
global. Next week it is expected to announce that the number of
countries in which PayPal transfers can be made has risen to 190 from
103.
Free to choose, and learn
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D91=
19786
May 3rd 2007
From The Economist print edition
New research shows that parental choice raises standards-including for
those who stay in public schools
FEW ideas in education are more controversial than vouchers-letting
parents choose to educate their children wherever they wish at the
taxpayer's expense. First suggested by Milton Friedman, an economist,
in 1955, the principle is compellingly simple. The state pays; parents
choose; schools compete; standards rise; everybody gains.
Simple, perhaps, but it has aroused predictable-and often fatal-
opposition from the educational establishment. Letting parents choose
where to educate their children is a silly idea; professionals know
best. Co-operation, not competition, is the way to improve education
for all. Vouchers would increase inequality because children who are
hardest to teach would be left behind.
A prime minister on the edge
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9117042
May 3rd 2007 | JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition
Ehud Olmert seems to have ridden out the storm caused by a damning
report on last summer's war in Lebanon-for now
A SCATHING official report on the first few days of Israel's war in
Lebanon last summer has set off a game of brinkmanship for power. The
commission, which Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, himself appointed
to investigate the war (but without granting it the power to make
binding recommendations), criticised the whole government and military
establishment. But Eliyahu Winograd, the judge who headed the
commission, reserved his strongest censure for Mr Olmert, Amir Peretz,
the defence minister, and Dan Halutz, the then head of the army, for
going to war immediately after the Islamist militants of Hizbullah
kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. There had been inadequate preparation,
bad planning and no clear objectives.
The report revealed little that had not already come out in the
Israeli press. Its shock value was enhanced at least partly by a
campaign by opposition politicians to lower expectations about the
report, so that they could criticise the commission if it was indeed
tepid but strengthen the blow to the government if it was harsh.
A game of ducks and drakes
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9111447
May 3rd 2007
From The Economist print edition
The evolutionary battle of the sexes has some curious consequences
SEX, in most species of bird, is a consensual activity. It has to be.
Males have no penises and are armed with a genital opening which looks
little different from that of a female. Intercourse happens when these
two openings are brought together in what ornithologists refer to as a
cloacal kiss. In these circumstances, rape is a difficult option.
Drakes, however, are notorious rapists-forcing their attentions on
ducks indiscriminately-and it is surely no coincidence that they are
among the 3% of male birds that do have a penis. In fact, drake
penises come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes that are thought by
students of the subject to be part of an arms race to ensure that it
is the owner's sperm that fertilise the next generation of ducklings,
rather than anybody else's.
Conquistadors on the beach
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9112308
May 3rd 2007 | BARCELONA, LA CORU=D1A AND MADRID
From The Economist print edition
Spanish companies have gone global, but now trouble is brewing at home
with concerns over a property crash
IT WAS the early 1980s and a wholesale fashion business was booming
around the Balmes street market in Barcelona. Unlike the traditional
rag trade, these firms were striving to serve local shops and
boutiques rather than the big chains. One wholesaler was Isak Andic,
who arrived from Turkey as a 13-year-old and started selling T-shirts
to fellow students at Barcelona's American High School. Mr Andic
thought he could make more money on the retail side and in 1984 opened
the first Mango store in the Paseo de Gracia. It was another step in
the remarkable transformation of Spanish business.
Mango is one of two highly successful Spanish clothing firms which
have strutted onto the international stage-the other is the much
bigger Zara, owned by the Inditex group. In terms of stores it
recently overtook America's GAP to become the world's largest fashion
retailer. Both firms have become case studies of post-modern businesses
-design, marketing and retailing flair crossed with world-class
information technology and logistics systems. Instead of using lead
times of six months or so to mass-produce clothes that they hope will
be fashionable, Mango and Zara pioneered "fast fashion", in which they
rush a smaller number of garments into shops within days when they
spot new styles and appetites.
Bronze meddling
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9122766
May 3rd 2007
From The Economist print edition
Russian hypocrisy and heavy-handedness towards a former colony
CLUMSINESS on one hand, unprecedented bullying on the other. That is
the story of Russia's reaction to Estonia's decision to move a Soviet-
era war memorial and 12 unmarked graves from a prominent position in
the capital, Tallinn, to its international military cemetery.
Handled better, the move might have ruffled fewer feathers. But
Estonia's prime minister, Andrus Ansip, first raised the issue for
party advantage. He wanted his Reform party, founded by zealously free-
market ex-communists, to pinch some patriotic votes from other centre-
right parties in the March parliamentary elections. His country is now
paying a colossal political, social and diplomatic price.
Lighting on new faiths or none
http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9116934
May 3rd 2007 | APARECIDA AND MEXICO CITY
From The Economist print edition
In his first Latin American visit, Pope Benedict XVI will find a less
divided church facing stronger rivals
EVEN on an ordinary Sunday, the vast basilica of Nossa Senhora
Aparecida is barely big enough to contain the worshippers who gather
for morning mass. Votive candles, in a separate room, produce the heat
of a bonfire. The "hall of promises" is stuffed with offerings to the
Virgin, whose image was found nearby by three fishermen in 1717 and
who has been performing miracles ever since: plastic limbs acknowledge
healing, a model aeroplane a job gained with an airline.
Aparecida, in S=E3o Paulo state, is Brazil's version of Lourdes or
F=E1tima. Pope Benedict XVI chose it as the site of the fifth conference
of bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean, which is meant to set
the course for 450m or so of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics. The
inaugural mass on May 13th will crown Benedict's four-day trip to
Brazil, his first long-haul journey since becoming pope two years ago.
He will also canonise the country's first native-born saint and hold a
stadium-sized "encounter with youth".
Abe blows Japan's trumpet, cautiously
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9116791
May 3rd 2007 | TOKYO
From The Economist print edition
Shinzo Abe wants a more assertive foreign policy but Japan's energy
dependence is forcing it to be more pragmatic
SINCE becoming prime minister last September, Shinzo Abe has done
plenty of travelling. Straight off, he made a fence-mending trip to
China and South Korea, with whom Japan's relations had deteriorated
under his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. In January he visited
Europe, chiefly to emphasise that Japan was a staunch democratic
partner on NATO's eastern flank. This week, shortly after visiting
Washington for talks with George Bush, he toured the Middle East, the
fount of more than three-quarters of Japan's oil.
Mr Abe's men say his travels paint an emerging vision: while the
alliance with America remains the cornerstone of Japan's security
policy, Mr Abe is also pushing once-passive Japan to pursue its own,
more muscular course. For in Asia, says an official, Japan is playing
"a huge great game" in which it must compete with a rising China and a
newly confident Russia for resources, power and prestige.
A hero of his time
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9111417
May 3rd 2007
From The Economist print edition
He never went with the crowd and has written a political memoir like
no other
THE publishers probably groaned on receiving the text of this unusual
book. It seems scratched together and rushed-even a paste-up job. But
there is craft in the casualness. Before becoming his country's first
post-Communist president, Vaclav Havel wrote absurdist plays and
prison letters about speaking the truth to those in power. An
intellectual with a near-liturgical respect for words, he distrusts
mass-media patness almost as keenly as he hated Communist doublespeak.
A writer with his ear and his ironic humour was never going to spoon-
feed readers with a smoothly blended fairy tale.
Instead Mr Havel has tossed together official chronicle, satire, score-
settling, self-lacerating apologia and wise thoughts on statecraft
with merry disregard for timelines or tidy exposition. Out of the
apparent chaos, a pattern emerges. By the end you will have a
remarkable feel for Mr Havel's intricate personality-spiky, shy and
under-confident but inwardly tough-as well as a compelling record of
what candour and moral authority can, when the times are right,
achieve in politics.
David Halberstam
http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9111494
May 3rd 2007
From The Economist print edition
David Halberstam, chronicler of post-war America, died on April 23rd,
aged 73
"IF THE Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the press and the public
had known of the extent of the intelligence community's doubts, there
would have been a genuine uproar about going to war." Thus David
Halberstam in "The Best and the Brightest", telling the story of how
America slid into Vietnam. But they did not know. The young men were
shipped across in thousands, among them Mr Halberstam, covering the
conflict for the New York Times. He went as a believer, seeing the war
as a test of two political systems that America was bound to win. He
found cynicism, anger and pervasive lying about how things were going.
America could destroy, with its lumbering bombers, as much as it
pleased; the Vietcong had political superiority, and would win in the
end.
Mr Halberstam's truth-telling about the Vietnam war caused such
anguish to officialdom that President Kennedy tried to get him fired.
Journalists, and the general public, were less sceptical of government
back then; but this young man's copy, soon turned into books, started
an erosion of trust that has only gathered pace since.
Patently absurd
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/techview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=
=3D9134111
May 4th 2007
From Economist.com
The Supreme Court strikes a blow for common sense
THE DIRTY little secret about American patents is that they are too
easy to file, too easy to defend, and too easy to use for nobbling
legitimate competition. The patents exploited last year to extract
$612m from Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry e-mail
gizmo, would have barely passed muster in another country. Nor would
Vonage, the internet-telephony pioneer, have had to cough up $58m
recently for infringing three unbelievably broad patents if they had
been filed in Europe or Japan instead of America.
Patent law exists to encourage inventors by granting a monopoly for a
limited period (now 20 years) in exchange for publishing their work so
others can see how it affects their own innovations. Implicit in the
deal is a trade-off between private incentive and public good.
George's tenets
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9122567
May 3rd 2007
From The Economist print edition
The former CIA director's book has been rightly slated. It is worth
reading nonetheless
WHEN someone described Herbert Morrison, a minister in Britain's
1945-51 Labour government, as his own worst enemy, his fellow-
minister, Ernest Bevin, growled: "Not while I'm alive he ain't." You
might have thought that George Tenet, a former head of the CIA, is his
own worst enemy for producing a whingethon of a book, "At the Centre
of the Storm" (HarperCollins). But it turns out that there are legions
of Bevins around to prove you wrong. The book has been thoroughly
slammed and dunked since its publication on April 30th. And Mr Tenet's
book tour is turning into a nightmare; every time he goes on
television to complain that the administration mistreated and
misquoted him, he looks more and more snivelling. It's time for him to
cancel the tour and reconnect with his ancestral home in Greece.
Conservatives have gleefully leapt upon the book's errors. On the
first page the great spy reports that he visited the West Wing on
September 12th 2001, only to run into Richard Perle, a neocon grandee,
who said, unbidden, that "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened
yesterday. They bear responsibility." The only problem is that Mr
Perle was in France at the time. (Mr Tenet now says he may have got
the date wrong.) Liberals have accused Mr Tenet of acting as George
Bush's *****. Why didn't he resign when he realised that ***** Cheney
and his allies were distorting the intelligence? His resignation would
surely have derailed a war effort based on the idea that Saddam
possessed WMD. And everyone-left, right and centre-has accused him of
being both whiny and self-serving.
California's solar surge
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/greenview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=
=3D9096453
Apr 30th 2007
From Economist.com
It helps to have a sunny disposition
CALIFORNIA'S $3.3 billion solar initiative, championed by Arnold
Schwarzenegger, the governor, is impressive. State rebates, combined
with federal tax credits, can cover up to half the cost of a
residential solar system. California builders must now offer solar as
an option on all new construction. Another perk: installing solar on
existing buildings will not trigger a rise in California's already
heinous property taxes. Mr Schwarzenegger's goal of a million solar
roofs by 2017-in a state with 36m people, and growing-looks ambitious.
It also looks relatively feasible.
Sometimes, though, solar is easier said than done. This spring your
correspondent tried and failed to put solar panels on her family's
home in California's wine country. The problem was perhaps blindingly
obvious. It turns out that to install solar panels, you must have
enough sun. Our house is a two-bedroom place in the middle of the
woods, built during the late 1970s by my grandparents. Big oak trees
surround the house and keep it cool during the summer.
The black hole that ate Moldova
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/europeview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=
=3D9116439
May 3rd 2007
From Economist.com
A glimpse inside Transdniestria
EMBARRASSINGLY sleazy, expensive and indefensible-but ours, and we are
bloody well going to hang on to it. That was West Berlin during the
cold war, seen through NATO eyes. And it may also explain why Russia
has supported Transdniestria, a narrow strip of land on the eastern
bank of the Dniestr river that has broken away from Moldova, the
poorest and most demoralised country in Europe.
Just as Western soldiers propped up West Berlin, so Transdniestria has
survived thanks to the presence of Russian military "peace-keepers"-
really "piece-keepers"-maintaining their country's hold on territory
that has been a bastion of Russian military strength for centuries.
Western officials told the West Berlin government what to do; Russians
occupy senior positions in Transdniestrian officialdom.
Winning by degrees
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9112342
May 3rd 2007
From The Economist print edition
Europe's universities are the reluctant and unlikely pioneers of
public-sector competition
EUROPE wants to be competitive, but it's not ready to accept
competition, notes Esko Aho, a former Finnish prime minister and
European Commission adviser on reform. And if you wanted to examine
parts of European life that yearn to be world class, but are
determined to hold out against market forces and the laws of
competition, the continent's universities would be a good place to
start. They are cherished national champions, often funded and usually
controlled by the state, and sometimes crammed with political
appointees. In much of "old Europe", universities give a valuable
product-degrees-away more or less for free. That is a pretty effective
way of avoiding consumer pressure. They are further shielded from
competition by such things as tradition, national pride and language.
In the realm of private business, the EU has fostered competition in
markets for capital and goods. The European Commission works hard at
busting cartels, and tries (sometimes successfully) to stop
governments bailing out no-hopers with taxpayers' money. Yet the EU
(quite properly) has no powers to regulate education policy. Alas, in
much of Europe, that means subsidies, micro-management and legally
backed monopolies that govern the way universities are run. Small
wonder that many famous names are shadows of their former selves.
It started with a kiss
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/asiaview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=
=3D9102781
May 2nd 2007
From Economist.com
India's moral police blow their whistles
A seasoned traveller to India, Richard Gere might have known that it
would come to this. The Hollywood star was last week ordered to appear
before a court in Jaipur, Rajasthan, on a charge of public indecency.
His alleged crime was grabbing and kissing a Bollywood actress, Shilpa
Shetty, in front of 4,000 truckers in Delhi, at an event to raise
awareness of HIV/AIDS. The judge in Jaipur called this "highly
sexually erotic". He also summoned Ms Shetty, a moderately successful
actress who found fame in an execrable British reality TV show earlier
this year.
Back in America, Mr Gere tried to brazen out the charge. He blamed it
on right-wing opportunists, the self-proclaimed custodians of Indian
morality. But as effigies of the star of "Shall we dance?"-a film Mr
Gere acted in and claimed to be re-enacting with Ms Shetty-burst
aflame in Mumbai, he apologised for causing offence. Poor Ms Shetty,
caught between placating her compatriots and alienating a Hollywood A-
lister, said Mr Gere's clinch was a "little overboard".
In praise of entrepreneurs
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9070610
Apr 26th 2007
From The Economist print edition
The biography of a man who believed that uproar was the music of
capitalism
MUCH honoured as an economic prophet, Joseph Schumpeter has had to
wait half a century after his death for this splendid full-dress
biography covering his ideas, life and times. In 1983 Forbes
pronounced him a better guide to the tumultuous world economy than
John Maynard Keynes. In 1986 J.K. Galbraith described him as "the most
sophisticated conservative of this century". In 2000 Business Week ran
an article about him to which it gave the title "America's hottest
economist died fifty years ago". There are Schumpeter lectures,
Schumpeter societies and Schumpeter prizes.
Now he has received yet another accolade: a fat, learned biography by
Thomas McCraw, one of America's most respected business historians,
the author of a Pulitzer prize-winning history of the rise of
regulation. He has found the perfect subject in Schumpeter. He
succeeds in getting inside the economist's head, explaining not just
what he thought but why he thought it. Beyond this, he also succeeds
in painting a portrait of his times. Fin de si=E8cle Vienna, Weimar
Germany, Harvard University (where he is seen in our photograph)
before and after the first world war: all come to life on these pages.
The tale of three men called George
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9070603
Apr 26th 2007
From The Economist print edition
WHEN Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a mastermind of the September 11th 2001
terrorist attacks, appeared before a military tribunal at Guant=E1namo
Bay in March, he justified the atrocity by drawing a simple parallel
with American history. George Washington, he said, was just like Osama
bin Laden: the former fought for independence from British oppression;
the latter seeks to rid the Muslim world of American oppression. The
same argument has now been put forward by Sir Michael Rose, a retired
British general who, as a commander of special forces and of UN
peacekeepers, knows a thing or two about fighting terrorists and
insurgents.
With America's allies saying the same thing as its enemies, it may be
time to think again. General Rose's book is about three men called
George: Britain's King George III, George Washington, the commander of
America's rebel army, and President George Bush. According to the
author, Mr Bush has been every bit as arrogant, ignorant, misguided
and ill-advised as was George III. Britain, then the world's greatest
power, was defeated by the American "insurgents"; in a similar way,
America will be defeated in Iraq.
Boom and doom
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9070594
Apr 26th 2007
From The Economist print edition
CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY has taken a dull subject-the budget crunch that
will occur when America's baby-boom generation retires-and made it
funny. The boomers have voted themselves impossibly generous pension
and health-care benefits that will have to be paid for by younger
taxpayers. Since young people are, on average, much less wealthy than
the old, this strikes many of them as unfair. In Mr Buckley's latest
Washington satire, they do something about it.
Cassandra, the heroine, has had enough of her selfish elders. As a
teenager, she got into Yale, but found her father had spent her
college fund on his dotcom start-up. So she joins the army, which pays
college fees if you serve long enough. Stationed in Bosnia, she is
given the job of showing around a visiting congressman, who takes the
wheel of her Humvee and drives it drunkenly into a minefield. They
survive the explosion, but the army is so embarrassed by the
inevitable speculation that the two were having sex that Cassandra is
discharged. So she never goes to Yale.
Saved by the pill
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9070578
Apr 26th 2007
From The Economist print edition
IS IT life's greatest tragedy, its greatest joke, a disease or just
bad luck? Impotence, along with its causes and remedies, has been
bothering people since the dawn of medicine, literature and art. As
Angus McLaren's comprehensive survey shows, the way people treat
impotence says a lot about their attitudes to other things: the
desirability of sex, masculinity and its obligations, and the bumpy
progress of science towards a roughly accurate understanding of coitus
and its causes.
From classical times onwards, the crucial link was between sexual
potency and virility, rather than reproduction or pleasure. The
failure of the male erection was seen as a shameful lapse, regardless
of the purpose to which it might have been put. Christianity, which
became increasingly sex-shy from St Augustine onwards, changed the
focus. Celibate clerics made themselves experts on the minutiae of
sexual dysfunction: without the right kind of sex, a marriage was
invalid. Impotence was ultimately a theological question.
Life-giving letters
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9070569
Apr 26th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Some of the questions raised by an exhibition of holy texts and icons
WHATEVER else may divide Jews, Christians and Muslims, they can claim
a common heritage as People of the Book. Not only do all three faiths
ascribe overwhelming importance to a set of divinely inspired
writings, but the content of these writings overlaps. This is the sort
of remark that is often made in the course of emollient, inter-
religious dialogue, and it is in this spirit that the British Library
has mounted an exhibition with the title "Sacred: Discover What We
Share".
What the show stresses, however, is not commonality but variety.
Entering the exhibition, the visitor steps into a cubical area that is
partially enclosed by diaphanous material. Inside this space, open
copies of the Hebrew scriptures, the Christian Bible and the Koran are
displayed side by side. Moving on, the public is invited to consider
the differences that exist not just between the monotheistic
traditions but within them.
Saved by the pill
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9070578
Apr 26th 2007
From The Economist print edition
IS IT life's greatest tragedy, its greatest joke, a disease or just
bad luck? Impotence, along with its causes and remedies, has been
bothering people since the dawn of medicine, literature and art. As
Angus McLaren's comprehensive survey shows, the way people treat
impotence says a lot about their attitudes to other things: the
desirability of sex, masculinity and its obligations, and the bumpy
progress of science towards a roughly accurate understanding of coitus
and its causes.
From classical times onwards, the crucial link was between sexual
potency and virility, rather than reproduction or pleasure. The
failure of the male erection was seen as a shameful lapse, regardless
of the purpose to which it might have been put. Christianity, which
became increasingly sex-shy from St Augustine onwards, changed the
focus. Celibate clerics made themselves experts on the minutiae of
sexual dysfunction: without the right kind of sex, a marriage was
invalid. Impotence was ultimately a theological question.
Copy the lowly cockroach
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9033285
Apr 19th 2007
From The Economist print edition
SPOOKED by the subprime-mortgage mess? Queasy about collateralised
debt obligations? Investors of a nervous disposition should steer
clear of Richard Bookstaber's "A Demon of Our Own Design". He
understands the inner workings of financial markets. And he doesn't
like what he sees.
An options-theory egghead who swapped maths for mammon, Mr Bookstaber
spent much of the 1980s and 1990s as a "quant" (designer of
mathematical models), and later as a senior risk manager, at Morgan
Stanley and Salomon Brothers. He was, as he sheepishly puts it, "in
the vicinity" when stockmarkets tumbled in 1987 and Long-Term Capital
Management (LTCM), a hedge fund, disappeared down the plughole a
decade later.
The black curse
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D9033425
Apr 19th 2007
From The Economist print edition
LIKE the cars that might one day make the Western world a bit less
reliant on crude oil, "Untapped" is a hybrid; part travelogue, part
analysis and part lament. It is also well timed. Energy security has
become an obsession for the rich world. And some, especially in
America, have argued that the supposedly limitless supply of African
crude is the key to reducing the West's over-dependence on politically
risky Middle Eastern supplies. This book examines the consequent boom
in oil production and exploration that is currently sweeping across
Africa, and the effects that this may have on the continent. None of
it makes for pretty reading.
The author begins his travels in Nigeria, where Royal Dutch Shell
started off Africa's relationship with the modern oil industry by
striking black gold in the Delta region in 1958. But for all the
billions of dollars that Nigeria's oil has fetched on the world
markets since then, the country itself has virtually collapsed. It may
be the seventh-largest producer of crude in the world, but Nigeria
remains one of the poorest as well-an original example of "resource
curse". Nearby Gabon followed soon after.
The Truman Primary
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18507654/site/newsweek/
By Evan Thomas
Newsweek
May 14, 2007 issue - They all want to be Harry Truman. Hillary Clinton
invokes his iconic sign (THE BUCK STOPS HERE) to call for better
treatment of wounded veterans. Barack Obama reminds us that Truman was
the first politician bold enough to call for universal health care.
Rudy Giuliani notes that Truman was unpopular in his day, but if he
hadn't stood up to the Soviets in the late 1940s, asks Giuliani, "Who
knows how much longer the cold war would have gone on?"
Generational Tensions
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18507722/
The sons and daughters of some iconic Republicans (Ike! T.R.!) are
contemplating crossing the aisle.
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
May 14, 2007 issue - Susan Eisenhower is an accomplished professional,
the president of an international consulting firm. She also happens to
be Ike's granddaughter-and in that role, she's the humble torchbearer
for moderate "Eisenhower Republicans." Increasingly, however, she says
that the partisanship and free spending of the Bush presidency-and the
takeover of the party by single-issue voters, especially pro-lifers-is
driving these pragmatic, fiscally conservative voters out of the GOP.
Eisenhower says she could vote Democratic in 2008, but she's still
intent on saving her party. "I made a pact with a number of people,"
she tells NEWSWEEK. "I said, 'Please don't leave the party without
calling me first.' For a while, there weren't too many calls. And then
suddenly, there was a flurry of them. I found myself watching them
slip away one by one."
The Elephant in the Room
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18505030/site/newsweek/
George W. Bush has the lowest presidential approval rating in a
generation, and the leading Dems beat every major '08 Republican.
Coincidence?
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Marcus Mabry
Newsweek
Updated: 10:31 a.m. ET May 5, 2007
May 5, 2007 - It's hard to say which is worse news for Republicans:
that George W. Bush now has the worst approval rating of an American
president in a generation, or that he seems to be dragging every '08
Republican presidential candidate down with him. But According to the
new NEWSWEEK Poll, the public's approval of Bush has sunk to 28
percent, an all-time low for this president in our poll, and a point
lower than Gallup recorded for his father at Bush Sr.'s nadir. The
last president to be this unpopular was Jimmy Carter who also scored a
28 percent approval in 1979. This remarkably low rating seems to be
casting a dark shadow over the GOP's chances for victory in '08. The
NEWSWEEK Poll finds each of the leading Democratic contenders beating
the Republican frontrunners in head-to-head matchups.
With God in His Sights
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18508176/site/newsweek/
Hitchens takes on Gandhi, Billy Graham-and the Big Guy.
By Jerry Adler
Newsweek
May 14, 2007 issue - The psalmist writes, "the fool has said in his
heart, there is no God." It takes a certain sang-froid to quote this
verse in a book promoting atheism, butto the journalist Christopher
Hitchens it's an opportunity to remind his readers that in the iron-
fisted Kingdom of Judea, "it would perhaps have been a fool who did
not keep this conclusion buried deep inside." Today the risks
associated with heresy are smaller, although not negligible. Just ask
the novelist Salman Rushdie, who spent a decade under fatwa of death
for apostasy-or Hitchens himself, who was warned of possible reprisals
merely for having Rushdie stay in his apartment. After a lifetime of
iconoclasm, Hitchens finally takes on, in his new book, "God Is Not
Great," the Father of all icons. Now the world can judge what's in his
heart.
Collateral Disasters
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18507648/site/newsweek/
In Afghanistan's lopsided ethos, every civilian death counts against
the Americans.
By Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau
Newsweek
May 14, 2007 issue - The shopkeepers glower as an American military
patrol rumbles past the village bazaar at Afghany, some 80 miles
northeast of Kabul. Mohammad Qayam and Ghul Jan are still seething
about the precision U.S. airstrike in early March that hit their
friend Mirwais's home, less than a mile away. They and other neighbors
pulled nine broken corpses from the ruins: Mirwais's grandfather,
father, mother, wife and five small children. Mirwais himself and his
7-year-old son were away seeing relatives, the men say; now he has
fled into the mountains. Although local officials accuse Mirwais of
belonging to the Taliban, his neighbors say he was only a farmer. "We
hate the Americans so much now, we don't want to see their faces,"
says Jan. "They're no different from the Russians."
A Quiet Prayer For Democracy
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18507649/site/newsweek/
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek
May 14, 2007 issue - Over the past five years, president bush has made
various efforts to reform the Arab world. They have all stumbled over
one enormous obstacle. In the region, the people who win elections are
not democrats. They seem to believe in elections (at least as long as
they win), but not in the individual rights, laws and traditions that
create a genuine liberal democracy. The admin-
The Production Crunch
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18505675/site/newsweek/
Chavez-style oil nationalism is endangering world economic growth
Newsweek International
Last week's announcement from Caracas that the operations of Western
energy companies including BP, Chevron, Conoco, Exxon, Total and
Statoil were being reduced due to continuing nationalization of oil
reserves, and that the Chinese state oil giant CNPC would play a much
bigger future role in exploration and production, poses a serious
threat to the global oil market.
China's Wrong Turn on Trade
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18507726/site/newsweek/
By accident or design, China has embraced export-led economic growth.
The centerpiece is a wildly undervalued exchange rate.
By Robert J. Samuelson
Newsweek
May 14, 2007 issue - It sometimes seems that almost everything we buy
comes from China: DVD players, computers, shoes, toys, socks. This is,
of course, a myth. In 2006, imports from China totaled $288 billion,
about 16 percent of all U.S. imports and equal to only 2 percent of
America's $13.2 trillion economic output (gross domestic product).
Does that mean we don't have a trade problem with China? Not exactly.
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| User: "Meteorite Debris" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Enough of the superiority. Life can be so much better in France |
06 May 2007 06:13:06 AM |
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Last time that great scribe maff <maff91@yahoo.com> chipped away at
his/her stone these gems of wisdom for posterity ...
Enough of the superiority. Life can be so much better in France
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2073515,00.html
Nicolas Sarkozy is urging his expats in London to come home, but
they'll have to find a place among all the Brits flocking south
If Sarkozy is elected I predict the return of 1968. Errrr.
--
Remove both YOUR_SHOES before replying
apatriot #1, atheist #1417,
Chief EAC prophet
Jason Gastrich is praying for me on 8 January 2009
Apatriotism Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apatriotism
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make
you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
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