Religions > Atheism > OT: Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and right-wingers alike?
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
15 Jul 2007 07:10:40 AM |
| Object: |
OT: Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and right-wingers alike? |
Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and right-wingers
alike?
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2766305.ece
They say she is a scheming control-freak who will stop at nothing in
her bid to become the first Mrs President. And America's anti-Hillary
Clinton alliance is growing by the day.
By Leonard Doyle
Published: 15 July 2007
There is something about Hillary that raises the blood pressure of
otherwise easy-going Americans - and they don't need to be
Republicans. At a 4th of July barbecue, with the band working its way
through the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", I made the mistake of
asking a pleasant young woman what she thought of Hillary's chances.
Red white and blue fireworks were going off over Capitol Hill, as she
morphed into the sort of person who goes on the Jerry Springer Show.
She would "never, ever" vote for America's most famous politician, she
said. More than 50 per cent of Americans agree with her.
With everyone on tenterhooks over terrorism and the looming defeat in
Iraq, there is a febrile atmosphere in the US. Many are taking their
anger out on Hillary as she attempts to break through the last
remaining glass ceiling. Something called the "Hillary Conundrum" has
emerged to cause deep unease inside her party while giving comfort to
the Republican party, which by now should be in disarray.
Blessed is the Middle East peacemaker
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2771000.ece
Having proved the cynics wrong over Northern Ireland, Tony Blair now
has an even more intractable, ancient conflict to grapple with
By Anne Penketh
Published: 15 July 2007
Is Tony Blair going to solve the Middle East conflict then?
He might like to think so, but he's actually constrained by the narrow
job description as defined by the international Quartet which
appointed him. The Quartet's top negotiators - from the United States,
Russia, European Union and United Nations - plan to meet in Lisbon on
Thursday for the first high-level talks with Mr Blair since he was
named Middle East envoy, and will obviously discuss his exact
involvement. After that, he'll be off to the Middle East in the next
week or so.
Europe's plunging birth rate 'will lead to pensions crisis'
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2771031.ece
By Nina Lakhani
Published: 15 July 2007
Europe is getting old, and fast. Birth rates are falling below those
necessary to replace older people as they die. The average birth rate
in the European Union is down to 1.5 children per woman, and officials
warn that unless it rises to 1.7, the EU will have difficulty
financing its pension system.
Portugal's birth rate fell last year to the lowest level since records
began in 1935. Poland, with one of Europe's lowest fertility rates,
recently began a programme of tax breaks, longer maternity leave and
better pre-school provision to encourage larger families. The Nordic
model includes financial incentives and flexible working, and has seen
the birth rate increase slightly in Norway and Sweden.
Margaret Jay: With the UN's help, Britain can do a lot for Iraq
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2770990.ece
Published: 15 July 2007
We have yet to hear a major statement from Prime Minister Gordon Brown
on Iraq. But two weeks after taking office, he will have been told
that there are no political or military "silver bullets" to solve the
situation there. The Iraq Commission report states there are now no
easy choices, only painful ones for the countries who led the invasion
in 2003.
Established by the Foreign Policy Centre and Channel 4, the Iraq
Commission's remit was to identify options for the UK and specifically
for Gordon Brown's incoming administration. We have made 34
recommendations designed to reduce the immediate chaos and violence,
and in the longer term to offer some strategies for stability and
prosperity. The commission members are well aware that there is no
guarantee of success, and that parts of our report may seem over-
optimistic, but there is consensus that a clear blueprint for future
UK policy is a priority.
Rupert Cornwell: Out Of America
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2770986.ece
The US system of 'elected kingship' is proving a stumbling block for
those who want to get rid of George Bush, since impeachment is 'off
the table'
Published: 15 July 2007
Imagine Britain had had an American-style president in the dark times
of May 1940. If Neville Chamberlain hadn't decided to step down after
an unfavourable vote by the legislature, could he have been forced out
within 48 hours, and replaced by a man who could lead a country at
war?
The thought is prompted by the remarkable implosion of the presidency
of George Bush. The US legislature and the American people have long
since lost confidence in his ability to conduct his war in Iraq. Bush
happens to be a huge Churchill fan, and an inspirational bust of
Chamberlain's successor adorns the Oval Office. The irony, of course,
is that Churchill became prime minister because people sensed he was
the right leader for a war they knew had to be fought. A substantial
majority of Americans have given up on Bush for an opposite reason:
that he refuses to get them out of the war into which he led them, and
which, they now understand, did not need to be fought.
When an honest mistake is not worth the risk
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126445,00.html
Simon Caulkin, management editor
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Last Christmas, a legal firm sent me a mug. On the front was the
legend: 'Do you have a risk assessment for THIS?', and on the back:
'Have you: Tested the kettle's connection? Checked for vermin faeces
in the tea bag? Ensured the milk is within its sell-by date? Checked
the handle is secure? Waited for the tea to cool to a safe
temperature?'
This is a joke, but it's not much more extreme than the notice seen
recently at a cricket ground warning that cricket is a game played
with a hard ball that could hurt if it hit you. Or the council that
advised residents to take out liability insurance costing hundreds of
pounds a year for an allotment rented for =A35. Or, at a completely
different level, the US Sarbanes-Oxley legislation that obliges
companies to have internal controls to prevent future Enrons or
WorldComs.
How to coin it by being a real bore
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126446,00.html
Philip Kogan's independent publishing house has survived for 40 years
in a business ruled by the global corporates. Simon Caulkin hears how
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Amid the doom and gloom of the book trade - the disappearance of an
independent bookshop every week, deep price discounting by the
supermarkets, the pike-like eagerness of the large publishing houses
to swallow their smaller brethren whole - it's easy to conclude that
there's no life left outside the ranks of the big corporates.
Yet independent publishers continue not only to survive but thrive.
Astonishingly, industry sources put the number of UK independent
publishing houses at more than 3,000 - and though some are amateur or
'plain daft', the number remains remarkably constant, according to
Philip Kogan, chairman of Kogan Page, by some distance this country's
largest indie publisher of business books.
Fight for control: Iraq oil under pressure
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126441,00.html
Heather Stewart
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Long before coalition troops arrived in Iraq in 2003, anti-war
campaigners warned that George Bush's real motive was to grab its oil
reserves. While the violence continues to rage, workers in the
devastated country's energy industry are warning that America and
Britain are pressing Baghdad to hand over control of its oil industry
to foreign multinationals.
Hassan Jumaa Awad al Assadi, the head of the Iraqi oil workers' union,
was in London last week campaigning against a new law which, he says,
will give the oil giants unprecedented rights to his country's vast
reserves.
Opec tightens its grip as oil prices hit the roof
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126440,00.html
Emboldened by global growth, the cartel believes it can squeeze supply
- and control the market - for years to come, writes Heather Stewart
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
When oil prices shot up to $78 a barrel last summer, analysts calmly
dismissed it as a 'demand shock': the by-product of a golden period of
economic growth. Twelve months on, prices are painfully high once
again - but this time strong demand is not the only explanation. Opec,
the producers' cartel, has seized the moment to tighten its grip on
the market, slashing production, squeezing supply and forcing up
prices.
It's housing, housing, housing as Brown builds a new vision
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126437,00.html
The new Prime Minister has signalled his intent by kick-starting what
could be the biggest building programme for 30 years, writes Nick
Mathiason
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Since 2000 Labour has promised a major change in the number of new
homes. Headline-grabbing announcements from ministers came and went.
But though Britain is now in the midst of the most prolonged housing
price boom ever seen, the number of homes built annually has hardly
shifted from 80-year lows of about 185,000 a year. Meanwhile, whole
swathes of the population have been priced off the housing ladder.
To remedy a chronic supply shortage, last week Gordon Brown unveiled
plans to build 3 million homes by 2020. While it is easy to dismiss
his announcements as yet more froth, Whitehall officials,
housebuilders and regeneration specialists say radical reform and even
action is in the air.
From papers to bricks and mortar: Eddy Shah returns
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126438,00.html
Nick Mathiason
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
'The thing I've learnt is that it's the small guy who is responsible
for revolution or major change. The big guys all have vested
interests.' Eddy Shah, the man who broke the print unions'
stranglehold on the newspaper industry, is back and this time he is
training his guns on Britain's housebuilders.
Shah, 63, whose career has segued from newspaper baron to golf course
and hotel owner, has now, he claims, arrived at a business model that
will enable him to build quality homes at affordable prices through
his new firm, Green Ladder Homes.
Call to end war signals start of a media battle
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126449,00.html
Once a single journalist could speak for the whole of America. Last
week an extraordinary editorial in the New York Times demonstrated the
limits of the press in a diffuse media age. Paul Harris reports
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
It was a journalistic moment that harked back to an older age of the
power of print. The venerable New York Times, one of the world's most
famous newspapers, was delivering a devastating verdict on the war in
Iraq. American troops should leave, it declared. In a stark editorial,
it called for withdrawal from Iraq, essentially announcing that the
war had failed and that the troops needed to come home as soon as
possible.
Bone up on your Mandarin, kids, China is wise to the web
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126454,00.html
John Naughton
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
One of the more intriguing - and under-reported - developments of the
week was the announcement that the Brown government plans to boost the
teaching of Mandarin in UK schools. Creating the training and support
infrastructure to translate this aspiration into reality will not be
easy, but the idea is a very good one - and not just because today's
schoolchildren will grow up in a world dominated by Chinese economic
power. They will also have to adjust to a world influenced by the
'soft' (ie cultural) power that is the inescapable accompaniment to
economic dominance.
Developing nations seek an end to Europe's stranglehold on IMF
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126423,00.html
Heather Stewart
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Developing countries are demanding that Europe relinquish control over
the top job at the International Monetary Fund, after the board of the
Washington-based lender laid down rules for the most open selection
process in more than 60 years. Amar Bhattacharya, spokesman for the
G24 group of developing countries, said it was vital that Dominique
Strauss-Kahn, backed by most European countries, does not stand
unopposed. 'It is extremely important that the best possible
candidates be brought forward,' he said.
Sky-high oil prices signal higher rates
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126419,00.html
Bank could step in to tackle fresh inflation fears
Heather Stewart, economics editor
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Rocketing global oil prices could force the Bank of England to keep
interest rates higher for longer to stamp out fears of spiralling
inflation, analysts have warned.
After supply cuts from producers' cartel Opec, and predictions that
global energy demand will remain strong, the cost of a barrel of Brent
Crude rose by well over $1 on Friday, to close at $73.93, near the all-
time highs of last summer.
With commodities experts predicting the market will remain tight for
the rest of the year, Karen Ward, chief UK economist at HSBC, said oil
price rises could add up to 0.5 per cent to the inflation rate over
the coming months: and that would mean yet more rate increases.
A just war against the murderers in our midst
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2126640,00.html
Our way of life is tolerant, spirited and full of humour. We should
make no apologies for fighting the moral descendants of Stalin and
Hitler who would destroy it
Henry Porter
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
On a rare dry evening last week I walked to a meeting in London. The
streets were full and the pubs overflowing with drinkers, many of whom
are on the pavements because of the smoking ban: people having a good
time at the end of an average working day, smiling and joshing each
other. Too often we forget that we have built a successful and good-
natured society over the last 10 years at the same time as absorbing a
million or more people from scores of countries around the world. If
you ever wanted to see the accumulated virtue of British culture you
might start with the humour, consideration, tolerance, generosity and
all-round nous to be found in any mixed gathering anywhere in these
islands.
Don't dismiss the Church of England as wishy-washy
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2126627,00.html
Will Hutton
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
On the 18.28 Southport-Wigan Wallgate train on Thursday were marchers
from that day's Liverpool Orange Order parade in Southport. '***** the
Pope,' they drunkenly sang, amid ever coarser, more explicit anti-
Fenian songs. The toilet in the train had been locked so an Orange
marcher full of beer urinated besides the exit door as the only viable
means of relief while excoriating all things Irish Catholic.
Had he witnessed it, the Pope might have felt yet more justified in
his judgment that Protestantism could never create churches. It might
create Christian 'communities', but because it could not trace its
lineage back to the first Christian divines, it could never claim the
status of being a full church. Nor did Protestant 'communities' have a
sacramental priesthood or a communion based on liturgical mystery,
although of course the Holy Spirit might still reveal itself to them.
Revelation was certainly absent on the 18.28.
It's time to move beyond being 'gay'
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2126626,00.html
Forty years after the 1967 bill, homophobic abuse still goes on. Let's
ditch the sexual stereotypes
Simon Fanshawe
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
I had a gratifyingly zeitgeist moment the other day in one of London's
smarter clubs. It had met with a spot of bother; people were going
into the loo cubicles together to share lines of coke. So now the loo
doors brandish a strict sign: 'Any two people found in this cubicle
using drugs will be ejected from the club.' And I just thought of a
member of staff knocking on the door when a boyfriend and I were over-
amorously engaged therein and being able to say: 'Don't worry we're
just having sex,' and the doorman saying: 'OK. Carry on.'
The readers' editor on ... autism and the MMR vaccination controversy
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2126631,00.html
Stephen Pritchard
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
The Observer reported last week on a 'big surge' in the number of
children in Britain with autism and included the claim that the rise
might be linked to the use of the MMR vaccine. This caused an
immediate outcry within the scientific and medical community.
An unpublished report leaked to the paper showed that the number of
children in Britain with autism could be as many as one in 58. The
document had been the work of seven academics at Cambridge University,
two of whom, the paper said, believed privately that the surprisingly
high figure 'could be linked to the controversial MMR vaccine'.
Kremlin tears up arms pact with Nato
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126843,00.html
Russia's relations with West hit a new low point
Luke Harding in Moscow
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
President Vladimir Putin yesterday signalled that Russia was on a new
and explosive collision course with Nato when he dumped a key arms
control treaty limiting the deployment of conventional forces in
Europe.
Putin said Moscow was unilaterally withdrawing from the Soviet-era
Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty because of 'extraordinary
circumstances that affect the security of the Russian Federation', the
Kremlin said. These required 'immediate measures'.
The treaty governs where Nato and Russia can station their troops in
Europe. Moscow's decision to bin it suggests that Putin's talks
earlier this month with President George Bush came to nothing, and
that the Kremlin has reverted to its earlier belligerent mood. The
Kremlin has for months been bitterly incensed by the Bush
administration's decision to site elements of its missile defence
shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Violence ebbing. Wealth returning. Can this be Iraq?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126619,00.html
The clamour is growing in America and Britain for troops to be brought
home. Violence grips large parts of the country. But elsewhere the
green shoots of recovery are showing through the rubble
Peter Beaumont in Iraq
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
The cycle of murder and vengeance grinds quickly in Iraq. Last week,
in the western city of Tal Afar, it was all over in 10 minutes.
No one saw how Jamil Salem Jamil, aged 19, arrived. If he was driven
to his target, then the car stayed out of sight. A slim Sunni youth,
with a thick crop of black hair above his elongated features, he
walked down the alley to the house where Khosheed Abbas, a policeman,
his fiancee, Mariam Azzideen, and their families, all Shias, were
sitting down to a simple wedding feast.
Failure in Afghanistan risks rise in terror, say generals
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126817,00.html
Military chiefs warn No.10 that defeat could lead to change of regime
in Pakistan
Nicholas Watt and Ned Temko
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Britain's most senior generals have issued a blunt warning to Downing
Street that the military campaign in Afghanistan is facing a
catastrophic failure, a development that could lead to an Islamist
government seizing power in neighbouring Pakistan.
Amid fears that London and Washington are taking their eye off
Afghanistan as they grapple with Iraq, the generals have told Number
10 that the collapse of the government in Afghanistan, headed by Hamid
Karzai, would present a grave threat to the security of Britain.
Promise of a televised education has India gripped by Swot Idol fever
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126842,00.html
Amelia Gentleman in New Delhi
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Two thousand Indian schoolchildren began a televised battle last night
to win five scholarships to English universities, in the first
instalment of a new prime-time show tipped to grip the nation this
summer.
Scholar Hunt - Destination UK has none of the glamour of the other
reality shows which have bewitched Indian viewers in recent months,
but such is the value ascribed to education here that broadcasters
expect this quiet programme to attract large Saturday-night audiences.
Over eight weeks the students will sit exams, undergo Mastermind-style
general knowledge quizzes, IQ tests, and endure interviews with
academics from Leeds, Warwick, Cardiff, Sheffield and Middlesex, the
universities which have offered fully-funded places.
Nepal's king seeks escape amid probe into wealth
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126615,00.html
Robbed of his legal powers by parliament, a despised king now faces
being stripped of his vast riches
Dan McDougall in Kathmandu
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Plastered on the ancient moss-covered stone walls of a lane next to
Kathmandu's opulent royal palace, a satirical poster depicts Nepal's
King Gyanendra on the verge of madness. The monarch is pictured,
gripped by fear and paranoia, sawing the legs from his huge gilded
throne one by one.
Once the absolute ruler of this poverty-stricken Himalayan kingdom, in
recent months King Gyanendra has been reduced to a shadow hovering
over a power struggle between the Nepali government he ironically
revived under huge public pressure for the return of democracy, and
the Maoist rebels who have come in from the cold to join the new
regime and ultimately depose him.
Mosque stirs racial passion in Germany
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126622,00.html
While Muslims see a =A320m building for Cologne as test of a nation's
tolerance, critics fear the rise of a parallel, repressive society
Jason Burke in Cologne
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
This weekend the mosque is overcrowded, the cafe grubby, the social
centre and offices scruffy and uncomfortable. Not for long, hopes
Kilic Iqbal, 27, who works for the Turkish religious and cultural
association that runs the complex. 'It will be beautiful, but much
more too,' said Iqbal. 'The Muslims of Germany have been here 40
years, there are more than 120,000 in Cologne, it will show we are
part of society.
Europe's new golden coast
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126623,00.html
Millionaires, tycoons and celebrities are bringing glamour to
Montenegro's shores
Daniel McLaughlin in Budva
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Zarko Radulovic's family was not wealthy and his two decades as a
ship's captain were not lucrative, but this week the Rolling Stones
stayed at his hotel and things are looking up. He is a man of modern
Montenegro, the world's youngest independent state, where glittering
wealth and glamour mask poverty and corruption and a small elite is
benefiting from the sale of swaths of the country to foreign tycoons
and celebrities.
Kenyan fury at threat to organic trade
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126614,00.html
Poor farmers could lose their livelihoods if the UK approves a ban on
air-freighted imports
Aidan Hartley in Kiambu, Kenya
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
In floppy hats and gumboots, Kenya's Kikuyu farmers are preparing for
war with Britain. There isn't an AK-47 in sight, though there are
plenty of organic cucumbers, carrots, French beans and cauliflowers.
It's a battle over who is to blame for climate change - poor African
farmers who export their produce by air, or Western consumers who care
about the environmental impact of 'food miles'.
'Who emits more greenhouse gases?' asks Charles Kimani among his
avocado trees. 'A Kenyan or a Briton?' The average Briton emits 30
times more carbon than a Kenyan, according to World Bank figures - or
9=2E4 tonnes of CO2 compared with 0.3 tonnes.
Success on a plate for school entrepreneurs
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2126727,00.html
Amelia Hill
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Sceptics predicted classroom chaos when 10,000 of the nation's
teenagers were handed =A310 and invited to use it to make as much money
as they could in a month.
But pupils from 120 schools across Britain took the challenge so
seriously, and raised so much money, they have put the contestants in
Dragons' Den and The Apprentice to shame.
The highest profit on =A310 was =A3410; a 4,100 per cent increase in a
month. The average profit was =A399.33, a 993 per cent increase, and the
biggest team profit was =A31,000.
Hell on earth? Just enjoy it ...
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2126492,00.html
In pointing out the absurd antics of our crazed leaders in Black Mass,
John Gray appears more satirist than philosopher of the post-9/11
world, says Peter Conrad
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Guardian
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia
by John Gray
Allen Lane =A318.99, pp229
Philosophers once aimed to teach us serenity. Buddha smiled as he
contemplated the void and Socrates drank his dose of hemlock in the
same spirit of wise acceptance. Philosophy today has a different
agenda: its gift to us is a contagious fear, as it terrorises us into
awareness of our world's dangerous fragility. Even before you open
John Gray's book, its cover tells you to be afraid, to be very afraid.
The design couples a black mass with a bloodbath. Ants pullulate in
the mire and gore: the lord of the flies has unleashed an infestation
of pests. Is this the plague of insects that overran Maoist China when
the peasants, browbeaten into the defence of the leader's agricultural
regime, battered all the sparrows to death? Man, seeking to unseat
God, imagines heaven is within his reach. Instead he creates hell on
earth.
London's earning
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2124458,00.html
Not since the loadsamoney Eighties has Britain had it so good. The
colossal deals of the capital's private equity magnates have created a
'national wealth service'. But Brown's controversial tax loopholes and
the ever-growing disparity between rich and poor have kick-started a
moral backlash. Ned Temko enters the secretive world of hedgies,
quants and non-doms
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Times are good for Patrick. At Christmas, he boarded a private jet for
a ski break with a few workmates in Zermatt. Since then, he has spent
a weekend fooling around in the English countryside in a =A3200,000
supercar, helicoptered off for an afternoon at Goodwood's Festival of
Speed, enjoyed a private showing of Damien Hirst's famously bejewelled
human skull, and, just last week, accepted a =A35m offer on his gadget-
filled South Kensington flat.
The genes that build America
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2124456,00.html
From the discovery that presidential hopeful Barack Obama is descended
from white slave owners to the realisation that the majority of black
Americans have European ancestors, a boom in 'recreational genetics'
is forcing America to redefine its roots. Paul Harris pieces together
the DNA jigsaw of what it really means to be born in the USA
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Al Sharpton walked into a South Carolina pine forest just outside the
sleepy southern town of Edgefield and stopped at a cluster of
toothlike unmarked gravestones. This was the former plantation on
which a few generations ago his ancestors had worked, lived, loved and
died, owned as property by white masters. 'You must assume that it's
family here,' Sharpton said, referring to the abandoned slave
graveyard.
A few weeks previously Reverend Sharpton, one of America's most
outspoken black civil rights leaders, had not known of the cemetery's
existence. But researchers had explored his genealogy and broken the
news to him. Sharpton's story had an astonishing twist: the
genealogists discovered that his ancestors had once been owned by the
ancestors of Strom Thurmond, the Senator and former segregationist who
once ran for president on a racist platform. The phrase 'ironic
coincidence' did not begin to cover it.
.
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| User: "JTEM" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and right-wingers alike? |
16 Jul 2007 01:24:48 AM |
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maff <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and
right-wingers alike?
She's not. In fact, she's leading in the polls.
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| User: "maff" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and right-wingers alike? |
16 Jul 2007 05:01:51 AM |
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On Jul 16, 7:24 am, JTEM <jte...@gmail.com> wrote:
maff <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and
right-wingers alike?
She's not. In fact, she's leading in the polls.
She is also leading in the negative rating even more than Kerry or
Gore.
.
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| User: "JTEM" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and right-wingers alike? |
16 Jul 2007 06:30:32 AM |
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maff <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
JTEM <jte...@gmail.com> wrote:
maff <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and
right-wingers alike?
She's not. In fact, she's leading in the polls.
She is also leading in the negative rating even more than
Kerry or Gore.
Given almost 16 years of non-stop Reich wing slander,
that's hardly a surprise.
Not a single one of the Republican candidates for President
could think of a good thing to say about Clinton at one of
their debates. Considering the night-and-day contrast with
the Bush disaster, that's quite a feat.
But if you live in the alternative universe of neo-con
propaganda, you have an extremely negative view of
Hillary.
Personally, I don't. I loved Bill, and am very fond of
Hillary. But I have STRONG reservations about a Hillary
Presidency. I mean, what would be the message?
The Clinton years were GREAT years for American,
absolutely, but there's no going back. In a way, as
rosey-red as the Clinton years seem at this late stage,
and as much as I long for a return to them, I think the
more stark reality of an Al Gore would be better.
Hillary represents the rosey-red past, while someone
like an Al Gore represents the future, the tough job
that desperately needs to be done. And as much as
I'd like to head full steam towards the glory days of
the Clinton years, I know in my heart that we must
move forward, we must do what needs to be done.
.
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| User: "maff" |
|
| Title: Re: OT: Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and right-wingers alike? |
16 Jul 2007 10:07:53 AM |
|
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On Jul 16, 12:30 pm, JTEM <jte...@gmail.com> wrote:
maff <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
JTEM <jte...@gmail.com> wrote:
maff <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and
right-wingers alike?
She's not. In fact, she's leading in the polls.
She is also leading in the negative rating even more than
Kerry or Gore.
Given almost 16 years of non-stop Reich wing slander,
that's hardly a surprise.
Not a single one of the Republican candidates for President
could think of a good thing to say about Clinton at one of
their debates. Considering the night-and-day contrast with
the Bush disaster, that's quite a feat.
But if you live in the alternative universe of neo-con
propaganda, you have an extremely negative view of
Hillary.
Personally, I don't. I loved Bill, and am very fond of
Hillary. But I have STRONG reservations about a Hillary
Presidency. I mean, what would be the message?
The Clinton years were GREAT years for American,
absolutely, but there's no going back. In a way, as
rosey-red as the Clinton years seem at this late stage,
and as much as I long for a return to them, I think the
more stark reality of an Al Gore would be better.
Hillary represents the rosey-red past, while someone
like an Al Gore represents the future, the tough job
that desperately needs to be done. And as much as
I'd like to head full steam towards the glory days of
the Clinton years, I know in my heart that we must
move forward, we must do what needs to be done.
With such negatives, even if she wins, Republicans will bounce back. I
doubt Gore is going to run.
.
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|
|
|
|
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| User: "Michelle Malkin" |
|
| Title: Re: Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and right-wingers alike? |
16 Jul 2007 12:32:14 AM |
|
|
"maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1184501440.004605.205860@n2g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and right-wingers
alike?
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2766305.ece
They say she is a scheming control-freak who will stop at nothing in
her bid to become the first Mrs President. And America's anti-Hillary
Clinton alliance is growing by the day.
********************************************
Good, because I'm backing John Edwards and
have donated to his campaign several times
already.
--
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
Michelle Malkin (Mickey) aa list#1
BAAWA Knight & Bible Thumper Thumper
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
When fascism comes to America, it will be
wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross -
Sinclair Lewis
By Leonard Doyle
Published: 15 July 2007
There is something about Hillary that raises the blood pressure of
otherwise easy-going Americans - and they don't need to be
Republicans. At a 4th of July barbecue, with the band working its way
through the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", I made the mistake of
asking a pleasant young woman what she thought of Hillary's chances.
Red white and blue fireworks were going off over Capitol Hill, as she
morphed into the sort of person who goes on the Jerry Springer Show.
She would "never, ever" vote for America's most famous politician, she
said. More than 50 per cent of Americans agree with her.
With everyone on tenterhooks over terrorism and the looming defeat in
Iraq, there is a febrile atmosphere in the US. Many are taking their
anger out on Hillary as she attempts to break through the last
remaining glass ceiling. Something called the "Hillary Conundrum" has
emerged to cause deep unease inside her party while giving comfort to
the Republican party, which by now should be in disarray.
Blessed is the Middle East peacemaker
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2771000.ece
Having proved the cynics wrong over Northern Ireland, Tony Blair now
has an even more intractable, ancient conflict to grapple with
By Anne Penketh
Published: 15 July 2007
Is Tony Blair going to solve the Middle East conflict then?
He might like to think so, but he's actually constrained by the narrow
job description as defined by the international Quartet which
appointed him. The Quartet's top negotiators - from the United States,
Russia, European Union and United Nations - plan to meet in Lisbon on
Thursday for the first high-level talks with Mr Blair since he was
named Middle East envoy, and will obviously discuss his exact
involvement. After that, he'll be off to the Middle East in the next
week or so.
Europe's plunging birth rate 'will lead to pensions crisis'
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2771031.ece
By Nina Lakhani
Published: 15 July 2007
Europe is getting old, and fast. Birth rates are falling below those
necessary to replace older people as they die. The average birth rate
in the European Union is down to 1.5 children per woman, and officials
warn that unless it rises to 1.7, the EU will have difficulty
financing its pension system.
Portugal's birth rate fell last year to the lowest level since records
began in 1935. Poland, with one of Europe's lowest fertility rates,
recently began a programme of tax breaks, longer maternity leave and
better pre-school provision to encourage larger families. The Nordic
model includes financial incentives and flexible working, and has seen
the birth rate increase slightly in Norway and Sweden.
Margaret Jay: With the UN's help, Britain can do a lot for Iraq
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2770990.ece
Published: 15 July 2007
We have yet to hear a major statement from Prime Minister Gordon Brown
on Iraq. But two weeks after taking office, he will have been told
that there are no political or military "silver bullets" to solve the
situation there. The Iraq Commission report states there are now no
easy choices, only painful ones for the countries who led the invasion
in 2003.
Established by the Foreign Policy Centre and Channel 4, the Iraq
Commission's remit was to identify options for the UK and specifically
for Gordon Brown's incoming administration. We have made 34
recommendations designed to reduce the immediate chaos and violence,
and in the longer term to offer some strategies for stability and
prosperity. The commission members are well aware that there is no
guarantee of success, and that parts of our report may seem over-
optimistic, but there is consensus that a clear blueprint for future
UK policy is a priority.
Rupert Cornwell: Out Of America
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2770986.ece
The US system of 'elected kingship' is proving a stumbling block for
those who want to get rid of George Bush, since impeachment is 'off
the table'
Published: 15 July 2007
Imagine Britain had had an American-style president in the dark times
of May 1940. If Neville Chamberlain hadn't decided to step down after
an unfavourable vote by the legislature, could he have been forced out
within 48 hours, and replaced by a man who could lead a country at
war?
The thought is prompted by the remarkable implosion of the presidency
of George Bush. The US legislature and the American people have long
since lost confidence in his ability to conduct his war in Iraq. Bush
happens to be a huge Churchill fan, and an inspirational bust of
Chamberlain's successor adorns the Oval Office. The irony, of course,
is that Churchill became prime minister because people sensed he was
the right leader for a war they knew had to be fought. A substantial
majority of Americans have given up on Bush for an opposite reason:
that he refuses to get them out of the war into which he led them, and
which, they now understand, did not need to be fought.
When an honest mistake is not worth the risk
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126445,00.html
Simon Caulkin, management editor
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Last Christmas, a legal firm sent me a mug. On the front was the
legend: 'Do you have a risk assessment for THIS?', and on the back:
'Have you: Tested the kettle's connection? Checked for vermin faeces
in the tea bag? Ensured the milk is within its sell-by date? Checked
the handle is secure? Waited for the tea to cool to a safe
temperature?'
This is a joke, but it's not much more extreme than the notice seen
recently at a cricket ground warning that cricket is a game played
with a hard ball that could hurt if it hit you. Or the council that
advised residents to take out liability insurance costing hundreds of
pounds a year for an allotment rented for £5. Or, at a completely
different level, the US Sarbanes-Oxley legislation that obliges
companies to have internal controls to prevent future Enrons or
WorldComs.
How to coin it by being a real bore
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126446,00.html
Philip Kogan's independent publishing house has survived for 40 years
in a business ruled by the global corporates. Simon Caulkin hears how
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Amid the doom and gloom of the book trade - the disappearance of an
independent bookshop every week, deep price discounting by the
supermarkets, the pike-like eagerness of the large publishing houses
to swallow their smaller brethren whole - it's easy to conclude that
there's no life left outside the ranks of the big corporates.
Yet independent publishers continue not only to survive but thrive.
Astonishingly, industry sources put the number of UK independent
publishing houses at more than 3,000 - and though some are amateur or
'plain daft', the number remains remarkably constant, according to
Philip Kogan, chairman of Kogan Page, by some distance this country's
largest indie publisher of business books.
Fight for control: Iraq oil under pressure
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126441,00.html
Heather Stewart
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Long before coalition troops arrived in Iraq in 2003, anti-war
campaigners warned that George Bush's real motive was to grab its oil
reserves. While the violence continues to rage, workers in the
devastated country's energy industry are warning that America and
Britain are pressing Baghdad to hand over control of its oil industry
to foreign multinationals.
Hassan Jumaa Awad al Assadi, the head of the Iraqi oil workers' union,
was in London last week campaigning against a new law which, he says,
will give the oil giants unprecedented rights to his country's vast
reserves.
Opec tightens its grip as oil prices hit the roof
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126440,00.html
Emboldened by global growth, the cartel believes it can squeeze supply
- and control the market - for years to come, writes Heather Stewart
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
When oil prices shot up to $78 a barrel last summer, analysts calmly
dismissed it as a 'demand shock': the by-product of a golden period of
economic growth. Twelve months on, prices are painfully high once
again - but this time strong demand is not the only explanation. Opec,
the producers' cartel, has seized the moment to tighten its grip on
the market, slashing production, squeezing supply and forcing up
prices.
It's housing, housing, housing as Brown builds a new vision
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126437,00.html
The new Prime Minister has signalled his intent by kick-starting what
could be the biggest building programme for 30 years, writes Nick
Mathiason
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Since 2000 Labour has promised a major change in the number of new
homes. Headline-grabbing announcements from ministers came and went.
But though Britain is now in the midst of the most prolonged housing
price boom ever seen, the number of homes built annually has hardly
shifted from 80-year lows of about 185,000 a year. Meanwhile, whole
swathes of the population have been priced off the housing ladder.
To remedy a chronic supply shortage, last week Gordon Brown unveiled
plans to build 3 million homes by 2020. While it is easy to dismiss
his announcements as yet more froth, Whitehall officials,
housebuilders and regeneration specialists say radical reform and even
action is in the air.
From papers to bricks and mortar: Eddy Shah returns
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126438,00.html
Nick Mathiason
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
'The thing I've learnt is that it's the small guy who is responsible
for revolution or major change. The big guys all have vested
interests.' Eddy Shah, the man who broke the print unions'
stranglehold on the newspaper industry, is back and this time he is
training his guns on Britain's housebuilders.
Shah, 63, whose career has segued from newspaper baron to golf course
and hotel owner, has now, he claims, arrived at a business model that
will enable him to build quality homes at affordable prices through
his new firm, Green Ladder Homes.
Call to end war signals start of a media battle
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126449,00.html
Once a single journalist could speak for the whole of America. Last
week an extraordinary editorial in the New York Times demonstrated the
limits of the press in a diffuse media age. Paul Harris reports
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
It was a journalistic moment that harked back to an older age of the
power of print. The venerable New York Times, one of the world's most
famous newspapers, was delivering a devastating verdict on the war in
Iraq. American troops should leave, it declared. In a stark editorial,
it called for withdrawal from Iraq, essentially announcing that the
war had failed and that the troops needed to come home as soon as
possible.
Bone up on your Mandarin, kids, China is wise to the web
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126454,00.html
John Naughton
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
One of the more intriguing - and under-reported - developments of the
week was the announcement that the Brown government plans to boost the
teaching of Mandarin in UK schools. Creating the training and support
infrastructure to translate this aspiration into reality will not be
easy, but the idea is a very good one - and not just because today's
schoolchildren will grow up in a world dominated by Chinese economic
power. They will also have to adjust to a world influenced by the
'soft' (ie cultural) power that is the inescapable accompaniment to
economic dominance.
Developing nations seek an end to Europe's stranglehold on IMF
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126423,00.html
Heather Stewart
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Developing countries are demanding that Europe relinquish control over
the top job at the International Monetary Fund, after the board of the
Washington-based lender laid down rules for the most open selection
process in more than 60 years. Amar Bhattacharya, spokesman for the
G24 group of developing countries, said it was vital that Dominique
Strauss-Kahn, backed by most European countries, does not stand
unopposed. 'It is extremely important that the best possible
candidates be brought forward,' he said.
Sky-high oil prices signal higher rates
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2126419,00.html
Bank could step in to tackle fresh inflation fears
Heather Stewart, economics editor
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Rocketing global oil prices could force the Bank of England to keep
interest rates higher for longer to stamp out fears of spiralling
inflation, analysts have warned.
After supply cuts from producers' cartel Opec, and predictions that
global energy demand will remain strong, the cost of a barrel of Brent
Crude rose by well over $1 on Friday, to close at $73.93, near the all-
time highs of last summer.
With commodities experts predicting the market will remain tight for
the rest of the year, Karen Ward, chief UK economist at HSBC, said oil
price rises could add up to 0.5 per cent to the inflation rate over
the coming months: and that would mean yet more rate increases.
A just war against the murderers in our midst
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2126640,00.html
Our way of life is tolerant, spirited and full of humour. We should
make no apologies for fighting the moral descendants of Stalin and
Hitler who would destroy it
Henry Porter
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
On a rare dry evening last week I walked to a meeting in London. The
streets were full and the pubs overflowing with drinkers, many of whom
are on the pavements because of the smoking ban: people having a good
time at the end of an average working day, smiling and joshing each
other. Too often we forget that we have built a successful and good-
natured society over the last 10 years at the same time as absorbing a
million or more people from scores of countries around the world. If
you ever wanted to see the accumulated virtue of British culture you
might start with the humour, consideration, tolerance, generosity and
all-round nous to be found in any mixed gathering anywhere in these
islands.
Don't dismiss the Church of England as wishy-washy
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2126627,00.html
Will Hutton
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
On the 18.28 Southport-Wigan Wallgate train on Thursday were marchers
from that day's Liverpool Orange Order parade in Southport. '***** the
Pope,' they drunkenly sang, amid ever coarser, more explicit anti-
Fenian songs. The toilet in the train had been locked so an Orange
marcher full of beer urinated besides the exit door as the only viable
means of relief while excoriating all things Irish Catholic.
Had he witnessed it, the Pope might have felt yet more justified in
his judgment that Protestantism could never create churches. It might
create Christian 'communities', but because it could not trace its
lineage back to the first Christian divines, it could never claim the
status of being a full church. Nor did Protestant 'communities' have a
sacramental priesthood or a communion based on liturgical mystery,
although of course the Holy Spirit might still reveal itself to them.
Revelation was certainly absent on the 18.28.
It's time to move beyond being 'gay'
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2126626,00.html
Forty years after the 1967 bill, homophobic abuse still goes on. Let's
ditch the sexual stereotypes
Simon Fanshawe
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
I had a gratifyingly zeitgeist moment the other day in one of London's
smarter clubs. It had met with a spot of bother; people were going
into the loo cubicles together to share lines of coke. So now the loo
doors brandish a strict sign: 'Any two people found in this cubicle
using drugs will be ejected from the club.' And I just thought of a
member of staff knocking on the door when a boyfriend and I were over-
amorously engaged therein and being able to say: 'Don't worry we're
just having sex,' and the doorman saying: 'OK. Carry on.'
The readers' editor on ... autism and the MMR vaccination controversy
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2126631,00.html
Stephen Pritchard
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
The Observer reported last week on a 'big surge' in the number of
children in Britain with autism and included the claim that the rise
might be linked to the use of the MMR vaccine. This caused an
immediate outcry within the scientific and medical community.
An unpublished report leaked to the paper showed that the number of
children in Britain with autism could be as many as one in 58. The
document had been the work of seven academics at Cambridge University,
two of whom, the paper said, believed privately that the surprisingly
high figure 'could be linked to the controversial MMR vaccine'.
Kremlin tears up arms pact with Nato
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126843,00.html
Russia's relations with West hit a new low point
Luke Harding in Moscow
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
President Vladimir Putin yesterday signalled that Russia was on a new
and explosive collision course with Nato when he dumped a key arms
control treaty limiting the deployment of conventional forces in
Europe.
Putin said Moscow was unilaterally withdrawing from the Soviet-era
Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty because of 'extraordinary
circumstances that affect the security of the Russian Federation', the
Kremlin said. These required 'immediate measures'.
The treaty governs where Nato and Russia can station their troops in
Europe. Moscow's decision to bin it suggests that Putin's talks
earlier this month with President George Bush came to nothing, and
that the Kremlin has reverted to its earlier belligerent mood. The
Kremlin has for months been bitterly incensed by the Bush
administration's decision to site elements of its missile defence
shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Violence ebbing. Wealth returning. Can this be Iraq?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126619,00.html
The clamour is growing in America and Britain for troops to be brought
home. Violence grips large parts of the country. But elsewhere the
green shoots of recovery are showing through the rubble
Peter Beaumont in Iraq
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
The cycle of murder and vengeance grinds quickly in Iraq. Last week,
in the western city of Tal Afar, it was all over in 10 minutes.
No one saw how Jamil Salem Jamil, aged 19, arrived. If he was driven
to his target, then the car stayed out of sight. A slim Sunni youth,
with a thick crop of black hair above his elongated features, he
walked down the alley to the house where Khosheed Abbas, a policeman,
his fiancee, Mariam Azzideen, and their families, all Shias, were
sitting down to a simple wedding feast.
Failure in Afghanistan risks rise in terror, say generals
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126817,00.html
Military chiefs warn No.10 that defeat could lead to change of regime
in Pakistan
Nicholas Watt and Ned Temko
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Britain's most senior generals have issued a blunt warning to Downing
Street that the military campaign in Afghanistan is facing a
catastrophic failure, a development that could lead to an Islamist
government seizing power in neighbouring Pakistan.
Amid fears that London and Washington are taking their eye off
Afghanistan as they grapple with Iraq, the generals have told Number
10 that the collapse of the government in Afghanistan, headed by Hamid
Karzai, would present a grave threat to the security of Britain.
Promise of a televised education has India gripped by Swot Idol fever
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126842,00.html
Amelia Gentleman in New Delhi
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Two thousand Indian schoolchildren began a televised battle last night
to win five scholarships to English universities, in the first
instalment of a new prime-time show tipped to grip the nation this
summer.
Scholar Hunt - Destination UK has none of the glamour of the other
reality shows which have bewitched Indian viewers in recent months,
but such is the value ascribed to education here that broadcasters
expect this quiet programme to attract large Saturday-night audiences.
Over eight weeks the students will sit exams, undergo Mastermind-style
general knowledge quizzes, IQ tests, and endure interviews with
academics from Leeds, Warwick, Cardiff, Sheffield and Middlesex, the
universities which have offered fully-funded places.
Nepal's king seeks escape amid probe into wealth
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126615,00.html
Robbed of his legal powers by parliament, a despised king now faces
being stripped of his vast riches
Dan McDougall in Kathmandu
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Plastered on the ancient moss-covered stone walls of a lane next to
Kathmandu's opulent royal palace, a satirical poster depicts Nepal's
King Gyanendra on the verge of madness. The monarch is pictured,
gripped by fear and paranoia, sawing the legs from his huge gilded
throne one by one.
Once the absolute ruler of this poverty-stricken Himalayan kingdom, in
recent months King Gyanendra has been reduced to a shadow hovering
over a power struggle between the Nepali government he ironically
revived under huge public pressure for the return of democracy, and
the Maoist rebels who have come in from the cold to join the new
regime and ultimately depose him.
Mosque stirs racial passion in Germany
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126622,00.html
While Muslims see a £20m building for Cologne as test of a nation's
tolerance, critics fear the rise of a parallel, repressive society
Jason Burke in Cologne
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
This weekend the mosque is overcrowded, the cafe grubby, the social
centre and offices scruffy and uncomfortable. Not for long, hopes
Kilic Iqbal, 27, who works for the Turkish religious and cultural
association that runs the complex. 'It will be beautiful, but much
more too,' said Iqbal. 'The Muslims of Germany have been here 40
years, there are more than 120,000 in Cologne, it will show we are
part of society.
Europe's new golden coast
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126623,00.html
Millionaires, tycoons and celebrities are bringing glamour to
Montenegro's shores
Daniel McLaughlin in Budva
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Zarko Radulovic's family was not wealthy and his two decades as a
ship's captain were not lucrative, but this week the Rolling Stones
stayed at his hotel and things are looking up. He is a man of modern
Montenegro, the world's youngest independent state, where glittering
wealth and glamour mask poverty and corruption and a small elite is
benefiting from the sale of swaths of the country to foreign tycoons
and celebrities.
Kenyan fury at threat to organic trade
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2126614,00.html
Poor farmers could lose their livelihoods if the UK approves a ban on
air-freighted imports
Aidan Hartley in Kiambu, Kenya
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
In floppy hats and gumboots, Kenya's Kikuyu farmers are preparing for
war with Britain. There isn't an AK-47 in sight, though there are
plenty of organic cucumbers, carrots, French beans and cauliflowers.
It's a battle over who is to blame for climate change - poor African
farmers who export their produce by air, or Western consumers who care
about the environmental impact of 'food miles'.
'Who emits more greenhouse gases?' asks Charles Kimani among his
avocado trees. 'A Kenyan or a Briton?' The average Briton emits 30
times more carbon than a Kenyan, according to World Bank figures - or
9.4 tonnes of CO2 compared with 0.3 tonnes.
Success on a plate for school entrepreneurs
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2126727,00.html
Amelia Hill
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Sceptics predicted classroom chaos when 10,000 of the nation's
teenagers were handed £10 and invited to use it to make as much money
as they could in a month.
But pupils from 120 schools across Britain took the challenge so
seriously, and raised so much money, they have put the contestants in
Dragons' Den and The Apprentice to shame.
The highest profit on £10 was £410; a 4,100 per cent increase in a
month. The average profit was £99.33, a 993 per cent increase, and the
biggest team profit was £1,000.
Hell on earth? Just enjoy it ...
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2126492,00.html
In pointing out the absurd antics of our crazed leaders in Black Mass,
John Gray appears more satirist than philosopher of the post-9/11
world, says Peter Conrad
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Guardian
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia
by John Gray
Allen Lane £18.99, pp229
Philosophers once aimed to teach us serenity. Buddha smiled as he
contemplated the void and Socrates drank his dose of hemlock in the
same spirit of wise acceptance. Philosophy today has a different
agenda: its gift to us is a contagious fear, as it terrorises us into
awareness of our world's dangerous fragility. Even before you open
John Gray's book, its cover tells you to be afraid, to be very afraid.
The design couples a black mass with a bloodbath. Ants pullulate in
the mire and gore: the lord of the flies has unleashed an infestation
of pests. Is this the plague of insects that overran Maoist China when
the peasants, browbeaten into the defence of the leader's agricultural
regime, battered all the sparrows to death? Man, seeking to unseat
God, imagines heaven is within his reach. Instead he creates hell on
earth.
London's earning
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2124458,00.html
Not since the loadsamoney Eighties has Britain had it so good. The
colossal deals of the capital's private equity magnates have created a
'national wealth service'. But Brown's controversial tax loopholes and
the ever-growing disparity between rich and poor have kick-started a
moral backlash. Ned Temko enters the secretive world of hedgies,
quants and non-doms
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Times are good for Patrick. At Christmas, he boarded a private jet for
a ski break with a few workmates in Zermatt. Since then, he has spent
a weekend fooling around in the English countryside in a £200,000
supercar, helicoptered off for an afternoon at Goodwood's Festival of
Speed, enjoyed a private showing of Damien Hirst's famously bejewelled
human skull, and, just last week, accepted a £5m offer on his gadget-
filled South Kensington flat.
The genes that build America
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2124456,00.html
From the discovery that presidential hopeful Barack Obama is descended
from white slave owners to the realisation that the majority of black
Americans have European ancestors, a boom in 'recreational genetics'
is forcing America to redefine its roots. Paul Harris pieces together
the DNA jigsaw of what it really means to be born in the USA
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer
Al Sharpton walked into a South Carolina pine forest just outside the
sleepy southern town of Edgefield and stopped at a cluster of
toothlike unmarked gravestones. This was the former plantation on
which a few generations ago his ancestors had worked, lived, loved and
died, owned as property by white masters. 'You must assume that it's
family here,' Sharpton said, referring to the abandoned slave
graveyard.
A few weeks previously Reverend Sharpton, one of America's most
outspoken black civil rights leaders, had not known of the cemetery's
existence. But researchers had explored his genealogy and broken the
news to him. Sharpton's story had an astonishing twist: the
genealogists discovered that his ancestors had once been owned by the
ancestors of Strom Thurmond, the Senator and former segregationist who
once ran for president on a racist platform. The phrase 'ironic
coincidence' did not begin to cover it.
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