November 29, 2006
Plan for Mayfair
It isn't only in the United States that citizens are fed-up about the Iraq War. Here's a British jab, suggesting that an invasion of Mayfair, an expensive residential area of London, might be in order.
No one, it occurs to us, has yet seen fit to ask the most obvious question to arise from the death of Alexander Litvinenko, namely is there not an urgent and compelling case for military intervention in (at the very least) Piccadilly and Mayfair, given that substantially more nuclear material has now been found in the hotels, sushi bars and office buildings of central London than the combined efforts of the UN weapons inspectors and coalition forces managed to uncover in the whole of Iraq? Just a thought.
Diary, by Jon Henley, Tuesday November 28, 2006, in The Guardian.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 3:08 AM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2006
British commentary: "how America is eating the world"
"
On a global scale the average US citizen uses far more than his or her fair share of the planet's resources - consuming more than four times the worldwide average of energy, almost three times as much water and producing more than twice the average amount of rubbish and five times the amount of carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming," explains the London-based Independent today. This isn't news, except that today's the day when the U.S. population reaches a round 300 million. The article you see here (and can read at www.independent.co.uk) is titled "Supersize Nation: As its population reaches 300m, how America is eating the world." Yuck.
While the British are nearly as irrational and misleading as the United States in their airline anti-terrorist measures (the government here, too, is in need of justification for the Iraq War, of course, so this makes sense), the British press is far superior to ours and I don't mind at all if they take a hard look at America.
I'm using the IRIS system now when I enter the U.K., which means going into a glass compartment and letting a machine read my irises. No human interaction, no passport or landing card to show, and it's very very fast. But it's a little worrisome, thinking that the government has my iris pattern in its system.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 2:30 PM | Comments (4)
July 30, 2006
Americans aren't crazy about the American way, either
Many Americans are angry about the way our country behaves in the world, and a letter to the editor in a recent issue of Newsweek magazine is just one expression of this. Rev. David A. Vogan wrote, "All my life I've been learning that the American way to solve problems is to kill people." Please, those of you elsewhere in the world, join with us to change things for the better.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 1:05 PM | Comments (1)
June 7, 2006
Good will squandered? Surveys of 10 nations, 2004
It's not hard to understand why we, the United States, would have some relationship problems, given that a poll in October 2004 found that "George Bush has squandered a wealth of sympathy around the world towards America since September 11 with public opinion in 10 leading countries - including some of its closest allies - growing more hostile to the United States while he has been in office." A month later, we reelected him (or, depending on your view, elected him for the first time--and of course there's still the Ohio question, covered in Rolling Stone this month).
United States Information Agency Alumni Association: Surveys of 10 nations, September-October 2004
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:09 PM | Comments (0)
June 2, 2006
Here's the link to the "Website of the Week" notice
Valley Advocate: Splash "Bookmark: Website of the Week--encouraging people around here to read what the world thinks about America!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 1:08 PM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2006
More about Canadians and the United States
This came in as a comment, but it's too good not to put here where it's easy to read:
"I remember a Canadian television commercial, where two Canadians are outside a club or a hotel or something in Detroit and a limo pulls up and a bunch of guys get out, leaving the door open. The Canadians look inside and see the Stanley Cup. They get an idea, jump in the limo and get the driver to go over to the Windsor side, where they open up the sun roof and drive around holding the Stanley Cup up in the air.
"To me, it seemed to sum up the Canadian obsession with their big brother neighbor. We don't notice them, but they can't help but notice us, everywhere. They can't turn us off. We're on their TV sets. And, we steal their national sport.
"It's like a joke: What do you call 12 Canadians surrounded by 30,000 Americans? Answer: A professional hockey game."
Posted by Karen Christensen at 5:13 AM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2006
Canadians don't care? No, Canadians are bored by America
I asked my friend Barry Wellman, a famous sociologist who studies Internet communities, why we haven't had many contributions from Canada on LoveUsHateUS.com. Please couldn't he, I asked, knowing that he is a networker without equal, get some friends and colleagues to write. Here's what he said:
"Canadians are bored with the theme, "Love Us, Hate Us", because by nature of living next to the gorilla, they deal with it all the time.
For example, try the term "software lumber dispute" on Canadians and Americans. Every Canadian knows it: American perfidy in ignoring NAFTA rulings about softwood lumber tariffs. I doubt that 0.01% of Americans do. [I didn't.}
"There are many books on the theme of living with King Kong, whom you may recall had his attractions as well as his rambunctiousness destructiveness. Some major ones came from the 1970s. George Grant, Lament for a Nation; Ian Lumsden (ed.) Close the 49th Parallel; Margaret Atwood, Survival (non-fiction). And on a different, more pro-American note, Edgar Z Friedenberg, Deference to Authority."
Posted by Karen Christensen at 5:05 PM | Comments (0)