Opinion

Everyday Acts of Resistance, An online gourmet food shop calls its Maple Cream Cookies "truly delicious and addictive." In John Banzhaf's view, that description should be treated not as a selling point but as a warning. Banzhaf, a George Washington University law professor who never saw a problem that couldn't be solved by suing someone, argues that food sellers have a legal duty to warn consumers about the dangerous deliciousness of high-calorie products such as ice cream, cheeseburgers, and potato chips. "Bet you can't eat just one!" presumably wouldn't count.
07-Dec-04, Spengler, Asia Times (Hong Kong), Writing off Europe, Every German schoolroom should display a stuffed Dutchman as a horrible example to youth, wrote the poet Heinrich Heine in 1831. For Americans, the horrible example to youth at the taxidermist shop is Western Europe. Last month the US re-elected a president despised by enormous European majorities. Europeans hate and fear the United States, but Americans barely can summon the energy to ignore Europe, which they have written off as a decadent and soon-to-disappear civilization. In the major newspapers of the US east coast, to be sure, Europeans continue to read about their sad little concerns. What "red state" Americans hear, by contrast, is that Europe is dying, like the now-vanished "evil empire" of Soviet communism.
06-Dec-04, Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph (UK), An Englishman's home is his dungeon, One of the key measures of a society's health is how easily you can insulate yourself from its underclass. In America, unless one resides in a very small number of problematic inner-city quarters or wishes to make a career in the drug trade, one will live a life blessedly untouched by crime. In Britain, alas, it's the peculiar genius of Home Office policy to have turned the entire country into one big, rundown, inner-city, no-go slum estate, extending from prosperous suburbs to leafy villages, even unto Upper Cheyne Row. (Link Requires free registration and cookies enabled)
08-Dec-04, Caroline Overington, The Age (Aust), Blair backs Annan as quit pressure simmers, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has backed beleaguered UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, saying criticism of him was unfair and that he was doing "a fine job". Speaking in London, Mr Blair said he hoped that Mr Annan, who has been criticised over the UN oil-for-food scandal, would be "allowed to get on with his job".