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“I have seen many Anne Franks in Cambodia. …Under Pol Pot, many children were separated from their families. They faced starvation and were sent to the front to fight and die,” she explains. “Like Anna, they never knew peace and the warmth of a home.”

Translated by Sayana Ser with help from the Dutch embassy in Cambodia (Kampuchea, Khmer), The Diary of Anne Frank has now become one of the most popular and discussed books in this war-torn country.

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This book continues to change the world, one reader at a time. It has been translated into at least 67 languages and more than 31 million copies have been sold. Arguably, it is the most influential book of the 20th century. Similarly to this Cambodian story, it was (and remains) very popular in postwar Japan (it was published there in 1952, and has sold 4 million copies, which is exceeded only by sales in the US).

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Far away from the Taliban insurgency, in this most peaceful corner of Afghanistan, a quiet revolution is gaining pace.

Women are driving cars — a rarity in Afghanistan — working in public offices and police stations, and sitting on local councils. There is even a female governor, the first and only one in Afghanistan.

In many ways this province, Bamian, is unique. A half-dozen years of relative peace in this part of the country since the fall of the Taliban and a lessening of lawlessness and disorder have allowed women to push the boundaries here.

Most of the people in Bamian are ethnic Hazaras, Shiite Muslims who are in any case more open than most Afghans to the idea of women working outside the home.

But the changes in women’s lives here are also an enormous step for Afghanistan as a whole. And they may point the way to broader possibilities for women, eventually, if peace can be secured in this very conservative Muslim society, which has been dominated by militia commanders and warlords during the last 30 years of war.

They also make great rugs in that area…

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how many undecideds can there be left in the nation?

You gotta get out more. Drive to some part of town you don’t typically have to go to. Walk around and talk to 10 people - you’ll find people that have no clue about any of this. They may have heard something here or there, but there are tons and tons of people who don’t follow this stuff like some of us.

It is simple really - cable/internet. If you’re like friends of mine who don’t have cable, and can’t afford internet or a new computer or both, you’re forced to just depend on others for the news you get. You see Judge Judy/Joe Brown/Price Is Right/E.R./Office on television and maybe you hear a snippet or two on the news. When you get on the internet at the library after waiting a while for a computer, you check your email, and maybe you see a headline or two - a brief snapshot at that moment in time - and you keep moving.

You go to work, and maybe you hear something here or there, but for the most part you are working, not sitting down and having extended policy discussions over coffee in your office. Because if you were, you’d have the internet and cable.

It’s an incredible amount of information to process, and if you’re not a) in the information stream b) experienced with it enough to be able to process the information rapidly and connect it all, you still aren’t that informed. That’s because reports come out, then get debunked, or modified, or proved false, then true. Polls come out and change, change back, show something but are within the margin of error, are done with different methodologies, are disputed, are validated. 539, Rasmussen, Ipsis, Gallup, CNN, CBS, RCP. Then the pundits are weighing in and saying this or that. Palin’s giving interviews where she’s a complete dunce. Debates! New allegations. Is this ad accurate? Is that ad accurate? Crisis! There’s so much information to process.

There are absolutely loads of people who haven’t had the time to keep up, and for a lot of people, they see the information moving like whitewater rapids, and they fear jumping into it and not being able to figure out how to handle it all. They want someone who is in the know to tell them what’s been happening.

There are loads of undecided people, because if you don’t have time to sit there and digest all this stuff because you have your pre-established patterns of going to work, then the grocery store, and taking care of kids or going to a second job, and running errands and things like that.

This is why you should talk to your friends and family and even people who are around when the topic comes up. You’ll know, because you’ll see them bring out some topic that has long been covered, and mention it almost as if to say “what’s up with that - tell me”, and that’s an opportunity to share what you know. It may seem incredible to you and I, but yes, a lot of people are undecided, because they are uninformed. We have to inform them. Because some people just don’t know.

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According to a special report in The Economist, eighty percent of economists and 71% of economists with no party affiliation prefer Barack Obama’s economic plan. Read about it here.

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In today’s uncertain and, well, terrifying economic climate, it’s good to think ahead. While we don’t want to alarm you, basically your company could go broke at any second and you’ll be out on the street. Even worse, it’s in their best interest to keep it from you until the very last moment. All you have are the emails that arrive in your inbox, the high-level assistant who loves to gossip and your nose for bullshit.

Here are six warning signs that you might just be on a sinking ship.

Go and read - there’s plenty of truth there.

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Dear JAY [Redacted]:

Because you are a valued customer and your opinion is important to us, we would like to periodically ask you to provide feedback regarding your experience with our hotels. The feedback we collect from our customers is used to make improvements to our hotels and processes so we can better serve you.

However, our records indicate that you have not given us permission to send customer survey invitations to you at this email address. If you would like the opportunity to provide occasional feedback, please give us permission to contact you at this email address to complete future surveys. This permission is for research purposes only and does not give us permission to send you any marketing or promotional information.

Thank you in advance for your feedback and for spending your time away from home at Marriott.

Sincerely,

J.W. Marriott, Jr.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Marriott International, Inc.

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And a 90-year-old woman, trapped in the middle of a financial meltdown, shoots herself and she’s still in better shape than the economy. Yet, the Governor of Alaska wants to talk about somebody Barack Obama doesn’t know very well, and what this somebody Barack Obama doesn’t know very well, did, during the year Obama was eight and the Governor of Alaska was in pre-Kindergarten.

And she wants to talk about Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And she doesn’t object to being introduced with a reference to Barack Obama’s middle name. Well, this is my suggestion. In much the same way we, America, in the corporate persona of Fannie Mae, have forgiven poor Addie Polk of Akron, Ohio.

We, America, also need to forgive poor Sarah Palin of Wasilla, Alaska. They are both in situations that are beyond their ability to cope. They are both stuck in a crucible caused by forces they cannot comprehend. They are both unable to understand what they are doing.

After stumbling through a clumsier version of it at Englewood, Colorado, the Governor of Alaska said Saturday at Carson, California:

“Our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country.”

She later defended the remark by adding this was an “association that has been known but hasn’t been talked about.”

Governor, Conservative groups have thus far spent ten million dollars this year trying to make something, anything, out of the brief interaction on a charity board between Sen. Obama, and a rehabilitated former domestic radical from the ’60s and not even Conservatives have been stupid enough to buy the snake oil, that this was either a close relationship or a nefarious one.

But of course, you know better, Governor. You’re smarter than the rest of us. A reporter asks you a horrible gotcha question like’which newspapers do you read’ and it takes you four days to come up with an answer, and somehow it’s the reporter’s fault.

The reporter asks you to name one Supreme Court ruling with which you disagree other than Roe vs. Wade and even though you’d commented on just such a case from Alaska no less not three months ago your eyes turn into a big neon sign reading “Vacancy” and you insist it’s because that evil media asked the wrong question.

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During a rally in California on Saturday, Palin had said, “I’m reading on my Starbucks mocha cup, okay? The quote of the day… It was Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State and U.N. ambassador. … Now she said it, I didn’t. She said, ‘There’s a place in hell reserved for women who don’t support other women.’”

Some pundits pointed out that Palin had misquoted Albright, whose correct statement reads: “here’s a place in hell reserved for women who don’t help other women.”

Albright said in a statement to the Huffington Post on Sunday she was “flattered” that the governor had chosen her “as a source of wisdom,” but that what she said “had nothing to do with politics.”

“This is yet another example of McCain and Palin distorting the truth, and all the more reason to remember that this campaign is not about gender, it is about which candidate has an agenda that will improve the lives of all Americans, including women. The truth is, if you care about the status of women in our society and in our troubled economy, the best choice by far is Obama-Biden,” she added.

I wonder if “helping other women” includes not having them pay for their own rape examination kit.

Anyway, if Palin gets her campaign strategy off a Starbucks cup, I guess McCain is using a coke can: “Please recycle”.

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Election officials and watchdog groups are bracing for the wave of sneaky or suspicious phone calls, leaflets and emails that typically hit battleground states in the final 30 days of the presidential campaign.

Young voters at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Penn. have already been targeted, with students reporting that flyers have been posted around campus warning that undercover police will be at the polls on Election Day looking to make arrests.

The flyer reads like a friendly letter to fellow students relaying a warning from an “Obama supporter”: “He informed me that on the day of the election there will be undercover officers to execute warrants on those who come to vote based on the anticipated turnout,” writes the anonymous student in the letter which was later posted on the Drexel College Democrats website. “He advised me if I had any outstanding warrants or traffic offenses I should clear them up prior to voting.”

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Iceland’s parliament has passed emergency legislation to try to salvage the country’s banking system.

In a televised address to the nation, Prime Minister Geir Haarde said the legislation would help the island avoid national bankruptcy.

Iceland will also offer an unlimited guarantee for all bank customers’ savings accounts.

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Sarah Palin has a very distinctive way of speaking. Except when she doesn’t.

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As pressure built in the credit markets and stocks spiraled lower around the world on Monday, the Federal Reserve was considering a radical new plan to jump-start the engine of the financial system.

Under a proposal being discussed with the Treasury Department, the Fed could buy vast amounts of the unsecured short-term debt that companies rely on to finance their day-to-day activities, according to officials familiar with the discussions. If this were to happen, the central bank would come closer than ever to lending directly to businesses.

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On Monday, the Fed announced that it would once again redouble one of its key emergency lending programs, increasing the size of its Term Auction Facility to $600 billion, from $300 billion. On top of that, the central bank plans to provide an additional $300 billion to banks to meet their end-of-the-year cash needs.

So that’s another $600b on top of the $700b in the bailout plan…

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What we get when we mix LEGO and Fine Art?

via

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