Buenos Aires is a city of beautiful people where appearances are important.We will arise, my people.
But not everyone in Buenos Aires is beautiful. Gonzalo Otalora, for instance, is downright ugly, and he is not embarrassed to admit it.
It's not fair, he said. The beautiful people get all the breaks. Beauty is a natural advantage and he wants the good-lookers to be taxed to finance compensation for the ugly people.
I suspect this is the principle point of interest: the religious schools. The slash-and-burn anti-clerical reforms at the end of the nineteenth century have left this as something of a curiosity.
Concessionnaire Mercedes-Benz dans le Berkshire et à Orange County, en Californie, il avait auparavant participé au financement de deux écoles religieuses pilotes à Sheffield, en 2005, vitrines de la réforme de l'éducation du gouvernement Blair.
Bah, on sait bien que l'Angleterre n'est pas une démocratie mais un pays d' "alternance" politique Droite / Droite, où le libéralisme économique sauvage règne en maître depuis l'époque de l'Empire quand l'Angleterre dominait économiquement le monde. Le Parti travailliste anglais, c'est surtout le parti qui fait travailler...Worth remembering every time you read a pious piece about the tabloid press "hatred" of the EU.
It's right that we reflect on the appalling human-rights record of Sudan. But is not the bear which was to go home with the children not also an opportunity to see ourselves as others do? Our encouragement to our children to anthropomorphise wild animals is a baffling feature of our culture. The children's sections of bookshops offer little more than a choice between stories of white children or talking animals. Where does it all lead? Urban pets, Animal Liberation and more spending on pet food than the world's poor have to feed themselves. Many Muslims find our relationships with dogs particularly distasteful, not least in loving them for their companionship. I suppose we must have been doing it since we started breeding them in our post-glacial caves. No wonder we are muddled enough to think calling a stuffed bear Muhammad is OK on the grounds that so many Muslims name their sons after him.I hope this is a parody. I fear it is not.
Tom Snow
London
Dr Imad Hassan, 45, is a Sudanese doctor and writer with a PhD in comparative religious studies who has lived in Britain since 1991.
He feels that someone from the Sudanese community must speak out against the ruling, and is planning to organise a protest from fellow scholars.
"I feel insulted as a Muslim by the government of Sudan, not by Mrs Gibbons," he told the BBC. "Describing the lovely children's toy with the name of Muhammad is a compliment, it is not an insult.
What a top chap. I wish the media would tell us more about men like this, and less about Abu bloody Hamza.
Ricardo maltraitait Svetlana, et celle-ci l'avait quitté. Pour tenter de la faire revenir à lui, cet Espagnol de 31 ans s'est adressé à une émission de télévision d'Antena 3, "Le journal de Patricia". Sans dire à la jeune femme qu'il s'agissait de son ancien persécuteur, l'animatrice l'avait convaincue de venir sur le plateau au motif qu'un "proche" voulait lui faire une surpise. La jeune Russe s'était imaginé qu'il s'agissait d'un membre de sa famille demeuré en Russie. Placée face à son agresseur, la surprise a été de taille. Devant les caméras, son ancien compagnon lui a demandé de l'épouser. Elle a répondu "non".
Read the whole thing, and weep.<br>Ricardo beat Svetlana, and she left him. A judge sentenced him to 11 months in the slammer, and forbid him access to Sveltana for 2 years. Undaunted, Ricardo contacted the reality TV show "Patricia's Diary", and asked them to set up Sveltana with him as a "close friend" she wasn't expecting; in his sick way, he wasn't wrong. Brought face to face with his victim, he asked her to marry him; she said no.
Quatre jours plus tard, il l'a égorgée.
Translation: "nothing to do with us, guv".La société de production de l'émission, Boomerang TV, a expliqué pourquoi, à ses yeux, les organisateurs de ce programme n'ont aucune part de responsabilité dans cet assassinat, dans la mesure où ils ne savaient rien de cette affaire de maltraitance.
Un responsable d'Antena 3, a assuré que "tous les moyens de contrôle permis par la loi avaient été utilisés" avant d'organiser la rencontre surprise entre Ricardo et Svetlana et a jugé "injuste d'établir une relation de cause à effet entre l'émission et cette mort".
Snow White and the seventy-two dwarves
Speaking to an Arab affairs expert on the reports that Islamic Jihad is threatening to send scores of women suicide bombers to blow themselves up near IDF troops if Israel starts an operation on the ground in Gaza, she enquired what awaited such women in heaven, the equivalent of the notorious 72 virgins ready to serve the male shahids. The answer: dwarves who will serve them. Even in jihadi heaven the women are discriminated against, it seems.
Oh dear, I now have even more questions. Are these real dwarves? What do their mothers think?What does “served” mean? Is it a euphemism, or is it light house work? Orgies of depraved carnality, or a cup of hot cocoa and bedtime stories? Bedtime stories, or “bedtime stories”? Is it wrong that the words “served by dwarves” keeping repeating in my head in the voice of Mr. Humphries?
Via the comments, PJ from the invaluble pajamasinbananas blog rightly reminds me that everything isn't sweetness and light in the west, either:
Saudi Arabia is an absolute discrace, but this sort of treatment of women can even be seen to a lesser extent in the West: 'PHILADELPHIA — In a rare rebuke, a bar association has criticized a judge for refusing to uphold sexual assault charges against a man who allegedly let friends rape a prostitute he had hired. The judge said she considered the case "theft of services."
It’s terrifying – we’ve got our own Teresa Carr Deni in the form of Judge James Pickles. Whether telling rape survivors that they should have “closed their legs”, or that wearing a miniskirt was “asking for it”, he made his contribution to keeping the rape conviction rate down.
To my relief, he has forsaken judging rape survivors, and taken up tabloid journalism – a profession to which his temperament, intellect and opinions are better suited.
However, we still have Starforth Hill – “Judge Ian Starforth Hill came under fire after saying that an eight-year-old girl rape victim was “not entirely an angel” in 1993. He was banned from hearing rape cases”.
Yet the [deleted] is still allowed to hear other sorts of case - what do judges need to do to be sacked?
I’ve now had two goes at right a cool, dispassionate and dark blog post on our chums, the Saudi’s. On both occasions, I had to stop before I got too angry. Hopefully it’ll be ready by next week.
A clam dredged up off the coast of Iceland is thought to have been the longest-lived animal discovered. Scientists said the mollusk, an ocean quahog clam, was aged between 405 and 410 years and could offer insights into the secrets of longevity...The clam, nicknamed Ming after the Chinese dynasty in power when it was born, was in its infancy when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and Shakespeare was writing plays such as Othello and Hamlet.Bangor's press release here, BBC report here
