United States
At the climax of The King's Speech, I held my breath with the rest of the packed audience and hoped to God that history was kind to King George VI.
In recent weeks, Facebook and other social media have clearly demonstrated their capacity to do far more than just allow us to keep in touch with our family and friends. They have proven to be powerful organizing tools, capable of assisting in the creation of broad international movements for social change. Social media has proven to be a particularly powerful tool in countries in which basic democratic rights such as a free press and the right to assembly are severely restricted. At the same time, Facebook and YouTube are increasingly rendering international borders as meaningless. Western media coverage of the recent popular uprising in Egypt consistently emphasized the catalytic role of Facebook in galvanizing youth and young adults to take action against an entrenched regime that had long been viewed as impenetrable. In the days after Mubarak's departure, both the New York Times and The Los Angeles Times published lead stories describing the role of certain Facebook pages in not only serving as a call to action, but as a space in which emerging activists in Tunisia and Egypt were able to share lessons with each other. These young activists had not only managed to evade the reach of both nations' security police, they had also sidelined older opposition parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
The United States has already spent $3 trillion on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
On May 30, 2009, a terrorist attack in Arizona ended the lives of two U.S. citizens -- a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter.
In the old days, in the coal towns of West Virginia, winter was a time when folks hunkered around the pot-bellied stove and whiled away time spinning stories. At times, someone would fiddle with the draft, poke the coal embers, and release an extra dollop of acrid coal smell. Houses were drafty. Your front side facing the stove could be burning up, your backside shivering cold.
Yesterday I received my email copy of ePistle, Evangelicals for Social Action’s weekly electronic communication. This article discussing the situation in the Ivory Coast and the former president Laurent Gbagbo immediately caught my attention:
“The Ivory Coast is on the brink of civil war, and chocolate companies could play a critical role in saving lives and bringing peace.
Before the 2011 State of the Union address, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that President Obama would speak about "investments" and that it was Latin for spending. I looked it up. The Latin root for "investment" is in + vesti meaning to clothe or surround. The definition of "invest" according to Dictionary.com is: "to put money to use, by purchase or expenditure, in something offering potential profitable returns, as interest, income or appreciation in value." The difference between an investment and spending is the difference between buying a new pair of shoes and buying stock in the company that makes the shoes. I may enjoy the shoes, but stock in the company will pay dividends long after the shoes are old and gone. The shoes are of little value or benefit to my children, but stock in the company, especially if the company grows and prospers, will benefit them. In his State of the Union address, President Obama spoke about winning the future. In order to do this, the United States ought to attend to innovation and education. We, as a nation, ought to rebuild the country's infrastructure, bring down national debt, reorganize government for more efficiency, and continue our support for the democratic aspirations of people across the globe. All of these will require investments.