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from From Reuters.com:
How has the credit crisis affected you?
The demise of Lehman Brothers a year ago sparked a collapse in financial market confidence and set of a series of reactions that have spread hardship into the four corners of the globe.
Reuters News has charted the key events and their impact in "Times of Crisis" -- a major new multimedia production on Reuters.com. (See it here.)
We'd like to add the experiences of Reuters readers. So, if you or your family have been affected by the events of the past year then use the comments section below to share your story.
I had been a college graduate for 3 months when Lehman collapsed. Since then, I’ve gotten a better job with better wages, improved my living standard, and paid off the credit card debt I accrued in college.If the recession had come a year or two later, I probably wouldn’t have been as cautious starting out and I would be feeling the effects more than I am.
from Mark Jones:
Towards the web 2.0 interview
On Monday, Reuters arranged for UK Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg to be interviewed live by the social web.
We've been edging towards this with previous social media segments in Reuters-hosted NewsMaker events like those with Conservative leader David Cameron and World Bank President Bob Zoellick who have taken questions from Twitter and the like after making public policy speeches.
But Monday's event was purely online, with an agenda driven entirely by web participants. And, in weaving together four elements of social media practice, we think we've come up with a possible template for interviews in the age of Web 2.0:
1. Crowd-source all the questions
Questions were solicited via a Reuters blog post, the 12 seconds video service, Twitter and the CoverItLive live-blogging service.
We know this isn't new -- there have been radio phone-in interviews based on listeners' questions for decades. But the questions that we prompted weren't exclusive to our service - they existed on other platforms where side conversations could and did take place. That notion of setting off a distributed conversation is new-ish.
Which baby names would you consign to the history books?
Perhaps we should ask Jordan’s baby daughter Princess Tiaamii when she grows up. Or Geri Halliwell’s girl Bluebell Madonna and Nicolas Cage’s son Kal-el, named after Superman.
The list of bizarre celeb names goes on and on, but for most of us the choice comes down to classic, cool or slightly quirky.
While official figures show that old-fashioned names are still among the most popular choices, some classic names remain firmly stuck in the history books.
Norman and Gertrude top a list of names that have fallen out of fashion over the last 100 years, according to research for the mother and baby website Gurgle.com.
While Ruby and Olivia are all the rage, Edna, Ethel and Irene are strictly off limits.
Other unloved entries on the list of endangered names include Clifford, Frank, Arnold, Leonard, Ada, Agnes, Elsie and Mabel.
Women on the frontline
Should women be allowed to fight on the frontline? Is it time for complete equality in the armed forces? Is society ready for the idea of female soldiers routinely fighting and dying in combat?
The death of Sergeant Sarah Bryant, the first female British soldier to be killed in Afghanistan, has reignited the long-running debate over women’s role in modern warfare.
The existing rules that exclude women from situations where the primary duty is “to close with and kill the enemy” are irrelevant in Afghanistan and Iraq where there is no single front line, according to some commentators.
Instead, British forces are engaged in a “360-degree war” where all soldiers, male or female, could be in the line of fire at any time, Catherine Philp wrote in the Times.
“In times gone by, rules like these kept women far behind the men,” she writes. “In the heat of the Iraq insurgency, however, all that began to change. In reality, the rules are already stretched to breaking point.”
The old arguments that women are not physically capable to fight or might disrupt “unit cohesiveness” no longer hold water, she added.
The Ministry of Defence says there are now about 18,000 women in the armed forces, just under 10 percent of the total. The Sex Discrimination Act (1975) allows the armed forces to exclude women from some posts.
War has no rules, only conventions established by bleeding heart liberals, and old men. War has morals and codes, adhered to by just and righteous individuals as a way of preserving us from the savagery that divides man from the animals. Yet when the tide of conflict ceases to observe those conventions, when the enemy ceases to play by the accepted codes, what then? Do we maintain our moral stance regardless of personal cost? Do we maintain that ‘stiff upper lip’ and ‘starched collar’ that we, the British, are so famous for? Or do we fight the bastards at their own game, using their tactics, their deceit, their cowardice, and forsake our own ideologies of how war should be fought? I’ll tell you what we should do. We abandon civility, we shirk off the ridiculousness of engagement protocol. We fight them on their terms, in their backyard, with all the dirty, underhanded tactics they employ. To that end we may achieve something more than if we remain the way we are, operating in hazardous climates with little to protect us, and equipment that government should be ashamed to provide us with. Yet beyond all this, if centuries of conflict have taught us anything, it is this: that guerilla warfare cannot be won, led alone fought, using conventional tactics. There are no known targets, no enemy in line of sight, no safe zones, no rear echelon, no forward lines, no ‘no fly’ zones, no ‘free-fire’ hotspots when you fight a guerilla war. When you fight insurgency. When you are in-country everyone is a target, and everyone a potential insurgent. It’s that thinking that keeps you wired; keeps you sharp; keeps you alive. Fire must be fought with fire. Punch landed for punch. Give no quarter, and expect none in return because rest assured if you’re captured it’s the end of the line sooner or later. There is no compassion, no chivalry, no mercy, and no respite. If the government dictate our troops be in Afghanistan then stay we will, not through choice but duty. The sadness of it all is quite simply this: in 12 years of the mighty Red Machine occupying Afghanistan they failed to bring either the Mujahaddin nor the Taliban to heal. In 10 years of occupation of South Vietnam the USA failed to bring the VietCong to heal. Malaya taught the UK that insurgency operations were difficult at best, impossible to achieve success in at worst. Vietnam was unwinnable. The UK realised this and stayed at home. And yet here we are again, at the behest of the USA, fighting a war I have doubts we can ever succeed in, let alone win. You have to ask why can we, or at least the people who profess to run our civilised nation, not learn anything from history?
I pray for the safe return of all our soldiers, sailors, and air personnel. God speed to you all, and stay safe.
NDL
What now for Britain’s “special relationship” with Washington?
“He might not have been the easiest of allies, but an ally he has been.”
That’s the verdict of the Daily Telegraph in an editorial to mark President George W. Bush’s farewell tour of Europe.
Despite concerns over issues such as Iraq, the economy and extradition treaties, Bush was “never disloyal or ungrateful”, the paper said.
He acknowledged Britain’s unparalleled support after the Sept. 11 attacks, the newspaper noted. And Bush backed Britain over Northern Ireland and the Israeli-Palestine roadmap, the paper said.
“A country, like a man, can have friends who are difficult. But sticking to them is the essence of friendship,” the paper said.
The Independent wasn’t quite so gracious.
Yes and that ‘special’ relationships continues with special gifts such as the sub-prime crisis and bullish demands to Brown to not leave Iraq.
Very special my aspidistra!
Media’s views on the abortion vote
As MPs prepare to vote on cutting the time limit for abortions, the Daily Mail says the current system “shames our nation”.
Foetuses are being aborted at a late stage in their development when they would have had a good chance of survival outside the womb, the Mail says in an editorial.
“An attack on women? Utter nonsense. The campaign to cut the time-limit is an attack on an everyday practice that shames our nation,” it says.
Rubbish, says Times columnist David Aaronovitch.
There is no significant evidence to support the claim that the foetus is more viable at up to 24 weeks than in 1967 or 1990 when the law was last changed.
“If viability isn’t the test – as it was claimed to be back in 1990 when the limit was reduced from 28 weeks – then the judgment must be that some folk simply don’t like abortions and wish to restrict them as much as possible,” he writes.
There is little doubt that the “temperature of the debate about abortion” has changed in recent times, says the Independent.
Thursday’s front pages
THE GUARDIAN: Recession alert as Brown fights back
Gordon Brown’s drive to recapture the political agenda with a programme of new laws to create “an opportunity-rich Britain” was badly shaken yesterday by King’s warning.
“The nice decade is behind us,” Mervyn King declared in funereal tones, warning that the economy was “travelling along a bumpy road” as he predicted rising prices would put a squeeze on take-home pay for millions of workers.
Full story here
FINANCIAL TIMES: No rate cuts before 2010
Britons should not expect another cut in interest rates for at least two years, the Bank of England indicated yesterday as it warned that inflation would rise far above its previous forecasts and persist at levels well above the government’s target until early 2010.
Do you believe in ghosts?
From a haunted church in Abington, Cambridgeshire, to a spectral white bird spotted in the Devon village of Zeal Monachorum, England’s towns and villages are full of ghost stories.
Authors Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson have written a county-by-county guide to the hundreds of tales that have been repeated down the years.
While some may scoff, the collection contains hundreds of accounts from people convinced they have seen headless horsemen, screaming skulls or supernatural packs of dogs.
Poltergeists, ghostly figures in country churchyards and strange auras in houses are recorded across the country.
Have you seen a ghost? Do you believe in the supernatural? Or do you think it’s all in the imagination?
I have seen things that others have not since the age of 4.
My life’s experiences have been critically self questioned. My conclusion is that I may be mad ( after all we are all a little mad?) or I may have psychic ability( perhaps a bit of both)
I cannot deny what I see although I have tried in vain!
Should the public police the Internet?
In an age of viruses, fraud and identity theft, who should be responsible for policing the Internet?
Governments, private security companies and law enforcement agencies all play a part in tackling cyber-crime.
But author and academic Jonathan Zittrain argues that we should be wary of “locking down” the Internet with increasing amounts of centralised rules and sealed gadgets that can’t be tinkered with.
In a new book published by Penguin and Yale University Press, he says part of the answer lies in greater freedom and trust, rather than more rules or technological solutions.
We don’t have police on every street corner in the real world, so why have that online, he asks?
People should be encouraged to see themselves as “netizens” — active participants in the online world, rather than passive consumers of Internet content.
They could share the load of policing the net, reporting threats and working together to combat the risks.
Police it where needed – sites or forums that target children should be closed down, as should sites that are scams.The great thing about the internet is that there is such a wealth of diverse information readily available, even if it is information on how to grow stronger strains of skunk cannabis or make homemade drugs and bombs. Freedom of expression and freedom of information are paramount and it sometimes seems as though the internet is their last sanctuary.Of course people should report crime if they come across it on the internet, just as they should in ‘real life’ but people should also mind their own business and get out more.
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The Wall
