The Flipside of Diversity

Another US expat blogger had an interesting experience in London this weekend:

...suddenly a group of police officers in their bright yellow jackets appeared out of nowhere. They were running towards me and the ten or so other people standing outside the tube. They were screaming “Run! Move!”...

...An old woman standing near me was confused and a policewoman grabbed her arm and screamed that there was a mob coming and that if she didn’t move quickly, she’d be trampled....the policewoman started yelling “You’re almost there! Keep running! You’ll be safe soon!"...

...They were moving very quickly and chanting. One group walked by screaming “Down with Israel!” over and over again. At this, the pregnant woman standing next to me in the park started to cry...

http://www.anglofille.com/2009/01/05/the-accidental-protestor

We, um, haven't encountered that aspect of London just yet, but it's nice to know we have more to look forward to :-/

Practice Safe Shopping

One of the neat things about working in the defense industry was that I knew many of the projects I worked on would help save lives.* I admit that I really didn't think working at Amazon would provide quite that same perk. However, reading today's news makes you wonder if e-commerce doesn't offer long-term public safety benefits as well:

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."

Jessica Keyes was among the shoppers. She told the Daily News she saw a woman knocked down just a few feet from the dying worker.

"When the paramedics came, she said 'I'm pregnant,'" Keyes said.

Paramedics treated the woman inside the store and then, according to Keys, told the woman: "There's nothing we can do. The baby is gone."

Now I've shopped at Wal-Mart thousands of times, and am perfectly aware from personal experience that this story is in no way reflective of that company in particular, nor American consumers in general. But I also admit that, reading such things from overseas and without the context of first-hand experience in America, I can see how some people develop an unfortunately biased view of our nation :-(

* For those who think this is an oxymoron:

• it is called the Defense Department for a reason
• better equipment helps keep our own soldiers alive longer
• when weapon delivery can be made more accurate (through improved sensors, guidance systems, fire control, battle command & communications, etc), the military can (and does) use smaller and fewer munitions to engage the same strategic target, which (besides being cheaper) directly results in reduced "collateral" civilian casualties

No Panacea

This was less than encouraging:

Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child, according to a recent UNICEF report....the childhood that many British parents give to their offspring is so awful that it is hard to conceive of worse, at least on a mass scale.

Nearly 40 percent of teachers have taken time off to recover from violent incidents at students’ hands. About a quarter of British teachers have been assaulted by their students over the last year.

The British, never fond of children, have lost all knowledge or intuition about how to raise them; as a consequence, they now fear them, perhaps the most terrible augury possible for a society. The signs of this fear are unmistakable on the faces of the elderly in public places. An involuntary look of distaste, even barely controlled terror, crosses their faces if a group of young teens approaches; then they try to look as if they are not really there, hoping to avoid trouble.

Written by a cynical pessimist with a chip on his shoulder? Possibly, but supported by this BBC article:

British people are the least likely in Europe to be "have-a-go heroes" and get involved if they witness a crime, research from a think tank claims.

The public policy group Reform says that Britons have become "passive bystanders" in the fight against crime.