31 August 2007

Cupcakes Versus Vegetables

Cupcake meida rides again:
A decade later, the memory of her remains, but how much else has changed. After the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, Princes William and Harry (then aged 15 and 12, respectively) marched through central London, their little heads bowed, toward their mother's funeral.
While the substanative aniversary gos almost unnoticed:
The (Gdansk) strike marked the beginning of the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher are, rightly, given the greatest share of credit for winning the Cold War. But Lech Walesa and John Paul II played indispensable roles.

In the 70s many experts believed that continuing the Cold War was pointless-- the Communists weren't so bad, not every society valued Western style freedom, cowed populations accepted what they could not change. Solidarity and the Poles put the lie to such talk. In the long twilight struggle against Stalinism, the workers of Poland were the first light of sunrise.

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