Baltus Van Tassel: The horseman was a Hessian mercenary sent to the shores by German princes to keep Americans under the yoke of England. But unlike his compatriots, who came for money, the horseman came for love of carnage.
Napoleon had been fighting this army of slaves and free people in Haiti and it depleted his forces. And after the Revolution, when the French were driven out, they stopped and sold this big chunk of North America to the Americans for very little mone...
I made 'Siam Sunset.' In Australia, it was pretty much universally hated, but I did notice that almost any American who saw it loved that film, so in 2001 I made a film in America called 'Swimfan,' and they released like a big studio movie, and it ma...
The reason that most British actors are better than most American actors in the end is that they don't make any money. At the very end of their lives, they get into a space movie and they make a lot of money, but until that happens, basically, they d...
George Bush is by American standards rabidly Upper Class - Eastern, Socially Attractive, WASP, 19th-century money, several generations of Andover and Yale (and, while we're at it, his father, George H. W. 'Poppy' Bush, was a former president and his ...
So we in Congress have a very clear choice. We can take largely symbolic action and sit back and fiddle while Americans burn more gasoline. Or we can pass concrete, effective legislation that will save consumers money while significantly reducing U.S...
When we talk about the kind of folks whose lives will be made better by raising the minimum wage, we're not talking about a couple teenagers earning extra spending money to supplement their allowance. We're talking about providers and breadwinners. W...
Nothing gives us greater pride than the importance of India's scientific and engineering colleges, or the army of Indian scientists at organizations such as Microsoft and NASA. Our temples are not the god-encrusted shrines of Varanasi, but Western sc...
If Barack Obama goes on to win the election, there will be plenty of ink and video spent on chronicling the historic nature of the turnout among young voters and African-Americans. But as important as both constituencies have been to Obama - particul...
President George W. Bush's aggressive war on Islamic terrorism produced a 100 percent perfect track record of keeping the United States safe from another attack. The result has been increased security for the American people, who, in turn, have becom...
I've gotten more flack from the remake nature of our 'Being Human' from American audiences than I have from British fans. Every fan of the BBC original that I've bumped into seemed very excited and interested in seeing what we did with it - at least ...
People say that New Yorkers aren't friendly, but I think they're more friendly than Londoners. Here there is a front-footed nature of Americans. You can go out on a night out and meet 10 random people and stay in touch with them, whereas that's not g...
The American people ask, and legitimately so, why should we carry the heavy burden to ensure international peace and stability. You also profit from it, so you should also take your share in the burden. That's Secretary Gates's message. I share that ...
Quakers are known for wanting to give back. Ban the bomb and the civil rights movement and the native American struggle for justice - those things were very, very front-burner in my childhood, as were the ideas of working for peace and if you have mo...
Populists have always been out to challenge the orthodoxy of the corporate order and to empower workaday Americans so they can control their own economic and political destinies. This approach distinguishes the movement from classic liberalism, which...
Our military leaders don't seize power in coups; our soldiers and sailors don't go on strike for higher pay or benefits; our armed forces don't weigh in on the political process. In return, Americans have a sacred duty to treat them honorably.
As parents and as consumers, we have the right and the power to pressure the entertainment industry to respond to our needs. Americans, after all, should insist that every corporate giant - whether it produces chemicals or records - accept responsibi...
The country of the Two Holy Places has in our religion a peculiarity of its own over the other Muslim countries. In our religion, it is not permissible for any non-Muslim to stay in our country. Therefore, even though American civilians are not targe...
As Americans, we're not sure we share values. We're sometimes even afraid to use the word 'values.' We talk about teaching ethics in schools - people say, 'What ethics? Whose ethics? Maybe we can't.' And they confuse that with teaching of religion.
I understand the Second Amendment. I respect the Second Amendment. I think we need to use common sense tools to keep the American people safe, to keep our streets safe.
Curitiba is not a paradise. We have all the problems that most Latin American cities have. We have slums. We have the same difficulties, but the big difference is the respect given by people due to the quality of the services which are provided.
