A．different interest groups held different concerns.B．l-找考题网

A．different interest groups held different concerns.B．l……

Getting to the heart of Kuwaiti democracy seems hilariously easy. Armed only with a dog-eared NEWSWEEK ID, I ambled through the gates of the National Assembly last week. Unscanned, unsearched, my satchel could easily have held the odd grenade or an anthrax-stuffed lunchbox. The only person who stopped me was a guard who grinned and invited me to take a swig of orange juice from his plastic bottle. Were I a Kuwaiti woman wielding a ballot, I would have been a clearer and more present danger. That very day Parliament blocked a bill giving women the vote; 29 M.P.s voted in favour and 29 against, with two abstentions. Unable to decide whether the bill had passed or not, the government scheduled another vote in two weeks―too late for women to register for June’’s municipal elections. The next such elections aren’’t until 2009. Inside the elegant, marbled Parliament itself, a sea of mustachioed men in white robes sat in green seats, debating furiously. The ruling emir has pushed for women’’s political rights for years; ironically, the democratically elected legislature has thwarted him. Traditionalists and tribal leaders are opposed. Liberals fret, too, that Islamists will let their multiple wives vote, swelling conservative ranks. "When I came to Parliament today, people who voted yes didn’’t even shake hands with me," said one Shia cleric. "Why can’’t we respect each other and work together" Why not indeed By Gulf standards, Kuwait is a democratic superstar. Its citizens enjoy free speech (as long as they don’’t insult their emir, naturally) and boast a Parliament that can actually pass laws. Unlike their Saudi sisters, Kuwaiti women drive, work and travel freely. They run multibillion-dollar businesses and serve as ambassadors. Their academic success is such that colleges have actually lowered the grades required for male students to get into medical and engineering courses. Even then, 70 percent of university students are females. In Kuwait, the Western obsession with the higab finds its equivalent. At a fancy party for NEWSWEEK’’s Arabic edition, some Kuwaiti women wore them. Others opted for tight, spangled, sheer little numbers in peacock blue or parrot orange. For the party’’s entertainment, Nancy Ajram, the Arab world’’s answer to Britney Spears, sang passionate songs of love in a white mini-dress. She couldn’’t dance for us, alas, since shaking one’’s body onstage is illegal in Kuwait. That didn’’t stop whole tables of men from raising their camera-enabled mobile phones and clicking her picture. You’’d think not being able to vote or dance in public would anger Kuwait’’s younger generation of women. To find out, I headed to the malls―Kuwait’’s archipelago of civic freedom. Eager to duck strict parents and the social taboos of dating in public, young Kuwaitis have taken to cafes, beaming flirtatious infrared e-mails to one another on their cell phones. At Starbucks in the glittering Al Sharq Mall, I found only tables of men, puffing cigarettes and grumbling about the service. At Pizza Hut, I thought I’’d got an answer after encountering a young woman who looked every inch the modern suffragette - drainpipe jeans, strappy sliver high-heeled sandals and a higab studded with purple rhinestones. But, no, Mariam Al-Enizi, 20, studying business administration at Kuwait University, doesn’’t think women need the vote. "Men are better at politics than women," she explained, adding that women in Kuwait already have everything they need. Welcome to democracy, Kuwaiti style. The bill giving women the vote did not manage to pass because________.

A．different interest groups held different concerns.
B．liberals did not reach consensus among themselves.
C．Parliament was controlled by traditionalists.
D．Parliament members were all conservatives.

问答题I agree to some extent with my imaginary English reader. American literary historians are perhaps prone to view their own national scene too narrowly, mistaking prominence for uniqueness. They do over-phrase their own literature, or certainly its minor figures. And Americans do swing from aggressive over-phrase of their literature to an equally unfortunate, imitative deference. But then, the English themselves are somewhat insular in their literary appraisals. Moreover, in fields where they are not preeminent―e. g. in painting and music― they too alternate between boasting of native products and copying those of the Continent. How many English paintings try to look as though they were done in Paris; how many times have we read in articles that they really represent an English tradition after all.To speak of American literature, then, is not to assert that it is completely unlike that of Europe. Broadly speaking, America and Europe have kept step. At any given moment the traveler could find examples in both of the same architecture, the same style in dress, the same books on the shelves. Ideas have crossed the Atlantic as freely as men and merchandise, though sometimes more slowly. When I refer to American habit, thoughts, etc. , I intend some sort of qualification to precede the word, for frequently the difference between America and Europe (especially England) will be one of degree, sometimes only of a small degree. The amount of divergence is a subtle affair, liable to perplex the Englishman when he looks at America. He is looking at a country which in important senses grew out of his own, which in several ways still resembles his own ― and which is yet a foreign country. There are odd overlappings and abrupt unfamiliarities; kinship yields to a sudden alienation, as when we hail a person across the street, only to discover from his blank response that we have mistaken a stranger for a friend.