All those years of bribes and beatings by police officers who never deserved their authority had left young people alienated, their voices unheard.
The mayor countered that he had made his opposition to the pipeline clear, and that he deserved more authority over the schools.
And in the West Bank, the economic and security reforms of Salam Fayyad, who recently resigned as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, deserve much praise.
"For years, we environmentalists have been telling the authorities that GDP growth at any cost is a mistake," she says.The authorities deserve credit for some initiatives, such as improved standards for vehicle and factory emissions, converting urban-heating systems from coal to gas, and investing in sources of renewable energy.
Andrew Lindsay, a director at the city's chamber of commerce, says municipal authorities deserve more credit from Whitehall.
And the Kosovar Albanian authorities deserve a special mention, having taken ethnic cleansing to its most extreme form — ridding themselves almost entirely of the Serb and Roma populations.
As in previous kingpin arrests, there may be some dispute about which country's authorities deserve the most credit for the capture.Whoever it is, this is a highly significant arrest.
On February 2nd Wu Yi, a deputy prime minister, popped up at Nanchang station, urging local officials to "be fully aware of the arduousness and gravity of the snow-havoc battle".According to Fang Xiu'an, of the China Coal Transport and Distribution Association, which handles marketing for coal producers, the authorities deserve high marks for responding to the crisis.
The upside of this latest scandal may be dwarfed by the depression but the authorities deserve a salute.
We need to let our politicians know that we no longer buy their nationalist bluff, that we don't share their fear of sliding into irrelevance if we give the European Commission and the European Parliament the authority they deserve.
