Secrets can remind us of the countless human dramas, of frailty and heroism, playing out silently in the lives of people all around us even now.

Investors, of course, are hedging their bets. Having ventured successfully into emerging non democratic countries whose frailty they are starting to fear, some, out of prudence, are starting to rediscover Europe.

But he says that he has yet to experience someone who became more aware of their body, in all its frailty and its grace, without, at the same time, becoming more compassionate towards all of life.

The presidential electoral campaign in the United States has highlighted the frailty of the support for open trade in the world s most powerful nation. The sub prime mortgage crisis has shown how lack of international coordination and regulation can exacerbate the inherent fragility of financial markets.

China s leaders oppose stiffer sanctions against North Korea for a simple reason they fear the frailty of Kim Jong un s regime more than they fear the international security consequences of the missile launch. Above all, China wants to prevent the regime s collapse, which it fears may result from stricter sanctions.

Defenders of President Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and the military emphasize the difficulty of the task they face in Iraq, human frailty and fallibility, and the fact that there are always a few rotten apples. America's system of government, however, recognizes all of this, and attempts to guard against it.