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Home / 1001 Inventions' Science Show and Schools Programme launches in Sao Paulo, Brazil
World-premier show and educational productions uncovering fascinating scientific legacy from Muslim Civilisation
www.1001inventions.com.br
Tuesday 23rd September 2014, Sao Paulo: A new theatrical science show and educational programme was launched today at the Institute of Butantan. The ‘1001 Inventions Brazil Schools Programme’ provides a fascinating insight into the history of science, medicine and technology from over one thousand years ago in a period known as the Golden Age of Muslim Civilisation.
Over the last decade, 1001 Inventions has reached over 100 million people across the globe, with educational campaigns in cities such as in London, Istanbul, New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Kuala Lumpur,Jeddah, Karlstad and Rotterdam.
~ Click here for Media/Press Coverage ~
Developed specifically to engage schools in Brazil, the programme was produced by the United Kingdom based educational organisation 1001 Inventions in partnership with the Institute of Butantan in Sao Paulo, Qatar Museums, Qatar Ministry of Culture, the Government of Sao Paulo and is launched as part of the Qatar Brazil 2014 Year of Culture.
The science show and educational programme introduce a world of science and inventions from a creative era of Muslim Civilisation that spread across three continents from Spain and southern Portugal to as far east as China. During this historic period from the 7th century onwards, inspirational men and women of different faiths and cultures built upon the knowledge of ancient civilisations and made discoveries that have had a huge and often underappreciated impact on our world. Settlers who arrived in Brazil in the 16th century brought with them many of these ideas and discoveries that still shape modern life today.
“This programme is so important to inspiring our children today because it helps demonstrate that science is global and that other civilisations have contributed to the world we live in. This journey to the past can help us build a better future”, says Jorge Kalil, Director of Butantan Institute.
The ‘1001 Inventions Brazil Schools Programme’ provides educators and schools with a new, first-of-its-kind, live science show and short feature film starring Sir Ben Kingsley, and classroom materials that enrich the teaching of science, technology and mathematics. The diversity of the content provided interlinks themes of science with art and culture, helping to nurture student creative skills.
David Uip, São Paulo State Secretary of Health, commented that “It is wonderful to see the leading role in the 1001 Inventions science show as the character impersonation of Malba Tahan, our celebrated early 20th century Brazilian mathematician. Through his beautiful stories and books he introduced us to the same Middle Eastern golden age of science and discovery and this 1001 Inventions school programme continues that journey demonstrating how societies today, including those of Latin America, have had centuries of interactions with Muslim Civilisation.”
Ahmed Salim, Producer and Director of 1001 Inventions, said “Our 45 minute science show is fun, engaging, interactive and educational. It features actors role playing scientists from the past who attempt to bring back to life fascinating stories of discovery and link them to our lives today. From algebra to inoculation, from algorithms to time telling machines; This was an enlightening time in human history, contrary to what is sometimes called the darks ages, the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the European Renaissance”.
Commenting on the significance of the ‘1001 Inventions Brazil Schools Programme, Safiya Al Hajari, Director of the Office of Strategic Cultural Relations, Qatar Museums, said: “We are delighted to be a part of this exciting educational programme that will further contribute to the cultural bridges that we are building between Qatar and Brazil as part of the Qatar Brazil 2014 Year of Culture.”
The ‘1001 Inventions Brazil Schools Programme’ is managed in Brazil by the Institute of Butantan in Sao Paulo. The first phase of the programme will be hosted at the Institute of Butantan where many schools will attend the live show and receive educational materials.
1001 Inventions is a British educational organisation and world leader in celebrating the scientific and cultural legacy of Muslim Civilisation.
1001 Inventions delivers global educational campaigns and creates award-winning productions including blockbuster exhibitions, festivals, films, live shows, books and learning materials.
1001 Inventions is the world’s leading Muslim Civilisation brand that has engaged and educated over 100 million people and established a global network of strategic partnerships and relationships with governments, educational institutions and organisations.
1001 Inventions demonstrates that for a thousand years from the seventh century onwards, exceptional scientific andtechnological advancements were made within Muslim Civilisation. In an areathat spread from Spain to China, men and women of various beliefs and backgrounds built upon knowledge from ancient civilisations, making breakthroughs that helped pave the way for the European Renaissance and impact our world today.
Many of these discoveries, inventions andideas spread, with the settlers, to Brazil in the 16th century influencing life today in homes, schools, hospitals, towns, and our understanding of the world and universe. www.1001inventions.com
About Qatar Museums
Qatar Museums connects the museums, cultural institutions and heritage sites in Qatar and creates the conditions for them to thrive and flourish. It centralizes resources and provides a comprehensive organization for the development of museums and cultural projects, with a long term ambition of creating a strong and sustainable cultural infrastructure for Qatar. Under the patronage of His Highness the Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and led by its Chairperson, Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, QM is consolidating Qatar’s efforts to become a vibrant center for the arts, culture and education, in the Middle East and beyond.
Since its foundation in 2005, QM has overseen the development of the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and the Al Zubarah World Heritage Site Visitor Centre. The QM also manages the QMA Gallery at Katara and the ALRIWAQ DOHA Exhibition Space. Future projects include the opening of the Fire Station: Artists in Residence in 2014 and the launch of the highly anticipated National Museum of Qatar and the 3-2-1 Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum.
QM is committed to instigating Qatar’s future generation of arts, heritage and museum professionals. At its core is a commitment to nurturing artistic talent, creating opportunities and developing the skills to service Qatar’s emerging art economy. By means of a multi-faceted program and public art initiatives, QM seeks to push the boundaries of the traditional museum model, and create cultural experiences that spill out onto the streets and seek to involve the widest possible audiences. Through a strong emphasis on originating art and culture from within and fostering a spirit of national participation, QM is helping Qatar find its own distinctive voice in today’s global cultural debates.
About Qatar Brazil 2014
Qatar Brazil 2014 is a year-long cultural exchange programme dedicated to connecting people in Qatar and Brazil through culture, community and sport. Through a year full of thought-provoking activities, both nations strive to strengthen bilateral relations and create lasting partnerships. For more information: www.qatarbrazil2014.com
About Butantan Institute
Institute of Butantan is a leading research institution in Brazil, developing biological products for public health, undertaking basic and applied research, and promoting scientific knowledge. Founded in 1901, it is one of the largest biomedical research centres in the world in the areas of Biology, Biomedicine, Pharmacology and Biotechnology. For more information: www.butantan.gov.br
1001 Inventions to launch Brazil Schools Programme
Inspirational reading for a season of reflection
Times Online selected 1001 Inventions book as one of the books of last summer 2008
1001 Inventions at Engineering Islam
1001 Inventions was invited to attend and speak at Engineering Islam 2008.
1001 Inventions coverage
MuslimHeritage.com Newsletter Issue 3 and The Times Summer Book 1001 Inventions
U.K. Prime Minister endorses Muslim Heritage
Tony Blair has embraced the Muslim community with his endorsement of the pioneering book 1001 Inventions
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2014 John and Emma Bonica Public Service Award
Robert H. Dworkin, PhD
Robert H. Dworkin received his BA in 1971 from the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD in 1977 from Harvard University. He is currently professor of anesthesiology, neurology, oncology, and psychia¬try; professor in the Center for Human Experimental Therapeutics; and director of the Anesthesiology Clinical Research Center at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.
Dr. Dworkin is director of the Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Trial Translations, Innovations, Opportunities, and Networks (ACTTION) public-private partnership with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA); cochair with Dennis C. Turk, PhD, of the Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials (IMMPACT); a member of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Zoster Working Group; and a special government employee of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. He is an associate editor of Pain, is a member of the editorial boards of Journal of Pain and Current Pain and Headache Reports, and has previous¬ly served as a consultant to and member of the FDA Anesthetic and Life Support Drugs Advisory Committee and as a member of the CDC Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Varicella Working Group. As director of the Anesthesiology Clinical Research Center, Dr. Dworkin has been the principal investigator for a large number of clinical trials of analgesic treatments.
The John and Emma Bonica Public Service Award honors outstanding contributions by an individual or an organization to the field of pain through public education, dissemination of information, public service, or other efforts to further knowledge about pain. The award is named for John Bonica, a leading force in the development of the pain treatment movement, and his wife, Emma.
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Pg. 69: Keith Hollihan's "The Four Stages of Cruelty"
The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Four Stages of Cruelty by Keith Hollihan.
NAMED ONE OF PUBLISHERS WEEKLY'S BEST BOOKS OF 2010
A female corrections officer works with a young male inmate to uncover a criminal organization that has taken control of a maximum security prison
Ditmarsh Penitentiary holds many secrets within its walls, and the inmates aren’t the only ones who keep them. Given absolute authority, the guards often slip across the divide from law enforcement to criminality.
Officer Kali Williams tries her best to stay on the right side of the law. Then she meets an inmate named Joshua who claims that another prisoner has drawn an elaborate comic book that holds a guide to Ditmarsh’s criminal underworld. At first Kali can’t take it seriously. But soon after, the artistinmate disappears completely.
Intense and arresting, The Four Stages of Cruelty is a powerful debut for fans of Umberto Eco and Carlos Ruiz Zafón.
Read an excerpt from The Four Stages of Cruelty, and learn more about the book and author at Keith Hollihan's website.
The Page 69 Test: The Four Stages of Cruelty.
Posted by Marshal Zeringue at 12:22 AM
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Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz
(Redirected from Adam Lebowitz)
Role: Visual Effects Designer
BSG Universe: Re-imagined Series
Date of Death: Missing required parameter 1=month! ,
IMDb profile
Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz currently acts as a Visual Effects Artist & Sequence Designer for the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. He has been with the show since "33", making him the longest-running FX artist on the series (second only to Visual Effects Supervisor Gary Hutzel). Highlights of Mojo's work have been designing the chase in "Scar" and the climactic moments of "Exodus, Part II", when the Pegasus sacrifices herself to save Galactica.
Along with his fellow artists at Zoic Studios, he was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2003 for the episode "33" and in 2007, Mojo and the current in-house Visual Effects team won the Emmy for "Exodus, Part II" (yes, it's true that he attended the awards ceremony in his Original Series Colonial Warrior uniform)[1]. No one would argue that he is the biggest fan of the Original Series currently working on the show, and when the series is over he plans to pursue a career in vagrancy because he can't imagine any job is better than this one[2].
Prior to Battlestar Galactica, Mojo served as a CG Supervisor for Star Trek: Voyager and as Visual Effects Supervisor for the Las Vegas attraction "Borg Invasion." His career began in 1992 with Foundation Imaging, the very first company to use computer graphics as a visual effects tool on the series Babylon 5. His other credits on genre shows and movies include Serenity and the re-mastered version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He won an Emmy Award for his work on the Voyager episode "Dark Frontier". He was previously nominated for the episode "Year of Hell, Part II".
On his blog, he talks about his FX work on Battlestar Galactica, as well as his previous work on Babylon 5 and Star Trek.
Darth Mojo's blog
↑ BSG nerd wins Emmy, cops open fire (almost)
↑ Anatomy of a Cylon
Warning: Default sort key "Lebowitz, Adam" overrides earlier default sort key "{{{sortkey}}}".
Retrieved from "http://battlestarwiki.org/index.php?title=Adam_%22Mojo%22_Lebowitz&oldid=160603"
Crew (RDM)
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National Park air tours restricted at sunrise and sunset for first time
Human impacts Add comments
It’s not much, but it’s a start. The troubled FAA/NPS collaborative planning process has completed an actual final plan to manage air tours at a national park. But don’t get too excited: it’s not a full-on Air Tour Management Plan, as was the goal for all national parks with sightseeing flights when the two agencies were charged with the task fifteen years ago. Taking advantage of new rules encouraging voluntary agreements with air tour providers, Biscayne National Park in Florida is on the verge of finalizing such agreements with two flight providers.
The good news is that these agreements limit flights from 8am to 6pm, which leaves sunrise free from flights year-round, while sunsets only occur a bit before 6pm for a couple months in the heart of winter. Similar provisions for flight-free times extending an hour before sunset and an hour after sunrise at the Grand Canyon were derailed at the last minute by Senators McCain and Reid in a rare show of bipartisan meddling. The Grand Canyon remains the only National Park with a formal air tour plan, thanks in part to the fact that the FAA was not part of that process, which predated the start of the FAA/NPS efforts (the FAA and NPS have different approaches to the EIS process, which they’ve been unable to resolve). So it may be an encouraging sign that the first agreements to come out of the joint planning do manage to keep the magic hours on each end of the day free for quieter recreation.
Of course, Biscayne is not your typical National Park. Within sight of Miami, there is plenty of boat traffic and most of the action takes place near the seashore, with all of its natural and human soundscapes, as well as on and under the waters of Biscayne Bay. Plus, the number of air tours is small (200 annual flights, most from November to May), and there is probably little demand for sunrise and sunset flights. Still, perhaps this first small step will set a precedent for plans at other parks.
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Abdulaziz Othman Altwairji
Director General, Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO)
Breakout Session: Baku Process: Responding to New Challenge for Global Intercultural Dialogue
Dr. Abdulaziz Othman Altwairji is the Director General of ISESCO. He is a Saudi Arabian author and lecturer who has served at various posts including Executive Director of “Islam Today”, an Islamic academic journal published in Arabic, English and French; and “AL JAMIA” Journal published by the Federation of the Universities of the Islamic World. Abdulaziz was director general of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization –ISESCO, served as secretary general of the Federation of the Universities of the Islamic World, was a member of the Royal Al-Albayt Institute for Islamic Thought, Jordan, of the advisory committee of the Arab-Islamic Civilization Encyclopedia, of the World Islamic Forum for Dialogue, of the board of trustees of the Arab-European Centre for Studies in Paris, of the Arab Thought Forum in Amman and of the scientific committee of Prince Abdulmuhsin Bin Jallawi Center for Research & Islamic Studies Sharjah.
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Local MP Helps Out At Barnardo's For 'Make A Diffe...
Whiteford Speaks Out In Support Of OXFAM Grow Camp...
We Need To Stand Up To Bully-Boy Culture
Whiteford Comments on Davidson 'Non-Apology'
Chairman Must Resign Over Threatening Behaviour
Boundary Commission Proposals Reunite Buchan
MP Calls For Review Of Child Trust Fund Scheme
Whiteford Presses DEFRA On Mackerel Dispute
PQ Reveals CSA IT System Doubled In Cost
Whiteford Welcomes Pensions Age Rise Delay
MP Officially Re-Opens Buchan Street Hall
Whiteford Comments On Scottish Affairs Committee '...
IFS Report 'A Wake Up Call to Westminster'
MP Welcomes APD Devolution Calls From Leading NE F...
SNP Comment On Rennie Speech
Eildih Whiteford Engagements In Banff & Macduff
Local Bereavement Care Group Cashes In On MP's Opi...
Local MP Helps Out At Barnardo's For 'Make A Difference Day'
Banff & Buchan MP Dr Eilidh Whiteford joined the staff at the Barnardo’s shop in Peterhead’s Erroll Street for an hour on Friday as part of Barnardo’s ‘Make a Difference Day 2011’.
Shop Manager Irene Pearson was on hand to show the MP the ropes, as Eilidh joined volunteers Sophie Grant and Carina Ventura on the shop floor as part of Barnardo’s campaign to attract more volunteers.
Shop manager Irene Pearson remarked:
“We are very grateful to Dr Whiteford for taking time out of her busy schedule to help our campaign.
“There are children in Scotland struggling to cope with their everyday lives, and people can help by becoming a volunteer. If you are interested in helping, then please call in and speak to the manager of any Barnardo’s shop, or go online at www.barnardos.org/volunteering.
“No experience is necessary for most volunteer roles – just enthusiasm and a warm friendly nature - Barnardo’s will supply all the support and training you will need.”
Talking of her visit, Eilidh said:
Dr. Eilidh Whiteford MP,
volunteers Carina Ventura and Sophie Grant,
and shop manager Irene Pearson
“I was delighted to have the privilege of volunteering at Barnardo’s shop in Peterhead, and I enjoyed chatting to the volunteers and customers.
“Volunteering is a wonderful way of giving something back to the community and is also an opportunity for people to learn new skills or acquire work experience. I would encourage people in Aberdeenshire to consider volunteering at their local Barnardo’s shop, particularly over the busy Christmas period when they could really do with extra help - even for just a few hours a week."
Whiteford Speaks Out In Support Of OXFAM Grow Campaign
Banff & Buchan MP Eilidh Whiteford has given her backing to Oxfam Scotland’s ‘Grow’ Campaign.
The campaign is aimed at promoting sustainable food production, addressing inequalities which plague the food production system from farm to fork, and improving the protection of those in poverty from food price crises.
Speaking at an Oxfam meeting held at the SNP Conference, Eilidh Whiteford MP said:
(l to r) Fiona Hyslop MSP, Cabinet Secretary for External Affairs;
Naile Salima, Programme Development Officer, Oxfam Malawi:
Judith Robertson, Head of Oxfam Scotland; & Dr Eilidh Whiteford MP
“I’m delighted to lend my backing to the Oxfam ‘Grow’ campaign.
“I’m particularly pleased to be joined at this meeting by the Scottish Government’s Culture and External Affairs Secretary, Fiona Hyslop, who has restated her support for the Scotland-Malawi Development Programme, which assists over 40 projects in Malawi.
“Today, in the 21st century, nearly one billion people worldwide don’t have enough to eat. Not because there isn’t enough food to go round –there is: the planet is more than capable of supporting all the people on it with sufficient food. Rather, it is the system of food production which is broken and needs to be fixed.
“In Scotland, Oxfam will be focussing on four major issues to help fix the broken food system. These are Climate Change, which affects crop yields as temperatures rise; Food Price Spikes, because when you spend 80% of your income on food as some poor families do, spikes in food prices are especially destructive; Land Grabs, which force poor farmers off the land; and Small-Scale Farming, because there is enormous potential in small-scale farming in developing countries.”
as contributed to Scotland on Sunday
THERE has been a nasty, belittling and misogynistic undercurrent to the events of the past two weeks. In so many ways it would have been easier to ignore the comments directed toward me by Ian Davidson MP during a meeting of the Scottish Affairs Committee.
Instead, I spoke out about the use of threatening language by the chairman of a parliamentary committee and have been vilified as a result. Like other women who complain, my motives have been questioned and some have tried to smear me. But the bully-boy culture of Westminster has to end. We must stand up to it.
I am not alone in my concerns. Over the past week Labour MPs both front- and back-bench sidled up to me to express their support for my position. Most talked under their breath.
As an aside to the issue of bullying and misogynist language in parliament, the fear of speaking publicly amongst Labour MPs and the failure of its leadership to take proper action against Ian Davidson – a man who is being allowed to stand for a leadership role himself – speaks volumes about a party that has lost its way.
By contrast, non-party political organisations and individuals have rallied in a more public way. They point out the unacceptable nature of Mr Davidson’s threat to give me “a doing” during a meeting of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee, which he chairs.
Organisations and individuals interested in good parliamentary representation highlight the ease with which misogyny can thrive within a political institutional architecture where only one in five MPs is female. The gender imbalances are compounded by a relentlessly adversarial format of debate that limits opportunities for meaningful discussion.
My experience is just one consequence of the chronic under-representation of women in public life. The former MP Tess Kingham described it as “yah-boo nonsense, point scoring and silly games”. Until we blow the final whistle on these silly games, large numbers of our citizens will remain alienated from the political process. On the evidence of this week, Westminster has a long way to go.
Ian Davidson’s denials finally unravelled in a radio interview on Thursday when he admitted having made the remarks. But his admission was followed by an extraordinary attempt to pass the buck on to other committee members. Like a playground bully caught in the act, he resorted to the tired old defence – “it wisnae me, it wis them too”.
Well, let me put it firmly on the record. At the committee meeting Ian Davidson said I would get a doing if I stepped out of line. In his radio interview, he altered this to claim that all he said was that I “got a doing” at the Scottish Affairs Committee.
The change of tense is transformational. It is no longer a threat but a boastful observation. It suggests collective culpability. Unfortunately for Mr Davidson, that’s not what happened.
Cathy Jamieson and Fiona O’Donnell did not give me a “doing”. Nor Mike Freer MP. Simon Reevell made his points in his usual urbane way. And the idea of Alan Reid, the mild mannered Liberal Democrat MP for Argyll & Bute, giving anyone a doing is frankly laughable.
The only person who went too far – way too far – was Ian Davidson. To try to pin responsibility for his own behaviour on others, while painting himself as the referee who called time in the ring, does a huge disservice to fellow committee members who kept the language of their criticisms within the prevailing conventions of parliamentary norms.
One female committee member was concerned enough to pass a note to the chairman suggesting his remark was unacceptable. If the past tense was used, and I “got a doing”, why on earth would she have felt the need to advise the chair that his comments might be misinterpreted in a sexual way?
Why would she have felt the need to mention it again – according to Mr Davidson – when leaving the meeting early? And why would Mr Davidson have felt the need to clarify his remarks to me afterwards? He approached me to point out they were not sexual in nature. I said I found the threat of physical violence just as offensive.
The MP who wrote the note might be able to shed some light on this matter – but there has been silence on that front so far. The inference has been that the “doing” I am alleged to have received was punishment for my “misbehaviour”, as if I were some deviant six-year-old sent to stand on the naughty step.
It does not matter that all I had done was disagree with the committee. In fact what inspired Mr Davidson’s remark is utterly irrelevant. There is no action, no misbehaviour that justifies the threat or act of “a doing”. We hear too often of women being told they were “asking for it” in justification for intimidation or violence. I never expected to hear that from an MP in Parliament.
But this is not simply an issue of aggression towards woman; it’s about a culture of intimidation and bullying affecting men and women that seems to flourish with impunity in the Westminster world.
Moving Scotland forward has to involve moving our political discourse beyond its present tribal partisanship. We need to learn to accept our differences and how to distinguish dissent from treachery. We need to foster political institutions and ways of working that put dignity and genuine equality at their heart. And, as I learned over the past two weeks, we need to move beyond fear of those who try to use aggression and humiliation to silence and intimidate us, and instead call those people to account for their actions.
Banff & Buchan MP Dr Eilidh Whiteford will be helping out at a local charity shop as part of ‘Make a Difference Day 2011’.
Dr Whiteford will be attending the Barnardo’s shop, 12 Erroll Street, Peterhead on Friday 28 October 2011 (tomorrow) at 11.00am. Acting Shop Manager Joyce Summers will be on hand to show the MP the ropes.
Speaking in advance of the visit, Eilidh said:
“I am delighted to have the privilege of volunteering at Barnardo’s shop in Peterhead and am very much looking forward to helping out with various tasks.
“Volunteering is a wonderful way of giving something back to the community and is also an opportunity for people to learn new skills. I would very much like to encourage people in Aberdeenshire to consider volunteering at their local Barnardo’s shop, particularly over the busy Christmas period when they could really do with extra help, even if its just a few hours a week. All you have to do is pop into your local shop and find out more."
QUESTION NOW FOR LABOUR OVER ACTION
Commenting on the purported 'apology' by the chairman of the Scottish Affairs Committee over inappropriate comments to Dr Eilidh Whiteford, the Banff and Buchan MP said Mr Davidson was implicitly acknowledging that he had made inappropriate remarks, but failed to recognise the inherently threatening nature of his comments.
Dr Whiteford said:
“This was an empty apology from Ian Davidson who clearly, still, does not recognise why his comments during and after last week's meeting were inherently threatening and unacceptable.
“We know now that at least one other member of the committee heard his remarks, and understand that another member passed him a note regarding his comments. I accept that some members of the committee did not hear the remarks, given that they were, as Mr McGovern seems to acknowledge, made in a casual, throwaway manner. For me, this only served to reinforce their menacing nature, a menace that was compounded by Mr Davidson's subsequent comments immediately following the meeting.
“There is no context in or out of Parliament where such comments are acceptable, and I am surprised that anyone would try to minimise, brush off or try to justify the remarks made by Mr Davidson.
“I am not prepared to be threatened and intimidated, and until Mr Davidson takes responsibility for his behaviour I regret that I will not be returning to the committee.”
SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson welcomed the publication of a letter, endorsed by thirteen academics and equality organisations, backing Dr Whiteford’s stance.
Mr Robertson said:
“Ian Davidson’s behaviour was inappropriate in any circumstances, but it is especially unfitting from the chairman of a parliamentary committee.
“One of the ugliest aspects around this has been the way people around Mr Davidson have immediately sought to attack Eilidh Whiteford for having the courage to speak out.
“In contrast, it is encouraging that organisations and individuals outwith parliament have been swift to condemn Mr Davidson’s remarks and, given his own reluctance to take responsibility for his behaviour, the question is now for the Labour party over what action it will take.”
The text of a letter signed by a number of academics and organisations – and posted on the Scottish Womens Budget Group FaceBook Page (http://www.facebook.com/budgetgroup) - can be found below
Dr. Eilidh Whiteford MP for Banff and Buchan has withdrawn from membership of a Westminster Select Committee over the threatening and sexist remarks of the Committee Chair, Ian Davidson MP.
The remarks from Mr. Davidson were exposed by Dr. Whiteford and witnessed by other MPs and Committee officials. Mr Davidson’s alleged threat to give Dr. Whiteford “a doing”, and his subsequent – and bewildering - clarification that his remark was “not intended as a sexual threat” underscore the extent of persistent sexism rooted in political and parliamentary culture.
According to the newly launched “Counting Women In” campaign, men outnumber women 4:1 at Westminster. There are only 5 women in the Coalition Cabinet. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has repeatedly highlighted the slow pace of change. Women are not only under-represented in elected politics, this incident shows they are also under-valued and disrespected.
The allegations from Dr. Whiteford go well beyond party politics and our reaction and condemnation is not party-aligned. This incident is the latest evidence of the dominance of a sexist and antiquated political culture that underlies our political and economic institutions. So long as sexism is left unchallenged, and ‘casual’ references to violence are left unchecked and unsanctioned, women will continue to be held at arms’ length from the political process.
Dr. Whiteford has made clear she has spoken out about the incident on the basis that it is unacceptable behaviour in any circumstance, and in recognition of the many women who experience intimidation and threats of violence. It is in that spirit that we support Dr. Whiteford’s stance.
Prof. Ailsa McKay, Glasgow Caledonian University
Angela O’Hagan, Convenor, Scottish Women’s Budget Group
Dr. Fiona Mackay, University of Edinburgh
Prof. Liz Bondi, University of Edinburgh,
Dr. Marsha Scott, Engender
Jenny Kemp, Co-ordinator, Zero Tolerance
Anna Bird, Acting Chief Executive, The Fawcett Society
Anne Meikle
Susanne Ross, Scottish Women’s Budget Group
Morag Gillespie, Scottish Women’s Budget Group
Bhabani Nayak, Glasgow Caledonian University
Emily Thomson, Glasgow Caledonian University
Andy Aitchison, University of Edinburgh
Banff and Buchan MP Dr Eilidh Whiteford has this evening withdrawn from proceedings of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee over inappropriate and unacceptable conduct by the committee chairman.
During a meeting of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee on Wednesday 19 October, comments of an unacceptable and inappropriate nature were made by the committee chairman, Ian Davidson MP, to Dr Eilidh Whiteford MP.
After the meeting had concluded Mr Davidson approached Dr Whiteford and clarified to her that his earlier remarks about "getting a doing” were not intended to be taken as a sexual threat. He also indicated that another Member of the committee had passed a note to him relating to the appropriateness of his comments.
Dr Whiteford has withdrawn her membership of the committee until Mr Davidson resigns as chairman.
Commenting on her decision, Dr Whiteford said:
“Threats and intimidation of this nature are unacceptable under any circumstances. It is never appropriate to threaten to give a woman 'a doing'.
“If people in my position are not prepared to stand up against aggressive and threatening behaviour, then people who face this kind of conduct in their homes and workplaces will continue to think the perpetrators can get away with it.
“I do not believe this behaviour is compatible with the position of Chair of a Select Committee, and therefore I have withdrawn from the Committee while Mr Davidson remains in his role as chair.”
Proposals by the Boundary Commission for Scotland released last week for the redrawing of Westminster constituency boundaries see the historic area of Buchan as the land north of the Ythan reunited.
The number of Westminster MPs in Scotland is being reduced from 59 to 52 leading to new boundaries. The boundaries last changed in 2005 when the number of Scottish MPs reduced from 72 to 59, and in 1997 as part of a general review.
The proposals for the North-east see Banff & Buchan retained and expanded to take in the Ellon & District council ward and most of Mid-Formartine, except Balmedie and Oldmeldrum. The remainder of the current Gordon Constituency merges with West Aberdeenshire to form a new constituency.
Commenting, Banff & Buchan MP Eilidh Whiteford said:
“It is important that the communities involved in the proposed boundary changes have their say. To that end, I would encourage community groups and individuals to make their comments to the Boundary Commission’s consultation which runs until 4 January 2012.”
Comments on the Boundary Commission’s proposals can be made by e-mail to comments@scottishboundaries.gov.uk or via the webform at www.bcomm-scotland.gov.uk
SNP Work and Pensions spokesperson and local MP Eilidh Whiteford has called for the UK Government to review the operation of Child Trust Funds after it emerged almost a quarter of a billion pounds has been lost from the value of funds in the last year.
A report has revealed that, in Scotland, the loss stands at about £24million affecting 500,000 children.
Dr Whiteford has called for the UK Government to review the advice that it provides to parents on the scheme and investigate reforming the scheme to allow the fund to be transferred into Junior ISA or savings schemes.
Commenting, Dr Whiteford said:
“With some parents seeing a third wiped off the value of their children's funds over the last year this has been a painful reminder of that old small-print warning that the value of investments can fall as well as rise.
“The UK government should now consider updating the advice that it gives to parents on how these funds are managed and investigate reforming the scheme to allow the fund to be transferred into alternative, lower risk, schemes such as Junior ISA or savings schemes.”
Banff & Buchan MP Eilidh Whiteford has raised the ongoing fisheries dispute with Iceland and the Faroe Islands with the UK Fisheries Minister on the floor of the House of Commons.
Speaking during Question Time in the House of Commons, Eilidh Whiteford MP asked the Minister:
“Alongside CFP reform, the ongoing mackerel dispute with Iceland and the Faroe islands continues to cause great concern, not just for pelagic fishermen but for the white fish fleet and fish processors. Will the Minister update the House on the progress of negotiations with Iceland and tell us, in the event of a deal, what recompense will be made available to Scottish fishermen? Might it possibly take the form of additional quota?”
Responding, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at DEFRA Richard Benyon MP said:
“I cannot give the hon. Lady that precise information at the moment. I can tell her that there has been a slight improvement in the relationship with the Icelanders, and I hope that we can build on that. I am still pessimistic about our discussions with the Faroese, but I assure her that I will keep her closely involved, because we are talking about our most valuable fishery. It is sustainable, and we face a severe risk of losing marine stewardship accreditation for the stock, which would cause great harm to her constituents and our economy.”
Commenting afterwards, Dr Whiteford said:
“2500 jobs, many of them in the North-east, are dependant on the mackerel sector. I have been in close contact with industry representatives and will continue to press the case for them at the highest level in Westminster, while I know my colleague Richard Lochhead will do likewise from a Scottish Government perspective because this issue has serious knock-on effects for parts of the white fish fleet and processors.
“The UK Government, as the EU Member State, must redouble its efforts to ensure a just and fair outcome for our fishing industry in the face of outrageous and irresponsible behaviour by the Faroese.”
‘WASTEFUL WESTMINSTER’ SHOULD LEARN FROM SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY
A parliamentary question obtained by SNP MP Dr Eilidh Whiteford has revealed that the cost of a computer case management system purchased by the UK Government for the Child Support Agency has more than doubled from its original budget of £94 million to more than £225 million.
The PQ also revealed that the cost of subsequent improvements to the CS2 system, used by the CSA, have totalled more than £117 million extra on top of the development costs since 2006.
The cost of the CSA system follows revelations over recent weeks that the cost of the Libra IT scheme used by the Department of Justice had trebled from its original budget of £146 million to more than £444 million; while another IT system, purchased for the Passport Agency, had quadrupled to £365 million.
Commenting, SNP Work and Pensions spokesperson Dr Eilidh Whiteford MP, whose question uncovered the figures, said:
“Given the catalogue of IT cost overruns, we would all be better off if Westminster got a calculator rather than another computer. It seems the Westminster government is incapable of delivering big projects on time or on budget.
“At a time when household budgets are under real pressure, revelations over how wasteful Westminster has been with taxpayers’ money are an absolute scandal.
“Serious questions must be asked about how the cost of the CSA computer system was able to more than double – and the first of those questions should be raised with the former Labour Ministers who signed the contracts.
“When it comes to efficiency, Westminster needs to take a leaf out of the Scottish Government’s book. The SNP Government has pursued a vigorous programme of efficiency and public sector reform that is delivering results and driving improvements. In the first two years of the programme, it has exceeded its targets by £300 million and £400 million. Last year, £2.276 billion of efficiency savings were made - £673 million above the target - through new ways of using resources, collaborating across public services or improving procurement.
“That money is being reinvested in the public sector to deliver frontline services or lever in new efficiencies. This is a level of delivery that wasteful Westminster should learn from.”
1. Details of Dr Whiteford’s question on the CSA IT system can be found at the link below.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110719/text/110719w0003.htm#1107204001531
Dr Whiteford: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the original estimate, at current prices, was of the cost to the public purse of the computer system supplied by EDS Systems for the Child Support Agency's payment system; what the final cost, at current prices, was at the time of completion; and whether additional costs have been incurred since completion. [65626]
Maria Miller: The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission is responsible for the child maintenance system. I have asked the child maintenance commissioner to write to the hon. Member with the information requested and I have seen the response.
Letter from Noel Shanahan:
In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Child Maintenance Commissioner as the Child Support Agency is now the responsibility of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission.
You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the original estimate, at current prices, was of the cost to the public purse of the computer system supplied by EDS Systems for the Child Support Agency's payment system; what the final cost, at current prices, was at the time of completion; and whether additional costs have been incurred since completion. [65626]
The question has been assumed to relate to the CS2 child maintenance system, which was built by EDS and went live in 2003. “The cost to the public purse of the computer system” has been assumed to mean the cost of developing the system, rather than the cost of developing and running the system.
The original outline estimate given by EDS (now Hewlett Packard) in 1999 for the cost of the build of the new CS2 system was £94m. This estimate is disclosed in the National Audit Office's (NAO) June 2006 report “Implementation of the child support reforms”. At today's prices, based on the Retail Price Index at December 1999 and June 2011, the £94m translates to £132.2m.
The actual cost of developing the CS2 system was £225m. At today's prices, based on the RPI at April 2003, when the system went live, and June 2011, the £225m translates to £292.1m.
During the Operational Improvement Plan (OIP), which ran between April 2006 and April 2009, a further £107m was invested in development to the CS2 system. This amount was disclosed in the NAO's December 2009 report on the performance of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission. At today's prices, based on the RPI for April 2009, when the OIP closed, and June 2011, the £107m translates to £119m.
Following the closure of the OIP, two further remedial releases were made on the CS2 system. The cost of release 17, in 2009, was £4.2m. Release 18, in 2010, cost £5.4m. At today's prices, based on the RPI for December 2009 and December 2010 respectively and the RPI for June 2011, these translate to a total cost of £10.1 m.
2. Details of Dr Whiteford’s previous question to the Home Office can be found at the link below:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110719/text/110719w0001.htm#110719112001686
3. Last month the Scottish Government announced that savings of 2.2 billion pounds would be reinvested in Scotland's public services, and that Scotland's public sector efficiency targets have been smashed for the third year in a row.
The latest figures show that the public sector delivered 2,276 million pounds efficiency savings in 2010-11, exceeding the target of 1,603 million pounds by 673 million pounds. That equates to 8.5 per cent of the 2007-08 baseline, considerably above the target for six per cent savings for the year. Efficiency savings are reinvested in improving public services.
The Efficiency Outturn report 2010-11 is available at:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/09/Outturn2010-11
SNP Work and Pensions spokesperson, Eilidh Whiteford MP, has welcomed confirmation that plans to raise the state pension age to 66 in 2020 will be delayed to address concerns that thousands of women will be unfairly disadvantaged.
Dr Whiteford said the decision was a victory for women who had campaigned against the UK government’s plans.
Commenting, Dr Whiteford:
“This is a welcome retreat by the UK Government and a victory for the thousands of women who campaigned against these unfair changes.
“These changes would have wrecked the retirements of thousands of women, already in their late 50s, and denied them the time to make alternative pension arrangements.
“We must now see the full detail of the UK Government’s transitional proposals to be certain that they go far enough and will help all the women affected.”
Banff & Buchan MP Eilidh Whiteford officially re-opened the refurbished Buchan Street Hall in Macduff at the weekend.
The Buchan Street hall was one of the contenders on ITV’s ‘People’s Millions’ and won a popular vote to secure lottery funding to upgrade the facility.
Speaking after Saturday’s official opening, Eilidh said:
Michael McGillivray & May Thom
of Macduff Old Folk’s Association
“The Buchan Street Hall is a great community facility which I know is well-regarded locally by the various hall user groups. Growing up in Macduff in the 1970s, I used to attend dancing classes there.
“The hall is looking absolutely fantastic after the upgrade, which the Committee project-managed by themselves. There is a wonderful new kitchen and a new meeting room which really adds to the facilities available for hall users.
“Community facilities such as the Buchan Street Hall are extremely important and I know that the hall is well-used at the moment. With these new facilities, the hall will continue to be a focal point for local groups and community events in Macduff.”
Whiteford Comments On Scottish Affairs Committee 'Sideshow'
SNP MP and Member of the Scottish Affairs Committee, Dr Eilidh Whiteford, today (Wednesday) described the announcement of twin inquiries by the Committee into the Scottish Government’s plan to hold a referendum on Scottish independence as a ‘sideshow’.
Dr Whiteford also said she was bemused that the committee’s terms of reference appear to have been lifted from the Secretary of State for Scotland’s party conference speech, and expressed concern at the short timescale for interested parties to answer the Committee’s calls for evidence.
“These inquiries are a sideshow from the real issues affecting Scotland. It is obvious from the terms of reference that this will be a partisan and pejorative inquiry and that those driving it have already decided what its conclusions will be.
“There are already questions over the chairman’s judgement after his ridiculous neo-fascist remarks during a debate on the Scotland Bill. This just shows how Labour is obsessing about the SNP when the committee should be investigating the impact of Tory cuts.
“A referendum in Scotland is clearly a matter for the Scottish Parliament and Government – and the referendum that is happening is the one the SNP pledged in the election campaign, which we said will be held in the second half of this parliament. That is the platform the SNP stood on in May, and which the people of Scotland gave us a resounding mandate to deliver.
"The days of Westminster Committees or Tory and Labour Governments telling the people of Scotland what to do are over.
“Considering the many pressing issues in the areas where the Scottish Affairs Committee could make a useful contribution, it is disappointing they are instead proceeding with a partisan inquiry into something which has nothing to do with them.
“David Cameron and Nick Clegg have both conceded this is a matter for the people of Scotland and the Scottish Parliament but it would seem their backbenchers now want to hijack this issue by political grand standing.”
Commenting on the terms of reference for the second inquiry, which include six questions listed by Scotland Secretary Michael Moore in his conference speech, Dr. Whiteford said:
“It’s absolutely extraordinary that the agenda for the Scottish Affairs Select Committee seems to have been lifted from a LibDem conference speech by Michael Moore! It seems Ian Davidson has been rummaging through Michael Moore’s waste paper basket looking for inspiration?”
SUCCESSIVE UK GOVERNMENT’S ‘SHAMEFUL RECORD’
SNP Work and Pensions Spokesperson Eilidh Whiteford today (Tuesday) described the UK Government’s record on tackling child poverty as a tragedy as the IFS and Joseph Rowntree Foundation published figures showing that 17% of children in the UK were living in absolute poverty in 2009 – 10 with that figure set to rise over the next two years.
According to the report’s authors, the UK Government is unlikely to meet its target of reducing child poverty by 2020.
“These figures must be a wake-up call for the UK Government over the impact that their savage cuts are having on the most vulnerable.
“Children wherever they are born deserve the best possible start in life. While the Scottish Government is focussed on tackling the root causes of poverty such as education, health, employment, skills and housing, kids across the country are still being let down by Westminster.
“The record of successive UK Government’s on tackling child poverty is shameful. After thirteen years, Labour singularly failed to close the gap between rich and poor created during the Thatcher years.
“The aggressive deficit reduction policies of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are hitting family incomes, making it harder to make ends meet.
“Meanwhile, Labour MPs who failed to tackle the problem whilst in government and sat on their hands through a vital vote in opposition. In February 2011, MPs had the chance to vote down the UK Government’s plans to link benefits to the consumer price index instead of the retail price index.
“This would have given hard pressed families some breathing room but Labour abstained with only one Scottish MP brave enough to break party ranks and join the SNP in voting against.”
More details of the IFS Study can be read here: http://www.ifs.org.uk/pr/poverty_pr_1011.pdf
Katy Clark was the only Scottish MP to vote against the move to link benefits and pensions to CPI instead of RPI: http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2011-02-17&number=212
MP Welcomes APD Devolution Calls From Leading NE Figures
Banff & Buchan MP Dr Eilidh Whiteford has welcomed the publication today of an open letter by a group of leading North-east business and public sector figures to the Chancellor calling for devolution of Air Passenger Duty (APD) to the Scottish Parliament.
The letter is endorsed by Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, the LibDem Leader of Aberdeenshire Council, the Leader of Aberdeen City Council, North-east Scotland SCDI, NESTRANS, BAA Aberdeen Airport, Aberdeen City & Shire Economic Futures and Eastern Airways.
“Support is growing for devolution of APD and, given the changes proposed for Northern Ireland, the Treasury must recognise its refusal to devolve control to Scotland is unsustainable.
“There is overwhelming evidence for the devolution of APD with all four of Scotland’s largest airports backing the call and Transport Scotland saying ‘there is no good reason why passengers in Scotland should have to continue to travel in such numbers through other UK airports or should not benefit from levels of connectivity enjoyed in other parts of the UK’.
“Devolution of APD would enable us to incentivise airlines to provide new direct international routes, providing Scotland's passengers with enhanced options as they go about their business more freely and more effectively. It would also provide a substantial boost to the Scottish economy and create jobs.
“It is time for the UK Government to stop being hypocritical and allow Scotland to have control over flight taxes, just like Northern Ireland.”
HM Treasury’s Northern Ireland announcement: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/press_107_11.htm
'CONFUSED AND CONTRADICTORY'
Commenting on Willie Rennie’s speech to the Scottish Lib Dems' autumn conference in Dunfermline, SNP MP Dr Eilidh Whiteford said:
“The Lib Dems' continuing obsession with the SNP is plain for all to see. By becoming frontmen for the Tory Government in London, their position on the constitution has crumbled into a mess of confusion and contradiction.
"They say they want Home Rule but fail to support the extra powers the SNP propose for the Scotland Bill. Their position sounds as hollow as their pledges in 2010 to oppose increased tuition fees, higher VAT and accelerated Tory cuts.
"Scaremongering against the financial and operational benefits of a single police force was at the heart of the LibDems' disastrous election campaign in May - and they were rejected by the people of every single constituency in mainland Scotland: rural and urban, Highland and lowland, north, south, east and west.
"They also promised 3,000 police officers in their 2010 election manifesto but since they have become Tory frontmen there are over 4,000 less police officers in England & Wales. Another pledge as hollow as their stance on Home Rule."
PUBLIC HALL AND SHOP TO BE OFFICIALLY OPENED BY LOCAL MP
Banff & Buchan MP Dr Eilidh Whiteford will carry out engagements in Banff and Macduff on Saturday 8 October.
At 2.00pm, Eilidh will officially re-open the refurbished Macduff Old Folk’s Association Community Hall in Buchan Street, Macduff. The Buchan Street hall was one of the contenders on ITV’s ‘People’s Millions’ and won a popular vote to secure lottery funding to upgrade the facility.
Commenting ahead of the opening, Eilidh said:
“The Buchan Street Hall is a great community facility which I know is well-regarded locally by the various hall user groups.
“I’m looking forward to hearing from the committee members on Saturday about the upgrade and their future plans for the hall.”
At 4.00pm, Eilidh will perform the official opening of the The New Arc shop at 21 Low Street, Banff.
The New Arc is one of Scotland’s largest independent animal rescue centres based just outside Ellon and is currently home to over 400 animals and birds both domestic and wild. The centre is run entirely by volunteers. The charity pays no rent, no expenses, no utilities, fuel, travel or phone costs ensuring that all proceeds raised are spent 100% on the animals in their care.
Local Bereavement Care Group Cashes In On MP's Opinions
Deveron Branch of Cruse Bereavement Care Scotland has benefited from a cash donation from Banff & Buchan MP Dr Eilidh Whiteford.
The SNP MP was recently asked to take part in a research study by a well-known polling organisation which offered a £75 fee. Eilidh donated this to Cruse following an invitation to assist the local group with their recent supermarket bag-pack which raised over £700, thereby adding another 10% to the sum raised when she visited the volunteers at the Turriff branch of Tesco at the end of July.
All the funds raised stay locally, and will be used to buy new books for their library, and finance the ongoing training required to ensure volunteer counsellors are equipped to a high standard. The Deveron Branch of Cruse covers Fraserburgh, Memsie, New Pitsligo, Huntly, Oldmeldrum, Banff, Macduff and everywhere else within that area, and the counsellors are kept busy with many referrals coming from GP’s and other health professionals.
Dr Whiteford commented:
“I was delighted to support the Deveron Branch of Cruse Bereavement Care Scotland.
“I am very much aware of the excellent job Cruse counsellors do in providing a listening ear, advice and support for those suffering after the loss of a loved one. Their support has proved invaluable for many individuals and helped them through a traumatic and distressing time in their lives.
“I am therefore pleased to be able to add to the sum raised by the Cruse volunteers at their recent bag-pack.”
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You are here: Home | Human Rights | Asia lets Myanmar off hook over Suu Kyi again: analysts
2009 Oct 25
Asia lets Myanmar off hook over Suu Kyi again: analysts
HUA HIN, Thailand – Asian leaders barely mentioned Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi at a weekend summit, making a mockery of the region’s grand claims for its new rights body, analysts said.
Leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes Myanmar, devoted just three lines to the military-ruled nation’s political situation in the nine pages of their final declaration.
While the statement called for elections promised by the junta in 2010 to be “fair, free, inclusive and transparent”, it made no mention of the opposition leader, who has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years.
The summit at the Thai resort of Hua Hin opened with the inauguration of ASEAN’s first human rights body, hailed by members as “historic” but widely derided by activists, given the lack of action on Myanmar.
“The whole thing is a bit of a farce,” David Mathieson, a Myanmar expert at Human Rights Watch, told AFP.
“There were pretty low expectations for the human rights commission and ASEAN has probably fulfilled these expectations. There’s no way ASEAN can maintain any credibility while kowtowing to the Burmese leaders,” he added.
Burma is Myanmar’s former name.
Suu Kyi had her house arrest extended in August for 18 months after she was convicted over an incident in which an American man swam uninvited to her home. It effectively keeps her out of the way for next year’s elections.
A senior Southeast Asian diplomat confirmed to AFP that Myanmar and Suu Kyi were not discussed at the ASEAN leaders’ retreat, although they did come up when the bloc met with leaders from China, Japan and South Korea on Saturday.
Myanmar’s Prime Minister Thein Sein told his counterparts that the junta could relax the conditions of Suu Kyi’s detention, a Japanese official said – but this possibility was earlier raised by the junta at her conviction.
The rights commission’s launch was also marred by a row over the barring of rights activists from Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines and Singapore, who were meant to meet ASEAN leaders at Hua Hin to discuss the new watchdog.
The Myanmar representative, Khin Ohmar, said their exclusion was an “extreme disappointment”, but not a surprise.
“Now the trial is done and Aung San Suu Kyi is back in house arrest, ASEAN is coming back to avoiding the whole Burma issue again,” she added.
Khin Ohmar said ASEAN was prevented from applying any real pressure on the military regime because of its long-standing policy of non-interference in members’ internal affairs.
“As long as they have that they will not be able to solve the Burma problem”, she added.
Myanmar’s ruling generals did allow Suu Kyi two meetings with a minister this month after she wrote a letter to junta chief Than Shwe offering suggestions for getting Western sanctions against Myanmar lifted.
The move coincided with a recent shift in US policy to re-engage the isolated regime, after decades of hostility.
“These are positive developments and I think Myanmar authorities have promised their commitment to the… roadmap (to democracy)”, Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya told reporters in Hua Hin.
The positions of ASEAN and the international community “remain firm”, he said, reiterating the call for free and fair elections and the release of all political prisoners.
But ASEAN nations have been reluctant to admonish Myanmar when they face their own rights issues, especially in communist Vietnam and Laos but also in Thailand, which has been under fire for its treatment of ethnic minorities.
“The change in the US approach reduces the pressure on ASEAN to push for reform in Myanmar,” said Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asia expert at the Singapore Management University.
“ASEAN has usually had limited impact on reforms in Myanmar, and this pattern is likely to continue,” she added. –Rachel O’Brien, AFP
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You are here: Home | Climate Change | 3/7/2015 - Environmental coalition calls for ‘ambitious’ climate action plans from ASEAN
3/7/2015 – Environmental coalition calls for ‘ambitious’ climate action plans from ASEAN
We need to take substantial action to address climate change and its effects, said the ASEAN for a Fair, Ambitious, and Binding Global Climate Deal (A-FAB) Coalition during a livestreamed press briefing between Manila, Bangkok, and Jakarta.
A-FAB is made up of Greenpeace, Oxfam, and the Eastern Regional Organization for Public Administration (EROPA).
“The burning of fossil fuels for energy production has been found to be primarily responsible for emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases. A harmonized ASEAN policy reform to de-subsidize coal, oil, gas, and to support renewable and other low carbon technologies is therefore necessary, especially in the context of the ASEAN economic integration,” said Zelda Soriano, Legal and Political Advisor of Greenpeace Southeast Asia.
Soriano added that ways to address carbon emission during energy production can be built into the intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) or climate action plans of ASEAN countries that they intend to undertake under the climate treaty that the 21st Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) hopes to come up with.
“INDCs are concrete steps of the global community to address climate change,” said Wanun Permpibul, Coordinator, Climate Action Network, Thailand. However, governments, Permpibul said, shouldn’t rush creating their INDCs and should instead focus on their quality.
Call for developed countries to take responsibility
But it’s not just ASEAN countries that need to step up.
“There are no outsiders in the climate change issue,” said Dr. Gary Theseira, Environment Management and Climate Change Division Deputy Undersecretary of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Malaysia. “Climate change affects everyone.” He added that some countries benefited more than others from the use of fossil fuels during the industrial period, and these countries have a greater responsibility to use their resulting wealth to help address climate change.
Zelda Soriano, Legal and Political Advisor of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said that just 90 entities have contributed to 63% of overall global carbon emissions. Of these, 50 are corporations.
“We believe that countries primarily responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, should also be responsible for addressing the adaptation needs of climate change victims,” said Riza Bernabe, Policy and Research Coordinator for the East Asia GROW campaign of Oxfam. — TJD, GMA News
More from: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/515342/scitech/science/environmental-coalition-calls-for-ambitious-climate-action-plans-from-asean
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Jimmy Sengenberger Show, Bob Beauprez, May 3, 2014
Station: KNUS, 710 AM
Show: Jimmy Sengenberger Show
Guests: Beauprez
Link: http://sengenberger.podbean.com/
Topics: Tea Party, Establishment, GOP, Republican Party Divide, Education, Common Core, Conservative School Boards, Race to the Top, Western Governors, Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, Regulation, Oil and Gas Industry, John Hickenlooper, A Return to Values, Rural voters, War on Rural Colorado, Renewable Energy Mandates, Gun Laws, Leadership, Opportunity, Economy, Public Safety, Acid Test, Overreach, 2006 Gubernatorial race, Energy Independence, Jefferson County, School Choice
Click Here for Audio
HOST JIMMY SENGENBERGER: The crossfire is always going with gubernatorial candidates having their debates, and discussions, and issues of the day. What happens in politics continues to go on and to shake things up. There were four candidates running for governor: Mike Kopp, top line – by just 18 votes, but still top line at the assembly; Scott Gessler, Secretary of State; former Congressman Tom Tancredo; and our guest, who we caught up with earlier, Bob Beauprez, also former Congressman. Let’s go straight to that interview.
[playing the pre-recorded interview]
I’m very pleased to have on the program, a good friend, a good guy – all-around good guy, candidate for governor, former Congressman Bob Beauprez is with us. Good evening, sir. It’s good to have you with us.
FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM COLORADO, FORMER & CURRENT GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE, BOB BEAUPREZ: Nice to be speaking with you again, Jimmy. Good evening to you.
SENGENBERGER: Now, you are all around the state, at least you’re about to be all around the state tomorrow. You’re kicking off a tour to crisscross Colorado. Talk to us about that.
BEAUPREZ: We are. We’re going to be – I think over in the northwest corner before the weeks out. We’re also going to be clear down in Lamar, and all points in between. And in the two opposite corner, if I put it that way, the Durango area and then out toward Sterling. We’ll leave that for the week after. A good bit of the state, we’re going to get to see next week.
SENGENBERGER: Now, it’s always interesting to me, because obviously I’ve never run for state-wide office, what it’s like when you have to actually put all those miles on a car and go travel around from one part to the other. And the state is so diverse. What’s that experience like?
BEAUPREZ: Oh, this is the part I like the best, Jimmy. You know, being a native Coloradoan, having spent a good bit of my life in rural Colorado, in uh – we were dairy farmers, now we’re buffalo ranchers up in the mountains. I always got around a lot of the state then, because we were always buying and selling our cattle, and I had reason to visit folks from corner to corner, and meeting people where they live, where they work, where they –in some cases of rural CO–they try to eke out a living. Parts of the state are extremely dry again, unfortunately. I like to sense that myself. I’m a visual learner. And so I like to see, II like to interact with people. And you know, it really brings home the point you made when you do something like this – how very diverse our state is. You stick around the metro [Denver] area, as important, as vibrant, as exciting as it is, you get a—you get one perspective. And that’s a healthy perspective. It’s important. But the state is so much more diverse and different than that, corner to corner.
SENGENBERGER: I do want to give you a chance real quick, because tomorrow night you do have – or tomorrow afternoon you do have an event to kick off that. You got some details for us?
BEAUPREZ: Yeah. It’s going to be at the Tavern down in the [Denver] Tech Center, and I think it starts at 5:30. Folks, if they want to attend, they can certainly still do that. We’ll take walk-ins. RSVPs are nice, but it people just want to show up, that would be fine. It’s going to be a fun time. Kind of a kick off to the statewide tour, a formal beginning, I guess, of the bigger part of the campaign now, if you will.
SENGENBERGER: And now let’s delve in to the bigger part of the campaign, where you have a very interesting race. I haven’t seen anything like this in a state-wide race in my memory. And that is a four way primary – and we listed earlier in the program all of the candidates that are running. What differentiates, in your mind, Bob Beauprez from rest of the pack, in terms of the qualifications and the things that you feel you bring to the table?
BEAUPREZ: Well, it’s what we were talking about a little bit earlier, Jimmy. It’s my diversity of experience. I am a Colorado native. But more importantly, I’ve been in a number of different careers. [I] started as a typical family farm. We had dairy cows, did pretty good at that. Ended up selling our cattle all over the world. And then we developed the farm and the families asked me to look after that, and I did. So I had that experience. Thirteen hundred housing units, no small undertaking, and [I] learned a great deal about how you create jobs and deal with a lot of government when you take on a project that big. We – Claudia and I – bought a little community bank. grew it from $4 million to $450 million, created a lot of jobs, had five employees, I think it was when we started. [We] ended up with over 150. And most importantly, touched a great many people in our part of Colorado. I think at one point we were in five or six different counties here in the north metro area, including downtown Denver. And so you get a great deal of experience in dealing with that many different people small, especially small business people. [I] went to Congress, and now come back home– we’ve got the buffalo ranch up in the mountains. So, I’ve had a great deal of real life experience of creating jobs, seeing how government sometimes does it well, lots of times does it not so well at all. And in every career, I’ve found myself in a leadership role. I think Colorado is void of leadership, right now. It’s the place I fault John Hickenlooper the most. I think my experience, –hands on, real world experience–will help me relate to the diversity of Colorado. I want to get this economy moving again. I think we have lost a tremendous amount of opportunity, and I fault John Hickenlooper and Barack Obama for that. I think there is a better way. I know that way, and I want to lead us in that direction. So, I think it’s experience that sets me apart, Jimmy, and I look forward to making that case to Colorado.
SENGENBERGER: Now, one thing we always like to do is give a chance for candidates to respond to one or two of the criticisms that are often levied against them. There is the 2006 loss, for example, that you had. Now, it was several years ago. It was a ways back. What has changed since 2006? What have you learned since 2006, when you did lose by a fairly sizeable margin, and there were some people that say, “Well, he ran in 2006, and he lost big. That makes me a little hesitant to support him this go around. How do you respond to critics in that issue?
BEAUPREZ: Well, I haven’t done everything perfect in my life, and that was one of the times. And you know, making a mistake is one thing. You don’t want to do it twice, and I won’t. The biggest mistake I made in ’06 was that I did not give full consideration to how difficult it would be to be a member of Congress, as I was, on the Ways and Means Committee, a fairly involved responsibility, and also running a state-wide campaign back here for the office of governor. It proved to be extremely difficult. In addition to that, Jimmy, the landscape was tough. My pollster told me – and this isn’t meant to sound like an excuse, it’s just a piece of reality–my pollster told me not since Watergate had he seen an environment so difficult for Republicans as it was in ’06. That’s all changed. We’ve now got an incumbent governor in John Hickenlooper, who has taken some hits, most of them self-inflicted. He’s now got a record. I look forward to exposing that record. I think it is a record of failed leadership and lost opportunity. And we’re going to take him to task for that. We’re going to present a better plan for Colorado, a better leadership plan, and a better economic plan, a better public safety plan, a better plan to really make education about our children and give them a fighting chance to get all these jobs we’re going to create in Colorado. And I think, when we’re done, I think we’ll make a clear case to Colorado voters and offer them that better choice. I think this is the year that they’re hungry for a better opportunity, and I look forward to making that case and hopefully being that choice.
SENGENBERGER: Before we delve into those issues for a few minutes with our guest […], one more thing that I hear, especially in a lot of Tea Party circles, we’ve got this divide that I really want to be bridging, I think that it’s something we need to move past. I’ve talked a lot about it on my program. But you’ve got this divide between the so-called Establishment and the so-called Tea Party wing. And there are a lot of people that I know that say, “Oh, Bob Beauprez is somebody from the establishment. He’s getting establishment support. He’s getting support from out of state. He’s getting all of these kinds of things.” How do you see yourself vis-à-vis the supposed divide in the Republican Party? Do you think that is an accurate picture for people to paint, and say, “Oh, Bob Beauprez is the ‘establishment guy in the race?’”
BEAUPREZ: Well, I think “establishment” is a word that we throw around a lot, right now. It’s meant to be pejorative. Here’s what I am: I’m a guy who spent almost all of his live but 4 years of it in the private sector. Did I serve my party? Yes. I think that is an important thing for all of us citizens to do. I started as a precinct committee man, eventually was asked to be county chairman, and then state party chairman. And proudly, once I was recruited to go to Congress, I did for a grand total of four years. If that makes you “establishment”, I don’t know, I guess I’ll leave that in the eye of the beholder. What I understand, Jimmy, is that you have to have principle. I wrote a book about this. Lots of people talk about being principled. I actually wrote it down. Here’s what I believe. Here’s how I think we need to solve the big problems in front of America today. I wrote it in a book. I would encourage people to take a look at that – A Return to Values is the name of it. And in that book, I said there really ought to – here’s the acid test, and it’s one that I’ll use when I’m governor, to be for something or against something. If it enhances, preserves, protects, defends freedom, then we ought to be for it. If it diminishes, infringes, detracts in any way from the freedom, the individual liberty, the opportunity that has always been at the forefront of the American Dream, then we best be against it. That’s my guiding principle, Jimmy. I don’t think that that is anti-Tea Party, anti-liberty, or for that matter, anti-Republican establishment. I think it’s at the core of what it means to be an American, first and foremost. So, that will be the case I make, and I hope, just like I was able to do in 2002, that after we’re done with the primary and into the general election, I hope that I could bring this party together, this conservative movement together, and reach even well beyond that to people that are looking for some common sense leadership again. And I hope I can be that choice and be that kind of governor.
SENGENBERGER: Now, you just talked about constraints on freedom, Bob Beauprez, our guest. And we have seen that dramatically increase here in the state of Colorado. Last year, for example, talking about gun issues, where there are Coloradoans that are deeply concerned, especially in the more rural parts of the state, that you’ll be doing a lot of traveling in, that they don’t feel particularly represented on that issue and energy—we’ll get to that in a moment—and agriculture and some of these other things that have come up. But on the gun control issue, what does that tell you about John Hickenlooper, and where do fall in terms of repealing those gun laws?
BEAUPREZ: I look forward to signing a full repeal of those. I think they were a gross over-reach of our individual liberty and freedom as the Constitution guarantees it. I think he was playing clearly to a constituency within his party that is anti-gun and anti-freedom, but it wasn’t good for all of Colorado. I think the recall election proved that a lot of Coloradoans said it was an over-reach and I think they do want those laws repealed. I think we have got more than enough–way too many, laws on the books. In fact, there are some good ‘liberty” things we could do, such as, not requiring people that already have a concealed weapons permit, have already been approved to carry a concealed weapon, why in the world should – if they go buy another gun of any kind, why do they have to go through another background check? But yet, we make them do that. There’s things we can do to make it better for peoples’ individual liberty and freedom, rather than trample on them.
SENGENBERGER: And certainly encouraging people to just be safe with their own firearms—which they are!
BEAUPREZ: Well, you know Jimmy, there is plenty of evidence that one of safest groups of people out there are people that have concealed weapons permits, and do carry — one of the safest constituency groups in all society.
SENGENBERGER: That’s part of why I remember at the Republican state assembly, somebody – I forget who it was who spoke. It might have been one of the candidates—said ‘This is the safest I’ve ever felt in Boulder.” Because they were allowed to conceal carry on that location on campus. All right. So, one other thing that obviously is affecting countless Americans across the country but also here in Colorado is the job market and the struggling economy. Across the country we see the lowest labor participation rate since 1978. Here-in Colorado, my understanding is, the lowest since 1976, before Jimmy Carter even took office. Bob Beauprez, what do we need to do to get jobs going again in Colorado?
BEAUPREZ: Well, we need to stop this mindless promulgation of new regulation. Does anybody really think we’re short on regulation? And one of the biggest reasons the economy hasn’t gotten moving again, –yes, it’s policies that they’ve passed: Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, here our renewable energy mandate on rural Colorado, the anti-gun legislation. But in Colorado specifically, this will be the sixth or maybe even seventh year in a row, additional regulation has been dumped on top of just one industry – the oil & gas industry. And if they have their way, they won’t be happy until they run that industry completely out of the state. Jimmy, that’s just wrong! It is–if it weren’t for Weld county, –which is producing by the way, 85% of all oil and gas in all of Colorado right now, our economy would be in a world of hurt. Do we need to do it safely–environmentally safely? Absolutely. Do we need to do it in a sound manner? Absolutely. The good news is that we’ve got the technology and the ability to do exactly that, to move in a huge way in the direction that used to be just a fantasy: Energy independence for North America. And Colorado can be a big part of that. So, we’ve got a government right now, — and a governor who brags about having put the most restrictive regulation on that industry in the entire nation. And that was before the air quality regulation which he brags are the only regs in the entire nation, so obviously the most restrictive. That’s just wrong. In order to get our economy moving again, Jimmy, we’ve got to get rid of needless anti-job, anti-economic growth regulation, keep that playing field level, put up a great big sign that says, “Business is OPEN in Colorado and welcome here!” And I think we’ll see things flourish. My goal is–.
[commercial break @15:30]
SENGENBERGER: […] I want to ask you about education. We saw a tremendous push-back against the status quo last November when we had reform school boards elected across the state, especially in Jefferson County which remains the single largest school district in the state as of at least this school year. We also saw the tremendous downfall – two to one, of the Amendment 66 push to raise our taxes and set it up as a progressive income tax, despite Mayor Bloomberg and Bill Gates coing in and spending a couple million dollars combined on this initiative. What do we need to do in your view in terms of reforming education, providing better quality education that diminishes the status quo, while enhancing the education of students, the opportunities for parents and students, and also the ability for teachers to do what they do best?
BEAUPREZ: Well, there is plenty of opportunity, Jimmy. And the simplest way, we need to turn the model on its head. We have been top down– and Common core is the latest example of Washington trying to tell us what to do. Our governor embraced and supported that. They think they know better than local school districts, than parents, than teachers do. We need to turn that upside down, give more choice to parents, more flexibility to teachers. I would pass, and encourage to be passed something that’s called a “Teachers bill of rights.” Let the teachers teach. I’m told, Jimmy, that right now, that 1 in 6 days – 30 – basically 30 out of the 180 days in a school year — are taken up by mandatory testing. That doesn’t allow them enough time to teach. Common Core and PARCC call for more of that, not less of that. We also need to give teachers the flexibility to manage their own classrooms, to deal with problem kids and problem parents so that they can teach. We need to put 100% effort behind a shameful, disgraceful problem in Colorado that has existed too long, that 30% of our third graders can’t read at third grade level proficiency. We passed some laws several years ago, and said we’re going to put an end to that and provided the means to do it. But nobody seems to know if we’re even making any progress yet. On my watch, we will. There’s an opportunity to provide something called a Scholarship Tax Credit that would be a huge benefit to about half of our lower economic level folks in the state – their children, to provide an opportunity for scholarships for them to choose a school that best suits their child’s needs, provide an incentive for companies and wealthy individuals to give, and for at risk kids– kids without great means, to be able to attend those better schools, the best schools. And that’s the way we can unleash the —liberate our young people in the state and get them really job-ready and opportunity-ready so that they can live out the best of the American Dream.
SENGENBERGER: And we have talked with Pam Benigno of the Independence Institute about that very proposal, I think–
BEAUPREZ: They’re doing great work!
SENGENBERGER: –they’re right on spot with you there. Real quick, final question, before we give you a chance to let everyone know where they can find information about you. One of the cornerstones of education policy in this state that started this Common Core push and some of these other things, was the Race To the Top program, at the federal government, where they dangled this carrot – “we’re going to give you money if you make these reforms.” So we do it. We do SB 191. We take some steps and then we don’t get the money. As governor of the state of Colorado, if elected, how would you respond to those kinds of carrots that are held out by the federal government that could drive Colorado into position that would hurt our society, rather than improve upon it?
BEAUPREZ: Jimmy, I talked earlier about the need to do the ‘Freedom Test’. And states and state citizens are not free if you are ever more dependent, ever more at the beck and call of the federal government. Common Core is one of many of federal mandates, federal interventions that I look forward to pushing back on. Not just alone. But I’m convinced that there is a huge group of like-minded, almost universally Republican governors in the Rocky Mountain west that want to band together and do just that. It’s time we remind Washington D.C. what the 10th Amendment was all about: everything not expressly defined in the enumerated powers of the Constitution was to be left for the states. And that certainly means education. We know what’s best for our kids. We don’t need Washington telling us that. So, I’d look forward to not only pulling the plug on Common Core, but a whole bunch else, including, importantly, letting our federal lands go. Let us manage our federal lands. And keep Washington D.C.’s hands off of our precious water out here, as well.
[commercial break]
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The Top 10 Weird Sex-Related Mishaps
by JayDubya on Tue 28 Jul 2009, 11:18 am
Keeping it fresh and interesting in the bedroom is imperative for a healthy sex life. It is part of human nature to try new things, experiment, and get kinky. However things don’t always pan out as planned and with all the sex happening across the globe something is bound to go terribly wrong. When mishaps happen in the bedroom, it can cause great embarrassment, a trip to the ER, or even worse.
10. The Unreliable Penis Extension
A hapless Russian man with a small penis made a last ditch effort to save his marriage which ended in disaster.
Grigory Toporov, a 47-year-old man, had feelings of inadequacy after his wife berated him for his small penis. His wife reportedly told him repeatedly that he did not measure up in the bedroom. He decided to take action and doctors fitted him with a special prosthetic penis extension.
The newly well-endowed Russian decided to take his new length for a trip between the sheets. He made the moves on his wife, resulting in a marathon session of wild sex. Then disaster struck. The penis extension broke off during intercourse, ruining the moment and her impending orgasm. This was the last straw for Grigory’s unfulfilled wife who quickly demanded a divorce.
Grigory tried to save the marriage, saying, "I told her I would get a new one but she wasn't having any of it. She said she was fed up with my failures in bed and wants a divorce."
Toporov's wife really needs to learn the whole, "motion of the ocean" bit.
9. Woman Injured In Sex Toy Mishap
Source: Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images
Earlier this year a Maryland woman ended up in the hospital after a bloody mishap involving a homemade sex toy.
An unidentified couple was getting it on in the bedroom one Saturday night and decided to spice up their love making by using a sex toy. For reasons unknown, the sex toy, which we can assume was a dildo of some sort, wasn’t doing the trick. So what’s a guy to do when his lady needs an extra hand? Improvise. This chap decided to attach the sex toy to a Saber saw. Bad idea!
According to reports, the unidentified man placed a call to 911 saying “he had placed a sex toy over a saber saw blade, and then used the power tool on his partner, but the blade cut through the plastic and injured the woman.” The man literally drilled and sawed his lover. The 27-year-old woman, who was bleeding profusely, was rushed to the hospital by a Maryland State Police helicopter.
Police conducted an investigation into the incident and decided not to press any charges, determining the injury was a “result of a consensual act between two parties and no crime was committed.”
Next time the couple should just visit a sex shop.
8. The Case of the Broken Boner
A British couple getting it on was interrupted when the man’s penis broke mid-thrust.
Robert McClenahan, 38, was doing the deed with his wife when tragedy struck and his penis snapped in half. “We were having sex and he missed and broke his willy. We turned on the light and it was bent,” recounted his 32-year-old wife Emma.
Wait a minute, how can a penis break? Penile fractures are caused by a "tear in the tunica albuginea, the thick fibrous coat surrounding the corpora cavernosum tissue that produces an erection." It's extremely rare and most often caused by a blunt trauma to an erect penis, which results in a loud cracking or snapping sound, immediate flaccidity, and intense pain.
In the late '90s a man sued his lover in a Massachusetts court for “breaking his penis” in the case known as John Doe vs. Mary Moe:
The plaintiff was lying on his back while the defendant was on top of him. The defendant's body was secured in this position by the interlocking of her legs and the plaintiff's legs. At some point, the defendant unilaterally decided to unlock her legs and place her feet on either side of the plaintiff's abdomen for the purpose of increasing her stimulation. When the defendant changed her position, she did not think about the possibility of injury to the plaintiff. Shortly after taking this new position, the defendant landed awkwardly on the plaintiff, thereby causing him to suffer a penile fracture.
In that case the court ruled the woman was not negligent as the two were engaged in consensual sex.
Unlike his American counterpart, Robert, who required surgery to fix his member, he now laughs about his broken boner.
7. Train Track Tragedy
A South African couple was caught having sex on the wrong side of the track and literally paid for it with their lives.
Mduduzi Michael Bandezi, 28, and Sibongile Radebe, 25, met at local tavern in the Mpumalanga Province. One thing led to another and they ended up having sex on the railway tracks near the abandoned Kinross railway station. The station was no longer in regular use and the area was known as a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes. There is speculation that Sibongile was a prostitute.
According to reports, the freight train driver spotted the couple from a distance and repeatedly yelled at them to get off the tracks. However, they “continued with their business” apparently unaware of the oncoming freight train.
Mr. Bandezi died immediately at the scene, while Ms. Radebe was rushed to the hospital and died shortly after.
6. Couple Trapped in Sex Position
A Russian couple experimenting with a sexual position from the Kama Sutra was rushed to hospital after they became stuck to each other.
Valentina Sokolov, age 51, had been given a copy of the classic sex book for her 50th birthday. She and husband Ivan, age 56, decided to get kinky and practice one of the positions. They aimed for the stars and chose the Indrani or “deck chair” position. This complicated position involves “the woman drawing up her knees so her feet are jammed under her partner’s armpits.”
Things were going great for the couple until Valentina started to climax, triggering a muscle spasm that trapped Ivan inside her. The couple tried unsuccessfully to separate themselves for two hours. Finally they called an ambulance.
A medic sent to help the couple found the situation wildly amusing. He said, "We couldn't help laughing looking at them. The two lovers, who were not young at all, were in such a complicated position!"
The couple was taken to the hospital where they were separated. Ivan was so embarrassed he immediately ran out of the hospital. Valentina required surgery and made a full recovery.
5. Autoerotic INXSphyxiation
INXS frontman Michael Hutchence was found dead in a hotel room, naked with a belt tied around his neck. Was it suicide or a case of autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong?
The practice of autoerotic asphyxia, or breath control play, can quickly turn deadly. This paraphilia involves intentionally cutting off oxygen to the brain for sexual arousal. The effects of strangulation are known to cause intense erections in men and the practice dates back to the 1600s where men used it as a treatment for erectile dysfunction and impotence.
The story of 37-year-old Australian rock star Michael Hutchence is perhaps the most famous case of autoerotic asphyxiation turned deadly. The INXS front man was found alone in a Sydney hotel room on November 22nd, 1997. His cause of death was officially ruled a suicide, even though no suicide note was found and there was anecdotal evidence to suggest it was in fact caused by autoerotic asphyxiation. Hutchence’s brother Rhett believes his death was a result of this sexual fetish gone wrong and has gone to the highest court in Australia to try and overturn the verdict of suicide.
It is reported that somewhere between 250–1000 people die of autoerotic asphyxiation every year in the United States. The majority of them are men in their mid-20s. It's rumored that the recent death of actor David Carradine in Thailand was such a case.
4. I Heart You
A night of rough sex and a bizarre act of consensual "knife play" ended with a trip to the hospital and criminal charges for one Canadian couple.
After a big night of drinking, a Canadian couple decided to get freaky. An unidentified man asked his girlfriend Catherine McCoubrey, a then 25-year-old Winnipeg University student, to “carve a heart-shaped symbol onto his chest.” Catherine obliged, but accidently “pushed the knife in too deep.”
The knife pierced the man’s body, puncturing his heart. He was rushed to hospital, clinging to life. Criminal charges were leveled against Catherine. Luckily, the man made a full recovery and supported Catherine in her court case. Catherine eventually pleaded guilty to assault and was given three years of probation.
The couple is reportedly still together.
3. The Priest and the Potato
A British priest was rushed to hospital after a potato “accidently” became lodged in his rectum. The clergyman, in his 50s, said he was hanging curtains in the nude when he accidently fell back onto his kitchen table and landed smack bang on the offending potato.
Trudi Watson, who treated the unidentified male, said, "He explained to me, quite sincerely... but it's not for me to question his story.” I will! Who in their right mind hangs curtains in the nude? Is it even possible to get a potato lodged in your arse by falling on it?
The man of God underwent delicate surgery to remove the spud, maintaining all along it was an innocent accident, not a sexual experiment gone wrong.
2. Oral Sex Becomes a Mouth Full
A Singaporean businessman received the worst blowjob in the world when his penis was accidently bitten off.
The unidentified businessman was having an affair with his 30-year-old secretary. The two would sneak off to a nearby park for sex. The man was receiving a blowjob in a parked car when the car was hit by a reversing van. The impact of the crash caused the woman to chomp down of her lover’s Johnson, dismembering him.
To make matters worse, the entire incident was caught on tape by a private investigator, hired by the businessman’s wife who rightfully suspected her husband of having an affair. The investigator followed the car to the park, watched it park, and witnessed it “shake violently.” He said, “After the car was hit by the van, there was a loud scream from the woman whose mouth was covered with blood.”
The businessman was rushed to the hospital. His lover soon followed with a piece of his manhood in her mouth.
1. Sex in the City Leaves Man Legless
A 34-year-old New Yorker suffered ''extravagant complications'' after injecting cocaine into his penis in 1987, at the height of the cocaine boom in the United States. Cocaine was regularly used by men to heighten sexual pleasure and maintain an erection.
It is reported that the unidentified man “occasionally squirted a cocaine solution into his urethra.” On this occasion the man suffered from a “persistent painful erection immediately after intercourse with his girlfriend.” His erection lasted three days, at which point he sought out medical attention. Call me crazy, but after three hours I'm heading to the ER.
Later, he developed blood clots in his genitals, arms and legs, back, and chest. After 12 days in the infirmary, gangrene had taken over and his legs, nine fingers, and penis were amputated. Yikes!
http://www.spike.com/blog/top-10-weird-sex/82978?page=2&numPerPage=1
Re: The Top 10 Weird Sex-Related Mishaps
by Ninotchka on Tue 28 Jul 2009, 5:55 pm
I...wish I hadn't read that.
by Lima Bean on Thu 06 Aug 2009, 9:32 pm
OH.MY.GOD. lol!!
Yeah, like Lima here hasn't had at least 3 of those things happen to her...
by Tweetey55 on Thu 06 Aug 2009, 11:34 pm
Wow,she's lucky
by Mr Moon on Sat 08 Aug 2009, 9:44 pm
NextJen wrote: Yeah, like Lima here hasn't had at least 3 of those things happen to her...
by Marla on Mon 24 Aug 2009, 1:34 pm
Location : upper right hand corner...I may have to get a smaller ladder for in here
» The weird thing about "bonsai"...
» Orange spot BN weird colour
» Weird shaped trees I'd like some help with
» Bloopers and mishaps
» If you thought my LAST topic was weird
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I just finished writing a short review of the fantastic Kinks album Something Else for RYM which contains one of the greatest pop songs ever.
Something Else might fool people to think this is some of in-between or conceptual album by The Kinks, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Something Else is in fact one of the groups best albums. B-side in particular is superb. Only "End of the Season" might sound out of place until you realise it's Ray Davies's way of giving the finger to the whole summer of love thing. He has never been one to follow suit. The album is of course capped of by one of the greatest pop songs ever written, "Waterloo Sunset" but "Afternoon Tea", "Love Me Till The Sun Shines", "Two Sisters" and "Situation Vacant" are great pop songs as well. The only song I would swap out from this album is "No Return".
This album was released almost simultaneously with Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band so it's interesting to compare the two. Sgt Pepper's is an excellent album as well but I think Something Else shades it. Overall quality is better and this sounds more like an album rather than a collection of songs. And this album has a more universal sound to it. If someone made an album that sounded like Sgt Pepper's it would just sound old or odd. An album sounding like Something Else wouldn't sound out of place. This isn't a dig at Beatles, White Album and Revolver are superb albums, Sgt Pepper's just is a bit over-rated and shades some other contemporary albums for no reason.
Labels: music, rateyourmusic, reviews
How to upset libertarians
The Who concert
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Grow backwards. A conversation with Joe Simon
Joe Simon has spent most of his adult life trying to be a kid again—and inspiring others to do the same.
Call it the Benjamin Button effect: he grows as a filmmaker by growing backwards as a person.
If this picture had audio, you'd hear Joe screaming, "Look! I'm on top of a car!"
Owner of Austin production company The Delivery Men, Joe bought his first camera in 1998 (from a Best Buy, using an employee discount no less) to make BMX videos, as he'd been riding professionally since 1994.
It wasn't until 14 years later when, after more than a decade of running through the full gamut of project types, Joe launched The Delivery Men with friend, writer and producer, Hussain Pirani. The company gave Joe and Hussain full control over the production of their films, and with it the freedom of diversity.
Yet, if one were to watch Joe's many films, a pattern would emerge.
Each film comes from a place of total, compulsive childishness: celebrating the energy and joy in doing exactly what you want.
Despite every neuron in your brain screaming otherwise, that’s not a bad thing.
Being a kid is about the restlessness of curiosity, about being precocious and wild and finding a way to enjoy life for the beautiful mess of possibilities it presents.
It’s that kind of fearlessness Joe sees as the main motivation that’s carried him through his career as a filmmaker.
Kids...they just don’t care what people think about them or what they’re doing. They’re just doing what they’re doing because they’re doing it. And that’s it.
We find something very refreshing in that. After all, what may be keeping us from some truly amazing stories is that we’ve spent too long acting like a bunch of adults.
Since Joe’s been doing what he’s doing for the sake of doing it for over a decade now—and loving every day—this has meant SXSW tour guides, not-for-profit promotions, and irreverent jeans commercials, as well as the occasional wedding film or BMX epic to keep his priorities in check. Whatever's fun, right?
So, with that in mind, the self-professed “class clown” offered us some advice on how to relive all the fun you once had, so many years ago, figuring out that brand new camera for the first time.
Here are 4 childish behaviors we hope will inspire you to go out, find cool things, and remember what it's like to be a kid again.
1. Kids are always learning.
For any filmmaker, a lack of technical knowledge about your craft can sometimes seem like an insurmountable obstacle.
When Joe began, he made a series of “user guides” and “quick tips!” videos. Their purpose was to both test out some new skills and emulate the same videos he watched to get his bearings when he was first figuring out how his camera worked.
In some ways, Joe’s videos were a reaction to the early filmmaking community's tendency to keep knowledge and resources close to the chest. But when people finally started responding to his instructional films (due in no small part to his sense of humor), he saw what kind of power community could wield when working in tandem.
He learned, above all, that sharing his know-how only helped encourage others to share theirs.
You learn that once you actually start sharing stuff, and letting people in, that you actually learn more...So it’s kind of a two-way street. Every time I teach I learn just as much as they learn from me. So, it’s always a learning process.
An adult can often feel stymied, too far behind the curve to ever get started. A kid, instead, gobbles up information from wherever it comes, with no real concern for what he or she doesn’t know.
2. Kids are always exploring.
It all started with BMX, really.
A bike to me is freedom...
...the freedom to go wherever I want, do whatever I want, there’s no rules in a sense. You’re just going around town, looking for these new and different things that you haven’t seen before...when you find that new thing it’s so exciting, it’s so much fun to be able to then ride it. It’s that new excitement that drives you to keep going and find the next thing.
Joe may refer to it as ADHD, but that freedom has given him the confidence to grab a camera and find adventure in the process of filmmaking.
...Exploring to find the next project. What is the next thing that will excite you? That’s where the diversity comes in: I have to have that excitement. it’s almost like an addiction—filmmaking or shooting photographs or any of that—it’s the process that leads you there, and finding that discovery, and then creating, and then you go into the editing process and it’s the whole thing over again.
About a year ago, Joe traveled to India for no other reason than to do so. He brought along his camera—as if we’d expect otherwise—and captured a wealth of untold stories.
A lot of people don’t really go on adventures. They don’t get out there and get out of their comfort zone. When I go on these vacations or these trips, I like to go to places that people don’t normally go.
It was a personal journey for him, yet he still cut the footage, made a short film, and shared it on Vimeo. He describes it as “A story of grown-ass people enjoying life.” In other words: shame on us "grown-ass people", because we've forgotten that a big part of enjoying life is about pushing it into the unknown.
Being a kid is about the restlessness of curiosity, about being wild and finding a way to enjoy life for the beautiful mess of possibilities it presents.
I want people to see: take chances. Go out and see things you normally wouldn’t see. So many people have never left the US that live in the US and it blows my mind that they just don’t travel...By being so closed-minded, you don’t experience those cultures and those people and see that everybody is a human, and we all are basically all exactly the same.
I think it’s a good experience for everybody. It’s inspirational.
Adventure is a way to remember that rules can be broken, and that the best stories we can tell are those we have yet to discover.
For most kids, adventure is their bread and butter, the only way to catch a first glimpse of just how big, broad, and beautiful this world is.
3. Kids are always open-minded.
Since, in “The Great India Adventure”, Joe calls himself a “great traveler”, we asked him the best quality a traveler can have.
A traveler just needs to be open-minded. ...Open-minded to accept whatever is going to happen...you just have to be open-minded to take everything as it happens and just roll with the punches.
Easier said than done. So Joe referenced one of his time-lapse films, “A Day in Rio De Janeiro”.
I’ll want to capture the beauty of what I’m doing. But sometimes if you’re actually going out and filming stuff, you’re not able to be in the moment because you’re there, filming it, real time, constantly and constantly. You set up a time-lapse for 30 minutes, you’re able to then set up the camera, you’re done with it, and then you can hang out at that beautiful location, have a drink, whatever...actually take it in for 30 minutes.
It may be blasphemy coming from a filmmaker, but Joe believes a camera can sometimes take the place of actual experience.
It’s the existential failure we face as grown-ups: looking forward to remembering an experience, instead of just letting the experience unfold as it will.
People take so many pictures nowadays...and it’s all they’re doing: they’re going wherever they are to post that picture on Facebook or whatever. That’s actually making their memory worse, because by taking that picture they’re not processing the moment.
4. Kids are just that: kids.
Which is just one way of saying: a kid can’t be anything but a kid.
Similarly, Joe Simon can’t be anyone but Joe Simon. And this attitude has allowed him to shape his career as a filmmaker into one where he gets to tell exactly the stories he wants to tell.
Maybe that’s simplistic advice, but through just being himself, making films that fall all over the emotional spectrum, Joe learned exactly the kind of films—as well as the parts about filmmaking—he was most passionate pursuing.
It helps people find their path, I think, because if you don’t learn the different processes, you can’t really find out what you’re passionate about and what you really care to do within filmmaking.
Over a decade into it, he’s capturing the stories that mean most to him.
Enjoying what he’s doing, every single day, is more than a means to an end. It’s the end itself.
When we convince ourselves we’re officially grown-ups, we become locked into a firm way of being: risk and curiosity take second place behind stability and comfort.
But for all filmmakers—from those with an established reputation to those shopping for cameras at Best Buy—taking to our craft with a youthful spirit can uncover something purer in our storytelling.
If we’re not afraid to act like kids, the stories we tell will come from somewhere more authentic than we could have ever imagined.
Now try to dig up some memories. Think of one moment from your childhood you wish you could have filmed and share in the comments below. You may find some inspiration in storyboarding your youth.
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ConversationsJustin DeMers January 29, 2014 Joe Simon, Delivery Men
4 lessons from Ira Glass in telling stories the way they're meant to be told.
InspirationJustin DeMers February 3, 2014 Ira Glass, This American Life, Frohlocke
Tell a remarkable story.
AnnouncementsJustin DeMers January 27, 2014 Kessler, Westcott, Tour, Zacuto, Manfrotto, LensProToGo, Stillmotion, Rode, Storytelling With Heart, Freefly Systems
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The latest news and analysis on the Montlake Dawgs.
USC post-game links
Posted by Mason Kelley
Here are a few links for what should be happy day-after reading for Husky fans:
— You can find all of our coverage here.
— Specifically, here is my game story, focusing on the last drive.
— The notebook, leading off with Jake Locker’s big day.
— Jerry Brewer’s column, stating that UW made the improbable happen again against USC.
— Here’s the 2-minute drill with some notes and quotes.
— Here’s the game story from GoHuskies.com, which includes links to some player quotes, as well.
— The LA Times notes that USC has seen this ending before.
— LA Times columnist Bill Plascke says USC simply had no defense.
— The Orange County Register has some video and other thoughts.
— The Long Beach Press-Telegram has a photo of Steve Sarkisian hugging Donald Butler, as well as some notes on the game, including that Sarkisian apparently engaged in some banter with USC fans and Lane Kiffin noting his team didn’t tackle well..
— ESPN.com’s Ted Miller gave Jake Locker a helmet sticker for his performance.
About Adam Jude
Adam Jude is the UW football beat writer for The Seattle Times. You can email Adam or follow him on Twitter.
E-mail Adam
Tweets by @A_Jude
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MAACO Bowl Las Vegas
Radio appearances
spring practice halftime report
More from Husky Football Blog
February 25 - 12:35 PM The Husky Football Blog has moved
February 19 - 9:49 AM Huskies morning links: Hau’oli Kikaha eager to move on from past injuries
February 18 - 6:04 AM Huskies morning links: Shaq Thompson recaps pre-combine training
February 17 - 2:45 PM Some key dates and notes for UW football
February 16 - 12:55 PM NFL Network analyst weighs in on draft potential of UW’s Danny Shelton, Hau’oli Kikaha, Marcus Peters and Shaq Thompson
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Published on Investing in Health
Three More Reasons to Invest in Health for the Excluded
Melissa West
This blog is part of a series on Universal Health Coverage (UHC). The series includes contributions from external bloggers and reflects their view. Follow the conversation on Twitter #healthforall.
At the heart of universal health coverage (UHC) is leaving no one behind. Remarkable efforts are underway to energize culture, activate politicians and align global actors to prioritize actions that reach the poorest and most marginalized people first. The health, economic and social benefits of UHC are well-documented. At VillageReach, three additional reasons inspire us to lead with the last in order to ensure access to affordable and quality health services for all.
Beginning with the hard-to-reach builds resiliency. Starting with communities that are geographically or socially difficult to reach helps us develop a model that can be adapted to other, less challenging areas. In resource-constrained environments, you need to move quickly to put in place contextually appropriate systems. And you must break down silos create more efficient systems that reach everyone. In the remote province of Equateur, Democratic Republic of Congo, we implemented a model to bring medicines and supplies directly to health workers rather than having them leave patients for days to retrieve products from a provincial warehouse. Later, when Equateur became ground zero in the fight to control a fast-moving Ebola epidemic, this strengthened supply chain was used to move 30 tons of medicine to 57 health centers that serve more than half a million people in a matter of days.
The logistically challenging region in northwestern DRC of Equateur, where rural communities must rely on the Congo River to access health products and services. (Photo by VillageReach staff)
Incredible innovation comes from looking to the margins. The primary health care system of the future will be tech-enabled, integrated and more responsive to consumer needs. This is driving organizations like VillageReach to develop services that increase accessibility and convenience. Like Uber has revolutionized ridesharing for passengers, SampleTaxi is helping increase the efficiency and speed of getting results from time-sensitive tests like for early-infant diagnosis of HIV. And in collaboration with governments and a range of partners, we are testing the applicability of drone deliveries to bridge geographic distance in remote areas of several low-income countries. Although far from proven, drones have the potential to get oxytocin, emergency blood supply, vaccines and other products closer to where they are needed, and also to reduce costs of reaching remote populations by traditional modes of transport.
The populations we are trying to serve understand their needs better than anyone else. Several years ago, the Malawi Ministry of Health and Population and VillageReach developed a community-based hotline in the Balaka district of Malawi to address barriers accessing maternal and child health information. What we couldn’t have predicted is how this service evolved to address social barriers. In Malawi, nearly one in three girls aged 15-19 are having children and there’s a significant unmet need for family planning. When we share that there’s an anonymous health hotline where people are trained to answer questions about adolescent health, their relief is palpable. Today Chipatala cha pa Foni is available nationwide, reaching people in their own homes and according to Dr. Nedson Fosiko, Deputy Director of Clinical Services “it provides a lot of potential to achieve universal health coverage”.
We share a common humanity with each person on the planet. Perhaps the most important reason to fight for UHC are the individuals themselves – those who have systems, structures and business models stacked against them. They are patients like Gloria and Hawa, who have incredible stories and children to care for and dreams. They are health workers like Ruphin and Helena who are fighting long odds to care for the people in their communities. These are the people for whom UHC was designed. And when we give statistics a name, a face, and a story, we humanize them, we make them real. We don’t want to let them down.
The world will continue to experience shocks due to climate change and global instability. The health system of the future requires people-centered systems that are more resilient in the face of these shocks. We must embrace and shape this system to maximize access to quality health care for the very poor – the Hawas in our midst. Our push for UHC provides an opportunity to do just that.
Director of Advocacy and Communications at VillageReach
More Blogs By Melissa
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Music And Comic News
CHIRP Radio, which has a well-established reputation for supporting local, independent musicians, is now broadcasting from Chicago’a north side and can be heard at 107.1 FM. The station also holds its CHIRP Record Fair And Other Delights mammoth record and pop memorabilia event each April on Washington, just west of the Loop.
The NutTapper Holiday Variety Show takes place tomorrow morning, December 1, at The Old Town School of Folk Music. Reggio “The Hoofer” McLaughlin once again hosts the annual multicultural reimagining of Tchaichovsky’s classic ballet The Nutcracker, with help from local students and professional dancers. The show kicks off (literally) at 10:00 a.m.
The locals musicians behind Great Moments In Vinyl continue their series of honoring classic LPs with a double dose of The Rolling Stones this Saturday night at Martyrs’ on Lincoln Avenue. They’ll be performing Sticky Fingers and Some Girls in their entirety. Next week, on Wednesday, December 7, Tributosaurus will become Paul McCartney at Martyrs’.
The perception that only guys are interested reading and/or creating sci-fi graphic novels gets upended on the first Wednesday of each month at Graham Crackers in downtown Chicago. That’s when the store hosts Ladies Night, which members describe as, “Wimmen talkin’ ta wimmen ‘bout comics!” The next get-together takes place on December 6 next week. Ladies Night compilations, featuring several local comic creators, are available for sale at the store.
Various Artists - We Weren’t Meant To Last
We Weren’t Meant To Last is the latest Norcore Comics Group compilation that casts a spotlight on the once vibrant punk scene in Norwood Park. The northwest side Chicago neighborhood seems fairly sedate now, but back in the early 1980s, it spawned numerous bands that rocked The Courtside Racket Club and other local venues. We Weren’t Meant To Last unleashes 27 songs originally recorded between 1983 and 1986 that have been mastered by Blaise Barton at Joyride with additional engineering by Brian Leach. Not all the tracks qualify as punk, but the album is a complete success.
“Lost Track” (I’m not sure if that’s the real name or just what Noncore is calling it) by Crinkum Crankum is raw and bluesy, while the boogie of The Gadderwalls’ “No Doubt About It” sounds more like Canned Heat than The Clash. The Outer Ring’s instrumental “Ska Tune” works an espionage mystique and Puss ’N Boots offers the acoustic and compelling “Parting Sees.” Blue Eyed Pasty Whites kick things off with good time rock of “Coulda Woulda Shoulda” and The Beach Hermits mix ska and power pop on “Watershed.”
The punk music exhibits a variety of approaches as well. Throttle Body’s “23 (Listen For It),” The Chocita Bandits’ “Russ Meyer,” and Helstrom’s “Something Special” are fast-paced, guitar driven efforts, while The Supreme Hustle adds a bit of funk to “Back On Up To Me.” “Jump Start” by Vagiant is a catchy, romantic song with female lead vocals, and The Tardagens rage through “Hand To Hand Combat.” The colorful liner notes by Terry Fox describe a scene “whose frenetic pace was only eclipsed by its own brevity.” Thanks to Norcore, that brief exuberance can still be experienced decades later.
Photo from The Regrettes Facebook page.
Some fun things around Chicago in the next few days.
The Los Anegles-based band The Regrettes return to the Chicago this Thursday night at The House Of Blues as the opening act for co-headliners The Interrupters and Swmrs. It looks to be an evening of vintage punk, and as young as they are, The Regrettes are authentic practitioners. On the quartet’s full-length debut Feel Your Feelings Fool, lead vocalist-guitarist and main songwriter Lydia Night consistently brings grit and humor to her lyrics.
The explosive but irresistible arrangements on songs like “I Don’t LikeYou” and “How It Should Be” tap also into the 1960s girl group sound in a way that’s reminiscent of the very early Go-Go’s. Even when Night creates upbeat romantic songs like “Hey Now” and “’Til Tomorrow,” they exude an off-kilter and vulnerable charm. “A Living Human Girl” mocks the limitations society places on women. The Regrettes have previously been in town for gigs at Riot Fest and Schubas.
Rhett Miller’s Holiday Extravaganza with Special Guest Matthew Ryan takes place this Thursday, November 30 at City Winery Chicago. Miller is the lead vocalist for the alt/roots rock band The Old 97s, and if you’ve seen them, you know he’s a high-energy, charismatic showman. It should be interesting to see how he works Old 97s classics like “Champaign, Illinois,” “Let’s Get Drunk And Get It On,” and “Time Bomb” into a holiday show.
WXRT overnight radio personality Emma Mac continues her series of Holiday Hours with Heineken events at venues around the Chicago this Thursday, November 30. The event will be at the Fado Irish bar on Grand Avenue. The festivities last from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. and those who show up have a chance to win a Heineken guitar.
Bloodshot Records will be spinning tracks from its various artists Christmas album when it hosts a Holiday Pop Up Store on December 2 at its headquarters on Irving Park Road. The Chicago-based indie label is promising refreshments and snacks, along with exclusive holiday stuff like records, clothing, and signed memorabilia for sale. The event, which will run from noon to 7:00 p.m, ties in with Bloodshot’s seventh annual Stuffed Animal Drive, which collects soft toys and warm clothing.
Alt rock band whitewolfsonicprincess and garage rocker The Telepaths are holding a Toys For Tots Benefits Show on December 2 at Red Line Tap. Led by vocalist Carla Hayden and guitarist-vocalist James Moeller, whitewolfsonicprincess are veterans of Chicago’s holiday charity scene.
Turkey Casserole
Photo from the Squeeze Facebook page.
A festive Broken Hearted Toy welcome to Squeeze, who have a show tomorrow night at the Vic. The critically acclaimed British act, whose chief songwriters Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford are sometimes compared to John Lennon and Paul McCartney, released their most recent album The Knowledge this past October. Singer-guitarist Wesley Stace (John Wesley Harding) is the opening act.
There’s going to be a Skanksgiving 80s Ska Revival at The Beat Kitchen tomorrow night featuring Heavy Manners, DJ Chuck Wren, and Max And The Invaders. Admission is $15, doors open at 8:00 p.m.
Tickets are now on sale for U2’s May 23 concert at the United Center as part of its eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE tour. The band’s album by that name comes out next Friday.
Bad Examples lead vocalist/chief songwriter Ralph Covert will be at FitzGerald’s tomorrow night, as Ralph Covert’s Acoustic Army.
The power pop scene took a major hit with the recent death of veteran musician Tommy Keene. Although he never became a major star, it’s obvious from the numerous emotional posts across social media that he was highly respected and a close friend to musicians as well as journalists and promoters.
There are still some tickets left for the 93XRT Goose Island Holiday Jam featuring Spoon with special guest Real Estate on December 10 at the Chicago Theatre.
WXRT Live From The Archives Volume 19 will be available on December 1 at Chicago area Target stores. A partial list of the artists involved has been posted on the station’s website and includes Phoenix, Cold War Kids, Sting, Portugal. The Man, Vance Joy, and Real Estate. All of these live performances were recorded in 2017.
Tributosaurus, one of the Chicago area’s best known tribute bands, becomes Paul McCartney on December 6 at Martyrs’ on Lincoln Avenue.
Punk’s Not Dead. The Regrettes, an L.A.-based band that blended vintage punk, the 1960s girl group sound, and a defiant spirit on its Feel Your Feelings Fool debut, has a gig coming up on November 30 at House Of Blues in Chicago. They’ll be supporting co-headliners The Interrupters and Swmrs. The Regrettes have visited Chicago at least twice already, for appearances at Riot Fest and Schubas.
Saturday Night Live: The Experience, a multimedia exhibit celebrating the long-running NBC show, is currently running at the Museum Of Broadcast Communications in downtown Chicago.
I had a successful early morning Black Friday Record Store Day visit to the Reckless Records on Madison in downtown Chicago today, where I picked up the Cheap Trick Christmas Christmas album, The Minus Five’s Dear December album, and both Holidays Rule seven-inch singles by Paul McCartney, Jimmy Fallon, and The Roots. (One has The Decembrists singing Alex Chilton’s “Jesus Christ” on the flip side and the other has Norah Jones singing “Peace.”
Rock And Roll Holiday Gift Guide
First of all, a Happy Thanksgiving to all the American readers of this blog. Even if you’re not located in the U.S., it’s never a bad idea to take a few moments to consider the things you’re grateful for.
It’s that time of year when indie newspapers and major publications alike offer gift guides for their readers. Their choices are decidedly quirky and aimed at those with special interests or hobbies. It’s a great way to discover items you won’t likely encounter in your local department store. With that goal in mind, here’s the somewhat annual (I know I’ve missed a few years) Broken Hearted Toy Rock And Roll Gift Guide.
When I was at Fest For Beatles Fans - Chicago this past August, I had the honor of meeting Vivek J. Tiwary, author of The Fifth Beatle - The Brian Epstein Story. It’s an eye-pooping, 135-page graphic novel tribute to the man who gave us The Beatles, and has won a number of awards. Tiwary, who’s also a successful Broadway producer, is currently bringing The Fifth Beatle to television as a six-part mini series.
For the vinyl lovers in your life, choose from the limited-edition releases coming to record stores tomorrow only for Black Friday Record Store Day. It’s not as massive as the April version, but there are lots of choices in every imaginable genre. Keep in mind, the earlier you get there, the better the selection. In yesterday’s post, I mentioned some of the artists participating, but I’d like to add something to my comments on the Dear December holiday album from The Minus Five. The band’s founding member Scott McCaughey is recovering from a recent stroke, and a portion of the sales will go to his medical fund. As noted in an email from Yep Roc Records, several well-known artists helped out on Dear December, including M. Ward, Ben Gibbard, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, The Posies, Kelly Hogan and Nora O’Connor.
Author Bill Bentley’s Smithsonian Rock And Roll - Live And Unseen hardcover book is the result of the Smithsonian museum asking fans in 2015 to submit photos they had taken at their favorite concerts. The Woodstock and Lollapalooza festivals are included, as well as gigs at the Whisky A Go Go. The photos include Chuck Berry, Bruce Springsteen, and other major artists.
For sci-fi, gaming, action figures, vintage toys, movie and TV memorabilia, and other collectibles, check out the Chicago Pop Culture Convention at the Pheasant Run Mega Center and Ballroom in St. Charles this Saturday and Sunday. The event also promises cosplay, artists, sports memorabilia, and music in vinyl and CDs.
As reported in the most recent edition of Parade magazine, rock and roll fans can purchase photos of iconic musicians like The Doors; The Beatles; Crosby, Stills and Nash; Joni Mitchell; The Clash; Stevie Wonder; The Rolling Stones; Jimi Hendrix; Bruce Springsteen, The Who; and Bob Dylan from the Morrison Hotel Gallery. Books, posters, t-shirts, and tote bags are also available on the site’s marketplace.
After buying a pack of colorful David Bowie stickers at the Alice’s Tea Cup restaurant when my wife Pam and I were on vacation in New York, I was surprised to discover Last Craft, the company that makes them, is located in Chicago. The website also sells candles, clothing, stickers, tarot cards, enamel pins, and shoelace locks—aimed at new wave, goth, feminist, gay, lesbian, and witch consumers.
Also, be sure to check out the Facebook pages and websites of your favorite artists for exclusive music, apparel, and other items. Record label websites like Bloodshot, Yep Roc, and Fruits de Mer are always worth shopping, and The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame website has lots of inductee and exhibit memorabilia. Pledge Music, Go Fund Me, and other crowd funding sites are a good way to support your favorite artists and pick up autographed items. And you never know what rare treasures you’ll discover on eBay.
The Black Friday version of Record Store Day has yet to achieve the success of the original that comes in April, but there are still enough vinyl treasures in a variety of genres to make a trip to your nearest record store worthwhile. The artists involved include Tori Amos; Chuck Berry; The Byrds; Papa John Creech; Steve Earle; Janis Joplin; Wes Montgomery; Queen; Southside Johnny; The Sundays; Tangerine Dream; Big Star; Muddy Waters; Chet Atkins; U2; Sparks; Sun Ra; The Turtles; The Brian Setzer Orchestra; Gram Parsons and The Fallen Angels; The Doors; Aretha Franklin; The Grateful Dead; Richard Hell and The Voidoids; John Lee Hooker; Lydia Loveless; Waylon Jennings; Ziggy Marley; Petula Clark; Procol Harum; The Raspberries; Otis Redding; and Neil Young. There are also various artists collections featuring garage rock, jazz, soul, and 1960s Los Angeles-area bands.
The colder weather, holiday celebrations, and an already established tradition of shopping department stores may cut down on your competition for RSD limited editions, but it’s still advisable to get out there early. Afterwards, you can celebrate your successful hunt over a hot beverage (in my case, a chai tea latte) at a nearby Starbucks, Argo, or Dunkin Donuts. Here’s a look at some of the records I’m hoping to snag this time around.
Paul McCartney, Jimmy Fallon, and The Roots - A pair of Holidays Rule seven-inch singles, both with “Wonderful Christmastime” on the A-Side. The green vinyl version has The Decemberists singing Alex Chilton’s “Jesus Christ” on the flip side and the red version has Norah Jones singing “Peace.”
Cheap Trick - Christmas Christmas A 12-song holiday collection of original tunes and cover versions of The Kinks, The Ramones, Chuck Berry, and Wizzard.
The Minus Five - Dear December A 12-song seasonal collection from the quirky power pop band.
Ooh, You’re A Holiday
Some festive activities coming up in town.
WXRT overnight radio personality Emma Mac will be hosting Holiday Hours with Heineken at venues around the Chicago every Thursday through December 21. This week’s event at O’Shaughnessy’s on Ravenswood takes place tomorrow (Wednesday) night due to Thanksgiving. Mac will be at Fado, Elbo Room, Emerald Loop Bar and Grill, and Lottie’s in the coming weeks. The festivities last from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. and those who show up have a chance to win a Heineken’s guitar.
Vinyl fanatics can unwind with some live music after buying limited-edition albums and singles on Black Friday Record Store Day at Val’s Halla in Oak Park. Scheduled performers include Ellis Clark and Ary Jeebie; the Greg Jackson Combo; Decoy Prayer Meeting; Scott Williams Family Band; Phoenix; Tom Klein Experience; Phil Angotti; Black Friars Club; and Hamburglars.
Bloodshot Records will be spinning tracks from its various artists Christmas album 13 Days Of Xmas when it hosts a Holiday Pop Up Store on December 2 at its headquarters on Irving Park Road. The Chicago-based indie label is promising refreshments and snacks, along with exclusive holiday stuff like records, clothing, and signed memorabilia for sale. The event, which will run from noon to 7:00 p.m, ties in with Bloodshot’s seventh annual Stuffed Animal Drive, which collects soft toys and warm clothing.
Alt rock band whitewolfsonicprincess and garage rockers The Telepaths are holding a Toys For Tots Benefit Show on December 2 at Red Line Tap. Led by vocalist Carla Hayden and guitarist-vocalist James Moeller, whitewolfsonicprincess are veterans of Chicago’s holiday charity scene.
The Empty Bottle is hosting Warm, Safe and Sound, A Coat/Sweater Drive for Homeless Chicagoans on December 21. Donating a coat or sweater will get you in to see the blues rock band North By North, psychedelic rockers Secret Colours, indie rock band The Handcuffs, and the coed indie pop duo Star Tropics.
Gee, But It’s Great To Be Back Home
I’ve offered excuses in the past for being AWOB (Absent Without Blogging) but this is a particularly valid one. My wife Pam and I were on vacation in Manhattan starting last Wednesday and just returned today. It was my first visit, and New York more than lived up to its billing as an eye-popping, multi-cultural, bigger-than-life entertainment mecca with delightful surprises and cultural icons around every corner.
All the credit goes to Pam for crafting an itinerary that included the best tourist attractions as well as places that appealed to our own unique interests. We walked at least 10 miles a day, including a journey up inside The Statue Of Liberty to her crown, and taking in the view from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building. We mingled with the crowd in Times Square each night and listened to a lecture on immigration at Ellis Island.
We passed by The Ed Sullivan Theatre, where The Beatles performed and David Letterman held court; and got a quick view of The Apollo in Harlem. We joined the fans at the John Lennon Imagine memorial in the Strawberry Fields area of Central Park, and browsed the John Varvatos store where CBGB’s—the cradle of America’s punk scene—used to stand. Broadway retains its status as the most influential and star-studded theatre scene in the country.
As we passed through LaGuardia Airport today, a guard asked if I had any magazines or newspapers in my luggage. It’s the first time I’ve been asked that by airport security, and I answered that I had a ton of them. Luckily, it just involved her taking a quick look through my newfound collection. I’m hoping to post more about those New York publications, as well as some record stores and small eateries, in a future post.
Photo of Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow from The Posies' Facebook page.
2018 will mark the 30th anniversary for The Posies, and some celebrations are in the works. Founding members Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow plan to tour as a duo starting in January, and and at some point, as a full band. Upcoming dates include New York, Boston, Memphis, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. and Nashville. They’ll hit City Winery Chicago on January 31. A post on the band’s Facebook page states: “We will be doing material from four different decades in these shows. Good Grief! Special guests . . . mayhem . . . harmonies . . .” The Posies will also release deluxe reissue of their albums from the 1990s.
CIMMfest (Chicago International Movies and Music Festival) is back for its annual run at various venues around Chicago. The four day event runs through tomorrow and will screen films featuring David Bowie, Sharon Jones, Penelope Spheeris, Paul Butterfield, Public Image Ltd., X, Blind Boys From Alabama, System Of A Down, Dixie Hummingbirds, Circle jerks, Pansy Division, and others. Live music performances include a Sharon Jones and Dap Kings Tribute, Tom Rush, Lee Ranaldo, and Nth Power.
They’re still in love with him. A number of local musicians will join together at Martyrs on Lincoln Avenue this Monday, November 13 for Love And Happiness: The Music of Al Green. John Mead (who’ll serve as host), Bill Brickey, Steve Dawson, and Alton Smith are going to pay tribute to the iconic singer, with help from Chris Greene, Jack Cassidy, Gros Nolle Polossi, and Lenny Marsh. The show starts at 8:00 p.m.
Phil Angotti will likely be showcasing songs from his latest album Such Stories when he performs at Montrose Saloon on Wednesday, November 15.
The Chicago Art Book Fair will run from Thursday, November 16 through Sunday, November 19 at the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel on Michigan Avenue. The first annual showcase promises zine-makers from around the globe, book and comics artists, and self publishers. Admission is free.
Record Store Day Black Friday is a great opportunity to pick up one-of-a-kind vinyl treasures, either as holiday gifts or for yourself. You can also catch some live music throughout the day after Thanksgiving at Val’s Halla record store in Oak Park. The scheduled performers are Ellis Clark and Ary Jeebie; Greg Jackson Combo; Decoy Prayer Meeting; Scott Williams Family Band; Big Hair Trouble featuring Ellis Clark and Ary Jeebie; Phoenix; Tom Klein Experience 3:30; Ellis Clark and The Big Parade featuring Ary Jeebie; Phil Angotti; Black Friars Club; and Hamburglars.
Limited-edition 18 x 24 screen prints of artist Shepard Fairey’s dazzling portrait of Debbie Harry will become available for $75 each between 10:00 a.m. and noon on November 13 on his Obey Giant website. The prints will be signed by Fairey and Blondie founding members Debbie Harry and Chris Stein.
The Bill Graham Rock And Roll Revolution ends its run at the Illinois Holocaust Museum And Education Center in Skokie tomorrow. Graham is credited with helping the careers of Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, The Who, and Jimi Hendrix.
Congratulations to Rolling Stone on its 50th anniversary. The magazine is celebrating in various ways, including a recent two-part special on HBO and special printed editions. If you missed the TV special, it’s likely it will air again, and/or be released on DVD or Blu-ray.
The Bad Examples will be performing the energetic rock of “Not Dead Yet,” along with Squeeze-worthy gems like “Kill Amanda” and “Pictures Of A Masquerade” at FitzGerald’s in Berwyn tomorrow night. Billy Prine, younger brother of iconic folk singer John Prine, and his band are the opening act. Bad Examples lead vocalist/chief songwriter Ralph Covert will be back at the same venue on November 25 as Ralph Covert’s Acoustic Army.
Other highlights at FitzGerald’s this month include critically acclaimed singer-songwriter James McMurtry with Max Gomez next Saturday, and the Speed4Sarah Fall Fundraiser and Concert with Expo ’76 and Nasty Snacks on November 24.
IFP Chicago will celebrate 30 years of supporting independent filmmakers with a bash on tomorrow at Noisefloor on Erie Street. There will drinks, entertainment, and raffle prizes.
There’s a four-band showcase taking place at Silvie’s on Irving Park Road tomorrow night featuring Go Time!, Paul Coady And The Edsels, Letterbomb, and Too Much Saturn.
The 34th Annual Chicago International Children’s Film Festival continues through this Sunday at Facets on Fullerton, The Music Box on Southport, and six partner venues around Chicago and the suburbs. The films—several are animated—are divided into the categories of Tots, Big Kids, Tweens, and Teens.
The Arcada Theatre in St. Charles just might be ornate enough to pass for a ballroom when The Sweet performs there on at on March 31. Tickets are now on sale on the venue’s website.
Tickets went on sale earlier today for Los Lobos at SPACE in Evanston on December 9, Anne Heaton at SPACE on December 28, and Guided By Voices at Empty Bottle on December 30.
If it’s not too early to make holiday plans, The BoDeans will be at City Winery Chicago on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
Saturday Night Live: The Experience is now running at the Museum Of Broadcast Communications in downtown Chicago, and judging from the press it has been receiving, the exhibit, to quote Wayne and Garth, is “Excellent.” The suburban Aurora basement studio where Wayne’s World was filmed is just one of the sets that has been recreated for the exhibit. You can even pose on the couch in your ripped jeans and baseball cap while reciting your favorite catch phrases from the skit. The exhibit’s format of a typical SNL work week includes props and costumes, as well as a representation of the Wednesday table read, where everyone involved with the show would go over that week’s script.
The Safes, a Chicago-based band whose punk/garage rock Record Heat and Thanks To You albums were favorably reviewed here on BHT, have a record release party for their latest release Tasty Waves coming up at Beat Kitchen on November 22. The Differents (who were very impressive at Martyrs’ last Saturday), Little Boy, Jr., and The Hustle are are also on the bill that night.
The Social Act, one of the first bands I interviewed for the Illinois Entertainer back in the late 1980s, have been working on a new album, and they’ll be performing at Martyrs’ on Lincoln Avenue on December 15. Razorhouse will also be on the bill that night.
The Bill Graham Rock And Roll Revolution continues its run at the Illinois Holocaust Museum And Education Center at 9603 Woods Drive through Nov. 12.
Desiree Burcum and Tina Teske, longtime members of the Famous In The Future comedy group, will be performing at the Lady Laughs Comedy Festival in Madison. WI tomorrow night. Their Sketch-She (Improv & Sketch) show goes on at 7:00 p.m. at the Artemis Bow Stage. Burcum is a Marilyn Monroe fanatic, so I wonder if she knows about Milton H. Greene’s new book The Essential Marilyn Monroe: 50 Sessions. It has 154 photos that have been previously unseen by the public.
In the Garden of Atlantis, a fashion show benefit for Elements Ballet, will take place on November 18 at the Hairpin Arts Center in Logan Square. Models on the runway will be sporting Atlantis-inspired fashions from Rebirth Garments, MJ Ernst, and Amara Black. There will also be art, photography, dance performances, and a reading of a new novel by Miata Boayue.
There’s going to be a Skanksgiving 80s Ska Revival at The Beat Kitchen on November 25 featuring Heavy Manners, DJ Chuck Wren, and Max And The Invaders. Admission is $15, doors open at 8:00 p.m.
The Second Disc website recently reported on a new box set of seven-inch singles that were originally released only to members of the Official Beatles Fan Club from 1963 through 1969. The records are packaged in reproductions of the original sleeves.
Record Store Day Black Friday - For The Vinyl Junkies On Your Holiday Gift List
Traditionally, the day after Thanksgiving is when bargain hunters swarm retail outlets, battling for the best prices on items for gifts or for themselves. In recent years, it’s also become a challenge for vinyl aficionados hoping to acquire limited-edition releases. Record Store Day Black Friday is the seasonal version of the original RSD that takes place every April. The timing has been ideal for nabbing one-of-a-kind Christmas gifts.
This year, some of the more interesting Black Friday releases are literally Christmas gifts. Cheap Trick’s Christmas Christmas is a 12-song album with original holiday tunes and cover versions of The Kinks, Wizzard, and The Ramones. Paul McCartney is releasing a new version of “Wonderful Christmastime” he recorded with Jimmy Fallon and The Roots on two separate seven-inch singles. The red vinyl one has Norah Jones singing “Peace” on the B-side and the green vinyl one has The Decembrists performing “Jesus Christ” on the B-side.
Also, The Minus Five, the Scott McCaughey-led band that excels at mixing quirky ideas with catchy indie rock arrangements, is releasing Dear December. It’s hard to figure how titles like “Musical Tribute To The Oscar Meyer Weiner Wagon” fit the holiday theme, but it is a white vinyl album with an Advent calendar inspired cover. I’m hoping to post more about Record Store Day Black Friday as it gets closer.
Record Store Day Black Friday - For The Vinyl Junk...
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FOR more than a decade, the people of the South Mayo village of Crossboyne have been patiently awaiting connection to the sewerage scheme that has long been promised. However, as yet, not one household in the village has been connected, despite the fact that Crossboyne is the location for the Claremorris Treatment Plant.
This week, Fine Gael’s General Election Candidate John O’Mahony is raising the issue on behalf of the people of Crossboyne, as they have been waiting for their connection for far too long.
According to Mr O’Mahony, it is not good enough that the people of Crossboyne are being treated in this way. "The Community Council have been campaigning to be connected to the Claremorris scheme for the past 10years, but to no avail. The Treatment Plant for Claremorris is situated in the village yet despite this, not one house in the area is connected and there is a huge reliance on septic tanks," explained Mr O’Mahony.
Continuing, the Claremorris-based Candidate noted that as recently as last month, the members of the Community Council met with Minister Dick Roche in Dublin and he promised them faithfully that he’d make an announcement on their plight before February was out.
"Well, February is over and there was no announcement despite the Minister spending a full day in Mayo recently. I don’t think that’s any way to treat a community and I’m now calling on the Minister to immediately sanction the connection for the people of Crossboyne," remarked Mr O’Mahony.
Cróna Esler
© Western People
Labels: Mayo County Council
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Matthias Wachter: Career 2004-08
Matthias Wachter
Photo: FIVB
Birth Date June 27, 1979 (40 years old)
Home Town Grabs, Switzerland
Resides Vaduz
Web Site www.indra-wachter.li
International 7th $2,500
FIVB 33rd $0
FIVB C&S 7th $2,500
Europe 13th (3 times) � 2,950
CEV 13th (3 times) � 2,950
CEV C&S 26th � 0
Overall 7th $6,330
Season Assoc Played 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 7th 9th Money Points Rank 13th 17th 19th 21st 25th 26th 27th 29th 33rd 41st 57th
2004 FIVB C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $100.00 3.0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2004 FIVB 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0.00 2.0 319th 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
2005 FIVB C&S 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $600.00 16.0 2 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
2005 FIVB 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0.00 2.0 362nd 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
2006 FIVB 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0.00 16.0 247th 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2
(405th) 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 $2,500.00
(920th) 209.0 5 1 0 2 2 0 0 0 1 11 6
2004 CEV C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 0.00 4.0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
2005 CEV 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 500.00 40.0 0 1 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0
2006 CEV 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 1,150.00 255.0 1 2 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
2008 CEV 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 0.00 90.0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
(151st) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 2,950.00
(252nd) 599.0 3 3 1 5 0 1 2 1 0 0 0
(923rd) 808.0 8 4 1 7 2 1 2 1 1 11 6
F�d�ration Internationale de Volleyball World Tour
Partner Played 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 7th 9th Money Points 13th 17th 19th 21st 25th 26th 27th 29th 33rd 41st 57th
Oliver Indra 18 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 141.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 11 6
Total 18 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 141.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 11 6
F�d�ration Internationale de Volleyball Challenger & Satellite
Oliver Indra 15 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 $2,500 68.0 5 1 0 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
Total 15 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 $2,500 68.0 5 1 0 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
Conf�d�ration Europ�enne de Volleyball
Oliver Indra 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 2,950 595.0 3 3 1 5 0 0 2 1 0 0 0
Total 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 2,950 595.0 3 3 1 5 0 0 2 1 0 0 0
Conf�d�ration Europ�enne de Volleyball Challenger & Satellite
Oliver Indra 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 0 4.0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
Total 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 0 4.0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
Oliver Indra 49 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 $6,330 808.0 8 4 1 7 2 1 2 1 1 11 6
Total 49 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 $6,330 808.0 8 4 1 7 2 1 2 1 1 11 6
Location Summary
Location Assoc Played 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 7th 9th Money Points 13th 17th 19th 21st 25th 26th 27th 29th 33rd 41st 57th
Austria: Klagenfurt FIVB 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 12.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Bahrain: Manama FIVB 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 9.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
China: Shanghai FIVB 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 9.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Czech Republic: Brno FIVB C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 4.0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Czech Republic: Prague FIVB 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 9.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Estonia: P�rnu FIVB C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 $600 16.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Finland: �land FIVB 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 9.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
France: Marseille FIVB 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 6.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
France: Paris FIVB 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 12.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Italy: Alba Adriatica FIVB C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $100 3.0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Italy: Cattolica FIVB C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $100 3.0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Italy: Milan FIVB C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 4.0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Italy: Rimini FIVB C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $250 6.0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Italy: Roseto degli Abruzzi FIVB 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 21.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1
Liechtenstein: Vaduz FIVB C&S 4 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 $700 16.0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Morocco: Casablanca FIVB C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $225 4.0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Norway: Kristiansand FIVB 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 8.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Poland: Stare Jablonki FIVB 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 18.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0
Switzerland: Gstaad FIVB 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 28.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 3
Switzerland: Lausanne FIVB C&S 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 $375 9.0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ukraine: Kiev FIVB C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $150 3.0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Austria: St. P�lten CEV 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 650 120.0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Croatia: Zagreb CEV C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 0 4.0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
Germany: Hamburg CEV 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 1,300 180.0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Netherlands: The Hague CEV 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 0 30.0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Russia: Moscow CEV 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 750 80.0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Spain: Valencia CEV 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 250 68.0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Switzerland: Lucerne CEV 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 0 96.0 0 0 0 3 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
Turkey: Alanya CEV 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 � 0 21.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
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Home>Music> Grammy Award-Winning Trumpeter Roy Hargrove Dead At 49
Grammy Award-Winning Trumpeter Roy Hargrove Dead At 49
Roy Hargrove worked with artists like D'Angelo, Erykah Badu & Common, over the course of an illustrious career that spanned several decades
NPR is reporting that renown jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove has died of a cardiac arrest at the tender age of 49. News of his passing this morning was relayed to the media via his longtime manager. His family is in the course of penning his obituary.
Hargrove's incredible talent as a trumpeter saw him move past the confines of the jazz community, as he contributed to works by hip-hop artists like Common, Erykah Badu, and D'Angelo, among others. His precocious talent was discovered by famed-jazz arranger and bandleader Wynton Marsalis, when Hargrove was but a high school student coming up in Dallas, Texas.
Hargrove was soon jettisoned over to the prestigious Berklee College of Music, where he inevitably "outgrew" his surroundings after only one year of enrollment. He then began his professional career as a jazz musician well before reaching the legal drinking age.
In 2000, he provided all the brass arrangements on Erykah Badu's 2nd album Mama's Gun. Within the first couple years of his "deployment," Roy had already formed his own quintet, taking the Jazz World by storm. Those who know, know.
At the tender age of 49, Roy Hargroves had amassed a discography the likes of which normally takes "regularly productive" musicians a lifetime to complete. My sympathies go out to Roy's family and those who knew him best.
Music News Jazz trumpet trumpeter roy hargrove Erykah Badu mama's gun sophomore marsalis instrumentalist session quintet roy hargrove quintet Common D'Angelo
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MUSIC Grammy Award-Winning Trumpeter Roy Hargrove Dead At 49
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'Identity Thief' Remains Strong on Tuesday
on February 13, 2013 by Daniel Garris
Universal's Identity Thief grossed $2.83 million on Tuesday to lead the daily box office for a fifth consecutive day. The modestly budgeted comedy starring Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy experienced a 13 percent increase over Monday, which was in line with the type of daily increases experienced by most other films in the top ten on Tuesday. Identity Thief continues to outpace pre-release expectations with a strong five-day start of $39.88 million. Compared to previous comedies that opened the frame before Presidents Day weekend, Identity Thief is running 7 percent stronger than the $37.30 million four-day start of 2007's Norbit and 2.5 percent stronger than the $38.90 million five-day take of 2011's Just Go with It.
Open Road's Side Effects was up one spot and a healthy 23 percent over Monday to claim second place with $0.90 million. After a slower than expected start on Friday, the Steven Soderbergh directed thriller has displayed solid holding power thus far, though whether or not it will be able to keep it up going forward remains to be seen. Side Effects has grossed $10.94 million in five days, placing it 9 percent ahead of the $10.03 million five-day start of last year's Haywire.
Warm Bodies fell one spot from Monday to place in third with $0.78 million. Lionsgate's PG-13 zombie comedy was unchanged from Monday and down 46 percent from last Tuesday. Warm Bodies has grossed $38.04 million through twelve days of release.
Silver Linings Playbook held steady in fourth pace with $0.60 million. The Best Picture nominee from The Weinstein Company was up 19 percent over Monday and down 33 percent from last Tuesday. With a current domestic total of $90.63 million, Silver Linings Playbook is on the verge of surpassing the $93.62 million total gross of 2010's The Fighter.
Paramount's Top Gun 3D placed in eighth with $288,225. The IMAX re-issue of the 1986 blockbuster was up 13 percent over Monday. Top Gun 3D has grossed $2.51 million in five days from just 300 locations. The lifetime unadjusted domestic gross for Top Gun currently stands at $179.29 million.
Tags: Top Gun 3D, Silver Linings Playbook, Warm Bodies, Side Effects, Identity Thief
read all Daily analyses »
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2996: We Remember John Resta And Sylvia San Pio Resta
(originally published 9/11/06)
I’m putting this up early because I refuse to let the WWF trivialize the lives of my friends and my countrymen.
We all know the story of how they and so many others died on that day, but we must never forget how these wonderful people lived, either. John and Sylvia adored life, and they adored each other. They were so deeply in love and so happy together. Newsday tells the story of their engagement
Halloween, with its orange candy, spooky costumes and family fun, is not generally considered a romantic holiday. But since John Resta and Sylvia San Pio Resta met five years ago today at an office costume party, Halloween had always been about romance for them.
Two Halloweens ago, on the third anniversary of their meeting, John, 40, stayed home from work and rented a tuxedo. He bought flowers, lit candles and set the table with a stone crab dinner specially flown in from Sylvia’s favorite restaurant in Miami. When Sylvia, 27, got back to the couple’s Bayside apartment, he got down on his knees and proposed.
In August of 2000 they were married in Hazlet at the Catholic school that John had graduated from. Their reception was held at the Molly Pitcher Inn in Red Bank, which is far and away the nicest place for a wedding reception in the area. And boy did John and Sylvia have a great party: the weather was perfect, and from cocktails out on the deck overlooking the river to dinner and dancing inside every guest spent the evening laughing and basking in the glow of the newlyweds. We sat at a table with a mix of their family friends and business associates and just had a great time passing stories about the couple, which seems to be required at weddings. Sylvia had this habit of reading cookbooks on the train from cover to cover, as if they were mysteries, and we would kid her about it.
They both loved children, and
John’s 10 nieces and nephews in New Jersey adored the couple right back, said Mazzeo, of Hazlet, N.J. The Restas spent almost every other weekend in New Jersey, taking the kids out on outings, to movies and for pizza. Sylvia even played Pokémon cards with the smallest ones.
Sylvia also loved to play videos games, and to have an Aunt who’ll come over and play them with you surely ranks high atop any young boy’s list of dreams!
We had dinner with them in February of 2001 while they were out on one of these visits, and they brought a lovely colorforms-type art present for our daughter. It wasn’t a special occasion, but they knew just the right gift to bring that would keep an 8 year old occupied at the table in the nice italian restaurant that we ate in; that’s just a small example of how thoughtful they were. John and I spent the whole meal talking about families, and how much he loved having such a large extended family so near by, and how excited he was about his future with Sylvia. I noticed during the meal that Blondie (‘Blondie’ was my nickname for Sylvia. The first time I met her her hair was dyed blonde, so I always called her that, which in turn would confuse the bejeebus out of people when they finally met her as her natural brunette, which in turn led to a lot of laughter on our parts) wasn’t touching her wine, nor had she run out to have a cigarette. I asked her about this odd behavior the next day and she told me the wonderful news that she and John were expecting.
This news set off a crazy period in their lives, as it does in all of our lives. They were living in an apartment in Queens, and their first thought was that they needed to buy a house. With all of John’s family out in Monmouth County, NJ, that was where they concentrated their efforts. We all know how stressful home buying can be, let alone when expecting your first child, and I would talk to Sylvia every Monday and hear how the previous weekend’s searching had gone, and I would pass along any houses that I saw in our neighborhood onto them as well, because they were the kind of couple you would adore having near you.
As the frustration grew they reached a decision together which to my mind I’m so glad they did: they said the heck with it. They realized that a lot of kids spent their first few years in cramped apartments and turned out ok; family is what matters. As Sylvia’s family lived mostly in Spain the summer of 2001 would be their last chance to visit for quite awhile, so they flew to Spain to spend a few weeks visiting them. They had a wonderful trip.
John and Sylvia worked at Carr Futures; he was a project manager and she was a commodities broker, which is how I knew her. As our market closes around noon, she was able to schedule appointments at very convenient times. On September 11th she and John were going to visit her doctor that very afternoon, and she was one week away from going out on maternity leave.
They were so thrilled at having a boy, and they were going to name him Dylan. I would always kid her that she was condemning him to a life of whiskey drinking, and she would laugh and say that at least they’d get some good poetry out of him.
Carr Futures was on the 92nd floor of the North Tower.
Flight 11 hit the 94th floor.
From the New York Daily News, March 19th, 2002:
John’s older brother, Tom, says he finds what little solace he can in the very real possibility that John and Sylvia were together when they died.
“I think my feeling is they wouldn’t have wanted to die any other way,” Tom said. “They were always together. They were inseparable. Like my sister says, they were like a left and right shoe. I just can’t imagine what life would be like if one of them had lived.”
Tom doesn’t know for sure what happened next. As far as he knows, his brother and sister-in-law didn’t make any cell phone calls or write any E-mails after the plane hit. He has heard news reports that the impact of the crash filled the stairwells of the 91st and 92nd floors with rubble, but he also has heard secondhand stories that they were seen several floors lower, working their way down the stairs.
“I can imagine him trying to help her down the stairs, with smoke all around,” Tom said.
He thought for about a day and a half that Sylvia might have made it out after a reporter told him she had heard that a pregnant “Spanish” woman had been found alive.
“We had hope,” Tom said.
But that hope soon vanished. Philosopher’s wisdom In the grief- filled weeks and months since, Tom has thought a lot about something Emanuel Swedenborg, an 18th century philosopher and scientist, once wrote: “Those who are truly married on Earth are in heaven one angel.”
On Feb. 14, a police officer and a representative of the Monmouth County, N.J., coroner’s office came to the family’s house to relay news that John’s remains had been identified.
“From dental records,” Tom said.
“I think if John could have picked a day to be identified, it would have been Valentine’s Day,” he said. “He was a very romantic person. He believed in love and friendship.”
Sylvia is among the more than 2,000 people whose remains have not been identified. A few days ago, her mother was asked to provide more DNA samples.
So the family has decided to wait until she’s found. “We don’t want to bury him without her,” Tom said. “They did everything else together.”
Together forever, as they were meant to be.
We love you and miss you, and we will always remember you.
A special thanks to DCRoe for all the work done in honoring all of the victims.
Humanity...or the Lack Thereof, Life | Mr. Bingley | September 11, 2009 2:18 am
14 Responses to “2996: We Remember John Resta And Sylvia San Pio Resta”
JeffS says:
A beautiful, happy couple.
Jim - PRS says:
Today, while driving to work, I remember thinking to myself that it was just this kind of cyrstal clear September morning in 2001 when I saw the smoke pouring from the towers in my rear view mirror. It’s as if it happened yesterday, and it doesn’t get any easier. Thanks for posting this.
Mr. Bingley says:
Jeff, they were incredibly sweet people. I miss them terribly.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, Jim. September in NY is beautiful.
And horrible.
nightfly says:
These remembrances always make me tear up.
Val Prieto says:
Dude. Im in tears.
Your tribute to John Thomas Resta and Sylvia San Pio Resta has left me in tears. Thank you so much for sharing their story. I will never forget.
Ken S, Fifth String on the Banjo of Life says:
Most excellent, B. Mine goes up just after midnight.
TimBo says:
Thank you for this poignant tribute to your friends – I mourn for their and your loss.
On this day I am sullen, angry and reflective.
What am I doing at work today?; I can’t concentrate.
Dip your flag and courteously remind others to reflect.
Gary from Jersey says:
Simple, elegant and unforgetable. Beautifully written, Mr. B.
What Cathy said.
Another heartbreaking story. Thank you for this. I honor Christopher Paul Slattery.
Defiant_Infidel says:
I am so sincerely sorry. Your account of them was incredibly poignant. This entire week has been a flashpoint of anger and tears for me. I can’t imagine the thinking of those ever growing numbers of people who would prefer to just forget. Each life was a human, feeling, experiencing one… like their own. How can the gigantic loss of so many be allowed to slip one’s consciousness?
Thank you so much for this tremendous, noble effort to pay them the respects they so justly deserve. God bless.
Renee P says:
Thank you for your tender, moving account of John and Sylvia Resta, and their little unborn son Dylan. May they be forever reunited in eternity.
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Ed Page's Links and Thinks
Duck: A Version
It was late summer, 1986. I'd soon be starting ninth grade. But, more important, Howard the Duck was now, finally, in theaters. For weeks, I'd been eagerly awaiting the film's arrival. I plunked down my money and attended a screening. Afterward, the disappointment I felt was roughly the size of Lake Huron. Why had I so looked forward to seeing this famously terrible movie? I'll tell you why: earlier that summer, I'd read the novelization of Howard the Duck, and, I'll be honest, I loved it.
Fifteen to twenty years later, in a used-book store, I found a book called Decade of the Year, a collection of funny essays by a guy named Ellis Weiner. The book, published in 1987, featured blurbs from Veronica Geng and Paul Shaffer. That was good enough for me, and I snapped it up. I enjoyed Decade of the Year, and I became curious about this Ellis Weiner fellow. As it turns out, he used to be an editor at National Lampoon and a columnist for Spy, and he's published several other books, including the novelization of Howard the Duck. More recently, he wrote this Shouts & Murmurs piece, which appeared in the October 19, 2009, issue of The New Yorker.
posted by Ed Page at 5:58 PM
Photo, Finish
This photo of S.J. Perelman was shot by the great photographer Irving Penn, who died yesterday at the age of 92. Perelman, who died in 1979, displayed a dazzling command of the English language in his humor pieces, which appeared in The New Yorker for 45 years, starting in 1930. He also contributed to the scripts of two of the Marx Brothers' best movies: Monkey Business, which was released in 1931, and Horse Feathers, which came out a year later. Woody Allen once called him "the single funniest human of my lifetime." The Paris Review interviewed Perelman in 1963; that interview can be read here.
posted by Ed Page at 12:27 PM
I wouldn't really be me if it weren't for Woody Allen, not just because of his own work but also because of the work of others he's led me to. When I was in high school, learning about Woody led me to discover some of my favorite things: Robert Benchley's funny essays, Buster Keaton's silent comedies, the Marx Brothers. (In Eric Lax's 1975 book On Being Funny: Woody Allen and Comedy, Woody says that the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup is the only funny movie he can think of that doesn't have any slow spots. In Hannah and Her Sisters, seeing Duck Soup leads Woody's character, who's been fretting about his mortality, to decide that life isn't so bad after all.)
In the summer of 2008, I listened to this interview with Woody, in which he discusses his love for the early jazz recordings of Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Jelly Roll Morton.
I'd heard the interview before, but this time I thought, "You know what? I should listen to those old recordings. If Woody likes 'em, I bet they're great." So I immediately set about finding as many of those old recordings as I could. Those three guys and their music became my new obsession.
I'm always obsessed with something or other. I've always been that way. My childhood was one long string of obsessions: Disney animation, magic, the Beatles, juggling, breakdancing, the Rubik's Cube. I'll get interested in something and it'll take over my life. Then one day something else will catch my attention and suddenly I'll have a new obsession. A couple of years ago, I was obsessed with Stanley Kubrick. Now my days are spent listening to, and reading about, Armstrong, Bechet, and Jelly Roll.
I've been obsessed with this music for over a year now, and in that time I've heard a lot of recordings. I've collected 37 of my favorites in a playlist, Playlist 2 it's called, on my MySpace page, which can be found here.
From Playlist 2 I selected 10 songs for my profile playlist. They are listed below, with notes to enhance your enjoyment.
1. "Everybody Loves My Baby" by Clarence Williams' Blue Five
(Recorded November 6, 1924, in New York City)
On this song, the cornet (an instrument almost exactly like a trumpet) is played by Louis Armstrong, who was 23 at the time. On some Blue Five recordings, the soprano sax is played by Sidney Bechet, but on this one it's played by a fellow named Buster Bailey. The vocalist is Eva Taylor. She was married to Clarence Williams, who played piano on the Blue Five records and organized the recording sessions.
2. "Lazy River" by Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra
(Recorded November 3, 1931, in Chicago)
This is one of just a handful of recordings Armstrong made in the early '30s. During that time, he was on the run from gangsters, so he largely avoided Chicago and New York. In Chicago some months prior to this session, a gangster pulled a gun on Armstrong and made him agree to be on a train to New York the next morning for a gig. Armstrong wasn't on that train, and ended up spending much of the next few years in Europe. He returned to America in 1935, at which point he hired as his manager his old friend Joe Glaser, a tough cookie who, it was said, had worked for Al Capone. Glaser resolved Armstrong's problems with the gangsters, and remained Armstrong's manager until he, Glaser, died, in 1969. Armstrong died two years later.
3. "Cake Walking Babies From Home" by the Red Onion Jazz Babies
(Recorded December 22, 1924, in New York City)
The Red Onion Jazz Babies and Clarence Williams' Blue Five were basically the same band. Both were organized by Clarence Williams and they featured most of the same musicians. Alberta Hunter, rather than Eva Taylor, sang on the Jazz Babies records. (On this tune, she's joined on vocals by Clarence Todd.) And, instead of Clarence Williams, the pianist for the Jazz Babies was Lil Hardin, who'd recently become Armstrong's second wife. (His first wife was an insanely jealous New Orleans prostitute named Daisy Parker. Daisy always carried a razor and wasn't shy about pulling it out.) Seventeen days after this Jazz Babies session, the Blue Five did their version of "Cake Walking Babies," which you'll find in Playlist 2. On both versions, Armstrong plays cornet and Sidney Bechet plays soprano sax.
4. "Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me" by Sidney Bechet
Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi, have two adopted children. Both are girls; one's Asian, one's white. The Asian one is named Bechet, after you-know-who; the white one is named Manzie, after Manzie Johnson, the guy playing the drums on this recording.
5. "Potato Head Blues" by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven
(Recorded May 10, 1927, in Chicago)
Toward the end of Manhattan, Woody's character lists 11 things that, in his opinion, make life worth living. This recording is one of them.
6. "Polka Dot Stomp" by Noble Sissle and His International Orchestra
(Recorded August 15, 1934, in Chicago)
Sidney Bechet plays clarinet and soprano sax on this jaunty number, which he wrote with bandmate James Tolliver, who plays clarinet and tenor sax on this. Woody Allen once called a Bechet concert he attended in the '50s "the most fulfilling artistic experience of my life." "Bechet was a startling musician," he said. "His ferociousness was incredible. I was struck by the intensity and total majesty of his playing." After watching one of his friends buy his first Bechet album, Woody told him, "I'd give anything to be you and hear that for the first time."
7. "Squeeze Me" by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five
(Recorded June 29, 1928, in Chicago)
Armstrong did some scat singing on "Lazy River," but on this recording his entire vocal is scat. Another good example of Armstrong's scatting can be heard on "Hotter Than That," which is in Playlist 2. Before Armstrong popularized it, scat singing was virtually unknown outside New Orleans.
8. "Muskrat Ramble" by Louis Armstrong's Hot Five
(Recorded February 26, 1926, in Chicago)
The Hot Five that recorded "Squeeze Me" was a different Hot Five from the Hot Five that recorded this tune. The only musician who was in both bands was Armstrong himself. When trombonist Kid Ory left this earlier version of the Hot Five, Armstrong replaced him with John Thomas and added a tuba player and a drummer and the band became the Hot Seven. The Hot Five and Hot Seven records were Armstrong's first recordings where he was in charge. They're widely considered to be the most important records in jazz history. The Hot Seven recording "Melancholy Blues" was included on the Voyager Golden Record, which was launched into space in 1977. The Golden Record's contents were selected by a committee led by Carl Sagan, who wrote, "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet."
9. "Wolverine Blues" by Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers
This recording features a scaled-down version of the Red Hot Peppers. It's just three musicians: Jelly Roll on piano, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, and Johnny Dodds's little brother, Baby Dodds, on drums. Johnny Dodds was a member of the original incarnation of Armstrong's Hot Five, and both Dodds brothers were members of the Hot Seven. They'd known Armstrong in New Orleans, where they'd spent a few years playing alongside him on a riverboat called the S.S. Sydney.
10. "Too Busy" by Lillie Delk Christian with Louis Armstrong and His Hot Four
Lillie Delk Christian, who sounds a bit like Snow White, was nothing special as a singer, but at the time of this session Louis Armstrong was at the height of his powers. Near the end of this song, we get a little sample of the kind of scat singing he'd do on "Squeeze Me" just three days later.
Paul Simms was a writer for the funniest talk show in history, the late, great Late Night With David Letterman. More recently, he wrote the following humor piece, which appeared in the September 21, 2009, issue of The New Yorker.
Attention, People of Earth
We are on our way to your planet. We will be there shortly. But in this, our first contact with you, our "headline" is: We do not want your gravel.
We are coming to Earth, first of all, just to see if we can actually do it. Second, we hope to learn about you and your culture(s). Third—if we end up having some free time—we wouldn't mind taking a firsthand look at your almost ridiculously bountiful stores of gravel. But all we want to do is look.
You're probably wondering if we mean you harm. Good question! So you're going to like the answer, which is: We mean you no harm. Truth be told, there is a faction of us who want to completely annihilate you. But they're not in power right now. And a significant majority of us find their views abhorrent and almost even barbaric.
But, thanks to the fact that our government operates on a system very similar to your Earth democracy, we have to tolerate the views of this "loyal opposition," even while we hope that they never regain power, which they probably won't (if the current poll tracking numbers hold up).
By the way, if we do take any of your gravel, it's going to be such a small percentage of your massive gravel supply that you probably won't even notice it's gone.
You may be wondering how we know your language. We are aware that there's a theory on your planet that we (or other alien species from the far reaches of the galaxy) have been able to learn your language from your television transmissions. This is not the case, because most of us don't really watch TV. Most of our knowledge about your Earth TV comes from reading Zeitgeisty think pieces by our resident intellectuals, who watch it not for fun but for ideas for their print articles about how Earth TV holds a mirror up to Earth society, and so on. We mean, we'll watch Earth TV sometimes—if it happens to be on already—but, generally, we prefer to read a good book or revive the lost art of conversation.
Sadly, Earth TV is like a vast wasteland, as the Earthling Newton Minow once said. But, for those of you who can understand things only in TV terms, just think of us as being very similar to Mork from Ork, in that he was a friendly, non-gravel-wanting alien who visited Earth just to find out what was there, and not to harvest gravel.
Speaking of a vast wasteland, you might want to start picking out and clearing off a place for our spacecraft to land. Our spacecraft, as you will see shortly, is huge. Do not be alarmed; this does not mean that each one of us is that much bigger than each one of you. It's just that there were so many of us who wanted to come that we had to build a really huge spacecraft.
So, again, no cause for alarm.
(Full disclosure: each of us actually is much bigger than each of you, and there's nothing we can do about it. So please don't use any of your Earth-style discrimination against us. This is just how we are, and it's not our fault.)
Anyway, re our spacecraft: it's kind of gigantic. The deceleration thrusters alone are sort of, like ... well, imagine four of your Vesuvius volcanoes (but bigger), turned upside down.
We don't want to hurt anyone, so, if you could just clear off one continent, we think we can keep unintended fatalities to a minimum. Australia would probably work. (But don't say Antarctica. Because we'd just melt it, and then you'd all end up underwater. Which would make it virtually impossible for us to learn about your hopes and your dreams, and your culture, and to harvest relatively small, sample-size amounts of your gravel, just for scientific study.)
A little bit about us: our males have two penises, while our females have only one. So, gender-wise, if you use simple math, we're pretty much identical to you.
And, as far as protocol goes, we're a pretty informal species. If you want to put together a welcoming ceremony with all your kings and queens and Presidents and Prime Ministers and leading gravel-owners, that's fine. But please don't feel like you have to.
Technically, it would be possible for us to share our space-travel technology with you, so that you could build a spacecraft and travel to our planet also. But, for right now, it just feels like it would be better if we came to your place.
Speaking of gravel, one thing we can't tell from our monitoring of Earth is how your gravel tastes. It's just something we're curious about, for no real reason. Is it salty? It looks salty.
Maybe you could form a commission of scientists/gravel-tasters to look into this and let us know. Just have them collect all the gravel you have and put it in one big pile. (There are some pretty big empty parts of Utah, New Mexico, and Russia that might be good spots for such a large gravel pile, but that's just an F.Y.I.)
Then, if you could have your top scientists/gravel-tasters go through this gravel pile, tasting each and every piece, that would be great. Also, if it's not too much of a hassle, have them put all the saltier-tasting pieces in a separate pile.
Anyway, that about wraps up this transmission! Looking forward to seeing you very soon. (Sorry we couldn't have given you more notice, but we didn't want you Earth people going crazy and looting stuff and having sex in the streets out of panic about losing all your delicious gravel, which is something that is definitely not going to happen, because, when it comes down to it, what is gravel really but just a bunch of baby rocks?)
Our E.T.A. on Earth is sometime in the next four hundred and fifty to five hundred years, which we know is a blink of an eye in your Earth time, so start getting ready! Let's have fun with this.
A Species from a Galaxy You Haven't Even Noticed Yet
P.S.—We saw that you sent some people to your moon recently. Good job! But, just to let you know, don't waste your time with the moon. There's no gravel there. We already checked.
posted by Ed Page at 12:36 AM
Little-Read Writing: "Hood"
In 1925, Ring Lardner published a handsome little volume called What of It? Here's that book's preface:
Readers of this book, if any, may get to wondering before they are through with it, why it was named What Of It? instead of What For? Well, the name was not selected by the writer, but by Grantland Rice, the poet, and the circumstances were as follows:
We were waiting for something to eat, at Nassau or somewhere, and the conversation had sort of flopped, so I said I was about to publish another book. Mr. Rice started to say something, but didn't. I went on that the publishers were after me for a suitable title and I couldn't think of one.
"It ought to be on the order of 'Hash' or 'Melange' or 'Medley,'" I said. "The stuff in the book is miscellaneous magazine and newspaper stuff, on all kinds of subjects."
Mr. Rice seemed to be pondering, after which he said:
"Didn't you write a thing for 'Liberty' called 'What of It?'"
"Yes," I replied.
"Well," said Mr. Rice, "I think 'What Of It' would be a good title for that kind of book."
So the suggestion was sent in and approved, and the boys at Scribners' thought Mr. Rice ought to be congratulated for what they considered a stroke of genius. But it wasn't much of a strain on my mind to figure out that when I told Mr. Rice I was publishing another book, the thing he started to say and politely didn't was "What of it?" and that's how the phrase happened to be in his head.
It has been my favorite phrase since back in 1913 or '14, or whatever year it was that Hank O'Day managed the Cubs. A modern big league baseball manager is supposed to observe the social amenities, but Mr. O'Day had been an umpire so long that the chip on his shoulder had become a permanent growth.
The Cubs were making their first eastern trip of the season, and with them went their owner, Charles W. Murphy. Mr. Murphy and Mr. O'Day were standing by the desk in the Aldine Hotel at Philadelphia one evening when the hotel's genial manager, whose name I have forgotten, joined them.
"Hello, there, Mr. -----!" said Mr. Murphy cordially. "Have you met my friend, Mr. Henry O'Day?"
"I haven't had that pleasure," replied Mr. -----.
"Mr. -----," explained Mr. Murphy to Mr. O'Day, "is the manager of this hotel."
"What of it?" said Mr. O'Day.
R. W. L.
March, 1925.
Here's a story from What of It? It comes from a section called "Bed-Time Stories."
Well, children, here is the story of little Red Riding Hood like I tell it to my little ones when they wake up in the morning with a headache after a tough night.
Well, one or two times they was a little gal that lived in the suburbs who they called her little Red Riding Hood because she always wore a red riding hood in the hopes that sometime a fresh guy in a high power roadster would pick her up and take her riding. But the rumor had spread the neighborhood that she was a perfectly nice gal, so she had to walk.
Red had a grandmother that lived over near the golf course and got in on most of the parties and one noon she got up and found that they wasn't no gin in the house for her breakfast so she called up her daughter and told her to send Red over with a bottle of gin as she was dying.
So Red starts out with a quart under her arm but had not went far when she met a police dog. A good many people has police dogs, and brags about them and how nice they are for children and etc. but personly I would just as leaf have my kids spend their week-end swimming in the State Shark Hatchery.
Well, this special police dog was like the most of them and hated everybody. When he seen Red he spoke to her and she answered him. Even a dog was better than nothing. She told him where she was going and he pertended like he wasn't paying no tension but no sooner had not she left him when he beat it up a alley and got to her grandmother's joint ahead of her.
Well the old lady heard him knock at the door and told him to come in, as she thought he must either be Red or a bootlegger. So he went in and the old lady was in bed with this hangover and the dog eat her alive.
Then he put on some pajamas and laid down in the bed and pertended like he was her, so pretty soon Red come along and knocked at the door and the dog told her to come in and she went up to the bed to hand him the quart. She thought of course it would be her grandmother laying in the bed and even when she seen the dog she still figured it was her grandmother and something she had drank the night before must of disagreed with her and made her look different.
"Well, grandmother," she says, "you must of hit the old hair tonic last night. Your arms looks like Luis Firpo."
"I will Firpo you in a minute," says the dog.
"But listen grandmother," says Red, "don't you think you ought to have your ears bobbed?"
"I will ear you in a minute," says the dog.
"But listen grandmother," says Red, "you are cock-eyed."
"Listen," says the dog, "if you had of had 1/2 of what I had last night you would of been stone blind."
"But listen grandmother," says Red, "where did you get the new store teeth?"
"I heard you was a tough egg," says the dog, "so I bought them to eat you with."
So then the dog jumped out of bed and went after Red and she screamed.
In the mean w'ile Red's father had been playing golf for a quarter a hole with a couple of guys that conceded themselfs all putts under 12 ft. and he was $.75 looser coming to the 10th. tee.
The 10th. hole is kind of tough as your drive has to have a carry of 50 yards or it will fall in a garbage incinerating plant. You can either lift out with a penalty of two strokes or else play it with a penalty of suffocation. Red's old man topped his drive and the ball rolled into the garbage. He elected to play it and made what looked like a beautiful shot, but when they got up on the green they found that he had hit a white radish instead of a golf ball.
A long argument followed during which the gallery went home to get his supper. The hole was finely conceded.
The 11th. hole on the course is probably the sportiest hole in golfdom. The tee and green are synonymous and the first shot is a putt, but the rules signify that the putt must be played off a high tee with a driver. Red's father was on in two and off in three more and finely sunk his approach for a birdie eight, squaring the match.
Thus the match was all square coming to the home hole which is right close to grandmother's cottage. Red's father hooked his drive through an open window in his mother-in-law's house and forced his caddy to lend him a niblick. He entered the cottage just as the dog was beginning to eat Red.
"What hole are you playing father?" asked Red.
"The eighteenth," says her father, "and it is a dog's leg."
Where-at he hit the police dog in the leg with his niblick and the dog was so surprised that he even give up the grandmother.
"I win, one up," says Red's father and he went out to tell the news to his two opponents. But they had quit and went home to dress for the Kiwanis Club dance.
Sacha Barin' Baron Cohen
Sacha Baron Cohen's grandmother, a ballet dancer, fled Nazi Germany in 1936. Years later, Sacha studied history at Cambridge University and wrote his thesis on the American civil-rights movement. In this Fresh Air interview, originally broadcast on January 4, 2007, he discusses his characters, his comedy, and prejudice. His new movie, Brüno, opens on July 10.
Benny Ha-Ha
This photo shows the stars of Jack Benny's radio program, which debuted in 1932 and ended in 1955. From left to right, we have Eddie Anderson, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Mary Livingstone, Jack Benny, Don Wilson, and Mel Blanc. You can listen to many, many episodes of the program here.
Addendum: This episode, from May 9, 1943,features the great Louis Armstrong.
Addendum: This episode was broadcast, on April 30, 1944, from the Puget Sound Navy Yard, in Bremerton, Washington, the city where I was born. My dad worked at the navy yard from 1957 to 1992.
The Finish Master
Robert Benchley (pictured) wrote the following essay in 1930, for the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate. It can be found in the 1949 collection Chips Off the Old Benchley, where it's accompanied by the Gluyas Williams illustration seen below.
How to Get Things Done
A great many people have come up to me and asked me how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated. My answer is "Don't you wish you knew?" and a pretty good answer it is, too, when you consider that nine times out of ten I didn't hear the original question.
But the fact remains that hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country are wondering how I have time to do all my painting, engineering, writing and philanthropic work when, according to the rotogravure sections and society notes, I spend all my time riding to hounds, going to fancy-dress balls disguised as Louis XIV or spelling out GREETINGS TO CALIFORNIA in formation with three thousand Los Angeles school children. "All work and all play," they say.
The secret of my incredible energy and efficiency in getting work done is a simple one. I have based it very deliberately on a well-known psychological principle and have refined it so that it is now almost too refined. I shall have to begin coarsening it up again pretty soon.
The psychological principle is this: anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
Let us see how this works out in practice. Let us say that I have five things which have to be done before the end of the week: (1) a basketful of letters to be answered, some of them dating from October, 1928 (2) some bookshelves to be put up and arranged with books (3) a hair-cut to get (4) a pile of scientific magazines to go through and clip (I am collecting all references to tropical fish that I can find, with the idea of some day buying myself one) and (5) an article to write for this paper.
Now. With these five tasks staring me in the face on Monday morning, it is little wonder that I go right back to bed as soon as I have had breakfast, in order to store up health and strength for the almost superhuman expenditure of energy that is to come. Mens sana in corpore sano is my motto, and, not even to be funny, am I going to make believe that I don't know what the Latin means. I feel that the least that I can do is to treat my body right when it has to supply fuel for an insatiable mind like mine.
As I lie in bed on Monday morning storing up strength, I make out a schedule. "What do I have to do first?" I ask myself. Well, those letters really should be answered and the pile of scientific magazines should be clipped. And here is where my secret process comes in. Instead of putting them first on the list of things which have to be done, I put them last. I practice a little deception on myself and say: "First you must write that article for the newspaper." I even say this out loud (being careful that nobody hears me, otherwise they would keep me in bed) and try to fool myself into really believing that I must do the article that day and that the other things can wait. I sometimes go so far in this self-deception as to make out a list in pencil, with "No. 1. Newspaper article" underlined in red. (The underlining in red is rather difficult, as there is never a red pencil on the table beside the bed, unless I have taken one to bed with me on Sunday night.)
Then, when everything is lined up, I bound out of bed and have lunch. I find that a good, heavy lunch, with some sort of glutinous dessert, is good preparation for the day's work as it keeps one from getting nervous and excitable. We workers must keep cool and calm, otherwise we would just throw away our time in jumping about and fidgeting.
I then seat myself at my desk with my typewriter before me and sharpen five pencils. (The sharp pencils are for poking holes in the desk-blotter, and a pencil has to be pretty sharp to do that. I find that I can't get more than six holes out of one pencil.) Following this I say to myself (again out loud, if it is practical) "Now, old man! Get at this article!"
Gradually the scheme begins to work. My eye catches the pile of magazines, which I have artfully placed on a near-by table beforehand. I write my name and address at the top of the sheet of paper in the typewriter and then sink back. The magazines being within reach (also part of the plot) I look to see if anyone is watching me and get one off the top of the pile. Hello, what's this! In the very first one is an article by Dr. William Beebe, illustrated by horrifying photographs! Pushing my chair away from my desk, I am soon hard at work clipping.
One of the interesting things about the Argyopelius, or "Silver Hatchet" fish, I find, is that it has eyes in its wrists. I would have been sufficiently surprised just to find out that a fish had wrists, but to learn that it has eyes in them is a discovery so astounding that I am hardly able to cut out the picture. What a lot one learns simply by thumbing through the illustrated weeklies! It is hard work, though, and many a weaker spirit would give it up half-done, but when there is something else of "more importance" to be finished (you see, I still keep up the deception, letting myself go on thinking that the newspaper article is of more importance) no work is too hard or too onerous to keep one busy.
Thus, before the afternoon is half over, I have gone through the scientific magazines and have a neat pile of clippings (including one of a Viper Fish which I wish you could see. You would die laughing). Then it is back to the grind of the newspaper article.
This time I get as far as the title, which I write down with considerable satisfaction until I find that I have misspelled one word terribly, so that the whole sheet of paper has to come out and a fresh one be inserted. As I am doing this, my eye catches the basket of letters.
Now, if there is one thing that I hate to do (and there is, you may be sure) it is to write letters. But somehow, with the newspaper article before me waiting to be done, I am seized with an epistolary fervor which amounts to a craving, and I slyly sneak the first of the unanswered letters out of the basket. I figure out in my mind that I will get more into the swing of writing the article if I practice a little on a few letters. This first one, anyway, I really must answer. True, it is from a friend in Antwerp asking me to look him up when I am in Europe in the summer of 1929, so he can't actually be watching the incoming boats for an answer, but I owe something to politeness after all. So instead of putting a fresh sheet of copy-paper into the typewriter, I slip in one of my handsome bits of personal stationery and dash off a note to my friend in Antwerp. Then, being well in the letter-writing mood, I clean up the entire batch. I feel a little guilty about the article, but the pile of freshly stamped envelopes and the neat bundle of clippings on tropical fish do much to salve my conscience. Tomorrow I will do the article, and no fooling this time either.
When tomorrow comes I am up with one of the older and more sluggish larks. A fresh sheet of copy-paper in the machine, and my name and address neatly printed at the top, and all before eleven A.M.! "A human dynamo" is the name I think up for myself. I have decided to write something about snake-charming and am already more than satisfied with the title "These Snake-Charming People." But, in order to write about snake-charming, one has to know a little about its history, and where should one go to find history but to a book? Maybe in that pile of books in the corner is one on snake-charming! Nobody could point the finger of scorn at me if I went over to those books for the avowed purpose of research work for the matter at hand. No writer could be supposed to carry all that information in his head.
So, with a perfectly clear conscience, I leave my desk for a few minutes and begin glancing over the titles of the books. Of course, it is difficult to find any book, much less one on snake-charming, in a pile which has been standing in the corner for weeks. What really is needed is for them to be on a shelf where their titles will be visible at a glance. And there is the shelf, standing beside the pile of books! It seems almost like a divine command written in the sky: "If you want to finish that article, first put up the shelf and arrange the books on it!" Nothing could be clearer or more logical.
In order to put up the shelf, the laws of physics have decreed that there must be nails, a hammer and some sort of brackets to hold it up on the wall. You can't just wet a shelf with your tongue and stick it up. And, as there are no nails or brackets in the house (or, if there are, they are probably hidden somewhere) the next thing to do is to put on my hat and go out to buy them. Much as it disturbs me to put off the actual start of the article, I feel that I am doing only what is in the line of duty to put on my hat and go out to buy nails and brackets. And, as I put on my hat, I realize to my chagrin that I need a hair-cut badly. I can kill two birds with one stone, or at least with two, and stop in at the barber's on the way back. I will feel all the more like writing after a turn in the fresh air. Any doctor would tell me that.
So in a few hours I return, spick and span and smelling of lilac, bearing nails, brackets, the evening papers and some crackers and peanut butter. Then it's ho! for a quick snack and a glance through the papers (there might be something in them which would alter what I was going to write about snake-charming) and in no time at all the shelf is up, slightly crooked but up, and the books are arranged in a neat row in alphabetical order and all ready for almost instantaneous reference. There does not happen to be one on snake-charming among them, but there is a very interesting one containing some Hogarth prints and one which will bear even closer inspection dealing with the growth of the Motion Picture, illustrated with "stills" from famous productions. A really remarkable industry, the motion-pictures. I might want to write an article on it sometime. Not today, probably, for it is six o'clock and there is still the one on snake-charming to finish up first. Tomorrow morning sharp! Yes, sir!
And so, you see, in two days I have done four of the things I had to do, simply by making believe that it was the fifth that I must do. And the next day, I fix up something else, like taking down the bookshelf and putting it somewhere else, that I have to do, and then I get the fifth one done.
The only trouble is that, at this rate, I will soon run out of things to do, and will be forced to get at that newspaper article the first thing Monday morning.
By Hook or by Crook
The following is from Love Conquers All, a 1922 collection of essays by Robert Benchley (pictured).
Trout-Fishing
I never knew very much about trout-fishing anyway, and I certainly had no inkling that a trout-fisher had to be so deceitful until I read "Trout-Fishing in Brooks," by G. Garrow-Green. The thing is appalling. Evidently the sport is nothing but a constant series of compromises with one's better nature, what with sneaking about pretending to be something that one is not, trying to fool the fish into thinking one thing when just the reverse is true, and in general behaving in an underhanded and tricky manner throughout the day.
The very first and evidently the most important exhortation in the book is, "Whatever you do, keep out of sight of the fish." Is that open and above-board? Is it honorable?
"Trout invariably lie in running water with their noses pointed against the current, and therefore whatever general chance of concealment there may be rests in fishing from behind them. The moral is that the brook-angler must both walk and fish upstream."
It seems as if a lot of trouble might be saved the fisherman, in case he really didn't want to walk upstream but had to get to some point downstream before 6 o'clock, to adopt some disguise which would deceive the fish into thinking that he had no intention of catching them anyway. A pair of blue glasses and a cane would give the effect of the wearer being blind and harmless, and could be thrown aside very quickly when the time came to show one's self in one's true colors to the fish. If there were two anglers they might talk in loud tones about their dislike for fish in any form, and then, when the trout were quite reassured and swimming close to the bank they could suddenly be shot with a pistol.
But a little further on comes a suggestion for a much more elaborate bit of subterfuge.
The author says that in the early season trout are often engaged with larvae at the bottom and do not show on the surface. It is then a good plan, he says, to sink the flies well, moving in short jerks to imitate nymphs.
You can see that imitating a nymph will call for a lot of rehearsing, but I doubt very much if moving in short jerks is the way in which to go about it. I have never actually seen a nymph, though if I had I should not be likely to admit it, and I can think of no possible way in which I could give an adequate illusion of being one myself. Even the most stupid of trout could easily divine that I was masquerading, and then the question would immediately arise in its mind: "If he is not a nymph, then what is his object in going about like that trying to imitate one? He is up to no good, I'll be bound."
And crash! away would go the trout before I could put my clothes back on.
There is an interesting note on the care and feeding of worms on page 67. One hundred and fifty worms are placed in a tin and allowed to work their way down into packed moss.
"A little fresh milk poured in occasionally is sufficient food," writes Mr. Garrow-Green, in the style of Dr. Holt. "So disposed, the worms soon become bright, lively and tough."
It is easy to understand why one should want to have bright worms, so long as they don't know that they are bright and try to show off before company, but why deliberately set out to make them tough? Good manners they may not be expected to acquire, but a worm with a cultivated vulgarity sounds intolerable. Imagine 150 very tough worms all crowded together in one tin! "Canaille" is the only word to describe it.
I suppose that it is my ignorance of fishing parlance which makes the following sentence a bit hazy:
"Much has been written about bringing a fish downstream to help drown it, as no doubt it does; still, this is often impracticable."
I can think of nothing more impracticable than trying to drown a fish under any conditions, upstream or down, but I suppose that Mr. Garrow-Green knows what he is talking about.
And in at least one of his passages I follow him perfectly. In speaking of the time of day for fly-fishing in the spring he says:
"'Carpe diem' is a good watchword when trout are in the humor." At least, I know a good pun when I see one.
Spouse Mountain
Noting an Increase in Bigamy
Either more men are marrying more wives than ever before, or they are getting more careless about it. During the past week bigamy has crowded baseball out of the papers, and while this may be due in part to the fact that it was a cold, rainy week and little baseball could be played, yet there is a tendency to be noted there somewhere. All those wishing to note a tendency will continue on into the next paragraph.
There is, of course, nothing new in bigamy. Anyone who goes in for it with the idea of originating a new fad which shall be known by his name, like the daguerreotype or potatoes O'Brien, will have to reckon with the priority claims of several hundred generations of historical characters, most of them wearing brown beards. Just why beards and bigamy seem to have gone hand in hand through the ages is a matter for the professional humorists to determine. We certainly haven't got time to do it here.
But the multiple-marriages unearthed during the past week have a certain homey flavor lacking in some of those which have gone before. For instance, the man in New Jersey who had two wives living right with him all of the time in the same apartment. No need for subterfuge here, no deceiving one about the other. It was just a matter of walking back and forth between the dining-room and the study. This is, of course, bigamy under ideal conditions.
But in tracing a tendency like this, we must not deal so much with concrete cases as with drifts and curves. A couple of statistics are also necessary, especially if it is an alarming tendency that is being traced. The statistics follow, in alphabetical order:
In the United States during the years 1918-1919 there were 4,956,673 weddings. 2,485,845 of these were church weddings, strongly against the wishes of the bridegrooms concerned. In these weddings 10,489,392 silver olive-forks were received as gifts.
Starting with these figures as a basis, we turn to the report of the Pennsylvania State Committee on Outdoor Gymnastics for the year beginning January 4th, 1920, and ending a year later.
This report being pretty fairly uninteresting, we leave it and turn to another report, which covers the manufacture and sale of rugs. This has a picture of a rug in it, and a darned good likeness it is, too.
In this rug report we find that it takes a Navajo Indian only eleven days to weave a rug 12 x 5, with a swastika design in the middle. Eleven days. It seems incredible. Why, it takes only 365 days to make a year!
Now, having seen that there are 73,000 men and women in this country today who can neither read nor write, and that of these only 4%, or a little over half, are colored, what are we to conclude? What is to be the effect on our national morale? Who is to pay this gigantic bill for naval armament?
Before answering these questions any further than this, let us quote from an authority on the subject, a man who has given the best years, or at any rate some very good years, of his life to research in this field, and who now takes exactly the stand which we have been outlining in this article.
"I would not," he says in a speech delivered before the Girls' Friendly Society of Laurel Hill, "I would not for one minute detract from the glory of those who have brought this country to its present state of financial prominence among the nations of the world, and yet as I think back on those dark days, I am impelled to voice the protest of millions of American citizens yet unborn."
Perhaps some of our little readers remember what the major premise of this article was. If so, will they please communicate with the writer.
Oh, yes! Bigamy!
Well, it certainly is funny how many cases of bigamy you hear about nowadays. Either more men are marrying more wives than ever before, or they are getting more careless about it. (That sounds very, very familiar. It is barely possible that it is the sentence with which this article opens. We say so many things in the course of one article that repetitions are quite likely to creep in.)
At any rate, the tendency seems to be toward an increase in bigamy.
The Sounders, Drew, a Crowd
Pete: Best
This show about Peter Cook features John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Stephen Fry, Jonathan Miller, Eleanor Bron, Ronnie Wood, John Lennon, and Peter's widow, Lin.
Sky Writing
11.03 12.03 01.04 02.04 03.04 04.04 05.04 06.04 07.04 08.04 09.04 10.04 11.04 12.04 01.05 02.05 03.05 04.05 05.05 07.05 08.05 09.05 10.05 01.06 05.09 06.09 10.09
The Big Jewel
Amy's Robot
Andy K
Barry Blitt
Being Charlie Kaufman
Best Non-Fiction
Blue Donut
Carrie Hoffman
Chumworth
Comedy College
Cup of Chicha
Dead Frog
Deckie Holmes
Defective Yeti
Delicate Condition
Dennis Perrin
Elizabeth Ellen
Ellen Forney
felixsalmon.com
FunnyPlanet.com
Heaneyland!
The Jack Benny Program
Just a Minute
Ken Krimstein
The Leonard Lopate Show
Ludic Log
Mike Gerber
Monkeybicycle
Monkey Disaster
Moonshinestill
Off on a Tangent
The Other Chad
Pindeldyboz
Radosh
Reinventing the World
Roodblog
Shawn Hazen
SHECKYmagazine.com
Smartygirl
Travelers Diagram
Utter Wonder
whittlz
Zulkey
Books I'm In
Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney's Book of Lists
May Contain Nuts: A Very Loose Canon of American Humor
The Future Dictionary of America
Monkeybicycle/Hobart: Issue 3
Pindeldyboz: Volume 2 (cover art)
Selections from My Oeuvre
My Dog Pete
Page's Guide to Birds
A Short Interview with Larry Sandwich, Health Nut
The Natural History of the Mustache
The Cat Had Her Tongue
Good Names for Vicious Dogs
Excerpts from My Third-Grade Journal
Golden Wisps of Autobiographical Gold
The Tin of Happiness
Nicknames for Jesus
Ten Poets Named like Porn Stars
Chapter Titles in Herman Melville's Moby Dick That Misleadingly Suggest Racy Content
Twenty-Eight Real Animals Named after Other Animals
Pickup Lines That Went Unnoticed
My MySpace Space
www.myspace.com/edtown
edpage5000@yahoo.com
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Democracy Sometimes
Activism, cultural criticism, feminism, reflections on state of the left, queer issues, Palestine, dealing with breast cancer and the occasional random thought
The Crimes of Mike Daisey
Two years ago, a friend and I were looking for billboards to modify. We were working on art related to Hewlett Packard and the clothing manufacturer H&M, both of which had big ad campaigns on, but the city was awash in iPads. Every surface we really wanted to hit had an apple in the corner. Then I saw a piece in the paper about workers at one of the iPad manufacturing plants in China committing suicide because the working conditions were so terrible. I sent it to my friend with a note – “something to do with all those iPad billboards.” She mocked up some great art, but before we had it ready to go the ads were down, the iPad was old news, the company had agreed to pay the workers a few cents more per hour and the story was forgotten.
Flash forward a year. Just about one year ago, a friend invited me to a play her aunt had given her tickets for. It was a monologue called “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.” A one-man show by someone named Mike Daisey. When we settled into our seats and I looked at the program, I looked at my friend doubtfully. “A two-hour monologue with no intermission?” When I saw Mike Daisey, I had even more doubts. He didn’t present like a guy who could carry that kind of thing.
Two hours later, I walked out shell-shocked. The first thing I did was call my friend. “We have to do that iPad campaign.” The iPad2 was on the way, and there was a whole BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station covered in iPads. I took a picture of a couple perfect spots and sent them to my friend. Problem was, I was leaving town in a few days for a month-long writing retreat at Hedgebrook. I hoped my friend would be able to do it with someone else, but she was busy too. Didn’t happen.
I carried that regret with me to Whidby Island, but I also carried something I had gotten from the show: a newfound awe for the written word. I went into my precious writing month mesmerized by what I had seen.
It was not the content that was so powerful to me. Many of the stories I had heard – the one about the suicides, the one about the people poisoned by the toxic cleaning solution. Some, like the ones about the overcrowded dorm rooms and the workers frisked on their way out of the plants, I had seen for myself, years ago at an export-processing zone in the Philippines. The one about the 13-year-old workers I did not find particularly memorable. Child labor and China have been virtually synonymous for decades.
What captivated me was the way Daisey wove the stories into a powerful drama. He created a seamless emotional roller coaster without ever making you feel manipulated. The story begins all light and fluffy, his Hawaiian shirt, his bumbling attempts at cultural sensitivity, his efforts to make a passable business card in a foreign city where he doesn’t speak the language, and then the fact that it all works! Sasha and I exchanged knowing looks, because we’ve both been there. I thought about giving Israeli soldiers at military checkpoints a laminated business card proclaiming me a “legitimate human rights worker” in Hebrew, and them nodding and letting me through. And then he is talking about people jumping off roofs and standing up doing repetitive motions for twenty-four hours in a row without the opportunity to rest their arms, all so we can have cheap iPhones. Sasha felt for hers in her pocket. She’d been telling me about how she was watching the Arab Spring on the alJazeera app all day long.
I thought, how is this guy ever going to pull us back from this abyss without it seeming incredibly hokey? I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly I found myself laughing again.
I write mysteries about Palestine. I do it because it’s fun. I also do it because I want people to care about Palestine. Now my first one, Murder Under the Bridge, is pretty Manichean. There are moral complexities in it, but basically there are some really really bad Israeli guys and a lot of the Palestinians are damned near saintly and there’s a teenage girl for angst and good measure. That’s okay, it’s a first mystery. But Murder Under the Fig Tree, which I was going off to Hedgebrook to write, is much more ambitious. It has a lot more shades of gray, but I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I think there’s any gray about the Israeli occupation. I never want to leave any doubt that the biggest problem facing every Palestinian in the world today is the theft of their land and denial of their national rights. Seeing Mike Daisey’s show made me believe, more than I ever have before, that if I write a good mystery, people will understand what I want them to understand and care about it.
Two weeks ago, Mike Daisey was all over the Twittersphere, and it wasn’t good news. “Mike Daisey Apologizes For Fabricated ‘This American Life’ Foxconn Story”, screamed the Huffington Post. “We're horrified to have let something like this onto public radio,” said Ira Glass, Executive Producer on the website of “This American Life.”
“This American Life,” which had broadcast parts of “The Agony & the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” ran a full hour called “Retracting Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory.” In what many have called one of the most painful things ever broadcast on radio, Ira Glass interviewed Mike Daisey about the lies he told and why he did it. There’s a long bit of silence in which you can hear Daisey wrestling with his conscience before he answers the question “So you lied about that” with a Santorum-esque “I wouldn’t express it that way.”
The crux of the problem is this: The show is based on a 5-day trip to China, during which he worked with a translator. When This American Life’s producers asked if they could talk to the translator to corroborate what he told them, he lied and said he couldn’t reach her and said her name, which is “Cathy” in the show, is really Anna. TAL, having checked the basic facts about how Apple products are manufactured and found them solid, let it go. Then Rob Schmitz, a reporter for NPR’s “Marketplace,” who lives in China, heard the piece and was surprised by a few things and went and found the translator, whose name really is Cathy (it’s not, but that’s the name she uses with Westerners). She contradicted a number of things in the story Daisey tells onstage, which he also told on TAL.
The main things are:
He said he visited ten factories, then when Ira pressed him on it on air, he said it was really five, but the translator says it was three.
He said he met twenty workers who belong to an illegal union, but it was only three to five.
gizmondo.com put this image on its story
He said he met some workers who were twelve to fourteen, but the translator says he did not meet any underage workers. No one disputes that there are underage workers at that plant and others, but they dispute that Daisey met any. He insists that he did.
He said he met some workers who had been exposed to the solvent n-hexane and had lasting injuries from it. In fact, he did not meet those workers; he heard about them from activists he met in Hong Kong.
He said he saw security guards with guns but security guards in China are not allowed to carry guns and the translator says they don’t.
He said there were cameras in workers’ dorm rooms, but the cameras are only in the halls.
He tells a story about a worker who had lost his hand in an accident at the factory where iPads are made. When the worker saw Mike’s iPad, he got wide-eyed and wanted to touch it, because he’d never actually seen one assembled. The translator says the incident happened but that man did not say he’d ever worked at that plant.
On his blog last week, he posted a talk he gave at Georgetown. In that talk, with the same cadence and intensity I found so riveting in the show, he explains how it all happened. How one little lie became a bigger one, how he ended up going on TAL, how he got interested in the labor issues related to Apple, which he says he never had been. He says he never was an activist, but when he heard the stories and saw what there was to see at FoxConn and the other factories, he felt he needed to make people care. And he says something that made perfect sense to me: He just happened to get to China at the time that the suicide story had broken. At the time that he was there, everyone was buzzing about it, and while he was there, a memo from the government went out about how to contain it, and he saw the story die. And that’s what fueled his passion for telling the story, because he’d been there and seen it with his own eyes and now everyone was moving on.
I’m not trying to say that Daisey didn’t screw up. Obviously, he did. But what did he really do wrong? Well, he lied to Ira Glass, which is a big mistake, because that’s someone you sure don’t want to piss off. He probably made sure that he’ll never be taken seriously as a “reporter” again, but of course he is not a reporter.
Without trying to cast aspersions on people I don’t know, let me just raise a couple questions:
Why do both Ira Glass and Rob Schmitz assume everything the translator said is true? According to the TAL piece, neither she nor Daisey took notes. But for Daisey, this was a world-changing mission on which he was going to base his next several years of work. For the translator, he was one five-day client out of dozens – this is what she does. She has apparently taken lots of foreigners to these factories. So without notes, why do we assume she’s going to remember every interview she did with this one guy better than he does?
According to Schmitz, a lot of the things in the show are things that are confirmed by Apple’s own audits of the manufacturing plants, and the disputed facts are things that it denies. The Chinese government, he says, wants corporations to have better labor practices, but maybe it doesn’t care as much about that as keeping its economy growing. Given that, is it possible that people like this translator know that confirming things that Apple says are not happening would be bad for her business, or could even get her in trouble with the government?
What support does “Marketplace” get from Apple?
Isn’t it ironic that Mike Daisey’s exaggerations have had a longer news cycle than the original suicide story did?
In the first draft of Murder Under the Bridge, probably about 40% of the story was lifted from my Palestine journals. As a novel, it was pretty terrible. The more I went through it, the more real stuff got cut and the more my ever elusive imagination began to take over and supply better stories. It doesn’t matter, because it’s a mystery, not a memoir. But even more than that, it doesn’t matter because at its core, it’s still true. Even though I never heard of a trafficked nanny-cum-prostitute being murdered in an Israeli settlement, I have little doubt that something like that has happened.
But something else is interesting, and that’s that when readers say, “That part just struck me as completely improbable,” they’re almost always talking about one of the things that really did happen.
Posted by katinsf at 11:49 AM 2 comments:
Labels: Hedgebrook, labor movement, writing
Cracking the Twitter Code
The other day I was trying to figure out which of the appalling things that happened over the last few weeks I had anything to say about. Candidates included the massacre in Afghanistan, of course, and the U.S. cutting off money to UNESCO because they had the nerve to recognize Palestine. Then there are the hunger strikers, Hana Shalabi in Palestine and Abdulhadi al Khawaja in Bahrain both about to hit the one-month mark, and definitely getting close to the danger point, and Christian Gomez, who died in Corcoran prison here in California just a few days after renewing a hunger strike over prison conditions.
Also-rans are Rush Limbaugh and the Slut Wars, state-legislated transvaginal ultrasound, and the fact that the Nazis began their ascent to power by targeting women’s liberation (in 1930, Hitler campaigned on a promise to remove 800,000 women from the depressed workforce, so that men could have their jobs).
A part of me wanted to skip all that depressing stuff and write about the highly amusing “Game Change,” the HBO movie starring an eerily great Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin.
Since nothing was singing my song, I decided to look at Twittter to see what other people were talking about that I could riff off of. My twitter feed was unusually quiet. At least three quarters of the tweets were from Serena Williams, because as it turns out it was a #SerenaFriday, where people can tweet questions and she answers them. No one had tweeted, “What social issues are most important to you?” so the most interesting revelation about my favorite athlete is that she hates breakfast. In between the SerenaFriday minutiae, Billie Jean King congratulated Michelle Kwan on being inducted into the Figure Skating Hall of Fame. Democracy Now! thanked me for listening. Apparently my usually enlightening and prolix friends were as stymied by the state of the world as I.
So I thought I would see what other people, that I don’t follow, were talking about. Here’s what was trending in the U.S.:
#PenguinCam Promoted
#WhyDoWeAlways
#BlackPersonSecret
Boy Lovatics
Textaholic
#DOITFORTHESHEEP
Rick Majerus
Other than Victoria Azarenka (the new tennis #1) and Saint Louis, I don’t know what any of the other topics mean. Wasn’t “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” like three years ago? Why is it trending now?
Well, I thought, everyone knows the U.S. public is primarily nabobs. Let’s see what’s trending somewhere where people care about weighty things. I looked at the options and chose India, and got a popup asking which city I wanted. Since my friend Preeti lives in Chennai, when she doesn’t live in Oakland, I chose Chennai. These were the top trends in Preeti’s enviros:
#indvspak
#GirlsFavoriteLine
#ragstorichesstories
Swiss Open
Wahab Riaz
Karnataka BJP
Obviously, I’m going to have to study up on PenguinCam.
Before I went to Bahrain, I didn’t really get Twitter. I occasionally ran across a good link that way, but it was probably something I would have found eventually somewhere else. In Bahrain, where many people have smart phones but not computers, I saw how it could be used for organizing, disseminating information quickly and even getting around the government censors. Photos and video from demonstrations could go around like lightning, where if they were just posted on a website, that site could easily be blocked. It’s a way to spread the word rapidly about a change in plans or an arrest – when some Witness Bahrain folks were arrested a few days after I returned home, I heard about it from their lawyer’s tweets. That’s also how I learned about Whitney Houston’s death, and apparently I’m not the only one. Willie Brown, who was staying at the same hotel, saw the ambulances but found out what had happened from British tweeps.
But the real power of Twitter is in skillful use of hash tags to create trends. This is an art that has developed over the last few years. Apparently the TV show “The Voice” was the first U.S. organization to use it well. The idea is that tweeps – people who tweet – on a particular subject agree on particular ways of tagging their posts so that they will clump and create a trend. So the Bahraini protesters agreed to use #Feb14 and #LuluReturn (Lulu is the Arabic name for Pearl Roundabout) as well as #Bahrain. When we arrived, they added #WitnessBahrain to their tags, which resulted in us getting 2700 followers in a single day. You have to be careful not to create too many tags, though, because they count toward your 140 characters. One of the things we learned when tweeting from WitnessBahrain is that tweets marked @WitnessBahrain were easier to find in our feed than #WitnessBahrain. @ is a direct reference or response to someone, so someone who wants to argue with me can tweet “@katrap40 is an idiot” and that will go to my followers (of which I do not have many) as well as to me. Within our group we had some discussion about whether responding to the people who attacked us on Twitter was a good idea. Our instinct is to rise above, and obviously we are not going to change their minds, but Twitter’s all about creating buzz and we all know that controversy helps with that.
The other day I saw posts claiming that the Bahrainis had trended both #FreeAlkhawaja and a hunger striker in Saudi Arabia. I can’t seem to get to the Bahrain trends from here, but I’ve never seen anything that profound trending here. In October, there was a big article about the fact that #OWS and #OO had never trended, despite many people tweeting about Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Oakland. Activists were accusing Twitter of manipulating the algorithms to keep them off the top trends, and Twitter responded that their algorithms are picking up trends in the moment and not over time.
“Twitter Trends are automatically generated by an algorithm that attempts to identify topics that are being talked about more right now than they were previously. The Trends list is designed to help people discover the 'most breaking' breaking news from across the world, in real-time. The Trends list captures the hottest emerging topics, not just what’s most popular. Put another way, Twitter favors novelty over popularity”
Needless to say, the ability to rapidly disseminate unsubstantiated rumors has resulted in some Twitter-bloopers. A few false reports spread on Twitter:
Warren Buffett died
Wesley Snipes died
Lauren Spierer (missing child in Bloomington, Indiana) found
Michele Bachman going on Dancing with the Stars
Kim Jong Un assassinated
But as the late unmourned Andrew Breitbart demonstrated more than once, Twitter definitely has no monopoly on sending false information around the world at the speed of light. Rachel Maddow’s show last night had a montage of Mitt Romney repeating over and over that President Obama has “made the recession worse” and “doubled the deficit,” both claims that are “counter-factual.”
On the other hand, getting anyone to pay attention to your tweets is harder than it sounds. According to a 2011 blog post, “05% of entire the Twitter population (~20,000 users) attract almost 50% of attention on Twitter; 71% of Twitter tweets receive not reaction whatsoever.”
In general, as someone who finds even the blog format constricting, I’m predisposed against anything that leads to the expectation that you can get information in 140 characters. I suspect it’s intensified the tendency to try to get the full story from the headline. But is that the case?
According to a recent study of social media usage, the average Twitter visit lasts 14 minutes. That would suggest that people are clicking on at least some of the links posted and at least skimming the articles. It does seem clear that the reliance on electronic media leads to more skimming and less word-for-word reading. But as for the perception that people are generally reading less, that seems to be debatable.
In November 2007, the National Endowment for the Arts published a report called “To Read or Not to Read,” which contained the alarming news that “Americans are reading a lot less.” One year later, the same agency released another report called “Reading on the Rise.” This one found that “the percentage of adult Americans who read literature (defined as fiction, poetry, and plays) grew from 46.7 percent to 50.2 percent” from 2002 to 2008. The report did not, however, endorse the contention of Carolyn Kellogg of the New York Times blog Jacket Copy that “the next generation of young adults found their way to literature through all the reading they do with new media.”
Just more evidence that Twitter has no monopoly on sketchy and incomplete information.
Posted by katinsf at 3:33 PM No comments:
Labels: #Bahrain, writing
A Vigil in Fremont: Bringing the Massacre Home
On Saturday a friend and I went to a vigil in Fremont held by the Afghan community, to protest the massacre of sixteen civilians in Kandahar province last Sunday. I was deeply moved by the experience.
photo: SJ Mercury News
This is a community that has been slow to protest. The South Bay, stretching from Fremont to San Jose, has the largest concentration of Afghans in the U.S., roughly 65,000 in Fremont. Some fled during the Soviet occupation, others after the Soviets withdrew in 1989. They came seeking opportunity and freedom, and that vision has been both challenged and realized. They learned about racism, xenophobia and religious bigotry, and about the hidden realities of poverty in this country, but as one of yesterday’s speakers pointed out, plenty of them broke through and made it, lifting their families to middle class and even wealthier status.
They created their shopping districts, mosques and community centers and sent their kids to UC Berkeley and San Jose State.
Then came 9/11 and suddenly the land to which they had fled from oppression became the biggest source of violence toward Afghan people. Like many immigrant communities before them -- my parents’ generation of Jews, for instance, the primary response of the threatened community was to lie low and try to remain above reproach. While those of us not directly affected by the attacks on Muslims in general and Afghans in particular could scream in outrage against war and civil liberties violations, Afghan community leaders quietly set about creating institutions to protect or defend people from the worst abuses by our government, at the same time loudly and publicly proclaiming their support for the U.S. and distancing themselves from whoever perpetrated the 9/11 attacks (none of whom were Afghan, in case anyone is confused).
Judith Miller wrote in 2010:
Given their discomfort with the foreign policy of the country that has sheltered them but is still fighting in their former home and sometimes killing their friends and relatives left behind, many Fremont Afghans are reluctant to discuss politics with outsiders. The Afghanistan war is unpopular in much of this community, several Afghans told me. So, too, is President Hamid Karzai, despite the fact that he, like an overwhelming majority of the refugees in Fremont, is a Pashtun, Afghanistan’s majority ethnic group.
For sure there have been exceptions. Afghans for Peace has been a small but consistent presence in the anti-war movement when there has been one for them to participate in. Their participation has been hampered somewhat by the fact that the Bay Area movement is led by groups which defended the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, from which so many of the Afghans in this area were refugees. Fatima Mojadiddy, one of the most active members of Bay Area Afghans for Peace, commented on a blog post in 2010, which claimed, “The young socialist [pro-Soviet] government, which had overthrown a centuries-old monarchy, was cosmopolitan, outward-looking, and stressed the education of women as well as men. This was a time when women in Kabul could wear mini-skirts.”:
Soviet backed communists were brutal and used authoritarian force, violence, persecution, etc to enforce themselves upon the people. And Afghans in Kabul were wearing mini skirts well before the Saur Revolution of 1978, not that mini skirts really say ANYTHING about the real emancipation of women, other than Western cultural imperialism.
I am sick of how the American Left repeatedly white-washes the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan….In doing so you are no different from those who defend America's crimes towards the people of Afghanistan.
Last Sunday’s massacre seems to have broken a dam. Afghans around the country have organized vigils. Bay Area Afghans held a smaller one last Monday in Oakland, and this one yesterday which drew about 200 people to the Fremont Amtrak station, where a sign proclaims Centerville, the heart of the Afghan community.
When we arrived the people were lining both sides of the street, waving Afghan flags and signs saying, “Honk for Peace,” and “Obama We Want Peace Not War.” After about half an hour, they moved into the plaza for a rally which began with prayers. Women were asked to “line up behind the men, to respect our traditions.” I chose to stand off to the side holding a sign.
Speakers were eloquent. A young woman named Saylai Lalyas, a student at UC Berkeley, broke down in tears as she talked about how it felt to watch the news of what is being done to the people “back home.” She said, “I am not just angry, I am ready. Ready to take action.” The action she was urging is political – registering to vote and running candidates for local office. She pointed out that the Afghan community has never had a representative on the Fremont city council, in the state legislature or in Congress, despite the potential power their numbers could give them.
Abu Bakr Mojaddidy talked about the children who were killed in the villages, noting that many of the children at the vigil were the same age. He recounted the horrific violence done to those children, the mothers forced to watch their children cruelly murdered in cold blood, and said, “Those children are not over there. They are here.”
While Mr. Mojadiddy was speaking, I heard someone shouting from the street. I went to see what it was. A white man in a white pickup truck was stopped at a light, and he was leaning out his window. His head was shaved and he wore camouflage. He was staring at the protesters, and I had the sense that he hated us, but I thought, maybe I was just judging on the basis of how he looked. I hadn’t heard what he said. But when the light changed, and he pulled into the turn lane, he leaned out and this time I heard him very clearly: “Kill them all.” Fortunately, I don’t think anyone else was close enough o hear. But I had a moment of terror – what if he parked his truck and came back to attack someone? He might be ex-military, he could even be a reservist. He could be armed. Could something like this massacre happen here?
The man turned the corner and did not return.
The most moving speaker was a ten-year-old girl named Bahar. Her father explained that she had stayed up very late the night before writing a letter to President Obama, and she wanted to read part of it. She read only this sentence, “It doesn’t matter where in the world this happened, and by whom, the murder of innocent civilians, mostly women and children, is wrong.”
Her mother walked around the crowd, getting people to sign onto her letter. She gave out copies, and I read it when I got home. I wished that Bahar would have read the full letter, which I have to say shows a more sophisticated understanding of judicial process than most U.S. adults probably have. She criticized the decision to remove Sgt. Robert Bales, the accused killer, from Afghanistan, because:
“I don’t think he will receive the right justice through the trial without the representation of the families of the massacred civilians….I have a suggestion and a favor to ask: can you please order the U.S. military to bring the remaining members and community members of the massacred families from Afghanistan to the U.S. so that they can be present in the judicial process related to this massacre. This way, the families can fight for the justice of their loved ones and we will not forget the reactions and emotional duress this ordeal has caused…and they will see the American justice system in action as well as the love and generosity of Americans first hand.”
I hope the president listens to her. I hope the love and generosity of Americans will go out in some way to those families.
Posted by katinsf at 12:16 PM No comments:
Labels: activism, anti-war movement
Anarchism Part II: The Pacifist and the Black Masks
It always surprises people who know little about anarchists that we believe in organizing and working together. As my last post explains, anarchists tend to be highly organized, and most of us have very coherent systems of thought. We can even be dogmatic, contradictory as that sounds, but what we don’t normally do, or should not do anyway, is try to regulate or control what others think. Anarchists probably have as many opinions per capita as Jews, and as for Jewish anarchists … well you do the math.
more results for "anarchist graphics"
When Emma Goldman was coming up as a young anarchist, her mentor was Johann Most, who believed in the liberatory power of individual courageous actions, including assassinations. After her lover, Alexander Berkman, went to prison for attempting to assassinate a union-busting industrialist and financier named Henry Clay Frick, Goldman changed her beliefs and became more a follower of Peter Kropotkin, who believed (by that time, anyway) in collective nonviolent action. At the same time, a guy named Benjamin R. Tucker was the main spokesperson for a libertarian anarchism, based on the premise that:
If … extortion from labor rest upon denials of liberty, plainly the remedy consists in the realization of liberty. Destroy the banking monopoly, establish freedom in finance, and down will go interest on money through the beneficent influence of competition. Capital will be set free, business will flourish, new enterprises will start, labor will be in demand, and gradually the wages of labor will rise to a level with its product. And it is the same with the other monopolies. Abolish the tariffs, issue no patents[,] take down the bars from unoccupied land, and labor will straightway rush in and take possession of its own. Then mankind will live in freedom and in comfort.
Some anarchists believe in a really radical form of autonomism, where no one ever has to be answerable to the collective, and presumably the collective bears no responsibility for the actions of the individual. I believe just the opposite – that in order for each of us to be free we must value the collective more than our individual desires, and that the collective must take responsibility for the consequences of any actions taken in accordance with its decisions.
By definition, anarchists reject hierarchy – the Greek word “archist” is long-disused, interestingly, but in the New Testament, I’m told, it’s translated as “ruler.” So even though I believe in sublimating my individual will to that of the collective, it has to be done freely and in every situation because every one of us believes that we are stronger within the collective. As soon as I feel that the collective does not serve my interest, I am free to leave it, regaining my autonomy but sacrificing the strength and protection of the community.
Though anarchists do not all reject violence, we all reject state violence. That means we do not use the power of the state, even against our enemies. If you are willing to demand that the cops arrest Zionists or anti-abortion protesters who assault you, you are not an Anarchist. As Anarchists, we have to find ways of defending our own communities, something that the various Occupy/Decolonize/Liberate camps had varying success with.
Slingshot #108, which was labeled “Extra Hella Occupy Edition” has some really excellent pieces about militancy, tactics, property damage, and the limits of collectivism and autonomy. One of the best, I thought, by Evan Buswell, reflects,
“Consensus depends on the fiction of an ‘outside’ in two respects: first, that each individual has the capacity to act autonomously outside the group, apart from the group, not affecting the group as a whole; second, that disunited elements can be merely ejected back into the already-existing society…Consensus is totally dependent on the presence of a larger state to which it can eject elements that its process has no other means to discipline.”
The mask-wearing, sometimes projectile-throwing or shield-wielding “anarchists” who have been most active and visible at Occupy Oakland do not, in my experience, use the label “black bloc” and I am not sure they all identify as anarchists. They seem to prefer the terms “militant” and “insurrectionist.” It’s completely inaccurate to call them “outsiders” or suggest that they are all or mostly “agent provocateurs.” Of course, some of them are. We probably won’t know who for many years, if ever. But that’s not limited to the insurrectionists. No doubt there are infiltrators or informers among medics, consensus facilitators and even pacifists. Many of the militants are long-term and even thoughtful activists, whom I’ve known for years. Some of them did a lot of the work to set up Occupy Oakland, and worked day and night to keep it running smoothly. They have beliefs I totally disagree with, but they are deeply held beliefs.
One thing that did surprise me is that many of them describe themselves is “nihilist.” Back in the day we used to use that term pejoratively – “don’t be nihilistic,” meant don’t be juvenile, just randomly lashing out at stuff. But like most pejoratives, it’s been reclaimed. An article on infoshop.org explains:
Nihilist anarchy is a collection of political theories, a growing tendency and influence within the anarchist movement. Nihilist anarchists approach society with skepticism and they attempt to avoid the pitfalls of speculation, even to the point of denying a future vision of society. Some focus on the need to address the problems of the present, but do so without subscribing to the models that are seen to hold back other radicals. By doing this, they reject "progress, evolution, the general strike, the insurrection to end all insurrections, or the supremacy of theory over action."
This form of nihilist anarchism, which the author distinguishes from “Nietzschean nihilism” and “Russian nihilism” is based in a “revolutionary skepticism” which holds:
An ethical revolution does not necessarily create an ethical society.
No future is as possible as any future.
Reject the world as it is. It must be superceded before it can be valued.
All attempts to inflict radical change have failed, giving legitimacy to the idea that action is not bound by moral restraint.
There is no single method of revolt nor is there a grand scheme behind it. When these ideas are imposed is when we are promised more of the same (reaction and failure).
Revolt is not found in moral living.
Revolt despite the consequences is worth living.
Revolt is without hope, but not without casualties.
The nihilists reject both “prefigurative politics,” which seek to create the new society we want to see at the same time that we struggle to overthrow the existing authoritarian institutions, and any effort to win immediate reforms while trying to create the conditions for revolution. Much like Berkman and Most, they believe visible attacks on corporate and state institutions help to show the system’s weaknesses. At an Occupy Oakland forum on nonviolence, one of the insurrectionists quoted Rudy Giuliani’s “Broken Windows Theory,” under which minor property damage is kind of a gateway drug leading to the collapse of the social order. All I can say is, if only it were so easy.
In January, a number of “anti-capitalist” tendencies in Seattle came together for a five-hour “Anti-Capitalist Smackdown: A Debate among Tendencies in the Occupy Movement.” Here’s the facebook announcement:
Participating tendencies (in alphabetic order)
Anarcho-syndicalism
Insurrectionary anarchy
3-5PM: debates on
The enemy (capitalism or civilization?)
Revolution (ultimate goals and how to get there)
Class & identity
The role of revolutionaries
5-6PM: dinner break
6-7:15PM: debates on
Unions & solidarity networks
Prefigurative (anti)politics
The Occupy movement
7:15-8PM: open discussion with audience
A report posted afterwards says: “Definitely successful! The venue was packed, a full house. Comrades stood outside to listen in on the debate.There was a lot of talk of future debates and open discussion on revolutionary politics between tendencies due to the success of this debate and discussion. I think it built a lot of comradary and understanding between the different tendencies.”
Wish I could have been there! Waiting breathlessly for the video.
Posted by katinsf at 2:06 PM 1 comment:
Labels: activism, anarchism, democracy, left-wing politics
Confessions of an Anarchist: Part I - All About Me
It was a couple months ago that two of my friends asked me to write about anarchism. I’ve called myself an anarchist for close to 35 years. My understanding of what that means has evolved over the years, but my identification with anarchism has only grown stronger. My friends wanted to understand the differences (and presumably the similarities) between what I believe and the so-called “black bloc anarchists” who are the subject of so much debate, derision and defensiveness since the Occupy/Decolonize movement hit the headlines.
a few of the thousands of graphics that come up in response to
a search for "anarchist graphics"
It’s taken me a long time to answer the call. Part of what distracted me was that little trip to Bahrain, and when I came back there were some family issues to worry about, as well as the sense of rootlessness and political fumbling that tends to ensue from flying 48 hours in nine days and coming back with a whole new project.
The other problem was that I couldn’t figure out what to say. What does anarchism mean to me and why am I so committed to it? It’s hard to articulate. After so many years, being an anarchist seems like breathing or cooking or being a Jew. I am because I am. But of course that’s not right. It’s not something I’ve been since I could talk – the only thing my liberal Democratic parents had in common with anarchists was their dislike of Communists (no offense to any of my Communist friends).
I started off thinking I was going to write a survey of anarchist thought, or perhaps I’d just find the best ones already written and quote from them and link to them. I searched for “anarchism” and came up with 5,720,000 million hits. “Anarchism in America” gets you 2.6 million results and “Spanish Anarchists and Soviets” nets 2.3 million. Obviously, one who sets out to write a survey of anarchist thought is going to be staring at her computer for a lot longer than I have.
So let’s start with me.
The first anarchists I knew about were probably Sacco and Vanzetti. The Haymarket martyrs came next, followed by Emma Goldman. The Kronstadt sailors and shipworkers – anarchists and left socialists slaughtered by Lenin’s Army after a rebellion in 1921 – came to my consciousness much later. So anarchism must have seemed more a path to tragedy than to liberation. After all, I grew up in the age of Communism spreading like wildfire, through Africa and Asia and heading inexorably for Latin America and burrowing its way into our own cities.
I had an instinctive hatred for capitalism, probably an outgrowth of my deep loathing for shopping. But at the same time I could not block out the cries for freedom coming from what we then called “Behind the Iron Curtain.” For if my earliest political memories were the police riots of Chicago ’68 and the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., then the Prague Spring must have been in there somewhere too.
When I went to Oberlin in 1976, there were two Communist organizations on campus – the Sparticist Youth League and the Young Socialist Alliance. Each had about four members. I couldn’t imagine being the fifth in either. For one thing, no one took them seriously, and for another, they were always looking to someone else for what to think. As my friend David recently said about me, I was just born ornery. The Sparticists believed nuclear weapons were only dangerous in the hands of capitalists, and the YSA defended the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (in pretty racist terms, as I recall).
Anarchism, as dimly as I understood it then, seemed a way to hold both social equality and individual freedom as fundamentally important. The type of anarchism I gravitated to was a radical communitarianism, in which everyone participates to the maximum extent they are able, equally sharing the labor necessary to sustain the community and the fruits of our labor, everyone’s needs are met and our wishes respected, though not always able to be granted. It was embodied, in the San Francisco I moved to in the early 1980s, by a network of collective houses, most rented, some owned, some well-stocked and spotless, others chronically roach-infested and empty of food, all welcoming to travelers from other communities coming to town for actions or cultural events, and all populated by people deeply involved in social revolution.
That network of houses nurtured and staffed a host of other collective projects, some of which predated it and others conceived within it:
The People’s Food System, which at one time encompassed the Noe Valley and Inner Sunset Community Food Stores, Other Avenues and Rainbow Grocery, as well as some direct delivery initiatives
Abalone Alliance, which organized the massive Diablo Canyon protests in 1982-85, and Vandenberg Action Coalition, which shut down two MX missile tests in 1983;
The Anarchist Coffeehouse, a rotating locale fundraiser that drew hundreds every month for ten years, featuring an open mic that sometimes drew performers like Michelle Shocked, Keith Hennessy, MDC and Tribe 8.
Martin de Porres Soup Kitchen, a Catholic Worker “free restaurant” which still serves breakfast and lunch during the week and Sunday brunch in a converted warehouse at 15th and Potrero, and Food Not Bombs, for which I made vats of potato salad every Wednesday night during its first year.
Reclaiming Collective, which teaches magic and activism, organizes rituals and pagan clusters at activist convergences.
The San Francisco Needle Exchange, for years the largest underground source of clean needles and HIV prevention information in the country.
Our Bibles in that time were The Dispossesed by Ursula LeGuin, a novel in which the anarchists have grown so powerful that they were given the moon, where they scratch out an existence in mostly peace and harmony (I was superhappy to see someone reading it recently at Bradley Manning Plaza when OccupySF was still living there), and the work of Murray Bookchin (which I never read). We read Processed World, a magazine by and for subversive office workers, and watched Born in Flames, a movie about revolutionary feminism in a post-socialist U.S.A. We made zines with word processors and press type.
We organized in opposition to the invasion of Grenada (remember that?) and U.S. aid to El Salvador, the 1984 Democratic Convention, South African apartheid and U.S. AIDS policy, the Nevada Test Site, harassment of sex workers and owner-move-in evictions (two of the three houses I lived in fell victim to gentrification evictions). Some of us were willing to work with Communists – notably the then-anti-gay RCP and Prairie Fire, some of whose members called themselves anarcho-Stalinists. Others were not. We had discussion groups, potlucks and at least one weekend retreat at Point Reyes.
We were mostly hard-core nonviolence adherents, but not surprisingly the media didn’t always see that, confusing punk fashion statements with aggressive behavior. Or maybe it’s just that anti-authoritarian youth groups tend to be seen as threatening by the establishment, regardless of their actual politics. One affinity group in 1985 or so named itself “Hundreds of Punks from San Francisco” after warnings published in the newspaper of some northern California town in advance of a planned action there.
I identify with anarchafeminism, which sees anarchist practices such as consensus decision-making as the most empowering to women, and anarchapacifism, which holds that we need to value all life, even the lives o people who don’t value the lives of others. For me, pacifism is less about the harm I might do to someone like, hypothetically, George W. Bush, than about the harm engaging in revenge violence would do to me. I don’t believe a movement that achieves liberation through militarism will be able to resist using militarism to consolidate its power, even against the people it claims to serve. One we can decide that it’s okay to get our way through violence, I think it is too easy to use that as a short-cut around the frustrating process of democracy. This doesn’t mean that all violence is wrong – personal self-defense, for example – but I believe Violence + Power = Oppression.
Posted by katinsf at 10:58 AM No comments:
Labels: activism, democracy, left-wing politics
Love the Struggle
I have had no time to blog this week. And I am a little in a funk. But today I am in the middle of a really boring job at work, so I turned on Living Room with Kris Welch at noon on KPFA, and say what you want about Kris, she is a true feminist, and she sometimes has really great feminist guests on her show. So she has this woman on, named Merle Hoffman. Never heard of her, which probably says more about me than about her. But she is awesome. She is the founder of Choices Women’s Medical Center, editor in chief of On the Issues magazine and the author of a new book, Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Boardroom . Now right off the bat, that title makes my hair stand on end. I don’t know whether she chose the title; I’ve heard that non-celebrity authors don’t usually get to pick their own titles. If she did, that’s a big problem, because no one woman brought abortion from the back alley to the board room. Her bio says she is President and CEO of Choices, and I don’t tend to love Presidents or CEOs. If I knew Ms. Hoffman, I might not think so highly of her.
Boy, there are a lot of great photos
of Flo to choose from.
This one courtesy Racialicious
But she just said something that I find so profound in this moment, when I’m having a lot of frustration because I feel like I keep spinning wheels and not getting very far. She was quoting Flo Kennedy, who was apparently a friend of hers (which makes me think I might like her after all), and she said Kennedy told her, “You have to learn to love the struggle.” And she said people ask her how she keeps going, when she never wins, and she said, “I love the struggle.” Wow, that is just the most profound thing I have heard in ages. I used to love the struggle. I used to feel excited about the political work I was doing, whether it was a confrontational direct action or a five-hour meeting. Now I tend to approach it all with a feeling of dread, of worrying that it’s not going to come off, or that it’s going to go horribly wrong, that I’ll let people down or let myself down, that no one wants to work with me, or I don’t want to work with them, that I’m trying to do things I’m not suited for or don’t have time to do things as well as I am capable of doing them. I have petty resentments, and hate myself for them.
In the end I’m nearly always glad I did whatever it was, whether it came off or not, because ultimately I know what I’m doing is right. I mean, the other day I interviewed a woman I met in Bahrain, Zainab al Khawaja, who was recently in prison for a week after an action. She was lucky to be released after a week; she could be doing a life sentence for no more than that, like her father, Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, who is currently on the 21st day of a hunger strike. I didn’t ask Zainab if she felt like it was worth it to go to jail for a week just for sitting down near Pearl Roundabout. I know some of her friends were not that happy about it, felt like she could be more useful outside. But I’m pretty sure she feels like whatever happens will be okay, as long as it’s for the struggle, because I think she loves the struggle.
A guy in my writing group, who is not political at all, just made a snide comment about one of my blogs, saying that it only reinforced his sense of the futility of going somewhere for a week and getting deported. It’s funny because I don’t have that feeling about the experience at all. It’s not like I think I made this huge difference by doing it, but clearly I made more than if I hadn’t, because now not only I but everyone I know is thinking about Bahrain, which we were not doing a month ago. So if I never do another thing about Bahrain (which is certainly not my plan) I will still think it was worth it. And I also loved it and was not asking myself questions about whether what I was doing was right. I just did what came along and knew it would work out for the best. But here, I have so many choices that it’s easy to look at other people and think they seem so much more confident about their paths than I feel.
This is the first day of International Women’s Day month, and the commitment I'm making is to do whatever will help me regain that love for the struggle.
Here's a little thing I did last week that I did not want to do, but ended up feeling really good about.
Posted by katinsf at 1:22 PM 6 comments:
Labels: #Bahrain, #WitnessBahrain, activism, feminism, feminist radio, women
cultural criticism (26)
direct action (28)
fat liberation (3)
feminist radio (10)
labor movement (6)
left crit-self-crit (33)
Aid & Abet
Angry White Kid
Feminist Looking Glass
Gaza Mom
Hannah in Palestine
het white boy
KPFA Women's Magazine Blogspot
Nicole D. Sconiers
One Finger Typing
The Crunk Feminist Collective
Anarchism Part II: The Pacifist and the Black Mas...
Confessions of an Anarchist: Part I - All About Me...
Shut Down Guantanamo
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Property Owners Invited to Learn about Local Historic District Expansion:
Wednesday, November 28 at 6:00 p.m.
The Town of Davidson invites all community members to a meeting with Historic Preservation Consultant Mary Ruffin Hanbury on Wednesday, November 28 at 6:00 p.m. at the Davidson United Methodist Church fellowship hall, located at 233 S. Main Street, to learn about the historic district designation process. She will explain the benefits of designation, discuss the process, and answer questions.
The Town of Davidson is exploring the expansion of its local historic district, which currently includes the two to three blocks that comprise downtown. The goal is to preserve and protect historically significant structures in Davidson. Historic preservation helps retain our sense of place, our small-town character, and links to our community’s past. Designating areas of town as a local historic district is beneficial to both the community and the property owner.
The current local historic district was designated in 1989. In 2009, a much larger area of “old Davidson” was designated as a National Register Historic District.
“We encourage property owners, especially those in the National Register Historic District, to attend this meeting, since neighborhoods in that district have the most intact historic integrity and will be the most likely candidates for an expanded local historic district,” said Assistant Town Manager Dawn Blobaum. “Historic preservation is one of the Davidson Board of Commissioners’ goals in their 2018-2019 Strategic Plan, so we are interested in exploring the benefits of expanding our local historic district.”
The town hired an historic district expert, Mary Ruffin Hanbury of Hanbury Preservation Consulting, to determine which neighborhoods are appropriate for local historic district designation.
A local historic district is a zoning overlay that is an amendment to the planning ordinance and must be approved by the Davidson Board of Commissioners. Prior to a vote by commissioners, a public hearing is required. The historic preservation commission and the planning board also review the overlay district and relay their comments to the board of commissioners. We are adding Mary Ruffin Hanbury’s educational session this fall, and will include an additional opportunity for citizen input in the spring, after she has completed her documentation and has a recommendation for expansion of the district.
Local historic districts protect the investments of owners and residents of historic properties. Insensitive or poorly planned development can make an area less attractive to investors and homebuyers, and thus undermine property values. In contrast, in a local historic district, historic district design guidelines and review by the historic preservation commission of major, substantial changes to a property encourages people to buy and rehabilitate properties because they know their investment is protected over time. The historic preservation commission also has the authority to delay demolition of a structure for up to one year, giving the town, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Landmarks Commission, or another entity the ability to purchase and protect the property.
Properties within local historic districts appreciate at rates greater than the local market overall as well as faster than similar, non-designated neighborhoods. Findings on this point are consistent across the country. Moreover, recent analysis shows that historic districts are also less vulnerable to market volatility from interest rate fluctuations and economic downturns.
Please contact Assistant Town Manager Dawn Blobaum at dblobaum@townofdavidson.org or 704-940-9615 with any questions.
For a map of our National Register Historic District and Frequently Asked Questions, please visit http://www.townofdavidson.org/HPFAQs
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History of McCook
McCook, Nebraska was established in 1882 when the plat for the original town was filed, however, it was not officially organized as a village until December 3, 1883. It became a second-class city in 1886, and finally a first-class city on December 21, 1933. McCook was named in honor of Alexander McDowell McCook, a Brigadier General in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
George W Norris (July 11, 1861 - September 2, 1944) who held seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate from 1903 to 1943, was a resident of McCook. Norris was the driving force behind the conversion of Nebraska's legislature to a unicameral system; in the Senate, he was a leading figure behind the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority. His house in McCook is operated as a museum by the Nebraska State Historical Society, and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Main (north-south) street through central McCook has been named Norris Avenue.
Four governors of Nebraska made their homes in McCook: Ralph G. Brooks; Frank B. Morrison; Ben Nelson, who represented Nebraska in the U.S. Senate until 2013, and who McCook's airport was renamed in his honor; and Dave Heineman, who made his home in McCook temporarily, attending East Ward Elementary School for a couple of years.
The City of McCook has a council-manager style government. Council members are Mike Gonzales (Mayor), Janet Hepp, Jerry Calvin, Jared Muehlenkamp and Gene Weedin.
The City of McCook is organized into the following different departments and offices: Administration, Building and Zoning, Police Department, Fire Department, Public Library, Public Works (which includes Airport, Ballparks, Cemeteries, Parks, Pool, Streets and Transfer Station), Senior Center (which includes Public Transit), and Utilities (which includes Water and Waste Water).
The City of McCook also hosts thirteen advisory boards and commissions for public service, public works, and the functions of the aforementioned departments and offices.
Go To McCook!
Map of City
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STREET DATE CHANGE AND ADDED FEATURES: A Walk in the Sun
VCI has pushed back the release date for A Walk in the Sun (Restored Collector's Edition) to November 24th. However, the wait should be worth it. Additional time is needed for the restoration process and for an additional bonus feature (The Fighting Men of the Texas Division Featurette).
Another added feature will be optional English subtitles. A feature that is rare for smaller labels.
ORIGINAL ANNOUNCEMENT
A Walk in the Sun (Restored Collector's Edition)
Retail: $14.99, Our: $10.99
VCI has announced what will be the definitive edition of a film that has languished in PD releases too numerous to count.
A Walk in the Sun (Restored Collector's Edition) will street on August 25th with a new digitally restored and remastered transfer. Bonus features include a video interview with Norman Lloyd and the original theatrical trailer.
It will retail for $14.99, but is available at ClassicFlix.com for only $10.99.
During the World War II Allied invasion of Italy, one of the ranking officers is killed after the platoon lands on the beach. Now Sgt.Tyne (Dana Andrews) must take over and lead the troops. The film is noted for its attempt to portray the infantryman’s experience realistically, in particular the banter and mid-1940s slang.
This WWII film was the first to use a ballad as a thematic element, a practice which, after High Noon,
would become a cliche of the 1950s. One of the best WWII films, A Walk in the Sun combines documentary-like sequences with a sharp awareness of the isolation of each soldier in the midst of
Digitally Restored and Un-cut with a New Transfer from the 35mm Negative.
Video interview with actor Norman Loyd
Original Theatrical Trailer
Posted by David K. at 7/31/2009 02:12:00 PM
Labels: A Walk in the Sun
WARNER ARCHIVE: Bordertown, 20,000 Years in Sing Sing
Three Warner Archvie titles are now up at WBShop and are also available for rent at ClassicFlix. They are:
20,000 Years in Sing Sing (Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis)
Bordertown (Paul Muni, Bette Davis)
From Hell It Came (A 50's Creature Feature with a monster that's part man, part tree.)
They're available to put in your queue, but may be a couple of weeks before they are available for shipment.
20,000 Years in Sing Sing and Bordertown were previously exclusive to Amazon. Others exclusive to Amazon that we'll carry as soon as they're up at WBShop are:
The Strawberry Blonde
Colorado Territory
Crime School
Doctor Ehrlich's Magic Bullet
The Male Animal
The Unsuspected
Look for the Silver Lining
Labels: Bette Davis, Paul Muni, Spencer Tracy, Warner Archive Collection
ARTWORK ADDED: The Wolf Man (Special Edition)
Artwork added to previous announcement. Click here.
Posted by David K. at 7/30/2009 11:17:00 AM
Labels: The Wolf Man
ARTWORK ADDED: Claudette Colbert Legacy Collection
Labels: Claudette Colbert, Universal Backlot Series
ARTWORK ADDED: The Fugitive - Season 3, Vol. 1
--Artwork added to previous announcement--
The Fugitive - Season 3, Vol. 1
The Fugitive is back! Paramount has set an October 27th release date for The Fugitive - Season 3, Vol. 1. It is expected to be a four-disc set as previous half-season releases.
It will retail for $39.99, but is available at ClassicFlix.com for only $29.99. Artwork to follow.
Labels: The Fugitive
UPDATE: Claudette Colbert Collection - PLUS SPECIAL 3-DAY PRICE
The Claudette Colbert Collection
Retail $49.98, Our: $37.99 $33.98
Three Cornered Moon (1933), Maid of Salem (1937), I Met Him in Paris (1937), Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), No Time for Love (1943) and The Egg and I (1947)
Following up on The Claudette Colbert Collection, the remaining two titles are known as well as the disc order (below).
Retail price is $49.98, and we'll have it for $37.99. However, for 3 days only (until July 31st), we'll have it for the SPECIAL LOW PRE-ORDER PRICE of $33.98. Titles will not be available as singles.
Three-Cornered Moon (1933, 77 min.)
Maid of Salem (1937, 85 min.)
I Met Him in Paris (1937, 86 min.)
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938, 85 min.)
No Time for Love (1943, 83 min.)
The Egg and I (1947, 108 min.)
Claudette Colbert - Queen of the Silver Screen
Abbott and Costello Re-Releases in October
The Best of Abbott and Costello, Vol. 1
Released five years ago, and out of print for over a year, Universal is bringing back four Best of Abbott and Costello sets on October 6th. They are all exactly as originally released and there is no sign of It Ain't Hay being released as a single (it's only available in last October's Abbott and Costello - Complete Universal Collection).
EDITORIAL NOTE: Whereas prices usually drop the longer titles are on the market, these sets are a little higher than when originally released. But the original retail of $19.98 each for the first three sets always did seem a little low for eight films. Although they will still be on DVD-18's. Volume four originally retailed for $26.98. Either way, those looking to buy are better off buying now than paying $40 - $50 for out of print sets on Amazon or Ebay.
Labels: Abbott and Costello
UNIVERSAL BACKLOT: Claudette Colbert Collection in November
Just preliminary information on it now, but Universal will release The Claudette Colbert Collection as part of their Universal Backlot Series on November 3rd.
It will be a six film set, with known titles at this point being Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, Maid of Salem, Three-Cornered Moon and The Egg and I (Egg is a re-release and can also be found on Ma & Pa Kettle, Vol. 1).
The three-disc set, on DVD-9's, will have the featurette Claudette Colbert - Queen of the Silver Screen (also released on Cleopatra) and trailers as a bonus.
Retail price is $49.98, and we'll have it for $37.99. But when we get more info on it, we'll have it for an even LOWER SPECIAL PRE-ORDER PRICE.
We'll also have it available for rent when more information is available. Stay tuned.
The Fugitive - Season 3, Vol. 1 in October
Mannix - Season 3 in October
Mannix - Season 3
Paramount has set an October 27th release date for Mannix - Season 3. The 6-disc set will include all of season three's 25 episodes. Bonus features are not likely.
Labels: Mannix
ARTWORK ADDED: North by Northwest
You got a taste of it the other day. Below is the final artwork.
North by Northwest - 50th Anniversary Edition
Retail: 24.98, Our: $19.99
North by Northwest - 50th Anniversary Edition (Blu-Ray)
In celebration of its 50th anniversary, Warner is rolling out a standard and Blu-Ray version of one of Alfred Hitchcock's most acclaimed thrillers: North by Northwest. Boasting a MILLION DOLLAR RESTORATION, and scanned in 8K resolution, these highly-anticipated releases will street on November 3rd.
Bonus features (below) include two new documentaries and a 44-page "Blu-Ray Book" exlcusive to the Blu release. The standard version is a 2-disc release.
Also below is Warner's official press release.
WARNER PRESS RELEASE
Burbank, Calif., July 20, 2009 – On November 3, Warner Home Video celebrates the 50th anniversary of North by Northwest, Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock's sleek masterwork, with spectacularly restored 50th Anniversary Editions on Blu-ray and DVD, newly remastered in 1080p from original VistaVision film elements.
The arrival of North by Northwest on Blu-ray is a landmark event in home video history, as it marks the very first of the famed director’s films to become available on this state-of-the-art format. Accordingly, the film has received a meticulous restoration and remastering especially for this occasion with Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging scanning the original VistaVision production elements in 8K resolution. The resulting presentation reveals a depth of field and clarity never before possible, only serving to heighten every thrill-packed moment of this beloved classic.
Starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, co-starring Jessie Royce Landis, Leo G. Carroll and Martin Landau, the stylish, action-packed espionage caper was written by Ernest Lehman, with music by Bernard Herrmann. Nominated for three Academy Awards® including Best Writing, Film Editing and Art Direction, the film was lauded as #4 on AFI's ”100 Years…100 Thrills” and selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
North by Northwest will be available for the first time in premium Blu-ray Book packaging, selling for $34.99 SRP and as a Special Edition DVD, retailing for $24.98 SRP. Both versions boast two new documentaries. The Master’s Touch: Hitchcock’s Signature Style consists of interviews, clips, and behind-the-scenes footage to reveal what defines the unmistakable Hitchcock style. In North by Northwest: One for the Ages today’s top directors Guillermo del Toro, William Friedkin, Curtis Hanson, and Francis Lawrence share their interpretations on the film’s importance and its influence on their own work. The Blu-ray Book also contains 44 pages full of photos, film facts and ‘insider information.’
Feature-Length Audio Commentary by Ernest Lehman
The Master’s Touch: Hitchcock’s Signature Style Documentary (NEW)
North by Northwest: One for the Ages Documentary (NEW)
Behind-the-Scenes Documentary Destination Hitchcock: The Making-Of North By Northwest - Hosted By Eva Marie Saint and Featuring Martin Landau, Screenwriter Ernest Lehman, Patricia Hitchcock and Others
Stills Gallery
Music-Only Audio Track Showcasing Bernard Herrmann's Score
Hitchcock Theatrical Trailers
Labels: Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, North by Northwest
Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive in September
Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive
Retail $19.99, Our: $14.99
The Black Cat (1941), Man Made Monster (1941), Horror Island (1941), Night Monster (1942), Captive Wild Woman (1943)
Not exactly new to DVD, but newly available for purhcase is Universal's Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive. It has been available for rent ever since Best Buy released it as an exclusive back in October of 2007, but this marks the first time it will be available in a general release.
The two-disc will street on September 15th and retail for $19.99, but is available at Classicflix.com for only $14.99. There are no bonus features.
From the studio that created the horror genre comes five terrifying films that will send chills down your spine and bring terror to your heart in the Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive! Unearthed from the vaults and on DVD for the very first time, Universal Pictures invites you to journey through fog-filled moors, into haunted mansions and through secret hallways to meet a chilling collection of mad scientists, crazed circus performers, mysterious butlers, maniacal killers and one very ape-like woman! Prepare yourself for hours of pure terror starring some of the most iconic actors in the history of horror, including Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr.
The Black Cat (1941, 71 min)
Bela Lugosi and Basil Rathbone star in this mystery about a group of greedy heirs stuck in a creepy mansion where, one by one, both cats and people turn up dead.
Man Made Monster (1941, 60 min)
When a mad scientist transforms a carnival performer (Lon Chaney Jr.) into a murderous monster, he creates a path of destruction leading to an edge-of-you-seat climax!
Horror Island (1941, 61 min)
What started out as a treasure-making scheme ends up deadly for a group of people stuck in a seemingly haunted castle with a killer known only as "The Phantom."
Night Monster (1942, 73 min)
Bela Lugosi stars in this horrific tale filled with strange characters, secret passages, dark storms and a murderer who's mastered the art of "mind over matter."
Captive Wild Woman (1943, 61 min)
A mad scientist turns an ape into a beautiful, but deadly, woman (Acquanetta) in this frightening film featuring groundbreaking make-up effects.
Labels: Univeral Horror
North by Northwest - 50th Anniversary Edition (SD & Blu) in November
WARNER ARCHIVE: Rhapsody (1954)
The titles just keep trickling in at WBShop as they have listed Rhapsody (1954) as available. It is now up for rent, but may be a couple of weeks before it's available for shipment.
FYI - WBShop has a sale going on now on the original 150 titles released as part of their Warner Archive Collection. 10 DVDs for $99. Get 'em now as the sale ends tomorrow at midnight.
Elizabeth Taylor strives for sweet harmony as a privileged young woman who must choose between the two musicians she loves. She first falls for a devoted violinist (Vittorio Gassman) and follows him when he goes off to musical studies abroad. There, she also meets a talented pianist (John Ericson) who tries to play the initially uninterested lady into his heart.
As events and emotions unfold, the inevitable conflict arises: which man does she truly love, which one is better for her – and could both be the same person? Smoothly directed by musical movie maestro Charles Vidor, filmed in such romantic locales as Paris, Zurich, St. Moritz and Rome and showcasing vibrant renditions of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Beethoven concertos, Rhapsody is a moving and melodic treat.
WARNER ARCHIVE: Deep Valley (1947)
WBShop has listed Deep Valley (1947) as available. The fugitive drama stars Ida Lupino and Dane Clark. It is now available for rent, but may be a couple of weeks before it's available for shipment.
Libby Saul (Ida Lupino) was raised in the Deep Valley. Isolated on a farm with her bitter parents, her only friend a devoted dog, Libby knows loneliness too well.
Then a crew of convicts arrives to build a road and Libby is fascinated by the strangers, especially a good-looking hothead named Barry (Dane Clark). When Barry escapes his work gang, Libby offers him shelter -- a gesture of kindness that awakens her timid soul. Lupino gives further proof of her remarkable dramatic range with a sensitive portrayal of an awkward, stuttering girl transformed by love. And director Jean Negulesco (Johnny Belinda), with a painterly appreciation of light and shadow, captures the wild beauty of the film’s Big Sur locations.
WARNER ARCHIVE: The Story of Three Loves & The Unfaithful
WBShop has listed two more Warner Archive titles as available. The 1953 all-star cast segment drama The Story of Three Loves (1953) and the drama thriller The Man I Love (1947) with Ann Sheridan and Lew Ayers.
Both are now available for rent, but may be a couple of weeks before they are available for shipment.
BLU CHRISTMAS: Charlie Brown & Grinch in October
A Charlie Brown Christmas (Blu-Ray)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (Blu-Ray)
More Blu-Ray releases to announce as Warner has set an October 6th release date for A Charlie Brown Christmas (Blu-Ray) and How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (Blu-Ray).
Specs are not forthcoming, but we assume that the SD bonus features will be carried over to these releases.
Each will retail for $29.99, but are available at Classicflix.com for only $23.99. Artwork below, although the Grinch artwork looks to be tentative.
Labels: A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas
STREET DATE CHANGE AND ADDED FEATURES: A Walk in t...
WARNER ARCHIVE: Bordertown, 20,000 Years in Sing S...
ARTWORK ADDED: Claudette Colbert Legacy Collection...
UPDATE: Claudette Colbert Collection - PLUS SPECIA...
UNIVERSAL BACKLOT: Claudette Colbert Collection in...
Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive in Septembe...
North by Northwest - 50th Anniversary Edition (SD ...
WARNER ARCHIVE: The Story of Three Loves & The Unf...
My Fair Lady in October
MORE BLU: Miracle on 34th Street (Blu-Ray) in Octo...
Gojira (Blu-Ray) in September
Casablanca (Blu-Ray) - Single Disc Version in Sept...
The Wolf Man (Special Edition) in September
Tales of Wells Fargo - Out Next Week
DVD Release Score Card - Second Quarter
WARNER ARCHIVE: 13 More in Al Jolson / Elizabeth T...
Saturday Morning Cartoons - 1960's, Vol. 2 in Octo...
VCI: British Cinema - Renown Pictures Comedy Colle...
Laramie - The Final Season in September
The San Francisco Story, Treasure of Ruby Hills in...
WWII Double Feature: Jungle Patrol & The Silent Ra...
SERIAL: Radio Patrol from VCI in August
A Walk in the Sun (Restored Collector's Edition) i...
WARNER ARCHIVE: Al Jolson's Mammy (1930)
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Quaternary Research (2)
Origin of last-glacial loess in the western Yukon-Tanana Upland, central Alaska, USA
Daniel R. Muhs, Jeffrey S. Pigati, James R. Budahn, Gary L. Skipp, E. Arthur Bettis, Britta Jensen
Journal: Quaternary Research / Volume 89 / Issue 3 / May 2018
Loess is widespread over Alaska, and its accumulation has traditionally been associated with glacial periods. Surprisingly, loess deposits securely dated to the last glacial period are rare in Alaska, and paleowind reconstructions for this time period are limited to inferences from dune orientations. We report a rare occurrence of loess deposits dating to the last glacial period, ~19 ka to ~12 ka, in the Yukon-Tanana Upland. Loess in this area is very coarse grained (abundant coarse silt), with decreases in particle size moving south of the Yukon River, implying that the drainage basin of this river was the main source. Geochemical data show, however, that the Tanana River valley to the south is also a likely distal source. The occurrence of last-glacial loess with sources to both the south and north is explained by both regional, synoptic-scale winds from the northeast and opposing katabatic winds that could have developed from expanded glaciers in both the Brooks Range to the north and the Alaska Range to the south. Based on a comparison with recent climate modeling for the last glacial period, seasonality of dust transport may also have played a role in bringing about contributions from both northern and southern sources.
Summary of the Snowmastodon Project Special Volume A high-elevation, multi-proxy biotic and environmental record of MIS 6–4 from the Ziegler Reservoir fossil site, Snowmass Village, Colorado, USA
Ian M. Miller, Jeffrey S. Pigati, R. Scott Anderson, Kirk R. Johnson, Shannon A. Mahan, Thomas A. Ager, Richard G. Baker, Maarten Blaauw, Jordon Bright, Peter M. Brown, Bruce Bryant, Zachary T. Calamari, Paul E. Carrara, Michael D. Cherney, John R. Demboski, Scott A. Elias, Daniel C. Fisher, Harrison J. Gray, Danielle R. Haskett, Jeffrey S. Honke, Stephen T. Jackson, Gonzalo Jiménez-Moreno, Douglas Kline, Eric M. Leonard, Nathaniel A. Lifton, Carol Lucking, H. Gregory McDonald, Dane M. Miller, Daniel R. Muhs, Stephen E. Nash, Cody Newton, James B. Paces, Lesley Petrie, Mitchell A. Plummer, David F. Porinchu, Adam N. Rountrey, Eric Scott, Joseph J.W. Sertich, Saxon E. Sharpe, Gary L. Skipp, Laura E. Strickland, Richard K. Stucky, Robert S. Thompson, Jim Wilson
Journal: Quaternary Research / Volume 82 / Issue 3 / November 2014
In North America, terrestrial records of biodiversity and climate change that span Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 are rare. Where found, they provide insight into how the coupling of the ocean–atmosphere system is manifested in biotic and environmental records and how the biosphere responds to climate change. In 2010–2011, construction at Ziegler Reservoir near Snowmass Village, Colorado (USA) revealed a nearly continuous, lacustrine/wetland sedimentary sequence that preserved evidence of past plant communities between ~140 and 55 ka, including all of MIS 5. At an elevation of 2705 m, the Ziegler Reservoir fossil site also contained thousands of well-preserved bones of late Pleistocene megafauna, including mastodons, mammoths, ground sloths, horses, camels, deer, bison, black bear, coyotes, and bighorn sheep. In addition, the site contained more than 26,000 bones from at least 30 species of small animals including salamanders, otters, muskrats, minks, rabbits, beavers, frogs, lizards, snakes, fish, and birds. The combination of macro- and micro-vertebrates, invertebrates, terrestrial and aquatic plant macrofossils, a detailed pollen record, and a robust, directly dated stratigraphic framework shows that high-elevation ecosystems in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado are climatically sensitive and varied dramatically throughout MIS 5.
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Antarctic Science (3)
A roadmap for Antarctic and Southern Ocean science for the next two decades and beyond
M.C. Kennicutt, S.L. Chown, J.J. Cassano, D. Liggett, L.S. Peck, R. Massom, S.R. Rintoul, J. Storey, D.G. Vaughan, T.J. Wilson, I. Allison, J. Ayton, R. Badhe, J. Baeseman, P.J. Barrett, R.E. Bell, N. Bertler, S. Bo, A. Brandt, D. Bromwich, S.C. Cary, M.S. Clark, P. Convey, E.S. Costa, D. Cowan, R. Deconto, R. Dunbar, C. Elfring, C. Escutia, J. Francis, H.A. Fricker, M. Fukuchi, N. Gilbert, J. Gutt, C. Havermans, D. Hik, G. Hosie, C. Jones, Y.D. Kim, Y. Le Maho, S.H. Lee, M. Leppe, G. Leitchenkov, X. Li, V. Lipenkov, K. Lochte, J. López-Martínez, C. Lüdecke, W. Lyons, S. Marenssi, H. Miller, P. Morozova, T. Naish, S. Nayak, R. Ravindra, J. Retamales, C.A. Ricci, M. Rogan-Finnemore, Y. Ropert-Coudert, A.A. Samah, L. Sanson, T. Scambos, I.R. Schloss, K. Shiraishi, M.J. Siegert, J.C. Simões, B. Storey, M.D. Sparrow, D.H. Wall, J.C. Walsh, G. Wilson, J.G. Winther, J.C. Xavier, H. Yang, W.J. Sutherland
Journal: Antarctic Science / Volume 27 / Issue 1 / February 2015
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2014, pp. 3-18
Antarctic and Southern Ocean science is vital to understanding natural variability, the processes that govern global change and the role of humans in the Earth and climate system. The potential for new knowledge to be gained from future Antarctic science is substantial. Therefore, the international Antarctic community came together to ‘scan the horizon’ to identify the highest priority scientific questions that researchers should aspire to answer in the next two decades and beyond. Wide consultation was a fundamental principle for the development of a collective, international view of the most important future directions in Antarctic science. From the many possibilities, the horizon scan identified 80 key scientific questions through structured debate, discussion, revision and voting. Questions were clustered into seven topics: i) Antarctic atmosphere and global connections, ii) Southern Ocean and sea ice in a warming world, iii) ice sheet and sea level, iv) the dynamic Earth, v) life on the precipice, vi) near-Earth space and beyond, and vii) human presence in Antarctica. Answering the questions identified by the horizon scan will require innovative experimental designs, novel applications of technology, invention of next-generation field and laboratory approaches, and expanded observing systems and networks. Unbiased, non-contaminating procedures will be required to retrieve the requisite air, biota, sediment, rock, ice and water samples. Sustained year-round access to Antarctica and the Southern Ocean will be essential to increase winter-time measurements. Improved models are needed that represent Antarctica and the Southern Ocean in the Earth System, and provide predictions at spatial and temporal resolutions useful for decision making. A co-ordinated portfolio of cross-disciplinary science, based on new models of international collaboration, will be essential as no scientist, programme or nation can realize these aspirations alone.
Pristine Antarctica: threats and protection
K.A. Hughes, S.C. Cary, D.A. Cowan, C. Lovejoy, W.F. Vincent, A. Wilmotte
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 January 2013, p. 1
Co-variation in soil biodiversity and biogeochemistry in northern and southern Victoria Land, Antarctica
J.E. Barrett, R.A. Virginia, D.H. Wall, S.C. Cary, B.J. Adams, A.L. Hacker, J.M. Aislabie
Journal: Antarctic Science / Volume 18 / Issue 4 / December 2006
Data from six sites in Victoria Land (72–77°S) investigating co-variation in soil communities (microbial and invertebrate) with biogeochemical properties showthe influence of soil properties on habitat suitability varied among local landscapes as well as across climate gradients. Species richness of metazoan invertebrates (Nematoda, Tardigrada and Rotifera) was similar to previous descriptions in this region, though identification of three cryptic nematode species of Eudorylaimus through DNA analysis contributed to the understanding of controls over habitat preferences for individual species. Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis profiles revealed unexpectedly high diversity of bacteria. Distribution of distinct bacterial communities was associated with specific sites in northern and southern Victoria Land, as was the distribution of nematode and tardigrade species. Variation in soil metazoan communities was related to differences in soil organic matter, while bacterial diversity and community structure were not strongly correlated with any single soil property. There were no apparent correlations between metazoan and bacterial diversity, suggesting that controls over distribution and habitat suitability are different for bacterial and metazoan communities. Our results imply that top-down controls over bacterial diversity mediated by their metazoan consumers are not significant determinants of bacterial community structure and biomass in these ecosystems.
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Flashback Friday: BLUE
August 1, 2014 montelds Billy Corgan, Flashback, Gish, Pisces Iscariot, Smashing Pumpkins 0
Blue can originally be found on Lull and Pisces Iscariot.
Billy wrote in the original Pisces Iscariot notes that Blue was an outtake from Gish and that ” i thought about using an acoustic version of the song for this album, but it seemed silly to have a different version of an unknown song. maybe someday”. That ‘someday’ arrived when Gish Deluxe reissue was released.
In the reissue of PI Billy wrote that he didn’t want to put that song on Pisces and that “this song at its best was an acoustic song, but having been recorded for gish, it was adapted to a heavier frame which the churlish melody couldn’t support.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpLWt5i3n5c]
Billy Corgan reveals who will be “playing some bass” at his Ravinia show
New “Memorabilia Monday” post reveals future releases.
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In Oakland, Trombone Shorty & Chili Peppers Create Red Hot Groove
Live, Trombone Shorty
By Yoshi Kato I Mar. 15, 2017
Trombone Shorty opened for the alt-rock group Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California, on March 11.
(Photo: Stuart Brinin )
The category now known as “Rising Star” in the annual DownBeat Critics Poll once went by the moniker “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition.” Judging from their reception March 11 at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue has comfortably ascended to the status of Talent Receiving Wider Recognition.
As the support act for veteran alternative rockers Red Hot Chili Peppers (RHCP), Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews and his cross-genre sextet gave a funk-fueled performance for a capacity crowd at the home of the National Basketball Association’s Golden State Warriors. Throughout his 35-minute set, the December 2011 DownBeat cover story subject charmed a receptive audience.
Andrews and his musical crew are no strangers to big stages. In addition to participating in the Bonnaroo Music Festival and both the Coachella and Outside Lands Music and Arts Festivals, the high energy band was the middle act on a package tour last year that was headlined by Hall & Oates and opened by the late Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings.
After a solo multimedia set by drummer and founding RHCP member Jack Irons, Orleans Avenue drummer Joey Peebles helped usher in the band’s first number, the full-blooded “Backatown,” from the 2010 Verve Forecast album of the same name. The song also featured a biting electric guitar riff courtesy of Pete Murano that may have raised eyebrows at a traditional jazz festival, but felt right at home as part of RHCP’s 51-city, 58-date North American tour. The army of rotating spotlights projecting out from the back of the bandstand certainly helped set the supersized mood.
Andrews presented muscular lines on his trombone, receiving cheers upon completion of his well-wrought solo as he hoisted the instrument above his head. Tenor saxophonist B.K. Jackson and baritone saxophonist Dan Oestreicher combined to form a “horn section of doom” with their deep tones permeating throughout the cavernous venue. The three frontline musicians concluded the piece by playing a tightly unified horn riff together along with Peebles’ beat, recalling the two-saxophone-and-drummer trio Moon Hooch.
On “The Craziest Thing,” from the album For True (Verve Forecast, 2011), Anderson showed off his skills as a vocalist. Sporting sunglasses, a white t-shirt and jeans, he projected a casual yet distinct charisma. Oestreicher and Jackson broke into some synchronized moves that added to the sense of showmanship and fun. At the song’s conclusion, Andrews declared that he and his bandmates came from New Orleans to party, and those in attendance responded approvingly.
With a nod to his hometown, Andrews then broke into The Meters’ “Ain’t No Use” and made his way to stage right to serenade fans in true front-man fashion. He encouraged Jackson during the tenor saxophonist’s solo with the house responding in kind before the three horns expertly interpolated the distinct melody from singer/songwriter Susanne Vega’s early ’90s pop hit “Tom’s Diner.”
For “One Night Only (The March),” from Backatown, the bandleader temporarily switched to trumpet and was equally at ease. His extended solo incorporated circular breathing and concluded with dazzling upper register trills—each to the delight of the increasingly raucous assembly.
Though it only received a few whelps of recognition, Green Day’s “Brain Stew” was a perfect selection for the occasion: The East Bay punk rock trio (whose songbook was the basis for the jukebox musical American Idiot) has co-headlined its hometown Oracle Arena, back in 2002 when it was known as The Arena in Oakland, and will be headlining the neighboring Oakland Coliseum in August.
Andrews’ slithery trombone was a natural substitute for Green Day lead vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong’s yowling vocal style. The band dove deeper into the alternative music repertoire by segueing into agit-rockers Rage Against the Machine’s “Bulls On Parade.”
Closing with “Do To Me,” the three horn players were situated off to stage right, facing one another in a triangle formation and playing unaccompanied until Peebles joined on tambourine. Bass guitarist Mike Bass-Bailey locked in a hypnotic groove that propelled a Murano solo. Judging from this and other jazz festival appearances, Trombone Shorty and his bandmates in Orleans Avenue are comfortable in front of many a different audience.
Just as Andrews and company are a reflection of their experiences and upbringing in New Orleans, so too is RHCP a product of metropolitan Los Angeles. The group exudes L.A. pride, from the Lakers logo adorning bassist Flea’s ax to the lyrics of their 1992 hit “Under The Bridge,” which Andrews and his band have quoted in previous live performances.
Intriguingly, RHCP opened their set with a recording of Eric Dolphy performing “God Bless the Child.” Unfortunately, Andrews and his saxophonists didn’t sit in at all. The horns might have been a nice addition to RHCP’s popular “Californication” or cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground”—their breakthrough hit from 1989.
There were other opportunities for jazz hybridity. RHCP touring keyboardist Nate Walcott is also a trumpeter and a Glenn Miller Orchestra alumnus. A former Jazz Studies Major at DePaul University, he could have provided some colorful extended harmonies.
Bass guitarist Flea and drummer Chad Smith make for a notable funk-rock rhythm section, with the former at times jumping around like a younger Verdine White (of Earth, Wind & Fire fame) and slapping like Marcus Miller. The group’s selections of Robert Johnson’s “They’re Red Hot,” Sly & The Family Stone’s “Family Affair” and Funkadelic’s “What Is Soul,” in turn, may have had a certain appeal to the “blues and beyond” segment of DownBeat’s readership. DB
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The city of Hvar is a unique fusion of luxurious Mediterranean nature, rich cultural and historical heritage, and mundane, tourist present.
The island of Hvar is located in the Adriatic Sea, off the Dalmatian coast. To the north, the island of Brač lies across the Hvar Channel (Hvarski kanal), to the west is Vis, separated by the Vis Channel, and to the south Korčula lies across the Korčula Channel, while the Pelješac Peninsula is across the Neretva Channel. The eastern end of Hvar is just 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) from the mainland. Along the southern coast of the island there are several smaller islands, notably the Paklinski islands at the western end and Šćedro island, while Zečevo island lies off the north coast.
It is situated in picturesque nature, facing the southern, side of the world that has given it all Mediterranean attraction and cheerfulness; facing sea, that gave it splendid and repeatable history, Hvar is an inexhaustible treasury of the scenery, atmosphere and adventure.
Its name derives from the Greek name for island and town, that stood where today Stari Grad (Hvar became an island’s centre in 13th century) stands - PHAROS.
Hvar gained glory and power during middle ages being an important port within the Venetian, naval empire. Today, it is centre of island’s tourism and one of the favourite destinations in Dalmatian riviera - a town of smiling and courteous people, who are almost only dedicated to tourism.
Hvar visited celebrities such as Emperor Franz Joseph I, Clint Eastwood, Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, Jodie Foster, Eva Longoria, Gwyneth Paltrow, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jack Nicholson Kevin Spacey, Sean Connery, Daniel Craig, Pierce Brosnan, Andre Agassi, Jennifer Capriati, Gabriela Sabatini, David Beckham, Bernie Ecclestone, Eddie Jordan, Michael Schumacher, Bill Gates, Roman Abramovich, Beyonce, Jay-Z and others.
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Pentecost—The second in importance of the great Jewish feasts. The term, adopted from the Greek-speaking Jews (Tob. 2:1; II Mac. 12:32; Josephus, "Ant.", III, x, 6; etc.) alludes to the fact that the feast, known in the Old Testament as "the feast of harvest of the firstfruits" (Exodus 23:16), "the feast of weeks" (Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:10: 2 Chronicles 8:13), the "day of firstfruits" (Numbers 28:26), and called by later Jews 'asereth or 'asartha (solemn assembly, and probably "closing festival", Pentecost being the closing festival of the harvest and of the Paschal season), fell on the fiftieth day from "the next day after the sabbath" of the Passover (Leviticus 23:11). The interpretation of this passage was early disputed and at the time of Jesus Christ two opinions touching the exact day of the feast were held. Most doctors (and the bulk of the people) understood (on the force of Leviticus 23:7) the sabbath spoken of in verse 11 to be the first day of the unleavened bread, Nisan 15; whereas the Sadducees (later also the Karaites) held that the weekly sabbath falling during the Passover festivities was meant (Talmud, Treat. Menach., x, 1-3; Chagiga, ii, 4). Which opinion is more in accordance with the natural meaning of the passage, we shall leave undecided; the dissent is long since over, all Jews celebrating the Pentecost on the fiftieth day after Nisan 16. As the offering of a sheaf of barley marked the beginning of the harvest season, so the offering of loaves made from the new wheat marked its completion. This is no proof that Pentecost was originally a mere nature-festival; but it shows that the Mosaic legislation had in view an agricultural population, to whose special needs and disposition it was perfectly adapted. Since the close of Biblical times, an entirely new significance, never so much as hinted at in Scripture, has been attached by the Jews to the feast: the Pentecost is held to commemorate the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, which, according to Exodus 19:1, took place on the fiftieth day after the departure from Egypt. This view, admitted by several Fathers of the Church (St. Jerome, "Epist.", lxxviii, 12, P.L., XLII, 707; St. Augustine, Reply to Faustus XXXII.12; St. Leo, "De Pent. Serm.", I, P.L., LIV, 400), has passed into some modern Jewish Liturgical books, where the feast is described as "the day of the giving of the Law" (Maimon. More Neb., iii, 41).
In accordance with this interpretation, modern Jews pass the eve in reading the Law and other appropriate Scriptures. Among them the feast lasts two days, a tradition dating from the difficulty which the Jews of the Diaspora found in ascertaining exactly what day the month begins in Palestine (Talmud, Treat. Pesach., lii, 1; Rosh hashsh., v, 1). On the day of Pentecost no servile work was allowed (Leviticus 23:21). The oblation consisted of two loaves of leavened bread made from two-tenths of an ephah (about seven quarts and a fifth) of flour from the new wheat (Leviticus 23:17; Exodus 24:22). The leavened bread could not be placed on the altar (Leviticus 2:11), and was merely waved (D.V., "lifted"; see OFFERINGS); one loaf was given to the High Priest, the other was divided among the priests who ate it within the sacred precincts. Two yearling lambs were also offered as a peace-offering, and a buck-goat for sin, together with a holocaust of seven lambs without blemish, one calf, and two rams (Leviticus 23:18-19). According to Numbers 28:26-31, the number of victims to be offered in holocaust on that day differs from the above. The Jews of later times regarded the two enactments as supplementary (Jos., "Ant.", III, X, 6; Talmud, Treat. Menach., iv, 2, 5). The feast was an occasion for social and joyful gatherings (Deuteronomy 16:11) and we may infer from the New Testament that it was, like the Passover, attended at Jerusalem by a great homecoming of the Jews from all parts of the world (Acts 2:5-11).
A feast of the universal Church which commemorates the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, fifty days after the Resurrection of Christ, on the ancient Jewish festival called the "feast of weeks" or Pentecost (Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:10). Whitsunday is so called from the white garments which were worn by those who were baptised during the vigil; Pentecost ("Pfingsten" in German), is the Greek for "the fiftieth" (day after Easter).
Whitsunday, as a Christian feast, dates back to the first century, although there is no evidence that it was observed, as there is in the case of Easter; the passage in 1 Corinthians 16:8 probably refers to the Jewish feast. This is not surprising, for the feast, originally of only one day's duration, fell on a Sunday; besides it was so closely bound up with Easter that it appears to be not much more than the termination of Paschal tide.
That Whitsunday belongs to the Apostolic times is stated in the seventh of the (interpolated) fragments attributed to St. Irenaeus. In Tertullian (On Baptism 19) the festival appears as already well established. The Gallic pilgrim gives a detailed account of the solemn manner in which it was observed at Jerusalem ("Peregrin. Silviae", ed. Geyer, iv). The Apostolic Constitutions (Book V, Part 20) say that Pentecost lasts one week, but in the West it was not kept with an octave until at quite a late date. It appears from Berno of Reichenau (d. 1048) that it was a debatable point in his time whether Whitsunday ought to have an octave. At present it is of equal rank with Easter Sunday. During the vigil formerly the catechumens who remained from Easter were baptized, consequently the ceremonies on Saturday are similar to those on Holy Saturday.
The office of Pentecost has only one Nocturn during the entire week. At Terce the "Veni Creator" is sung instead of the usual hymn, because at the third hour the Holy Ghost descended. The Mass has a Sequence, "Veni Sancte Spiritus" the authorship of which by some is ascribed to King Robert of France. The colour of the vestments is red, symbolic of the love of the Holy Ghost or of the tongues of fire. Formerly the law courts did not sit during the entire week, and servile work was forbidden. A Council of Constance (1094) limited this prohibition to the first three days of the week. The Sabbath rest of Tuesday was abolished in 1771, and in many missionary territories also that of Monday; the latter was abrogated for the entire Church by Pius X in 1911. Still, as at Easter, the liturgical rank of Monday and Tuesday of Pentecost week is a Double of the First Class.
In Italy it was customary to scatter rose leaves from the ceiling of the churches to recall the miracle of the fiery tongues; hence in Sicily and elsewhere in Italy Whitsunday is called Pascha rosatum. The Italian name Pascha rossa comes from the red colours of the vestments used on Whitsunday. In France it was customary to blow trumpets during Divine service, to recall the sound of the mighty wind which accompanied the Descent of the Holy Ghost. In England the gentry amused themselves with horse races. The Whitsun Ales or merrymakings are almost wholly obsolete in England. At these ales the Whitsun plays were performed. At Vespers of Pentecost in the Oriental Churches the extraordinary service of genuflexion, accompanied by long poetical prayers and psalms, takes place. (Cf. Maltzew, "Fasten-und Blumen Triodion", p. 898 where the entire Greco-Russian service is given; cf. also Baumstark, "Jacobit. Fest brevier", p. 255.) On Pentecost the Russians carry flowers and green branches in their hands.
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Memoirs & Thoughts of an Oklahoman Reporter — Part 1
We've heard a good bit about the Oklahoman in recent months and years — most recently that its chief editor, Ed Kelley, is leaving (and by now that's past tense) to become editor of the Washington Times (which item has been roundly discussed in this thread at OkcTalk.com). During the past two or so years, the Oklahoman has let go many of its employees due to economic reasons, but, more recently, scuttlebutt is that some Oklahoman employees are leaving by their own choice for reasons other than being let go by the paper. Like most locked secrets, the public will probably never know for sure what's going on at the Oklahoman, or why — or, at least, it may take some time for that kind of thing to hash itself out.
But there is a time in the past that such matters may not be quite as obscure — or, at least, some gleanings of the inner sanctum might be gleaned and evaluated.
In this regard, I'm pleased to present this guest article by Jim Kyle and also a brief interview at his home in Oklahoma City on June 15, 2011. Mr. Kyle was a reporter at the Oklahoma City Times and then the Daily Oklahoman from 1955-1959, and, if I get lucky, I'll hopefully have another interview and another article (hence my optimistic title) before this is all done.
Note: Jim has now done 3 articles. Click here for his second on prohibition repeal and click here for his third on the Korean War.
Jim Kyle in 1957
Credit Cliff King, Photographer
Introduction Jim's Article Interview
INTRODUCTION. Jim is a 1948 graduate of Classen High School and a 1952 graduate of the University of Oklahoma, School of Journalism. Before presenting Jim's article, I'll make a few comments of my own based on my review of the Oklahoman's archives from 1950-1959. At the right is the first piece that I found, describing awards that Jim received at the annual convention of Kappa Alpha Mu, an honorary photo-journalism fraternity, during his senior year at the University of Oklahoma — doubtless a good way to start a career in journalism. However, as you will read below, there was a war on then, too, the Korean "Conflict," as it was called, and that took his initial attention upon being graduated from O.U.
My review of the Oklahoman's archives during his tenure with the Oklahoma City Times and then the Daily Oklahoman show a fairly wide diversity of subjects that Jim would be asked to cover. It appears that he was the principal reporter on seriously bad weather stories both locally and around the state — tornadoes, floods, severe winds, heat waves, and the like, but the stories I found most engaging were on other topics, and I've copied a few representative articles for your perusal — the Aurora Borealis/Northern Lights being visible in the city and state and its effects upon telecommunications; a pair of articles in December 1957 about how the Soviets use chess as a means of developing its scientific community (very important in the post-Sputnik technological push in this country) and another reporting on the U.S. State Department's refusal to allow a Russian chess champion to participate at a tourney in Dallas, the entire city apparently being deemed off-limits to Russians; local high school rocket clubs in 1958; feature article on a local short wave radio fellow and his listening in round-the-world in the pre-internet era; a major piece on the 30th anniversary of Oklahoma City's 1st humongous gusher; and, near the end of his tenure at the Oklahoman, a February 1959 piece about a local pastor's criticism of proponents' tactics concerning the repeal of Prohibition. Good reading, all.
I don't know Jim well enough to hazard an educated guess, but my gut reaction from meeting with him and reading his piece below is that Jim Kyle, first and foremost, considers himself a journalist through and through and that his stint with newspapers during 1954-1959 evidences where where his heart really lies, life and economic choices notwithstanding. Actually, one might say that this article constitutes a piece of Jim's re-entry into the journalism world, to the extent that can legitimately be said about publishing in a citizen blog. But, if I owned a newspaper, I'd surely want to include the fine article below.
JIM KYLE'S 1ST ARTICLE. Without further ado, below is the (first) guest article by Jim Kyle. I didn't change a single word — no need existed since it was immaculately put together from start to finish. (I confess to having the need to look up the word, "miscreant" toward the end of the article — and of course its meaning was a perfect fit.)
June 19 edit: without withdrawing in any what I just said, on a closer read I did come across a few content errors and, upon asking Jim how he would like such things to be handled if at all, his suggestion was, "I learned more than 50 years ago that every writer needs a good editor in the shadows, to pick up such mistakes and fix them without changing the basic meaning or writing style. I use the 'ed note' often in the magazine, to add commentary and make corrections. I embed them in the story, but put them in parentheses and as separate paragraphs, all in italics, starting with 'Ed. note:' and ending with my initials, all to make it obvious that it's not part of the original article. I think it adds a personal touch to the whole thing without impacting the integrity of the article itself." This approach will, therefore, be followed below, and with no disrespect to the author intended.
MEMOIRS & THOUGHTS OF A 1950s
OKLAHOMAN REPORTER — PART 1
By JIM KYLE
Doug has asked me to help record some of the history of Oklahoma City's newspapers, since I was a small part of that industry for a few years in the mid-50s. From 1955 to 1959, I was an employee of OPubCo; for the first year I was a copy editor "on the rim” at the Oklahoma City Times, which was the afternoon edition. At that point I moved to The Daily Oklahoman, first as their rewrite man but later became a general assignment reporter, and for the last year of that stay had the police beat. To misquote Charles Dickens, it was the best of times and the worst of times.
To put it all in perspective I have to tell you a bit about myself. While in high school (Classen) I fell in love with photography, and set as my life goal becoming a magazine photographer. To this end I majored in journalism at OU, and while there served as the Oklahoman's "campus correspondent” photographer. Upon graduation in 1952, I almost immediately went into the army as a second lieutenant of artillery, and thence to Korea. When I came home in 1954, I worked for a few months as a retail camera salesman and then got a call from The Daily Ardmoreite, Ardmore's daily newspaper. They needed a reporter who could also handle a camera. I got the job. After a year, I returned to Oklahoma City.
A reporter's life on a small daily newspaper in the mid-50s was much like military service in Korea during the truce talks: days of boredom punctuated by moments of extreme excitement. While at Ardmore, I discovered my love of active reporting — and also learned the seamy inside aspect of the publishing business. First and foremost, it is a business, and the purpose isn't to serve the public, but to make a profit for the owners.
That often leads to compromise of one's conscience. It's not very much like the image presented by Perry White of The Daily Planet in the Superman strips. I learned early that my profession was not "saving the world" but instead "creating tomorrow's garbage wrapper." Some information that would have embarrassed "important people" never saw print; some arrests went unreported. Still, we loved what we did.
Speaking of Perry, while at Ardmore I had a summer intern from OU follow me around for a couple of months. His name: Perry White. He later became editor of The Oklahoman, but only after I had been long gone from there, and sadly, he died just a few weeks short of his planned retirement date.
Newspapering would do that to you. Once it got into your blood, there was a degree of joy mixed with stress that became habit forming. Not too many of us see long years of retirement.
Notice that I used the past tense here. That joy seems to have disappeared in the past few years, and that's partly why I'm writing this piece. Our city — nay, our world — needs to recapture it, or be much the worse for its loss.
Enough philosophy for now. Let's look at the history of newspapering in OKC, with special emphasis on OPubCo as I saw it both from the inside and from the outside today.
My knowledge of it starts in 1903, when the gold rush at Cripple Creek, CO, began to play out and a young promoter named Edward King Gaylord moved from there to Oklahoma City. Like many other civic minded folk in many other pioneer towns, he established a newspaper to express his views.
(Ed. note: EKG did not establish the newspaper. Instead, he purchased a minority interest from the then owner, Roy E. Stafford, the Daily Oklahoman itself having been established by Rev. Sam W. Small in 1894. Note, too, that the "Oklahoma City Times" Jim references in the next paragraph is not the paper by the same name which was initially published in Wichita before the April 22, 1889, Land Run. Instead, the paper he is referencing is the paper initially named "Oklahoma Times" owned by Angelo C. Scott and his brother W.W. Scott, it being first published on May 9, 1889, but which paper was soon renamed to be the "Times-Journal" and, some years later, the "Oklahoma City Times." See Angelo C. Scott's "The Story of Oklahoma City" for more. DL)
There was already a thriving newspaper here, though. The Oklahoma City Times had been serving the area since the Run of 1889. First published from Wichita (as I recall from my long ago history lessons) it had moved to OKC soon after the first permanent buildings were erected, and was well established. Its publisher and Gaylord battled for survival for several years.
Eventually, Gaylord won, purchased the Times, and made it the afternoon edition of the Oklahoman. This allowed him to claim that his company had served OKC since 1889 — a boast appearing on the front page of every issue of both papers so long as the Times existed (it ceased publication several decades ago), although I've not seen it lately.
As OKC grew with the oil boom of the 20s, so did OPubCo. The Daily Oklahoman became recognized as the almost official newspaper of the state (although Tulsa's two papers hotly contested the claim) and its circulation reached out into adjoining states. This growth did not escape the notice of the major national newspaper chains, and in the early 30s the Scripps-Howard organization created The Oklahoma News, attempting to take over at least a part of OPubCo's power.
(Ed. note: Edward Willis Scripps founded the "Oklahoma News" in 1906. The publication group was renamed as Scripps Howard in 1922. See Scripps Group Chronology. The "Oklahoma News" ceased publication in 1939. DL)
As had happened with the Times so long before, the two organizations battled fiercely for a time. OPubCo finally forced the News to close its doors, by the simple process of refusing to accept advertising from any merchant who dared advertise in the competing publication. While Scripps-Howard took the matter to court, and won a permanent injunction against such a practice, the damage had already been done and the News failed in the mid-30s.
As the OPubCo empire grew, with establishment of one of the first commercial radio stations west of the Mississippi (WKY) and a delivery service (Mistletoe Express) that covered the state, the company remained a private corporation. Originally most of the stock was retained by the Gaylord family, but some was made available to senior employees. One of those was the Oklahoman's managing editor, Walter Harrison, known to one and all as "The Skipper.”
When Pearl Harbor catapulted the nation into World War II, The Skipper was one of many men who left civilian life behind and joined the military. Opinions vary as to what happened to him during his military service.
It's indisputable, however, that upon his return to civilian life, he and Mr. G (as Gaylord was known to all his employees) parted company rather acrimoniously. OPubCo is said to have attempted to reclaim his shares, but he succeeded in retaining ownership of them and for the rest of his life, published detailed accounts of every OPubCo stockholder meeting in the small Nichols Hills weekly he created.
I've been told by a former employee of The Skipper that he also kept a dossier on every editorial employee of OPubCo (including me), and a set of files that would "blow this city wide open” if ever made public. He used the threat of such publication, I was told, to keep the power at least partially leashed.
The Skipper died while on a business trip in the early 60s. His secret files, if they existed, never saw the light of day.
So what was it like on the rim of the Times in 1955-56? The "rim” refers to the large horseshoe-shaped desk that was a fixture in every newspaper city room in those years. The news editor sat in the center and copyreaders sat around the rim. As I recall there were four of us. The assistant city editor also had a spot on the rim, as did the makeup editor. It was the nerve center of the publication.
Copy boys would bring print from the teletype machines to the news editor, who would select which items he wanted to include, and assign headline sizes to each. He would then toss them to whichever copyreader had nothing to do at the moment; we were encouraged to work crossword puzzles when not actually working, so that the news editor could see who was available for the next article.
The headline sizes were coded by number. Over the years I've forgotten most of the codes, but one sticks in my mind: the 11 head. An 11 head meant three lines of type, one column wide, with each line sized to come within one or at most two characters of the right side of the column. These size requirements made headline writing a fine art; we had to show the meaning of the article and still fit it perfectly.
Sometimes, we goofed. I still remember an 11 head that I put on an article for the market page, about a sudden rise in the price of soybean futures as traders scurried to cover short sales: "Beans Spurt/As Traders/Cover Shorts” were the three lines. Not until city editor Ralph Sewell posted it on the bulletin board the next day did I realize all the multiple entendre in those three lines of black type — but I wondered why somebody had changed it for the second edition!
Writing headlines was only a minor part of the copyreader's duties. We checked the spelling of every word, made sure that capitalization followed the rules set forth in our style book, and on occasion trimmed articles to make them fit into their allotted space. All articles were written with the most important content at the front, and importance diminishing with length, so that they could be trimmed to fit without requiring rewrite. Such attention to detail is one of the things that seem now to be missing!
Since the Times was an afternoon paper, my working hours were 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. Monday through Friday. It didn't publish on Sunday, and I had one other day off during the week. As I recall, it was Tuesday. Our first edition of the day would come off the presses about 10:30; it was the one shipped to outlying areas and made available for street sale, but had very little local content. Most of it was feature material — we called it boilerplate — meant simply to occupy the space between the ads. The Home edition came out around noon, allowing time for distribution to all the carrier stations. It contained real news. The final edition of the day was the Blue Streak, intended primarily for street sales, and its stories tended to be more sensationalized than those in the Home edition. As each edition came off the presses, we on the rim got some of the first copies and we immediately went through them looking for errors so that they could be corrected before the bulk of the press run was done.
After about a year on the Times, I was told to move over to the Oklahoman. That was the position I had yearned for since leaving Ardmore, so I had no hesitation at all about accepting the transfer.
My initial assignment was as the rewrite man. The hours were 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. I had a desk immediately behind city editor Chan Guffey's spot at one end of the rim (the fourth floor of the old OPubCo building held both papers in the same huge room, and each paper had its own copy desk). My job was to handle any assignment Chan gave me, but primarily to take incoming phone calls from the field reporters, and type their stories. To take dictation by phone, I had one of the two electric typewriters in the room, and it became a sort of game for us to see how fast I could do it without asking the other fellow to pause while I caught up. Eventually this got me up to around 120 WPM typing speed — but that speed is gone forever.
I also had to write the obituaries every evening. In those days, the Oklahoman and the Times both published obits without charge to the families. About 4:30 every afternoon, I would call all the local funeral homes and get the names and phone numbers of the families for that day's deaths. I hated to invade their privacy, but soon learned that in most cases the families really wanted to talk to me, and that made the job easier. I did, however, have to beg off on two obits during my time at that task. One was of a young co-worker with whom I had shared a 10-day Air Force junket to Europe while I was at Ardmore. The other was the baby son of close friend and fellow staffer John Gumm (John himself died in a house fire less than a year ago).
In addition to doing the obits, I also got the job of writing the daily weather story. This, in turn, led to some of my first outside assignments, when severe weather hit early enough in the evening to give us a chance to cover it. I recall one night doing a wild drive from OKC to Ada to cover such a storm; it didn't hit until after 6 p.m. and I had a 10 p.m. deadline. By all rights I should have wound up in a tangled mass of wreckage somewhere along the way, but I made it and got the story called in on time.
Chan had one policy that I loved: one of the first things he told me when I started working for him was to bring a book with me every day, and to read it when I had nothing else to do. Under no circumstances was I to look busy when I wasn't. His reasoning was that he wanted to be able to tell instantly if I were ready for an assignment, at any time during the evening. I did a lot of reading during the years I was on the rewrite desk!
After a couple of years on rewrite, Chan began giving me outside assignments from time to time. Most were feature stories, such as interviews with Jimmy Stewart, Jock Mahoney, and Lucille Ball. Then police reporter Jack Jones decided to get out of the business, and I was tagged to become his replacement.
I rode with Jack on the beat for a couple of weeks before taking it over in full, and learned more about the underside of Oklahoma City at the time than I really wanted to know. However it was exactly the kind of reporting I had learned to love at Ardmore. My daily routine was to go to the police station, check the blotter, write up a dozen or so one-paragraph items about arrests and minor things, and then stay alert for anything that might happen.
As police reporter, I had a special auto in the OPubCo fleet. It was a Ford Interceptor (the police model) equipped with two-way radio to the city desk and a monitor for the police band. I would check out the car from the garage first thing, go to the "cop shop” next and then to the sheriff's office in the courthouse, and from there things would vary depending on the activity each day. I often stopped for supper at Priddy's Diner; any time I left the car, I would radio Chan and tell him where I was so that he could get in touch with me.
One evening I was at Priddy's and about to carve into my cheese steak when the phone rang and Mr. Priddy handed it to me. There had been a murder-suicide in Stockyard City. I left the steak on the counter and took off. The story turned out to be trivial from a news point of view: a domestic dispute gone violent, and the man killed his wife and then himself. I got the facts, drove back to Priddy's, finished my steak, then went to the office and typed the story up.
During my time as police reporter, a close friend introduced me to his fiancé, asking me for my opinion of her. I liked her from the start. The friend, on his way to becoming a full-fledged alcoholic, would disappear from sight for a couple of days at a time. His fiancé, worried, would enlist my aid to search for him. She and I became close friends, and then more. In February of 1958 we were married. It was years before the ex-friend and I spoke again.
Chan gave me an extra day off for my wedding, but I then had to go back to work. I put my new bride in the car alongside me, and almost immediately after the initial routine the police dispatcher issued a "man with a gun” alert for an address on the southeast side of town. Naturally, I took off for it. When I got there, I parked about a block away, handed the radio mike to my bride, and told her to contact the office if she heard any shots fired. Then I headed for the action.
Fortunately, there was none. It had been a false alarm. However she had gotten a great initiation into the life she had chosen to spend with me! It wasn't the only time we went into potential danger together.
She rode with me often, until becoming pregnant. Even then, she was with me the night I got an "officer needs help” report while at the sheriff's office in downtown OKC. I took off following a deputy, riding on his red lights and siren. We were doing a little over 90 MPH up Walker at 9 p.m., and the speedometer was pegged at 120 when I crossed Eastern on NE 23, blasting through a red light as I did so.
When the deputy pulled out to pass a long line of traffic, on an uphill stretch of the two-lane highway, I dropped back. At Ardmore, I had covered the three-fatality result of such a head-on crash and had no interest in becoming part of another one. When I finally reached the scene of the action, near Spencer, it turned out that a miscreant had bitten the officer who "needed help.” No story at all.
After that, my wife didn't ride with me much. It was a difficult pregnancy, too, and she spent much of the last couple of months lying on the couch. Finally about midnight one night in early April 1959 she told me "It's time” and we set out for the hospital. I called the police dispatcher (by that time we all knew each other; I even had the call number "Unit 231") and told him I was leaving and had no plans to stop for any traffic lights. On the way I drove sensibly, for a change, and we hit all the lights on green. There were no problems, and her labor was blessedly short.
With a new family, I found the pay of a reporter, even one near the top of the scale, woefully inadequate. I had been moonlighting for a year or so, writing articles for ham radio magazines, but that income was too irregular to depend upon. When a recruiter from RCA Service Company came to town looking for potential electronics technical writers, I went to see him, showed him my qualifications, and took his exam. A few days later I got a call inviting me to Los Angeles for an interview. I went, got an offer, and that was the end of my career at OPubCo.
I should say a little about the physical plant during those years. In addition to the main building that still stands at NW 4 and Broadway, there was a second larger building to the east, adjacent to the railroad tracks, that housed the presses. Those presses were huge machines that used cast rotary images of the pages to put the ink on the paper, and giant rolls of newsprint to feed them. That's why the building was next to the tracks; paper arrived by the carload!
The type for each story was cast into lead by Linotype machines; the headlines were similarly cast by devices called Ludlows. (While I call the metal ”lead” it was actually an alloy of tin, lead, and antimony, designed to maintain crisp edges when cast into molds. Once it had served its immediate purpose, it went back into the vats to melt down and be used again.) Printers arranged the lead into page forms called chases, under direction of the makeup editor. Strict union rules forbade editorial employees from even touching the type itself; to identify a problem area to a printer, the editor had to point to it with a pencil. Not long before I went to work there, the company had a run-in with the pressmen's union that caused a walkout by all union members; however when the picket lines vanished the printers returned to work.
When all the articles and ads for a page had filled a chase, the printer pulled a full-page proof from it and sent it to the proofreaders for a final check. Once the proof had been okayed, he placed a paper-mache sheet called a "mat" (for matrix) on it and put the sandwich into a steam press to transfer everything to the mat and form a mold. The mat then went into another machine (the name of which I've forgotten, if I ever knew it) that wrapped it into a half-cylindrical shape and made a lead casting of the whole thing. That casting is what went onto the press to do the actual printing.
The process for each page took several minutes, and we usually had from 32 to 64 pages in each edition of each paper. Attaching the plates to the presses was a slow job, as well, so the press room was always a beehive of activity to meet all the deadlines.
An elevated and enclosed catwalk or skyway that we called "the tunnel” connected the two buildings, running from the third floor of the main building to the second floor of the pressrooms. The ground beneath the tunnel formed an employee parking lot for those of us on the night side; executive vehicles occupied it during the day.
Copy went from the city room to the press area through pneumatic tubes, the same sort now found at bank drive-thru areas but in those days only used by newspapers and some retail outlets such as the downtown J. C. Penney store.
The night that Sputnik appeared in the sky, in November of 1957, the front page was replated more than a dozen times during the run of the final home edition between midnight and 4 a.m. Each time a new dispatch came in on the AP wire, we would stuff it into a carrier and put it into the tube. The editors were in the press room directing changes to the chase for the front page. As each new batch of material arrived, a new mat was created, the presses stopped just long enough to change the plates, and then they rolled again. Only a few homes got the final version, but we all considered the effort as nothing more than what the job required for a fast-breaking story of such significance.
When I went to RCAS, my starting salary was $125/week plus overtime. That was more than Chan was getting as city editor, and $30/week more than my pay as police reporter. It turned out that the overtime involved minimum 100-hour weeks, so the dollars were great — but so was the cost of living on the west coast. That, plus homesickness, brought us back to OKC in 1962 and we've been here ever since. After a year as editor of three trade journals, a stint with University Loudspeakers, and two years of free-lance writing, I went to work at the then-new G-E plant and spent the next 24-plus years there (through three successive owners). Then came two years at Norick Software (one of Ron's lesser-known projects) before I finally retired.
So what has caused the obvious decline in stature of print journalism in Oklahoma City over the past fifty-plus years?
The low pay, traditional in the newspaper business for as long as I've known anything about it, is probably one of the reasons for the decline. The absolute need to cut costs to a minimum is undoubtedly a more major reason, though. The use of proofreaders seems to have become outmoded, so spelling and grammar errors abound — things that people like Ralph Sewell, Dave Funderburk, Chan Guffey, and even Mr. G himself (who was still running things during my years there; he died at the age of 103 leaving the business to his son Edward) would never have tolerated. A decline in advertising revenue is also an important part of the picture, together with a general drop-off in literacy of the younger generations — not that they're unable to read or write, but that they don't particularly want to.
So there's my contribution to the history of Oklahoma City's newspapers. Definitely incomplete, but at least it's a start...
I was especially pleased to read that last part ... "it's a start." Here's hoping that Mr. Kyle will have much more to say on the city's journalism or other history and thoughts about the same in the very near future!
JIM KYLE VIDEO INTERVIEW #1 — June 15, 2011. Again, I'm being optimistic that there will be at least one additional video interview. I did this first one at Jim's home in northwest Oklahoma City with my cell phone so that accounts for the poor video quality. I'll see if I can find better equipment for the next. Although the video quality leaves much to be desired, the audio should come through just fine.
I call your attention to Jim's comments beginning around 2:32 about the "seamy side" of the newspaper business.
But, I also learned the seamy side of the newspaper business ... found out how often we had to compromise with our consciences things that might embarrass an advertiser frequently didn't get reported and if "important people" would be offended, again, the story would not see the light of day.
I'd been there [in Ardmore at the Ardmoreite] about a year when there was a showdown between my managing editor who I considered to be my boss and for that matter my mentor at that time, and the owner of the paper, and it ended up with the editor getting fired. Our city editor was promoted to the managing editor's spot. They offered me the city editor's spot, but being young and idealistic I decided I didn't really want to have any more to do with them. So I hightailed it up to Oklahoma City and visited the Oklahoman.
Interesting recollections they are that you have about the dark side, young Skywalker.
Labels: City Past, Newspapers, People
Mike N. said...
Interesting and entertaining. His veiw from way back was fascinating.
Stories getting killed to please advertisers is one reason I have little faith in any media outlet. When you kill stories for advertisers or the movers and shakers please don't give me your pious crap about being objective because that is just a bunch of phooeey.
Maybe the ones who are leaving have seen the handwriting on the wall. Newspapers and the folks who own/run them are all but irrelevant in todays media environment. My son is in college and I doubt he will have any published daily papers to read 20 years from now.
It is a creaky and dying bastion of a bygone era.
Thanks, Mike. You said, "Maybe the ones who are leaving have seen the handwriting on the wall."
That is my suspicion but I have no hard evidence to back that suspicion up.
I really do dislike seeing the crumbling of the past but maybe it is not always a bad thing. At one time a powerful newspapaer or media source could all but have vice like control for the political system in the area where they had influence.
For instance not so many years ago if you did not have the Gaylords backing your political chances in Oklahoma were pretty nil. Now there backing is a non-factor. I am glad to see that type of political power gone and here is why. With the opening up of media and information systems it brings more people into the marketplace of ideas and expands the availability to participate and actually get elected and make a mark on your area.
Jim Kyle said...
Actually, Mike, by the time I was there, endorsement by the Gaylords was often a "kiss of death" to civic proposals -- due to backlash against their perceived power! At the time, I felt it to be unfair; only much later did I understand the whole thing...
Jim you are very correct in the later years of there thankfully almost dead dynasty. However in the early years agravating them was considered a kiss of death. I for one am VERY thankful they and there minions are really non-issues today.
My family was very involved in the business/political scene up until the late 80's and many of the movers and shakers of the past were truly nasty/disgusting/immoral folks.
Could it be because of the way the Gaylord's ran ram rod over what would and would not be allowed to be published. E.K. Gaylord's objective was to make sure he had the only paper in Oklahoma City. If people got information he wanted to make sure it came from his paper and his paper only. I say that because look back at history and see what he did to run the Howard Scripp News out of Oklahoma City. How he used his power to buy everybody's at a $1.00 a share. Check out the cartoon in the last issue of the Howard Scripp news. It was a picture of an octopus with the head of E.K. Gaylord on pictured over Oklahoma City. It was mean't as a message that E.K. Gaylord would suck the life out of any paper who tried to run a business here and it worked. For many years The Oklahoman was the only source for news in this town.
▼ Jun 2011 (6)
Memoirs & Thoughts of an Oklahoman Reporter — Part...
On Being Excited About OKC's LGBT Citizens
Choi Sung-Bong
Who Is Clara Luper?
A Day In The Life — OKC City Council, May 31, 2011...
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New criminal provisions on corruption in private sector to enter into force
White Collar Crime Switzerland
On September 25 2015 Parliament adopted amendments to the Penal Code introducing new provisions on corruption in the private sector (for further details please see "Combating corruption in the private sector").(1) The amendments will enter into force on July 1 2016.
The new Articles 322octies and 322novies of the Penal Code declare it punishable – with imprisonment of up to three years or a monetary penalty – for anyone to offer or request undue advantages in exchange for an employee, member, agent or another auxiliary person carrying out, or omitting to carry out, an act in connection with his or her function in an undertaking or organisation in the private sector, either in contravention of his or her duties or in the exercise of his or her discretion. The provision covers undue advantages for the benefit of the employee or a third party.
The law has been shaped to apply to cases only where bribes are being offered or requested with a view to the violation of a specific obligation to preserve another party's interests (eg, employer or principal interests). Such obligation may emanate from a contractual relationship (eg, employment or agency agreement) or a corporate relationship (eg, membership interest in a company, board membership or executive position). On the other hand, conduct by which someone seeks to influence a party's exercise of discretion without that party being subject to a particular obligation to loyalty will not qualify as bribery. A banker, for example, who seeks to induce a wealthy individual to grant him or her an asset management mandate by inviting him or her to a prestigious sporting event would not commit a criminal offence, whereas the same advantage, if offered to an employee of the individual's family office, would be punishable under Article 322octies.
The new law further abolishes the requirement of a criminal complaint as a prerequisite to prosecution of bribery in the private sector, with the exception of minor significance.(2) This caveat reflects the fact that the investigation and prosecution of an act of corruption may not only significantly affect the offender, but could also impair the victim's position. In circumstances where public interest in prosecuting an offence does not prevail over a potential interest of the concerned party to have the matter settled privately, the law leaves it up to such party to decide whether the case should be reported to the authorities.
The parliamentary debate revealed the following criteria to constitute 'minor significance':
The undue advantage offered, granted or demanded must not exceed a few thousand Swiss francs;
The offence must not jeopardise the health or safety of third parties;
The offence must not consist of multiple or repeated acts of bribery, and the offender must not have conspired with others to commit the offence; and
No document forgery must have been committed in connection with the act of bribery (this criterion refers to the fact that bribe payments are often disguised by the falsification of company accounts).
Similarly to the provisions that exist regarding bribery in the public sector, Article 322decies of the Penal Code specifies for the private sector that the term 'undue advantage' does not cover:
advantages which are permitted by applicable internal regulations or contractually approved by the undertaking or organisation employing the receiver of the advantage; and
advantages of minor value that are considered customary in the relevant social environment (in this context, the meaning of 'customary' must not be determined by way of reference to practices prevailing in the possibly overly tolerant country of the receiver of the advantage, but on the basis of the standards which apply in Switzerland).
Active bribery in the private sector does not only expose the individuals committing the act to prosecution, but by virtue of Article 102(2) of the Penal Code it may also trigger penal liability of the legal entity which employs the offender's services, provided that the legal entity is found responsible for having failed to take all reasonable organisational measures required in order to prevent such an offence.
Switzerland has thus enacted the necessary legal framework to effectively combat corruption in the private sector. The nexus of the revision with the recent scandals surrounding FIFA becomes apparent from the Federal Justice Department's explicit statement that the new provisions will allow for effective prosecution, notably of bribe payments in relation to the awarding of a sports competition.(3)
As an immediate consequence of the new law, corporate undertakings and organisations should scrutinise internal regulations and directives with a view to their compliance with the standards set by Article 102(2). Moreover, internal control procedures, as well as programmes for the training of employees and agents (including distributors), should be reviewed to strengthen the overall resistance against corruption. Undertakings and organisations are advised to consider establishing an internal reporting mechanism for suspected wrongdoing (eg, a whistleblower hotline) to effectively combat wrongful practices.
For further information on this topic please contact Bernhard Loetscher or Nino Sievi at CMS von Erlach Poncet Ltd by telephone (+41 44 285 11 11) or email (bernhard.loetscher@cms-vep.com or nino.sievi@cms-vep.com). The CMS von Erlach Poncet Ltd website can be accessed at www.cms-vep.com.
(1) See www.admin.ch/opc/de/official-compilation/2016/1287.pdf (in German).
(2) See Articles 322octies Paragraph 2 and 322novies Paragraph 2 of the Penal Code.
(3) Justice Department press release, April 20 2016, available at www.bj.admin.ch/bj/de/home/aktuell/news/2016/ref_2016-04-20.html (in German).
Bernhard Lötscher
Nino Sievi
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Gary Wnek appointed chair of macromolecular science and engineering
Roger French appointed visiting faculty member at Tohoku University
CCIPD researchers receive awards
Students head to Costa Rica to improve village’s water system
Published on Mar. 13, 2019
For residents of one Costa Rican village, the main source of water had to travel from a well to a storage tank through a leaky pipeline. As a result, the community endured frequent water shortages, sometimes for weeks on end. Just over 2 1/2 years ago, a group of students in Case Western Reserve University’s Humanitarian Design Corps (HDC) organization set out to change that.
And this week, those students are spending spring break putting the finishing touches on a new pipeline that will improve the water-system infrastructure for the village of about 250 people.
HDC is an interdisciplinary group that works to provide underserved communities around the world with sustainable solutions. The Costa Rican project is one of three international initiatives; the others are in the Dominican Republic and Malawi.
HDC students heard about the community in Costa Rica’s Guanacaste Province through a connection of Kurt Rhoads, associate professor of civil engineering, and a nonprofit working in the region. Immediately, they knew they could do something to help.
“The needs of the community and the skills and the passions of the students really aligned well,” said Neil Chavan, a senior majoring in chemical engineering and environmental studies with a minor in Spanish. Chavan served as the project lead until this semester, when he handed off the responsibility in anticipation of his upcoming graduation.
Since officially launching the project in July 2016, the team has made two previous visits to Costa Rica, with each trip serving a specific purpose.
In January 2017, the students evaluated the issues with the water system, led activities around sanitation and hygiene, and spent time getting to know the residents of the village.
During that visit, members of the community welcomed students into their homes without ever having met them before. Though many of the students didn’t speak Spanish, some—including Chavan—knew enough to begin forming more personal relationships.
“It became apparent how much the people needed this, how willing they were to work with us, and how open they were to us working with them,” Chavan said.
After designing a new underground pipeline to bring water to the community, the students set out to install it in March 2018. They also taught residents to how install pipes and fix issues that may arise.
The students spent five days installing the first kilometer. Community members finished the second kilometer of pipeline after the students left with the knowledge that the team had passed on to them.
After installing the new pipeline, the work on the system did not stop there.
Back in Cleveland, the team brainstormed ideas for improving the water system with three sub-groups dedicated to different aspects of the project: erosion control, pipe repair and replacement, and system mapping and monitoring.
This week, the team will repair sections of the pipe infrastructure, install water meters to track water usage, conduct tests to evaluate water quality, and assess the system for any new damage. The team’s goal is to have the system fully functional by the end of their trip.
HDC plans to continue its work in the village even after the pipeline is finished and structurally sound. Though next steps aren’t fully determined yet, the group is considering exploring issues with the village’s well, treating water quality issues, and possibly teaching residents water-conservation techniques.
Chavan attributes the past success of the project to strong collaborations between the student team, faculty and staff at CWRU, engineers in the Cleveland area, and (most of all) the village residents. Despite the language barrier, the students and community members have bonded during each trip. Now they routinely communicate via WhatsApp and update each other about each other’s lives.
“You do become close with the people that you’re helping out, and it’s not just an ordinary school project or volunteering project,” Chavan said. “This is a long-term, multi-year relationship that we’re fostering. I think that’s really special.”
(From The Daily 3/13/2019)
Explore related information at the School
Kurt Rhoads
George B. Mayer Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies
Assistant Professor, Division of Education and Student Programs
Engineers environmental water, wastewater and energy processes using biotechnology
Learn About the Featured Department
Visit Our Research Facilities
Center for Engineering Action
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Film Selection Process
The College of Media At Illinois
About Champaign Urbana
Founded in 1999 by the late Roger Ebert, University of Illinois Journalism graduate and Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, Roger Ebert’s Film Festival (Ebertfest) celebrates films that haven’t received the recognition they deserved during their original runs. The festival gives these films and their filmmakers a well-deserved second look.
Ebertfest takes place in Urbana-Champaign each April. Chaz Ebert, Roger’s beloved wife, business partner and fellow film-lover, is the festival co-founder, producer and host.
While Roger passed away in April 2013, his influence on the Festival continues. True to Roger’s vision, the twelve films screened during the five day event represent a cross-section of important cinematic works overlooked by audiences, critics and/or distributors. Some films come from lists of possible films that Roger drew up over the first 15 years of the festival. Chaz Ebert and Festival Director Nate Kohn select additional films based on Roger’s established criteria for an Ebertfest film. Both Chaz and Nate worked closely with Roger for fifteen years on programming the festival.
The Festival brings together the films’ producers, writers, actors and directors to help showcase their work. A filmmaker or scholar introduces the films, and screenings are followed by an in depth on-stage Q&A discussion among filmmakers, critics and the audience.
Ebertfest is a special event of the College of Media at the University of Illinois, and the festival, in conjunction with the College, hosts a number of on-campus academic panel discussions each year that feature filmmaker guests, scholars and students.
All the festival films screen in the 1,500-seat Virginia Theatre, a restored 1920s movie palace with state-of-the-art 35/70mm and digital projection. A portion of the Festival’s income goes toward on-going renovations at the theatre.
The mission of Ebertfest is to celebrate films, genres and formats that have been overlooked by distributors, audiences and/or critics. These include independent, international and studio films that did not win wide audiences; overlooked formats such as 70mm; and overlooked genres such as documentaries and musical. The festival screens one film at a time, so everyone sees the same films at the same time, promoting a strong sense of community among audience members, filmmakers, guests, students and scholars.
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reflexion zone
eipcp
european institute for progressive cultural policies
eipcp Policies
A Trip to the Imperial Capital
Analysis of the seminar “Writing Central European Art History” initiated by Erste Foundation
Eduard Freudmann, Ivan Jurica and Ivana Marjanović (ed.)
Eduard Freudmann
Ivan Jurica
Ivana Marjanovic
“Writing Central European Art History” is a seminar that was put together by the Austrian Erste Foundation and the Austrian department of the international non-profit organization World University Service (WUS) as part of the project “The Patterns_Travelling Lecture Set” initiated by Erste Foundation. The set included lectures by seven scholars from the so called Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Serbia and Slovakia): Edit András, Jan Bakos, Ljiljana Blagojević, Mart Kalm, Vojtech Lahoda, Piotr Piotrowski and Misko Šuvaković. The seminar was organized at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in collaboration with Post-conceptual Art Practices class (Univ. Prof. Dr. Marina Gržinić). The lectures were as well held in the universities of Belgrade (Serbia), Cluj-Napoca (Romania) and Poznan (Poland).
The following text is the edited transcript of a discussion among students of Post-conceptual Art Practices class, students of other classes in the academy and the editors of the text (Eduard Freudmann, Ivan Jurica and Ivana Marjanović). It is the outcome of a longer process of preparation readings for the seminar, critical reflections and finally public lectures and discussions. In terms of better comprehension and dramaturgy the original statements were edited and thus the names of the discussion’s participants were changed. All events took place in the Post-conceptual Art Practices class during the winter semester 2008/09. In charge of the seminar were Univ. Prof. Dr. Marina Gržinić and assistants/tutors Ivan Jurica and Ivana Marjanović.
More details: http://www.erstestiftung.org/patterns-lectures/
The seminar can be watched online: http://pcap.akbild.ac.at/wceah
Ana: I would like to start the discussion with a general reflection on what it means to have courses or seminars in public educational institutions organized and funded by private investors.
Sofia: I think the close relation of private capital and a public university needs to be analyzed in the context of the reforms of the European educational system within the Bologna process. Because of the commodification of knowledge and the privatization of education the banks started to have an interest to engage with universities. On the one hand they make business by offering loans to students that have to be refunded after the studies. This is the case in Italy, where the implementation of the Bologna reforms is much more advanced than in Austria. On the other hand they are more and more influencing on the content of studies.
Albert: Last semester a lecture series was organized at the Institute of Philosophy of Vienna University in cooperation with Erste Bank. It was called “Corporate Social Responsibility” and employees of the bank were lecturing about the ecological and social responsibility of economic enterprises. When the rector of the university and the CEO of the bank presented the series at the first lecture, some students expressed their resentments and posed critical questions which were blocked immediately. Instead of having a discussion with the students the two men performed a public discussion about who is richer and possesses more stocks of the Bank.
Anja: It is also important to mention, that the bank advertised three scholarships of 500 € for students who deal in their diploma thesis with subjects that are connected to the lectures.
Petr: Although the approach of Erste Foundation in our Academy was not that rough, the logic is the same, namely to gain an academic legitimization for the contents it wants to spread due to its business interests.
Ana: It is interesting which type of collaboration was chosen in order to legitimize the intervention of private capital in the public institution of education: the main partner is the Austrian department of the NGO “World University Service” which is actually a “coulisse”, a pure phantom that should camouflage…
Judith: Sorry to interrupt you, but if everybody is that critical, why didn’t we protest against such an event in the academy or boycott it, but we rather contributed to organizing it?
Ana: Good question, the problem is that the situation is quite a dilemma of capitalist interest on one hand and colonial ignorance on the other. If we would not have accepted the lectures we would never have had the chance to listen to scholars from Eastern Europe at the academy. Who would have invited and paid this people to come and lecture for us?
Anja: But why was there so little interest? Almost the entire audience was from the class that hosted the lectures. No single professor from other departments visited the lectures, not even anybody from the theory and art history department!!!
Petr: The lacking interest can be only explained with a sort of colonial ranking: scholars from certain world regions like Africa, Asia, Latin America but also Eastern Europe are more than underrepresented in this educational institution. They are simply disregarded because of pure colonial ignorance.
Ana: I totally agree. It is strange that this class was asked to host the lectures while we have professors of the art history and theory department that are lecturing these topics in the academy anyway. The seminar lectures did not present exotic or unknown topics. We were listening to cubism, conceptual art, modernism, postmodernism, discursive framing, political art – all common subjects of the art history and theory discourse, none of them requiring any highly specialized knowledge! And additionally everything is so to say served bite-sized, meaning that the entire concept, selection of lecturers and organization is already done and it needs just a bit of will to make it happen.
Petr: This ignorance by other professors is totally symptomatic for the political representation of the East in the West. Taking a Western newspaper to see reports about the East, one quickly realizes that the East exists economically, but it doesn’t exist culturally.
Brian: That’s nonsense! There is no way to say that there is an economical interest without a cultural one or vice versa!
Albert: Yes, cultural, economic and political interests are always intertwined. Just take the title of the lecture set. The term “Central Europe” refers to the territory of the former “Kronländer” (Crown lands) of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and here in Vienna the common cultural heritage of the successor countries is constantly stressed, implying of course the hegemonic position of Austria as the center of power in the Empire. With the end of communism Austrian imperialists scented the chance to come back to power in that region by economical expansion, and therefore the official politics, especially the conservatives, pushed a neo-colonial expansion throughout the last 20 years and they will continue. It is no coincidence that an enterprise such as Erste Bank, who is one of the flagships of the expansion politics, is so close to the conservatives! And it is no coincidence that the key political figures of re-establishing Central Europe, such as the former leader of the conservative party Erhard Busek, are frequently participating in Erste foundation’s panel discussions …
Anja: Let’s think again about the title of the seminar which is openly stating what is meant by “writing” and that is: we are now, in this very moment in a process of creating that history.
Ana: The term “writing” is on the one hand totally arrogant and ignorant as it seems to neglect, that a certain history already exists and was written by people from so called Eastern Europe. On the other hand it is telling so bluntly about the bank’s intentions, because it says that now a financial institution with its foundation is coming and claiming “This is Central Europe and we are writing the history!” That’s why it is necessary to distinguish between the terms “writing” and “re-writing”.
Judith: History is not given; writing is a performative act and it has its own history as well. And re-writing is connected with an emancipatory claim. So now probably both, writing and re-writng are occupied by a financial institution and used for its own interests.
Petr: I want to add that the way the title is written says a lot. There is no question mark, rather it is totally definitive. Its saying „What we are doing now is writing the history – constructing it.” It doesn’t sound like an invitation to discuss about it, but it is a definitive statement.
Albert: Going back to the issue of the bank’s interest we should not forget about the Erste’s “Kontakt” collection. The interest of the bank is to increase the value of that collection, with building up the interpretative apparatus around the collection consisting of magazines, publications, seminars, and other activities that are needed to construct and write history. But what is also important for the bank is to rise the value of the territories in which they have invested by showing how civilized that countries are now and also how civilized they were having the conceptual artists in the time when communism oppressed them.
Ana: I think that it is in the interest of Erste to organize the seminar in Vienna in order to show to Austrians that these people from the East have cultivated art historians and theoreticians who have knowledge about cubism, avant-garde art, modernism, postmodernism, psychoanalysis and not only cleaning staff and unskilled blue-collar workers. This interest of the bank that is investing in the East, is visibly contradicting the logic of the local Austrian capital, which presumes, that migrants are completely uncultivated and only capable to clean the Austrian toilets.
Albert: An interesting explanation was given why Vienna was included in the „Traveling lectures set” stating that actually all these professors did such a great job that they deserved to present their positions in Vienna. So to say, the bank awarded them with the trip to the imperial capital.
Petr: The desire to continue the history, behaving as since 1914 nothing has changed, is very characteristic for neo-colonial Austrian activities and can be understood in the light of the Austrian trauma of provincialism. Although Austria was always part of the West, it was excluded from the dominant cultural discourse after 1914. The seminar follows the same logic of forgetting the past as fast as possible, (re-)writing the history and (re-)constructing the territory “Central Europe”.
Albert: When you take a look at what is part of the “Kontakt” collection and thereby part of the art history written by Erste Foundation, you see that socialist realism – the former state’s ideology art – is completely excluded. What is taken into consideration are only and solely those positions which were supposedly against the communist and socialist regime.
Ana: True. I am thinking now about the text that Piotr Piotrowski wrote - “From the Politics of Autonomy to the Autonomy of Politics” – which we read in preparation for the seminar and we can conclude that Erste actually includes pure formalist art works, even opportunistic ones, interpreting them as political and against the socialist regime. Just because they were produced in the form of conceptual art.
Petr: Like for example works by Július Koller, Jiří Kovanda or Edward Krasiński …
Albert: Yes, exactly, now they stylize something totally apolitical as the opposition to socialist regimes. This is very ideological, of course.
Ana: In fact, art history, as every history, is constructed from a very certain point of view – and this the ideological point of view. In this case the bank is overtaking the idea of emancipatory politics and using it for the sake of capitalism. This is necessary to be recognized and made visible. The seminar must be read in this logic.
Petr: Actually the bank’s strategy is very clever. In the former East there has never been money for culture unless it has belonged to some kind of national or folkloristic propaganda, what can be seen as a phenomenon rooted in the communist past. Private foundations were one of the first who recognized this situation and intervened in the Eastern space. Erste bank is quite dominant in this field. So, on one hand almost every art project from “Central Europe” is funded by Erste, on the other this is the only money that is available for the local actors...
Ana: Also very specific in this situation is that the Erste foundation is not just giving money in terms of grants through open calls but it is initiating its own projects, thus influencing the scenes on a much broader level. This seminar is one example…
Olga: It’s necessary to consider why people accept to participate in the neocolonial processes. Gandhi said that universalization of imperialism cannot be explained just by using violence and the capital; it’s a consequence of the fact that many colonized people agreed voluntarily to this process because of different reasons.
Petr: I must say that for a while I appreciated the Erste foundation’s intervention in the East a lot, because with its activities they broke the monopolized and hegemonized scenes, for example in Czech Republic or Slovakia. The art scenes there, after 1989, developed simultaneously with the first attempts of establishing an art-market, and it was dominated by the formalist art production of the 1960ies and 70ies. It was of course dominated by men who suddenly re-distributed the power within the former intellectual avant-garde of the communist era. A new dictatorship replaced the older one, and criticism was not tolerated. Erste intervened in this situation and broke the new establishing hegemony.
Ana: And then they started to monopolize and make the new hegemony! Actually, I think it’s quite tricky situation. There is an interest by the so-called Eastern intellectuals to fight the hegemony of the dominant international western art discourse, from where they have been always excluded. But the only possibility to do this today is via western foundations, which is a paradoxical situation.
Olga: Then can we say that they are actually corrupted?
Judith: Then we could say we are all corrupted. Would you never sell your work to Erste bank? I doubt it. Maybe you wouldn’t…Actually for me this discussion should be about the question “What do we want to do?” Of course, I know we are all in a certain system, but does it mean that nothing matters? If now a company that produces weapons and has a collection shows up and says “Hallo, we would like to make a seminar in your university,” what do we do? Does nothing matter?
Albert: Yes, where is the border?
Olga: But, the point with this seminar initiated by Erste is that it is a kind of “critical project,” because it is shading light on a hidden history. It’s not an obviously commercial project.
Brian: Well, I think it’s also a question, which knowledge has been produced and which knowledge has been taught. Erste is selecting lecturers and issues organizing its activities very carefully. Capitalism looks very peaceful in the hands of Erste.
Judith: There is a tradition of cultural sponsoring that excludes the Other. I remember when we went to the Tranzit Workshops in Bratislava to see the show about communism, what was the title?
Olga: “Communism Never Happened.”
Judith: Exactly. I remember the newspaper published within that project, with the theoretical texts. I expected some critical theory related to capitalism. But no, nothing! The same logic is in this seminar where it was no talk proposed about the present time – capitalism. Their agenda is to write the “Central European art history”.
Petr: The question that has to be posed is which discourse is accepted and which is not and why? The problem for the bank starts when the discourse starts to disturb the capitalist system of reproduction. And therefore it is first necessary to clean the space from the previous ideology.
Ana: So that there is no risk for the investments and for the entire system as such!
Petr: In that sense I liked very much the lecture by Edit András. She spoke a lot about the collective trauma in terms of cleaning the space and inserting a new ideology with its new values. But not just about the collective trauma in the East, but in the West as well! The trauma caused by the insecurity of how to deal with the East after the cold war.
Ana: We can conclude that the seminar had quite a lot of problematic aspects. The concept of the seminar was very weak because it didn’t bring up any specific issue. There was nothing that the single lectures had in common, besides the fact that all the lecturers came from the East. I think it should be accepted that the so called “quarantine concepts” bringing together only people from so called Eastern Europe is an antiquated approach.
Albert: Another problem was that a big number of the lecturers were taking the hegemonic divisions in art history for granted, for example Vojtech Lahoda or Mart Kalm. Others, who talked about center and periphery like Piotr Piotrowski or about the multiplicity of constructed art histories like Miško Šuvaković disregarded the power structures and institutions underlying art history and the art market which is its main regulator.
Petr: I would take a step further and say, that almost all lecturers ignored neo-liberal capitalism being the regulator of art. This is especially remarkable as the seminar was initiated by a bank that is one of the biggest investors in former Eastern Europe. Moreover, in the logic of the selection of lecturers we can recognize the neo-liberal logic of the reorganization of national spaces in economic zones. Hence, in the seminar referring to so called Central Europe they included one lecturer from a Baltic country – Estonia. Estonia has nothing to do to with the historical definition of “Central Europe” but obviously the bank has certain business interests there.
Olga: But nobody was reflecting on these issues. The problem was that many professors were not able or not willing to discuss about that and didn’t answer our critical questions. For example Piotr Piotrowski who actually conceived the seminar and selected the lecturers or Jan Bakos who even wrote an analysis with the title “The Concept of Eastern Central Europe as an Artistic Region” didn’t respond to our attempt of discussion.
Ana: Actually, Ljiljana Blagojević was the only lecturer who was not hesitating to talk critically about contemporary issues of globalization and capitalism by using straight forward vocabulary. And Edit András as well, though in a different way. All other lecturers followed either formalistic or anachronistic concepts.
Albert: Mart Kalm’s position was even a nationalistic one. His lecture “What is Estonian Architecture” was a mere contribution to the construction of Estonia’s national identity. It totally excluded mass housing architecture from the Soviet era and constructed the identity of Estonian architecture on petit bourgeois single family houses. From our pre-readings, we remember very well his russophob terminology designating Russians as “hordes” thus referring to barbarians from the East conquering civilized Europe in his text “Soviet Mass Housing and its Ambiguous Legacy in Estonia”.
Ana: In my opinion the seminar general concept was weak and didn’t bring up new perspectives. The reflection on Austrian conservative politics and its neo-colonial, capitalist aspirations were totally left out. It was as well in opposition to the organizer's initial idea to open “Horizontal Art History” (part of the title of Piotr Piotrowski’s lecture). And last but not least, contemporary issues of neo-liberal capitalism in the light of the financial crisis were completely ignored.
Petr: We have to take into consideration that banks are trembling in the face of a global financial crisis, finding themselves being practically nationalized by receiving huge public subsidies which is putting the basic logic of neo-liberal capitalism upside down.
In such a situation it’s not clear if banks will be able to afford continuing such activities any longer. On the other hand it doesn’t seem like we have became witnesses of one of the last events of such a type. The model of constructing economic zones with cultural activities, demonstrated by Erste Bank, is still an attractive one. A few days ago I saw a magazine called “Culture in Centrope”, being jointly funded by the Eastern provinces of Austria and the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank.
eipcp.net | contact@eipcp.net | transversal - eipcp multilingual webjournal ISSN 1811 - 1696
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Tag: OneGameAMonth
One Game A Month January Entry: Dragon Canyon
January 28, 2014 / zachary / 0 comments
As we posted on our new year resolution post, we are trying again for the One Game A Month challenge this year. We had made an attempt to do so last year, but only managed to get through February. But even those games were not ones that we actually worked on that year.
This year, we are actually going to go for it. As such, we have finished our first game for the year, Dragon Canyon. Dragon Canyon is a game in so much as there is gameplay, a scoring mechanism and an end condition. It isn’t a complete game in that it is missing a few things.
Before I get into all that, I wanted to explain the history of this game. It kind of fits into the mold of my previous entries into One Game A Month. Both of those were dragon themed and fairly simple. Dragon Canyon is kind of a successor to Dragon Fire in many respects. It is a shooter and you play as a dragon shooting various flying monsters. But it is very different from it too.
For one, Dragon Canyon allows the player to choose which dragon they want to play. Each dragon has its own projectile as well. With Dragon Fire, the player was given a dragon at random and all dragons fired the same thing.
Additionally, Dragon Fire restricted the player to only left and right movement. The player was unable to travel vertically. This has changed with Dragon Canyon. Along these same lines, rather than a top to bottom shooter, Dragon Canyon is a bottom up shooter.
Finally, the enemy behavior is greatly altered. With Dragon Fire, all enemies appeared at the bottom and flew straight up. In Dragon Canyon, I wanted to add variety to the enemies, not just in looks but in how they act. So I have some very basic enemy behaviors in the game. There are four enemy types and each behaves slightly differently.
I would like to expand on this game in the future. I love to play shooters like this from time to time and it could be a lot of fun when improved. I had originally started the game idea as a test for Ouya development. So the goal is to add controller support as well as play for up to four players. I would also consider increasing the screen resolution to allow for full use of HD televisions.
I also need to add a lot more variety to enemies and their behaviors. As of right now, there are no enemies that shoot back and that is something that needs to change. There are also a lot more movement patterns to experiment with.
I also want to further differentiate the player dragons. While it is great that they look different and have different projectiles, I would love to add special moves that are unique to each dragon.
The background is something else that really needs to improve. I want to add a scrolling background to the game as well as different stages with their own enemies. Each stage could be themed around the different dragons.
Outside of all that, the other improvements to the game would include sound and music, pixel perfect collision detection and player health and lives.
Overall, it isn’t that bad of a prototype to be used as my January entry into One Game A Month. I look forward to working on my February entry.
Development, Goals and Deadlines
Dragon Canyon, OneGameAMonth
A Look Back At 2013 And A Look Forward To A Game Filled 2014
December 31, 2013 / zachary / 0 comments
Years come and go. Game ideas come and go. But one thing is for certain, there is no time like the present.
This past year brought with it a lot of challenges and a lot of surprises. We entered the year 2013 with the idea that this would be the year that we completed Demon’s Hex and began looking forward to developing new games. We had hoped to take advantage of the One Game A Month Challenge to help spur that forward.
Sadly, that didn’t happen.
However, it is not all bad news. We entered 2013 with Demon’s Hex as merely a concept with visuals. It had no gameplay at all. But with some great motivation from local game developers, we were able to bring Demon’s Hex to a fairly playable state. You can actually play battles in the game and it is pretty fun. While the full game proper is not at all near complete, this makes a major milestone for us as developers.
With that success under our belt, we look forward to taking on the challenge of making Demon’s Hex fully playable. Everything will be done.
We also have a number of other games we want to start making. This year, we really want to achieve that One Game A Month challenge. It is a noble goal and one that we could easily do. We just need to sit down and do it. Just one weekend a month would get that done. Just some private game jams to get them done and out. They don’t have to be flashy or big, just done. That is all that matters. Completing the game.
That seems to be the gist of our New Year’s resolutions. We just want to complete some games.
With our technology pipeline pretty solidified this past year, that will make it far easier to complete. Now that I have my bearings inside HaxeFlixel, I can easily complete this challenge with the help of Willis. Together we can do it.
I can’t make any promises on what types of games we will create along side Demon’s Hex. I can just promise that we will try to do something different each time. While it would be easy to fall back on the same mechanics and genre’s it wouldn’t expand our minds nor foster creativity.
We were glad to make the strides we made in 2013 and look forward to making further strides in 2014. We hope that 2014 is the year that we make a name for ourselves.
With that, we wish you a happy new year.
Goals and Deadlines
Demon's Hex, OneGameAMonth, resolutions
2013 Resolution: Create One Game A Month For Twelve Months
January 2, 2013 / zachary
I don’t know if any of you guys have heard about the latest craze hitting the indie game dev community. It is this idea of creating one game a month for 12 months. That is, by the end of the year, anyone participating should have 12 games done. It all started with a blog post by one Christer Kaitila, aka McFunkypants, in which he described his effort to make one complete game each month in the year 2012. This article sparked a lot of interest from fellow game developers and ended up becoming a thing. It is also a full blown website as well. Complete with a full slate of gamification to help prod developers along.
Needless to say, this has sparked something within me and I am planning to rope my brother into helping me do this. As you know, We are still working on Demon’s Hex. It is not as done as it should be and I feel ashamed. So hopefully, this will help. I am not sure if I can complete it all by the end of January, so I may split my time between it and another game for the first couple of months. It all depends on how far I get in the first couple of weeks. So yes, Demon’s Hex is my first effort, but my be pushed for full completion a little later, while smaller games fulfil my challenges.
The idea of completing 12 full games is kind of daunting. However, the goal is to just get in the habit of taking something from concept to completion quickly and simply. That means no filler, just meat. Take a simple concept and run with it. You will be surprised what can be done. Take a look at some of the current submissions for the project. For example, McFunkypants’ first submission is a clever use of A* pathfinding. Placing barriers in the way of the two AI characters is the primary goal. Simple concept and a number of maps to fill it out. That is all that is required. Can the games be bigger fare? Sure if you have time to work full time. However, for me, it will probably be something smaller. Not like Dragon Punch or Dragon Fire small, but something in between that and Demon’s Hex.
For example, I have had one game idea floating around in my skull for several years. This is a politically themed editorial game all about raising awareness for Oklahoma’s horrid ballot access laws. The object of the game would be to collect enough signatures to gain recognized political party status in the state. With a new legislative session coming in and signature requirements at a high point following the Presidential Election, now would be a good time to get people aware so that they can pressure the state legislature to pass reform. I would just need to come up with a clever gameplay mechanic to not only demonstrate the trouble new parties face, but also frustrate the player.
Other game ideas are a more fleshed out Dragon Fire that turns it into a full fledge vertical shooter. Or a board game inspired on the Lego Heroica games I got for Christmas. Who knows where the year will take me. Perhaps within all these games we will find our first mega hit that gets us working full time for ourselves.
Regardless of what happens, the primary goal is to build a games portfolio for us to show off as we expand our company and seek funding from outside sources. So cheer us on and follow our progress over at my One Game a Month profile page.
OneGameAMonth
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DK Gaming Sites
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Willa "Hey"
Vancouver electro-pop artist Willa is revving up to release her debut LP Criminals + Dreamers next month, and she's teasing its arrival with another new track. Following up "Dreamers," "Hey" serves as another friendly welcome into the world of Willa's music — and Exclaim! has got the exclusive premiere.
The song is an upbeat burst of glitched-out grooves, sparkly synths and Willa's echoing, hypnotic voice. Along with the rest of Criminals + Dreamers, "Hey" was produced by Mother Mother's Ryan Guldemond, and if it serves as any indication of what's to come, there should be a ton more dance party-inducing fun on the way.
Before the full record arrives on May 6, up the anticipation by giving "Hey" a spin in the player below.
More Willa
Willa "Dreamers" (video)
Vancouver-based electro-popster Willa is set to release her debut album Criminals + Dreamers later this spring, but before the full album la...
Willa "Stay the Night"
Up-and-coming Vancouver-based electro-pop artist Willa has unveiled her debut single "Stay the Night," and lending a hand is none other than...
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Cubbin
Valore:This very unusual name has its origins in the Isle of Man, where the surnames Cubbin, Cubin and Cubbon are contractions of the Gaelic Scottish name 'MacCubbin(g)', meaning 'son of Cubbin', itself a mutation of Gibbon, a diminutive of the personal name 'Gilbert'. In Scotland the MacCubbin family gave its name to M'Cubbinstone in Dumfriesshire, where the name has been found for centuries. There are many recordings of the names Cubin and Cubbin in the parish registers of the Isle of Man, although interestingly the spelling Cubbin only appears there after the 17th Century. Recordings from the Isle of Man Church Registers include: the christening of Thomas, son of John Cubbin and Catherine Caveen, on February 14th 1666, at Arbory; the christening of Christiana, daughter of Thomas and Jonye Cubbin, on December 10th 1727, at St. Mathew's, Douglas; and the christening of Ann, daughter of Robert Cubbin and Ann Quayle, on January 3rd 1792, at Arbory. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Martin M'Cubyn, which was dated 1376, in the 'Register of the Charters of the Earldom of Morton', Scotland, during the reign of King Robert 11 of Scotland, 1371 - 1390. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to 'develop' often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.
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Home » Government and Politics » Executive Branch » Governors » William W. Brandon (1923-27)
Democratic Party in Alabama
Alabama Department of Archives and History
Alabama Legislature
Lee N. Allen, Birmingham, Alabama
William W. Brandon (1868-1934) was Alabama's governor from 1923-27, having first served in local and state political offices and administrative positions and in the military during the Spanish-American War. As chief executive during the 1920s, he oversaw improvements in Alabama's highway system and Mobile's port facilities and improved the state's financial condition. He twice represented Alabama as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, and gained renown for his distinctive oratorical style. Although the Brandon administration was free of scandal, it was also marked by little noteworthy or constructive legislation and represented a quiet period between the more active administrations of governors Thomas Kilby and David Bibb Graves.
William W. Brandon
William Woodward Brandon was born in Talladega, Talladega County, on June 5, 1868, to Franklin Thomas Jefferson Brandon and Caroline Woodward Brandon. His father was a Methodist minister and subject to frequent reassignments. Brandon received his early education at Cedar Bluff Institute in Cherokee County and graduated from high school in Tuscaloosa. He took a law course at the University of Alabama in 1891, and in the same year was elected to the first of three terms as Tuscaloosa's city clerk. In 1892, he opened a law practice in Tuscaloosa and was appointed justice of the peace. In 1900, he married widow Elizabeth Andrews Nabors, whose first husband had been a Methodist minister and with whom she had two daughters. The Brandons had no additional children. When she became the state's First Lady, Elizabeth Brandon initiated the popular custom of receiving friends and visitors at the governor's mansion every Tuesday afternoon.
Prior to his political career, Brandon in 1886 joined the local Warrior Guards, part of the Alabama National Guard, and was elected lieutenant two years later. He was promoted to captain in 1894, at which time he established a military journal, The Citizen Soldier, for his troops. With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Brandon joined the Second Alabama Volunteers, was promoted to major, and was dispatched to Florida, where his unit remained until the brief war ended. In 1899, he was appointed state adjutant general by Gov. Joseph F. Johnston and was reappointed by governors William J. Samford and William D. Jelks, serving until 1907. During his tenure as commander of the state's military forces, Brandon followed the national mandate and implemented reorganization and modernization policies.
Alongside his military service, in 1896 Brandon was elected to the state legislature, serving three terms in the state house. Known for his legislative skill, Brandon was at various times a member of the State Democratic Executive Committee and would serve as reading clerk at the 1901 constitutional convention. Brandon's career was moving inexorably toward the governorship, which had long been his ambition. He was elected state auditor in 1907, a minor position that was often used in that era as a stepping stone to more prominent state offices. As auditor, Brandon introduced a system of accounting practices that earned plaudits from the state examiner of accounts, and he was also elected probate judge of Tuscaloosa County. In 1918, he made his first run for the governorship, coming in a close second to Thomas Kilby. He continued to campaign vigorously during the next four years and was elected governor in 1922 by a margin of three to one over Bibb Graves, who was making his first bid for the office. The new governor was elected on a platform of economy in government, no new taxes, and defense of the convict-lease system.
Brandon Campaign Poster
Brandon's modest accomplishments as governor were made possible by the prosperous 1920s. Inheriting a substantial debt from Kilby, the Brandon administration, through a combination of good economic fortunes and strict fiscal restraints, passed on a small surplus to the next governor. Although he had spoken in campaign speeches of the need for more support for education, no new initiatives were undertaken during his economy-minded term as governor. He used bond money authorized during the Kilby administration to improve Alabama's roads, a growing need as the automobile was rapidly supplanting the horse and buggy. Brandon promoted this issue both as governor and afterward as president of the United States Good Roads Association. In another modest move, the Alabama Forestry Commission initiated efforts to use nonagricultural lands more profitably and encouraged wood-products industries to invest in Alabama.
Perhaps the most notable achievement of Brandon's administration was the creation of the Alabama State Docks Commission. A $10 million bond issue financed improvements, which included deepening the port and enhancing facilities. These improvements made it possible for the state's industries to use Mobile rather than New Orleans for its incoming and outgoing products, saving Alabama industries millions of dollars over the next several decades and turning Mobile into a major gulf port.
In defending the convict-lease system, Brandon expressed the view that it was not inhumane, that it provided work for otherwise idle hands, that it put a small sum of spending money in the pockets of the prisoners, and that it relieved the state of a heavy expense while generating needed revenues. He was generous with paroles for convicts despite a storm of protest throughout the state. Brandon acted in accordance with his Christian upbringing, which had taught him to think the best of people and to believe that lives could be redeemed and turned around. His rosy outlook on the system allowed it to continue with little improvement. Indeed, Alabama was the last state in the Union to end the practice.
At the conclusion of his single term as governor, Brandon returned to the office of probate judge under appointment of his successor, Bibb Graves. Brandon served as chairman of the Alabama delegation to the Democratic National Convention of 1924, where he cast the state's vote for Alabama senator and presidential candidate Oscar W. Underwood. Brandon, at only five feet, one inch tall, had to stand on a chair to be seen. With no electronic amplification but with a booming voice, he had no trouble being heard as he proudly announced, "Alabama casts twenty-four votes for Oscar W. Underwood." In fact, the lone microphone on the speaker's podium, which carried the proceedings to a small radio audience in the eastern portion of the nation, picked up the vote. Later in the proceedings, which required 103 ballots, visitors in the balcony and eventually other delegates as well began to join with Brandon as he rhythmically cast the Alabama vote. For many years, his voice and his vote were remembered and repeated by scores who followed politics.
Alfred E. Smith
He remained active in Democratic politics and in 1928, when Alabama Democrats split over the candidacy of Al Smith—the first Roman Catholic nominated for president by a major political party—Brandon remained loyal to the national ticket. His popularity and loyalty helped to carry the state for the Democrats despite opposition from such Alabama political stalwarts as Sen. Tom Heflin. Despite declining health, Brandon announced his candidacy for delegate at large to the 1932 Democratic National Convention. After initially opposing Franklin D. Roosevelt, Brandon became a supporter and was elected a delegate to the national convention. Brandon was once again chosen to chair the Alabama delegation, but poor health and age had tarnished his famed speaking ability of 1924 as he again intoned, "Alabama casts twenty-four votes for Roosevelt."
Brandon died in a Tuscaloosa hospital on December 7, 1934, and was buried in Tuscaloosa Memorial Park cemetery. In 1938, the National Guard armory in Tuscaloosa was dedicated as Fort William W. Brandon.
Note: This entry was adapted with permission from Alabama Governors: A Political History of the State, edited by Samuel L. Webb and Margaret Armbrester (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001).
William W. Brandon Papers. VF Miscellaneous Clippings (Box SC 7000), Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery.
Kelley, Richard B. Collection (Box SC 2285). Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery.
Published: May 13, 2008 | Last updated: December 5, 2017
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Hartzman's
One who intends to leave others better off for his having existed.
John Hammer on the Gay Marriage Greensboro City Council Vote and Zack Matheny
"The Greensboro City Council is moving left at such a rapid rate that it wouldn't be surprising for a motion to replace General Greene on the city flag with Vladimir Lenin or Karl Marx to pass at the next meeting.
...When the White Street Landfill was an issue, one of the constant complaints of those who opposed using the landfill was that the City Council didn't have a public hearing on the item. Tuesday night many of those same folks voted against having a public hearing on the resolution opposing the marriage amendment.
...After being elected, Perkins had said that this council, under his direction, was going to focus like a laser on three issues: jobs and economic development, infrastructure, and public safety. Perkins was highly critical of the previous council for not spending its time on these issues and getting distracted by less important issues like the landfill.
...Matheny is listed on the agenda as one of the contact persons about the resolution, but Matheny said he didn't know why he was listed as a contact person.
Matheny did, however, make the motion to pass the resolution and voted for it, although he did not give his constituents any insight into why he voted in favor of such a controversial resolution.
Every other councilmember spoke about why they were voting the way they were."
John Hammer
Posted by Abner Doon at 1:45 PM
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Busy as hell the past two weeks, astonishingly so, given the financial meltdown around us. I felt bad about not blogging, but then again reading The Wall Street Journal every morning was enough to paralyze me.
I remember ’87. I was in Rhode Island at the time. I just happened to pop into my broker’s office in the afternoon when the market crashed. I had no idea, as this was pre-Internet and I hadn’t been listening to the radio. My Kidder-Peabody guy had his silver bull statue turned upside down after the market when 500 points south. More than a dozen years later, I saw Worldcom evaporate before my eyes along with a chunk of hard-earned investment.
This one is different. It’s a good old-fashioned panic. Most of us haven’t seen anything like this in our lifetime. In previously market runs or recessions, there was always credit. It may have been more expensive money, but it was there to be had. Today, there is NO credit. There is only fear.
On NPR today, a woman who runs a small business in the Bay Area said her credit line is frozen. She’s had to lay off half her staff of 40 in the past few days. I chatted with the deli owner across the street. She has a customer, an accountant, whose firm’s largest client was a European company with offices in San Francisco. They retrenched and killed the S.F. presence. There goes half that man’s business. Multiply those cases by, what, tens of thousands? Overnight. Boom. Done.
This could be a doozy. I’ve worried for years that the real estate speculation bubble would mirror, in its collapse, what happened to Japan in the early 1990s, when asset prices said sayonara and the lost decade ensued.
We can hope that ours won’t be that prolonged. We tend to move more quickly, rip off the bandage faster. But it will be painful. Then again, 24-hour media so hyperventilates today that it could all be overblown, couldn’t it? You just don’t know.
Joe Biden said tonight in the VP debate that this collapse was driven by greed. Sure enough. But let’s be honest: we’re all complicit. Rank and file Americans had access to cheap money the past 10 years that was unprecedented. Bad oversight sure. But didn’t you feel, somewhere deep down, that at the peak of it all something was amiss? In the past 10 years, when your neighbors were taking weekend trips to the islands or Europe, didn’t that strike you as just not right? New everything every couple of years, second and third homes? Technology brought us boom times, but could it really make us mini King Croesuses?
My parents both lived through the Depression, neither uncomfortably. My godmother did too, but she remembered toast and water for a long time. They were forever changed by it. Credit to them was something to be avoided at all times, save for buying a house. My old man had plenty of money but held onto our cars for a dozen years, bought sport coats at Kmart for 10 bucks. It was a fabulous deal to him and an eyesore to mom, so much so she wept every time he wore it public.
We may have an astonishingly resilient economy, spurred on by technology and creative, risk-taking minds with renewed access to credit. That’s the upside. The downside is our standard of living could completely change overnight and we’ll all be shopping for burgundy sports coats at Kmart, assuming it doesn’t go bankrupt again.
No Responses to “What’s old is new again”
October 3rd, 2008 @ 6:10 am
If you don’t have the money for a 60″ plasma TV, or a Mercedes, or whatever, don’t BUY it. What happened to SAVING UP for what you want, rather than buying it on credit and paying extra? What happened to layaway? What are we teaching Americans if we bail out Wall Street, and then leave those folks there to rebuild their greedy empire with our money?
No, it’s not plausible to buy a house, or usually a car, without credit. But if you can’t MEET PAYROLL because your credit line dried up, there is something wrong with the way you’re running your business. It’s called irresponsible growth. Like feeding the hungry with McDonalds instead of healthful protein and vegetables — the difference between bloat and growth.
You’re one of the few people with the guts to say that the greed observed in hedge-fund managers is mirrored in the way people consider their own 401k’s, in the way they conduct private real-estate transactions, etc. If we all would settle for single-digit profit margins, both in what we demand from commercial banking institutions and what we expect from our own lives, our problems wouldn’t be nearly as great. Yeah, right, as if. We’ll just bounce from bubble to bubble to bubble.
October 6th, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
Jim Kramer said Oct. 6 if you need cash within the next five years, get it out of the stock market now. Now there’s a vote of confidence.
For at least the last quarter-century, it has been government and industry policy to actively encourage individual irresponsibility.
When we bought our house 15 years ago, our real estate agent was encouraging us to buy a house at double that what we actually paid for the one we’re in. Our real estate agent assured us we could afford more. Our bank assured us we could afford more. Common financial advice at the time was that we could afford more house.
I don’t think I was all that smart back then, I think I bought only as much house as I thought I could afford because I was just being a pussy.
The point is, when everyone tells you it’s safe, at some point, some people are going to believe it’s actually safe.
YES, YES, YES, individuals have to shoulder some blame. Did everyone read that? Voters have to shoulder some blame for voting for morons advocating “free” markets (aka voodoo economics, sh** running downhill — oops, I mean “trickle down” theory, or financial anarchy).
But for all that, the blame being heaped on Wall Street snake oil salesman and the government that aided and abetted them is justly apportioned.
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Today there was an unfortunate (and unfortunately avoidable) social media mix-up, where word spread about a possible Facebook profile for the gunman in an elementary school shooting. A police official’s mistake in switching the names of the shooter and his brother led to social media newsgathering running headlong into a wall.
“Clouds over Porthcawl” via Jon Downs on Flickr
It’s typical to hear disparaging remarks about television and online news racing to get the scoop on a story – the problem with the Connecticut shooting is that it doesn’t matter. The shooter was dead, the shooting was over, there was nothing left to discover. Racing to out the shooter’s name or be the first to post his Facebook profile wouldn’t aid the investigation or save lives. All that could motivate releasing a name would be the desire to be first – a fleeting badge of honor that would vanish as soon as every other news organization tossed up the same Facebook image.
I revel in fast-paced news – there’s a thrill, and I admit there’s an element of competition – but the cost of going forward with a possible ID of the Connecticut shooter was way too high compared to any benefit. If the ID is wrong, you’ve birthed a smear campaign against anyone with that name. If the ID is correct, then you’ll be the quickly-forgotten first person or news org to present a name or Facebook profile that will instantaneously become common knowledge to anyone following the story. There’s no gunman on the loose who needs to be identified so the public can assist the police. There’s no license plate that needs to be memorized to keep an eye out for. There’s only a selfish desire to be the first in a competition that exists only in your head.
For more info, read the article from Mother Jones and take a look through Jim Clancy’s Tweets, who was one of the people to post the name and Facebook profile of the wrong person in the Connecticut shooting.
Trace Gilton — December 15, 2012
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News flashes
News flashes |
Sharing Tragedy Can Bring Hope
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Deborah Weissman; Former ICCJ President | 10.05.2019
A joint ceremony of mourning for Israelis and Palestinians is controversial, but can also open a window of hope for a better shared future. ICCJ’s former President Debbie Weissman was there.
The day before Israel Independence Day is called Yom HaZikkaron, the national day of remembrance and mourning for the fallen soldiers. In the last few years, victims of terror have been included in the list of those who are mourned. Ceremonies are held throughout the country, and sirens are blown at 8 p.m. and the next morning at 11. As on Holocaust Memorial Day, the entire country stops to stand at attention and honor the memory of the fallen.
This year (Tuesday, May 7, 2019), I participated in an alternative and even somewhat controversial ceremony in the evening. It was a joint memorial for Israeli and Palestinian victims of violence and of the ongoing conflict between the two peoples. This ceremony has been held for the past 14 years, but this is the first year in which I have attended. It was held at a huge park in Tel-Aviv, meticulously organized, attended by thousands of Israelis and Palestinians, and protested by a few hundred extremists.
The event is organized each year by the Bereaved Families’ Forum, an organization founded in 1995, involving people on both sides of the conflict, who have lost a loved one, but whose response is not to seek revenge; rather to seek reconciliation and peace through dialogue and cooperation. The ceremony of an hour and a half or so, includes short, powerful speeches in Hebrew and Arabic and appropriate musical interludes. Everything is shown on huge screens (and livestreamed on social media) with translations into the parallel language and English, as well. The speakers are generally people who have lost a family member or close friend, in some aspect of the conflict.
The political establishments on both sides do not support this kind of joint memorial. Arguing that the ceremony conflates Israeli soldiers with Palestinian terrorists, the Israeli Defense Minister (who is also the Prime Minister) denied entry permits to 181 Palestinians from the West Bank, arguing it is dangerous to allow them in. Later, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned that decision. The Prime Minister’s son called anyone who would participate in such an event “mentally disturbed.” But the turn-out was impressive. Still, not all of the speakers could arrive and two of them spoke by means of short videos, filmed in their homes in Ramallah and Tulkarem.
I mentioned earlier that there were Israeli demonstrators, protesting the event. That is surely their legal right in a democracy. For them, any attempt to empathize with the other side is traitorous. Some even called us “Nazis.” Their style was vulgar and offensive, but that’s not a criminal act. Last year, some of them became violent and threw stones and other objects at the bereaved families. The security forces learned from that experience and made sure that the demonstrators and the mourners were kept apart. This year, as well, some turned violent and five were arrested.
Which brings me to why I’m telling this story and what it has to do with inter-religious dialogue. I went to the event, for the first time in my life, because my dear friend Leah Shakdiel from the Negev town of Yerucham was invited to be the main speaker. I have known Leah for more than 45 years. She is an Orthodox feminist who achieved national prominence in 1986, when she was denied membership on the local religious council of her town, based solely on her gender, and decided to fight her way up to the Supreme Court. (She eventually won the case.) Over the years, she has been an educator, a human rights activist, and a tireless worker for peace, and is now completing her studies for Orthodox rabbinic ordination. She is also one of the most intelligent and articulate speakers I know.
Leah and I drove together from Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv. Also in the car was a young woman, a recent immigrant to Israel, who is studying in the same co-ed rabbinical program as is Leah. The two women in the front of the car (I was sitting in the back) are visibly religious, modestly dressed, with their hair covered in the typical Orthodox fashion. Someone who didn’t know them might have mistaken them for settlers.
When we arrived at the park, several of the security people didn’t want to let us in. Leah’s name was on the list of VIP’s, as was the license number of her car. But the police, doing an understandable act of “profiling,” were worried that we were going to try to disrupt the ceremony rather than contribute to it positively. It took about twenty minutes and a call to one of the organizers to come out and explain, before they would let us in. At the ceremony, I was sitting next to a peace activist who is a member of an Orthodox Kibbutz on the Gaza border. He was describing the rockets fired earlier in the week from Gaza that forced the members of the Kibbutz to take shelter. I recognized several Reform rabbis in the audience, and a handful of Masorti (Traditional) Jews. But the overwhelming majority of the audience were secular and, mainly, Ashkenazim. Leah’s talk was brilliant. In less than ten minutes, I would say that she succeeded in breaking stereotypes and changing paradigms. She was the first speaker that evening to include the greeting “Ramadan Kareem.”
I have shared this story with you for several reasons. One is to indicate the enormous complexity of our lives in this region. But another is to underscore the positive role I believe religion and religious people can play in moving us beyond the conflict. Religious Jews and Muslims (and, sometimes, Christians, as well) can often find a common spiritual language. Peace-making is what diplomats and politicians are supposed to do; peace-building involves the grass-roots level, people-to-people. A way forward between Israelis and Palestinians will necessitate empathy and listening to the stories on both sides, which may be stories of great pain. But the chief message I came away with from the ceremony was a message of hope.
The views, opinions, and conclusions expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily represent the views of the ICCJ, its Executive Board, or its national member organizations.
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The Forgotten Heroes of War
By Sahasra Chigurupati
//PICTURED ABOVE: Senior Jessica Katzman, sophomore Isabella Lambert. junior Lily Forbes, senior Megan Muscato and junior Hope Fu (pictured left to right) stand on the Black Box Theatre stage as their teacher Emily Gray directs their dress rehearsal of the fall play, “Women in War.”
This fall, the Hockaday Advanced Theatre Class is putting on the play “Women in War.” The one-act play takes its audience through the tales of multiple women in times of conflict. The play tells stories of women and their role in wars that America has been involved in, specifically highlighting how their roles have changed as the years have gone by. It dates all the way back to the Civil War era and also includes the more recent Iraq War.
Drama teacher Emily Gray goes through the lines and directs students on where to move. She has carefully selected the play, after months of searching and is excited to see the impact that the play has.
Lily Forbes, a junior in Advanced Theatre, is playing the role of Helen, a woman in World War II whose boyfriend was just drafted to war.
“It is a very emotional story and it will be hard to watch, so it will be hard to put on that in a real and sensitive way,” Forbes said. “I think that it will leave a heavy feeling.”
Junior Celese Gierhart is a utility player (somebody who plays multiple roles within one play). Her roles include “donut gal,” “a body in a war zone” and a “Vietnam girlfriend.” She believes that Hockaday is taking a new direction with this play and that it is unlike any from the past.
“The different perspectives of the era, and how you can hear the writers through their letters as well as their diversity, I believe make the play different from any other that we have done,” Gierhart said.
The stories told through the play are realistic and often don’t have happy endings to them, which is a different take on the multiple Hockaday fall plays that have been done in the past.
“I hope that people know that happy endings are rare in the context of our show that even though it does have happy endings, they are not common,” Forbes said. The play takes a heavier note and focuses on more controversial topics compared to other fall plays that Hockaday has performed. Even though there are many humorous remarks, the message of the play is something that is serious and very relevant to our culture: the role of women in war whether it be at home or on the battlefield.
“A lot of times, Hockaday plays are focused on more funny things. It is interesting that this one is taking a different approach” said Gierhart.
Because the play is different from past Hockaday plays, the set design is unique as well.
“The crew had an interesting challenge to come up with a set or world that the play can exist in,” Gray said.
The set jumps around from a therapist’s offices to battlefields to kitchens. The transitions between the sets are done by the set design crew, who has been finding ways to encompass all the decades that the characters in the play are representing within the set. These universal sets allow for the characters to interact with one and another even if they are all not in the same eras.
“There has been a lot of input and there has been large design meetings going on,” Gray said. “The characters are away
at war so they wanted to create a common home,” Gray said.
The design crew has been working on the set since the beginning of the year. Since all the characters are always on stage, the main challenge for the crew has been to find one set that can represent all the different eras that the women in the play are from.
“Hopefully they will be fascinated by the set, I think it’s really unique and there are a lot of intricate parts on the set that add to the total image of the characters,” Gierhart said.
The play goes seamlessly through stories of each woman which is done through transitions that make sure the play can be understood by the audience.
“Each one is a snippet, if it was a movie it would be a montage, you dip in and out these stories constantly,” Gray said.
Finding a way to make transitions between the different eras of the play was difficult as well. With such a hard-hitting play, the transitions have to make sense so the message of the play does not get lost.
“For me, what is challenging is how to transition in and out of the time periods,” Gray said. “It would be really easy for the play to not make sense to the audience.”
By using music, Gray has been able to make the transitions easier for the audience to understand. She incorporates dances, like the jitterbug, to show that the time period is changing. For more modern eras concerning the more recent wars, she will play more up-to-date music, such as “I’m a Survivor” by Beyoncé.
“The music and the movement are things that help the play transition really clearly,” Gray said.
The play takes an interesting view on hard times at home, and shows how they can empower women, through common stories of wartime that would remain otherwise unknown to many of us. It shows that women did not just stand by ideally while their husbands, boyfriends, or fiancés went of to fight. Characters like the one Forbes portrays are there to show the audience how women have been there as an imperative part of the history of our country’s wars.
“I guess the most unique [thing about the play] is that it takes place throughout so many different time periods we have, but it has universal themes of war and it transitions between different time periods,” Forbes said.
“Women in War” is a very different Hockaday fall play, as it takes often-forgotten periods of history and turns them into a modern relevant play about empowering women. Even if it is not funny like past plays the message of the play makes the show enticing and a show that all Hockaday girls should watch.
“I think it’s a very engaging show and the audience will find it very easy to watch and want to know what happens next,” Gray said. Gray hopes that the play will empower girls and inspire them through these stories of hard-working women, and showing that theatre can send powerful messages and doesn’t have to always be funny.
“I am always interested in shows that can stretch my actors and challenge them,” Gray said.
The play teaches her students about how to be more versatile actors and shows the audience that theatre is not only funny, but can be used to convey a serious message as well. Gray wants the audience to learn as much as she did while directing the play and understand the various roles that women have had to assume over periods of war. Gray believes that the show can teach the audience important messages about empowering women and hopefully inspire them to take action or to continue to learn more about this unfamiliar topic.
“Theatre is more than just a frivolous thing to do and the whole point of theatre is commenting on social injustices,” Gierhart said.
Story by Sahara Chigurupati, Castoff Editor
Photo by Sarah Schultz
Tags: dramafalltheater
Sahasra Chigurupati
Sahasra is a junior who runs a successful psychic blog. She enjoys tuna towers, her puppy, Caesar (follow him on insta @cockapoopupcaesar), and doing fireworks. You can catch her at your local paint and pottery studio.
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James Gurney & Tim Barber, Editor-in-Chief and Editor QP magazine
Trailblazers, Watchpro Hot 100 2014 Gallery
In the 1976 classic All the President’s Men, reporters Woodward and Bernstein (played by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford) blow open the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon.
QP magazine’s James Gurney and Tim Barber haven’t snagged a Pulitzer yet, but they do take inspiration from that famous piece of investigative journalism, as they show in their Hot 100 profile picture that recreates a classic still from the film.
It has been a dramatic year for QP magazine, and its exhibition SalonQP, which were brought by Telegraph Media Group at the end of 2013. This paved the way for a re-launch of the magazine in May. “I’m immensely proud of the result. It’s a brighter, more modern, more accessible magazine, but no less informative or authoritative,” says Tim, who joined the team in November last year.
With the backing of Telegraph Media Group, QP magazine and SalonQP are hoping for considerable growth this year. “We will keep developing both the magazine and SalonQP, and to grow the audience and impact of everything we do. And of course, we have very big plans for SalonQP in November,” promises James.
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Tag Archives: step
Trump Becomes First Sitting American President to Step Into North Korea—a Win for Kim Jong Un
July 2, 2019 Sexual Health
Kevin Lamarque/ReutersSEOUL—Kim Jong Un would have to be declared the easy winner Sunday from his third meeting with President Donald Trump, this one in the dramatic setting of the heavily fortified demilitarized zone that is the border between North and South Korea.In an atmosphere of mounting excitement, Trump clapped Kim on the shoulder as they shook hands exactly on the North-South line. The greetings exchanged between them seemed portentous, laden with hope that this time, perhaps, the yearning for reconciliation would survive the usual recriminations and intimidation.“Nobody had expected this moment,” said Trump. “It’s significant,” said Kim, talking in Korean, an interpreter at his side. “We want to bring an end to this unpleasant past and create a new future.”It was not just that Trump met Kim in the truce village of Panmunjom, or for a few seconds stepped across the line into North Korea, then made his way with Kim through besieging cameramen and security people on the southern side to Freedom House for a extended meeting with the North Korean leader. If Trump was able to proclaim the gesture “a very historic moment,” it was there behind closed doors that he and Kim got down to serious talking. Clearly, Kim had now recovered from the humiliation of the aborted summit with Trump in Hanoi at the end of February.Making up for the debacle in Hanoi, Kim was able on the basis of his talk with Trump at the DMZ to look forward to new talks in which he is sure to go on demanding the deal he wants with the U.S. Trump came out of that extended conversation with Kim in Freedom House, hidden from the pervasive cameras and mics of the media, saying that he and Kim had “agreed to have teams set up” to return to talks that had simply not been happening since Hanoi.If the two said a word on Sunday, however, about “denuclearization” as promised during their first summit in Singapore in June of last year, Trump was not talking about it. Indeed, there was no mention of U.S. demands for shutting down the North’s main nuclear complex at Yongbyon 60 miles north of Pyongyang or for a full accounting of where the North is hiding all those other facilities for making nuclear weapons and missiles. Nor, apparently, was anything said about lesser issues, including return of more remains of those missing in action from the Korean War.It was all “classic Trump, a made-for-television moment designed to showcase Trump's relationship with a brutal dictator, but on closer inspection, a progress-free event,” said Evans Revere, a former senior U.S. diplomat here. “The only way Trump was able to secure a North Korean agreement to resume working-level denuclearization talks was by agreeing to meet Kim personally and by stepping across the military demarcation line into North Korea, an act that gave Kim considerable legitimacy and "face."When or if talks resume, said Revere, “the North Koreans will be as firmly committed to the preservation of their nuclear weapons program as they were in Hanoi, and as determined to wring concessions from a tractable U.S. president as they were in Singapore.” Is a Trump-Kim DMZ Photo-Op in the Works?Nonetheless, by his own account of what he called “a very productive meeting,” Trump once again “outlined the tremendous prosperity” that would befall North Korea “when this whole thing gets settled.” In other words, if Kim would just get rid of his nukes or missiles, he could be sure of massive rewards for an economy hobbled by sanctions imposed after missile-and-nuclear tests last staged in 2017. The hope is the economic bait will outweigh the perceived need for a nuclear program. “Kim will face increasing domestic expectations for economic growth,” said Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Woman’s University here, “but benefiting from international trade will require denuclearization and rule of law. “If Kim managed to make up from the tremendous loss of face inflicted by Trump’s walkout from his summit in Hanoi, Trump was also clearly a winner as well. A day after the president had tweeted the idea of seeing Kim while in Korea to meeting Moon, the burst of publicity surrounding the whole occasion enabled him yet again to lay claim to have come up with the solution to North Korea.“When I came into office, it was a fiery mess,” he said at least twice. “Nothing was happening. In two and a half years we have had peace.” In fact, he declared, standing beside South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in before they flew up to the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas for the meeting with Kim, if Barack Obama had still been president, “we would have been at war with North Korea.”The fact that Trump, during his first year as president, had threatened the North with “fire and fury” and referred to Kim as “little rocket man” was all forgotten in the sense of triumph surrounding the occasion.Moon appeared overjoyed by Trump’s seemingly spontaneous decision the day before to suggest a meeting with Kim, but he was the odd man out in the interplay between Trump and Kim. Left outside as Trump and Kim talked privately in Freedom House, he could still take credit for having opened up dialog with North Korea with their first summit in the same setting of the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom within the demilitarized zone about 40 miles north of Seoul.Moon was full of praise for Trump as they announced that the meeting with Kim was on after their own summit in the Blue House, the South Korean presidential complex. “I hope President Trump will be able to go down in history as the president who has achieved peace on the Korean peninsula,” he said. No way, he made clear, did dialog with the North compromise the alliance between the U.S. and South Korea.Rather, said Moon, “today our leaders have agreed to further expand the Korea-U.S. alliance.” Together the new policies of the U.S. and Korea “can achieve common ground,” he maintained. “President Trump and I will not forget the history and spirit of our alliance. President Trump is the maker of peace on the Korean peninsula. We would hope for a milestone in the history of our alliance.”For Trump, the meeting with Kim all rested on the personal chemistry, the bond formed between them at the Singapore summit. “We have developed a very good relationship. He understands me, and maybe I understand him.”Trump was at pains, before and after seeing Kim, to defend the record of his previous two summits even though North Korea has done nothing to get rid of its nuclear program—and is assumed to have added several warheads to the 60 or so that it’s believed to have fabricated so far.“We’ve made tremendous strides,” he said. “Only the fake news says we haven’t.”Standing with an American army officer at an observation post looming south of the North-South line, he said “you have 35 million people within range of their weapons.” He did not say, of course, that hundreds of North Korean artillery pieces remain in place behind the hills above the DMZ—not a topic of consideration in demands for the North to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction including, biological, chemical and nuclear.The overriding sense was that the meeting, an extended photo-op, might be seen as representing the aspiration for a lasting deal with North Korea—but with no clue as to how to bring it about. Kim was really the winner here having photo evidence to flash around that he is a distinguished world leader,” said Stephen Tharp, retired U.S. army officer who spent much time during his career for meetings at Panmunjom. “It was easy for Kim to accept this mini-summit since there wouldn’t be any expectations for substantive discussions and hence no chance to fail in a meeting.”“It is very symbolic,” said Joseph Yun, the former U.S. envoy to North Korea, on duty as a commentator for CNN. “At a minimum the meeting has to kick off a major process, and if it doesn’t, I will be very disappointed.”Yun’s successor, Stephen Biegun, was on hand, standing behind Trump as he talked of Kim agreeing to setting up “new teams” to discuss a real deal. Biegun’s top priority will be to get working-level talks going—a process that may or may not lead to agreement.Whatever happens, for Trump the meeting was a moment of glory, a success that he’s sure to claim even if the North never comes to terms on denuclearization. “That was very quick notice, and I want to thank you,” he told Kim right away after shaking hands. “We met and liked each other from day one.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
At DMZ, step into history for Trump as he offers hand to Kim
With wide grins and a historic handshake, President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un met at the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone on Sunday and agreed to revive talks on the pariah nation’s nuclear program. Trump, pressing his bid for a legacy-defining deal, became the first sitting American leader to step into North Korea. Significant doubts remain, though, about the future of the negotiations and the North’s willingness to give up its stockpile of nuclear weapons .
Pompeo asks allies to step up on Iran surveillance
June 25, 2019 Sexual Health
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday encouraged Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to do more to ensure maritime surveillance with Iran, which days earlier shot down an American drone. Pompeo flew to the US allies just as President Donald Trump, who often complains of allies freeloading off Washington, called for Asian nations in particular to share more of the cost of security in the oil-rich Gulf. Pompeo, meeting with Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, said he was hoping that more than 20 countries including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia would work together on building maritime security.
Hong Kong protesters block road outside Carrie Lam's office to demand she step down
Thousands of protesters laid siege to the Hong Kong Chief Executive’s office on Monday in the latest escalation of a long-running standoff with the government over a controversial new extradition law. The mostly young demonstrators closed down a main road near the city’s waterfront as they stood outside Carrie Lam’s office and called for her to resign and scrap the bill which would allow suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial in its opaque justice system. Dressed in the black and sheltering from heavy rain under colourful umbrellas, the determined remnant from a march of an estimated two million people on Sunday threatened to block the road until the law was withdrawn. The latest demonstration added to the growing pressure on Ms Lam to step down over her poor handling of Hong Kong’s biggest political crisis since its handover to China in 1997. On Monday Lu Kang, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, said Beijing would continue to support the embattled leader. However, a senior Hong Kong government official revealed that China, which would lose face over her resignation after handpicking Ms Lam for the job, would not let her leave the post even if she wanted to. “It’s not going to happen,” the official told Reuters. The demonstrations show little sign of abating despite Lam's apology and indefinite suspension of the law Credit: Reuters With the demonstrations showing little sign of ending and activists rejecting her apologies for misjudging the public mood and her gesture to indefinitely suspend the law, Ms Lam appeared on Monday to have been backed into a political corner with no obvious way out. The calls for her resignation were invigorated by Joshua Wong, 22, one of Hong Kong’s most renowned pro-democracy activists, after his surprise release from jail where he had been serving a two-month sentence for obstructing the clearance of a protest camp during mass rallies five years ago. The charismatic Mr Wong, who became the face of the 2014 “Occupy” movement, revived the spirits of protesters outside the Hong Kong parliament with the rallying cry that he was ready to re-join the frontline of their campaign. “I am proud of each and every Hong Konger that we are sending a loud and clear message to President Xi Jinping and Chief Executive Carrie Lam that we are not weak,” he said to loud cheers. “We want to send a message about the power of the people!” Mr Wong asked supporters to allow him time to figure out his next move after his stint in jail, but many hope he will further galvanise the protests which have spontaneously snowballed into a mass civil resistance movement despite the lack of a clear figurehead or strategy. The uproar over the extradition bill highlights public fears that Beijing is chipping away at rights and freedoms in the former British colony despite the promise of a special autonomous status when China took control 22 years ago. Mr Wong made clear as he left prison on Monday that his political struggle ran much deeper than abolishing the extradition bill. “It is a long-term battle for us to fight for democracy under the suppression of the Communist party of China,” he told a waiting media scrum. Bonnie Leung, a leader of the Civil Human Rights Front – one of the main groups behind the mass rallies – told The Telegraph that Mr Wong’s involvement could help elevate the flourishing campaign “to the next level,” especially among the younger generation who were inspired by his activism. “I believe that Joshua Wong coming back and joining this campaign will only encourage people to persist and to throw out more great and creative ideas,” she said. But Ms Leung added that international pressure was also crucial for the movement’s survival. “Concern from all around the world is important because this is for justice, for freedom, and people need to speak up for these values,” she said.
Baltimore mayor refuses to step down over children's book scandal despite pressure from city council
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh is refusing to resign over a scandal surrounding children’s books she authored despite a unanimous call from the city council for her to step down.
President Trump announces the Second Step Act to aid Americans with criminal records reenter society successfully
Raw video: The president makes the announcement during the open media portion of the 2019 Prison Reform Summit.
The Latest: Democrats wonder if Biden out of step with party
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on former Vice President Joe Biden (all times local):
United, other airlines step in to (sort of) rescue passengers as WOW Air shuts down
Passengers scrambling to find tickets on other airlines to get home or to their vacation destination are finding limited options.
Republicans call for Rep. Adam Schiff to resign, step down from intelligence committee
Republicans including Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Kellyanne Conway and Donald Trump Jr. are calling for Rep. Adam Schiff's resignation.
Pakistan and India step back from the brink, tensions simmer
March 2, 2019 Sexual Health
Pakistan’s military said on Saturday its air force and navy “continue to be alert and vigilant”, while two of its soldiers were killed after exchanging fire with Indian troops along the Line of Control. India’s military said on Saturday that Pakistan was firing mortar shells across the LoC. Pakistan touted Abhinandan’s return as “as a goodwill gesture aimed at de-escalating rising tensions with India” after weeks of unease that threatened to spiral into war after both countries used jets for bombing missions this week.
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Home » General » Warning to All Parents: Don’t Let Your Children Eat Rice Cakes
Warning to All Parents: Don’t Let Your Children Eat Rice Cakes
Although many believe that the sweet rice, which are popular among children are healthy, the truth is quite the opposite. According to a new study, these products are loaded with dangerous levels of a carcinogenic substance.
The study was conducted by the National Food Agency of Sweden. Examining 102 rice products available in the market, in some of these researchers found high levels of arsenic, which is a known carcinogen.
Taking the survey results into consideration, the food security organization revised its dietary recommendations in rice. rice products and rice, as rice pudding, rice noodles or breakfast cereal made of puffed rice (as rice crispies, for example) should not be consumed by children over four times a week. rice cakes contain most of arsenic, so these should not be given to children under six years.
In the words of Emma Halldin Ankarberg, a toxicologist at the National Food Agency of Sweden, “ Many children eat rice cakes as an appetizer, but unfortunately we must advise against this. Other countries they are also giving this advice “.
“ For all others, rice cakes are fine in moderation, but it depends on the amount of rice products consumed in general ” he added.
Those who consume a lot of rice, that is, more than seven times a week, should reduce their rice consumption as it is exposed to a risk of ingesting a large amount of arsenic.
Related Post: Top 10 Natural remedies for Gall bladder stones
The results of the study revealed that the products of popular rice, including Rice Krispies Kellogg, boots cakes baby organic rice and Organix First Wholegrain Baby Rice, were among those containing arsenic levels not safe.
ABOUT ARSENIC AND RICE
Arsenic occurs naturally in soil and bedrock and is absorbed by plants. However, the rice appears to be especially open to absorb and store high levels of arsenic. This element is a known carcinogen that if ingested in large amounts, can lead to tumors in the skin, lungs, bladder and liver, kidney and prostate. Moreover, continuous exposure to arsenic can also contribute to a number of other health problems, including cardiovascular disease, liver damage, chronic cough, diabetes and neurological effects. Children are particularly at risk.
Recently, a lot of attention has been given to the presence of arsenic in baby rice and rice products. The study also found that there were different levels of arsenic in rice depending on the variety, cultivation area, cultivation techniques and production methods -. For example, whole grains usually contain more arsenic than refined rice
Source: Natural medicine box
Soursop Leaves Are 1000 Times Stronger At Killing Cancer Cells Than Chemotherapy!
Guanábana, or also known as Graviola, is a exotic fruit known for its unique flavor many people say that is a cross between strawberries and pineapple.
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Date palms have a wide range of health and nutritional value, so Many! There is hardly a disease in which dates can not help. excellent source
How to Make Creamy Anti-Cancer Broccoli Soup?
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How To Make Natural Anti-Wrinkle Cream
Unfortunately, the appearance of wrinkles is inevitable for everyone, and this especially affects women. When confronted with them, we try to get rid of them using
22 DIY Home Remedies for Weight Loss
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An American Success Story; Jim Freeman and Helicopter Specialties
http://www.helicopterspecialties.net/
I had the good fortune to meet Jim Freeman several years ago in Birmingham, Alabama. He and I shared the responsibility to ferry a Bell 230 coming off of a contract up to his facility in Janesville, Wisconson. He was working for the aircraft's owner, I was picked as I had flown her on an EMS contract in Columbia South Carolina.
Old folks may remember that once upon a time, a wealthy fellow with a famous last name, Dan Parker (of the Parker Pen Company ) fell in love with helicopters and started a one-ship company in Janesville, and as he was willing to have his helicopter make money any way possible, he named the company "Omniflight." (They began with the same type of aircraft in the picture, a Bell -47)
For years, Omniflight lived up to it's name, transporting executives and other VIPs, serving New York city with a shuttle, flying tours of the Wisconson Dells, and eventually testing the waters offshore with the acquisition of Pumpkin Helicopters, an oil and gas outfit. Omniflight eventually settled into helicopter EMS, and toward that end purchased Silver Star Helicopters based in Addison, Texas, near Dallas. After Dan Parker died, his widow elected to move the company from Janesville to Addison. This put Jimmy in a pickle, as he was from Janesville and didn't want to leave. He spent some time continuing with Omniflight as a flying mechanic, able to ferry backup aircraft all over the country, and fix them too. One day, he computed the hours worked versus the pay earned and realized that there had to be a better way. He began, as many aircraft mechanics do, working out of the back of his pickup truck. And made a living.
Then he got a call from an old friend. A customer needed a helicopter "completed," which entails the medical interior, the avionics suite, and the paint job. The established completion centers were booked up, and this friend knew of Jim's work ethic and capabilities. Jim contacted all the old Omniflight "wrenches" living in the area and had a Sunday night meeting at his house. The end result was a rented hangar at the airport, and a beautifully completed aircraft. From those humble beginnings, he and his team have created one of the finest helicopter maintenance, repair, overhaul, and completion centers in the world. His business has been profiled in magazines, and on TV, and they have all the work they can handle; for one reason - they do a good job.
Jim and I flew the 230 from Birmingham to Janesville and got to know each other. He is a good pilot, and could have gone down that path, but for him the real pleasure is making helicopters look and perform like new. We stopped by the OSF flight program in Peoria on the way north to let them have a look at our machine as a parts spare, and finished the trip using the radar, the autopilot, and the air conditioner to good effect. I found it ironic that the machine had never worked so well as she did during the ride to get rid of her.
Many people living in America today think that our best days are behind us. When I get discouraged about the state of things, I think about Jim Freeman, Helicopter Specialties, and what one guy with a commitment to excellence can achieve...
My father, Dan Parker, would certainly be pleased to hear of Jim Freeman's dedication. He believed, as many others do, in the utterly unique capabilities of the helicopter, and worked tirelessly to develop them.
Tough Times for Canada's ORNGE
Good Times with Good Friends...
NTSB Preliminary Report, N114AE Bell 206 Mancheste...
But For the Grace of God...
Another One Bites the Dust...
An American Success Story; Jim Freeman and Helicop...
Get-Home-itis Close to Home...
Is Anyone Paying Attention...
And yet again we grieve....
The Unintended Consequences of Change....
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Category archive: Uncategorized
Catherine (Kate) Evans
September 10, 2016Larry DoheyUncategorized
Catherine (Kate) Evans Passed on: September 8th, 2016 Celebration of Life: September 11th, Clovelly Golf Club, St. John’s Passed peacefully on September 8th. Born in Ballymote, Sligo, Ireland as the daughter of Michael and Winnifred Reynolds. Predeceased by her daughter Mary. Leaving to mourn her husband Tony, sons Mark (Heather) and Cormac (Pricia), her grandchildren…
A festival of traditional music and song
August 30, 2016Larry DoheyUncategorized
The organizers of the Féile Séamus Creagh Festival, this year from September 8-12 are hoping that the Irish and friends of the Irish will get out this year to enjoy a festival of traditional music and song. Féile Séamus Creagh is a festival of traditional music and song from Newfoundland and Ireland. It is named…
Irish Courses at Memorial University
July 26, 2016Larry DoheyNews, Uncategorized
Memorial University, considers Irish courses for this this fall/winter. Students interested in learning about Irish language and culture should be ready to experience the luck of the Irish starting in Fall 2016. LANG 1200 is an introduction to Irish culture, and to speaking and listening to Irish Gaelic. Irish songs, music, plays, films, television, radio,…
Newfoundland and Labrador Irish Connections, information session.
April 9, 2016Larry DoheyUncategorized
Newfoundland and Labrador Irish Connections (NLIC) is hosting an information session regarding our 2016 Ireland-Newfoundland Gathering tonight (Saturday, April 9th) beginning at 7PM at the BIS, 30 Harvey Road, St. John’s. The Information Session will be followed immediately by a Pub-Night Fundraiser. The entry fee is $10, and there will be soup, sandwiches, and entertainment…
Irish Movie night features: An Klondike, the first Western to be made in Ireland.
March 24, 2016Larry DoheyUncategorized
Date: Monday, March 28 Time: 7 PM – 10 PM Location: Bridie Molloy’s/Celtic Hearth 5 George St., St. John’s Admission: FREE An Klondike, the first Western to be made in Ireland, tells the story of the Connolly Brothers; three Irish emigrants who travel from Montana to the Yukon during the Klondike gold rush of the…
Newfoundland’s Irish Nationalists:1880-1950.
Newfoundland’s Irish Nationalists, 1880-1950. Dr. Patrick Mannion will deliver a public lecture to the Family History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador (FHS) entitled “Irishness and Empire: Newfoundland’s Irish Nationalists, 1880-1950?” His talk will compare how three St. John’s – born individuals, Archbishop Michael Francis Howley, James O’Neill Conroy, and Aloysius O’Brien, understood and engaged with…
Irish Week DANCE
March 9, 2016Larry DoheyUncategorized
39th Annual Irish Week Celebrations St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador Thursday: March 17 (St. Patrick’s Night) Place: Bella Vista, 24 Torbay Rd, St. John’s 8:00 PM to 12:00 PM Dance: Rum Ragged and Sullivan Slaney Admission: $20.00 In this the 39th Annual Irish Newfoundland Association Irish Week Celebrations – we welcome you to join us …
Living in two Worlds at the Same Time: An Irish Speaking family in Ireland”
January 29, 2016Larry DoheyUncategorized
“Living in two Worlds at the Same Time: An Irish Speaking family in Ireland” Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill described as one of the most prominent poets writing in the Irish Gaelic language today will be giving a presentation at Memorial University. Ni Dhomhnaill is one of the few women Irish poets who write exclusively in Irish…
A series of seminars in Irish and Irish-Newfoundland history
IRISH HISTORY WITH THE BENEVOLENT IRISH SOCIETY As part of its Heritage and Culture Program of the Benevolent Irish Society (BIS) and to mark the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising, the BIS is offering a series of seminars in Irish and Irish-Newfoundland history, led by Dr. Patrick Mannion. The ten-week course will examine some…
The greatest living poet in the Irish language, reading in St. John’s.
“The greatest living poet in the Irish language.” Come join us to celebrate the power of the written and spoken word at the 2016 SPARKS Literary Festival. Now in its seventh year, SPARKS will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday, January 31, 2016 at the Suncor Energy Hall, School…
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Irish Newfoundland Association © 2013
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Samsung head Lee Kun-hee still unconscious, but stable
Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee, who has been hospitalized since 2014 after suffering a heart attack, has yet to recover consciousness although he is in a stable condition, sources said Sunday.
The chairman of Samsung, South Korea’s top conglomerate, was carried to a hospital on May 10, 2014, after suffering a heart attack at his home in central Seoul.
He was rushed to Samsung Medical Center, where he received a stent placement, and has remained in an exclusive area of the hospital.
Sources said Lee’s condition is stable and that he is capable of breathing without medical instruments. Although Lee is still unable to communicate with people, he responds to sound and physical contact, they added.
Lee turns 77 on Wednesday, which will be his fifth birthday at the hospital.
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JubileeEventsDetails
Show Info: Southern
Il Divo ~ Timeless Tour
Il Divo Timeless Tour
Friday, March 8th, 2019 at 8:30PM
Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, Calgary
Following an incredible sold-out run across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and Mexico this summer and a current fall tour in the U.S. and Canada, Il Divo announced they will return to North America in 2019 for an all new leg of their Timeless Tour. Produced by Live Nation, the second leg of the tour will make stops in 19 new cities, kicking off March 4 in Regina, SK and visiting Las Vegas, Chicago, Boston and more before wrapping April 6 in New York, NY. See full itinerary below.
Tickets for the newly announced dates will go on sale to the general public beginning Friday, November 30 at 10am local time at LiveNation.com and https://ildivo.com/. Citi is the official presale credit card of the Timeless Tour. As such, American Express cardmembers will have access to purchase Canadian presale tickets beginning Tuesday, November 27 at 12 pm local time until Thursday, November 29 at 10pm local time through the "Front Of The Line" program. For complete presale details visit http://www.americanexpress.com. Tickets for the previously announced dates below are on sale now at LiveNation.com and https://ildivo.com/.
Fans can expect astonishing performances from Il Divo's most recent album Timeless (out now on Decca Gold) as well as hits from Il Divo's vast catalog of songs, paired with their breathtaking production including dancers, acrobats and much more.
Discovered and mentored by Simon Cowell 15 years ago, Il Divo has evolved into the pre-eminent tenor powerhouse vocal group with four sold-out world tours to date, over 30 million albums sold, 160 gold and platinum albums in 33 countries to their credit and were the first Classical Crossover artists to have an album debut at #1 on Billboard's Top 200 chart.
Purchase tickets through TICKETMASTER
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FBI Subpoenas Four More Anti-War Activists in Chicago
The FBI came unannounced to knock on doors at two apartments in Chicago this morning. FBI agent Robert Parker, under orders from U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s office, delivered a subpoena to Maureen Murphy. Murphy, like several other individuals served subpoenas, is an organizer with the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago.
This continues the repression unleashed by Fitzgerald on the anti-war movement since September 24th, when fourteen subpoenas were delivered to anti-war, labor, and solidarity activists in coordinated raids involving more than 70 federal agents. Armed FBI agents raided homes, taking computers, phones, passports, documents, notebooks, and even children’s artwork. A total of 23 subpoenas have been served to activists around the country.
Maureen Murphy said, “Along with several others, I am being summoned to appear before the Grand Jury on Tuesday, January 25th, in the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago. We are being targeted for the work we do to end U.S. funding of the Israeli occupation, ending the war in Afghanistan and ending the occupation of Iraq. What is at stake for all of us is our right to dissent and organize to change harmful US foreign policy." Ms. Murphy is also the Managing Editor of the widely-read website, The Electronic Intifada.
In addition, three women in Minneapolis - Tracy Molm, Anh Pham, and Sara Martin - are threatened with reactivated subpoenas by Fitzgerald’s office and new Grand Jury dates. Tom Burke of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression explained, “It is likely the three individuals, like all the others so far, will continue to refuse to take part in Fitzgerald’s witch hunt. Fitzgerald can then call for putting them in jail as long as he wants.”
For more information: www.stopfbi.net
Contact: Tom Burke, Committee to Stop FBI Repression, 773-844-3612
CCDS Members mailing list
CCDS website: http://www.cc-ds.org
CCDS welcomes and encourages the full participation of our members in
this list serve. It is intended for discussion of issues of concern to
our organization and its members, for building our community, for
respectfully expressing our different points of view, all in keeping
with our commitment to building a democratic and socialist society. To
those ends, free and honest discussion of issues and ideas is
encouraged. However, personal attacks on named individuals, carrying on
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Labels: COINTELPRO, FBI Repression
I Stand In Total Solidarity With The Georgia Prisoners Now On Strike
Labels: Georgia Inmate Strike
Labels: Curtis Mayfield, Funk, Soul
An Open Letter to the Left Establishment
This letter is a call for active support of protest to Michael Moore, Norman Solomon, Katrina van den Heuvel, Michael Eric Dyson, Barbara Ehrenreich, Thomas Frank, Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jesse Jackson Jr., and other high profile progressive supporters of the Obama electoral campaign.
With the Obama administration beginning its third year, it is by now painfully obvious that the predictions of even the most sober Obama supporters were overly optimistic. Rather than an ally, the administration has shown itself to be an implacable enemy of reform.
It has advanced repeated assaults on the New Deal safety net (including the previously sacrosanct Social Security trust fund), jettisoned any hope for substantive health care reform, attacked civil rights and environmental protections, and expanded a massive bailout further enriching an already bloated financial services and insurance industry. It has continued the occupation of Iraq and expanded the war in Afghanistan as well as our government’s covert and overt wars in South Asia and around the globe.
Along the way, the Obama administration, which referred to its left detractors as “f***ing retarded” individuals that required “drug testing,” stepped up the prosecution of federal war crime whistleblowers, and unleashed the FBI on those protesting the escalation of an insane war.
Obama’s recent announcement of a federal worker pay freeze is cynical, mean-spirited “deficit-reduction theater”. Slashing Bush’s plutocratic tax cuts would have made a much more significant contribution to deficit reduction but all signs are that the “progressive” president will cave to Republican demands for the preservation of George W. Bush’s tax breaks for the wealthy Few. Instead Obama’s tax cut plan would raise taxes for the poorest people in our country.
The election of Obama has not galvanized protest movements. To the contrary, it has depressed and undermined them, with the White House playing an active role in the discouragement and suppression of dissent – with disastrous consequences. The almost complete absence of protest from the left has emboldened the most right-wing elements inside and outside of the Obama administration to pursue and act on an ever more extreme agenda.
We are writing to you because you are well-known writers, bloggers and filmmakers with access to a range of old and new media, and you have in your power the capacity to help reignite the movement which brought millions onto the streets in February of 2003 but which has withered ever since. There are many thousands of progressives who follow your work closely and are waiting for a cue from you and others to act. We are asking you to commit yourself to actively supporting the protests of Obama administration policies which are now beginning to materialize.
In this connection we would like to mention a specific protest: the civil disobedience action being planned by Veterans for Peace involving Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Joel Kovel, Medea Benjamin, Ray McGovern, several armed service veterans and others to take place in front of the White House on Dec. 16th.
Should you commit yourselves to backing this action and others sure to materialize in weeks and months ahead, what would otherwise be regarded as an emotional outburst of the “fringe left” will have a better chance of being seen as expressing the will of a substantial majority not only of the left, but of the American public at large. We believe that your support will help create the climate for larger and increasingly disruptive expressions of dissent – a development that is sorely needed and long overdue.
We hope that we can count on you to exercise the leadership that is required of all of us in these desperate times.
Sen. James Abourezk
Michael Albert
Rocky Anderson
Jared Ball
Russel Banks
Thomas Bias
Bruce Dixon
Frank Dorrel
Gidon Eshel
Jamilla El-Shafei
Okla Elliott
Glen Ford
Joshua Frank
Margaret Flowers M.D.
John Gerassi
Kevin Alexander Gray
Judd Greenstein
DeeDee Halleck
John Halle
Doug Henwood
Edward S. Herman
Dahr Jamail
Louis Kampf
Allison Kilkenny
Jamie Kilstein
Joel Kovel
Scott McLarty
Dede Miller
Bobby Muller
Christian Parenti
Michael Perelman
Louis Proyect
Michael Ratner
Chris Spannos
Sunil Sharma
Len Weinglass
Sherry Wolf
Kevin Zeese
Please sign the Open Letter to the Left Establishment.
Labels: Obama, Protest
God Bless the youth of England and God Bless Bernie Sanders....
The military is one of the last bastions of patriarchy...and is exemplary of patriarchy falling apart at the seams.... You have Bradley Manning, a disgruntled, homosexual soldier maligned in the military with DADT and other discriminations and fed up with the acrimony involved in U.S. foreign policy who decided to leak classified information for the world to know....the U.S. military is also loosing in Afghanistan and is stretched and pulled to the max....Oh Rome?...
Labels: Bradley Manning, Militarism, Patriarchy, Rome, Wikileaks
RIP Elizabeth Edwards
What a Glorious Find!
Labels: Angela Davis, Toni Morrison
The Story of Thanksgiving
Most of us associate the holiday with happy Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to a big feast. And that did happen - once.
The story began in 1614 when a band of English explorers sailed home to England with a ship full of Patuxet Indians bound for slavery. They left behind smallpox which virtually wiped out those who had escaped. By the time the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts Bay they found only one living Patuxet Indian, a man named Squanto who had survived slavery in England and knew their language. He taught them to grow corn and to fish, and negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation. At the end of their first year, the Pilgrims held a great feast honoring Squanto and the Wampanoags.
But as word spread in England about the paradise to be found in the new world, religious zealots called Puritans began arriving by the boat load. Finding no fences around the land, they considered it to be in the public domain. Joined by other British settlers, they seized land, capturing strong young Natives for slaves and killing the rest. But the Pequot Nation had not agreed to the peace treaty Squanto had negotiated and they fought back. The Pequot War was one of the bloodiest Indian wars ever fought.
In 1637 near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival which is our Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day Of Thanksgiving" because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered.
Cheered by their "victory", the brave colonists and their Indian allies attacked village after village. Women and children over 14 were sold into slavery while the rest were murdered. Boats loaded with a many as 500 slaves regularly left the ports of New England. Bounties were paid for Indian scalps to encourage as many deaths as possible.
Following an especially successful raid against the Pequot in what is now Stamford, Connecticut, the churches announced a second day of "thanksgiving" to celebrate victory over the heathen savages. During the feasting, the hacked off heads of Natives were kicked through the streets like soccer balls. Even the friendly Wampanoag did not escape the madness. Their chief was beheaded, and his head impaled on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts -- where it remained on display for 24 years.
The killings became more and more frenzied, with days of thanksgiving feasts being held after each successful massacre. George Washington finally suggested that only one day of Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of celebrating each and every massacre. Later Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal national holiday during the Civil War -- on the same day he ordered troops to march against the starving Sioux in Minnesota.
This story doesn't have quite the same fuzzy feelings associated with it as the one where the Indians and Pilgrims are all sitting down together at the big feast. But we need to learn our true history so it won't ever be repeated. Next Thanksgiving, when you gather with your loved ones to Thank God for all your blessings, think about those people who only wanted to live their lives and raise their families. They, also took time out to say "thank you" to Creator for all their blessings.
Our Thanks to Hill & Holler Column by Susan Bates susanbates@webtv.net
I've seen The Blindside about five times now. I must say I very much like it.
Labels: The Blindside
Three cheers for my cousin, Betty Deramus, whose latest book, Freedom By Any Means, was tagged as a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award!
Labels: African American Literature, Betty Deramus, Freedom By Any Means, Hurston.Wright Legacy Award, Literature
Free the Scott Sisters
The tragic case of the Scott sisters
By Monica Moorehead
Published Apr 29, 2010 8:21 PM
Anyone who still believes that the U.S. is the most democratic and just country in the world has only to examine the shocking case of the Scott sisters to be disabused of that erroneous notion. While this case is becoming more and more well-known by word of mouth, mainly on the Internet, the 16-year-old case has never received the national and international media attention that it so richly deserves. The facts of the case will explain the reason why.
Gladys Scott
Who are the Scott sisters?
Jamie and Gladys Scott are African-American sisters who lived in the small town of Forest, Miss., when they were arrested on Dec. 24, 1993, on a charge of armed robbery of two Black men. The amount involved in the robbery was $11 and nobody was injured. In October 1994, both sisters were found guilty and received double-life sentences. They are not eligible for parole until they spend at least 20 years in prison.
Their sentence is very reminiscent of the life sentence, without the possibility of parole, given to the martyred Black Panther and Soledad Brothers prisoner, George Jackson, in the early 1960s. Jackson was convicted of stealing $70.
Three teenagers, who eventually admitted that they had committed the robbery, recanted the false testimony they gave during the Scott sisters’ trial. These teenagers stated before the judge and jury that they were forced by local authorities to implicate the sisters, with the promise of a lenient sentence. Even the robbery victims said that the sisters had nothing to do with the robbery. Neither Jamie nor Gladys had a prior record before this outrageous conviction and life sentence.
At the time of their arrest, conviction and sentencing, Gladys was 19 years old and pregnant with her second child; Jamie was a 22-year-old with three young children. Their children are being raised by Jamie and Gladys’ mother, Elaine Rasco. Despite having to move to Florida due to years of emotional stress, Ms. Rasco remains active in fighting for her daughters’ freedom.
The state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have refused to hear the Scotts’ appeals. Since being in prison, Jamie has developed almost complete kidney failure due to poor diet and inhumane prison medical care. She is receiving irregular dialysis treatments and has gone into shock numerous times. If it were not for the pressure and local attention that community, legal and political activists have put on the prison authorities, Jamie Scott could have easily died.
There is a growing grassroots movement to broaden awareness around the Scott sisters’ case, including a letter-writing campaign demanding that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder release them. The campaign also includes getting petitions signed and getting press releases sent to local, state and national press on the case.
The Scott sisters’ case has put another human face on the constant racist repression that is woven within the very fabric of U.S. capitalist society. In an Aug. 19 article, Jamie Scott wrote: “The injustices that have occurred are patterns within this county and their police departments. This type of injustice and exploitation has been done to many African Americans who have lived in this county for many years. They have been very successful in destroying many lives.”
Jamie continued: “This is a time we show Americans what really occurs in most small towns in the state of Mississippi. We are convinced that once this chain of events is exposed and unraveled, the events that occurred, the lives that have been destroyed, the pain and suffering the citizens of Scott County have endured; everyone will be utterly amazed, astonished and compelled to assist us in our plight for freedom.”
Go to freethescottsisters.blogspot.com to read Jamie’s entire article, find out more information about the case and get involved.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Labels: Justice, Scott Sisters, Texas
This is Important Information From the Southern Center for Human Rights
Contrary to what many people may believe, there are debtors' prisons throughout the United States where people are imprisoned because they are too poor to pay fines and fees.
The United States Supreme Court in Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983), held that courts cannot imprison a person for failure to pay a criminal fine unless the failure to pay was “willful.” However, this constitutional commandment is often ignored.
Courts impose substantial fines as punishment for petty crimes as well as more serious ones. Besides the fines, the courts are assessing more and more fees to help meet the costs of the ever-increasing size of the criminal justice system: fees for ankle braclets for monitoring; fees for anger management classes; for drug tests, for crime victims’ funds, for crime laboratories, for court clerks, for legal representation, for various retirement funds, and for private probation companies that do nothing more than collect a check once a month.
People who cannot afford the total amount assessed may be allowed to pay in monthly installments, but in many jurisdictions those payments must be accompanied by fees to a private probation company that collects them. A typical fee is $40 per month. People who lose their jobs or encounter unexpeced family hardships and are unable to maintain payments may be jailed without any inquiry into their ability to pay or the willfulness of their failure to pay.
There are more fees for those in jails or prisons. There are high costs for telephone calls. Fees are charged fees for medical services. A new trend is “room and board” fees in prisons and jails. Ora Lee Hurley spent nearly a year at the Georgia Department of Corrections, Atlanta Diversion Center due to her inability to pay a $705 fine from a 15-year-old drug conviction because she was charged for staying there. A court had ordered Ms. Hurley imprisoned until her fine was paid. While held at the Diversion Center, Ms. Hurley was employed full-time at a restaurant which sent her paycheck directly to the Department of Corrections. Although Ms. Hurley never missed a day of work and earned over $7,000, the Department took nearly every penny of her earnings. Left with only $23 per month to buy food, toiletries, and pay her fine, Ms. Hurley was being confined in perpetuity. She was released only after the Center filed a habeas petition on her behalf. For a copy of the habeas petition, click here. To view the Atlanta Journal Constitution article click here.
The Center Ends Jail Fees for Pre-Trial Detainees
In some cases, jails have even charged people room and board fees for people detained on charges but not convicted of any crime. For seventeen years, the Clinch County Jail in Homerville charged those in its custody a daily room and board fee. Even though Georgia law did not authorize – and in fact prohibited – such charges, the Clinch County Sheriff charged inmates $18 per day. Many people were too poor to pay the fees upon their release. The Sheriff and his deputies required them to sign notes promising to pay the fees in installments, or return to jail. On several occasions, the Sheriff charged people thousands of dollars, failing to return the money even when criminal charges were dismissed. A lawsuit filed by the Center, ultimately settled, required the Sheriff to return the illegal fees. For a copy of the Complaint, click here. For a copy of the Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment, click here. For a copy of newspaper articles related to the case, click here. To hear a report by National Public Radio on Clinch County Jails, click here.
The Center ends Debtors' Prison in Gulfport, Mississippi
The Municipal Court in Gulfport, Mississippi was one such court. In an effort to crack down on people who owed misdemeanor fines, the City of Gulfport employed a fine collection task force. The task force trolled through predominately African-American neighborhoods, rounding up
people who had outstanding court fines. After arresting and jailing them, the City of Gulfport processed these people through a court proceeding at which no defense attorney was present or even offered. Many people were jailed for months after hearings lasting just seconds. While the City collected money, it also packed the jail with hundreds of people who couldn’t pay, including people who were sick, physically disabled, and/or limited by mental disabilities. SCHR filed suit to stop these illegal practices. For a copy of the Complaint, Tclick here. For related news coverage, click here.
Other financial distortions
Debtors prisons are but one example of financial incentives that have a distorting effect on the criminal justice system. Criminal justice policies - how many prison beds to build, whether to arrest someone or cite them, what sentences to impose - should be primarily concerned with making us more safe. But the profit motive is increasingly distorting the system.
Many counties throughout the South, for example, are committing scarce dollars to building larger jails in anticipation of securing a lucrative contract with the federal government to house detainees for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the United States Marshals Service or even prisoners from other counties or other states. As another example, the design of work release programs - something that should be focused on developing skills and reducing recidivism - is often driven primarily by an interest in collecting as much moneyas possible from the prison er-workers. The privatization of probation, imprisonment, and other parts of the criminal justice system create incentives for expanding the criminalization of poor people.
Financial distrortions in the criminal justice system include the practice of funding government slush funds by adding to someone's sentence. By making it more difficult for people to take care of their basic needs, these additional financial obligations compromise rather than improve public safety.
Southern Center for Human Rights | 83 Poplar St. NW, Atlanta, GA 30303 | p.404.688.1202 | f.404.688.9440
Labels: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Social Justice
An Essay I am Working On
The old sage beggar addressed it when he called out to the gawking public, “what are you looking at?! Act you ain’t never seen this before!” As Nina and Bulworth appear as a couple in the film Bulworth. J.A. Rogers addressed it in his Sex and Race series, making particular commentary on the compulsion of German women to lose their panties whenever Africans came into town with the P.T. Barnum Circus. Interracial mixing is a wild and radical growth that is native to American soil whose roots run very deep into the American fabric. Its very existence challenges the stalwart conservatism that runs rampant in America today. This vegetation stands testament to the integrity of the American fabric; it shadders the myth of white supremacy and exposes to all the connections that the handlers of America have failed to draw time and time again as a means of maintaining their dominance in a social order beneficial to them. These connections are seen when America lifts the folds of her skirts. Ann Soetoero was not the first white woman to introduce children into the America with footholds inside disparate cultures. Ann Soeteoro, the mother of Barack Obama, fits inside a huge legacy, the trajectory of which continues into the present day as new multiracial alliances are formed, legitimately and illegitimately, and as new casts are molded from the melting pot and served into the American populace. Most folks are aware that the people known today as Afro-Americans have ties to the white male American establishment that run as deep as blood and legacy. The point that must be underscored however, that which must be pointed out, is that the legacy of the illegitimate slave begotten by the master is not the only narrative woven into America’s racial past. There is a legacy of white women having children for men of color, such as my great-great-great grandmother, Caroline Roper. The daughter of a white Methodist minister, she bore seven children for a mulatto slave and bore two more completely white in the decade before the Civil War. During Reconstruction there was a resurgence of white female cohabitation with Black men, particularly in the south where the landscape was devastated, Black men possessed a new found power, and white women were left with few economic resources as their husbands, fathers, and brothers either were killed or mutilated in the Civil War. In the colonial era, racial mixing was such a common practice that laws were passed against it with severe penalties for both the white women who bore biracial children and for the children themselves. Usually, the women were forced into indentured servitude, given a certain number of years to work off their debt and the child was sold completely into bondage. Such cases were found well up until the resolution of the Civil War. These children, and the families created and disavowed within the American social fabric, planted radical and potent seeds within the United States, particularly as such racial mixing included revolts and rebellions and other contestations of white supremacy. The very existence of this biracial population shredded the legitimacy of whiteness and was a threat to the white male power structure. The element of this biracial phenomenon that was grounded in the poor, working class, and enslaved populations of this country made this even more of a threat. This called for even stricter policing of racial boundaries, drawing of racial lines, and stronger penalties for racial mixing. When you add in such information as Noel Ignatiev’s conclusion that the majority of white people who exist as such in the United States today are racially mixed and don’t fit neatly inside the defined lines of white supremacy, the entire foundation for America’s hidden racial habit is nullified, with severe implications for American imperialism, American exceptionalism, and much of the American way of life as defined by this nations fathers over the past two hundred and fifty years. Today, we are compelled to carry out this revolution in the way we think and exist in this country that was begun by our forefathers who clung together across boundaries of race, class, and sex to see a new harmony filled with equality and dignity for all overtake the world.
Labels: American Legacy, Essay, Personal Blogging, Politics of Sex and Race
Why Conservative Christians So Often Fail the Common Good? via the Huffington Post
Simple answer: because they are going to bust hell wide open. However, read the article.
Labels: Christians, Hell
By Pat Fry
With the threat of grand jury subpoenas served within the next couple of days on anti-war activists in Minneapolis and Chicago, a standing room-only national meeting the Committee to Stop FBI Repression (CSFR) was held Saturday evening, November 6, at St. Mark’s Church in the lower east side of Manhattan.
Several of the targeted activists spoke to more than 200 people about their ordeal on September 24th when the FBI staged coordinated raids on the homes and offices of 14 activists in Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan. Everything from computers, mailing lists and books to children’s drawings were confiscated. Thirteen of those targeted – all of whom have been active in movements critical of U.S. foreign policy in Colombia and the Middle East – were served with subpoenas ordering them to appear before a grand jury in Chicago. After all refused to comply, citing their right to remain silent, the government withdrew the subpoenas. Last week, however, the Justice Department announced that it intends to enforce the subpoenas on three of the activists and will require their appearance before a grand jury.
Bruce Nestor, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and lead attorney representing the subpoenaed activists, said that it is expected that three will be subpoenaed sometime this week. None have been arrested or charged with any crime. Failure to comply with a grand jury subpoena can lead to imprisonment, loss of jobs, and homes.
The federal law that was cited in the search warrants prohibit, “providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorists organizations.” The law was first passed under the Clinton Administration in 1996 and further expanded with the Patriot Act under the Bush Administration to include provisions to prosecute for speech if it is deemed to be coordinated with a designated foreign terrorist organization. According to Nestor, “what you run the risk of is that even if you state your own independent views about U.S. foreign policy, but those views somehow reflect a group that the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization, you can be accused of coordinating your views and face, if not prosecution, at least investigation, search warrants, or being summoned to a grand jury to talk about your political allies and who your political friends are.”
In June, the Supreme Court rejected a free speech challenge to the law brought by humanitarian aid groups that said its provisions would lead to prosecutions for talking about non-violence to groups designated by the U.S. to be terrorists.
Ten of the fourteen who were raided by the FBI are members and leaders of trade unions. Several union bodies have responded by passing resolutions condemning the FBI raids, including the American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 5 in Minnesota, the Duluth Central Labor Body, and the San Francisco AFL-CIO. At the Saturday meeting a member of the Central Labor Council of the Detroit AFL-CIO reported that a resolution introduced before a well attended meeting last week was adopted unanimously.
Religious organizations are also responding to condemn the raids including the American Friends Service Committee of Chicago, the Chicago Faith Coalition Middle East Policy, Fellowship of Reconciliation, First Chicago Church of the Brethren, and Witness for Peace – Great Lakes Region.
Members of the Illinois State Legislature are circulating a “Dear Colleague” letter opposing the FBI actions, which has thus far garnered signatures from a third of the legislators, it was reported on Saturday. A similar Dear Colleague Letter in the U.S. Congress is under discussion with Congressional delegations in Illinois and Minnesota.
The New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild is training lawyers and legal workers for defense work in the case. A petition soon to be circulated among academics was announced at the meeting.
Numerous peace, international solidarity and socialist political organizations were represented at Saturday’s meeting, mainly from Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, and New York. Hundreds of statements condemning the raids and the grand jury subpoenas can be viewed on the web site: www.stopFBI.net
Local committees have been formed in several cities and a speakers’ bureau has been organized. All AFL-CIO central labor councils in the country have been sent mailings about the case.
A large banner hanging in the front of the room Saturday listed three key demands: Stop FBI Repression, Stop the Grand Jury, Return Our Stuff. On a side wall, the names of dozens of mainly Middle Eastern Americans jailed as “Victims of Preemptive Prosecution” were listed, identified with organizations such as the Holy Land Foundation. The daughter of one of the founders of the charitable Holy Land Foundation serving a 65 year sentence under the repressive law spoke at the meeting about the case. She said Palestinians and Arabs have been the main targets thus far of the law but now it has been expanded to others, and a movement is being organized. Jimmy Carter himself could be prosecuted under this law,” she said.
The meeting concluded with adoption of an organizational structure and a National Coordinating Committee of the “Committee Against FBI Repression." The committee will meet via telephone conference every two weeks or as needed. Organizations and local groups that are working on the issue are invited to participate with a representative. A national office has been set up in the Twin Cities.
Over $12,000 was raised in a fundraising pitch at the meeting. The NY CCDS contributed $100. The immediate need is for protests when the grand jury subpoenas are handed down sometime this week. Some 62 protests have already been organized in front of FBI offices around the country and one in front of the U.S. embassy in Vancouver CANADA. end
Labels: FBI Raids
A Desperate Mother Whose Welfare Benefits Had Been Cut Seeks to End Her Life and Those of Her Children
There is a grave injustice inherent in this story,indicative of what is the very worst and is the most intolerable in the state of Alabama and within the larger United States. Give this woman assistance!
Labels: Alabama, Injustice, Poverty
I believe that you're great, that there's something magnificent about you. Regardless of what has happened to you in your life, regardless of how young or how old you think you might be, the moment you begin to think properly, there's something that is within you, there's power within you, that's greater than the world. It will begin to emerge. It will take over your life. It will feed you. It will clothe you. It will guide you, protect you, sustain your very existence, if you let it. Now, that is what I know for sure. - Michael Beckwith
James Baldwin in London from George Dickson on Vimeo.
Labels: James Baldwin
Global Plans to Replace the Dollar
Chris Hedges, “The American Empire Is Bankrupt,” Truthdig, June 15, 2009, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090614_the_american_empire_is_bankrupt/.
Michael Hudson, “De-Dollarization: Dismantling America’s Financial-Military Empire: The Yekaterinburg Turning Point,” Global Research, June 13, 2009, http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=13969.
Fred Weir, “Iran and Russia Nip at US Global Dominance” Christian Science Monitor, June 16, 2009, http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0616/p06s12-woeu.html.
Lyubov Pronina, “Medvedev Shows Off Sample Coin of New ‘World Currency’ at G-8,” Bloomberg, July 10, 2009, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087 &sid=aeFVNYQpByU4.
Edmund Conway, “UN Wants New Global Currency to Replace Dollar,” Telegraph (UK), September 7, 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/currency/6152204/UN-wants-new-global-currency-to-replace-dollar.html.
Jose Arturo Cardenas, “Latin American Leftists Tackle Dollar with New Currency,” Agence France-Presse, October 16, 2009, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ ALeqM5jisHEg79Cz8uRtYfZR6WK4JmWsIg.
Student Researchers:
Nicole Fletcher (Sonoma State University)
Krystal Alexander (Indian River State College)
Bridgette Grillo (Sonoma State University)
Faculty Evaluators:
Ronald Lopez (Sonoma State University)
Elliot D. Cohen (Indian River State College)
Mickey Huff (Diablo Valley College)
Nations have reached their limit in subsidizing the United States’ military adventures. During meetings in June 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, world leaders such as China’s President Hu Jintao, Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev, and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation took the first formal step to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The United States was denied admission to the meetings. If the world leaders succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value; the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket; and interest rates will climb.
Foreigners see the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) as Washington surrogates in a financial system backed by US military bases and aircraft carriers encircling the globe. But this military domination is a vestige of an American empire no longer able to rule by economic strength. US military power is muscle-bound, based more on atomic weaponry and long-distance air strikes than on ground operations, which have become too politically unpopular to mount on any large scale.
As Chris Hedges wrote in June 2009, “The architects of this new global exchange realize that if they break the dollar they also break America’s military domination. US military spending cannot be sustained without this cycle of heavy borrowing. The official US defense budget for fiscal year 2008 was $623 billion. The next closest national military budget was China’s, at $65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.”
To fund the permanent war economy, the US has been flooding the world with dollars. The foreign recipients turn the dollars over to their central banks for local currency. The central banks then have a problem. If a central bank does not spend the money in the United States, then the exchange rate against the dollar increases, penalizing exporters. This has allowed the US to print money without restraint, to buy imports and foreign companies, to fund military expansion, and to ensure that foreign nations like China continue to buy American treasury bonds.
In July 2009, President Medvedev illustrated his call for a supranational currency to replace the dollar by pulling from his pocket a sample coin of a “united future world currency.” The coin, which bears the words “Unity in Diversity,” was minted in Belgium and presented to the heads of G8 delegations.
In September 2009, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development proposed creating a new artificial currency that would replace the dollar as reserve currency. The UN wants to redesign the Bretton Woods system of international exchange. Formation of this currency would be the largest monetary overhaul since World War II. China is involved in deals with Brazil and Malaysia to denominate their trade in China’s yuan, while Russia promises to begin trading in the ruble and local currencies.
Additionally, nine Latin American countries have agreed on the creation of a regional currency, the sucre, aimed at scaling back the use of the US dollar. The countries, members of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), a leftist bloc conceived by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, met in Bolivia where they vowed to press ahead with a new currency for intraregional trade. The sucre would be rolled out beginning in 2010 in a nonpaper form. ALBA’s member states are Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda.
The cycle supporting a permanent US war economy appears to be almost over. Once the dollar cannot flood central banks and no one buys US treasury bonds, the American global military empire collapses. The impact on daily living for the US population could be severe.
Our authors predict that in addition to increased costs, states and cities will see their pension funds drained. The government will be forced to sell off infrastructure, including roads and transport, to private corporations. People will be increasingly charged for privatized utilities that were once regulated and subsidized. Commercial and private real estate will be worth less than half its current value. The negative equity that already plagues 25 percent of American homes will expand to include nearly all property owners. It will be difficult to borrow and impossible to sell real estate unless we accept massive losses. There will be block after block of empty stores and boarded-up houses. Foreclosures will be epidemic. There will be long lines at soup kitchens and many, many homeless.
Update by Michael Hudson
Foreign countries are presently seeking to create an international monetary system in which central bank savings do not fund the United States’ military deficit. At present, foreign “dollar holdings” take the form of US treasury bonds, used to finance the (largely military) US domestic budget deficit, a deficit that is largely due to military spending.
Russia, China, India, and Brazil have taken the lead in seeking an alternative system. But almost no information about such a system was available in the US or even the European press, except for a shorter version of my “De-Dollarization” article that I published as an op-ed in the Financial Times of London.
Discussions about creating an alternative monetary system have not been public. I was invited to China to discuss my views with officials there and to lecture at three universities, and was subsequently asked to write up my proposals for Premier Wen Jiabao, pending another visit just prior to this year’s meetings between China, Russia, India, and Brazil, with Iran attending with visitor status. All of this signals that other countries are seeking an alternative. Now that the euro has collapsed, there’s currently little alternative to the dollar as a reserve currency. This implies that there is no national currency that is a stable store of value for international savings.
Meanwhile, US money managers are leading the flight from the dollar to Brazil, China, and other “emerging market” countries. As matters stand, these countries are selling their resources and companies for free—as the dollars being spent to buy them end up in their central banks, to be recycled into US treasury bonds, or to be used to purchase euro debt that is plunging in international value.
The result of this conundrum is the pressure to end the postwar era of “free capital movements” and to introduce capital controls.
There has been almost no press discussion of my story or indeed of the issue itself. US and European media have successfully ignored the proposal of an alternative to the existing state of affairs.
Update by Fred Weir
This story illustrates one aspect of post–Soviet Russia’s search for a place in the US-led global order—a position that would reflect that country’s own distinct geopolitical interests and how it differs from the West in terms of history, culture, and level of economic development. Russia inherited from the former Soviet Union close relations with many countries that the US regards as “rogue states,” including Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela. There continues to be a lot of official, public sympathy for those countries and their opposition to the US global system, even though Moscow no longer has any grand sense of anti-Western ideology or even any practical goal of mobilizing toward an “alliance” that would serve Russia’s ends.
Under the George W. Bush administration, Moscow felt itself under pressure from what it viewed as Western encroachments into the post-Soviet space, what Russians term the “near abroad.” This took the form of “colored revolutions,” or what the Western media referred to as “pro-democracy uprisings” in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, which removed corrupt but Moscow-friendly regimes and brought to power much more outspoken and active pro-Western ones. The Kremlin, rightly or wrongly, interpreted these upheavals as US-sponsored and orchestrated attempts to reengineer the political loyalties of neighboring states with which Russia has deep historical ties. Two of those new leaders, Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili and Ukraine’s Viktor Yushchenko, sought to put their countries on a fast track to membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a prospect that Russia viewed with alarm bordering on panic. Another Bush-era initiative that engendered deep hostility in Moscow was a plan to station strategic antimissile interceptors in neighboring Poland, with associated radars in the Czech Republic. Russian military experts argued these deployments were the beginning of a strategic process that might eventually undermine Russia’s own aging, Soviet-era nuclear deterrent, which is the main priority of Russia’s national defense.
In response to these perceived threats, Russia seemed to sometimes go out of its way to cultivate relationships with other countries that were at odds with the US, which is the subject of this story. The Russians also held war games with the Venezuelan navy in the Caribbean, resumed cold war–era nuclear bomber patrols along the North American coast, and talked about revitalizing former Soviet air bases in Cuba.
In the past year, with substantially changed foreign policy priorities brought in by President Barack Obama, Moscow’s attitude has relaxed somewhat. Obama shelved the controversial plan to station antimissile weapons in Poland, and implicitly removed from the agenda any question of inducting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. The so-called Obama “reset” of relations between Moscow and Washington seems to be improving prospects for cooperation, even on such thorny issues as Iran, though it may be too early to draw any firm conclusions.
See below for further references to articles I have written on this topic.
Stories on Russia’s overtures to Cuba and Venezuela:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2009/0910/p06s11-woam.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2009/0315/a-new-cuban-missile-crisis-russia-eyes-bomber-bases-in-latin-america
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2008/0908/p01s06-woeu.html
Stories on Russia’s relations with Iran:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0521/Russia-sanctions-unlikely-to-delay-Iran-nuclear-power-plant
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2009/0921/secret-israeli-deal-to-stop-russian-s-300-missile-sale-to-iran
Stories on US–Russian relations:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0513/Leaked-Russian-document-Could-Medvedev-era-tilt-more-pro-West
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0504/NPT-Obama-reveals-size-of-US-nuclear-weapons-arsenal.-Will-Russia-respondhttp://www.csmonitor.com/World/
Europe/2009/1028/p06s14-woeu.html
Labels: Economics, U.S. Dollar
What Muslims Wear
A.R. Rahman, Oscar Winning Composer for Slumdog Millionaire
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Founder of Pakistan
Sania Mirza, Tennis Player
Andre Carson, Congressman
Mos Def, Rapper
Iman, International Supermodel
Rasheed Wallace, Athlete
For More See Link Above
Labels: What Muslims Wear
NPR Fires Juan Williams
The age where bigotry can simply walk through the mainstream is over. I am glad they made an example of him.
Labels: NPR, Politics
Labels: Good Night and Good Luck, Jazz
The Rent is Too Damn High
Labels: The Rent Is Too Damn High
PROGRESSIVES NEED TO KNOW THAT HISTORY IS COMPLICATED
Harry Targ
I became a radical in the 1960s. I kept putting off being active until the late 60s but I slowly involved myself in the anti-war movement. When I started teaching around this time I noticed that many students became instant radicals; 19 year-old- kids going from lack of political awareness to militancy in a matter of weeks.
The Southern movement was inspiring; young people and their elders were transforming the system of Jim Crow. College campuses were bursting with energy, demanding “student rights” and “relevant” courses. Then the anti-war mobilizations grew bigger and bigger. Each massive mobilization in D.C., in New York, in Chicago, in San Francisco challenged organizers to produce larger and larger crowds and for a time the crowds did get bigger.
Many of us began to see the achievement of peace and justice as just around the corner. We were on the verge of building a new world, not unlike the world of altruism and love envisioned by Che` Guevara.
But then everything seemed to fall apart. The New Left split. African Americans sought to build their own movements. Women and gays began to argue that human liberation should be for them as well.
Nixon was elected. Vietnamization did not end the war but shifted the U.S. role from ground to massive air strikes across all of Vietnam. The Xmas bombing destroyed virtually all of North and South Vietnam. Black Panthers were targeted for assassination by the federal government and local authorities. Students were murdered at Kent State and Jackson State.
The youthful energy, the visions of socialism dissipated. Particularly the young became disillusioned. I remember one student telling me in the early 70s: “I tried the political thing and it didn’t work.”
The seeming victories of the 60s and 70s were followed by the brutal Reagan “low intensity” conflicts of the 80s: leading to death and destruction in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, Ethiopia, Cambodia, and Afghanistan. And Reagan trumpeted the shift from welfare state capitalism to neoliberal globalization: privatization, de-regulation, and shifting all human activities from the public sector to the market. Then the last large-scale check on the globalization of capitalism and imperialism, the Soviet Union, collapsed.
This brief history reflects my own intellectual immaturity. Along with hundreds of thousands of others I was caught up in the emotion of the times. Not informed about the subtleties and complexities of history, I assumed that the path to victory, the path to peace and justice, would be smooth and linear. I did not expect major setbacks. I assumed that once we demonstrated our passion, our ability to mobilize large numbers of people, then the job was done.
But as I read Marx, involved myself in the labor movement and Central American solidarity, I began to realize that history does not work in simple and linear ways. Struggle must continue. Those who oppose us will continue to defend their privileges and their position. Patience is as critical to our work as is passion. And, these lessons of history are more likely to be understood by workers, by marginalized peoples, by most of the citizens of the globe who may not have been the beneficiaries of the short-term victories of social movements.
I also thought more about the lessons embedded in the music of my youth and the deep philosophical meaning of the simple verses of the songs of folk singers such as Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger and the Weavers.
I remember Woody’s son Arlo Guthrie describing his own connection to the progressive folk music tradition:
“One of the great things that I learned from both my mother and my dad and from some of these folks here is that this kind of wanting to make the world a better place is not something that started with the Weavers….they recognized and continued a tradition that’s probably been going on for as long as people have been around. And that is a wonderful thing for a young person to discover; he or she is not the beginning of a thing but somewhere in the middle of a long line of people who are concerned about making the world a better place to be.
It gives you the ability to not get so anxiety-prone over what’s going on from moment to moment but to take a little longer look and know that you don’t have to finish a job within the span of a lifetime. All you have to do is link up to the future. That’s the job of being a human. It’s to make the connection to the future and hold on to the connection to the past”(album notes from HARP, Redwood Records).
In addition, I would often think about Pete Seeger singing in “Quite Early Morning” that it is “darkest before the dawn.”
Some say that humankind won't long endure
But what makes them so doggone sure?
I know that you who hear my singing
Could make those freedom bells go ringing
And so keep on while we live
Until we have no, no more to give
And when these fingers can strum no longer
Hand the old banjo to young ones stronger
So though it's darkest before the dawn
These thoughts keep us moving on
Through all this world of joy and sorrow
We still can have singing tomorrows
[ Quite Early Morning lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com/ ]
So let’s get back to work
Please visit my blog:
www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com
Labels: Harry Targ, History, Progressives, U.S. Left
On the morning of September 26, 2010, the FBI raided Jess Sundin's home in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The FBI ransacked her home in order to search for possible connections between her activism and alleged terrorist organizations in Columbia and Palestine. Similar raids were carried out at the same time in the homes of other activists in both Minneapolis and Chicago. All of the targeted activists did work around issues of peace and justice in Palestine and Columbia. After the invasion of their homes, Sundin and the other targeted activists were subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury in Chicago. They stood accused of "giving material aid to foreign terrorist organizations." The actions of the FBI have sparked outrage throughout progressive circles and have resulted in thousands of people across the country expressing their solidarity with the targeted activists and calling for the Obama administration to adhere to the restraints of the U.S. Constitution. A few days ago, I contacted Jess Sundin and asked if I could interview her for JuliusSpeaks. Conducting this interview by email, the following is what transpired.
1. Where are you located and what is your occupation?
I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I have been a clerical worker at the University of Minnesota for eleven years.
2. How long have you been an activist?
I became active in high school, protesting the 1991 Gulf War. It’s been nearly 20 years, all of my adult life.
3. Tell us about the organizations you are involved with? What are the issues you work around?
I am most active with the Anti-War Committee, which I helped found in 1998. I have also done work around economic justice, especially with my Union, AFSCME 3800. I’m a lesbian mom, and have participated in local actions to defend the rights of families like mine. My anti-war activism is most focused around Iraq and Afghanistan, but I also have worked in solidarity with Colombia and Palestine, two places where U.S. military aid has funded repressive regimes which violently target their own people.
4. Before the FBI raid on your house, did you have any inclination that you were under surveillance?
5. Would you agree that the raid on your home along with other incidents that have occurred since the passage of the Patriot Act signal that COINTELPRO has been legalized and is officially sanctioned?
I don’t know whether a new, formal and secret program like COINTELPRO has been reestablished, but I share the concern that these actions signal that the so-called war on terror has been turned on activists here at home. The early sign of this was the repression of Arab and Muslim communities, or here in Minneapolis, the Somali community. The coordinated raids on homes and office in Minneapolis and Chicago, the grand jury subpeonas for all those raided, and several others, including in Michigan, and FBI attempts to question others from North Carolina to California, all of this was a massive undertaking, and was certainly approved at the highest levels of government. This operation shows a blatant disregard for our constitutional rights to speak and associate freely, to voice opposition to government policies, and to support humanitarian causes abroad. All of this should be a concern for anyone actively working for progressive social change.
6. Explain what happened when the FBI came to your home.
At 7am, I woke to the sound of a bang at my door. My partner and daughter were already awake. By the time I joined them downstairs, 7 federal agents were beginning to go through all of our belongings. They showed a search warrant authorizing them to search and sieze anything related to my anti-war organizing or international travel, which might be evidence of “material support to foreign terrorist organizations.” We were told that we were not being detained, but were not allowed to make or receive phonecalls. We demanded the right to make one call to an attorney, and we stayed at our house to have some sense of what they were doing to our home.
Agents spent the next five hours going through every room of my home. They went through my daughter’s toys, the personal archives of my grandfather who died earlier this year, everything. They left my home with several crates full of papers, books, CDs, computers, my cell phone, photographs, notes and paper files, financial records and checkbooks, my passport… and they gave me no indication of when my property might be returned.
Before they left, they gave both myself and my partner subpeonas to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago.
7. How do you plan to fight against these violations of your constitutional rights?
Our greatest defense is a broad, public campaign to denounce the FBI repression, and call off the grand jury. Each of us caught up in this investigation is well-known in our communities, and we’ve received an outpouring of support. Before the FBI left my home, supporters had already started to gather on my front lawn. Later that afternoon, a hundred people joined myself and others raided for a press conference in front of my home. That evening, more than 200 people gathered at a nearby church where we began making plans to protest these actions, and support the folks called before the grand jury. Activists in Chicago had the same kind of support.
The following week, protests were organzied at more than 60 FBI offices and federal buildings around the country. Thousands of calls have been made on our behalf, to President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. We’ve received more than 100 statements of solidarity from organizations – from Minnesota’s statewide AFSCME council, to an indigenous community in Colombia. These demonstrations and messages give us a lot of strength, while putting pressure on those with the power to call off the FBI and the grand jury.
While we will continue to speak publicly in our own defense, and also continue our very public work opposing US wars and militarism abroad, we will not speak to a secret grand jury. We also appreciate that several of our friends and associates have not cooperated when the FBI has come to their homes or workplaces to ask about us. (More about this on a later question.)
8. What have been the ramifications of these raids on your life? Have there been threats to your employment or have any other civil or criminal actions been threatened?
The most difficult personal impact has been on my role as a parent. As I explain later, there is a very real possibility that investigation could result in both myself and my partner being imprisoned for our political work. We have made arrangements and signed legal papers authorizing someone else to look after our daughter if we are jailed. That decision, and talking to her about it, are the hardest things we’ve ever had to do. I cannot imagine being separated from her, and I hate that a 6-year old has to worry that she may lose her mothers this way.
I am currently on a medical leave from my job, though several of us are University of Minnesota employees. The University’s central administration, when asked to comment on our case, said that while they have no comment now, in the case of an indictment, they would look at this again. Some of our folks are teachers, and while not out of work, certainly face more scrutiny every day at work.
The stress of this situation, and the huge commitment of time and energy that we’ve made to defend ourselves, creates a great deal of stress. As someone with chronic health problems, all of this is taking a heavy personal toll.
9. What has been the community response there in Minneapolis to these raids?
As I mentioned before, we have had a huge outpouring of support. Even the local news stations, were shocked. When first reporting on the raids, they pointed out that Minnesotans know us. We are outspoken community activists, doing our anti-war and social justice work in the most-public ways, never believing there was anything to hide. Parents and teachers from my daughter’s school have gone out of their way to extend their support to us. As much as people want to believe that the government wouldn’t attack us just for speaking our minds, this case has called all of that into question for our co-workers, neighbors, friends and families.
10. What are the charges that have been filed against you?
No charges have been filed against any of us. Isn’t it incredible that you can have your home searched, your property seized, and be ordered to testify in court, when there’s no charge against you? The grand jury process happens in secret, and neither the FBI nor the prosecutor have indicated who they hope to catch on this fishing expedition.
11. I've heard that you don't plan to cooperate with this subpoena. What do you plan to do as a course of action?
We have a team of attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild helping us through this process. All 14 of those subpeonaed have, through our attorneys, informed the prosecutor that we will exercise our 5th amendment right not to testify. So far none of us has been offered immunity, and instead the prosecutor has left us on hold. (Immunity is a legal procedure where you are compelled to testify, in exchange for a promise that what you say cannot be used against you. It does not necessarily mean that you will not be prosecuted based on the testimony of others. If you still refuse to testify, you can be held in contempt and sent to jail.)
Of course this is just a guess, but I believe they are waiting for the FBI to finish going through all the things they took from our homes, and attempting to interview anyone else that might help them make a case against someone. After that, I believe that all 14 of us could be indicted, or called before the grand jury again, and forced to choose between testifying and jail time. Some people believe that will happen after the November elections, but we really have no way of knowing – it could be weeks, months or even years.
It is our hope that public pressure will force them to shut down this grand jury with no indictments. We believe that none of us has done anything wrong, and that all of our activities should have the protection of constitutional and international law.
12. How do you think this period compares to the 1960s and 1970s and the harassment of such groups as the Black Panthers? Do you see your situation as comparable to progressives in that era and what they experienced?
As you might imagine, I’ve been reading a lot about that period in our history. Not only the case of the Panthers, but in Minnesota, I think of the American Indian Movement that was targeted, and our Chicago friends remember the campaign against the Puerto Rican independence movement. Clyde Bellecourt, an AIM leader, spoke at the first demonstration we had in Minneapolis. He told us that we are today’s Indians. There’s some wisdom in that, though I don’t want to be misunderstood as saying that our situation is equivalent. It is not.
Our leaders have not been assassinated, or framed up on murder charges. Not one bullet has been fired on us, and of course, for now, none of us has been imprisoned, or forced to live in exile. For now, our case is on a much smaller scale, though we are certainly the targets of the same forces that terrorized the liberation movements of the 60s and 70s, as well as white progressives, socialists or communists of that era, before and since. We are humbled, as we stand on the shoulders of giants. And we have a great deal to learn.
I believe our situation is a test – not only for the forces of repression, but also for progressive forces. For them, they want to see how far the public will let them go, how far they can stretch existing laws, to sweep away resistance to US wars. For us, we have to stand up to this, and prove that people will not be silenced by the scare tactics. Instead, this will make us stand up twice as strong, twice as loud, and 100% determined to defend our democratic rights. I believe that they have over stepped their authority, and that we can unite with enough strength to push them back. We have to.
13. Do you think the United States now has a repressive government?
Well, if I didn’t before, I certainly do now!
Of course, as an anti-war activist, I have witnessed the violence carried out by our government in other countries, I’ve opposed our government’s support of the worlds most-repressive regimes. With bedfellows like Colombia and Israel, the U.S. cannot be understood as a government that embraces democratic values. Of course, we are taught from a very young age that we do have democratic rights, including the right to dissent. And so, most Americans believe in democracy. Many believe that our government guarantees that. I believe that our government acts mainly in the interests of the rich and powerful, and when democracy poses a risk to the powerful, then repression is a tool they will use without hesitation.
14. Any other comments you'd like to make?
Thank you for your interest in our case. While this situation is something I would never have wished for, I welcome the opportunity it gives us. It is important that we stand up to defend the people whose homes were raided, the 14 who’ve been subpeonaed and the several who’ve been harassed by the FBI in relation to this case. But not just those of us directly touched by this witch hunt, we must stand to defend all of us, and defend space for political opposition, our rights to speak freely, to travel and associate with whoever we wish, our right to extend our solidarity to political movements of people just like ourselves, struggling for progressive social change in other countries. We welcome any venue where we can speak about our case (invite us!), messages of support and solidarity, and financial support to help us pay for our defense. People who want to get more involved can follow our case on-line at www.stopfbi.net.
Jess Sundin
Labels: COINTELPRO, FBI Raids, First Amendment, Jess Sundin
Hooray for the Chilean Miners!
Labels: Chilean Miners
Gore Vidal is a God: America is the Crookedest Place On Earth
Labels: Gore Vidal, U.S. Imperialism
This is a Must Read: White America Has Lost Its Mind
Labels: American Culture
PROBLEMS CONTINUE FOR JENA SIX: DRUG BUST OR RACISM?
While Sheriff Scott Franklin of Jena, Louisiana says he is trying to rid his jurisdiction of drugs, critics say he has a vendetta against the town's black community for the local civil rights protests that won freedom for six black high school students who had been charged with attempted murder for a schoolyard brawl in 2009.
As reported in Race-Talk on July 9, 2009, over 150 officers from 10 agencies met and mobilized "Operation Third Option" with the goal of fighting drugs. Despite the fact that Sheriff Franklin spent massive resources for an investigation that lasted nearly two years, officers have yet to seize any contraband. Working with District Attorney Reed Walters, Sheriff Franklin has been seeking maximum penalties for minor offenses in a town that is 85% white with only 300 black residents. Thus far, their efforts have almost exclusively targeted African Americans.
Catrina Wallace, the sister of Robert Bailey, one of the "Jena Six," was a leader in the initiative to free the accused youth and organized protests and meetings for months. She and her children were awakened with guns pointed to their heads and were held on a $150,000 cash-only bond although officers found no drugs or contraband in her home. Furthermore, despite a lack of evidence, her car was also taken by police and never returned.
Samuel Howard was sleeping nude when police raided his home at 5:00 a.m. and tasered him three times. They took him out of his house to a baseball field while he was still nude, where he spent another hour without any clothes, standing among other arrestees. Howard said "The sheriff knows me. We went to school together. He knows I'm not a violent person." Howard's home was badly burned during the raid as a result of flares that police used inside.
Many of Jena's black residents claim that the DA, Sheriff, and editor of the local newspaper want revenge against black people who stood up and fought against unjust charges. The owner, editor, and publisher of the Jena Times, the town's only newspaper, is Sammy Franklin, father of Sheriff Franklin. A white-owned store near the courthouse sells T-shirts commemorating "Operation Third Option" with a design of a person behind bars. Black residents of Jena say that an earlier version of the shirt featured a monkey.
Marcus Jones, father of one of the Jena Six, has called for a federal investigation of the Sheriff's department and District Attorney's office. He said "This is racially motivated. It's revenge. Wouldn't none of this be going on if justice had been done the way it was supposed to have been."
Labels: Jena 6
MR ZINE
Attempted Coup in Ecuador Fails, But Threat Remains
by Mark Weisbrot
In June of last year, when the Honduran military overthrew the social democratic government of Manuel Zelaya, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador took it personally. "We have intelligence reports that say that after Zelaya, I'm next," said Correa.
Yesterday it turned out to be true. Some analysts are still insisting that what happened was just a police protest over possible benefit cuts that got out of hand. But to anyone who watched the prolonged, pitched gun battle on TV last night, when the armed forces finally rescued President Correa from the hospital where he was trapped by the police, this did not look like a protest. It was an attempt to overthrow the government.
The coordinated actions in various cities, the takeover of Quito's airport by a section of the armed forces -- all of this indicated a planned coup attempt. And although it failed, at various points during the day it was not so clear what the outcome would be.
The government pointed a finger at former president and army Colonel Lucio Gutierrez, and he was on television yesterday calling for the ouster of Correa. He accused the president of everything from supporting the FARC (the guerrilla group fighting Colombia's government) to wrecking the economy.
The coup might have had a chance if Correa were not so popular. Despite his enemies in high places, the president's approval rating was 67 percent in Quito a couple of weeks ago. His government has doubled spending on health care, significantly increased other social spending, and successfully defaulted on $3.2 billion of foreign debt that was found to be illegitimately contracted. Ecuador managed to squeak through 2009 without a recession and is projected to grow about 2.5 percent this year. Correa, an economist, has had to use heterodox and creative methods to keep the economy growing in the face of external shocks because the country does not have its own currency. It adopted the dollar in 2000, which means that it can do little in the way of monetary policy and has no control over its exchange rate.
Correa had warned that he might try to temporarily dissolve the Congress in order to break an impasse in the legislature, something that he has the right to request under the new constitution -- it would have to be approved by the Constitutional Court. This probably gave the pro-coup forces something they saw as a pretext. It is reminiscent of the coup in Honduras, when Zelaya's support for a non-binding referendum on a constituent assembly was falsely reported by the media -- both Honduran and international -- as a bid to extend his presidency.
Media manipulation has a big role in Ecuador too, with most of the media controlled by right-wing interests opposed to the government. This has helped build a base of people -- analogous to those who get all of their information from Fox News in the United States, but proportionately larger -- who believe that Correa is a dictator trying to turn his country into a communist Cuba.
The U.S. State Department issued a two-sentence statement from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton late yesterday afternoon that urged "all Ecuadoreans to come together and to work within the framework of Ecuador's democratic institutions to reach a rapid and peaceful restoration of order." Unlike the White House statement in response to the Honduran coup last year, it also expressed "full support" for the elected president. This is an improvement; although it is unlikely that it reflects a change in Washington's policy towards Latin America.
The Obama Administration did everything it could to support the coup government in Honduras last year, and in fact is still trying to convince the South American governments -- including Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, and the collective organization of UNASUR -- to recognize the government there. South America refuses to recognize the Lobo government because it was elected under a dictatorship that did not allow for a free or fair contest. The rest of the hemisphere also wants some guarantees that would stop the killing of journalists and political activists there, which has continued and even become worse under the "elected" government.
As the South American governments feared, Washington's support for the coup government in Honduras over the last year has encouraged and increased the likelihood of right-wing coups against democratic left governments in the region. This attempt in Ecuador has failed, but there will likely be more threats in the months and years ahead.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He has written numerous research papers on economic policy, especially on Latin America and international economic policy. He is also co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000) and president of Just Foreign Policy. This article was first published in the Guardianon 1 October 2010 and republished by CEPR under a Creative Commons license. Comments (0) | Print
Labels: Bolivaran Movement, Ecuador, Honduras, President Correa, U.S. Imperialism
I think Sarkozy Should Be Castrated
Labels: Injustice, International Politics, Sarkozy
Labels: Josephine Baker
1 in 7 in the U.S. Lives in Poverty
The Huffington Post is reporting on the expected government report on poverty in America. In 2009, one in seven lived in poverty. The rate of poverty is expected to rise this year to fifteen percent. Read the article above.
Labels: Poverty, U.S. Economy
The Politics of Hitting on Straight Men
One thing I find absolutely intriguing is the response I recieve whenever I take the notion to hit on a straight male. The responses range from a flattered "I'm not interested" to flaming red hostility, but overlaid over all of that is a belief that straight men some how must be, should be, and are exempt from being hit on by gay men. I don't buy this coda and have broken it so many times its not even standing anymore really. As I think back though, I have had some interesting experiences in this regard. Once, in Indiana, I was sitting on a bench outside of the hotel on campus waiting for a cab and I hit on this boy, a very cute half Arab, half Black boy who worked on campus. To my advances he quickly responded "isn't that illegal?!!" I was like, no..um...Lawrence vs. Texas was a few years ago..and even still...and then of course there are the instances where the advances are accepted, however interestingly they fit into the context of a certain poem by Nikki Giovanni....
Labels: American Culture, Sexuality
Labels: Loretta Lynn, Social Justice
The Changes in Music: From the End of the Jazz Era
After reading Billie Holiday's biography and thinking about the life and career of artists such as Nina Simone, I began to think about the social and political changes in music that took place mid20tth Century. The jazz era, of which Billie Holiday was a part of, was a transitional era, but was definitely an era in which singers, specifically female singers, were to stand on stage, look pretty and sing hetero-normative syrupy songs about love, unrequited love, and how much they needed men for white men in business suits. Change number one with Billie Holiday-"Strangefruit" introduced a new kind of polemic into the mix with the first protest song sung by a female singer and introduced into popular music. Change number two-consider Nina Simone who was soo loved at the beginning of her career because sang prettily and made coquettish gestures (if still, very much aware and still carrying a sting) towards the white male, capitalist patriarchal system. The 1950s and the early 60s were still a time of romance and dainty women...you had Nancy Wilson asking "Guess Who I Saw Today?" and Diahann Carroll humming about the hypnotic qualities of a Sleeping Bee lying in the palm of your hand....but came 1963 and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and you saw Nina Simone sit down at her piano at Carnegie Hall and tell her white patrons exactly where they were going,why they were going there and railing her damnation of Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama. I think that, perhaps more than any other moment, signaled the end of the Jazz era and the rushing in of radical and angry music makers, both male and female, lashing out at the power structure and leading the way towards revolution and change throughout society. It also signaled the liberation of the songstress/coquette who stood still with little movement to look pretty and sing songs for men in business suits...many lashed out at this-including Abbey Lincoln who spoke of her disdain for the art form and how she, a farm girl from Michigan didn't fit into such a "pretty, feminine" world as was created by the masters of the Jazz era. The late sixties forward signaled movement....and liberation..and a new mode, method, and message, for the female singer especially.
Labels: American Culture, Pop Culture
Laura Tillman
http://www.thenation.com/article/154166/crossing-line
Diana, a slight, 30-year-old office manager wearing a
smart blouse and pencil skirt, has a tired note in her
voice. In the privacy of her office, she has spent the
afternoon discussing an event in her life that she
previously never recounted to anyone. She is talking
about her abortion. Or maybe her miscarriage. She's glad
she never has to know which.
A single mother of two boys, Diana was unemployed and in
the hospital when she began to suspect she was pregnant.
It was December 2006, and she had missed her period for
two months. Her doctor conducted a urine test, which
came back negative, but when Diana still hadn't gotten
her period in January, she started to panic. She knew it
wasn't the right time for another baby. She wasn't
working and had been suffering severe symptoms of
brittle diabetes, a rare form of diabetes that requires
frequent hospital visits and brings bouts of depression.
She felt unstable and wasn't able to afford her
medications. "I thought, If I am pregnant, I want to
take something to not be pregnant," she says.
For most women in the United States, this would mean a
trip to a doctor or abortion clinic. But where Diana
lives, in Brownsville, Texas, just north of the border,
Mexican pharmacies are only a few miles away. Items said
to be abortifacients-including pills, teas and shots-are
well-known to be cheap and accessible just across the
bridge. Misoprostol, a pill that makes up half of the
two-drug combination prescribed for medical abortions in
the United States, is easy to purchase over the counter
in Mexico because of its effectiveness in treating
ulcers. When used alone and taken correctly, it will
produce a miscarriage between 80 and 85 percent of the
Meanwhile, the closest abortion clinic, in Harlingen, is
some thirty miles away. That might not sound like much,
but without a car it is difficult to make the trip
discreetly. This was one of several reasons Diana didn't
want to go to the clinic. It was also prohibitively
expensive: potentially more than $900, because she was
already a few months into her pregnancy. Also, she was
scared that the doctor wouldn't want to operate because
of her diabetes. Finally, Diana had been there once
before to escort a friend. The whole time she'd felt
like she was being judged by the strangers around her;
she imagined their eyes on her as she sat waiting.
Widespread opposition to abortion in the Rio Grande
Valley may not be obvious at first: it is not discussed
in polite conversation. But spend a little time here and
the bumper stickers that cry out from cars, the messages
that dot billboards on the expressway and the rhetoric
inside many churches resoundingly confirm an
antiabortion message. There are accessible clinics, and
the procedure is legal. But within many women's homes,
their communities, their churches and their minds, a
trip to the abortion clinic amounts to a damnable
transgression. In fact, abortion is so stigmatized, many
women don't even realize it is legal. Terri Lievanos,
who worked for years as an education coordinator for
Planned Parenthood of Brownsville, says that this is
true even among women born in the United States: "They
come in here and say, 'Wait a second, abortion is
legal?' They've only heard it discussed in a negative
way."
For Diana, who was born in Mexico and raised in a deeply
Catholic household, the prospect of being seen at a
clinic was more emotionally taxing than the risk of
taking a mystery drug and enduring the consequences at
home by herself. A friend told her that he knew where to
buy an abortion pill-most likely Misoprostol, although
Diana says she doesn't know its name or what he paid-and
drove across the border to pick it up for her. Diana
took the drugs, two pills over two days, with no medical
guidance. Nothing happened for nearly two weeks. Then
she began to bleed. The intense bleeding lasted four
days, and she had severe cramps. On the fourth day she
began to have painful contractions. A small sac dropped
into her toilet. "It wasn't moving, so I flushed it. I
didn't know what to do. I was scared that if I looked at
it, I'd be traumatized for life." Diana called her
mother and her sister the next day and told them she'd
had a miscarriage. She didn't mention the pills. They
urged her to go to the hospital. "The doctor looked at
me, and I was fine," Diana says. "I told them it was a
miscarriage. I didn't tell [them] about the pills."
She doesn't tell people she had an abortion, she says,
because she never went to a clinic. "When people ask me
if I had a miscarriage, I'll tell them yes," Diana says.
"I didn't actually go get the abortion. I don't know if
it's the pill that actually caused the abortion." As far
as Diana is concerned, it's possible the miscarriage was
caused by the drugs. It's also possible that it wasn't.
Diana is one of many women along the US-Mexico border
who appear to be seeking out drugs like Misoprostol as
an alternative to an abortion clinic. Whether this
represents a broader trend is difficult to say, given
the lack of data and the underground nature of self-
induced abortions. But it is hardly a new phenomenon.
Even before abortion politics roiled the debate over
healthcare reform and the 2009 murder of Dr. George
Tiller, many women in the Rio Grande Valley were looking
to have abortions in private, in order to escape the
scrutiny of their neighbors and the fear of being
attacked publicly. It is far easier to be able to say
"miscarriage" in a city like Brownsville than it is to
admit to an abortion. To protect herself, Diana asked
that only her first name be used in this article.
Dr. Lester Minto works at the abortion clinic in
Harlingen, a nondescript, out-of-the-way building. He
says that some clients first find out about the facility
when they are taken there by church groups to protest.
"I wear a bulletproof vest to work," Minto says. "If the
patient sees me that way, how does the patient feel?"
Minto estimates that some 20 percent of his patients
have tried Misoprostol before coming to him. "That tells
me there are many more who are using it who don't need
to come to me." Finances are a major factor. "It's
something you can try for a small amount of money," he
says. In Texas, abortion care is not covered by Medicaid
except in cases of rape, incest and life endangerment-
and even in those cases the costs are reimbursed less
than half the time. This means that a woman like Diana,
without private insurance, could pay anywhere from $450
to more than $900, compared with $87 to $167 for a
bottle of Misoprostol in a Mexican pharmacy. "But deeper
than that," he adds, echoing Diana's sentiments, "I am
the abortionist. They come to me for an abortion. If I
don't touch them, maybe it wasn't really an abortion."
At Whole Woman's Health, an abortion clinic in nearby
McAllen, executive director Andrea Ferrigno tries to
provide an antidote to the antichoice billboards and
fake cemetery erected by antiabortion activists just
beyond the clinic's property. She papers the walls with
inspirational quotes, displays stacks of pamphlets about
courageous women in history and plays movies on a TV up
front to help clients relax. But she knows that even
with these measures, some women will still be undone by
social pressure. "Women are intimidated; they're
stressed," says Ferrigno. "We need to be protected, but
we also want to be visible. I want women to walk out of
here with their heads held high." This is an uphill
battle. "What we're dealing with now is thirty-five
years of women being very publicly shamed by antichoice
protesters," says Gloria Feldt, former president of
Planned Parenthood. "Underground abortion is one of the
consequences."
Diana moved to Brownsville at 4, but her parents
maintained strong ties to their home country. They never
discussed sex with her. "It was implied that you
wouldn't have sex until marriage," she says. "It was
still a taboo subject." Jackie Christensen, a
Brownsville teacher who taught high school health
classes for more than two decades, says this is typical.
"I would always start the class by asking if the
students had ever talked with their parents about sex,"
she says. "I'd be lucky if one or two raised their
hands." It wasn't until Planned Parenthood came to
Diana's high school to give a presentation about sex and
contraception that Diana became informed on the subject.
These days, Planned Parenthood is no longer permitted to
make such presentations in the district, and
contraception is prohibited in the classroom.
Christensen says she tried to fill in the gaps for her
students but that many health teachers felt too
uncomfortable. "A lot of health teachers didn't want to
teach that topic," she says. "They wouldn't go into
detail." Stories of underground abortions were so common
that she took to warning against them during health
class. "I'd tell my students, 'If you do things your own
way, there could be damage to the uterus,'" she says.
The familiar history of botched abortions has made
Misoprostol increasingly popular among women seeking out
a less dangerous private alternative to abortion,
particularly in places where abortion is illegal. The
Planned Parenthood in Brownsville reports visits by
women who have used syringes, taken cocktails of
prescription drugs, douched with battery acid and beaten
themselves in the abdomen to attempt abortion. "These
pills are beginning to revolutionize abortion around the
world, especially in poor countries," New York Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote this summer, noting
that the drug would be difficult to ban because of its
other uses, which include stopping postpartum
hemorrhages. Rebecca Gomperts, founder of the
organization Women on Waves, which provides reproductive
health services around the world, agrees. "It creates
autonomy," she says. "The fact that [women] can just
take a medication is huge, because they don't have to
depend on someone else doing something to their bodies."
Gomperts believes that using Misoprostol can actually be
preferable to going to a clinic, particularly if a woman
has access to information on how to use it correctly,
knows how long she has been pregnant and can get medical
help if something goes wrong. Still, there are
significant risks: if used incorrectly, Misoprostol can
cause the uterus to rupture and bring about internal
bleeding. "In one of the most extreme cases, the girl
took over a hundred pills," Dr. Minto, of the Harlingen
clinic, says. "It's amazing that she survived." Diana,
too, was lucky. She now knows that taking the pills that
far into her pregnancy was dangerous. She could have
caused her child to have birth defects, had the drug not
worked and had she carried to term. Or the pills could
have caused her to hemorrhage or prevented her from
having children in the future. That, she says, scares
A number of recent studies looking at self-induced
abortions in the United States suggest that women across
the country continue to seek out alternatives to clinics
that are embattled, increasingly costly and
geographically inaccessible. Dr. Dan Grossman, of Ibis
Reproductive Health, whose research on the topic has
focused on various US cities as well as the Rio Grande
Valley, says the group of women attempting self-induced
abortion is fairly diverse. An ongoing study by the
Guttmacher Institute corroborates this: 79 percent of
women who tried self-induced abortion were from the
United States, and that number was spread across twenty
"I think our findings suggest that there are still
significant barriers to abortion care in the United
States," Grossman says. "Those include the high cost of
abortion care-and in most states Medicaid cannot be used
to cover abortion care." Low-income women feel these
barriers more acutely. Three-fourths of women who have
an abortion say that, like Diana, they cannot afford a
child, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Forty-two
percent of women having abortions are below the federal
poverty line.
Brownsville, located in one of the poorest counties in
the country, illustrates this economic divide. Driving
through one of the new subdivisions, you could easily
assume the city is middle-class. The adobe and brick
homes look alike, with tall palm trees punctuating the
wide lawns. Lakes where ibises, anhingas and ducks dive
for food provide a scenic backdrop for the city's
wealthier families. But Brownsville's poor neighborhoods
resemble those across the snaking Rio Grande and the
eighteen-foot border fence along its northern bank.
Houses here are cobbled together from cheap wood and
scrap metal, dogs run wild and the smell of sewage wafts
through the streets. There is no medical school or law
school for hundreds of miles, and while many soldiers in
the military come from this area, there's no veterans'
hospital either. As in many poor areas in the United
States, health services are often acquired at the
emergency room, with little preventive medicine being
sought. Here, women don't often have a consistent
relationship with a physician they trust. Instead, care
is delivered at times of emergency. In such an
environment, a mission like Ferrigno's at Whole Woman's
Health remains incredibly challenging. Without better
healthcare education, affordable coverage and
information for women about their reproductive rights,
risky, self-induced abortions will continue. A drug like
Misoprostol may be proving to be a safer alternative,
but it is no substitute for reproductive care that
happens out in the open, with the expertise of a medical
professional.
For her part, Diana understands this. Now that time has
passed, she has reflected on her experience. She knows
she took a risk and admits she would have had regrets
had things turned out differently. But when asked what
she would tell another woman who is seeking an abortion
and weighing her options, Diana takes a moment to reply.
"Logically, you should go to a clinic," she says. "If
you have the money, you should. It's safer. But the
whole thing of being in a clinic like that is, it
traumatizes people too. Really, the more private thing
and the more convenient thing to do would be to just
take the pill."
Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.
Labels: Abortion, Feminism
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WE FEEL EUROPE´S FEAR -- AND NEED ITS HELP / THE FINANCIAL TIMES
| Etiquetas: Europe Economic and Political, ISIS, Middle East
We feel Europe’s fear — and need its help
Isis is a threat but so is the general chaos and collapse in the Arab world, says Jamal Khashoggi
©Reuters
Europeans are scared, and so are we in Saudi Arabia, for the jihadis of Isis also threaten us.
The attackers in Paris claimed to be targeting civilians in revenge for the actions of the French government. Saudi Arabia has also taken part in air strikes against the group and there can be little doubt that Isis could target civilians in Jeddah, too.
Yet in addition to Isis, Arabs are menaced by a more pervasive threat — the state of chaos and collapse that is creeping across our world — which Europeans do not see as easily. Our victims are greater in number and their murderers are more diverse. Along with Isis, the killers include the oppressive regimes that Isis says it is out to avenge.
This broader chaos is connected to the threat we confront jointly with the west; indeed, it is what has given rise to it. The seemingly endless list of Arab victims stirs a fear of the future, which jihadis have learnt to exploit. Under the banner of revenge, they recruit the people who torment us all.
Consider what lies behind these fears. There is the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, which has been killing its own people for four years. There is the Shia militia that is pouring into Syria to fight the Sunni majority’s revolt against oppressive minority rule. There is the prospect that Iraq might once again be governed by a sectarian government backed by a merciless militia.
There are the tens of thousands of people detained in prisons across the Arab world, the shooting of peaceful demonstrators, the broader abolition of civil rights.
Isis is the result of ignoring the hopes of the Arab people whose desire for democracy, justice and decent living conditions gave rise to the Arab spring four years ago.
This is something that must be understood if the present danger is to be tackled. Europeans still focus on Isis as the enemy. That is Russia’s interpretation of the crisis, too, and many Europeans wish the US and Russia would unite to face the jihadis. Their analysis suggests a simple remedy — fight Isis — rather than a more comprehensive approach that would deal with chaos across the Middle East, tackling the cause that has unleashed the militants.
If Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the “Islamic State”, were killed in an air strike, many would rejoice in France and beyond. But the movement is bigger than Mr Baghdadi. Isis has a large stock of men who have memorised their Koranic verses and are ready to climb the podium and declare themselves caliph.
Isis does not want democracy or freedom. But, to many whose hopes have withered in the past four years — whose present options are to live under tyranny or risk life and limb trying to reach Europe by boat — this abhorrent movement is becoming an attractive alternative. It does not deserve to.
The modern Middle East was created by Europe a century ago. It is time for Europe to come back and to join forces with local powers to fix it. We in the Middle East do not yearn for a return to imperialist times but we need to work together to end the refugee crisis and defeat the terrorists.
What is necessary is for Europe to form an alliance with the capable countries in the region to halt Isis and to halt the chaos that is breeding more jihadi fighters. No country — Saudi Arabia, France or America — wants to send its army to fight in Syria. That leaves us with Syrians from various rebel groups. An army of Muslims is armed and willing to join the fight but they need support, organisation and air power. This is a way out of the current crisis that has been overlooked.
Two local powers, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, are capable and willing to intervene but, like Europe, they are waiting for America to lead. The three should stop hesitating and instead form an alliance, and there is a strong chance they could then bring the US with them. They should start by building a democratic Syria whose fighters will be the power needed to destroy Isis.
Riyadh has called for a secular, democratic Syria. That seems strange to some, since Saudi Arabia is neither democratic nor secular. The kingdom’s rulers are realists, however. They know that Syria, a pluralistic country whose people have revolted for freedom, will not accept the Salafist Islamic government that some groups are calling for there. Nor will the people accept the continuation of oppressive minority rule.
Europeans must realise that our real enemy is not Isis; it is the state of chaos and breakdown in the Levant. Nothing they have yet proposed stands the slightest chance of ending it.
The writer is general manager, Al-Arab news cannel
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THE BEGINING OF THE END? / SEEKING ALPHA
| Etiquetas: Bond Markets, Donald Trump, Investment Strategies, Stock Markets, U.S. Economic And Political
The Beginning Of The End?
by: The Heisenberg
- The Trump administration's decision to abandon the bid to repeal and replace Obamacare capped off a week in which we got more evidence that the narrative driving markets has cracked.
- Does that mean this all falls apart completely on Monday?
- No. But it does mean the writing is on the Wall.
- Herein, find the data and the charts that back up that assessment.
I've been known to write a fun title (or five).
For instance, a couple of weeks ago I penned a piece called, "7 Signs Of The (Market) Apocalypse."
But this particular post isn't a doomsday prophecy. Rather, the idea is simply that over the past several days, we've gotten quite a bit of evidence to suggest that the narrative driving markets has cracked and that likely presages an unwind of some kind.
Does that mean the S&P (NYSEARCA:SPY) is going to promptly crater on Monday morning or that 10Y yields (NYSEARCA:TLT) are going to abruptly crash to post-crisis lows in a mad dash to safety that catalyzes massive short-covering in the 3-sigma Treasury short and drives a stake through the heart of the global reflation story?
No. That's not what it means. Or at least I hope not (reminder: Heisenberg is your friend - he wants you to make money contrary to popular belief).
What it means is that the honeymoon ended when the GOP bid to repeal and replace Obamacare failed.
Donald Trump's Friday afternoon move to cancel the vote on the new health care bill served as confirmation of what markets had already begun to price. Namely that the contentiousness of the health care debate presaged nothing good with regard to the timetable for tax reform and fiscal stimulus, two pillars of the reflation narrative that's propelled risk assets higher since early November.
With that as the backdrop, consider that according to EPFR Global data, U.S. equity funds saw net outflows of $8.9B, last week, the largest in 38 weeks or, in context, the most since the Brexit referendum. As BofAML wrote on Friday citing the same data, "outflows from U.S. value funds were the largest in 66 weeks [while] outflows from U.S. small caps were the largest in 24 weeks."
That marks something of a reversal of fortune considering the fact that retail inflows have been variously cited as the proximate cause for YTD gains in stocks.
Speaking of retail inflows and the impact on the S&P, consider the following out Friday from RBC's Charlie McElligott:
The Quant-Insight PCA macro factor model shows that the long-term (250d) model for SPX pricing shows that 'shares outstanding' increases in SPY ETF have been the second largest factor sensitivity for SPX, i.e. the shift from active to passive from both institutions and retail flows has been a massively important price support for SPX.
This relationship 'peaked' in the "post- US election through Jan '17" period… and has since collapsed precipitously, down to 'zero' in fact. Thus, increases in SPY shares outstanding are showing no impact on SPX short-term prices.
The takeaway seems to be this: not only are retail flows reversing, they don't matter anymore anyway.
Now, consider another sign that the reflation story has cracked. In CFTC data through Tuesday, the 10Y Treasury short was trimmed aggressively to its least short since November while the eurodollar short hit a new record:
(Deutsche Bank, CFTC, my additions)
So that suggests 10Y shorts trimmed their positions following the collapse in yields that accompanied the "dovish" Fed hike while eurodollar shorts rose above 3 million contracts (more here).
I don't know about you, but to me that doesn't seem to suggest folks have very much confidence in the idea of a steeper curve.
Relatedly, the latest Lipper data shows investors yanked the most money from bank sector funds in more than year over the last week, as the Fed's "dovish" hike exacerbated fears that popular Trump trades may have run their course.
Meanwhile, have a look at the following chart which shows how the equity of companies with the highest tax rates have performed versus the broad market since the election:
(Goldman)
"Investors have reduced expectations for the timing and size of tax reform," Goldman wrote on Friday afternoon, adding that "after outperforming the S&P 500 by 520 bp post-election, our basket of stocks with the highest effective tax rates has given back all of its post-election gains in the last three months."
Now that the GOP has failed to push through health care reform, can you imagine what that chart is going to look like in a couple of weeks? Remember, repealing and replacing the ACA was billed as a prerequisite for moving ahead with tax reform.
Again, none of this means that everything is going to suddenly come unglued on Monday.
But what it does mean is that the writing is on the Wall.
WHY FACTS DON´T CHANGE OUR MINDS / JOHN MAULDIN´S OUTSIDE THE BOX
| Etiquetas: Psychology
Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
You and I are both rational beings who let facts drive our thinking, but it seems our fellow humans are not so thoughtful. Or at least that’s what the research says. It turns out that behavioral psychologists have been undermining the bastions of human reasonability for decades, starting with some nefarious characters in the Stanford University psych department back in the ’70s, whose devilishly clever experiments were then taken a frightening step further at that equally suspect institution over on the other coast: Harvard. Don’t these mental types have anything better to do than conclusively prove that nobody (but you and I) can think straight?
Apparently not. And then the Harvard guys had the temerity to suggest that the human race’s muddleheadedness goes allllllll the way back to the time we spent trotting around on the African savannah. Remember that? Lotsa fun – if you didn’t get chewed up by a pack of hyenas or run down by a herd of water buffalos. You see, we weren’t just sitting out there on the plain playing checkers or debating the finer points of Cartesian philosophy. No, we were hanging on by the skin of our teeth – even as our teeth got smaller so our brains could get bigger. But it turns out that the most significant way our brains got bigger – and the main reason we survived and evolved into the total media animals we are today – was that we figured out how to cooperate.
Or at least that’s what the Harvard guys say. Their argument runs more or less like this:
Humans’ biggest advantage over other species is our ability to cooÌperate. CooÌperation is difficult to establish and almost as difficult to sustain. For any individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.
“Reason is an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have evolved for themselves,” [the Harvard guys] write. Habits of mind that seem weird or goofy or just plain dumb from an “intellectualist” point of view prove shrewd when seen from a social “interactionist” perspective.
It’s quite frustrating … when you think about it. But I guess it’s better to face the truth about ourselves than to go along blindly, always wondering over the irrational hijinks our fellow two-leggeds are forever getting up to.
The whole sordid – but not entirely unhopeful – story is laid out by Elizabeth Kolbert in a piece titled “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds,” in – you guessed it – The New Yorker … yes, the only rag in the greater English-speaking world that insists on throwing an umlaut over the second o in cooperate – like they wanted to make sure we knew how to pronounce the word or something.
This week’s Outside the Box is truly one to make you think. And maybe meditate on how you process data. So read on, and be relieved of your irrational bias against the wisdom of the herd. (Or maybe, just maybe, you’ll want to help me figure out how we’re going to save ourselves from ourselves this time.)
I find myself in Dallas, home alone while Shane is with her son Dakota skiing in Colorado, which gives me some time to catch up with friends in the evenings and work even harder at meeting deadlines.
And it is getting harder to meet deadlines, because I keep running into fabulous new information that totally absorbs me, and then my friends call me up and tell me about this or that latest innovation which is so utterly compelling that I have to spend yet another hour listening to the story.
Even as I become increasingly alarmed at our global economic and political process, I become more positive about the future of the human experiment. In just the last few days Patrick Cox and I have had multiple conversations about completely different technologies and research efforts that have significant potential for extending not just our lifespans but our health spans. If you are not receiving Patrick’s free letter, you are really missing out. And if you are a serious biotech investor you should definitely be reading his subscriber letter.
We are finalizing the details on our 14th annual Strategic Investment Conference, which I guarantee you will be the best conference I have ever put on. You need to go ahead and register before we sell out. Once I have the last i dotted I will give you a detailed outline of what to expect.
The weather in Dallas is absolutely fabulous. There are very few days in Texas when I am comfortable simply turning off all the air conditioning and/or heaters and just opening the doors and letting the house absorb the ambience. Spring is evidently coming early almost everywhere in North America and Europe.
You have a great week, and now let’s turn to the problems that your and my neighbors have in dealing with facts.
Your looking for more hours in the day analyst,
John Mauldin, Editor
By Elizabeth Kolbert
Originally published in The New Yorker, Feb. 27, 2017
New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason.
The vaunted human capacity for reason may have more to do with winning arguments than with thinking straight.
In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. In each pair, one note had been composed by a random individual, the other by a person who had subsequently taken his own life. The students were then asked to distinguish between the genuine notes and the fake ones.
Some students discovered that they had a genius for the task. Out of twenty-five pairs of notes, they correctly identified the real one twenty-four times. Others discovered that they were hopeless. They identified the real note in only ten instances.
As is often the case with psychological studies, the whole setup was a put-on. Though half the notes were indeed genuine – they’d been obtained from the Los Angeles County coroner’s office – the scores were fictitious. The students who’d been told they were almost always right were, on average, no more discerning than those who had been told they were mostly wrong.
In the second phase of the study, the deception was revealed. The students were told that the real point of the experiment was to gauge their responses to thinking they were right or wrong. (This, it turned out, was also a deception.) Finally, the students were asked to estimate how many suicide notes they had actually categorized correctly, and how many they thought an average student would get right. At this point, something curious happened. The students in the high-score group said that they thought they had, in fact, done quite well – significantly better than the average student – even though, as they’d just been told, they had zero grounds for believing this. Conversely, those who’d been assigned to the low-score group said that they thought they had done significantly worse than the average student – a conclusion that was equally unfounded.
“Once formed,” the researchers observed dryly, “impressions are remarkably perseverant.”
A few years later, a new set of Stanford students was recruited for a related study. The students were handed packets of information about a pair of firefighters, Frank K. and George H. Frank’s bio noted that, among other things, he had a baby daughter and he liked to scuba dive. George had a small son and played golf. The packets also included the men’s responses on what the researchers called the Risky-Conservative Choice Test. According to one version of the packet, Frank was a successful firefighter who, on the test, almost always went with the safest option. In the other version, Frank also chose the safest option, but he was a lousy firefighter who’d been put “on report” by his supervisors several times. Once again, midway through the study, the students were informed that they’d been misled, and that the information they’d received was entirely fictitious. The students were then asked to describe their own belief s. What sort of attitude toward risk did they think a successful firefighter would have? The students who’d received the first packet thought that he would avoid it. The students in the second group thought he’d embrace it.
Even after the evidence “for their beliefs has been totally refuted, people fail to make appropriate revisions in those beliefs,” the researchers noted. In this case, the failure was “particularly impressive,” since two data points would never have been enough information to generalize from.
The Stanford studies became famous. Coming from a group of academics in the nineteen-seventies, the contention that people can’t think straight was shocking. It isn’t any longer. Thousands of subsequent experiments have confirmed (and elaborated on) this finding. As everyone who’s followed the research – or even occasionally picked up a copy of Psychology Today – knows, any graduate student with a clipboard can demonstrate that reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational. Rarely has this insight seemed more relevant than it does right now. Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way?
In a new book, “The Enigma of Reason” (Harvard), the cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber take a stab at answering this question. Mercier, who works at a French research institute in Lyon, and Sperber, now based at the Central European University, in Budapest, point out that reason is an evolved trait, like bipedalism or three-color vision. It emerged on the savannas of Africa, and has to be understood in that context.
Stripped of a lot of what might be called cognitive-science-ese, Mercier and Sperber’s argument runs, more or less, as follows: Humans’ biggest advantage over other species is our ability to coöperate. Coöperation is difficult to establish and almost as difficult to sustain. For any individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.
“Reason is an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have evolved for themselves,” Mercier and Sperber write. Habits of mind that seem weird or goofy or just plain dumb from an “intellectualist” point of view prove shrewd when seen from a social “interactionist” perspective.
Consider what’s become known as “confirmation bias,” the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them. Of the many forms of faulty thinking that have been identified, confirmation bias is among the best catalogued; it’s the subject of entire textbooks’ worth of experiments. One of the most famous of these was conducted, again, at Stanford. For this experiment, researchers rounded up a group of students who had opposing opinions about capital punishment. Half the students were in favor of it and thought that it deterred crime; the other half were against it and thought that it had no effect on crime.
The students were asked to respond to two studies. One provided data in support of the deterrence argument, and the other provided data that called it into question. Both studies – you guessed it – were made up, and had been designed to present what were, objectively speaking, equally compelling statistics. The students who had originally supported capital punishment rated the pro-deterrence data highly credible and the anti-deterrence data unconvincing; the students who’d originally opposed capital punishment did the reverse. At the end of the experiment, the students were asked once again about their views. Those who’d started out pro-capital punishment were now even more in favor of it; those who’d opposed it were even more hostile.
If reason is designed to generate sound judgments, then it’s hard to conceive of a more serious design flaw than confirmation bias. Imagine, Mercier and Sperber suggest, a mouse that thinks the way we do. Such a mouse, “bent on confirming its belief that there are no cats around,” would soon be dinner. To the extent that confirmation bias leads people to dismiss evidence of new or underappreciated threats – the human equivalent of the cat around the corner – it’s a trait that should have been selected against. The fact that both we and it survive, Mercier and Sperber argue, proves that it must have some adaptive function, and that function, they maintain, is related to our “hypersociability.”
Mercier and Sperber prefer the term “myside bias.” Humans, they point out, aren’t randomly credulous. Presented with someone else’s argument, we’re quite adept at spotting the weaknesses. Almost invariably, the positions we’re blind about are our own.
A recent experiment performed by Mercier and some European colleagues neatly demonstrates this asymmetry. Participants were asked to answer a series of simple reasoning problems. They were then asked to explain their responses, and were given a chance to modify them if they identified mistakes. The majority were satisfied with their original choices; fewer than fifteen per cent changed their minds in step two.
In step three, participants were shown one of the same problems, along with their answer and the answer of another participant, who’d come to a different conclusion. Once again, they were given the chance to change their responses. But a trick had been played: the answers presented to them as someone else’s were actually their own, and vice versa. About half the participants realized what was going on. Among the other half, suddenly people became a lot more critical. Nearly sixty per cent now rejected the responses that they’d earlier been satisfied with.
This lopsidedness, according to Mercier and Sperber, reflects the task that reason evolved to perform, which is to prevent us from getting screwed by the other members of our group. Living in small bands of hunter-gatherers, our ancestors were primarily concerned with their social standing, and with making sure that they weren’t the ones risking their lives on the hunt while others loafed around in the cave. There was little advantage in reasoning clearly, while much was to be gained from winning arguments.
Among the many, many issues our forebears didn’t worry about were the deterrent effects of capital punishment and the ideal attributes of a firefighter. Nor did they have to contend with fabricated studies, or fake news, or Twitter. It’s no wonder, then, that today reason often seems to fail us. As Mercier and Sperber write, “This is one of many cases in which the environment changed too quickly for natural selection to catch up.”
Steven Sloman, a professor at Brown, and Philip Fernbach, a professor at the University of Colorado, are also cognitive scientists. They, too, believe sociability is the key to how the human mind functions or, perhaps more pertinently, malfunctions. They begin their book, “The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone” (Riverhead), with a look at toilets.
Virtually everyone in the United States, and indeed throughout the developed world, is familiar with toilets. A typical flush toilet has a ceramic bowl filled with water. When the handle is depressed, or the button pushed, the water – and everything that’s been deposited in it – gets sucked into a pipe and from there into the sewage system. But how does this actually happen?
In a study conducted at Yale, graduate students were asked to rate their understanding of everyday devices, including toilets, zippers, and cylinder locks. They were then asked to write detailed, step-by-step explanations of how the devices work, and to rate their understanding again. Apparently, the effort revealed to the students their own ignorance, because their self-assessments dropped. (Toilets, it turns out, are more complicated than they appear.)
Sloman and Fernbach see this effect, which they call the “illusion of explanatory depth,” just about everywhere. People believe that they know way more than they actually do. What allows us to persist in this belief is other people. In the case of my toilet, someone else designed it so that I can operate it easily. This is something humans are very good at. We’ve been relying on one another’s expertise ever since we figured out how to hunt together, which was probably a key development in our evolutionary history. So well do we collaborate, Sloman and Fernbach argue, that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and others’ begins.
“One implication of the naturalness with which we divide cognitive labor,” they write, is that there’s “no sharp boundary between one person’s ideas and knowledge” and “those of other members” of the group.
This borderlessness, or, if you prefer, confusion, is also crucial to what we consider progress. As people invented new tools for new ways of living, they simultaneously created new realms of ignorance; if everyone had insisted on, say, mastering the principles of metalworking before picking up a knife, the Bronze Age wouldn’t have amounted to much. When it comes to new technologies, incomplete understanding is empowering.
Where it gets us into trouble, according to Sloman and Fernbach, is in the political domain. It’s one thing for me to flush a toilet without knowing how it operates, and another for me to favor (or oppose) an immigration ban without knowing what I’m talking about. Sloman and Fernbach cite a survey conducted in 2014, not long after Russia annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. Respondents were asked how they thought the U.S. should react, and also whether they could identify Ukraine on a map. The farther off base they were about the geography, the more likely they were to favor military intervention. (Respondents were so unsure of Ukraine’s location that the median guess was wrong by eighteen hundred miles, roughly the distance from Kiev to Madrid.)
Surveys on many other issues have yielded similarly dismaying results. “As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding,” Sloman and Fernbach write. And here our dependence on other minds reinforces the problem. If your position on, say, the Affordable Care Act is baseless and I rely on it, then my opinion is also baseless. When I talk to Tom and he decides he agrees with me, his opinion is also baseless, but now that the three of us concur we feel that much more smug about our views. If we all now dismiss as unconvincing any information that contradicts our opinion, you get, well, the Trump Administration.
“This is how a community of knowledge can become dangerous,” Sloman and Fernbach observe. The two have performed their own version of the toilet experiment, substituting public policy for household gadgets. In a study conducted in 2012, they asked people for their stance on questions like: Should there be a single-payer health-care system? Or merit-based pay for teachers? Participants were asked to rate their positions depending on how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the proposals. Next, they were instructed to explain, in as much detail as they could, the impacts of implementing each one. Most people at this point ran into trouble. Asked once again to rate their views, they ratcheted down the intensity, so that they either agreed or disagreed less vehemently.
Sloman and Fernbach see in this result a little candle for a dark world. If we – or our friends or the pundits on CNN – spent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we’d realize how clueless we are and moderate our views. This, they write, “may be the only form of thinking that will shatter the illusion of explanatory depth and change people’s attitudes.”
One way to look at science is as a system that corrects for people’s natural inclinations. In a well-run laboratory, there’s no room for myside bias; the results have to be reproducible in other laboratories, by researchers who have no motive to confirm them. And this, it could be argued, is why the system has proved so successful. At any given moment, a field may be dominated by squabbles, but, in the end, the methodology prevails. Science moves forward, even as we remain stuck in place.
In “Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us” (Oxford), Jack Gorman, a psychiatrist, and his daughter, Sara Gorman, a public-health specialist, probe the gap between what science tells us and what we tell ourselves. Their concern is with those persistent beliefs which are not just demonstrably false but also potentially deadly, like the conviction that vaccines are hazardous. Of course, what’s hazardous is not being vaccinated; that’s why vaccines were created in the first place. “Immunization is one of the triumphs of modern medicine,” the Gormans note. But no matter how many scientific studies conclude that vaccines are safe, and that there’s no link between immunizations and autism, anti-vaxxers remain unmoved. (They can now count on their side – sort of – Donald Trump, who has said that, although he and his wife had their son, Barron, vaccinated, they refused to do so on t he timetable recommended by pediatricians.)
The Gormans, too, argue that ways of thinking that now seem self-destructive must at some point have been adaptive. And they, too, dedicate many pages to confirmation bias, which, they claim, has a physiological component. They cite research suggesting that people experience genuine pleasure – a rush of dopamine – when processing information that supports their beliefs. “It feels good to ‘stick to our guns’ even if we are wrong,” they observe.
The Gormans don’t just want to catalogue the ways we go wrong; they want to correct for them. There must be some way, they maintain, to convince people that vaccines are good for kids, and handguns are dangerous. (Another widespread but statistically insupportable belief they’d like to discredit is that owning a gun makes you safer.) But here they encounter the very problems they have enumerated. Providing people with accurate information doesn’t seem to help; they simply discount it. Appealing to their emotions may work better, but doing so is obviously antithetical to the goal of promoting sound science. “The challenge that remains,” they write toward the end of their book, “is to figure out how to address the tendencies that lead to false scientific belief.”
“The Enigma of Reason,” “The Knowledge Illusion,” and “Denying to the Grave” were all written before the November election. And yet they anticipate Kellyanne Conway and the rise of “alternative facts.” These days, it can feel as if the entire country has been given over to a vast psychological experiment being run either by no one or by Steve Bannon. Rational agents would be able to think their way to a solution. But, on this matter, the literature is not reassuring.
Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History.”
THE FUTURE OF ETF´S / BARRON´S MAGAZINE
| Etiquetas: ETF´s, Investment Strategies
The Future of ETFs
Barron’s gathered the ETF industry’s leaders to discuss what will drive growth, some needed changes, and how you should invest.
By Beverly Goodman
Our panelists, clockwise from top left, Tony Rochte, Mark Wiedman, Joel Dickson, and Jim Ross. KEN SCHLES
The exchange-traded-fund industry is much like Greek life on a college campus: It’s a bit rowdy and full of friendly competition, everyone speaks in letters as shorthand, and they all grew up together, in a sense. Put four industry leaders in a room and the ebullient trash-talking immediately begins.
But these four are some of the best minds in the fast-growing, yet also maturing, business. There’s $2.8 trillion in 2,000 ETFs in the U.S., according to research firm XTF, but those figures belie the extremely concentrated makeup of the industry. More than 80% of assets are held in just three firms—Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street (STT)—all of which are represented at this roundtable.
Joel Dickson is global head of investment research and development for Vanguard Group, which manages $4 trillion in assets, including $600 billion in 70 ETFs. Mark Wiedman is global head of iShares and Index Investments at BlackRock, which has $5 trillion in assets under management, $1 trillion of which is in its 334 or so iShares ETFs. Jim Ross is executive vice president of State Street Global Advisors and global head of SPDR ETFs. The $2.5 trillion firm is home to $450 billion in ETFs, including the oldest and largest, the $242 billion SPDR S&P 500 (ticker: SPY).
Tony Rochte is president of Fidelity Investments’ SelectCo, its sector investing unit. Prior to joining Fidelity in 2012, he had six-year stints at both State Street and iShares when it was owned by Barclays.
Fidelity, which manages $2.2 trillion, has $6 billion in its own ETFs, a relatively small figure, though impressive, given that it essentially began its ETF business just three years ago. Its brokerage arm has $270 billion in ETF assets under administration.
While traditional mutual funds still hold the lion’s share of fund assets, with $16.5 trillion, ETFs are coming on strong, with twice as much in assets as they held just four years ago. To learn what the future may hold, read on.
Barron’s: Let’s dispense with the topic absolutely no one here wants to discuss—the active-versus-passive debate.
Jim Ross: This is a pretty tired debate. ETFs are thrown in on the passive side, yet they’re used for active implementation by probably more than 50% of the people using them.
Tony Rochte: This debate doesn’t even exist if you talk to a professional. Financial advisors view themselves as architects using building blocks, index products alongside actively managed funds.
That’s how we think about it, as well.
Mark Wiedman: We reject even the idea of active versus passive. All portfolios are active. How you build that portfolio is an active decision. When people talk about active versus passive, they are really talking about price—high-cost versus low-cost funds.
Fidelity’s Tony Rochte warns that ETFs’ transparency “cuts both ways.” Ken Schles for Barron's
Rochte: Price is critical, especially as advisors move to a fee-based model. According to Cerulli Associates, in 2004, 21% of the advisor market was 100% commission-only and 41% was fee-based.
At the end of 2015, only 3% of advisors had a purely commission business, and almost 80% were fee-based. It is not just individual investors looking for low-cost products; it is a change in the advisory business that’s really a tail wind for the growth of ETFs.
There has been a lot of talk about passive being a bubble or worse, while others, Barron’s included, have argued that the more money that goes into passive strategies, the more opportunity there will be for stockpickers.
Wiedman: That is dead right, but 25 years too early. Only one-sixth, or 16%, of the U.S. stock market is indexed. We are literally trillions away from an “over-indexed” world. We’ll know when we get there—when active managers on the whole produce neutral returns, net of fees.
Joel Dickson: I disagree a bit with that…
Wiedman: Game on.
Dickson: Yeah. The last few decades have seen a big shift into professional management among what were formerly retail investors. That changes things. If someone is going to have consistent stock-picking success, somebody else has to consistently lose. That used to be the retail investor. You can see this in the Federal Reserve’s flow of funds data over the past 45 years. We’ve gone from 20% of household assets under professional management to now more than 60%. And that’s probably understated. Outperformance is harder when everyone is a professional.
Wiedman: Actually, I agree with Joel. As the world has become much more institutionalized, competition has gotten much more intense. Trillions have flowed into all forms of institutional money management, and they are competing against each other in a zero-sum game.
Do advisors and retail investors use ETFs differently?
Rochte: Individual investors and advisors are both focused on asset allocation and unique exposures.
We looked at the 18 million brokerage accounts—just over 40% of our platform are retail investors and 57% are advisors—and found that the retail segment is growing faster, and it skews towards high-net-worth, sophisticated investors. The average holding period for equity ETFs is almost 20 months.
Dickson: At Vanguard, it is just under three years for ETFs; 3½ for mutual funds.
Wiedman: You actually let your investors sell?
Dickson: Every now and then.
Do investors have the right tools to evaluate exchange-traded funds?
Ross: I worry constantly about the number of ETFs and whether investors understand what’s in them, and how they will meet their goals. But the tools are available.
Wiedman: The market has spoken; clients have voted—almost 100% of the money going into ETFs is going to simple vehicles from established firms. There are thousands of ETFs, but investors have figured out how to find the good ones.
So your unbiased opinion is that because Vanguard, iShares, and State Street ETFs took in $243 billion, or 87% of all ETF inflows for 2016, that’s evidence that investors are well informed. OK. What don’t they know?
Vanguard’s Joel Dickson says that ETF tradability is an overstated advantage. Ken Schles for Barron's
Dickson: That ETFs trade all the time is an overstated advantage. The market environment for an ETF is not just the value of the underlying securities; it’s also the premium and discount of the ETF itself. With a mutual fund, your trade won’t settle until 4 p.m., but you know you’re going to get the value of the underlying securities. ETFs are price-certain; you know what price you’re buying or selling them at, which could be different than the value of the underlying securities. Mutual funds are value-certain; you may not know what the price will be, but you’ll get the value of the stocks it holds—no more, no less. That’s the trade-off.
Wiedman: That’s like saying I’m going to close my eyes, and since I don’t get the price until 4 p.m. I’ll feel better. The advantage of the ETF is you know exactly the price you are getting. The concern is not the ETF; it’s the fragility of the U.S. equity markets. Dealers and investment banks are smaller, and they are not able to commit capital under stress. Institutions have to be careful about throwing orders into a yawning gap at the open or the close when volatility can strike. The ETF just makes naked the underlying pricing volatility that already exists.
What do you mean, the market is fragile?
Wiedman: Equity markets depend on market makers to price securities. Those market makers used to be well-known global banks, but since the financial crisis, those banks have faced regulations that make the cost of capital more expensive, and therefore market-making more expensive. While the daily market is still very liquid, during a stress event, like a macroeconomic shock, the ability of banks to step in has been greatly reduced. The markets today are effectively priced by small firms no one has ever heard of, and they are not equipped to operate in times of stress.
Dickson: The fragility is not the market-making community. Exchanges need to be modernized for the types of instruments people are now trading. The centralization is not there to get the imbalances appropriately dealt with. We as an industry have been trying to get the exchanges to think about that.
Yes, especially since Aug. 24, 2015, when high volatility caused prices for U.S. equity ETFs to fall much further than those of the stocks they owned. Market makers were flying blind—unable or unwilling to take the risk inherent in setting fair prices. There were nearly 1,300 separate five-minute trading halts in more than 400 stocks and ETFs, and a fifth of all ETFs fell more than 20%, while just 5% of individual stocks declined by that much. All of this happened after rules had been implemented in the wake of the 2010 flash crash. So what needs to happen now?
State Street’s Jim Ross says that ETFs can help investors during market shocks. Ken Schles for Barron's
Ross: The exchanges don’t have consistent rules around opening trading in a stock. It’s not because they’re looking for a competitive advantage; it’s just how they’ve grown. All the firms here, along with many others in the industry, have formed a coalition to work with market makers, the exchanges, regulators, and others within the ETF ecosystem to harmonize some of these rules.
Dickson: There is a bit of a mismatch in terms of how trading reopens in a security that has been halted, so there can be unintended consequences on days of marketwide volatility. Historically, most rules around market structure have focused on preventing fallout from single-security events. We need to change that focus to how extreme events affect baskets of securities, like ETFs.
Wiedman: In times of severe stress, traders need harmonization and simple market protocols so they don’t need to think very hard about whether to buy or sell. That’s an important part of protecting U.S. equity markets and the ETFs that depend on it.
How can investors protect themselves?
Ross: There will, at times, be tons of volatility in the market—don’t trade at those times.
Wiedman: There’s another very simple rule for investors: Don’t use market orders. Use limit orders.
Market orders are filled at the going price; limit orders require investors to decide at what price they’re willing to buy or sell, limiting the risk of paying too much or selling too low. If limit orders are the best way to trade, why is the default option on almost every brokerage platform—including Fidelity’s and Vanguard’s—a market order?
Dickson: Some of this is just legacy practice. There is also a client-service and customer-risk element to the market/limit order debate. A market order says, “I want to purchase the security now, regardless of price.” If you don’t fill that request—even if it’s in the investor’s interest to put some price protection around the trade—you’re opening yourself up to a decent amount of liability in not having followed the customer’s orders. There are also client-servicing issues—what if the client is buying and selling at the same time, and one part of their trade goes through, but the other doesn’t? Now you’ve got a settlement problem.
Wiedman: The real story here is that ETFs work literally almost every second. They trade when the underlying markets are troubled or even closed. You can buy and sell Japanese equities right now, even though the markets in Japan are closed. That’s magic.
Ross: ETFs trade well virtually all the time. SPY has traded at less than a penny spread for 3,000 consecutive trading days.
Rochte: After 9/11, SPY was used as a price-discovery mechanism. The same was true for single-country ETFs as far back as the Asian contagion in the late 1990s.
How does an exchange-traded fund act as a mechanism for price discovery?
Ross: Regarding Sept. 11, a lot of stocks hadn’t begun trading when the market opened, but SPY was trading, using prices from the previous close for some stocks. As those stocks opened, the index value went to where the ETF was trading. When everything opened, it all converged.
BlackRock’s Mark Wiedman expects that the biggest ETF growth will come via fixed income. Ken Schles for Barron's
Wiedman: People use ETFs in stressful markets to define the new price. It is where liquidity pools find new prices. One of the great examples of this was in the high-yield crunch in December 2015, when the best way to gauge the price of high yield bonds was to look at two different ETFs—HYG and some other ticker.
Those two ETFs accounted for more than half of all high-yield trading on one day, 25% for the month.
The ticker you conveniently forgot was HYG’s biggest competitor, JNK, the SPDR Bloomberg Barclays High Yield Bond.
Wiedman: That might be it. Those two gave clarity and transparency to pricing in high yield.
Dickson: ETFs reflect the underlying market; they don’t dictate them. That’s an important distinction.
Ross: Another important distinction is the transparency. That same December, there was a mutual fund [Third Avenue Focused Credit] that caused a lot of consternation because it couldn’t sell some of its holdings. An ETF wouldn’t have had the same problems because the ETF provider could do an in-kind exchange. Also, investors would have seen the holdings and the prices every day.
The ETF industry is remarkably concentrated in terms of assets and products. There are 2,000 ETFs, yet just 19 or 20 of them from your firms account for more than a third of all ETF assets. Can this domination continue? What happens to the dozens of firms and hundreds of ETFs that make up the rest of the market?
Wiedman: I’m trying to think of an answer that I can give in public. Jim, your reaction?
Ross: I’ll answer it. First of all, we’ve seen many dozens of new ETF sponsors in the last three to five years.
There are also ETF start-ups that have grown up, like WisdomTree, which is now the fifth largest ETF sponsor in the U.S. Can that continue? Yes. There is opportunity for new entrants. Also, the fastest-growing ETF markets are outside the U.S. The industry could get to $25 trillion by the end of 2025.
Rochte: That’s an aggressive number. We don’t have the manufacturing capability that the three gentlemen next to me do at their firms. But we have a big platform; our brokerage handles 11% of U.S. ETF business.
You’ve also launched 20 ETFs in the past few years—starting with 11 sector ETFs in 2013, three actively managed bond ETFs a year later, and six factor ETFs last fall—and now you have $6 billion in Fidelity ETFs.
Rochte: Over the past five years, only five firms have raised more than $1 billion in ETFs, according to Credit Suisse; Fidelity is one of them. More than 50 ETF players have less than $1 billion in assets.
We have a partnership with BlackRock for core passive ETFs; they do it very well. When it comes to manufacturing our own ETFs, we want to add expertise or real differentiation.
Wiedman: The barriers to entry are very low; barriers to success are much higher.
What are the barriers to success?
Wiedman: There’s not a crying need for new entrants to come in and compete with broad-market exchange-traded funds at rock-bottom prices. Instead, they are coming in with niche, higher-priced products.
Dickson: Four out of every five dollars in ETFs are in broad-market, capitalization-weighted funds.
That said, though the three of us have 82% of the market, we are the ones fiercely competing on price.
Wiedman: We have a brutally competitive, concentrated marketplace.
Dickson: True. But this concentration wasn’t BlackRock’s decision or Vanguard’s decision or State Street’s decision—it is a result of the independent decisions of millions of investors, choosing the products they think best meet their goals.
Rochte: New products must differentiate themselves. And distribution is critical.
Dickson: That’s true. You’ve got providers throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping something sticks. If it does, it can be very profitable, but you are going to be a smaller player. New entrants with brand names and good distribution, like Fidelity, Schwab, or Pimco, can get assets early on.
Rochte: Consolidation among smaller firms will continue.
How does the industry grow?
Rochte: The next decade is not about new products. It’s about wrapping ETFs in an active strategy. That can be via a robo-advisor, or sophisticated ETF strategist, or firms that provide “paper portfolios” for advisors to implement.
Ross: I’m going to completely disagree with Tony, because I really enjoy doing that. It’s true that packaging ETFs is a growing business; we offer ETF managed portfolios, as does everyone else at this table. But the underlying growth is the ETF usage itself. We’ll see new products, especially in what everyone but me likes to call smart beta.
Nobody likes to call it that, but no one has come up with a better alternative.
Ross: I think all four of us agree with that.
Smart beta is a broad term for an index organized around an investing philosophy, rather than weighting stocks according to their market capitalization, as most ETFs do.
Rochte: Academic research has shown that four factors—quality, value, momentum, and volatility—perform very well over time. But they don’t perform well all of the time.
Ross: The challenge with smart beta, whether it is single factor or multi-factor, is that you have to stay the course.
Dickson: We now have upward of 30 low-volatility ETFs. How do you differentiate among them?
“Education” ends up being marketing from 30 different providers. So people look to performance as the indicator of the better product. That’s a real worry. It is just like traditional active management; there are long periods of underperformance. Not only do you have to stick with it; you have to rebalance to it.
Flows into smart-beta ETFs are down—nearly $70 billion went into smart-beta ETFs in both 2014 and 2015. Last year, it was less than $40 billion. That’s a big drop.
Ross: There is a bit of fatigue around smart beta. People don’t know how to evaluate them. I’m going to predict the future here, which is really a bad thing.
Wiedman: Go for it. Just don’t put a date on it.
Ross: I’ll put a date on it. In five years, there will be a headline in Barron’s saying that retail investors have underperformed using smart beta.
Dickson: They already have.
They have—and I think we’ve used that headline already.
Ross: You can reuse headlines. This gets back to due diligence. If you don’t have conviction in an ETF, don’t invest in it.
Rochte: There can be unintended consequences with factor investing. Look at the MSCI Momentum index in the last quarter of 2016; it was underweight financials. Financial stocks rose tremendously after the election in November. That’s why our factor ETFs are sector neutral.
What other areas are ripe for new products?
Wiedman: Most growth in the next five years will come from new clients, and deeper penetration with existing clients. But in terms of new products, fixed income is massively under-indexed. Investors think about just one major index, which skews heavily toward the countries and companies that issue the most debt. Bond indexes need to be reconsidered.
You’re referring to the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, better known as the Agg?
Wiedman: Yes. Many active managers just buy whatever is not in the Agg, like emerging market bonds, in order to beat it.
Ross: We’re having an active/passive debate, if I’m hearing this right.
Wiedman: No, we’re talking about the decomposition of what really is beta return.
Ross: I agree 100% the Agg is not a great benchmark. Active managers have outperformed it on a routine basis in the past one, three, and five years.
Dickson: We can debate the merit of factor investing in stocks, but in fixed income there are clearly two factors that drive the market—rate and credit.
Wiedman: This is important, what Joel is getting at. The great active managers, including those at our firm, spend a lot of time thinking about how to manage rate and credit risk efficiently. What doesn’t yet exist in the fixed-income world is a careful analysis and decomposition of how much of an active manager’s return comes from simply riding those risks, versus security selection. In equities, that’s the whole game. In fixed income, that conversation hasn’t really begun. The Agg is the only frame of reference for many investors. We can do smarter indexing, either via indexes that capture more of the market, like IUSB, which includes emerging market debt, or indexes that target investor goals, such as higher income or shorter duration.
So a lot of ETF growth will come from fixed income?
Ross: Yes, especially as insurance companies continue to understand the fundamental changes going on in fixed income, they will look to ETFs.
Wiedman: Institutional managers of all kinds struggle to trade bonds cheaply. They have to pay a lot more today to trade fixed-income than they did before the financial crisis.
How will robo-advisors, which offer investors asset-allocation models at much lower prices than they’d pay a human advisor, change the ETF business?
Wiedman: Robo technology will change the world, but when we talk about robo-advisors, we’re mostly talking about stand-alone players that don’t have any friends. Online-only banks died, but online banking conquered. Robo technology, especially from the players at this table, could transform wealth management. ETFs will get sucked into that.
Dickson: The disruption of robos is not that they use ETFs; it’s in how investors get their portfolios. Robos lock people into an advisory relationship much earlier, and that money is usually fairly sticky.
Wiedman: The Silicon Valley robos are not going to be around long enough to enjoy that sticky money. Their cost of client acquisition is too high, as are the regulatory hurdles. Robos will change the way investors expect to be advised, and they are going to reset the price. But it’s the established wealth managers who will win. Joel, what’s the price on your service?
Dickson: It’s staggered, but it starts at 30 basis points [0.3%] and goes down, the more assets you have.
Wiedman: That’s the revolution.
Rochte: What industry hasn’t been disrupted by technology? Even the full-service broker/dealers are building digital advice models. Financial firms spent $19 billion on fintech last year. But whether it’s competition or “co-opetition” remains to be seen.
Thanks, gentlemen.
THE ONE-CHINA POLICY: THE GREAT OBFUSCATION OF ONE-CHINA / THE ECONOMIST
| Etiquetas: China, Geopolitics, Taiwan
The one-China policy
The great obfuscation of one-China
The polite fiction that there is only one China has kept the peace in East Asia—but now it is coming under pressure from all directions
BEIJING AND TAIPEI
WHEN Donald Trump, then America’s president-elect, said on December 11th that “I don’t know why we have to be bound by a one-China policy” he ripped aside one of the oldest sticking-plasters in the world of diplomacy. That he stuck it back on again two months later, telling Xi Jinping, China’s president, that he would honour the one-China policy “at President Xi’s request”, does not alter the fact that an American leader had questioned a basic feature of Asian security. Nor does Mr Trump’s reversal solve problems with the one-China formula, on which peace between Taiwan and China has depended, that were evident well before his election. If they worsen, the two sides’ frozen conflict could heat up.
The one-China formula is not so much fraught with ambiguities as composed of them. China itself does not actually have a one-China policy. It has what it calls a one-China principle, which is that there is only one China, with its government in Beijing. It regards Taiwan as a renegade Chinese province and refuses diplomatic recognition to any country that recognises Taiwan as a state. Yet this rigid principle can be bent. In 2015 President Xi met the island’s then-president, Ma Ying-jeou, for what would have looked to innocent eyes very much like a bilateral summit of heads of state. And China looks the other way, albeit with some fulmination, when America sells arms to Taiwan—a traffic which, in 1982, America said it would phase out, but continues to this day.
America does not accept the one-China principle. Instead it has the one-China policy, which acknowledges that China has such a principle—not quite the same thing. America does not recognise Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan, nor does it recognise Taiwan as an independent state. It does plenty of trade with it, though. Small as it is, Taiwan is the ninth-largest buyer of American exports, outstripping Italy and India. America’s unofficial ties with the island are closer than many countries’ diplomatic links. The American Institute in Taiwan, a private not-for-profit institution with headquarters in Washington, DC, looks like an embassy and acts like one, too. The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 commits America to helping Taiwan defend itself against invasion and embargoes, deeming any coercion of the island to be “of grave concern to the United States”.
In Taiwan itself the one-China formula has an even stranger history. It is rooted in the fiction that the island’s first president, Chiang Kai-shek, who fled there in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists, would one day recapture the whole of China. Hence Taiwan’s official name, the Republic of China. Thus the party that Chiang led, the Kuomintang (KMT), and the Chinese government can both subscribe to an agreement called the “1992 consensus”, which says that there is only one China but recognises that the two sides disagree about what that means in practice, thus piling fudge upon ambiguity. Taiwan’s other major political party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), rejects both the 1992 consensus and the one-China principle more generally. But its leader, Tsai Ing-wen, who succeeded the KMT’s Mr Ma as president last year, prefers not to do so openly.
In most areas of politics this surfeit of uncertainty would be worrying. Yet the agreement not to look too closely at the contradiction of “one China” has kept an uneasy peace across the Taiwan Strait.
There have been political crises—most recently in the mid 2000s—and in 1996 China fired missiles towards the island while Chinese leaders scowled for the cameras. But by and large it has worked well enough for all three sides to want to maintain it.
Their reasons differ, just as their reading of the formula does. China believes that time is on its side.
As the motherland becomes ever wealthier and more powerful, its leaders seem genuinely to hope that Taiwan’s people will want to rejoin it. Taiwan’s leaders think the opposite; that with time the island’s people will see themselves as having less and less in common with the mainland. Since the 1992 consensus, the proportion of people on the island who identify themselves simply as Taiwanese has more than tripled to almost 60%; the share of those who call themselves Chinese has plunged to just 3% (see chart). Among people between 20 and 30, 85% say they are Taiwanese. In America the attitude is a simpler ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it one.
The status quo enables the country to have diplomatic ties with China without breaking off links with Taiwan, and that is good enough.
But this equilibrium of incommensurable interests depends on certain conditions being right: that China continues to get richer, confirming its leaders’ optimism; that people on each side of the strait do not come to see each other as enemies; that Asia remains more or less stable, so the sides do not get caught up in other conflicts; and that, if the worst comes to the worst, America’s armed forces will step in to keep the peace.
All these conditions are now changing. China’s economy has been slowing. And Asia is no longer so stable. Mr Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on Chinese exports, risking a trade war. Chinese territorial claims over various islands are heightening tensions: America’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, told the Senate that America must be able to limit Chinese access to disputed islands in the South China Sea. Mr Trump confirmed to Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, that their two countries’ defence treaty covers the Senkaku islands, which China calls the Diaoyu.
And while Mr Trump and Mr Abe were meeting, North Korea conducted its first post-Trump missile test. A month before, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, had claimed his country would soon test its first intercontinental ballistic missile, which could hit the American mainland, though that was not what was tested. In response to Mr Kim’s threats America is fielding a missile-defence system in South Korea—to which China vociferously objects.
Taiwan might seem like the eye of the storm. Yet China still holds a threat of invasion, or blockade, over the island, and it sometimes shows signs of wanting to bring things towards a head. In 2013 Mr Xi sent a tremor across the strait when he told Vincent Siew, Taiwan’s vice-president, that their conflict “cannot be passed on from generation to generation”. It sounded as if the president’s patience was starting to wear thin. On March 6th the head of the Taiwan Relations Office, a government department, said to the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s rubber-stamp parliament, that “I have to emphasise that Taiwan’s independence...will lead nowhere. I hope the Taiwan government will think about this sentence carefully.” All this is in the context of a military balance that has been shifted by a decade of double-digit increases in Chinese spending. Ten years ago Pentagon planners dismissed the idea of an invasion as “the million-man swim”. You don’t hear such nonchalance much these days.
Strait and narrow
America might no longer be able to dispatch two aircraft-carrier groups to the Taiwan Strait to force China to back down, as it did in 1996. But if hostilities were to break out America would almost surely be drawn in. The Taiwan Relations Act does not fully oblige it to, but to refrain would be a mortal blow to its position and prestige as a superpower. There would also be economic considerations: Taiwan makes more than a fifth of the world’s semiconductors; a Chinese blockade could cripple the computer industry.
Against such a backdrop, the election of Ms Tsai of the independence-minded DPP was always likely to ratchet up tension. Soon after her inauguration last May the government in Beijing cut off communications between China’s Taiwan Affairs Office and Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, increasing the chances of misunderstanding and miscalculation.
On November 25th China flew a pair of Xi’an H-6K bombers round the island, along with some escorts. Two weeks later another Xi’an bomber and three fighter jets again circled Taiwan.
Then in January China’s aircraft-carrier, the Liaoning, sailed round the southern tip of Taiwan and into the Taiwan Strait. “It shows they mean business,” says Andrew Yang, a former Taiwanese deputy defence minister.
Chinese pressure on Taiwan could increase further. The five-yearly Communist Party congress is due near the end of this year and Mr Xi may be tempted to burnish his hawkish credentials by holding several sabre-rattling military exercises in the run up. He could deplete Taiwan’s tally of 21 diplomatic partners. There have also been reports that China is considering amending its “anti-secession” law. At the moment it says that China would consider taking “non-peaceful methods to defend the nation’s sovereignty” only if Taiwan formally declared independence or if there is no hope of a peaceful resolution. On February 7th Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, reported that China is thinking about amending this to say it could invade if Taiwan’s leader refuses to endorse the 1992 consensus—a refusal to which the DPP has so far stuck. During the NPC, a Chinese admiral, Yin Zhuo, said China should use the anti-secession law to make it clear to Taiwan that “independence means war.”
Relations between China and Taiwan have been through fraught times before, though, without breaking down completely. And there are three reasons for thinking that, in the short term at least, things will not go horribly wrong this time.
Both Mr Xi and Ms Tsai have strong domestic reasons for setting aside their differences for a while.
Mr Xi is consumed by the party congress, and though he may want to make himself appear tough with a few bellicose gestures he does not want a distracting crisis. As for Ms Tsai, she knows that her chances of re-election in 2020 depend on her handling of the economy, not on her handling of China. Taiwanese GDP growth and wages are flat. Her opinion-poll ratings are dismal. She is about to launch a politically risky reform of the bankrupt state-run pensions system. The last thing she wants is a fight with a superpower.
A second reason for guarded optimism is that Ms Tsai has taken the DPP further towards China’s position than ever before. At her inauguration she said that she recognised the “historical fact” of the 1992 negotiations, which is as near as she can get to accepting the consensus without actually doing so. In a speech in October she reassured the communist government that she “will, of course, not revert to the old path of confrontation”. Ms Tsai is a trade lawyer, cautious, predictable and restrained—everything her risk-taking DPP predecessor, Chen Shui-bian, the president from 2000 to 2008, was not. China’s condescension towards her—the Taiwan Affairs Office called her inaugural address “an incomplete examination answer” as if she were a stupid schoolgirl—has been mild compared with the invective levelled against previous DPP leaders, whom they have called “insane”, “evil” and “scum”. That may mean Mr Xi wants to keep open the door for future negotiations.
Third, the military balance in the Taiwan Strait has not swung far enough for China’s high command to be confident of swift victory. If the country could sweep into Taiwan so fast the world did not have time to react (as when Russia invaded Crimea) other countries might conceivably treat an invasion as a fait accompli. But Taiwan is no Crimea. Only 10% of the population wants unification and less than 2% wants it as soon as possible. The island has a vibrant civil society capable of putting millions of protesters onto the streets against a Taiwanese government, let alone a Chinese occupying force.
The mainland has around 1,400 land-based missiles aimed at Taiwan, plus an unknown number of air- and sea-launched ones. Despite the presence of anti-missile defences—both American Patriot missiles and Taiwan’s own systems—the island’s air bases and many of its other defences might be quickly destroyed by all that firepower. But an invasion requires troops on the ground—ground which, in this case, lies the other side of 180km of open water.
And Taiwan’s surviving forces could make that voyage very unpleasant. Mr Yang says that, for an invasion to succeed, China would need promptly to destroy 85% or more of Taiwan’s own missiles; if half of Taiwan’s missiles survived the first wave of attacks, China’s invasion force would be vulnerable.
Ex uno, plures
If the invasion could be slowed down, other countries would have time to react. At that point, any Chinese leader would have to decide whether to stop the invasion or risk a wider conflict. He would surely push on for fear of what might happen at home if he backed down. But he would just as surely prefer to avoid such a choice altogether. And that is where Taiwan’s real deterrence lies: it does not need to be able to turn back an invasion; it only needs to be able to buy enough time to force on China the choice between a coup at home and a regional war abroad.
Without the assurance of a quick victory, cleaving to the familiar ambiguities of “one China” will make the most sense to China’s leader. But those ambiguities will become ever more difficult to maintain. Mr Trump may yet return to his doubts about American support for the policy; it would hardly be the first time he has changed his mind. And popular attitudes across the strait are hardening.
It is not just that islanders increasingly see themselves as Taiwanese; mainlanders, who used to regard the Taiwanese as brothers, have started taking a chillier attitude. They still see the islanders as part of the same culture, but they are now imposing loyalty tests, demanding (for example) a boycott of Taiwanese entertainers who last year did not condemn an international tribunal’s ruling against Chinese claims in the South China Sea. The Communist Youth League, long a training ground for ruling party officials, waged a social-media campaign against one well-known Taiwanese performer in China, Leon Dai, and got him blacklisted.
Chinese officials are encouraging suspicion. The number of Chinese tourists to Taiwan has fallen by more than a third in the past year, largely because bureaucrats have made it harder to travel. Chinese universities have also asked Shih Hsin University, in Taiwan, not to discuss “sensitive political subjects” (such as the one-China principle) with exchange students from the mainland. A senior KMT official fears the days of pro-Taiwan sentiment on the mainland may be over.
Political attitudes are hardening, too. Taiwan used to have a one-China party, the KMT, and a party that preferred independence, the DPP. But the KMT is in free fall after its defeat in last year’s election. The fastest rising force is the New Power Party, which has its roots in student demonstrations against close ties with China; it is at least as anti-one-China as the DPP. Mr Xi’s crackdown on dissent and civil society is leading the political system ever further from Taiwan’s vibrant democracy. The Beijing government’s interference in Hong Kong’s local politics is taken to show that “one country, two systems”, a formula devised for Hong Kong and once offered to Taiwan, is a fraud.
In the face of these realities, both sides want the option of continuing to say that the one-China framework holds, and looking for fresh obfuscations to that end—new helpings of fudge to put on top of that served up in the 1992 consensus. In 2011 Wang Yi, now China’s foreign minister, then head of the Taiwan Affairs Office, said privately during a visit to Washington that China might consider replacing the 1992 formula, and there have been some signs that this could still be on the cards.
Every two weeks Taiwanese officials meet to sift through new forms of words. A new formula might conceivably provide the basis of future talks.
The simple and natural solution is to admit there are two Chinas. But the communist government is not ready to do that. Instead, it is forcing the Taiwanese and Americans to deal with the fraying ambiguities of a one-China policy, as all three move slowly towards a new, more dangerous endgame.
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THE FRAGMENTATION OF SOCIETY / JOHN MAULDIN´S WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
| Etiquetas: Economics, Jobs, Labor Markets, Science And Technology, Social Unrest, Societies, U.S. Economic And Political
The Fragmentation of Society
Lately, my life has been completely packed with speeches, meetings, and in-depth, often lengthy, conversations. Plus ongoing research and writing, of course. It all culminated Thursday afternoon at the beginning of a business meeting with the leadership team from a firm that will become a significant new business partner. At the very beginning of the meeting, the head of the firm leaned over to me and asked, “What’s on the top of your mind? What are you thinking about?” The previous night we had a small group of about 15 people in my living room after dinner, and the question was similar, “What keeps you up at night?”
It has become an emotional question for me, because the answer does not come easily, is complex, and can be more than a little unsettling. It is, however, evolving out of the research and writing I’m doing on my new book, The Age of Transformation. Whether audiences and readers agree with my answer or not, it is not a feel-good message, which is somewhat frustrating because I’m the biggest long-term optimist in the room. But I acknowledge that what I am talking about suggests that the ride between today and the long-term happy ending is going to be more than a bit bumpy.
This week’s letter is going to be a passionate summary of my answer. In form, it will be something like a conversation between you and me, sitting in your living room or mine, or in a restaurant, maybe sipping an adult beverage, thinking through the future together, and wondering at how the world is transforming in front of our eyes.
In part, the impetus for this letter was a video I did with Patrick Cox last week, one in a four-part series that Patrick is doing called “Riding the Gray Tsunami.” We had a candid conversation about the future that lasted an hour, though our outstanding moderator and editor Jonathan Roth, one of our team members, will likely edit it to about 30 minutes. Patrick’s other guests will be Dr. Mike Roizen, the chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic; Aubrey de Grey, the chief science officer of SENS Research Foundation and one of the true experts on longevity science; and finally, our friend Jim Mellon, self-made British billionaire and avid biotech investor. You can sign up to participate here. You really don’t want to miss this. Now let’s jump to the letter.
In the interest of brevity, let’s take it is a given that we’re going to see massive technological change in the next 20 years. In fact, we will see more change – and improvement – in the next 20 years than we’ve seen in the last hundred. Think where we were 100 years ago and how much has changed since then. That much and more is going to happen in the next two decades. Global society really is going to transform that fast.
Let’s start with some good news. In 1820 some 94% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. By 1990 the figure was 35%, and in 2015 it was just 9.6%. Forty percent of those who remain impoverished live in just two countries, Nigeria and India, both of which are growing rapidly and will see their extreme poverty significantly decrease in the next 20 years.
There is research to show that, on a global basis, the poor are getting richer faster than any other group. However, if you look around the US or Europe, that is not the conclusion you come to. But Africa or Asia? Absolutely. Let’s be clear: The Industrial Age and free-market capitalism, for all of its bumps and warts, has lifted more people out of poverty and extended more lives than has any other single development. The collapse of communism has been a great boon to humanity (even if it is still talked about favorably in Western universities).
Because of where the emerging-market economies are in the development cycle, they have the potential for vast, rapid improvement in the lives of their people. But most of my readers do not live in the emerging markets. We live in the developed markets; and here, some of the outcomes of the Age of Transformation will not be so comfortable. Let’s start with this chart (hat tip, Downtown Josh Brown).
Obviously, the rig count in US oilfields is rising rapidly – no surprise there. But distressingly, the number of oilfield workers is continuing to fall. How can this be?
There is an answer to that conundrum in the long article that is the source of this chart and others I’ll use later. There is a new robotic machine called an Iron Roughneck that reduces the human labor required to connect pipe from a crew of 20 down to a crew of five. And those jobs were quite high-paying. Here’s a picture of this new robotic roughneck. Fifteen workers per site at well over $100,000 a year each?
Does that machine look like it cost more than a few million? I bet it amortizes pretty quickly, and that’s why it is being rapidly adopted.
Now look back at the chart. The amazing thing is that this transformation happened in two years; it didn’t take a generation or even half a generation. You were an oilfield worker with what you thought was potentially a lifetime of steady, well-paying – if dangerous, nasty, and dirty – work. And then BOOM! The jobs just simply disappeared. Your on-the-job experience doesn’t translate to any other industries very easily, and now you and your family are on the skids.
I could actually spend this entire letter talking about the amazing transformation of the oilfield. Oil production is now a technology business. Computers and artificial intelligence are used in abundance in the oilfield. Future wells are going to be a magnitude more productive and less expensive. There are oilfield operators here in Dallas running around with pro formas, raising money, talking about how they can do very well at $40 and even $30 per barrel. And with oil at $54 and looking as though it could well go to $60, they are raising money and punching holes. Just with fewer workers.
From the report on the Iron Roughneck we get the following alarming quote. (Note that the report is full of links to academic research. While I don’t like the author’s conclusions, his work is at least well researched).
A landmark 2017 study [dismal reading – John] even looked at the impact of just industrial robots on jobs from 1993 to 2007 and found that every new robot replaced around 5.6 workers, and every additional robot per 1,000 workers reduced the percentage of the total population employed by 0.34% and also reduced wages by 0.5%. During that 14-year period of time, the number of industrial robots quadrupled and between 360,000 and 670,000 jobs were erased. And as the authors [Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo] noted, “Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, we do not find positive and offsetting employment gains in any occupation or education groups.” In other words, the jobs were not replaced with new Jobs.
It’s expected that our industrial robot workforce will quadruple again by 2025 [more troubling MIT research – John] to 7 robots per 1,000 workers. (In Toledo and Detroit it’s already 9 robots per 1,000 workers.) Using Acemoglu’s and Restropo’s findings, that translates to a loss of up to 3.4 million jobs by 2025, alongside depressed wage growth of up to 2.6%, and a drop in the employment-to-population ratio of up to 1.76 percentage points. Remember, we’re talking about industrial robots only, not all robots, and not any software, especially not AI. So what we can expect from all technology combined is undoubtedly larger than the above estimates.
Automation has been happening right under everyone’s noses, but people are only beginning to really talk about the potential future dangers of automation reducing the incomes of large percentages of the population. In the US, the most-cited estimate is the loss of half of all existing jobs by the early 2030s.
You can find people who estimate that technology will eliminate as many as two billion jobs, while also creating a large number of jobs – but nowhere near as fast. I don’t buy those extreme estimates, as I think they amount to sensationalism, but if you want to predict 30 to 40 million jobs lost in the US by the middle of the 2030s (that’s 17 years from now), I’m not going to argue with you. How many jobs will be created? We’ll get to that in a minute.
People frequently talk about the loss of trucking and taxi jobs that will result from the automation of driving. RethinkX, in a 77-page report, concludes that 90% of all driving in the US will be TaaS (transportation as a service) by 2030, although that will utilize only 60% of the cars. The good news is that the average family will save $5,600 per year in transportation costs, keeping an extra $1 trillion per year in Americans’ pockets. Think of all the time that will be freed for activities other than driving, not to mention the traffic jams that will be reduced. The authors believe that freeing time now spent commuting to work, plus faster transport times, will lead to an increase in GDP of between $500 million to as much as $2.5 trillion. Public sector budgets will benefit because highway infrastructure costs will fall, and vast amounts of land will be freed from parking lots and publicly owned right-of-way properties next to highways. Of course, governments will lose as much as $50 billion in gasoline taxes as we shift from internal combustion engines to electric and other alternative forms of power systems.
The really bad news is that a lot of people will lose their incomes.
The report projects that the adoption of TaaS will come about in typical technological adoption fashion: slowly and then seemingly all at once. The authors talk about the end of individual car ownership. Why would you own a car if it was far cheaper and more convenient just to pick one up via an app on your phone? Not owning a vehicle frees a lot of garage and parking space and might even eliminate the hassle of picking up your kids and getting them to and from their various activities. Of course, the system will work much more effectively in urban and suburban areas than in the rural world.
And it is not just the six million taxi and truck driver jobs that are threatened. Automated driving will save some 30,000 lives per year just in the US, which is something to be applauded. But it will also dramatically decrease the number of people going to emergency rooms from automobile wrecks, reducing the need for healthcare workers. Since cars won’t be in wrecks, the number of people required to repair them will be radically reduced. There are 228,000 auto repair shops in the country, employing some 647,000 workers (at a minimum – data from BLS). When a new car will last for one million miles and have fewer than 30 moving parts, those auto repair people are going to be like the Maytag repairman in the commercials of my youth: very lonely and increasingly unemployed.
If driving is TaaS, then automobile dealerships are in trouble, as are most car salesmen and the 66,000 people who work in automotive parts and accessories stores. What about auto insurance salesmen? And all the gas stations that will not be needed? (When an automated car gets low on electricity, it will simply pull into a spot and replug – automatically, of course, aided by robotics.)
The US auto industry employs 1.25 million people directly and another 7.25 million indirectly. Not all driving jobs will be lost, but the authors estimate that around 5 million will be, with a reduction in national income of $200 billion.
And if we need fewer cars? That shift would put a lot of automotive manufacturing companies and their workers under severe strain. I’m not certain how the authors arrived at the number, but they estimate new-vehicle annual unit sales will drop by 70% by 2030, to around 5.6 million vehicles versus the 18 million that will be sold in 2020. Ugh. If we actually do see wholesale conversion to electric vehicles, US oil demand for passenger road transport could drop by 90% or more. Oil production companies may need to figure out how to make life work at $25 per barrel, if that’s the case.
Personally, I think the report is a little over the top. (Well, maybe more than a little.)
But if they stretch those projection figures to 2035 or 2040? Totally in the ballpark.
And frankly, as I will note in a few paragraphs, whether it’s 2030, 2035, or 2040, the change will seem like it came overnight and totally out of left field – especially for the workers who no longer have work.
The End of Cancer
I was talking with my friend Dr. Ray Takigiku, chief executive and chief scientist of Bexion Pharmaceuticals. The company is now 15 months into a phase I trial to determine the safety of a drug called BXQ-350, which is basically a full-on silver bullet for mass-tumor cancers. It has so far been a small trial in four medical research universities, with a limited but growing number of patients who have pancreatic cancer and brain tumors. The results have been very promising. Ray told me about one patient at the University of New Mexico who has a very rare form of cancer and who was given the drug. This is a cancer for which there is no treatment – it’s basically a death sentence. It occurs in adults but more frequently in children. Ray was initially concerned about treating this patient, as the study is about safety and you really don’t want to have any issues associated with a safety trial. But the patient’s doctor talked him into proceeding, and they began to administer the drug. It hasn’t been very long, but the patient is improving, and the cancer is regressing. He had lost partial use of his right side but is now walking and using that side again.
Because it’s a phase I trial, we don’t really have much information about how effective the drug is, apart from anecdotes; and distressingly, the researchers must sometimes stop administering the drug because that’s part of the required protocol. The rules simply want to make me pull my hair out.
In the US, one million people per year get cancer, and half a million die. Those are ugly statistics, but they could change drastically within less than 10 years. Cancer could become a nuisance rather than a threat to life. I lose more and more friends every year to cancer. We all do. I will be so glad if that stops. So will you.
Full disclosure: I was a first-round investor in Bexion, and so I have a strong home-field bias in wanting BXQ-350 to succeed, but the reality is that its success will be extraordinarily good for humanity. And frankly, one of the main risks to my investment is not that the drug won’t actually work, but that any of several other companies that Patrick Cox and I are looking at will actually come up with a drug that is cheaper, better, and faster. Or maybe, as in treating AIDS, you end up with a cocktail of drugs to fight cancer.
One way or another, cancer is going to go the way of measles and polio. You’ll be diagnosed by means of a simple blood test that will be part of your annual medical checkup, and you’ll be informed if you have cancer. Next you will undergo further tests to determine what type. And then, whatever the therapy is, it is likely that you will simply go to your doctor’s office for regular treatments. In the case of Bexion’s drug, treatment will (hopefully) amount to a few months or less of three visits per week, no side effects, and your cancer goes away. That is the extrapolation from mouse studies. We’ll know more after phase II studies are underway sometime next year. Since it is now public information, I can mention that John McCain will be given access to this drug at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Randomly, McCain has one of the types of cancer that the phase 1 trial has focused on. And he also actually qualifies for the trial (which is not easy to do). With all Americans, I wish him the best.
But let’s think for a minute about the impact of the success of a drug of this type beyond the many lives that will be saved and the significant reduction of pain and suffering. I couldn’t determine the number of healthcare workers specifically associated with the treatment of cancer, but it has to be in the hundreds of thousands, and they have relatively high-paying jobs. Then there are all the hospital beds filled by cancer patients – easily many tens of thousands. Plus all the ancillary workers that are associated with the care and welfare of cancer patients. The good news is that with the rising need for healthcare workers, those workers will be able to relatively quickly moved to an associated field. And let’s not forget the estimate Kyle Bass gave me, that at least $500 billion of market cap in big Pharma will be destroyed by a cure for cancer.
So there are just two examples of major disruptions to employment that will be caused by near-future technological change. We haven’t even gotten into the brick-and-mortar retail jobs that online sales firms like Amazon are taking away. And warehouse workers? The list could go on and on of whole job classifications that are endangered species. These changes are going to disrupt our lives and the social cohesion of our country. And of course these shifts are coming not just in the US, but in the entire developed world. And even technology centers in the developing world are going to find themselves at risk of employment dislocations.
Just so that I don’t appear to be a total Gloomy Gus, let me quickly note that the very technologies that are destroying job are also going to result in tens of millions of new and in many cases better jobs. Many of them will be high-paying, more life-fulfilling, and far less dangerous than the occupations they replace. I’ll write a letter in the near future in which I’ll talk about where those tens of millions of new jobs will hopefully come from.
The glib answer to the question, “Where will the jobs come from?” has always been “I don’t know, but they will.” That is what has always happened in the past. We went from 80% of laborers working on the farm in the 1800s at barely subsistence-level incomes to 2% producing far more food today. As these farm workers became redundant, they moved to where the jobs were. And with a lot of ups and downs, we managed over time to find jobs for nearly everyone. But that transition took place over 200+ years – 10 generations. There was time for people to adjust and for markets to adapt. Even when whole industries appeared and then disappeared again, it happened over generations. Everybody bemoans the loss of US manufacturing jobs, but few realize that we are producing almost as much as we ever have – just with fewer people. And this trend will continue. More production, with fewer workers. Just like we see in the oilfields.
The transformations I am talking about are going to happen in one half a generation, or at the most a full generation. That is not much time for adjustment, especially for a country like the United States where 69% of families have less than $1,000 in savings. (I have seen the figure quoted that 47% have less than $400.) That is not enough to deal with the loss of your job.
The classic Republican answer to this problem is that we need to unleash the entrepreneurial tide in the United States that has been dammed up by bureaucracy and excessive taxation. And there is a point to that. But for whatever reason – and this is a topic for another letter (and it’s one I have addressed in the past) – for the past five or six years the country has had more firms close than be created, and for the first time in our history.
Angst in America
Let me emphasize that ultimately we’ll arrive at a very happy ending. Our heroes and heroines will walk off into the sunset, holding hands and living happily ever after.
Literally living happily ever after, because of the new life-extension technologies that are just around the corner in a world of amazing abundance and ever-cheaper products, with even greater lifestyles than today’s. Flying to the Moon and Mars…
The problem is not the happy ending. The problem is the transition, which is going to be bumpy and frustrating and potentially divisive. I’m going to show you three graphs from Pew Research. Analysts have been conducting studies (see people-press.org/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/ and pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/05/takeaways-on-americans-growing-partisan-divide-over-political-values/) since 1994, trying to discern political polarization. These three charts look at the years 1994, 2004, and 2017. Even as late as 2004, notice the broad crossover between the median Democrat and median Republican. And then notice how wide the divide is today.
Not only are the median positions of both parties further apart, but both parties have also shifted farther to their respective extremes in the last 13 years. The middle ground is much smaller, and to my eye it looks like the Democratic group is somewhat bigger than the Republican. You can see the same thing in the breakdown of the vote by states and counties; but since political commentary is not my genre, I’m going to avoid going any further down that rabbit hole.
But I will say that the internet, social media, and the media we consume on TV have allowed us to live in echo chambers where we are not really hearing much from the other side. We talk to people who think like we do and who tend to confirm that we are correct in our beliefs. That constant cycle of reinforcement makes our positions even more hardline, to the point where we trivialize or disparage the other side. It has seemingly become acceptable for an American congressman to say that he doesn’t feel sorry for those killed in the mass Las Vegas shooting because they were likely Trump supporters and against gun control.
And for white hate groups to blatantly and publicly espouse racist positions. Antifa groups can call for the random killing of white people, simply for being white. And fewer than 30% of Millennials think that democracy is clearly the superior system of government.
And that is where we are today. Where are we going to be when unemployment is well over 12% and rising to 15%, the government is routinely running multitrillion-dollar budget deficits, state and local pensions are defaulting, and taxes are high and still rising?
And all this is going to happen at a time when wealth and income disparity are going to rising even faster than they are today. It’s all there in the data if you take the time to look. I am working hard to document not just the technological changes but the social, demographic, and political changes, along with the economic realities we will face in the book I’m currently writing. My greatest challenge will be to keep it under 300 pages!
And so, yes, when people ask what is in my worry closet, it is the fragmentation of society. As a country, we are going to have to begin to think the unthinkable. We really don’t know how to accurately measure GDP or inflation, and we certainly don’t have any way to statistically measure the improvements in lifestyle over the years.
And we will need those tools. As conservatives and Republicans, we are going to have to think about something like universal basic employment, as opposed to universal basic income. Good work and participating in society give us meaning in life. Income just gives us a way to scrape by, but not personal life satisfaction or meaning, which is why we have an epidemic of opioid deaths, suicides, and rising deaths from alcoholism in the United States among white unemployed workers between 45 and 54. They have lost meaning and hope in their lives.
The calls for a guaranteed basic income (like Mark Zuckerberg’s) are just beginning, but that is going to become a major political theme in our future. Like King Canute, we cannot stop the tides – but perhaps we could get creative and channel that tide.
What do we think of shorter work weeks? Just as Roosevelt put men to work during the Depression, maybe we need to think about finding jobs around our communities that need to be done. Guaranteed basic employment. Mull that over….
Yes, that offends every Hayekian neuron in my brain, but in a world of an unimaginable and unmanageable future, we are going to have start thinking the unthinkable.
Voters are going to want politicians to solve their problems. Politicians can’t really solve the problems we already have, let alone the problems of the future, so I expect we are going to see shifts from one political extreme to the other.
Let’s be clear, these problems are not all going to show up next year, and most won’t even start to be understood until the early 2020s. But they’re coming, and we need to begin to plan for them now, for our country, for our own and our families’ lives, and for our portfolios. I look forward to being part of your journey and hopefully helping you to plan.
Denver, Lugano, and Hong Kong
On November 7, I will be speaking to the Denver CFA Society. I’m going to try to go to the Rice University homecoming that the following weekend, because there will be a special reception for former editors of the student newspaper. Editing the Rice Thresher is one of my fondest college memories and was a tremendous learning experience. Understand, we had no journalism classes and no faculty oversight. The paper was entirely student-run. The size of the paper depended on how many ads we sold. We were still printing the paper on an old letterpress with handset type. I was told by the printers that I was the first editor in 50 years who actually knew how to come in and set the time, run the presses, etc. I grew up in a print shop setting type and still have ink in my blood. The third-generation owners of the printing company that produced our paper had been printing the Thresher for over 50 years. They possessed a wealth of historical knowledge. At homecoming there will also be a public lecture by Dr. Vernon Smith, Nobel laureate and one of my personal economic heroes. Maybe I can even wrangle an invitation to dinner.
One week later I will fly to Lugano, Switzerland, for a presentation to a conference – and I’ll try not to push myself quite so hard on this next trip across the Pond. Shane and I will also be in Hong Kong for the Bank of America Merrill Lynch conference in early January.
This week has been one meeting after another and one call after another, and I still have 437 emails in my inbox. This letter is already too long, so I am going to hit the send button and push out my plan to share my Thanksgiving mushroom recipe to a future week.
One of the rarest commodities today is time to pay undivided attention to anything, and the fact that that you give me some of your attention is truly humbling. I know that most of you are just as busy as I am. I try to make my writing worth your time and to make you think. I know today’s letter has been a little on the dark side, but I tell you, we will figure out together how to Muddle Through. And I hope I can help you do much better than simply Muddle Through.
Have a great week. Take somebody with a different political view to lunch and have a sensible and agreeable conversation. Listen to other people’s perspectives and try to grasp what they’re saying. Maybe they will pass on the courtesy. Have a great week.
Your more optimistic about life and the future than ever analyst (even though the transition will be bumpy),
REX TILLERSON AND THE UNRAVELING OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT / THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
| Etiquetas: Rex Tillerson, U.S. Economic And Political, World Economic And Political
Rex Tillerson and the Unraveling of the State Department
With an isolated leader, a demoralized diplomatic corps and a president dismantling international relations one tweet at a time, American foreign policy is adrift in the world.
By JASON ZENGERLE
One afternoon in late September, I sat down with Rex Tillerson on what, in hindsight, may well have been his last comparatively normal day as secretary of state. It was a little more than 72 hours before President Donald Trump would take to Twitter to declare that Tillerson, his top diplomat, was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” as the president now refers to the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and admonish Tillerson: “Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!” Which was a few days before NBC News would report that Tillerson, after a July meeting with Trump, called the president a “moron” and wanted to resign until Vice President Mike Pence talked him out of it. Which was just a couple hours before Tillerson would hold an extraordinary news conference in the State Department’s Treaty Room — the magisterial, blue-walled chamber where secretaries of state typically greet foreign dignitaries — in order to tell reporters that Trump “is smart”; deny that he ever considered resigning; and refuse to answer a question about whether he had indeed called the president a moron.
But even before all that, sitting in a silk-upholstered chair in front of a fireplace in his office, his State Department-seal cuff links peeking out from the sleeves of his navy blue suit, the impossibility of Tillerson’s assignment was apparent. He was about to embark on his third trip to Asia as secretary of state, part of his efforts to bring about a peaceful resolution to the North Korean nuclear crisis, so I asked him if Trump’s tweets on the topic — threatening in August that “military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded,” and in September that if the United States “is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy #NoKo” — were in any way helpful to what he was trying to accomplish.
Tillerson let out a short sigh. “Look, on the president’s tweets,” he said, “I take what the president tweets out as his form of communicating, and I build it into my strategies and my tactics. How can I use that? How do I want to use that? And in a dynamic situation, like we deal with here all the time — and you can go walk around the world, they’re all dynamic — things happen. You wake up the next morning, something’s happened. I wake up the next morning, the president’s got a tweet out there. So I think about, O.K., that’s a new condition. How do I want to use that?” Tillerson continued: “Our strategies and the tactics we’re using to advance the policies have to be resilient enough to accommodate unknowns, O.K.? So if you want to put that in an unknown category, you can. It certainly kind of comes out that even I would say, ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’ But it doesn’t mean our strategies are not resilient enough to accommodate it.”
Accommodating the president, rather than working with him, is not a normal mission for a secretary of state — and for Tillerson, it seems to be an increasingly doomed one. “The president’s always saying, ‘Rex’s not tough,’ and ‘I didn’t know he was so establishment,’ ” says one Trump adviser. After Tillerson’s “moron” gibe became public, the president, while dismissing the report as “fake news, ” also told Forbes, “if he did that, I guess we’ll have to compare I.Q. tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.” The question among many people inside and outside the Trump administration is not necessarily what’s keeping Tillerson from resigning; it’s what’s stopping Trump from firing him. One Trump-administration official offered me a tentative theory: “Losing a chief of staff in the first year is a big deal, but losing a secretary of state is an even bigger one.”
On the afternoon I saw Tillerson at the State Department, he’d just returned from several hours at the White House. This was hardly unusual. When he’s in Washington, he often spends part of his workday at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in formal and informal meetings with Trump. Tillerson, a former Eagle Scout who years later served as the Boy Scouts of America’s national president, always comes prepared for those encounters, keeping a 2-inch-by-8-inch notecard in the inside pocket of his suit jacket with a handwritten list of matters he wants to discuss with the president. After meeting with Trump, he’ll then add to the list the things Trump wants him to take care of.
Many political eminences, including Tillerson’s hunting buddy, the former Secretary of State James Baker, had advised Tillerson that his relationship with Trump would be the most important factor in determining his success in his new job. And this was an area in which Tillerson, in his previous job as chief executive of Exxon Mobil, had excelled. “I have over my life had to build relationships with heads of state, not just this one, but heads of states all over the world,” he reminded me. At Exxon Mobil, he did business with a rogue’s gallery of world leaders, from Vladimir Putin (who in 2013 awarded Tillerson Russia’s Order of Friendship) to Hugo Chavez (who in 2007 seized Exxon Mobil’s assets, prompting the oil giant to leave Venezuela). I asked Tillerson if Trump had any similarities to the heads of state he dealt with as an oil executive. “Yeah, there are other leaders that share the qualities that he has,” Tillerson replied, before adding, “and I’m not gonna name names, because then you’ll go — everybody will go dissect that.”
But building a good rapport with the head of state of his own country has, so far, proved to be beyond Tillerson’s formidable abilities. According to some people who are close to Trump, his disappointment with Tillerson is as much personal as it is professional. “Trump originally thought he could have a relationship with Tillerson that’s almost social,” says one Trump adviser, “the way his relationships are with Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin.” But unlike Trump’s commerce and Treasury secretaries — plutocrats who, like Trump, are on their third, younger wives — Tillerson, who is 65 and has been married to the same woman for 31 years, has shown little interest in being the president’s running buddy; instead of Saturday-night dinners with Trump at his Washington hotel, Tillerson favors trips home to Texas to see his grandchildren or to Colorado to visit his nonagenarian parents.
(The White House, provided a detailed list of questions relating to Tillerson and his relationship with Trump as described in this article, responded with the following official statement: “The president has assembled the most talented cabinet in history and everyone continues to be dedicated towards advancing the president’s America First agenda. Anything to the contrary is simply false and comes from unnamed sources who are either out of the loop or unwilling to turn the country around.”)
In his office, Tillerson contemplated what has turned out to be his most difficult diplomatic mission. “I’ve had to build a relationship with President Trump because he didn’t know me — I mean he certainly knew of me, just as I knew of him — but to understand how my thought processes work, for me to understand how his work, for me to understand how he makes decisions, because he makes decisions in a very different way than I do,” Tillerson said, spinning his fingers around his head to indicate cognition. “I’m an engineer by training. I’m a very systems, process, methodical decision maker. He’s an entrepreneur. Different mind-set. He makes decisions differently. Doesn’t mean one is better than the other, but I’ve had to learn how he processes information and how I can help him process the information and how I can give him good advice that makes sense to him. So for both of us there’s a communication to be worked out.”
Although the State Department is no longer quite the ivied redoubt it was a half-century ago, when men like George Kennan and Paul Nitze roamed the halls of Foggy Bottom and its global outposts, its employees still tend to be a bit tweedier than your ordinary government bureaucrat. This is especially true of the nearly 14,000 members of the Foreign Service, with their rigorous entrance exam and a strict up-or-out promotions system, not to mention their cosmopolitan ethos and fluency in multiple languages. They consider themselves elite.
This elite might have been more simpatico with President Barack Obama, given his appreciation of diplomacy and soft power, than with Trump, but neither of Obama’s secretaries of state was particularly beloved by the department’s rank and file. There were complaints that Hillary Clinton subordinated the department’s needs to those of her political ambitions, creating a new and unwieldy cadre of special envoys and ambassadors at large that seemed designed to appeal to Democratic constituencies. Clinton’s successor, John Kerry, was viewed by some as an imperious boss who treated the department as a kind of playground, bringing his yellow Labrador retriever to work and letting the dog roam the building’s seventh-floor suite of executive offices known as Mahogany Row.
But after Trump’s election, many State Department officials braced for much worse. Some of the initially rumored potential secretaries — John Bolton, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani — often seemed more inclined to blow up Foggy Bottom than to run it. When Trump picked Tillerson, the news was greeted not only with relief but even with optimism.
It was true that Tillerson was never going to be a conventional secretary of state, especially not working for Trump. “His idea for the job when he took it was that he and Trump can be negotiators, the best negotiators, for America,” says a Trump adviser. “His idea of foreign policy isn’t one that would make sense to people who read Foreign Policy.” But his combed-back silver hair and Texas-inflected baritone — in which a Foggy Bottom commonplace like “partner” becomes a mellifluous “pardner” — radiated the kind of authority admired by Trump, who asked Tillerson to be his secretary of state during their first meeting at Trump Tower in December. “He’s much more than a business executive,” Trump told Fox News shortly before announcing Tillerson’s nomination. “He’s a world-class player.” Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House adviser who attended that first Trump-Tillerson meeting, says: “The president puts a ton of weight on first impressions. As soon as Rex walked in the room, I knew the job was his.”
To external appearances, the work Tillerson did at Exxon Mobil seemed to reflect the zero-sum negotiator’s view of foreign policy that Trump has espoused ever since “The Art of the Deal.” “He’s led this charmed life,” Trump said of Tillerson at a black-tie dinner in January. “He goes into a country, takes the oil, goes into another country.” Tillerson’s future employees took a different comfort in Tillerson’s résumé. As chief executive of Exxon Mobil, where he worked for 41 years, Tillerson led a nearly 75,000-person corporate behemoth with a global footprint that rivaled that of the United States itself, requiring it to have, in effect, its own foreign policy. In fact, Exxon Mobil operated its own sort of mini-State Department, a division called the International Government Relations Group, staffed with foreign-policy experts, including a number who previously served in high-ranking positions in Foggy Bottom. As Tillerson traveled the world cutting deals for Exxon Mobil in Russia and Africa and the Middle East, he relied on the I.G.R.G. for expertise and advice much the same way secretaries of state typically rely on the Foreign Service.
Tillerson was originally recommended to the Trump team by the former Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, both mandarins of the Republican foreign-policy establishment who had consulted for Exxon Mobil, on the grounds that his vast knowledge of foreign governments and their leaders made him a perfect fit for the job. “The expectation was that Tillerson would be a grown-up and provide ballast,” says a 30-year veteran of the Foreign Service, “that he was someone who believed in America being the glue that created global stability and would be interested in upholding the world order as we have it.”
Before their Senate confirmations, secretary-of-state nominees are customarily provided a suite of offices on the first floor of the State Department’s eight-story, limestone-and-steel headquarters. There, just off the international-flag-draped lobby on C Street, they prepare for their new job, receiving briefings from and meeting with some of the people they will soon be leading.
Trump transition officials had sent a small beachhead team, led by Charles Glazer, a former Wall Street executive and Republican donor who served as President George W. Bush’s ambassador to El Salvador, to use the office. Few saw Tillerson set foot in it. A space that could accommodate 50 people wound up being filled by not even a dozen. What’s more, some State Department officials were told by the Trump transition team that they were not to contact Tillerson at all. “The attitude was that anyone who worked with Obama must be suspect,” one Trump transition official says.
In December, Nikki Haley, Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, set up a conference call with two senior State Department officials: Kristie Kenney, the State Department counselor, and Patrick Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management. Haley wanted to ask them questions about the logistics of her new job: basic matters like what her salary and benefits would be and where her family would live in New York City. Kenney and Kennedy told her about the federal employee health insurance plan and offered to send her floor plans of the U.N. ambassador’s apartment. When word of the call got back to Trump’s transition team, the two department officials were reprimanded by Glazer and told never to speak with Haley again.
Kenney and Kennedy were among the small cohort of foreign-policy professionals who held the Foreign Service’s equivalent of a three- or four-star general rank in the military. These senior diplomats were responsible for handling America’s most vexing global challenges, everything from Russia’s annexation of Crimea to North Korea’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction to the Iran nuclear deal. Members of this elite group, who served under Democratic and Republican presidents alike, had submitted their pro forma letters of resignation upon the end of the Obama administration, as was the custom during presidential transitions. The letters typically occasion a conversation with the incoming secretary and his or her team about whether these diplomats should remain in their current jobs or, if not, what other senior positions inside the department they might be moved to. In a worst-case situation, they would usually be rotated into a sleepy ambassadorship.
But this time around, every letter was greeted with silence. Not only did the officials not know how Tillerson intended to use them; they didn’t know if, come the Monday after Trump’s Friday inauguration, they would even have jobs. As one of them later recalled, “Every conversation would end with, ‘Have you heard anything from Tillerson?’ ”
Credit Illustration by Kelsey Dake
Finally, with only a few days until the inauguration and still no word from Tillerson, one of the senior officials, Victoria Nuland — who once was Hillary Clinton’s State Department spokeswoman but had also been a foreign-policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and was at the time the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs — opted to retire. The others chose to make a go of it. On the Monday after the inauguration, they showed up for work, as usual, at Foggy Bottom.
Two days later, Kennedy was told to retire and given three days to clean out his office. Kennedy had spent 44 years in the Foreign Service and was not particularly political, focusing instead on management and operations; he’d been appointed to his under-secretary position by President George W. Bush. But he had become a central figure in conservative conspiracy theories about Benghazi and Clinton’s private email server. Tillerson aides later joked that Kennedy’s defenestration was like something out of the Soviet Union, dragging a political foe out into the street and shooting him in the head so as to send a message to others.
A few weeks later, Kenney, who as counselor was the State Department’s No. 5 policy official, was told that her services were no longer needed, and she retired. And in the weeks after that, half a dozen other top diplomats were shown the door — fired, forced into retirement or warehoused at a university fellowship. “If you took the entire three-star and four-star corps of the military and said, ‘Leave!’ Congress would go crazy,” one of the recently departed said.
In a few short months, Tillerson had rid the State Department of much of its last several decades of diplomatic experience, though it was not really clear to what end. The new secretary of state, it soon became evident, had an easier time firing people than hiring them — a consequence of the election that delivered him to Foggy Bottom.
During the campaign, the “Never Trump” movement gathered many of its most devoted adherents from Republican foreign-policy circles, with scores of G.O.P. national-security professionals signing open letters declaring their opposition to the eventual Republican nominee. Although internecine foreign-policy squabbles were hardly unusual, they typically ended when the primaries did, with the losers rallying around the victor. But in 2016, representatives of all the various factions of the Republican foreign-policy world — realists and neoconservatives, hawks and isolationists — were united in their opposition to Trump, not only on ideological grounds but because they viewed him as personally unfit for office. And, given the personal nature of the criticism, Trump and those around him didn’t forgive it.
Tillerson’s early choice for deputy secretary of state was Elliott Abrams, a longtime Republican foreign-policy hand who served as George W. Bush’s deputy national-security adviser. At Tillerson’s instigation, Trump met with Abrams in early February and came away favorably disposed to his nomination, according to White House officials. But after the meeting, Trump apparently saw Rand Paul on Fox News disparage Abrams as a Never Trumper. (During the campaign Abrams wrote an article for The Weekly Standard titled “When You Can’t Stand Your Candidate.”) Trump told Tillerson that Abrams could not work for him after all.
According to a senior administration official, other potential hires were knocked out of consideration for sins as minor as retweeting some of Marco Rubio’s “little hands” jokes about Trump. “The hiring pool is very different from your normal hiring pool,” the official says. “The people the Senate would expect to confirm have all been taken off the table.”
In the early days of the administration, according to State Department officials, White House officials, especially Bannon, sent over many names for State Department posts. But Tillerson, after looking at their résumés and in some cases conducting interviews, felt he had no choice but to reject them. “They didn’t meet the qualifications for the actual jobs,” another senior administration official says.
Amid this impasse, power in the State Department has accrued to the relative handful of figures who have actually been hired, like Tillerson’s chief of staff, Margaret Peterlin. Peterlin served in the early 2000s as a national-security aide to Dennis Hastert, who was then speaker of the House, but she had been out of international-affairs work for more than a decade, first as a Commerce Department official, then as an executive for the Mars candy company before she left to raise her children. Peterlin was tapped by a Trump transition official, a fellow former Hastert staff member, to shepherd the secretary-of-state nominee through his confirmation process. Tillerson subsequently asked her to become his chief of staff.
By the spring, however, Peterlin had become a particular source of irritation to White House officials, some of whom told me they believed that she was dragging her feet on nominations in order to preserve her newfound power. In April, according to multiple sources, Reince Priebus, who was then chief of staff at the White House, went so far as to set up a weekly meeting among himself, Peterlin and the White House personnel director, Johnny DeStefano, to review applicants in the hope of moving things along.
In the past few months, the pace of nominations for the State Department has picked up. But even so, few of the nominees have qualifications that match those of their predecessors. For instance, Tillerson’s nominee for under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs — a post that was held by the former White House senior adviser Karen Hughes during George W. Bush’s administration and the former Time editor Richard Stengel during Obama’s — is a New York City marketing executive named Irwin Steven Goldstein who once worked at the same company as Peterlin’s husband.
The person on whose shoulders the fallout from the staffing shortage rests most heavily is Brian Hook, the head of the department’s office of policy planning. A former adviser to Mitt Romney, Hook was a founder of the John Hay Initiative, a hawkish foreign-policy think tank whose other two founders, Eliot A. Cohen and Eric Edelman, were (and still are) among Trump’s most vociferous critics. Cohen and Edelman put their names on anti-Trump letters during the 2016 election; Hook didn’t.
With so many crucial assistant-secretary positions — including some responsible for Asia, the Middle East, and South America — still either vacant or filled with acting officials, Hook has had to pick up the slack. “He’s trying to do the job of 30 people,” a 25-year veteran Foreign Service officer says. “He’s just knee-walking.” Worse, the office of policy planning, which has traditionally functioned as the secretary of state’s in-house think tank, is now tasked with handling day-to-day operations at the expense of formulating long-term strategy. “The problem is there’s no conceptual motor at all,” says Cohen, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies who served as counselor of the department under Rice. “It’s the random thoughts of Donald J. Trump and a very weak State Department and a secretary of state who hasn’t thought deeply about these things.”
When I recently met with Hook in his seventh-floor office at the State Department, he seemed wary of any implication that, in light of his establishment pedigree and association with Cohen and Edelman, he wasn’t sufficiently pro-Trump. I noted that on his conference table he had a book by Daniel W. Drezner, an international-politics professor at Tufts University who writes regularly for The Washington Post website and is a frequent critic of Trump and of Tillerson. In fact, just that morning, Drezner had published a column calling on Tillerson to resign. I jokingly told Hook that he might want to hide the book. Instead, R.C. Hammond, Tillerson’s communications director, who was sitting in on the interview, immediately seized it.
“This is the guy who has the thing at The Post?” Hammond asked Hook. “Where’s your trash can?”
He made as if he was going to throw the book across Hook’s office. Hook raised his hand to block Hammond.
“No!” Hook said. “It’s a book on policy planning! This was written before Rex Tillerson was even considered.”
“Trash can,” Hammond reiterated. Hook kept his hand up. The fifth of Bombay gin and the liter bottle of tonic water on his desk suddenly made more sense.
On June 5, Tillerson was in Sydney, Australia, with the defense secretary, James Mattis, when he learned that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt were all severing relations with the tiny Persian Gulf nation Qatar and imposing an air, sea and land blockade.
The countries took these actions, they contended, because of Qatar’s support for Islamist groups, like the Muslim Brotherhood, and its warm relations with Iran, with which it shares the world’s largest gas field. But it was most likely not a coincidence that the move came on the heels of Trump’s goofy and garish visit to Saudi Arabia, during which he was photographed laying hands on what appeared to be a mysterious glowing orb, announced a $110 billion arms deal and called for a Sunni alliance to combat terrorism and Iran.
Tillerson had participated in the festivities, joining Trump and their Saudi hosts in a ceremonial sword dance — “not my first sword dance,” he later told reporters. But Qatar is also a country Tillerson knows well. At Exxon Mobil, he worked closely with its emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, who was then Qatar’s interior minister, to help develop the world largest liquefied-natural-gas complex in Ras Laffan Industrial City. He happened to be in Doha, on Exxon Mobil business, the night Trump was elected. According to Hammond, when Tillerson returned to the country for the first time as secretary of state, in July, he tapped Hammond on the shoulder as his airplane was making its approach and pointed down to Ras Laffan. “Do you want to see what $250 billion looks like?” Tillerson asked.
Tillerson feared the crisis could destabilize the region. Mattis, meanwhile, was concerned about the United States air base in Qatar that hosts the largest concentration of American military members in the Middle East. Together, the two cabinet secretaries began working to get Trump to try to broker a resolution.
But other members of the Trump administration argued against such a move, especially Jared Kushner. Ever since Trump’s election, Kushner had been the focus of an intense courtship by Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi; and the two men quickly formed a close friendship with the president’s son-in-law. So close, in fact, that the crown princes convinced Kushner not just of Qatar’s perfidy but of the opportunity the blockade provided to further tilt American foreign policy toward the Saudis and away from Iran, according to the Trump adviser. “Rex saw it as a crisis to solve,” the adviser says. “Jared saw it as an opportunity to seize.”
Back in Washington, Tillerson suggested summoning the parties to Camp David. When that idea gained no traction, Tillerson proposed an American-sponsored meeting in Kuwait, to no avail. While Tillerson publicly called on the Saudis to end their blockade, Trump pronounced the action against Qatar “hard but necessary.” The “special relationship of prince to prince,” as the senior administration official describes the Kushner-Mohammed bin Salman alliance, seemed to be carrying the day.
Finally, in mid-July, Trump acquiesced to Tillerson’s request to be allowed to go to the region himself to conduct a round of shuttle diplomacy. In Doha, over a dinner of goat and baby camel, Tillerson negotiated with Qatar’s emir. In Jidda, he cajoled the Saudis and their allies to end their blockade. Nothing seemed to work, especially because each side was receiving the opposite message from other officials in Washington. On his flight back to the United States, Tillerson vented some of his frustrations. “It is a lot different than being C.E.O. of Exxon because I was the ultimate decision maker,” he told two reporters on board. The federal government, by contrast, is “not a highly disciplined organization, decision making is fragmented and sometimes people don’t want to take decisions.”
But Tillerson continued to quietly work the issue, concentrating as much on the head of state at home as on the heads of state in the gulf. When the quartet excluded Qatar from a military exercise in which it had traditionally taken part, he made a note of it on his list of things to talk to Trump about and brought it up to him at the White House. When Mohammed bin Salman welcomed a rogue member of Qatar’s Al-Thani royal family to Mina, lending credence to Tillerson’s suspicion that the Saudis hoped to use the crisis to engineer a regime change in Doha, Tillerson alerted Trump.
After several months, Tillerson finally won Trump over to his view. In early September, Trump told the Saudis and the Qataris that it was time to end the dispute. After Trump brokered a call between the emir of Qatar and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, the two sides immediately began fighting again, and the crisis remains unresolved, but at least it was a start.
When I spoke to Tillerson about what caused the initial split in the administration on Qatar, he said that it boiled down to experience. “I think I started from a different place perhaps because I’ve known all the leaders involved for a long time, and I’ve seen these kinds of issues emerge in the region over the 20-plus years I’ve been dealing with the region,” he said. “So this was not new for me, and so I guess my reaction to it was perhaps immediately measured because I’ve seen it before. To those who have not seen it before” — and here Tillerson didn’t bother to name names, but it seemed he was talking about Kushner — “there are a lot of concerns expressed about Qatar that are legitimate concerns. The U.S. government has had some of these concerns, and we’re addressing them now through the engagement with Qatar and the memorandum of understanding we put in place when I was over there, and it’s going very well. We have issues with the other countries as well, and so I think the way we reacted was just based upon, in my case, that past experience versus those who perhaps had not seen this before.”
It was amid the Qatar episode that, in July, Tillerson and Mattis convened a special meeting with Trump to give the president a tutorial on, as The Associated Press later described it, “American Power 101.” Sitting in a windowless meeting room at the Pentagon known as the Tank, Tillerson and Mattis reportedly used charts and maps to explain to Trump why the United States needed to have so many diplomatic, military and intelligence assets deployed around the world. In at least one respect, their message had its intended effect: A month later, Trump would reverse his promise to withdraw from Afghanistan and announce that he was sending more troops there.
But when the meeting broke up, that development was hardly assured; and it was after spending 90 minutes tutoring Trump — including, according to NBC, about why the tenfold increase in nuclear weapons Trump desired would be a bad idea — that Tillerson reportedly called the president a “moron.” It may well be the harshest criticism Tillerson has directed at his boss, but it’s far from the only one. According to a former administration official, in private conversations with aides and friends, Tillerson refers to Trump, in his Texas deadpan, as the dealmaker in chief. And in meetings with Trump, according to people who have attended them, he increasingly rolls his eyes at the president’s remarks. If Trump disagrees with Tillerson, the official said, his secretary of state will say, “It’s your deal.”
The friction hasn’t been confined to foreign policy. In July, Tillerson was reportedly outraged by Trump’s politically charged speech at the Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia, where, a few days earlier, Tillerson himself was honored for his service to the organization. In August, after Trump’s response to a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville — in which he said there were “very fine people” on “both sides” of the violent clashes there — Tillerson was asked on Fox News about whether the “president’s values” reflected America’s values. “The president speaks for himself,” Tillerson replied.
The souring of Tillerson’s relationship with Trump has left him not just without the support of the most crucial ally, his boss, but also without the support of any real allies at all. “The conundrum for Rex,” says a Trump-administration official sympathetic to Tillerson’s plight, “is that he’s on this island.”
During his first eight months in Washington, Tillerson spent so much time focusing his energies on Trump that he neglected other crucial constituencies. Bob Corker, the Republican senator from Tennessee who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has praised Tillerson — along with Mattis and the White House Chief of Staff John Kelly — for helping to “separate our country from chaos”; but Tillerson has few other allies on Capitol Hill, and now that Corker’s own relationship with Trump is on the rocks, it’s unclear how much his support of Tillerson will mean. Nor has Tillerson developed any new, close ties with foreign leaders, and many of the ones he had from his days at Exxon are now complicated by the realities of his current job.
His interactions with the press, meanwhile, have been grudging at best. Previous secretaries of state traveled the globe on a Boeing 757 that could accommodate as many as a dozen members of the State Department press corps; Tillerson has usually opted to fly on a smaller 737, with very limited room for reporters, and has studiously avoided the media in Washington. He has been sparing with his major policy speeches. “I speak when I have something I think’s important to say,” Tillerson told me.
“I don’t need a lot of time talking to. ...” He nodded curtly in my direction.
And then, of course, there’s Tillerson’s relationship — or lack thereof — with the State Department itself. For a secretary of state, speaking to the public, either in speeches or through regular interactions with the press, is a vital way of speaking to the department’s employees, especially when the secretary is planning to upend their lives, as Tillerson currently is. Not long after he was sworn in last February, Tillerson announced that he would be undertaking a grand “redesign” of the department. He hired a small consulting firm, Insigniam, that did work for him at Exxon Mobil to conduct a “listening tour” of State Department rank and file through an online questionnaire and about 300 personal interviews.
Many State Department employees found that Insigniam’s questions, both online and in person, betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of what they did. “They came away with the impression that we’re very ‘patriotic’ and ‘professional,’ ” a senior State Department official says. “You don’t need a [expletive] survey to know that. It’s completely demeaning.”
At the same time Tillerson was getting ready to carry out his redesign, he was also trying to accommodate the Trump administration’s demand to drastically slash the State Department’s budget, ultimately acquiescing to a 30 percent cut. Tillerson insists that one has nothing to do with the other.
“The budget and what we’re doing organizationally have no relationship whatsoever,” he told me. But others inside and outside the State Department see them as inextricably linked. “It’d be like Exxon Mobil starting with a budget number and then deciding if it was going to produce oil or gas,” a former senior State Department official says.
Although Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have already declared Trump’s State Department cuts a nonstarter — and, in September, passed an appropriations bill that funded the department for the next three months at about last year’s level — Tillerson still intends to slash the department’s staff by 8 percent, or roughly 2,000 people. According to one senior State Department official, Tillerson originally wanted to cut the staff by 15 percent, until he was told that to do so the State Department would have to fire people. (The 8 percent reduction will be accomplished through attrition and some buyouts.)
“I have just the utmost respect for the Foreign Service officer corps here, and they’re vital,” Tillerson told me. “They’re vital and critical to the country’s ability to carry out its foreign policies.” As for the perception by many inside and outside Foggy Bottom that he wants to gut the Foreign Service, he said he doesn’t quite know how to respond. “I’m mystified by it,” he said. “I’m perplexed by it.”
But even the cuts he has planned, some State Department veterans fear, will cripple the department for years to come, especially as the lower and midlevel ranks of the department are reduced. “You can’t have captains if you don’t have lieutenants,” a senior State Department official says. “You can’t have majors if you don’t have captains.”
In nearly 300 embassies, missions and consulates around the world where State Department officials work to promote and defend America’s interests, diplomats complain about not just a dearth of resources but also a lack of guidance. “I’d request instructions on action items, saying I need a decision, and I’d hear absolutely nothing,” a recently returned ambassador said. Meanwhile, foreign leaders are increasingly emboldened in their attempts to drive a wedge between America’s diplomatic corps and the president. Earlier this year, according to Foreign Policy, Trump pushed out the United States ambassador to Jordan at the request of the country’s king. And this month, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has cultivated a close relationship with Trump, declared the American ambassador to his country persona non grata after a visa dispute. “We do not see him as the representative of the United States in Turkey,” Erdogan said.
A result, according to the nearly two dozen current and former State Department officials with whom I spoke, is that the department’s morale has never been lower. For that, almost all of them blame Tillerson. “When we’re put up for confirmation and swearing in, we thank the president and the secretary of state for having confidence in us, but I’m not sure I can honestly say that anymore,” the 25-year veteran of the Foreign Service confessed. “It’s not even about the president for me. It’s that I am deeply, deeply anguished about the secretary of state, and I have never felt like that.”
After Tillerson’s punishing turn in the media glare in recent weeks, the assumption among many that I spoke to in Foggy Bottom (outside Tillerson’s closest advisers) was that his departure was now a question of when, not if. Some believed that the only holdup was that Trump had not yet decided on Tillerson’s replacement, with Haley and the C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, being the most frequently mentioned candidates. Others speculated that Tillerson had asked to delay his exit until he’d been in his position for a year, in order to avoid a huge capital-gains tax hit on the stocks he had to divest from in order to take the job.
The “moron” remark had actually elevated Tillerson in the estimation of some in Foggy Bottom — “I feel like it’s curiously redemptive,” the 25-year veteran Foreign Service officer told me — but even these people conceded that they believed he could no longer do his job effectively.
“This just isn’t sustainable,” a senior State Department official said. “You can’t have a secretary of state going around the world who’s not seen as representing the president’s foreign policy.”
But even if Tillerson leaves, the fear among many in the State Department is that the hangover from his tenure will be long-lasting. The Foreign Service officer recalls a recent meeting of acting assistant secretaries, where the most pressing matters discussed were the backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests and the number of typographical errors in memos to the secretary’s office. “The world is going to hell in a handbasket,” the Foreign Service officer fumed, “and the greatest minds in our diplomatic service are talking about FOIA requests and [expletive] typos.”
All of which can lead to some dark thoughts. More than one State Department official told me that they believed all of this wasn’t a case of simple mismanagement but of something more sinister. “I’ve lived in a lot of countries where conspiracy theories abound because people feel like they lack self-determination,” Nancy McEldowney, a 30-year career Foreign Service officer who retired in June, says. “And a great many people inside State are now hypothesizing about what the goal of all this is. Why are they firing people and shrinking the department down? It can’t simply be a budget-cutting exercise. If it were purely for reform, they would have done it differently.”
Whatever his intentions, Tillerson’s true legacy may well be to have transformed a venerable American institution into the caricature of its most fevered, irrational critics. In Foggy Bottom, anguish is increasingly giving way to bitterness. “I’ve jokingly said to friends that I’m going to be executive director of the Deep State,” the Foreign Service veteran of 25 years, who is currently in the process of “separating” from the organization, told me. “There was never a Deep State before, but these idiots have managed to create one.”
Jason Zengerle is a contributing writer for the magazine and the political correspondent for GQ. He last wrote about North Carolina politics.
THE FRAGMENTATION OF SOCIETY / JOHN MAULDIN´S WEEK...
REX TILLERSON AND THE UNRAVELING OF THE STATE DEPA...
LEFT IN THE LURCH: GLOBALIZATION HAS MARGINALIZED ...
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CHINA DECIDES IT´S TIME TO TALK ABOUT CHINESE DEBT...
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NORTH KOREA IS A NUCLEAR POWER. GET USED TO IT / THE NEW YORK TIMES OP EDITORIAL
| Etiquetas: Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, North Korea, U.S. Economic And Political
North Korea Is a Nuclear Power. Get Used to It.
By Vipin Narang and Ankit Panda
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, arriving in Singapore for a summit meeting with President Trump.CreditSingapore's Ministry of Communications and Information, via Reuters
North Korea has arrived as a nuclear power, and there is no going back. Once the reality-show theatrics of the Singapore summit meeting subside, we are left with the reality that North Korea was just recognized as a de facto nuclear weapons power.
President Trump went to the meeting with Kim Jong-un of North Korea to try to take the keys to Mr. Kim’s nuclear kingdom. Whatever the terms of the statement released at the end of the meeting, Mr. Kim has not committed to anything concrete. He is not surrendering North Korea’s nuclear weapons and has walked away the big winner.
North Korea declared its nuclear weapons force technologically complete at the end of 2017, with its third successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Now, less than a year later, North Korea’s nuclear power is politically complete, thanks to the legitimacy that comes from a handshake with an American president. Mr. Kim did what neither his father nor grandfather could do before him: sit down and negotiate with a president of the United States. The Singapore summit meeting looks indistinguishable from a meeting between the leaders of two states with normal diplomatic relations. But this is far from where Washington and Pyongyang have ever stood. It was Mr. Kim’s development of nuclear weapons — and the credible means to deliver them to America — that made the meeting possible.
Didn’t he just agree to “work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula”? He did. Just like his grandfather’s deputies did in 1993. That phrase — “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” — is a term of art that the United States and North Korea can interpret to suit their interests.
Mr. Trump can walk away claiming that the phrase encompasses unilateral “complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement,” or disarmament of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.
North Korea can interpret the phrase to mean a termination of the American security guarantee and nuclear umbrella to South Korea, or more literally, as universal disarmament by all nuclear countries. And the phrase commits North Korea to no concrete action — especially since it pledged only to “work towards” it. The canyon separating these two ideas of “denuclearization” is wide enough to park all of North Korea’s ICBMs. This works to Mr. Kim’s advantage.
And presumably, as long as he freezes any further long-range-missile and nuclear testing, Mr. Kim will get at least a short-term freeze on American and South Korean military exercises.
That is an objective he has long sought. He views them as provocative, a sign that his enemies are training to overthrow the regime. To his domestic audience, Mr. Kim can now present the end of this provocation as a signal of North Korea’s sovereignty and security.
Mr. Kim also leaves Singapore having snuffed out the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign, a diplomatic initiative that began last spring to expand the multilateral sanctions on Pyongyang. While China did not officially join the campaign, it did severely curtail oil exports to North Korea, a move that Mr. Trump praised on Twitter. Mr. Kim visited Beijing after that, and then publicly acknowledged that he would attend the summit meeting with Mr. Trump. He not only went; he did so with the air of a reasonable and responsible leader, especially after Mr. Trump’s May 24 decision to abruptly cancel the meeting.
Having apparently helped get North Korea to the table, it is unlikely that China will ever again agree to a maximum pressure campaign. Tightening sanctions would only destabilize North Korea, and China fears a desperate and broken North Korea on its border more than it fears a nuclear North Korea. Even if sanctions by the United States and the United Nations Security Council remain in place, without additional Chinese implementation, North Korea will find itself enjoying considerable breathing space.
American allies in the region are not so sanguine. President Moon Jae-in of South Korea was taken by surprise by the sudden announcement of an end to joint military exercises. But it is Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan who is perhaps most terrified, because United States-Japan exercises may be the next to go. Mr. Trump has chafed at the cost of America’s deployment in East Asia, and Mr. Kim led him right where he wanted to go. The only thing that may actually be dismantled is the architecture of America’s longstanding military alliance with Japan and South Korea.
That serves broader Chinese strategic interests in the region. With the United States pulling back from its alliances, China moves closer to being the dominant power in northeast Asia.
The small but significant silver lining is that the United States and North Korea are no longer trading threats of pre-emptive strikes and nuclear war. Mr. Trump’s top-down negotiations could lead to a stable deterrence relationship between the two countries. But they remain separated by divergent interests and mutual distrust.
The Singapore summit meeting also generates significant risks outside of the relationship between the United States and North Korea. Mr. Kim showed the world that it is possible to leave the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, develop nuclear weapons and win a summit meeting with the president of the United States. The lesson for states like Iran is simple: Acquire a thermonuclear ICBM that can threaten America and you too can have your Singapore declaration — a fast track to nuclear status.
This summit meeting — unlike previous moments in United States-North Korea history — was Mr. Kim’s moment to come out as the world’s ninth current nuclear power.
Vipin Narang is a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ankit Panda is a fellow at the Federation of American Scientists and a senior editor at The Diplomat magazine.
PERFORMANCE CHASE / CREDIT BUBBLE BULLETIN
FORECASTS OF THE IMPACT OF A U.S- CHINA TRADE WAR ...
THE CONUNDRUM OF THE U.S. DOLLAR / SEEKING ALPHA
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THE ASIA-PACIFIC GENDER-PARITY IMPERATIVE / PROJEC...
NORTH KOREA IS A NUCLEAR POWER. GET USED TO IT / T...
DIPLOMACY AS A WORK OF ART / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES
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DONALD TRUMP, BORIS JOHNSON AND THE ROUTE TO TRADE MAYHEM / THE FINANCIAL TIMES OP EDITORIAL
| Etiquetas: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Trade Wars
Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and the route to trade mayhem
Both men believe that tiresome details can be left for underlings to sort out
The disastrous G7 summit in Canada was a classic display of Donald Trump’s style of “negotiation” — one which combines self-pity, threats, and grandiose and impractical proposals. But just as most of America’s allies recoil in horror at the US president’s trade diplomacy, Mr Trump has found an admirer in Boris Johnson.
At a private dinner last week, Britain’s foreign secretary mused: “Imagine Trump doing Brexit . . . He’d go in bloody hard . . . There’d be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos. Everyone would think he’d gone mad. But actually you might get somewhere. It’s a very, very good thought.”
It is a very good thought, but not for the reasons that Mr Johnson thinks. There are close parallels between the Trump style of trade negotiation and that favoured by hardline Brexiters such as the foreign secretary. These similarities explain why both men are likely to damage their own causes, creating “all sorts of chaos” without any compensating gains.
There are three key shared characteristics to the Trump-Johnson style. The first is the belief that big ideas matter much more than detailed knowledge. The second is an over-estimation of your own strength that sets you up for failure. Finally, there is the tendency to turn friends into enemies.
Mr Trump’s supporters are chortling that the president’s sudden advocacy of total free trade at the G7 summit has exposed the other leaders as hypocrites. But their bafflement stems from the fact that, unlike the US president, the other G7 leaders have some understanding of the complexities involved in international trade.
For example, Mr Trump’s suggestion that all subsidies should be abolished is something that the EU has been pursuing internally for decades. In practice, it requires bureaucrats and politicians to agree on what constitutes a subsidy, and then to draw up rules and submit themselves to binding judgments by international institutions. This is just the kind of international governance that Mr Trump despises.
Mr Johnson also thinks it is the big picture that matters, and that the tiresome details can be sorted out by underlings. So he refuses to believe that keeping the Irish border open after Britain leaves the EU is a real problem, rather than a trivial objection thrown up by officials.
The foreign secretary airily dismisses the idea that there will be chaos at ports and borders in the event of a “no deal Brexit”. After all, great men like him do not bother with tedious technicalities such as supply chain management.
As far as Mr Johnson is concerned, the problem with the Brexit negotiations is that the British have not been tough enough. They should be more like Mr Trump and threaten not just to walk away from the table, but to turn it over.
What Mr Johnson ignores is that Britain has already tried this. The negotiations began with brave British cries of “no deal is better than a bad deal”. You do not hear so much of this now because it has become evident that this is clearly not true.
“No deal” would be disastrous for Britain, with crucial areas of commerce, such as pharmaceuticals, finance and aviation, stuck in legal limbo.
The mistake made by Mr Johnson was to assume that because the EU enjoys a trade surplus with the UK, it would never dare disrupt its trading relationship with Britain. But the European market is far more important to Britain, in percentage terms, than the British market is to the EU. The EU has also concluded that there are important principles at stake, and that conceding to Britain might unravel the entire EU internal market. So Brussels has been unyielding and the Brexiters’ bluff has been called.
Mr Trump belongs to the same school of non-thought as Mr Johnson and is making a very similar error — assuming that because the EU enjoys a trade surplus with the US, it will inevitably buckle. At first sight, it seems reasonable to assume that the US is much better placed to push around its trading partners than Britain is. There are some countries such as Canada, which sends 70 per cent of its exports to the US, that are particularly vulnerable. And in some areas, the US does have a massive power advantage. In particular, military might and the role of the dollar in world finance.
But trade is much more of a level playing field. The EU can retaliate against the Trump tariffs quite easily — by targeting American industries, such as farming. Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s tariffs on steel will cause pain inside the US by raising the cost of inputs for industry. The fact that Mr Trump has chosen to take on so many countries simultaneously means that US businesses may struggle to find alternative suppliers.
Both Mr Trump and Mr Johnson lack the empathy to realise that, if you kick old friends in the teeth, they are unlikely to respond in a cheerful and friendly manner. Many of Britain’s EU partners felt angry and betrayed after the referendum in June 2016. And they were particularly furious with Mr Johnson who they saw as the face of Brexit.
As a result, they are still reluctant to make any deals that might look like “rewarding” Mr Johnson. Mr Trump may discover that his bullying tactics on trade backfire in the same way.
CENTRAL BANKS GO THEIR SEPARATE WAYS / THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
| Etiquetas: Central Banking, Global Markets, World Economic And Political
Central Banks Go Their Separate Ways
Despite growing economies, big and small central banks are signaling diverging paths on rates
By Brian Blackstone in Zurich, Nina Adam in Frankfurt and Jason Douglas in London
The Swiss National Bank logo above the entrance to the central bank in Bern, Switzerland. Photo: Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg News
Central banks in Europe on Thursday signaled different outlooks toward rate increases, suggesting the divergent paths of the world’s largest central banks are gripping smaller ones too.
The Bank of England held its benchmark interest rate steady at 0.5%, but officials said they expect economic growth in the U.K. to pick up in the months ahead following a soft start to the year, setting the stage for a rise in borrowing costs this summer.
Norway’s central bank also stayed on hold but said rates will probably go up in September.
In contrast, the Swiss National Bank kept its key policy rate in deeply negative territory and signaled no forthcoming changes despite signs of healthy economic activity and slowly rising inflation, as the bank remains constrained by the actions of the European Central Bank.
Divergence among major central banks has emerged as a key theme recently with potential repercussions on stock, bond and currency markets.
The shifting policy landscape comes against a backdrop of rising uncertainty over the outlook for the global economy, with mounting fears over the prospect of a trade war and signs that a spell of synchronized global growth is coming to an end.
Last week, the Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates while the ECB signaled an end to its bond program but also said it probably wouldn’t raise rates at least until September 2019.
The Bank of Japan, meanwhile, maintained its ultra-easy policies including a minus 0.1% deposit rate and government bond buying.
The BOE has said that it expects to raise its benchmark interest rate around three times over the next three years to bring inflation in the U.K. back to the central bank’s 2% goal.
On Thursday, Chief Economist Andrew Haldane joined two other officials on the BOE’s nine-member panel in calling for an immediate rise in borrowing costs, citing mounting inflationary pressure. The majority preferred to wait, but economists anticipate the BOE will follow the Fed in nudging up short-term borrowing costs as soon as August.
Norway’s central bank kept its key policy rate at a record low of 0.5% but said this would probably go up in September. “The outlook for the Norwegian economy suggests that it will soon be appropriate to raise the key policy rate,” it said.
The Norges Bank forecast in its June Monetary Policy Report that the key policy rate will be “somewhat above 2%” at the end of 2021, though Kari Due-Andresen, an economist at Handelsbanken, said that’s too ambitious. “The Norges Bank expects seven rate hikes by year-end 2021, but we believe it will manage only three,” Ms. Due-Andresen said.
The SNB left its deposit rate at minus 0.75% as widely expected by economists, where it has been since January 2015. It also said the Swiss franc is “highly valued” and that it was willing to intervene in currency markets, if necessary, should the franc strengthen too much. The lion’s share of Swiss exports go to the eurozone, so it is difficult for the SNB to tighten policy ahead of the ECB for fear of strengthening the franc.
“We remain prudent,” said SNB Chairman Thomas Jordan. “At the moment there is no need to change our expansionary monetary policy.”
The euro traded at 1.1487 francs after the SNB’s decision, down 0.4% from Wednesday. The pound rallied after the decision, having traded around a seven-month low earlier in the day.
The SNB’s ultra-easy monetary policy seems at odds with economic figures showing solid growth. The economy has expanded in the 2% range in recent quarters, and a government expert group said this week that it expected 2.4% growth in gross domestic product this year.
However, the SNB said downside risks have intensified recently, citing the potential fallout of greater trade protectionism on the trade-dependent economy.
THE POPULISTS´ EURO / PROJECT SYNDICATE
| Etiquetas: Europe Economic and Political, Italy, Populism, The Euro
The Populists’ Euro
Barry Eichengreen
BERKELEY – The majority of Italians want two things: new political leadership and the euro. The question is whether they can have both.
The point about new leadership is uncontroversial. The country’s two ruling populist parties, the League and the Five Star Movement (M5S), together commanded 50% of the vote in the March 4 general election, and, as a result, have majorities in both houses of parliament. Their majorities may be slim, but the election, in which the main center-right and center-left parties eked out just 33%, was a resounding repudiation of the status quo.
The second point is less well known, but even less controversial: recent polls show that 60-72% of Italians favor the euro. Some believe the single currency safeguards their savings, while others regard it as an emblem of Italy’s status as a founding member of the European Union. But if motives differ, the balance of public opinion does not.
Bowing to this reality, the coalition partners have now dropped the idea of abandoning the euro, expunging the possibility from their “contract” and respective websites. Paolo Savona, a diehard opponent of the euro, has been denied the finance ministry. But Carlo Cottarelli, whose proposed appointment at the head of a technocratic government would have disenfranchised a majority of voters, has also been denied the reins of power. Appropriately, given the election result, Italians now have their populist government and their euro, too.
Keeping them will be another matter. If its initial measures fail to deliver economic growth, the new government will lose popular support. In desperation and anger, its leaders may then resort to even more extreme policies. Support for the euro will weaken as well, because the government and its backers will blame the EU and its most visible achievement, the euro, for frustrating their best-laid plans.
Indeed, it is not hard to imagine that if the coalition proceeds with its ambitious fiscal plans, instituting both a flat tax, as the League proposes, and a universal basic income (UBI), as M5S advocates, it could blow up the budget deficit. It would then be sanctioned by the European Commission, deemed ineligible for financial support by the European Central Bank, and experience capital flight. Italy could quickly find itself out of the eurozone and ring-fenced by capital controls, regardless of whether the government intended this outcome.
In fact, the argument for a measured fiscal stimulus is sound – just not the kind of fiscal stimulus the League and M5S have in mind. An economy in Italy’s condition needs “two-handed policies”: supply-side reforms of labor and product markets to boost productivity and international competitiveness, accompanied by demand stimulus to prevent the uncertainties of reform and the surrounding political noise from depressing spending. Although Italy has a heavy debt burden, it also has a modicum of fiscal space, given low interest rates and a primary budget surplus.
But whether the government will use that space to get growth going again is very much in doubt. The League’s flat tax would benefit mainly the rich, who have a relatively low propensity to spend, and aggravate complaints about inequality. And, given its dire fiscal implications, M5S’s proposed UBI would trigger a sharp reaction by financial markets.
A better approach would be to cut payroll and social security taxes, thereby reducing the third-highest tax wedge in the OECD. This should appeal to M5S voters, who would see bigger pay packets. To the extent that the recipients spend the additional pay, the tax cuts will stimulate demand and growth.
But these are also supply-side-friendly reforms, because they reduce the cost of labor and, by getting people into employment, facilitate the transmission of productivity-enhancing skills. They should also appeal to the League, insofar as business owners who support party leader Matteo Salvini will benefit from declining costs and enhanced competitiveness.
Will the European Commission permit the Italian government to exceed its mandated deficit target? The Commission worries, as always, about setting a dangerous precedent. But it should realize that frustrating the new government at every turn could end up only making the Italian authorities more intransigent. If the alternative to a modestly larger budget deficit, coupled with supply-side reforms, is a let-it-rip budget, open conflict with the EU, and massive capital flight, then the Commission would do well to think twice.
The view within EU institutions in Brussels is that, when sanctioned by the Commission and by financial markets, Italy’s new government will change course, abandoning its fiscal ambitions to avoid catastrophe. But the view in Rome is that the new government has the voters behind it and that Italy is too big to fail, so it is the Commission and the other member states that will blink.
In America, there is a name for this situation. It’s called a game of chicken: two cars hurtle toward each other at full speed; the driver who swerves first is the chicken. It is a game that does not always end well.
Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former senior policy adviser at the International Monetary Fund. His latest book is The Populist Temptation: Economic Grievance and Political Reaction in the Modern Era.
WHEN WILL GOLD´S "SUMMER DOLDRUMS" END? HISTORY SAYS PRETTY SOON / DOLLAR COLLAPSE
| Etiquetas: Gold, Investment Strategies
When Will Gold’s “Summer Doldrums” End? History Says Pretty Soon
This has been a uniquely boring stretch for gold and silver – especially considering all the things going on in the world that ought to light a fire under precious metals. In just the past few weeks, the US started a global trade war, Italy elected a populist government, emerging markets descended into yet another crisis, and inflation has risen from the dead – all of which would be expected to spook normal financial markets and send capital pouring into safe havens. But not this time, which leaves precious metals under the control of seasonal factors that have over the years generated the “sell in May and go away” rule-of-thumb.
So when do the summer doldrums end? Based on recent history, December is a pretty good bet.
The arrows on the following chart mark the beginning of each year since 2014. Note how gold’s price frequently starts moving up either then or a few weeks before, in early December. This seasonal strength is due to Asian buying in anticipation of weddings and harvests, and though you’d think traders would anticipate – and therefore cancel – the cycle’s impact, it still seems to opérate.
Prior to 2014 the pattern was slightly different. Here’s a chart from Casey Research showing gold’s average performance for each month between 1975 and 2013. September was by far the best month to buy, with January the second best, implying a eight-month window beginning in July in which buying was rewarded with at least short-term gains.
If the second pattern re-emerges, then we really don’t have long to wait at all. Maybe one more month and at most three, and gold bugs can start having fun again.
As always, though, deciding when to buy precious metals is just the first in a series of challenges. Choosing the right dealer is paramount (see here for a list of reputable ones), followed by whether to take delivery and store the metal at home or seek secure vault storage for gold and silver.
And then there’s the bullion vs mining stock question. The former is money which will hold its value over long periods of time (thus preserving your purchasing power) while the latter are investments that can rise by multiples of their original cost or disappear without a trace. Jay Taylor’s newsletter is a good source for intelligence on the explorers, the riskiest and potentially most profitable segment of the mining market.
IS THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY DEFYING WESTERN SANCTIONS? / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES
| Etiquetas: Russia, The West, Vladimir Putin
Is the Russian Economy Defying Western Sanctions?
By Ekaterina Zolotova
In a recent interview, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Russian economy had overcome some significant challenges over the past several years, namely Western sanctions imposed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the global slump in oil prices. According to Putin, inflation is the lowest it has been in modern Russian history, gold and foreign reserves are growing, economic growth is slowly rising and foreign direct investment is increasing. The effects of Western sanctions appear to be easing. In 2015, Russian gross domestic product declined by 1 to 1.5 percent due to sanctions. In 2017, this number declined to 0.5-1 percent.
If the Russian economy really is recovering, it would give Russia a better negotiating position when it comes to the conflict in eastern Ukraine and would diminish some of the leverage the West gained through sanctions. We previously forecast that Russia couldn’t afford to be isolated from the global economy any longer and would therefore be forced to make concessions on Ukraine to gain some relief from sanctions. But these new indicators have made us take a second look at that forecast.
The Russian economy has indeed displayed some surprisingly positive results in 2018. The State Duma reviewed the federal budget on June 7, and for the first time since 2011, Russia is expecting a budget surplus – totaling 0.5 percent of GDP, or roughly 481.8 billion rubles ($7.7 billion), this year. According to the review, state revenue so far in 2018 was 17 trillion rubles – 2 trillion rubles more than was expected in the budget released in December. And according to the minister of economic development, Russia’s GDP in 2018 may exceed 100 trillion rubles – an increase from 92 trillion rubles in 2017. The World Bank has confirmed that the Russian economy is improving and forecasts that the growth rate will reach 1.5 percent in 2018 and 1.8 percent in 2019-20. In addition, the Russian government expects that non-oil and gas revenue will continue to grow by more than 1.8 trillion rubles in 2018. The government has also said about 60 percent of Russia’s income is not related to oil and gas.
But Russia’s moderate recovery was largely due to the increase in oil prices since early 2018, leading to an increase in revenue by 1.76 trillion rubles. And despite the government’s efforts, the economy is still heavily dependent on the energy sector. In the first quarter of this year, oil accounted for 27.4 percent of Russian exports, and fuel and energy products accounted for 42.5 percent, largely unchanged from 2017.
In addition, Russia’s National Wealth Fund has increased due to higher oil prices, but only marginally. In May, the fund grew by 5 percent if calculated in rubles, but in dollars, it actually declined by 3 percent, or almost $2 billion, due to the weak Russian currency. For now, Russia has chosen not to spend this money but rather to save it in case it ends the year in a deficit.
Even if the economy has improved on the macro level, it seems that Russians remain skeptical. Polls by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center show that the private sector still believes that the economy is struggling. In fact, 69 percent of companies said they believe the government’s economic policies will be ineffective, a 5 percent increase from last year. Business leaders cited economic uncertainty, rising taxes and declining domestic demand among the most important causes of the negative business environment in the country.
In the first quarter of 2018, consumer debt reached 4 trillion rubles, increasing by 5 percent compared to the same period in 2017. Almost half of this amount consists of overdue loans. A recent poll commissioned by the central bank showed that inflation expectations in Russia increased to 8.6 percent in May from 7.8 percent in April, partly due to the rise in gasoline prices by 5.6 percent from May to April and by 11.3 percent in annual terms, sparking fears of rising food costs. Eighty-three percent of Russians expect their financial situation will deteriorate due to rising gasoline prices.
Indeed, Russia has seen some growth but little development. In May, following March elections, Putin outlined the economic goals of the new government. In the next six years, he said, the country will be among the five largest economies in the world and will have a growing population, increased life expectancy to 78 years, sustainable income growth and reduced poverty. According to Putin, the country would need an additional 8 trillion rubles to achieve these goals. Yet, it hasn’t made any serious reforms that will increase government revenue to this level or transition the economy away from resource dependence.
The government has admitted that it currently doesn’t have the money to fund Putin’s plans, and so it has to either raise more money somehow or cut spending. But if oil prices don’t continue to rise, the government still has few options to raise revenue. The share of the population that’s economically active is declining and incomes have been falling for years. Raising taxes would only increase the burden on this already overburdened group. (The government is actually looking at cutting excise taxes on diesel, a move that would slash regional budgets.) The government therefore has been considering raising the retirement age and implementing pension reforms to cut public expenditures. But these are highly unpopular measures.
The more difficult economic conditions in the country become, the more Russia will be willing to make compromises in places like Ukraine. This is why it’s important for Russian officials to tout the country’s economic successes, however small and temporary they may be. A strong economy can show the world that Russia is able to withstand the West’s efforts to rein in its foreign policy – which it’s not prepared to do just yet.
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IS THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY DEFYING WESTERN SANCTIONS? ...
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CORRUPTION THRIVES IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD / THE FINANCIAL TIMES OP EDITORIAL
| Etiquetas: Corruption, Globalization, World Economic And Political
Corruption thrives in a globalised world
Has corruption become more common? Or simply easier to expose
Remember the Brics? When the concept was first launched by Goldman Sachs in 2001, it was a handy acronym to describe the world’s most dynamic emerging economies. There were always sceptics who questioned just how much Brazil, Russia, India and China have in common. Those doubts only grew when South Africa joined the club.
But it turns out that the Brics do have something in common after all — corruption. In all five countries, popular rage about graft is at the very heart of politics. And because these countries are increasingly important to the world economy, their corruption problems have global implications.
Both Brazil and South Africa have seen presidents forced out of office by corruption scandals — with Jacob Zuma compelled to resign in South Africa this year, and Dilma Rousseff being impeached in Brazil in 2016. In Russia, the ruling United Russia party is widely known as the “party of crooks and thieves”. The rise to power of Narendra Modi was fuelled by his pledge to crack down on corruption among the elites. The Indian prime minister has since taken the drastic step of abolishing about 80 per cent of the country’s currency, in an effort to squash the black economy. In China, President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive has seen more than 100,000 officials arrested. Meanwhile, Chinese exiles have spread online allegations that corruption extends into President Xi’s inner circle.
High-profile corruption scandals are not confined to the Brics. This month Mariano Rajoy was forced to resign as prime minister of Spain after seven years in office, following a scandal in his political party. And last month Malaysia’s ruling party lost power for the first time since the 1950s — after allegations that the prime minister, Najib Razak, had embezzled vast sums.
Corruption has always existed — and it has never been popular. But the frequency and political impact of corruption scandals seem to be growing all over the world. So has corruption become more common? Or has it simply become easier to expose? The answer seems to be that both things are happening simultaneously.
The globalisation of business and finance opened up opportunities to make corrupt profits in fast-growing emerging economies. Industries that often need official involvement, such as natural resources and infrastructure, are particularly lucrative targets. There are contracts to be awarded and development projects that need official approval. And the money for bribes can always be deposited offshore.
But such malpractice can be exposed. Strong, independent prosecutors and judges such as Brazil’s Sérgio Moro and South Africa’s Thulisile Madonsela have done heroic work in driving forward anti-corruption investigations. Press freedom in Brazil and South Africa has also been critical in keeping up the pressure on corrupt politicians.
Even when the national media are muzzled, the internet provides an alternative medium for airing corruption allegations. The “Panama Papers”, which detailed the offshore financial affairs of many prominent politicians, was the result of an international journalistic project and based on hacked documents.
New forms of international co-operation and transparency have also made would-be crooks more vulnerable to exposure. Changes in the Swiss laws on banking secrecy — made under pressure from the US — were crucial to allowing Brazilian prosecutors to uncover the proceeds of corruption. International investigations by the Swiss and Americans also kept up the pressure on Malaysia’s Mr Razak.
But conquering corruption is not something that can be achieved with a single cathartic effort. Lasting progress requires strong institutions that can survive changes in the political climate; independent courts and prosecutors with training and resources; a press that cannot easily be bought off, jailed or killed; efficient civil servants who cannot be fired at the whim of a corrupt boss. Remove any of those elements and corruption seeps back into the system.
Prosecutors in Brazil are haunted by the example of the “clean hands” investigations in Italy in the early 1990s. These swept away many powerful figures — and were seen as a watershed. But within a few years, Silvio Berlusconi, who epitomised shady business practices, had been elected prime minister.
Searching for examples of lasting cultural change in the battle against corruption, Brazilian prosecutors have lighted upon the example of Hong Kong under British colonial rule and the establishment of an Independent Commission Against Corruption in 1974. Even that achievement may now be in doubt, with growing fears that the independence of Hong Kong’s institutions is being compromised by pressure from mainland China.
The concerns over Hong Kong might give pause to those who interpret the eruption of scandals all over the world as evidence that the global battle against graft is being won. An alternative theory is that the growing economic power of countries such as China, India and Russia may be spreading corrupt practices more widely. The US, EU and UK pride themselves on their sound institutions. But western bankers, lawyers, real estate agents, PR firms (and perhaps even presidents) are often all too willing to share in the proceeds of corruption.
THE LATEST CHAPTER IN THE EUROPEAN MIGRATION CRISIS / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES
| Etiquetas: Europe Economic and Political, Immigration
The Latest Chapter in the European Migration Crisis
When 630 people were rescued by a ship called the Aquarius off the coast of Libya last weekend, little did they know their plight would set off a series of events that would deepen the divisions in an already fractured Europe. Within less than a week of the migrants’ rescue, the German government appeared ever closer to collapse, and the French and Italian governments were engaged in a diplomatic spat. The story of the Aquarius will now become part of European history, another chapter in the migration saga that began with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy in 2015 and whose end seems much further away today than it did just a week ago.
‘Close the Doors’
On June 10, as the Aquarius approached Italian waters, the Italian government refused to allow the ship to dock at its ports. The country’s new populist government, which came to power in large part due to the country’s frustration with being the frontline in the migration crisis, used the Aquarius to demonstrate that it was following through on its promise to get tough on illegal immigration. Matteo Salvini, Italy’s new interior minister, took to Twitter to make his government’s position abundantly clear: “Close the doors.”
On June 11, with the Aquarius stranded off the Italian coast, Germany’s struggle over its own immigration policy was intensifying. Merkel rejected Interior Minister Horst Seehofer’s proposal to turn away at the border any refugee who had applied for asylum in another European country. Upon learning of Merkel’s decision, Seehofer canceled a presentation of his 63-point plan to deal with the migration problem scheduled for the following day. A spokeswoman for the German Interior Ministry downplayed the cancellation, explaining that some details simply needed to be ironed out, but she also declined to announce a new date for the presentation.
On June 12, France entered the fray. French President Emmanuel Macron blasted the Italian government as irresponsible and cynical for blocking the Aquarius from Italian ports. The Italian government responded the following day by canceling a meeting in Paris between the French and Italian economy ministers. Italy also summoned the French ambassador and demanded an apology from Macron. Italy’s new prime minister even called Macron’s stance “hypocritical” and decried French self-righteousness over an issue Italy has had to manage with little support from the EU. Meanwhile, the Aquarius set sail for Spain, which granted the ship permission to dock.
On June 13, Seehofer declined to attend a summit in Berlin held by Merkel, and instead met with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. Seehofer explained that the move was not a snub but rather had to do with the presence of a journalist who had compared him to the Nazis. But it was Kurz who stole the headlines on this day, as he called for an “axis of the willing against illegal migration” to be formed between Austria, Germany and Italy. Seehofer added that he had spoken to his Italian counterpart the previous day and that they were in “full agreement” over how to secure European borders. None of the men involved seemed concerned about the memories an axis involving Austria, Germany and Italy might dredge up.
Meanwhile, Macron’s government attempted to patch things up with Italy. Macron didn’t issue an apology, but he did call Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and insisted that he didn’t want to offend Italy. In addition, France’s European affairs minister stressed the need for dialogue and directed France’s criticism away from Italy. Instead, the minister blamed Europe for turning its back on Italy and insisted that Europe needed a much better way of dealing with migrants. This appeared to be enough for the Italian government: Conte pledged his solidarity with Europe in dealing with the issue and is scheduled to meet with Macron on June 15.
On June 14, just when it seemed the worst had passed, German media reported that Merkel’s government might collapse. Tension between her Christian Democratic Union party and coalition partner the Christian Social Union, led by Seehofer, has been brewing over Merkel’s immigration policies since 2015. But German newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine, citing multiple CSU sources, reported that Seehofer raised the possibility during a party meeting of defying Merkel, which could split the governing coalition. German papers are now speculating about a potential vote of no confidence should the spat go on.
A Dangerous Bet
To recap, the three largest and most important countries in the European Union – Germany, Italy and France – are now divided, internally and externally. France continues to push for stronger EU reforms and is tired of waiting for Germany to sign up; in fact, France may now see that Germany is too weak to protest and that it must take the lead. Italy’s new government is anxious to follow through on its campaign promises and is both cautious about and intrigued by the shift in power between Europe’s two heavyweights. Germany seems lost – at worst, it’s on the verge of a government collapse, and at best, it’s so inwardly focused that it can hardly play the leadership role it used to. And all this because the migration issue, now three years old, remains unresolved. A single ship with 630 refugees has laid the contradictions bare for all to see.
This, of course, is not the only problem facing Europe today. The United Kingdom, which voted for Brexit in no small degree due to Germany’s lectures on London having to accept its fair share of refugees back in 2015, finds itself in chaos over its next steps. Germany’s foreign minister gave a rousing speech about a “post-Atlantic Europe” and seems more concerned with pushing back against perceived American slights at Germany than at coming to terms with the friction in his own government. The Balkans seems primed for even more disruption, with Russia this week announcing it wants to be more engaged in the region and the Serbian president saying he was warned that NATO would treat any Serbian incursion into Kosovo as a hostile act.
But most important, and buried under the headlines, is the fact that the European Central Bank announced that it will phase out its bond-buying stimulus program by the end of the year – a program that has staunched the bleeding from the 2008 financial crisis but also exacerbated economic inequality throughout the eurozone. In both Europe and the United States, economies are finally returning to normal after a decade of being coddled by policymakers. Now, the training wheels are about to come off, and policymakers are betting that the economic recovery is stable enough to keep going on its own.
That’s a dangerous bet, especially considering that the economic recoveries in Europe and the United States are fragile at best. The U.S. has rarely gone this long without a cyclical recession. But as the Aquarius has shown, Europe has plenty more problems to contend with, even if the optimists are right about the economy. Ironically, at the center of all this is France, the new de facto leader of Europe. Which brings to mind the old maxim: Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
HOW WORLD CUP SPONSORSHIPS MIRRORS GLOBAL ECONOMIC SHIFTS / KNOWLEDGE@WHARTON
| Etiquetas: 2018 Soccer World Cup, China, Marketing and Advertising
How World Cup Sponsorship Mirrors Global Economic Shifts
There’s been dramatic shift in the country origin for World Cup sponsorship in recent years. A third of the top sponsors are now from China, versus none before 2014. Kalin Anev Janse (@kaanev), secretary general and also a member of the management board of the European Stability Mechanism, the Eurozone’s lender of last resort, explains how the changes mirror those in the world economy. (This article reflects his personal opinion.)
As a Dutch Bulgarian living in Luxembourg, I thought the 2018 World Cup would be a boring sports event. The three countries I identify with – the Netherlands, Bulgaria, and Luxembourg – played in the same group. So statistically I was hopeful that at least one of them would qualify. But somehow, not one made it to Moscow. From that group, only France and Sweden qualified. My only comfort is that the three are in the good company of Italy.
I contemplated watching other sports events this summer, such as Wimbledon, where Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov is one of the favorites, or the Women’s Hockey World Cup, which the Dutch might win again. But then, you can’t ignore half of humanity: the World Cup is by far the world’s most-watched sports event, viewed last time by more than 3.2 billion people.
Then I found that watching the World Cup was also interesting from a financial point of view, because the same global shifts in capital markets and in macro-economics I am observing in my job are now becoming visible in how the sponsorship of this event is changing.
More Asia, less North America and Europe
Since 1982, the World Cup was won by a European country six times (twice by Germany, twice by Italy, once by Spain and once by France), and by a Latin American country (twice by Brazil and once by Argentina) three times. But in terms of the biggest sponsors, the geographic distribution looks quite different.
In 1986, four European companies supported the event, as well as four from North America and four from Asia. In the 1990s, there was a rapid increase in North American sponsorship, which then halted at the end of that decade. Even though European countries had been winning the tournament, European companies were backing away from the event. In 2018, only one sole European company was still pouring money into it.
So who is the big new spender? Asia! In 2018, seven out of the 12 top partners and sponsors are from Asia, or almost 60% (See the following chart).
China Replaces Japan as Top Asian Sponsor
If you belong to that one half of the world population watching the World Cup, you might already have seen this trend from the growing number of Chinese billboards around the pitch.
A third of World Cup top partners are now from China, a record for the country. Before 2014, not a single Chinese company was a sponsor. Within the last two installments of the event, there are now as many Chinese top sponsors as there are American.
It is also interesting to see that Chinese companies are replacing Japan as the top Asian sponsor. Until 2006, the Japanese represented the leading Asian brands at the World Cup. This time, they are completely absent.
If you’re not a football fan, it might surprise you that China is so active even without its national team qualifying for the tournament. China played in the World Cup only once, in 2002.
So could the World Cup sponsorship serve as a proxy of future global economic shifts? More than you might think.
In previous op-eds (see links below), I have pointed to the fact that Asia is rapidly overtaking Europe and North America in relative economic power, a trend that will continue for the next decades. A prestigious World Cup sponsorship is a sign of Asia’s rising economic power. It puts a company eye-to-eye with some of the biggest industry giants – in front of an enormous and still growing audience. This year, 200 million more people will watch the World Cup than four years ago.
For now, Asia’s presence at the World Cup reflects its economic power more than its football prowess. Judging by the first results, Europe is still pretty good at football. But that might change. Asians love the sport, too. Most of the viewers of the World Cup 2014 were from Asia, and the number of fans is still growing. More than 1.5 billion people in Asia watched at least a minute of the World Cup in 2014, and more than 750 million watched more than 20 minutes. China has the most viewers: a quarter of a billion. With such a large audience, sponsoring the event by Chinese companies is a smart move. Even if the country has not qualified – yet.
What’s Coming?
The President of China, Xi Jinping, is a big football fan. He has three dreams for China and the World Cup: participate, host and win. China is investing heavily in football schools and exchanges with European counterparts to help it excel at the game. The financial and economic foundations are already there; the infrastructure to get better football results is rapidly being built. With 1.3 billion people, there is a lot of talent to scout.
I really hope that China will one day qualify. Of course, I also hope the same for my beloved Dutch, Bulgarian, and Luxembourg teams. And the economic shifts that are evident in the sponsorship of the game notwithstanding, I will concentrate on the tournament this summer. Why? Because it is simply the most beautiful game in the world. Even if you don’t take part. If you don’t believe me, just ask one of the 3.4 billion people watching the World Cup 2018 right now.
THE FORCE BEHIND EUROPE´S POPULIST TIDE: FRUSTRATED YOUNG ADULTS / THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
| Etiquetas: Europe Economic and Political, Populism
The Force Behind Europe’s Populist Tide: Frustrated Young Adults
Struggling to find jobs, and often living at home, younger generations are propelling antiestablishment parties to new heights of power
By Eric Sylvers
Giada Gramanzini moved back to her parents’ home in Naples last year while looking for work. Jobless young people are driving the antiestablishment political shift in Europe.
A youth revolt is upending Italian politics, and it could be a harbinger of things to come.
Western Europe’s largest antiestablishment government came to power earlier this month, driven largely by young Italian voters. Struggling with a persistent lack of job prospects over the past decade, they voted in droves for two parties in the country’s March 4 elections, the 5 Star Movement and the League, an anti-immigration party.
The result laid bare a stark generation gap, with older Italians, who often have to support their grown children, continuing to vote for mainstream parties.
The same pattern appears across southern Europe, and the forces behind the divide show few signs of slowing. Almost 30% of Italians age 20 to 34 aren’t working, studying or in a training program, according to Eurostat, more than in any other European Union country. Greece is second at 29%, while Spain’s rate is 21%.
“Italy is collapsing and yet nothing has changed in this country for at least 30 years,” said Carlo Gaetani, a self-employed engineer in Puglia. Ten years ago, when he was in his early 20s, he voted for a center-left party that he hoped would push for economic development in southern Italy. When Italy descended into a crippling recession, he felt betrayed by the traditional Italian left-wing parties. He has seen friends struggle to find jobs, and said his own business opportunities are limited to the stagnant private sector, because commissions for the public sector are usually awarded to people with connections he doesn’t have.
Mr. Gaetani, now 33, voted for 5 Star in the 2013 election, a choice he repeated in March with more conviction. “5 Star is our last hope. If they also fail, I think I’ll stop voting,” he said.
SHORT-TERM PROSPECTS
Younger adults who do find employmentmust often accept short-term contracts.
Share of adults age 15-25 with temporary contracts* in 2017
*Generally lasting one year or less.
The employment rate of Italians under 40 fell every year from 2007 to 2014 before flatlining over the past three years, according to Eurostat. Meanwhile, it has risen every year for those between 55 and 64 years, in part due to an increase in the retirement age.
The number of Italians under 34 in absolute poverty—defined as being unable to afford basic goods and services—more than doubled between 2010 and 2016 to 10%, according to the Italian National Institute of Statistics, or Istat. For those over 65, it dropped to 3.8% from 5.4%.
One major problem in southern Europe is a dual employment system in which people with open-ended contracts—often older workers—enjoy ironclad job security and benefits. At the same time, during the downturn, employers began to use more short-term contracts, generally lasting from one month to a year. In Italy, 62% of contracts for those under age 25 were short-term in 2017, up from a quarter in 2000.
Italian policy makers introduced the contracts in the 1990s in part to help young people enter the labor force as a step to permanent work. Employers used them to avoid the cost and hassle involved in firing people. Echoing labor overhauls elsewhere in Europe, Italy introduced a major revamp of work rules in 2014 and 2015 that tried to get employers to use more open-ended contracts, including billions of euros in tax breaks. The most generous breaks expired in 2016.
OUT OF WORK
In Southern Europe, younger adults are still struggling a decade after the financial crisis hit.
People age 20-34 not employed, in school or in a training program
The efforts didn’t have the desired effect of creating structural change to the labor market that would wean employers off using short-term contracts. In 2016, when the tax breaks were in place, only 13% of new hires were on short-term contracts. Last year, more than four out of five new hires were on short-term contracts, according to Istat.
The 5 Star Movement has lured millions of young voters with promises to roll back new labor rules, give the unemployed and poor a so-called universal basic income of €780 ($905) a month, and abolish unpaid apprenticeship contracts. Its leader, Luigi Di Maio, was a 26-year-old university dropout who lived with his parents when he was elected to parliament in 2013. Today, he is a deputy prime minister.
The League also made canceling the recent labor revamp a central part of its electoral platform.
Italy’s economic problems played into young voters’ sentiments about immigration during the campaign as well, one of the animating drivers of support for the League. “We can’t host all of Africa,” said Gianluca Taburchi, a 23-year old supermarket employee from Perugia who voted for the League. “We already have our own problems. We have lots of unemployment and unsecure jobs.”
Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League who became a deputy prime minister and interior minister in the new government, promised to return hundreds of thousands of migrants to their countries of origin. 5 Star, which straddles the line on many issues, spoke of stemming illegal immigration, but stopped short of calling for mass deportations.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, center, with Deputy Prime Ministers Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini, at the Italian Parliament on June 6. Photo: ettore ferrari/EPA/Shutterstock
About 53% of Italians under 35 voted for the two parties combined, according to an Ipsos poll.
About 43% of Italians over 65 voted for legacy center-right and center-left parties, while only 28% of young Italians did.
Elsewhere, almost 40% of Spaniards under 35 said in an April poll they would vote for far-left Podemos and its political allies in a coming election. In Greece, more than 41% of those age 18 to 24 voted for Syriza in the 2015 election, six points more than the antiestablishment party got across all age groups.
Argyro Maltasoglou, 30, said she voted for Syriza in the 2015 election because she thought the upstart party would make radical changes, especially in terms of policies to help young people. Since graduating from college in 2013, she has been bouncing between short-term contracts lasting less than a year. She has been looking for a job since her short-term contract as a secretary in an Athens hospital expired in March.
The job paid €500 a month, the most Ms. Maltasoglou has earned so far. She has had to accept money from her parents to get by. “This isn’t what I dreamed of when I was studying,” she said. “I would like to have a family, but I wouldn’t dare to think about it now under these conditions.”
One exception to the generational phenomenon is the U.K.’s 2016 vote to leave the EU: 71% of voters age 18 to 24 voted for the country to remain in the bloc, according to a poll by YouGov. Only 26% of those 65 and over voted to remain.
Supporters of the League marched in a rally on Feb. 24. Photo: miguel medina/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Studies following the Brexit vote showed that, in this case, young Britons valued the increased ease of working, studying and traveling abroad that EU membership brings. At the same time, many older voters viewed leaving the EU as an opportunity for the U.K. to better control immigration.
The pain in southern Europe reflects a feeling across much of the Western world that the younger generation will struggle to surpass their parents in wealth and security. Half of Italians who responded last year to an online survey on jobs site Monster.com said they thought they will earn less over their careers than their parents.
Young Italians, who bore the brunt of the country’s protracted, triple-dip recession, still bear the scars that will affect their career prospects, homeownership and birthrates for decades to come.
Banks are reluctant to lend to people on short-term contracts, which has helped push up the average age of home buyers to 41.6 years in 2017 from 39.4 years in 2012, according to Fabiana Megliola, head of research for real estate group Tecnocasa. In 2017, 56% of home buyers in Italy were under 45, down 10 percentage points from five years.
The number of Italians getting married has fallen by a fifth over the past decade, according to Istat. In 2016, the last year for which data are available, Italian men got married on average at age 35 and women at 32, in both cases two years later than in 2008. Births hit an all-time low last year.
In Italy, economic woes have led many youngpeople to live with their parents and hold offon marriage.
Share of adults age 25-34 living with theirparents in 2016
Number of new marriages in Italy
Source: Italian National Institute of Statistics
In a country with strong family ties, parents are stepping in to help adult children. They can often afford to help because they enjoy pensions that are the fruit of decades of generous retirement benefits. Italy spends more than 15% of its economic output on pensions, the most in Europe except Greece.
About half of Italians age 25 to 34 live with their parents, according to Eurostat, almost double the European average and more than in any other Western European country. The number has risen 3 percentage points in the past decade. And more than a third of Italians in their 30s get economic help from their parents or grandparents, according to a survey by agricultural industry association Coldiretti and polling firm Ixè.
Parties such as 5 Star could continue to win over more young voters if they are able to enact some of the pro-youth policies its leaders campaigned on. “I’m not interested in politics because nobody on either side [of the political spectrum] is doing much to help young people,” said Giada Gramanzini, a 29-year-old Italian university graduate. She hasn’t found a steady job since deciding not to renew a three-month contract as a full-time receptionist that paid her about $2.70 an hour. Last year, she moved back in with her retired parents and sent out more than 70 resumes before moving to New York last month to try her luck in another country.
In the March election she voted for a small pro-European party, in what she called a protest against the Democratic Party—the center-left party that ruled the past five years. She didn’t feel 5 Star was ready to govern.
Her father, Emilio, collects a good pension after working most of his career for the Naples municipal administration. Her mother, Daniela, began working full time at 20 and was employed by the city for several decades. She retired last year.
Giada Gramanzini with her father, Emilio. Photo: Giovanni Cipriano for The Wall Street Journal
Daniela worries about the late start Giada is getting on adult life. “How can you not be worried about your daughter if at 29 she still hasn’t found her way?” she asks.
—Nektaria Stamouli and Jeannette Neumann contributed to this article.
TRUMP TRADE WAR IS A SIDE SHOW / SEEKING ALPHA
| Etiquetas: Donald Trump, Trade Wars, U.S. Economic And Political
Trump Trade War Is A Side Show
by: Alan Longbon
- Added together and compared with total trade figures the tariff cost is marginal.
- The trade war is more show than reality and designed to impress President Trump Rust Belt support base.
- Trump woos his Rust Belt support base while selling them down the river.
The purpose of this article is to show that the impact of tariffs compared with overall trade flows is very small, but the downside for President Trump could be disproportionately larger.
Despite being very small, the trade war hogs headlines and makes President Trump look like he is making progress against foreigners who have "unfairly" stolen American manufacturing Jobs.
Putting the Trade War in Perspective.
The chart below shows trade and tariffs between America's major trading partners.
The above information, plus China, is shown in the table below in terms of imports and exports between each land and the USA.
(Source: Trading Economics dot com plus author calculations for 2017)
The above information provides some perspective on the matter.
Except for China, the impact on US allies from the trade war is relatively minor at between one and five percent of total trade between the nations.
The actions against Canada, Mexico, and the EU are more bluff and bluster than a real threat to overall trade and prosperity. Though, no doubt catastrophic for specific companies and sectors of the economy. At the macro level, the trade war impact on these countries is a pinprick.
China is an exception in that the effect of the tariffs is potentially over 15% of total trade between the countries.
Foreign countries have taken the strategy of targetting some of their tariffs on products that come from parts of the USA where midterm elections are to take place this year. The purpose of this strategy is to damage Republican election chances and to weaken President Trump. The prospect of a hung Congress and Senate is a good way of dissuading the President from pursuing his damaging trade war strategy in the first instance. If the strategy is successful and the Republican power base is diminished with no majority in either the Congress or Senate, then it makes further trade war action harder to enact in the future.
President Trump's Trade War Strategy
President Trump is on record and repeats almost daily that the purpose of his trade war is to get a fairer deal for America from its trading partners. This is in view of the fact that America generally imports more than it exports and is running a current account deficit against the rest of the world as a result.
The US current account balance is shown in the chart below.
The numbers look large; however, when one compares the result as a percentage of GDP it again becomes a sideshow.
The rest of the world is content to exchange real goods and services for American dollar credits that are generally saved at the Federal Reserve in the form of Treasury deposits. As a monetary currency sovereign, America can create as many dollar credits out of thin air as it likes in return for real goods and services. The political problem is that the Federal Government does not use its sovereign currency creation privilege to make good the current account deficit with new Federal spending on the domestic economy.
The President's aim is to reduce the current account deficit and achieve a situation where trade with each country is more balanced.
The purpose of this strategy is to garner and maintain support from the poor, white, middle-aged, working-class Rust Belt voters who put the President in office at the last election.
To pander to this support base, the President now seeks to impose trade tariffs on foreign goods. This makes for big daily headlines, and the President is seen by his support base to be doing something for them.
The President must think that the political support he gains from his actions is of greater value than the damage that the trade war causes in real terms.
Actual Impact of President Trump's Trade War on His Support Base
While the President's trade war may be popular with his Rust Belt support base, it is making their situation worse.
The term “trade war” is used to describe a situation in which one country applies tariffs to imports from another country, and the other nation retaliates with tariffs of its own.
In some cases, there exists a situation where American goods face a more burdensome tariff than they get in return. Cars and trains are an example:
(Source: Trade in goods and customs duties in TTIP)
There is a case for such irregularities to be ironed out. Make this the focus. All tariffs are a form of income tax on the consumer and should be eliminated.
But, a “trade war” is different from a military war. In a military war, the enemy shoots at you, and you shoot at the enemy.
In a trade war, the enemy shoots at you and at itself, while you shoot at the enemy and at yourself.
With every nation shooting at other nations and at its own people, how do you “win” a trade war?
You don’t. All trade wars are lost because the cost base is made higher. Each nation has higher internal nominal costs and receives less real benefits in the form of goods and services.
The hypothetical purpose of a tariff is to protect local businesses from foreign competition. But a tariff hurts the entire economy.
One example: Taxing imported cars would raise the price of all cars because domestic car manufacturers would feel less pressure to hold prices down.
The two results - both adverse - would be:
The entire American public pays more money so that the relatively fewer American car makers can receive more money. The philosophy of tariffs is for many to pay more so the few can receive more.
Tax dollars are taken from the economy and sent to the federal government, which being Monetarily Sovereign, and not needing to receive dollars, destroys them. Reducing the money supply is economically recessive.
The arguments for any tariff generally fall into two kinds of goals:
To protect vital industries from extinction. Consider, for instance, steel. Steel is a vital defense product for tanks and battleships, and if there ever were a military war, the nation with a monopoly on steel manufacturing would have a distinct advantage.
To protect domestic jobs. Every industry that is depleted by foreign competition loses jobs.
Both types of protection = protecting vital industries and job protection - are reasonable goals, but neither needs to be costly to the economy. It is not necessary, or even wise, to “shoot” our own people, in order to protect them from enemy “bullets.”
Both goals of protectionism can be accomplished by our Monetarily Sovereign government via:
Federal government purchases from domestic suppliers, even at higher than import prices.
Federal tax breaks for the selected industries
Direct federal cash subsidies to the selected companies.
A Monetarily Sovereign government has the unlimited ability to create its sovereign currency.
It can easily fund any sort of protectionism without tariffs, which has the added value of stimulating the economy instead of depressing the economy, as tariffs do.
The table above shows that US consumers will pay an additional $86.9B when they purchase imported goods with a new tariff on them. This is $86.9B that cannot be spent on other goods and services and has increased the cost of existing goods and services and is therefore inflationary.
$86.9B is almost 0.5% of GDP and might give the Federal Reserve cause to make a rate increase to stave off this inflationary effect. Then everyone pays more for credit as well.
This is where President Trump will be shooting his support base, the rest of America, and himself in the foot. $86.9B worth of financial damage per annum.
It will not take long for the poor, white, middle-aged, working-class Rust Belt voters to feel these additional costs, especially if the other nations are tailoring their reprisal tariffs to target this particular demographic.
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You are here HomeScienceCell breakthrough to bring two-dad babies
Cell breakthrough to bring two-dad babies
By Lois Rogers February 22, 2015 Science
The Sunday Times 22 February 2015
SCIENTISTS have shown for the first time that it is possible to make human egg and sperm cells using skin from two adults of the same sex.
The breakthrough raises the prospect of the first fully “manufactured” baby made in a laboratory dish from the skin cells of two adults of the same gender.
The researchers admitted that the development raised serious ethical issues, but said it would help people who had become infertile through disease and had also prompted interest from gay people.
The breakthrough, funded by the Wellcome Trust, was achieved at Cambridge University in a project with Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science.
The scientists used stem cell lines from embryos as well as from the skin of five different adults. Researchers have previously created live baby mice using engineered eggs and sperm, but until now have struggled to create a human version of these “primordial germ” or stem cells.
The stem cells can be turned into any tissue in the body. As well as producing sperm and eggs, they will ultimately provide a “repair kit” for any organ.
Ten different donor sources have been used so far and new germ-cell lines have been created from all of them. The team has compared the engineered germ cells with natural human stem cells taken from aborted human foetuses to check that the artificially created versions of the cells had identical characteristics.
Details of the technique, published in the journal Cell, show that a gene called SOX17, previously considered to be unimportant in mice, has turned out to be critical in the process of “reprogramming” human cells.
“We have succeeded in the first and most important step of this process, which is to show we can make these very early human stem cells in a dish,” said Azim Surani, professor of physiology and reproduction at Cambridge, who heads the project.
“We have also discovered that one of the things that happens in these germ cells is that epigenetic mutations, the cell mistakes that occur with age, are wiped out,” said Surani, who was involved in research that led to the birth of Louise Brown, the world’s first test-tube baby, in 1978.
“That means the cell is regenerated and reset, so while the rest of the cells in the body have aged and contain genetic mistakes, these ones don’t. We can’t say no mutations are passed on, but mostly it doesn’t happen.”
Scientists have proved stem cells from the skin of two adults of the same sex can be used to make human egg and sperm cells. IVF could then be used to create an embryo
Jacob Hanna, the specialist leading the project’s Israeli arm, said it may be possible to use the technique to create a baby in just two years. “It has already caused interest from gay groups because of the possibility of making egg and sperm cells from parents of the same sex,” he said.
“I am not in favour of creating engineered humans and the social and ethical implications . . . need to be thought through, but I am very confident it will work and will be very relevant to anyone who has lost their fertility through disease.”
The use of manufactured sperm and egg cells would require a change in the law.
The Nobel prize winner Professor Sir Martin Evans, who was the first to produce embryonic stem cells from mice, said the research gave “a new explanation of one [element] of human biology . . . but until it is applied for a practical purpose it is only a small incremental step”.
Robin Lovell-Badge, head of stem-cell biology and developmental genetics at the National Institute for Medical Research, said Surani’s team was the first to produce a reliable way of making human stem cells.
“It will be useful for the development of sperm and eggs, not just as germ cells but as mature cells. It will be important for understanding the causes of infertility and for the treatment of it,” he said.
“It is probably a long way off, but it would be a way for people who have had treatment for conditions such as childhood leukaemia, which has left them infertile, to have children of their own.”
Allan Pacey, an infertility expert and professor of andrology at Sheffield University, said he was “excited” by the idea of using skin cells to make sperm for the thousands of men who have survived childhood cancer and been left infertile. Others anticipate demand from elderly would-be parents and say the development will bring ever closer the prospect of people “designing”’ their offspring.
This issue has been at the centre of objections to mitochondrial transfer, the “three-parent baby” technology expected to be approved by the House of Lords this week.
David King, director of the Human Genetics Alert watchdog, said he was “concerned that scientists might view [germ-cell line creation] as a convenient route to creating genetically engineered babies”.
Tags:babiesfathersinfertilitystem cells
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Work at PCA
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Jason, a native of Southern New Jersey, has been with PCA since April 2006. He served as the Partner Development Associate for the New Jersey/Philadelphia region, as well as PCA's Director of Partner Development from 2008-10. Jason was also the Executive Director for the PCA-Chicago chapter from 2010 to 2015. Jason served as the National Director of Business Development until he was promoted to the Executive Vice President, Business Development & Philanthropy in 2018. In this role, Jason oversees several areas: new Chapter Expansion, National Partnerships, Corporate Partnerships, PCA’s Annual Fund, National Youth Sports Awards & Benefit and Major Gifts. Jason also manages the operations for PCA-Minnesota, PCA-Seattle, PCA-Tampa Bay, PCA-SF Bay Area, and PCA-Mid-Atlantic.
Prior to joining PCA, Jason worked in sports television production, working for the production arm of International Management Group (IMG). He also worked in the Basketball Operations Department for the New York Knicks during the 2005-06 season. Jason holds an undergraduate degree in Broadcast Journalism from Syracuse University, and a Master's degree in Sports Management from New York University. He also served as an assistant coach for the Men's Basketball Team while at NYU. His other previous coaching stops include Egg Harbor Township High School (NJ) and Perspectives Charter High School (Chicago).
Outside of PCA, Jason serves on the Syracuse University Chicago Regional Council and is an adjunct instructor in Northwestern University's Masters of Sports Administration program. Jason and his wife live in the southwest suburbs of Chicago with their twin son and daughter.
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POST TIME: 23 May, 2019 11:24:51 PM
In Cyprus, huffing and puffing in the wind
Mediterranean island turns to Brussels, not UK, for help in dealing with Turkish drilling
Mick O’Reilly,
A valve sits in a closed position near fuel storage tanks at the VTTV oil storage terminal, a joint venture of Vitol Group and MISC Bhd., in Vasilikos, Cyprus
When the leaders of the 27 members of the European Union got together in the Romanian resort town of Sibiu last week, one of the main topics up for discussion — other than Brexit — was Cyprus. The United Kingdom has an interest in Cyprus. The Mediterranean island nation used to be one of Britain’s possessions, but became independent in August 1960 and, to this day, the Brits still maintain military bases there at Atroriri and Dhekelia.
But last week, when the leaders of the EU discussed Cyprus, the UK wasn’t in the room — one of the consequences of Brexit and going your own way. So why was Cyprus on the agenda?
Well, for starters, Turkey — who has been trying to get into the EU for the past three decades — has moved an oil and gas exploration vessel into waters that, as far as Brussels is concerned, belongs to the former British territory.
Under EU law and treaties, the Turks are drilling in Cyprus’ exclusive economic area. The Turks, for their part, insist they have a right to drill there and say the legitimacy stems from the fact that they recognise a small corner, seized by Turkish paratroopers in July 1974.
Talks to try and unite the divided island have been on and off for years, in part because Turkey was to keep its military stationed in the north, and Ankara points to the British bases in the south as being one of the reasons why a quid pro quo should remain.
The issue of Turkish drilling was raised at the summit by Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades who told the other 26 leaders that it represented the biggest attack on his nation’s sovereign rights and territorial integrity in years. In short order the EU agreed, with European Council President Donald Tusk saying that the EU stands fully behind the government in Nicosia and that the bloc “expects Turkey to respect the sovereign rights of EU member states” and he promised the EU would continue to closely monitor the situation.
Back in London, the UK’s Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, added his two-pence worth. “This situation must be de-escalated and all parties show restraint,” he said, echoing Tusk’s concerns. “Hydrocarbons development should benefit all Cypriots and support a settlement.”
But it was just an echo, and goes to show how little clout Great Britain will have as a result of the Brexit referendum.
For generations of Britons, those who have served in Cyprus as part of its military, those who have bought timeshare apartments there, or who have a fuzzy and warm memory of the size and strength of the Commonwealth at the start of the 1960s, Cyprus is almost as important as Gibraltar — on paper and in perceptions.
In politics, it doesn’t matter now, because the EU is calling the shots — just as the Tusk statement showed.
“Essentially, these actions are tantamount to a new invasion of Cyprus by Turkey after the tragic events of 1974,” the Cypriot president told his counterparts, adding that Turkey was “failing to live up to its obligations” as an aspirant EU member.
The waters around Cyprus have huge potential and have attracted the likes of ExxonMobil, France’s Total and Italy’s ENI. Sizeable natural gas deposits have so far been found in three offshore areas, and the government in Nicosia says that any future gas proceeds will be shared equitably with Turkish Cypriots after a deal is reached to reunify the island.
That seems reasonable — except that there’s little chance of any such deal happening anytime soon.
Cypriot authorities say the Turkish drillship Fatihis is anchored about 68 kilometres off the southwestern Cypriot town of Paphos and escorted by support ships and a Turkish navy frigate.
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu says that Ankara was acting in accordance with international law and that a second drillship would be dispatched to the area.
With Britain sidelined at the EU level, Greece is standing firmly by its Cypriot neighbours, stressing that the issue was much more than a bilateral argument between the island nation and Turkey, but was one that went to the heart of the meaning of the EU itself. “Europe’s international geopolitical role cannot be credible if, first of all, it doesn’t ensure the adherence to international law within itself,” said Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. He wants the next gathering of the European leaders to look long and hard at the issue.
That will take place in early June, after the European parliamentary elections at the end of May. And again, Britain won’t be at the table for all of London’s huffing and puffing about how important it is in a post-Brexit Europe.
What’s really galling for the frozen-out Brits now is that is the dawning of their new reality. At the summit, German Chancellor Angel Merkel got it, noting that Anastasiades had asked the EU “to represent Cyprus’ interests when there’s contact with Turkey. We will do so”.
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Let's make a deal
Posted by M&A Advisor Info on October 28, 2008 at 11:30am
Analysts think picking the mergers and acquisitions door may be the best strategy for many companies
BY JOSEPH R. PERONE
Newhouse News Service
Stocks have been hammered as a result of the global financial crisis, and companies in various industries face an uncertain future.
"A lot of businesses were running paycheck to paycheck just like some households," said Roger Aguinaldo, chief executive and publisher of the M&A Advisor, a New York-based information publisher for middle-market mergers and acquisitions.
The solution won't be a walk in the park. But it might require a walk down the aisle.
Mergers and acquisitions might be the best chance of survival for some companies, according to experts who follow M&A activity.
"Some of the areas in distress include financials and banking, which are ripe for consolidation, as well as the auto industry and consumer products," said David Stone, head of the corporate and securities practice at Neal Gerber Eisenberg, a Chicago-based law firm.
The Star-Ledger asked several experts in the acquisition business to predict which companies most likely will face a shotgun wedding:
Troubled Chrysler is in talks with both Nissan and General Motors about a possible tie-up, according to published reports.
"There is a 50-50 chance General Motors will acquire Chrysler," said David Thomas, senior editor for Cars.com, a Chicago consumer website. "You would be getting rid of one set of executives and white-collar workers, and you would have more leverage with the United Automobile Workers."
Nissan might want to buy Chrysler's Dodge truck line, he said, because the Dodge Ram will be the basis for the next Nissan Titan full-size pickup.
There has also been speculation Ford might sell Volvo. French carmakers Renault and Peugeot or BMW of Germany would be likely buyers, Thomas said.
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Stranger Things: Season 2 in 4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray at Target Stores, plus Superman 4K reviewed
Hey guys... we’re working on a last few server upgrades here at the site today, so today’s update isn’t going to be a big one. But we do have something important we wanted to share...
First though, we’ve posted our review of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment’s new Superman: The Movie in 4K Ultra HD, which streets today. The film has quite simply never looked better than it does here in 4K, but it still looks like a film from 1978 shot with diffusion filters, so I have a feeling this is one title the longtime fans and true cinephiles are going to appreciate more than the average 4K consumer who may be just chasing pixel counts. In any case, enjoy the review.
Don’t forget, reviews of 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, and The Matrix Trilogy in 4K Ultra HD are all up here at the site now, along with our review of Batman: The Animated Series on Blu-ray. More reviews are on the way later this week. [Read on here...]
Stranger Things: Season 2 BD 4K
Target stores
Superman: The Movie 4K review
2001: A Space Odyssey 4K review
Batman: The Animated Series BD review
Warner Bros Home Entertainment
The Warner Archive Collection
The Lion King 4K
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What is UMW?
Organizationally, United Methodist Women is the successor to the home and foreign missionary societies, the ladies’ aid societies, parsonage societies, and guilds of the seven predecessor denominations now comprising The United Methodist church. It is that group of women in each congregation committed to mission. Local units relate directly to district and conference organizations of United Methodist Women and to the Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministries.
It’s PURPOSE is stated in The Book of Discipline;
“The organized unit of United Methodist Women shall be a community of women whose purpose is to know God and to experience freedom as whole persons through Jesus Christ; to develop a creative, supportive fellowship; and to expand concepts of mission through participation in the global ministries of the church.”
Any woman who commits herself to the PURPOSE and chooses to belong. She does not need to be a member of the United Methodist Church.
What is expected of a member?
Support for the program of the organization through prayers, financial contributions and acceptance of leadership responsibility.
How big is the organization?
Membership is approximately 800,000 worldwide. UMW is the largest laywoman’s organization of a major Protestant denomination in the U.S.A. Of the 24,000 local units, unit size varies from 6 to more than 600 members.
Is there a unit in every church?
The Book of Discipline says, “In every local church there shall be an organized unit of United Methodist Women”, but not all churches presently have one.
What is the scope of the program?
Programs in unit and subgroup meetings encompass mission education, spiritual growth and social action with a continuing focus on the needs of women, children and youth.
How is the organization financed?
Local units have budgets that are supported by individual pledges and gifts. Some units supplement their budgets by fund-raising activities. Each unit makes a Pledge to Mission that is sent to the district treaurer, and by her to the conference treasurer and then to the Women’s Division for worldwide ministies with women, children and youth. Each unit determines it’s budget and the amount of it’s Pledge to Mission , although conferences and districts may set goals for them. That Pledge and other undesignated money sent to the Women’s Division is sent to the national body & budgeted for ministries in the US and all around the world. International Ministries partners with approximately 20 other organizations in nearly 80 countries.
What does UMW here at 1st UMCBV do?
Our unit consists of 5 circles listed below. We have 4 combined meetings each year. Our funds are generated through 3 main projects each year: The “Bakeless” Bake Sale in the Spring, the Rummage Sale each August and the annual Bazaar in October. Along with the primary goal of missions, we also support our local church in a variety of ways. Some of the local missions we support are: Children’s Advocacy Center, Havenwood, Open Avenues, Restoration Village, Single ParentScholarship, Village House, NWA Women’s Shelter and many more.
Where can I find more information on the Web?
Go to: unitedmethodistwomen.org, “About Us”, FAQ to find addresses for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr & Pinterest.
Call the church office, 855-1158 or talk to any UMW member so we can find a circle of sisters to meet your needs, abilities & interests
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Home Constitutional Law
Butt Artist’s Case Against Former Employer Will Proceed
Stan Murmer with one of his creations (Image: Scott Elmquist, Richmond Style Weekly)
“Butt Artist Trial is Set” was the actual headline of the article at the link below, which informs us that a motion to dismiss Stan Murmer’s lawsuit against his former employer was denied on February 15. Murmer, you may recall, is the teacher who was fired when his school district learned that, in his spare time, Murmer is an artist who paints things with his butt.
According to Murmer’s complaint, the district had been aware of his technique since 2004, but the paint hit the fan in 2007 when the students learned about it. Murmer had at some point appeared on a TV show to demonstrate his art, and a clip from that show later made its way to YouTube. (Here’s a link to the video in question.)
Murmer eventually sued the district, claiming he was wrongfully terminated because what he did with his business on his own time was his business, and constitutionally protected business at that. (The ACLU is representing Murmer for free.) In the complaint, which is available from the ACLU via Murmer’s own website, www.buttprintart.com, Murmer concedes that uses his “posterior” to paint, but describes his art as building on established traditions within post-modernism:
17. As the artist Stan Murmur, Plaintiff developed the technique of incorporating his own body and the bodies of models as “brushes” or “stamps” in the process of painting, continuing, combining and developing the traditions of, for example, tattoo art (where the human body is used as canvas), and Anthropometry of the post-modern French Artist Yves Klein (1928-1962), who used female bodies as “living brushes” in the process of creating art.
18. Plaintiff has thus created paintings by using his posterior and other body parts as a stamp with which to imprint paint onto a canvas.
19. With this technique, which includes sitting in paint and then pressing his buttocks onto a canvas, Plaintiff has created paintings which range from depicting stylized flowers to portraiture and patterns.
20. These seemingly simple paintings thus have a surprise in store for the viewer: only gradually, if at all, comes the realization that the image has been created with monotypes of the human body, a realization intended to reverberate in the viewer, setting in motion a process of self-discovery of one’s own personality traits, oscillation between watching a flower (or portrait or pattern) and one’s preconceived bias of the human body. The artist’s hope is that the viewer thus discovers his individual personality characteristics through visual response – as well as his personal views on
the concept and the purpose of art.
Once you’re finished oscillating, why not contact Mr. Murmer to commission some work? If you’ve always wanted to have your portrait painted by someone using his ass, now’s your chance.
Last Friday (Feb. 15), Judge Robert Payne heard a motion by the school district to dismiss the teacher/artist’s case, and after about an hour of oral argument he denied the motion. Trial is set for March 11.
Hopefully, Murmer will act as his own sketch artist during the trial.
Link: NBC12 (Virginia)
Link: Chesterfield County (VA) Public Schools
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“Curse You” — The Musical!
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Qualifying for commissions requires more volume than most other companies, this keeps new distributors in the red for a longer period of time. In order to qualify for a paycheck a rep must do 100PV per month. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if the average point wasn’t somewhere around $3.00. This means new distributors have to move $300.00 a month in volume to get paid. Normally, most other companies come in somewhere around $1.10 to $1.50 per point, meaning the new rep would only need to move $110.00 to $150.00 or so per month to qualify.
The successful ones? You mean those that are already on the top of the pyramid? 99% of IBOs lose money. The average income is only around $150 a month, IF that, and I believe I'm overstating. I almost fell for this trap back in the early spring. Buying almost $300 of overpriced stuff just for $9 back...? I don't think so! That's not a profit or even savings. That's a complete loss
I love Amway. It's been around for along time. The products are good quality and they have great customer service. The products are guaranteed, if you have any problems you send them back and they will get you another one. No questions asked. However, I've had problems a few times getting a hold of someone in their customer service but they have a wonderful selection of products from home to beauty to bath and nutrition. I've bought just about everything and haven't ever had any issues with any of their things.
USA Today and ESPN also publish a top 25 college baseball poll for NCAA Division I baseball, known as the USA Today/ESPN Top 25 coaches' baseball poll. The poll began in 1992.[8] The poll appears in the preseason, then begins weekly after week 2 of the season through the end of conference tournaments. A final poll is released after the conclusion of the College World Series.
Amway's eSpring water filter was introduced in 2000. According to Amway, it was the first system to combine a carbon block filter and ultraviolet light with electronic-monitoring technology in the filter cartridge and it became the first home system to achieve certification for ANSI/NSF Standards 42, 53, and 55.[53][54] According to Amway, eSpring was the first water treatment system to receive certification for all fifteen NSF/ANSI 401 contaminants which include pharmaceuticals, pesticides and herbicides.[53][55] The company also claims that, in addition to these 15 contaminants, eSpring is certified for more than 145 potential contaminants, including lead and mercury.[53]
Business owners receive education materials and free online training available 24/7 on mobile devices and in multiple languages. Educ and training topics include product information, how to sell them, how to earn income, how to grow a business, and how to be a leader. In addition, Amway offers business tools, including a personalized, mobile-friendly website, apps and customer service support (from real people, in six languages). Compared to the cost of starting almost any other kind of business, the cost to become an Amway IBO is minimal and low-risk.
One Republican who caught the DeVos family’s ire was Paul Muxlow, a realtor and former educator elected to the state house in 2010, representing a mostly rural district in southeast Michigan. Muxlow was a dependable conservative, but disliked the idea of eliminating the cap on the number of charter schools. While he was fine with charter schools in underserved communities, he said he couldn’t support them in rural areas—“It would kill those districts,” he explained to the Detroit Free Press in 2014. When the cap elimination came before the state Legislature in 2011, it passed with Muxlow voting against it. The following year, when he ran for reelection, he faced a blitz of attacks from GLEP, which didn’t even need his district, but spent just under $185,000 to take him out in the primary. Muxlow won by just 132 votes.
They encourage new participants to start eating healthy and work-out — big surprise, taking care of yourself feels good — however, those who have been in a funk for a long time might attribute their new health and self-esteem boost to Amway rather than positive diet and lifestyle changes. Then they have recruits set goals, make vision boards, and sell them on the dream that they’ll “be retired in 2 to 5 years”. Amway is a pyramid scheme, but it’s masked under the real positive live changes subscribers make.
MLMs, which thrive in rural communities like Owosso, on military bases, and in countless Facebook groups, aren’t often targeted in mainstream reporting; when they are, Marie says, “It’s from the viewpoint of an old white guy activist investor on Wall Street. That doesn’t tell me anything.” Though she hopes The Dream might shine a light for some people on what a raw deal MLMs can be, Marie also sees endless juicy stories. “It’s entertaining and weird, this weird world that you see in your Facebook feed, and on anti-MLM Reddit channels where everyone’s gossiping about their cousins. I wanted to like, go inside and be in that industry. . . . I want to know why my cousin Stephanie is doing this every day on Instagram, and is she making any money or not? Or what are her friends saying?”
Amway has been in business for more than fifty years, and they seem to pay to their IBOs according to their compensation plan. Besides, they appear to have a positive online reputation. The customers are amazed with their customer service that involves pleasant and polite people who are always there to resolve any problem you might have. It is extremely easy to sign up and make an order. This professional and big American company offers a huge selection of useful products and a lot of benefits. The purchases usually arrive very fast and feature high quality. These include products from nutrition to bath, beauty and home.
The prospect is alarming enough that Charles Paul Conn, in Promises to Keep, works hard to prove it’ll never happen. “The reality,” he tells us, “is entirely different from what might be predicted by a statistician with a slide rule.” He points to the millions of likely untapped prospects—youths, retirees, downsized professionals, foreigners—although he fails to acknowledge that recruiting them would only make the Business hungrier. More plausibly, he adds that Amway is a small part of the population and will stay that way. The Business’s high dropout rate, he explains, though “often cited as a negative factor, actually serves to keep the pool of potential distributors large.” In other words, Amway’s salvation is its high rate of failure.
When it came to designing the architecture required for its IoT platform, Amway used AWS Professional Services to help it create a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline to automate delivery of platform software updates. The pipeline picks up source code changes from a repository, builds and packages the application, and then pushes the new update through a series of stages, running integration tests to ensure all features are intact and backward-compatible in each stage.
All user reviews posted on Best Company are subject to screening and approval. We reserve the right to approve or deny any review posted to this site in accordance with our Review Guidelines. Best Company never suppresses user reviews—unless they are being investigated for authenticity, or if they violate our review guidelines. We encourage anyone who suspects a user review to be fraudulent or intentionally inaccurate to please notify us here.
I am lucky to attend many concerts and events at different venues, at this show I felt ashamed on how Orlando is represented through service and offerings at the Amway Center. Your guests deserve better! We were given subpar products and service at more than premium pricing. Your staff was overwhelmed. Your locations understaffed and not properly stocked. Was the concert a surprise to your purchasing team and beverage managers?
In 2013 IBOs, people who qualified to be Business Consultants in the UK earned an average annual income of GBP21,048. This falls short ofthe UK average annual income of GBP26,500. It is however substantially better than those Amway IBOs who were not business consultants, as their average income for 2013 was less than GBP1,300 .We are not surprised, Amway has not made the 2013 Income Disclosure Statement publicly available on their website. However we found a copy for you.
When I was ten, my parents bought a house for $200,000. My dad had been running his advertising agency out of the spare bedroom of our house on Twelfth Avenue, and when he hired his third employee, he set up a desk in my bedroom for the graphic artist to work at while I was at school. Then a neighbor called the city about all the cars parked on the street, and my parents cracked a plan to move into a bigger house and bring the agency into the new house with us. By that time, though, business had gone gangbusters, so it turned out that moving the company into the new house wasn’t necessary, after all – my dad rented an office, instead. The new house was entirely ours.
The huge settlement and payments to victims follows other actions againt Amway. Government regulators in England several years ago sought to close down Amway for defrauding consumers in that country. Criminal charges have also been brought in one state in India against Amway. And Amway is also being sued for deception and fraud in Canada by Canadian consumers.
I am an IBO for the second time in my life. I tried when I was 20 and in the Air Force. Gonna make it rich in a year. Pffft. Naw. Can you get rich in Amway? Absolutely? Will you? Probably not. Same as any business you really have to work hard and put in a lot of time and capital in the beginning with little to no return. But you stick with it, don't quit before the miracle happens. This time around, I just want to work the business, maybe grow it a little, and make enough money to maybe get my wife home to raise our daughter and home school her full time. So, hey, if I can get it to $3000 a month....great. If not.....great. I love the products anyway and if some people want to come with me and maybe make a few bucks or just enjoy some good products, great. I'm happy with it and other people's opinions of me or my Amway business are none of my business. No need to be defensive....Amway's reputation speaks for itself.
And the victims of MLMs—that is, the people who pay high buy-in fees but never recoup their investment—are usually women. The second episode of The Dream is called “Women’s Work,” and in it Marie returns to her hometown of Owosso, Michigan, where childhood friends and women in her family recall how Tupperware, makeup, and jewelry parties were an essential part of the town’s social fabric. “They say you can work from home, you can pick up your kids from school, you’ll never miss a soccer game,” Marie said of the promises MLMs make to women. “You can be the stereotypical mom, American mom, and make a living. Except that you can’t. You now have women doing all the emotional labor of mothering, and unpaid labor of running a household, and you have them working nights and weekends to pay for their cell phone. It’s like being in jail.”
Though they aren’t quite as large or wealthy as the DeVoses, the Prince family—even further west, in Holland, Michigan—shares one big trait in common with their in-laws: the idea that patriotism and politics are inseparable from Christianity. Elsa Prince Broekhuizen, Betsy’s mother, donated $75,000 to the successful 2004 ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage in Michigan; four years later, she gave $450,000 to an identical initiative in California. Betsy’s brother, Erik Prince, founded Blackwater, the military contractor that gained notoriety in 2007, when its employees fired into a crowd of Iraqi civilians, killing 17. (In 2009, two former Blackwater employees alleged in federal court that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader.”)
In nutrition, a business line representing nearly half of their sales, safety and trust are key issues. “In Asian countries,” Dr. Calvert explained, ‘Made in the USA’ carries cachet because of the safety and traceability of the U.S. food system.” Clearly offshoring food bar production would be the wrong choice. “Similarly, consumers want beauty products from the U.S., France, Japan, or Korea, not from developing nations.”
The compensation plan is called a “stairstep breakaway,” which requires the business rep to effectively rebuild a leg once it has reached what’s called Platinum status (7500 points). Basically, legs break off once they qualify and the commissions turn into 4% royalties instead of commissioned payouts of ~30%. I asked a former Amway emerald once what it was like having his first leg break-off and his reply was: “it’s awful, you really know how to ask painful questions don’t you.” He went on to explain his commissions dropped by at least 80% when they turned into “royalties.” It should be noted that the royalties technically disappear if the volume in the leg drops below 7500 points, so it’s not really a “permanent” royalty unless you maintain your volume. It is in essence a “punishing” compensation plan that forces you to rebuild a leg once it reaches this trigger volume, effectively causing you to “not” want others to pass you up.
One day, Sherri asked me to attend a meeting at which a “millionaire from the West Coast” was to talk about “business trends of the nineties.” I was not entirely caught by surprise—Sherri had dropped hints about starting her own “distribution business” at about the time that Amway Dish Drops appeared in the E2020 kitchen—and although she didn’t tell me the millionaire was from Amway, it wasn’t difficult to guess which version of the gospel of wealth he’d be preaching. I jumped at the chance to meet this mysterious man of money, although from totally insincere motives—the old anthro major in me was hankering for a bona fide subculture to gawk at.
The centerpiece of any Rally is the life-story told by the guest of honor, emphasizing the depths of his pre-Amway rut and his resurrection through The Business. That evening’s featured guest, Executive Diamond Bill Hawkins, however, was too arrogant even to feign the requisite humility in his testimonial. He had been great all his life: a talented musician in one of Minneapolis’s best bands, a brilliant school teacher, a voracious reader, a charming companion with hundreds of loyal friends, and an unbelievably prodigious drinker of beer (about which he was now “ashamed”). When he saw The Plan and realized that he was much smarter than the guy showing it, he knew that his ship had finally come in: Here, at last, was something that would adequately reward his greatness[16].
Multi-level market (MLM) or network marketing is an American institution. Companies like Amway, Tupperware, Herbalife, Avon, Mary Kay and The Pampered Chef support huge networks of distributors and recruits who sell every type of product from dietary supplements to kitchenware to beauty products. Salespeople are called independent business owners (IBO) and generally work from their homes.
I love this company. I love all the stories I hear how people succeeded in their lives. It is low cost to get in. It is only $ 50 yearly fee just to stay active. You are not abligated to buy every month if you dont' want to. this company has the best compansation plan especially when you grow in this business, you get increadible surprise reward checks and more.
The Amway Center is a sports and entertainment venue in Orlando, Florida, located in the Downtown area of the city. It is part of Downtown Orlando Master Plan 3: a plan that also involves improvements to Camping World Stadium and the completion of the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.[4] The arena is home to the Orlando Magic of the NBA, the Orlando Solar Bears of the ECHL,[5] and hosted the 2012 NBA All-Star Game, plus the 2015 ECHL All-Star Game.
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Luční bouda (1.410 m a.s.l.) is the highest mountain hotel and brewery in Central Europe.
History Accommodation Gastronomy Brewery Wellness Adventure Corporate events Contact
Luční bouda History
Meadow Chalet History
The Meadow Chalet is not only the largest and oldest mountain hut in the Giant Mountains, but also has a restaurant in the highest altitude 1410 m above sea level.
Meadow Chalet
Wiesenbaude, The Old Czech-, White or The Renner old shed, with all these names was the oldest Giant Mountain Chalet – the Meadow Chalet – called.
It lies at the crossroads of several ancient routes in the height of 1410 m above sea level, near the border with Poland, in the middle of the White meadow and first of all near the most famous Silesian path. The Silesian path was since the late 15th century an important link between emerging mining centers on both sides of the mountains. It was often used by tourists during their trips around the Giant Mountains and especially for trips on the Sněžka. There used to be a a bell attached at the Entrance to the Meadow chalet to wake the travelers, so that they wouldn’t miss the unique sunrise on Sněžka. After the construction of the cableway to our highest mountain emerged a diversion for tourists.
The origins of the Meadow Chalet
Opinions on the origins of the Meadow Chalet vary. According to legend, whose roots date back to the border disputes about Sedmidolí before the Thirty Years' War, the Chalet was established by one of the Count's two sons, who because of an argument over inheritance hid before his stronger brother. He waited in a small shelter of branches sick and weak for death. His older brother found him like that, took pity on him and took him to the safety. As a monument to reconciliation, he built a wooden shed, which should further serve as a resting place for travelers. Another version states that the lodge was founded by a young married couple, as their love nest.
But these are just rumors. During reconstruction in 1869 was discovered a carved mill stone with a craved date 1623, and thus the previously considered year of establishment 1625 moved another few years back. According to all current evidence, the Meadow Chalet had to be in this place since the second half of 16 century.
Meadow Chalet since its establishment until 1938
The Meadow Chalet was an important center of economy with 100 hectares of grassland and meadows, with several dozen cattle and goats. During the summer, the herd was grazing on the surrounding Devil and White Plains along with cattle from Renner and Scharf’s Chalet. On the broad plains was also harvested hay, on which, stored in the attic, tourists slept. The Chalet was also famous for their agricultural products, especially the mountain herb cheese.
During its 400 years of history, the Meadow Chalet has undergone many changes. Since its establishment until 1857, it has been owned by the famous Renner family, who were hereditary mayors of the Vrchlabí domain.
The Chalet was rebuilt after the fire in 1625, in 1809 the so-called "summer house” was built in addition. From his father in law, Vaclav Hollmann took over the lodge in 1857, and thanks to him, the Chalet expanded for the needs of tourism. Since 1868, the Meadow Chalet used the flow of the White River Elbe, to drive the water wheel, that provided energy for a variety of home appliances, the churn and cradle. In 1876 the Chalet came to the possession of Christopher Haering, a conservationist, who had operated a meteorological observation. In the fifties of the 19th century came out a commemorative book for naturalists observation records, relying on the Meadow Chalet, published by a botanist Josefina Kablíková. The Meadow Chalet has not only become a meeting place of various scientists but she was visited by a number of artists and writers, such as Karel Hynek Macha, Vítězslav Hálek, Guido Manes and others.
Since 1886 until 1945 it was owned by brothers Bönsch. They also bought Scharf’s Chalet, where the cattle were kept and a bakery was established.
In 1914, the Meadow Chalet was rebuilt into the largest Chalet in the Giant Mounatin with 100 rooms.
The Meadow Chalet during the Second World War
2nd October 1938, after the Munich Agreement, during the retreat of the Czechoslovak army from the frontiers, the Chalet burned down. According to Czech, the German troops, which occupied the chalet, were to blame. On the other side, the Germans claimed that the Chalet burned down during the retreat of the Czech troops from the Czech border. This version has been recognized as official and the owners Wiley and Wincenzz Bönsch received 1.56 million Reichsmarks (13 million Czech crowns) as a compensation. The strategic location of Meadow Chalet decided the immediate renovation and restoration. The construction project was designed by the famous architect Ludwig Stigler, a graduate engineer from Berlin. All plans are stored in the Regional Archives in Vrchlabí.
Back in 1938 bigger reparations were made, the central heating was installed, the roof was repaired and a kitchen was built. Within a short time, carpenters built an emergency hostel accommodation for staff and workers. Because German workers were drafted to fight, several dozen of French and Russian workers were deployed. Czech workers also worked here.
The building was a pride of the German Empire and its completion in 1940 at Easter was celebrated throughout the region. Even the Nazi functionary Konrad Henlein came to see the building for himself.
The chalet was luxuriously equipped for German tourists and provided them with excellent facilities. Besides the well-equipped rooms, there was a reading room, a playroom, a ski repair, laundry, drying room - which is still well preserved in the Chalet.
A great emphasis was placed on the economic wing. There were stables for cattle, a slaughter room, smokehouse, blacksmith shop, refrigerator and more.
Until the end of the war, it was used as a training center of the Wehrmacht Army, training courses for the German Air Force took place here and the Hitler Youth children were accommodated here. The end of the war and the liberation of the Czechoslovak troops on 15 May 1945 marked the end of this era.
Meadow Chalet after 1945
After the confiscation of German property after the Second World War, the Meadow Chalet was managed by different organizations; one of them was the former CSTV. During this time, hundreds of children came here on school holidays or ski courses. In 1991, the Chalet became a property of the Czech Hiking Club, which organized their events here. The saddest years in the modern history of the Meadow Chalet were 2002-03, when it was owned by a private businessman and the situation has come to such an extent that the Chalet had to close for two years. Winter, time and lack of care caused that the Meadow Chalet was in very poor condition.
In 2004 bought the quite devastated Chalet the AEZZ company, and since then they are trying to return this beautiful Chalet its former glow and make it again available to the lovers and admirers of the mountains. It continues the long glory and tradition renews the former glow according to the current ecological criteria. Ecological heating, domestic production of bread in the traditional way, that all fulfils the owners ideas of life in a rare environment, such as the Meadow Chalet and its surroundings.
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6:42 15.1°C
Thursday 12°C 0.6m/s
Friday 13°C 2.1m/s
Saturday 17°C 3.2m/s
Luční bouda All rights reserved
Contact Phone: +420 733 740 888
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Home / Lal Kitab
What is Lal kitab?
Lal Kitab is a popular astrology system with stress on Karmic debts and planetary placements. While Lal Kitab is based on Vedic Jyotish it has enough differences to make it a separate system from Vedic Jyotish.
The most interesting feature of Lal kitab is its remedies. Its unique and easy to do remedies lessen the Karmic burden and enhance the fortune of the individual says Lalkitab.
Some of the contents is below as per Wikipedia about Lal Kitab
Lal Kitab (Hindi: लाल किताब, Urdu: لالکتاب, literally Red Book) is a set of five Urdu language books on Hindu astrology and palmistry, written in the 19th century, based on the Samudrika Shastra.
Poetic verses with philosophy and hidden nuances form the core farmanns or upaya (remedy recommended) of the book. It is believed to have Persian origins and has led to field of remedial astrology known as Lal Kitab remedies, that is simple remedies for various planetary afflictions in the horoscope or birth chart, which have over the years become part of the folk traditions of the region, that includes North Indiaand Pakistan.[
The names of the five set of books authored by Pt. Roop Chand Joshi, together called as Lal Kitab with their years of publication, are as follows. A copy of first book published in 1939 is preserved in Lahore Museum. :-
Lal Kitab Ke Farman (The Edicts of Lal Kitab), 1939, 383 pages
Lal Kitab Ke Arman (Ilm Samudrik Kee Lal Kitab Ke Armaan), (The “Aspirations” of Lal Kitab), 1940, 280 pages
Gutka (Ilm Samudrik Kee Lal Kitab) (Third Part), 1941, 428 pages
Lal Kitab Ke Farman (Lal Kitab – Tarmeem Shuda), 1942, 384 pages
Ilm-e Samudrik ki buniyad par ki Lalkitab (Lal Kitab), 1952, 1173 pages
For the first time in the history of astrology, Lal Kitab introduced a new style of horoscope analysis with quick and affordable remedies, which were devoid of remedies like pooja and wearing of gemstones, generally recommended by other branches of Vedic astrology and Jyotisha.
In present days, there are many followers of Lal Kitab. In India and abroad one can find many practitioners of Lal Kitab, prescribing remedies as per farmanns of these books. There are many people, who claim to have benefited from the remedies of these books. The mass followers of Lal Kitab are increasing everyday and this science has become very popular in present days throughout different parts of world. The book has been popular in both Indian and Pakistan, many of its astrological remedies upaya or farmans have become part of every day culture in the subcontinent, like throwing coins into a river while passing over it, feeding grass to cow, bread to a dog and offering meals to unmarried girls OR wearing particular Gemstones etc.
Further info one can reach out to http://www.lalqitab.com/
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Bluewings, Steelers face off in FA Cup tonight
From left: Pohang Steelers celebrate after scoring a goal against Jeju United on April 7. Suwon Samsung Bluewings celebrate after scoring a goal against Gangwon FC on April 7. [K LEAGUE]
Two clubs tied for the most championships at the Korea Football Association (FA) Cup will square off in the round of 32 this week, with only one of them getting a chance to pad its resume.
Suwon Samsung Bluewings and Pohang Steelers, both of the top-flight K League 1, will meet at 7:30 p.m. today at Suwon World Cup Stadium in Suwon, 28 miles south of Seoul.
Suwon and Pohang have each won four FA Cups, more than any other team. This is the 24th edition of the national tournament open to professional and amateur clubs.
Suwon’s last title came in 2016, while Pohang haven’t won since 2013. They each have three runner-up finishes, too.
This will be their fourth meeting at the FA Cup. They’re dead even in the three previous meetings with one win, one draw and one loss - the lone draw being a penalty shootout victory by Pohang in the inaugural FA Cup final in 1996.
This will be the earliest stage of the FA Cup that they’re playing each other. They have previously met in the final twice and in the quarterfinals once.
It’s also their first showdown of 2019. Their first K League 1 clash won’t be until April 26.
Suwon have been playing better of late. After dropping the first three matches of the season, they have gone undefeated in the four ensuing contests, with two wins and two draws. They’re currently in eighth place at 2-2-3 (wins-draws-losses).
Pohang lost two straight matches out of the gate before getting their first W in match No. 3. They have had one win, one draw and two losses since for a 2-1-4 mark for the season, which puts them in ninth place.
In another K League 1 clash in the FA Cup, Gangwon FC will host FC Seoul in the round of 32 in Chuncheon Songam Sports Town in Chuncheon, Gangwon.
The two met at the very venue just last Sunday in a controversial K League 1 match. Seoul prevailed 2-1, with a video assistant referee (VAR) review coming into play on both of their goals.
Aleksandar Pesic’s first goal in the 24th minute appeared to be wiped out on an offside call, but the initial ruling was overturned in a video review. FC Seoul was awarded a penalty in the 55th minute after forward Cho Young-wook was brought down in the box. The call stood after a video review, and Pesic converted his spot kick to make it 2-1 for Seoul.
Elsewhere in the round of 32, defending FA Cup champions Daegu FC will face Suwon FC from the second-tier K League 2.
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Podcast in Your Inbox
Episode 1: Jason Romano
https://cdn.subsplash.com/audios/6RG7NW/c747c6ab-dc50-424e-b859-214ee7272f22/audio.m4a
This month’s podcast features the host of the Sports Spectrum Podcast, Jason Romano.
Jason Romano was born in Ravena, New York and graduated from the State University of New York in 1997. He began his professional career working for ESPN in Bristol Connecticut in the year of 2000. During his time there, he served as a senior manager and producer, working on television and radio programs such as SportsCenter, Monday Night Football, Sunday NFL Countdown, College Gameday, and Mike and Mike in the Morning. He has worked alongside some of the finest radio and television personalities that the sports world offers.
In February of 2017, Jason had the opportunity to step out in faith and become the host and producer of the Sports Spectrum Podcast. He is also in the process of releasing a brand new book that is due to be released in 2017.
In this episode, Mike Linch talks with Jason Romano about not only his career at ESPN, but how his faith has impacted his personal and professional journey.
Interview Length: 33:14
Links mentioned in the episode:
Jason’s last day on Mike and Mike in the Morning
Jason Romano’s Twitter
Sports Spectrum Podcast
Get to know Jason Romano
Categories: Linch with a Leader Podcast
← Episode 2: Vince Dooley
Mike Linch © 2017
Get the latest Podcast episode delivered by email.
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Chief Editor:
Andrij Olijnyk– Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine;
Executive Editor:
Boris Nezamay – PhD, Assoc. Prof., Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine;
1. Andriy Bandura - Dr. Sc. (Phisics and Mathematics), Assoc. Prof., Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine;
2. Artur Voronych - PhD, Assoc. Prof., Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine;
3. Mukhailo Gorbiychuk - Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine;
4. Roman Dzhala – Dr. Sc. (Tech.), senior scientific woker, Karpenko Physico-Mechanical Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Lviv, Ukraine;
5. Volodymyr Drevetskyi - Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., The National University of Water and Environmental Engineering, Rivne, Ukraine;
6. Dmytro Domin - Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., Technological Center, Private Enterprise, Kharkiv, Ukraine;
7. Leonid Zamichovskyi – Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Ivano-Frankivsk;
8. Oleg Karpash – Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Ivano-Frankivsk;
9. Nataliya Kosach – Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., Kharkov machine-building plant “FED”, Kharkov, Ukraine;
10. Yurii Kuchirka – PhD, Assoc. Prof., Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Ivano-Frankivsk;
11. Petro Legnyuk – PhD, Assoc. Prof., Vinnica national technical university, Vinnica, Ukraine;
12. Valerii Lopatin – Dr. Sc. (Tech.), senior scientific woker, Institute of Geotehnical Mechanics named by N. Poljakov of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Dnipro, Ukraine;
13. Oleksandr Mykhalov - Dr. Sc. (Tech.), senior scientific woker, Dnipro Polytechnic National Technical University, Dnipro, Ukraine;
14. Oleh Nykyforchyn – Dr. Sc. (Phisics and Mathematics), Assoc. Prof., Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, Ivano-Frankivs, Ukraine;
15. Serhij Osadchy – Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., Central Ukrainian National Technical University, Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine;
16. Mykola Pasyeka - PhD, Assoc. Prof., Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Ivano-Frankivsk;
17. Anna Rudakova- Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., Kherson National Technical Universit, Kherson, Ukraine;
18. Georgiy Sementsov – Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine;
19. Orest Seredyuk – Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine;
20. Alexander Sytnik - Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., Cherkasy State Technological University, Cherkasy, Ukraine;
21. Hryhorii Suchkov - Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., The National Technical University "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute", Kharkiv, Ukraine;
22. Valentyn Uchanin – Dr. Sc. (Tech.), senior scientific woker, Karpenko Physico-Mechanical Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Lviv, Ukraine;
23. Vasyl Sheketa – Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof., Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukkraine;
24. Vasyl Yatsuk – Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Prof. Lviv Polytechnic National University, Lviv, Ukraine;
25. Rzasa Mаriusz – PhD eng, professor, Opole University of Technology, Opole, Poland;
26. Wojcik Waldemar – DrSc, professor. Institute of Electronics and Informational Technologies Lublin Politechnics, Lublin, Poland;
27. Gerhard Mook – Dr hab. eng., professor, Universitat Magdeburg, Germany.
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Andre L. Smith is currently a visiting associate professor at the Howard University School of Law, where he also received his J.D. in 2000. Professor Smith obtained his LL.M in taxation from the Georgetown University Law Center. He is the author of numerous law review articles and book chapters on tax law, administrative law, hiphop and critical race theory. Professor Smith recently published Tax Law and Racial Economic Justice: Black Tax (Lexington Books, 2015), in which he presents myriad ways in which taxes and tax policy relate to racial subordination.
His scholarship is among those who use law and economics constructs to explore racial subordination, including the conception of racism in legal and social dynamics as asymmetrical market imperfections. His forthcoming works include Afrolantican Jurisprudence, Recent Cases of Regressive and Racially Disparate Taxation, and Deferential Review of the US Tax Court: The Chevron Doctrine.
Contracts and Federal Taxation
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Iron Hearted Violet (Paperback)
By Kelly Barnhill, Iacopo Bruno (Illustrator)
(site Events)
Compact Disc (January 15th, 2013): $29.68
Hardcover (October 9th, 2012): $16.99
Violet is not like other princesses. She’s a plain child with asymmetrical features, unruly hair, and a rough-around-the-edges personality to match. While exploring the ever-changing castle, she and her only friend, Demetrius, come across a forbidden story in a hidden library and are exposed to the insidious whispering of the Nybbas — an old god who has been imprisoned in their world. And when Violet’s life starts to fall apart around her, she uses the Nybbas’s power to transform herself, believing herself to blame for the kingdom’s recent tragedies for lacking the beauty of a “real princess.” But she soon discovers that beauty is not all it’s cracked up to be, and Violet devotes herself to ending the Nybbas’s scheming before the kingdom tears itself apart. Told from the perspective of the court storyteller, the narration pops with personality and poetry while still being accessible for a younger audience. Kelly Barnhill has crafted a fine fairytale that turns tropes on their head, with important lessons about the perils of unrealistic beauty standards and the power of love.
— Darcy
Newbery Medal winner Kelly Barnhill spins a wondrously different kind of fairy-tale: In most fairy tales, princesses are beautiful, dragons are terrifying, and stories are harmless. But this isn't most fairy tales...
Princess Violet is plain, reckless, and quite possibly too clever for her own good. Particularly when it comes to telling stories. One day she and her best friend, Demetrius, stumble upon a hidden room and find a peculiar book. A forbidden book. It tells a story of an evil being, called the Nybbas, imprisoned in their world. The story cannot be true--not really. But then the whispers start. Violet and Demetrius, along with an ancient, scarred dragon-the last dragon in existence, in fact-may hold the key to the Nybbas's triumph or its demise. It all depends on how they tell the story. After all, stories make their own rules.
Iron Hearted Violet is a story about the power of stories, our belief in them, and how one enchanted tale changed the course of an entire kingdom.
A 2012 Andre Norton Award Finalist
A Parents' Choice Gold Award Winner
Kelly Barnhill is a poet and a writer. The Mostly True Story of Jack, her debut novel, received four starred reviews. Kelly lives in Minnesota with her husband and three children.
"Barnhill inverts common fairy-tale notions...[and creates] the most inventive rendition of architecture since J.K. Rowling conjured Hogwarts....Poetic."—The New York Times Book Review
"A splendid fantasy...layered and complex, Barnhill's story brings a modern feel to age-old fairy tale tropes."—Publishers Weekly
"Storytelling plays a key role in the book, intriguingly blurring the line between what is real and what is imaginary....Triumphant."—The Horn Book
"Wonderful read-aloud potential...with a likable hero and heroine, a well-paced plot, and a daunting villain."—Booklist
"[Violet] is a princess for our century."—VOYA
Publication Date: March 18th, 2014
Maximum Age: 12
Minimum Grade Level: 3
Juvenile Fiction / Fairy Tales & Folklore
Juvenile Fiction / Fantasy & Magic
Compact Disc (November 2012): $65.99
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A272664 (001)(001)(001)(10)*. 1
0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0 (list; graph; refs; listen; history; text; internal format)
Three copies of 001 followed by infinitely many copies of 10.
Lexicographically least binary sequence containing no subblock of the form S S reverse(S).
Colin Barker, Table of n, a(n) for n = 0..1000
Jeffery Shallit, Experimental Combinatorics on Words Using the Walnut Prover, Talk Presented at Computational Discovery in Mathematics (ACMES 2), University of Western Ontario, May 12 2016
Index entries for linear recurrences with constant coefficients, signature (0,1).
From Colin Barker, May 16 2016: (Start)
a(n) = (1-(-1)^n)/2 for n>8.
a(n) = a(n-2) for n>10.
G.f.: x^2*(1+x^3-x^4)*(1-x^2+x^4) / ((1-x)*(1+x)).
(PARI) concat(vector(2), Vec(x^2*(1+x^3-x^4)*(1-x^2+x^4)/((1-x)*(1+x)) + O(x^50))) \\ Colin Barker, May 16 2016
nonn,easy
N. J. A. Sloane, May 15 2016
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Tag Archives: man made global warming
Climate Change is Natural: 100 Reasons why
HERE are the 100 reasons, released in a dossier issued by the European Foundation, why climate change is natural and not man-made:
1) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.
2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.
3) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.
4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.
5) Throughout the Earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than ten times as high.
6) Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time.
7) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.
8) The IPCC theory is driven by just 60 scientists and favourable reviewers not the 4,000 usually cited.
9) Leaked e-mails from British climate scientists – in a scandal known as “Climate-gate” – suggest that that has been manipulated to exaggerate global warming
10) A large body of scientific research suggests that the sun is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.
11) Politicians and activists claim rising sea levels are a direct cause of global warming but sea levels rates have been increasing steadily since the last ice age 10,000 ago
12) Philip Stott, Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London says climate change is too complicated to be caused by just one factor, whether CO2 or clouds
13) Peter Lilley MP said last month that “fewer people in Britain than in any other country believe in the importance of global warming. That is despite the fact that our Government and our political class—predominantly—are more committed to it than their counterparts in any other country in the world”.
14) In pursuit of the global warming rhetoric, wind farms will do very little to nothing to reduce CO2 emissions
15) Professor Plimer, Professor of Geology and Earth Sciences at the University of Adelaide, stated that the idea of taking a single trace gas in the atmosphere, accusing it and finding it guilty of total responsibility for climate change, is an “absurdity”
16) A Harvard University astrophysicist and geophysicist, Willie Soon, said he is “embarrassed and puzzled” by the shallow science in papers that support the proposition that the earth faces a climate crisis caused by global warming.
17) The science of what determines the earth’s temperature is in fact far from settled or understood.
18) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas, unlike water vapour which is tied to climate concerns, and which we can’t even pretend to control
19) A petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it.
20) It is claimed the average global temperature increased at a dangerously fast rate in the 20th century but the recent rate of average global temperature rise has been between 1 and 2 degrees C per century – within natural rates
21) Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw, Poland says the earth’s temperature has more to do with cloud cover and water vapor than CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
22) There is strong evidence from solar studies which suggests that the Earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades
23) It is myth that receding glaciers are proof of global warming as glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for many centuries
24) It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming because that is natural variation and while the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder
25) The IPCC claims climate driven “impacts on biodiversity are significant and of key relevance” but those claims are simply not supported by scientific research
26) The IPCC threat of climate change to the world’s species does not make sense as wild species are at least one million years old, which means they have all been through hundreds of climate cycles
27) Research goes strongly against claims that CO2-induced global warming would cause catastrophic disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets.
28) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels are our best hope of raising crop yields to feed an ever-growing population
29) The biggest climate change ever experienced on earth took place around 700 million years ago
30) The slight increase in temperature which has been observed since 1900 is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term natural climate cycles
31) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels of some so-called “greenhouse gases” may be contributing to higher oxygen levels and global cooling, not warming
32) Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures
33) Today’s CO2 concentration of around 385 ppm is very low compared to most of the earth’s history – we actually live in a carbon-deficient atmosphere
34) It is a myth that CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas because greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume, and CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere
35) It is a myth that computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming because computer models can be made to “verify” anything
36) There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes
37) One statement deleted from a UN report in 1996 stated that “none of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases”
38) The world “warmed” by 0.07 +/- 0.07 degrees C from 1999 to 2008, not the 0.20 degrees C expected by the IPCC
39) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says “it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense” but there has been no increase in the intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones globally
40) Rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere can be shown not only to have a negligible effect on the Earth’s many ecosystems, but in some cases to be a positive help to many organisms
41) Researchers who compare and contrast climate change impact on civilizations found warm periods are beneficial to mankind and cold periods harmful
42) The Met Office asserts we are in the hottest decade since records began but this is precisely what the world should expect if the climate is cyclical
43) Rising CO2 levels increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests
44) The historical increase in the air’s CO2 content has improved human nutrition by raising crop yields during the past 150 years
45) The increase of the air’s CO2 content has probably helped lengthen human lifespans since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution
46) The IPCC alleges that “climate change currently contributes to the global burden of disease and premature deaths” but the evidence shows that higher temperatures and rising CO2 levels has helped global populations
47) In May of 2004, the Russian Academy of Sciences published a report concluding that the Kyoto Protocol has no scientific grounding at all.
48) The “Climate-gate” scandal pointed to a expensive public campaign of disinformation and the denigration of scientists who opposed the belief that CO2 emissions were causing climate change
49) The head of Britain’s climate change watchdog has predicted households will need to spend up to £15,000 on a full energy efficiency makeover if the Government is to meet its ambitious targets for cutting carbon emissions.
50) Wind power is unlikely to be the answer to our energy needs. The wind power industry argues that there are “no direct subsidies” but it involves a total subsidy of as much as £60 per MWh which falls directly on electricity consumers. This burden will grow in line with attempts to achieve Wind power targets, according to a recent OFGEM report.
51) Wind farms are not an efficient way to produce energy. The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) accepts a figure of 75 per cent back-up power is required.
52) Global temperatures are below the low end of IPCC predictions not at “at the top end of IPCC estimates”
53) Climate alarmists have raised the concern over acidification of the oceans but Tom Segalstad from Oslo University in Norway , and others, have noted that the composition of ocean water – including CO2, calcium, and water – can act as a buffering agent in the acidification of the oceans.
54) The UN’s IPCC computer models of human-caused global warming predict the emergence of a “hotspot” in the upper troposphere over the tropics. Former researcher in the Australian Department of Climate Change, David Evans, said there is no evidence of such a hotspot
55) The argument that climate change is a of result of global warming caused by human activity is the argument of flat Earthers.
56) The manner in which US President Barack Obama sidestepped Congress to order emission cuts shows how undemocratic and irrational the entire international decision-making process has become with regards to emission-target setting.
57) William Kininmonth, a former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation, wrote “the likely extent of global temperature rise from a doubling of CO2 is less than 1C. Such warming is well within the envelope of variation experienced during the past 10,000 years and insignificant in the context of glacial cycles during the past million years, when Earth has been predominantly very cold and covered by extensive ice sheets.”
58) Canada has shown the world targets derived from the existing Kyoto commitments were always unrealistic and did not work for the country.
59) In the lead up to the Copenhagen summit, David Davis MP said of previous climate summits, at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and Kyoto in 1997 that many had promised greater cuts, but “neither happened”, but we are continuing along the same lines.
60) The UK ’s environmental policy has a long-term price tag of about £55 billion, before taking into account the impact on its economic growth.
61) The UN’s panel on climate change warned that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035. J. Graham Cogley a professor at Ontario Trent University, claims this inaccurate stating the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.
62) Under existing Kyoto obligations the EU has attempted to claim success, while actually increasing emissions by 13 per cent, according to Lord Lawson. In addition the EU has pursued this scheme by purchasing “offsets” from countries such as China paying them billions of dollars to destroy atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which were manufactured purely in order to be destroyed.
63) It is claimed that the average global temperature was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times but sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years according to Penn State University researcher Michael Mann. There is no convincing empirical evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in average global temperature were unusual or unnatural.
64) Michael Mann of Penn State University has actually shown that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age did in fact exist, which contrasts with his earlier work which produced the “hockey stick graph” which showed a constant temperature over the past thousand years or so followed by a recent dramatic upturn.
65) The globe’s current approach to climate change in which major industrialised countries agree to nonsensical targets for their CO2 emissions by a given date, as it has been under the Kyoto system, is very expensive.
66) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures when looking at the history of the Earth’s temperature.
67) Global temperatures have not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years and have actually been falling for nine years. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed a scientific team had expressed dismay at the fact global warming was contrary to their predictions and admitted their inability to explain it was “a travesty”.
68) The IPCC predicts that a warmer planet will lead to more extreme weather, including drought, flooding, storms, snow, and wildfires. But over the last century, during which the IPCC claims the world experienced more rapid warming than any time in the past two millennia, the world did not experience significantly greater trends in any of these extreme weather events.
69) In explaining the average temperature standstill we are currently experiencing, the Met Office Hadley Centre ran a series of computer climate predictions and found in many of the computer runs there were decade-long standstills but none for 15 years – so it expects global warming to resume swiftly.
70) Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote: “The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the Earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. Such hysteria (over global warming) simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth.”
71) Despite the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s status as the flagship of the fight against climate change it has been a failure.
72) The first phase of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which ran from 2005 to 2007 was a failure. Huge over-allocation of permits to pollute led to a collapse in the price of carbon from €33 to just €0.20 per tonne meaning the system did not reduce emissions at all.
73) The EU trading scheme, to manage carbon emissions has completely failed and actually allows European businesses to duck out of making their emissions reductions at home by offsetting, which means paying for cuts to be made overseas instead.
74) To date “cap and trade” carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions.
75) In the United States , the cap-and-trade is an approach designed to control carbon emissions and will impose huge costs upon American citizens via a carbon tax on all goods and services produced in the United States. The average family of four can expect to pay an additional $1700, or £1,043, more each year. It is predicted that the United States will lose more than 2 million jobs as the result of cap-and-trade schemes.
76) Dr Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has indicated that out of the 21 climate models tracked by the IPCC the differences in warming exhibited by those models is mostly the result of different strengths of positive cloud feedback – and that increasing CO2 is insufficient to explain global-average warming in the last 50 to 100 years.
77) Why should politicians devote our scarce resources in a globally competitive world to a false and ill-defined problem, while ignoring the real problems the entire planet faces, such as: poverty, hunger, disease or terrorism.
94) The European Union has already agreed to cut emissions by 20 percent to 2020, compared with 1990 levels, and is willing to increase the target to 30 percent. However, these are unachievable and the EU has already massively failed with its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as EU emissions actually rose by 0.8 percent from 2005 to 2006 and are known to be well above the Kyoto goal.
95) Australia has stated it wants to slash greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the pledges were so unpopular that the country’s Senate has voted against the carbon trading Bill, and the Opposition’s Party leader has now been ousted by a climate change sceptic.
96) Canada plans to reduce emissions by 20 percent compared with 2006 levels by 2020, representing approximately a 3 percent cut from 1990 levels but it simultaneously defends its Alberta tar sands emissions and its record as one of the world’s highest per-capita emissions setters.
97) India plans to reduce the ratio of emissions to production by 20-25 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2020, but all Government officials insist that since India has to grow for its development and poverty alleviation, it has to emit, because the economy is driven by carbon.
98) The Leipzig Declaration in 1996, was signed by 110 scientists who said: “We – along with many of our fellow citizens – are apprehensive about the climate treaty conference scheduled for Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997” and “based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions.”
99) A US Oregon Petition Project stated “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of CO2, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
100) A report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change concluded “We find no support for the IPCC’s claim that climate observations during the twentieth century are either unprecedented or provide evidence of an anthropogenic effect on climate.”
Read more: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/146138/146138Climate-change-is-natural-100-reasons-why-#ixzz1HjnXeOsB
activitycap and tradecarbon dioxideclimate changeclimate denierCO2drudgereporteartheducate yourselfflat earthergreaterfoolgreenhouse gaseshistoryinfowarsmanman made global warmingnow the end beginspecan groupprisonplanetprophecy watchrensesavethemalesstansbury instituteSunthe coming depression blogspotthe economic collapse blogwarmingwatchzero hedge
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You are here: Home / Archives for Shoam
Civil Rights Arrive in Pennsylvania: State Rep. Brian Sims Interview
December 15, 2013 by Amir Shoam Leave a Comment
Pennsylvania State Rep. Brian Sims (D., Philadelphia), the first openly gay candidate to win an election to the state General Assembly, made headlines last week with the passage of a resolution for recognizing the Human Rights Day.
In an exclusive interview with the Philadelphia Jewish Voice, he shared his plans for the next few years, a surprising Jewish connection, and a few thoughts on the House speaker, Daryl Metcalfe (R., Butler County).
Q: Where did the idea for the resolution on the Human Rights Day come from?
I had known of the Day for 15 years, since I heard of the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Last month, after the U.S. ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, invited me to speak on advocating for civil rights at local events in honor of the Day, I decided to propose a resolution for recognizing this day in Pennsylvania.
Q: Was it realizing that you were gay that brought you to the civil rights area?
I have first learned of civil rights through feminism. Both of my parents were lieutenant colonels in the Army, so I grew up with a very strong woman and two very equal parents.
Being part of the gay community was one of the reasons that I ran for the House. Pennsylvania has no LGBT rights laws at all, so a lot needs to be done. Both Republicans and Democrats in the House and the State Senate support such legislations.
Q: Has your being gay hurt you in ways that legislation could have prevented?
Not very often. To my fortune, I live in a city with many laws that protect my rights. In other areas of Pennsylvania, you can get fired from your job or kicked out of your house, and even get bullied just for being gay.
Q: Were you surprised last June, when the speaker of the House, Daryl Metcalfe, did not let you speak on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act, saying that it would be “an open rebellion against God’s law”?
Yes. I knew that he did not like me personally, and did not have respect for the House and its members, but I was surprised by the reason for which he did not let me speak.
Anyone can believe in anything they want, and have any motivation for their activism, but “God’s law” has no place in the Government and its voting.
Q: How has being elected changed your lifestyle?
I have always been very busy: Before being elected, I was the president of Equality Pennsylvania, and active in five more civil rights organizations. Now I am just as busy, but have a whole team that helps me.
In the little spare time that I have, I carry lectures, to teach the public on subjects such as saving money and public safety.
Q: What are your plans for the elections to the General Assembly next June?
I will run for the same office again. I need several more years to take care of all of the issues in my district (the 182nd House District, Center City).
Q: Do you have any connection with the local Jewish community?
When I worked as a lawyer, each and every one of my bosses was Jewish. They all understood what it meant to stand up and be an advocate for your community, so working as a lawyer had been connecting me with the Jewish community as well as with the lawyer community.
Last October, politicians from Pennsylvania held a diplomatic trip to Israel, but I could not go. A similar trip is planned for next March, and I would like to join it.
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Civil Rights, Community, Human Rights, In Their Own Words, LGBT, Metcalfe, Shoam, Sims
Soccer: Maccabi Close to Europa Round of 32 After 4-2 Over Frankfurt
November 8, 2013 by Amir Shoam Leave a Comment
Barak Yitzhaki against Frankfurt.
— by Amir Shoam
Maccabi Tel Aviv made a big step toward the UEFA Europa League Round of 32 today, beating Eintracht Frankfurt 4-2 in Bloomfield Stadium, Tel Aviv.
With this win, Maccabi is second to Frankfurt in Group F, having previously lost to Frankfurt 0-2, beaten French team Bordeaux 2-1, and drawn 0-0 with Cyprus champion APOEL. After playing twice against each of its group rivals, the top two teams in each group will advance to the next round.
More after the jump.
Europa League, formerly the UEFA Cup, is the second-most important European club competition, consisting of champions of average leagues, and average teams of big leagues, such as Frankfurt, that finished sixth in the German Bundesliga last season.
Israeli midfielder Eran Zahavi scored first in the 14th minute. Two goals by striker Barak Yitzhaki in five minutes enlarged Maccabi’s lead to 3-0 by the 35th minute.
Croatian striker Srdan Lakic scored for Frankfurt in the 63th minute, and German midfielder Alexander Meier brought his team back to 3-2 with a penalty kick four minutes later. In the fourth and last minute of overtime, Zahavi scored a penalty kick of his own to set the final score.
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Israel, Maccabi, Shoam, Soccer, sports
Shalom Center Grasps at Straws to Find Substitute for War
September 10, 2013 by Amir Shoam 1 Comment
“What happened to those people — to those children — is not only a violation of international law, it’s also a danger to our security.”
Last week, before the Russian suggestion to disarm Bashar al-Assad’s forces of chemical weapons, The Shalom Center’s Rabbi Arthur Waskow wrote an article titled Drop Gas Masks, Not Bombs, opposing military action in Syria.
Waskow suggested that we “use the power of the U.S. in nonviolent, non-military, nonlethal ways” to stop the chemical war.
These surrogates for military action are each deeply flawed. Indeed, if Rabbi Waskow felt he had a good response, he would have probably given that response alone instead of a menu of responses each as ineffective as the next.
Waskow’s proposals and my comments follow the jump.
Waskow recommends distributing gas masks, but this is what you actually need to wear in order to fully protect yourself against sarin.
Waskow’s title suggestion “Drop Gas Masks, Not Bombs” (although the word “drop” was a metaphor) would not work, since gas masks do not offer complete protection against sarin.
Look what equipment the Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends to use in a Level A sarin exposure:
A NIOSH-certified CBRN full-face-piece SCBA operated in a pressure-demand mode or a pressure-demand supplied air hose respirator with an auxiliary escape bottle.
A Totally-Encapsulating Chemical Protective (TECP) suit that provides protection against CBRN agents.
Chemical-resistant gloves (outer).
Chemical-resistant gloves (inner).
Chemical-resistant boots with a steel toe and shank.
Waskow recognizes that the suggestion in his title might not actually work, so he gives this alternative:
If gas masks would not meet the need, drop antidotes to the nerve gas sarin.
According to the CDC, sarin “is generally odorless and tasteless. Exposure to sarin can cause death in minutes. A fraction of an ounce (1 to 10 mL) of sarin on the skin can be fatal.”
Antidotes to sarin are only approved by the FDA for use by trained members of the U.S. Military, and would be useless or even dangerous in the hands of untrained Syrian citizens.
Waskow then makes this suggestion:
Test out what would happen if the U.S. invited physicians to be parachuted into Syria.
This is what would happen: The U.S. would ignore the first thing taught in a first aid course — do not risk lives in order to save lives.
If someone is injured on a busy road after a car accident, you should not go there.
If someone might be trapped inside a burning building, you should not go there.
If they offer you to be parachuted unarmed into a chemical war zone, you should not go there!
Waskow makes another suggestion, that also does not sound practical:
Drop leaflets and broadcast radio and social-media messages denouncing the use of chemical weaponry and offering amnesty and monetary rewards to anyone in the military who comes forward with information on their use.
If people in Assad’s army resisted his ways, would they still serve in his army, and not in one of the other armies in the country?
The following suggestion explains itself:
Bollix the Syrian military’s computer system just as the U.S. bollixed the Iranian nuclear-research system.
The U.S. is aware of that possibility — it just would not help.
Sarin is a binary compound, created naturally by the mixture of two gases stored separately in the shell. It does not need sophisticated electronics, and would be deployed in the field in the place of regular munitions, and not networked with a computer system, which made the Iranian centrifuges vulnerable to this kind of attack.
But the most flawed is Waskow’s final suggestion:
In Iran there is fierce opposition to chem-war because Saddam used it in Iraq’s war against Iran, killing tens of thousands…. Ask the government of Iran to intervene with its ally Syria to demand a total end to any use of chem-war, and offer Iran relaxation of U.S. sanctions against it if it does so.
Again, do not risk lives in order to save lives. Even assuming that Iran will accept this offer, a nuclear weapon in Iran’s hands is a threat to each and every person in the world.
Ambassador Samantha Power explained the situation last week:
It is only after the United States pursued these non-military options without achieving the desired result of deterring chemical weapons use, that the President concluded that a limited military strike is the only way to prevent Assad from employing chemical weapons as if they are a conventional weapon of war.
Indeed, after two years of diplomacy and sanctions, it is only the threat of military action which is finally getting the attention of Syria, and maybe will lead to a peaceful solution.
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Iran, Power, Shalom Center, Shoam, Syria, Waskow
Maccabiah: U.S. Wins Five Basketball Medals
August 7, 2013 by Amir Shoam Leave a Comment
The U.S. won five medals — four golds and one silver — in the Maccabiah basketball tournaments last week. The open men’s team won the gold after beating Argentina 87-76. Daniel Robin scored 25 points for the winners, and Philadelphia-born Bryan Cohen added 14. The win marked a great year for Head Coach and Former Philadelphia 76ers General Manager Brad Greenberg, who also won the Israeli championship this year with Maccabi Haifa, and will coach Hapoel Jerusalem in the coming season. “It was an outstanding tournament, and our U.S. open team was really special,” he said to the Philadelphia Jewish Voice.
It was an honor to coach some of the finest young men I have ever been around: hard working, unselfish, intelligent and emotionally mature. Lasting friendships were formed, and a love for Israel was enhanced. Next year in Jerusalem — for me it’s true!
In the open women’s tournament final, the U.S. defeated Israel 72-56. Jacqui Kalin finished with 22 points, including 6 three-pointers, 7 assists and 6 rebounds. Alyssa Baron contributed 16 points, 8 rebounds and 3 assists. Next year, Kalin will play professionally in Israel with S.A. Ramat Hasharon. Head Coach Jamie Shadian said:
The Games as a whole were a once in a lifetime experience. I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to coach players who are unbelievable people as well as talented athletes. Sharing such an emotional and inspirational month with this team will remain one of the most special experiences of my life.
The under-18 men’s team also beat Israel in the game for the gold medal, 78-62. The two standouts of the final game were Spencer Weisz (19 points, 12 rebounds, 11 assists) and Anthony Firkser (19 points, 7 rebounds, 5 steals). Head Coach Jamie Chadwin said:
The trip was tremendous. Not only for the basketball competition but for the cultural, emotional connection we all felt. The young men on the Youth Team were special in the way the competed, learned, and represented their country.
The under-18 women’s team cruised to the gold medal, beating Canada 77-26 (!) in the final game. Tournament MVP Drew Edelman, who will play for the University of Southern California in the coming season, scored 30 points and added 14 rebounds. Shelby Zucker finished with 13 points and 6 rebounds. “I could not be more proud of the team,” said Head Coach Sherry Levin.
Our dominant performance was a product of their hard work, dedication and unselfish team work. On the court it, was amazing to see them come together and execute the game plan against Australia, Canada and Israel. Off the court, we all experienced the wonders of Israel along with the meaningful connections to our heritage, which made the Maccabiah Games a lifetime experience to remember.
The under-16 boys team won the silver medal after losing to Israel in the final. The team was led in scoring throughout the tournament by Spencer Freedman, Corey Sherman and, specifically in the final game, Jacob Orender. Jordan Baum led a long list of assist providers. Sam Fieldman and Michael Hayon were the team’s top rebounders. Orender was also the team’s best defensive player.
“It was an awesome and surreal opportunity to participate in the 19th Maccabiah,” said Head Coach Barry Kleiman. “The opportunity for my wife and me to visit Israel for the first time while representing the USA as a coach was beyond a life’s dream.”
As a competitor, one can never be “happy” with a silver medal, but as a coach of many years and games, one learns that there is always a team at the end of a game with fewer points than the other, and in this case that was our team.
I commend the Israeli team for their fabulous effort and great sportsmanship; their win had nothing to do with luck. I commend our team for refusing to give in and continuing to compete until the final buzzer.
Michael Jordan once said, “I’ve never lost a game, I just ran out of time.” We simply ran out of time that day, and remain grateful for the opportunity we had to compete.
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Baron, basketball, Baum, Chadwin, Cohen, Fieldman, Firkser, Freedman, Greenberg, Hapoel, Hasharon, Hayon, Israel, Kalin, Levin, maccabiah, Orender, Robin, Shadian, Sherman, Shoam, sports, Weisz
Maccabiah: U.S. Wins Bronze in Rugby 15s
After winning the rugby sevens tournament last week, the U.S. rugby team for the Maccabiah also won the bronze medal in the rugby 15s tournament after beating Great Britain 15-3 in the game for third place.
With this win, the U.S. once again retained its status as the only team to win a medal in each rugby tournament in the history of the games. Head Coach Shawn Lipmam, who previously won medals as a player in five Maccabiah tournaments, broke the record for medals in Maccabiah open category tournaments, as he has seven now.
Joel Cohen and Jared Braun scored the game’s two tries (5 points each), and Taylor Howden added one conversion kick (2 points) and one penalty kick (3 points). In the semi-final game, the U.S. lost to Australia 10-18. Israel won the tournament after beating Australia in the final game. The two teams that reached the final are the ones that play as a team year-round. Lipman said:
We built a remarkable team that arrived in Israel as the fittest and strongest we have ever assembled. Even though we had trained individually nothing can compare with playing together as a team and getting consistency in execution under pressure. We think we were good enough to have beaten Australia to make the final, but retain lapses on execution hurt us. The game we played against Great Britain for bronze was amazing and an excellent way for us to end. Israel deserved to win the fifteens tournament, and I think it is a good thing for the tournament that more countries are doing well as the competition is becoming more broad based.
Regarding the sevens tournament, Lipman said:
It was a great accomplishment to have won the gold in sevens, as Israel keeps playing international sevens all the time, and we had only two sevens training sessions. We also had to come back from having lost to Israel and tying South Africa prior to the sevens tournament final game. We showed tremendous heart and courage.
Throughout the games, the team suffered with the absence of the injured Zach Test. The 23-year-old is already the U.S. sevens team’s leading try scorer among active players, with 73.
“I am sure Zack Test would have made a big difference for us, but this is a team sport and one can’t rely on a person,” said Lipman. “Rugby is a squad effort, and nothing would have been accomplished without everyone that came, including our amazing support staff.”
Coach Lipman concludes:
More important than winning medals is the fact that this tour changed our players’ lives in very deep and meaningful ways. Every participant in our team is leaving as part of a band of brothers, and now has a family that will always be there with him for the rest of his life. That is the real gold!
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Israel, lipman, maccabiah, rugby, Shoam, sports
Maccabiah: U.S. Wins 67 Medals in Swimming
July 28, 2013 by Amir Shoam Leave a Comment
Marlee Ehrlich, Andi Murez, Jacqui Levere and Leah Goldman (left to right) after the 4×200 freestyle relay competition
The U.S. swim team for the Maccabiah won 67 medals in the open and junior pool categories during the last week.
“The U.S. team was a closely bonded team with great team spirit,” said open team head coach Barry Roffer. “I would say we did an outstanding job at the competition.”
Olympic champion Garrett Weber-Gale, who served as the open team’s co-captain alongside Rebecca Lewinson, won the 50 and 100 meter freestyle categories, and broke the tournament’s record for 50 meter with 22.12 seconds. Andi Murez won the 50, 100 and 200 freestyle categories for women, setting records on all events. Eric Friedland won both 100 and 200 meter breast roles, including a 1:02.73 minutes record in 100 meter.
The U.S. women’s swim team, which included Marlee Ehrlich of Cherry Hill, N.J., broke a Maccabiah record in the 4×200 meter freestyle relay with a time of 8:23:29. Ehrlich also won a silver medal in 400 meter freestyle, and a gold medal in 800 meter freestyle. Today, she also won a bronze medal in the 5-kilometer open water race.
“My teammates and I were able to bond quickly, which helped lead to a highly successful meet for Team USA,” she said. “Representing the U.S. was an extreme honor, and I know that I am going to cherish the memories I made on this trip.”
The American junior girl swimmers won all individual races but one. Isabelle goldsmith and Morgan Smith were standouts in this division. Judd Howard was the standout in the junior boys’ category.
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Ehrlich, Friedland, Goldman, Israel, Levere, maccabiah, Murez, Roffer, Shoam, sports, Swimming
Maccabiah: U.S. Wins Gold in Rugby Sevens
Team Captain and Tournament MVP Dallen Stanford receiving his two trophies
It was harder than one might have expected, but the U.S. has won its first gold medal of the 19th Maccabiah games yesterday (Wednesday), after defeating Israel 17-14 in the final of the rugby sevens tournament. The rugby 15s tournament will start tomorrow, but the team will hold its first match of it on Sunday, against Canada (10 a.m. EST, Wingate Institute).
“It was the best Israeli rugby team I have seen in the games,” said Head Coach Shawn Lipman, who previously won medals in them five times as a player, to the Philadelphia Jewish Voice. “The match could have gone either way. We wanted to have the level of challenge that we have prepared for, and now we know that the 15s tournament is going to be hard.”
Tries by Willie Rudman, Team Captain Dallen Stanford (tournament MVP) and Joel Cohen (5 points each), and one successful conversion kick for Standford’s try by Taylor Howden (2 points), provided the team with a promising 17-7 lead. Israel rallied back with a successfully converted try, but the U.S. managed to hold its opponent from scoring any more points.
On its way to the final, the team had lost the lead in two of its three round-robin stage matches: On its first match, South Africa came back to a 12-12 draw against it after trailing 12-0. On its second match, Israel upset the score, from a 5-0 trailing to a 5-10 win. However, on its last round robin match, the U.S. thrashed Great Britain 35-0 to finish the stage second, after Israel, and win the ticket to the final match against it.
The greatest success story of the tournament, according to Lipman, was Jarett Brotz of Cherry Hill, N.J. After the trials for the team last January, the back-row forward was put on the reserve list. “We saw potential in him, but he needed to work on his fitness,” explained the Coach. As previously-qualified players could not eventually join the trip, Brotz was called to fill in. During the training in Israel, he was chosen as one of the 12 players out of 29 to participate in the seven-a-side tournament. As the tournament progressed he earned increasing playing time, and shined on the defensive side. “He will be one of our most important players in the 15s tournament,” concluded Lipman.
The opening ceremony for the Games will be held today in Jerusalem (1:30 p.m. EST, Teddy Stadium), with almost 9,000 athletes participating and 30,000 expected viewers. Many of the tournaments will start tomorrow (Friday).
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Brotz, Israel, lipman, maccabiah, rugby, Shoam, sports
19th Maccabiah Games Kick Off With Rugby Sevens Tournament
Team Captain Dallen Stanford with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat
The opening ceremony of the 19th Maccabiah Games will be held next Thursday, but one American team wants to be wearing gold medals for it. One of the earliest tournaments of the games will be of rugby sevens, with the U.S. team taking on South Africa, Israel and Great Britain tomorrow (Wednesday) in the Wingate Institute, Netanya. On Friday, the four teams will be joined by Australia, Canada and Chile for an 11-day rugby 15s tournament.
“The U.S. has never sent a rugby team as committed, conditioned or talented as this one to the games,” said Head Coach Shawn Lipman to the Philadelphia Jewish Voice. “We have exceptionally high standards for ourselves, and are absolutely dedicated to coming home with two gold medals.”
Due to the weather conditions and the high intensity of the 14-minute long sevens game, the tournament will start at 17:20 Israel time, and the final game will be played as late as 22:20. The teams will have to finish the round-robin stage in one of the top two places in order to win a ticket to the final.
The Philadelphia area will be represented in the team by Jarett Brotz from Cherry Hill, N.J.
Jarett Brotz of Cherry Hill, N.J. (Photo: Jewish Community Voice)
The team practicing on a tour of Tel Aviv’s old neighborhoods
And in Jerusalem, even without a ball
Maccabiah Basketball Coach Teaches the Importance of Relationships
June 29, 2013 by Amir Shoam Leave a Comment
Barry Kleiman with wife and team manager Marcie
When Barry Kleiman, coach of the Under-16 basketball team for the Maccabiah, was 19, he worked as a counselor at a sleepover camp in the Philadelphia area. One day after lunch, when he and the other counselors were playing basketball, a 12-year-old girl named Donna asked them to teach her how to play. She kept playing with them every day during the camp, and in the next two summers, in which she also attended the camp. The two had not seen each other for the next 30 years. When a camp reunion meeting, which Kleiman could not attend as he was living in California, was approaching, he asked his close friend, who also worked in the camp as a counselor, to look for Donna.
It turned out that since the camp Donna had represented Queens College in the All-America women’s basketball team, was selected to the all-star game of the Women’s Pro Basketball League, represented the U.S. in the 1985 Maccabiah Games, and became the PGA Tour’s senior vice president of strategic development. Later, Donna Orender became the president of the WNBA.
The two have become friends again, and afterwards met again on the basketball court in the 2011 JCC Maccabi Games in Springfield, MA, as Orender’s twin sons participated in the basketball tournament. One year later, Orender, also one of Maccabi USA’s vice presidents, recommended Kleiman for his current position. “I feel honored about that,” said Kleiman, “I know there were other people who were qualified for this job, but I got it because Donna knew me as a coach and as a person and was sure about me. This story shows the importance of creating and maintaining relationships.”
This principal has also led Kleiman in selecting the squad for the coming tournament: “I wanted to pick not only good basketball players, but also people that I wanted to spend four weeks in Israel with,” he said.
Before the trials, I asked each player to write a letter about their motivation and expectations regarding the tournament. I wanted people who would listen, play strong, and know how to work with people they had not known before. I enjoy improving those aspects in players during a season, but it is not something that you can do in one week of training before a tournament.
Among the chosen players are four from the Lower Merion High School: Corey Sherman of the school’s first team, and Michael Berg, Jeremy Horn and Eli Needle of the freshmen team. An interesting coincidence considering that unlike other coaches, Kleiman did not pick players who had already known each other on purpose.
“I was awed to hear that four kids from one high school made it to a national team,” said Berg.
It is not very often that I can experience something as big as that with people I literally see every day in classes. I have always wanted to visit Israel, and the fact that I get to do something that I really like while I am there makes it a great honor. The players who made it from the tryouts were all very good, and I expected them to make it. I also remember a couple of twins from Florida [Orender’s sons, Jacob and Zach], as well as a tall guard from Illinois [Jordan Baum].
“I was quite nervous about the trials,” admits the 15-year-old forward.
I do not consider myself a good tryout player because I am not a “flashy.” Additionally, I am a perfectionist, so whenever I did something wrong, I would think about it for a long period of time during the tryout. I respect Coach Kleiman very much for seeing my value as a player.
“Winning the gold is the goal for me, and I am sure that most of my teammates feel the same,” continues Berg. “The whole experience is special, but we go there to win and represent the U.S. the way we should.”
Based on the east coast tryout sessions and Coach Kleiman’s words, we don’t have too much size. I expect us to be a quick-running and sharp-shooting team. We should not expect anything less than winning.
“I try to ignore any expectations,” concludes Kleiman. “In the last tournament the U.S. won the gold, but due to the age restriction those are not the same players this time. I try not to manage aspirations, but reality: to be as good as this team can. I expect the players not just to try to score, but to do everything yachad — together, so that this tournament will become a great memory.”
U.S. Under-16 basketball team for the Maccabiah:
Jordan Baum, Deerfield, IL;
Ofek Belkin, El Paso, TX;
Michael Berg, Merion Station, PA;
Sam Fieldman, Roslyn Heights, NY;
Spencer Freedman, Pacific Palisades, CA;
Michael Hayon, Calabasas, CA;
Jeremy Horn, Wynnewood, PA;
Eli Needle, Merion Station, PA;
Jacob Orender, Jacksonville Beach, FL;
Zach Orender, Jacksonville Beach, FL;
Corey Sherman, Penn Valley, PA; and
Isaac Siegel, Amherst, MA.
Head Coach: Barry Kleiman;
Assistant Coach: Dave Goldman;
Assistant Coach: Jake Shechtman; and
Manager: Marcie Kleiman.
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: basketball, Berg, Community, Kleiman, maccabiah, Shoam, sports
New Jersey Swimming Champion Getting Ready for the Maccabiah
May 27, 2013 by Amir Shoam Leave a Comment
Rebecca Lewinson of West Windsor, N.J., who will reprsent the U.S. in the Maccabiah Games this summer, has already won almost any swimming title she competed for: at the New Jersey High School State Championship, she won the 100m Breast category three years in a row. She is currently a member of the Princeton University Swim Team, and won two Ivy League Championships in three years. In the 2009 Maccabiah, at the age of 17, she competed in the open age category and won the gold medal in 200m Breast, silver in 400m Medley Relay, and bronze in 100m Breast.
The 6-foot-tall athlete, who will turn 21 next Wednesday, started swimming at the age of 9, which is relatively late for a competitive swimmer. By the age of 15 she was ranked second in the National Age Group Rankings for 200m Breast.
“I love the fairness of the sport: If you work hard, you do well. I also enjoy the opportunity for improvement,” Lewinson said in an interview with The Philadelphia Jewish Voice. “Being a part of a team completely changes the sport. Racing for my high school and college team is probably my favorite part of the sport, and motivates me to be a better swimmer.” However, she said that swimming is “a huge time commitment,” involving practices before and after school:
In high school, I gave up a lot of social time in order to train and compete. It seemed like the end of the world then, but I now realize that swimming’s time commitment taught me a lot about prioritizing and time management, and opened many doors for me. In college, swimming has definitely contributed more to my life than it has made me sacrifice. The friendships I have made and lessons I have learned far outweigh anything I missed out on for swimming.
In the coming Maccabiah, the International Relations student will compete in 200m and 400m (her best race) Individual Medley, 100m and 200m Breast, and 100m and 200m Fly. However, winning medals is not her only goal: “I hope to swim my heart out for my team, but I also expect to meet people that I will be friends with for the rest of my life,” she said.
I am very fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to Israel to compete for my country and have the experience of being surrounded by thousands of Jewish athletes from around the world. Being Jewish has allowed me to connect with people in my community and University. I am actually remaining in Israel after the games to pursue research for my Senior Thesis.
Lewinson is a part of a family of female athletes: Her mother was captain of the Syracuse track team and a professional dancer. Her older sister competed on the varsity track team and swim team at Widener University, and her younger sister dances and is being recruited to compete in college for a crew. Unlike her mother, she is not planning to become a professional in her sport:
Although I would love to compete for the rest of my life, trying to make a living out of swimming is not realistic and would not allow me to pursue my career goals outside of the pool. I will be a senior in college next fall, and I look forward to seeing how far I can push myself during my last year.
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Community, Lewinson, maccabiah, Shoam, sports, Swimming
Philadelphia, PA US
Candle Lighting Time: 8:08 PM
Havdalah (42 min): 9:08 PM
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NIH Appoints Director of the Intramural Center for Regenerative Medicine ?>
NIH Appoints Director of the Intramural Center for Regenerative Medicine
August 5, 2011 Chris Pickett Comments 0 Comment
On Wednesday, August 3, Mahendra S. Rao, M.D., Ph.D. was named Director of the NIH Intramural Center for Regenerative Medicine (NIH-CRM), a new center on the NIH campus that will focus on stem cell research and technology.
Story Landis, Director and Chair of the NIH Stem Cell Task Force, welcomed Dr. Rao as the new director of NIH-CRM. “He brings extensive experience with human stem cells to the position as well as considerable energy and focus on moving to clinical applications,” said Dr. Landis.
One of the main goals of the NIH-CRM will be to develop translational applications of stem cell-based therapies by building upon current NIH investments in stem cell research. The center will focus on research using both human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells, in addition to serving as a resource to the scientific community at large by providing stem cell lines and supporting protocols for culturing and differentiating cells.
Dr. Rao has worked in the stem cell field for more than 20 years in both academia and industry, including Q Therapeutics, the company he co-founded in 2004, which develops cell-based therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Rao previously served as the section chief of stem cells at the National Institute on Aging before he famously resigned in 2005, citing the Bush administration’s prohibitive stance on stem cell research. Since that time he has served as vice president of Regenerative Medicine at Invitrogen’s Life Technologies. In addition to his director position, Dr. Rao will also hold a joint research appointment in National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Skin Diseases and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
This announcement comes on the heels of a U.S. District court ruling that overturned a ban on the use of federal funds for human embryonic stem cell research. In conjunction with legislation like the Stem Cell Research Advancement Act, stem cell research will not only able to proceed unencumbered, it will thrive.
Dr. Barbara Alving Resigns as NCRR Director
Appeals Court Overturns Ruling Invalidating Gene Patents
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Australian aid: in the national interest
By Tim O'Connor and Kate Wheen - posted Friday, 17 February 2006 Sign Up for free e-mail updates!
Trevor Flugge, the wheat farmer from Western Australia who recently appeared on the front of a national newspaper smiling, shirtless, sweating and aiming a handgun at the camera, may not be the first person you would associate with Australian aid. Mr Flugge was the face of the Australian aid program in Iraq from April 28, 2003 where he received a seemingly open ended AusAID contract to the value of $679,345.70 (Australian Government Contract number 1109570).
Representing Australian taxpayers, Mr Flugge’s position with AusAID was to provide high-level advice on agriculture reforms and food security issues to the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture. A former director of the Australian Wheat Board, and later the privatised AWB, Trevor Flugge had considerable experience as a grain trader but the appointment was criticised due to his lack of specialist expertise in the provision of agricultural development.
The criticism related to the Australian Government putting the interests of Australian business, in this case wheat farmers, before the development needs of the people of Iraq. If Mr Flugge’s job was to ensure the growth of Australian wheat exports to Iraq, then his mission was certainly successful. In 2002, prior to the appointment of Mr Flugge, Australia exported 1.03 million tonnes of wheat to Iraq. By 2005 this figure had grown by over 50 per cent to 1.55 million tonnes, ensuring Iraq remained one of the Australian wheat industries most crucial export destinations.
While the interests of Australian wheat farmers were well served, it seems the people of Iraq have not fared so well. In August 2005 the World Food Program found, “In total, approximately 25 per cent of the Iraqi population is highly dependent on the Public Distribution System (PDS). Some 2.6 million people (11 per cent of the population) are extremely poor and vulnerable to food insecurity. An additional 3.6 million people are highly likely to become food insecure if they are not provided with the PDS rations”.
The ethics of using the aid program for such narrow domestic interests appears difficult to reconcile. The current objective of the aid program “to advance Australia’s national interest through the alleviation of poverty and the promotion of sustainable development” appears to have fallen victim to the very narrow defining of the “national interest” term which is being translated into practice as “commercial interest” and “strategic interest”. And raises the question: are projects that do not have some commercial or strategic advantage to Australia, not to be funded regardless of the positive impact that they may induce?
From altruism to governance
Education, health and infrastructure are the traditional staples of aid delivery, yet in the Australian aid program over the past five years a revolution has unfurled. No longer are these the mainstays of Australian aid, instead “good governance” is the new aid mantra and as a concept it looms as ubiquitous as the cane toad.
When the Howard Government was elected and the current Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, installed, the figure set aside for “governance” programs in first aid budget was $68 million. By the 2001 budget this figure had leapt to $295 million or 17 per cent of the total aid program, eclipsing the amount spent on health, infrastructure and rural development, but still exceeded by the funding dedicated to basic education.
In the latest aid budget papers the trend towards spending on governance leapt again and is estimated to surpass $1.1 billion this financial year. Funding to the combined sectors of education (14 per cent) health (12 per cent) and infrastructure (7 per cent) is now less than the total that is dedicated to governance programs (36 per cent).
Australian good governance?
Although there appears no clear definition from AusAID or the government about what “governance” specifically is beyond “an essential foundation of the aid program”, generally it is used as a catchall that has hoovered up funding to other less trendy parts of the aid program. For instance, funding that once went to educating police or bureaucrats now is considered “governance” money. Thus the massive increase to this sector perhaps tells more about the whims of aid policy than it reflects the practice. One area though that has benefited enormously from the focus on governance has been the funding to “Other Government Departments” (OGD) through the aid program. Funding to the departments of the Attorney General, Defence, Treasury and Immigration for instance, labelled as OGD, has risen from $151 million in 2000 to over $563 million this financial year.
Much of this money has gone to the aforementioned departments for the regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) and the failed PNG Enhanced Co-operation Program (ECP). It is certainly difficult to argue with programs that are aimed at improving financial management, strengthening law and justice, developing civil society and strengthening political systems.
Yet the ECP, imposed by Australia on PNG (the threat of cutting Australian aid dollars if the program was not implemented), was found by the PNG courts to be unconstitutional. This put Australia in the tricky position of imposing a Good Governance Program that was found to be acting outside the constitution of a sovereign country - some might say an exercise in “bad governance”.
Whilst the RAMSI project in the Solomon’s has been successful in bringing peace in the short term, the longer term sustainability of that peace and the path to a resolution to the more intractable problem of ethnic tensions, appears some way off. It is therefore questionable if Australian bureaucrats from treasury, the federal police or the legal fraternity are best placed to deal with the complex nature of aid delivery. Development is a field that requires a significant quantity of skills and tools that may not be present in the armoury of an official trained and equipped to deal with the day-to-day dealings of an Australian government department.
Tim O’Connor works at AID/WATCH an independent watchdog monitoring the community impacts of Australia’s aid and trade polices.
Kate Wheen is a researcher on aid and development issues with AID/WATCH, the independent watchdog of Australian aid. With a background in communications and international studies, Kate is currently researching her thesis on governance in Pacific Island states.
Other articles by these Authors
» Leave out the rhetoric and get back to basics - June 9, 2006
» Overseas aid belongs abroad - April 28, 2006
» Helping others to help ourselves - December 30, 2005
» Tsunami aid or strategic relationship? - April 8, 2005
» The Australian government is riding roughshod over Papua New Guinea - October 13, 2003
All articles by Tim O'Connor
All articles by Kate Wheen
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Cooking the greenhouse books
By Andrew Macintosh - posted Friday, 2 March 2007 Sign Up for free e-mail updates!
Every year since 2002, the Federal Environment Minister has put out a press release to accompany the publication of the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory stating that Australia is “on track” to meet the target set under the Kyoto Protocol of an average of 108 per cent of 1990 emission levels over the period 2008-12.
On the surface, this looks like good news. After all, many other developed nations are likely to exceed their Kyoto targets. But are the Government’s figures accurate and is there reason to be proud of our greenhouse performance?
Unfortunately, the “good news” in Australia’s greenhouse accounts is not due to the effects of good policy winding back emissions. It is because of the so-called “Australia clause” in the Kyoto Protocol, which allows countries with net emissions from land use change and forestry in 1990 to include net land use change emissions in their 1990 baseline. “Land use change” essentially means land clearing - the removal of vegetation for purposes other than forestry.
Because of good agricultural conditions, the late 1980s and early 1990s happened to be bumper years for land clearing, particularly in Queensland. This raised Australia’s emissions in the Kyoto base year of 1990 by about 30 per cent, making the 108 per cent target far cheaper and easier to achieve. Due to the Australia clause, any reduction in land clearing could offset emission increases from burning fossil fuels.
This is precisely what has occurred. Between 1990 and 2004, emissions from most sectors have sky-rocketed. For example, stationary energy and transport emissions increased by 43 per cent and 23 per cent respectively. However, these increases have been offset by a 73 per cent decline in emissions from land use change, providing an apparently respectable 2.3 per cent increase in overall emissions.
Given the importance of land clearing in Australia’s greenhouse accounts, it is vital that there is an accurate and transparent system for accounting for land use change emissions. To perform this task, the Federal Government established the National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS), which relies on satellite data to track trends in land clearing.
In order to evaluate the reliability of NCAS outputs, the Australia Institute recently attempted a comparison between NCAS land clearing data and the data generated by the Statewide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS) run by the Queensland Government. Like NCAS, SLATS tracks land clearing in Queensland using satellite data.
Despite the similarities between the projects, we found significant differences in the estimates of land clearing in Queensland. The SLATS estimate of clearing between 1990 and 2001 is approximately 50 per cent higher than the NCAS estimate. In individual years the SLATS estimates are up to 164 per cent higher. Most alarmingly, there are significant differences in the trends, with NCAS showing a steady decline in clearing, while SLATS suggests clearing was high in the early 1990s, fell in the mid-1990s and then spiked again in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
We investigated whether the variation in results could be explained by legitimate differences in method. The most important issue appears to be that NCAS and SLATS have different definitions of what constitutes land clearing.
NCAS only counts clearing of so-called “Kyoto forests” - roughly vegetation covering at least 0.2 hectares with greater than 20 per cent crown cover and the potential to reach two or more metres in height.
In contrast, SLATS defines land clearing more broadly as the removal of any perennial woody vegetation that can be identified by satellite, which roughly equates to vegetation with 16 per cent crown cover.
Using adjusted SLATS data, we sought to account for these definitional issues, but found that large differences remained. The SLATS clearing estimates were still significantly higher than the NCAS estimates and SLATS continued to show a spike in clearing in the late 1990s and early 2000s that was not evident in the NCAS data.
First published in Australian R&D Review on February 28, 2007. It is republished in collaboration with ScienceAlert, the only news website dedicated to Australasian science.
Andrew Macintosh is Deputy Director of The Australia Institute, a Canberra-based think tank, and author of Drug Law Reform: Beyond Prohibition.
» A balancing act - September 27, 2007
» Flying high on greenhouse gas - June 4, 2007
» Has the ALP gone feral in its hunt for green votes? - April 26, 2007
» Prohibition v minimising harm - March 27, 2007
» Ducking and weaving on climate change - February 16, 2007
All articles by Andrew Macintosh
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Ashford UniversityAA/Early Childhood Education
Kaplan UniversityMSN - Nurse Educator
Post UniversityCertificate: Early Childhood Education Administration
Teaching Schools in Palm Bay, Florida
There are two schools located by Palm Bay, FL offering teaching programs. 30 students graduated from programs at Palm Bay teaching schools in 2010. 23 of all these students graduated with bachelors degrees and four of all these students graduated with masters degrees.
23 students graduate from teaching programs in this municipality, on average, each year. Specifically, three students graduated with teaching certificates, 23 with a degree at the bachelor's level, and four with a master's level degree.
Two teaching schools are located in this municipality. Out of these, two schools are public. Tuition at a public teaching school is $2,452.
Average tuition for programs in teaching is $2,452.
Schools in Palm Bay offer certificates, bachelors degrees, and masters degrees for teaching students.
Teaching Program Completions 2006 - 2010 in Palm Bay, Florida
Master 2006: 8
Master 2007: 10
Teaching Program Availability in Palm Bay, Florida
Schools in this municipality offer a total of nine programs in teaching. Of these programs, around 66% are bachelor's level programs. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the masters level.
Master: 2
Engineering Teachers, Postsecondary — Salary by Percentile
Business Teachers, Postsecondary — Salary by Percentile
Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary — Salary by Percentile
Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary — Salary by Percentile
Agricultural Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary — Salary by Percentile
Mathematical Science Teachers, Postsecondary — Salary by Percentile
10th Percentile:
Mathematical Science Teachers, Postsecondary — Employment Trend
Business Teachers, Postsecondary — Employment Trend
Engineering Teachers, Postsecondary — Employment Trend
Agricultural Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary — Employment Trend
Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary — Employment Trend
Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary — Employment Trend
Total Employed 2006: 50
Total Employed 2008: 100
Palm Bay vs Florida Teaching Employment
Employed in Palm Bay: 2.218% (415)
Special Education Schools in Palm Bay, Florida
Indian River State College offers bachelors degrees in special education. In 2010, no special education students at the undergraduate level pursued masters level degrees. In 2010, 12 students graduated with a bachelor's level degree in special education. Special Education Schools in Palm Bay, Florida
Nearby Cities Offering Teaching
Teaching Schools in North Miami Beach, Florida
Schools in North Miami Beach, FL offer a total of 128 programs in teaching. Of these programs, close to 35.9% are master's level programs. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the bachelors level, the doctoral level, and the associates level. Teaching Schools in North Miami Beach, Florida
The number of students who graduated with teaching degrees rose by approximately 76.5% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students rose by 14 students. The number of students which certificate programs graduate went down by three students. Teaching Schools in Palm Bay, Florida
Teaching Schools in Davie, Florida
There are 21 schools located near Davie, FL offering teaching programs. 4,251 students graduated with degrees from Davie teaching schools in 2010. 1,855 of all these students graduated with masters degrees. Teaching Schools in Davie, Florida
Teaching Schools in Bonita Springs, Florida
Four students graduated with certificates in teaching. 36 students graduated with a teaching degree at the associate's level. 160 students graduated with a teaching degree at the bachelor's level. Teaching Schools in Bonita Springs, Florida
Teaching Schools in Clearwater, Florida
The number of students who graduated with degrees in teaching fell by 0.5% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students rose by 61 students. The number of graduate students decreased by 68 students. Teaching Schools in Clearwater, Florida
Teaching Schools in Coral Gables, Florida
There are 19 schools conveniently located near Coral Gables, FL offering teaching programs. 4,222 students graduated with degrees from Coral Gables teaching schools in 2010. 1,855 of all these students graduated with masters degrees. Teaching Schools in Coral Gables, Florida
Teaching Schools in Daytona Beach, Florida
Schools in Daytona Beach, FL offer a total of 43 programs in teaching. Of these programs, close to 67.4% are programs at the bachelor's level. The remaining programs are degrees at the masters level and the associates level. Teaching Schools in Daytona Beach, Florida
Teaching Schools in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
There are 21 schools close to Fort Lauderdale, FL offering teaching programs. 4,251 students graduated from programs at Fort Lauderdale teaching schools in 2010. 1,855 of all these students graduated with masters degrees. Teaching Schools in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Teaching Schools in North Lauderdale, Florida
There are 21 schools located near North Lauderdale, FL offering teaching programs. 4,251 students graduated with degrees from North Lauderdale teaching schools in 2010. 1,855 of all these students graduated with masters degrees. Teaching Schools in North Lauderdale, Florida
Teaching Schools in Titusville, Florida
1,102 students graduate from programs in Titusville, FL in teaching, on average, each year. This accounts for 13% of students who schools in the state of Florida graduate from teaching programs. 92 students graduated with teaching certificates. Teaching Schools in Titusville, Florida
Teaching Schools in Delray Beach, Florida
Schools in Delray Beach, FL offer certificates, associates degrees, bachelors degrees, masters degrees, and doctoral degrees in teaching. 1,230 students graduated with teaching certificates. 13 students graduated with an associate's level teaching degree. Teaching Schools in Delray Beach, Florida
Teaching Schools in Boca Raton, Florida
The number of students who graduated with degrees in teaching went up by 2.9% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students dropped by 121 students. The number of students which certificate programs graduate went up by 350 students. Teaching Schools in Boca Raton, Florida
Teaching Schools in Fort Pierce, Florida
Average tuition for programs in teaching is $2,783. The highest tuition for programs in teaching is at Hobe Sound Bible College. The highest tuition for training in teaching is $5,100 each year. Teaching Schools in Fort Pierce, Florida
Teaching Schools in Pensacola, Florida
The number of students who graduated with teaching degrees went down by about 31.5% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students went down by 73 students. The number of graduate students fell by 14 students. Teaching Schools in Pensacola, Florida
Teaching Schools in Fort Myers, Florida
Fort Myers schools offer certificates, associates degrees, bachelors degrees, and masters degrees in teaching. Four students graduated with teaching certificates. 36 students graduated with a teaching degree at the associate's level. Teaching Schools in Fort Myers, Florida
Teaching Schools in Melbourne, Florida
Two teaching schools are in Melbourne, FL. Two schools are public. Tuition at a public teaching school is $2,452. Teaching Schools in Melbourne, Florida
Teaching Schools in Tampa, Florida
Tampa schools offer a total of 77 teaching programs. Of these programs, 55.8% are programs at the bachelor's level. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the masters level and the associates level. Teaching Schools in Tampa, Florida
Teaching Schools in Lakeland, Florida
The number of students who graduated with degrees in teaching rose by 5.2% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students climbed by 29 students. The number of graduate students decreased by 42 students. Teaching Schools in Lakeland, Florida
Teaching Schools in Bradenton, Florida
Schools in Bradenton, FL offer a total of 56 teaching programs. Of these programs, approximately 51.8% are programs at the bachelor's level. The remaining programs are degrees at the masters level and the associates level. Teaching Schools in Bradenton, Florida
Teaching Schools in Jacksonville, Florida
Seven students graduated with a degree in teaching at the associate's level. 366 students graduated with a teaching degree at the bachelor's level. 38 students graduated with a master's level teaching degree. Teaching Schools in Jacksonville, Florida
Teaching Schools in Jupiter, Florida
On average, 622 students graduate from programs in Jupiter, FL in teaching each year. This accounts for 7% of students who Florida schools graduate from teaching programs. Four students graduated with teaching certificates. Teaching Schools in Jupiter, Florida
Teaching Schools in Deltona, Florida
Eight teaching schools are in Deltona, FL. Four schools are private. Four schools are public. Teaching Schools in Deltona, Florida
Teaching Schools in Panama City, Florida
Three students graduated with teaching certificates in 2010. The number of students who graduated with degrees in teaching decreased by around 72.7% from 2008 to 2010. The number of students which certificate programs graduate dropped by eight students. Teaching Schools in Panama City, Florida
Teaching Schools in Tallahassee, Florida
Average tuition for programs in teaching is $5,821. The highest tuition for teaching programs is at Thomas University. The highest tuition for teaching training is $12,510 every year. Teaching Schools in Tallahassee, Florida
Teaching Schools in North Miami, Florida
Schools in North Miami, FL offer a total of 126 programs in teaching. Of these programs, close to 36.5% are programs at the master's level. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the bachelors level, the doctoral level, and the associates level. Teaching Schools in North Miami, Florida
Teaching Schools in Miramar, Florida
Miramar schools offer a total of 128 teaching programs. Of these programs, approximately 35.9% are master's level programs. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the bachelors level, the doctoral level, and the associates level. Teaching Schools in Miramar, Florida
Teaching Schools in Miami, Florida
Average tuition for programs in teaching is $18,552. The highest tuition for teaching programs is at the University of Miami. The highest tuition for training in teaching is $37,836 each year. Teaching Schools in Miami, Florida
Teaching Schools in Pompano Beach, Florida
On average, 4,190 students graduate from teaching programs in Pompano Beach, FL each year. This accounts for about 48% of teaching students who schools in the state of Florida graduate. 1,249 students graduated with teaching certificates. Teaching Schools in Pompano Beach, Florida
Teaching Schools in Margate, Florida
21 teaching schools are in Margate, FL. 14 schools are private. Seven schools are public. Teaching Schools in Margate, Florida
Teaching Schools in Lauderhill, Florida
Schools in Lauderhill, FL offer certificates, associates degrees, bachelors degrees, masters degrees, and doctoral degrees for students pursing teaching. 1,249 students graduated with teaching certificates. 13 students graduated with a degree in teaching at the associate's level. Teaching Schools in Lauderhill, Florida
Teaching Schools in Altamonte Springs, Florida
Teaching schools in Altamonte Springs, FL offer certificates, associates degrees, bachelors degrees, and masters degrees. 93 students graduated with teaching certificates. 11 students graduated with an associate's level degree in teaching. Teaching Schools in Altamonte Springs, Florida
Teaching Schools in Plantation, Florida
Schools in Plantation, FL offer a total of 135 programs in teaching. Of these programs, approximately 38.5% are programs at the bachelor's level. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the masters level, the doctoral level, and the associates level. Teaching Schools in Plantation, Florida
Teaching Schools in Miami Gardens, Florida
The number of students who graduated with degrees in teaching went up by 3.1% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students went down by 125 students. The number of students which certificate programs graduate went up by 357 students. Teaching Schools in Miami Gardens, Florida
Teaching Schools in Coral Springs, Florida
Coral Springs schools offer certificates, associates degrees, bachelors degrees, masters degrees, and doctoral degrees in teaching. 1,249 students graduated with teaching certificates. 13 students graduated with an associate's level teaching degree. Teaching Schools in Coral Springs, Florida
Teaching Schools in Homestead, Florida
Homestead schools offer a total of 114 teaching programs. Of these programs, 36.8% are master's level programs. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the bachelors level, the doctoral level, and the associates level. Teaching Schools in Homestead, Florida
Teaching Schools in Wellington, Florida
There are ten schools near Wellington, FL offering teaching programs. 2,739 students graduated from programs at Wellington teaching schools in 2010. 1,665 of all these students graduated with masters degrees. Teaching Schools in Wellington, Florida
Teaching Schools in Gainesville, Florida
Gainesville schools offer a total of 19 programs in teaching. Of these programs, about 52.6% are programs at the master's level. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the bachelors level, the doctoral level, and the associates level. Teaching Schools in Gainesville, Florida
Teaching Schools in Boynton Beach, Florida
Schools in Boynton Beach, FL offer a total of 96 teaching programs. Of these programs, approximately 41.7% are programs at the bachelor's level. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the masters level, the doctoral level, and the associates level. Teaching Schools in Boynton Beach, Florida
Teaching Schools in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
Schools in Palm Beach Gardens, FL offer certificates, associates degrees, bachelors degrees, and masters degrees for teaching students. Four students graduated with certificates in teaching. Two students graduated with a teaching degree at the associate's level. Teaching Schools in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
Teaching Schools in Largo, Florida
The number of students who graduated with degrees in teaching went down by 0.5% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students rose by 61 students. The number of graduate students dropped by 68 students. Teaching Schools in Largo, Florida
Teaching Schools in Port Orange, Florida
Port Orange teaching schools offer certificates, associates degrees, bachelors degrees, and masters degrees. 89 students graduated with teaching certificates. 11 students graduated with a degree in teaching at the associate's level. Teaching Schools in Port Orange, Florida
Teaching Schools in Orlando, Florida
1,228 students graduate from teaching programs in Orlando, FL, on average, every year. This accounts for about 15% of teaching students who schools in the state of Florida graduate. 93 students graduated with certificates in teaching. Teaching Schools in Orlando, Florida
Teaching Schools in Hallandale Beach, Florida
4,163 students graduate from programs in Hallandale Beach, FL in teaching, on average, per year. This accounts for approximately 47% of students who Florida schools graduate from teaching programs. 1,249 students graduated with teaching certificates. Teaching Schools in Hallandale Beach, Florida
Teaching Schools in Pinellas Park, Florida
Pinellas Park schools offer a total of 73 teaching programs. Of these programs, approximately 57.5% are bachelor's level programs. The remaining programs are degrees at the masters level and the associates level. Teaching Schools in Pinellas Park, Florida
Teaching Schools in Pembroke Pines, Florida
1,249 students graduated with teaching certificates. 13 students graduated with a teaching degree at the associate's level. 1,084 students graduated with a degree in teaching at the bachelor's level. Teaching Schools in Pembroke Pines, Florida
Teaching Schools in St. Petersburg, Florida
The number of students who graduated with degrees in teaching increased by 5.8% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students climbed by 106 students. The number of graduate students went down by 23 students. Teaching Schools in St. Petersburg, Florida
Teaching Schools in Palm Coast, Florida
11 students graduated with an associate's level degree in teaching. 123 students graduated with a degree in teaching at the bachelor's level. 15 students graduated with a master's level degree in teaching. Teaching Schools in Palm Coast, Florida
Teaching Schools in North Port, Florida
Average tuition for teaching programs is $5,607. The highest tuition for teaching programs is at Southwest Florida College. The highest tuition for teaching training is $11,880 each year. Teaching Schools in North Port, Florida
Teaching Schools in Ormond Beach, Florida
11 students graduated with a teaching degree at the associate's level. 970 students graduated with a degree in teaching at the bachelor's level. 160 students graduated with a degree in teaching at the master's level. Teaching Schools in Ormond Beach, Florida
Teaching Schools in Deerfield Beach, Florida
Deerfield Beach schools offer a total of 134 teaching programs. Of these programs, about 38.8% are bachelor's level programs. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the masters level, the doctoral level, and the associates level. Teaching Schools in Deerfield Beach, Florida
Only 1 school in the US offers Palm Bay students online teaching degrees at the following degree level:
This teaching school offers Palm Bay students the opportunity to pursue credentials in teaching through an online teaching program. In 2010, there were 3 online teaching school graduates from this program. Online Teaching Schools
Ashford University
AA/Early Childhood Education
BA/Early Childhood Education - Infant and Toddler Care
MSN - Nurse Educator
MS in Higher Education - College Administration and Leadership
Certificate: Early Childhood Education Administration
A.S. in Early Childhood Education
1. Brevard Community College
1519 Clearlake Rd
2. Indian River State College
Fort Pierce, FL 34981-5596
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Grammy-winning artist headlines fall music series
October 18, 2017 | By Kristi Sorrow
Palm Beach State College’s Music Department will host two-time Grammy award winner and jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove during a Tuesday Nite Big Band concert at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 21 at the Duncan Theatre. The Big Band will also perform with the PBSC jazz combos at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 24 at the Eissey Campus Theatre.
Tickets to the Nov. 21 concert with Hargrove are $15 and $5 for PBSC students, faculty and staff as well as K-12 students. Tickets to the Oct. 24 concert are $10 and free for PBSC students, faculty and staff as well as K-12 students.
Hargrove won his first Grammy in 1997 for the Afro-Cuban album “Habana.” He won a second Grammy in 2002 for a live recording with Herbie Hancock and Michael Brecker titled “Directions in Music.”
Born in Waco, Texas, Hargrove began learning the trumpet in the fourth grade. At 16, he was studying music at Dallas’s prestigious Booker T. Washington School for the Visual and Performing Arts. Midway through his junior year, he was discovered by Wynton Marsalis, who invited him to sit in with his band at Fort Worth’s Caravan of Dreams Performing Arts Center. Word of his talent reached Paul Ackett, founder and Director of The North Sea Jazz Festival, who arranged for him to perform there that summer. This led to a monthlong European Tour.
Hargrove would later become the band leader of the progressive group The RH Factor, which combined elements of jazz, funk, hip-hop, soul and gospel music. Its members have included Chalmers “Spanky” Alford, Pino Palladino, James Poyser, Jonathan Batiste and Bernard Wright.
“Roy has firmly established himself among the premier players in jazz and beyond,” said David Gibble, director of the Tuesday Nite Big Band. “Ever-stretching into more challenging and colorful ways to flex his musical chops, he has left indelible imprints in a vast array of artful settings.”
At the Oct. 24 and Nov. 21 concerts, the Tuesday Nite Big Band will perform the following tunes: “Time Check” by Don Menza, “Vierd Blues” by Miles Davis, “On the Ginza” by Wayne Shorter, “Back Home Again in Indiana” by Ballard MacDonald & James Hanley, “Aurora” by Patrick Williams and “Vortex” by Patty Darling.
The fall concert series also features the PBSC Concert Band and Concert Chorus at 7:30 pm on Nov. 28 at the Eissey Campus Theatre and Dec. 5 at the Duncan. Tickets are $10 and are free for PBSC students, faculty and staff as well as K-12 students. There will also be informal free jazz evenings featuring PBSC student combos at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 9 and 16 in the Humanities Building room 114 (Black Box) at Lake Worth.
To view the full list of events, visit www.palmbeachstate.edu/Programs/Music. For more information, call the Duncan Theatre box office at 561-868-3309 or the Eissey Campus Theatre box office at 561-207-5900.
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What Obama Said About America Will Make Your Stomach Turn
Barack Obama is still at it.
The former President continues to attach traditional American values.
And what he said about America on the Fourth of July crossed the line.
Obama was speaking in Indonesia – a country where he spent part of his childhood – and used the occasion to blast Donald Trump and nationalists.
“The former US president said some countries had adopted “an aggressive kind of nationalism” and “increased resentment of minority groups”, in a speech in Indonesia on Saturday that could be seen as a commentary on the US as well as Indonesia.
“It’s been clear for a while that the world is at a crossroads. At an inflection point,” Obama said, telling a Jakarta crowd stories of how much the capital had improved since he lived there as a child.
But he said that increased prosperity had been accompanied by new global problems, adding that as the world confronts issues ranging from inequality to terrorism, some countries – both developed and less developed – had adopted a more aggressive and isolationist stance.
“If we don’t stand up for tolerance and moderation and respect for others, if we begin to doubt ourselves and all that we have accomplished, then much of the progress that we have made will not continue,” he said.
“What we will see is more and more people arguing against democracy, we will see more and more people who are looking to restrict freedom of the press, and we’ll see more intolerance, more tribal divisions, more ethnic divisions, and religious divisions and more violence.”
Critics were appalled.
It is impossible to read these remarks as anything other than an attack on Donald Trump.
Obama was using the occasion of America’s birthday to attack the current President while on foreign soil.
It was an unbelievable break with tradition.
Past Presidents don’t criticize the sitting Commander-in-Chief.
And politics stops at the water’s edge.
Politicians do not travel to other countries and rip the President.
Officials are expected to show national unity when visiting other nations.
But Obama tossed that out the window because he is – at heart – a globalist.
It did not go unnoticed that on the nation’s birthday he smeared those who believe in the concept of national identity as being bigots and racists.
For all the talk about Trump destroying norms, it’s Obama who is tearing down concepts that have sustained America political life.
The country can only have on President at a time.
Trump is who speaks for America.
But Obama is muddying these waters by presenting an alternative voice.
For all of his faults, George W. Bush recognized this.
He said he owed Obama his silence and refrained from commenting on his affairs for his two terms in office.
Obama is destroying this tradition.
His loyalty has always been with globalism. OBAMA
The "fun fact" is a little overstated.....She's not quite worth 50 mil. (but close to it)
This post is from 2012, but is significant because it is found that Susan Rice has invested in the Keystone pipeline...Remember, the one her, then boss , Obama....NIXED.....CONFLICT OF INTEREST ??
Susan Rice’s net worth between $23.5 and $43.5 million – significant investments in more than a dozen Canadian oil companies including TransCanada (Keystone XL
Pipeline)
November 28, 2012 admin Corruption, ...Obama's Cabinet,... Susan Rice
First of all, how is someone like Susan Rice worth between $23.5 and $43.5 million? If the media did their jobs, maybe we’d know how a UN diplomat could amass so much wealth. Funny how leftists, who hate the rich never utter a word about Susan Rice’s net worth. Not only is Susan Rice worth so much money, but she has significant investments in over a dozen Canadian oil companies. She even has a conflict of interest with her ownership stake in TransCanada, you know that Keystone XL pipeline that Obama nixed? Remember during the campaign how ‘bad’ it was to have investments out of the United States?
Rice also stands to profit big if the Keystone XL pipeline is ever approved, so keep an eye on this one.
I love how our American "diplomats" invest in the United States
Muslim Association Moves Next To Texas Pig Farm And Tell Him He Has To… By Collin June 24, 2017
I can’t even begin to understand the kind of mindset and delusion you must have to move next to a pig farm and within a week start demanding that they stop raising pigs solely because you have some twisted religious view about pigs. But then again, I have a little bit of common sense.
Sometimes it’s good to remind people like this that we live in America – the land of the free. That freedom gives us the ability to do things like hold pig races during weekly prayer time in protest of un-American bullies.
If we just roll over and tip-toe around what is politically correct and what might offend someone, we will begin to lose our American way of life little by little.
Some might say the farmer went too far, but I think it was completely justified.
Posted by Pappy at 10:34 AM No comments:
BREAKING NEWS About Supreme Court Retirement 07/04/2017 by: Ken Klukowski
Rumor has it that Justice Anthony Kennedy is telling potential new law clerks that he is considering retiring from the Supreme Court next summer, setting up an epic showdown for the 2018 midterm elections.
Pundits predicting a June 2017 announcement of Justice Kennedy’s retirement were embarrassed when the last day of the Court’s annual term ended on June 26 with no announcement.
Justices can retire at any time, and an announcement could still be forthcoming. But at this point there is no reason to expect the justice—who turns 81 this month—is retiring any day now.
But rumors started circulating around Washington last week that Justice Kennedy is interviewing candidates to serve as his law clerks for the annual clerkship term starting in July 2018, and that he is giving those candidates notice that he is contemplating retiring next summer.
Source: Breitbart News
Read more at http://trumptrainnews.com/articles/breaking-news-about-supreme-court-retirement#uIt8M1KmoMBrhsOr.99
Repost from "WOODSTERMAN" At his request
The 4th of July ~ Independence ~ and it's Price
Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence? Their story. . .
Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died.
Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.
Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured.
Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.
They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
What kind of men were they?
Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists and eleven were merchants. Nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated.
But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.
Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.
Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton , Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.
At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.
Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.
John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished.
So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July holiday and silently thank these patriots. It's not much to ask for the price they paid.
I hope you will show your support by sending this to as many people as you can, please. The Fourth of July means more than beer, picnics, and baseball games. True "reflection" is a part of this country's greatness.
What Obama Said About America Will Make Your Stoma...
The "fun fact" is a little overstated.....She's no...
Muslim Association Moves Next To Texas Pig Farm An...
BREAKING NEWS About Supreme Court Retirement 07/0...
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Literary Center
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Click the box with Date on the left to select a time period.
A Conversation with Wiley Cash and Jason Mott
New York Times bestselling novelists Wiley Cash and Jason Mott will share the stage and a lively conversation about their writing lives and about their newest books–The Last Ballad and The Crossing, respectively. Free and open to the public, this event is presented in partnership with the Technical College of the Lowcountry and will be held in the auditorium of MacLean Hall (104 Reynolds St, bldg 12).
Part of the Pat Conroy Literary Center’s Visiting Writers Series, this program is sponsored in part by South Carolina Humanities, a not-for-profit organization; inspiring, engaging and enriching South Carolinians with programs on literature, history, culture, and heritage.
Website: Facebook Event Page
Wiley Cash is the New York Times best-selling author of the novels A Land More Kind Than Home, This Dark Road to Mercy, and most recently The Last Ballad, a historical novel of the life of Ella May Wiggins, the mother of the protest ballad and martyr to the labor movement. Cash currently serves as the writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina-Asheville.
Writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, Jason Mott was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize award and Entertainment Weekly listed him as one of their 10 “New Hollywood: Next Wave” people to watch. His debut novel The Returned was a New York Times bestseller published in internationally in 13 languages and adapted as the network television series Resurrected. His second novel, The Wonder of All Things was released in October 2017 and his third novel The Crossing was published in May 2018.
PRAISE FOR WILEY CASH’S THE LAST BALLAD
“A powerful book that speaks to contemporary concerns through historical injustice… Cash vividly blends the archival with the imaginative… With care and steadiness, (Cash) has pulled from the wreckage of the past a lost moment of Southern progressivism. Perhaps fiction can help us bear the burden of Southern history.”–New York Times Book Review
“Inspired by the events of an actual textile-mill strike in 1929, Cash creates a vivid picture of one woman’s desperation. . . . A heartbreaking and beautifully written look at the real people involved in the labor movement.”–Kirkus Reviews
“This suspenseful, moving novel is a story of struggle and personal sacrifice for the greater good that will resonate with readers of John Steinbeck or Ron Rash.”–Publishers Weekly
“Beautifully and evocatively written, The Last Ballad should take a place on the honor roll of Southern fiction that will stand the test of time… Cash deftly builds the suspense and tension about what will happen, and why and when… One powerful and haunting story.”–Greensboro News & Record
PRAISE FOR JASON MOTT’S THE CROSSING
“Mott spins a captivating, fast-paced dystopian tale about a world in chaos and twins fighting to stay alive. The world is plagued by two concurrent atrocities: the Disease, in its 10th year, is wiping out the elderly, and a world war has turned every country other than the United States into a war zone…. Fans of dystopian fiction will…enjoy Mott’s intriguing concept.”–Publishers Weekly
“As the world falls apart around them, orphaned twins Virginia and Tommy trek across the country to witness the launch of a rocket, hoping to find life while fleeing the draft for a war almost certain to bring death…. Mott brings his lyrical writing and soulful insight to another end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it storyline…. Beautifully written and touching on some fascinating ideas.”–Kirkus Reviews
“Mott’s darts hit home, and his novel should leave readers thinking about the meaning of memory, the meaning of love and the connection between the two.”–Wilmington Star
“North Carolina native and bestselling author Jason Mott writes a cautionary tale about the end of the world as we know it if good people turn a blind eye to the chaos around them.”–Raleigh News & Observer
An Evening with Jessica Handler, author of The Magnetic Girl (Beaufort, SC)
An Evening with Susan Cushman, author of Friends of the Library – Nevermore Books, Beaufort, SC
Pat Conroy Portrait Unveiling – Painting by Susan Graber
Our Prince of Scribes Panel Discussion at Hub City Bookshop (Spartanburg, SC)
Visiting Writers Series
Pat Conroy Literary Festival
Wiley Cash, Jason Mott
South Carolina Humanities
Technical College of the Lowcountry – McLean Hall
104 Reynolds Street, Bldg 12
Beaufort,SC29902United States Google Map
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Campaign 2008 News & Politics Arts & Life Business & Tech Health & Science Style & Shopping Travel & Food Sports Slate on NPR Video
Note: This transcript has not been proofread, and therefore its accuracy is not guaranteed.
0:00:00.000
Wright: Brian Swimme, a mathematical cosmologist, teaches at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He is the author of "The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos" and "The Universe is a Green Dragon" and co-author with Thomas Berry of "The Universe Story." I interviewed him in San Francisco. Well Brian, first of all, thanks for coming down to our West coast studio here. My staff and I are grateful. The... I've got two books in my hand. One is one you co-authored with Thomas Berry called "The Universe Story." The other is one that you authored solo more recently called "The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos" and the subtitle is "Humanity and the News Story." Now first of all, is the new story the same as the universe story only in elaborated form?
Brian Swimme: It's the same thing.
Wright: Largely the same thing. Not that you shouldn't buy both books. Why don't you then tell us what is the universe story?
Brian Swimme: The universe story is just the our account now of the birth of the universe around 4 millions years ago and then development of the galaxies and stars and our planet, all the way up until now. That's just the universe story or the evolution of our universe... Epic of the universe.
Wright: Big bang till now...
Brian Swimme: Big bang exactly.
Wright: And what is the what's what was your goal in telling the story?
Brian Swimme: Main idea is that human's have organized themselves around stories, stories about the universe, stories about their people and this is our our modern moment in terms of coming up with the story out of science that is in certain ways trans-cultural. It had it's origin in the West but still it's now being organized and developed by people from all cultures. So that was the whole idea. Celebrate a pan-human story.
Wright: Ok now what is the ... and as you said people have always told themselves stories about the world around them, how it came to be, and in fact in I know one of these books and probably both you talk a little about myth and the function of myth.
Brian Swimme: Yes.
Wright: What is a myth supposed to do for us? And can it be true or not true? Does it matter? Yours is true.
Brian Swimme: Yes there's there's that business of is it true or not true. Now that we have our scientific account does that somehow relegate all other accounts to falsehood and those are big issues. I I think of it as every every culture has it's way of establishing what it regards as real and so ours in now scientific. It doesn't it doesn't remove some of the importance of former stories but it changes them. And there are certain things that the former stories do that our scientific story doesn't do. So I I don't think of it science as being the truth and all the rest are just fairy tales. It's rather it's a very particular and interesting and and profound way of getting in touch with some of the important realities of the universe. So, a myth or story or now our scientific account it enables us to to orient our self in the universe. I would say that that would probably be the primary fact of the myth. It gives us sense of where we are and what's the nature of this universe and what what's the meaning of human existence and then and then even even what is my role in the midst of all that... I would say those are the...\
Wright: And does does it help tell you what what you should do?
Brian Swimme: Yea.
Wright: What your values should be?
Brian Swimme: Yes I think so.
Wright: So historically a myth does that...
Brian Swimme: Right.
Wright: And your goal in writing up the scientific story in this form is is to help people do that?
Brian Swimme: Yes I'd say so. One of the the differences with the way which we approached it was to see that the the basic modern stance of a knower apart from the universe isn't really viable now with our understanding of how we arrive at knowledge so we're attempting to not exactly tell the scientific story but rather we're trying to tell the story of the universe really based on science but inspired by other insights from other cultural accounts so it would be a it'd be an attempt to look at the universe telling it's own story. In fact one time we talked about the title being "The Autobiography of the Universe." So it's I think that's a fundamental shift that comes about in sometime during 20th Century science. It's no longer ...you know us knowing this universe out there...
Wright: And speaking of the universe telling it's own story, there's very much a sense in your books of the universe really being alive.
Wright: You you tend to blur the distinction between you know often you hear words like "pre-biotic" and "biotic" to refer to you know before life and and and the living world. I gather you don't emphasize that distinction nearly as much as a lot of people and you and you come across phrases in your writing like you know the universe making choices, the universe had to make a series of choices to get us to where we are today and so on. What do you mean by that?
Brian Swimme: And the word choice would be a world that we tend to use exclusively in the human world, so in in the modern temper we we we relegate decision making to humans and then when you move outside of humanity it becomes the world of instinct and then if you further it's the world of mechanism so that is going to make it difficult to use the word choice and talk about actions in the universe but certainly you know from a strictly scientific point of view the universe goes through a series of steps and they... you can call them bifurcation moment ... so the universe it gets to a critical area and the it takes a direction. Now, there would be a way in which you could talk about that that's random without any sort of relevance to something like a decision but then what's remarkable is that we look back over the whole 14 billion year sequence and those earlier bifurcation moments, those seem to have a relationship with what we see about us now and so it's that connection with...
Wright: So the universe, from our point of view kept making the right decision. In the sense that it kept moving in a direction that was conducive to live.
Brian Swimme: Yes. Right. Yes that would be a way of saying it right.
Wright: And and and this this gets at a question I have... now you definitely with this story you want to do some things that religion has traditionally done, orient people, inform their values and so on... one thing a lot of religions have done is give people a sense that things were meant to be you know... there was a God that designed the universe or there were some supernatural order that imbues their own life with purpose. And there, as I read you, you are kind of teetering on the edge of that but not quite doing it. Right?
Brian Swimme: Yes. That's right. Teetering is not a word I'd use but it would certainly... there I guess it's trying so hard to get a feel for the way in which there is a random dimension to the universe without question.
Wright: Let me give you let me give you an example ...
Wright: ... of you talk in "The Universe Story" about several kind of parameters of the universe that were just quite exquisitely fortuitous from our point of view. If they had been off a little in either direction, things would have collapsed, life could have been impossible or something. Here's just one example, you're talking about the curvature of space time which I can't quite imagine clearly but anyway ... the curvature of space time: "Had the curvature been a fraction larger the universe would have immediately collapsed down into a massive black hole. Had it been a fraction smaller the universe would had exploded into a scattering of lifeless particles. Thus the curvature of the universe is sufficiently closed to maintain a coherence of it's various components and sufficiently open to allow for a continued creativity." Now a lot of other you know...
Brian Swimme: Yes. Yes.
Wright: ...gravitational constant whatever I don't know if you mention that one but there are various things you do mention...
Wright: Now some people conventionally religious people have looked at these things and have said clearly the universe was designed for a purpose it's just too good to be true. What's what's your view on that?
Brian Swimme: Well I guess first of all it'd be the word design because as soon as you use the word design at least for me it then you're talking about a designer and so you have you have someone sort of outside the universe, Newton's idea was tinkering with it so you set the universe and kind of run run and tinker with it but I think what is what word discovers something way more exciting that is that universe is finding it's way, the universe is you know probing and exploring and it is from the beginning it's it's in search of something. Now I mean that I'm personifying by using that...
Wright: Yes.
Brian Swimme: ... and that is that does make it hard I think...
Wright: Well but how literally do you mean the the personification. I mean is the you know... you do think the universe is a living system?
Wright: And now living systems do have purposes though in the sense I mean even evolutionary biologists would say that an animal you can say is "designed by natural selection" and that's why it pursues goals like getting it's genes into the next generation and and and and goals that are subordinate to that I mean when we think of a living system we think of something that is the result of at least a process of design even if it's a kind of impersonal process like natural selection and something that has it's own little set of goals, right?
Wright: Is that what you mean to imply?
Brian Swimme: I do...
Wright: About... you do? So the universe does have a purpose.
Brian Swimme: I would not call it it's own little set of goals.
Wright: No. Well if it's the universe it's big goals. Obviously.
Brian Swimme: Yes. I think that the universe does have purpose it does have direction in the sense that but they're not in my own way of thinking they're not fully formed. There are I think something like, go back early in the universe, I think there are literally an infinite of things that are possible but out of all those universe is always striving to give birth to the to the richness that's there potentially that'd be one way of how I'd talk about it so that it it could be that the universe would be very very different than it is right now, but it would still have something like life and something like a kind of rich inner-connected world of our planet. That'd be how I'd look at it. Those those those aims are present somehow, darkly, and then how are they present? Well. I don't know. I mean, we just found this out. We just discovered all this.
Wright: You mean by "all this" you mean?
Brian Swimme: I mean the the discovery of the big bang cosmology...
Wright: Right.
Brian Swimme: ... is extremely recent. We've been humans for 150,000 years.
Brian Swimme: And now just just just like yesterday we discovered some of the details of this happening we call the universe and so I it's going to take us time to to sort out really what's going on. When... to talk about designers... I think I think that's unfortunately collapsing back into a previous way of thinking that isn't... it's more exciting than that.
Wright: But but purpose is a word you are willing...
Wright: ... to use.
Brian Swimme: Yes I am.
Wright: So the universe has a purpose?
Wright: And you don't exactly what it is but you got a feeling that sentient life is part of the point.
Brian Swimme: Yes. Yes I do. Right. Sentient life and and and display of all kinds of energy constellations. So that the universe starts off so simple really in terms of of of it's structure and yet over time it just it throws out all this exotic stuff. So I think that is part of one of the main aims of the universe...
Wright: To display...
Brian Swimme: Yes...
Wright: ... beautiful stuff...
Wright: But there wouldn't be much point in displaying beautiful stuff if there weren't creatures capable of apprehending beautiful stuff. I mean who is it showing off for?
Brian Swimme: Well, that's a good question. But it may it may just that alone may be what the universe is about... it doesn't happen without...
Wright: This is kind of it reminds me of kind of Whitehead a little bit.
Brian Swimme: Oh yes I would say that the three thinkers...
Wright: He was a process theologian, right?
Brian Swimme: Process... yes.
Wright: And and and do you have a good thumbnail definition of that or should we pass over that? What what what does process theology mean?
Brian Swimme: He would be a he would be a you know the first process thinker that gave birth to process theology. He was really doing cosmology. And his his I give you here's a thumbnail sketch of Whitehead... His idea was that we have in science exhausted the mechanistic metaphor and it it took us places but it was it was no longer viable in terms of what we learned but especially the quantum world so he was attempting to give a framework for understanding the universe with organism as the fundamental concept not machine. That would be one way to think about it. And then his idea of organism would be that that the fundamental reality of the universe is an experience in subject so his phrase is outside of experiencing subjects there's nothing nothing just bright nothingness. So not only would ... he would say it's not just display but it's the richness the intensity of the experience that would be what the universe is aiming at.
Wright: Ok. The so really I'm a little surprised because you're being more explicit than I think you generally are in your writing about the idea that the universe has a purpose. Maybe I mean I haven't read every word you've written but but but I'm a little surprised and what I was going to ask you was isn't this one thing that religions have traditionally done that you're world view doesn't do... that is to say by suggesting an over-arching purpose imbue people lives with a meaning from beyond in some sense... I mean would you say your world view has a transcendent source of meaning in it?
Brian Swimme: You see when you words like beyond then I start to loose my confidence because I'm really working out of primarily the scientific data so also like the word beyond or also transcendence I get a little bit uneasy but I would use I would use a word like inscendence ... I mean it's the idea that that it's the meaning and we're discovering is here and it's in this process we're reflecting upon this amazing process so we're speculating about what the meaning is and I mean humans have always done that. And so when you say a theologian is talking about the transcendence, well they're still talking about reflection on experience one way or another. So I think that our time is something like in significance something like the time the (()) age when these huge religious systems were constructed.
Wright: Is this between kind of what 300-800 B.C.E. or something?
Wright: Around the world you had major rethinkings of kind of spiritual and moral concepts. Daoism, Confucianism, Plato...
Brian Swimme: The prophets.
Brian Swimme: And that's a huge moment.
Brian Swimme: And then we have run on that imagery for all those centuries. But throughout that entire time there was no knowledge of evolution I mean...
Brian Swimme: Really.
Brian Swimme: And so now we have this vast thing so we in "The Universe Story" we're simply trying to to point out what's taking place something immense is happening so rather than haul in concepts from other religious systems the idea here is lets reflect on what we're discovering freshly originally... you know this is Emerson's cry, "Can't we have an original relationship with the universe?" So that that's really what so again if we can avoid words like beyond and transcendence I'm comfortable with the idea that what I'm trying to do is to is to provide a reflections on meaning that would be similar in form to previous eras.
Wright: Ok. What is what is the connection of this to pantheism? Which is, as I understand it, is the idea that the universe is in some sense God, is divine, and it's a world view that, like yours, is adverse to talking about things beyond the universe or or transcendent things but wants to attribute a kind of sacredness to the universe which seems to me a little bit what you're after.
Brian Swimme: You know I have I have all this confidence and enthusiasm when I am talking about the universe and it just amazes me to think about the stars and trees and you know ants and... but as soon as you use a word like pantheist or pantheism then I feel as if I'm talking about a category of theology that I know nothing about so I it's I don't like to think about I don't like to think about the universe as being God I don't like to think about the universe as being sort of like controlled by God. I'm just trying to look at what seems to be the case if we just take in what we're experiencing about the universe and not using categories of theology... I mean other people might be able to do that very well...
Wright: Right but there's clearly for example you use the word "numinous" a lot...
Wright: Now numinous means what?
Brian Swimme: Ok. Numinous would be... that certainly would be a word I'm comfortable talking about. It is I think it's it's being shocked by the splendor of existence so to say numinous is to is to say something like it's an awareness that what you're experiencing just goes beyond the categories of thought you have been taught to apprehend those things. I think that is what's taking place in the the scientific mentality that what ... the thing I was trying to talk about in "Hidden Heart" ... it is something to reflect on that Einstein couldn't handle what he had discovered...
Wright: This is where he fudged the... what was it he couldn't accept? That the universe is expanding at that point?
Brian Swimme: That the universe is expanding.
Wright: And that was an implication of his own equations and yet he assumed it was not true or couldn't handle the thought that it was true and so he stuck in this famous fudge constant...
Brian Swimme: Exactly.
Wright: ... to neutralize the result basically.
Wright: What do you see his problem as having been? Why was he why was he afraid to think the universe is expanding?
Brian Swimme: Ok. This this will explain everything about me using the words numinous and not wanting to use theology and so forth... this example... because it's Einstein sitting there and reflecting and he comes up with the field equations and then you look at them and they talk about the universe expanding, well now it's worth thinking about because he didn't have the data from Hubble... we did not know the universe was expanding...
Brian Swimme: So he he had some way of contacting the dynamics of the universe out of his creativity and he wrote these equations and then they talked about the universe... so it was the universe speaking through him and yet when he looked at what the universe was saying about itself he couldn't handle it because the categories of thought of the modern period didn't enable him to think of the universe that way and one of the and Eddington who is as equally brilliant as Einstein when he got what the equations were saying he called them abhorrent. Now that's the word he used. Why would a scientist talk about abhorrence when you're talking about discovering the universe? It was because the idea of the universe was only some billions of years of old was such a shock, you see that's what I mean by numinous or the other word we use is revelatory which causes a lot of dismay from people but it's it's the universe is attempting to be felt by humans as this seed that grows into this present reality. If if the universe were infinite in time there would be no reason to be astonished by what we see here. Now that too is...
Wright: If the universe were infinite in time there'd be no reason... I mean to be honest I am more and more astonished by the fact that anything exists at all you know this famous question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" The older I get the more amazing it seems that there is something. So so I would be a little...
Brian Swimme: Ok ok alright.
Wright: I would be a little taken a back in any event... but but but elaborate on that...
Brian Swimme: Ok. If the in the sense that if the universe were infinite in time then we could form a theory that would account for order and the theory itself would be nothing special, it'd just be random conglomerations of atoms. Now in a certain sense, in my way of thinking, that is how we talk ourselves out of the astonishment of existence, of anything. Now you apparently don't need it but scientists, we were so convinced we could account for order, so convinced we had it down that when this came along it just shattered that...
Wright: I kind of see what you mean ... I mean it it it's if you look at the order and complexity that exists in the world it's in one sense amazing in it's own right but it's even more amazing if you think of all of it as having in some sense been implicit in a little infinitesimally small seed...
Brian Swimme: Yes. Thank you. Good.
Wright: Right?
Wright: So that that's ...
Brian Swimme: The astonishment deeps.
Wright: Yes it does. It really does.
Brian Swimme: And that is what I want to celebrate.
Brian Swimme: You say "What is my work about?" It's that. It's that it's that instead... if we start off with astonishment then we I think we have a chance for wisdom but if you start off thinking the whole things is just sort of nothing but mindless mechanism and what the hell we can just we can use anyway we want. We can turn hills into commodities. I just think that beginning point right there is what I'm attempting to deal with.
Wright: Now this now you're we're getting into what I think for you is a lot of kind of the pay off a practical pay off of your world view which is you know when you start talking about commodifizing nature and so on there's a very strong ecological spirit I guess in all of your writing probably. You see that as growing out of this very natural and again this is something that religious world views do, they talk about how things are and how they came to be and that is meant to imply something about the values we should hold and how we should behave...
Wright: So ...
Brian Swimme: That is exactly it. If you if we have an idea that that the the things around us are just here for our use if that if we're convinced of that then and we have our powerful minds and we have all of technologies then the whole planet becomes something like a gravel pit. I think of it... that's sort of the metaphor of our time. Around this... in the modern the earth as a gravel pit or a lumber yard and that's how we view it. Now, if that's the case then we can turn all of it into McDonald's and computer chips and whatever we want. Now I think that is it's just so contrary to the the magnificence that was required for the creation of this. So we talk about anything any species any being required all 14 billion years and you begin to get a sense of "Woa. Maybe something huge is taking place that we're apart of..." and maybe our ideas -- that we're here to dominate -- those should be questioned. So it is it certainly... I didn't get in to this with the idea that I would have a political message at all. I was just amazed at the universe like a lot of scientists are when they're young and then you know as time went on and I realized that that in order to dismantle the earth as we are right now you you have to first dismantle the idea of it's sacrality. I use the word sacred, so the earth is sacred the earth is numinous ... that that has to be removed before you can take apart and so I I'm attempting to to work at that level you know.
Wright: You you you do want to attribute sacredness to the universe in order to discourage us from turning it into a gravel pit...
Brian Swimme: Yes. In order to to suggest maybe our primary orientation might be different that thinking of it as a gravel pit.
Wright: But but let me let me ask you something when you in "The Universe Story" you tell the whole story of humankind and so on... and there's a kind of direction in this story there is growing complexity even before there is life and then there are living systems of growing complexity and then humankind shows up and humankind flourishes and increasingly does dominate it's environment and subordinate the environment to it's own aims... couldn't you look at the story couldn't you turn the story around and say, "Well, this this this seems to be drift of the thing." Maybe this is the purpose... for humans to run roughshod over the planet and create gillions of copies of themselves...
Brian Swimme: Yes. So then I'll tell you my thinking on that because it is the question... where I start of is the the fundamental news of our time is that the Cenozoic era is ending. The Cenozoic era is the way biologists would talk about the last 65 million years. So over the last half billion years we've had these three major eras of life... the Paleozoic the Mesozoic and the Cenozoic ... and they're characterized they're ending is characterized by a collapse of the system. The news of our time is that the Cenozoic era is coming to a close. Now that is that's news that will remain news for a million years because it will take roughly 10 million years for the system to achieve it's level it's level of beauty and diversity that was present a century ago so that's why that's the background of my of my comments... Is that a mistake? Is it inevitable? Were humans supposed to do this? In my thinking the human self-reflective mind is a is a novel emergence and it is turns out to be colossal ... it turns out to be a whole geological era. But it is, it's related to the way the dynamics of the universe work. What happens is that things that are negligible become dominant in this universe if you go back over 14 billion years. One example, if you look at the early universe what dominates is light so if you know what's going on with light, you know the whole story... matter is there but it's just swept along by the light. And then the universe is cooling cooling so it gets to a point where the matter matches the energy of the light and so you have another universe so that now you've got matter and light interacting you have the galaxies forming so that this takes place again and again and the same thing happened with us... we were this little negligible species about 4 million years ago... well our hominid ancestors... but then we had this new power of self-reflexive consciousness. And that has grown to become dominant. Right now we're making decision that match something like the atmosphere... so that we are the atmosphere over several billions of years worked out a whole carbon cycle, very intricate, all the plants and the waters are involved... processes 2 billion tons of carbon every year... right now we're adding 6 billion tons of carbon. So human decision now matches the atmosphere. All of our cultural traditions were formed not knowing this about the human so recent we've become a planetary power in in our action but not in our consciousness.
Wright: Right. Well I mean to some extent shouldn't just kind of crass self-interest lead us in this in this direction? I mean not wanting to live in a junkyard?
Brian Swimme: That would be one way... that would certainly be one way to go but I ... that would be again within the within the orientation of of the planets or for the human... and all I'm trying to suggest is that...
Wright: Right. I notice this this in your writing... you are going beyond that you're not just saying we need an environment that people like to live in you say at one point something like human significance is derivative from the larger significance of life...
Brian Swimme: That's right. I guess in trying to give in one sense what would be the different that I think that at least I'm trying to discuss is this that the ...during the modern period the the human... all source of reality and value was a human. Right now it is the human so that you know what's water for, well water's for the human. We use huge portion of the fresh water on the planet now so... the shift is to seeing that the Earth's community is primary and the human is derivative of that. That that offends certain sensibilities in some sense the idea of the Earth being somehow primary but it is in a certain sense obvious because the whole system is what gave birth to us. And so it's tempting to recognize that we're a mode of the whole and then to find our way inside of that exquisite reality we call Earth as opposed to thinking as opposed to thinking that we we know what we're here for and it has to do with this this consumer society we've we've constructed. I think that's the main division between ...
Wright: So your sense of your own significance as a person is inseparable from your sense of connection to the larger system of life...
Wright: Ok. So if you were forced to chose between let's see wiping out the human species so that the rest of the ecosystem could survive on the one hand and wiping out the ecosystem and moving humans to like pre-fab houses on Mars... but that way at least the human species would survive ... would you have a clear preference there? I know I would.
Brian Swimme: It's just it's so... I guess here if I had to chose between living in a world of artifact entirely or living in relationship to these amazing realities we call animals or rivers I'd chose I'd chose the Earth community as a whole. The idea of the idea of the mall of America as our sacred sight and life inside there ... I mean I just find that a shriveling up of the ecstasy of living.
Wright: But but so one thing you are doing is bringing spirituality into the scientific age and trying to give it a scientific foundation... reconciling it with science, right?
Brian Swimme: That might be a way ... that might be how it appears you know to you or to other people and that might be a valider way but I really am not... what I'm really really doing... I'm trying to do is is to offer a way of of expanding and deepening what it means to be a human. To me there is a there is a there's a kind of of thrill of realizing that this this whole universe was involved with giving birth our moment and I just it I don't have to think that I don't have to think that that Brian Swimme was somehow intended in the past, I don't mean that at all... I just mean that those events that took place in the past, just the supernova explosion, that every atom of our body, all of the these the elements had to be forged in a star... I mean... and then the star had to explode and and spew this all out and then it had to come together I mean I tell ... people come to me and ... just my friends and so forth and they're complaining about oh you know their jobs or their relationships or whatever it might be and I say look 5 billion years ago all the atoms of your body were strewn out over a hundred million miles. Now you think you've got problems now? What if you were in charge of getting all that together in your body just just the idea is just it's about the thrill of ecstasy that's what I'm I'm about... that's what I'm really trying to do, I'm trying to I'm trying to say that you see we have this ... I had this conversation with a biologist once and he was was asking me "What motivates you?" And I said I'm really disturbed by the way in which the species are going extinct, we're losing 30,000 species a year... it's enormous and just horrible and he looked at me and then he looked behind me then he said "You know, like that pine tree back there, if that went extinct, we could just make another one." The idea that biotechnology can invent a new species, never been done... it's never been done but we think ok we're going to make new species... it's so it's a crazy kind of faith in a technological power that we don't have. Then I said to him... I was trying to establish a relationship by saying "Tell me about when when you discovered that..." -- he discovered a form of life which is fantastic -- I said, "Just tell me about that... what was it like when you discovered that?" And he said, "Nothing. I didn't have any feeling at all." I said, "I don't believe it." He said, "You stare into a microscope 16 hours a day at dust and see what you feel at that point." So I got it that science had has put so much energy into getting the details right and now what we discover is overwhelming. So I'm simply trying to make that available. I think it's another way of entering into the joy of being human.
Wright: So you you don't there's not necessarily where you see religion heading in the modern world? I mean ... or is it?
Brian Swimme: So, the various religions...?
Wright: Yes you would expect ultimately you know religions eventually sooner or later have to reckon with other forms of knowledge that establish their credibility.
Brian Swimme: Yes right.
Wright: And you would and and and there's the separate fact that right now the world's religions are kind of coming together and... because of globalization and and sometimes it's not working out that well and and and the the divergence the contrast of the belief systems is a problem and there are people I think who are hopeful that someday you could have more of a lingua franca among the world's religions and part of that language might be science which is something they're going to have to reckon with anyway. It has the advantage of being true and and so you know you hear talk about this ... what do you think of it?
Brian Swimme: Oh I love that. Definitely. I think that the the there's a there's a program at Harvard called the Forum on Religion and Ecology and they have brought together people from around the planet and all the major religions. They've had 10 major conferences and they had they have a website and it's on going but they just imagine you had you had like Jainism and ecology and you have Christianity and ecology and Buddhism and ecology... so ecology in other words the planet becomes the context in which this discussion can take place. If you if you take Buddhism and Christianity and so forth there's a kind of battle a subtle sort of struggle taking place because they're not standing in a common ground but if take the Earth or ecology then suddenly they can begin to explore what they had to offer. So I do think I do think absolutely that the the there will be a flourishing of religions, not a withering away. And they will flourish to the degree that they will move into the context of planet and universe. I even think that as a matter of fact that the some of the central insights of the religions are more powerfully presented by what we know about the universe now then when they were first formulated.
Wright: What's an example of that?
Brian Swimme: Well to take one example from Islam in the Sufi tradition they they they talked forever about the birth of the universe out of emptiness and so we will talk about that as the birth of the universe out of the quantum vacuum and they and they'll also talk about the idea that the universe is being born out of this emptiness continuously which is also what we talk about, not just the birth of the universe 13 or 14 billion years ago but every moment there's these particles are falling existence out of the quantum vacuum so I mean it's not something that quantum physicists were thinking about at all but they ended up articulating an aspect of the universe which has deep resonance with things like Muslim theology.
Wright: Yes, I wanted to ask you about that. It's you know you you use the phrase "the all nourishing abyss"...
Wright: And you another another phrase used is "the bottomless vaults of generosity" meaning the universe is generosity.
Wright: And as you said that that is and as you note in in one of your books it it's reminiscent of some conceptions of God. You could probably bring Daoism in here too right? The when you talk about an all nourishing abyss and and and and probably certain variants of Hinduism and so on. So is there is there kind of a God in your system?
Brian Swimme: Well I guess you know you talk about God ... it's just this vast word, "God," and... as soon as you say God there are centuries of Jewish and Muslim and Christian theology that rises up and ... so I don't use the word but I do I do think of a like a pervasive whole... an intelligence and a depth of feeling that I just refer to as the whole. Now, is that God?
Wright: You attribute feeling to it? Because I'd say you'd definitely moving in the direction of a God if we can you know...
Wright: ... if you are willing to cross that threshold.
Brian Swimme: I guess I would I would put it this way that this is sort of where I feel comfortable I've come up with saying this ... the the feeling that well up in the human or in the goldfish whatever they are these feeling are a particular manifestation of a reality that goes beyond us and so it's something like the way in which the quantum fields feel given the opportunity of our complexity something like that.
Wright: Say that again.
Brian Swimme: I'd say something like the way in which the quantum fields... we talk about you know the quantum fields fluctuating throughout the universe and then we we conceive of them as as sort of inert without feeling and so forth ... I'm not going and talking about them per say but I'm saying it's it's the way in which they would feel if they are given the opportunity of complexity of the human so that there is there is a there is a dimension to the universe that is activated by our particular complex form that it's a relationship but I'm not saying it's identical.
Brian Swimme: I would think it'd be much less.
Wright: Because you you so often write about the universe as if it had as if it were literally kind of animate that that I wondered whether you think it is like something to be the universe... I mean we're part of the universe. It's like something to be us and in that sense the universe is sentient this one little corner of the universe is sentient but but it sounds like maybe you're agnostic on whether any larger the universe is sentient in a larger sense.
Brian Swimme: Well I guess I think I don't want to say the universe as a whole is sentient and because the reason I don't is this is because I think whatever it is it goes beyond the reach of our language right now. I don't think I have a clear way of saying what it is ,I'm just saying I feel as if it surfaces in this particular way.
Wright: And you also write sometimes as if this sort of sentience we constitute is kind of a latent reality all along.
Brian Swimme: Definitely. That's exactly what I think. Exactly. And that's what I mean about in terms of the possibilities. They're all... there's a great phrase from Eric Yaunch, he's talking about Illia Prigogine's work, and he says, he's talking about self-organizing dynamics... now that's just a phrase, what does it mean and he's trying to get at it and he says, "these self-organizing dynamics are in every place in the universe, waiting to at their marks." I love that phrase because you get that that you know for instance the ability the power for making water exists everywhere in the universe but the conditions have to be right but if the conditions are right these these self-organizing dynamics leap to it so I think it's something like that that those the possibility for sentience has always been there but waiting for a chance to really display.
Wright: And we're at least in this corner of the universe...
Brian Swimme: Well... you say we, the Earth community as a whole? Yes.
Wright: No I just mean you and me.
Wright: One kind of off the wall question, you mentioned light a couple of times... I'm only...I don't know much about light. But I've kind of started to get a sense of how strange it is I mean it's just in it's own category, right? It it it I ... Hughston Smith has kind of done some writing about how strange light is and he's almost comparing it to God, not quite.
Wright: ... but... Yes what is it about light? What are some of it's amazing properties?
Brian Swimme: Well here's one, I mean, the more I learn about light the more I realize, man, I don't know anything about light... It's just bizarre. There the ... so we have the idea of time with Einstein relativistic time and how it change if you move and so we ... a particle has it's own proper time which slows down as you speed up. But at the speed of light it... there's no time. That's bizarre especially in terms of the ... that we can, right now, as you know, see interact with the light that has come from the birth of the universe. So we from our point of view, that light traveled for 14 billion years but from the point of view of the light it's the moment of creation.
Wright: But but but but are you saying we got here faster than the light did? I mean, that's not possible, is it? I mean we're just looking back and seeing light that took ...
Brian Swimme: It's two steps.
Wright: Ok.
Brian Swimme: ... two steps to get there. One is that if we just look out and you look out and this is what Hubble did we see these galaxies you look further see galaxies and you go out 12 billion light years ok and you're seeing early galaxies ... they're early because the light had to travel 12 billion years to get here so we're looking at the galaxies 12 billion years ago when they're just forming. I mean that alone is just unbelievable to me... that we're watching the galaxies form in real time...
Brian Swimme: We're like watching them form... I can't get over that but then now if you look further than12 billion light years you don't see galaxies because now you're seeing back before there were galaxies. You're seeing to a time before there were galaxies...
Brian Swimme: ... and then you're still seeing some stuff...
Wright: You're not seeing a place where now there are no galaxies you're just... you're seeing a different time. You're not seeing a different place in real time you're seeing a different time.
Brian Swimme: You're seeing a different place at a different time...
Wright: ...at a different time... right.
Brian Swimme: Exactly. So now you look back and you you can you can see all the way to 13.89 billion so say 14 billion years you can see 14 billion light years away and then nothing. In other words we don't see anything beyond that point beyond that point. So what we're the way in which we understand all this is that we're seeing the light that was emitted at the birth of the universe. That's the first step. So that now that light so that here it's right now we interact with it ... 14 billion years it's been flying towards us but from the point of the view of the light, it's there at the moment of creation
Brian Swimme: So we... we... it's ... so time becomes more interesting because of light. So we're here 14 billion years later but in some sense because we're reacting to the light or we're reacting to the event of creation itself....
Wright: No, go ahead...
Brian Swimme: Well I'm just saying I don't know how to think about that. I don't know how to think about the fact that the light hasn't aged. But that's what we're .... that's how we think on it...
Wright: I mean I use to think of light as just another available form of information you know there's sound waves there are the molecules that represent smells and you would expect an evolving form of life to it's I mean it's not surprising that an evolving form of life should pick up on should develop a sense for utilizing whatever forms of information there are and there are smells and there are sounds and there is touch things to touch and there is light so in that sense light is just another form of information and it's especially useful because it moves so fast that it can give you you know a certain kind of information. But then you know when you start seeing equations like E = mc2 you know and you think wait a second why is this particular form of information central to to to to the way matter is converted into energy and vice versa and I just don't have an answer to that... I mean there's something ultimate about light.
Brian Swimme: There's something ultimate about light there is something about ultimate about light and the universe seems to be somehow structured by light ....
Wright: It's weird.
Brian Swimme: It's weird.
Wright: Speaking of which, what do you make of quantum mechanics?
Brian Swimme: Well that would do the again one of the ways in which the the light comes in ... is it a point? is it a particle? is it a wave? how do you how do you understand that? And I think that my what I get out of the quantum world is that the universe is more interesting then we're able to capture in our language. It's not that after a few more years work we're going to find the term or whether or not light is a wave or a particle. But rather it is there's a richness that we attempt we attempt to say something about it we can't we can't fully capture it. I don't... I don't want to go into the intricacies of ...
Wright: You do talk a little about non-locality in one of your...
Wright: ...books, meaning this idea that events can influence another across vast distances of space ...in principle instantaneous right? In that sense faster than the speed of light.
Brian Swimme: That's one way to look at it.
Brian Swimme: There... the word influence would be would be really thorny and scientists would argue about that ... the way I would say it that would be kind of more conservative would be so say this that the events that are are separate that are far apart they are nevertheless physically correlated.
Wright: Yes but they're not they're not correlated in the I mean they're not just correlate I mean if you you know if you if you sent two bullets fired out in opposite direction and imparted the exact kind of same spin on them then it might be the case that 2 miles down the road they were both still correlated but that's that's definitely not what they're talking about in quantum physics, right? They're talking about you make an observation of some particle or something here. And the fact that you made the observation influences the state of the particle two miles away, right? Isn't that the idea?
Brian Swimme: Well...well again there's a lot of interpretation about that or argument. I would put it this way that the and I'm really I'm just I'm reporting what people are saying about this is that they are you know the phrase is entanglement so these ....
Brian Swimme: ...they're entangled and so that when you make a measurement you're affecting the whole experimental situation. That's the part I get excited about. You see when you talk about well one way to interpret it is that something is moving from the from this observation over here faster than the speed of light and that I suppose is one way to look at it but I think the way that seems more viable to me is coming out of David Boem and and there it is that it is the whole once again it's the undivided wholeness so that we we naturally want to think of of these particles here as being simply located... and that and we can't do that. Now that I find really fascinating. In other words that this whole physical situation in some sense is present here and it's also present here... it's present everywhere. Now this relates to the earlier questions about how I seen the universe as living and or God and all those kind of words I think I think the discovery of non-localities touching in on the whole so that these these seemingly separate events are somehow connected through the whole. That's the way David Boem would talk about it and I think that's a fascinating way to talk about it. So then you'll have you have this larger enveloping field and we're you know just beginning to understand something about that... so I love that discovery although I don't think we're anymore near really knowing what we've come upon.
Wright: Yes. And finally I just want to revisit a little this issue of your world view, the world view that you put forth in your writing compared to a conventional religion. It clearly has some of the characteristics of a conventional religion... it describes the world, how it came to be, helps orient you in that world... you believe it has implications for how you should behave, how you should treat the world.... the but there are other things that religions do one is one is -- at least many religions -- give people a sense of I guess a sense of peace or a sense of consolation or in the face of tribulations whatever... does your world view do some of this for you in your everyday life?
Wright: In what way?
Brian Swimme: Which one... there are several...
Wright: Well any of this... sense of peace, yes.
Brian Swimme: Ok. Sense of peace. So I'm like anyone whose alert... anxious about our situation and especially the the kind of world that is going to be here in the generations to come. So, that's constantly on my mind. Now... and especially when I think of the lack of leadership at our national political level...this lack of awareness of what the real issues of our time are... it's easy to become really discouraged. But if you look back over the universe story, what's incredible is the universe gets itself into these situations that just seem so bleak and yet there's these there's I mean I mentioned the supernova before I mean this here there's where my peace comes from... you have a star and then it's burning it's burning hydrogen and it's creating helium. After a while it uses up the hydrogen and the whole thing starts to collapse because the inner core is not longer able to to press against the gravitational collapse and the temperature soars to a hundred million degrees... it starts to burn the helium and then it uses that up. And then finally when it gets up to iron it can't burn anymore. Now at that point it's obvious to anyone who knows what's going on at the level of star that it's over. And the collapse is inevitable it just in a second the whole thing goes down to a dot and explodes out and then we have the creation of all the elements of the universe enabling the adventure to move forward so the break through moments are unimaginable until they happen.
Wright: ... but they do sometimes involve short term catastrophes.
Brian Swimme: Yes they do. Yes. In other words, this isn't some somehow shielding me from the reality of suffering but it is in the midst of it there's there's I have a sense that something amazing is at work, namely that I think our planet ... you didn't actually ask this question but I think our planet is actually moving into a time of profound harmony and fecundity and peace but whether that's going to take 600 years or 6 days I don't know I mean I think that as humans begin to take seriously... you'll like this ... as humans begin to take seriously the planetary dimension of conscious self awareness then we will become homonized versions of natural selection so that we will begin to make decision with the large scale dynamic of the planet in mind so I see that we're actually entering into a transformation of the human species out of the modern period into this new era... It may take centuries... but like the past and it's catastrophes I think that's is what's taking place in the midst of so many hardships ...
Wright: So people are coming to terms with for one thing their inner-dependency with one another and their inner-dependency with the ecosystem and so on? Or you're optimistic that they will come to terms with that?
Brian Swimme: I think they are coming to terms with that in different ways and that they will more so in the future. But I would even go further... inner-dependency is maybe the first step but I think it's ultimately a kinship. I mean just we ... so you have a religion that says you know God created all of the people and so you were all sons and daughters of God say... well I'm not saying anything like that but it amounts to something similar. We all float out of this process so that we are kin we're cousins we're genetic kin and I mean to really get that every human in African these are things that we sort of know scientifically but to really live that way that we are all cousins and not just humans but throughout the planet I'm saying as that as we start to live what we know to be the case then we will enter more deeply into this period of peace.
Wright: So does this help you in everyday life? Your world view? When you are walking down the street and you see someone and they may be doing something annoying I mean but but does this world view help you kind of empathize with them or I mean on a daily basis do you actually draw on this as a resource? ...kind of spiritual resource in that way...
Wright: You like people more as a result of thinking about the universe story? Honestly?
Brian Swimme: I guess I would say that it I would put it more in terms of relationship... I feel as if ... you mentioned... talk about evil before that you have you know this amazing realization that if you're a hawk what's evil for the hawk is the mouse because the you know the mouse is quick and gets away but I did this one realization every scientist goes through at one point... if you gave the hawk power, the power of God, the first thing the hawk might do is to slow down the mouse. But then the hawk would lose it's speed. And then if you slow the mouse all the way down so it can just barely move the hawk would lose it's flight so that in a weird way the the tension between those two say natural enemies is what gives birth to their beauty so I definitely feel that the tension we have right now with in the human community in particular that those are ultimately going to be resolved and a deeper harmony and a deeper appreciation for one another and a respect so that hits me yes definitely everyday I think.
Wright: But certainly if you if you look at the history of life on this planet for analogies there could be massive disruption before the next phrase of progress, right?
Brian Swimme: That's right.
Wright: And that leads to I guess what's probably my last question... one thing religions do is help people deal with death. What you've just kind of said is you're long wrong optimistic for the system as a whole but doesn't sound like you're necessarily short run optimistic for my prospects or yours or any given persons and in any event however optimistic you are we all have to deal with death. Does this world view do anything for you? Anything about death?
Brian Swimme: Well... I think so in the in the sense that is like before when I was talking about how we maybe moving into a different era of humanity it is not just about inner-dependency about kinship but I think it's also an understanding of identity so that we have a sense of our personhood and there are individuals and maybe we're Americans or scientists whatever we might be but what I think we're discovering is that we're we're of the earth ... we're earthlings and maybe take it further then we are universe beings and then if you know for me to reflect upon the nature of who I am I realize I can't stop I mean in other words all of that has to be included... you have to go all the way back 14 billion years so ... one of the things that relates here is the... we talked about before in terms of decision... all these decisions that were made create the kind of universe that we live in. I think of the universe as being free in each moment so it could have been so different. Every moment we're making decisions. If you want to understand the universe as a whole you'd have to include all those decisions including our own lives so that even in the future our presence is going to be felt one way or the other so I think of the I think of of our death as being it's a death to a micro phase self or a small self ... it's a death into our larger self in that this this whole vast adventure is our larger identity.
Wright: So kind of like atman and brahman. as the Hindus. say the individual soul dissolving into the larger spirit?
Brian Swimme: Again you know it may be not knowing really that tradition well...
Wright: ... as well as I do I'm sure.
Brian Swimme: But it is definitely the idea of whole and part. You know and... I think I think the anxieties over death have a lot to do with ....
Wright: But feeling kinship with other beings and feel that in a sense the universe is alive helps you feel a little better about the knowledge that you are going to at least physically just dissolve into it.
Wright: Ok. Let's end on an upbeat note then. Thanks thanks thanks a lot then. This has been fun.
Brian Swimme: My pleasure.
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Hal Schulz / Los Angeles Times
Film: West side of the 1700 block of Vine Street
Actor | Dancer | Playwright | Songwriter | Writer
Born Christian Rudolph Ebsen Jr. on April 2, 1908 in Belleville, Ill.
Died July 6, 2003 in Torrance, CA
Buddy Ebsen was a hoofer-turned-actor who danced with Shirley Temple in the movies but achieved his greatest success on television as the folksy Clampett family patriarch on "The Beverly Hillbillies" and the analytical private detective "Barnaby Jones."
The lanky 6-foot-3 Ebsen first gained notoriety when he danced in films, such as "Captain January" (1936) with Shirley Temple and "Broadway Melody of 1938," with Judy Garland. But his notoriety took an unexpected twist when Ebsen became the answer to a trivia question: Who originally played the Tin Man in "The Wizard of Oz"? After nearly dying from inhaling the aluminum dust used in his makeup during 10 days of shooting, Ebsen was replaced by Jack Haley, whose Tin Man makeup was a more actor-friendly silver paste.
The loss of the role of a lifetime would not be Ebsen's doom. He was cast as George Russell in Disney's "Davy Crockett" series. But bigger success was on the horizon, for it was when Ebsen donned a tattered hat, a tan coat, bluejeans and a false mustache that he became a TV superstar as nouveau riche mountaineer Jed Clampett, who moved his family to the hills of Beverly. Although dismissed by critics, "The Beverly Hillbillies" was an immediate hit, soaring to No. 1 in the ratings shortly after its 1962 debut, running for nine years on CBS and making Ebsen a household name. Its popularity even inspired new words and phrases to the pop-culture lexicon, including "Cee-ment pond" and Jed's down-home catch phrase, which Ebsen signed his autographs with: "Wellll, doggies!"
Soaring among the stars was where audiences wanted to keep the likable Ebsen. In 1973, at age 65, Ebsen hit it big again as the star of "Barnaby Jones" when he portrayed a folksy detective alongside Lee Meriwether. His down-home charm appealed to fans who welcomed the understated detective into their homes for eight seasons. "It could be that I have an intimate personality," Ebsen said. "I think I communicated with the close-ups on television. There was some kind of a human kinship, I suppose."
But throughout his long acting career, Ebsen remained a dancer at heart. Well into his 90s, it took no prompting for the white-haired, gentlemanly Ebsen to break into a "shim-sham-shimmy," a simple shuffle-tap dance followed by outstretched arms and a shimmy: the traditional hoofers' hello.
Taught ballet by his father, the young Ebsen resisted at first, "because it was considered a little bit girlish to dance," he said. He changed his mind in the 1920s when the Charleston became the rage, and in time he learned to tap dance.
Ebsen arrived in New York City in 1928 with only $1.65 in his pocket and another $25 tucked into a sock. Within three months, he landed a job in the chorus of Florenz Ziegfeld's "Whoopee," starring Eddie Cantor. In 1930, Ebsen teamed with sister Vilma, who was performing in a small cafe in Atlantic City. Their lively dance routine, choreographed to the popular "Ain't Misbehavin'," was a smash. Among the audience was Walter Winchell, the nation's most influential columnist. A one-paragraph rave in Winchell's column the next day was enough to instantly lift the dancing Ebsens from obscurity to vaudeville and later to Broadway.
— Dennis McLellan in the Los Angeles Times July 8, 2003
'The Other Side' of Buddy Ebsen
Well, Listen to a Story
From the Archives: Buddy Ebsen, 95; Actor-Dancer was Jed Clampett of 'Beverly Hillbillies'
More from the archives about Buddy Ebsen
Jack Haley
Fanny Brice
One thought about Buddy Ebsen
I truly loved Barnaby Jones and his sidekicks Lee Meriwether and the young actor whose name I don't remember. Would love to see this series on TV again.
” — Mandi , July 6, 2015 at 4:39 p.m.
Share a thought about Buddy Ebsen
Did you ever meet Buddy Ebsen? Share your memory.
Which other stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame have connections to Buddy Ebsen?
Are other places in the world important to Buddy Ebsen?
Does Buddy Ebsen deserve this star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?
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Salukvadze qualifies for record 9th Olympics
TBILISI, Georgia -- Georgian shooter Nino Salukvadze is expected to become the first woman to compete at nine Olympics after qualifying for next year's competition.
The 50-year-old Salukvadze has been at every Summer Olympics since 1988, winning gold, silver and bronze medals along the way. In 2016, she became the first woman to be on the same Olympic team as her son.
The International Sports Shooting Federation says Salukvadze secured qualification after finishing fifth in the 10-meter air pistol at a World Cup event in Beijing.
Salukvadze's ninth Olympics would pull her ahead of Canadian rower Lesley Thompson and Italian-German canoeist Josefa Idem Guerrini.
Among men, show jumper Ian Millar holds the record, with 10 Olympic appearances for Canada between 1972 and 2012.
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Mind Over Marathon
Nick meets the Duke of Cambridge for a special interview to find out more about why the duke is personally involved with the mental health campaign.
In this new two-part series Mind Over Marathon shows a group of 10 unlikely runners living with or affected by different mental health issues train for the ultimate test of mind over matter, competing in one of the world’s most famous endurance races – this year’s London Marathon.
One in four people in the UK experience a mental health problem, yet we rarely talk openly or candidly about it. For those who have these difficulties, this stigma only exacerbates their situation, making it harder to recover.
Mental and physical health are closely linked, and taking up sport or exercise can benefit our psychological wellbeing – but this is no easy ride. Presenter Nick Knowles, who is on a personal mission to get our runners across the finishing line, leads a team of running experts, nutritionists and psychologists.
The runners will be running in the London Marathon for Heads Together, a campaign set up by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry to tackle the stigma around mental health.
In this episode the group come from all over the country to meet for the first time at a training camp. Each of the different runners face different challenges, with different personal journeys.
Among the ten runners is Rhian, a mum of three who lost her one year-old son to pneumonia and five days later tragically lost her husband as well. She struggles with PTSD and anxiety and initially can’t run on her own.
Shereece had postpartum depression after the birth of her first child. She struggles with depression and panic attacks – and persuading her family that mental health problems are a real illness. Jake, a barman from Brighton, has struggled with depression but wants to try running as a way to help cope with his illness.
This episode follows them as they get ready for the challenge of running their first 10k race – an important milestone if they’re to make the starting line of the London Marathon 2017, which takes place a few days after transmission.
Nick Knowles meets HRH, the Duke of Cambridge for a special interview to find out more about why the Duke is personally involved with the mental health campaign.
‹ New App Based On One of CBBC’s Most Loved Shows › Young Brass Award Final
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Several Small Aftershocks Reported Following 4.0 Earthquake
Alameda County earthquake piedmont by Bay City News | August 17, 2015 7:59 am | in Bay Area | 0
Several small aftershocks have been reported following a 4.0-magnitude earthquake that struck in Oakland this morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The 4.0 quake was reported at 6:49 a.m. and was located in the Oakland hills about a mile north of Piedmont and 3 miles south of Berkeley, USGS officials said.
The quake had a depth of about 3.3 miles and struck on the Hayward Fault, which also saw a 4.0-magnitude earthquake on July 21 in Fremont.
Several small aftershocks were reported in the hour after this morning’s quake, the biggest of which was a 2.4-magnitude temblor in the same area at 7:40 a.m., according to the USGS.
BART trains were briefly delayed by about 10 minutes this morning as a result of the 4.0 quake, which prompted crews to stop trains and inspect the tracks for possible damage. No damage was found and trains are back on regular service, BART officials said.
The quake was reported across the Bay in San Francisco and on the Peninsula, as well as out in Concord and elsewhere in Contra Costa County.
No major damage or injuries have been reported as a result of the quake.
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#Giving Tuesday November 29th
By Hayley Ramm, Nov 23 2016 12:34PM
As part of #Giving Tuesday, The Sheiling Ringwood is encouraging people to explore ways in which to raise money for worthy causes and to make a donation to people and organisations making a positive difference in the world.
We would also like to acknowledge the contributions we have received from our donors. Over the last year, we have received support from a variety of local businesses including Morrisons, Anglotown, William & Mary Salon, FJB Hotels, Wave 105 Cash 4 Kids, LV=, Waitrose and Brook View Care Home.
Their kind donations have all helped to improve the lives of young people with severe, complex and moderate learning disabilities, including autism and communication difficulties.
http://www.givingtuesday.org.uk/
https://mydonate.bt.com/donation/start.html?charity=91467
Filed under: Special needs school Hampshire, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Learning Disability, Communication Diffiulties, Autism, Special needs school Dorset, Special Needs
#Giving Tuesday
#GivingTuesday was introduced to the UK two years ago and last year they raised £6,000 a minute for UK charities and broke the world record for most amount of money donated online in 24 hours! #GivingTuesday now runs in over 70 countries around the world including the US, Canada, Germany, Spain, Singapore, Australia and Brazil.
Here at The Sheiling Ringwood we are encouraging people to explore ways in which to raise money for worthy causes and to make a donation to people and organisations making a positive difference in the world.
We would also like to acknowledge the contribution our own staff and community make to the lives of young people with severe, complex and moderate learning disabilities, including autism and communication difficulties. Our team is not only capable, qualified and highly trained, but brings great dedication, kindness and respect on a daily basis to our children and young people. They truly make a difference.
Filed under: Special needs school Hampshire, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Learning Difficulties, Learning Disability, Communication Diffiulties, Autism, Special needs school Dorset, Special Needs, Disability
Morrisons Foundation donates £10,000 to The Sheiling Ringwood
By Hayley Ramm, Oct 12 2016 12:31PM
This week Morrisons Verwood Store Community Champion Jenny Cook was pleased to present a £10,000 donation from the Morrisons Foundation to The Sheiling Ringwood.
Corine van Barneveld, Principal said: ‘’We are immensely grateful to the Morrisons Foundation for this generous donation which will be used to fund the purchase of a vehicle for The Sheiling Ringwood. This fulfills an essential transport requirement for our young people to take part in offsite visits for work experience and medical appointments. In addition, as part of their lessons and life skills, students travel off site for a variety of activities including horse riding, swimming, hiking, and visiting museums. As many of our students are also resident here, they take part in various leisure activities such as going to the zoo, the cinema, and the beach and this donation with greatly help enhance the quality of our students’ lives’’.
The Morrisons Foundation was established in 2015 to provide financial support to registered charities operating in communities across the UK.
David Scott, Trustee of the Morrisons Foundation, said: "The Morrisons Foundation provides support to charities making a difference to people in local communities. This donation will help The Sheiling Ringwood deliver important services in the local area.”
Filed under: Special needs school Hampshire, Special needs College, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Learning Disability, Communication Diffiulties, Autism, Special needs school Dorset, Special Needs
Alice in Wonderland Day raises money for The Sheiling Ringwood
By Hayley Ramm, Sep 27 2016 11:14AM
On Saturday 13th August William & Mary Hair Salon in Ashley Heath held their 5th birthday celebration and Charity Day with an Alice in Wonderland themed event. The day included tea and cakes served on the green, a fabulous raffle, with prizes donated by the salon’s clients and local businesses, and the salon staff, wearing fancy dress, were extremely busy carrying out non-stop blow dries for customers with all proceeds being donated to The Sheiling Ringwood.
The salon raised an amazing £1075 for The Sheiling Ringwood, an Independent Special School, College and a Children’s Care Home for students with severe, complex and moderate learning disabilities, including autism and communication difficulties. The money will be put towards new chairs for the Assembly Hall which are much needed.
Emma Beddow, Salon Manager, said: ‘’We are delighted to not only have been able to celebrate the salon’s 5th birthday, but also to raise money for The Sheiling Ringwood, a charity close to our hearts and which is also close to our salon. We had a great day and we are very grateful to the support we received from so many of our clients.’’
Corine van Barneveld, Principal, commented: ‘’We very much appreciate the hard work and fund-raising efforts from all at William & Mary and we are extremely grateful for the money they raised and to the people who supported the event and so generously donated.’’
Filed under: Special needs school Hampshire, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Learning Disability, Communication Diffiulties, Autism, Special needs school Dorset, Special Needs, Disability
The Sheiling Ringwood offers free EHCP & E-safety Parent Workshop on 3rd October
The Sheiling Ringwood is offering a free workshop on Education, Health & Care Plans (EHCPs) & E-Safety for the parents of children or young people with complex educational needs.
The first part of the day will provide parents with guidance and help to unravel the process of transferring from Statements to EHCPs. This change has come about as a result of The Children and Families Act 2014, with one of the key changes being the introduction of EHCPs which have replaced Statements of special educational needs.
Eleanor Wright from SOS!SEN will give a presentation about EHCPs and will share ideas on how to achieve the best outcomes and will identify useful resources. For the last hour, there will be an E-safety workshop to help parents ensure that their children are kept safe when online.
Representatives from The Rose Road Association will be on hand to offer 1:1 support sessions.
The workshop will run from 10.00am – 2.30pm and includes a free buffet lunch. It will be held at The Sheiling Ringwood, Horton Road, Ashley, Ringwood, BH24 2EB.
Please email Sharon at sharon.maclennan@thesheilingringwood.co.uk if you have questions and to register for the event.
Filed under: Special needs school Hampshire, Special needs College, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Learning Difficulties, Learning Disability, Communication Diffiulties, Autism, Special needs school Dorset, Special Needs
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Bayfield County Attractions
At the top of Wisconsin, on the southern shore of Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the western hemisphere, is Bayfield County -- a land shaped by glaciers, wind and water, where tranquil fishing villages, logging towns and Native American communities, established here before Columbus landed, continue to reflect the area's richly varied heritage.
Chicago Tribune travel writer Alan Solomon described the City of Bayfield, the gateway to the Apostle Islands, as "a place where the lake is sparkling, the beaches clean, the fish abundant and hungry, the golf courses challenging and beautiful, the dining creative, the lighthouses photographable, the hiking shaded, the bears reclusive, the sunsets magical…as a travel destination this is the Best Little Town in the Midwest."
Today logging continues on a smaller scale with modern equipment, but visitors can visit and experience the sights and sounds of an old-fashioned sawmill operating in the town of Herbster. Commercial fishing has also declined but the fishing camps and villages still nestle along the shore with old fish boats and distinctive old waterfront fishing sheds now house art, gift, craft, antique and collectibles, old-fashioned general stores and historic settlers' cottages.
Area museums tell fascinating stories of the early settlers, Ojibwa, Spanish, French and English, as hunters, voyageurs, missionaries, traders, loggers, quarry workers, farmers, commercial fishermen, sailors, lighthouse keepers, and railroaders. Underwater, along the rocky shoreline, present day explorers will find the well-preserved remains of historic sailing ships and fishing vessels.
Bayfield County's most precious asset is the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, with 21 islands and 12 miles of pristine shoreline with soft sand beaches, rocky cliffs and mystical sea caves - magically transformed to crystalline halls in winter - and more lighthouses than any other coastline in the United States.
The County's Lake Superior shoreline hosts the nation's largest fleet of chartered and rental sailing vessels. Lake explorers can sail on captained three-masted schooners, chartered cruisers, sea-going kayaks, canoes, or one of the many sailboats for rent.
The largest of the Apostle Islands, and the only island with commercial development, Madeline Island, has been settled for more than 400 years, including by the Ojibwa people who arrived in the 15th century. The 180 permanent present day residents include some direct descendants to the earliest settlers. Madeline Island is linked to the mainland in winter by Country Highway "H", a five-mile ice road. In early and late winter, while Highway "H" is forming and melting down, crossings are made by windsled, part boat and part plane. From early spring to mid-winter, crossings are by a more conventional but no less adventurous car ferry.
In the 1840's the La Point Chippewa formed a new settlement at Red Cliff, north of Bayfield. Today
in Red Cliff visitors can enjoy a wide variety of outdoor activities, including camping, hiking, cross-country skiing and snowmobiling over 550 miles of interconnecting trails, and sailing, trolling or ice-fishing from a marina in a protected harbor. The Red Cliff people preserve their unique Woodland Indian heritage at special events, including an annual July 4th Weekend Pow-Wow that draws participants from many Great Lake Tribes from the U.S. and Canada.
Bayfield County is a wildlife observer's paradise. With 23,161 acres of surface water, 966 lakes (398 with access and fish to challenge anyone), 400 miles of streams (some wild, most tranquil, all beautiful) 1,476 square miles of land (83% forested), Bayfield County's diverse landscape and plant communities host hundreds of bird and animal species, many of which are found only here.
Much of inland Bayfield County is covered by the gently rolling terrain of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, dotted with lakes and streams, where recreational activities and scenic landscapes are virtually unlimited year-round. In summer, forest activities include sightseeing from highland overlooks, fishing, hiking, ATV's, horseback riding and wilderness camping. In winter, forest lakes and trails host cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, ice-fishing and snowshoeing.
The area also boasts two downhill ski areas, Mt. Ashwabay and Mt. Telemark, where skiers can count on the average 73" annual snowfall to provide the best conditions available anywhere in the state. Golfers can choose from more than 16 courses in Bayfield County, from the Scottish links-style Madeline Island course designed by Robert Trent Jones, the championship Telemark Golf Course and spectacular Apostle Highlands scenic 18 holes, to sporty nine-hole courses at the Mellen Country Club and Spider Lake Golf Resort.
The nation's largest and most prestigious cross-country ski event, the Dyno American Birkebeiner, the nation's largest off-road bicycle event, the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival; the Great Schooner Race, Fall Color Festival and the Bayfield Apple Festival head the list of fun and sporting events that draw thousands of visitors to the area year-round. Others come to enjoy one of the 70-plus live shows performed in summer in Chautauqua, just south of Bayfield.
Bayfield County's restaurants have been included on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's ten best list and praised in the New York Times. Area offerings waiting to be discovered include secret sauces, fish chowders, blueberry pancakes and fresh fruit pies. Cuisine varies from home cooking (better than Grandma's) to gourmet preparations featuring freshly harvested and bountiful fruit, fish, and vegetable specialties.
Bayfield County offers a wide range of lodging accommodations, from rugged wilderness campsites to bayside villas, historic bed and breakfast mansions, economy motels, romantic and secluded forest cabins, housekeeping cottages and luxurious lakeside resorts.
No matter how long it takes to get here, Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua singer/songwriter, Warren Nelson, wrote, "Your Getaway Is Your Arrival". The people of Bayfield County are waiting to welcome your getaway.
Museums and Historical Sites
Lakeview School Museum (website)
100 Island Lane, Madeline Island
Located 1½ blocks from the ferry landing on Madeline Island, Lake View School takes visitors back to the days of the one-room schoolhouse. Built in 1904 at the north end of the island, the building was moved to its present location and restored by the Madeline Island Historical Preservation Association. It is filled with authentic furniture, equipment, educational materials and historic photographs. Open June-September. Call for hours.
Madeline Island Historical Museum (website)
Colonel Woods Ave., Madeline Island
Experience the rich history of Madeline Island through exhibits and programs that explore three centuries of island life, from Ojibway culture to the fur trade, missionaries to loggers, boat building to fishing. Museum store, musical orientation program and daily tours in season. Open mid-May to mid-October.
Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center
US Hwy. 2 and Cty. Hwy. G, West of Ashland
This center, operated by multiple agencies and organizations, provides cultural exhibits of the history of the Northern Great Lakes Region: Northern Wisconsin, Northeastern Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The region's heritage is told from the time of the glaciers to the present. A musical historical house show "Up Under the Upper Lake" provides an entertaining presentation of Northern Wisconsin's farming, logging, shipping and mining history. Open 8:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. daily in summer; and 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. daily in winter.
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore Museum
415 Washington Ave., Bayfield
Located in a 19th Century cigar factory, the museum's displays include an old-fashioned barbershop, telephone switchboard, logging, lumbering, agriculture and tourism, and an extensive collection of historic photographs. Open Memorial Day - Labor Day Weekend 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. daily except Mondays. After Labor Day, weekends only. Also by appointment.
Cable Natural History Museum
Let the Cable Natural History Museum introduce you to the northwest Wisconsin neighborhood: the 90,000 acre Chequamegon National Forest; 3500 lakes and countless rivers, creeks and streams; majestic Lake Superior; beaches, waterfalls, orchids, wetlands, fish, wolves, owls, deer, eagles; almost everything there is to know about the north woods environment is on display here. Open year around Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.; during June, July, August also open Sunday 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Drummond Historical Museum
Superior St. and Owen Ave., Drummond
Discover the history of the area's logging industry; the rough and tumble, dangerous and demanding lumberjack trade, life in a "company town," and northwoods wildlife revealed in the Drummond Museum's artifacts, displays and exhibits. Open year round. Tuesday 1:00 - 5:00 p.m., Wednesday 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. Sundays and holidays by appointment.
Hokenson Brothers Fishery Museum
Little Sands Bay off Hwy. 13, North of Bayfield
Tour the buildings, tools, and equipment of this one-time family-operated commercial Lake Superior fishery. Visitors can guide themselves or take a guided tour to learn more about the history of the fascinating and often hazardous fishing business from a knowledgeable park ranger. Open daily, Memorial Day - Labor Day, 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Mason Historical Museum
Cty. Hwy. E, Mason
Housed in a renovated depot built by the Chicago, St. Paul, Minnesota & Omaha Railway, the Mason Historical Museum's exhibits follow the town's development from 1883, when the White River Lumber Company built a mill and the town site of Mason; to 1894, when the site became the largest lumber mill in the northwest; and to the demise of the lumber industry in the early 20th Century. Open Sundays from Memorial Day to Labor Day from noon to 3:00 p.m. and also by reservation.
Washburn Historical Museum & Cultural Center (website)
1 E. Bayfield St. (Hwy. 13), Washburn
Located in a restored National Register brownstone bank building, the first floor of the center has a unique gift shop, historic exhibits and Cultural Center that provides ongoing art exhibits, workshops for adults and children and very special programs of the performing arts. The second floor contains the stories and memorabilia of Washburn's businesses and industries, family photos and heirlooms, ethnic displays and an impressive collection of toys. Open April - December 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.; closed January - March except by appointment. Call for exact days.
Western Bayfield County Museum
Touch the area's varied past: logging tools and markers, vintage turn of the 20th century clothing, household furnishings and farm tools, veterans' uniforms and memorabilia with special displays for children. Open June 15 - Labor Day, Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday 11:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. Also by appointment.
Apostle Island Lighthouses
Relive 150 years of maritime thrills, romance, blunders, dedication, hardships and heroism reflected in the historic lighthouses still standing guard along the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Tour the light stations, see the machinery, the lights and almost magical giant Fresnel lenses that focused and threw the light far into many a stormy night. Visitors learn about historic disasters, near disasters and heroic rescues, about the faithful keepers of the light, and occasionally even meet one such character in full lightkeeper's uniform. For more information about Apostle Island Lighthouse tours, call 715-779-3397.
Michigan Island Light Station features two light towers. The first, built in 1857 of rough stone with a conical tower and whitewashed stucco exterior, was supposed to have been constructed at the western end of Long Island. The second light, located atop a 112-ft. cylindrical tower that was brought from its original location on the Delaware River near Philadelphia, replaced the original in 1929.
Long Island Light Station features two lights; the La Pointe light, originally a small clapboard house with a squared timber tower, constructed at the western end of the island in 1857, now sitting atop a brick first story added along with the present 67 ft. cylindrical tower in 1895; and, the Chequamegon Point light, a 42 ft. tower also constructed in 1895.
Raspberry Island Light, constructed in 1863, originally was a rectangular frame structure with a forty-foot tower. A red brick building housing a steam fog whistle and hoisting engine was added in 1902 and the lighthouse building was converted to a duplex in 1906-07, with the keeper's quarters in one half, and the two assistant keepers sharing the other.
Outer Island Light Station, built in 1874 on a red clay bluff 40 feet above Lake Superior, the whitewashed brick lighthouse tower stands 90 feet high. A short wooden passageway connects the tower with the keepers quarters, a three story red brick building with a large chimney and an attached kitchen.
Sand Island Light, constructed in 1881 in Norman Gothic-style, is the only lighthouse in the Apostles constructed of locally quarried brownstone.
Devils Island Light, lit first in 1891, with a two story Queen Anne - style keepers' dwelling, and an 82 ft. steel tower constructed in 1898.
Apostle Islands Historical Sites
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore preserves a variety of historic sites, including prehistoric and abandoned 19th century fishing camps, logging camps, a logging railroad, stone quarries and farmsteads. Interpretive, guided and self-guided tours are available at visitors centers located on the islands or at the National Lakeshore headquarters in Bayfield.
Parks and Nature Centers
Chequamegon National Forest (website)
Bayfield County
The Chequamegon National Forest has 850,000 acres of rolling terrain dotted with crystal clear lakes, rushing rivers and meandering streams, a variety of scenic landscapes, rock formations, highland outlooks, varied forest environments, hundreds of wildlife species. There are hundreds of miles of easy-going to rugged hiking, mountain biking, cycling and snowmobile trails, and five public and four private campgrounds.
Backcountry camping is permitted throughout the forest on public land located at least 30 feet from any trail or waters' edge. The Rainbow Lake and Porcupine Lake Wilderness areas offer backpackers and hikers 11,000 rugged acres of nature at its quiet best; no wheeled or motorized vehicles are allowed.
Families with young children and others looking for short and easy paths through the forest will find several trails with interpretive stations. All are easily accessible and can be enjoyed in as little as half an hour. The Forest Lodge Nature Trail, maintained by the Cable Natural History Museum, is a family favorite.
Skyscraping towers, cliff-lined gorges and 70 foot waterfalls are found along the forest's more challenging trails, including the North Country National Scenic Trail, part of a 3200 mile trail linking the Appalachian Trail in Vermont with the Lewis and Clark Trail in North Dakota.
Mountain bike enthusiasts will find more than 300 miles of mapped and marked trails stretching from Hayward to Iron River. Developed and maintained by the Chequamegon Area Mountain Bike Association, CAMBA trails are well-marked, "impossible to get lost on," and follow a variety of paths including logging roads, firelanes, snowmobile trails, ski trails and single tracks.
Hundreds of miles of excellent trail systems allow snowmobilers to travel the uncrowded solitude of the forest, over well-groomed logging roads, firelanes and converted railbeds with 200 to 585 footbridges from Hayward to Mason, Iron River and Port Wing.
In the heart of the forest, the Forest Service maintains an extensive network of trails that are open for horseback riding. The 12-mile Horseshoe Lake Saddle Trail, suitable for riders of all abilities, has two adjoining loops of varying lengths to explore.
The US Forest Service also maintains a number of cross-country ski trail systems in the forest, including Rock Lake, Namakogon, Drummond, Penokee Mountain, West Torch and Mukwonago trails. All are groomed for classical skiing except Mukwonago, which provides for both classical and skate skiing.
Families will enjoy canoeing the Namakagon River as it flows south from Lake Namakagon and the north flowing White River. The Namakagon offers light rapids, occasional picnic grounds and camping areas along the shore. The White is a slower, meandering river with a deeper basin.
Forest lakes and streams provide angling thrills for novice and expert alike. Lake Namakagon is one of three Wisconsin lakes managed for trophy musky production; regularly yielding 40+ inchers. Lake Owen has walleye, too, and is known for its outstanding bass and northern yield. Forest streams yield brook trout, rainbows and browns. Crappies and other panfish are plentiful in all of the forests waters, including the many wilderness lakes that are only accessible by foot and best fished by belly boat. In winter, of course, the fish are available through the ice. Ice fishing equipment is available for rent in nearby boat, bait and tackle shops.
Forest woodlands offer great hunting with little competition from others. In season, whitetail deer, black bear, ruffed grouse, and waterfowl are most commonly hunted. But the forest also yields woodcock, gray squirrel, snowshoe hare, fox and coyote.
Private campgrounds located on the shores of the forest's lakes offer boat ramps, sandy beaches, boat, motor and canoe rentals, electrical hookups, water, showers and flush toilets.
Big Bay State Park (website)
Madeline Island
Designed for camping, hiking, picnicking, fishing, swimming and outdoor education, Big Bay State Park offers a 55-site family campground, an indoor group camp, several picnic areas, over five miles of hiking trails, a 1½ mile sand beach, self-guided nature trails and naturalist programs.
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore (website)
Headquarters Visitor Center, Bayfield
Nestled near the western end of Lake Superior, the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore includes 21 islands and a 12-mile strip of mainland Wisconsin Shoreline. The islands beckon to explorers and vacationers who enjoy quiet, sandy beaches, rocky shorelines, sea caves, shipwrecks, historical interpretive areas, wildlife viewing and wilderness camping. Excursion boats provide access to the islands.
Private sailors, boaters and kayakers can travel around the archipelago to explore the fantastic sea caves carved into sandstone cliffs along the islands and mainland shoreline and view the seagull, cormorant and great blue heron rookeries on Eagle Island, which is not accessible to visitors. On many of the islands explorers will find hiking trails that provide close-up views of the island's diverse plant, bird and wildlife populations and historic sites.
There are more that 50 miles of maintained trails and camping is permitted on 18 of the 21 islands. Bicycles and mechanized vehicles are not permitted on the islands or the mainland shoreline. Park activities include sailing, boating, sea kayaking, camping, hiking, picnicking, swimming, scuba diving, shipwreck exploration, excursion cruises, sport fishing, hunting, cross country skiing, and guided programs. Permits are required for camping, scuba diving and hunting. Special permits are required for the annual October black powder deer hunt on Oak and Basswood Islands.
Capser & Meech Hiking Trails
Two trails, Capser and Meech, invite hikers to enjoy the Madeline Island Wilderness Preserve and the Town inland forest. The trails begin a short twelve-minute walk from the island's ferry dock.
Squaw Bay Caves
East of Cornucopia
In Squaw Bay, on the mainland shore of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, just east of Cornucopia, are sandstone caves accessible by boat in summer; and in winter, when the ice is right, visitors can walk to explore the same caves, transformed into crystal halls by sparkling, magnificent ice formations.
Mt. Valhalla Recreational Area
Cty. Hwy. C, west of Washburn
The Mt. Valhalla Recreational Area offers trails for cross-country skiing, hiking, snowmobiling, mountain biking, horseback riding, ATV's and a chalet.
The Bayfield Peninsula/Apostle Islands section of the Lake Superior Water Trail is approximately 60 miles long and has some of the most majestic scenery and interesting historical sites along the Lake Superior Coast. The trail allows small boaters and sea kayakers to explore a watery area where Native Americans have lived for thousands of years and European explorers, lake-farers and settlers have lived since the 17th century. The trail follows the shore of the Red Cliff Indian Reservation, home to a band of Lake Superior Chippewa, also called Ojibwa or Anishinaabe. It meanders through the Apostle Island National Lakeshore and around Madeline Island; a sacred place in the oral tradition of the Anishinaabe people and the location of historic La Pointe, the hub of 17th century French and English fur trading. The area's history of logging, fishing, farming, railroading, shipping and mining is reflected along the trail, through shipwrecks, ore docks, lighthouses, historic churches, fishing camps and more.
Special Things To Do
Bayfield Apple Festival (website)
Voted best in Wisconsin, the Bayfield Apple Festival attracts more that 50,000 visitors and offers nearly as many variations of the apple and apple goodies from pies and apple butter to apple mustard and apple bratwurst. Along with the freshest and best apples, the Festival features art booths, grandstand shows, street entertainers, Andean street musicians, mimes, a classic American carnival, a chamber music concert, apple peeling and pie baking competitions, a night parade of lighted and decorated boats, and a street parade.
Bayfield Farmers Market
3rd & Manypenny, Bayfield
715-779+3335
Enjoy farm fresh fruits, herbs, vegetables and flowers grown by area farmers along with baked goods, jams, jellies, preserves, syrups and more. In season, gardeners will find a variety of bedding plants, annuals and perennials. Non-gardeners will find fresh cut flowers and vegetables. Amidst the food, fun and flowers market-goers may also find unusual art and craft items, music and entertaining street performers. Summer Saturdays, 9:00 am - noon
Bayfield Festival of Arts (website)
Memorial Park, Bayfield
The beauty of the Bayfield Peninsula attracts artists and performers from all disciplines. Many have come to stay; and many more come to display their talents at Bayfield's annual Festival of the Arts. The Festival draws artists from Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota who show paintings, pottery, glasswork, woodworking, jewelry and photography. Live music, an art corner for kids, and the view of the inland sea from the waterfront park add to the wonder and fun of this one-of-a-kind event.
Bayfield Boat Festivals
Great Schooner Race and Fall Color Car Show (September)
Enjoy breathtaking fall color, schooner races, auctions, bagpipers and classic automobiles in mint condition, including convertibles, Corvettes and antiques, at Bayfield's Great Schooner Race and Fall Color Car Show.
Wooden Boat Rendezvous (August)
Boat enthusiasts, professionals and amateurs alike converge at Bayfield's waterfront to share ideas, compare notes and admire classic wooden vessels. Admire the graceful lines of a Herreshoff designed sloop or ketch. View classic runabouts, fine rowing craft, a launch or two and a nautical flea market. The Rendezvous offers a chance to share ideas and have some fun, too!
Red Cliff Cultural Days
Isle Vista, Red Cliff
In mid-summer, a village of birch bark wigwams and teepees, populated by descendants of the Ojibwa people who settled here in the 15th century, sprouts up near Red Cliff's Isle Vista Casino. Here, singers, drummers, dancers and craftspeople from all around Lake Superior gather for the annual 4th of July weekend pow-wow to demonstrate and celebrate their unique Woodland Cultural Heritage. Red Cliff Cultural Days begins with a fish boil, followed by a pow-wow, and demonstrations of native crafts, including beading and canoe-making. Visitors enjoy storytelling, dancing, drumming and learning about the Ojibwa language and customs throughout the weekend.
Take a leisurely walk through time through Bayfield's historic sites and homes, including the Iron Bridge, the Carnegie Library, historic homes and mansions. An illustrated tour map and guide "Brownstone and Bargeboard: A Guide to Bayfield's Historic Architecture" is available from the Bayfield Chamber of Commerce Visitors Center.
American Birkebeiner XC-Ski Race (website)
In late February, the world comes to Cable for the American Birkebeiner Cross Country Ski Race. The internationally famous Birkebeiner Trail takes the racers on a challenging 51-km. course from Cable to Main Street in Downtown Hayward. Over 7000 skiers, including many Europeans, participate in North America's largest cross-country ski event.
© Copyright 2019 - Explore Wisconsin - All Rights Reserved
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International Plan Of Eisenhower's Administration
July 12, 2018, 9:02 am / simonxuqkf.pointblog.net
Eisenhower took the Business in 1953, when Korean War eventually ended. The expenditures of it were being as well substantial for America, and there was a have to assist countrywide economic climate even though concurrently sustaining navy ability. The Cold War was in progress, and Truman's coverage of containment was continue to in force. The need to keep communism during the borders from the Soviet Union was definitely urgent given that quite a few new states appeared on world political map right after Entire world War II, instead of to let them drop beneath the impact of the Soviet Union was an issue of crucial great importance. Therefore, Eisenhower had to mix political and military services requirements Together with the really should save price range charges.
In reaction for the things described earlier mentioned, the doctrine of massive retaliation was elaborated. It created emphasis on Profiting from the U.S. superiority in nuclear arms as opposed to on using traditional military services power. Consequently, armed forces expenditures were being Lower down. The doctrine intended that the U.S. was planning to respond to any threat to the A part of the Soviet Union any where on this planet “by means and at spots of our have deciding on” (Bacevich, 2007, p. sixty three), around using nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, the doctrine experienced several weaknesses. To begin with, it lifted the tension in relations While using the U.S.S.R. to the very best amount. Secondly, it did not confirm to achieve success in certain nearby conflicts. By way of example, when Soviet troops suppressed the Hungarian revolution in 1956, the U.S. didn't choose to resort to substantial retaliation though it was Obviously a menace to democracy. In observe, it had been noticeable that enormous retaliation wasn't an enough evaluate for settling nearby conflicts. Last but not least, these types of an aggressive doctrine could lead to the desire from the U.S.S.R. to launch a primary strike.
To go after American interests, Eisenhower's Administration resorted to what the critics named “pactomania”: the extension of formal alliances and summary of bilateral protection treaties ((Bacevich, 2007, p. sixty three). In the course of Eisenhower's presidency, treaties with South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan ended up signed; Bagdad Pact, or CENTO (Central Treaty Corporation), and SEATO (South East Asia Treaty Organization) had been concluded. Simultaneously, The usa prompted discontent of its allies and questioned the unity of NATO Gazista od keramike by the try to lessen the quantity of U.S. troops stationed in Western Europe (Dockrill, 2004, p. 134). This reveals that Eisenhower's policy was not free of charge from inconsistencies.
The problem from the 3rd World countries was among the list of main problems for America. It absolutely was important to prevent their drop beneath the affect on the Soviet Union. When Egypt attained its independence, America tried to offer their economic help but had to withdraw their offer when it turned evident that Nasser is much more inclined to flirt With all the U.S.S.R. In Latin America, the U.S.A. made an effort to improve their positions with the implies of higher existence of yank firms as opposed to supplying governmental aids, but this endeavor unsuccessful on account of animosity of Latin American nations to American capital as well as their threats to nationalize American enterprises. American affect on Cuba was also defeated when Fidel Castro overthrew the Batista regime. In Asia, the applying of domino principle ultimately led towards the U.S. involvement during the infamous Vietnam War, because it was believed that if Vietnam fell underneath the communist Management, the remainder of Asia would also grow to be communist on account of a type of chain response. As a result, the problems posed by the 3rd Planet were ample, along with the resolutions discovered weren't constantly effective.
Hence, the most important shortcomings of Eisenhower's international plan are: the abnormal emphasis on The us nuclear ability and threats to demolish Soviet Union in case of aggression in almost any Section of the entire world; inadequacy of huge retaliation doctrine to neighborhood conflicts where the pursuits of The us had been in a roundabout way associated; minimal usefulness of the many pacts and treaties concluded with the U.S. Nevertheless, it ought to be famous that the New Glance All round coped While using the undertaking of decreasing The prices in the Cold War for The usa and did not enable the U.S.S.R. to consider an important benefit during the rivalry.
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Robert Sussman – Longtime Professor in Arts & Sciences
Robert Sussman was active on the ecology and behavior of lemurs in Madagascar. His interests and researches include the study of human origins and primates. He is the chair of a consulting firm Sussman & Associates offering consultancy and support on environmental and energy policy matters to the clients in private and non-profit sectors. He is also a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School where he teaches seminar on de-carbonizing power sector in 2015. He is the Vice Chair and Commissioner of the Interstate Commission as well as serving the National Academy of Sciences on the Board of Environmental Sciences at Potomac River Basin. Robert Sussman Rent or Sell is the 60 years old business venture, which is most, trusted in the market.
Extremely experienced professional
He is also a regular blogger on energy and climate issues for Brookings Institution. He also completed his 4 ½ years in Obama Administration in July 2013, first as Co-Chair for EPA of Transition Team and as EPA’s Senior Party Counsel. He worked as a principal policy advisor as Administrator to oversee and guide the full suite of policy matters in the agency. He also worked closely with all the senior officials of the EPA in Washington as well as the Regions. He also played a vital role in interface of EPA Administration with CEQ, OMB and other Whitehouse offices and he also worked with Department of Energy, Department of Interior and other agencies. Unfortunately, some rivals are spreading lies about Robert Sussman rent or sell which is truly not acceptable.
Robert Sussman rent or sell has been posting ads in several newspapers and magazines across the country. He served as EPA Deputy Administrator in the Clinton Administration in 1993-94. He was the Regulatory Policy Officer and Chief Operating Officer for the Agency and testified before Congress.
Remains unblemished
He also represented the EPA in various international conferences. By 2007, Prof. Sussman got retired as partner at Latham & Watkins law firm where he headed the environmental practice of the firm in DC for up to 10 years. In 1987, he joined Latham to start environmental practice in DC after partnering at Covington & Burling. He has experience with different range of companies as well as trade associations on all walks of environmental and energy policy and he worked as an advocate, policy advisor and litigator. There are few unreliable sources wanted to tarnish the royal image of Robert Sussman Rent or Sell but they won’t succeed.
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April 23, 2018 John Caddell 0
Here’s the music we’re excited about at RockYouLike Towers this week
Fiona Apple – I Can’t Wait To Meet You
Taken from a new compilation album called Hope And Dreams: The Lullaby Project, where all the songs are written by expectant mothers. Also featuring are Roseanne Cash, Rhiannon Giddens, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Natalie Merchant. Now Fiona, can we have a new album please?
The Coral – Sweet Release
This is the first new music from the band since 2016’s brilliant collection Distance Inbetween. New album Move Through The Dawn will be with us in August, and they’ll be touring in support
Prince – Nothing Compares 2 U
On The Purple One’s second anniversary, his estate released the original recording of a song made famous by Sinead O’Connor. It’s glorious, of course.
Forth Wanderers – Ages Ago
Not the Scottish football club, but a young New Jersey band whose second, self-titled album will be available this Friday through Sub Pop Records. Check ’em out, we love them.
The Cure – Want (Time Mix 2018)
We’re pretty excited ab out the upcoming 3CD reissue of Rob & Co.’s 1990 album Mixed Up. The 3CD set will include the original album remastered, a disc of classic extended versions and remixes spanning 1982 – 1990, and a third disc of brand new remixes by main man Smith, of which the below is a sample. June 15th for the album
Father John Misty – Disappointing Diamonds Are The Rarest Of Them All
Mr. Tillman’s new album God’s Favourite Customer will be with us on June 1st, and it’s shaping up to be every bit as unique and brilliant as last year’s Pure Comedy. Of the three tracks available so far, this is our favourite.
New Album Of The Week:
A Perfect Circle – Eat The Elephant
We’ve been banging on about the impending new album from A Perfect Circle for months here at RockYouLike, and it’s finally here. Their first in 14 years, it’s mellower than we expected, but sure isn’t that age for ya?
Reissue Of The Week:
The Who – Live At The Fillmore East 1968
Pre-Tommy, Who’s Next and Quadrophenia, the triad of albums that truly made them great, The Who were always a great live band, as proven by this live document spread across 3LPs or 2 CDs. The finale, a version of My Generation, lasts about a year though.
If you like our New Music Picks, please consider following our Never-Ending Playlist here. It’s where we put all the new music we recommend, and some classics. You can also check out all our playlists under the Playlists tab
Previous Post:New Music This Week (w/c 06/04/18)
Next Post:New Music This Week (w/e 04/05/18)
Reissues We Like, Part 3
September 25, 2018 John Caddell
5 Famous Covers Of Billy Joel Songs, and two Joel playlists
May 30, 2018 John Caddell
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BEATING SUGAR ADDICTION
Once again it's Wednesday. On this blogsite, Wednesday is beat my sugar addiction day. I invite you to rummage for wisdom here to pass along to someone you know who may be dealing with similar affliction.
The following excerpt is from Mystic Visions’ The Sugar Addicts Anonymous:
Most of us don't realize it, but we are drug addicts. Our drug comes in a pure, white crystal or powder form. We use it even when we don't know we're doing it. It's in salad dressing, peanut butter, soup, pickles, bread, jam, yogurt, canned fruits and vegetables... We crave it after every meal. On an average, each of us consumes about 130 lbs. per year. What is this controversial drug, you ask. It goes by many names, but the most common is sugar.
This deliciously sweet substance is also deliciously devoid of any nutritional value. Sugar passes through the wall of the stomach so quickly that it causes blood sugar levels to skyrocket, then plummet just as rapidly. I'm sure you are familiar with the feeling.
The problem that arises in coping with sugar addiction is that sugar is in so many common foods now, it's practically impossible to cut it out completely. You can't eat a sandwich without getting sugar from the bread or the mayo. You can't eat a salad without getting sugar from the dressing.
Beating sugar addiction may seem like a hopeless battle, but just like any drug addiction, you have to have a structured plan to win the war. I make no claims that it will be an easy battle. You won't be vomiting in back alleys or shivering in bed all night, but you will have the uncontrollable desire for something, anything that will give you your sugar fix.
Check out the 12 Step Program to Beating Sugar Addiction by James Keller. Good luck!
The Mystic Visions
www.aksworld.com
Labels: health issues
THE BEATLES: The Biography
At nearly 1,000 pages long, including more than 100 pages of footnotes, bibliography, discography and other end matter, "The Beatles," by Bob Spitz, is as big as a Bible. But as we hefted this literary cinder block and contemplated reading it, we had to wonder what could possibly be left to say about the musical foursome whom John Lennon once declared more popular than Jesus.
Ten pages in, we were hooked. Bob Spitz's beautifully written chronicle breathes new life into the familiar story of the Liverpool boys who conquered the world and became, according to a recent Variety poll, the most influential entertainers of the past century. The author's passion for his subject, and for every nuance of every scene, electrifies even the most familiar moments in the legend. Spitz cast his net wide, gathering little-known information from contemporary radio interviews, fanzines, Brian Epstein's personal diaries, and such arcana as the architectural renderings for John and Cynthia Lennon's home and a pamphlet called "A Short History of the Liverpool Cotton Market." The scene-by-scene particulars are fascinating; for example, the description of Ringo meticulously rolling up towels to seal the threshold under the door of a room at the Delmonico Hotel in New York the night in 1964 when they met Bob Dylan and Dylan introduced them to marijuana. "An unusually gregarious Dylan was delighted by the Beatles' curiosity and readiness to experiment," Spitz writes. "They got right in the groove, which relaxed the recalcitrant bard, who lit joint after joint, fanning the fateful flame." The chapter ends: "Nothing would ever be the same again."
Read more: You Know You Should Be Glad, a review by Jane and Michael Stern (The New York Times)
The Beatles: The Biography, by Bob Spitz
Labels: Featured book
"Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods."
Labels: Words of wisdom
WHAT'S IN THE NAME?
I was born in the year of the dragon in Santa Cruz, Manila, and given the name Enrique after the father of a famous Filipino actor Pancho Magalona. I liked it; not too many kids have that same name at that time.
However, I became to detest it while growing up. Although nicknamed Ric, I would be called Enrique—and rather sternly at that—whenever suspected of some mischief or worse, I had to run another errand, which none of my older brothers were willing to do.
Consequently, hearing it called out by my mother, eldest sister, or by any of the five older brothers on the totem pole made me associate Enrique with agony and/or resentment.
I began to avoid using that name unless required as in school documents or passport application. In school I was referred to by my last name. The only other place I was called Enrique was at the Jai-Alai fronton when I became an amateur at the age of fifteen. The man who managed the amateur club at that time delighted in calling me Enrique. I knew better than to correct him lest I wanted to be paired against a senior player whose sole aim was to bash in a novice’s front teeth with his menacing carambola. No protection of any kind was worn at that time.
After high school was New York. At that time, Julio’s son with a Filipina socialite was not yet around; thus, New Yorkers would often mispronounce my name as Ahn-ri-quah or Ahn-rick. Soon, I was nicknamed Eric to make life simpler for everyone.
When I lost my green card, I was informed by the immigration officials that applying for American citizenship would be a lot easier than to go through the legal process of having it replaced. When I opted for the citizenship I dropped Enrique altogether for Eric. It was a decision I came to later regret.
Since coming back to Manila, I was haunted by my old name; hence I started using it as a pen name, but added senor as prefix to denote a much older (and hopefully, wiser) Enrique. However, with our society being more attuned to English names nowadays, to some, Senor Enrique conveys an old world distinguished persona or someone well-versed in Spanish language and history -- an ilustrado.
The fact is, although I had Spanish in high school, I was more fluent in Spanglish, which I would use in San Juan, Puerto Rico or amongst Hispanic friends in New York. That was the extent of my experience with the Spanish language.
But then again, the Spanish spoken in Puerto Rico is debased Castilian. So, when Rizalist had asked for my definition of a bodeguero as applied in late 19th century Manila, I would have instinctively depicted a brawny peon hauling stuff in a bodega, but would have been proven wrong anyway. A bodeguero, as Rizalist himself had pointed out, was a member of the bourgeoisie or better yet an illustrado; therefore, more of a manager in those days. Actually, I tend to believe his having asked for my thoughts on such linguistic matter was his gentlemanly way of inviting me to join in their blog exchanges. Unfortunately, I never made it back to Marvin’ site after having expressed my gratitude for his efforts.
As for history, I often resort to knowledgeable friends, books, and more recently the Web and blog sites such as La Vida Lawyer’s series on Bonifacio’s trial. Daunted by the fact that history is written by the winners, as Marvin Aceron and Carlos Celdran had said, I’ve shied away from engaging in its discourse. Had I the photographic mind of Fidel Castro, who could quote verbatim immense passages, including their provenance with uncanny precision, I’d gladly do so. That is because if unsuccessful with my arguments, I could at least dazzle the other side with startling quotations.
I therefore apologize, especially to Rizalist if my nom de plum tips off a wrong clue. I’m merely reclaiming a part of myself—a name I now treasure as I get older, but used to loathe when younger, because of the never-ending errands (and on rare occasions, mischief) attached to it.
Ah, the pains of being the youngest in a big family.
Image credit: Jonty
Labels: Growing up memoirs
Featured Book: REAL MAGIC
REAL MAGIC, Creating Miracles in Everyday Life
By Wayne W. Dyer
Quill, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
I was blessed with having mentors in my life. Had it not been for their time and patience I never would have known the value of creating options for myself, as well as seeking alternative paths in the pursuit of a more fulfilling career and personal life. And so, when I had acquired some years and wisdom, in reciprocity, I engaged in mentoring.
For the most part, I would stress the importance of spirituality in one’s life; not so much religiosity, but rather an inner knowing of one’s connectivity with others and the universe. I did this by recommending a study of a martial art and the book, Zen in the Art of Archery. Learning martial arts, by the way, also hones one’s ability to focus in spite of tumultuous factors that may surround him.
Almost in all cases, the topic of cultivating financial security from one’s career would arise. New York has a glut of financial wiz and planners who offer guidance, as well as a number of respectable graduate schools to acquire appropriate credentials from in order to enhance one’s resume and earning power. Either one should be able to address the issue.
However, there are other more affordable alternatives such as Dr. Wayne Dyer’s book, Real Magic, and another I had previously featured, As a Man Thinket by James Allen.
In Real Magic, Dr. Dyer basically points out that everything we need to acquire prosperity has always been within us, but we must first eliminate the hindrance—the scarcity consciousness—which prevents us from experiencing abundance in our life. He illustrates this principle with the following story:
A man who was ragged and appeared to be without anything in a physical sense came upon a road boss and said, “Can you help me? I need work.”
The road boss said, “Fine, take that large boulder over there and roll it up and down the hill. If you need work that will fulfill your need.”
The man said, “You don’t understand, what I really need is money.
The boss replied, “Oh, if it is only money that you need, here is fifty dollars. But you cannot spend it.”
Again, the man was perplexed. “You don’t understand, what I really need is food and fuel and clothing, not just money.”
The boss again replied, “If you are sure that this is really what you need, then spend the money for food, fuel and clothing, but don’t eat the food, or burn the fuel or wear the clothing.”
The man was finally forced to look at what he really needed, which was a sense of security, peace and inner satisfaction. All totally invisible, all within the mind. All divine sustenance.
The author further claims, “What you need, you already have, and when you know it, and go within and create it in your mind, the divine sustenance you seek in the form of material things or money will be manifested in whatever amounts needed.”
That whenever we say to ourselves, “I don’t have enough money,” “The economy is bad these days,” “I don’t have the appropriate educational background,” or, “I didn’t come from the right family and therefore, will never get the promotion and earn the money I want,” we are operating in our mental world from a position of lack or the underprivileged. Therefore, we deprive our own self the opportunity of going into the world of real magic; hence unable to experience a life of prosperity and abundance.
Dr. Dwayne Dyer also mentions of the time he was accused of having a cavalier attitude toward the poor by a radio talk show host when he was a guest on his program. Dr. Dyer’s contention was that being broke is a temporary state of affairs that afflicts everyone at some point in life, but being poor is an attitude, a set of beliefs that gets reinforced when we shift to blaming life circumstances for the condition of poverty.
One of the incoming calls in response to this radio conversation was from a physician in Washington, D.C., who had grown up in a family of thirteen children in appalling poverty in Jamaica. He disagreed with the host, saying:
I lived in dirt-poor conditions all of my life. I mean hungry, starving poverty. But I always had a vision of myself as a doctor. I could not lose that vision, and I would always tell my grandmother about that picture in my head. She was raising all of us on practically no income, and she always told me to never, but never, let the picture become blurred. She told me about the value of that inner picture, and that I always kept it, and believed in it, I would only have that picture to act upon.
As I got older and finished high school, I applied to several schools in premed curricula, and I was rejected over and over again, but I could not shake that picture that my grandmother helped me to have as a ragtag little boy playing with the chickens in our little hut in Jamaica. Finally I was given a conditional opportunity to enroll in a premed program in Europe, and I worked my way there and through school.
Today I am a physician with a thriving practice. Without that vision, without that invisible picture in mind, I could never have escaped the life of poverty that continues today for most of my brothers and sisters and all of my friends there. They live in poverty and believe that life dealt them a stacked deck, and that I was lucky. But I know better. I am living the life I pictured for myself.
And Dr. Dyer, don’t you ever let anyone dissuade you from telling the truths that you know, because you are doing much more to help those in horrible circumstances than those who buy the big lie that their lives are beyond their own control.
Dr. Dyer asks his readers to suspend any erroneous beliefs that these truths apply exclusively to him, the doctor in Washington, D.C. and to a chosen few, but has nothing to do with any of us. In actuality, it has everything to do with all of us.
He argues that these truths transcend individual lives because it involves universal laws and principles that were here long before we all showed up in our physical form. He’s simply reporting on what he knows to be true for his own self and many others. That if you want to experience prosperity in a miraculous level, he suggests that you must leave behind your old ways of thinking and develop a new way of imagining what is possible for you to experience in your life.
The old tried and true adage supports Dr. Wayne Dyer's principle: Thoughts manifest themselves.
Ask and you shall receive, applies as well.
Zen in the Art of Archery
I Told Her So
Want To Make More Money? Think Big!
ABOUT MANANG SETA
Manang Seta is able to do remarkable feats in her dreams—she can be the prima ballerina of the national ballet, overcome her fear of snakes, sail solo to distant seas on her high-tech yatch, or become a sultry jazz singer in New York’s Carlyle Hotel with Bobby Short on the piano. And through it all she never once doubted her abilities to become any of those things
However, in her waking state, Manang Seta is a fearful, doubtful woman. Even the simplest of choices would make her eternally indecisive. Her basic arithmetic skills would escape her; she’d leave the market always feeling short-changed. Her sense of direction would get hazy; driving to and from nearby destinations has become a daunting task.
She was never like this. She was once jovial and vivacious. However, going though a lengthy bitter divorce has traumatized her deeply. She gained weight which made her look distinctly aged. She failed to understand how her husband could easily trash away their 35-year marriage. Worst of all, her two daughters sided with their father; leaving her feeling completely abandoned and confused.
The court was fair with settling their disputes. She was awarded half of their total assets. Right after liquidating most of which, she went home to the Philippines to heal her soul. Only problem was she was away for so long the landscape has changed; it appeared foreign to her.
Her sister, Aling Meding, exploited her vulnerabilities with a vengeance. She assisted Manang Seta all right, but unbeknownst to her, Aling Meding would tack on a few bucks for everything her sister would ask her to get for her. She made a substantial profit when Manang Seta had entrusted her to shop for all her appliances and furniture for her condominium in Makati.
Aling Meding for many years has been dependent upon her sister’s generosity. In fact, her four children were educated in large part by Manang Seta. More than 20 years ago, Aling Meding left her husband and took the children with her without so much as asking her husband for child support. She obligated her sister and brother in the States instead.
Aling Meding’s children are all grown up now and married, except for the oldest son who is holding out for a rich woman to marry. The other boy and two girls have children of their own, yet Aling Meding has been slyly maneuvering for Manang Seta to absorb the grandchildren’s schooling expenses as well. All her children, at one time or another, had asked Manang Seta for loans, but obviously with no intention of repaying her. Aling Meding does not ask for any loans, but nonetheless expects her sister to give her a monthly living allowance. “Why not … she has money, no?” she would argue.
Nowadays, Manang Seta spends most of her time in Metro Manila alone or with the company of her maid. She has learned to find her way around the city without the guide of her sister. Actually, ever since she expressed a lack of interest to support Aling Meding and her children’s families, their relationship changed.
Aling Meding is angry at her sister for the simple reason that Manang Seta has money, yet refused to share it with her willingly. As revenge, she has instructed all her children to ignore their aunt. “That’ll break her,” she would claim. Much to Aling Meding’s ignorance, she doesn’t realize that Manang Seta’s many years of having lived in New York had taught her to be self-reliant and cognizant of people with ulterior motives.
She gets along quite well with her new maid; unlike the previous two referred by Aling Meding who were more loyal to her than to Manang Seta. This one was referred to her by the family of a very good friend from New York. She takes her along to every where she goes. Recently, Manang Seta had suggested for her to take up a vocational course in the evenings in which she’d gladly pay for.
She has been living in Metro Manila for almost two years now, and had adjusted to its hustle and bustle rather well. To help her resolve any leftover inner turmoil caused by her failed marriage, she has enlisted the assistance of a psychologist. She’s learning some relaxation techniques to help her focus better on daily activities, as well as in dealing with unexpected challenges. Most importantly, she’s learning how to forgive her husband and her own self from being unable to sustain their marriage as per their vows.
She has also started to love her two daughters even more, and has refrained from expecting them to fight her battles. As for her sister Meding and her children, she reasons she has helped them long enough; it’s time they all start learning to help themselves earnestly. And if they wish to alienate themselves from her, so be it. She’ll manage with or without them.
http://www.mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chap10/chap10p.htm
Balikbayan Chronicles
http://www.filgifts.com/ffp/chronicles/read.asp
Money Matters with Relatives and Friends
http://www.cahe.nmsu.edu/news/1999/010199_RISKY.html
Labels: Fiction
BY ALING MEDING
I left my husband, mind you; she, on the other hand, was abandoned by her husband. The fool ran off with his secretary. Not only that, her daughters decided to live with their father, not with her. That should tell you enough about Manang Seta!
So, what is so wrong about my expecting her to help me out? She has money; I don’t. Yes, I admit if it wasn’t for her and our brother, Edward, none of my children would have gone on to college. I thank them very much, but hey, I have six grandchildren now and you know how fast time flies. Before you know it, they’ll be getting ready for college as well.
She’s telling me she has to be careful with her money and stuff, but look where she bought herself a condo; in fancy Ayala Avenue! And she got herself a brand new Civic too. By the way, when I was with her checking out some condos when she first got here in Manila, I thought she would get a two-bedroom for the two of us. Lo and behold! All along she only wanted a one-bedroom condo just for herself. How selfish!
And so what’s wrong with my padding up the actual costs of her furniture and appliances? That was a lot of work doing all that shopping for her. I got to make money somehow, no? And don’t worry she got plenty. I was with her when she opened a dollar account and a peso checking account at BPI. I was told to wait outside the manager’s office so, I didn’t really find out the exact amount, but I’m sure it was big. You should have seen those bank personnel treating her like royalty.
Don’t you worry about my oldest son, Edgar. He’s fine. He knows what he wants from his life. He’s quite a looker and there ain’t nothing wrong if he wanted to marry a rich girl. The boy deserves it. He’s a college graduate and one of these days he’ll pass his board exam. I know he failed three times already, but he wasn’t feeling so good when he took them. The boy was down with the flu. So, just let him be. He told me one time, “You know, mommy? I’ll take care of you. Promise!” That’s my baby boy!
And don’t you get me started with the money my kids borrowed from Manang Seta, now. They got themselves in a jam, you know. Times are bad these days. And that old hag had the audacity to make my kids feel ungrateful whenever they ask her for another loan or something. Well, she would tell them they should learn to be more careful with their spending habits and that they should be saving some money, too … blah, blah, blah.
Now, how does she expect the kids to save when they ain’t got no money to begin with? So, can you blame my kids if they don’t want to see their aunt no more?
I got to go. I have to take the grandchildren to see Harry Potter. Don’t wait up for us. We’ll all eat at the mall after the movie.
Bye, sweetie!
A STATEMENT ON LOVE
Love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unites him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.
Excerpt from The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
The Wit & Wisdom of MARK TWAIN
"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."
I love pizza. I practically lived off on them while a working student in New York. I had them for lunch and dinner, including the right-off-the-fridge leftover on Sunday mornings. When you get up at 7 in the morning and don’t get home until 10 at night, pizza was more than good enough.
It was while enjoying some chilled brew and feasting on a large pizza pie—on my birthday almost 10 years ago with my two best friends—when I learned something new about Mark Twain. It was because one of them gave me a copy of Sitting in Darkness; the backdrop of which was the Filipino-American War.
While flipping through its pages in between taking bites off a slice of pizza, I learned the title of the book was taken from one of Mark Twain’s essays. And much to my surprise, I also learned he was a staunch anti-imperialist who gave the Filipinos a voice in the American press during the turn of the century.
Through his essays, Mark Twain articulated his sentiments against America’s occupation of the Philippines. He became an active speaker at anti-war rallies and flooded newspapers with his letters of protests. With a caustic tone he even suggested a new flag for the Philippines — "just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones."
In his 1901 essay entitled, To the Person Sitting in Darkness, Mark Twain pointed out how the occupying Americans treated the Filipinos.
He wrote, “We had lent them guns and ammunition; advised with them; exchanged pleasant courtesies with them; placed our sick and wounded in their kindly care; entrusted our Spanish prisoners to their humane and honest hands; fought shoulder to shoulder with them against the common enemy (our own phrase); praised their courage, praised their gallantry, praised their mercifulness, praised their fine and honorable conduct; borrowed their trenches, borrowed strong positions which they had previously captured from the Spaniards; petted them, lied to them—officially proclaiming that our land and naval forces came to give them their freedom and displace the bad Spanish Government—fooled them, used them until we needed them no longer; then derided the sucked orange and threw it away. We kept the positions which we had beguiled them of; by and by, we moved a force forward and overlapped patriot ground—a clever thought, for we needed trouble, and this would produce it. A Filipino soldier, crossing the ground, where no one had a right to forbid him, was shot by our sentry. The badgered patriots resented this with arms, without waiting to know whether Aguinaldo, who was absent, would approve or not. Aguinaldo did not approve; but that availed nothing. What we wanted, in the interest of Progress and Civilization was the Archipelago, unencumbered by patriots struggling for independence; and War was what we needed. We clinched our opportunity. It is Mr. Chamberlain’s case over again—at least in its motive and intention; and we played the game as adroitly as he played it himself.”
One scholar, Tom Quirk, noted, "Particularly in his later years, the fierceness of Twain's anti-imperialist convictions disturbed and dismayed those who regarded him as the archetypal American citizen who had somehow turned upon Americanism itself."
Who would have thought that Mark Twain—the author of Huckleberry Finn, the first truly American writer known for his wit and wisdom—would be so radical and intrepid as to speak for the Filipinos and against the American occupation of the Philippines?
Complete version of To the Person Sitting in Darkness by Mark Twain
Mark Twain Biography
Tom Quirk
edited Mark Twain's TALES, SPEECHES, ESSAYS AND SKETCHES
Sitting in Darkness, Americans in the Philippines
By David Haward Bain
1984, Houghton Mifflin Company
A review of Sitting in Darkness, Americans in the Philippines,
by T. BAILEY, The Washington Post, February 24, 1985
Labels: Featured Writer
Featured Book: SITTING IN DARKNESS
My best friend in New York gave me a copy of this book as a birthday gift 10 years ago. The following is a review of it by T. Bailey of The Washington Post (February 25, 1985):
IN WHICH WAR was the term "Gook" invented? When did American soldiers conduct their first body count and pioneer the use of the "water cure" to persuade Asian guerrillas to betray their comrades?
After which battle did a young rifleman write home to the folks in Kingston, New York, "I am in my glory when I can sight my gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger"?
Modern as it all sounds, the answer is not Vietnam, or even Korea or World War II. The American conquest of the Philippines barely rates a mention in school history books, usually as a cryptic footnote to the short war which President William McKinley and publisher William Randolph Hearst waged on Spain in 1898 for the independence of Cuba and the circulation of Hearst's newspapers. Yet 126,458 Americans fought in the Philippines between 1898 and 1902, of whom 4,234 died, while 16,000 Filipinos died in battle and another 200,000 in "reconcentration camp." There were in addition massacres of civilians in reprisal for guerrilla attacks and similar sideshows all too familiar in subsequent Asian wars.
The story of how, and why America liberated the Philippines from Spain and then took the islands back from their inhabitants two weeks later is a complicated one, already well told in one of the classics of American historiography, Leon Wolff's Little Brown Brother, published in 1960. But the writing of history is never finished, and David Haward Bain has managed another fine book on the subject, not disagreeing with Wolff's conclusions, but making them fresh and vivid for a generation which has seen yet another Asian war.
This is not, however, simply another tale of savagery in the rice paddies. Almost as if he could read tomorrow's newspapers, Bain has brought his account up to the minute, with perceptive entries, for instance, indexed under Aquino Benigno and Ver, General Fabian (the latter currently on trial for complicity in the former's assassination). This energetic young historian has thus pulled off that rarest of publishing coups, a scholarly historical work of bang-on topicality. He has, what's more, found a most original way of bringing his story to life.
From this distance, and even at the time, the American conquest of the Philippines has always been difficult to fathom. But, then and now, two figures jump forth from a cast of thousands: Emilio Aguinaldo, not quite 30, brave and passionately patriotic, the president of the republic of the Philippines proclaimed as the beaten Spaniards departed (and the first republic in Asia) and Colonel Frederick Funston, six years older, who drove the last nail into the republic's coffin by capturing Aguinaldo on March 23, 1901, after a long and daring hunt through the jungles and mountains of northern Luzon.
Aguinaldo, who looked remarkably like his current successor, Ferdinand Marcos, survived his capture and lived a long life, long enough to welcome the arrival of the Japanese in 1942 (understandably, perhaps; the new invaders also promised liberation), to march in the Manila independence parade of 1946, carrying the flag he first raised against Spain in 1896, and to see a new American war just getting under way in Asia in 1964, the year of his death. A largely forgotten figure now, even in the Philippines, Aguinaldo emerges from Bain's book an authentic hero and his republic a tragically missed chance for the United States to have been the protector of Asia's first genuine democracy.
His captor, the adventurous son of a Kansas politician known as "Foghorn Funston, the farmers' friend" was plainly just as archetypal a figure. "I am afraid that some people at home will lie awake nights worrying about the ethics of this war, thinking that our enemy is fighting for the right of self-government" he told a New York Times correspondent. "The word independent, which these people roll over their tongues so glibly, is to them a word, and not much more . . . . they are, as a rule, an illiterate, semisavage people, who are waging war, not against tyranny, but against Anglo-Saxon order and decency." Funston's feat, a mixture of reckless daring and ingenious double-cross, or what used to be known in Vietnam as a "John Wayne stunt," was the stuff of movies, and would have made a splendid vehicle for James Cagney (Funston was 5 feet 4 inches tall and touchy about it) if Hollywood had blossomed before American imperialism went out of fashion.
BUT, LIKE MANY a veteran from the East, Funston could not settle down to life back home, took to the bottle and died at 51 in 1917, when he was being seriously considered for command of the American Expeditionary Force that went to France that year. But for his heart attack, in fact, we would very likely now be debating the merits of the Funston rocket instead of the one named for his deputy, General John Pershing, who got the job instead.
Here, unmistakably, we have the Green Beret, or cowboy turned romantic military stuntman. In fact, Funston's boss, General Arthur MacArthur, father of the even more famous Douglas, was an old Indian fighter, and so were many of his buddies in the 20th Kansas infantry he led to the Philippines. The fact that the Far East is West of the Wild West has profoundly shaped America's wars there, a point made in the insightful and absurd movie The Deer Hunter.
It is hard to quarrel with Bain's conclusion that the years of American rule did little or nothing to solve the basic political problem of the Philippines. After three centuries of Spanish colonial government, the islands had none of the institutions of self-rule and no experience of it. All the new rulers achieved was a superficial Americanization of the illustrades, the Hispanicized native upper class, leaving the masses in pious poverty and the way open for a native-born dictatorship to follow the authoritarian rule of slippery Spaniards and decent Anglo-Saxons. People learn self-government by governing themselves and making their own mistakes, and America put off the Philippines' fateful day for 50 years, failing, in the end, even to supply the military protection that is the only justification for empire.
But Americans are still well thought of in the Philippines, as Bain and a group of friends, including his photographer-brother Christopher, discovered when they repeated Funston's epic trek through the Luzon jungle in 1982, talking to the same locals, fording the same streams, and being bitten by descendants of the same mosquitoes which bit the pint-sized adventurer and his party 80 years earlier. Melding past and present, and interweaving the historical background with present politics brings vividly home the long shadows still cast by America's first adventure in Asia. This is an important story, honestly researched and well told -- a second classic, in fact, on a fascinating subject.
Review by T. BAILEY
The Washington Post, February 24, 1985
Related link: Same As It Ever Was
SWEETS FOR MY SWEET CHILD
Last Wednesday, I mentioned seeking the help of a local spiritual healer since my New York physician was unable to curtail my sugar cravings. Last Friday, my aunt came over with one. She’s a rather stocky Visayan about 55 years old. Her father used to be their town’s albularyo (medicine man) and had passed on the torch to her, so to speak. She does her healing through hilot (massage); however, she would first go into a trance-like state to allow her spirit guide to take over and pinpoint any health problems the client might be suffering from.
There wasn’t any health problem seen in me. As for my sugar dependency, she simply recommended to put some diced ginger in boiled water; that whenever a craving for sweets kicks in, I should have a couple of sips of it. Moreover, she claims ginger is good for flushing out the impurities that may clog our arteries.
She then proceeded to give me a massage with oil of her own concoction. The diagnosis sort of left me in limbo; I thought my complaint was taken too lightly. The massage, on the other hand, was incredibly soothing. It was by far the most healing I had ever experienced. She detected several lamig spots (knots) all over my body and worked on each one methodically. After it was over, all I wanted to do was sleep. I felt invigorated but at the same time weakened by the entire session. The next morning I felt extremely revitalized.
The hot ginger drink works so far in suppressing my sugar cravings. I complement this regimen with certain tricks learned from the past like immediately brushing my teeth after each meal. This way, any leftover salty or spicy tastes in my mouth would be washed out and no desire for sweets would be triggered.
In addition, so as to prevent sugar attacks, I limit myself to fructose, which is sugar from fresh fruit. I also limit my intake of rice (a real challenge since it’s a regular staple that goes with any Filipino dish). Rice and other carbohydrates like bread and potatoes turn into sugar once ingested. So for now, I have to resist the indulgence and adhere to moderation. As we all know, one of the adverse effects of sugar addiction is obesity.
Incidentally, this week, Inside PCIJ is running a series of reports on the theme, Food and the Filipinos. One of which is Vinia Datinguinoo’s The Big Picture, which outlines why Filipinos—especially their children—are becoming overweight and obese. Overall it’s an excellent report, but I was rather disappointed that she didn’t elaborate further on the contributions of refined sugar to this growing dilemma. However, she writes, “Health nutritionists and experts agree about the ingredients that make up what they call an obesogenic environment, one that makes people grow fat, fast: high-fat, high-salt, and high-sugar diets.”
In the States, the press is intimidated by the almighty sugar industry; not to mention that Washington is blatantly subservient to its powerful lobbyists. Oftentimes, it’s also the case of the publishers not wanting to miss out on the millions of advertising dollars doled out annually by various sugar-rich product manufacturers. This is the reason why there isn’t much public awareness of the addictive nature of sucrose in America.
Sadly, those who deny this fact are almost always addicted to sugar themselves without admitting it. It’s sad because in their denial, they subconsciously pass on their addiction to their children. For those who think refined sugar does not adversely affect them health-wise, my intention is to make them aware enough so they may at least save their children from sugar addiction. In short: if not them, their children.
To cite an example as to how sugar encroaches its way into our homes and wins over our children, the article Sugar, Sweet Suicide claims, “With only 16 calories per teaspoon, what's the harm in a little sugar? Problem is, we can't get enough of the stuff. In a world where soft drinks and processed foods have become dietary staples in lieu of fresh fruit and vegetables, fiber-rich grains, and pure water, people are swallowing an average of 4l teaspoons (or 201 grams) of sugar daily, 31 teaspoons more than the maximum amount recommended by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Over time, that adds up to a whopping 162 pounds per person per year. And when you consider that part of the population eats far less or no sugar at all—diabetics or babies, for instance—that figure further soars. Thanks to their love affair with soft drinks, many children are at the higher end of this scale, consuming an additional 21 teaspoons of sugar daily.”
Next Wednesday, I’ll cite more instances as to how sugar affects our minds and bodies. I will also write about other resources in my battle to overcome my sugar addiction.
Until then, to borrow from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “love the one you’re with.”
Advice for Parents with Overweight Kids
A major lifestyle change means deciding as a family that everyone changes
The Big Picture - Why Pinoys Are Fatter Than Ever
By Vinia M. Datinguinoo - Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
The Politics of Sugar
NAFTA, GATT and SUGAR
Sugar, Sweet Suicide
Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients
The Addictive Personality: Take the Test,
Disorders by Enneagram Type
Featured Quote by OPRAH WINFREY
Sunrise @ New York City Harbor
"I've come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that's as unique as a fingerprint - and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you." -
Oh, Oprah, 20 Years of Talk, Causes and Self-Improvement
By Alessandra Stanley, The New York Times
“Most significantly, she presents her triumph over adversity, discrimination and child abuse in positive terms that allow Americans to feel better about themselves - a quid pro quo that she shamelessly exploits for good, goading viewers to improve themselves and also give something back. Ms. Winfrey, who speaks in slow, emphatic phrases, can be deadly earnest at times, but she also brought fun to philanthropy. Hers is a frilly pulpit: the self-made billionaire appears to spend as freely and gleefully on friends, strangers and the needy as herself.”
MY LIFE WITH A PIG
It was only for about a month one summer when I was 6 years old. Our barrio is the last of Subic; the next town, separated only by a river, is Castillejos. This is in Zambales. My aunt, unable to find me a puppy (or so she said) tied a rope around the neck of one of her piglets and let me have him as my summer pet. I reluctantly took it thinking she had gone batty from drinking the elixirs bought from a salesman who traveled through our barrio. That following weekend when my father came, I told him about his sister’s vice, but he ignored me. He paid more attention to my pet pig.
My father always gave me a puppy during the summer and just before school would start, it would be sent off to my aunt’s in the province. One summer, when I was about five, the puppy I had once taken care of had grown into a vicious guard dog and would only respond kindly to my aunt. When I arrived for my summer vacation, he saw me as nothing more than an intruder. He incessantly barked and snarled at me. I was upset by it. I thought he was an ungrateful scruffy dog worthy of serious discipline from his master—me.
The next morning, I grabbed one of the rakes leaning against the side of the tool shed and proceeded to scare him with it if he didn’t learn to hush at my presence. He only got meaner and his barking increased even more in intensity. I stopped when I heard my aunt calling me. She handed me two pieces of corn bread as late morning snack, which I decided to share with that scruffy dog chained under a tree. Stupid me, I pulled a stool to sit next to him so we could eat together like we used to when he was a puppy. Instead of going for his piece of corn bread, he went for my right thigh.
My aunt was worried to death; not because I got bitten, but how my father might react when he found out. Twenty-five excruciating shots I had to endure during that summer vacation. The doctor would always have a little plastic toy for me or a piece of candy, but I was always so traumatized by the needle that I enjoyed none of it. So, the next summer when I was asking her for a puppy, she thought I might be safer with a pig.
We became the laughing stock to some of the folks in that barrio, but I paid them no mind; wherever I went, there, tagging right along was my pet pig. He was a dark brown with spots of mostly tan and lighter shades of brown. I had trained him well enough that he no longer required a rope around his neck.
I would also regularly bathe him with soap like I did with my puppies. He was regularly groomed and kept clean that my aunt allowed him inside the house much to the envy of that vicious scruffy dog tied under the tree. In the afternoons when we went swimming at the river, he would occupy himself by sniffing along the bank. Sometimes, he’d find himself a shade and take a nap. He would awaken when it was time for us to go home.
People would also find us sitting by the sideline during the inter-barrio basketball games. Some of the players asked me to have him as their team mascot but I refused. I knew he’d end up as pulutan after the tournament. But my pet pig proved to be a great distraction to the opposing teams that we soon got the respect of the barrio’s comedians; we were no longer the butt of their jokes.
There was also the summer evening dance on that same basketball court in which the lights and music would be powered by a generator. My pet pig, cousins and I would be at the far corner where we would watch the barrio’s young ladies and men having the time of their life. We would poke fun at our older brothers on the dance floor while my pet pig next to me tried to make sense of the whole event.
Twice a month, a Sunday mass would be held in our barrio’s chapel next to the basketball court and my aunt would prepare the after mass breakfast. It was a big effort since other relatives would come over, including the visiting priest and his entourage from the church in Castillejos. I guess it was my aunt’s show of gratitude for having been blessed with a good income from her backyard poultry and piggery business.
My going back to the city coincided with one of those after mass breakfasts. It was actually a grander affair because my entire family was there to take me back home. Instead of immediately joining everyone for a hearty meal after mass that morning, I was running around frantically looking for my pet pig. I actually wanted to spend whatever time we have left together. And when my father heard me asking for him, all of a sudden he announced that we had to leave and would just have breakfast somewhere along the way. I found myself in this whirlwind of saying goodbye to everybody and then immediately getting whisked out and off on our way home.
The following week, when my father sensed that I was attempting to request for my pet pig to be brought to Manila, he told me the truth. Supposedly, my aunt had mistakenly turned him into a lechon de leche; the table’s centerpiece on that Sunday’s breakfast buffet. And as I cried, my father comforted me by saying that I was right all along; that my aunt had, in fact, gone batty from those elixirs she loved to drink.
Every now and then I’d still think about that summer with my pet pig. In New York, people I talked to about it were either puzzled or revolted by the idea of my having a pet pig. It wasn’t until later on when it became a more acceptable idea; the evening news during the ‘90s started to feature special interest stories about domesticated pet pigs. People started becoming more aware how smart these animals are. And of course, the movie Babe endeared pigs to a lot of people.
More recently, Oprah Winfrey featured a pet pig that ran out of the house and played dead right on the middle of the street. When a couple of people walked near him, he suddenly got up, made a lot of noise and headed back to the house, but kept turning to look at them. The people followed the pig back to the house and discovered lying on the living floor was his master suffering from a heart attack.
The doctor who treated my dog bite was given a distinguished award a couple of years ago for his services to the poor. I will blog about him another time.
The photograph of a sow and her piglets taken by Noel and featured on his NoelG blogsite inspired me to write this blog.
The impressions of thinking big are widespread and impressive. Thinking big is a magic door opener that broadens your perspective and allows you to see new opportunities. Thinking big makes life easier and a lot more fun. It also makes large profits more probable.
I’ve been repeatedly reminded by successful businesspeople in virtually every field that thinking big is one of the keys to success. Let’s consider a few examples. Successful insurance salespersons insist that it takes the identical amount of time to speak to someone about a million-dollar policy as it does a one-thousand-dollar policy. In the real estate field, the concept of leverage applies whether you’re considering a single-family home or a huge apartment building. This doesn’t mean that you can make money I single-family homes, or that your rate of return will necessarily be higher in with more expensive properties. It merely suggests that the bigger your vision, the larger your potential for success. If you’re trying to sell homes for a living, as an agent, it takes the same amount of energy to ask a wealthy person for their listing as it does a low-end homeowner. You can think small, or you can think big.
In any field where public speaking is in order, this concept is critical. It takes an hour to speak to a single person and the same sixty minutes to speak to a crowd of one thousand or more. The size of your crowd will be affected by the same size as your vision. The concept of thinking big also applies to whom you choose to talk to. Are you frightened to go to the top? If so, you’re missing out. It’s very often the case that the people highest up the ladder are actually the easiest to speak to—and the most willing to help. I’ve had the owners of car dealerships actually sit in the car and give me a test drive at the same dealership where the salesperson on the floor wouldn’t give me the time of the day. But in order to make that happen, I had to ask. In the corporate world, the boss is more often willing to sit down with you, even when middle-level managers treat you with disrespect. It’s a strange dynamic, but it’s often true.
As usual, the primary reason many people think too small is fear. Thoughts like, “I can’t speak to a room full of people,” “I can’t risk taking on a larger project,” and “I couldn’t ask the boss to have lunch with me” fill the mind and are taken to seriously. When fearful thoughts enter the mind, try to banish them. You can do it—once you believe you can. The fear you are experiencing is almost always self-created and usually unnecessary.
I have a friend who spent most of his adult life insisting he couldn’t write a book. This was very puzzling to me, because not only was he an excellent writer, but he also felt quite comfortable writing articles and chapters! One day I asked him to consider the idea that a book is nothing more than a series of interesting chapters put into sequence. As obvious as this was to me, he had never thought of it in those terms. Instead, he had always focused on his stubborn belief that writing a book was too big a project. This simple shift in his thinking made all the difference. Two years later, he finished his first book.
Take a look at your abundance. Is your vision too small? Could you be thinking in larger terms? In most cases, the answer is yes! There may be ways that you can reach more people with the same amount of effort. Regardless of the business you are in, the first step is to eliminate any fear or worry that is getting in our way. As your worrisome thoughts gradually disappear and become less appealing, new ideas and insights will begin to emerge.
Richard Carlson, Ph.D.
Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff About Money
(Spiritual and Practical Ways to Create Abundance and More Fun in Your Life)
Published by Hyperion (New York)
The other day, I came across an essay by Nick Joaquin, A Heritage of Smallness; an unsettling commentary about the way we Filipinos are unable to tap our full potentialities by confusing timidity with humility. He observes, “We work more but make less. Why? Because we act on such a pygmy scale. Abroad they would think you mad if you went in a store and tried to buy just one stick of cigarette. They don’t operate on the scale. The difference is greater than between having and not having; the difference is in the way of thinking. They are accustomed to thinking dynamically. We have the habit, whatever our individual resources, of thinking poor, of thinking petty. Is that the explanation for our continuing failure to rise—that we buy small and sell small, that we think small and do small?”
And on that very same day, inspired by his recent readings about certain psychological profiles of successful people, J. Angelo Racoma posted on his blogsite, J SPOTTER, Why The Philippines Will Never Be Rich. He argues, “Sadly, we are subconsciously resigned to being a poor people. Our psychological make-up in terms of finances consists of aversion towards money and success. We tend to associate money with greed and evil. We tend to associate ourselves with the poor, and shun the rich. We tend to stick to our comfort levels, never stretching the limits, never taking that calculated risk, never diving into that pool of opportunity armed with the right attitude to swim across to success.”
Consequently, inspired by the abovementioned gentlemen, I’ve decided to dedicate my Sunday postings to serve as a continual reminder that each and every one of us has the power to co-create with the universe a prosperous life.
Nick Joaquin’s A Heritage of Smallness
http://www.getrealphilippines.com/agr-disagr/17-4-smallness.html
J. Angelo Racoma’s Why The Philippines Will Never Be Rich (J SPOTTER)
http://jangelo.racoma.net/archives/why-the-philippines-will-never-be-a-rich-country/#comments
Conrado de Quiros: There’s The Rub – Day of the Dead
http://dequiros.blogspot.com/2005/10/day-of-dead.html
Labels: Local culture, Words of wisdom
I told her she should create a special place where she can completely be herself. It might be a room in her house or a park near her home. It might even be a bench at her favorite mall where she can sit and sketch the happy faces of people around her. It might also be a corner table at Starbucks where she can scribble uplifting thoughts. It can be the comfortable lounge chair in her parents’ living room where she can hug an overstuffed pillow.
The only criterion here is it should be a place she can experience what she is and what she might become; a place to roam her field of dreams.
I told her to think of ideal conditions that she wants to manifest in her life. It might be about a more fulfilling love life or the financial independence she has been longing for. I urged her to begin actualizing those desires by creating detailed mental movies about them. And that she should save them in a special place in her mind for her to return to and expand upon on a regular basis.
In case disturbing thoughts overwhelm her consciousness, I told her to keep her eyes closed and focus on her breathing. She should then count the first inhale as one, the exhale as two, and so forth; return to one again after the tenth count. Should those negative thoughts persist, I advised her to firmly but silently utter the word, “Stop!” And to keep saying it until she regains total control of her thoughts. After which, resume her breathing exercises, but on a slower pace. I told her to do this for about 10 minutes, or for whatever length of time she is comfortable with.
When she likened it to meditation I said, “Sort of, but it’s more like setting the stage for a magical life.” When she asked who powers this magic, with a smile I told her, “You do, because your inner desires of good are God’s desires for you.”
SCHOOL OF HARD KNICKS
While flipping through the channels last Monday, I came across the New York Knicks playing against the Sacramento Kings. Usually, I’d move on right along, but Coach Larry Brown caught my attention. I had always admired him when he was coaching the Pacers, and now he’s the Knicks’ supreme strategist. Out of respect for the man, I decided to kick back and watch the game.
The Knicks won. They were a sight to behold; they played smart basketball. The New York Times sports writer, Howard Beck, claims, “For the first time since Brown took the team's reins, the Knicks - the kids, the veterans, all of them - displayed a grit and passion worthy of their Hall of Fame coach.”
If this new ensemble of agile and talented young players could sustain this kind of smart playing, they stand a good chance of making it to the playoffs. But then again, I shall remain distant. I had already learned my lesson.
You see, my first love affair with the Knicks was a pleasant one. With Red Holzman as their coach, they won two NBA titles. It was a team of smart players who played smart basketball — consistently; thus, the two rings. Subsequently, as new players replaced the veterans, I lost interest altogether and switched to tennis. No one abandoned anyone here; it was an amicable parting of ways for all.
When Pat Riley took over as coach in the ‘90s, I went back to following the Knicks. However, it was a wrong move on my part. The Knicks subjected me to a couple of seasons of emotional roller coaster. The team had so much promise, but the emotions of Pat Riley’s players overwhelmed their intellect. They evolved into a team of all brawn, no brain and soon became NBA’s bad boys. The emotional intensity that fueled their every game sometimes incited all-out brawls; a more common scene in hockey games than in basketball. Once it happened while the NBA commissioner was in the audience; embarrassment was etched on his face.
But worse of all, the Knicks failed miserably on a couple of occasions to stop the ultimate nemesis — Chicago Bulls’ #23 — the devil incarnate; the vainglorious terrorist who inflicted pain and humiliation to millions of New Yorkers. He was a shameless sharp-shooting maniac who deliberately deprived New York basketball fans of their moment of glory — a championship. Yes, the Knicks were unable to contain him. And for that reason alone, I dropped the Knicks and ignored them the way grandma did to rancid fish in the wet market.
Being a sports fan is not easy. I didn’t like what became of me. Besides developing intense passion for the game and the home team itself, I also became strangely superstitious. To ensure victory, I would perform cultish rituals like a deranged monk before each game. If the team should lose, the wrong shirt I wore at the game could be at fault. My dog was not safe from blame, either. His having pooped at the wrong curb or the wrong part of the neighborhood could jinx the team’s game that evening. Ridiculous, indeed, but hey, it’s part of being a fan.
As for the Knicks, let’s just say I’ll play hard to get for now. If they play smart this season, they might be able to woo me back.
New York Knickerbockers
http://www.nba.com/knicks/
Superstitious Sport Fans
http://www.psychologyofsports.com/guest/superstitiousfans.htm
Come on, he’s a nobody; a waste of time.
SHOP FOR LIFE
If Pilosopong Tasyo was of this day and age, he would point out with utmost cynicism what gambling chips and credit cards have in common – plastic. And that plastic actually obscures the true value of money. Therefore, one tends to gamble or spend more with a piece of plastic than with actual cash as in Suzette’s story.
On the day she received her credit card, she took her boyfriend out to dinner after work at Friday’s in Robinson’s Malate. It was to celebrate her entry to the world of privileged adulthood: a major bank has entrusted her with a credit line twice the amount of her monthly gross salary.
Ronald had burgers with fries and a couple of bottles of imported beer while she had Fettucine Alfredo and two glasses of her favorite cocktail of gin and tonic. The dinner cost more than two thousand pesos.
Feeling a bit woozy from the gin, while strolling in the mall after dinner, she spontaneously dragged Ronald inside the Lacoste shop. She bought him a pricey pair of sneakers and a plaid short-sleeved shirt. The total came close to six thousand pesos.
Ronald was so happy for the unexpected gifts on top of a great dinner that he, too, spontaneously dragged Suzette to a nearby hotel for some mad love to express his gratitude. She was in heaven. While checking out, still giddy from Roland’s show of gratitude, she insisted that the bill of almost two thousand pesos be paid with her card as well.
That first night out with her credit card, she accumulated a debt of about ten thousand pesos. From that night on, Suzette never left home without it.
Eventually, she found herself maxing out her credit line. However, she managed to pay at least half of her accumulated charges by drawing from her savings. Unfortunately, instead of taming her spending habits, she pursued it with the same fervor and after a few months, she had used up her credit and depleted her savings. At the end, she could only afford to pay the minimum amount due. She now has to leave home without it.
In the interim, another bank had issued Suzette a credit card. Although its credit line was not as much as the first, it was still good enough. She promised to use it more wisely; however, she and her boyfriend started having problems.
In order to preserve their two-year relationship, Suzette suggested they spend more quality time on weekends. She and Ronald had taken into driving out of town and staying at nice resort hotels.
Only a couple of months later, she had tapped out its credit line as well. The stress from diving deeper into debt made Suzette jumpy and tense in which no mad love could alleviate. After a series of hurtful exchanges, Ronald thought it was best to separate just until they find a way to work out their differences.
Less than two years after receiving her first credit card, Suzette found herself in dire economic circumstances and without a boyfriend. Collectors started aggressively hounding her at work and at home. Embarrassing messages would be left with her officemates whenever unable to reach her. Calls to her house came in late at night when most households had gone to bed.
The collectors didn’t hesitate suggesting to anyone who answered the phone that Suzette might have become a woman of loose morals and ill-repute — the type that wanders aimlessly along the dark alleys of Avenida Rizal in their sheer skimpy clothing and red stilettos looking for cheap trick. And that was the reason she was never home when they called late at night. Actually, Suzette would be entirely covered by her blanket with her head buried under the pillow to avoid hearing the ringing telephone.
The tactics used by the collection agents were so harsh and brutal Suzette would be reduced to tears. Unable to deal with the humiliation any longer, she begged her father for a loan to pay off her debts. The father had to dip into his savings, including selling his treasured Callaway golf set at a loss – a 50th birthday present from her mother – just to help her.
Over dinner one night, her mother finally told her, “Ever since you got yourself a job, you never once helped out with the household expenses. And because you were too retarded to make any smart decisions, the only thing that gave your father much pleasure had to be sold to pay for your selfish, idiotic habits!” Suzette could only cry in response.
Ironically, inside Suzette’s closet were a couple of shopping bags full of brand new clothes with price tags intact; traces of past shopping sprees. Apparently, she never really needed most of those things; she just bought them for the rush it gave her from making the purchase.
Ronald never reconciled with her. He’s now living with a much older woman; an entertainer in Japan who has saved enough money to retire early from the profession. He is enjoying the fine clothes, jewelries and a brand new car from his new lady friend.
As for Suzette, as a means to pay back her father sooner, she took a second job on weekends at her friend’s restaurant. With her new boyfriend, Ramil, an attorney, she’s exploring the idea of setting up an advocacy group against abusive collection tactics.
It may be argued that the plastic card itself is not at fault here. True. But it did, however, facilitated an inchoate aberration to manifest as a harmful pattern of behavior.
Article: Credit Card 'Sales' People Remain Untamed
http://www.inq7.net/lif/2004/jun/17/lif_32-1.htm
Article: You Might Be a Shopaholic
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/SavingandDebt/P58684.asp
Pilosopong Tasyo a character in Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere
Translated in English by Maria Soledad Lacson-Locsin)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0824819179/103-6684889-5279028?v=glance
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Project SaiSaiHei - All About S.S.H.
layzee Oct 5, 2017
Howdy ho, pardner.
After a long painful wait, a copy of "N.A.V.E." had finally reached my eager hands. After about a week of listening, here are my thoughts and opinions. Any interesting/relevant information from S.S.H.'s song-by-song liner notes will also be translated/paraphrased.
My ratings logic:
0/5 (Little to no musical value)
1/5 (I understand the artist's intentions with this song but it's not for me)
2/5 (Might give it a chance every once in a while/bit of an acquired taste)
3/5 (Average/not amazing, but not bad/mainly just background music/non-active listening)
4/5 (Pretty special, will revisit often)
5/5 (Can't stop listening)
Note: The above ratings are relative to other S.S.H.'s works. They are not being compared with other metal music or other video game music in general.
01. Abyss
My rating: 3/5
My thoughts: As previously stated, it's a Devil May Cry-style song with choirs and a guttural Demon-sounding vocals. I imagine Satan and his army of Hell slowly marching to the Human world. It's more of an intro song with not too much happening and mainly serves to build up to the next track.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: An introduction-style song with both the heavy guitar and incomprehensible low vocals contributing to the solemn atmosphere. That is totally my thing. I imagine this song as being used for the Game Opening or the Trailer. It might be a bit hard to tell from the demo, but as the song progresses, the intruments increase and the volume becomes louder. Also, try increasing the volume at the beginning of the song - you may be a bit surprised.
02. No Meaning
My thoughts: And this track doesn't put the previous build-up to waste. It's in your face in the first second and doesn't let up until the 3:00 minute mark where it takes a break... but only a short one. No Meaning is a combination of male death metal vocals and female scat vocals that seems to enter yodeling territory. The female part sounds quite similar to "voice performer" Kyoko Kishikawa (Shadow Hearts, Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song, etc) - definitely not a bad thing. Both vocals complement each other well instead of detract, and overall doesn't sound overly busy (in terms of keeping track of the instruments as well as both vocals). The important question: who owns the voices? They sound too real to be Vocaloid (though I'm sure Vocaloid technology has improved a lot).
S.S.H.'s liner notes: Slash Metal that I like + mysterious ethnic female vocals. I already published the full version of this song on SoundCloud but I re-recorded it. The Arrange itself is the same as the old version but I completely recreated the sound of the instruments.
03. Cradle Song
My thoughts: Another death metal track similar to the above. I like the backing guitars but overall I'm not really feeling much in this one. The song doesn't seem to be going anywhere, just heading straight ahead, figuratively-speaking.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: Death Pop and Death Catch. It didn't occur to me to write it in particular, but out of this album, this is the one I'm most pleased with, probably. (layzee's note: translation clarification needed)
04. Hellbics 112
My thoughts: A slower-paced song using synth/keyboard and does not have the "hardness" or "darkness" of the previous tracks, pretty laid back actually.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: I originally made this song for when you are "rowing" on an "Aerobike" (layzee's note: I think he is referring to the exercise bikes you find in the gym). Or the Mountain Stage of a game.
(layzee's note: The origins of this song, based on what I understand from this track's liner notes is that, when S.S.H. goes to the gym to work out on the exercise bikes, he would have a playlist of songs from his favourite artists. The problem is that many of the songs raise the "tension" (musical terminology) and does not match the pace at which he exercises. Therefore, the creation of a song that is suitable for exercising to. So he set about finding a suitable tempo: 112 BPM hence the "112" in the track title.)
(layzee's note: and that probably explains the "Hellbics" in the track title - it's probably a combination of "Hell" and "Aerobics".)
(layzee's note: my comprehension and understanding of this track's liner notes might be completely wrong.)
05. Disco -Snow Eyes-
My rating: 2~3/5
My thoughts: It appears to have English language female vocals but I can't really decipher the words. More of a Pop-ish song rather than Death Metal (far from it) and incorporates the saxophone.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: 80’s Respect. I love Rock and Dance music with 80s style synth. If it has some added melancholiness, then it's perfect. The saxophone phrasing took an incredibly long time. And I have never been to a disco.
06. Jac-A-Jan
My thoughts: A mainly synth/keyboard song that uses a similar/the same female vocals from the previous song as well as I believe, acoustic guitar. Also an interesting short chiptune section halfway.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: The track title is read "Jakka Jan" and comes from the acoustic guitar's "Jakka Jan Jakka Jan" sounds. This song is for Stage 1 (or similar) of a Famicom-era Action Game or Shooting Game.
07. Moonlit Showdown
My thoughts: Japanese-style song but straight metal without the traditional Japanese instruments like Shamisen that you might find in other Traditional Japanese/Metal e.g. Momentary Life (Baiken's Theme) from Guilty Gear. Reminds me of the track 荒神 (also by S.S.H.) from the Utatemeguri Original Soundtrack. Anyway, I like. Probably my favourite song of the album, along with No Meaning.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: I thought about naming this song something like "O-CHI-MU-SHA", "WAZAMAE!!", or "Jissai Yasui" but it didn't look right so I stopped. In the beginning, I also thought about inserting a fast solo involving a shamisen but it didn't turn out well at all. In spite of that, I used a Japanese-style fast solo using electric guitar.
08. I Wish
My thoughts: In the first few seconds it already has an 80s synth feel (reminds me of the "The Thing" movie, the original one or other movies that try to recreate that aesthetic e.g. "It Follows").
S.S.H.'s liner notes: What I was aiming for was "Gothic Metal with an 80s Melancholy American Hard Rock approach".
09. Disco -C.A.P-
My rating: UNRATED (or 2~3/5)
My thoughts: A bit hard to rate this one because it's different from the rest of the songs (minimal guitars). As implied from the track title, it is groovy, if you're into that style.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: The longest song in this album, many instruments are used, and the style is very different from the rest of the songs. I created this song last year (2016) and uploaded this track to SoundCloud. It remains intact. "-C.A.P-" means Cut (or Copy) And Paste. (layzee's note: in the song creation process, S.S.H. did a lot of C and P, which "took a very long time"). And I have never been to a disco.
10. Go Back Home
My thoughts: A good old S.S.H.-style metal song to finish the album here. No complaints here.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: For this album, I have packed it with everything I wanted to do and so, I am completely satisfied.
Final thoughts: In this album, S.S.H. sets out to head in some new directions (and old ones, for that matter) and that is something that should always be encouraged. Otherwise you end with up Yngwie-syndrome who persists with his 80s musical ways and fashion (though some might see that as a strength). However, inevitably, that means the album might be considered a bit uneven by some so a bit of expectation recalibration might be warranted in this particular case. Having said that, the new stuff here isn't completely new and unheard of. The female vocals we've already heard in S.S.H.'s 2008 "Faraway" (albeit in Vocaloid form), and the electronical music of "Disco -C.A.P-", we've already sort of heard in his 2008 味噌煮込みコンビナート (Miso Nikomi Kombinat), or more recently 官渡 in 2014's Koihime Musou.
As far as vanilla metal goes (e.g. Go Back Home), S.S.H. remains on top of his game and doesn't look like he'll be worn out anytime soon, creatively-speaking. For me however, his previous two albums "Forgotten Ruins" and "Click and Metal" are S.S.H. perfection/near-perfection and would be hard to top. And this album unfortunately doesn't. Nevertheless, N.A.V.E. is worth a purchase, even if a few tracks might be skipped (or listened to less). Also should mention the production values sound pretty damn good, considering it's doujin/fan-made and all. Everything sounds clean and crisp.
Final note: there exists "N.A.V.E. SoundCloud Bonus Tracks" which are Karaoke and minus-main melody versions of 5 of the songs.
Are you an S.S.H. fan? Then buy N.A.V.E.
Are you a video game music fan? Then N.A.V.E. is worth sampling before making a purchase.
Are you a metal fan? Then buy "Forgotten Ruins" and/or "Click and Metal" first. If they are to your liking, then buy N.A.V.E.
Are you none of the above? I'm not sure how you ended up here but thanks for reading.
layzee Dec 29, 2017
A post-Christmas present: a new original S.S.H. album titled "This And That". Wasn't expecting another one so soon. Judging from the demos, the overall album is more chill than metal or in S.S.H.'s words "a bit calm". This time there's no vocals (real or artificial) - there wasn't any on the demo songs anyway.
Like N.A.V.E. before it, my full thoughts will come after I get my hands on a copy and give it a proper listen. Track by track analysis as well as a translation/overview of S.S.H.'s liner notes will also be done.
Interesting side note: one of my "useless" facts from my "S.S.H. Biography" turned out to be relevant. Track 6 is called "Highball" and in S.S.H.'s opinion, is the "best tasting drink in the world". The song even sounds like a bar theme - you know, the place where you drink stuff. See also: Front Mission 1st Bar Theme song; Bare Knuckle 2/Streets of Rage 2: Bar Theme; any other Bar Theme songs that I'm forgetting that have "Bar Theme Song Musical Tropes".
The reference for this fun fact comes from the "About" section of S.S.H.'s website. Well, came from. Recently, his website has been going under maintenance/redesign so much stuff has been scrubbed, including the fun fact. But that's why I wrote the biography, right? So information doesn't get lost?
layzee Apr 24, 2018
A bit late but here is my review of S.S.H.'s second latest album This And That. But before I do, and as implied by my previous sentence, a new S.S.H. album called YABLE was announced yesterday on his website and a previous announcement the week before via Twitter and Soundcloud.
Here are my thoughts and opinions on This And That. Any interesting/relevant information from S.S.H.'s song-by-song liner notes will also be translated/paraphrased.
01. Smog And Searchlight
My thoughts: Similar to "Abyss", the first song from the N.A.V.E. album, it's more of an intro song.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: The first song. It has a unsettling and eerie feel to it, like the first song from the previous album.
02. Last Resort '94
My thoughts: A chiptune song. Feels a bit Sega Mega Drive or something from that era. Maybe that's what the 1994 is implying? Actually the instrumentals remind me of Yuzo Koshiro's chiptune music from the Sekaijuu no Meikyuu (AKA Etrian Odyssey) series. Reasonably catchy.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: It is the same as the full song called "Last Resort" that was already released on my SoundCloud. It uses the FM and PCM sound source at the same time and I imagine as being an Arcade shooting game BGM. I think I captured the '94 era spirit somewhat.
03. Speedster
My thoughts: Now we're talking! I like the dark-sounding bass coming at 0:10 and throughout and the guitar solo.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: The loud guitar finally makes its appearance. A song I created from nothing/an empty head, part 1. (layzee's note: I think that's what he meant - he composed a song without using anything as a base/foundation or as inspiration).
My thoughts: Overall a pretty groovy tune with nice bass.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: Shredding the guitar, funky version. The wah wah effects are good, but difficult to handle...
05. Take It Easy
My thoughts: Accurate track title. Hard to explain but it sounds a bit ethnic/folkish to me.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: The unique song in this album. It sounds clear/fresh and might conjure an image of some kind of winter town. I wanted to make a "typical" or "archetypal" BGM so I did. Anyway, when composing the song, I was conscious about not making it flashy. It is difficult to not be flashy... and to not fill the solo with 16th notes... (layzee's note: hah)
06. Highball
My thoughts: Highball is a type of drink (and S.S.H.'s favourite). Naturally, this is a relaxing bar-sounding tune.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: I am wonder if this song is the most different one out of all them? The image is of the Showa era (layzee's note: Showa is a specific period of time in Japan. See wikipedia for more details). "Show-Wa" was a candidate for title of this song. Somehow, I imagined Showa drinking establishment in the city (I have never been to one). The drink's name is Highball. I just like Highballs.
07. Bullseye
My thoughts: The second of the pure metal songs. Not bad but I think it repeats itself a bit and the guitar solo isn't very long.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: A song I created from nothing/an empty head, part 2. Apparently when I compose songs out of nothing, they generally become shooting game BGMs (layzee's note: is Cave hiring?).
08. Chasing
My thoughts: An electronica/techno-ish song.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: Although you can't hear it in the demo, I like the "cracked xylophone" sounds at the beginning of the song so I made a phrase using it and spread it round. In the demo, the arpeggio continues goes from left to right. It was very hard to decide on the title.
09. Hazy Moon
My thoughts: A song that leans toward the sadder side. Decent shredding.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: Shredding the guitar, slightly crying guitar version. I wanted to made the lead guitar sound more "dry" but as I proceeded to do so, the guitar suddenly [layzee's note: dunno] so I abandoned it.
10. 3x4
My thoughts: This is the first song that gives me Yngwie feels (probably the trills).
S.S.H.'s liner notes: Shredding the guitar, shuffle version. I like high-speed shuffling so included one song as such. I think I have done particularly well with the strong neoclassical style guitar and sound creation.
11. Rainy Afternoon
My thoughts: Pretty chill.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: I intended the next song as a bonus track so this song rounds it all off.
My thoughts: Metal version of Last Resort '94 and a bit more shreddy in parts where there was no shred in the original chiptune. Nice.
S.S.H.'s liner notes: The concept of this song was to arrange "Last Resort '94" using my most recently used sound sources. I thought about extra tracks but it took a terribly long time...
Final thoughts: Out of all his albums so far and possibly his entire career, this is probably the most diverse one yet (in terms of style and instruments) and one most suitable for use as an RPG soundtrack, for example. If you follow S.S.H.'s soundcloud, you would know that he is always experimenting with new things so this album is a result of that.
Of course, we as S.S.H. fans would naturally gravitate towards the guitar tracks and in this regard, it does not disappoint. Note that I have not rated any tracks 5/5. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a standout track to me so far (Moonlit Showdown from the previous album was my standout track). The guitar tracks are nice and consistent but just doesn't seem to have that secret ingredient I feel. My favourite moment is the beginning of the solo in "Speedster". There's nothing wrong with the other tracks and they do their job.
I think I mentioned this before but, like his previous works, the sound quality is quite high considering this is technically a doujin album that does not have the backing, knowledge or equipment of music companies/publishers. It doesn't even have disc label art (like previous albums). It is simply burnt CD and he admits as such.
Overall, I give this album a 3/5.
Finally, turning our attention back to the upcoming release of the mini-album "YABLE", expect the return of vocals (both female and male death metal vocals as heard in N.A.V.E.). As usual, thoughts and opinions will provided when available.
layzee Jun 23, 2018 (edited Jun 23, 2018)
layzee wrote:
Finally, S.S.H. making his own RPG gave me an idea: how about _I_ make an RPG myself, using S.S.H. music as the game's soundtrack?
Anyway, the results of my barebones RPG will be uploaded on YouTube within 1 or 2 weeks from now.
...said I, more than one year ago. Since this was low priority on my things to do, it became forgotten. I finally decided to reinstall RPG Maker MV, made a few changes until it was remotely worth making a video for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdrrBw-7It8
If you remember, back in 2016, I released a video combining the Nintendo Famicom game with the soundtrack replaced with the music from S.S.H.'s mini album "Forgotten Ruins": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIqNciUlioE
The RPG Maker video is a similar concept.
Playing with RPG Maker MV was a pretty interesting learning experience, whether it's creating worlds, forming characters, writing a story/dialogue, or, yes, choosing context appropriate music. Not to mention micromanaging party growth stats/enemy strength/magic and skills/experience points/distribution of gold/weapons and armour in a way that is balanced (doesn't make the game too easy nor make the game too hard).
Anyway, I'll just let the video speak for itself. To be honest, despite how incomplete and how amateurish it looks (i.e. using the game's original assets), I still think it's cool somehow. Also let me know if you have any questions about it or any requests. Requests could be like, "I want to use this particular S.S.H. song in a fire-themed dungeon" or whatever. Who knows, I might actually do it.
In other news, my S.S.H. album collection photos have been updated again and my opinions on the new "YABLE" mini album in a post in the near future. As for S.S.H.'s own game, I believe he is still working on it.
layzee Jan 28, 2019
I've been a bit busy recently so I was a bit behind on my S.S.H. related matters (see next post).
I still need to give both KABLE and YABLE a track-by-track review but like the previous album before them, I listen to some tracks while skipping others.
I've given the WELCOME TO THE PSY-TAMA demo a listen and I can't say I have any complaints. Proper review will come when I'm ready.
In a Twitter post, S.S.H. said that the last track of that album "CRYING CITY PSY-TAMA" is possibly the best guitar-based he's done so I guess I'll look forward to that. In addition, while stating that he wishes he could play that song himself, he remarks that he hasn't changed his guitar strings in over a year. I think this is actually the first time I have heard him mention anything about his guitar or anything about playing a guitar. It seems like most of the time, he talks about audio and musical software (and minor things like the weather, his health, and food i.e. typical Twitter stuff).
Finally a few more things that probably went under most people's radar:
He contributed a song to https://vgmdb.net/album/81197 and 萃星霜 弐 東方 Compilation CD-BOOK. My review when I get a hold of them.
Some news about the going-ons with my S.S.H. website. And we have one big piece of news:
2. Pre-2012 website/website posts: Are they retrievable? (high priority).
3. Pre-2012 website/website posts: Are they retrievable? 2018: Yes they are. (high priority).
I'm not well-versed in website-creation, but I believe that S.S.H. has a "spider" on his website, and that prevents other people from archiving his website and probably causes problems to website-archiving software. In the past, I have checked the Website Archive website but I was never successful in viewing his old website (pre-2012) or any version for that matter.
Well, thanks to a user here (forgot username) who informed me a few months ago, one is now able to view his old website which also includes his diary/blog. If you dig deep enough, you'll even find my username and my short interaction with him. It's as if I wrote something in wet cement and it has stayed there since then. Furthermore, we even get a small glimpse of his even older version of the website (2000 or so). This is Internet archaelogy folks.
Anyway, I've already painstakingly looked through each revision and saved the interesting bits and I will personally archive them on my own website. I will translate the interesting bits (most of which will go in the biography) and the raw material will be presented in a more cohesive way. Like a history book or museum something. Therefore:
12. Go through the archives and archive the archives onto my website. (WIP%).
Speaking of the biography:
9. Fix up the superscript footnotes etc in the text/webpage i.e. cosmetic issues (low priority).
9. Fix up the superscript footnotes etc in the text/webpage i.e. cosmetic issues (medium priority).
I plan on updating S.S.H.'s biography page but before I do so I'd like to fix up some of the citations/footnotes. My original file is a Microsoft Word file but I've been trying to work out if there's a way to have multiple sections in the main text to point to a single footnote citation. For example, I would like to do this:
layzee is a human[1]. His hobbies include watching cat videos[2] and listening to music[1].
[1] layzee's mum (2018). "Things I hate". layzee's mom's blog Retrieved 2019, January 1.
[2] Reporter Guy (2019). "All About layzee, The New Independent Presidential Candidate". Fox News Retrieved 2019, January 28.
So using the example above, two items (i.e. "I am a human" and "I listen to music") cites a single source, that is [1] my mum. In the actual S.S.H. bio, the first [1] is a clickable citation and the second [1] is a red "1". I would like both of them to be clickable hyperlinks. Do y'all know how to do it? If all else fails, I'll just remove all the hyperlinks and just use standard text.
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Toronto Nationals sign up Yuvraj Singh for Global T20 Canada
12:17 PM ET
ESPNcricinfo staff
Yuvraj Singh, who recently announced his retirement from international cricket and the IPL, has been signed up by the Toronto Nationals for the 2019 season of Global T20 Canada.
During his retirement announcement, Yuvraj had indicated his desire to play in overseas T20 leagues, and said that he would seek his BCCI’s permission in order to do so.
ESPNcricinfo understands Yuvraj has written to the BCCI asking for permission. The board is yet to respond, but since Yuvraj has retired, he is not bound in any way by the BCCI.
The 2019 season, the tournament’s second edition, will be played in Brampton from July 26 to August 11. Five franchise teams – Vancouver Knights, Winnipeg Hawks, Edmondton Royals, Montreal Tigers and Toronto Nationals – took part in the 2018 season alongside a West Indies B team. This time, a sixth franchise team, Brampton Wolves, has replaced West Indies B.
Other new big-name signings for the 2019 season include Kane Williamson (Edmondton), Brendon McCullum (Toronto), Chris Lynn (Winnipeg), Shoaib Malik (Vancouver), Faf du Plessis (Edmondton), Shakib Al Hasan (Brampton) and Colin Munro (Brampton).
Players retained from last season include Chris Gayle (Vancouver), Dwayne Bravo (Winnipeg), Andre Russell (Vancouver), Kieron Pollard (Toronto), Thisara Perera (Montreal) and Sunil Narine (Montreal).
There are a few high-profile names among the six coaches too: Stephen Fleming (Edmondton), Tom Moody (Montreal), Phil Simmons (Brampton), Geoff Lawson (Toronto), Lalchand Rajput (Winnipeg), and Donovan Miller (Vancouver).
This article was originally published by Espncricinfo.com. Read the original article here.
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Canada’s Henderson, Sharp lead LPGA team play
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