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Vicon's Value Destruction
Usually, a company's stock price changes by more than its business value. This is evident by the price volatility that allows value investors like Warren Buffett to buy low and sell high (or in his case, hold forever). But occasionally, a company's intrinsic value does change drastically over a relatively short period. Vicon provides such an example.
Vicon was first brought up on this site about 5 quarters ago, as a company that traded at a discount to its net current assets. At the time, it was breaking even, and had current assets of $36 million along with land and buildings booked at another $6 million, against liabilities of $9 million. It traded for just $23 million.
Unfortunately, over the course of just over a year, this seeming margin of safety was completely erased. The company's book value has fallen from $33 million to just $23 million over a relatively short period (for value investors, that is...For traders this represents an eternity).
A number of things went wrong, a great deal of which can likely be blamed on poor decisions by the company's managers. First, while industry conditions were weak (orders have fallen off considerably since the recession),the company has made little effort to curtail costs. R&D and SG&A spend have either trended up or remained flat despite depressed revenue levels. As a result, Vicon has lost an average of more than a million dollars for each of the last three quarters. For a large company, this is a drop in the bucket; for Vicon's current market cap, however, $1 million represents 7% of book value!
Vicon also paid $5 million last quarter to settle a long-running lawsuit. At the time Vicon was originally brought up, the latest decision by the US Patent Office had been to issue a "Final Rejection" of the claims brought against Vicon. A few months later, however, the plaintiffs won an appeal and the case was reopened. This settlement represents 25% of the company's book value!
Accordingly, Vicon becomes the newest member of this site's ******************Value Fail page, where it is hoped investors (including myself) can learn from past mistakes, with these caveats in mind.
But despite the value destruction this company underwent, value investors did not get burned badly. All that was eroded here was the margin of safety. As such, investors were able to exit this investment with minimal losses even after the company announced that it had agreed to pay out the $5 million settlement. The margin of safety saves the day yet again.
Disclosure: No position
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← NAPALM DEATH Returns to North America with DEVILDRIVER
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MUNICIPAL WASTE: The Art of Thrashing
Posted on February 19, 2008 by dr.park
If there’s one band’s success that has forced labels scrambling to sign retro-thrash bands, it’s Richmond, Virginia’s MUNICIPAL WASTE. Taking the best of the worlds of classic punk, hardcore, and thrash, the band add their own attitude and style to create some of the best crossover music in decades. The WASTE‘s new album, The Art of Partying, does just that while continuing where 2005’s excellent Hazardous Mutation left off but with added thrashing fury. APESHIT hung out with vocalist, Tony Foresta and drumgod Dave Witte during one of the stops on their recent tour with SUICIDAL TENDENCIES. What we learned was that despite their comedy-induced image, MUNICIPAL WASTE are dead serious about their music.
APESHIT: How’s the tour with SUICIDAL TENDENCIES going?
Dave: I think it’s going real good. It’s good for us. Everybody on the tour is really nice. The crowds are awesome. They’re supportive. People are showing up for us. There’s definitely a lot of people showing up for SUICIDAL that are hearing us for the first time and are embracing us and getting the picture.
Tony: It’s like the best tour possible for us right now…a West Coast tour with SUICIDAL. A huge fuckin’ opportunity for us. We were really stoked on it.
APESHIT: Did you hang out in Venice with them?
Tony: No, no. I wish. I wish.
APESHIT: It’s a lot safer [there] now than when they started.
Tony: Yeah.
APESHIT: Back then you don’t want to go visit over there. But now it’s alright.
Tony: Our first day off was Thanksgiving so we just hung out at our friend Andy‘s house. The other day off that they had, I guess they went to Venice, and we went and played Phoenix.
APESHIT: The new album is a great follow up to Hazardous Mutation. How do you guys feel about how it turned out from your perspective?
Tony: Thanks! Zeuss [producer] did a bang up job. [Although] we can nitpick it apart just cause it’s our music. All in all, I think it came out pretty well.
Dave: Yeah, Zeuss did really good, and I think it’s a good representation of where we were at at that time.
APESHIT: What gave you the idea to work with him over other producers?
Tony: We heard that he was interested in us. I just pictured a dude named “Zeuss” recording all the HATEBREED albums. Nothing against HATEBREED, Dave and I are huge HATEBREED fans. I just thought it was going to be some straight edge, militant…I just had this weird image in my head that he was going to be kind of difficult for some reason and that we wouldn’t be able to get our ideas across to him. But it was the exact opposite.
Dave: Ironically, he’s a huge fan. And I actually wanted to record with him in the first place. It’s ironic that he came to us.
Tony: Seriously, he’s one of the most down to earth dudes. He comes to our shows. It’s like talking to my brother.
Dave: We’ll do another one with him.
Tony: Definitely.
APESHIT: You just see his name in the credits [of albums] and no one knows anything about him except that he’s got this cool name.
Tony and Dave: [Laughs]
APESHIT: You guys did an awesomely fun and ridiculous video for “Headbanger Face Rip” with the b-movie folks at Troma Studios. How did you guys hook up with Troma?
Tony: I was trying to get them to do a video with us when our first record came out. We just never really [had things] work out. The label (Earache Records) is like, “Who do you want to do your video?”
“Troma.”
[Earache] actually knew somebody so he contacted them to hook it up.
APESHIT: How was the video shoot?
Tony: It was hot! It was the middle of summer in this garage. We were sweatin’ so bad.
Dave: I guess I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve never done anything like that…filming behind a screen playing drums. They kept telling me to do it over and over.
APESHIT: Did they already have an idea planned for the video or did you sit down together and come up with the idea?
Tony: We had a bunch of different ideas, and we just ended up doing a blue screen video. We wanted it to be acting and blowing stuff up, but we’ll just save that for the next time.
APESHIT: Let’s talk about your song-style. It’s straight up and catchy. For a lot of other bands, they’re into four or five-minute songs. Do you find it easier to write shorter, catchier songs? Or is it just something natural for you guys to do?
Tony: I just think that as far as we go, we all have really short attention spans. And I think that’s the audience that we cater to. So it’s easier to get in and get out instead of having something dragging out, playing a two-minute guitar solo.
Dave: Plenty of other people do that and they’re great at it. But that’s not what we’re choosing to do.
APESHIT: As a band, you guys are all crucial pieces to the MUNICIPAL WASTE sound. Did you guys have this kind of chemistry from day one when you guys had this line-up?
Tony: Yeah, I think so.
Dave: Yeah. The first time I jammed with Ryan (guitars), it was right on. After the other guy left and they needed someone, I went and jammed with Ryan not even knowing that I was going to join the band. It just felt real cool.
Tony: Once we got Phil (bass), we had to start writing the album (Hazardous Mutation). We got five songs done, everybody turned around, and we had a new song and I had to keep writing lyrics.
Dave: For me, even for them moreso, it was just different. I didn’t know how it went with the old band.
Tony: It’s a lot smoother now. [Laughs]
APESHIT: Dave, you are one of the most underrated drumgods in extreme music.
Dave: Thanks!
APESHIT: You’ve played in so many great bands (DISCORDANCE AXIS, BURNT BY THE SUN, ANODYNE, MELT-BANANA, EXIT-13, HUMAN REMAINS, etc.), have a great resume and everything. But the press doesn’t give you enough recognition. [Turning to Tony] Is there anything Dave can’t play?
Tony: Ska. He refuses to play ska.
Dave: No, that’s wrong. I’ve actually always wanted to do a ska band and a rockabilly band because both have shitloads of energy, and I’m an energy nut. I love being creative and energetic. But, I have a problem playing salsa. [Otherwise] I’m open to learning and playing anything.
But thanks for your kind words. I appreciate it.
APESHIT: One thing that I thought was funny but also cool when I first got here [to the show] was that all the teenage kids were dressed like it was 1985. It’s like, “Where did they get all that merchandise? I didn’t even have that when I was younger.”
APESHIT: Does it trip you guys out?
Tony: I love it! When we first started, it was just punks and hardcore kids, and we were the ones with the denim vests on, the four of us. Even metal kids in general weren’t dressing like that back then. I say “back then” like this was a long time ago. This was like six or seven years ago. In January [2008], it’ll be seven years. It’s weird. Kids just didn’t really do that. Now, it’s come back so much that people aren’t embarrassed to be into thrash anymore.
Dave: It’s weird. There’s a big thing in the 80’s that was all like that and then it faded out.
APESHIT: You are credited with not only being a crossover band but bringing back a lot of the old school sounds. As a result of your guy’s success, there are a lot of labels that want similar sounding bands. You know, that’s just the way it goes.
APESHIT: That becomes just kind of a way for bands to have a gimmick to get a career started. How do you guys feel about?
Tony: I think there are a lot of bands that kind of cheapen it. I hate to badmouth anyone, but I think a lot of bands are influenced by us than bands that they should be [influenced by], like bands from back then. But, there’s also bands that are fucking amazing right now like TOXIC HOLOCAUST. I’m all for a thrash revival and all that, but I just want it to be sincere and not a trend or bandwagon thing because that’s what’s going to ruin it.
Dave: Recently, I’ve come up with this theory that we’ve always done what we’ve wanted to do. And this whole explosion of mimic bands, it’s like any other type of musical scene. A ton of them, most of them suck. But then there’s that one that figures something out. They change, they evolve, and start the next wave.
APESHIT: Does it feel odd to know that for some of the kids that come out to your shows, they might be hearing this style of music for the first time?
Tony: I love that shit.
Dave: I love being able to inspire kids.
Tony: It was the same for me as a kid to go, “What the fuck was that?” I remember when I first saw THE JESUS LIZARD, the singer was a fucking lunatic. I was like, “What is this shit?” I didn’t even know what the fuck…the kind of music and the way he was singing was totally off the wall. That inspiration was huge. I hope we do that.
Dave: It’s always awesome to inspire some one. You up there doing what you love to do and some kid shows up and goes, “I got the message.” It’s an amazing feeling.
APESHIT: Just like the new album title, partying is an art…if you’re experienced and do enough of it. However, surviving the art of partying is another challenge. You guys must have a lot fun going to shows and going out on tour. Do you have any solid tips on dealing with a massive hangover?
Tony: It’s so funny that we wrote a party album, and now we’re all kind of over it [partying]. [Laughs] Being on the so road for so long between that time and now, we don’t really party as much [anymore]. The next record is going to called The Art of Not Partying. [Laughs]
I don’t know…stay hydrated. We drink water all the time.
Dave: The ultimate hangover cure is kombucha tea.
Tony: We’ve toned down the partying.
Dave: We still party once in a while. But it’s hard when you’re out there nine months out of the year. We kind of realized that, “Shit, we need to chill.” [Laughs] I can’t tour like this. If we get fucked up all the time, it’s not healthy.
APESHIT: I read an interview that you guys did for another zine, and they basically tried to portray you as the ultimate partying band…partying this and partying that. It’s like, “They’re musicians too! They don’t just party.”
Dave: A lot of people get caught up in that.
Tony: That whole image, we’re going to try to stray away from that in the future just because it’s like overshadowing what we do, what we care about…which is playing badass thrash songs. We like to have fun too, but I don’t want that to overshadow…I don’t want it to be some fucking cheesy gimmick. Playing this sort of music is really important to us.
APESHIT: Do you guys have any plans to re-release your pre-Earache releases?
Tony: There’s been talks about it but it’s still available. People can still get the first record. It’s fine where it is right now. We might get a reissue somewhere down the line. We’d rather work on a new album than work on some old shit.
APESHIT: Is Earache going to release The Art of Partying with a DVD later?
Tony: I don’t know. They videotaped one of our shows where the footage was shitty. Maybe something down the line. Throw the video on there and some wacky shit.
APESHIT: I like the DVD for Hazardous Mutation, but I wish I could’ve gotten some kind of warning so I wouldn’t have to buy it twice. [The DVD was included in a subsequent special edition re-release.]
Tony: Well, it was kind of good for us cause when it came out, that album didn’t get a lot of press. But it slowly built steam, and they wanted to reissue it so people would hear about it. It just kind of went over a lot of people’s heads so they re-released it to let people know what was going on.
APESHIT: You guys grew up on punk and hardcore. What’s your take on today’s contemporary hardcore scene?
Tony: INEPSY is the shit! It’s seems like there’s a lot more hardcore bands popping up. There’s good bands like A.N.S. and CAUSTIC CHRIST…ANNIHILATION TIME, we’ve always talk about them for years.
Dave: There’s a small group that I like. Other than that, I don’t really know much about it.
APESHIT: Metalcore is this giant…the meaning isn’t even the same anymore.
Tony: You can ask me questions about punk and hardcore all day, but I don’t know shit about metalcore. [Laughs]
I pay no attention to that bullshit.
APESHIT: I was wondering if you guys read the book or saw the movie, American Hardcore.
Tony: Yeah! We watched it a couple of weeks ago. It’s really cool. That book’s really cool too. I like reading about WHITE CROSS and other bands from Richmond that were fucking awesome. I love learning about shit like that.
APESHIT: It seems like things are going really well for you guys. How do you feel about the way things are going for the band?
Tony: We’re really happy. We’re starting to choose our own battles now, not go out on tour as much, not kill ourselves as much. We put two years in pretty hard. We’re going to take couple months off and go at it again. Bust our ass, just like we always do. We’re work addicts. We’re workaholics. It’s just paying off.
Dave: It’s fun man. Get to see the world. We’re actually out there doing what we love to do.
APESHIT: What’s next for THE WASTE after this tour?
Tony: Vacation! We’ll be at home writing songs on our vacation. [Laughs] Just chillin’ and plan what we’re going to do for the summer.
This entry was posted in Features and tagged american-hardcore, burnt-by-the-sun, dave-witte, discordance-axis, hatebreed, inepsy, municipal-waste, partying, suicial-tendencies, the-jesus-lizard, thrash, toxic-holocaust, troma, white-cross, zeuss. Bookmark the permalink.
One thought on “MUNICIPAL WASTE: The Art of Thrashing”
Cait Delphine says:
Although I’m no expert, in my opinion this is truly great interview. You seriously covered all grounds! One of the most enjoyable (and longest!) I’ve read in a long time. I’m interviewing them, or Tony at least, at the New England Metal and Hardcore festival next weekend, so your interview has definitely helped me think more about where to go with my questions, and what not to ask (so I don’t steal your questions). 😉
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Flawed 'clean-up' of Maralinga
Information about the flawed 'clean up' of the Maralinga nuclear test site in the 1990s
Lots of articles posted at:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30410/20090218-0153/www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/#bwt
Critical analysis of the Maralinga 'clean up' by nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson:
2015 submission to SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission
Book: 'Maralinga: Australia's Nuclear Waste Cover-up', Alan Parkinson, ABC Books, 2007, 233 pages, $32.95 (pb). Review posted at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/38547 To purchase the book, try ABC book sellers or order online at http://shop.abc.net.au (enter Maralinga or Parkinson in the search engine). Now available as a Kindle e-book at Amazon for $15.99.
Numerous articles by Alan Parkinson posted at http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30410/20090218-0153/www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/#bwt
Maralinga - Australia's nuclear waste cover-up, Ockham's Razor - ABC Radio National, September 2, 2007, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2007/2019647.htm#transcript
“The Maralinga Rehabilitation Project: Final Report”, Medicine and Global Survival, Volume 7, Number 2, February 2002. http://www.ippnw.org/pdf/mgs/7-2-parkinson.pdf
Maralinga Rehabilitation Project, 2000, text of conference presentation + photos: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/31544/20040522-0000/www.mapw.org.au/confer...
Comments in ABC Radio National, Background Briefing program, “Maralinga: The Fall Out Continues”, April 16, 2000, http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/maraling...
Maralinga and Lucas Heights, ABC Ockham's Razor, 22 Sept 2002, http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/maralinga-and-...
Second-round submission to ARPANSA 2003-04 inquiry into Proposed National Radioactive Waste Repository, download Word file: http://www.archive.foe.org.au/sites/default/files/ParkinsonARPANSA2004.doc
Cleaning Up Maralinga, ABC Radio National, ‘Perspective’ series, 22 April 2003, www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/perspective
"Maralinga: Clean-Up or Cover-Up?" Australasian Science, July, 21 (6), 2000, p.16. (not available online)
'The Maralinga Rehabilitation Project: Final Report', Medicine, Conflict and Survival, Vol.20, 2004, pp.70-80, London: Frank Cass. (not available online)
Plutonium at Maralinga – Alan Parkinson
Dust at Maralinga ‒ Alan Parkinson
Maralinga Mystery - Alan Parkinson
Critical analysis of the Maralinga 'clean up' by nuclear physicist Prof. Peter Johnston:
Written submission #256 to ARPANSA 2003-04 inquiry into Proposed National Radioactive Waste Repository, available from jim.green@archive.foe.org.au
Second-round submission to ARPANSA 2003-04 inquiry into Proposed National Radioactive Waste Repository. Download PDF: http://www.archive.foe.org.au/sites/default/files/JohnstonN1100.pdf
P.N. Johnston, A.C. Collett, T.J. Gara, "Aboriginal participation and concerns throughout the rehabilitation of Maralinga", presented at the Third International Symposium on the Protection of the Environment from Ionising Radiation, Darwin. See pp.349-56 in this PDF: http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/CSP-17_web.pdf
Critical analysis of the Maralinga 'clean up' by scientific whistleblower Dale Timmons:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30410/20090218-0153/www.geocities.com/jimg...
Australian government propaganda:
http://www.ret.gov.au/resources/radioactive_waste/maralinga/Pages/Marali...
Propaganda from the Australian nuclear regulator ARPANSA:
http://arpansa.gov.au/RadiationProtection/basics/maralinga.cfm
http://arpansa.gov.au/pubs/basics/maralinga.pdf (this PDF file ends with a list of references to literature on Maralinga and the 'clean up')
Cabinet papers reveal British Government denied compensation to people affected Maralinga, Emu Fields nuclear tests
Tory Shepherd, The Advertiser, 1 Jan 2014
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/cabinet-papers-reveal-british-government-denied-compensation-to-people-affected-maralinga-emu-fields-nuclear-tests/story-fni6uo1m-1226793288275
THE British Government did not want to pay to clean up the South Australian Outback after its nuclear testing program and was reluctant to pay compensation to the Australians it exposed to radiation.
Cabinet documents from 1986 and 1987, released by the National Archives of Australia, detail how the Australian Government told the British that people who had to take samples from the toxic cloud were "undoubtedly inadequately protected and monitored for radiation exposure and that was a direct result of British assurances that they faced negligible risks of radiation exposure".
The Hawke/Keating Government was also keen to "constrain" how much money it gave to the victims of the radioactive material released at Maralinga and Emu Fields.
Why cabinet sought only a partial clean-up of British nuclear test site
1 January 2014, Paul Chadwick
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/31/why-cabinet-sought-only-par...
The complete rehabilitation of areas of Australia used to test British nuclear weapons may not be possible, the Hawke cabinet was advised in 1986. Cabinet was warned that a full clean-up may have been more expensive than the British government would be willing to contemplate, according to documents released this week by the National Archives. They provide new insights into the Hawke government's response to the recommendations of the McClelland royal commission into British nuclear tests in Australia.
The documents cover technical aspects of the clean-up, collection of data about persons who may have been exposed to radiation and compensation issues affecting veterans of the testing and Indigenous people whose lands had been damaged. The material shows how ministers perceived these seemingly distinct issues as being connected.
In addressing the royal commission's recommendation that the sites be cleaned up “so that they are fit for unrestricted habitation by the traditional Aboriginal owners as soon as possible”, cabinet heard from the minister for resources and energy, Gareth Evans, that such a clean-up of all affected areas would be extraordinarily expensive. At least as expensive as plutonium clean-up operations at Palomares in Spain and in the Marshall Islands – in 1970s dollar values, more than $US200m.
“But even expenditure on this scale cannot on present indications be expected to achieve a fully effective rehabilitation of the area given the experience that residual contamination, albeit at significantly lower levels, would continue to be present,” Evans reported.
This, and the remoteness of Maralinga, the area in South Australia where the tests took place, meant it “may be reasonable to set aside, even at this early stage, the option of absolutely unrestricted habitation”.
A clean-up costing in the order of $20m to $25m was “much more within the ballpark that the UK government is likely, on present indications, to be prepared to contemplate”. Cabinet was looking for a contribution from Britain of 50% of the clean-up cost.
In an overview report to cabinet in May 1986, Evans noted that “a non-confrontational approach had been adopted in all dealings with the UK government and an amicable and productive working relationship has so far been maintained”.
The Thatcher government's view was interpreted for the Hawke cabinet as follows:
“While the British government will continue to minimise its obligation to clean up the sites, its final willingness to pay in whole or in part will depend on both a mix of legal and moral argument, and on the extent of the clean-up insisted upon. The British have also stated their concern that if personal compensation awards are opened up, precedents will be set for compensation of their own nuclear veterans.
“There is a connection between the compensation and clean-up issues only in so far as restraint by the Australian government on this compensation issue may assist the negotiating climate when it comes to seeking recovery of clean-up costs,” Evans advised his colleagues.
There were indications that Maralinga Aboriginal representatives may accept that, once the main hazards were dealt with cost effectively, the “very large additional sums that may need to be spent to secure the ‘unrestricted habitation’ criterion might be much better spent elsewhere”.
Compensation in the form of services such as water and roads “could be very helpful in securing Aboriginal acceptance of a reasonable ultimate clean-up program”, Evans reported.
Studies necessary for a reduced scale of clean-up were approved by cabinet. An aerial survey of radioactivity around the test sites would be followed by a more detailed ground survey. Five studies would “define the areas – hopefully quite small – which must remain surrounded by fences, and further outer areas in which activities such as food gathering and excavation should not occur”.
A report by technical experts attached to the cabinet submission states: “Aboriginals living and gathering food on the Maralinga lands may be exposed [to contaminants] … in three major ways – by inhalation, by ingestion and by entry of contaminated material through open flesh wounds and abrasions.”
The experts considered options for burial of contaminated soil. They noted that since one of the contaminants had a half life of 24,000 years it was a prerequisite to make a prediction about the sort of changes in the earth expected to occur in the Maralinga area in the timeframe.
Cabinet rejected the royal commission's recommendation for the creation of a new register of persons who may have been exposed to “black mist” or radiation at the tests. It reasoned that two substantial lists of persons involved in the tests and potentially exposed to radiation already existed and that obtainable information would add nothing of significance.
The Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Clyde Holding, presented cabinet with a submission in response to the royal commission's recommendation that Aboriginal people be compensated for dispossession of the lands used for testing.
Holding was blunt and evocative: “... we have no option but to accept the principle of compensation for dispossession. The actions of previous Australian government [sic] in shepherding Aboriginal people from their traditional lands for the purpose of conducting atomic tests were both immoral and appallingly executed. The resultant disruption to Aboriginal life has been catastrophic; Yalata, where many were resettled, is testimony to that. If we deny compensation we shall stand condemned as surely as those who committed the outrage of dispossession in the first place.”
Cabinet accepted Holding's recommendation that $500,000 be provided in 1986-87 for services, such as roads and water, for Indigenous communities with a traditional interest in sites at Maralinga affected by the atomic test program, with future amounts to be subject to further consideration.
Holding advised: “This would in effect be a down payment on an unspecified overall sum, which would need to be calculated at a later stage when more information is available on needs and on the extent of continuing restrictions on use and enjoyment of areas of the Maralinga lands. It will be seen as a low figure and will be criticised for that; we can counter such criticism by pointing out that it is the first instalment, and that there needs first to be consultation with the traditional owners on what is to be done.”
Maralinga sites need more repair work, files show
Philip Dorling
http://www.theage.com.au/national/maralinga-sites-need-more-repair-work-...
MORE than a decade after the Howard government declared the clean-up of Maralinga to be finished, the Australian government is continuing to support remediation work at the former British nuclear weapons test site.
Confidential federal government files released under freedom of information also show Canberra bureaucrats have at times been primarily concerned with ''perceptions'' of radioactive contamination, while rejecting a request by the Maralinga Tjarutja Aboriginal community for a site near the Maralinga village to be cleared of high levels of toxic uranium contamination.
Files released by the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism show that erosion of the massive Taranaki burial trench north of Maralinga, described by federal bureaucrats as ''a large radioactive waste repository'', has required significant remediation work. Other burial pits scattered across the former nuclear test range have also been subject to subsidence and erosion, exposing asbestos-contaminated debris.
While the released documents indicate ''no radiological contamination of groundwater'' has been detected, the federal government has been obliged under its 2009 agreement with Maralinga Tjarutja for the hand-back of the Maralinga test site to initiate a range of further remediation work.
The Taranaki trench was excavated in the mid-1990s and used to bury radioactive-contaminated debris and soil, principally from numerous ''minor trials'', British nuclear weapons safety and development experiments conducted between 1956 and 1963 that caused the heaviest radioactive contamination at Maralinga.
Records of a Maralinga Lands and Environmental Management Committee meeting in October last year show that ''erosion of the Taranaki trench was noted'' and that repair work funded by the Commonwealth would be carried out by the Maralinga Tjarutja. An annual survey of 85 debris pits revealed that 19 pits had been subject to erosion or subsidence, with eight requiring ''major work'' and at least four containing exposed asbestos.
A brief prepared for Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson in April this year questioned the capacity of the Maralinga Tjarutja to manage the former nuclear test site.
''We understand that [the Maralinga Tjarutja's] site manager is to be replaced with a community member at the end of June 2011. While it is not for the department to dictate who fills this position, it is necessary that Maralinga Tjarutja appreciates the need for competent management of the site.''
The released files also show that the Australian government declined requests by Maralinga Tjarutja to clean up the trials site closest to the Maralinga Village.
Situated east of the Maralinga airstrip, the Kuli site was used by British nuclear weapons scientists to conduct 262 trials that explosively dispersed 7.4 tonnes of uranium into the environment.
Maralinga's nuclear nightmare continues
By Phil Shannon
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/38547
Maralinga: Australia's Nuclear Waste Cover-up
By Alan Parkinson
ABC Books, 2007, 233 pages, $32.95 (pb)
Federal science minister Peter McGauran was almost incontinent with joy in 2003 — the clean-up of the plutonium-contaminated British atomic bomb testing site at Maralinga in South Australia's remote north had "achieved its goals", exceeded "world's best practice" and was "something Australia can be proud of". Not so happy, however, was nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson, whose book Maralinga: Australia's Nuclear Waste Cover-up shows that the "clean-up" was more a "cover-up" of a cost-cutting dumping of hazardous radioactive waste in shallow holes in the ground.
Seven of the 12 British atomic bombs exploded on Australian territory 50 years ago were at Maralinga in 1956 and 1957. Even more so than the bomb tests, it was the hundreds of related trials, which continued until the mid-1960s, that contaminated 100 square kilometres of land with plutonium and other radioactive elements. Twenty-four kilograms of highly dangerous plutonium was used but only 0.9kgs was repatriated to Britain. The remainder was spread over a wide area, while thousands of tonnes of plutonium-contaminated debris (concrete, steel, cable, etc) lay in poorly covered bare earth pits following inadequate British clean-ups, the last in 1967.
By 1993, Parkinson had become the key person on the project, representing the then federal Labor government (through the Department of Primary Industry and Energy) and as a member of the minister's advisory committee, MARTAC (the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee). What followed was a mounting catalogue of problems that became a fully-fledged disaster after Parkinson was sacked in 1997 by the new Coalition government.
The main problem concerned the clean-up of the contaminated debris in the pits. In-situ vitrification (ISV), which used electricity to melt the pit contents and soil, cooling to form a hard glass-like rock that immobilises the radioactive contaminants, had been adopted as the best available solution. The project team, however, were badly misled by inaccurate, 20-year old British recollections of the pits and their contents. Parkinson's team found that the total volume of contaminated debris was three times greater than they had been led to believe. The ISV treatment would therefore cost much more and the government department went into zealous cost-cutting mode.
The situation had been exacerbated from mid-1997 with a changing of the management guard in the department, which put a person in charge who knew nothing of radiation and had no program management experience. Parkinson, the specialist scientist who wanted to do a proper job, clashed with the bureaucrat out to wind up the job and save money.
In secret meetings, the department arranged an extension to the existing clean-up project management contract with Gutteridge, Haskins & Davey (GHD) to take over the management part of the ISV project from the ISV engineering experts Geosafe. GHD, which had originally tendered for the job but not made the shortlist, had bought the successful tenderer, the government's Australian Construction Services, during a post-election festival of privatisation.
So, a failed tenderer was now in charge of a process for which they had no expertise. GHD, in turn, reported to a similarly ignorant department, while MARTAC was partially blinded by the failure of cooperation and information flow between the direct market competitors, GHD (managing the ISV project) and Geosafe (conducting it). This, says Parkinson, "doomed" the project.
As Parkinson feared, cost-cutting undid the project. An unexplained explosion of something flammable in vitrification Pit No. 17 in March 1999 — a legacy of the undocumented British pit stocktake two decades ago — gave the department and MARTAC the excuse to scrap the costly but effective ISV, blaming the process not the pit contents. With ISV red-lined, the next best option, which was to encase the debris in a concrete-lined facility (the minimum requirement for such disposal in the US and Britain), was also scratched and shallow trench burial under just one to two metres of soil was adopted.
The clean-up, by simply burying long-lived radioactive debris in a hole in the ground with no treatment or lining, had thus been "botched", says Parkinson, but the Coalition's then science minister, Nick Minchin, declared the site safe in March 2000. Parkinson exposed the disgraceful outcome through the ABC, provoking the government into a furious rebuttal composed of scientific distortion and personal abuse.
When the new minister, McGauran, then waved the subsequent MARTAC report as a true and proper record sanctifying the clean-up, Parkinson unpicked this alleged seal of approval at its shonky seams. Written by a part-time advisory committee that did not have day-to-day contact with, or full information on, the project, the report was riddled with mistakes and errors. That six "eminent" scientists signed it, is, to Parkinson, evidence that MARTAC had become "a puppet advisory committee". Also failing the scientific test was ARPANSA (Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Authority), the government's "independent" nuclear regulator, which also gave the "clean-up" the all-clear.The government claims that the "clean-up" has exceeded world's best practice. Parkinson argues that the higher standards proposed for the national low-level nuclear waste depository (containment drums stored in a deep-engineered facility, with a concrete base and covered by impervious layers), make the government's statements about Maralinga's hole-in-the-ground approach being world's best practice utterly "frivolous".
Equally disturbing for Parkinson is the fact that the nuclear waste depository project itself has the same client (the renamed Department of Employment, Science and Training), the same contractor (GHD) and the same regulator (ARPANSA) that so dismally mismanaged the Maralinga clean-up to save a dollar.
If the government's claims of a safe site at Maralinga are true then why, asks Parkinson, is not the government agreeing to total indemnity? Perhaps because it doesn't want the financial liability for people (traditional owners, souvenir hunters, site maintainers) contaminated from the hundreds of square kilometres of soil known still to be contaminated (often well-above the clean-up criteria) but which were not involved in the partial clean-up; from the "hundreds and possibly thousands of tonnes of contaminated soil" that blew away as radioactive dust during the scraping and dumping process by the earthworks machinery; from the radioactive material and pits that have not yet been found; from the 20kgs (84% of the original amount) of plutonium still out there.
It is no disrespect to say that, as a writer, Parkinson makes a very good nuclear engineer, or that the big picture sometimes goes a little out of focus because of his intense gaze at the personal level of his intimate involvement with the project and its personalities. What Parkinson has delivered, however, is an invaluable service in blowing the lid on the "cheap and nasty scheme" of an incompetent and lying government, and its tame and leashed scientists and senior bureaucrats. Parkinson has more integrity than the lot of them. Maralinga has not been cleaned up. The government's assurances on anything nuclear should be taken with a grain of contaminated Maralinga soil.
Maralinga - Australia's nuclear waste cover-up
Ockham's Razor - ABC Radio National
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2007/2019647.htm#transcript
Robyn Williams: Isn't it fascinating to contemplate how the world changes. Twenty-five years ago we saw the first CDs replace those large vinyl discs we used to call LPs. Fifty years ago the space age really began with the launch of Sputnik, the first satellite, followed by Laika the dog. And at about the same time, out in the desert in South Australia, the British were exploding bombs, atomic bombs, something that may come as a surprise to younger listeners.
Alan Parkinson has written a book about all this and about what happened next. It's called 'Maralinga, Australia's Nuclear Waste Cover-up'.
Alan Parkinson:
Most people living in Australia today probably do not know that twelve atomic bombs have been exploded on Australian territory.
Seven of those bombs were exploded at Maralinga, in South Australia, in the 1950s. Following those explosions, Britain conducted a series of experiments in which they exploded another 15 bombs in a manner which precluded an atomic explosion. Those experiments spread plutonium and uranium over hundreds of square kilometres of the South Australian landscape.
Before they abandoned the site, the British conducted a final clean-up in 1967, and the Australian government accepted their assurance that Maralinga was clean. In the mid 1980s, scientists from the Australian Radiation Laboratory surveyed the site and found it was far from satisfactory.
In 1989, I prepared estimates for some 30 options for cleaning the site, ranging from simply fencing the contaminated area to scraping over 100 square kilometres of land and burying the contaminated soil. The Federal government agreed with the South Australian government and the Maralinga Tjarutja to implement a partial clean-up.
This partial clean-up was to be in two parts: the first was to scrape up and buy the most contaminated soil. The second part was to treat 21 pits containing thousands of tonnes of plutonium-contaminated debris by a process of vitrification, which would immobilise the plutonium for perhaps a million years.
In 1993, I was appointed a member of the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee whose purpose was to advise the Minister on progress of the project, and a few months later, I was appointed the government's representative to oversee the whole project.
By the end of 1997, the collection and burial of contaminated soil was nearing an end. However, as that soil was scraped up, we found the state of the 21 debris pits was not at all what we had been led to believe from the British reports.
The pits were very much larger than the British reports told us, with about three times as much debris as we had expected, and therefore treatment by vitrification would clearly cost a lot more.
By then we had completed a three-year program to match the vitrification technology to the Maralinga geology, and a company called Geosafe had built the equipment ready to use it to treat the pits. Unfortunately, when the department signed the contract with Geosafe, they failed to include that most basic feature of any contract: a statement of what had to be achieved.
The equipment was tested in Adelaide before being taken to site, and those tests, which I witnessed, showed that the technology was going to be just as successful as we had hoped.
It was at this time that the department held three meetings with a company that had no knowledge at all of the vitrification technology; they had not been involved in the three-year development program, and nobody from that company had even seen the full-size equipment. Similarly, the two attendees from the department had no knowledge of the technology, or any project management experience. Add to that, nobody in those meetings had any nuclear expertise or experience in the disposal of nuclear waste.
Even though I was the government's representative overseeing the whole project, I was excluded, as was Geosafe.
The department then proposed to appoint this company as project manager and project authority over the vitrification part of the project. I resisted this and advised them not to proceed along this path. Geosafe also objected, telling the department several times in writing and face-to-face that the company was not qualified to take over the project, having no knowledge at all of what was involved. The department persisted and against all advice, appointed the company. For my pains I was removed from the project and the advisory committee. I was sacked.
So the world's experts in the vitrification technology found themselves contracted to the department but reporting to a company that knew nothing about the technology. In turn, that company reported to people in the department who were similarly ignorant of the technology, had no nuclear expertise and no project management experience. From that point on, the project was almost certainly likely to fail.
Within a few weeks of being appointed, the new project managers put forward a proposal that some of the pits should be exhumed and their contents buried, claiming this would be cheaper. The department accepted the suggestion and introduced what they called the hybrid system, a mixture of dubious practice and the best available technology. And I maintain they did this merely to save money, in fact later when Mr Peter McGauran inherited the project, he tried to defend the saving of over $5-million.
Vitrification of some pits continued until, as treatment was nearing completion on one pit, there was a huge explosion within the pit. The steel hood over the pit was extensively damaged, and molten glass was spewed some 50 metres from the pit. Fortunately, nobody was injured in the incident, but it gave the government an excuse to cancel vitrification altogether.
They then exhumed all the pits, including those that had been vitrified, and placed the whole lot in a shallow grave and covered it.
In March 2000, Senator Minchin visited Maralinga and declared the site was safe, and could be returned to the Aborigines. He was accompanied on that visit by Dr John Loy, the Head of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, ARPANSA.
Dr Loy went on to claim that the shallow burial of plutonium contaminated debris was world's best practice. Three years later, on 25th March, 2003, Mr McGauran tabled the government's final report of the project in parliament. In his speech, he said, 'The project achieved its goals and a world best practice result', oblivious to the fact that a partial clean-up cannot, by definition, be world's best practice.
It would be a pity if the only record of the project was that published by the government. That final report contains so many incorrect statements that it cannot be said to describe what really happened on the project.
And now, seven years after the government claimed the project a success and four years after Mr McGauran's declaration, it is time to put a few things into perspective and look back on how the project was managed and what it bodes for the future.
In this I am mindful of the Prime Minister's push towards nuclear power. Dr Switkowski's inquiry drew attention to three things that are relevant to the Maralinga project.
The first is for there to be an independent nuclear regulator. The Maralinga project was half way through its final phase when ARPANSA was born.
The second is the need to recruit scientists and engineers with experience in the nuclear industry. The last phase of the Maralinga project was managed by a company with no nuclear expertise, reporting to a client similarly devoid of nuclear experiences, and in some cases, no technical knowledge.
And the third is the problem of nuclear waste disposal. The Minister and the Chief Nuclear Regulator claim the shallow burial of plutonium to be world's best practice. So why does the rest of the world not follow suit? Why do they insist that long-lived nuclear waste, such as that at Maralinga, should be disposed of in a deep geological facility?
In August 2003, I visited Sellafield in Northern England; that is where the plutonium now spread over a huge area of South Australia originated. There, people with far more experience in dealing with plutonium place plutonium-contaminated material in stainless steel drums and store those drums in an airconditioned building on a guarded site, awaiting permanent deep geological disposal.
It is the same story in America where trials similar to those at Maralinga were conducted, except on a much smaller scale. In their clean-up, the Americans bagged the contaminated soil and debris and transported the whole lot over 300 kilometres to a nuclear waste storage facility on a guarded site.
Those countries clearly do not agree that burial of plutonium in a shallow grave with no packaging and in totally unsuitable geology is world's best practice.
In July 2001, the government published a document called 'Safe Storage of Radioactive Waste' which says that long-lived low and intermediate level waste is not suitable for shallow burial. And yet that is what has been done at Maralinga and claimed to be world's best practice.
And the government puts similar spin on other features of the project.
In his speech to Parliament Mr McGauran said the clean-up would 'permit unrestricted access to about 90% of the 3,200 square kilometre Maralinga site'. But there was unrestricted access to 90% of the site before the project started. The only additional area in which there is unrestricted access is half a square kilometre. Admittedly another 1.6 square kilometres have been cleaned, but that is within the area to which access is restricted. And one part of that restricted area is 300 times more contaminated than the clean-up criteria.
In truth, after spending $108-million, less than 2% of the land contaminated above the clean-up criteria has been cleaned. I am not criticising that, it was what was planned, but let us keep it in perspective.
Anybody listening to the government's statements might be under the impression that the whole site is now clean and all the plutonium used in those British trials has been buried. In fact, almost 85% of the original 24,000 grams of plutonium remains on the surface.
In 24,000 years time, half of that plutonium will still be there, but in about 400 years from now, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to detect it.
On my last visit to Maralinga in September 1999, I was farewelled with, 'Well, see you in February for the handover'. I have heard many times that the site will be returned 'later in the year', or 'in the next few months', and seven years later I am still waiting for that event.
Will the Aborigines accept return of their land?
If they do, then for thousands of years, they will have to rely on the Federal government to honour any agreements they might enter, in full knowledge that only a few years ago, the government unilaterally broke their agreement to clean the site using the best available technology and then failed to do so.
Double Standards with Radioactive Waste
Australasian Science, September 2002
Alan Parkinson says the government is cutting corners.
Australia’s disposal of its radioactive waste is ill-considered and irresponsible. Whether it is short-lived waste from Commonwealth facilities, long-lived plutonium waste from an atomic bomb test site on Aboriginal land, or reactor waste from Lucas Heights, the government applies double standards to suit its own agenda. There is no consistency, and little evidence of logic.
Most of Australia’s current inventory of stored radioactive waste is at Woomera. This includes 2000 m3 of lightly contaminated soil from a CSIRO site at Fishermens Bend in Melbourne - said to be naturally occurring uranium from research into processing radioactive ores. It also includes 60 m3 of waste from Defence facilities such as St Mary’s on Sydney’s outskirts, being old radium-painted dial gauges, watches and compasses.
The removal of radioactive waste from both sites was an “intervention”, which is defined by National Health and Medical Research Council Health Series No 39 as: “Action taken to decrease exposures to radiation which arise from existing situations”; taken to mean improving an already-contaminated site.
The government will dispose of low-level waste from Fishermens Bend and government laboratories in its national waste repository, which is in the early stages of construction in South Australia. It will be packaged in drums, placed on a solid foundation in a trench up to 20 metres deep, and covered by several layers of impervious materials.
An undefined “appropriate authority” will impose an “institutional control period” of 200-300 years, after which the waste will have decayed to safe levels and no further control will be necessary.
The controversial clean-up of the atomic bomb test site at Maralinga was also an “intervention”, but there are significant differences between the treatment of Maralinga debris and that from other sites.
The radioactive contaminant at Maralinga is plutonium, which has a half-life of 24,000 years. It will not decay to “safe” levels in 200-300 years. Since the government intends to return the land to the Maralinga Tjarutja people, there will be no institutional control.
Surprisingly, there was no study to find a proper site for disposal of the Maralinga debris, and no call for a site with suitable geology. The disposal trenches at Maralinga are only 15 metres deep in limestone and dolomite strata exhibiting many cracks and fissures. This geology is totally unsuitable.
The plutonium-contaminated debris at Maralinga was not packaged; it was simply dropped into a bare hole in the ground and covered. It is not on a compacted base, and is not covered by several impervious layers.
On 20 June Trish Worth, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health, admitted in a letter to me: “While both uranium and plutonium are radiotoxic, gram for gram plutonium is far more hazardous”. But she maintains it is correct to package the uranium from the CSIRO site, while burial in a bare hole in the ground is appropriate for plutonium debris.
In a statement issued in April 2000, Dr John Loy, head of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency within the Department of Health, supported the shallow disposal of long-lived plutonium debris at Maralinga as “world’s best practice”. This is inconsistent with a government paper of July 2001 stating that low or intermediate level long-lived waste is not suitable for near-surface disposal.
Surely if short-lived waste needs to be packaged for disposal at a carefully selected site, so too does the long-lived Maralinga debris.
The government’s actions don’t lend confidence to how they will dispose of waste from the replacement reactor being constructed Lucas Heights. This is the same reactor that Dr Loy said in July 2000 should not go ahead until the method of handling the spent fuel is “written in blood”. Yet Loy has licensed its construction while the process for handling spent fuel is not resolved.
The government’s double standards between pushing its agenda for the reactor or cleaning up Commonwealth sites, and the treatment of far greater contamination on Aboriginal land are all too apparent.
It is high time that clear and firm guidelines for the disposal of radioactive waste are published, and adherence to these guidelines made mandatory. The government also must accept long-term responsibility for sites that were contaminated with their approval.
Alan Parkinson is a nuclear engineer with more than 40 years’ experience. He was previously the Commonwealth’s representative overseeing the Maralinga rehabilitation project.
ConScientious Fallout on Radioactive Waste
Peter Pockley, Australasian Science, September 2002
The reaction to nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson’s criticisms of the Federal government’s handling of radioactive waste (conScience, AS, August 2002, p.14) showed that the issue has not been swept under the dry soil of South Australia.
Like July’s conScience column on CSIRO by Dr Max Whitten, Parkinson’s forthright views attracted considerable attention in the media, with ABC TV and Radio National carrying items prominently, as did The Canberra Times, The Age, The Daily Telegraph and The Adelaide Advertiser.
The Australian Conservation Foundation and the SA Labor government supported Parkinson’s contention that the Federal government’s handling of the clean-up of plutonium contamination at Maralinga and its unrealised plans for disposal of low and medium level radioactive waste from the existing and future reactors at Lucas Heights are “irresponsible”, apply “double standards” and are far removed from assertions of “world’s best practice”.
But Dr John Loy, CEO of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), maintains that Parkinson’s views are “sheer rubbish” (see pp.18-19).
Meanwhile, all states and territories have rejected the search by Science Minister, Peter McGauran, for a site for a national repository. South Australian Environment Minister, John Hill, confirmed on Radio National that his government was opposed to a site anywhere in SA.
Parkinson says that Loy’s response is “deliberately misleading” and “sheer government propaganda”. He disputes government claims that ARPANSA is “the independent regulator”, saying ARPANSA is an integral arm of government that is responsible to the Minister of Health. Yet Loy - who exercises the legal power of ARPANSA, which has no governing Board - approves or licenses the actions of another ministry (Science). “He provides answers that suit the government’s prior decisions,” Parkinson claims.
Parkinson agrees that packaging of contaminated soil at Maralinga was never an option, but he has never claimed that it should have been. He says Loy has confirmed double standards since none of the soil from Fishermens Bend is as hazardous as highly radioactive debris - such as steel plates, concrete slabs and lead bricks - left from trials at Maralinga that the government merely shovelled into a trench.
Regarding approval for the new reactor, Parkinson asserts: “Loy wanted firm plans for reprocessing and waste disposal before he would grant a construction licence for the new reactor, but after he granted that licence without firm plans, he switched to wanting that evidence before granting an operating licence. And he says he is independent.”
Jim Green
What was done at Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that wouldn't be adopted on white-fellas land." -- Nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson, ABC Radio National, 'Breakfast', August 5, 2002.
In the 1990s the Australian Government carried out what was supposed to be a final clean-up of the Maralinga nuclear test site in South Australia. The clean-up stemmed from recommendations in the 1985 report of the Royal Commission.
A large majority of the contamination resulted not from the nuclear tests per se but from so-called minor trials which were discontinued in 1963. The stated purpose of the trials was to physically test the safety and security of British nuclear weapons in case of accident, and some experiments were designed to improve the trigger mechanisms. The trigger mechanisms of the weapons were subjected to chemical explosions, heat and other tests. The resultant destruction produced plumes of radioactive material in the form of fine particles. These particles fell to earth over a wide area of the test range and in some cases, beyond it. The ‘minor trials’ contaminated Maralinga with approximately 8,000 kg of uranium, 24 kg of plutonium, and 100 kg of beryllium.
In March 2000 the then Minister for Industry, Science and Resources, Senator Nick Minchin, declared Maralinga safe after $108 million had been spent on the clean-up. However, the clean-up generated a great deal of controversy, much of it generated by criticisms expressed by scientists who worked on the project, namely:
* Mr. Alan Parkinson. In 1989, Mr. Parkinson, a nuclear engineer, developed some 30 options for rehabilitation of the Maralinga atomic bomb test site. In August 1994, he was appointed the Government’s Representative to oversee the whole of the clean-up project and was also a member of the government’s advisory committee (MARTAC). In December 1997, he was removed from both appointments for questioning the management of the project.
* Mr. Dale Timmons, a geochemist involved in the in-situ vitrification (ISV) of contaminated debris at Maralinga.
* Professor Peter Johnston, adviser to the traditional owners, the Maralinga Tjarutja, and Professor of Applied Nuclear Physics at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
Mr. Parkinson’s view is that the clean-up was significantly flawed, especially the shallow burial of plutonium-contaminated debris. Prof. Johnston’s view is that the clean-up was successful overall despite poor project management by the Australian Government. Mr. Timmons has not commented on the overall status of the clean-up, restricting his comments to the ISV component in which he was heavily involved.
DEST clearly failed to properly manage the Maralinga clean-up. Professor Johnston wrote in his submission to ARPANSA:
"In the Maralinga Rehabilitation Project, DEST had no in-house capacity for engineering or scientific assessment of its contractors for a substantial part of the project. It had internal engineering support for the early part of the project but that individual was removed. As a consequence, DEST contracted for services in extremely deficient ways, e.g. the Geosafe contract contained no performance criteria." (The Geosafe contract was for vitrification of contaminated debris.)
"In the case of Maralinga, there were mitigating circumstances that kept the project going forward but in a sub-optimal way. These were the MARTAC [Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee] advisory group, the Maralinga Consultative Group as well as ad-hoc advice sought from ARPANSA at various times. While these groups greatly aided in the successful completion of the project, there were still very large expenditures and significant hazards resulting from the deficient management of the project by DEST."
Inevitably the poor project management had adverse consequences for the clean-up. Professor Johnston’s presentation for an ARPANSA forum listed some examples:
“DEST concluded a contract with Geosafe Australia for technical services that contained no performance criteria. Draft documents prepared by DEST have often been technically wrong due to a lack of technical input. Non-technical public servants made decisions where technical expertise was needed. Technical advice often not sought except from a contractor.”
Mr. Parkinson illustrates DEST’s inadequate project management capabilities in his submission to ARPANSA (cited above):
“A glaring example of the lack of expertise in project management is provided by the appointment by the department of GHD to manage the ISV phase of the Maralinga project. In spite of the fact that several aspects of GHD’s performance on the earlier phases of the project were less than satisfactory, and the fact that they had absolutely no knowledge or experience of the complex process and equipment of ISV, the department appointed them Project Manager and Project Authority. And those responsible cannot claim they were not aware of GHD’s ignorance in the ISV technology; it was spelled out in writing to them. It is almost a fundamental requirement for the project manager to have a good knowledge and some experience of the project - in this case GHD had none. To emphasise the department’s lack of project management skills, they also appointed GHD Project Authority, in which position they should have had a detailed knowledge of the process and equipment. No wonder the Maralinga project became such a failure.”
Consultation with the Maralinga Tjarutja was inadequate. Prof. Johnston et al note in the conference paper (cited above):
“The Australian Government responded to these [Royal Commission] recommendations by forming in February 1986, a Technical Assessment Group (TAG) to address the technical conclusions stemming from the Royal Commission and a Consultative Group was formed as a forum for discussion of the program. TAG’s task was to provide the Australian Government with options for rehabilitation rather than a recommendation. Membership of the Consultative Group was as envisaged by the Royal Commission for the Maralinga Commission but with additional representatives of the West Australian Government. Notably this structure which formed the basis for the entire rehabilitation project left the traditional owners and the South Australian Government out of direct decision making. It ensured that real authority remained with bureaucrats within the Department of Primary Industries and Energy which obtained advice from TAG and later the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee (MARTAC).”
The roles of these groups is explained in the same paper:
“The Maralinga Consultative Group met on an ad hoc basis during the TAG investigations in order to provide information on the progress of scientific studies, planning the rehabilitation work, during the rehabilitation work and in the preparation of the final reports. The consultative group was established to discuss and monitor the TAG studies was re-established in 1993 involving South Australian Government and Maralinga Tjarutja to discuss the MRP. It first met in March 1994. During 1997 and 1998, while a great deal of the rehabilitation work was done, there were few meetings of either MARTAC or the consultative group.”
The most problematic aspect of the project was the decision to abandon ISV in favour of shallow burial of plutonium contaminated debris in totally unsuitable geology. The Australian Government claims that ISV was abandoned because of safety concerns following an explosion on March 21, 1999. However, the use of ISV was curtailed even before the explosion and the decisions to curtail and then abandon ISV were clearly motivated by cost-cutting objectives. This is revealed by numerous statements in the project documentation. To give some examples:
* an October 1998 paper by MARTAC said: "The recent consideration of alternative treatments for ISV for these outer pits has arisen as a result of the revised estimate for ISV being considerably above the project budget."
* a July 17, 1998 paper written by the chair of MARTAC gives the following criteria for considering options for the Taranaki pits: time savings; cost savings; nature of waste form; potential for exposure of waste; and efficiency of operation.
* at an April 13, 1999 meeting, Garth Chamberlain from GHD, the construction company which was appointed as project manager (despite having little knowledge about ISV and no experience with the technology), said it was a much easier, quicker and cheaper option to exhume and bury debris rather than using ISV.
As Prof. Johnston et al. note in their conference paper (cited above), the decision to abandon ISV: “... was announced to the Maralinga Consultative Group in the middle of a meeting in July 1999 without the consent of the other members of the Consultative Group, particularly Maralinga Tjarutja and South Australia. ... The Consultative Group has continued to meet through 2000 and 2001, but there was diminished confidence in the consultative process as a result of the Commonwealth unilateral decision to abandon ISV.”
The unilateral decision to abandon ISV was taken despite previous agreement that no changes to the clean-up methodology would be taken without discussing the proposed changes with the Maralinga Tjarutja.
Senator Minchin said in a May 1, 2000 media release that: "As the primary risk from plutonium is inhalation, all these groups have agreed that deep burial of plutonium is a safe way of handling this waste.” By “these groups” the Minister meant ARPANSA, the Maralinga Tjarutja and South Australian Government. The Minister’s statement is false on two counts. Firstly, the burial of plutonium-contaminated debris is not ‘deep’ no matter how loose the definition - the soil cover is just 5 metres. Secondly, the Maralinga Tjarutja certainly did not agree to the decision to abandon ISV in favour of burial - in fact they wrote to the Minister disassociating themselves from the decision (Senate Estimates, May 3, 2000).
The Australian Senate passed a resolution on August 21, 2002, which reads as follows:
That the Senate-
(a) notes:
(i) that the clean up of the Maralinga atomic test site resulted in highly plutonium-contaminated debris being buried in shallow earth trenches and covered with just one to two metres of soil,
(ii) that large quantities of radioactive soil were blown away during the removal and relocation of that soil into the Taranaki burial trenches, so much so that the contaminated airborne dust caused the work to be stopped on many occasions and forward area facilities to be evacuated on at least one occasion, and
(iii) that americium and uranium waste products are proposed to be stored in an intermediate waste repository and that both these contaminants are buried in the Maralinga trenches;
(b) rejects the assertion by the Minister for Science (Mr McGauran) on 14 August 2002 that this solution to dealing with radioactive material exceeds world's best practice;
(c) contrasts the Maralinga method of disposal of long-lived, highly radioactive material with the Government's proposals to store low-level waste in purpose-built lined trenches 20 metres deep and to store intermediate waste in a deep geological facility;
(d) calls on the Government to acknowledge that long-lived radioactive material is not suitable for near surface disposal; and
(e) urges the Government to exhume the debris at Maralinga, sort it and use a safer, more long-lasting method of storing this material.
The Australian Senate passed another resolution on October 15, 2003, which inter alia condemned the Maralinga clean-up. The resolution was as follows:
That the Senate:
(i) that 15 October 2003 marks the 50th anniversary of the first atomic test conducted by the British government in northern South Australia;
(ii) that on this day "Totem 1", a 10 kilotonne atomic bomb, was detonated at Emu Junction, some 240 kilometres west of Coober Pedy;
(iii) that the Anangu community received no forewarning of the test;
(iv) that the 1984 Royal Commission report concluded that Totem 1 was detonated in wind conditions that would produce unacceptable levels of fallout, and that the decision to detonate failed to take into account the existence of people at Wallatinna and Welbourn Hill;
(b) expresses its concern for those indigenous peoples whose lands and health over generations have been detrimentally affected by this and subsequent atomic tests conducted in northern South Australia;
(c) congratulates the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta – the Senior Aboriginal Women of Coober Pedy - for their ongoing efforts to highlight the experience of their peoples affected by these tests;
(d) condemns the Government for its failure to properly dispose of radioactive waste from atomic tests conducted in the Maralinga precinct; and
(e) expresses its continued opposition to the siting of a low-level radioactive waste repository in South Australia.
The problems with the Maralinga clean-up raises an important issue with respect to the proposed national radioactive waste dump - many of the same organisations and individuals involved in the flawed Maralinga clean-up are now involved in the radioactive waste dump project, namely DEST, ARPANSA, and at least one private contractor.
Prof. Johnston argued in his written submission to ARPANSA that DEST had failed to demonstrate an ability to properly manage the dump project:
"The applicant for a licence [DEST] does not have the technical competence required to manage the contracts of a proposed operator. The operator who may have the necessary technical competence is not a co-applicant. I am not convinced the applicant will have effective control of the project. I believe the application has not demonstrated that the applicant has the capacity to ensure that it can abide by the licence conditions that could be imposed under Section 35 of the ARPANS Act because of a lack of technical competence in managing its contractors."
Statements by nuclear physicist Prof. Peter Johnston
Verbal submission to ARPANSA dump inquiry, Adelaide, 2004.
Prof. Johnston was unable to attend so what follows is from someone reading his PowerPoint presentation into the record.
Prof of Nuclear Physics at RMIT
DEST was an ineffective manager of the Maralinga Cleanup in a number of key ways. The pattern of contracting required services for the Repository project is similar to the Maralinga cleanup.
Effectiveness of DEST during the Maralinga Cleanup:
DEST follows the philosophy of contracting all requirements to a Repository Operator, who is a contractor. Safety is in the hands of the operator. The equivalent organisation to the Repository Operator at Maralinga could bid for other work that would be under its operational management. The primary source of advice came from this contractor. At times the project was not fully in DEST's control.
Failures:
DEST concluded a contract with Geosafe Australia for technical services that contained no performance criteria. Draft documents prepared by DEST have often been technically wrong due to a lack of technical input. Non-technical public servants made decisions where technical expertise
was needed. Technical advice often not sought except from a contractor.
Accountabilities:
The Project Director is non-technical. The Repository Manager is a contractor. The Radiation Safety Officer is a contractor employed by the Repository Operator.
So where does the effective control and the risk lie?
Effective Control and Risk:
Effective control lies with the contractor not DEST, because it lacks the technical skills to supervise its contractor. The risk associated with the release from the repository lies with the community and the Government of Australia.
Inability to manage:
The applicant has not demonstrated effective control. There is a note - see Regulatory Guidelines on Performance Standards for Licence Applicants & Licence Holders. Effective control is normally required by the licence conditions imposed under section 35 of the ARPANS Act.
Mitigating of Control Problems at Maralinga:
Oversight by the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee. Maralinga Consultative Group. ARPANSA was the supporting contractor, not a regulator until 2000 - when the work was essentially complete.
Some quotes from written submission #256 to ARPANSA dump inquiry.
Prof Peter Johnston, Acting Head and Professor of Applied Nuclear Physics, Dept of Applied Physics, RMIT University, 22-10-03.
(Writing in personal capacity but also works as adviser to Maralinga Tjarutja re 'suboptimal' clean-up of Maralinga nuclear test-site.)
"I believe the application has not demonstrated that the applicant will have effective control of the project or has the capacity to ensure that it can abide by the licence conditions that could be imposed under Section 35 of the ARPANSA Act because of a lack of technical competence in managing its contractors."
"In the Maralinga Rehabilitation Project, DEST had no in-house capacity for engineering or scientific assessment of its contractors for a substantial part of the project. It had internal engineering support for the early part \ of the project but that individual was removed. As a consequence, DEST contracte3d for services in extremely deficient ways, e.g. the Geosafe contract contained no performance criteria."
"The underlying philosophy of not having expertise relies on the concept that the risk can be contracted out. I reject this as the risk is to the Australian community not the contractor."
"In the case of Maralinga, there were mitigating circumstances that kept the project going forward but in a sub-optimal way. These were the MARTAC advisory group, the Maralinga Consultative Group as well as ad-hoc advice sought from ARPANSA at various times. While these groups greatly aided in the successful completion of the project, there were still very large expenditures and significant hazards resulting from the deficient management of the project by DEST."
"The applicant for a licence does not have the technical competence required to manage the contracts of a proposed operator. The operator who may have the necessary technical competence is not a co-applicant. I am not convinced the applicant will have effective control of the project. I believe the application has not demonstrated that the applicant has the capacity to ensure that it can abide by the licence conditions that could be imposed under Section 35 of the ARPANS Act because of a lack of technical competence in managing its contractors."
Quote from: Peter Johnston et al, "Aboriginal participation and concerns throughout the rehabilitation of Maralinga", presented at the Third International Symposium on the Protection of the Environment from Ionising Radiation, Darwin, 22-26 July 2002, IAEA-CSP-17, IAEA, Vienna, 2003, p.349-356, http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/CSP-17_web.pdf
“A considerable problem throughout the MRP was a lack of technical skills within the Department managing the project. Until 1997, engineering skills were provided by Alan Parkinson, but there was no Radiation Protecion expertise. Technical advice had to come from contractors, MARTAC or ARL and on important occasions it was not sought.”
Cleanup and effects
From Wiikipedia, accessed 16 Jan 2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_nuclear_tests_at_Maralinga
The initial cleanup operation was codenamed Operation Brumby, and was conducted in 1967.[1] Attempts were made to dilute the concentration of radioactive material by turning over and mixing the surface soil.[23] Additionally, the remains of the firings, including plutonium-contaminated fragments, were buried in 22 concrete-capped pits.[23]
By the 1980s some Australian servicemen and traditional Aboriginal owners of the land were suffering blindness, sores and illnesses such as cancer. They "started to piece things together, linking their afflictions with their exposure to nuclear testing". Groups including the Atomic Veterans Association and the Pitjantjatjara Council pressured the government, until in 1985 it agreed to hold a royal commission to investigate the damage that had been caused.[20]
The McClelland Royal Commission into the tests delivered its report in late 1985, and found that significant radiation hazards still existed at many of the Maralinga test sites, particularly at Taranaki,[19] where the Vixen B trials into the effects of burning plutonium had been carried out. A Technical Assessment Group was set up to advise on rehabilitation options, and a much more extensive cleanup program was initiated at the site.[23]
The TAG Report plan was approved in 1991 and work commenced on site in 1996 and was completed in 2000 at a cost of $108 million dollars.[19][24] In the worst-contaminated areas, 350,000 cubic metres of soil and debris were removed from an area of more than 2 square kilometers, and buried in trenches. Eleven debris pits were also treated with in-situ vitrification. Most of the site (approximately 3,200 square kilometres) is now safe for unrestricted access and approximately 120 square kilometres is considered safe for access but not permanent occupancy.[19]Alan Parkinson has observed that "an Aboriginal living a semi-traditional lifestyle would receive an effective dose of 5 mSv/a (five times that allowed for a member of the public). Within the 120 km², the effective dose would be up to 13 times greater."[25]
A Department of Veterans' Affairs study concluded that "Overall, the doses received by Australian participants were small. ... Only 2% of participants received more than the current Australian annual dose limit for occupationally exposed persons (20 mSv)."[26] However, such findings are contested. A 1999 study for the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association found that 30 per cent of involved veterans had died, mostly in their fifties, from cancers.[27]
Successive Australian governments failed to compensate servicemen who contracted cancers following exposure to radiation at Maralinga. However, after a British decision in 1988 to compensate its own servicemen, the Australian Government negotiated compensation for several Australian servicemen suffering from two specific conditions, leukemia (except lymphatic leukemia) and the rare blood disorder multiple myeloma.[28]
One author suggests that the resettlement and denial of aboriginal access to their homelands "contributed significantly to the social disintegration which characterises the community to this day. Petrol sniffing, juvenile crime, alcoholism and chronic friction between residents and the South Australian police have become facts of life."[5] In 1994, the Australian Government reached a compensation settlement with Maralinga Tjarutja, which resulted in the payment of $13.5 million in settlement of all claims in relation to the nuclear testing.[19]
Maralinga: The Fall Out Continues
Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Radio National's Background Briefing
Produced by Gregg Borschmann
www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s120383.htm
Maralinga. The fall out's not over yet. Experts say the plutonium clean up isn't good enough and they question the validity of the code of practice used by authorities. There's evidence of shenanigans and expediency at Maralinga. Then there's the man who wore a contaminated T-shirt all the way from Adelaide to Melbourne. Background Briefing spoke to some key insiders who went on the record for the first time.
Gregg Borschmann: Moving the goal posts, milking the cow, short-cuts, cover-ups and the shit really hitting the fan. It doesn’t sound like world’s best practice, but it all happened during the clean-up of the Maralinga nuclear test site. These vivid descriptions are not our words; rather, they come straight from the experts who took on the toughest job in the world: making plutonium safe, forever. Hello, I’m Gregg Borschmann and today Background Briefing raises serious questions about the $108-million clean-up of the former British A-bomb test site in outback South Australia. It’s claimed that this has been a world first, the biggest and most successful clean-up ever, of an old nuclear weapons testing range. Sixteen years since planning for the clean-up began, contractors are due to leave the site this month. But leaked documents show that behind the scenes, the project has been increasingly troubled. Some key insiders, including the government’s own advisers, say that the job has not been finished properly.
Alan Parkinson: I don’t believe it is international best practice. I don’t believe that the code that they quote selectively was written considering burial of plutonium 239. Plutonium 239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, which means that there’s something like quarter-of-a-million years before it can be considered safe.
Gregg Borschmann: Engineer, Alan Parkinson has worked in the nuclear industry for over 40 years. For much of the past decade, he has been an official adviser on the project to either the government or the Maralinga Tjarutja Aboriginal people. He compares the Maralinga clean-up unfavourably with what the Americans did at their Nevada nuclear testing site.
Alan Parkinson: At the site that I visited, it was a project called “Double-tracks”, the Americans removed 53 grams of plutonium from about, I think it was 1500 cubic metres of soil. They bagged that soil, that contaminated soil, and they ten transported it 80 miles on public highways to be placed in a nuclear waste repository on a site that is guarded by the US Army. I compared that with burial of 2-1/2 kilograms of plutonium in 250,000 cubic metres of soil, and 2-1/2 kilograms of plutonium mixed in the debris in what is nothing more than a hole in the ground, on a site which is not guarded and which at some date in the future, might be returned to the Maralinga Tjarutja to live their semi-traditional lifestyle. I think there is a huge discrepancy in the way that Maralinga has been treated and overseas treatment of similar sites.
Gregg Borschmann: In other words, the Americans bagged around 50 grams of plutonium contaminated soil and put it into a military repository under lock, key and guard. Australia, by comparison, has put 100 times that amount of plutonium into several large unlined, unguarded holes in the ground.
Alan Parkinson is talking publicly about Maralinga for the first time today on Background Briefing. It’s two years since his contract with the government was terminated in tense and unusual circumstances. He says what has been done at Maralinga since would not be acceptable anywhere else in Australia, or indeed anywhere else in the world.
Alan Parkinson: Whatever is done at Maralinga should be made public, and the Department and ARPANSA should be able to defend the actions. Some of the stuff that’s gone on and some of the stuff that I’ve heard about does not make good reading, and I don’t think they can defend some of the things that they have done, like this burial of debris. They’ve no idea what’s buried there so they can’t defend it, can they?
Gregg Borschmann: Background Briefing has also confirmed that the official code being used to sign off on the clean-up was never intended by the majority of its authors to apply to Maralinga. In addition, Alan Parkinson lifts the lid on how a key Maralinga job was won by the large Australian engineering firm Gutteridge Haskins and Davey, or GHD. The deal was done without competitive tender, and before the government knew how much it was going to cost.
Alan Parkinson: That was a meeting I had with the Department on the 18th November, ’97, and it was at that meeting that I was told by a senior officer, Rob Rawson, that the decision had already been made to appoint GHD as Project Manager. I found out later that this was the day before the Department sent out a short letter inviting GHD to submit a proposal, and before they’d even been told how much this new arrangement would cost. I told Rawson that he might as well tear up another letter that he’d just signed, because he’d just changed the ground rules. But really, I shouldn’t have been surprised, because for some time, GHD had been acting as though they already had the job.
Gregg Borschmann: This arrangement and the story of GHD’s subsequent project management was to become critical as the Maralinga clean-up ended in acrimony and uncertainty.
Gregg Borschmann: Maralinga is now a ghost town. Most of the buildings have been removed or looted. You can’t see the debris from the nuclear test days. If it wasn’t taken back or sold by the British, it was buried. There were holes in the ground everywhere, for everything, from empty fuel drums and household garbage to plutonium contaminated firing pads. Despite this, a major part of the problem remained literally on the surface: plutonium contamination scattered over thousands of hectares at three main test sites called Taranaki, TM and Wewak. What was agreed at the beginning of this project was already a compromise. A perfect job would have been too expensive and the health risks didn’t warrant it. Instead, it was agreed that there were two jobs to be done. The first would remove and bury only the worst of the plutonium contaminated topsoil, spread over more than several hundred hectares. The second job had to do with several kilograms of plutonium contaminated debris buried in pits at Taranaki. This was the most heavily contaminated of the three clean-up sites.
Alan Parkinson: There were 21 of these pits. What happened during the set of trials known as Vixen B trials, was that the Brits detonated an atomic bomb in a manner which would not allow it to explode as an atomic bomb. It was what we call one-point trial. These trials would melt the plutonium, shoot it up into the air and be spread all over the place, but it also damaged the structure on which these devices were placed. So at the end of each one of these trials, (and there were 15 of them) the equipment had to be thrown out and the best way to do that was to dig a pit alongside where the firing pad had been and bury the stuff. So although we had a report from the British to tell us what was in these pits, it was in very general terms, like steel joists, cables, lead bricks, concrete and soil, and that was about the sum total of our knowledge of those pits.
Gregg Borschmann: Engineer, Alan Parkinson. That’s the sound of leading-edge waste clean-up technology. It’s called in situ vitrification, or ISV, and it’s cost Australia more than $30-million. In 1996, the scientists, government and the dispossessed Maralinga Aboriginal community agreed it was the best, final solution for the Taranaki pits. But last year, it was dumped in favour of simply burying the remaining plutonium in yet another big hole in the ground. This switch troubled some of the government’s own experts. The project was guided by a scientific committee called MARTAC, the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee. Background Briefing has a copy of leaked official notes from a MARTAC meeting in August last year. The meeting was with the South Australian Government and the Maralinga Tjarutja. The notes quote a member of the committee, Dr Mike Costello, who is an international authority on plutonium. Here is an edited reading from the official notes of Dr Costello’s comments.
Reader: I don’t believe that shallow burial is 1) Within the spirit of the UK National Radiation Protection Board Code. I accept it is within the letter; or 2) That it’s accepted practice. However I’m out-voted by my colleagues. I have experienced with plutonium at Sellafield in the UK, there are much smaller quantities of plutonium there. The amounts varied, yet whilst minuscule, it had to be enclosed in concrete. I don’t believe this shallow burial is the best that we can do, as it could be encapsulated in concrete.
Gregg Borschmann: Dr Costello would not be interviewed for Background Briefing. In 1954, the British Government asked Australian Prime Minister, Bob Menzies, for a permanent site to test nuclear weapons. The arid lands between the Great Victoria Desert and the Nullarbor Plain in South Australia seemed to be ideal. Isolated in the outback, the Maralinga Range became home to a secret city of more than 2,000 people. As well as it’s bomb factories and test sites, it boasted its own Post Office, Bank, tennis courts, swimming pool, cinema, international airport, two churches, sewer system and a gymnasium.
Voice-over: The mighty power of the atom is unleashed. The Maralinga blast is caused by a low yield bomb. This scientifically, is a small explosion.
Gregg Borschmann: The British detonated seven A-bombs at Maralinga in the late 1950s and then over the next six years, conducted several hundred smaller, sometimes clandestine experiments, using plutonium, uranium and other radioactive materials. Ironically, it was mainly these so-called minor trials, and not the A-bombs, which left the legacy of plutonium contamination at Maralinga. The Maralinga Tjarutja Aboriginal people were prevented from entering their lands once the tests started in the 1950s. Barrister Andrew Collett has been working to help get that country restored and returned to the Tjarutja since the 1985 Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia. Andrew Collett.
Andrew Collett: You have to bear in mind and keep firmly in mind, that what the community has is the legacy of probably the most environmentally irresponsible act ever committed in Australia, when British scientists exploded plutonium and got it up in the air just for the sake of seeing where it went. It went all over Aboriginal land, and the government is now trying to stabilise and clean that up. But the clean-up, which is coming to a close now, is at least the fourth clean-up since 1962. The community would be mad to assume that this clean-up got all of that plutonium and took away all of the risk. We’re dealing with contamination irresponsibly put there by a foreign power who then has not told the Australian government precisely what was there, or where it was. The community has to assume that there’ll be problems in the future, particularly when plutonium will be a contaminant and a danger for the next quarter-of-a-million years, a time scale that is impossible for us to contemplate, longer ago than an Ice Age.
Gregg Borschmann: As much as the Tjarutja want their land back, uncertainty over the long-term safety of the clean-up remains a stumbling block which will be discussed this week in talks between the Tjarutja and the South Australian Premier, John Olsen. Andrew Collett again.
Andrew Collett: There’s a very, very heavy burden on the community to weigh up how effective this clean-up will be, so the issues include how good is the clean-up, what does that mean in the future, will there be problems in the future, will the proposed burial of plutonium in a deep burial trench last quarter-of-a-million years, what happens if it doesn’t, who’s going to meet the cost if it doesn’t.
Gregg Borschmann: Lawyer for the Tjarutja, Andrew Collett. Early last month, there was a carefully controlled set-piece of modern day media management at Maralinga that was meant to set the stage for the eventual hand-back of the Maralinga lands to the Tjarutja. The specially invited TV networks and a handful of newspaper and radio reporters flew to the site to witness the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources, Senator Nick Minchin, declare that the clean-up had been successful, coming in on time and within budget.
Nick Minchin: We can shut the book on it, but in a way that is very positive for the future in the way that we have worked together with the Aboriginal people to clean up this area and rehabilitate it, not just to say sorry, but you know, sorry it happened but we’ll walk away. We’ve actually as a people, and this is Labor and Liberal together, have worked with the Aboriginal people to rehabilitate this area.
Gregg Borschmann: Part of the theatre on that day was the handing over, to the Minister, of a letter from ARPANSA. That’s the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, Australia’s independent nuclear regulator. The letter, signed by the Head of ARPANSA, Dr John Loy, refers in part to a radioactive waste safety code published in 1992. Here is an edited reading of the key paragraph.
Reader: ARPANSA certifies that the burial trenches at Taranaki have been constructed consistent with the National Code of Practice for the near surface disposal of radioactive waste.
Gregg Borschmann: But that code was never intended to be used for large amounts of long lived radioactive waste like that found at Maralinga. Background Briefing has spoken to all of the scientists who wrote the Code. One refused to comment, and another didn’t return our calls. But the remaining three all confirmed that the Code was for low level, short lived wastes only. One of the scientists who wrote it is from Canada’s Radiation Protection Bureau. Here he is on the phone from Ottowa. Bliss Tracy.
Bliss Tracy: The understanding that I had of the task at that time was that we were to look at various industrial ways, perhaps incidental wastes, that might be generated by hospitals or research laboratories, that kind of problem, that was what we had to deal with.
Gregg Borschmann: So it was never your understanding that that 1992 Code of Practice would apply in Maralinga-type situations?
Bliss Tracy: No. Our discussions at that time, we never mentioned Maralinga as part of this, and since I have worked on both problems I think I would have been aware of that if they had intended to apply it to Maralinga. It never came up for the discussion when I attended the meetings, anyway.
Gregg Borschmann: Does it surprise you to hear now that the Australian Government is using this code as its benchmark for the disposal of plutonium at Maralinga in a burial pit?
Bliss Tracy: Yes, it’s surprising, although probably not appropriate for me as a Canadian to comment on policies of another government.
Gregg Borschmann: Scientist, Bliss Tracy in Ottowa. This week, the Chair of the committee that drafted the Code, Neville Hargreave, confirmed that it was written for low level industrial and medical wastes. It was not meant for the radioactive waste that would come from nuclear power or weapons testing programs such as at Maralinga. This was confirmed again for Background Briefing by another scientist who helped write the code, Dr Loel Munslow-Davies, from Western Australia. Despite this overwhelmingly important question about the validity of the Code in these circumstances, the Department in charge of Maralinga was still using it last week to claim the clean-up had been a success. Jeff Harris:
Jeff Harris: Some of the key guidelines that we followed, included the International Atomic Energy Agency’s guidelines for disposal and rehabilitation of contaminated sites, and we’ve also followed our own National Code of Conduct for burial of radioactive materials. So indeed the procedures that have been followed here have been perfectly safe and have been well suited to the site.
Gregg Borschmann: Jeff Harris, a senior officer of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources. Senator Minchin has also used the Code repeatedly recently to reassure Australians about the quality of the clean-up. And yet according to leaked minutes of a meeting of the Maralinga scientific advisers last year, the Minister has already been given an out. The official minutes record a senior officer from the nuclear regulator ARPANSA saying it was not necessary to meet the letter of the Code, since what was being done at Maralinga was an ‘intervention’. The minutes do not explain what this means. The ARPANSA officer involved did not return our calls this week.
Gregg Borschmann: A lot of plutonium-contaminated soil was buried at Maralinga. Almost 400,000 tonnes of it. It was buried in three massive holes. The largest at Taranaki was bigger than four football fields, and as deep as a five-storey building. It’s widely acknowledged that a good job was done with this first soil removal phase of the Maralinga clean-up. It won two National Case Earth Awards for environmental best practice. As the soil removal operations wound down in late 1997, it was time to move to the final and most difficult part of the project: cleaning up the 21 highly contaminated pits at Taranaki. That was the job for ISV, signed off on by the experts as the best, final solution.
Gregg Borschmann: So just what is this ISV, or in situ vitrification? Developed in America over the past decade, it is designed to safely immobilise all manner of nasty wastes, from toxic chemicals to long-lived plutonium. While the process is complex, the concept is simple. After five years of research and testing in Australia specifically for the conditions at Maralinga, four large electrodes were inserted into each pit at Taranaki. The electric current then effectively ‘cooked’ the contaminated debris soil at temperatures over 1500 degrees. This molten mass, looking not unlike the lava from a volcano, cooled and solidified into a large glass-like or vitreous block. It was designed to permanently encase the plutonium. But after only five months on site, things didn’t seem to be going well. There was dispute about just what ISV was meant to be doing. Background Briefing has a copy of a leaked email written in October, 1998 by the head of the company contracted to do the ISV work. His name is Leo Thompson, from Geosafe Australia. He refused to be interviewed for this program but he did give us a written statement in which he stood behind the safety and effectiveness of ISV technology. The leaked email we had received earlier, shows that in late 1998, he was under intense pressure to prove it on site. Here is a reading from that email.
Reader: The shit has really hit the fan in the past couple of weeks. GHD have been critical of everything they can to cast doubt on Geosafe and ISV. They’re saying the process is not living up to expectations and Geosafe is unable to manage the project. I must be losing my mind, because a lot of people, including MARTAC members, are remembering things I don’t recall.
Gregg Borschmann: The email goes on to refer to trouble over whether or not his contract stipulated any requirement to melt all the steel buried in the pit. Some members of the scientific committee MARTAC were worried about a piece of unmelted steel which had been found inside an ISV block. Again, a reading from Leo Thompson’s same October email.
Reader: It really should not be a big deal. From a risk standpoint, the fact that unmelted plates are embedded in the central core of the block, should be considered an acceptable solution in my view. Seems like GHD and others are moving the goalposts so they can discredit me personally, Geosafe as a company, and the ISV process in general.
Gregg Borschmann: Five months later, a large explosion occurred at Taranaki in Pit 17, as it was being melted. To this day, there is no officially agreed explanation for what happened. But Background Briefing has uncovered startling new evidence. That evidence comes first hand from Avon Hudson, a former leading aircraftsman in the Royal Australian Air Force, who worked at Taranaki during the Vixen B nuclear trials. In late 1960, he saw a box of explosives which were dumped by a British Royal Army soldier into a pit at Taranaki. Several months later, he came across an equally dubious and dangerous burial: a 3,000 lb pressurised hydrogen gas cylinder.
Avon Hudson: This was a separate hole to where I seen the box of explosives put; it wasn’t too far away, it might have been less than 100 metres, it might have been about that distance. There was a hole there, probably 10 to 12 foot deep, a round hole, and it would have been probably maybe 10 or 12 feet in diameter, something of that order. And there was a cylinder dumped there, it was a hydrogen cylinder, a red hydrogen cylinder about 7-feet long. That was thrown there by the hole, with other debris. It wasn’t the debris from these actual explosions, these Vixen explosions, and when I went back there some time later, that cylinder was partly in the hole, it had been put into the hole but it was still not completely down, it was sticking out. So I assumed that that was buried there.
Gregg Borschmann: Nuclear veteran Avon Hudson. Last year, in the months after the explosion, he tried to go public with this key information and his concerns about the Taranaki pits. He range the media and a host of politicians, including Senator Minchin. He says the Minister’s office never phoned him back.
Avon Hudson: The way Maralinga operated, if you could picture back in that era, not too many people cared about very much at all, and if they had to get rid of anything, well it just was chucked into a pit. They didn’t distinguish between a nuclear debris and say a barrel or a cylinder or any other debris, it all was chucked in together. They didn’t really separate those into categories, because nobody really give two hoots. They had one interest, and that was getting out of Maralinga; most people hated the joint.
Gregg Borschmann: When the explosion occurred on site in March last year, you were obviously very concerned about the possibility of future explosions. Why were you so concerned about say, something like a hydrogen cylinder?
Avon Hudson: Well when I heard about the explosion, I was concerned that if they were to strike this cylinder by the melting process, the vitrification, and it exploded, somebody would possibly be killed. That was my immediate concern. And I tried to draw this to the attention of relevant people I thought; I thought they were relevant, but I’m not so sure now. But I couldn’t get anywhere.
Gregg Borschmann: It was a time of crisis for the project, when everyone was looking for the most credible reason for the explosion. Avon Hudson, and his potentially critical evidence, was ignored. The precise contents of the pits at Taranaki had long been a mystery and the subject of considerable debate. Last year, following the explosion, the Australian Government wrote to Britain seeking clarification yet again of what was in the 21 pits. The British doubted there would be anything explosive in them, but they weren’t prepared to give Australia any guarantees. Another key piece of evidence also went missing last year. A drum was dug up by contractors excavating one of the other pits at Taranaki. Remarkably, instead of being set aside for examination, it was simply re-buried. Alan Parkinson and the Tjarutja knew about the incident, but other people who should have, didn’t, at a meeting in May last year.
Alan Parkinson: The cause of the explosion had not yet been identified. We thought it could have been a closed acetylene bottle, a closed drum of bitumen, or some other closed vessel. So that was why we asked had a drum been uncovered; we knew that one had during exhumation of another pit. When the question was put forward, it was immediately denied, No, there’s not been any drum recovered, so the question was put again. And it was only after putting it a second time that it was acknowledged that a drum had been uncovered, and we said, Well, what happened to it? Oh, we buried it again. What disturbed me about that was the Department and members of MARTAC who were at the meeting, didn’t know that a drum had been uncovered, neither did ARPANSA.
Gregg Borschmann: Engineer, Alan Parkinson. After the explosion in Pit 17, the game changed. Work and planning on the site was thrown into chaos, combining with pressure to keep the project rolling to this year’s deadline. But despite the gravity of the situation on such a high profile Commonwealth job on Commonwealth land, Jeff Harris from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, says there was no need for any formal government inquiry.
Jeff Harris: The ISV contractor undertook an investigation and we received their final report in October. You might recall that the explosion took place in March, so that took a considerable length of time. The ISV contractor had a view of what the cause of the explosion was. We then commissioned an independent review of that by experts based in Britain and Australia, and they reviewed that, they didn’t comer to the same conclusion, and indeed it left the cause of the accident up in the air. Once that had occurred of course, we were then in a very critical point of having to decide whether to proceed with the technology after the explosion when the cause was not known, and what risks would that entail for worker safety. We elected to go for worker safety and also for burial option that we knew worked, that the levels of contamination were much less than we’d anticipated, and that we had very good experience in a number of sites at Maralinga, including Taranaki.
Gregg Borschmann: The Geosafe report that Jeff Harris speaks about said that the most likely cause of the explosion was due to the detonation of buried explosive materials. This is a conclusion that would be strongly supported by nuclear veteran Avon Hudson’s first hand account. So why was Mr Hudson ignored and the Geosafe report dismissed? Could it be that the explosion provided the final excuse to dump ISV, that there were other concerns not related to its technical performance? Background Briefing has confirmed that there was constant pressure over the last two years of the project to modify or abandon the ISV process, as the job of melting the Taranaki pits became bigger and more complicated than originally anticipated. But why dump leading-edge technology when already more than $30-million had been spent on it? It’s the Big Question for which no convincing answer has been provided. Jeff Harris from the Department says the decision was based on safety considerations, not price.
Jeff Harris: Price didn’t come into the calculations at all. What came into the calculations was the safety to our workers on site. The explosion that occurred on 21 March caused very substantial damage to the ISV equipment and risked fatalities. In the end, there were no injuries and there was no radiation uptake by any workers, but that was cause for us to do a thorough risk assessment of whether we should proceed with that procedure or whether we should review the experience that we had in burying the material under a cover of 5 metres of soil at depths of up to 10-15 metres. At the end of the day that was the process that we chose, and I think it was a very good decision.
Gregg Borschmann: The concern about worker safety is understandable, but the timing is curious. If you remember, Jeff Harris told Background Briefing that the Geosafe report on the explosion was delivered to the Department in October last year. But the decision to abandon ISV was announced by the Commonwealth three months earlier to the South Australian Government and the Maralinga Tjarutja. So why dump the process before you’ve even got your report? The Maralinga Tjarutja Aboriginal people were so concerned about losing ISV that they wrote back to Senator Minchin disassociating themselves from the decision. They also asked for Mr Harris to be removed as Chair of the consultative group meetings.
Gregg Borschmann: There was always going to be intense scientific scrutiny of ISV at Maralinga. This was its largest commercial application treating a plutonium contaminated site in the world, and everyone wanted to get it right. Minister Minchin acknowledged this point last month on the Radio National Breakfast program.
Nick Minchin: At all times we were operating under the strict guidance and on the basis of the advice of an expert technical advisory group, and the Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, we didn’t make a move without that expert advice and the subsequent approval of the independent agency that regulates this matter, so at no stage have we done anything other than according to the best scientific advice.
Gregg Borschmann: But what is the best scientific advice? The scientists were not in agreement. For example, the ISV process had some strong supporters on the MARTAC advisory committee. One committee member says in a leaked email that ISV had not been given ‘a fair go’. Background Briefing has evidence that personal and political, as well as scientific judgements, were being made. For example, in late 1998, the Chair of MARTAC, Des Davy, sent out a rather strange email to his fellow committee members. He more or less said he had asked Jeff Harris if the Department wanted a negative finding about ISV. Here is a reading of part of that email from Des Davy.
Reader: I asked Jeff Harris on Monday would he welcome advice to terminate Geosafe’s contract, and go for excavation trench disposal at some nominal depth, say 10 metres of cover.
Gregg Borschmann: The spokesman for the department, Jeff Harris, says the Department got the best possible advice and that disagreement among experts is not unusual.
Jeff Harris: They are a group of scientists and at times I’ve likened it to herding cats when you see them out on site, they want to go off and investigate where a particular bit of wire leads, or what a particular trench might contain. But they’re an excellent group that have worked together, they have differences of views, and generally speaking, they come to common decisions, which of course is what we need. It’s no good if you have a committee that it has 20 different opinions. They can have those different opinions, but they need to come together and say, Well what’s the best advice we can provide to the Minister and the Department on each of these technical issues as they arise.
Gregg Borschmann: It’s significant that the Government’s independent nuclear umpire, ARPANSA, was also feeling uncomfortable with the way things were panning out at Maralinga. Geoff Williams, a senior officer at ARPANSA, was responsible for ensuring that the site was cleaned to agreed standards. He became upset when he unofficially received a copy of an audit of the occupational health and safety at the site. He felt the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, ISR, or the project managers, should have let him know about the report and provided him with an official copy earlier. Here is a reading of an email he sent in August last year.
Reader: To date, no-one from ISR or GHD has thought fit to provide us with a copy of the audit report, even though it mentions, and has implications, for ARPANSA operations and independence. As the regulator, this is unacceptable to us, to my way of thinking at least. Also I am very concerned, putting it mildly, at the host of indiscretions, short-cuts and cover-ups that have been whispered to me but which have never been officially advised. Nor have the inquiries been fruitful when I’ve asked direct questions.
Gregg Borschmann: A reading from an email sent by Geoff Williams, from nuclear regulator, ARPANSA. This personal comment, while never officially recorded, does not paint a pretty picture of relations between Australia’s independent nuclear umpire and the company that was by then managing the entire project, GHD. So if ARPANSA wasn’t always happy with this relationship, what about the department; how did it get on with GHD? The answer to this question may help explain both the way in which Alan Parkinson was sacked and why ISV was dumped. The appointment of GHD as project managers for the final ISV phase of the project was consummated on Christmas Eve, 1997. It had been a whirlwind, and often clandestine courtship. From the Department, Jeff Harris says it was a simple affair.
Jeff Harris: The tender for project management was won by GHD prior to the commencement of this project. The contract was extended; it was not a case of a new contract, their contract was simply extended to cover another element of the project, and it’s been a very successful outcome.
Gregg Borschmann: The tender for project management that Jeff Harris refers to, was not won by GHD. It had been awarded to a Commonwealth Government owned company in 1994. GHD didn’t make the shortlist of six, and were not invited to tender. But GHD became involved in the Maralinga project by buying this Commonwealth company when it was privatised in mid-1997. At that stage, GHD had no involvement with, or authority over the ISV process. So how did this crucial change come about?
Gregg Borschmann: There is no doubt that the high tech ISV melting process was a big job, with high stakes and potential risks. Jeff Harris says this is precisely why the Commonwealth needed a strong, reputable project manager like GHD to look after the job. But this doesn’t explain how GHD came to get the job without even having to tender for it. The three-page agreement that was signed between GHD and the Department on 24th December, 1997, describes the new arrangement to take over that project management of ISV as a ‘contract variation.’ This was a convenient piece of housekeeping for both the Department and GHD, sidestepping the Department’s tendering and purchase guidelines. These guidelines require any new contract over $100,000 to be subject to scrutiny and approval by a three-person assessment panel. This assessment never occurred, because the deal was a described as a ‘variation’ rather than a new contract. GHD would not speak to Background Briefing. All matters were referred back to the Department. Jeff Harris again.
Jeff Harris: When we commenced the ISV operations on site, we reviewed our project management arrangements, and we determined that it would make sense and be very sound management for us to extend the project management arrangements for Gutteridge, Haskins & Davey to include the ISV process.
Gregg Borschmann: On the 21st November, 1997, the company responded to an invitation by the Department to put a proposal for management of the ISV contract. Background Briefing has a copy of this letter. In it, GHD estimated their additional services would cost in ‘the order of a quarter-of-a-million-dollars.’ Background Briefing also has copies of GHD monthly reports to the Department. These provide details of project expenditure. Not all of the money that GHD has earned since is related to ISV. But the monthly reports indicate that over the past two years or so, the company has been paid, in staff costs alone, more than $2.5-million. This is ten times the cost of the original estimate. I put these figures to Jeff Harris.
Jeff Harris: We have a fee structure with GHD, and within the overall budget, we’ve maintained those fees; we’ve got very good value for money for the public, for the taxpayer in terms of this is an excellent outcome in terms of the clean-up criteria that have been met, the safety of the site for handover back to the Maralinga Tjarutja, the consultations that we’ve had with the traditional owners and with other stakeholders, and overall this project has worked out very well indeed, and it’s been extremely good value for money for the taxpayer.
Gregg Borschmann: Background Briefing has documents which show that some people connected with the project disagreed, and thought there wasn’t enough supervision of GHD by the Department. Alan Parkinson is one of them. He has important background detail on the origins of the ISV deal between GHD and the Department. Between 7th November and the 2nd December, 1997, there were three secret meetings between GHD and the Department. Background Briefing has a copy of the official ‘talking points’ for two of these meetings which confirm that the main topic of discussion was the project management of the ISV contract with Geosafe. Neither Geosafe nor Alan Parkinson, as the Department’s representative with GHD and Geosafe, were told about or invited to these meetings. Alan Parkinson.
Alan Parkinson: I found it astonishing that since I was the Department’s representative on both contracts, I should have been excluded from a meeting which was to discuss the future of both of those contracts. I found that quite astonishing. The people from the Department who attended the meeting had no project experience, little knowledge of the project, none at all of ISV. They had no experience in conducting these negotiations and no experience dealing with contractors. I found out about the meeting quite by accident, and I did ask why was I excluded, and the response was, You’re only an adviser, we don’t need to seek your advice if we don’t wish to.
Gregg Borschmann: If Alan Parkinson was astonished, Leo Thompson from Geosafe was equally amazed and upset when he was officially informed of the proposal on 19th November. This was the day the Department’s letter of invitation went to GHD. Thompson faxed a reply to the Department the next day. Here is a reading from that letter.
Reader: It is very surprising and disturbing that you would consider taking such action without first consulting with me. If you have concerns about how the ISV project is progressing, or being managed, I expect you to bring these concerns to my attention so that I can work to resolve them. Your proposal raises for Geosafe some very serious legal and commercial issues.
Gregg Borschmann: Why didn’t the Department discuss such a major change to arrangements with Geosafe before inviting GHD, and only GHD, to submit the proposal to project manage the ISV contract? From the time of that crucial meeting on 7th November, between GHD and the Department, it was clear that the deal was heading for conclusion. This was 12 days before GHD were officially invited to submit their proposal. This is confirmed by a hand-written note penned by a senior departmental officer on the official ‘talking points’ for that meeting. The officer notes, ‘I am inclined to support GHD assuming project management of the Geosafe contract.’ Out at Maralinga a few weeks later, in November, 1997, Alan Parkinson was left in no doubt which way things were going to go. There had been another discreet meeting between the Department of Primary Industry and Energy, or DPIE as it was then known, and GHD. Here is a reading from an email written by Alan Parkinson to the MARTAC advisory committee to explain his version of events.
Reader: A few days later, on the 26th November, there was another secret meeting held at site between DPIE and GHD, attended by Messrs Rawson and Perkins from DPIE, and Rosenbauer, Chamberlain and Ryan from GHD. Again I was excluded, even though I was on site and available to attend. As I drove Messrs Rawson, Perkins and Rosenbauer to the airport next morning, 27th November, I asked how the meeting went. There was a very strained silence. But when we were standing in the airport apron, (CENSORED) came over to me, stood very close and in a threatening voice said, ‘It will come about’, meaning that GHD would take over.
Gregg Borschmann: Perhaps none of this would matter if the Maralinga clean[up was not ending under such a cloud. How good was the clean-up? How safe is Maralinga now? There are many insiders who say we will never know because of the way the job was finished. These are questions which weigh heavily on the Maralinga Tjarutja people. Barrister, Andrew Collett.
Andrew Collett: The community want the land back, but not to the extent of compromising their safety in the future. Obviously the community will be negotiating with the Commonwealth the basis of the hand-back of the land, and the community no doubt will want to be satisfied that any future problems will be remediated, not at a cost to Aboriginal people, before they are likely to take the land back.
Gregg Borschmann: As much as they want their land back, they must now make a tough choice about whether or not to accept it with all the uncertainties. It remains to be seen whether the Commonwealth and South Australian Governments will be prepared to give them the guarantees they will seek. Administrator for the Maralinga Tjarutja, Dr Archie Barton, the community itself and especially its elders, want to make sure that future generations don’t suffer the way the old people did.
Archie Barton: And I think they want to be pretty sure of getting the land back and they depend on good instruction from their advisers and that puts us in a very difficult decision because we have to be pretty sure of ourselves of accepting something and pass it on to those people. So we’re becoming the meat in the sandwich as advisers.
Gregg Borschmann: Making the choice very more difficult for the Tjarutja, just before we went to air, we hard about another significant and unexpected find of plutonium at Maralinga. There’s been no official announcement, but it begs the question, how many more hot spots are there? Background Briefing has evidence of several incidents that have been hushed up. We confirmed that in early 1998, a man who had worked on the project flew to Melbourne from Adelaide wearing a plutonium contaminated shirt. This was only discovered accidentally when the man was given his final routine lung monitor test in Melbourne. The authorities at the time admitted the event was of concern because control of safety procedures at Maralinga was, in their phrase, ‘lost’. But was the airline which flew the man to Melbourne notified? Were radiation control procedures at Maralinga revised or changed? No. One of the people we spoke to for this program said that is such an incident had occurred in America, there would have been a major investigation. That didn’t happen at Maralinga. After working on the project off and on for more than a decade, nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson says there’s key elements of the clean-up story which are yet to be unravelled, and important lessons to be learned for the future.
Alan Parkinson: It’s not up to me to say should there be any inquiry. It is funny that the people in the Senate seem to press for inquiries into all sorts of things, but something such as this, a nuclear waste repository in what is nothing more than a hole in the ground, certainly should have some assessment by politicians. When you consider that people who are in charge of this project are the same people who are responsible for a national nuclear waste repository, which will be used to dispose of far less hazardous waste than this, that they’re the people who could easily just say, 'Well, just put a hole in the ground, throw it in'. That’s what we’ve done with the plutonium at Maralinga. And if the politicians have accepted that without any demurring, then why should we bother?
Gregg Borschmann: He remembers a comment in the early days of the project from one of the tenderers.
Alan Parkinson: One company, they had an American in their team, and he just said out of the blue, Of course, this won’t be the final clean-up at Maralinga. Now I agree with him, I don’t think it will be. I went out to Nevada test site in 1995, and the person who replaced me on MARTAC, Terry Vaith, was then the head of the test site, and on my return to Australia, he sent me an aerial photograph of the Nevada test site, and at the bottom was a little caption which said Old Test Sites Never Die.
Gregg Borschmann: Coordinating Producer, Linda McGinness; Research, Julie Browning; Technical operator, Anne Marie de Bettencor; Additional reporting, research and Japanese green tea, provided by Chris Bullock. Background Briefing’s Executive Producer is Kirsten Garrett. I’m Gregg Borschmann.
Senator Nick Minchin, Federal Minister for Industry, Science and Resources (Australia) responds to this Background Briefing program
http://www.isr.gov.au/media/2000/april/cmr153%2D00.doc
Background on the Maralinga clean-up courtesy of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (Australia)
http://www.isr.gov.au/media/2000/march/maralinga%5Fquestions.doc
Details of the Maralinga cleanup thus far from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (Australia)
http://www.isr.gov.au/media/2000/march/maralinga%5Fbooklet.doc
Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA)
http://www.arpansa.gov.au/
Relevant information and web links courtesy of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA)
http://www.arpansa.gov.au/sites.htm
Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (Australia)
http://www.dpie.gov.au
http://www.acfonline.org.au
Gutteridge Haskins & Davey Pty Ltd (GHD) (the company contracted to design and manage site rehabilitation at Maralinga)
http://www.ghd.com.au
Exchange of letters in the Australian Financial Review
Australian Financial Review, letters, 16/8/02
I almost choked on my cereal hearing Federal Science Minister Peter McGauran describe the ‘clean-up’ of the Maralinga nuclear test site as ‘world’s best practice’ on ABC radio recently.
Thanks to nuclear engineer and Maralinga whistle-blower Alan Parkinson, we have a wealth of internal project information which clearly contradicts the minister’s claim. For example, a senior official in the regulatory agency, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, complained about ‘a host of indiscretions, short-cuts and cover-ups’ at the Maralinga clean-up site.
Likewise, project documents clearly and unequivocally demonstrate that vitrification of plutonium-contaminated debris was abandoned in favour of shallow burial as a cost-cutting measure. Vitrification was described as world’s best practice, then when that was abandoned as a cost-cutting measure, shallow burial was described as world’s best practice. Both cannot be true.
Sadly, this sort of Orwellian double-speak is also in evidence in relation to the federal government’s plan for a national nuclear dump at Woomera, South Australia.
Maralinga Clean-up Meets All Standards
The Maralinga project is one we can be proud of. This is the first time that a clean-up of a former test site on this scale has been completed anywhere in the world ("Double-speak on Maralinga clean-up", AFR Letters, August 16). The program of remediation was developed and monitored by leading technical specialists and was consistent with guidelines produced by the International Atomic Energy Agency on the rehabilitation of contaminated sites. The clean-up of the main test sites at Maralinga was successfully completed in 2000 and the independent regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, has confirmed that the clean-up met the standards agreed to by the Commonwealth, South Australia and the traditional owners (Maralinga Tjarutja) at the start of the project.
Claims that the Government cut corners at Maralinga and abandoned the in situ vitrification process because of cost concerns are completely wrong. More than $108million was spent on site remediation and the Government at all times acted on expert scientific advice, achieving a world's best-practice result.
The Government is adopting a similarly responsible approach to the establishment of a national repository for Australia's low-level waste. The national repository represents the best long-term solution to the management of this material.
Peter McGauran, Federal Minister for Science
Canberra, ACT.
Maralinga claims a fiction
The Minister for Science, Peter McGauran, continues the fiction that the treatment of plutonium-contaminated debris at Maralinga was not a cost cutting exercise. ("Maralinga clean-up meets all standards", AFR Letters, August 9).
As the Commonwealth's Representative from 1993 until January 1998, I oversaw the whole project. When the contaminated soil was removed in 1997 from around 21 pits, we found huge quantities of plutonium-contaminated debris only a few centimetres beneath the surface. There was some three times more debris than Britain had reported, so it would cost more to treat the pits by in situ vitrification (ISV). Towards the end of 1997, the department started to seek ways to reduce this cost.
At this time I was removed from the project for voicing my opposition to the way that the department proposed to manage the final phase. On my removal from the project I became an adviser to the Maralinga Tjarutja until I collaborated in the ABC Radio program Background Briefing in April 2000 exposing the shortcomings of the project.
Long before the ISV treatment started at site in May 1998, the department had asked their recently appointed project manager, GHD, a company which had no knowledge at all of the ISV process or equipment, to look at various options, which all included some simple burial of the debris. The project documents of the time show a distinct relationship between the options and cost. For example, one document states: "The recent consideration of alternative treatments for ISV for these outer pits has arisen as a result of the revised estimate for ISV being considerably above the project budget." And this is not an isolated statement.
The Minister also echoes the so-called independent chief nuclear regulator with the ridiculous claim that the shallow burial of this plutonium-contaminated debris is "world’s best practice." A discussion paper issued by McGauran’s own department says that such long-lived waste is not suitable for near-surface disposal, but that is exactly what has been done.
Alan Parkinson
Weetangera ACT
Time for government to come clean on Maralinga
Science minister Peter McGauran makes some odd claims about the Maralinga ‘clean-up’ (AFR letters, August 19). He says the government relied on the advice of the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee (MARTAC) - but that committee unanimously recommended vitrification of plutonium-contaminated debris, not shallow burial.
Worse still, the shallow burial took place in unlined trenches in totally unsuitable geology. MARTAC member Dr. Mike Costello said at a MARTAC meeting in August 1999: “I have experience with plutonium at Sellafield in the UK, there are much smaller quantities of plutonium there. The amounts varied, yet whilst minuscule, it had to be enclosed in concrete.”
The minister denies that vitrification was abandoned as a cost-cutting measure, but a written statement from MARTAC openly acknowledged that alternative treatments were considered because the debris pits were larger than expected and the cost of vitrification would therefore increase.
Shallow burial was not a superior option, or even an acceptable one, but it was cheaper.
As nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson said recently on ABC radio, "What was done at Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that wouldn't be adopted on white-fellas land.”
The minister should stop revising history and organise another clean-up of Maralinga instead. His dissembling is an insult to all South Australians.
Nuclear reaction
No doubt nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson's critique of the 'independent' regulator's role in the Maralinga debacle will draw a response from the 'independent' regulator himself, namely the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency's John Loy (Marlainga claims a fiction, AFR Letters, August 20).
It is a matter of public record that Helen Garnett, head of the Lucas Heights nuclear agency, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), sat on the panel which interviewed applicants for the top job at ARPANSA. Moreover, six ex-ANSTO staff now work for the 'independent' regulator.
ARPANSA is also too close to government. For example, Loy said a new reactor would not be approved until “progress” was made on establishing a store for intermediate-level waste. The government's one and only plan for this waste - co-location with a planned waste dump at Woomera - was abandoned in the face of public opposition, but Loy still approved a new reactor.
Fitzroy Vic
Maralinga clean-up exceeded the standards required
Nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson was the Commonwealth's representative on the Maralinga project until January 1998 and has limited knowledge of the later stages of the project ("Maralinga claims a fiction", AFR Letters, August 20).
His insistence that he oversaw the whole project and was thus privy to current views and opinions of the expert advisory committee is inaccurate.
It is outrageous to suggest that the in-situ vitrification (ISV) was dropped due to cost considerations, as Parkinson repeatedly insists. More than $108 million was spent on the remediation work and the technique was abandoned because of safety concerns.
The Government considered every option to ensure the safety of the Australian public and followed the advice of scientific experts who, unlike Parkinson, were monitoring the progress of the rehabilitation work and were involved with the project from start to finish.
The independent authority, ARPANSA, has confirmed that the clean-up met the standards agreed to at the start of the project by the Commonwealth, South Australia and the traditional owners.
Moreover, in 2000 they further advised the Government that the amount of plutonium buried at Maralinga was less than what was allowed for by the National Health and Medical Research Council's "code of practice for the near-surface disposal of radioactive waste in Australia (1992)".
The facts are that not only has the Government achieved all the objectives of the remediation work but that the end result exceeded the standards required."
Personal attacks unfair, Mr McGauran.
Science minister Peter McGauran resorts to ad hominem attacks regarding the clean-up of the Maralinga nuclear test site (“Maralinga clean-up exceeded the standards required”, AFR Letters, August 22). He falsely accuses nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson of misrepresenting his involvement in the project, but Parkinson accurately stated in his August 20 letter that: “As the Commonwealth's Representative from 1993 until January 1998, I oversaw the whole project.”
A retraction and apology from the minister is in order.
The minister says it is “outrageous” to suggest that vitrification of plutonium-contaminated debris was abandoned in favour of shallow burial due to cost considerations. But project documentation repeatedly states otherwise, and both Parkinson and myself cited specific examples from the documentation in letters published in the Financial Review on August 20.
The minister’s claim that vitrification was abandoned because of safety concerns is a furphy - demonstrably so. See for example Parkinson’s article in the February edition of the journal Medicine and Global Survival.
The minister says the government followed expert advice. But who was following and who leading? ABC radio’s Background Briefing exposé (16/4/00) revealed that the head of the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee e-mailed a senior government official in late 1998 asking if the latter would “welcome” advice to abandon vitrification in favour of shallow burial. That is inconsistent with the role usually ascribed to independent expert committees - namely issuing advice on scientific criteria.
The minister refers to the 1992 NH&MRC Code of Practice, but this Code was of no relevance to Maralinga as its authors have indicated. Indeed McGauran’s predecessor Nick Minchin said in a 17/4/00 media release that: "The Government has always made clear that the Code of Practice for the near-surface disposal of radioactive waste in Australia (1992) does not formally apply to this clean up."
The Science Minister, Peter McGauran is again quite wrong in his statements concerning the decisions to abandon in situ vitrification (ISV) of debris pits at Maralinga (Maralinga clean-up exceeded the standards required, AFR 22 August 2002). He asserts that I was not privy to views and opinions concerning the later stages of the project.
I was fully involved in the project until January 1998, and by then the government was seeking ways to minimise the cost of treating the debris pits. From then until April 2000 I was an adviser to the Maralinga Tjarutja and so received all of the information provided to the South Australian government and the traditional owners. When I severed my connection with the project, the decisions first of all to limit the application of the ISV technology and then to abandon it had already been made.
So if I did not have all of the information which led to these awful decisions, then neither did the South Australian government nor the Maralinga Tjarutja.
The latter part of the Minister's letter is so ridiculous that it beggars belief. When will the government stop referring to the "independent" regulator? When will they stop hiding behind a code that even they admit was not applicable? And when will they stop claiming that the project exceeded the standards, when they know that the regulator granted concessions because some parts of the clean-up did not meet the criteria?
Parkinson-Alan-12-06-2015.pdf
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125 of 195 properties
1,300 ft of Stunning Low Bank Oceanfront & Cottage, Nelson Island, BC, Canada
Oceanfront Acreage
1,300 ft south facing low bank oceanfront, 4.8 acres, 1,200 sf cottage, workshop + fixer upper guest cabin. Nelson Island, water access only, 10 minutes to Marina, 2.5 hours from Vancouver.
A spectacular south facing acreage. The entire property is low bank ocean frontage and useable acreage. The 1,300 feet of shoreline stretches from a sheltered gravel beach to a solid granite promontory which is truly a best case scenario. The beach is ideal to dig clams and gather oysters and ideal for the entire family to enjoy. The granite promontory is where the cottage is located featuring a 180 degree view.
When considering a water access property it’s very important to have secure deep water sheltered moorage. The moorage for this property meets all those requirements. The moorage location is capable of handling any size vessel and a deep draft in any tide. The current system is a quality aluminum ramp and 8’ x 30’ float. Expansion to the float would not be difficult.
Main Cottage
1,200 sf cedar home constructed in 1987. Hardwood floors, cathedral ceilings and a wrap around deck to capture the expansive view. The home is heated by wood stove; the appliances and lighting are fuelled by propane. There is a catchment system for fresh water however there is a fresh water license from a neighbouring source. You would just need to connect. There is a composting toilet however there is ample room and organic material (dirt) for the installation of a septic field system.
168 sf workshop directly behind the cottage for storage of tools and supplies.
Located in the bay above the gravel beach roughly 500 feet from the main cottage is the perfect spot for guests. The cabin does need work but it would be worth fixing it up.
4.8 acres, 1,300+ ft low bank oceanfront
Location : 2.5 hours travel north from Vancouver on Nelson Island in Agamemnon. In between Earls Cove and Pender Harbour.
Access : Contact Listing Broker
Services : Fuel delivery
Recreation :
Nelson Island is a Mecca for marine recreational activity. Boating, fishing, kayaking, scuba diving, site seeing, swimming in an area characterised as one of BC’s popular outdoor playgrounds. Nelson Island is centered between some of BC’s best boating territories, Jervis Inlet, Princess Louisa Inlet, Thormanby Island and Desolation Sound Marine Park just to name a few. There are endless amounts of shoreline to explore but one does not have to venture any further than your own dock to catch your daily limit in prawns, crabs, oysters and clams.
Area Data : Nelson Island
Named after Viscount Horatio Nelson, the hero of the British navy, Nelson Island sits at the mouth of Jervis Inlet guarding the secrets of Prince of Wales Reach and Queens Reach. Famous with the yachting crowd for the scenery and anchorages, the area has a lot to offer. It is one of the few spots on the coast where you can feel the presence of the towering Coast Mountains while experiencing the expanse of the Strait of Georgia. It is a region with a mild, dry and semi-Mediterranean climate. A granite quarry opened on the island in 1887 and its stone was used to build the B.C. Legislature in Victoria and the library at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
Pender Harbour
Pender Harbour, north of Sechelt, was once the winter headquarters of the Sechelt Nation, and on nearby Mount Daniel you can see the remains of moon rings (stone circles built by Sechelt girls as they entered womanhood), and Sechelt pictographs mark the cliffs above Sakinaw Lake.
Originally famous for fabulous sport fishing, the tranquil and bustling Pender Harbour today is also a favourite spot for artists and photographers, as well as canoeists and kayakers. The 52 kilometres of jagged harbour shoreline support all sorts of housing, marine and recreational developments.
World-class yachts make Pender Harbour their evening destination anchorage, where the sunsets are amongst the best in British Columbia. The deep, clear waters of the harbour are recognized, especially during winter months, as one of the world's premier sites for underwater exploration and photography.
Named after the original First Nations people of the region, the shishalh, the community is sustained by self-government, a communal lifestyle and wisdom of the elders. Sechelt is a small community sitting on a sandbar, the narrow Sechelt isthmus separating Sechelt Inlet from the Strait of Georgia.
If it weren't for this small neck of land less than a half mile wide, a large portion of the peninsula north of Sechelt would be an island, cut off from the mainland. This wedge of sand backs ocean water, which flows from the northwestern entrance to the inlet near Egmont, into three inlets: Sechelt Inlet (the largest), and the Salmon and Narrows Inlets, which branch east from Sechelt Inlet.
The word "Sechelt" means land between two waters. Indian Legend has it that the creator gods were sent by the Divine Spirit to form the world. They carved out valleys leaving a beach along the inlet at Porpoise Bay. Later, the transformers, a male raven and a female mink, changed details by carving trees and forming pools of water. The raven is an integral part of the Sechelt Indian Band's culture and is often seen in their carvings.
A magnificent sweep of beautifully cobbled beach combines wave polished granite ramparts with driftwood & many-coloured pebbles. Treed mountains, cascading creeks and waterfalls create the spectacular coastline of Sechelt making the community a photographer's delight year-round. Sechelt's central location on the southern peninsula of the Sunshine Coast makes it a natural hub for business, culture and tourism. The thriving village is surrounded by beautiful mountain scenery and a natural seaside beauty that lends a special charm to the attractions and amenities of the Heart of the Sunshine Coast.
The Sechelt area climate is characterized by mild, moist winters and warm dry summers. Temperatures on the Coast range from freezing in winter to highs of 30C (90F) in summer. The annual rainfall is approximately 100cm (40in.) The Sunshine Coast is sheltered from the open Pacific, and the milder weather patterns result in very light snowfalls in the region. The Sunshine Coast is split into two portions on either side of Jervis Inlet. Roughly speaking, the southern half between the ferry slips at Langdale and Earls Cove occupies the Sechelt Peninsula, while the northern half between the ferry slip at Saltery Bay and Lund sits on the Malaspina Peninsula.
Powell River a full service community with a population of 22,000 is a year round sea to mountain recreation area. The regions recreational services include an 18 hole championship golf course, lawn bowling green, curling rink, a 16 lane Bowling alley, tennis courts, an all weather 400 meter track, as well as many baseball, fast ball, softball and soccer fields.
Miles of hiking trails lead to beautiful lookouts, waterfalls, or peaceful lakes which can be viewed along the 180 km Sunshine Coast Trail and numerous recreational areas can be reached by logging roads, owned by the logging companies. Boating and sports fishing are ardently pursued as all season sports. Marinas and Government docks are available to residents and visitors.
Powell River is known as the “HOT SPOT” for winter diving in North America. The “Mermaid” at Mermaid Cove in Saltery Bay Provincial Park is an extra special attraction. The area also has some of the largest Wolf eel and Octopus in the world. Canoeing may also be enjoyed on the quiet lakes of Powell River or you can take in the Powell Forest Canoe Route Circuit. Ocean canoeing and kayaking is very popular in Jervis Inlet, the Copeland Islands Marine Park, the Malaspina Inlet with Okeover Arm, and Desolation Sound. For all the nature lovers and sightseers, Powell River has many parks, viewpoints and beaches to explore, and the hiking club will help you take advantage of the many beautiful trails. Bird watching is also unprecedented.
Powell River has 5 major banks, newly constructed Hospital, Walmart, Canadian Tire, etc.
Zoning : RU4
The property is governed by the Sechelt Regional District.
Click on the link below for direct access for bylaws.
Zoning ByLaw 337
Legal : Lot A, Reference Plan 3491 District Lot 2216, Group 1 New Westminster District
PID 003-085-562
Taxes : $609.26 (2010)
Boundaries : See maps included
Buyers should verify any information provided that is important to them to their sole satisfaction. Our best efforts have been made to provide the most current and accurate information from sources believed to be reliable.
British Columbia Land Professionals
#101 - 313 Sixth Street
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Taxi conversations (caution: low external validity)
Brett Keller February 14, 2014
I will try not to generalize too much -- a la Thomas Friedman -- from conversations with taxi drivers to entire cultures or the state of nations, but I thought these three were worth sharing:
In Zambia in October, I was asked "In America, who pays the the other family for a wedding, the man's family or the woman's family?" He was aghast that the answer was "neither," although on further discussion of American wedding rituals I conceded that the bride's family does pay more of the costs. This then led to many interesting conversations throughout my work in Zambia.
In Kenya this week, I listed to a 20-minute explication on US foreign policy on the International Criminal Court. This lopsided knowledge, where non-Americans almost always seem to know more about US policy than Americans know of other countries' policies, is always a bit surprising, but also an indication that US decisions are felt around the world.
In Tanzania last week, I was asked where I'm from. I respond "the US," and often get "which state?" but "Arkansas" yields blank stares. So, I typically say "Arkansas... it's next to Texas" or "Arkansas... it's where Bill Clinton was governor before he became president." This time I went with the latter explanation. The driver paused, and said "Bill Clinton... Yes, I think I know that name. He is Hillary Clinton's husband, yes?" Progress, there.
In humor, travel, US policy
An uphill battle
Brett Keller April 3, 2013
I took this photo in the NYC subway a few days ago. My apologies for the quality, but I thought it's a great juxtaposition:
In the top of the photo is an ad from the NYC Department of Health, advising you to choose food with less sodium. (Here's an AP story about the ads.) But to the bottom right is an ad for McDonald's dollar menu, and those are everywhere. While it doesn't mean we shouldn't run such ads, it's worth remembering that the sheer volume of food advertising will always dwarf opposing health messages.
In New York, public health, US policy
Obesity pessimism
Brett Keller November 7, 2012
I posted before on the massive increase in obesity in the US over the last couple decades, trying to understand the why of the phenomenal change for the worse. Seriously, take another look at those maps. A while back Matt Steinglass wrote a depressing piece in The Economist on the likelihood of the US turning this trend around:
I very much doubt America is going to do anything, as a matter of public health policy, that has any appreciable effect on obesity rates in the next couple of decades. It's not that it's impossible for governments to hold down obesity; France, which had rapidly rising childhood obesity early this century, instituted an aggressive set of public-health interventions including school-based food and exercise shifts, nurse assessments of overweight kids, visits to families where overweight kids were identified, and so forth. Their childhood obesity rates stabilised at a fraction of America's. The problem isn't that it's not possible; rather, it's that America is incapable of doing it.
America's national governing ideology is based almost entirely on the assertion of negative rights, with a few exceptions for positive rights and public goods such as universal elementary education, national defence and highways. But it's become increasingly clear over the past decade that the country simply doesn't have the political vocabulary that would allow it to institute effective national programmes to improve eating and exercise habits or culture. A country that can't think of a vision of public life beyond freedom of individual choice, including the individual choice to watch TV and eat a Big Mac, is not going to be able to craft public policies that encourage people to exercise and eat right. We're the fattest country on earth because that's what our political philosophy leads to. We ought to incorporate that into the way we see ourselves; it's certainly the way other countries see us.
On the other hand, it's notable that states where the public has a somewhat broader conception of the public interest, as in the north-east and west, tend to have lower obesity rates.
This reminds me that a classmate asked me a while back about my impression of Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign. I responded that my impression is positive, and that every little bit helps... but that the scale of the problem is so vast that I find it hard seeing any real, measurable impact from a program like Let's Move. To really turn obesity around we'd need a major rethinking of huge swathes of social and political reality: our massive subsidization of unhealthy foods over healthy ones (through a number of indirect mechanisms), our massive subsidization of unhealthy lifestyles by supporting cars and suburbanization rather than walking and urban density, and so on and so forth. And, as Steinglass notes, the places with the greatest obesity rates are the least likely to implement such change.
In culture, cynical rants, public health, public policy, US policy
Weekend reading: race in America
Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of my favorite writers -- I highly recommend his memoir, The Beautiful Struggle, about growing up in Baltimore. His writing has a riveting flow even on the most innocuous subjects, so when he writes about something serious it really kills. He has a long and excellent cover story in The Atlantic this month on Barack Obama: "Fear of a Black President". It's the best thing I've read this month:
What black people are experiencing right now is a kind of privilege previously withheld—seeing our most sacred cultural practices and tropes validated in the world’s highest office. Throughout the whole of American history, this kind of cultural power was wielded solely by whites, and with such ubiquity that it was not even commented upon. The expansion of this cultural power beyond the private province of whites has been a tremendous advance for black America. Conversely, for those who’ve long treasured white exclusivity, the existence of a President Barack Obama is discombobulating, even terrifying. For as surely as the iconic picture of the young black boy reaching out to touch the president’s curly hair sends one message to black America, it sends another to those who have enjoyed the power of whiteness.
In culture, inequality, journalism, US policy
Fluoride in New Jersey
Brett Keller March 6, 2012
I saw this poster at a bus stop on campus a couple weeks ago:
If you can't read it, the title reads: "Stop the New Jersey Public Water Supply Fluoridation Act" and it goes on to say "Fluoride is a toxic chemical even in the smallest doses and when pumped into our water supply it is impossible to control the level of consumption." (emphasis added)
I took a picture but didn't think about it again until I saw this article on Friday: "In New Jersey, a Battle Over a Fluoridation Bill, and the Facts" (NYT) by Kate Zernike. I appreciate that she calls the fearmongering what it is -- a conspiracy theory:
While 72 percent of Americans get their water from public systems that add fluoride, just 14 percent of New Jersey residents do, placing the state next to last... A bill in the Legislature would change that, requiring all public water systems in New Jersey to add fluoride to the supply. But while the proposal has won support from a host of medical groups, it has proved unusually politically charged.
Similar bills have failed in the state since 2005, under pressure from the public utilities lobby and municipalities that argue that fluoridation costs too much, environmentalists who say it pollutes the water supply, and antifluoride activists who argue that it causes cancer, lowers I.Q. and amounts to government-forced medicine.
Public health officials argue that the evidence does not support any of those arguments — and to the contrary, that fluoridating the water is the single best weapon in fighting tooth decay, the most prevalent disease among children.
But they also say they are fighting a proliferation of misleading information. While conspiracy theories about fluoride in public water supplies have circulated since the early days of the John Birch Society, they now thrive online, where anyone, with a little help from Google, can suddenly become a medical authority.
The whole article is worth a read. I think it's a pretty good journalistic take on a charged issue that is a political controversy but not a scientific one. It gives some context as to why people are against it -- a few misleading studies amplified by word of mouth and the Internet -- but also emphasizes which side the evidence base (overwhelmingly) backs up.
Further, there are some echoes here of the anti-vaccine movement, in that a move to reduce the threshold of acceptable fluoride levels by HHS was taken to be an acknowledgment that the worst fears of the fluoridation foes were vindicated. That parallels how any mention of efforts to improve vaccine safety (a good thing) is misshapen by antivaccine activists into an acknowledgment that their theories have been vindicated. In short, I'm looking forward to Seth Mnookin's take on all this.
In Princeton, public health, public policy, US policy
Up to speed: microfoundations
[Admin note: this is the first of a new series of "Up to speed" posts which will draw together information on a subject that's either new to me or has been getting a lot of play lately in the press or in some corner of the blogosphere. The idea here is that folks who are experts on this particular subject might not find anything new; I'm synthesizing things for those who want to get up to speed.]
Microfoundations (Wikipedia) are quite important in modern macroeconomics. Modern macroeconomics really started with Keynes. His landmark General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (published in 1936) set the stage for pretty much everything that has come since. Basically everything that came before Keynes couldn't explain the Great Depression -- or worse yet how the world might get out of it -- and Keynes' theories (rightly or wrongly) became popular because they addressed that central failing.
One major criticism was that modern macroeconomic models like Keynes' were top-down, only looking at aggregate totals of measures like output and investment. That may not seem too bad, but when you tried to break things down to the underlying individual behaviors that would add up to those aggregates, wacky stuff happens. At that point microeconomic models were much better fleshed out, and the micro models all started with individual rational actors maximizing their utility, assumptions that macroeconomists just couldn't get from breaking down their aggregate models.
The most influential criticism came from Robert Lucas, in what became known as the Lucas Critique (here's a PDF of his 1976 paper). Lucas basically argued that aggregate models weren't that helpful because they were only looking at surface-level parameters without understanding the underlying mechanisms. If something -- like the policy environment -- changes drastically then the old relationships that were observed in the aggregate data may no longer apply. An example from Wikipedia:
One important application of the critique is its implication that the historical negative correlation between inflation and unemployment, known as the Phillips Curve, could break down if the monetary authorities attempted to exploit it. Permanently raising inflation in hopes that this would permanently lower unemployment would eventually cause firms' inflation forecasts to rise, altering their employment decisions.
Economists responded by developing "micro-founded" macroeconomic models, ones that built up from the sum of microeconomic models. The most commonly used of these models is called, awkwardly, dynamic stochastic general equilibirum (DGSE). Much of my study time this semester involves learning the math behind this. What's the next step forward from DGSE? Are these models better than the old Keynesian models? How do we even define "better"? These are all hot topics in macro at the moment. There's been a recent spat in the economics blogosphere that illustrates this -- what follows are a few highlights.
Back in 2009 Paul Krugman (NYT columnist, Nobel winner, and Woodrow Wilson School professor) wrote an article titled "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?" that included this paragraph:
As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth. Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn’t sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the Depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets, this time gussied up with fancy equations. The renewed romance with the idealized market was, to be sure, partly a response to shifting political winds, partly a response to financial incentives. But while sabbaticals at the Hoover Institution and job opportunities on Wall Street are nothing to sneeze at, the central cause of the profession’s failure was the desire for an all-encompassing, intellectually elegant approach that also gave economists a chance to show off their mathematical prowess.
Last month Stephen Williamson wrote this:
[Because of the financial crisis] There was now a convenient excuse to wage war, but in this case a war on mainstream macroeconomics. But how can this make any sense? The George W era produced a political epiphany for Krugman, but how did that ever translate into a war on macroeconomists? You're right, it does not make any sense. The tools of modern macroeconomics are no more the tools of right-wingers than of left-wingers. These are not Republican tools, Libertarian tools, Democratic tools, or whatever.
A bit of a sidetrack, but this prompted Noah Smith to write a long post (that is generally more technical than I want to get in to here) defending the idea that modern macro models (like DSGE) are in fact ideologically biased, even if that's not their intent. Near the end:
So what this illustrates is that it's really hard to make a DSGE model with even a few sort-of semi-realistic features. As a result, it's really hard to make a DSGE model in which government policy plays a useful role in stabilizing the business cycle. By contrast, it's pretty easy to make a DSGE model in which government plays no useful role, and can only mess things up. So what ends up happening? You guessed it: a macro literature where most papers have only a very limited role for government.
In other words, a macro literature whose policy advice is heavily tilted toward the political preferences of conservatives.
Back on the main track, Simon Wren-Lewis, writing at Mainly Macro, comes to Krugman's defense, sort of, by saying that its conceivable that an aggregate model might actually be more defensible than a micro-founded one in certain circumstances.
This view [Krugman's view that aggregate models may still be useful] appears controversial. If the accepted way of doing macroeconomics in academic journals is to almost always use a ‘fancier optimisation’ model, how can something more ad hoc be more useful? Coupled with remarks like ‘the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth’ (from the 2009 piece) this has got a lot of others, like Stephen Williamson, upset. [skipping several paragraphs]
But suppose there is in fact more than one valid microfoundation for a particular aggregate model. In other words, there is not just one, but perhaps a variety of particular worlds which would lead to this set of aggregate macro relationships....Furthermore, suppose that more than one of these particular worlds was a reasonable representation of reality... It would seem to me that in this case the aggregate model derived from these different worlds has some utility beyond just one of these microfounded models. It is robust to alternative microfoundations.
Back on the main track, Krugman followed up with an argument for why its OK to use both aggregate and microfounded models.
And here's Noah Smith writing again, "Why bother with microfoundations?"
Using wrong descriptions of how people behave may or may not yield aggregate relationships that really do describe the economy. But the presence of the incorrect microfoundations will not give the aggregate results a leg up over models that simply started with the aggregates....
When I look at the macro models that have been constructed since Lucas first published his critique in the 1970s, I see a whole bunch of microfoundations that would be rejected by any sort of empirical or experimental evidence (on the RBC side as well as the Neo-Keynesian side). In other words, I see a bunch of crappy models of individual human behavior being tossed into macro models. This has basically convinced me that the "microfounded" DSGE models we now use are only occasionally superior to aggregate-only models. Macroeconomists seem to have basically nodded in the direction of the Lucas critique and in the direction of microeconomics as a whole, and then done one of two things: either A) gone right on using aggregate models, while writing down some "microfoundations" to please journal editors, or B) drawn policy recommendations directly from incorrect models of individual behavior.
The most recent is from Krugman, wherein he says (basically) that models that make both small and big predictions should be judged more on the big than the small.
This is just a sampling, and likely a biased one as there are many who dismiss the criticism of microfoundations out of hand and thus aren't writing detailed responses. Either way, the microfoundations models are dominant in the macro literature now, and the macro-for-policy-folks class I'm taking at the moment focuses on micro-founded models (because they're "how modern macro is done").
So what to conclude? My general impression is that microeconomics is more heavily 'evolved' than macroeconomics. (You could say that in macro the generation times are much longer, and the DNA replication bits are dodgier, so evolving from something clearly wrong towards something clearly better is taking longer.)
Around the same time that micro was getting problematized by Kahneman and others who questioned the rational utility-maximizing nature of humans, thus launching behavioral economics revolution -- which tries to complicate micro theory with a bit of reality -- the macroeconomists were just getting around to incorporating the original microeconomic emphasis on rationality. Just how much micro will change in the next decades in response to the behavioral revolution is unclear, so expecting troglodytesque macro to have already figured this out is unrealistic.
A number of things are unclear to me: just how deep the dissatisfaction with the current models is, how broadly these critiques (vs. others from different directions) are endorsed, and what actually drives change in fields of inquiry. Looking back in another 30-40 years we might see this moment in time as a pivotal shift in the history of the development of macroeconomics -- or it may be a little hiccup that no one remembers at all. It's too soon to tell.
Updates: since writing this I've noticed several more additions to the discussion:
Simon Wren-Lewis at Mainly Macro: Microfoundations and the speed model development
Harold Pollack at the Incidental Economist: Micfoundations, it's not just a debate for macroeconomists
Joseph at Observational Epidemiology: Microfoundations
Also related: Paul Krugman share a recent speech on "Economics in the Crisis"
Simon Wren-Lewis again: "What have microfoundations ever done for us?"
In economics, methodological quibbles, prose, statistics, Up to speed, US policy
The US health care non-system
I spent much of yesterday thinking about the past, present, and future of the American health care system. I've largely chosen classes with an international or methodological focus so this was a bit of a departure from my normal fare. In one day I finished up some readings on health reform, wrote a brief paper speculating on what US healthcare will look like in 2030, attended a talk by Uwe Reinhardt largely based on this paper (PDF), and went to a three hour lecture on US health care (part of a class on the economics of the US welfare state). It's a mammoth subject, and there are many bloggers who write exclusively about domestic health policy -- the guys at the Incidental Economist have smart stuff to say on it every day. There's so much to be said and done even on the somewhat narrowed subject of the Affordable Care Act (ie, "ObamaCare").
But that's not what keeps popping into my head.What keeps getting reinforced is how our system really isn't a system at all, but a weird conglomeration of lots of different approaches for various fragments of our society that emerged for quirky historical and political reasons. I found this description -- from a report comparing various industrialized countries' systems -- humorously understated: "The U.S. does not have a 'health system,' but rather a variety of private and public institutions and programs that regulate, finance, and deliver care." (source)
Paul Starr's classic Social Transformation of American Medicine is a good start for trying to understand how we got to the 'variety' we have today. The end result is that it doesn't serve very many people well at all. The US is a great place to get the most advanced care if you can afford it, but even then you're going to pay a lot more for it. For the non-wealthy the expenses are amplified and we end up rationing care by ability to pay. By pretty much every standard other than innovation (ie, including the delivery of that innovation to those who really need it, not just those who can pay) the US falls dreadfully short. We get poor life expectancy, magnified inequalities, and spending that's roughly twice as much per person as in any other wealthy country.
Ironically, whether the Affordable Care Act goes into effect in 2014 depends largely on whether Obama gets reelected, and whether Obama gets reelected or not depends largely on what the unemployment rate does between now and November. So the future of the US health system depends in a very real way on fluctuations in the economy over the next eight months, and no one really understand that well at all.
If you're just looking at the trajectory of the American health system the ACA is a major reform, even a fundamental one. It will do (and has already started to do) a lot of good things, but I'm skeptical that it will do all that much to fix costs or shift our focus to public health ---prevention over treatment. There are a lot of good small fixes in there, but nothing revolutionary when you compare us to other countries.
And this is why I find domestic health policy profoundly depressing. It's why I've chosen to focus more on international health than domestic politics. In international health I think the prospects for witnessing and contributing to massive, heartening, orders-of-magnitude positive change in my professional lifetime are quite real. On US health policy, I'm less optimistic. My friend and classmate Jesse Singal wrote a description of the US health system -- in the context of astonishingly ridiculous remarks by some conservatives on contraception -- that I think about sums it up: "...our medical system is an octopus riding a donkey riding a skateboard into a sadness quarry."
Monday Miscellany: NYC edition
Two weeks ago I moved to New York City for the summer, so today's links from around the interwebs are focused on the Big Apple:
New York State may be on the verge of approving gay marriage, which would make this week an awesome time to be in New York City. I'm sure it will also be a very distracting week to work at an office building across from City Hall -- the protests can get quite loud.
The 13 worst things found on Craigslist while looking for a NYC sublet. (Honestly, I think some of the listings I saw were worse.)
An amazing time lapse video of NYC:
Mindrelic - Manhattan in motion from Mindrelic on Vimeo.
Three-Way Street -- an aerial video of a New York intersection:
3-Way Street from ronconcocacola on Vimeo.
In Monday miscellany, New York, US policy
The START treaty is one step closer to ratification in Russia. Of course, it probably doesn't affect the probability that we'll all die in a nuclear war in any significant way, but I still generally think a world with fewer nuclear warheads sitting around is a good thing. The story I linked to is still missing something: a broader analysis of why the leadership of both countries is so firmly behind nuclear reduction. I understand that it's expensive to maintain the weapons, and that both sides likely see the reduction as having little effect on their deterrent capabilities, but there's a third reason. I've read -- I can't remember where, and would love to be pointed to links in the comments -- that the worldwide use of nuclear full for power generation outpaces worldwide mining of fissionable materials and that continued destruction of old warheads is thus necessary to keep nuclear power cheap. If that's true, it's a pretty key fact that's being left out of coverage. Wouldn't the story be different if it was framed as "there's a shortage of nuclear fuel and if the elites can't figure out a way to keep disarmament going, it will affect energy prices in the long term"?
I think this underscores a shortcoming of traditional journalism. By focusing on key individuals doing key things and making public statements, broader historical, social, and economic trends can get missed, or downplayed. We end up with a "Great Men" first draft of history rather than a more complete and true picture.
Anyway, Merry Christmas.
In journalism, US policy
Randomizing in the USA, ctd
[Update: There's quite a bit of new material on this controversy if you're interested. Here's a PDF of Seth Diamond's testimony in support of (and extensive description of) the evaluation at a recent hearing, along with letters of support from a number of social scientists and public health researchers. Also, here's a separate article on the City Council hearing at which Diamond testified, and an NPR story that basically rehashes the Times one. Michael Gechter argues that the testing is wrong because there isn't doubt about whether the program works, but, as noted in the comments there, doesn't note that denial-of-service was already part of the program because it was underfunded.] A couple weeks ago I posted a link to this NYTimes article on a program of assistance for the homeless that's currently being evaluated by a randomized trial. The Poverty Action Lab blog had some discussion on the subject that you should check out too.
The short version is that New York City has a housing assistance program that is supposed to keep people from becoming homeless, but they never gave it a truly rigorous evaluation. It would have been better to evaluate it up front (before the full program was rolled out) but they didn't do that, and now they are. The policy isn't proven to work, and they don't have resources to give it to everyone anyway, so instead of using a waiting list (arguably a fair system) they're randomizing people into receiving the assistance or not, and then tracking whether they end up homeless. If that makes you a little uncomfortable, that's probably a good thing -- it's a sticky issue, and one that might wrongly be easier to brush aside when working in a different culture. But I think on balance it's still a good idea to evaluate programs when we don't know if they actually do what they're supposed to do.
The thing I want to highlight for now is the impact that the tone and presentation of the article impacts your reactions to the issue being discussed. There's obviously an effect, but I thought this would be a good example because I noticed that the Times article contains both valid criticisms of the program and a good defense of why it makes sense to test it.
I reworked the article by rearranging the presentation of those sections. Mostly I just shifted paragraphs, but in a few cases I rearranged some clauses as well. I changed the headline, but otherwise I didn't change a single word, other than clarifying some names when they were introduced in a different order than in the original. And by leading with the rationale for the policy instead of with the emotional appeal against it, I think the article gives a much different impression. Let me know what you think:
City Department Innovates to Test Policy Solutions
By CARA BUCKLEY with some unauthorized edits by BRETT KELLER
It has long been the standard practice in medical testing: Give drug treatment to one group while another, the control group, goes without.
Now, New York City is applying the same methodology to assess one of its programs to prevent homelessness. Half of the test subjects — people who are behind on rent and in danger of being evicted — are being denied assistance from the program for two years, with researchers tracking them to see if they end up homeless.
New York City is among a number of governments, philanthropies and research groups turning to so-called randomized controlled trials to evaluate social welfare programs.
The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development recently started an 18-month study in 10 cities and counties to track up to 3,000 families who land in homeless shelters. Families will be randomly assigned to programs that put them in homes, give them housing subsidies or allow them to stay in shelters. The goal, a HUD spokesman, Brian Sullivan, said, is to find out which approach most effectively ushered people into permanent homes.
The New York study involves monitoring 400 households that sought Homebase help between June and August. Two hundred were given the program’s services, and 200 were not. Those denied help by Homebase were given the names of other agencies — among them H.R.A. Job Centers, Housing Court Answers and Eviction Intervention Services — from which they could seek assistance.
The city’s Department of Homeless Services said the study was necessary to determine whether the $23 million program, called Homebase, helped the people for whom it was intended. Homebase, begun in 2004, offers job training, counseling services and emergency money to help people stay in their homes.
The department, added commissioner Seth Diamond, had to cut $20 million from its budget in November, and federal stimulus money for Homebase will end in July 2012.
Such trials, while not new, are becoming especially popular in developing countries. In India, for example, researchers using a controlled trial found that installing cameras in classrooms reduced teacher absenteeism at rural schools. Children given deworming treatment in Kenya ended up having better attendance at school and growing taller.
“It’s a very effective way to find out what works and what doesn’t,” said Esther Duflo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has advanced the testing of social programs in the third world. “Everybody, every country, has a limited budget and wants to find out what programs are effective.”
The department is paying $577,000 for the study, which is being administered by the City University of New York along with the research firm Abt Associates, based in Cambridge, Mass. The firm’s institutional review board concluded that the study was ethical for several reasons, said Mary Maguire, a spokeswoman for Abt: because it was not an entitlement, meaning it was not available to everyone; because it could not serve all of the people who applied for it; and because the control group had access to other services.
The firm also believed, she said, that such tests offered the “most compelling evidence” about how well a program worked.
Dennis P. Culhane, a professor of social welfare policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the New York test was particularly valuable because there was widespread doubt about whether eviction-prevention programs really worked.
Professor Culhane, who is working as a consultant on both the New York and HUD studies, added that people were routinely denied Homebase help anyway, and that the study was merely reorganizing who ended up in that pool. According to the city, 5,500 households receive full Homebase help each year, and an additional 1,500 are denied case management and rental assistance because money runs out.
But some public officials and legal aid groups have denounced the study as unethical and cruel, and have called on the city to stop the study and to grant help to all the test subjects who had been denied assistance.
“They should immediately stop this experiment,” said the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer. “The city shouldn’t be making guinea pigs out of its most vulnerable.”
But, as controversial as the experiment has become, Mr. Diamond said that just because 90 percent of the families helped by Homebase stayed out of shelters did not mean it was Homebase that kept families in their homes. People who sought out Homebase might be resourceful to begin with, he said, and adept at patching together various means of housing help.
Advocates for the homeless said they were puzzled about why the trial was necessary, since the city proclaimed the Homebase program as “highly successful” in the September 2010 Mayor’s Management Report, saying that over 90 percent of families that received help from Homebase did not end up in homeless shelters. One critic of the trial, Councilwoman Annabel Palma, is holding a General Welfare Committee hearing about the program on Thursday.
“I don’t think homeless people in our time, or in any time, should be treated like lab rats,” Ms. Palma said.
“This is about putting emotions aside,” [Mr. Diamond] said. “When you’re making decisions about millions of dollars and thousands of people’s lives, you have to do this on data, and that is what this is about.”
Still, legal aid lawyers in New York said that apart from their opposition to the study’s ethics, its timing was troubling because nowadays, there were fewer resources to go around.
Ian Davie, a lawyer with Legal Services NYC in the Bronx, said Homebase was often a family’s last resort before eviction. One of his clients, Angie Almodovar, 27, a single mother who is pregnant with her third child, ended up in the study group denied Homebase assistance. “I wanted to cry, honestly speaking,” Ms. Almodovar said. “Homebase at the time was my only hope.”
Ms. Almodovar said she was told when she sought help from Homebase that in order to apply, she had to enter a lottery that could result in her being denied assistance. She said she signed a letter indicating she understood. Five minutes after a caseworker typed her information into a computer, she learned she would not receive assistance from the program.
With Mr. Davie’s help, she cobbled together money from the Coalition for the Homeless and a public-assistance grant to stay in her apartment. But Mr. Davie wondered what would become of those less able to navigate the system. “She was the person who didn’t fall through the cracks,” Mr. Davie said of Ms. Almodovar. “It’s the people who don’t have assistance that are the ones we really worry about.”
Professor Culhane said, “There’s no doubt you can find poor people in need, but there’s no evidence that people who get this program’s help would end up homeless without it.”
In aid industry, ethics, evidence-based, journalism, methodological quibbles, New York, prose, statistics, US policy
Randomizing in the USA
The NYTimes posted this article about a randomized trial in New York City:
Dean Karlan at Innovations for Policy Action responds:
It always amazes me when people think resources are unlimited. Why is "scarce resource" such a hard concept to understand?
I think two of the most important points here are that a) there weren't enough resources for everyone to get the services anyway, so they're just changing the decision-making process for who gets the service from first-come-first-served (presumably) to randomized, and b) studies like this can be ethical when there is reasonable doubt about whether a program actually helps or not. If it were firmly established that the program is beneficial, then it's unethical to test it, which is why you can't keep testing a proven drug against placebo.
However, this is good food for thought for those who are interested in doing randomized trials of development initiatives in other countries. It shows the impact (and reactions) from individuals to being treated as "test subjects" here in the US -- and why should we expect people in other countries to feel differently? That said, a lot of randomized trials don't get this sort of pushback. I'm not familiar with this program beyond what I read in this article, but it's possible that more could have been done to communicate the purpose of the trial to the community, activists, and the media.
There are some interesting questions raised in the IPA blog comments as well.
In aid industry, ethics, evidence-based, international development, prose, US policy
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Stesheni kumi na moja
Brett Keller April 10, 2015
I'm a bit late to the "social science bloggers love Station Eleven" party. Chris Blattman put it in his 2014 favorite novels list, and Jay Ulfelder shared a nice excerpt. I loved it too, so I'll try to add something new. Station Eleven is a novel about what happens after - and just before, and during - a flu pandemic wipes out 99% of the human population. The survivors refer to that event as the Collapse, and mostly avoid talking about or thinking about the immediate aftermath when all was a fight for survival. But Station Eleven is not just derivative post-apocalyptica. The book avoids a garish focus on the period just after the Collapse, but instead focuses on the more relatable period just as things are beginning to unravel, and much later, as bands of survivors who made it through the roughest bits are starting to rebuild. The main characters are a band of musicians and thespians who are trying to retain some of the cultural heritage and pass it on to the next generation, who have no memory of the world before the Collapse.
It's also a novel about loss, both personal and societal. One of my favorite passages:
...No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities.… No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through the litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.
Since I was reading this novel while traveling for work in Tanzania and Zimbabwe and Liberia, I was struck by its focus on Canada and the US. Nothing wrong with this: the author is Canadian* and the presumed audience is probably North American. But I kept wondering what the Collapse would have been like elsewhere. It was global, but would it have been equally catastrophic elsewhere? Urban centers like Manhattan are ludicrously unworkable in the absence of the electricity and cars and subways and other bits of the massive, distributed, and - to casual eyes - largely invisible infrastructure working to constantly feed them with supplies and people and information.
The novel implies that these urban centers fared worse, and focuses on suburbia and rural areas, where survivors re-learn how to farm, how to make things for themselves. We see nothing of the global "periphery" where the fall from wealth might be less great, where the collective psychological trauma of losing 99 out of 100 people might dominate the loss of technology. Of course, the periphery is defined by the observer and the writer, and isn't the periphery at all to those who live in it. Maybe things would fare better, or maybe not.
Imagine the same novel, but set in Tanzania, or some other country where the majority of people are small-holder subsistence farmers. Maybe it would use the device of following two relatives, one living 'upcountry' or in 'the village' (i.e., poor rural parts) and the other living in Dar es Salaam. Relationships are established in an early chapter when the successful urban relative visits the village, or the rural relative visits the big city, and both marvel at their differences.
Then the flu hits, and things start to break down. Narrative chapters are intersperse with transcripts of SMS (text message) exchanges, demands for mPesa transfers, the realization that money doesn't matter anymore, and finally the realization that the networks aren't getting anything through anymore. Some city dwellers flee for the countryside but find themselves shunned as bearers of contagion. The urban protagonist makes her way, over the course of months or years, to the rural area where her relative once lived, hoping to find things are better there. Her belief that the village will be the same mirrors the readers' belief - and common trope in writing about developing countries - that subsistence farmers today somehow live just as they did centuries or millenia ago. Bullshit, of course.
As the urbanite nears the village, her encounters reveal all the ways the modern fabric of village life was related to society and technology and has likewise broken down with the Collapse. Perhaps the power vacuum set off struggles amongst survivors and led to some new social order, where none of her skills are that useful. Nearing the village, she finds that the rural relative is now leader, revealing his situation has been reversed by the Collapse just as the once successful urbanite finds her way into his village with her last shilling.
Maybe this novel already exists. Or something else using the post-apocalyptic form to explore somewhere that's not Canada or the US or Europe and not reliant on mechanized agriculture. Pointers, please, as I'd love to read it.
*originally I wrote the author was American. Oops. Apologies, Canada!
In book reviews, culture, prose, Tanzania
Data: big, small, and meta
Brett Keller January 28, 2014
When I read this New York Times piece back in August, I was in the midst of preparation and training for data collection at rural health facilities in Zambia. The Times piece profiles a group called Global Pulse that is doing good work on the 'big data' side of global health:
The efforts by Global Pulse and a growing collection of scientists at universities, companies and nonprofit groups have been given the label “Big Data for development.” It is a field of great opportunity and challenge. The goal, the scientists involved agree, is to bring real-time monitoring and prediction to development and aid programs. Projects and policies, they say, can move faster, adapt to changing circumstances and be more effective, helping to lift more communities out of poverty and even save lives.
Since I was gearing up for 'field work' (more on that here; I'll get to it soon), I was struck at the time by the very different challenges one faces at the other end of the spectrum. Call it small data? And I connected the Global Pulse profile with this, by Wayan Vota, from just a few days before:
The Sneakernet Reality of Big Data in Africa
When I hear people talking about “big data” in the developing world, I always picture the school administrator I met in Tanzania and the reality of sneakernet data transmissions processes.
The school level administrator has more data than he knows what to do with. Years and years of student grades recorded in notebooks – the hand-written on paper kind of notebooks. Each teacher records her student attendance and grades in one notebook, which the principal then records in his notebook. At the local district level, each principal’s notebook is recorded into a master dataset for that area, which is then aggregated at the regional, state, and national level in even more hand-written journals... Finally, it reaches the Minister of Education as a printed-out computer-generated report, complied by ministerial staff from those journals that finally make it to the ministry, and are not destroyed by water, rot, insects, or just plain misplacement or loss. Note that no where along the way is this data digitized and even at the ministerial level, the data isn’t necessarily deeply analyzed or shared widely....
And to be realistic, until countries invest in this basic, unsexy, and often ignored level of infrastructure, we’ll never have “big data” nor Open Data in Tanzania or anywhere else. (Read the rest here.)
Right on. And sure enough two weeks later I found myself elbow-deep in data that looked like this -- "Sneakernet" in action:
In many countries a quite a lot of data -- of varying quality -- exists, but it's often formatted like the above. Optimistically, it may get used for local decisions, and eventually for high-level policy decisions when it's months or years out of date. There's a lot of hard, good work being done to improve these systems (more often by residents of low-income countries, sometimes by foreigners), but still far too little. This data is certainly primary, in the sense that was collected on individuals, or by facilities, or about communities, but there are huge problems with quality, and with the sneakernet by which it gets back to policymakers, researchers, and (sometimes) citizens.
For the sake of quick reference, I keep a folder on my computer that has -- for each of the countries I work in -- most of the major recent ultimate sources of nationally-representative health data. All too often the only high-quality ultimate source is the most recent Demographic and Health Survey, surely one of the greatest public goods provided by the US government's aid agency. (I think I'm paraphrasing Angus Deaton here, but can't recall the source.) When I spent a summer doing epidemiology research with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, I was struck by just how many rich data sources there were to draw on, at least compared to low-income countries. Very often there just isn't much primary data on which to build.
On the other end of the spectrum is what you might call the metadata of global health. When I think about the work the folks I know in global health -- classmates, professors, acquaintances, and occasionally thought not often me -- do day to day, much of it is generating metadata. This is research or analysis derived from the primary data, and thus relying on its quality. It's usually smart, almost always well-intentioned, and often well-packaged, but this towering edifice of effort is erected over a foundation of primary data; the metadata sometimes gives the appearance of being primary, when you dig down the sources often point back to those one or three ultimate data sources.
That's not to say that generating this metadata is bad: for instance, modeling impacts of policy decisions given the best available data is still the best way to sift through competing health policy priorities if you want to have the greatest impact. Or a more cynical take: the technocratic nature of global health decision-making requires that we either have this data or, in its absence, impute it. But regardless of the value of certain targeted bits of the metadata, there's the question of the overall balance of investment in primary vs. secondary-to-meta data, and my view -- somewhat ironically derived entirely from anecdotes -- is that we should be investing a lot more in the former.
One way to frame this trade-off is to ask, when considering a research project or academic institute or whatnot, whether the money spent on that project might result in more value for money if it was spent instead training data collectors and statistics offices, or supporting primary data collection (e.g., funding household surveys) in low-income countries. I think in many cases the answer will be clear, perhaps to everyone except those directly generating the metadata.
That does not mean that none of this metadata is worthwhile. On the contrary, some of it is absolutely essential. But a lot isn't, and there are opportunity costs to any investment, a choice between investing in data collection and statistics systems in low-income countries, vs. research projects where most of the money will ultimately stay in high-income countries, and the causal pathway to impact is much less direct.
Looping back to the original link, one way to think of the 'big data' efforts like Global Pulse is that they're not metadata at all, but an attempt to find new sources of primary data. Because there are so few good sources of data that get funded, or that filter through the sneakernet, the hope is that mobile phone usage and search terms and whatnot can be mined to give us entirely new primary data, on which to build new pyramids of metadata, and with which to make policy decisions, skipping the sneakernet altogether. That would be pretty cool if it works out.
In international development, methodological quibbles, prose, public health
A more useful aid debate
Ken Opalo highlights recent entries on the great aid debate from Bill Gates, Jeff Sachs, Bill Easterly, and Chris Blattman. Much has been said on this debate, and sometimes it feels like it's hard to add anything new. But since having a monosyllabic first name seem sufficient qualification to weigh in, I will. First, this part of Ken's post resonates with me:
I think most reasonable people would agree that Sachs kind of oversold his big push idea in The End of Poverty. Or may be this was just a result of his attempt to shock the donor world into reaching the 0.7 percent mark in contributions. In any event it is unfortunate that the debate on the relative efficacy of aid left the pages of journal articles in its current form. It would have been more helpful if the debate spilled into the public in a policy-relevant form, with questions like: under what conditions does aid make a difference? What can we do to increase the efficacy of aid? What kinds of aid should we continue and what kinds should we abolish all together? (emphasis added)
Lee Crawfurd wrote something along these lines too: "Does Policy Work?" Lee wrote that on Jan 10, 2013, and I jokingly said it was the best aid blog post of the year (so far). Now that 2013 has wrapped up, I'll extend that evaluation to 'best aid blog post of 2013'. It's worth sharing again:
The question "does policy work" is jarring, because we immediately realise that it makes little sense. Governments have about 20-30 different Ministries, which immediately implies at least 20-30 different areas of policy. Does which one work? We have health and education policy, infrastructure policy (roads, water, energy), trade policy, monetary policy, public financial management, employment policy, disaster response, financial sector policy, climate and environment policy, to name just a few. It makes very little sense to ask if they all collectively "work" or are "effective". Foreign aid is similar. Aid supports all of these different areas of policy....
A common concern is about the impact of aid on growth... Some aid is specifically targeted at growth - such as financing infrastructure or private sector development. But much of it is not. One of the few papers which looks at the macroeconomic impact of aid and actually bothers to disaggregate even a little the different types of aid, finds that the aid that could be considered to have growth as a target, does increase growth. It's the aid that was never intended to impact growth at all, such as humanitarian assistance, which doesn't have any impact on growth.
I like to think that most smart folks working on these issues -- and that includes both Sachs and Easterly -- would agree with the following summaries of our collective state of knowledge:
A lot of aid projects don't work, and some of them do harm.
Some aid, especially certain types of health projects, works extremely well.
The disagreement is on the balance of good and bad, so I wish -- as Ken wrote -- the debate spilled into the public sphere along those lines (which is good? which is bad? how can we get a better mix?) rather than the blanket statements both sides are driven to by the very publicness of the debate. It reminds me a bit of debates in theology: if you put a fundamentalist and Einstein in the same room, they'll both be talking about "God" but meaning very different things with the same words. (This is not a direct analogy, so don't ask who is who...)
When Sachs and Easterly talk about whether aid "works", it would be nice if we could get everyone to first agree on a definition of "aid" and "works". But much of this seems to be driven by personal animosity between Easterly and Sachs, or more broadly, by personal animosity of a lot of aid experts vs. Sachs. Why's that? I think part of the answer is that it's hard to tell when Sachs is trying to be a scientist, and when he's trying to be an advocate. He benefits from being perceived as the former, but in reality is much more the latter. Nina Munk's The Idealist -- an excellent profile of Sachs I've been meaning to review -- explores this tension at some length. The more scientifically-minded get riled up by this confusion -- rightfully, I think. At the same time, public health folks tend to love Sachs precisely because he's been a powerful advocate for some types of health aid that demonstrably work -- also rightfully, I think. There's a tension there, and it's hard to completely dismiss one side as wrong, because the world is complicated and there are many overlapping debates and conversations; academic and lay, public and private, science and advocacy.
So, back to Ken's questions that would be answered by a more useful aid debate:
Under what conditions does aid make a difference?
What can we do to increase the efficacy of aid?
What kinds of aid should we continue and what kinds should we abolish all together?
Wouldn't it be amazing if the public debate were focused on these questions? Actually, something like that was done: Boston Review had a forum a while back on "Making Aid Work" with responses by Abhijit Banerjee, Angus Deaton, Howard White, Ruth Levine, and others. I think that series of questions is much more informative than another un-moderated round of Sachs vs Easterly.
In aid industry, international development, prose, public health
Advocates and scientists
A new book by The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty. The blurbs on Amazon are fascinating because they indicate that either the reviewers didn't actually read the book (which wouldn't be all that surprising) or that Munk's book paints a nuanced enough picture that readers can come away with very different views on what it actually proves. Here are two examples:
Amartya Sen: “Nina Munk’s book is an excellent – and moving – tribute to the vision and commitment of Jeffrey Sachs, as well as an enlightening account of how much can be achieved by reasoned determination.”
Robert Calderisi: "A powerful exposé of hubris run amok, drawing on touching accounts of real-life heroes fighting poverty on the front line."
The publisher's description seems to encompass both of those points of view: "The Idealist is the profound and moving story of what happens when the abstract theories of a brilliant, driven man meet the reality of human life." That sounds like a good read to me -- I look forward to reading when it comes out in September.
Munk's previous reporting strikes a similar tone. For example, here's an excerpt of her 2007 Vanity Fair profile of Sachs:
Leaving the region of Dertu, sitting in the back of an ancient Land Rover, I'm reminded of a meeting I had with Simon Bland, head of Britain's Department for International Development in Kenya. Referring to the Millennium Villages Project, and to Sachs in particular, Bland laid it out for me in plain terms: "I want to say, 'What concept are you trying to prove?' Because I know that if you spend enough money on each person in a village you will change their lives. If you put in enough resources—enough foreigners, technical assistance, and money—lives change. We know that. I've been doing it for years. I've lived and worked on and managed [development] projects.
"The problem is," he added, "when you walk away, what happens?"
Someone -- I think it was Chris Blattman, but I can't find the specific post -- wondered a while back whether too much attention has been given to the Millennium Villages Project. After all, the line of thinking goes, the MVP's have really just gotten more press and aren't that different from the many other projects with even less rigorous evaluation designs. That's certainly true: when journalists and aid bloggers debate the MVPs, part of what they're debating is Sachs himself because he's such a polarizing personality. If you really care about aid policy, and the uses of evidence in that policy, then that can all feel like an unhelpful distraction. Most aid efforts don't get book-length profiles, and the interest in Sachs' personality and persona will probably drive the interest in Munk's book.
But I also think the MVP debates have been healthy and interesting -- and ultimately deserving of most of the heat generated -- because they're about a central tension within aid and development, as well as other fields where research intersects with activism. If you think we already generally know what to do, then it makes sense to push forward with it at all costs. The naysayers who doubt you are unhelpful skeptics who are on some level ethically culpable for blocking good work. If you think the evidence is not yet in, then it makes more sense to function more like a scientist, collecting the evidence needed to make good decisions in the longer term. The naysayers opposing the scientists are then utopian advocates who throw millions at unproven projects. I've seen a similar tension within the field of public health, between those who see themselves primarily as advocates and those who see themselves as scientists, and I'm sure it exists elsewhere as well.
That is, of course, a caricature -- few people fall completely on one side of the advocates vs. scientists divide. But I think the caricature is a useful one for framing arguments. The fundamental disagreement is usually not about whether evidence should be used to inform efforts to end poverty or improve health or advance any other goal. Instead, the disagreement is often over what the current state of knowledge is. And on that note, if you harbor any doubts on where Sachs has positioned himself on that spectrum here's the beginning of Munk's 2007 profile:
In the respected opinion of Jeffrey David Sachs.... the problem of extreme poverty can be solved. In fact, the problem can be solved "easily." "We have enough on the planet to make sure, easily, that people aren't dying of their poverty. That's the basic truth," he tells me firmly, without a doubt.
...To Sachs, the end of poverty justifies the means. By hook or by crook, relentlessly, he has done more than anyone else to move the issue of global poverty into the mainstream—to force the developed world to consider his utopian thesis: with enough focus, enough determination, and, especially, enough money, extreme poverty can finally be eradicated.
Once, when I asked what kept him going at this frenzied pace, he snapped back, "If you haven't noticed, people are dying. It's an emergency."
via Gabriel Demombynes.
If you're new to the Millennium Villages debate, here's some background reading: a recent piece in Foreign Policy by Paul Starobin, and some good posts by Chris Blattman (one, two, three), this gem from Owen Barder, and Michael Clemens.
In evidence-based, international development, prose, public health, public policy
On deworming
GiveWell's Alexander Berger just posted a more in-depth blog review of the (hugely impactful) Miguel and Kremer deworming study. Here's some background: the Cochrane review, Givewell's first response to it, and IPA's very critical response. I've been meaning to blog on this since the new Cochrane review came out, but haven't had time to do the subject justice by really digging into all the papers. So I hope you'll forgive me for just sharing the comment I left at the latest GiveWell post, as it's basically what I was going to blog anyway:
Thanks for this interesting review — I especially appreciate that the authors [Miguel and Kremer] shared the material necessary for you [GiveWell] to examine their results in more depth, and that you talk through your thought process.
However, one thing you highlighted in your post on the new Cochrane review that isn’t mentioned here, and which I thought was much more important than the doubts about this Miguel and Kremer study, was that there have been so many other studies that did not find large effect on health outcomes! I’ve been meaning to write a long blog post about this when I really have time to dig into the references, but since I’m mid-thesis I’ll disclaim that this quick comment is based on recollection of the Cochrane review and your and IPA’s previous blog posts, so forgive me if I misremember something.
The Miguel and Kremer study gets a lot of attention in part because it had big effects, and in part because it measured outcomes that many (most?) other deworming studies hadn’t measured — but it’s not as if we believe these outcomes to be completely unrelated. This is a case where what we believe the underlying causal mechanism for the social effects to be is hugely important. For the epidemiologists reading, imagine this as a DAG (a directed acyclic graph) where the mechanism is “deworming -> better health -> better school attendance and cognitive function -> long-term social/economic outcomes.” That’s at least how I assume the mechanism is hypothesized.
So while the other studies don’t measure the social outcomes, it’s harder for me to imagine how deworming could have a very large effect on school and social/economic outcomes without first having an effect on (some) health outcomes — since the social outcomes are ‘downstream’ from the health ones. Maybe different people are assuming that something else is going on — that the health and social outcomes are somehow independent, or that you just can’t measure the health outcomes as easily as the social ones, which seems backwards to me. (To me this was the missing gap in the IPA blog response to GiveWell’s criticism as well.)
So continuing to give so much attention to this study, even if it’s critical, misses what I took to be the biggest takeaway from that review — there have been a bunch of studies that showed only small effects or none at all. They were looking at health outcomes, yes, but those aren’t unrelated to the long-term development, social, and economic effects. You [GiveWell] try to get at the external validity of this study by looking for different size effects in areas with different prevalence, which is good but limited. Ultimately, if you consider all of the studies that looked at various outcomes, I think the most plausible explanation for how you could get huge (social) effects in the Miguel Kremer study while seeing little to no (health) effects in the others is not that the other studies just didn’t measure the social effects, but that the Miguel Kremer study’s external validity is questionable because of its unique study population.
(Emphasis added throughout)
In epidemiology, evidence-based, international development, prose, public health
Someone should study this: Addis housing edition
Attention development economists and any other researchers who have an interest in urban or housing policy in low-income countries: My office in Addis has about 25 folks working in it, and we have a daily lunch pool where we pay in 400 birr a month (about 22 USD) to cover costs and all get to eat Ethiopian food for lunch every day. It's been a great way to get to know my coworkers -- my work is often more solitary: editing, writing, and analyzing data -- and an even better way to learn about a whole variety of issues in Ethiopia.
The conversation is typically in Amharic and mine is quite limited, so I'm lucky if I can figure out the topic being discussed. [I usually know if they're talking about work because so many NGO-speak words aren't translated, for example: "amharic amharic amharic Health Systems Strengthening amharic amharic..."] But folks will of course translate things as needed. One observation is that certain topics affect their daily lives a lot, and thus come up over and over again at lunch.
One subject that has come up repeatedly is housing. Middle class folks in Addis Ababa feel the housing shortage very acutely. Based on our conversations it seems the major limitation is in getting credit to buy or build a house.
The biggest source of good housing so far has been government-constructed condominiums, for which you pay a certain (I'm not sure how much) percentage down and then make payments over the years. (The government will soon launch a new "40/60 scheme" to which many folks are looking forward, in which anyone who can make a 40% down payment on a house will get a government mortgage for the remaining 60%.)
When my coworkers first mentioned that the government will offer the next round of condominiums by a public lottery, my thought was "that will solve someone's identification problem!" A large number of people -- many thousands -- have registered for the government lottery. I believe you have to meet a certain wealth or income threshold (i.e., be able to make the down payment), but after that condo eligibility will be determined randomly. I think that -- especially if someone organizes the study prior to the lottery -- this could yield very useful results on the impact of urban housing policy.
How (and how much) do individuals and families benefit from access to better housing? Are there changes in earnings, savings, investments? Health outcomes? Children's health and educational outcomes? How does it affect political attitudes or other life choices? It could also be an opportunity to study migration between different neighborhoods, amongst many other things.
A Google Scholar search for Ethiopia housing lottery turns up several mentions, but (in my very quick read) no evaluations taking advantage of the randomization. (I can't access this recent article in an engineering journal, but from the abstract assume that it's talking about a different kind of evaluation.) So, someone have at it? It's just not that often that large public policy schemes are randomized.
In economics, Ethiopia, international development, prose, public policy
"As it had to fail"
Brett Keller November 15, 2012
My favorite line from the Anti-Politics Machine is a throwaway. The author, James Ferguson, an anthropologist, describes a World Bank agricultural development program in Lesotho, and also -- through that lens -- ends up describing development programs more generally. At one point he notes that the program failed "as it had to fail" -- not really due to bad intentions, or to lack of technical expertise, or lack of funds -- but because failure was written into the program from the beginning. Depressing? Yes, but valuable. I read in part because Chris Blattman keeps plugging it, and then shortly before leaving for Ethiopia I saw that a friend had a copy I could borrow. Somehow it didn't make it onto reading lists for any of my classes for either of my degrees, though it should be required for pretty much anyone wanting to work in another culture (or, for that matter, trying to foment change in your own). Here's Blattman's description:
People’s main assets [in Lesotho] — cattle — were dying in downturns for lack of a market to sell them on. Households on hard times couldn’t turn their cattle into cash for school fees and food. Unfortunately, the cure turned out to be worse than the disease.
It turns out that cattle were attractive investments precisely because they were hard to liquidate. With most men working away from home in South Africa, buying cattle was the best way to keep the family saving rather than spending. They were a means for men to wield power over their families from afar.
Ferguson’s point was that development organizations attempt to be apolitical at their own risk. What’s more, he argued that they are structured to remain ignorant of the historical, political and cultural context in which they operate.
And here's a brief note from Foreign Affairs:
The book comes to two main conclusions. First is that the distinctive discourse and conceptual apparatus of development experts, although good for keeping development agencies in business, screen out and ignore most of the political and historical facts that actually explain Third World poverty-since these realities suggest that little can be accomplished by apolitical "development" interventions. Second, although enormous schemes like Thaba-Tseka generally fail to achieve their planned goals, they do have the major unplanned effect of strengthening and expanding the power of politically self-serving state bureaucracies. Particularly good is the discussion of the "bovine mystique," in which the author contrasts development experts' misinterpretation of "traditional" attitudes toward uneconomic livestock with the complex calculus of gender, cash and power in the rural Lesotho family.
The reality was that Lesotho was not really an idyllically-rural-but-poor agricultural economy, but rather a labor reserve more or less set up by and controlled by apartheid South Africa. The gulf between the actual political situation and the situation as envisioned by the World Bank -- where the main problems were lack of markets and technical solutions -- at the time was enormous. This lets Ferguson have a lot of fun showing the absurdities of Bank reports from the era, and once you realize what's going on it's quite frustrating to read how the programs turned out, and to wonder how no one saw it coming.
This contrast between rhetoric and reality is the book's greatest strength: because the situation is absurd, it illustrates Ferguson's points very well, that aid is inherently political, and that projects that ignore that reality have their future failure baked in from the start. But that contrast is a weakness too, as because the situation is extreme you're left wondering just how representative the case of Lesotho really was (or is). The 1970s-80s era World Bank certainly makes a great buffoon (if not quite a villain) in the story, and one wonders if things aren't at least a bit better today.
Either way, this is one of the best books on development I've read, as I find myself mentally referring to it on a regular basis. Is the rhetoric I'm reading (or writing) really how it is? Is that technical, apolitical sounding intervention really going to work? It's made me think more critically about the role outside groups -- even seemingly benevolent, apolitical ones -- have on local politics. On the other hand, the Anti-Politics Machine does read a bit like it was adapted from an anthropology dissertation (it was); I wish it could get a new edition with more editing to make it more presentable. And a less ugly cover. But that's no excuse -- if you want to work in development or international health or any related field, it should be high on your reading list.
In aid industry, book reviews, culture, cynical rants, economics, international development, prose
Why we should lie about the weather (and maybe more)
Brett Keller September 9, 2012
Nate Silver (who else?) has written a great piece on weather prediction -- "The Weatherman is Not a Moron" (NYT) -- that covers both the proliferation of data in weather forecasting, and why the quantity of data alone isn't enough. What intrigued me though was a section at the end about how to communicate the inevitable uncertainty in forecasts:
...Unfortunately, this cautious message can be undercut by private-sector forecasters. Catering to the demands of viewers can mean intentionally running the risk of making forecasts less accurate. For many years, the Weather Channel avoided forecasting an exact 50 percent chance of rain, which might seem wishy-washy to consumers. Instead, it rounded up to 60 or down to 40. In what may be the worst-kept secret in the business, numerous commercial weather forecasts are also biased toward forecasting more precipitation than will actually occur. (In the business, this is known as the wet bias.) For years, when the Weather Channel said there was a 20 percent chance of rain, it actually rained only about 5 percent of the time.
People don’t mind when a forecaster predicts rain and it turns out to be a nice day. But if it rains when it isn’t supposed to, they curse the weatherman for ruining their picnic. “If the forecast was objective, if it has zero bias in precipitation,” Bruce Rose, a former vice president for the Weather Channel, said, “we’d probably be in trouble.”
My thought when reading this was that there are actually two different reasons why you might want to systematically adjust reported percentages ((ie, fib a bit) when trying to communicate the likelihood of bad weather.
But first, an aside on what public health folks typically talk about when they talk about communicating uncertainty: I've heard a lot (in classes, in blogs, and in Bad Science, for example) about reporting absolute risks rather than relative risks, and about avoiding other ways of communicating risks that generally mislead. What people don't usually discuss is whether the point estimates themselves should ever be adjusted; rather, we concentrate on how to best communicate whatever the actual values are.
Now, back to weather. The first reason you might want to adjust the reported probability of rain is that people are rain averse: they care more strongly about getting rained on when it wasn't predicted than vice versa. It may be perfectly reasonable for people to feel this way, and so why not cater to their desires? This is the reason described in the excerpt from Silver's article above.
Another way to describe this bias is that most people would prefer to minimize Type II Error (false negatives) at the expense of having more Type I error (false positives), at least when it comes to rain. Obviously you could take this too far -- reporting rain every single day would completely eliminate Type II error, but it would also make forecasts worthless. Likewise, with big events like hurricanes the costs of Type I errors (wholesale evacuations, cancelled conventions, etc) become much greater, so this adjustment would be more problematic as the cost of false positives increases. But generally speaking, the so-called "wet bias" of adjusting all rain prediction probabilities upwards might be a good way to increase the general satisfaction of a rain-averse general public.
The second reason one might want to adjust the reported probability of rain -- or some other event -- is that people are generally bad at understanding probabilities. Luckily though, people tend to be bad about estimating probabilities in surprisingly systematic ways! Kahneman's excellent (if too long) book Thinking, Fast and Slow covers this at length. The best summary of these biases that I could find through a quick Google search was from Lee Merkhofer Consulting:
Studies show that people make systematic errors when estimating how likely uncertain events are. As shown in [the graph below], likely outcomes (above 40%) are typically estimated to be less probable than they really are. And, outcomes that are quite unlikely are typically estimated to be more probable than they are. Furthermore, people often behave as if extremely unlikely, but still possible outcomes have no chance whatsoever of occurring.
The graph from that link is a helpful if somewhat stylized visualization of the same biases:
In other words, people think that likely events (in the 30-99% range) are less likely to occur than they are in reality, that unlike events (in the 1-30% range) are more likely to occur than they are in reality, and extremely unlikely events (very close to 0%) won't happen at all.
My recollection is that these biases can be a bit different depending on whether the predicted event is bad (getting hit by lightning) or good (winning the lottery), and that the familiarity of the event also plays a role. Regardless, with something like weather, where most events are within the realm of lived experience and most of the probabilities lie within a reasonable range, the average bias could probably be measured pretty reliably.
So what do we do with this knowledge? Think about it this way: we want to increase the accuracy of communication, but there are two different points in the communications process where you can measure accuracy. You can care about how accurately the information is communicated from the source, or how well the information is received. If you care about the latter, and you know that people have systematic and thus predictable biases in perceiving the probability that something will happen, why not adjust the numbers you communicate so that the message -- as received by the audience -- is accurate?
Now, some made up numbers: Let's say the real chance of rain is 60%, as predicted by the best computer models. You might adjust that up to 70% if that's the reported risk that makes people perceive a 60% objective probability (again, see the graph above). You might then adjust that percentage up to 80% to account for rain aversion/wet bias.
Here I think it's important to distinguish between technical and popular communication channels: if you're sharing raw data about the weather or talking to a group of meteorologists or epidemiologists then you might take one approach, whereas another approach makes sense for communicating with a lay public. For folks who just tune in to the evening news to get tomorrow's weather forecast, you want the message they receive to be as close to reality as possible. If you insist on reporting the 'real' numbers, you actually draw your audience further from understanding reality than if you fudged them a bit.
The major and obvious downside to this approach is that people know this is happening, it won't work, or they'll be mad that you lied -- even though you were only lying to better communicate the truth! One possible way of getting around this is to describe the numbers as something other than percentages; using some made-up index that sounds enough like it to convince the layperson, while also being open to detailed examination by those who are interested.
For instance, we all the heat index and wind chill aren't the same as temperature, but rather represent just how hot or cold the weather actually feels. Likewise, we could report some like "Rain Risk" or "Rain Risk Index" that accounts for known biases in risk perception and rain aversion. The weather man would report a Rain Risk of 80%, while the actual probability of rain is just 60%. This would give us more useful information for the recipients, while also maintaining technical honesty and some level of transparency.
I care a lot more about health than about the weather, but I think predicting rain is a useful device for talking about the same issues of probability perception in health for several reasons. First off, the probabilities in rain forecasting are much more within the realm of human experience than the rare probabilities that come up so often in epidemiology. Secondly, the ethical stakes feel a bit lower when writing about lying about the weather rather than, say, suggesting physicians should systematically mislead their patients, even if the crucial and ultimate aim of the adjustment is to better inform them.
I'm not saying we should walk back all the progress we've made in terms of letting patients and physicians make decisions together, rather than the latter withholding information and paternalistically making decisions for patients based on the physician's preferences rather than the patient's. (That would be silly in part because physicians share their patients' biases.) The idea here is to come up with better measures of uncertainty -- call it adjusted risk or risk indexes or weighted probabilities or whatever -- that help us bypass humans' systematic flaws in understanding uncertainty.
In short: maybe we should lie to better tell the truth. But be honest about it.
In economics, methodological quibbles, prose, public health, public policy, statistics
A misuse of life expectancy
Jared Diamond is going back and forth with Acemoglu and Robinson over his review of their new book, Why Nations Fail. The exchange is interesting in and of itself, but I wanted to highlight one passage from Diamond's response:
The first point of their four-point letter is that tropical medicine and agricultural science aren’t major factors shaping national differences in prosperity. But the reasons why those are indeed major factors are obvious and well known. Tropical diseases cause a skilled worker, who completes professional training by age thirty, to look forward to, on the average, just ten years of economic productivity in Zambia before dying at an average life span of around forty, but to be economically productive for thirty-five years until retiring at age sixty-five in the US, Europe, and Japan (average life span around eighty). Even while they are still alive, workers in the tropics are often sick and unable to work. Women in the tropics face big obstacles in entering the workforce, because of having to care for their sick babies, or being pregnant with or nursing babies to replace previous babies likely to die or already dead. That’s why economists other than Acemoglu and Robinson do find a significant effect of geographic factors on prosperity today, after properly controlling for the effect of institutions.
I've added the bolding to highlight an interpretation of what life expectancy means that is wrong, but all too common.
It's analagous to something you may have heard about ancient Rome: since life expectancy was somewhere in the 30s, the Romans who lived to be 40 or 50 or 60 were incredibly rare and extraordinary. The problem is that life expectancy -- by which we typically mean life expectancy at birth -- is heavily skewed by infant mortality, or deaths under one year of age. Once you get to age five you're generally out of the woods -- compared to the super-high mortality rates common for infants (less than one year old) and children (less than five years old). While it's true that there were fewer old folks in ancient Roman society, or -- to use Diamond's example -- modern Zambian society, the difference isn't nearly as pronounced as you might think given the differences in life expectancy.
Does this matter? And if so, why? One area where it's clearly important is Diamond's usage in the passage above: examining the impact of changes in life expectancy on economic productivity. Despite the life expectancy at birth of 38 years, a Zambian male who reaches the age of thirty does not just have eight years of life expectancy left -- it's actually 23 years!
Here it's helpful to look at life tables, which show mortality and life expectancy at different intervals throughout the lifespan. This WHO paper by Alan Lopez et al. (PDF) examining mortality between 1990-9 in 191 countries provides some nice data: page 253 is a life table for Zambia in 1999. We see that males have a life expectancy at birth of just 38.01 years, versus 38.96 for females (this was one of the lowest in the world at that time). If you look at that single number you might conclude, like Diamond, that a 30-year old worker only has ~10 years of life left. But the life expectancy for those males remaining alive at age 30 (64.2% of the original birth cohort remains alive at this age) is actually 22.65 years. Similarly, the 18% of Zambians who reach age 65, retirement age in the US, can expect to live an additional 11.8 years, despite already having lived 27 years past the life expectancy at birth.
These numbers are still, of course, dreadful -- there's room for decreasing mortality at all stages of the lifespan. Diamond's correct in the sense that low life expectancy results in a much smaller economically active population. But he's incorrect when he estimates much more drastic reductions in the economically productive years that workers can expect once they reach their economically productive 20s, 30s, and 40s.
[Some notes: 1. The figures might be different if you limit it to "skilled workers" who aren't fully trained until age 30, as Diamond does; 2. I'm also assumed that Diamond is working from general life expectancy, which was similar to 40 years total, rather than a particular study that showed 10 years of life expectancy at age 30 for some subset of skilled workers, possibly due to high HIV prevalence -- that seems possible but unlikely; 3. In these Zambia estimates, about 10% of males die before reaching one year of age, or over 17% before reaching five years of age. By contrast, between the ages of 15-20 only 0.6% of surviving males die, and you don't see mortality rates higher than the under-5 ones until above age 85!; and 4. Zambia is an unusual case because much of the poor life expectancy there is due to very high HIV/AIDS prevalence and mortality -- which actually does affect adult mortality rates and not just infant and child mortality rates. Despite this caveat, it's still true that Diamond's interpretation is off. ]
In epidemiology, methodological quibbles, prose, public health, statistics
The great quant race
My Monday link round-up included this Big Think piece asking eight young economists about the future of their field. But, I wanted to highlight the response from Justin Wolfers:
Economics is in the midst of a massive and radical change. It used to be that we had little data, and no computing power, so the role of economic theory was to “fill in” for where facts were missing. Today, every interaction we have in our lives leaves behind a trail of data. Whatever question you are interested in answering, the data to analyze it exists on someone’s hard drive, somewhere. This background informs how I think about the future of economics.
Specifically, the tools of economics will continue to evolve and become more empirical. Economic theory will become a tool we use to structure our investigation of the data. Equally, economics is not the only social science engaged in this race: our friends in political science and sociology use similar tools; computer scientists are grappling with “big data” and machine learning; and statisticians are developing new tools. Whichever field adapts best will win. I think it will be economics. And so economists will continue to broaden the substantive areas we study. Since Gary Becker, we have been comfortable looking beyond the purely pecuniary domain, and I expect this trend towards cross-disciplinary work to continue.
I think it's broadly true that economics will become more empirical, and that this is a good thing, but I'm not convinced economics will "win" the race. This tracks somewhat with the thoughts from Marc Bellemare that I've linked to before: his post on "Methodological convergence in the social sciences" is about the rise of mathematical formalism in social sciences other than economics. This complements the rise of empirical methods, in the sense that while they are different developments, both are only possible because of the increasing mathematical, statistical, and coding competency of researchers in many fields. And I think the language of convergence is more likely to represent what will happen (and what is already happening), rather than the language of a "race."
We've already seen an increase in RCTs (developed in medicine and epidemiology) in economics and political science, and the decades ahead will (hopefully) see more routine serious analysis of observational data in epidemiology and other fields (in the sense that the analysis is more careful about causal inference), and advanced statistical techniques and machine learning methodologies will become commonplace across all fields as researchers deal with massive, complex longitudinal datasets gleaned not just from surveys but increasingly from everyday collection.
Economists have a head start in that their starting pool of talent is generally more mathematically competent than other social sciences' incoming PhD classes. But, switching back to the "race" terminology, economics will only "win" if -- as Wolfers speculates will happen -- it can leverage theory as a tool for structuring investigation. My rough impression is that economic theory does play this role, sometimes, but it has also held empirical investigation in economics back at times, perhaps through publication bias (see on minimum wage) against empirical results that don't fit the theory, and possibly more broadly through a general closure of routes of investigation that would not occur to someone already trained in economic theory.
Regardless, I get the impression that if you want to be a cutting-edge researcher in any social science you should be beefing up not only your mathematical and statistical training, but also your coding practice.
Update: Stevenson and Wolfers expand their thoughts in this excellent Bloomberg piece. And more at Freakonomics here.
In economics, epidemiology, prose, statistics
Aid, paternalism, and skepticism
Brett Keller July 31, 2012
Bill Easterly, the ex-blogger who just can't stop, writes about a conversation he had with GiveWell, a charity reviewer/giving guide that relies heavily on rigorous evidence to pick programs to invest in. I've been meaning to write about GiveWell's approach -- which I generally think is excellent. Easterly, of course, is an aid skeptic in general and a critic of planned, technocratic solutions in particular. Here's an excerpt from his notes on his conversation with GiveWell:
...a lot of things that people think will benefit poor people (such as improved cookstoves to reduce indoor smoke, deworming drugs, bed nets and water purification tablets) {are things} that poor people are unwilling to buy for even a few pennies. The philanthropy community’s answer to this is “we have to give them away for free because otherwise the take-up rates will drop.” The philosophy behind this is that poor people are irrational. That could be the right answer, but I think that we should do more research on the topic. Another explanation is that the people do know what they’re doing and that they rationally do not want what aid givers are offering. This is a message that people in the aid world are not getting.
Later, in the full transcript, he adds this:
We should try harder to figure out why people don’t buy health goods, instead of jumping to the conclusion that they are irrational.
It's easy to catch people doing irrational things. But it's remarkable how fast and unconsciously people get things right, solving really complex problems at lightning speed.
I'm with Easterly, up to a point: aid and development institutions need much better feedback loops, but are unlikely to develop them for reasons rooted in their nature and funding. The examples of bad aid he cites are often horrendous. But I think this critique is limited, especially on health, where the RCTs and all other sorts of evidence really do show that we can have massive impact -- reducing suffering and death on an epic scale -- with known interventions. [Also, a caution: the notes above are just notes and may have been worded differently if they were a polished, final product -- but I think they're still revealing.]
Elsewhere Easterly has been more positive about the likelihood of benefits from health aid/programs in particular, so I find it quite curious that his examples above of things that poor people don't always price rationally are all health-related. Instead, in the excerpts above he falls back on that great foundational argument of economists: if people are rational, why have all this top-down institutional interference? Well, I couldn't help contrasting that argument with this quote highlighted by another economist, Tyler Cowen, at Marginal Revolution:
Just half of those given a prescription to prevent heart disease actually adhere to refilling their medications, researchers find in the Journal of American Medicine. That lack of compliance, they estimate, results in 113,00 deaths annually.
Let that sink in for a moment. Residents of a wealthy country, the United States, do something very, very stupid. All of the RCTs show that taking these medicines will make them live longer, but people fail to overcome the barriers at hand to take something that is proven to make them live longer. As a consequence they die by the hundreds of thousands every single year. Humans may make remarkably fast unconscious decisions correctly in some spheres, sure, but it's hard to look at this result and see any way in which it makes much sense.
Now think about inserting Easterly's argument against paternalism (he doesn't specifically call it that here, but has done so elsewhere) in philanthropy here: if people in the US really want to live, why don't they take these medicines? Who are we to say they're irrational? That's one answer, but maybe we don't understand their preferences and should avoid top-down solutions until we have more research.
A reductio ad absurdum? Maybe. On the one hand, we do need more research on many things, including medication up-take in high- and low-income countries. On the other hand, aid skepticism that goes far enough to be against proven health interventions just because people don't always value those interventions rationally seems to line up a good deal with the sort of anti-paternalism-above-all streak in conservatism that opposes government intervention in pretty much every area. Maybe it's a good policy to try out some nudge-y (libertarian paternalism, if you will) policies to encourage people to take their medicine, or require people to have health insurance they would not choose to buy on their own.
Do you want to live longer? I bet you do, and it's safe to assume that people in low-income countries do as well. Do you always do exactly what will help you do so? Of course not: observe the obesity pandemic. Do poor people really want to suffer from worms or have their children die from diarrhea? Again, of course not. While poor people in low-income countries aren't always willing to invest a lot of time or pay a lot of money for things that would clearly help them stay alive for longer, that shouldn't be surprising to us. Why? Because the exact same thing is true of rich people in wealthy countries.
People everywhere -- rich and poor -- make dumb decisions all the time, often because those decisions are easier in the moment due to our many irrational cognitive and behavioral tics. Those seemingly dumb decisions usually reveal the non-optimal decision-making environments in which we live, but you still think we could overcome those things to choose interventions that are very clearly beneficial. But we don't always. The result is that sometimes people in low-income countries might not pay out of pocket for deworming medicine or bednets, and sometimes people in high-income countries don't take their medicine -- these are different sides of the same coin.
Now, to a more general discussion of aid skepticism: I agree with Easterly (in the same post) that aid skeptics are a "feature of the system" that ultimately make it more robust. But it's an iterative process that is often frustrating in the moment for those who are implementing or advocating for specific programs (in my case, health) because we see the skeptics as going too far. I'm probably one of the more skeptical implementers out there -- I think the majority of aid programs probably do more harm than good, and chose to work in health in part because I think that is less true in this sector than in others. I like to think that I apply just the right dose of skepticism to aid skepticism itself, wringing out a bit of cynicism to leave the practical core.
I also think that there are clear wins, supported by the evidence, especially in health, and thus that Easterly goes too far here. Why does he? Because his aid skepticism isn't simply pragmatic, but also rooted in an ideological opposition to all top-down programs. That's a nice way to put it, one that I think he might even agree with. But ultimately that leads to a place where you end up lumping things together that are not the same, and I'll argue that that does some harm. Here are two examples of aid, both more or less from Easterly's post:
Giving away medicines or bednets free, because otherwise people don't choose to invest in them; and,
A World Bank project in Uganda that "ended up burning down farmers’ homes and crops and driving the farmers off the land."
These are a both, in one sense, paternalistic, top-down programs, because they are based on the assumption that sometimes people don't choose to do what is best for themselves. But are they the same otherwise? I'd argue no. One might argue that they come from the same place, and an institution that funds the first will inevitably mess up and do the latter -- but I don't buy that strong form of aid skepticism. And being able to lump the apparently good program and the obviously bad together is what makes Easterly's rhetorical stance powerful.
If you so desire, you could label these two approaches as weak coercion and strong coercion. They are both coercive in the sense that they reshape the situations in which people live to help achieve an outcome that someone -- a planner, if you will -- has decided is better. All philanthropy and much public policy is coercive in this sense, and those who are ideologically opposed to it have a hard time seeing the difference. But to many of us, it's really only the latter, obvious harm that we dislike, whereas free medicines don't seem all that bad. I think that's why aid skeptics like Easterly group these two together, because they know we'll be repulsed by the strong form. But when they argue that all these policies are ultimately the same because they ignore people's preferences (as demonstrated by their willingness to pay for health goods, for example), the argument doesn't sit right with a broader audience. And then ultimately it gets ignored, because these things only really look the same if you look at them through certain ideological lenses.
That's why I wish Easterly would take a more pragmatic approach to aid skepticism; such a form might harp on the truly coercive aspects without lumping them in with the mildly paternalistic. Condemning the truly bad things is very necessary, and folks "on the inside' of the aid-industrial complex aren't generally well-positioned to make those arguments publicly. However, I think people sometimes need a bit of the latter policies, the mildly paternalistic ones like giving away medicines and nudging people's behavior -- in high- and low-income countries alike. Why? Because we're generally the same everywhere, doing what's easiest in a given situation rather than what we might choose were the circumstances different. Having skeptics on the outside where they can rail against wrongs is incredibly important, but they must also be careful to yell at the right things lest they be ignored altogether by those who don't share their ideological priors.
In aid industry, economics, evidence-based, international development, prose, public health, public policy
Mimicking success
Brett Keller July 5, 2012
If you don't know what works, there can be an understandable temptation to try to create a picture that more closely resembles things that work. In some of his presentations on the dire state of student learning around the world, Lant Pritchett invokes the zoological concept of isomorphic mimicry: the adoption of the camouflage of organizational forms that are successful elsewhere to hide their actual dysfunction. (Think, for example, of a harmless snake that has the same size and coloring as a very venomous snake -- potential predators might not be able to tell the difference, and so they assume both have the same deadly qualities.) For our illustrative purposes here, this could mean in practice that some leaders believe that, since good schools in advanced countries have lots of computers, it will follow that, if computers are put into poor schools, they will look more like the good schools. The hope is that, in the process, the poor schools will somehow (magically?) become good, or at least better than they previously were. Such inclinations can nicely complement the "edifice complex" of certain political leaders who wish to leave a lasting, tangible, physical legacy of their benevolent rule. Where this once meant a gleaming monument soaring towards the heavens, in the 21st century this can mean rows of shiny new computers in shiny new computer classrooms.
That's from this EduTech post by Michael Trucano. It's about the recent evaluations showing no impact from the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, but I think the broader idea can be applied to health programs as well. For a moment let's apply it to interventions designed to prevent maternal mortality. Maternal mortality is notoriously hard to measure because it is -- in the statistical sense -- quite rare. While many 'rates' (which are often not actual rates, but that's another story) in public health are expressed with denominators of 1,000 (live births, for example), maternal mortality uses a denominator of 100,000 to make the numerators a similar order of magnitude.
That means that you can rarely measure maternal mortality directly -- even with huge sample sizes you get massive confidence intervals that make it difficult to say whether things are getting worse, staying the same, or improving. Instead we typically measure indirect things, like the coverage of interventions that have been shown (in more rigorous studies) to reduce maternal morbidity or mortality. And sometimes we measure health systems things that have been shown to affect coverage of interventions... and so forth. The worry is that at some point you're measuring the sort of things that can be improved -- at least superficially -- without having any real impact.
All that to say: 1) it's important to measure the right thing, 2) determining what that 'right thing' is will always be difficult, and 3) it's good to step back every now and then and think about whether the thing you're funding or promoting or evaluating is really the thing you care about or if you're just measuring "organizational forms" that camouflage the thing you care about.
(Recent blog coverage of the OLPC evaluations here and here.)
In methodological quibbles, prose, public health, statistics
Addis taxi economics
A is in his early 20s, and he's my go-to taxi driver. He speaks good conversational English, which he picked up in part through being befriended by a Canadian couple who lived in Ethiopia for a while. Addis traffic is crazy but a bit more forgiving than some cities I've seen -- there don't seem to be many real traffic rules, but there's more deference to other drivers. "A, you drive like a pro," my friend says. "How long have you been driving?" "Oh, just six months!" (We gulp.) In Addis "taxi" is used to refer to both ancient minibuses that drive set routes throughout the city and to traditional blue-and-white cars -- often ancient-er -- that will take you wherever you want to go. (Google Images of Addis taxis here.) A's car is the latter type, an old model that breaks down often and has one window handle you have to pass around to roll down each window.
Minibuses charge a flat rate on pre-specified routes, usually just a few Birr (ie, less than $0.20 US), but the personal taxis can charge much more. So having a few reliable drivers' cell numbers is helpful because the prospect of your continued business helps ensure that you'll get a better price for each ride.
Regarding taxis more generally: always negotiate a fare before you get in. Depending on the mood of the driver, current traffic and road construction, and the evident wealth, race, or nationality of the prospective passenger, the prices quoted will vary widely. I was once quoted 60 Birr and 150 Birr as starting prices ($3.50 and $8.80 US) by two drivers standing right next to each other!
Almost all of the taxi business seems to come from internationals and upper-class Ethiopians. Thus, taxis often congregate around the neighborhoods, hotels, and restaurants frequented by these groups. You'll also get quoted a higher starting price if you're seen coming out of a nice hotel than if you pick a cab just around the corner.
Starting prices definitely differ by race as well. (Here I cite conversations with Chinese-American and Bengali-American friends living in Addis.) Drivers will generally assume you're from America (if you're Caucasian), China (if you're East Asian), and India (if you're South Asian) and charge accordingly. White people get the highest starting prices, whereas if they assume you're Chinese or Indian the starting price will be about 70% of the white price. This is, of course, entirely anecdotal, so econ PhD students take note: there's some fascinating research to be done on differential pricing of initial and final fares for internationals living in Addis. In economics this differential pricing is called price discrimination (which can actually be good for consumers as it allows producers to provide services to a broader range of people, who often have different preferences and ability to pay).
A doesn't own his taxi, and says that most drivers don't either. Instead, he rents/leases his from a man who owns many taxis. That guy made enough money ("he is rich now!") that he now goes to Dubai to buy other cars to import into Ethiopia. (Dubai is the go-to place for importing many things here.) A pays the owner a flat rate to have the taxi for a 10-day period, with more or less automatic renewals as long as he's doing well enough to keep paying the fee. If he gets sick or wants to take a day off he has to pay that day's rental fee out of earnings from another day, so A gets up at 6 am and drives until after midnight. Seven days a week.
A is only six months into the job, but he's already looking for the next gig. He aspires to work as a tour guide -- better pay and better hours, he says. And, I think, less risk of injury: almost all the taxis in Addis are from an era before airbags and seatbelts became commonplace. I think A would be a great tour guide -- I hope it works out.
In economics, Ethiopia, prose
Ethiopia bleg
Brett Keller May 23, 2012
Bleg: n. An entry in a blog requesting information or contributions. (via Wiktionary)
Finals are over, and I just have a few things to finish up before moving to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on June 1. I'll be there for almost eight months, working as a monitoring and evaluation intern on a large health project; this work will fulfill internship requirements for my MPA and MSPH degrees, and then I'll have just one semester left at Princeton before graduating. After two years of "book-learning" I'm quite excited to apply what I've been learning a bit.
One thing I learned from doing (too many?) short stints abroad is that it's easy to show up with good intentions and get in the way; I'm hopeful that eight months is long enough that I can be a net benefit to the team I'll be working with, rather than a drain as I get up to speed. I plan to get an Amharic tutor after I arrive -- unfortunately I figured out my internship recently enough that I wasn't able to plan ahead and study the language before going.
I'm especially excited to live in Ethiopia. I have not been before -- this will be my first visit to East Africa / the Horn of Africa at all. I'll mostly be in Addis, but should also spend some time in rural areas where the project is being implemented. I've already talked with several friends who briefly lived in Addis to get tips on what to read, what to do, who to meet, and what to pack. That said I'm always open for more suggestions.
So, I'll share what I've already, or definitely plan to read, and let you help fill in the gaps. Do you have book recommendations? Web or blog links? RSS suggestions? What-to-eat (or not eat) tips? Here's what I've dug up so far:
Owen Barder has several informative pages on living and working in Ethiopia here.
Chris Blattman's post on What to Read About Ethiopia has lots of tips, some of which I draw on below. His advice for working in a developing country is also helpful, along with lists of what to pack (parts one and two), though they're obviously not tailored to life in Addis. Blattman also links to Stefan Dercon's page with extensive readings on Ethiopian agriculture, and helpfully organizes relevant posts under tags, including posts tagged Ethiopia.
As for a general history, I've started Harold Marcus' academic History of Ethiopia, and it's good so far.
Books that have gotten multiple recommendations from friends -- and thus got bumped to the top of my list -- include The Emperor, Cutting for Stone, Chains of Heaven, and The Sign and the Seal. Other books I've seen mentioned here and there include Sweetness in the Belly, Waugh in Abyssinia, Notes from the Hyena's Belly, Scoop, and A Year in the Death of Africa. If you rave about one of these enough it might move higher up the priority list. But I'm sure there are others worth reading too.
For regular information flow I have a Google Alert for Ethiopia, the RSS feed for AllAfrica.com's Ethiopia page, and two blogs found so far: Addis Journal and Expat in Addis. (Blog recommendations welcome, especially more by Ethiopians.) There's also a Google group called Addis Diplo List.
One of my favorite novels is The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears -- the story of an Ethiopian immigrant in Washington, DC's Logan Circle neighborhood in the 1980s. It's as much about gentrification as it is about the immigrant experience, and I first read it as a new arrival in DC's Petworth neighborhood -- which is in some ways at a similar 'stage' of gentrification to Logan Circle in the 80s.
I've started How to Work in Someone Else's Country, which is aimed more at short-term consultants but has been helpful so far.
Also not specific to Ethiopia, but I'm finally getting around to reading the much-recommended Anti-Politics Machine, on the development industry in Lesotho, and it seems relevant.
Let me know what I've missed in the comments. And happy 200th blog post to me.
(Note: links to books are Amazon Affiliates links, which means I get a tiny cut of the sales value if you buy something after clicking a link.)
In Ethiopia, Hopkins, Princeton, prose, school, travel
Stats lingo in econometrics and epidemiology
Last week I came across an article I wish I'd found a year or two ago: "Glossary for econometrics and epidemiology" (PDF from JSTOR, ungated version here) by Gunasekara, Carter, and Blakely. Statistics is to some extent a common language for the social sciences, but there are also big variations in language that can cause problems when students and scholars try to read literature from outside their fields. I first learned epidemiology and biostatistics at a school of public health, and now this year I'm taking econometrics from an economist, as well as other classes that draw heavily on the economics literature.
Friends in my economics-centered program have asked me "what's biostatistics?" Likewise, public health friends have asked "what's econometrics?" (or just commented that it's a silly name). In reality both fields use many of the same techniques with different language and emphases. The Gunasekara, Carter, and Blakely glossary linked above covers the following terms, amongst others:
endogeneity and endogenous variables
exogenous variables
simultaneity, social drift, social selection, and reverse causality
instrumental variables
intermediate or mediating variables
omitted variable bias
unobserved heterogeneity
If you've only studied econometrics or biostatistics, chances are at least some of these terms will be new to you, even though most have roughly equivalent forms in the other field.
Outside of differing language, another difference is in the frequency with which techniques are used. For instance, instrumental variables seem (to me) to be under-used in public health / epidemiology applications. I took four terms of biostatistics at Johns Hopkins and don't recall instrumental variables being mentioned even once! On the other hand, economists just recently discovered randomized trials. (Now they're more widely used) .
But even within a given statistical technique there are important differences. You might think that all social scientists doing, say, multiple linear regression to analyze observational data or critiquing the results of randomized controlled trials would use the same language. In my experience they not only use different vocabulary for the same things, they also emphasize different things. About a third to half of my epidemiology coursework involved establishing causal models (often with directed acyclic graphs) in order to understand which confounding variables to control for in a regression, whereas in econometrics we (very!) briefly discussed how to decide which covariates might cause omitted variable bias. These discussions were basically about the same thing, but they differed in terms of language and in terms of emphasis.
I think an understanding of how and why researchers from different fields talk about things differently helps you to understand the sociology and motivations of each field. This is all related to what Marc Bellemare calls the ongoing "methodological convergence in the social sciences." As research becomes more interdisciplinary -- and as any applications of research are much more likely to require interdisciplinary knowledge -- understanding how researchers trained in different academic schools think and talk will become increasingly important.
In economics, epidemiology, methodological quibbles, prose, statistics
Facebook's brilliantly self-interested organ donation move
How can social media have a big impact on public health? Here's one example: Facebook just introduced a feature that allows users to announce their status as organ donors, and to tell the story of when they decided to sign up as a donor. They're -- rightly, I think -- getting tons of good press from it. Here's NPR for example:
Starting today, the social media giant is letting you add your organ-donation status to your timeline. And, if you'd like to become an organ donor, Facebook will direct you to a registry.
Patients and transplant surgeons are eager for you to try it out.
Nearly 114,000 people in this country are waiting for organs, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. But there simply aren't enough organs to go around.
It's an awesome idea. Far too few Americans are organ donors, so anything that boosts sign-up rates is welcome. As Ezra Klein notes, organ donation rates would be much higher if we simply had people opt out of donating, rather than opt in, but that's another story. (And another aside: I hope they alerted some smart people beforehand to help them rigorously measure the impact of this shift!)
Call me a cynic, but I think the story of why Facebook chose to do this -- and in the way they did it -- is more interesting.Yes, there's altruism, but Facebook is a business above all. Maybe they're just trying to cultivate that Google ethos of "we sometimes spend lots of money on far-sighted things just to make the world a better place." Facebook will certainly garner lots of public good will from this.
But I think, even more importantly, Facebook gets magnificent cover for introducing new modules on health/wellness. Check out the screenshot from their newsroom post on the new features:
That's right -- in the new Health & Wellness section you can enter not only whether you're an organ donor, but also these categories: "Overcame an Illness," "Quit a Habit," "New Eating Habits," "Weight Loss," "Glasses, Contacts, Others," and "Broken Bone."
All life events some people may want to share, of course. But Facebook makes money off of advertising, and just think of how much money Americans spend on weight loss, or on trying to quit smoking (or more usually, continuing it), or on glasses and contacts. Then think how much more advertisers will pay to show ads to segments of the billions of Facebook users who have shared the fact that they're actively trying to lose weight.
Maybe Facebook has seen this sort of health data as a major growth area for some time, but was wary of introducing such features in the wrong way. On any other news day the introduction of these features would have triggered a new outbreak of the "Facebook feature prompt privacy outcry" and "Why does Facebook need your health data?" stories. Sure, we'll get some of those this time, but I think any backlash will pale in comparison to the initial PR bump.
I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with the move, and I certainly welcome any boost in organ donor registration. It may just be that this is a case where Facebook's business interests in inducing us to share more of our personal information with them just happens to happily coincide with a badly needed public good. Either way, the execution is brilliant, because so far I've mostly seen news stories talking about how great organ donation is. And I just updated my Facebook status.
In cynical rants, prose, public health
On food deserts
Gina Kolata, writing for the New York Times, has sparked some debate with this article: "Studies Question the Pairing of Food Deserts and Obesity". In general I often wish that science reporting focused more on how the new studies fit in with the old, rather than just the (exciting) new ones. On first reading I noticed that one study is described as having explored the association of "the type of food within a mile and a half of their homes" with what people eat. This raised a little question mark in my mind, as I know that prior studies have often looked at distances much shorter than 1.5 miles, but it was mostly a vague hesitation. And if you didn't know that before reading the article, then you've missed a major difference between the old and new results (and one that could have been easily explained). Also, describing something as "an article of faith" when it's arguably something more like "the broad conclusion draw from most most prior research"... that certainly established an editorial tone from the beginning.
Intrigued, I sent the piece to a friend (and former public health classmate) who has work on food deserts, to get a more informed reaction. I'm sharing her thoughts here (with permission) because this is an area of research that I don't follow as closely, and her reactions helped me to situate this story in the broader literature:
1. This quote from the article is so good!
"It is always easy to advocate for more grocery stores,” said Kelly D. Brownell, director of Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, who was not involved in the studies. “But if you are looking for what you hope will change obesity, healthy food access is probably just wishful thinking.”
The "unhealthy food environment" has a much bigger impact on diet than the "healthy food environment", but it's politically more viable to work from an advocacy standpoint than a regulatory standpoint. (On that point, you still have to worry about what food is available - you can't just take out small businesses in impoverished neighborhoods and not replace it with anything.)
2. The article is too eager to dismiss the health-food access relationship. There's good research out there, but there's constant difficulty with tightening methods/definitions and deciding what to control for. The thing that I think is really powerful about the "food desert" discourse is that it opens doors to talk about race, poverty, community, culture, and more. At the end of the day, grocery stores are good for low-income areas because they bring in money and raise property values. If the literature isn't perfect on health effects, I'm still willing to advocate for them.
3. I want to know more about the geography of the study that found that low-income areas had more grocery stores than high-income areas. Were they a mix of urban, peri-urban, and rural areas? Because that's a whole other bear. (Non-shocker shocker: rural areas have food deserts... rural poverty is still a problem!)
4. The article does a good job of pointing to how difficult it is to study this. Hopkins (and the Baltimore Food Czar) are doing some work with healthy food access scores for neighborhoods. This would take into account how many healthy food options there are (supermarkets, farmers' markets, arabers, tiendas) and how many unhealthy food options there are (fast food, carry out, corner stores).
5. The studies they cite are with kids, but the relationship between food insecurity (which is different, but related to food access) and obesity is only well-established among women. (This, itself, is not talked about enough.) The thinking is that kids are often "shielded" from the effects of food insecurity by their mothers, who eat a yo-yo diet depending on the amount of food in the house.
My friend also suggested the following articles for additional reading:
Food deserts are complex and real (Amanda Behrens, Center for a Livable Future)
Baltimore food czar: food deserts studies don't apply (Adam Bednar, North Baltimore Patch)
Nischan, Nestle Weigh In On Food Deserts (Eleanor West, Food Republic)
In journalism, methodological quibbles, prose, public health, public policy, statistics
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Telemachus, Urged by Mentor, Leaving the Island of Calypso
Charles Meynier
Pen and black ink and brown wash with black chalk
Support: Laid paper
Sheet: 47.5 x 61.5 cm (18 11/16 x 24 3/16 in.); Mounted: 51 x 66 cm (20 1/16 x 26 in.)
Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 2014.14
This image is in the public domain. You can use it however you want. Read more about Open Access.At this time, we are not offering high-resolution TIFF images of detail or alternate views.
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You can copy, modify, and distribute this work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
Charles Meynier was a recipient of the Grand Prix de Rome in 1789 and became a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1815. A history painter, he created the grand decoration for ceilings of the Louvre (1819 and 1822), and produced numerous pictures glorifying the Napoleonic legend, which for the most part remain in the château de Versailles. Through the assistance of his brother Meynier Saint-Phal, a famous actor of the Comédie Française who paid for his studies, the artist entered the atelier of the painter François André Vincent (1746-1816), a principal rival of the master Jacques-Louis David. The studio in which Meynier received his training was known by the students of David as the atelier of the"perruques," (the wigs) the name given to royalists or conservatives during that period.
Signed, lower left, in black ink: c Meynier f.t, and inscribed, lower left, in black ink: 1800; inscribed, verso, center in black ink: Télémaque pressé par Mentor,/quitte L'île de Calypso./composition dont le tableau a Reuni tour le Suffrages /au Sallon de 1801 gravé dans les annales de peintures/Meynier. invt Delineavit 1800, and, lower right, verso, in black ink: Meynier No 157
Possibly, T. C. Bruun-Neergaard (1776-1824), Paris (possibly, his sale, Paris: rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hôtel de Bullion [Gendron], 29 August - 7 September 1814, lot 243; Henri Baderou, Paris; Frederick J. Cummings (1933-1990), Detroit and New York, until 1985; Colnaghi, New York, 1985; Private collection, New York, until 2014
New York, Colnaghi, French Drawings, 1760-1880, 17 April - 23 May 1985, cat. no. 8, illustrated
{{cite web|title=Telemachus, Urged by Mentor, Leaving the Island of Calypso|url=https://clevelandart.org/art/2014.14|author=Charles Meynier|year=1800|access-date=17 July 2019|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
DR - French
Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
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Delegates Go!
Let's see if we can figure this out. With the craze of Pokemon Go, sweeping the country and the world, I've begun hearing stories of people discovering creatures at their workplaces. They can only discover them if the app is active. They can only see them if they open up the camera app and look for them. This seems to take away from productive activities. If it's happening at workplaces, landmarks, churches, etc., what's the likelihood that it's happening at the Republican Convention in Cleveland and will happen at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia next week?
Two out of 3 people have a smartphone. We won't bump the percentage up though chances are delegates comprise of people who might be better connected than the general populace. Roughly 6% of smartphone users have downloaded the game app. Assume only half are actively playing because they're in popular hang-outs and near landmarks.
0.67x0.03=0.02 or 2% of convention delegates are probably playing the game at any given time. 48-50 Republicans may be playing the game rather than paying close attention to what's happening. My guess it'll probably be those who feel disengaged from the process and the party nominee. Similarly, there may be 90+ at the Democratic National Convention. They may have different reasons, like there's no drama. Maybe the percentage will be higher in Philadelphia just for that one reason.
Maybe there should be an app that says 'Gotcha' when you spot a delegate playing the game!
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Where to Begin (Part 1 of “Homestead: Venturing into the Poetics of Place”)
by Michelle Elrick
Over the next six months, Michelle’s contributions to "Communiqué," a new online exclusive from CV2, will take you behind the drafting of her new poetry manuscript in a series of place-specific writings titled "Homestead: Venturing into the Poetics of Place."
“I’m going home,” I tell the cab driver, as he loads my suitcases into the trunk. He smiles and says, “Alright then,” puts the car into gear and pulls away from the curb outside my house in Winnipeg. It’s 4:52 a.m. and we’re on our way to the Richardson International Airport, where I’ll board the 6:30 flight to Toronto en route to Glasgow. I’ve been to Glasgow once before, for three hours, during which I ate black pudding and grilled potato bread with sautéed mushrooms on the side. The grease and the blood sausage danced a mocking jig on my jet lag and threatened to undo my partially digested in-flight dinner of four hours previous. This time, I’m going to wait until I get to Rathven, the village of my Scottish ancestors, before choosing something safe to eat, like pasta or a pork chop with potatoes on the side.
I’m about to embark on a roundabout journey to the homes of my past—both those I’ve inhabited and those inherited through maternal and paternal family lines. The aim is to take a poetic account of these places, to deepen my understanding of “home,” and to complete a new poetry manuscript. I’ll be visiting the Parish of Rathven, Scotland, where the last Scottish Elricks of my paternal line lived prior to their emigration in the mid-19th century. Following this, I’ll be in Salzburg, Austria, where my mother was born and raised until age ten. Then it’s home to Canada with a visit to Abbotsford, British Columbia, where I spent my first twenty years. Although these places may be particular, the story of distant roots is an incredibly common one for the contemporary North American. In fact, the experience of being born at the end of a branch that spans an ocean is perhaps one of the unifying elements of Canadian culture; and it begs a thorough inquiry into the idea of home.
Over the years, I have played with various definitions of home, from the simplest location-based designation of current residence/childhood house, to the broader regional terms of landscape, province or country. I have also played with the axiom “home is where the heart is” (which my mother had hanging in cross-stitch on the kitchen wall of the Monashee house where I learned to read), broadening the definition to include the handful of people I love and care about. From there I went further, thinking back to the time in my mid-late teens when I first awakened to myself as a free-thinking being capable of both interpreting the world and acting in it. The places, people, art and events I experienced during that time are largely responsible for the way my personal taste and notion of well being developed. I began to define home as “the context in which one first speaks the word I.” As the years went on, I developed a pattern of moving houses—often within the same city, yet I also tried new cities (Kelowna, Vancouver, Winnipeg, London)—averaging one move every eight months since 2001. During this time, I kept certain cardboard boxes—ones that had proved their functionality and strength and showed no signs of breaking down or bottoming out. I became a master of the homey, able to move in, unpack, set up, and host a dinner party within the first two days of getting the keys. With all of this packing and unpacking, I began to think of home as “what you take with you when you go.” While all of these definitions describe home in a limited way, the essence of home is a much more complex thing that goes beyond place, people and context to include personal and collective history, myth and family legend, as well as texture, flavour and the whole repertoire of sensual experiences that produces feelings of familiarity and comfort. What better way to approach such an essence than through poetry?
The plane takes off and Winnipeg falls into the distance below like a penny flicked from the crest of the Abby-Mission bridge. Ten thousand feet and zooming east. Dawn rushes forward at an unnatural speed and I think about the locale of transition, the place that is the road. It’s a fluid, shifting place that is contingent on movement. It occurs to me that in choosing to write about place, I am writing a filter through which to view time dilate and compress, wrap and fold and loop. I remember Doreen Massey’s proposition that places are experienced as spatio-temporal events, that they are unique to the perception of the dweller, that there is no here without now, no then without there, and that one can never go home, since the temporality of that once place will have rendered it foreign in a new present time.
I don’t know what I will find in Rathven, or if the research I do there will open new doors into poetry. I wonder how I will fare in Salzburg without much knowledge of German. I wonder if I will find a way to lift the experiences of my childhood in Abbotsford into the now, and capture them afresh. Venturing into the poetics of place is a little like venturing into a room with your eyes closed, only to open them and find that you’ve lost your sense of smell. Just when you think you’ve got it, you realize there is so much more to apprehend. Outside the window, sun shines on the top-side of weather, a pristine, white field of light above a cloudy day in Thunder Bay. Not a bad place to begin.
Michelle Elrick is a poet and fiction writer from British Columbia and Manitoba. She is the author of a collection of poetry, To Speak, and a recipient of the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer. She is the former poetry editor of Geez magazine and coordinator of In Dialogue, the Manitoba Writer’s Guild reading series. Her work has appeared in Geist, Prairie Fire, EVENT and other journals. She is working on a new collection of poetry. For more information on her work, visit www.michelleelrick.com.
This piece is part of ‘Communiqué,’ a CV2 web exclusive.
Homestead: Venturing into the Poetics of Place
Rathven (Part 2 of “Homestead: Venturing into the Poetics of Place”)
Salzburg (Part 3 of “Homestead: Venturing into the Poetics of Place”)
Abbotsford (Part 4 of “Homestead: Venturing into the Poetics of Place”)
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Furman Kornfeld & Brennan LLP
Andrew S. Kowlowitz
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Andrew S. Kowlowitz is a partner focusing on attorney malpractice, professional liability and the defense of high exposure construction liability claims. Mr. Kowlowitz has successfully defended professionals, property owners and large construction companies in all phases of litigation in federal and state court, including trial. His practice also involves representing lawyers in grievance matters and partnership disputes. Mr. Kowlowitz has extensive appellate experience having argued numerous appeals involving attorney malpractice, professional liability and general liability.
Mr. Kowlowitz frequently lectures to attorneys and conducts risk management seminars. He has appeared as a lecturer in connection with numerous New York State Bar Association-sponsored CLE programs. Mr. Kowlowitz is frequently published in the New York Law Journal, the New York State Bar Association Journal, the New York State Bar Association, Trial Lawyers Section Digest and the Professional Liability Underwriting Society (PLUS) Journal.
Mr. Kowlowitz is the editor of the New York State Bar Association, Trial Lawyers Section Digest, and a member of the New York State Bar Association, Law Practice Management Committee.
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Mr. Kowlowitz is a graduate, cum laude, of the State University of New York at New Paltz with a Bachelors of Science in accounting, and has received a Juris Doctorate from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law with a concentration in taxation. He is admitted to practice in the State of New York, New Jersey and Florida, the U.S. District Court, Southern and Eastern District of New York and the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Representative Cases/Assignments
188-90 Eighth Ave. Hous. Dev. Fund Corp. v. Filemyr, 2014 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2261, 2014 NY Slip Op 31281(U) (N.Y. Sup. Ct. May 13, 2014)
Am. Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co. v. Barry, McTiernan & Moore, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 89553 (S.D.N.Y. 2010)
Balkheimer v. Spanton, 103 A.D.3d 603, 959 N.Y.S.2d 697 (2d Dep’t 2013)
Board of Mgrs. of Bridge Tower Place Condominium v. Starr Assoc. LLP, 111 A.D.3d 526, 975 N.Y.S.2d 41 (1st Dep’t 2013)
Casolo v. Locascio, 2014 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 6412 (Sup. Ct. Essex Cnty. 2014)
Charles v. Broad St. Dev., LLC, 89 A.D.3d 885, 932 N.Y.S.2d 537 (2d Dep’t 2011)
Charles v. Broad St. Dev., LLC, 100 A.D. 3d 476 (2nd Dep’t 2012)
Depetris & Bachrach, LLP v. Srour, 2011 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 7088 (N.Y. Cty. Sup. 2011)
Dinhofer v Medical Liab. Mut. Ins. Co., 92 A.D.3d 480, 938 N.Y.S.2d 525 (1st Dep’t 2012)
Ferrandino & Son, Inc. v. Wheaton Bldrs., Inc., LLC, 82 A.D.3d 1035, 920 N.Y.S.2d 123 (2d Dep’t 2011)
Fidelity & Deposit Co. of Md. v. Levine, Levine & Meyrowitz, CPAs, P.C., 66 A.D.3d 514, 886 N.Y.S.2d 693 (1st Dep’t 2009)
Fleyshman v. Suckle & Schlesinger, PLLC, 91 A.D.3d 591, 937 N.Y.S.2d 92 (2d Dep’t 2012)
Gabayzadeh v. Brafman, 502 Fed. Appx. 83 (2d Cir. 2012), affirming 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 142965, 2010 WL 6620688 (S.D.N.Y. 2010).
Harvey v. Greenberg, 82 A.D.3d 683, 919 N.Y.S.2d 519 (1st Dep’t 2011)
Hayat Masudi v. Wireless Channels Inc., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 110185 (E.D.N.Y. 2009)
Kaloakas Mgt. Corp. v. Lawrence & Walsh, P.C., 157 A.D. 3d 778 (2nd Dep’t 2018)
Kashelkar v. Bluestone, 306 Fed. Appx. 690 (2d Cir. N.Y. 2009)
Katebi v. Fink, 51 A.D.3d 424, 857 N.Y.S.2d 109 (1st Dep’t 2008)
Kempf v. Magida, 982 N.Y.S.2d 916, 2014 NY Slip Op 2410 (2d Dep’t 2014)
Lavian v. Tokayer, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 25912, 2009 WL 812065 (S.D.N.Y. 2009)
Magnetic Media Holdings, Inc. v. Zahakos, 2013 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2058, 2013 NY Slip Op 31044(U) (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2013)
Masudi v. Wireless Channels, Inc., 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21472, 2010 WL 816156 (E.D.N.Y. 2010)
Mizuno v. Nunberg, 122 A.D.3d 594, 996 N.Y.S.2d 301 (2nd Dep’t 2014)
Morad Assoc., LLC v. Lee, 112 A.D.3d 463, 975 N.Y.S.2d 881 (1st Dep’t 2013)
Murdock v. Legal Aid Soc’y, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1487 (E.D.N.Y. 2015)
Optical Communications Groups, INC. v. Rubin, Fioerlla & Friedman, LLP, 145 A.D. 3d 469 (1st Dep’t 2016)
Perkins v. Am. Transit Ins. Co., 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6703, 2013 WL 174426 (S.D.N.Y. 2013)
Purchase Real Estate Group, Inc. v. Jones, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 43201, 2010 WL 1837809 (S.D.N.Y. 2010)
Red Hook/Gowanus Chamber of Commerce, Inc. v. Brightbill,72 A.D.3d 403, 898 N.Y.S.2d 125 (1st Dep’t 2010)
Russo v. Rozenholc, 130 A.D.3d 492, 13 N.Y.S.3d 391 (1st Dep’t 2015)
Schloss v. Steinberg, 100 A.D.3d 476, 954 N.Y.S.2d 37 (1st Dep’t 2012)
Schottland v. Brown Harris Stevens Brooklyn, LLC, 137 A.D. 3d 995 (2nd Dep’t 2016)
Schutz v. Kagan Lubic Lepper Finkelstein & Gold LLP, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 1519, 2014 WL 278399 (2d Cir. N.Y. Jan. 27, 2014) affirming, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 93762, 2013 WL 3357921 (S.D.N.Y. 2013)
Sosa v. Chase Manhattan Bank, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21580, 2012 WL 560453 (E.D.N.Y. 2012)
St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co. v. Sledjeski & Tierney, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61393, 2009 WL 2151425 (E.D.N.Y. 2009)
Stang LLC v. Hudson Sq. Hotel, LLC, 158 A.D. 3d 446 (1st Dep’t 2018)
Stankey v. Tishman Constr. Corp. of N.Y., 131 A.D.3d 430, 2015 NY Slip Op 06643 (2015) (1st Dep’t 2015)
Steele v. First Nat’l Bank of Mifflintown, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187604 (M.D. Pa. 2012)
Travelers Indem Co. v. Paris & Chaikin, PLLC, 2016 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 4404 (Sup. C.t. New York Cnty. 2016)
Win Hay LLC v. Chin, 83 A.D.3d 450, 920 N.Y.S.2d 340 (1st Dep’t 2011)
WIN Radio Broadcasting Corp. v. Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth, PLC, 94 A.D.3d 985, 942 N.Y.S.2d 211 (2d Dep’t 2012)
Yuan v. Kaplan, 129 A.D.3d 714, 8 N.Y.S.3d 916 (2nd Dep’t 2015)
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Newton (‘Newt’) Artemis Fido Scamander was born in 1897. His interest in fabulous beasts was encouraged by his mother, who was an enthusiastic
breeder of fancy Hippogriffs. Upon leaving Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Mr Scamander joined the Ministry of Magic in the
Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. After two years at the Office for House-Elf Relocation, years he described as
‘tedious in the extreme’, he was transferred to the Beast Division, where his prodigious knowledge of bizarre magical animals ensured his rapid
Although almost solely responsible for the creation of the Werewolf Register in 1947, he says he is proudest of the Ban on Experimental Breeding,
passed in 1965, which effectively prevented the creation of new and untameable monsters within Britain. Mr Scamander’s work with the Dragon
Research and Restraint Bureau led to many trips abroad, during which he collected information for his worldwide best-seller Fantastic Beasts and
Where To Find Them.
Newt Scamander was awarded the Order of Merlin, Second Class, in 1979 in recognition of his services to the study of magic beasts, Magizoology.
Now retired, he lives in Dorset with his wife Porpentina and their pet Kneazles: Hoppy, Milly and Mauler.
As of 2017, Newt Scamander is still alive and well.
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'Eco-friendly' water-use system to benefit fruit processing industry
Home|PRESS RELEASES|'Eco-friendly' water-use system to benefit fruit processing industry
A university-industry partnership begun several years ago is bearing fruit — in the form of new technologies that could significantly enhance the sustainability of California’s food processing industry.
Among several projects aimed at improving efficient use of natural resources is a plan to reduce water use and discharge at Wawona Frozen Foods, a multifaceted fruit processing company based in Clovis.
Leading the work for California State University, Fresno is professor Gour Choudhury of the Department of Food Science and Nutrition. Choudhury, who also directs the university’s Center for Food Science and Nutrition Research, is a specialist in food processing systems engineering and development and has obtained several U.S. patents. Directing the work at Wawona is Bill Smittcamp, company president and also a member of the center’s advisory board.
Wawona has been involved with Fresno State in various research and development projects for many years, but the partnership to improve water use efficiency began shortly after Choudhury joined the Fresno State faculty in 2004. He and Smittcamp began discussing sustainability in food processing.
One of their shared concerns was water use.
“Water is the most important and essential input to fruit and vegetable processing plants,” Choudhury said. “Companies use large volumes of water and also generate large amounts of wastewater, and disposal issues are becoming a major impediment to growth and expansion of the food processing industry in the Central Valley, particularly in Fresno County.”
A specific problem in the Fresno area is disposal and treatment of wastewater. The combination of 500,000 residential water users and a few fruit processing plants has brought Fresno’s municipal treatment facility to near capacity. An expansion is planned, but in the meantime, the city may have to reduce inputs.
Smittcamp says the city tends to aim first at industry when it comes to water discharge restrictions, and Wawona is seeking to be preemptive in reducing the company’s water use, as well as wastewater discharge, before increased regulations are enacted.
“The water use issue in anything we do is huge,” Smittcamp said. “Sometimes it just takes another set of eyes to look at our situation and ask questions on how we could do things differently.”
That happened through the new partnership.
Choudhury began exploring ideas for reducing water use and discharge during fruit peeling and in other areas. One idea was to employ a fluid mixture of liquid and gas to take the skin off the peach. A specially-designed process was developed and tested in a laboratory setting at Fresno State; it was successful, with a “very significant” 80 percent reduction in water use, Choudhury said.
Choudhury then designed a commercial prototype unit and contracted with a local manufacturing company for fabrication. Wawona engineers helped to oversee installation and operation in the Clovis plant last summer.
Choudhury has labeled the new process an “eco-friendly lye-peeling system,” because it uses significantly less water than a conventional system and generates less wastewater.
“It peels very well,” Choudhury said. “Now the hard numbers on its water use have to come in.”
That will have to wait till next season. Since the prototype unit was installed late in the processing season last fall, engineers had just enough time to focus on operation and fine-tuning. During the winter months some adjustments will be made, and next summer, analysis of real water use and discharge will be conducted.
If the system proves viable, the processing industry will have an opportunity to increase sustainability statewide.
“Successful implementation of this project will result in the development of a technology that will comply with state and federal pollution control regulations and decrease the discharge from fruit processing plants, thereby reducing the disposal cost,” Choudhury said. “Such a system will reduce water intake and improve the profitability and the overall economic viability of the food processing industry in California.”
Smittcamp noted that cost of conversion to new systems can be high for the processor and will likely take years to accomplish, assuming the technology proves durable. Choudhury said once the process is patented and licensed, it could be manufactured locally and processors would have to purchase the equipment and install it.
Not surprisingly, the intent to reduce water use in processing has spawned other ideas that also are being explored, Choudhury reported. In fact, he is testing a second concept that would reduce water use in another phase of peach processing at Wawona. He
also is exploring a third idea for reusing processing by-products as an organic substrate for producing specialty crops such as mushroom.
Research work at the Wawona plant will likely continue for several years as new processing systems are evaluated and improved. Choudhury hopes the efforts will expand industrywide.
Results will be reported, as work continues, through various Fresno State outlets, including through the California State University Agricultural Research Initiative program, which provided funding jointly with Wawona for this work.
For additional project information, contact Choudhury via e-mail at gchoudhury@csufresno.edu.
(Copy by Steve Olson, California Agricultural Technology Institute)
By Shirley Armbruster|January 13th, 2009|Categories: PRESS RELEASES|Tags: Water Conservation, Water Technology|0 Comments on "'Eco-friendly' water-use system to benefit fruit processing industry" 0 Comments
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Our Partnership With St. Jude
In August 1978, TKE officially joined Frater Danny Thomas in the fight against childhood cancer by raising money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Now, 30 years later, TKE is recommitted to this amazing cause and will strive to continue the pledge set forth by our fellow Fraters. Even though Danny died in February 1991, his vision for St. Jude lives on.
Danny Thomas formed ALSAC to raise funds solely for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. And while the hospital struggled to sustain growth during the early years, support from individuals and organizations like TKE helped keep it afloat. Danny noted in the Fall '78 edition of THE TEKE, "Every time we'd think we had enough for next year, the researchers would come up with a bigger need. Fortunately, with people like my Fraters in TKE, we have been able to accomplish what we initially thought was a hopeless task."
Though this was the era when fraternities were viewed as wild and reckless, Danny noted how Tau Kappa Epsilon seemed to be driven by a different beat - one of goodwill.
"There's a unifying bond that grows from young men working together for community service to others that will keep them together for the rest of their lives," Danny noted during a 1978 interview for THE TEKE. "And when they work for something as important as saving the lives of children, that experience can't be equaled."
Tekes began a Keg Roll for St. Jude that same year, and chapters from across the country participated. One of the first chapters that participated was the Theta-Mu chapter at the University of New Orleans where their event was a marathon distance (26.2 miles). Many other chapters followed suit and these fundraisers continued until the early 1990s. The negative connotation the keg brought to the fraternal world ended the TKE Keg Roll, but its philanthropic impact on St. Jude is still being felt.
Danny further stated in THE TEKE: "I am proud to be a Teke, and I know St. Jude is going to approve of this marriage between the greatest Fraternity in the world and the greatest hospital with the most miraculous research center."
At Conclave 2015 in New Orleans, Chief Executive Officer Donald E. Aldrich and Past Grand Prytanis Bob Barr announced that Tau Kappa Epsilon fulfilled its 5-year, $1 million pledge to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital--a year early, nonetheless. Fraters across TKE Nation continue to support the children of St. Jude, but we still have work to do. Now is the time to make your work count!
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Quick Facts
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is leading the way the world understands, treats and defeats childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases.
Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food – because all a family should worry about is helping their child live.
Treatments invented at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20 percent to more than 80 percent since its opening. We won’t stop until no child dies from cancer.
Because the majority of St. Jude funding comes from individual contributors and partners like Tau Kappa Epsilon, St. Jude has the freedom to focus on what matters most – saving kids regardless of their financial situation.
St. Jude freely shares the discoveries it makes, and every child saved at St. Jude means doctors and scientists worldwide can use that knowledge to save thousands more children.
Learn More About Our Partnership With St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Why Proton Therapy?
Proton therapy allows doctors to precisely target tumors with high doses of radiation while sparing nearby healthy tissue and organs. This new therapy offers a huge benefit for children with brain tumors and other cancers in sensitive areas like the eye, because it reduces harm to the developing body and lessens the risk of secondary tumors later in life. St. Jude estimates that within five years 80 percent of the pediatric patients needing radiation will receive proton therapy.
The proton therapy center is the first in the nation dedicated solely to children and designed specifically to meet the needs of young patients. The center includes three treatment rooms, treatment preparation and recovery rooms for patients, plus a musical staircase that leads to a rain forest-inspired waiting room. The multidisciplinary staff comprises specialists from oncology, radiation therapy, diagnostic imaging, nursing, child life and others.
The powerhouse of proton therapy is the synchrotron, a massive particle acceleration system that generates the proton beam. Highly-skilled technicians program the synchrotron to deliver a beam at the exact energy levels needed for each specific patient. The proton beam then travels through the vacuum of the synchrotron at seven-tenths the speed of light, directly to the treatment room where it will be administered with exactitude to the patient, via a nozzle.
The depth and intensity of the proton beam is guided by advanced control systems to conform to the shape of the tumor. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the features unique to the St. Jude proton therapy system in November 2015 and the center began seeing its first patients in December.
The Epsilon-Kappa Alumni Association of Tau Kappa Epsilon at Loyola University Chicago was installed as a chapter on January 19, 2017.
Since 1899, Tau Kappa Epsilon has never had an exclusionary clause for membership. TKE does not judge men on their wealth, rank or honor, but instead on their personal worth and character.
Our mission is to "to aid men in their mental, moral, and social development for life." In essence, we build Better Men for a Better World.
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Three arrested for migrant smuggling in as many incidents
TAGS: Migration, Crime
A 16-year-old teenager was arrested on Monday on the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos on charges of people smuggling after a spate of incidents on Monday.
Port authorities said the suspect, a foreign national, was the skipper of a dinghy with an outboard motor carrying 41 migrants from Turkey to Greece. The boat was intercepted in the sea area of Agrielias off the island’s coast.
Port authorities intercepted another dinghy with 32 migrants in the sea area off Myrsini and arrested the 36-year-old skipper, a foreign national, while a similar vessel was found with 26 migrants off the coast close to the island’s airport. The 28-year-old skipper, also a foreign national, was arrested.
In all three cases the migrants were transferred to the port of Mytilene.
Creditors insist on budget milestones
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Home / Blogs / Hugh Warwick's blog / For love of the earth - a reaction to the Pope's encyclical
For love of the earth - a reaction to the Pope's encyclical
By Hugh Warwick
To judge by the reaction of some members of the far-right in America, it would seem that the Pope has hit a nerve. By daring to speak a truth, that many so dearly wish to remain hidden, he has potentially begun the revolution so long sought. For too long the Church has been comfortable to wallow in pomp and wealth while focusing displeasure on the activities of consenting adults in bed.
By ignoring, or worse still, condoning and taking part in some of the worst excesses of human existence, the church, as portrayed in history and the media, has not been an attractive proposition to me. The most persuasive argument came from a Catholic Worker friend who pointed out to me that Jesus was a nonviolent, revolutionary anarchist.
But then, Pope Francis …. He is doing a similarly good job at attracting me to the work of the church. Could he be the force that takes us over the tipping point? Moves the mass from ignorance to understanding? From passive acceptance to action?
The use of language that is bold is truly delightful – the acceptance that there is a real threat of the “unprecedented destruction of the ecosystem” and that this is caused by us is something that I, and many many others, have been saying for years. Yet the upper reaches of most establishments, political or religious, have remained mute. Why? Because to accept this as a reality means to accept the need to set about a fundamental shift in the way we operate as a species. And that will require a shift of power away from those who currently hold it in their tight grip.
He talks about our ‘home’. This is the shared planet, the home of uncountable life. The use of that word, home, is important. In Greek the word for home is oikos from which we get ecology and economy. Ecology is the study of the home; economy is the management of the home. As was pointed out by the perceptive thinker Satish Kumar, to manage what you have not studied is absurd.
But there is a light that comes from these words that is more penetrating than the call for ecological consideration. It also presents an opportunity for all parties to reconsider how they communicate about what is really important.
For so long we in the environmental world, have relied upon logic to be the motivation for people to make the necessary changes in their lives; changes that will start the process of reducing our impact. And one of the reasons we have done that is, I believe, in a reaction against ‘faith’. It is faith that got us into the mess we are in – faith that there is going to be another world to frolic around in after we kill this one, faith that we can keep on growing economies forever on a finite planet.
But there is a common theme between essences of religion and environmentalism, and that is love. The late American writer, Stephen Jay Gould, captured this so beautifully when he said, “We will not fight to save what we do not love.” And Pope Francis is allowing us again to go back to what motivated everyone I know – not logic, but love. I was talking to a botanist about the beauty in nature and he said, "scientists do themselves a disservice if they deny the importance of the unquantifiable." And you don’t get much more unquantifiable than love.
I do not think that these wise words will be enough to beat me out of my atheism, but they do herald a moment when the Catholic Church becomes more relevant to us all. I may not share the belief in the motivation for doing good, but I do share the relief of millions that such a powerful body may start a revolution that will see good done to life on earth.
© Hugh Warwick is an ecologist and writer. See: www.urchin.info
Keywords:environmentalism | environmental action | Environment | Ecology | climate change | catholic church | pope francis
Hugh Warwick's blog
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Cover: Nathan Dvir, Coming Soon, 2008-2013
1 - Johanna Diehl, Ukraine Memories
Presented by Jean-Christophe Blaser
2 - JJ Levine, Switch
Presented by Véronique Terrier Hermann
3 - Jean-Daniel Berclaz, Points de vue
4 - Il était une fois deux fois
Presented by Werner Kühler
5 - Les Blow-ups de Blow-Up
Presented by Michel Giniès et Christoph Schifferli
6 - Haus am Gern, Autoportrait comme couple d’artistes XVIII
Presented by Clément Chéroux
7 - Wundergarten der Natur: Broken Kindles par Sebastian Schmieg et Silvio Lorusso
Presented by Yannick Bouillis
8 - Peter Piller, Umschläge
Presented by Kevin Moore
9 - L’Ellipse
Presented by Martin Crawl
10 - Aurélien Froment, À Cheval
11 - Avant que ça n’arrive, Les collisions de Nicolas Descottes
Presented by Sam Stourdze
12 - The Operators' Invisible Hands, Apparition of a distance, however near it may be by Paul Soulellis
Presented by Joachim Schmid
13 - Type 42 ou la capture de l’écran
Presented by Sam Stourdzé
14 - Natan Dvir, Coming Soon
The Other of Art
In 2011, ELSE was launched with an aspiration to play with photography, to break away from the pretty image, since the issue of its status as documentary or art piece seemed to be largely obsolete. All that was left in the cultural field was a photograph perceived as a piece. Yet, already at the time, it was a piece stripped of that master that had for so long been associated as prefix. It is not that masterpieces have vanished from the history of photography; rather, let us say that they have been deactivated to leave room for re-contextualized images, replaced in their production or dissemination context. They thus asserted themselves as cultural objects. As the concept of vernacular is now being theorized and clarified, and as Werner Kühler himself - a regular guest in these pages—no longer hesitates to proceed with his coming out, it blatantly appears that it is not the mass of these other images that attracts us so much as their activation by actors from the field of photography - artists, collectors, critics, curators—into the field of art. These sets are, in Clément Chéroux's own words, the other of art.
It is the revenge of the archive, the encyclopedic palace, the dialectic of the document stripped of its primary status—its informative function—and thrown into the core of new cosmologies. Yesterday marginalized, these reinvented sets are the focus of sustained attention today. For the past three years, ELSE has been one of their ardent advocates.
Sam Stourdzé
Director of the Musée de l'Elysée (2010-2014)
Jean-Christophe Blaser
Curator at the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, co-curator for the exhibition reGeneration : 50 Photographers of Tomorrow, shown in Europe, the United States and China. Independant curator for photography and contemporary art exhibitions, he manages Kunstart, the assocation that runs Neuchâtel Art Center (CAN).
Yannick Bouillis
After studying philosophy, Yannick Bouillis (1972, France) is journalist for Asahi Shimbun (European affairs) before becoming a dealer in rare contemporary books (Artist books / Photography / Graphic Design ). He specializes on issues related to the image (photography and new media), interested in innovative mediations in art (museality, editorial practices…). Based in Arles and Amsterdam, he is the founder and director of Offprint Paris and Amsterdam Art Book Fair. He is presently authoring an essay on the links between poetry and contemporary art.
Martin Crawl
Lives and works in Paris. The series Where to be when the past is over was shown in Arles, as part of the exhibition From Here On (2011). The series Portrait of the Artist as a Daring Young American was exhibited at Paris Photo (2011). He has also published a text in the catalogue released for the exhibition Derrière le rideau, L’Esthétique Photomaton (2012).
Clément Chéroux
Photography Curator at the Centre Pompidou – Musée national d'art moderne. A Photography Historian and Doctor in Art History, he runs the magazine Etudes photographiques. He curated the exhibitions Mémoire des camps: photographies des camps de concentration et d’extermination nazis, 1933-1999 (2001), Le Troisième oeil: la photographie et l’occulte (2004), La Subversion des images: surréalisme, photographie, film (2009), Shoot! La photographie existentielle (2010), Edvard Munch: l’oeil moderne (2011), Derrière le rideau, l’esthétique Photomaton (2012).
Erik Kessels
Creative Director at KesselsKramer, an independent international communication agency located in Amsterdam and London. Kessels (1966) published several books of vernacular photography through KesselsKramer Publishing, including the In almost every picture series. He is one of the editors for the alternative photography magazine Useful Photography, along with Hans Aarsman, Claudie de Cleen, Julian Germain and Hans van der Meer. Kessels was granted the Amsterdam Award for the Arts in 2010.
www.kesselskramerpublishing.comhttp://www.kesselskramerpublishing.com/
Werner Kühler
German photographer and collector (1968, Bochum). After studyingat a Dusseldorf Art school, he decides not to become an artist, buth rather to practise, on occasion or to order, the full range of applied photography. He has been collecting vernacular photography for fifteen years.
Michel Giniès
Press photographer specialized in portraiture of artists. His images have been published in major international publications. In 1995, he started a collection of rare cinema stills. In February 2014, he will be involved both as lender and photographer with the exhibition Paparazzi at the Centre Pompidou Metz.
Independent scholar and curator, living in New York, his recent exhibitions and publications include Jacques Henri Lartigue : The Invention of an Artist (2004 ; 2012 for the French edition) ; Words Without Pictures (2009) ; Starburst : Color Photography in America 1970 - 1980 (2010); Robert Heinecken (2012); and Alchemical (2013).
Christoph Schifferli
Born 1950 in Zurich, he studied Sinology and Economic History in Paris; in 1980, he undertakes research in Asia, and works in various positions in publishing and technology sectors. Since 1983, he’s mostly focused on multimedia and Internet. Christoph Schifferli collects photography and artists’ books since the 1980s.
Joachim Schmid (1955) is a Berlin-based artist who has been working with found photographs since the early 80s. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in numerous collections. In 2007, Photoworks and Steidl published a comprehensive monograph, Joachim Schmid: Photoworks 1982–2007, on the occasion of his first retrospective exhibition.
www.schmid.wordpress.com
Director of the Musée de l’Elysée and Chief Editor for ELSE from 2011 to 2014. For many years now, he studies the mechanisms at work in the dissemination of images, with a focus on the links between photography, art and cinema. He has published several books and curated many exhibitions, including Le cliché-verre de Corot à Man Ray, the retrospectives Dorothea Lange and Tina Modotti, Chaplin et les images and Fellini, La Grande parade.
Véronique Terrier Hermann
A Doctor in Art History and Professor at the Ecole supérieure des beaux-arts in Nantes, she focuses more specifically on how contemporary art interplays with cinema and documentary.
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Engaging the Powers
About the papers
Part 1: The Powers at Work
Part 2: Christians in the World
Part 3: Beyond the Received Wisdom
Part 4: Lord, What Shall We Do?
Part 5: Towards a Different Future
List of all papers
New Papers to Part 1
Introducing 'Engaging the Powers'
The title of the project is taken from an influential book by the American theologian, Walter Wink. Wink is deeply perturbed by the imperialistic and militaristic stance of his home country which he sees as quite incompatible with Christian ideals. He sets out in this and two companion volumes to demonstrate how far the government of the US has departed from God’s will - much as the prophets of the Old Testament berated the rulers of ancient Israel and Judah. The ‘powers that be’ in the US, says Wink, claim to be acting in God’s name but their actions and policies are more aligned to the barbaric beliefs of the ancient Babylonians. Might this impassioned crie de cour apply to other nation states besides the USA, one has to inquire.
My theme, of course, is yes it does here in the UK though in a slightly different form. My starting point, however, is very unspectacular. Some fifteen years ago, I was running a small project in my hometown of Reading, in which I distributed campaigning literature from organisations like Christian Aid, Tearfund and CAFOD, drawing attention to the plights of many underdeveloped countries, particularly those of sub-Saharan Africa, which were deeply indebted and were being forced by the international institutions, led by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) to open up their markets to the emerging multinational corporations in return for forgiveness of some of their unrepayable pile of debts The detrimental effects of this policy for the inhabitants of the debtor nations led to claims of economic injustice and oppression by the charities concerned.
In an attempt to interest churches in Reading in this situation, I regularly distributed batches of campaigning literature from the charities which usually took the form of asking individuals to sign and send off postcards to relevant government ministries and other institutions. Each of the churches which joined this scheme provided an ‘advocate’ who distributed the literature and hopefully explained, referring to the literature provided by the charity concerned, why it was necessary. This seemed to work well, but when I also attempted to gain the attention of our advocates in a series of papers I wrote drawing attention to the background of what was actually going on, interest was virtually non-existent. At this time, I also came across a quotation of Archbishop Desmond Tutu to the effect that ‘Christians are very good at fishing the bodies out of the water, but not so good at finding out how they got there in the first place’. Well, the archbishop certainly didn’t have the churches in Reading in mind when he made this comment. It looked as though the problem I had encountered might be much more widespread.
At the risk of being accused of reaching broad general conclusions on insufficient evidence, I nevertheless generalised this situation by proposing that churches, at least those in the Church of England in our part of the country, appear to lack curiosity in the activities of ‘the powers’ which are so often seriously detrimental to a healthy society. If they lack curiosity, then they also lack knowledge and without knowledge of what is really going on they are in no position to offer informed criticism of the world as we find it. This appears to be a serious gap in the way the church relates to the world at large. The present project is designed to encourage a change of attitude in this respect.
It may well be objected that bishops and other senior church people frequently make critical comment about the social and economic shortcomings that we see about us. They do indeed, but there is no apparent means by which their insights might percolate down to parish level. This is seriously problematic because the obvious way of attempting a remedy, that into say, providing a stream of information sheets, unmediated by an advocate after the Reading model, would be not only ineffective but would seriously threaten the wellbeing of many, perhaps most parishioners, who lack the intellectual confidence to delve into these murky waters. I examine this problem in the course of the project.
HAMISH PRESTON
Writer of the Engaging the Powers website
Next: About the Papers
In order to download this page, click here.
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Displaying items by tag: christianity
Erenlai - Displaying items by tag: christianity
Utopia, on a Smaller Scale
Benoît's "Locating Utopia on the Map" has prompted my endless musings on utopias. Without going back as far as to Adam and Eve or Plato's Republic, one such utopia which left a vivid impression on me is the early Christian community of the first century Jerusalem established by Peter, as narrated in the Acts. The believers sold all their possessions, held everything in common and distributed goods based on needs. All was well, except when a man named Ananias and his wife Sapphira secretly kept a portion of the money they received from selling their land, they were both immediately punished with death at Peter's feet.
I often wonder how such a vision could be realized in present-day America. How many camels would go through the eye of a needle when the very people who claim the most literal and fundamentalist adherence to the Bible also happen to be aligned with a conservative voting block that most radically opposes any perceived "income redistribution"? One way for them to explain things away is to claim that the believers in Peter's church were only supposed to give up a portion, not all of their assets. I do not blame them for their unwillingness to give up their entire property, because I honestly admit that I would have a hard time renouncing mine, and I love my own garden much more than my neighbor's (this last point, however, might actually count as a virtue by the Ten Commandments). I am simply amazed at their sophisticated way of interpreting the Bible.
We do not know how long this early Christian community would have lasted had it not become scattered under persecution, but the relationship with surrounding communities does constitute a crucial factor for the survival of any utopia. That is why imaginary utopias tend to be set up conveniently on an island, such as Thomas More's eponymous story, which reminds me of a less famous work by a French Enlightenment writer abbé Prévost, whose voluminous novel Cleveland or the English Philosopher contains a subplot about a group of Protestants fleeing persecution who settled on an unknown island surrounded by rocks. In this perfectly idyllic society, there was no need for money and the residents shared everything based on their needs. A crisis arose, however, when the female and male birth rate became mysteriously so imbalanced that over a hundred maidens were waiting to be married. When six young men were recruited to join the colony, the elders decided that the only equitable way to determine who they should marry was to draw lots. The utopia started to disintegrate when it attempted to dictate the residents' innermost feelings in the name of equality.
Defining utopia, which connotes imagination and illusion, as social experiment, as Benoît did, may help to ground its plausibility. Utopia may become feasible if we renounce the all or nothing approach and experiment on a smaller scale. One of the reasons why Robert Owen's experiment at New Lanark enjoyed success for many years while his adventure in New Harmony, Indiana failed to take shape was because in New Lanark, he built upon an existing infrastructure and made noticeable improvements on workers' conditions, while in New Harmony, it was much more challenging to design a brand new society that would satisfy the needs and aspirations of new arrivals with vastly different backgrounds and principles.
When designing a utopia, a primary question emerges: where to recruit members for such a community? Past utopias were usually built by people who shared a similar ideal, such as religion. I also wrestle with the question of what to do with the children born from the members of such a community. While adults can accept a "social contract" on a voluntary basis, how can we ensure the children's freedom of choice, especially if the relationship between the utopia and the larger society is more or less hostile?
I can envision such a community for people 60 and older who share a strong emotional bond. In China, former high school classmates can conceivably create various types of communal living arrangements. Having spent their tender years together and bonded in some cases by a lifetime of friendship, high school classmates constitute an important support network in China. In many instances, formal or informal leaderships already emerged, facilitated by various social media, with more or less frequent activities organized such as reunions, celebrations, funerals and hardship donations. Alumni groups tend to maintain excellent relationship with the larger society which views such a bond as natural, uncontroversial and worthy of encouragement. Because members have held vastly different professions and achieved more or less material success in life, it is possible that some of them might be willing to share their respective expertise and devote a portion of their wealth to create various models of retirement community that offer mutual material and emotional support while positively impacting the social and natural environment. Given that the loneliness of the elderly is an increasingly grave problem facing modern society to the point that Pope Francis considers it one of the two greatest evils, communal living of older adults may be a type of utopia worthy of some consideration.
This is a response to an article by Benoit Vermander, which you can read here. Photo credit: New Harmony by F. Bate (View of a Community, as proposed by Robert Owen) printed 1838 Wiki Public Domain.
Opinions, Dreams & Videos
The Prophetic Task of Chinese Christianity
Chinese Christianity is confronted to many challenges, some of them present from the start of its history, others fostered by current social and political conditions. There is however one challenge that I would like to point out, which is not proper to China but about which Chinese Christians could, I believe, make a difference that would, on the long term, hugely impact World Christianity.
As in other parts of the world, Chinese Christians inherited the divisions that came from the history of the West: the "Eastern {Syrian} Church" that modestly expanded in China around the 5th-9th centuries was already marked by the theological and cultural divisions agitating the Church during that period. Tridentine Catholicism firmly shaped the Chinese Church from the end of the 16th century onwards. The arrival of Protestant missionaries during the nineteenth century radically diversified China's religious landscapes. Cultural differences among the Catholic religious congregations that were in charge of the missionary endeavor also fostered different types of devotion and liturgical sensitivities. Even Orthodoxy has left some marks on Chinese Christianity.
Such diversity is not without merits. It offers various outlooks on Christian traditions and overall understanding. It opened up a variety of paths for the development of local communities. Still, Chinese Christianity taken as a whole has suffered from the hostility and misunderstandings that the various denominations have brought with them and that some of its leaders are stirring even today. If open hostility is usually avoided, indifference and self-centered development are the norm, to the extent that Protestant and Catholics often have difficulties to recognize each other as sharing the same creed and the same baptism. The ecumenical encounters that may happen are enforced by the state administration, and have no impact on grassroots communities. Each Church is mainly preoccupied with its endogenous growth, and even when religious groups are subjected to the same challenges (as is recently the case in Zhejiang province and, progressively, other places) they are at pains to identify a commonality of interests.
Making China a beacon of ecumenical cooperation sounds like a far-away ideal, a dream without basis in reality. However, would not such cooperation be a road for the development of Chinese Christianity by healing past misunderstandings, and asserting a communion of faith conducive to a better appreciation of Christian ethos by Chinese society as a whole? Would it not be a "conversion within the conversion" that would give impetus and accrued reflexivity to Christian Churches experiencing the challenges associated with rapid, sometimes anarchic growth? Would it not give them accrued leverage upon the state? And, more importantly, would it not be a way to mobilize Chinese traditional resources of religious toleration by showing the world ways to pragmatically but purposefully overcome past divisions within Christianity?
It is precisely because Chinese Christianity is in a predicament that it needs to look for inventive ways of developing and asserting itself. And instead of being seen by other Churches as a "mission field" that permanently needs help and support from them, China's Churches could and should be making a decisive contribution to the future of Christianity. There is no better way for this than being at the frontline when it comes to the overcoming of the divisions that Western Churches brought with them along with the Gospel of reconciliation.
Photo by Liang Zhun
Is Asia Pacific? Interreligious conflicts, dialogue and inventiveness in today’s Asia
There is no need to underline the dizzying diversity of Asia’s religious landscape. I do not intend here to attempt even a preliminary sketch of the patchwork of faiths and traditions that extend from Pakistan to Japan… I just would like to point out some general trends that have emerged in the last two or three decades, trends that have been partly reshaping the setting of Asia’s religions. Also, I would like to reflect on the challenges that these trends are creating. Furthermore, I’d like to suggest a few possible answers that Christianity could articulate in response to current developments, provided that Christians wish indeed to become “peacemakers” as the Sermon on the Mount calls them to be. Such responses may also inspire the ones brought forward by other religions. In any case, interreligious dialogue in Asia has become an endeavor that no religion can escape from, not only for spiritual reasons but also in order to achieve the following goals: (a) progressing towards national and ethnic reconciliation (b) ensuring religious freedom and other civil rights (c) tackling global challenges (dialogue of civilizations, ecology, struggle against consumerism, development of a global ethic.)
Revivalism and Identity Crisis
Revivalism has become a predominant religious trend. The clearest example is provided by the new vitality found by Islam in Asia, as is also the case in other parts of the world. Such fact is of utmost importance: Indonesia is the most populated Muslim nation in the world; Bangladesh and Pakistan have overwhelming Muslim majorities, and Malaysia has also a Muslim majority, though not as pronounced; India has a strong Muslim minority; and Muslim populations are located on conflict-prone frontier regions in the Philippines, Thailand and China.
The point here is that such “vitality” - experienced with different feelings according to the standpoint of the observer - encompasses an array of very different phenomena that have to be carefully distinguished:
- A kind of revivalist atmosphere stressing both Islamic and ethnic pride on a background of post-colonial sensitivity and widespread religious education, affecting the consciousness of Muslim populations all around Asia.
- Marginal violent movements carrying attacks, movements often fostered by international networks.
- Pervasive political strategies trying to impose and enforce Islamic laws and Islamic state apparatus; such strategies threaten the fabric of the secular state (which was a feature of post-colonial Asia) or lead some states that from the start were not altogether secular to become openly theocratic.
- At the same time, it is important to note that, since 2001. Muslin communities often suffer from accrued hostility and prejudices, especially in countries where they are a minority - and these prejudices can reinforce violence and deviant behaviors. Some of these communities also suffer from disadvantageous social background and economic conditions.
A few additional remarks are in order:
- Among these trends, the third one might be the most preoccupying one. In history, such strategies have led to the annihilation/assimilation of populations living in Muslin societies and professing other faiths. Strategies vary according to the size of the proportion of the Muslim population and the overall political situation. A distinction is to be made between Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia on the one hand, and the other countries of the region where Muslims are a vocal minority, sometimes with complaints rooted into national history. At the same time, further comparison between Bangladesh and Pakistan for instance might help us to assess better the role of cultural or international factors in religious attitudes: Bangladesh prides itself of a spirit of tolerance and accommodation seemingly lacking in Pakistan. This opposition of style between two Moslem countries leads back to an array of cultural and political factors deeply anchored into the collective memory of the two protagonists.
- In countries with Muslim majority, Christians of tribal origin generally constitute the most vulnerable population when it comes to forced conversion and discrimination. At the same time, Christians who are social leaders because of their wealth, occupation or educational level are often at the frontline of ongoing confrontations (this is patent in Pakistan).
- Of course, besides the Islamic revival, other sources of concern exist, which strongly influence interreligious conflicts and cooperation on the continent as a whole: authoritarian States manipulative of religions or even of interreligious dialogue; revivalist political/religious currents and organizations that might go with the assertion of a “national’ religion (in a Buddhist context, the phenomenon can be observed in Sri-Lanka); materialism and consumerism as they are cutting off the very roots of interreligious dynamics and dialogue.
- With the exception of Vietnam maybe, one notes everywhere a strong growth of Protestantism, most of the time under a fundamentalist and proselytizing garb, which often exacerbates tensions already existing. Proselytism also characterizes new religions, which are in the rise in many countries. As a consequence of this increase of religious communalism, a country like China is much less “syncretistic” than in the past and, witnesses a new assertiveness of believers who are conscious of clear-cut confessional divisions.
In a Buddhist temple in Bangkok (July 2010)
1) In a context marked by potential or actual confrontations, but also by encounters and fluctuating frontiers, believers should not renounce the ideal of living and praying side by side as a privileged form of dialogue. Sometimes, and in different circles, there have been hesitations and reservations on a form of interreligious dialogue rooted into the fact of praying side by side. Still, one can reasonably think that God takes more pleasure in seeing people praying together than killing each other… Prayer often manifests itself as a kind of “revolutionary force”, and religious leaders are well advised to let and encourage people find their own way of associating their prayers in times and places of conflicts, natural disasters, or just for building up brotherly neighborhoods. Actually, what might be the most dangerous feature of violence is the fact that it exercises a kind of fascination that leads all people involved to a hardening of their own identity, fostering a chain of violent reactions - violent in spirit even when not in deeds. In this light, and even if such posture looks “idealistic”, the importance of a spiritual, even “mystical” approach towards interreligious understanding cannot be overlooked.
2) At the same time, it is impossible not to tackle directly the political dimension of interreligious encounters (understood as dialogue and tensions): ethnic or national revivalist movements and religious revivals are associated phenomena; ethnic, partisan and religious lines are often blurred. In the Catholic Church, a document of the Second Vatican Council, Dignitatis Humanae, has established the principle of religious freedom, associating it with a reflection on the mission, nature and duties of the state. At the same time, the text was strongly influenced by the American constitutionalism tradition. Asian religious leaders now need to clarify their stance about the secular state (which most of them tend to belittle or flatly reject.) Asian religions should debate of their political principles and, hopefully, agree on a few pressing tasks: (a) definition of the secular state, (b) pushing towards further regional union, encompassing a bill of rights emphasizing the spiritual roots of Asia (both their diversity and their strength), (c) working for equality among sexes (which might constitute the most important check against radical Islam on the long run)… Also going along this “political imperative”, arises the exigency to be always truthful about history. Interreligious and inter-ethnic encounters are made possible or are blocked by narratives that are shared or are conflicting. When they happen in a context where conflicting narratives are honestly recognized and retold, such encounters operate as a healing of memories.
3) Asia is a region marked by an irreducible linguistic, cultural and religious diversity. Traditionally seen by Christianity as a practical and theological challenge, such diversity is actually a treasure that needs to be assessed, appreciated and interpreted. Peace-building is thus to be seen as an ongoing endeavor inseparable from the development of interreligious dialogue: both tasks are anchored into an interpretative process through which cultures, creeds and world-views are perpetually reshaped. On the long run, the “translation” of traditional languages and narratives that the in-depth meeting with the Other makes possible nurtures a creative reinterpretation of one’s spirituality and faith.
4) Value education and other actions conducive to a culture of dialogue must target in priority women and the youth, as these two sectors are the ones who are susceptible to foster in the future a less rigid and more compassionate social culture. Value education starts from existential requirements such as the importance of honesty, mutual respect and joy. Interreligious cooperation is actually anchored into the nurturing of basic values that, ideally, could and should be taught in the schools of a pluralistic secular state.
A “musical” metaphor might help us to ascertain what is at stake in such encounters: we all have different musical tastes, different “ears”, and yet we are called to do music together. What then will come out of our musical disagreements? At the end of the day, we cannot bet for sure on the kind of music that God likes and composes. Maybe He does not compose in the C scale or in B moll, maybe He composes a kind of serial or computer-generated music that goes through disharmonies and rhythmic breaks – music that we do not immediately appreciate. Creative music generally challenges our listening habits - and we can assume that God indeed is a creative composer.
Religions at the Crossroads 當神人相遇
The Other “Ties That Bind”: Christianity in East Asia and the Pacific
In this and similar conferences, we are in the process of being reintroduced to one another–like a gathering of a long-lost family. Not just Taiwanese, especially the aboriginal population, and the Island peoples–who are joined by ancient linguistic and cultural ties; but Westerners, Europeans and Americans as well.
Focus: Mapping and Unmapping the Pacific
Finding your path within the unexpected
In this two-part interview, Barnabe Hounguevou tells us the story of how he gradually decided to join the Jesuits, how was assigned to Taiwan by the society, and what he likes most about the island.
Looking at the World from Other's Eye 透過他人的眼睛看世界
Friday, 03 May 2013 13:29
Focus Response: Father Jacques Duraud, SJ on 'My God?'
Father Jacques Duraud made this reflection on his own faith in response to the eRenlai focus on faith and god in April this year. How do you conceive of faith and god, or even of a world without belief? Feel free to share with us!
Focus: My God?
The Taiwanese Experience: Adjusting to life on the other side of the world
In this video we talk to Roberto Villasante, a Spanish Christian living in Taiwan and learning Chinese, about his insights into Taiwanese culture, how it differs from the West, and what he misses most about home.
A Modern Transposition of the Saint-John Apocalypse
Chinese ink, color pencils, a schoolboy's quill and some paper were the only materials used by the French artist Gaston-Louis Marchal to perform a 78,4 square meter drawing.
This gives place to 84 paper panels that are used as squares for a tapestry.
With graphic computing techniques, this tapestry has been transformed into vast and noticeable frescoes visible in the church of Our Lady of Hope in Castres.
Image and Imagination 亞洲的想像花園
In Search of Lost Faith
Photography by Liz Hingley
Few would deny that the modern world is facing a spiritual crisis today. This observation was met with consensus in the beginning of the 20th century and continues on today.
As late as the Renaissance, Western civilization was dominated by Christianity. As scientific knowledge and methodology evolved, they started to chip away at the foundations of the Western theological worldview, starting with the findings of scientists such as Galileo Galilei and reaching an apex with the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origins of Species in 1859. Nowadays, most people do not buy in to the idea that our lives are governed by a certain deity (or deities). Neither do they believe that our world was created by some supernatural force. Science has apparently won the battle over religion, and many of us would pride ourselves as enlightened, intelligent modern human beings, free from the superstitious beliefs that dimmed the minds of our ancestors.
However, the proliferation of New Age theosophy and the increasingly complex discourse on astrology proves otherwise; thanks to the evolution of the technological industry, you can now receive complex astrolabes that can not only tell you your traditional astrological sign but also your moon sign and your ascending sign, and so on ad nauseum, which each have their own meanings and are supposed to influence you in different arenas of your life. What's more, the attraction of astrology is immune to scientific scrutiny and it’s not unusual to find PhD science graduates indulging in the guilty pleasures of astrology and feng shui. Clearly, the Promethean wisdom of science is not sufficient to quench our thirst for other-worldly meaning.
Max Weber, in his 1918 lecture "Science as Vocation" quotes Tolstoy’s concise explanation of why science cannot satisfy our spiritual appetite: "Science is meaningless because it gives no answers to our questions, the only questions of import to us: "What shall we do and how shall we live?"" Of course, as one who took up science as a vocation, Weber is not one to agree too quickly with the statement that "science is meaningless," but he does agree that the presupposition of a complete, wholesome theological metanarrative projects a stable theological subject, while the lack of such creates an alienated, self-centered individual, unsure of what to make out of the world or what to make out of himself. Weber further concludes that "natural science gives us an answer to the question of what we must do if we wish to master life technically. It leaves quite aside, or assumes for its purposes, whether we should and do wish to master life technically and whether it ultimately makes sense to do so."
Noting this sense of spiritual lack and the impotency of science, many people in the contemporary world have returned to their churches and their temples, in order to find spiritual peace. It is easy to imagine, however, that this is by no means an easier route. What has been undone by science cannot be remedied so easily. A couple of months ago, eRenlai presented a focus entitled "My God?" that explored the discovery, loss and rediscovery of faith. Interviewees included followers of Buddhism, Catholicism and Christianity. A Buddhist interviewee mentioned how difficult it was to completely commit to her faith, as in the modern world people are often jaded and guarded against religion. Even after several years of Buddhist practice, her Master doubts whether she has even reached the minimum requirement of becoming a true Buddhist.
The problem of committing to religious beliefs that are unscientific does not only exist in Buddhism. In order to avoid awkward encounters with scientific knowledge, such as the theory of evolution, the majority of Christian teachings nowadays mostly take a symbolist approach to the Scriptures. Those who embrace the fundamentalist approach and deny every scientific statement that opposes the propositions of the Bible are extremely scarce and are often viewed as misfits in contemporary society. However, though the symbolist approach is accepted in modern society, it is not a satisfying method, in that the authority to interpret sacred texts is then granted to humans and it gives the whole process a political spin. Who gets to decide the specific meaning of each text, and does that make the interpretation infallible? How do we know whether such an interoperation is not simply a guise for manipulation by vested interests? It is these doubts that constitute the core canon of literature on religious doubt such as A Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man or The Way of All Flesh. It is thus easy to see how difficult it is to maintain a steadfast religious conviction in modern society, despite the fact that science itself offers nothing better.
So what do we do now? For those who wish to remain religious, Max Weber suggests an "intellectual sacrifice," similar to a fideistic leap of faith, though this is no easy task, as demonstrated by the example of our Buddhist interviewee. For the non-believer, he has to search for the answer himself, to determine who is his God and who is his devil. Science works only insofar as it becomes a tool for the modern man to clarify his ideas. Either path he chooses, concludes Weber, the most important thing is to maintain his integrity. If one is faced with doubts about one's beliefs, one should have the courage to face these doubts head on, and not simply rush to the nearest exit.
Daring to Take Risks 勇於冒險
The Evolution of Rituals
Rituals and celebrations have always been a source of fascination for me. Despite growing up in Spain, my brother and I were raised by atheist parents and didn't undergo many of the common rites of passage that Spanish children did. I remember fierce little arguments with my classmates at primary school who would claim I had no name, since I hadn't undergone baptism. In Spain, not being baptised and, later on, confirmed was quite unusual for a child. There are usually large parties and celebrations involved with confirmation and I distinctly remember my friends excitedly looking forward to the gifts and the food. Though I never really envied them as such, it did occasionally make me feel left out, because, as a child, who doesn't want to have parties and receive gifts?
Focus: Rites and Rituals
A Centre for the Middle Country
The Beijing Centre for Chinese Studies (TBC) opened in 1998 and is located on the campus of the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.
In this interview with Father Thierry Meynard SJ, director of TBC, we learn of his story leading up to being named director, his thoughts on the importance of learning about China, and a detailed explanation of the services that the Centre provides.
Programs and contact: http://www.thebeijingcenter.org/
Beacons of hope 亞洲的人文引擎
Gender and Weddings in Taiwan
Red candles, ceremonial cannons, fresh flowers, everybody coming together to celebrate, but with all the throwing of fans (the bride throws a fan on the ground to represent that she's leaving her youthful temper behind her), the bride's mother throwing water at the bride's departing car (spilled water can't be retrieved, which signifies that the daughter should not go back to her old house just like the water can't be unpoured) and walking over broken tiles (which represents overcoming the past and expelling evil deities), the bride can't help but be a little overwhelmed. "Rites" are a kind of standard or a restriction, if a wedding is supposed to be for both the bride and the groom, then why are all the restrictions during the marriage rite imposed on the woman?
Translated from the Chinese original by Conor Stuart
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Previous Topic | Other hospital specialists for rheumatoid arthritis Surgery for rheumatoid arthritis - upper limb and neck | Next Topic
An important thing to bear in mind is that nowadays medication taken soon after diagnosis can slow the progression of joint damage and lessen the need for surgery. Disease Modifying Anti-Rheumatic Drugs (DMARDs) and biological treatments (anti-TNF therapy, rituximab and others) have made a big improvement to the way rheumatoid arthritis can be treated. These drugs tend to stop the gradual destruction of bones and joints and reduce the need for surgery. For people who have had RA for a long time (before these drugs were available) surgery may still be needed as the damage to bones and joints has already been done.
Half the people we interviewed had needed surgery, some only one or two operations but others, who had lived with the disease for many years, had several replacement joints.
Pat was diagnosed in 1982 at the age of 25 and talks about the many operations she has had since then.
Pat is married and has two daughters aged 29 and 20 and no longer living at home. Pat is a housewife and does two hours a week of voluntary work in her local community centre. She says it helps her keep in touch with her community and provides an occasion to smart up. Ethnic background' White British.
In 1988 I had a hip replacement cos I really couldn’t walk 5 yards at all. I was OK round the house, round the kitchen, you know leaning little, I just couldn’t walk down, I couldn’t walk down my hallway and it’s probably what fourteen foot or something. Me legs shrunk to about that much, I don’t know how deep that is, you know, when you put your knees together, that knee was dropped, that’s how much I’d worn away, the joint had worn away and I had that done in the January of 88 and that was quite successful, touch wood, I’m still got the same one anyway. And then in 97 well me toes all started to get real big bursars on them and things like that and I had, I had the toes straightened and a few other pins put in me toes and then 2 years later, 99, then me left hand had really, really gone over like, really down like that so I had to have them, and they’re plastic implants, those now. So it is much straighter than it was although you know, it doesn’t look like but it is much straighter and although there’s not much, there’s not much bending in them he says, if you leave them too far, they’re unrepairable. Once they’ve really gone over too far, those joints like that, we can’t get your fingers back in line. So you know, obviously I went along with that, so that was 99. 2004 that finger had a really big nodule on it that I kept knocking, you know, and I just said, “Can you take the nodule off?” and the Consultant said, “No,” he said, “A new joint,” but he said, “I don’t think it’s going to be successful because of your other problems,” but the Occupational Therapist who works with him saying, “Well yeah I think she needs to go have it done.” She persuaded him just to do one joint and not them all. So I also, I’d say, it’s probably not bad , it doesn’t bend, you know, it doesn’t bend much but it’s alright and yeah so that’s it really. I do thing these are going actually and I’m sure within, within the next few years they, see if I relax them, they’re just going like that. So I’m probably need to have them done but I’m trying to put them off because I am right handed so there’s not much I can do with me left hand you see. I can’t lift and I can’t grip and I can’t do anything and I know once I have my right hand done, I’m going to be really, really not be able to do anything, you know.
Some people were happy to have surgery to get rid of their pain, whereas others did not want any unless it was absolutely vital and tried muscle strengthening exercises to avoid it. Others knew that because of their age and the fact that prostheses wear out after a time, that they would need further operations so chose to wait as long as they could. The technical advances in prosthetics reassured people that revision operations could be successful.
Two women chose to have a second consultant's opinion to set their minds at rest that surgery was the right course of action. Having confidence in the surgeon's ability helped people face the operations. One woman felt it was important that the surgeon was not only specialised on a particular joint but also had experience with RA as well as osteoarthritis patients.
Some people wanted to know as little as possible about the operation, and one woman went into it as a positive experience.
Explains feelings towards her joint operation, not wanting to know details and seeing it as a positive step.
But my knees were, oh horrendous so but no I was I didn't want to know about the operation it was one of those people, some people want to know everything about it, every little detail and watch the videos and stuff and no and I've got a partner who's gone through things and the infection side of things, and I just thought I'd rather put cotton wool in my ears and rather not know about certain things.
But no I wasn't fearful, I, it was funny, the more operations I had the more I didn't look forward to it. I looked forward to it in a positive way, I'd make out, it's funny, I used to go in to get a, it was like I was going in for a makeover, I treated it as that, so I'd have a new joint, so I'd have a new outfit to come out with and when I had my knees, when they were doing my knees, I hadn't worn trousers for a long time and so to have a pair of nice black trousers on when my legs were straight, that was, it was just fantastic, so it was like a glorified plastic surgery [laughs]. So I tried to be positive and I'd do things within the hospital, I'd take things in that I'd enjoy doing.
So rather than sort of think about what the operation was going to do and how poorly you were going to be for a few days through that I'd sort of rather take, I'd take in some bits and pieces I was going to do or read, or catch up with friends with letter writing and that so I'd look forward to it in a way, as though it was a bit of a break. God, I can think of better ones but you know, but that was okay, yeah.
No I wouldn't be frightened at all about having a joint replacement. It's funny it's such a major thing, and you think they're chopping bits off you and putting metal in you and you know, you sort of say, in some sort of subconscious way you're saying bye to the old bits and hello to the new bits, you know, and it's a funny barmy way you go on with, but you know, I've done far more with these new knees. It's funny before I'd gone in for the knee replacement I thought, I was out in the garden, and I thought 'Well it doesn't matter about this knee anymore now, it's going anyway'. So I was there, and I thought if anyone could see me trying to dig a hole and I felt in absolute agony and I thought, it was just, the sensation was it doesn't care, it doesn't matter now, it's going this week [laughs]. So but it was quite funny, but they've been brilliant.
However, others emphasised the need to ask the surgeons questions about what they were going to do. One woman particularly wanted to know how it would feel in the weeks after surgery. Another said hospitals made her feel vulnerable and the formal atmosphere made it hard to ask the consultant all the questions she would like. Some participants had talked to other patients and heard worrying stories of similar operations that went wrong.
Feels surgeons could explain more and patients should ask questions about the planned operation.
Self employed marketing consultant. Married with one adult child born after diagnosis. Founder of National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society (NRAS). Chair of charity and active campaigner to raise awareness and increase standards of care for people with RA.
I think they need to tell you, I don't, I think surgeons I think they may be better now than they were many years ago but I think they, they don't always tell you as much as they could do. But I think it's also in part the patient's fault because I don't think patients ask. And there is, there is a certain element of not wanting to know too much but needing to know enough to be able to help yourself. I mean my hip flared when I had my knee done.
My hip flared quite badly and so that held up the progress on my physiotherapy on my knee and getting it mobilised because my hip was so painful and even with things like Pethadin it just wasn't really stopping the, the pain. And then the surgeon explained to me that, you know, when, when he did my knee of course they got, the get your knee up by your chin and they're banging the metal in and they're sawing bits off bones and, and I'm thinking, 'This is too much information!' [laughs]. So, you know, but that explained why my knee, my hip flared, because my hip isn't used to being put through that kind of gymnastics.
And so things like that, you know, you, you think, 'Well maybe he might have warned me about that'. Because I had, you know, two nights of no sleep at all and it's, nights are long in hospital when you're in pain and there's nothing much that they can do about it. So yes, they, they, I think they could probably give you a bit more information at times.
Several people had surgery privately mainly because of the longer waits in the NHS or because they had health insurance. One woman, who had 10 operations in all, described how for aftercare for one operation she was moved to an NHS ward with more experienced staff.
Was very glad to have moved from a private room to an NHS ward after her hip operation.
A lot of the other operations, being as I had them privately, I was in a room on my own so I didn't have that. I didn't have that support and help until the, until the replacement of the replacement hip that I had 3 years ago. That I had the operation in a private capacity but I was then moved into the national health ward because the rheumatologist considered that the national health ward was much more able and experienced in dealing with rheumatoid arthritis and he thought it would benefit me if I was cared for there in the days after the operation and he was right.
It was, it was better in a lot of ways to be in that ward. You don't have the, you don't have the privacy of your own bathroom which after a major operation is, is a help. It is a help to have that but on the other side the nurses were more experienced. I had more help. They were, they were much more used to people with my condition and how to deal with it and I had other people around, not with the same form of arthritis, but with various other things, and that helps, it helps to have company. You have the support of other people. So and you're not so cut off when you're in a national health ward, you know, you're feel that you're not isolated in your little room. Yeah.
So bearing in mind that you may have to have, you know, further replacements,
Yes, yes.
'what would you say the advantages and disadvantages, which would you choose?
I think provided I can be sure that the surgeon is a surgeon of my choice, I think that's the very most important thing to me. bearing in mind that revision operations are less straightforward than the first replacement operation is. I think it's really important to have a surgeon that you can feel confident, that can make a good job of it. So provided that it's a surgeon that's been recommended and that I have faith in I think I'd be entirely happy to have the operation under the National Health.
Two women were shocked by the number of operations they required when they saw the surgeon. People were nervous going into hospital and scared to death, petrified, frightened of the operation and worried that they would not wake up from the anaesthetic. Several people were afraid of being 'put to sleep' and had a spinal block anaesthetic and epidural rather than general anaesthesia. Some people confided their fears to friends rather than family, so as not to worry them.
Was shocked at how many operations the surgeon thought she needed and wished the wait were shorter.
Had her ankle operation under spinal block because she doesn't like general anaesthetics nor too much sympathy.
Had joint replacements under spinal block anaesthetic rather than general.
Partner in farming business, married with one adult child (born after RA started).
Yes, Well it was a bit of a shock, bit of shock about the arms and the elbows because I went to see a surgeon to take off nodules on my elbow, which was the reason I went to him, was sent to him, and once I was there he said, oh yes, we can, we can do this, we can do that and we can give you this and you know, I was sort of shell shocked when I came out of there, thinking oh I only went in to have [laugh] and he's gonna make me bionic sort of thing, you know, that's how I felt. But after thinking about it I thought well you know, you're not going lose anything by it so he seemed pretty sure that it would be an improvement, but then they send you away and you have to wait a year.
I was gonna say so how long have you got to wait?
I saw him last March and apparently you have to wait, you have to be operated on within a year, well the hospital's policy apparently, so the year is now up and I'm waiting to hear when the first operation is gonna take place. Apparently they're gonna, it's gonna be three, for the elbows and the hands, it's gonna be three operations, with six to nine months between each, each operation.
I think that anybody who's going have an operation has got concerns about it. I will just be glad when it's over. It's the, it would be fine if like you could go and they'd say yes you're going to have an operation and they do it within a month so you haven't got, I think the worst part is having so long to think about it. Because you get yourself, you think, 'Yeah right I'm going to have an operation' and then it just goes on and you've got more time to, to think about it and you have more time for people to say 'Oh, so and so went through a terrible time'. And, you have to hear all this and you really don't want to hear it. But, no, just, I'm optimistic about it and hope it will be better.
Freelance human resources consultant (part time), married with no children. Has had ankle surgery via private healthcare but other operations via NHS. Family history of RA.
I don't, I don't like general anaesthetics, general anaesthetics! and a few years ago I had a one operation because you probably hear, I cough a lot so, I'm, I'm asthmatic. I had one of my operations done under a spinal, a spinal block, being awake. So I managed to persuade the anaesthetists for all these operations to let me be awake so I had a epidural and a spinal block. So they make me a little bit sleepy.
So that was the only thing I was worried about in case he wouldn't do it because going back to my, my arm, my line problem, that's the problem I have because if they couldn't get a line in to me to do the epidural and that. They wanted to put me to sleep and that was what I started to panic about more than anything. But I have no worries otherwise. I mean, I'm quite I just like to go in there and get it done. So I don't like fuss, I tend to send my husband away as soon as I get there because I want to be, I want to treat it as like it's something that has to be done and that's the way I do it.
But that's the way I have to, that's the way I can handle it. If anyone starts being sympathetic and feels sorry for me than I'll just fall apart and get all upset. No I didn't mind too, I was more concerned about the after period, knowing that last time I was slightly depressed during the, the time I was at home. I was worried that, that would happen again but it's been very different from last time so I don't know why, I have no idea why but it's it's been easier this time. I've been more mobile as well, earlier than last time.
The first time I was relatively active minded I like to know lots about everything. It was interesting seeing what they do and people flitting around you and you are the centre of attention and I always like being the centre of attention [laughs]. It didn't trouble me, my father was, as I say, horrified, you know, the thought of me being, laying there awake. But somehow, it seemed to me as less of a big deal, even though you'd find that difficult to believe with surgeons and hammering going on every minute, but it seemed somehow, because I've spent most of my life lying on my back, while doctor's pulled this and pushed this that way and the other way.
It seemed like less of a, less of an operation, more of a procedure then, if I had it done that way. It is difficult to getting in, the spinal in the first place, you have to curl up in the fetal position and that can be of difficult. And you're always under the threat, and it was threat to me of, if they can't get it in, if they can't find the right space in the spine for it, then you have to have a general anaesthetic. They have to put you to sleep and that was always a, as I say, a threat for me.
But no as I say, the last, the first two, it was you know relatively trouble free. It varies a little bit from time to time. The first time I was a little bit worried because I could wiggle my toes and I'm lying on the operating table and I said, 'I can wiggle my toes, is the OK? Does that mean I'm gonna, you know, they're gonna cut into me and I'm gonna feel it?' 'No, no, that's fine.' Just depends on how much of the juice they give you.
But the second time, I was literally paralysed I couldn't move a thing and it really, it's not a very pleasant feeling at all, you know. You trying to move your foot and it just won't move. So that was a bit unsettling. But the first two were fine. The last two, I had believe or not, some pain 'cos they put a, I presume they still limit the blood flow, they put a tourniquet on the top of the thigh and obviously towards the end of the operation, and particularly on the last operation, where they, because my bones are so soft they broke my leg, and obviously they had to put a nail in my leg and that too longer. So I think the epidural was literally was running out. So it was, not stabbing pain but more of a dull ache, that wasn't very pleasant, the last twice, toward the end of the operation.
Pain relief after the operation was given by injections, epidural and intravenously via a drip. Three women who had epidurals all had problems with delayed or only partial pain relief.
After an operation, having no on-call nursing support at home can be worrying. People felt less safe being on there own and worried about falling and the practicalities of managing day to day. One woman was very uncomfortable getting home after hip surgery' she sat with others in an ambulance that went on a round trip to get home rather than having a stretcher style ambulance direct.
Scars were not mentioned much but one woman had been horrified at the scar at first but later was not too bothered. Another had to have some scar tissue removed several months after surgery and used to hide her scars but now felt it was part of what she had gone through so why should she. Using silicone patches helped one woman make her scars paler. Another showed family and friends the scar to 'prove' she had had major surgery and therefore felt entitled to moan at times.
Didn't like her scars and ate lots of Vitamin C rich fruit to heal them.
Has used silicone gel on her scars to reduce the redness and swelling.
Unemployed due to redundancy at time of interview but commencing new part time admin assistant job shortly. Single. Shares accommodation with flat mate. Personal assistants paid via direct payment. In receipt of Disability Living Allowance. Member of Arth
I also wasn't too keen on the scars either because I wasn't very old and it was a psychological, I felt a little bit disfigured by them, I still don't like the scars now but friends say that they're not that bad, I don't know what you're worried about but to me I didn't like the, the scars, I didn't like it when they actually showed it to me afterwards I've only ever seen hip replacements healed.
So I'd not seen what it looked like before it healed and when they actually showed it me that upset me and I made them keep the bandage on it so I couldn't see it, and then I became obsessed with healing myself and making the scar go back to, you know heal, and I read all these books on fruit, what sort of fruit is good for vitamin C for healing and I had, what did I call it? 'Heal the scar fruit bowl', I had a fruit bowl and I had everything.
Kiwi fruit's very good, full of vitamin C, so I was eating kiwi fruit like there was no tomorrow to try and heal myself, I did everything I could to make myself get as better as quickly as I could, I did the physio what they said, if they told me to get out of bed so many times a day I did it, so I made sure I was, basically because I hate hospitals I just wanted to get out of that hospital, so I did everything that they told me to do. I even tried to get me stitches out two days earlier than I should have done, because I wanted to go home, stupid but that was me.
I mean I've got a friend that goes out and has had a shoulder replaced and goes out there with her shoulder showing, whereas I'd be, I'm probably a bit 'oh I'm not showing my scar off' but that's me I think, but if it doesn't bother you, I think as you get older it doesn't bother you as much, because I can remember being horrified at my joint replacement scars and the doctor saying 'oh, you young ones, never like them do you'.
Whereas the older patients of seventy and eighty couldn't care less could they, I remember him saying that to me 'oh these young ones never like their joint scars'. I mean I cried when I saw me, my scars when I woke up, I thought 'oh my God' when they took the bandages off and I did I cried. 'Oh, disfigured, horrible' you know, but it did heal up and I kept thinking, do you want that scar or do you want to not be able to move and I thought well have to have the scar really. And you know what I mean that was my choice, but you know you have to talk yourself through these things.
Bank clerk, retired age 33 (due to RA). Single living with parents.
I did use treatment as well, I don't know this might be beneficial to people. After my second hip there was a treatment that I'd read about and they've, and they've become more popular now and there's different makes of them. But it's a silicone gel that you wear on your scar and it reduces the redness and the swelling and I got that, and I had to buy it last time because it wasn't available on prescription and now it's available on prescription, so I've got that for my knees, but you've got to wear it for eight weeks, and with the knees being sort of different and moving more, I haven't got round to wearing it, because I know it'll show through my trousers and I know it'll more difficult to keep on.
Where like on your hip it's just easier to do. But that was, it, the, the four, no the five year-old scar looks better than the fourteen year old scar because I used that treatment. So I will use it for my knees, but you can use it on scars, it says that are up to 20 years old, as long as there's redness in them you can use it. So I will be using that as well on my knees because the bottom of the scar is not as prominent as the top. So I may get away with it, but it's things like short skirts, knee length skirts I couldn't wear those. Not that I wore a lot of them but that sort of option's really gone, and I do tend to wear trousers more anyway.
General complications
Since some Disease Modifying Anti-Rheumatic Drugs can reduce people's immunity the risk of infection at surgery is higher so your rheumatologist may decide to pause your DMARD treatment briefly either side of surgery; for minor operations this may not be necessary and indeed it can be worse if your RA flares around the time of surgery. Four patients on anti-TNF drugs or rituximab drug have had surgery several years before being put on the new biologic treatments. Long-term steroid use reduces bone density, as does lack of weight bearing exercise, which can increase the risk of fracture. One woman found the top of the plaster cast rubbed off the skin, causing an ulcer. Anaemia may make blood transfusions more likely during and after surgery and one woman bled into her thigh muscle (a haematoma) after a bone graft.
Last updated August 2016.
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Profile of Welsh Golfer Dave Thomas
Dave Thomas was a pro golfer in Europe whose best successes came in the 1950s and 1960s, including near-misses at the British Open.
Full name: David Charles Thomas
Date and place of birth: Aug. 16, 1934, in Newcastle, England
Date and place of death: Aug. 27, 2013, in Spain
1955 Belgian Open
1958 Dutch Open
1959 French Open
1961 Esso Golden Tournament
1963 News of the World Match Play
1966 Swallow-Penfold Tournament
1968 Penfold Tournament
Thomas is credited with approximately 16 career wins on the professional circuits in Europe (14) and Australasia (2) that pre-dated the formation of the European Tour.
Dave Thomas never won a major championship, but had four Top 10 finishes at the British Open, three of which were Top 5, two of which were runner-up.
Notable Notes: Dave Thomas is probably best remembered on the golf course for being a great driver of the golf ball — long and straight — and for two near-misses at the British Open. At the 1958 British Open, Thomas lost a 36-hole playoff to Peter Thomson. Thomson won that playoff by four strokes, 139 to 143. And at the 1966 British Open, Thomas was runner-up to Jack Nicklaus in Nicklaus' first Open victory, losing by one shot.
A year later, Thomas published an instruction book titled Modern Golf.
As for Thomas' prowess with the driver, his friend Peter Alliss described him as "for a spell perhaps the longest straight driver in the world." Thomas once blasted a 420-yard drive at a tournament in England in 1967.
Born in England and died in Spain, Thomas was actually Welsh. He represented Wales 11 times in the World Cup. ... He also represented Great Britain four times in the Ryder Cup (1959, 1963, 1965, 1967).
Thomas turned pro in 1949. ... His pro career ended when he began suffering arthritis. ... He was elected to the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame in 2002. ... Once his playing days ended, Thomas turned to golf course design, sometimes partnering with Alliss, and designed approximately 150 golf courses in Britain, continental Europe and Asia.
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2014 March 31 • Monday
Now we come to the last of Fresh Sound's four CD reissues of jazz soundtrack LPs. Franz Waxman's Crime in the Streets and Gerald Fried's Dino are the 312th Soundtrack of the Week.
Crime in the Streets is one of many movies to be mislabelled film noir when released on video. It's a socially conscious juvenile-delinquent movie. It's a bit stagey but not bad. John Cassavetes is in it.
Waxman's music is great; complex, rhythmically intense, shrugging of influences from Elmer Bernstein and Duke Ellington to find its own identity.
There are three tracks, each a suite of themes and cues from the film. They cover a lot of ground. After that are three sketcehes" Nostalgia", "Song" and "Blues". These are apparently based on incidental music from the score. Finally there's a jazz orchestra piece, "Theme, Variations and Fugato".
The Varèse Soundtrack Club released the same program on a CD by itself a while back.
Dino's score starts out in a much different mood, much more menacing and stripped down, all low notes and stabbing brass and percussion. There's a quality to "Death in a Warehouse" which might remind you of some of Akira Ifukube's Godzilla music.
"Reform School" has some Herrmannesque string attacks and intensity. "Homecoming" is incredibly bleak and "Nightmare" offers no comfort at all, sustaining the mood of fear and panic that has dominated so far.
Just when you think you can't take anymore, the score swings into some toe-tapping tunes with "Saturday Night" and "Little Jazz". I'll guess these are for party scenes or something like that.
Things get mean again with "Meditation", then very romantic and seductive with "First Love". The record ends with another tense piece, "Defiance", then th Bernsteinesque "Waiting and Conclusion".
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Specialised Sub-committees
Sub-committees' events
Evergreen club
Icomos-price
Icomos-price 2018
ICOMOS HUNGARY = the Hungarian National Committee of ICOMOS
ICOMOS Hungary is one of the largest and influential national committees of this international professional organisation. The membership of ICOMOS Hungary consists from the most important and recognised specialists of Hungarian Historic Monuments’ protection. Similarly to the international structure of specialised scientific committees of ICOMOS, ICOMOS Hungary also established its specialised sub-committees on the national level. In conformity of characteristics of the assets of Hungarian Historic Monuments, the national sub-committees work in cooperation of the related ISCs of ICOMOS.
The ICOMOS Hungary has about 300 members with which it is one of the largest member organisations of ICOMOS. ICOMOS Hungary plays an important role among the domestic civic organisations; regarding its activity so far it has become indispensable protagonist in the field of Historic Monuments’ preservation. ICOMOS Hungary has been established among the first national committees of ICOMOS, organised by the “giants” of the Hungarian Monument conservation: Dezső Dercsényi[3], Miklós Horler[4], Géza Entz[5] and László Gerő[6]. The 3th General Assembly of ICOMOS was held in Budapest, Hungary. This memorably successful event also marked a turning point in the international recognition of the Hungarian methodology of scientific approach and operational practice. Despite the constraints of than communist regime, ICOMOS Hungary was always an active participant in the ICOMOS events both in international and national level.
In the years 1990, András Román[7] was elected as the Vice-President for Europe for consecutive terms as well as other Hungarian professional served as Presidents or Vice-presidents in several ISCs. A bit later, in 2005, Tamás Fejérdy[8] was elected as Vice-president for Europe (2005-2008).
In order to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the adoption of the Venice Charter, in 2004, ICOMOS Hungary organised a large scale international conference[9]. [The famous Venice Charter, adopted in 1964 and accepted as basic doctrinal text of ICOMOS in 1965, contains the worldwide principles of conservation and restoration of Historic Monuments.] Not mentioning other similar events, in 2006 the Presidents of European National Committees of ICOMOS held their annual regional meeting in the city of Pécs, Hungary. Hungarian experts – members of ICOMOS Hungary –are regularly invited to realise different missions in the name of ICOMOS (especially in the framework of UNESCO WF Centre and ICOMOS cooperation) and/or to be participants of several working groups, symposia.
ICOMOS Hungary published the “Karták könyve”: Book of Charters first time in 2002, the second (improved and expanded) edition was released in 2011. This book – being also used as a textbook at several universities – is the first of its kind, containing almost all international charters and other doctrinal texts (published until the date of its publication) and also some national on foreign laws related to the Historic Monuments’ preservation and conservation.
ICOMOS Hungary, if justified, issues statements related to current topics in connection with planned developments-investments in the World Heritage properties or other important historic monuments and sites in Hungary. ICOMOS Hungary also considers the professional monitoring of World Heritage Sites as a continual task for it as an organisation and also for its members personally who are connected particular properties.
In order to reach a wider and better understanding of aims, principles and tools of monuments preservation and to promote a large scale cooperation in that field, ICOMOS Hungary organised a 12-part series broadcast by the television. This action, together another 10-part series presenting Hungarian Historic Monuments had also the aim to highlight the complexity and diversity of monuments’ preservation.
Every year on 18 April, ICOMOS Hungary celebrates the International Day for Monuments and Sites, whose establishment was proposed by ICOMOS and approved by the 22nd UNESCO General Conference in 1983. On this occasion, ICOMOS Hungary issues its “ICOMOS Price”[11] every year, in order to recognise the best restorations from one side but, with its “Lemon Price”[12] also draws attention to negative interventions from the other side. A special price recognises the best examples of the “monument care” and another one the well-used-managed vernacular monuments.
ICOMOS Hungary every year organises the András Román Summer University on Monument Protection (before 2006: Eger summer university on monument protection)[13]. This is an international post-graduate summer course, aiming to shape a consolidated professional approach in the field of the monument-protection, of elements of the built cultural heritage.
[3] Dezső Dercsényi
[4] Miklós Horler
[5] Géza Entz
[6] László Gerő
[7] András Román
[8] Tamás Fejérdy
[9] The full proceedings / contributions’ material of the conference is available
[11] ICOMOS Price of ICOMOS Hungary - link
[12] „Citrom díj” - link
[13] RAMNYE - link
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Whale researchers say it's "unprecedented" that endangered southern resident killer whales normally found in the Salish Sea this time of year are nowhere to be seen.
The 75 remaining orcas, split between J, K and L pods, are usually feeding on chinook salmon in the Salish Sea by July, according to Wild Orca science and research director Deborah Giles.
But so far this summer, the whales haven't been seen in the area at all, something Giles called unprecedented in the time researchers have been monitoring them.
There was an unconfirmed report of southern residents on the west coast of Vancouver Island on June 27, but Giles said scientists have not confirmed the sighting.
She said it's important endangered orcas gather in the Salish Sea because it's healthier for the population when breeding.
Dwindling chinook salmon populations may be to blame for the species' no-show status in the Salish Sea, according to Giles.
In April, Fisheries and Oceans Canada introduced tough new restrictions on chinook fishing in B.C. waters, closing recreational and commercial fishing areas in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Gulf Islands.
It's not all bad news for the endangered orcas. J-pod was spotted near Tofino in May with a new calf in tow, and researchers said they were "cautiously optimistic" about the calf's chances of survival.
With files from CTV Vancouver Island's Brad MacLeod
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Reviews & Evaluations
Education & Training Policy
Strategy and Framework Development
A new Corporate Plan
A client needed a new Corporate Plan. The organisation had not revisited its strategy for three years after a hugely unsuccessful previous attempt at direction-setting.
Rod began by having individual discussions with each Executive member to gain their confidence and gather important background information. He then facilitated a series of half-day conversations where the Executive worked through possibilities for the future and their implications.
This was followed by a meeting of the Board where Rod helped members develop key themes that formed the basis for the Corporate Plan.
This approach was highly successful and resulted in a way forward while also gaining the commitment of Executive and Board members.
A workshop to uncover issues and develop ways forward
For another organisation, the task was rather different: to facilitate a workshop containing both the organisation’s representatives, and representatives of all members of a consortium that had been contracted to supply a major service.
For various reasons, the work had completely stalled, and something was needed as a circuit-breaker.
Through Rod’s facilitation at the workshop, the critical issues were uncovered and resolved, and the parties left with clear directions for moving ahead.
A national strategy for government
A government department needed a national strategy in a particular area. Rod and his researchers prepared an Issues Paper based on the available research, conducted a workshop of the best thinkers in the area, and then prepared a paper which the department used as a basis for moving forward.
Understanding the needs of stakeholders
A government department wanted to develop more effective communication strategies with the vocational education and training sector. We set out to understand the attitudes and values employers and their associations have towards VET, and to understand better how employers and their associations use information to make decisions about skills needs. Using qualitative and quantitative research with employers, the project team developed a suggested communication approach based on an understanding of those things that inform employers’ decision making, rather than the types of issues that are important to government.
Core Skills for Work Developmental Framework
The development of the Core Skills for Work Developmental Framework for the former Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations was an 18 month process, culminating in the development of a new Framework to describe a set of non-technical skills, knowledge and understandings that underpin successful participation in work. The project examined a wide range of recent research about employability skills and generic skills and their development, as well as a range of current approaches to addressing employability and generic skills from Australia and overseas. It also involved consultation with more than 800 people from a broad cross-section of organisations and sectors that have an interest in and potential use for the Framework, including employers, industry peak bodies, and education and training, community and employment services sectors.
A benchmarking resource for school career development services
This project, commissioned by the Career Industry Council of Australia, involved developing a benchmarking resource for school career development services. The tool has been designed to assist schools to benchmark their services against the features identified as being important in a contemporary school-based career development service. It can be used repeatedly by schools as a quality improvement exercise. The development of the tool was informed by targeted consultation with stakeholders in the sector, a review of the relevant research, and analysis of similar benchmarking and quality improvement resources.
Reviews and Evaluations
High Level Review of Training Packages
Ithaca Group was commissioned by the ANTA Ministerial Council, with Kaye Schofield, to conduct a High Level Review of Training Packages and to look at how they could better meet current and future skill needs. The review also addressed the capacity of the vocational education and training (VET) system to deliver outcomes defined in Training Packages, with a particular focus on teaching and learning, and ways this could be strengthened. This was a large scale review that involved extensive consultations with stakeholders around the nation. The outcomes of the review were unanimously endorsed by all members of the Ministerial Council and have informed a number of policy directions since.
Review of standards for Vocational Education and Training (VET) regulation
Ithaca Group was commissioned to support the National Skills Standards Council to conduct this large-scale review. We looked at submissions from a wide range of VET stakeholders including Registered Training Organisations, industry bodies (including Industry Skills Councils), government agencies and regulatory bodies, unions, consultants, academics and other individuals to review standards for the regulation of VET. It involved analysis of over one hundred submissions, and synthesis of the responses that they contained to find out the main themes. The review highlighted, among other things, the need for concurrent reforms to other parts of the VET system, particularly clarity and consistency of Training Packages, professional development of VET practitioners and auditors, and funding models that reward quality delivery, in order to improve training quality.
National Skills Standards Council Position Paper Consultation
Following on from the review of standards for VET regulation, Ithaca Group was again engaged by the National Skills Standards Council to undertake national consultations on the proposed changes to the standards. In addition to reporting stakeholder views from a series of general and targeted information sessions held in each capital city and a number of regional locations, Ithaca Group was responsible for coordinating and conducting the analysis and reporting stage of the project, which involved the documentation and synthesis of views from nearly two hundred written submissions.
Skills for Sustainability Professional Development Evaluation
This project was undertaken for the former Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and examined a range of models for professional development, including those currently in use for developing Skills for Sustainability in Australia, in order to determine the most effective models. This was to enable the Department to make decisions about its policy and program responses. In addition to a literature review, the project involved a series of consultations with program managers, developers and participants, as well as those responsible for funding and making decisions about professional development programs.
Education and Training Policy
A Fair Deal
This partnership project between Quay Connection, Ithaca Group, and the Research Forum was commissioned by the NSW Board of Vocational Education and Training (BVET). The ultimate objective of the research was to provide the Board with insights into opportunities for improving recruitment and retention of apprentices in key trades and increasing the proportion of apprentices who complete training and go on to work as qualified tradespeople in their field of expertise. It included qualitative and quantitative research with apprentices and employers and a brief review of relevant research and policy paper, focusing on apprenticeships in traditional and technical trades, and the project did not include traineeships. As a result of this project, BVET achieved – for the first time – a robust and reliable base of data, drawn from a large representative sample of apprentices (1200) and employers (501), to inform its considerations. The paper has resulted in several new policy initiatives.
Analysis of the Australian Apprenticeships System Construct
Ithaca Group was commissioned by the Australian Department of Industry to analyse the construct of the traditional Australian apprenticeship model and make recommendations about aspects of the construct that might be enhanced to provide a better experience for a wider range of apprentices and employers. We team conducted analysis, consultations with key informants, developed a series of propositions about what works and what doesn’t in the current apprenticeship construct, and tested them in a Think Tank comprising people from a range of industry, training and government agencies. The result was a report that described the key components that make up the current Australian Apprenticeships construct and analysed some of the key issues, challenges, opportunities and barriers the construct creates for stakeholders. The report concluded with some thoughts about where attention might best be focused in order to assist in improving apprentice retention and completion, and maximising the impact of investment in apprenticeships by all players.
Sustainable approaches to professional development
Ithaca Group worked with the Queensland Department of Education and Training and the Australian Council of Private Education and Training to develop sustainable approaches to professional development that can apply to the whole Queensland VET sector.
These approaches were focused less on products and programs and more on ways of encouraging a commitment to professional development based on an understanding of its contribution to business and professional success. In other words, they were built on a demand rather than supply perspective.
Replicating good practice
Ithaca Group was commissioned to investigate good practice in training people with a disability and Indigenous Australians for work outcomes, and to develop principles for replicating and sustaining good practice more broadly across the sector.
To do this we closely examined a handful of examples of good practice and drew from them generic and replicable characteristics.
Embedding innovation
This project required us to review innovative practice in the VET sector and to research how innovation is encouraged and embedded in other areas. From this investigation we developed some recommendations for encouraging, sustaining and embedding innovation in vocational education and training.
Promoting articulation
For this project we researched the literature on credit transfer and articulation arrangements between the vocational education and higher education sectors. We also spoke with people from institutions that have effective articulation arrangements in place. From this information, we developed a framework that captured the necessary elements of successful collaboration. In another project we tested the practical application of the framework in an initiative between industry, VET and higher education. The framework was further refined and published.
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GREEN BUILDLING MATERIALS COMBINE FORM WITH FUNCTION
Each year, the green building industry churns out new products that make sustainability an option in nearly every aspect of construction.
Throughout the past few months, the construction industry has seen the rise of exciting and innovative materials including smog-eating tiles, PVC-free carpet tiles, “stones” made from paper and solar panels that take cues from the sun’s location as to when to get rid of accumulating snow or hunker down during gale-force winds.
As the use of fossil fuels continues to affect the globe’s atmosphere, makers of construction materials are looking for innovative ways to keep the harmful effects of smog at bay. BoralPure tiles, a series of smog-eating tiles made by Boral, were the first tiles on the market that can be affixed to residential or commercial buildings to help alleviate the affects of smog. A catalyst, which is embedded in the roof tiles, allows them to reduce nitrogen oxide that’s created by pollution and creates cleaner air for those living or working in and around the buildings.
Other harmful materials can come in the form of perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), which are used largely as stain-repellants in carpets. InterfaceFLOR has created a carpet tile with no PFCs, which keeps the environment from being contaminated and the health of building residents intact.
While some materials, like PFC-free carpet and smog-eating tiles are manufactured from new materials, others, such as PaperStone products, are made from recycled ones. PaperStone is exactly what it sounds like — stone made from paper. Makers of the product use 100 percent recycled paper and press it together in a high-pressure process that creates a stone-like surface. Cabinets, countertops and other products have been made using the same process. PaperStone also manufactures RainStone cladding materials, which can be used on exterior walls.
While solar panels have been used for years, AllEarth Renewables has taken them a step further and made them especially useful for builders in areas with distinct seasonal patterns. The AllSun Trackers wake with the sunrise and immediately tilt northward to get rid of snow or other materials that may have fallen during the night. In extremely windy conditions, they’re built to automatically move themselves into a position that’s parallel to the ground, which keeps them from being uprooted.
Through the use of these products, and others that are constantly making their way into the sustainable building market, construction, architecture, engineering and design firms can be sure they’re environmentally-friendly as well as functional.
BuildingGreen.com; “Top 10 Products for 2012: Our Picks for a Resilient Future.”
Boralna.com
Yahoo.com; “Top Five Green Building Materials of 2012.”
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Prev Article 70. - EXTENSION, RENEWAL OR REINSTATEMENT OF CORPORATE STATUS Next
17-7002. Extension, renewal or reinstatement of articles of incorporation; new registered office and resident agent; procedures; effect; nonstock, nonprofit corporations. (a) Any corporation may procure an extension, renewal or reinstatement of its articles of incorporation, if a domestic corporation, or its authority to engage in business, if a foreign corporation, together with all the rights, franchises, privileges and immunities and subject to all of its duties, debts and liabilities which had been secured or imposed by its original articles of incorporation, and all amendments thereto, or by its authority to engage in business, as the case may be, and may designate a new registered office and resident agent in the following instances:
(1) At any time before the expiration of the time limited for the corporation's existence;
(2) at any time, where the corporation's articles of incorporation, if a domestic corporation, or the authority to engage in business, if a foreign corporation, has become inoperative by law for nonpayment of taxes or fees, or failure to file its annual report;
(3) at any time, where the articles of incorporation of a domestic corporation or the authority to engage in business of a foreign corporation has expired by reason of failure to renew it;
(4) at any time, where the articles of incorporation of a domestic corporation or the authority to engage in business of a foreign corporation has been renewed, but through failure to comply strictly with the provisions of this act, the validity of such renewal has been brought into question; and
(5) at any time, where the articles of incorporation of a domestic corporation or the authority to engage in business of a foreign corporation has been forfeited pursuant to subsection (c) of K.S.A. 17-6206 and amendments thereto.
(b) The extension, renewal or reinstatement of the articles of incorporation or authority to engage in business may be procured by executing and filing a certificate in accordance with K.S.A. 17-6003, and amendments thereto.
(c) The certificate required by subsection (b) shall state:
(1) The name of the corporation, which shall be the existing name of the corporation or the name it bore when its articles of incorporation or authority to engage in business expired, except as provided in subsection (e);
(2) if a new registered office and resident agent is designated, the address of the corporation's registered office in this state, which shall include the street, city and zip code and the name of its resident agent at such address;
(3) whether or not the renewal, or reinstatement is to be perpetual and, if not perpetual, the time for which the renewal or reinstatement is to continue; and, in case of renewal before the expiration of the time limited for its existence, the date when the renewal is to commence, which shall be prior to the date of the expiration of the old articles of incorporation or authority to engage in business which it is desired to renew;
(4) that the corporation desiring to be renewed or reinstated and so renewing or reinstating its corporate existence was duly organized under the laws of the state of its original incorporation;
(5) the date when the articles of incorporation or the authority to engage in business would expire, if such is the case, or such other facts as may show that the articles of incorporation or the authority to engage in business has become inoperative or void or that the validity of any renewal has been brought into question; and
(6) that the certificate for reinstatement is filed by authority of those who were directors or members of the governing body of the corporation at the time its articles of incorporation or the authority to engage in business expired, or who were elected directors or members of the governing body of the corporation as provided in subsection (g).
(d) Upon the filing of the certificate in accordance with K.S.A. 17-6003, and amendments thereto, the corporation shall be renewed or reinstated with the same force and effect as if its articles of incorporation had not become inoperative and void or had not expired by limitation. Such reinstatement shall validate all contracts, acts, matters and things made, done and performed within the scope of its articles of incorporation by the corporation, its officers and agents during the time when its articles of incorporation were inoperative or void or after their expiration by limitation, with the same force and effect and to all intents and purposes as if the articles of incorporation had at all times remained in full force and effect. All real and personal property, rights and credits, which belonged to the corporation at the time its articles of incorporation became inoperative or void, or expired by limitation and which were not disposed of prior to the time of its renewal or reinstatement shall be vested in the corporation after its renewal or reinstatement, as fully and amply as they were held by the corporation at and before the time its articles of incorporation became inoperative or void or expired by limitation, and the corporation after its renewal or reinstatement shall be as exclusively liable for all contracts, acts, matters and things made, done or performed in its name and on its behalf by its officers and agents prior to its reinstatement, as if its articles of incorporation had remained at all times in full force and effect.
(e) If, since the articles of incorporation became inoperative or void for nonpayment of taxes or fees, or, failure to file annual reports or expired by limitation, any other corporation organized under the laws of this state shall have adopted the same name as the corporation sought to be renewed or reinstated or shall have adopted a name so nearly similar thereto as not to distinguish it from the corporation to be renewed or reinstated, or any foreign corporation qualified in accordance with K.S.A. 17-7301, and amendments thereto, shall have adopted the same name as the corporation sought to be renewed or reinstated, or shall have adopted a name so nearly similar thereto as not to distinguish it from the corporation to be renewed or reinstated, then in such case the corporation to be renewed or reinstated shall not be renewed under the same name which it bore when its articles of incorporation became inoperative or void or expired, but shall be renewed under some other name; and in such case the certificate to be filed under the provisions of this section shall set forth the name borne by the corporation at the time its articles of incorporation became inoperative or void or expired and the new name under which the corporation is to be renewed or reinstated.
(f) Any corporation seeking to renew or reinstate its articles of incorporation under the provisions of this act shall file all annual reports and pay to the secretary of state an amount equal to all fees and any penalties thereon due. Nonprofit corporations shall file only the annual reports for the three most recent reporting periods, but shall pay all fees due.
(g) If a sufficient number of the last acting officers of any corporation desiring to renew or reinstate its articles of incorporation are not available by reason of death, unknown address or refusal or neglect to act, the directors of the corporation or those remaining on the board, even if only one, may elect successors to such officers. In any case where there shall be no directors of the corporation available for the purposes aforesaid, the stockholders may elect a full board of directors, as provided by the bylaws of the corporation, and the board shall then elect such officers as are provided by law, by the articles of incorporation or by the bylaws to carry on the business and affairs of the corporation. A special meeting of the stockholders for the purpose of electing directors may be called by any officer, director or stockholder upon notice given in accordance with K.S.A. 17-6512, and amendments thereto.
(h) After a reinstatement of the articles of incorporation of the corporation shall have been effected, except where a special meeting of stockholders has been called in accordance with the provisions of subsection (g), the officers who signed the certificate of reinstatement jointly shall call forthwith a special meeting of the stockholders of the corporation upon notice given in accordance with K.S.A. 17-6512, and amendments thereto, and at the special meeting the stockholders shall elect a full board of directors, which board shall then elect such officers as are provided by law, by the articles of incorporation or the bylaws to carry on the business and affairs of the corporation.
(i) Whenever it shall be desired to renew or reinstate the articles of incorporation of any corporation not for profit and having no capital stock, the governing body shall perform all the acts necessary for the renewal or reinstatement of the articles of incorporation of the corporation which are performed by the board of directors in the case of a corporation having capital stock. The members of any corporation not for profit and having no capital stock who are entitled to vote for the election of members of its governing body shall perform all the acts necessary for the renewal or reinstatement of the articles of the corporation which are performed by the stockholders in the case of a corporation having capital stock. In all other respects, the procedure for the renewal or reinstatement of the articles of incorporation of a corporation not for profit and having no capital stock shall conform, as nearly as may be applicable, to the procedure prescribed in this section for the renewal or reinstatement of the articles of incorporation of a corporation having capital stock.
History: L. 1972, ch. 52, § 118; L. 1973, ch. 100, § 14; L. 1989, ch. 80, § 1; L. 1993, ch. 163, § 8; L. 1994, ch. 182, § 2; L. 1998, ch. 189, § 20; L. 1999, ch. 41, § 11; L. 2000, ch. 39, § 41; L. 2005, ch. 157, § 10; L. 2007, ch. 81, § 6; July 1.
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News | Edith Ramirez Named U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chair
About U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chair Ramirez
Edith Ramirez was sworn in as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission on April 5, 2010, to a term that expires on September 25, 2015.
Prior to joining the Commission, Ramirez was a partner in the Los Angeles office of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, where she handled a broad range of complex business litigation, including successfully representing clients in intellectual property, antitrust, unfair competition, and Lanham Act matters. She also has extensive appellate litigation experience.
From 1993-1996, Ramirez was an associate at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP in Los Angeles. She clerked for the Hon. Alfred T. Goodwin in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1992-1993.
Throughout her career, Ramirez has been active in a variety of professional and community activities. Most recently, she served as the Vice President on the Board of Commissioners for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the nation’s largest municipal utility.
Ramirez graduated from Harvard Law School cum laude (1992), where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and holds an A.B. in History magna cum laude from Harvard University (1989).
Ramirez is a native of Southern California.
Comments from The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) issued the following statement congratulating Edith Ramirez on her appointment to Chair of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission:
“NALEO congratulates Edith Ramirez on her appointment to Chair of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). An accomplished intellectual property attorney with extensive experience in complex business litigation and current FTC Commissioner, Ramirez will bring a wealth of talent and expertise to her new role.
“Ramirez was first appointed Commissioner of the FTC in April 2010. In that role, she has demonstrated strong leadership and a continued commitment to serving the interests of the Latino community and all consumers. As Commissioner, Ramirez oversaw the shutdown of an unauthorized immigration services provider that was targeting Spanish speakers and other vulnerable groups in Maryland. Ramirez also led an effort to ensure protections were in place to combat deceptive mortgage advertisements, overseeing the creation of a new rule in 2011 that required consumer communications be transparent and clear.
“Prior to serving on the Commission, Ramirez worked as a private-sector attorney and served as the Vice President on the Board of Commissioners for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
“We applaud the President for appointing a talented and experienced Latina to serve as Chair of the FTC. We look forward to working with Ramirez on issues of importance to the Latino community in her new role, and ask for the President to demonstrate his continued commitment to a diverse Administration in future appointments.”
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Battle of Jutland, greatest naval battle of WWI, begins
Just before four o’clock on the afternoon of May 31, 1916, a British naval force commanded by Vice Admiral David Beatty confronts a squadron of German ships, led by Admiral Franz von Hipper, some 75 miles off the Danish coast. The two squadrons opened fire on each other simultaneously, beginning the opening phase of the greatest naval battle of World War I, the Battle of Jutland.
After the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, the German navy chose not to confront the numerically superior British Royal Navy in a major battle for more than a year, preferring to rest the bulk of its strategy at sea on its lethal U-boat submarines. In May 1916, however, with the majority of the British Grand Fleet anchored far away, at Scapa Flow, off the northern coast of Scotland, the commander of the German High Seas Fleet, Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer, believed the time was right to resume attacks on the British coastline. Confident that his communications were securely coded, Scheer ordered 19 U-boat submarines to position themselves for a raid on the North Sea coastal city of Sunderland while using air reconnaissance crafts to keep an eye on the British fleet’s movement from Scapa Flow. Bad weather hampered the airships, however, and Scheer called off the raid, instead ordering his fleet—24 battleships, five battle cruisers, 11 light cruisers and 63 destroyers—to head north, to the Skagerrak, a waterway located between Norway and northern Denmark, off the Jutland Peninsula, where they could attack Allied shipping interests and with luck, punch a hole in the stringent British blockade.
Unbeknownst to Scheer, however, a newly created intelligence unit located within an old building of the British Admiralty, known as Room 40, had cracked the German codes and warned the British Grand Fleet’s commander, Admiral John Rushworth Jellicoe, of Scheer’s intentions. Consequently, on the night of May 30, a British fleet of 28 battleships, nine battle cruisers, 34 light cruisers and 80 destroyers set out from Scapa Flow, bound for positions off the Skagerrak.
At 2:20 p.m. on May 31, Beatty, leading a British squadron, spotted Hipper’s warships. As each squadron maneuvered south to better its position, shots were fired, but neither side opened fire until 3:48 that afternoon. The initial phase of the gun battle lasted 55 minutes, during which two British battle cruisers, Indefatigable and Queen Mary were destroyed, killing over 2,000 sailors. At 4:43 p.m., Hipper’s squadron was joined by the remainder of the German fleet, commanded by Scheer. Beatty was forced to fight a delaying action for the next hour, until Jellicoe could arrive with the rest of the Grand Fleet.
With both fleets facing off in their entirety, a great battle of naval strategy began among the four commanders, particularly between Jellicoe and Scheer. As sections of the two fleets continued to engage each other throughout the late evening and the early morning of June 1, Jellicoe maneuvered 96 of the British ships into a V-shape surrounding 59 German ships. Hipper’s flagship, Lutzow, was disabled by 24 direct hits but was able, before it sank, to sink the British battle cruiser Invincible. Just after 6:30 on the evening of June 1, Scheer’s fleet executed a previously planned withdrawal under cover of darkness to their base at the German port of Wilhelmshaven, ending the battle and cheating the British of the major naval success they had envisioned.
The Battle of Jutland—or the Battle of the Skagerrak, as it was known to the Germans—engaged a total of 100,000 men aboard 250 ships over the course of 72 hours. The Germans, giddy from the glory of Scheer’s brilliant escape, claimed it as a victory for their High Seas Fleet. At first the British press agreed, but the truth was not so clear-cut. The German navy lost 11 ships, including a battleship and a battle cruiser, and suffered 3,058 casualties; the British sustained heavier losses, with 14 ships sunk, including three battle cruisers, and 6,784 casualties. Ten more German ships had suffered heavy damage, however, and by June 2, 1916, only 10 ships that had been involved in the battle were ready to leave port again (Jellicoe, on the other hand, could have put 23 to sea). On July 4, 1916, Scheer reported to the German high command that further fleet action was not an option, and that submarine warfare was Germany’s best hope for victory at sea. Despite the missed opportunities and heavy losses, the Battle of Jutland had left British naval superiority on the North Sea intact. The German High Seas Fleet would make no further attempts to break the Allied blockade or to engage the Grand Fleet for the remainder of World War I.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/battle-of-jutland
Natural Disasters & Environment
The Johnstown Flood
In a river valley in central Pennsylvania, heavy rain and a neglected dam lead to a catastrophe in which 2,209 people die and a prosperous city, Johnstown, is nearly wiped off the face of the earth. Johnstown, located at the confluence of the Little Conemaugh River and Stony ...read more
The BBC bans the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen”
Thirty years after its release, John Lydon—better known as Johnny Rotten—offered this assessment of the song that made the Sex Pistols the most reviled and revered figures in England in the spring of 1977: “There are not many songs written over baked beans at the breakfast table ...read more
The Boer War ends in South Africa
In Pretoria, representatives of Great Britain and the Boer states sign the Treaty of Vereeniging, officially ending the three-and-a-half-year South African Boer War. The Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers of southern Africa. ...read more
Netanyahu elected prime minister of Israel
In what was regarded as a setback for the Middle East peace process, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres is narrowly defeated in national elections by Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Peres, leader of the Labor Party, became prime minister in 1995 after Yitzhak Rabin was ...read more
Architect of the Holocaust hanged in Israel
Near Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler’s “final solution of the Jewish question,” was executed for his crimes against humanity. Eichmann was born in Solingen, Germany, in 1906. In November 1932, he joined the Nazi’s elite SS ...read more
Ford Motor Company signs agreement with Soviet Union
After two years of exploratory visits and friendly negotiations, Ford Motor Company signs a landmark agreement to produce cars in the Soviet Union on this day in 1929. The Soviet Union, which in 1928 had only 20,000 cars and a single truck factory, was eager to join the ranks of ...read more
Big Ben rings out over London for the first time
The famous tower clock known as Big Ben, located at the top of the 320-foot-high Elizabeth Tower, rings out over the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, for the first time on this day in 1859. After a fire destroyed much of the Palace of Westminster—the headquarters of ...read more
Germans conquer Crete
On this day in 1941, the last of the Allies evacuate after 11 days of battling a successful German parachute invasion of the island of Crete. Crete is now Axis-occupied territory. On the morning of May 20, some 3,000 members of Germany’s Division landed on Crete, which was ...read more
Three U.S. presidents close chapters on the Cold War
On this day in history, three U.S. presidents in three different years take significant steps toward ending the Cold War. Beginning on May 28, 1988, President Ronald Reagan met Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev for a four-day summit in Russia. Upon his election in 1980, ...read more
Poet Walt Whitman, author of “Leaves of Grass,” is born
Today is the birthday of poet Walt Whitman, born in West Hills, Long Island, and raised in Brooklyn. Although Whitman loved music and books, he left school at the age of 14 to become a journeyman printer. Later, he worked as a teacher, journalist, editor, carpenter, and held ...read more
Actor and director Clint Eastwood is born
Best known to his many fans for one of his most memorable screen incarnations–San Francisco Police Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan–the actor and Oscar-winning filmmaker Clint Eastwood is born on this day in 1930, in San Francisco, California. With his father, Eastwood wandered ...read more
Over 2,000 die in the Johnstown Flood
The South Fork Dam collapses on this day in 1889, causing a flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, that kills more than 2,200 people. Johnstown is 60 miles east of Pittsburgh in a valley near the Allegheny, Little Conemaugh, and Stony Creek Rivers. It is located on a floodplain that ...read more
Identity of “Deep Throat,” source who helped unravel the Watergate scandal, is revealed
W. Mark Felt’s family ends 30 years of speculation, identifying Felt, the former FBI assistant director, as “Deep Throat,” the secret source who helped unravel the Watergate scandal. Felt's admission, made in an article in Vanity Fair magazine, took legendary reporters Bob ...read more
Convicted murderer Charles Schmid brags about his crimes
Fifteen-year-old Alleen Rowe is killed by Charles Schmid in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona. Earlier in the night, Schmid allegedly had said to his friends, “I want to kill a girl! I want to do it tonight. I think I can get away with it!” Schmid went on to kill three other ...read more
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Why I Love Florence Nightingale (Now That I've Found Her) by Enid Shomer
I'd like to extend a warm welcome to author, Enid Shomer who so graciously offered to write a small post about the fascinating Florence Nightingale. As you may recall, I recently reviewed Enid's latest novel, The Twelve Rooms of the Nile.
Here is a bit more fascinating insight into this most fascinating woman written by award winning author, Enid Shomer, and based upon the intense research she completed on Florence Nightingale's life.
Why I Love Florence Nightingale
(Now that I’ve Found Her)
Enid Shomer
The Florence Nightingale in my novel The Twelve Rooms of the Nile is a sassy, ebullient, and witty woman. But it took years of research to find this Nightingale, to liberate her from more than a century of wildly varied biography and opinion. Along the way I encountered distortion, myth, and lacunae on a grand scale.
Initially, my ideas about Nightingale were based on popular culture and a single famous biography. From the former came the familiar if gauzy figure of the Lady with the Lamp—heroine of the Crimean War, and inventor of nursing. Then in college I read Lytton Strachey’s landmark volume Eminent Victorians.
A member of the Bloomsbury group, Strachey was a stylish writer with a razor-sharp tongue who introduced a new kind of biography that combined psychological insight with sarcastic irreverence. His portrait of Nightingale, still taught as a modern classic, is more character assassination than biography. He portrays a ruthlessly ambitious harridan who managed to work at least one friend to death. In my opinion, Strachey did more to distort her reputation than anyone before or since.
In the following decades, Nightingale was subjected to a spate of scholarly critiques based on doctrinaire Freudianism, books such as George Pickering’s Creative Malady: Illness in the Lives and Minds of Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Using the fact that Nightingale was bedridden for eleven years after returning from the Crimea and was never truly healthy again, these studies painted her as a hysterical hypochondriac, a conniving neurotic who used her psychosomatic illness for personal gain.
Florence Nightingale bedridden
Today, most scholars agree that the cause of her poor health was brucellosis, which she contracted in the Crimea by drinking raw milk or eating goat or lamb, common fare in Turkey then and now. A disease of livestock transmissible to humans, brucellosis causes symptoms similar to rheumatoid arthritis plus fevers and debilitating bone pain. Far from being a nutcase, Nightingale accomplished her legendary deeds not because of her illnesses, but in spite of them.
I also encountered a strange myth. Many nurses I consulted thought that Nightingale died of syphilis. Nightingale lived to be ninety. I believe she was a virgin. She never wavered in her opposition to marriage because she knew it would mean the end of her independence and of her ability to answer God’s call to be of service to the world. The sort of paradox that appeals to the imagination, this myth is credible in part because it is true to nineteenth-century mortality rates. Syphilis claimed as many lives then as tuberculosis. It caused the death, in fact, of the other main character in my novel, Gustave Flaubert, who caught it from the prostitutes he patronized along the Nile. Another source of the myth may be Nightingale’s repeated insistence in diaries and letters on her own “very passionate nature,” a claim borne out by her life. She could be reckless and impulsive, and never did anything halfway. Alone, she crawled on her belly by candlelight through the tunnels of the Great Pyramid. Unlike other women travelers on the Nile, she stayed on board her houseboat to go up (and down) the dangerous rapids at Aswan.
One essential trait almost never given its due in all the literature is her crackerjack humor, which allowed her to clothe her candor in the elegant robes of witty repartée. A letter she wrote as a six-year-old to her Aunt Anne illustrates how outspoken she was by nature: “I hope you have got safe to your journey’s end…And I do hope you saw the eclipse of the moon on the day you went. Papa says that you were blind boobies if you did not watch it for a whole hour, as we did.”
Some of her accomplishments have gone largely unsung. Few know that she pioneered the application of statistics to large populations and effectively invented Public Health. Her laboratory was the hospital at Scutari, the barracks of the British Army and, later, all of India, whose health care system she administered from her living room through powerful friends—Prime Ministers and cabinet secretaries. And although she did not subscribe to the germ theory, she instituted practices that had the same effect as if she had: scrupulous hygiene, fresh air, and downstream sewage treatment facilities. She cut the mortality rate of British soldiers in the Crimea by two-thirds.
The Nightingale I discovered and revived was not the dour and humorless figure so many of us associate with her name, but a vivacious rebel every bit the intellectual equal of Gustave Flaubert with whom she shares her fictional adventures in my novel. Both of them were geniuses who balked at the world but left it richer than they found it.
You can learn more about Enid Shomer and her work at:
http://www.enidshomer.com/
I LOVE COMMENTS
From History and Women
Evan said...
Would love to see the British make an epic period piece of Florence Nightingales' life. Have they made one? Something on the order of The King Speech or The Imitation Game!
Feb 26, 2015, 2:21:00 PM
Mirella Sichirollo Patzer said...
I;m not sure if a movie has been m,ade of her life. If they have, I don't know about it. I love the BBC and am enjoying watching all their period tv series like Land Girls, Crimson Field, and Forsyte Saga.
Mar 4, 2015, 10:06:00 AM
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Home » Context of 'September 14, 2001: Air National Guard Director Provides Chronology of Military Response to the 9/11 Attacks'
Context of 'September 14, 2001: Air National Guard Director Provides Chronology of Military Response to the 9/11 Attacks'
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8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001: Flight 11 Hits the North Tower of the World Trade Center
The hole caused by the Flight 11 crash. [Source: Reuters]Flight 11 slams into the WTC North Tower (Building 1). Hijackers Mohamed Atta Waleed Alshehri, Wail Alshehri, Abdulaziz Alomari, and Satam Al Suqami presumably are killed instantly, and many more in the tower will die over the next few hours. Seismic records pinpoint the crash at 26 seconds after 8:46 a.m. [CNN, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001; North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; USA Today, 12/20/2001; Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002, pp. 1-10; New York Times, 5/26/2002; USA Today, 8/12/2002; Associated Press, 8/21/2002; Newsday, 9/10/2002] The NIST report states the crash time to be 8:46:30. [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 19] The 9/11 Commission Report states the crash time to be 8:46:40. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 7] Investigators believe the plane still has about 10,000 gallons of fuel (see 8:57 a.m. September 11, 2001). [New York Times, 5/26/2002] The plane strikes the 93rd through 99th floors in the 110-story building. No one above the crash line survives; approximately 1,360 people die. Below the crash line, approximately 72 die and more than 4,000 survive. Both towers are slightly less than half full at the time of the attack, with between 5,000 to 7,000 people in each tower. This number is lower than expected. Many office workers have not yet shown up to work, and tourists to the observation deck opening at 9:30 A.M. have yet to arrive. [USA Today, 12/20/2001; National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 20-22] The impact severs some columns on the north side of the North Tower. Each tower is designed as a “tube-in-tube” structure and the steel columns which support its weight are arranged around the perimeter and in the core. The plane, which weighs 283,600 lb and is traveling at an estimated speed of around 430 mph (see October 2002-October 2005), severs 35 of the building’s 236 perimeter columns and damages another two. The damage to the South Tower’s perimeter will be similar (see 9:03 a.m. September 11, 2001). [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 5-9, 20, 22] The perimeter columns bear about half of the tower’s weight, so this damage reduces its ability to bear gravity loads by about 7.5 percent. [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 6] The actual damage to the 47 core columns is not known, as there are no photographs or videos of it, but there will be much speculation about this after 9/11. It will be suggested that some parts of the aircraft may have damaged the core even after crashing through the exterior wall. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): “Moving at 500 mph, an engine broke any exterior column it hit. If the engine missed the floor slab, the majority of the engine core remained intact and had enough residual momentum to sever a core column upon direct impact.” [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 107] According to NIST’s base case computer model, three of the core columns are severed and another ten suffer some damage. [National Institute of Standards & Technology, 9/2005, pp. 189 ] If this is accurate, it means that the impact damage to the core reduces the Tower’s strength by another approximately 7.5 percent, meaning that the building loses about 15 percent of its strength in total. This damage will be cited after 9/11 by NIST and others researchers as an event contributing to the building’s collapse (see October 23, 2002 and October 19, 2004). In addition, some of the fireproofing on the steel columns and trusses may be dislodged. The original fireproofing on the fire floors was mostly Blazeshield DC/F, but some of the fireproofing on the flooring has recently been upgraded to Blazeshield II, which is about 20 percent denser and 20 percent more adhesive. [National Institute of Standards & Technology, 9/2005, pp. xxxvi, 83 ] Photographs and videos of the towers will not show the state of fireproofing inside the buildings, but NIST will estimate the damage to it using a computer model. Its severe case model (see (October 2002-October 2005)) will predict that 43 of the 47 core columns are stripped of their fireproofing on one or more floors and that fireproofing is stripped from trusses covering 60,000 ft2 of floor area, the equivalent of about one and a half floors. NIST will say that the loss of fireproofing is a major cause of the collapse (see April 5, 2005), but only performs 15 tests on fireproofing samples (see October 26, 2005). [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 23] According to NIST, more fireproofing is stripped from the South Tower (see 9:03 a.m. September 11, 2001).
Entity Tags: Mohamed Atta, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Satam Al Suqami, Waleed Alshehri, Abdulaziz Alomari, World Trade Center, Wail Alshehri
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline
8:53 a.m. September 11, 2001: Otis Fighters Airborne, Allegedly Ordered toward New York
A typical F-15. [Source: US Air Force]Radar data will show that the two F-15s scrambled from Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, are airborne by this time. [Washington Post, 9/15/2001; North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 20] It is now eight minutes since the mission crew commander at NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) ordered that the jets be launched (see 8:45 a.m. September 11, 2001). [Vanity Fair, 8/1/2006] It is 40 minutes since air traffic controllers had their last communication with Flight 11 (see 8:13 a.m. September 11, 2001), and 28 minutes since they became certain that the aircraft was hijacked (see (8:25 a.m.) September 11, 2001). Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center seven minutes ago (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 7, 19 and 459]
Commander Wants Fighters Sent to New York - In Rome, New York, NEADS has just received news of the plane hitting the WTC (see 8:51 a.m. September 11, 2001). Major Kevin Nasypany, the facility’s mission crew commander, is asked what to do with the Otis fighters. He responds: “Send ‘em to New York City still. Continue! Go! This is what I got. Possible news that a 737 just hit the World Trade Center. This is a real-world.… Continue taking the fighters down to the New York City area, JFK [International Airport] area, if you can. Make sure that the FAA clears it—your route all the way through.… Let’s press with this.” [Vanity Fair, 8/1/2006] Yet there will be conflicting reports of the fighters’ destination (see (8:53 a.m.-9:05 a.m.) September 11, 2001), with some accounts saying they are directed toward military-controlled airspace off the Long Island coast. [Filson, 2003, pp. 56-59; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
Entity Tags: Northeast Air Defense Sector, Robert Marr, Kevin Nasypany, Otis Air National Guard Base
9:03 a.m. September 11, 2001: Flight 175 Crashes into WTC South Tower; Millions Watch Live on Television
Flight 175 hits the WTC South Tower. The picture was taken from a traffic helicopter. [Source: WABC 7/ Salient Stills]Flight 175 hits the South Tower of the World Trade Center (Tower Two). Seismic records pinpoint the time at six seconds before 9:03 a.m. (rounded to 9:03 a.m.). Hijackers Marwan Alshehhi, Fayez Ahmed Banihammad, Mohand Alshehri, Hamza Alghamdi, and Ahmed Alghamdi presumably are killed instantly, and many more in the tower will die over the next few hours. [New York Times, 9/12/2001; CNN, 9/12/2001; CNN, 9/17/2001; North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; USA Today, 12/20/2001; Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002, pp. 1-10; New York Times, 5/26/2002; Associated Press, 8/21/2002; USA Today, 9/2/2002] According to the NIST report, the crash time is 9:02:59. [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 38] According to the 9/11 Commission Report, the crash time is 9:03:11. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 8] Millions watch the crash live on television. The plane strikes the 77th through 85th floors in the 110-story building. Approximately 100 people are killed or injured in the initial impact; 600 people in the tower eventually die. The death toll is far lower than in the North Tower because about two-thirds of the South Tower’s occupants have evacuated the building in the 17 minutes since the first tower was struck. [USA Today, 12/20/2001; National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 5-9, 41] The combined death toll from the two towers is estimated at 2,819, not including the hijackers. [Associated Press, 8/21/2002] The impact severs some columns on the south side of the South Tower. Each of the Twin Towers is designed as a “tube-in-tube” structure and the steel columns which support its weight are arranged around the perimeter and in the core. The plane, which is traveling at an estimated speed of around 500 mph (see October 2002-October 2005), severs 33 of the building’s 236 perimeter columns and damages another one. [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 39] The perimeter columns bear about half of the tower’s weight, so the damage to them reduces the tower’s ability to bear gravity loads by about 7.1 percent. [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 6] The actual damage to the 47 core columns is not known, as there are no photographs or videos of it, but there will be much speculation about this after 9/11. It will be suggested that some parts of the aircraft may be able to damage the core even after crashing through the exterior wall (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001). [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 107] According to NIST’s base case model, five of the core columns are severed and another five suffer some damage. [National Institute of Standards & Technology, 9/2005, pp. 235 ] This may reduce the tower’s ability to bear loads by a further approximately 8 percent, meaning that the aircraft impact accounted for a loss of about 15 percent of the building’s strength. This damage will be cited as an event contributing to the building’s collapse after 9/11 (see October 23, 2002 and October 19, 2004). NIST’s base case estimate of damage to the North Tower’s core will be similar, even though the aircraft impact there was dissimilar (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001). Flight 11 hit the North Tower’s core head on, whereas Flight 175 only hits the corner of the South Tower’s core. [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 20-23, 38-41] In addition, some of the fireproofing on the steel columns and trusses may be dislodged (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001). [National Institute of Standards & Technology, 9/2005, pp. xxxvi, 83 ] Photographs and videos of the towers will not show the state of fireproofing inside the buildings, but the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will try to estimate the damage to fireproofing using a series of computer models. Its severe case model (see (October 2002-October 2005)) will predict that 39 of the 47 core columns are stripped of their fireproofing on one or more floors and that fireproofing is stripped from trusses covering 80,000 ft2 of floor area, the equivalent of about two floors. NIST will say that the loss of fireproofing is a major cause of the collapse (see April 5, 2005), but only performs 15 tests on fireproofing samples (see October 26, 2005). [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 41] According to NIST, less fireproofing is stripped from the North Tower (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001).
Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Marwan Alshehhi, Fayez Ahmed Banihammad, Hamza Alghamdi, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Ahmed Alghamdi, Mohand Alshehri
9:24 a.m. September 11, 2001: Fighter Jets Scrambled from Langley Air Force Base
Major Brad Derrig. [Source: ABC]At Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, the pilots of three F-16s receive the order to scramble (i.e. take off immediately). A Klaxon horn sounds and the status lights in the hangars change from yellow to green, notifying them of the order. [Longman, 2002, pp. 65; Filson, 2003, pp. 63; Spencer, 2008, pp. 141] The fighter jets belong to the North Dakota Air National Guard’s 119th Fighter Wing. The wing has a small detachment at Langley that serves as one of NORAD’s seven “alert” sites around the US, responsible for defending the nation against attack. [Spencer, 2008, pp. 114] The jets are already at “battle stations,” with the pilots in the cockpits but the engines off (see (9:09 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Filson, 2003, pp. 55; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 24; Spencer, 2008, pp. 117-119] The scramble order has just been issued by NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) (see 9:24 a.m. September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 8/26/2004, pp. 16]
Third Pilot Launched - The unit at Langley keeps two F-16s on “alert”—armed, fueled, and ready to take off within minutes if called upon. [Air Force Magazine, 2/2002; Bergen Record, 12/5/2003; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 17] But NEADS has instructed it to launch as many aircraft as it can (see (Between 9:10 a.m. and 9:23 a.m.) September 11, 2001), and so the unit’s operations manager Captain Craig Borgstrom is also preparing to take off in a third jet. [Spencer, 2008, pp. 118-119] Major Dean Eckmann calls the other two pilots, saying, “Quit check,” indicating a radio check. Major Brad Derrig responds, “Two.” Borgstrom replies: “Three. I’m going with you!” This is news to Derrig. According to author Lynn Spencer, Derrig is “stunned.… [N]ot much surprises him, but this does.” Borgstrom joining them as a pilot will mean that, in the middle of this unprecedented crisis, their unit will be left without a commanding officer. [Spencer, 2008, pp. 142]
Only Two Jets Fully Armed - The two jets that are kept on alert are fully armed. As Eckmann will later recall, “We can carry M9 heat seekers, Sidewinders for the M7 Sparrow, plus we have an internal 20 mm Vulcan cannon, and we were pretty much armed with all that.” [BBC, 9/1/2002] However, Borgstrom’s jet has guns only, and though the six-barrel 20 mm gun can fire 6,000 rounds per minute, it requires close range.
Pilot Unqualified to Lead Three Jets - As the three aircraft taxi out to the runway, Eckmann is concerned that he has not yet qualified as a mission commander—a “four-ship”—and is therefore not authorized to lead more than one fighter jet. He calls the other pilots, saying, “Hey, I’m only a two-ship!” But Derrig, who is a full-time instructor pilot for the Air National Guard, urges him not to worry. He responds: “Press! I’m an instructor,” giving his approval for the flight to operate as a “three-ship” under Eckmann’s lead. [Spencer, 2008, pp. 142] The three jets will take off and be airborne by 9:30 a.m. (see (9:25 a.m.-9:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 8/26/2004, pp. 16]
Entity Tags: Brad Derrig, 119th Fighter Wing, Craig Borgstrom, Dean Eckmann, Langley Air Force Base
(9:25 a.m.-9:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Langley Jets Take off, but Are Delayed during Launch
Captain Craig Borgstrom. [Source: US Air Force / Austin Knox]The three F-16 fighter jets ordered to scramble from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia (see 9:24 a.m. September 11, 2001) take off and, radar data will show, are airborne by 9:30 a.m. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; Christian Science Monitor, 4/16/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 27]
Delayed during Launch - Major Dean Eckmann will recall that, after receiving the scramble order, he and the two other pilots have “a pretty quick response time. I believe it was four to five minutes we were airborne from that point.” [BBC, 9/1/2002] According to the 1st Air Force’s book about 9/11, the three fighters are “given highest priority over all other air traffic at Langley Air Force Base” as they are launching. [Filson, 2003, pp. 63] But, according to author Lynn Spencer, in spite of this, the jets are delayed. As Eckmann is approaching the runway, he calls the control tower for clearance to take off, but the tower controller tells him, “Hold for an air traffic delay.” Air traffic controllers at the FAA’s Washington Center “have not had time to clear airliners out of the way for the northerly heading. Dozens of aircraft at various altitudes fill the jets’ route.” After having to wait two minutes, Eckmann complains: “We’re an active air scramble. We need to go now!” Finally, the tower controller tells him, “Roger, Quit flight is cleared for takeoff, 090 for 60,” meaning the fighters are to fly due east for 60 miles (see (9:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001).
Taking Off - The three jets launch 15 seconds apart, with Eckmann in front and the two other jets following. [Spencer, 2008, pp. 143-144] Pilot Craig Borgstrom will later recall, “[W]e took off, the three of us, and basically the formation we always brief on alert, we’ll stay in a two- to three-mile trail from the guy in front.” [Filson, 2003, pp. 63] According to the BBC, the pilots get a signal over their planes’ transponders, indicating an emergency wartime situation. [BBC, 9/1/2002]
Could Reach Washington before Pentagon Attack - F-16s have a maximum speed of 1,500 mph at high altitude, or 915 mph at sea level, so the three fighters could plausibly travel the 130 miles from Langley Air Force Base to Washington in just minutes. [Chant, 1987, pp. 404; Associated Press, 6/16/2000; USA Today, 9/16/2001; Washington Post, 9/16/2001 ; US Air Force, 10/2007] Major General Larry Arnold, the commanding general of NORAD’s Continental US Region, will tell the 9/11 Commission, “I think if those aircraft had gotten airborne immediately, if we were operating under something other than peacetime rules, where they could have turned immediately toward Washington, DC, and gone into burner, it is physically possible that they could have gotten over Washington” before 9:37, when the Pentagon is hit. [9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003] Yet according to the 9/11 Commission, the jets are redirected east over the Atlantic Ocean and will be 150 miles from the Pentagon when it is hit (see 9:30 a.m.-9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 27]
Conflicting Times - Some early news reports after 9/11 will say the Langley jets take off at the later time of 9:35 a.m. [Washington Post, 9/12/2001; CNN, 9/14/2001; Washington Post, 9/15/2001; CNN, 9/17/2001] But according to Colonel Alan Scott, the former vice commander of the Continental US NORAD Region, though the jets are airborne at 9:30, the report of this does not come down until 9:35, so this fact may account for the conflicting times. [9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003]
Entity Tags: Brad Derrig, Alan Scott, Craig Borgstrom, Dean Eckmann, Langley Air Force Base, Larry Arnold
9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: Flight 77 Crashes into Reinforced Section of the Pentagon, Killing 189
The Pentagon explodes. [Source: Donley/ Sipa]Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon. All 64 people on the plane are killed. A hundred-and-twenty-four people working in the building are killed, and a further victim will die in hospital several days later. Hijackers Hani Hanjour, Khalid Almihdhar, Majed Moqed, Nawaf Alhazmi, and Salem Alhazmi presumably are killed instantly. (Typically, they are not included in the death counts.) [CNN, 9/17/2001; North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; Guardian, 10/17/2001; Washington Post, 11/21/2001; USA Today, 8/12/2002; Associated Press, 8/21/2002; MSNBC, 9/3/2002; ABC News, 9/11/2002; CBS, 9/11/2002] Flight 77 hits the first floor of the Pentagon’s west wall. The impact and the resulting explosion heavily damage the building’s three outer rings. The path of destruction cuts through Army accounting offices on the outer E Ring, the Navy Command Center on the D Ring, and the Defense Intelligence Agency’s comptroller’s office on the C Ring. [Vogel, 2007, pp. 431 and 449] Flight 77 strikes the only side of the Pentagon that had recently been renovated—it was “within days of being totally [renovated].” [US Department of Defense, 9/15/2001] “It was the only area of the Pentagon with a sprinkler system, and it had been reconstructed with a web of steel columns and bars to withstand bomb blasts. The area struck by the plane also had blast-resistant windows—two inches thick and 2,500 pounds each—that stayed intact during the crash and fire. While perhaps, 4,500 people normally would have been working in the hardest-hit areas, because of the renovation work only about 800 were there.” More than 25,000 people work at the Pentagon. [Los Angeles Times, 9/16/2001] Furthermore, the plane hits an area that has no basement. As journalist Steve Vogel later points out, “If there had been one under the first floor, its occupants could easily have been trapped by fire and killed when the upper floors collapsed.” [Vogel, 2007, pp. 450]
Entity Tags: Hani Hanjour, Khalid Almihdhar, Nawaf Alhazmi, US Department of Defense, Salem Alhazmi, Majed Moqed, Pentagon
(10:03 a.m.-10:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Flight 93 Crashes; Seven-Minute Discrepancy in Exact Timing of Crash
Smoke rising, minutes after Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania. [Source: CNN]Exactly when Flight 93 crashes is unclear. According to NORAD, Flight 93 crashes at 10:03 a.m. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001] The 9/11 Commission gives an exact time of 11 seconds after 10:03 a.m. It will claim this “time is supported by evidence from the staff’s radar analysis, the flight data recorder, NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] analysis, and infrared satellite data.” It does note that “[t]he precise crash time has been the subject of some dispute.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] However, a seismic study authorized by the US Army and drafted by scientists Won-Young Kim and Gerald Baum to determine when the plane crashed will conclude that the crash happened at 10:06:05 a.m. [Kim and Baum, 2002 ; San Francisco Chronicle, 12/9/2002] The discrepancy is so puzzling that the Philadelphia Daily News will publish an article on the issue, titled “Three-Minute Discrepancy in Tape.” This notes that leading seismologists agree on the 10:06 a.m. time, give or take a couple of seconds. [Philadelphia Daily News, 9/16/2002] The New York Observer will note that, in addition to the seismology study, “The FAA gives a crash time of 10:07 a.m. In addition, the New York Times, drawing on flight controllers in more than one FAA facility, put the time at 10:10 a.m. Up to a seven-minute discrepancy? In terms of an air disaster, seven minutes is close to an eternity. The way our nation has historically treated any airline tragedy is to pair up recordings from the cockpit and air traffic control and parse the timeline down to the hundredths of a second. However, as [former Inspector General of the Transportation Department] Mary Schiavo points out, ‘We don’t have an NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigation here, and they ordinarily dissect the timeline to the thousandth of a second.’” [New York Observer, 2/15/2004]
Entity Tags: 9/11 Commission, North American Aerospace Defense Command, Federal Aviation Administration, Won-Young Kim, Mary Schiavo, Gerald R. Baum
(10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Flight 93 Crashes into Filled-in Mine in Pennsylvania Countryside
Flight 93 crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside. Resue vehicles arrive in the distance. [Source: Keith Srakocic/ Associated Press]Flight 93 crashes into an empty field just north of the Somerset County Airport, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, 124 miles or 15 minutes from Washington, D.C. Presumably, hijackers Ziad Jarrah, Ahmed Alhaznawi, Ahmed Alnami, Saeed Alghamdi, and all the plane’s passengers are killed instantly. [CNN, 9/12/2001; North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; Guardian, 10/17/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; USA Today, 8/12/2002; Associated Press, 8/21/2002; MSNBC, 9/3/2002] The point of impact is a reclaimed coal mine, known locally as the Diamond T Mine, that was reportedly abandoned in 1996. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/12/2001; St. Petersburg Times, 9/12/2001; Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/11/2002] Being “reclaimed” means the earth had been excavated down to the coal seam, the coal removed, and then the earth replaced and planted over. [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 121] A US Army authorized seismic study times the crash at five seconds after 10:06 a.m. [Kim and Baum, 2002 ; San Francisco Chronicle, 12/9/2002] As mentioned previously, the timing of this crash is disputed and it may well occur at 10:03 a.m., 10:07 a.m., or 10:10 a.m.
Entity Tags: San Francisco Chronicle, Ziad Jarrah, Ahmed Alhaznawi, Saeed Alghamdi, NBC, Ahmed Alnami
September 13, 2001: Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gives Confused and Inaccurate Account of Military Response to the 9/11 Attacks during Hearing
Carl Levin. [Source: Publicity photo]Air Force General Richard Myers is questioned about the US military’s response to the 9/11 attacks when he appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but his answers are vague and confused, and he claims, incorrectly, that no fighter jets were scrambled in response to the hijackings until after the Pentagon was hit. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 119; Farmer, 2009, pp. 241-243] Myers has been the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since March 2000. [US Air Force, 9/2005] With General Henry Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flying toward Europe on the morning of September 11 (see (8:50 a.m.-10:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001), he served as the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 9/11 attacks. [Myers, 2009, pp. 10; Shelton, Levinson, and McConnell, 2010, pp. 431-433]
Myers Says Fighters Were Only Scrambled after the Pentagon Attack - During the hearing, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) asks if the Department of Defense was contacted by “the FAA or the FBI or any other agency” after the first two hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center, at 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m. (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001 and 9:03 a.m. September 11, 2001), but before 9:37 a.m., when the Pentagon was hit (see 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001). Myers replies, “I don’t know the answer to that question.” Levin then asks if the military was “asked to take action against any specific aircraft” during the attacks. Myers answers, “When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS, radar aircraft, and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked.” Myers elaborates later in the hearing, telling Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL): “[A]fter the second tower was hit, I spoke to the commander of NORAD, General [Ralph] Eberhart (see (9:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001). And at that point, I think the decision was at that point to start launching aircraft.” But he tells Levin that “to the best of my knowledge,” the order to scramble fighters was only given “after the Pentagon was struck.”
Flight 93 Was Not Shot Down, Myers Says - Myers addresses the military’s response to Flight 93, the fourth hijacked plane, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania (see (10:03 a.m.-10:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and (10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001). He says: “[I]f my memory serves me… we had launched on the one that eventually crashed in Pennsylvania. I mean, we had gotten somebody close to it, as I recall.” However, he adds, “I’ll have to check that out.” When Levin mentions that there have been “statements that the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down,” Myers responds, “[T]he armed forces did not shoot down any aircraft.” He says, “[W]e never actually had to use force.” Although Myers appears unclear about when the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) launched fighters in response to the hijackings, he is more confident when he states: “At the time of the first impact on the World Trade Center, we stood up our Crisis Action Team. That was done immediately. So we stood it up. And we started talking to the federal agencies.” [US Congress, 9/13/2001]
NORAD and the 9/11 Commission Contradict Myers's Account - Myers’s claim that fighters were only launched in response to the hijackings after the Pentagon was hit will later be contradicted by the accounts of NORAD and the 9/11 Commission, which state that fighters were ordered to take off from Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, at 8:46 a.m. (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001) and from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia at 9:24 a.m. (see 9:24 a.m. September 11, 2001). [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 20, 27] The 9/11 Commission will also contradict Myers’s claim that the military launched fighters in response to Flight 93 and “had gotten somebody close to it.” “By the time the military learned about the flight,” the 9/11 Commission Report will state, “it had crashed.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 34]
Myers's Testimony Prompts Criticism in the Media - Journalist and author Philip Shenon will question why Myers, a veteran Air Force fighter pilot, would give such an inaccurate account of the military’s response to the 9/11 attacks during the hearing. “It seemed obvious that Myers, of all people at the Pentagon, would want to know—would demand to know—how jet fighters under NORAD’s control had responded on the morning of September 11 to the threat in the skies,” he will write. [US Congress, 9/13/2001; Shenon, 2008, pp. 119] John Farmer, the senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, will comment that “Myers’s evident confusion about precisely what had occurred prompted criticism in the media and a quick, if contradictory, response from the administration.” [Farmer, 2009, pp. 243] Major General Paul Weaver, director of the Air National Guard, will provide a more detailed account of the military’s response to the hijackings in an “impromptu hallway interview” at the Pentagon on September 14 (see September 14, 2001). [Dallas Morning News, 9/14/2001] And four days later, NORAD will release a timeline of its response to the hijackings (see September 18, 2001). [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001]
Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers, Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, Clarence W. (“Bill”) Nelson
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline
September 14, 2001: Air National Guard Director Provides Chronology of Military Response to the 9/11 Attacks
Major General Paul Weaver, director of the Air National Guard, provides reporters with details of the 9/11 attacks and the US military’s response to the hijackings. Speaking at the Pentagon, Weaver gives reporters a detailed account of what happened on September 11. He says Air National Guard planes responded to the hijackings on orders from NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), which was alerted to the hijackings by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Fighters Took Off Too Late to Catch Flight 175 - Weaver says that at 8:53 a.m., seven minutes after Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001), two F-15 fighter jets took off from Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in pursuit of Flight 175, the second plane to be hijacked (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001 and 8:53 a.m. September 11, 2001). However, Weaver says, the FAA had only told NEADS that “there was an airplane that had a problem,” and at that time it was unclear if Flight 175 had been hijacked. He says that although the fighters flew at over 500 miles per hour, they were unable to catch up with Flight 175 before it hit the South Tower of the WTC at 9:03 a.m. (see 9:03 a.m. September 11, 2001).
More Fighters Were Launched Just before Pentagon Was Hit - Weaver says Flight 77, the third aircraft to be hijacked, flew west for 45 minutes and then turned east, and its transponder was turned off. He does not claim that the military received notice that it had been hijacked, but says NEADS scrambled F-16 fighters that were on alert at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia at 9:35 a.m. (see 9:24 a.m. September 11, 2001 and (9:25 a.m.-9:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001). Two minutes later, at 9:37 a.m., the Pentagon was hit (see 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001). The F-16s, he says, subsequently remained on patrol over the Pentagon.
No Fighters Took Off to Intercept Flight 93 - Weaver says no fighters were scrambled to chase after Flight 93, the fourth hijacked plane, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania (see (10:03 a.m.-10:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and (10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001). “There was no notification for us to launch airplanes,” he tells the reporters. “We weren’t even close.” [Dallas Morning News, 9/14/2001; Farmer, 2009, pp. 244] (However, also on this day, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz contradicts Weaver’s claim. He tells PBS’s NewsHour, “[W]e were already tracking in on that plane that crashed in Pennsylvania,” and adds, “[T]he Air Force was in a position to do so [i.e. shoot Flight 93 down] if we had had to.” [NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 9/14/2001; Farmer, 2009, pp. 245] ) Weaver says that even if fighters had caught up with the hijacked planes, they may have been unable to stop them reaching their targets. “You’re not going to get an American pilot shooting down an American airliner,” he says. “We don’t have permission to do that.” According to Weaver, only the president can issue an order to shoot down an American airliner. [Dallas Morning News, 9/14/2001]
Weaver's Account Is the 'Most Accurate' Prior to the 9/11 Commission's Investigation - The account he gives to reporters today, according to John Farmer, the senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, will be “the last public statement uttered by General Weaver on the subject and proved to be the most accurate account of events issued until the 9/11 Commission’s investigation.” [Farmer, 2009, pp. 245] Apparently after Weaver issues his statement to the reporters, an Air Force spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, adds that no regular Air Force planes were scrambled during the 9/11 attacks, “because continental air defense is the mission of the Air National Guard.” He says regular Air Force fighters “have air superiority as their mission,” which means they train “to deploy somewhere where we are engaged in hostile action and secure the skies.” These fighters, according to the spokesman, “ordinarily are not ready to fly on short notice and their pilots are not on standby to defend the United States.” [Dallas Morning News, 9/14/2001]
Pentagon Has Been Slow to Answer Questions about Response to Hijackings - The Washington Post will comment, “Questions about the time it took US military planes to respond to the threat of several hijacked aircraft speeding toward the nation’s financial and military centers have dogged the Pentagon since the attacks.” It will add, “Top Pentagon officials have been slow to respond to press inquiries for a timeline that would establish the exact times that civil aviation authorities became aware of the hijackings, when US military commanders were notified, and when US fighter jets took to the air.” [Washington Post, 9/15/2001] The previous day, Air Force General Richard Myers was questioned about the military’s response to the attacks before the Senate Armed Services Committee, but his answers were vague and confused (see September 13, 2001). [US Congress, 9/13/2001; Farmer, 2009, pp. 241-242] NORAD will release its own timeline of the events of September 11 and its response to the hijackings on September 18 (see September 18, 2001). [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/29/2004]
Entity Tags: US Department of the Air Force, Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Weaver
September 18, 2001: NORAD Releases Timeline Outlining Its Response to the 9/11 Attacks
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) releases a chronology of the events of September 11 and its response to the terrorist attacks that day, but the accuracy of this account will later be challenged by the 9/11 Commission. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 34; 9/11 Commission, 7/29/2004]
NORAD Learned of First Hijackings Too Late to Defend the WTC - The chronology provides the times at which NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) was alerted to the hijackings and when fighter jets were scrambled in response to the hijackings. It states that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) notified NEADS about Flight 11, the first hijacked aircraft, at 8:40 a.m. In response, the order was given to scramble two F-15 fighters from Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, at 8:46 a.m. (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001), the same time that Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001), and the fighters were airborne at 8:52 a.m. (see 8:53 a.m. September 11, 2001). The FAA notified NEADS about Flight 175, the second hijacked aircraft, at 8:43 a.m., according to the chronology. When Flight 175 crashed into the WTC at 9:03 a.m. (see 9:03 a.m. September 11, 2001), the chronology states, the Otis fighters were 71 miles away from New York.
Fighters Were Scrambled in Response to Flight 77 Hijacking - NEADS was alerted to Flight 77, the third hijacked aircraft, at 9:24 a.m., according to the chronology. In response, the order was given to scramble two F-16 fighters from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia (see 9:24 a.m. September 11, 2001) and these were airborne at 9:30 a.m. (see (9:25 a.m.-9:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001). But the F-16s were 105 miles from the Pentagon when it was hit at 9:37 a.m. (see 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001). Regarding the fourth hijacked aircraft, Flight 93, the chronology gives “N/A” as the time the FAA alerted NEADS, but it also states that the FAA and NEADS discussed the flight on “a line of open communication.” At 10:03 a.m., when Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania (see (10:03 a.m.-10:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and (10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001), the chronology states, the F-16s launched from Langley Air Force Base in response to the hijacking of Flight 77 were “in place to protect DC.” [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001]
9/11 Commission Disputes NORAD's Account - The 9/11 Commission Report, released in 2004, will highlight what it says are inaccuracies in NORAD’s timeline of the events of September 11. It will state that NORAD’s claim that NEADS was alerted to Flight 77 at 9:24 a.m. was incorrect. The notice NEADS received at that time, according to the report, was the incorrect claim that Flight 11 “had not hit the World Trade Center and was heading for Washington, DC” (see 9:21 a.m. September 11, 2001). “NEADS never received notice that American 77 was hijacked,” the report will state. “It was notified at 9:34 that American 77 was lost (see 9:34 a.m. September 11, 2001). Then, minutes later, NEADS was told that an unknown plane was six miles southwest of the White House” (see 9:36 a.m. September 11, 2001). The report will state that NORAD’s claim that the Langley fighters were scrambled in response to the notification about Flight 77 is also incorrect. Instead, it will state, the fighters were scrambled in response to the incorrect report that Flight 11 was still airborne and heading south. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 34]
9/11 Commission Disputes NORAD's Account regarding Flights 175 and 93 - Furthermore, whereas NORAD’s chronology claims that NEADS discussed Flight 93 with the FAA on “a line of open communication,” the 9/11 Commission Report will state that NEADS “first received a call about United 93 from the military liaison at [the FAA’s] Cleveland Center at 10:07,” by which time the plane “had already crashed” (see 10:05 a.m.-10:08 a.m. September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 30] And while NORAD states that the FAA notified NEADS about Flight 175 at 8:43 a.m., according to the report, the first notification came “in a phone call from [the FAA’s] New York Center to NEADS at 9:03” (see (9:03 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 23]
Military Has Been Slow to Provide Details of Its Response on September 11 - US military officials, according to the Washington Post, “have been slow to respond to press inquiries for a timeline that would establish the exact times that civil aviation authorities became aware of the hijackings, when US military commanders were notified, and when US fighter jets took to the air.” [Washington Post, 9/15/2001] On September 13, Air Force General Richard Myers was questioned about the military’s response to the 9/11 attacks before the Senate Armed Services Committee, but his answers were vague and confused (see September 13, 2001). [US Congress, 9/13/2001; Farmer, 2009, pp. 241-242] A day later, Major General Paul Weaver, director of the Air National Guard, provided reporters with details of the military’s response to the hijackings in an “impromptu hallway interview” at the Pentagon (see September 14, 2001). [Dallas Morning News, 9/14/2001]
Entity Tags: North American Aerospace Defense Command
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Complete 911 Timeline
Project: Complete 911 Timeline
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February 5, 2003: Rice Says She Is Sure that Iraq Is Linked to Al-Qaeda
When asked on CNN if there is a clear connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, National Security Adviser Rice replies: “There is no question in my mind about the al-Qaeda connection. It is a connection that has unfolded, that we’re learning more about as we are able to take the testimony of detainees, people who were high up in the al-Qaeda organization. And what emerges is a picture of a Saddam Hussein who became impressed with what al-Qaeda did after it bombed our embassies in 1998 in Kenya and Tanzania, began to give them assistance in chemical and biological weapons, something that they were having trouble achieving on their own, that harbored a terrorist network under this man [Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi, despite the fact that Saddam Hussein was told that al-Zarqawi was there.” [CNN, 2/5/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform, 3/16/2004]
Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Al-Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Condoleezza Rice
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links
February 6, 2003: US Politicians Question Why Bush Administration Highlights Training Camp as Justifying War Against Iraq without Actually Attacking the Camp
One day after Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations in which he detailed an alleged al-Qaeda-linked training camp in northern Iraq said to be producing chemical weapons (see February 5, 2003), a number of US politicians question why the US has not taken any action against the camp. The camp, located near the town of Khurmal in territory controlled by the Kurdish rebel group Ansar al-Islam, is said to be closely linked to Islamist militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The Los Angeles Times reports that, “Lawmakers who have attended classified briefings on the camp say that they have been stymied for months in their efforts to get an explanation for why the United States has not launched a military strike on the compound…” Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) asks Colin Powell in a public hearing: “Why have we not taken it out? Why have we let it sit there if it’s such a dangerous plant producing these toxins?” Powell declines to answer, saying he cannot discuss the matter publicly. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) complains that she has been asking about striking the camp well before Powell’s speech based on intelligence given in private briefings, but, “We’ve been asking this question and have not been given an answer.” Officials have replied that “they’ll have to get back to us.” Representative Jane Harman (D-CA) notes that Powell’s speech could have cost the US an opportunity to prevent the spread of chemical weapons produced at the camp, saying, “By revealing the existence of the camp, it’s predictable whatever activity is there will probably go underground.” One anonymous US intelligence official suggests, “This is it, this is their compelling evidence for use of force. If you take it out, you can’t use it as justification for war.” [Los Angeles Times, 2/7/2003]
Entity Tags: Dianne Feinstein, Joseph Biden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Colin Powell, Jane Harman
Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
February 7-13, 2003: Orange Alert Causes Duct Tape and Plastic Sheeting Buying Panic
The government raises the threat level to orange. The announcement is made by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security Secretary Ridge, and FBI Director Mueller. CIA Director George Tenet calls the threat “the most specific we have seen” since 9/11 and says al-Qaeda may use a “radiological dispersal device, as well as poisons and chemicals.” Ashcroft states that “this decision for an increased threat condition designation is based on specific intelligence received and analyzed by the full intelligence community. This information has been corroborated by multiple intelligence sources.” [CNN, 2/7/2003] Ashcroft further claims that they have “evidence that terrorists would attack American hotels and apartment buildings.” [ABC News, 2/13/2007] A detailed plan is described to authorities by a captured terror suspect. This source cited a plot involving a Virginia- or Detroit-based al-Qaeda cell that had developed a method of carrying dirty bombs encased in shoes, suitcases, or laptops through airport scanners. The informant specifies government buildings and Christian or clerical centers as possible targets. [ABC News, 2/13/2007] Three days later, Fire Administrator David Paulison advises Americans to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape to protect themselves against radiological or biological attack. This causes a brief buying panic. [MSNBC, 6/4/2007] Batteries of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles are set up around Washington and the capital’s skies are patrolled by F-16 fighter jets and helicopters. [BBC, 2/14/2003] The threat is debunked on February 13, when the main source is finally given an FBI polygraph and fails it. Two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York state that a key piece of information leading to the terror alerts was fabricated. The claim made by a captured al-Qaeda member regarding a “dirty bomb” threat to Washington, New York, or Florida had proven to be a product of his imagination. Vincent Cannistraro, former head of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, says the intelligence turned out “to be fabricated and therefore the reason for a lot of the alarm, particularly in Washington this week, has been dissipated after they found out that this information was not true.” But threat levels remain stuck on orange for two more weeks. [ABC News, 2/13/2007] Bush administration officials do admit that the captured terror suspect lied, but add that this suspect was not the only source taken into consideration. Ridge says that there is “no need to start sealing the doors and windows.” Bush says that the warning, although based on evidence fabricated by an alleged terrorist, is a “stark reminder of the era that we’re in, that we’re at war and the war goes on.” [BBC, 2/14/2003] The alert followed less than forty-eight hours after Colin Powell’s famous speech to the United Nations in which he falsely accused Saddam Hussein of harboring al-Qaeda and training terrorists in the use of chemical weapons (see February 5, 2003). [Rolling Stone, 9/21/2006 ] Anti-war demonstrations also continue to take place world-wide. [MSNBC, 6/4/2007]
Entity Tags: Vincent Cannistraro, Tom Ridge, John Ashcroft, Robert S. Mueller III, Colin Powell, David Paulison, George J. Tenet, Saddam Hussein
Category Tags: Terror Alerts, Internal US Security After 9/11
February 8, 2003: Bush Assures US that WMD and Al-Qaeda Training Camps Exist in Iraq
In a radio address to the US nation, President Bush reiterates the two main reasons for military action against Iraq, named the certain existence of WMD and al-Qaeda training camps in Iraq. He says, “We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons—the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.… We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior al-Qaeda terrorist planner. This network runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad.” [President Bush, 8/2/2003]
February 9, 2003: Prisoner Interviews Debunk Allegations of Al-Qaeda-Iraqi Government Ties
Journalist Jason Burke writes in the Observer about recent interviews he has conducted with prisoners held by Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. One prisoner, Mohammed Mansour Shahab, claims to have been an Iraqi government agent who repeatedly met with Osama bin Laden over a several year period. The New Yorker published an article in March 2002 largely based on Shahab’s allegations and concluded, “the Kurds may have evidence of [Saddam Hussein’s] ties to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.” But Burke is able to find a number of inconsistencies and falsehoods in Shahab’s account, and after he points them out, Shahab does not deny that he was lying. Burke suggests that Shahab, like other prisoners being held by the Kurds, was lying in hopes of getting his prison sentence reduced since his Kurdish captors are looking to promote propaganda against their enemy, the Hussein government. Burke also interviews a number of prisoners belonging to the Ansar al-Islam militant group that is allegedly linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He does not see evidence of any link between that group and Hussein’s government and concludes, “Saddam may well have infiltrated the Ansar al-Islam with a view to monitoring the developments of the group (indeed it would be odd if he had not) but that appears to be about as far as his involvement with the group, and incidentally with al-Qaeda, goes.” [Observer, 2/9/2003]
Entity Tags: Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Ansar al-Islam, Mohammed Mansour Shahab
February 11, 2003: CIA Director Tenet Sees Poverty and Misery as Root Causes of Terrorism, but President Bush Believes Terrorists Hate US for Its Freedom
CIA Director George Tenet publicly states that “the numbers of societies and peoples excluded from the benefits of an expanding global economy, where the daily lot is hunger, disease, and displacement… produce large populations of disaffected youth who are prime recruits for our extremist foes.” However, in October 2004, the Washington Post will report that President Bush and most of his influential advisers do not see these factors, or US foreign policy, as the primary cause of terrorism. “Bush’s explanation, in private and public, is that terrorists hate America for its freedom.” Former CIA officer Marc Sageman will comment that the Bush administration’s analysis is “nonsense, complete nonsense. They obviously haven’t looked at any surveys.” He says that international polls show that large majorities in much of the world “view us as a hypocritical huge beast throwing our weight around in the Middle East.” Bush also believes that eliminating the top thirty or so al-Qaeda leaders can effectively destroy the group, while most analysts believe al-Qaeda is more of an ideology that will survive without its top leaders, and that root causes need to be addressed to make the ideology less appealing for potential new recruits. Wayne Downing, Bush’s counterterrorism “tsar” in late 2001 and 2002, will say: “This is not a war. What we’re faced with is an Islamic insurgency that is spreading throughout the world, not just the Islamic world.” Because it is “a political struggle, the military is not the key factor. The military has to be coordinated with the other elements of national power.” [Washington Post, 10/22/2004]
Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, Marc Sageman, Wayne Downing, George W. Bush
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
February 11 or 12, 2003: Powell Obtains Advance Copy of New Speech Allegedly by Bin Laden, Misrepresents Contents to Senate
Secretary of State Colin Powell obtains an advance transcript of a new audio tape thought to be from Osama bin Laden before it is broadcast on Al Jazeera, but misrepresents the contents to a US Senate panel, implying it shows a partnership between al-Qaeda and Iraq. [CNN, 2/12/2003] Following Powell’s initial claim the tape exists, Al Jazeera says that it has no such tape and dismisses Powell’s statement as a rumor. [Associated Press, 2/12/2003] However, later in the day Al Jazeera says that it does have the tape. [Reuters, 2/12/2003] It is unclear how Powell obtains the advance copy, and Counterpunch even jokes, “Maybe the CIA gave Powell the tape before they delivered it to Al Jazeera?” [CounterPunch, 2/13/2003] In his testimony to the Senate Budget Committee Powell says, “[Bin Laden] speaks to the people of Iraq and talks about their struggle and how he is in partnership with Iraq.” [CNN, 2/12/2003] Powell’s spokesperson, Richard Boucher, says that the recording proves “that bin Laden and Saddam Hussein seem to find common ground.” [Reuters, 2/11/2003; New York Times, 2/12/2003; Washington Post, 11/12/2003] However, although bin Laden tells his supporters in Iraq they may fight alongside the Saddam Hussein, if the country is invaded by the US (see November 12, 2002), he does not express any direct support for the current regime in Iraq, which he describes as “pagan.” [CNN, 2/12/2003] A senior editor for Al Jazeera says the tape offers no evidence of ties between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. “When you hear it, it doesn’t prove any relation between bin Laden or al-Qaeda group and the Iraqi regime,” he argues. [ABC News, 2/12/2003] Several news reports also challenge Powell and Boucher’s interpretation. For example, CNN reveals that the voice had criticized Saddam’s regime, declaring that “the socialists and the rulers [had] lost their legitimacy a long time ago, and the socialists are infidels regardless of where they are, whether in Baghdad or in Aden.” [CNN, 2/11/2003; New York Times, 11/12/2003] Similarly, a report published by Reuters notes that the voice “did not express support for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein—it said Muslims should support the Iraqi people rather than the country’s government.” [Reuters, 2/11/2003]
Entity Tags: Colin Powell, Richard A. Boucher, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Al Jazeera
Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements
February 12, 2003: New Alleged Bin Laden Speech Is Aired Discussing Iraq, Speaker Says Saddam Is Finished
A new speech thought to be from Osama bin Laden is aired on Al Jazeera. On the 16-minute audiotape the speaker predicts the US will invade Iraq to “loot Muslim riches” and “install a stooge government to follow its masters in Washington and Tel Aviv… to pave the way for the establishment of a greater Israel.” He also advises Iraqis on defensive tactics al-Qaeda has tested in Afghanistan, recommending trenches against aerial bombardment and saying “what the enemy fears most is urban and street warfare, in which heavy and costly human losses can be expected.” He also stresses the capacity of “martyrdom operations” to inflict “unprecedented harm” on the enemy. He predicts the US will use an “enormous propaganda machine” and “intense air strikes” to “hide its most conspicuous weak points: fear, cowardice, and lack of fighting spirit among its troops,” who are fighting for “the criminal gang in the White House.” Bin Laden also attacks Arab leaders allied with the US, calling them hypocrites and apostates, but highlights only six Arab countries as being in need of liberation: Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Yemen. It is unclear why he omits Egypt and the Gulf sheikdoms, for example. He tells his supporters in Iraq that they may fight with Saddam Hussein’s “pagan” Ba’ath forces, as they are finished anyway. [Laden, 2005, pp. 179-185]
Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements
February 12, 2003: Witness Says Future Madrid Bombers Are Planning Specific Suicide Bombing in Madrid
The wife of Mouhannad Almallah gave Spanish police stunning details about a group of Islamist militants planning attacks in January 2003 (see January 4, 2003), and she returns to the police to give them a new lead. She previously said that her husband, his brother Moutaz Almallah, Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet, and Mustapha Maymouni have been holding meetings planning attacks. Now she says that her husband told her that “one day” he would like to attack the Torres Kio towers of the Plaza de Castilla, an important Madrid landmark, with a car bomb. That attack does not occur, but all the men she mentions will be killed or arrested for roles in the 2004 Madrid bombings, except for Maymouni, who will be arrested for a role in bombings in Casablanca several months later (see May 16, 2003). Police apparently take her warnings seriously because they begin monitoring her apartment one month later (see January 17, 2003-Late March 2004). The wife’s brother, who is also Mouhannad’s business partner, will testify in 2007 that Mouhannad also told him about a desire to destroy the Torres Kio towers. [El Mundo (Madrid), 7/28/2005; El Mundo (Madrid), 3/13/2007]
Entity Tags: Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet, Moutaz Almallah, Mouhannad Almallah’s wife, Mustapha Maymouni, Mouhannad Almallah
Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Spain, 2004 Madrid Train Bombings
February 12, 2003: Swiss Analysts Decline to Analyze New Bin Laden Tape
Swiss voice analysts at the Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence decline to examine a new recording issued by a man thought to be Osama bin Laden (see February 11 or 12, 2003 and February 12, 2003). The institute previously analyzed a speech made by a man thought to be bin Laden and concluded that the speaker was not actually him (see November 29, 2002). The institute says that the previous analysis was done at the request of a French TV channel and was “mainly motivated by pure scientific curiosity.” It also says that the poor quality of that recording coupled with the limited number of voice examples meant that it was unlikely the recording could ever be properly authenticated. [Swissinfo (.org), 2/12/2003] However, US officials tell CNN that “this tape was of much better quality than the previous one presumed to be from bin Laden, which Al Jazeera broadcast in November.” [CNN, 2/12/2003] The institute does not analyze any later tapes thought to be released by bin Laden.
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Dalle Molle Institute
Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements, Hunt for Bin Laden in Pakistan
February 13, 2003: Blind Sheikh’s Son Captured in Pakistan
The Blind Sheikh’s sons Mohammad Omar Abdul-Rahman and Ahmad Abdul-Rahman in 1998. It is not clear which is which. [Source: CNN]Pakistani authorities raid an apartment in Quetta, Pakistan, and apparently arrest Mohammad Omar Abdul-Rahman, a son of the Blind Sheikh,’ Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. Supposedly, communications found at the apartment lead to the later arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (see February 29 or March 1, 2003). [New York Times, 3/4/2003] Government officials say he is a senior al-Qaeda operative who ran a training camp in Afghanistan before 9/11 attacks and also had a role in operational planning. Another son of the blind sheik, Ahmad Abdul-Rahman, was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001, but Ahmad was not considered to be high ranking. [Associated Press, 3/4/2003] But even though Mohammad Omar’s arrest is reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, there is no official announcement. In December 2005, his name will be on a list published by ABC News of high-detainees being held in a secret CIA prison (see November 2005). [ABC News, 12/5/2005] In 2006, the US will announce that it is emptying the CIA prisons and transferring all high-level prisoners to Guantanamo, but he will not be one of those transferred and it is unclear what happened to him (see September 2-3, 2006).
Entity Tags: Ahmad Abdul-Rahman, Mohammed Omar Abdul-Rahman, Omar Abdul-Rahman
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Key Captures and Deaths, Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, High Value Detainees
February 14, 2003: CIA Produces Report Mentioning Suspicious Indicators of Terrorist Affiliation in 9/11 Hijackers’ Passports, Does Not Disseminate It
The CIA produces a report entitled “A Reference Guide to Terrorist Passports.” The report discusses a suspicious indicator of terrorist affiliation that was contained in the passports of at least three of the 9/11 hijackers, possibly more. The indicator was placed there deliberately by the Saudi government, which used such indicators to track suspected radicals (see November 2, 2007). However, this report is classified and is not disseminated, meaning that if a radical were to arrive at a US port with a passport indicating he was a terrorist, an immigration official would be unable to recognize the indicator and would admit him. Over a year after this report is completed, the 9/11 Commission will show a passport bearing this indicator to one of the immigration officials who admitted 9/11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar to the US, but she will still be unable to recognize the indicator. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 25, 27, 41 ]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, 9/11 Commission
Category Tags: Saudi Arabia, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics, Hijacker Visas and Immigration
February 14, 2003-June 4, 2004: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Frequently Recounts Sultan Calling 9/11 a ‘Blessing in Disguise’
Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said. [Source: Government of Oman]In numerous public appearances, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recounts a conversation with the Sultan of Oman (Qaboos Bin Said) a month or two after 9/11. The sultan said to him words to the effect of that September 11 was a “blessing in disguise,” because it would “wake up the world, before terrorists get their hands on massive destruction, before they get biological weapons and kill not 3,000 but 30 or 300,000.” [US Department of Defense, 2/14/2003; US Department of Defense, 2/25/2003; US Department of Defense, 9/10/2003; US Department of Defense, 11/18/2003; US Department of Defense, 6/4/2004] When he is asked in an interview, “Do you feel that [9/11] was a wake- up call?” Rumsfeld responds, “I think so absolutely, yeah.” [PBS, 9/10/2003] Rumsfeld makes a similar claim in his prepared testimony for the 9/11 Commission in March 2004: “Think about what has been done since the September 11th attacks: two state sponsors of terrorism have been removed from power, a 90-nation coalition has been formed which is cooperating on a number of levels… All of these actions are putting pressure on terrorist networks. Taken together, they represent a collective effort that is unprecedented—which has undoubtedly saved lives, and made us safer than before September 11th.” [9/11 Commission, 3/23/2004]
Entity Tags: Qaboos Bin Said, Donald Rumsfeld
Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline
Category Tags: Other Post-9/11 Events
Mid-February 2003: Head 7/7 London Bomber Possibly Monitored by NSA, Stopped from Entering US
In his 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine, journalist Ron Suskind will claim that Mohammad Sidique Khan, the head suicide bomber in the 7/7 London bombings, was monitored as he attempted to fly to the US. According to Suskind, NSA surveillance discovers that Khan is coming to the US soon and has been in contact with suspect US citizens, including Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, an Islamist radical living in Virginia. E-mails between Khan, Ali, and others discuss plans for various violent activities, including a desire to “blow up synagogues on the East Coast.” FBI agent Dan Coleman, an expert on al-Qaeda, reads the intercepts and advocates either a very intensive surveillance of Khan when he is in the US, or not letting him in at all. Officials, including Joe Billy, head of the FBI’s New York office, worry about being held responsible if Khan is allowed into the country and then manages to commit some violent act. With Khan scheduled to come to the US in one day, “top bosses in Washington” quickly decide to put him on a no-fly list. Khan does fly to the US, and is stopped and sent back to Britain. As a result, he realizes the US is onto him and presumably takes greater precautions. [Suskind, 2006, pp. 200-203]
Confusion - However, when Suskind’s book is published in June 2006, a number of articles will dispute Suskind’s claim. For instance, Newsweek will report that “several US and [British] law-enforcement and counterterrorism officials” anonymously claim that Suskind is mistaken, and is confusing Sidique Khan with another British suspect named Mohammed Ajmal Khan. [Newsweek, 6/21/2006] The Telegraph reaches the same conclusion, and points out that Ajmal Khan pleaded guilty in a British trial in March on charges of providing weapons and funds to the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba. During that trial, it was revealed that he made several trips to the US and met with a group of suspected militants in Virginia, including one named Ahmed Omar Abu Ali.
Stands by Story - However, Suskind will resolutely stand by his story, saying, “In my investigation and in my book and in my conversations with people in the US government, there was no mistake or doubt that we are talking about Mohammad Sidique Khan, not Mohammed Ajmal Khan.” He says he was aware of the difference between the two and suggests British officials may have been trying to push Ajmal Khan instead to cover up their failures to stop the 7/7 bombings. The two officials mentioned by name in Suskind’s account, Coleman and Billy, apparently say nothing to the press to confirm or deny the story. [Daily Telegraph, 6/22/2006]
Visit to Israel - Curiously, it will be reported shortly after the 7/7 bombings that Khan visits Israel around this time, February 19-20, 2003, and the Israeli daily newspaper Maariv will claim he is suspected of helping two Pakistani-Britons plot a suicide bombing that kills three Israelis several months later (see February 19-20, 2003). [Guardian, 7/19/2005]
Entity Tags: Ron Suskind, National Security Agency, Joe Billy, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, Dan Coleman, Mohammed Ajmal Khan
Category Tags: 2005 7/7 London Bombings, Remote Surveillance, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
February 16, 2003: Condoleezza Rice Alleges Iraqi Government Is Allowing Al-Qaeda to Operate in Iraq
Asked for concrete evidence that Hussein has links to al-Qaeda, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice points to the presence of operatives allegedly being hosted in Iraq. “Well, we are, of course, continually learning more about these links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and there is evidence that Secretary [of State Colin] Powell did not have the time to talk about. But the core of the story is there in what Secretary Powell talked about. This poisons network with at least two dozen of its operatives operating in Baghdad, a man [Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] who is spreading poisons now throughout Europe and into Russia, a man who got medical care in Baghdad despite the fact that the Iraqis were asked to turn him over, training in biological and chemical weapons.” [Fox News Sunday, 2/16/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform, 3/16/2004]
Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Before February 17, 2003: Italian Military Intelligence Approves Kidnap of Milan Imam
The Italian military intelligence agency SISMI is briefed by the CIA on a plan to kidnap radical imam Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (a.k.a. Abu Omar) in Milan (see Noon February 17, 2003). SISMI agrees to the plan, but it appears other Italian agencies are not informed of it. The CIA will later claim the plan is even approved by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, although documentation to support this will not be produced. When Italian anti-terrorist authorities, who are monitoring Nasr and planning to arrest him, find he has been kidnapped, they will charge several CIA officers with breaking Italian law (see June 23, 2005 and After). [Washington Post, 12/6/2005]
Entity Tags: Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, SISMI, Central Intelligence Agency, Silvio Berlusconi
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Al-Qaeda in Italy
February 17, 2003: CIA Report Predicts More Than 90 Percent Chance Hussein and Terrorists Will Attack US with WMDs
Newsweek reports: “In recent weeks a small group of CIA analysts have been meeting as part of a ‘predictive analysis project’ to divine if and when Saddam might strike the United States with a weapon of mass destruction. The theory is that Saddam might slip one of his chem-bio or radiological weapons to al-Qaeda or some other terrorist group to create a massive diversion, a crisis in the American homeland that could stall an attack on Iraq.” The CIA has no hard evidence supporting this idea, but the CIA has calculated the odds, and in a report obtained by Newsweek, these analysts predict “that under the stipulated scenario there is a 59 percent probability that an attack on the US homeland involving WMD would occur before March 31, 2003, a 35 percent probability an attack would occur at a later date, and a 6 percent probability an attack would never occur.” But Newsweek will comment that “it is important to remember that the odds are determined by averaging a bunch of guesses, informed perhaps, but from experts whose careers can only be ruined by underestimating the threat.” [Newsweek, 2/17/2003] No such attack occurs.
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, Central Intelligence Agency
Noon February 17, 2003: CIA Kidnaps Own Informer in Broad Daylight in Italy, Damaging Italian Al-Qaeda Investigation
A surveillance photograph of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. [Source: Central Intelligence Agency]The CIA kidnaps an Islamic extremist who previously informed for it in Milan, Italy. The man, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (a.k.a. Abu Omar), who was a member of the Egyptian terror group Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya and was close to al-Qaeda, provided information to the CIA in Albania (see August 27, 1995 and Shortly After) and operated in Italy (see Summer 2000). [Chicago Tribune, 7/2/2005] While the kidnap is happening, one of the CIA officers involved in the operation, Robert Seldon Lady, is having a meeting on the other side of Milan with Bruno Megale, head of Milan’s antiterrorism police service, DIGOS. The meeting’s purpose is to allow Lady to keep an eye on Megale in case something goes wrong. [GQ, 3/2007 ] The US will say that Nasr is a dangerous terrorist and that he once plotted to assassinate the Egyptian foreign minister. However, Italian officials, who were monitoring him, will deny this and say his abduction damages an intelligence operation against al-Qaeda. A senior prosecutor will say, “When Nasr disappeared in February [2003], our investigation came to a standstill.” Italian authorities are mystified by the kidnap, as they are sharing the results of their surveillance with the CIA. Nor can they understand why Egypt wants Nasr back. When Nasr reaches Cairo, he is taken to the Egyptian interior minister and told that if he agrees to inform again, he will be set free. However, he refuses and spends most of the next 14 months in prison, facing “terrible tortures.” The Chicago Tribune will ask, “Why would the US government go to elaborate lengths to seize a 39-year-old Egyptian who, according to former Albanian intelligence officials, was once the CIA’s most productive source of information within the tightly knit group of Islamic fundamentalists living in exile in Albania?” One possible answer is that he is kidnapped in an attempt to turn him back into the informer he once was. The kidnapping generates a substantial amount of publicity, leading to an investigation of the CIA’s practice of extraordinary rendition, and an Italian official will comment, “Instead of having an investigation against terrorists, we are investigating this CIA kidnapping.” [Chicago Tribune, 7/2/2005] Arrest warrants will later be issued for some US intelligence officers involved in the kidnapping (see June 23, 2005 and After).
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Robert Seldon Lady, Bruno Megale, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
Category Tags: Other Possible Moles or Informants, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Al-Qaeda in Italy
February 18, 2003: Alleged Al-Qaeda Member El Motassadeq Convicted in Germany for 9/11 Role
Mounir El Motassadeq, an alleged member of Mohamed Atta’s Hamburg al-Qaeda cell, is convicted in Germany of accessory to murder in the 9/11 attacks. His is given the maximum sentence of 15 years. [Associated Press, 2/19/2003] El Motassadeq admitted varying degrees of contact with Atta, Marwan Alshehhi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Said Bahaji, Ziad Jarrah, and Zakariya Essabar; admitted he had been given power of attorney over Alshehhi’s bank account; and admitted attending an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan from May to August 2000 (see May 22 to August 2000); but he claimed he had nothing to do with the 9/11 plot. [New York Times, 10/24/2002] The conviction is the first one related to 9/11, but as the Independent puts it, “there are doubts whether there will ever be a second.” This is because intelligence agencies have been reluctant to turn over evidence, or give access to requested witnesses. In El Motassadeq’s case, his lawyers tried several times unsuccessfully to obtain testimony by two of his friends, bin al-Shibh and Mohammed Haydar Zammar—a lack of evidence that will later become grounds for overturning his conviction. [Independent, 2/20/2003]
Entity Tags: Zakariya Essabar, Said Bahaji, Ziad Jarrah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Mounir El Motassadeq, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, Germany, Marwan Alshehhi, Mohamed Atta, Al-Qaeda
Category Tags: Ramzi Bin Al-Shibh, Al-Qaeda in Germany
February 19, 2003: Expert with Access to Classified Evidence Claims There Is No Al-Qaeda-Iraqi Government Link
Shortly after 9/11, counterterrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna, a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, begins researching for his book, Inside al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror. He examines several tens of thousands of documents acquired from al-Qaeda and Taliban sources. During the course of his investigation, he finds no evidence of an Iraqi-al-Qaeda link. In an op-ed piece printed in the International Herald Tribune on February 19, 2003, he writes: “In addition to listening to 240 tapes taken from al-Qaeda’s central registry, I debriefed several al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees. I could find no evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The documentation and interviews indicated that al-Qaeda regarded Saddam, a secular leader, as an infidel.” [International Herald Tribune, 2/19/2003 Sources: Rohan Gunaratna]
Entity Tags: Rohan Gunaratna
February 19-20, 2003: Lead 7/7 London Bomber Visits Israel, Allegedly Assists Suicide Bombing There
Mohammad Sidique Khan, the lead suicide bomber in the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005), travels to Israel, staying there for only 24 hours. Israeli officials will confirm the visit in 2006. This is seven weeks before two British citizens, Omar Sharif and Asif Hanif, attack a cafe in Tel Aviv, Israel, with suicide bombs, killing three (see April 30, 2003). It is strongly suspected that Khan comes to Israel to help facilitate the bombing in some way, especially since Khan was seen in the company of Sharif and Hanif as far back as 2001 and was Sharif’s friend (see Summer 2001). However, Khan’s precise role, if any, in the cafe bombing is unknown, and apparently his connection to the two bombers will not be discovered by authorities until after the 7/7 bombings. [BBC, 7/9/2006]
Entity Tags: Asif Hanif, Omar Sharif, Mohammad Sidique Khan
Category Tags: 2005 7/7 London Bombings, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism
February 22-March 15, 2003: CIA Milan Chief Flies to Cairo, Following Abducted Imam Who Is Allegedly Tortured
Robert Seldon Lady, chief of the CIA’s substation in Milan, Italy, travels to Egypt for three weeks. A radical imam named Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (a.k.a. Abu Omar) was kidnapped by the CIA in Milan five days before and taken to Egypt, and Lady will later be accused of being a party to the abduction (see Noon February 17, 2003 and June 23, 2005 and After). According to the Washington Post, “many counterterrorism analysts take [Lady’s trip to Egypt] to mean he took part in the initial interrogation.” A search of Lady’s villa will later turn up computer disks showing a flight reservation from Zurich to Cairo and cell phone records will show that a phone associated with Lady was used to place calls from Cairo during the period Lady is thought to be there. Nasr will later say he is tortured when in Egypt (see April-May 2004). [Washington Post, 12/6/2005]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Robert Seldon Lady, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
February 24, 2003: Voice Analyst of Alleged Bin Laden Tapes Discusses Methodology in Interview
Popular Science magazine carries a rare interview with Tom Owen, a voice analyst who has worked on identifying Osama bin Laden in recordings allegedly released by the al-Qaeda leader. Owen worked for US media on the identification of bin Laden’s voice in a November 2002 recording (see November 12, 2002), assisted by a captain of the Saudi Interior Ministry’s forensics department he had apparently been teaching at the time. Owen, one of only eight forensic voice analysts certified by the American Board of Recorded Evidence, and other US experts identified the voice as bin Laden’s, although a Swiss facility disagreed (see November 29, 2002). The interview describes Owen’s lab and how he works, pivoting off the November recording. Owen criticizes the Swiss analysis, saying that the advanced biometrics software the Swiss used cannot work with the noise on the tape, as it is “designed to work with perfect samples.” Cleaning up the tape would not help, as this would remove the high and low frequencies a biometric system needs to make its identification.
Voice Identification Methodology - To identify voices, Owen uses a spectrograph, which produces spectrograms—“a kind of graphic speech rendering that has changed little since the 1940s”—that are then compared. His favorite tool for analyses is a “piece of vintage equipment—a reel-to-reel Voice Identification 700 spectrograph built in 1973,” which “differs little from the analog machines US Army intelligence officers built to identify and track German radio operators during World War II.” When analyzing a new recording thought to be from bin Laden, Owen compares the spectrograms it produces with spectrograms from a known bin Laden interview, such as one he granted to ABC in 1998 (see May 28, 1998). According to the magazine, there are “only a half-dozen words in common between the November tape and the ABC interview,” although the standards of the American Board of Recorded Evidence demand 20 identical words, preferably spoken in the same order.
Listening for 'Quirky Mannerisms' - However, Owen also listens for “the multitude of quirky mannerisms and pronunciation foibles peculiar to each voice,” because a trained ear can detect “the subtle whistle caused by a missing tooth, a person’s tendency to swallow in the middle of a sentence, even the way someone sets his or her jaw when speaking.” Owen plays the reporter what he calls a short-term memory tape, apparently a crucial tool in aural voice identifications. The spliced tape toggles between 2.5-second segments of bin Laden’s ABC interview and the November tape; Owen uses the tape to listen for peculiarities in a voice, especially when vowels are spoken. According to Owen, who says bin Laden’s voice is what the magazine calls “plenty peculiar,” the tape proves it is the “same guy” on the November tape and in the 1998 interview. However, the reporter comments: “To my untrained ear, it could be Darth Vader behind the static.… This is the sort of gray area that tends to make legal observers worry about the state of forensic science.”
Comments on NSA - According to the magazine, Owen’s technology is similar to that which the NSA probably uses to analyze voices, although Owen thinks the NSA has samples of bin Laden’s voice he does not. However, he does not think it has made biometric breakthroughs in analysis despite its advanced technology, which is “mostly devoted to listening.” [Popular Science, 2/24/2003]
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Tom Owen, National Security Agency, Osama bin Laden
Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements
February 25, 2003: More 9/11 Terrorist Plotters Believed to Be in Germany
The Chicago Tribune reveals that there appear to be many more members of Mohamed Atta’s Hamburg cell than previously reported. While many members of the cell died in the attacks or fled Germany just prior to 9/11, up to a dozen suspected of belonging to the Hamburg cell stayed behind, apparently hoping to avoid government scrutiny. Many of their names have not yet been revealed. In some cases, investigators still do not know the names. For instance, phone records show that someone using the alias Karl Herweg was in close communication with the Hamburg cell and Zacarias Moussaoui, but Herweg’s real identity is not known. [Chicago Tribune, 2/25/2003]
Entity Tags: Karl Herweg, Zacarias Moussaoui
Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Germany
February 26, 2003: Whistleblower Believes FBI Not Prepared for New Terrorist Threats
Coleen Rowley, the FBI whistleblower who was proclaimed Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2002, sends another public letter to FBI Director Mueller. She believes the FBI is not prepared for new terrorist attacks likely to result from the upcoming Iraq war. She also says counterterrorism cases are being mishandled. She claims the FBI and the Justice Department have not questioned captured al-Qaeda suspects Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid about their al-Qaeda contacts, choosing instead to focus entirely on prosecution. She writes, “Lack of follow-through with regard to Moussaoui and Reid gives a hollow ring to our ‘top priority’ —i.e., preventing another terrorist attack. Moussaoui almost certainly would know of other al-Qaeda contacts, possibly in the US, and would also be able to alert us to the motive behind his and Mohamed Atta’s interest in crop-dusting.” Moussaoui’s lawyer also says the government has not attempted to talk to Moussaoui since 9/11. [New York Times, 3/5/2003; New York Times, 3/6/2003]
Entity Tags: Richard C. Reid, Zacarias Moussaoui, US Department of Justice, Robert S. Mueller III, Coleen Rowley
Category Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, Internal US Security After 9/11, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
Late February 2003: DNA Identifies Passenger Remains, but Hijacker DNA Is Not Tested
Medical examiners match human remains to the DNA of two of the hijackers that flew on Flights 11 and/or 175 into the WTC. The names of the two hijackers are not released. The FBI gave the examiners DNA profiles of all ten hijackers on those flights a few weeks earlier. Genetic profiles of five hijackers from Flight 77 and the four from Flight 93 that did not match any of the passengers’ profiles have been given to the FBI, but the FBI has not given any DNA profiles with which to match them. [CNN, 2/27/2003]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation
Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation, 9/11 Investigations
February 28, 2003: CIA Refuses to Say Whether Bush Has Approved Enhanced Interrogation Techniques
CIA general counsel Scott Muller writes to Jane Harman (D-CA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, but fails to respond fully to questions about the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques. [Central Intelligence Agency, 2/28/2003 ] Following a briefing earlier in the month about the legality of the techniques (see February 2003), Harman had written to Muller and CIA Director George Tenet asking whether using the techniques was good policy for the US: “I would like to know whether the most senior levels of the White House have determined that these practices are consistent with the principles and policies of the United States. Have the enhanced techniques been authorized and approved by the President?” She also urges the CIA not to destroy videotapes of detainee interrogations because they are “the best proof that the written record is accurate,” and their destruction “would reflect badly on the Agency.” [US Congress, 2/10/2003 ] In his reply, Muller completely fails to mention the tapes or say whether Bush has been consulted. He also says it would be inappropriate for him to comment on policy issues, merely that “it would be fair to assume that policy as well as legal matters have been addressed within the Executive Branch.” [Central Intelligence Agency, 2/28/2003 ]
Entity Tags: House Intelligence Committee, Central Intelligence Agency, George W. Bush, Scott Muller, Jane Harman, George J. Tenet
Category Tags: Destruction of CIA Tapes, High Value Detainees, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
Shortly Before February 29 or March 1, 2003: Informant Helps Authorities Capture KSM
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed shortly after arrest. (Note: this picture is from a video presentation on prisoners the Pakistani government gave to BBC filmmakers. It has been adjusted to remove some blue tinge.) [Source: BBC's "The New Al-Qaeda."]9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is apparently captured by US and Pakistani forces with the help of an informant. One week after KSM’s capture, said to take place on February 29 or March 1, 2003 (see February 29 or March 1, 2003), the Los Angeles Times will report, “Pakistani officials have… hinted that [KSM] was betrayed by someone inside the organization who wanted to collect a $25-million reward for his capture.” One Pakistani official says, “I am not going to tell you how we captured him, but Khalid knows who did him in.” [Los Angeles Times, 3/8/2003] In 2008, the New York Times will provide additional details. According to an intelligence officer, the informant slips into a bathroom in the house where KSM is staying, and writes a text message to his government contacts: “I am with KSM.” The capture team then waits a few hours before raiding the house, to blur the connection to the informant. Little more is known about the informant or what other information he provides. He apparently is later personally thanked by CIA Director George Tenet and then resettled with the $25 million reward money in the US. [New York Times, 6/22/2008]
Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Category Tags: Other Possible Moles or Informants, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Spring 2003: Spanish Authorities Turn Down Chance to Videotape Secret Meetings of Madrid Bombers
The Spanish inteligence agency Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI) has a highly trusted informant named Abdelkader Farssaoui, a.k.a. Cartagena, placed within a group of suspected Islamist militants in Madrid (see September 2002-October 2003). Police have been monitoring this group for months and learning all about the group in part thanks to Farssaoui’s leads. Farssaoui is so trusted in the group that he is considered one of the group’s leaders, behind only Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet and Mustapha Maymouni. Farssaoui attends all the group’s secret meetings, and since he is an imam he usually leads them in prayer. As a result, some of the others suggest holding some of the group’s long weekly meetings at Farssaoui’s residence. Farssaoui reports this to his handlers and suggests it is an opportunity to easily record the meetings with audio and video. However, Farssaoui’s handlers reject the idea, saying it is not necessary. [El Mundo (Madrid), 2/13/2006]
Entity Tags: Mustapha Maymouni, Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, Abdelkader Farssaoui, Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet
Spring 2003: Aid to Afghanistan Falls Short of Promises
At the beginning of 2002, the US, Britain, and other countries around the world made large pledges of aid to Afghanistan (see November 2001-January 2002). But with a new war in Iraq taking considerable focus in the West, those pledges appear to be largely unfulfilled. In February 2003, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) says, “I think [the Bush administration has] already given up the ghost in Afghanistan. They’ve basically turned it over to the warlords.” In December 2002, President Bush signed a law authorizing close to $1 billion a year in aid to Afghanistan for the next four years. But one month later, when Bush submitted his actual budget to Congress, it authorized no money for Afghanistan aid whatsoever. Congress soon authorizes $300 million, but Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) notes that this amount “does not come near” the promise made a short time before. Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai, complains to the press, “What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing…There have been no significant changes for people.… [I don’t] know what to say to people anymore.” [Salon, 4/10/2003] As of early 2003, there are only about 3,000 Afghan soldiers who have been trained for the country’s new army, and many of those have quit because they had not been paid in more than six months. By contrast, there are roughly 200,000 fighters controlled by warlords. [Salon, 4/10/2003; Observer, 5/25/2003] A study of post-conflict zones done by Care International estimates that Bosnia is receiving international aid of $326 per person, and Kosovo $288 per person, but Afghanistan is receiving only $42 per person. There is one peacekeeper per 113 people in Bosnia, one per 48 people in Kosovo, but one per 5,380 in Afghanistan (and those are not allowed outside the capital of Kabul). [Observer, 5/25/2003] Only 3 percent of all international aid spent in Afghanistan has been for reconstruction, 13 percent is for emergency aid, and the rest is spent on security. One Afghan minister complains, “We don’t even have enough money to pay [government] wages, let alone plan reconstruction.” [Guardian, 9/20/2003] The Independent reports, “Afghans have also listened with astonishment as Americans portray their country’s experience since the overthrow of the Taliban as a ‘success’. Another Western observer summed up his views more acidly. ‘If the Americans think this is success, then outright failure must be pretty horrible to behold’.” [Independent, 2/24/2003]
Entity Tags: Joseph Biden, George W. Bush, Bush administration (43), Ahmed Wali Karzai, Chuck Hagel, Taliban
Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan
Category Tags: Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism, Afghanistan
Spring 2003: Bin Laden Allegedly Meets Group of Militants in Pakistan’s Tribal Region
Osama bin Laden allegedly attends a gathering of Islamist militants in Pakistan’s tribal region. In 2011, after bin Laden’s death, the New York Times will claim that an unnamed Pakistani militant leader alleges that he sees bin Laden in the spring of 2003. Accompanied by Arab and Chechen bodyguards, bin Laden arrives unexpectedly at a meeting of nearly 100 militants at a mountain village in North Waziristan. Apparently, bin Laden doesn’t make his presence known to the entire gathering. However, the militant leader meets him briefly inside a house, and he is sure it is bin Laden because he met him once, prior to the 9/11 attacks. This leader is an informant for the Pakistani military at this time, but he will not tell the Times if he passes this information on to his Pakistani handlers. He will also claim that from about 2002 to 2004, bin Laden moves from place to place in the tribal region. He speculates that after the US begins drone strikes in the tribal region in 2004, bin Laden moves to one of Pakistan’s towns outside of the tribal region where drone strikes don’t reach. [New York Times, 6/23/2011]
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, New York Times
Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Hunt for Bin Laden in Pakistan
Spring 2003: US Green Berets Repeatedly Denied Permission to Go After Mullah Omar
There are several credible sightings by CIA and military informants of top Taliban leader Mullah Omar entering a mosque in Kandahar, Afghanistan. A Green Beret team located at a base just minutes away are ready to deploy to go after Omar, but each time US military commanders follow strict protocol and call in the Delta Force commando team instead. But this team is based hundreds of miles away near Kabul and it takes them several hours to arrive in Kandahar. By that time, Omar has disappeared. Apparently this is part of a pattern only allowing certain Special Forces units to go after important targets. The Washington Post will report in 2004 that any mission that takes Special Forces farther than two miles from a “firebase” requires as long as 72 hours to be approved. And on the rare occasions that such forces are authorized to act, they are required to travel in armed convoys, a practice that alerts the enemy. [Washington Post, 1/5/2004]
Entity Tags: Mullah Omar, 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment--Delta, Green Berets
Category Tags: Afghanistan
Spring 2003 and After: Spanish Police Increase Surveillance of Madrid Bombers
Spanish police have been monitoring an apartment on Virgen de Coro street in Madrid owned by the brothers Moutaz and Mouhannad Almallah since January 17, 2003 (see January 17, 2003-Late March 2004). Police are now aware that the Almallah brothers are part of a group of Islamist militants regularly meeting there. On March 3, police extend the surveillance to the apartment of Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet, since he appears to be a leader of the group and the group holds meetings at his apartment as well (see March 3, 2003-March 2004). On March 14, police also start monitoring Mouhannad Almallah’s apartment (his brother Moutaz is mostly living in London) (see March 14, 2003). Over the next months, the surveillance of this group is intensified:
Police also keep a very close eye on the cars used by the militants. Police witness many of them taking evasive maneuvers while driving around town.
They notice the militants are taking evasive action such as frequently using pay phones and speaking in code, which are signs they are taking part in illegal activities.
They discover that Amer el-Azizi, a Spanish al-Qaeda operative wanted for a role in the 9/11 attacks, had probably escaped to Afghanistan in late 2001 using Mouhannad Almallah’s passport (see Shortly After November 21, 2001).
They find that Fakhet sometimes uses a car owned by relatives of Jamal Ahmidan (Ahmidan is the member of the group who will later lead the effort to buy the explosives for the Madrid bombings, see September 2003-February 2004).
One police report before the bombings says that all three apartments are “regarded as essential points of the logistical network to support the recruitment of ‘mujaheddin’” in Spain and that Moutaz Almallah makes the group an international threat, with links in Britain and the Netherlands. [El Mundo (Madrid), 8/10/2005]
Entity Tags: Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet, Jamal Ahmidan, Mouhannad Almallah, Moutaz Almallah, Amer el-Azizi
March 2003: Informant Gives Spanish Police Big Tip That Could Stop Madrid Train Bombings
Antonio Toro. [Source: EFE]Rafa Zouhier, an informant for Spain’s Civil Guard, tells his handler that two of his associates, Emilio Suarez Trashorras and Trashorras’s brother-in-law Antonio Toro, are illegally selling explosives from a mine in the Asturias region of Spain. Toro had recently been released from prison. Zouhier’s handler, known only by the alias “Victor,” includes the information in a report in March 2003 and sends it to higher-ups. He mentions that the people Zouhier referred to have 150 kilograms of explosives ready to sell. [El Mundo (Madrid), 4/9/2007] He reveals the two even asked him how to make bombs which could be set off by cell phone, and says they have been illegally selling explosives since 2001. In June 2003, police conduct a surprise inspection of the mine where Trashorras works, and they begin surveilling both of them, even though Trashorras, Toro, and Toro’s wife are all also government informants (see June 18, 2004 and September 2003-February 2004). [Expatica, 9/1/2004; Expatica, 11/22/2004] Later in the year, Trashorras, Toro, and others will sell large quantities of explosives to Jamal Ahmidan, alias “El Chino,” which will be used in the March 2004 Madrid train bombings (see September 2003-February 2004). Those bombs will be timed to explode using cell phones (see 7:37-7:42 a.m., March 11, 2004). For some reason, this sale is not detected, even though Toro and Trashorras are being monitored. Victor will reveal what Zouhier told him in 2007 court testimony. He did not mention it in several earlier testimonies, and will claim he “forgot.” [El Mundo (Madrid), 4/9/2007] Zouhier will eventually be convicted and sentenced to more than ten years in prison, on the grounds that he knew about the deal between Ahmidan and Trashorras and did not tell his handler about that as well. Zouhier claims that he did, but is unable to provide any proof. [El Mundo (Madrid), 4/9/2007; MSNBC, 10/31/2007]
Entity Tags: Rafa Zouhier, Antonio Toro, Emilio Suarez Trashorras, Jamal Ahmidan, “Victor”
Category Tags: Other Possible Moles or Informants, Al-Qaeda in Spain, 2004 Madrid Train Bombings
March-May 2003: British Intelligence Fails to Stop Suicide Bombers before They Attack Israel; Fails to Ban the Group They Belong to Afterwards
Asif Hanif (left) and Omar Sharif (right) holding AK-47 rifles and a Koran. Apparently this is from a video filmed on February 8, 2003, in the Gaza Strip. [Source: Public domain]In March 2003, the British domestic intelligence agency MI5 arrests eight members of the Islamist militant group Al-Muhajiroun in the city of Derby. Two other Britons, Asif Hanif and Omar Sharif, are also identified as members of the group, but they are not arrested. MI5 is also aware that Sharif is connected to the Finsbury Park mosque where radical imam Abu Hamza al-Masri preaches. [Daily Mail, 5/5/2003; ISN Security Watch, 7/21/2005] When police raided Abu Hamza’s mosque in January, they even found a letter from Sharif to Abu Hamza inquiring about the proper conduct of jihad. The letter contained Sharif’s address in Derby. [O'Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 90-91] MI5 does not monitor either Hanif or Sharif, and instead simply keeps their names on file, believing them to be harmless. Later that same month, Italian undercover journalist Claudio Franco, posing as a Muslim convert, visits the London office of Al-Muhajiroun and meets Hanif. Hanif, unaware that he is being formally interviewed, tells Franco that he is sorry the poison ricin was allegedly seized in a raid elsewhere in London (see January 7, 2003) before it could be used in an attack. The next month, Hanif and Sharif travel to Israel and are killed on a suicide bombing mission which kills three others (see April 30, 2003). After the bombing, Al-Muhajiroun’s official leader, Anjem Choudary, calls the two bombers martyrs. The group’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, admits he knew both men. But the group is not banned. [Daily Mail, 5/5/2003; ISN Security Watch, 7/21/2005] Other members of the group will attempt to build a large fertilizer bomb in early 2004 (see Early 2003-April 6, 2004), but the group will still not be banned, then or later. (It will disband on its own in late 2004 (see October 2004).) Investigators also fail to discover that Mohammad Sidique Khan, the lead bomber in the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005), knew both men, was friends with Sharif and attended the same small mosque as he did (see Summer 2001), and traveled to Israel weeks before they did in a probable attempt to help with the bombing (see February 19-20, 2003).
Entity Tags: Omar Sharif, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Anjem Choudary, UK Security Service (MI5), Al-Muhajiroun, Asif Hanif, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed
Category Tags: Omar Bakri & Al-Muhajiroun, 2005 7/7 London Bombings, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism
March 2003: Zelikow and 9/11 Commission Consultant Complete Outline of Final Report before Staff Start Writing It
9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow and Ernest May, a long-time associate of Zelikow and consultant to the commission, complete an outline of the commission’s final report, although the commission has barely began its work and will not report for another 16 months. The outline is detailed and contains chapter headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings. The outline anticipates a 16-chapter report (note: the final report only has 13) that starts with a history of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa against the US. There will then be chapters on US counterterrorism policy, threat reporting leading up to 9/11, and the attacks themselves will be in chapter seven (in the final report, the day of 9/11 chapter is moved to the start).
"Blinding Effects of Hindsight" - Zelikow and May even have a chapter ten entitled “Problems of Foresight—And Hindsight,” with a sub-chapter on “the blinding effects of hindsight,” (actually chapter 11 in the final report, slightly renamed “Foresight—And Hindsight;” the “blinding effects” sub-heading does not appear in the final version, but the chapter starts with a meditation on the value of hindsight).
Kept Secret - Zelikow shows the report to Commission Chairman Tom Kean and Vice-chairman Lee Hamilton and they like it, but think it could be seen as evidence that they have pre-determined the outcome. Therefore, they all decide it should be kept secret from the commission’s staff. According to May it is “treated as if it were the most classified document the commission possessed.” Zelikow comes up with his own internal classification system, labeling it “Commission Sensitive,” a phrase that appears on the top and bottom of each page.
Staff Alarmed - When the staff find out about it and are given copies over a year later, they are alarmed. They realize that the sections of the report about the Bush administration’s failings will be in the middle of the report, and the reader will have to wade past chapters on al-Qaeda’s history to get to them. Author Philip Shenon will comment: “Many assumed the worst when they saw that Zelikow had proposed a portion of the report entitled ‘The Blinding Effects of Hindsight.’ What ‘blinding hindsight’? They assumed Zelikow was trying to dismiss the value of hindsight regarding the Bush administration’s pre-9/11 performance.” In addition, some staffers begin circulating a parody entitled “The Warren Commission Report—Preemptive Outline.” One of the parody’s chapter headings is “Single Bullet: We Haven’t Seen the Evidence Yet. But Really. We’re Sure.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004; Shenon, 2008, pp. 388-389]
Entity Tags: Lee Hamilton, Ernest May, Thomas Kean, 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow
Category Tags: 9/11 Commission, Role of Philip Zelikow, 9/11 Investigations
March 2003: CIA Falsely Claims Kidnapped Imam Is in Bosnia
The CIA tells anti-terrorist authorities in Italy that it has reliable information that Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (a.k.a. Abu Omar), a radical Islamist cleric who was under joint Italian-CIA surveillance in Milan until recently, is in Bosnia. This is a deliberate lie; the CIA knows Nasr is in Egypt, as it recently kidnapped him and took him there, handing him over to Egyptian authorities (see Noon February 17, 2003). According to the Washington Post, the purpose of the lie is “to stymie efforts by the Italian anti-terrorism police to track down the cleric….” The Italians believe the CIA’s story for more than a year, but subsequently discover the CIA was involved in his kidnapping. [Washington Post, 12/6/2005]
Entity Tags: Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, Central Intelligence Agency
March 2003-July 2004: White House Has Better Relationship with 9/11 Commission’s Democratic Vice Chairman than Republican Chairman
The White House comes to prefer dealing with the 9/11 Commission’s vice chairman, Democrat Lee Hamilton, rather than its Republican chairman Tom Kean. Author Philip Shenon will comment: “The White House found that its best support on the Commission came from an unexpected corner—from Lee Hamilton.… Hamilton, they could see, was as much a man of the Washington establishment as he was a Democratic partisan. Probably more so.” This is because Hamilton, a friend of Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, “underst[ands] the prerogatives of the White House—in particular, the concept of executive privilege—in a way that Kean d[oes] not or w[ill] not.” White House chief of staff Andrew Card will comment: “I came to really respect Lee Hamilton. I think he listened better to our concerns better than Tom Kean.” The White House even comes to view Kean as disloyal, effectively operating as one of the Commission’s Democrats, while Hamilton is a de facto Republican (see Early July 2004). Kean will later say, “I think the White House believed Lee was more reliable than I was.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 177] Hamilton previously helped Republicans cover up political scandals (see Mid-1980s and 1992-January 1993). He is friends with Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and trusts them to tell the truth (see Before November 27, 2002).
Entity Tags: Thomas Kean, Andrew Card, Lee Hamilton, 9/11 Commission, Philip Shenon
Category Tags: 9/11 Commission, 9/11 Investigations
After February 2003: Militant’s Wife Continues Reporting on Group of Madrid Bombers
In January and February of 2003, the wife of suspected Islamist militant Mouhannad Almallah gave stunning details on the activities and planned attacks of a group of militants including her husband Mouhannad (see January 4, 2003 and February 12, 2003). She apparently grows estranged from him and sees him less and less in subsequent months. However, Spanish investigators are impressed with her revelations, especially since they had most of the group already under surveillance (see December 2001-June 2002). At some point, she is given a phone and a special number to call at any time she learns more about the group. The group frequently watches violent videos promoting jihad. For instance, one video shows a person in Afghanistan being buried up to his head in sand. There are also videos of radical imam Abu Qatada preaching. She manages to sneak some of the videos to the authorities and return them without being noticed. But most details about what warnings she gave after February 2003 remain unknown. [El Mundo (Madrid), 3/13/2007; El Mundo (Madrid), 3/13/2007]
Entity Tags: Mouhannad Almallah, Mouhannad Almallah’s wife
March 2003 and After: Alleged Leader of Al-Qaeda Bomb Plot Is Monitored in Britain but Mysteriously Never Arrested or Even Questioned
Mohammed Quayyum Khan. [Source: BBC]In March 2003, the British intelligence agency MI5 begins monitoring Mohammed Quayyum Khan (a.k.a. “Q”), a part-time taxi driver living in Luton, England, and born in Pakistan. He is said to be an associate of the radical London imams Omar Bakri Mohammed and Abu Hamza al-Masri. It is not known how MI5 first gains an interest in Quayyum, but apparently during a trip to Pakistan in 2003, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, tracks him overtly to warn him that they are aware of his activities. During a later court trial, an al-Qaeda operative turned informant named Mohammed Junaid Babar will allege that Quayyum:
Takes his orders from al-Qaeda leader Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi. He is said to be one of about three or four operatives working directly under this leader.
Arranges for Mohammad Sidique Khan, the head suicide bomber in the 7/7 London bombings, to travel to Pakistan and attend militant training camp in 2003.
Provides funds and equipment for militants fighting US troops in Afghanistan.
Is the leader of the 2004 British fertilizer bomb plot. Five of Quayyum’s associates will be sentenced to life in prison for roles in this plot.
In early February 2004, MI5 first discovers the existence of the fertilizer bomb plot while it monitors the various plotters meeting with Quayyum (see Early 2003-April 6, 2004). For instance, Omar Khyam, one of those who will later be sentenced to life in prison, is secretly videotaped meeting with Quayyum. Khyam will later admit that just before he left for militant training in Pakistan, Quayyum gave him money and said: “It’s better for both of us if we don’t meet each other. Because the security services may be monitoring me.” Yet when all the other members of the plot are arrested in late March 2004, Quayyum stays free. The Guardian will later report, “Despite the number of serious allegations leveled against him [in court], police and MI5 say they have never found sufficient evidence to arrest or charge him.” Quayyum is never questioned about his links to the fertilizer bomb plotters. After the 7/7 suicide bombings in 2005, he is not questioned about his verified links with the suicide bombers either (such as the monitored calls between him and the head suicide bomber (see Shortly Before July 2003)). He continues to live in Luton and is seen by a Guardian journalist working as a chef in a small cafe there. “He is thought to have since disappeared.” [Guardian, 5/1/2007; Guardian, 5/1/2007] Author Loretta Napoleoni will later comment that the lack of action against Quayyum is especially strange given the British government’s power to detain suspects for years without charge. She will say, “The press has proffered the hypothesis—neither confirmed nor denied by the special services—that Quayyum was a ‘Deep Throat’” mole or informant. [Antiwar (.com, 5/8/2007]
Entity Tags: Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, Abu Hamza al-Masri, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Mohammed Junaid Babar, Loretta Napoleoni, UK Security Service (MI5), Mohammed Quayyum Khan, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed
Category Tags: Other Possible Moles or Informants, 2005 7/7 London Bombings, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism
February 2003 or After: 9/11 Commission Staff Set up ‘Back-Channel Network’ to Report on Executive Director Zelikow’s Behavior
Members of the 9/11 Commission’s staff who are suspicious of the partisanship of the Commission’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, establish what author Philip Shenon calls a “back-channel network” through which reports of Zelikow’s behavior can be passed. The staff members are suspicious of Zelikow because they think he is close to the Bush administration, in particular National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (see January 3, 2001), whose interests he defends on the Commission (see May-June 2004). The network’s aim is to “alert the Democratic commissioners when [staff] thought Zelikow was up to no good.” Commissioner Tim Roemer will say that he often gets phone calls late at night or on weekends at home from staffers who want to talk about Zelikow. “It was like Deep Throat,” he will later say (see May 31, 2005). Richard Ben-Veniste is another one of the Democratic commissioners involved in the network. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 375]
Entity Tags: Richard Ben-Veniste, 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, Tim Roemer
February 29 or March 1, 2003: KSM Reportedly Arrested in Pakistan, but Doubts on Circumstances Persist
A photo taken during KSM’s alleged arrest in Pakistan. [Source: Associated Press]Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is reportedly arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. [Associated Press, 3/1/2003] Officials claim that he is arrested in a late-night joint Pakistani and FBI raid, in which they also arrest Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the purported main financer of the 9/11 attacks. [MSNBC, 3/3/2003] An insider informant allegedly tips off authorities to KSM’s location, and is given the $25 million reward money for his capture (see Shortly Before February 29 or March 1, 2003). However, some journalists immediately cast serious doubts about this arrest. For instance, MSNBC reports, “Some analysts questioned whether Mohammed was actually arrested Saturday, speculating that he may have been held for some time and that the news was made public when it was in the interests of the United States and Pakistan.” [MSNBC, 3/3/2003] There are numerous problems surrounding the US-alleged arrest of KSM:
Witnesses say KSM is not present when the raid occurs. [Associated Press, 3/2/2003; Associated Press, 3/2/2003; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/2/2003; Guardian, 3/3/2003; New York Times, 3/3/2003]
There are differing accounts about which house he is arrested in. [Associated Press, 3/1/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/2/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/3/2003]
There are differing accounts about where he was before the arrest and how authorities found him. [Time, 3/1/2003; Washington Post, 3/2/2003; Washington Post, 3/2/2003; New York Times, 3/3/2003; New York Times, 3/4/2003]
Some accounts have him sleeping when the arrest occurs and some don’t. [Los Angeles Times, 3/2/2003; Reuters, 3/2/2003; New York Times, 3/3/2003; Daily Telegraph, 3/4/2003]
Accounts differ on who arrests him—Pakistanis, Americans, or both. [CNN, 3/2/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/2/2003; New York Times, 3/2/2003; Daily Telegraph, 3/3/2003; London Times, 3/3/2003; Associated Press, 3/3/2003]
There are previously published accounts that KSM may have been killed in September 2002 (see September 11, 2002).
There are accounts that he was captured in June 2002 (see June 16, 2002).
These are just some of the difficulties with the arrest story. There are so many problems with it that one Guardian reporter says, “The story appears to be almost entirely fictional.” [Guardian, 3/6/2003]
Account by 9/11 Commissioners Conflicts - In addition, 9/11 Commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton will write in a 2006 book that the arrest is made in an apartment in Karachi and carried out by a joint CIA, FBI, and Pakistani team (see Early 2003).
Account by Musharraf Also Conflicts - Also in 2006, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will publish a memoir in which he claims that KSM was arrested on February 29, 2003 (instead of the widely cited March 1, 2003), and held by Pakistani forces for three days, “during which time we interrogated him fully. Once we were done with him and had all the information we wanted, we handed him over to the United States government.” [Musharraf, 2006, pp. 193]
Entity Tags: Thomas Kean, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Lee Hamilton, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Pervez Musharraf
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, 9/11 Timeline
Category Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Key Captures and Deaths, High Value Detainees, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
March 2, 2003: 9/11 Commission Executive Director Zelikow Tries to Prevent Staff Talking Directly to Commissioners
The 9/11 Commission’s executive director Philip Zelikow issues a five-page memo, entitled “What Do I Do Now?” telling newly hired staff members how to go about their jobs on the Commission. The most controversial part of the memo prevents staffers from returning calls from commissioners, stating: “If you are contacted by a commissioner, please contact [deputy executive director] Chris [Kojm] or me. We will be sure that the appropriate members of the Commission’s staff are responsive.” Author Philip Shenon will write that the staffers are surprised by this: “It occurred to several of the staff members, especially those with experience on other federal commissions, that Zelikow was trying to cut off their contact with the people they really worked for—the commissioners.”
Part of Memo Rescinded - When commissioner Jamie Gorelick learns of the restriction, she calls the Commission’s chairman and vice chairman, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, and tells them this is unacceptable. Fellow commissioner Max Cleland also thinks the order is a bad idea, and will later say, “It violates the spirit of an open look at what the hell happened on 9/11.” Zelikow is forced to rescind this portion of the memo, allowing commissioners free access to the staff.
Other Restrictions - Other rules in the memo include:
Commission staff should not disclose the exact location of the Commission’s offices for security reasons;
Staffers should never talk to reporters about the Commission’s work, because “there are no innocent conversations with reporters.” Zelikow or his deputy should be notified of such calls. A breach of this rule can get a staffer fired; and
All staffers have to prepare a confidential memo describing potential conflicts of interest. Shenon will comment, “Staff members who knew some of Zelikow’s own conflicts of interest found it amusing that he was so worried about theirs.” [9/11 Commission, 3/2/2003; Shenon, 2008, pp. 83-85]
Entity Tags: Philip Shenon, Jamie Gorelick, 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, Max Cleland
After February 29 or March 1, 2003: Interrogators Threaten to Kill KSM’s Children
At some point after alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is captured (see February 29 or March 1, 2003), interrogators threaten to kill his children if he does not co-operate with them. An “experienced agency interrogator” will tell the CIA inspector general that “interrogators said to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed that if anything else happens in the United States, ‘We’re going to kill your children.’” [Central Intelligence Agency, 5/7/2004, pp. 43 ] Two of his children are alleged to have been captured in late 2002 (see After September 11, 2002). According to author Ron Suskind, this is after CIA headquarters authorizes the interrogators to “do whatever’s necessary” to get information. However, according to a CIA manager with knowledge of the incident, “He [KSM] basically said, so, fine, they’ll join Allah in a better place.” [Suskind, 2006, pp. 230]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Category Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, High Value Detainees
Shortly After February 29 or March 1, 2003: Alleged 9/11 Mastermind KSM Tortured in Secret CIA Prison
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed shortly after arrest. (Note: this picture is from a video presentation on prisoners the Pakistani government gave to BBC filmmakers. It has been adjusted to remove some blue tinge.) [Source: BBC's "The New Al-Qaeda."]Following his arrest in Pakistan (see February 29 or March 1, 2003), al-Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) finds himself in CIA custody. After two days of detention in Pakistan, where, he will allege, he is punched and stomped upon by a CIA agent, he is sent to Afghanistan. After being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006, he will discuss his experiences and treatment with officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC—see October 6 - December 14, 2006). Mohammed will say of his transfer: “My eyes were covered with a cloth tied around my head and with a cloth bag pulled over it. A suppository was inserted into my rectum. I was not told what the suppository was for.” [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009]
Naked - He is reportedly placed in a cell naked for several days and repeatedly questioned by females as a humiliation. He is attached to a dog leash and repeatedly yanked into the walls of his cell. He is suspended from the ceiling, chained naked in a painful crouch for long periods, doused with cold water, and kept in suffocating heat. [New Yorker, 8/6/2007; MSNBC, 9/13/2007] On arriving in Afghanistan, he is put in a small cell, where, he will recall, he is “kept in a standing position with my hands cuffed and chained to a bar above my head.” After about an hour, “I was taken to another room where I was made to stand on tiptoes for about two hours during questioning.”
Interrogators - He will add: “Approximately 13 persons were in the room. These included the head interrogator (a man) and two female interrogators, plus about 10 muscle guys wearing masks. I think they were all Americans. From time to time one of the muscle guys would punch me in the chest and stomach.” This is the usual interrogation session that Mohammed will experience over the next few weeks.
Cold Water - They are interrupted periodically by his removal to a separate room. There, he will recall, he is doused with “cold water from buckets… for about 40 minutes. Not constantly as it took time to refill the buckets. After which I would be taken back to the interrogation room.”
No Toilet Access - During one interrogation, “I was offered water to drink; when I refused I was again taken to another room where I was made to lie [on] the floor with three persons holding me down. A tube was inserted into my anus and water poured inside. Afterwards I wanted to go to the toilet as I had a feeling as if I had diarrhea. No toilet access was provided until four hours later when I was given a bucket to use.” When he is returned to his cell, as he will recall, “I was always kept in the standing position with my hands cuffed and chained to a bar above my head.” [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009] However, he is resistant to these methods, so it is decided he will be transferred to a secret CIA prison in Poland (see March 7 - Mid-April, 2003), where he will be extensively waterboarded and tortured in other ways.
Entity Tags: International Committee of the Red Cross, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Destruction of CIA Tapes, High Value Detainees, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
Shortly After February 29 or March 1, 2003: KSM Allegedly Confesses He Has Recently Seen Bin Laden
Shortly after the arrest of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) (see February 29 or March 1, 2003), US investigators will allegedly find out that he had recently met with Osama bin Laden. Later in 2003, authors Nick Fielding and Yosri Fouda will claim that not long after KSM is transferred from Pakistani to US custody, he confesses that he had met with bin Laden within the past two months. Bin Laden is said to be in good health. KSM met him in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan after a journey involving a complicated network of phone calls and couriers. He also says that bin Laden has been concentrating his forces in South Waziristan, in Pakistan’s tribal region, and bin Laden has formed an alliance with Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Fielding and Fouda will note that this story seems confirmed by the fact that within days of KSM’s arrest, residents in the town of Chaman in Baluchistan said that US aircraft dropped millions of leaflets mentioning the $25 million reward for bin Laden’s arrest. KSM also allegedly claims to know that al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri recently returned to Quetta, Pakistan, after spending time in the Middle East. Also within days of KSM’s arrest, millions of leaflets about al-Zawahiri and his reward are dropped in that region. [Fouda and Fielding, 2003, pp. 184] It is likely that KSM is tortured during this time (see Shortly After February 29 or March 1, 2003). KSM will later say, “During the harshest period of my interrogation, I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop” (see March 7 - Mid-April, 2003).
Entity Tags: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Osama bin Laden
Category Tags: Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Osama Bin Laden, Hunt for Bin Laden in Pakistan
Between March 2003 and June 25, 2003: Top Al-Qaeda Prisoners Deny Al-Qaeda-Iraq Link
US officials admit that imprisioned al-Qaeda leaders Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaida have said in interrogations that bin Laden vetoed a long term relationship with Saddam because he did not want to be in Hussein’s debt. [Newsweek, 6/25/2003]
Entity Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaida
Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, High Value Detainees, Abu Zubaida
March 3, 2003: Bush’s Efforts in Fighting Terrorism Since 9/11 Are Called an ‘Abysmal Failure’
An article in the New Republic claims that “President Bush has repeatedly stifled efforts to strengthen domestic safeguards against further terrorist attacks. As a consequence, homeland security remains perilously deficient.” The article cites numerous examples to support this contention, and comments: “Bush’s record on homeland security ought to be considered a scandal. Yet, not only is it not a scandal, it’s not even a story, having largely failed to register with the public, the media, or even the political elite.” It points out numerous examples where the administration has opposed the spending of more money to protect against an attack and argues: “The White House appears to grasp that Bush’s standing on national security issues, especially after September 11, is so unassailable that he does not need to shore it up. Instead, the administration seems to view his wartime popularity as a massive bank of political capital from which they can withdraw and spend on other, unrelated causes. In the short run, this strategy is a political boon for Bush and his party. But, in the long run, it divides and weakens the nation against its external threats.” [New Republic, 3/3/2003] Here are some of the examples of evidence supporting this article’s arguments pointed out in this and subsequent articles:
Airports are said to be unacceptably vulnerable to terrorism. [Associated Press, 6/8/2004]
Terrorist watch lists remain unconsolidated. [United Press International, 4/30/2003]
Basic background checks on air security personnel remain undone. [Time, 7/8/2003]
The Treasury Department has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track al-Qaeda’s finances. [Associated Press, 4/30/2004]
The White House has spurned a request for 80 more investigators to track and disrupt the global financial networks of US-designated terrorist groups. [New York Times, 4/4/2004]
Cases involving “international terrorism” have been fizzling out in US courts. [Los Angeles Times, 12/9/2003]
Experts have concluded that the Iraq War has diverted resources from the war on terrorism and made the US less secure. [MSNBC, 7/29/2003; Salon, 7/31/2003]
Investigations have shown that most chemical plants across the US remain dangerously vulnerable to a guerilla-style attack. Some plants have virtually no security at all, often not even locked gates. Explosions at some of these plants could kill more than a million people. Yet the Bush administration has so far successfully opposed strengthening security regulations, apparently at the behest of chemical industry lobbyists. [New Republic, 3/3/2003; New Jersey Star-Ledger, 1/28/2005]
There has been a huge increase in government spending to train and respond to terrorist attacks, but Time magazine reports that the geographical spread of “funding appears to be almost inversely proportional to risk.” [Time, 3/21/2004]
Several high-profile studies have concluded that despite its frequent “bear any burden” rhetoric, the Bush administration has grossly underfunded domestic security. [New Republic, 3/3/2003; New York Times, 7/25/2003]
Community-based “first responders” lack basic equipment, including protective clothing and radios. [New Republic, 3/3/2003; New York Times, 7/25/2003]
Spending on computer upgrades, airport security, more customs agents, port security, border controls, chemical plant security, bioweapon vaccinations, and much more, is far below needed levels and often below Promised levels. [New Republic, 3/3/2003]
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Bush administration (43), Central Intelligence Agency, US Department of the Treasury, George W. Bush
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Policy/Politics, Internal US Security After 9/11
March 3, 2003-March 2004: Spanish Monitor Apartment of Madrid Bombings Mastermind
Beginning on March 3, 2003, Spanish police begin monitoring the apartment where Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet lives. He will later be considered one of around three masterminds of the 2004 Madrid bombings. Fakhet’s apartment is on Francisco Remiro street in Madrid. Police discovered his apartment after monitoring an apartment on Virgen de Coro street where Fakhet and other Islamist militants regularly meet (see January 17, 2003-Late March 2004). Police discover that the militants sometimes hold meetings at Fakhet’s apartment as well. They identify 16 militants who meet there. They notice that Mustapha Maymouni, Fakhet’s brother-in-law, frequently sleeps on the floor there. Maymouni is arrested in Morocco later in 2003 for a role in the Casablanca bombings (see May 16, 2003). Monitoring of his house apparently continues through the date of the Madrid bombings. [El Mundo (Madrid), 8/10/2005]
Entity Tags: Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet, Mustapha Maymouni
February-Late March 2003: US Intelligence Learns Al-Qaeda Called Off Chemical Bomb Attack in US, but Effectiveness of Bomb is Disputed
In February 2003, some radical militants are arrested in Bahrain. A joint US-Saudi raid of an apartment in Saudi Arabia owned by one of them reveals the designs for a bomb called a mubtakkar. This bomb is made of two widely available chemicals, sodium cyanide and hydrogen, which combine to create hydrogen cyanide. When turned to gas, it is lethal, and counterterrorism experts are highly alarmed at this technical breakthrough. CIA Director Tenet briefs President Bush about the mubtakkar bomb in early March. [Suskind, 2006, pp. 193-197; Time, 6/17/2006] Journalist Ron Suskind calls it a “nightmare delivery system—portable, easy to construct, deadly.” The CIA has a highly placed al-Qaeda informant codenamed Ali, and in late March they contact him to learn more about the bomb. He tells his CIA handlers that Yusef al-Ayeri, a Saudi in charge of al-Qaeda operations in the Arabian peninsula, visited al-Qaeda number two leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in January 2003. He told al-Zawahiri of an already advanced plot in the US. Operatives loosely linked to al-Qaeda had traveled to the US in the fall of 2002 and thoroughly cased locations in New York City. They would place the mubtakkar bomb in subway cars and remotely activate them. The group was ready to implement an attack in about 45 days. According to Suskind, several thousand people could be killed. But Ali learned that al-Zawahiri called off the attacks, though Ali does not know the reason why. The group did cancel the attack, and US intelligence never learns who exactly they were. President Bush and others puzzle why the attack was canceled and speculate that al-Qaeda put it aside in favor of an even bigger attack. [Suskind, 2006, pp. 216-220; Time, 6/17/2006] Suskind’s account will cause alarm when revealed in 2006. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) will say that authorities took the plot seriously but were never able to confirm its existence. Other officials will debate the effectiveness of the bomb and how many deaths it could have caused. [CNN, 6/18/2006] University of Maryland professor Milton Leitenberg later says of the bomb, “What you would get, in all probability, is a big bang, a big splash, but very little gas.” He also says that concentrations of key chemicals present in household materials are so low “you would get next to nothing” by using them, and one would have to get them from a chemical supplier or steal them from a laboratory. One counterterrorism official points out, “If this is such an amazing weapon, and the design for it is out there, why has no one ever used it?” [United Press International, 6/27/2006] An article by the private intelligence service Stratfor is also skeptical and suggests that al-Zawahiri called off the attack because it wouldn’t have been as deadly as if conventional bombs were used instead. [Stratfor, 6/21/2006] CIA Deputy Counter Terrorism Center Director Hank Crumpton will also later suggest that a team was recruited to stage the attack but apparently never was sent to the US. [Newsweek, 8/28/2007]
Entity Tags: Ron Suskind, Milton Leitenberg, Yusef al-Ayeri, Charles Schumer, George J. Tenet, Ali, Ayman al-Zawahiri, George W. Bush, Hank Crumpton
March 5, 2003: Al-Qaeda Operative Living in US Is Arrested in Pakistan
Majid Khan. [Source: Defense Department]According to his father, al-Qaeda operative Majid Khan is arrested by Pakistani soldiers and police at his brother Mohammed Khan’s house in Karachi, Pakistan, on March 5, 2003. Both brothers are interrogated by Pakistani and US agents. Majid Khan is eventually transferred to a secret US prison and will remain there until 2006, when he will be sent to the Guantanamo prison as one of 14 “high-value” detainees (see September 2-3, 2006). [Reuters, 5/15/2007] The US apparently considers Khan of high value due to his involvement in plots targeting the US. Khan moved to the US from Pakistan as a teenager in 1996 and graduated from a high school in Baltimore in 1999. According to US charges against him, he became involved in a local Islamic organization and then returned to Pakistan in 2002. An uncle and cousin who were al-Qaeda operatives drafted Khan there, and he started working for al-Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM). KSM worked with Khan because of Khan’s knowledge of the US, fluency in English, and willingness to be a suicide bomber. His family owned a gas station, and he allegedly plotted to blow up gas stations and poison water supplies in the US. [Baltimore Sun, 9/9/2006]
Entity Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Majid Khan, Mohammed Khan
Category Tags: Key Captures and Deaths, High Value Detainees, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
March 7 - Mid-April, 2003: Alleged 9/11 Mastermind Tortured in Poland
Communications antenna at Stare Kiejkuty, the Polish “black site” where Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was held for a time after his capture. [Source: CBC]9/11 planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, after being detained and abused for three days in US custody in Afghanistan (see February 29 or March 1, 2003 and Shortly After February 29 or March 1, 2003), is transferred to another CIA-run facility in Poland. [New Yorker, 8/6/2007; New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009] The facility is later identified as Stare Kiejkuty, a secret prison near the Szymany military airbase. Mohammed is flown in on a Gulfstream N379P jet known to prison officials as “the torture taxi.” The plane is probably piloted by “Jerry M,” a 56-year-old pilot for Aero Contractors, a company that transfers prisoners around the world for US intelligence agencies. [Der Spiegel (Hamburg), 4/27/2009] He is dressed in a tracksuit, blindfolded, hooded, has sound-blocking headphones placed over his ears, and is flown “sitting, leaning back, with my hands and ankles shackled in a high chair,” as he will later tell officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC—see October 6 - December 14, 2006). He later says he manages to sleep a few hours, for the first time in days. Upon arrival, Mohammed is stripped naked and placed in a small cell “with cameras where I was later informed by an interrogator that I was monitored 24 hours a day by a doctor, psychologist, and interrogator.” The walls are wooden and the cell measures some 10 by 13 feet. [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009; Der Spiegel (Hamburg), 4/27/2009]
'I Would Be Brought to the Verge of Death and Back Again' - As he will later recall, it was in this detention camp that “the most intense interrogation occurred, led by three experienced CIA interrogators, all over 65 years old and all strong and well trained.” The interrogators tell him that they have received the “green light from Washington” to give him “a hard time” (see Late September 2001 and September 25, 2002). As he will later recall: “They never used the word ‘torture’ and never referred to ‘physical pressure,’ only to ‘a hard time.’ I was never threatened with death, in fact I was told that they would not allow me to die, but that I would be brought to the ‘verge of death and back again.‘… I was kept for one month in the cell in a standing position with my hands cuffed and shackled above my head and my feet cuffed and shackled to a point in the floor.” When he falls asleep, “all my weight [is] applied to the handcuffs around my wrist resulting in open and bleeding wounds.” The ICRC will later confirm that Mohammed bears scars consistent with his allegations on both wrists and both ankles. “Both my feet became very swollen after one month of almost continual standing.”
Interrogations - He is interrogated in a different room, in sessions lasting anywhere from four to eight hours, and with a wide variety of participants. Sometimes women take part in the interrogations. A doctor is usually present. “If I was perceived not to be cooperating I would be put against a wall and punched and slapped in the body, head, and face. A thick flexible plastic collar would also be placed around my neck so that it could then be held at the two ends by a guard who would use it to slam me repeatedly against the wall. The beatings were combined with the use of cold water, which was poured over me using a hose-pipe. The beatings and use of cold water occurred on a daily basis during the first month.”
'Alternative Procedures' - The CIA interrogators use what they will later call “alternative procedures” on Mohammed, including waterboarding (see After March 7, 2003) and other techniques. He is sprayed with cold water from a hose-pipe in his cell and the “worst day” is when he is beaten for about half an hour by one of the interrogators. “My head was banged against the wall so hard that it started to bleed. Cold water was poured over my head. This was then repeated with other interrogators.” He is then waterboarded until a doctor intervenes. He gets an hours’s sleep and is then “put back in my cell standing with my hands shackled above my head.” He sleeps for a “few minutes” on the floor of cell after the torture sessions, but does not sleep well, “due to shackles on my ankles and wrists.” The toilet consists of a bucket in the cell, which he can use on request, but “I was not allowed to clean myself after toilet during the first month.” In the first month he is only fed on two occasions, “as a reward for perceived cooperation.” He gets Ensure [a liquid nutritional supplement] to drink every four hours. If he refuses it, “then my mouth was forced open by the guard and it was poured down my throat by force.” He loses 18 kg in the first month, after which he gets some clothes. In addition, “Artificial light was on 24 hours a day, but I never saw sunlight.” [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009]
Deliberately False Information - As he will later tell ICRC officials, he often lies to his interrogators: “During the harshest period of my interrogation, I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop.… I’m sure that the false information I was forced to invent… wasted a lot of their time and led to several false red-alerts being placed in the US.” [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009] It will later be reported that up to 90 percent of Mohammed’s confessions may be unreliable. Furthermore, he will recant many of his statements (see August 6, 2007).
Entity Tags: Jack Goldsmith, “Jerry M”, Aero Contractors, International Committee of the Red Cross, David S. Addington, Central Intelligence Agency, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Stare Kiejkuty
March 7, 2003-May 18, 2007: Al-Qaeda Financier Tied to Pearl’s Death Disappears for Four Years, Then Dies
An ill Saud Memon shortly before his death. [Source: Daily Times]Saud Memon, a Pakistani businessman who owns the land where Wall Street Journal report Daniel Pearl is killed in late January 2002 (see January 31, 2002), apparently flees Pakistan for fear of being arrested for Pearl’s death. According to later newspaper accounts in Pakistan and India, Memon is arrested by the FBI in South Africa on March 7, 2003. He is kept at Guantanamo prison for more than two years and then handed over to Pakistani authorities. On April 28, 2007, some unknown men drop Memon in front of his house in Pakistan. He is deathly ill and unable to speak or recognize people. He dies less than one month later on May 18, 2007. Memon has been the top name on the list of Pakistan’s most wanted. In addition to having a suspected role in Pearl’s death, he helped fund the Al Rashid Trust, which has been banned for being an al-Qaeda front. While some suspect a US and/or Pakistan government role in Memon’s disappearance, it is not known for sure what happened to him for those four years. [Associated Press, 5/18/2007; Daily Times (Lahore), 5/19/2007; Indo-Asian News Service, 5/19/2007]
Entity Tags: Al Rashid Trust, Saud Memon
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Key Captures and Deaths
After March 7, 2003: CIA Officer Takes Sightseeing Trip to See KSM Waterboarded
CIA manager Alfreda Frances Bikowsky takes an unauthorized trip to see alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) being waterboarded in Poland (see After March 7, 2003). Based on information from “two well-informed agency sources,” author Jane Mayer will write that Bikowsky is “so excited” by KSM’s capture that she flies “at government expense to the black site where Mohammed was held so that she could personally watch him being waterboarded.” However, according to Mayer, she is not an interrogator and has “no legitimate reason to be present during Mohammed’s interrogation.” A former colleague will say she went because, “She thought it would be cool to be in the room.” Her presence during KSM’s torture seems “to anger and strengthen his resolve, helping him to hold out longer against the harsh tactics used against him.” Bikowsky will later be reprimanded for this, and, in Mayer’s words, “superiors at the CIA scold […] her for treating the painful interrogation as a show.” A former colleague will say: “She got in some trouble. They told her, ‘It’s not supposed to be entertainment.’” [Mayer, 2008, pp. 273] Bikowsky may be interviewed by the CIA inspector general’s probe into torture (see July 16, 2003) and will later be considered for the position of deputy station chief in Baghdad (see (March 23, 2007)).
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Alec Station
After March 7, 2003: Alleged 9/11 Mastermind KSM Repeatedly Waterboarded in Poland
After being transferred from Afghanistan to Poland (see March 7 - Mid-April, 2003), alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is repeatedly waterboarded by the CIA, a technique simulating drowning that international law classifies as torture. He is only one of about four high-ranking detainees waterboarded, according to media reports (see May 2002-2003). [New Yorker, 8/6/2007; MSNBC, 9/13/2007; New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009] He will recall: “I would be strapped to a special bed, which could be rotated into a vertical position. A cloth would be placed over my face. Cold water from a bottle that had been kept in a fridge was then poured onto the cloth by one of the guards so that I could not breathe.… The cloth was then removed and the bed was put into a vertical position. The whole process was then repeated during about one hour. Injuries to my ankles and wrists also occurred during the waterboarding as I struggled in the panic of not being able to breathe. Female interrogators were also present… and a doctor was always present, standing out of sight behind the head of [the] bed, but I saw him when he came to fix a clip to my finger which was connected to a machine. I think it was to measure my pulse and oxygen content in my blood. So they could take me to [the] breaking point.” [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009] Accounts about the use of waterboarding on KSM differ. He says he is waterboarded five times. [New York Review of Books, 3/15/2009] However, contradictory reports will later appear:
NBC News will claim that, according to multiple unnamed officials, KSM underwent at least two sessions of waterboarding and other extreme measures before talking. One former senior intelligence official will say, “KSM required, shall we say, re-dipping.” [MSNBC, 9/13/2007]
In 2005, former and current intelligence officers and supervisors will tell ABC News that KSM “won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.” [ABC News, 11/18/2005] In 2007, a former CIA official familiar with KSM’s case will tell ABC News a sligntly different version of events: “KSM lasted the longest under waterboarding, about a minute and a half, but once he broke, it never had to be used again.” A senior CIA official will claim that KSM later admitted he only confessed because of the waterboarding. [ABC News, 9/14/2007] In November 2005, John Sifton of Human Rights Watch will say of waterboarding, “The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law.” [ABC News, 11/18/2005]
The New York Times will claim that “KSM was subjected to intense and repeated torture techniques that, at the time, were specifically designated as illegal under US law.” Some claim that KSM gives useful information. “However, many of the officials interviewed say KSM provided a raft of false and exaggerated statements that did not bear close scrutiny—the usual result, experts say, of torture.” CIA officials stopped the “extreme interrogation” sessions after about two weeks, worrying that they might have exceeded their legal bounds. Apparently pressure to stop comes from Jack Goldsmith, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, who is troubled about updates from KSM’s interrogations and raises legal questions. He is angrily opposed by the White House, particularly David Addington, a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. [New York Times, 10/4/2007]
The New Yorker will report that officials who have seen a classified Red Cross report say that KSM claims he was waterboarded five times. Further, he says he was waterboarded even after he started cooperating. But two former CIA officers will insist that he was waterboarded only once. One of them says that KSM “didn’t resist. He sang right away. He cracked real quick. A lot of them want to talk. Their egos are unimaginable. KSM was just a little doughboy.” [New Yorker, 8/6/2007]
A different ABC News account will claim that KSM was al-Qaeda’s toughest prisoner. CIA officers who subject themselves to waterboarding last only about 14 seconds, but KSM was able to last over two minutes. [ABC News, 11/18/2005]
In 2009, evidence will surface that indicates KSM was waterboarded up to 183 times (see April 16, 2009 and April 18, 2009).
Entity Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Central Intelligence Agency, John Sifton
March 9, 2003: Condoleezza Rice Suggests Hussein Could Work with Al-Qaeda to Attack US
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice goes on to speculate on CBS Face the Nation that Hussein may eventually decide to “enlist” al-Qaeda to attack the United States. “Now the al-Qaeda is an organization that’s quite disbursed and—and quite widespread in its effects, but it clearly has had links to the Iraqis, not to mention Iraqi links to all kinds of other terrorists. And what we do not want is the day when Saddam Hussein decides that he’s had enough of dealing with sanctions, enough of dealing with, quote, unquote, ‘containment,’ enough of dealing with America, and it’s time to end it on his terms, by transferring one of these weapons, just a little vial of something, to a terrorist for blackmail or for worse.” [Face the Nation, 3/9/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform, 3/16/2004]
Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice
March 10, 2003: Dubious Arrest Video Raises Question of KSM-ISI Connection
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed shortly after arrest. (Note: this picture is from a video presentation on prisoners the Pakistani government gave to BBC filmmakers, and it is not from the ISI video. It has been adjusted to remove some blue tinge.) [Source: BBC's "The New Al-Qaeda."]One week after the purported arrest of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) in Pakistan (see February 29 or March 1, 2003), the ISI show what they claim is a video of the capture. It is openly mocked as a bad forgery by the few reporters allowed to see it. [ABC News, 3/11/2003; Reuters, 3/11/2003; Pakistan News Service (Newark, CA), 3/11/2003; Daily Times (Lahore), 3/13/2003] For instance, a Fox News reporter says, “Foreign journalists looking at it laughed and said this is baloney, this is a reconstruction.” [Fox News, 3/10/2003] Other information about the arrest also raises questions about his relationship with the ISI (see Spring 1993). At the time of KSM’s alleged arrest, he was staying in a neighborhood filled with ISI officials, just a short distance from ISI headquarters, leading to suspicions that he’d been doing so with ISI approval. [Lateline, 3/3/2003] One expert notes that after his arrest, “Those who think they have ISI protection will stop feeling that comfort level.” [Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/2/2003] Journalist Robert Fisk reports, “Mohammed was an ISI asset; indeed, anyone who is ‘handed over’ by the ISI these days is almost certainly a former (or present) employee of the Pakistani agency whose control of Taliban operatives amazed even the Pakistani government during the years before 2001.” [Toronto Star, 3/3/2003]
Entity Tags: Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Category Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Pakistan and the ISI
Shortly Before March 14, 2003: CIA Allegedly Prevents Bush from Mentioning Atta in Prague Claim in Speech
In 2007, Newsweek will claim that still-classified portions of a CIA cable reveal that some White House officials wanted to mention an alleged meeting between hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague in a speech President Bush was scheduled to give on March 14, 2003. But after learning of the proposed speech, the CIA station in Prague sent back a cable explaining why the CIA believed the meeting never took place. Accounts differ, but one source familiar with the cable will claim that the cable was “strident” and expressed dismay the White House would try to fit the dubious claim into Bush’s speech only days before the US begins a planned invasion of Iraq. There is no proof that Bush ever saw the cable and he ultimately does not mention the claim in his speech. A senior intelligence official at the time will later claim that the White House proposed on multiple occasions to mention the claim in speeches by Bush and Vice President Cheney. While Bush never mentioned it, Cheney did on several occasions before the Iraq war began. For instance, in December 2001, Cheney claimed, “It’s been pretty well confirmed, that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service…” (see December 9, 2001). [Newsweek, 9/13/2006]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, White House, George W. Bush
March 14, 2003: Afghanistan Becomes Number One Heroin Producer
The Afghan government warns that unless the international community hands over the aid it promised, Afghanistan will slip back into its role as the world’s premier heroin producer. The country’s foreign minister warns Afghanistan could become a “narco-mafia state.” [BBC, 3/17/2003] A United Nations study later in the month notes that Afghanistan is once again the world’s number one heroin producer, producing 3,750 tons in 2002. Farmers are growing more opium poppies than ever throughout the country, including areas previously free of the crop. [Associated Press, 3/27/2003]
Entity Tags: United Nations, Afghanistan
Category Tags: Afghanistan, Drugs
March 14, 2003: Justice Department Claims Military Can Ignore Laws against Torture, Assault, Maiming, and Drugging Detainees
The Justice Department sends a legal memorandum to the Pentagon that claims federal laws prohibiting torture, assault, maiming, and other crimes do not apply to military interrogators questioning al-Qaeda captives because the president’s authority as commander in chief overrides the law. The 81-page memo, written by the Office of Legal Counsel’s John Yoo, is not publicly revealed for over five years (see April 1, 2008).
President Can Order Maiming, Disfigurement of Prisoners - Yoo writes that infractions such as slapping, shoving, and poking detainees do not warrant criminal liability. Yoo goes even farther, saying that the use of mind-altering drugs can be used on detainees as long as they do not produce “an extreme effect” calculated to “cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality.” [John C. Yoo, 3/14/2003 ; Washington Post, 4/2/2008] Yoo asks if the president can order a prisoner’s eyes poked out, or if the president could order “scalding water, corrosive acid or caustic substance” thrown on a prisoner. Can the president have a prisoner disfigured by slitting an ear or nose? Can the president order a prisoner’s tongue torn out or a limb permanently disabled? All of these assaults are noted in a US law prohibiting maiming. Yoo decides that no such restrictions exist for the president in a time of war; that law does not apply if the president deems it inapplicable. The memo contains numerous other discussions of various harsh and tortuous techniques, all parsed in dry legal terms. Those tactics are all permissible, Yoo writes, unless they result in “death, organ failure, or serious impairment of bodily functions.” Some of the techniques are proscribed by the Geneva Conventions, but Yoo writes that Geneva does not apply to detainees captured and accused of terrorism. [Washington Post, 4/6/2008]
'National Self-Defense' - Yoo asserts that the president’s powers as commander in chief supersede almost all other laws, even Constitutional provisions. “If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al-Qaeda terrorist network,” Yoo writes. “In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.… Even if an interrogation method arguably were to violate a criminal statute, the Justice Department could not bring a prosecution because the statute would be unconstitutional as applied in this context.” Interrogators who harmed a prisoner are protected by a “national and international version of the right to self-defense.” He notes that for conduct during interrogations to be illegal, that conduct must “shock the conscience,” an ill-defined rationale that will be used by Bush officials for years to justify the use of waterboarding and other extreme interrogation methods. Yoo writes, “Whether conduct is conscience-shocking turns in part on whether it is without any justification,” explaining that that it would have to be inspired by malice or sadism before it could be prosecuted.
Memo Buttresses Administration's Justifications of Torture - The Justice Department will tell the Defense Department not to use the memo nine months later (see December 2003-June 2004), but Yoo’s reasoning will be used to provide a legal foundation for the Defense Department’s use of aggressive and potentially illegal interrogation tactics. The Yoo memo is a follow-up and expansion to a similar, though more narrow, August 2002 memo also written by Yoo (see August 1, 2002). Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will suspend a list of aggressive interrogation techniques he had approved, in part because of Yoo’s memo, after an internal revolt by Justice Department and military lawyers (see February 6, 2003, Late 2003-2005 and December 2003-June 2004). However, in April 2003, a Pentagon working group will use Yoo’s memo to endorse the continued use of extreme tactics. [John C. Yoo, 3/14/2003 ; Washington Post, 4/2/2008; New York Times, 4/2/2008]
Justice Department Claims Attorney General Knows Nothing of Memo - Yoo sends the memo to the Pentagon without the knowledge of Attorney General John Ashcroft or Ashcroft’s deputy, Larry Thompson, senior department officials will say in 2008. [Washington Post, 4/4/2008]
Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, John C. Yoo, Larry D. Thompson, Al-Qaeda, Office of Legal Counsel (DOJ), Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Geneva Conventions, US Department of Defense
March 14, 2003: Spanish Police Hone in on Apartment of Madrid Bomber
On March 14, 2003, Spanish police begin intensively monitoring Islamist militant Mouhannad Almallah. They locate his house on Quimicos street in Madrid and begin monitoring it too. They notice that his brother Moutaz is frequently traveling back and forth between Madrid and London. Police also apparently begin videotaping the house, although details on that are unclear. [El Mundo (Madrid), 8/10/2005] Mouhannad had been a suspect since 1998, and Moutaz since 1995, and both had already been monitored to some degree (see November 1995). Both were linked to the al-Qaeda cell originally run by Barakat Yarkas. [El Mundo (Madrid), 3/2/2005] Surveillance on Mouhannad increased after police linked him to a group of militants meeting at the Virgen de Coro apartment owned and frequented by him and his brother (see January 17, 2003-Late March 2004). The police will continue to monitor him until the Madrid bombings. He will later get 12 years for his role in those bombings (see October 31, 2007).
Entity Tags: Moutaz Almallah, Mouhannad Almallah
Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Spain, 2004 Madrid Train Bombings, Remote Surveillance
March 14, 2003: President Bush Waives Last Remaining US Sanctions on Pakistan
President Bush waives the last set of US sanctions against Pakistan. The US imposed a new series of sanctions against Pakistan in 1998, after Pakistan exploded a nuclear weapon (see May 28, 1998), and in 1999, when President Pervez Musharraf overthrew a democratically elected government (see October 12, 1999). The lifted sanctions had prohibited the export of US military equipment and military assistance to a country whose head of government has been deposed. Some other sanctions were waived shortly after 9/11. Bush’s move comes as Musharraf is trying to decide whether or not to support a US-sponsored United Nations resolution which could start war with Iraq. It also comes two weeks after 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan (see February 29 or March 1, 2003). [Agence France-Presse, 3/14/2003]
Entity Tags: Pervez Musharraf, George W. Bush
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI
March 15, 2003: Alleged Al-Qaeda Leader Captured in Pakistan, Disappears into US Custody
A Moroccan named Yassir al-Jazeeri is captured in Lahore, Pakistan, by Pakistani police and the FBI. Al-Jazeeri is not on any wanted list and there is virtually no known public information about him before his arrest, but a Pakistani official will call him one of the seven top leaders of al-Qaeda. He is said to be linked to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in some way, who was arrested in Pakistan not long before (see February 29 or March 1, 2003). He is soon transferred into US custody. Witnesses see him at a CIA operated portion of the Bagram prison in Afghanistan in late 2003 through early 2004. One fellow detainee will later claim that al-Jazeeri told him he had been tortured and permanently injured, and forced to listen to loud music for four months straight. In 2007, Human Rights Watch will list him as a likely “ghost detainee” still being held by the US (see June 7, 2007). [Human Rights Watch, 6/7/2007]
Entity Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Central Intelligence Agency, Yassir al-Jazeeri
Category Tags: Key Captures and Deaths, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
Mid-March 2003: Al-Qaeda Operative in US Is Arrested, Informs on Others
Iyman Faris. [Source: Justice Department]Shortly after al-Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is captured in Pakistan in early March 2003 (see February 29 or March 1, 2003), US investigators discover an e-mail sent to KSM from an associate in the US. They learn the e-mail is from Iyman Faris, a truck driver living in Columbus, Ohio, who is a naturalized US citizen from Kashmir, Pakistan. Faris had been working on a plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge by cutting its suspension cables, but in the e-mail he complained to KSM that such a plot would be impossible to carry out. Faris is secretly arrested around the middle of March, and taken to a government safe house in Virginia. FBI agents threaten to have him declared an enemy combatant unless he cooperates, and also offer to move his extended family from Pakistan to the US if he does cooperate. He agrees, and begins phoning and sending e-mail messages to other al-Qaeda operatives while the FBI watches. A senior US official will later say: “He was sitting in the safe house making calls for us. It was a huge triumph for law enforcement.” Faris pleads guilty in early May to providing material support to al-Qaeda. [Time, 6/30/2003] In late June, Newsweek reveals Faris’s links to al-Qaeda and KSM, presumably ending his effectiveness as an informant. Interestingly, Newsweek notes that Faris got a speeding ticket in Ohio in May, suggesting he was being allowed to travel. [Newsweek, 6/15/2003] The charges against him are made public days after the Newsweek article. He later withdraws his guilty plea, but is subsequently convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. [CBS News, 6/14/2004]
Entity Tags: Iyman Faris, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Category Tags: Other Possible Moles or Informants, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Key Captures and Deaths, Internal US Security After 9/11
March 17, 2003: Ricin Scare in Paris is False Alarm
A suspicious substance is discovered in a train station locker at the Gare de Lyon in central Paris. Agents find two vials of powder, a bottle of liquid, and two other vials with liquid. The Interior Ministry says the contents of the vials are “traces of ricin in a mixture which has proven to be a very toxic poison.” [Newsday, 4/12/2003] Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy calls for greater public vigilance and says there could be a connection with a network of Islamic extremists who were detained around the capital in December. Officials have in the past linked ricin production to al-Qaeda and Iraq. On January 5, British police claimed to find traces of ricin in a raid on a London flat during which five men of North African origin with alleged al-Qaeda connections were arrested (see January 5, 2003). [BBC, 4/11/2003]
Terrorism Scare - The discovery sparks widespread terrorism concerns just two days before the invasion of Iraq. French authorities double the number of soldiers in the streets to 800 and order increased surveillance in train stations and ports. Flights are temporarily banned over nuclear power plants, chemical, petrochemical and other sensitive facilities. [Newsday, 4/12/2003] Ricin, which is derived from castor beans, is relatively easy to make and stockpile. If added to food or drinks, or injected into a victim, it causes severe and rapid bleeding to the stomach and intestines. If the poison gets into the bloodstream, it can attack the liver, kidneys and spleen, often leading to death. It may be inhaled, ingested or injected. There is no treatment or antidote. [New York Times, 4/12/2003]
Alleged al-Qaeda link - US officials said in August that the Islamic extremist group Ansar al-Islam tested ricin along with other chemical and biological agents in northern Iraq, territory controlled by Kurds, not Saddam Hussein. The group is allegedly linked to al-Qaeda. UN weapons inspectors, who left Iraq in 1998 after a first round of inspections, listed ricin among the poisons they believed Saddam produced and later failed to account for. [Newsday, 4/12/2003]
False alarm - The ministry soon downgrades the assessment, saying the traces of suspected ricin are too minute to be lethal. In fact, the substance later proves to be entirely harmless. Further Defense Ministry laboratory tests show the vials contain a mixture of ground barley and wheat germ. “Preliminary tests pointed towards ricin but they were not confirmed by more complete analysis,” an official says. [BBC, 4/11/2003] They said the grain was mistakenly identified as ricin because it consists of protein whose structure is similar to that of ricin. [New York Times, 4/12/2003] However, French officials are still not entirely satisfied that the substances found are not in some way related to a planned terrorist attack. A senior Interior Ministry says the substances may be “the product of an experiment” or the remains of an effort to produce a toxic weapon. Antiterrorism police agents will continue to investigate the incident, the officials says. [New York Times, 4/12/2003]
Entity Tags: Ansar al-Islam, Al-Qaeda, Nicolas Sarkozy
Category Tags: Terror Alerts, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
March 17, 2003: Homeland Security Raises Threat Level, Advises Americans to Buy Duct Tape and Plastic Sheeting
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) raises the national threat level to orange, or “high.” DHS director Tom Ridge tells Americans, not for the first time (see February 7-13, 2003), to stock up on duct tape and plastic sheeting as protection against biological and/or radiological attacks. [Unger, 2007, pp. 293] The duct tape and plastic sheeting recommendations have become something of a national joke by this point, with Saturday Night Live comedians riffing on the topic and a Tom Ridge impersonator performing while wrapped in plastic sheeting for Ridge and President Bush at a recent Gridiron dinner. Late-night talk show host Jay Leno recently said after having Ridge on his show: “When problems seem overwhelming, simplistic solutions always seem funny. Duct tape and plastic sheeting? When the threat level goes down, it’ll be downgraded to Scotch tape and two Ziploc bags.” On a more serious note, David Ropeik of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis says: “Ridge and the department need to come up with a better way of saying, ‘Be afraid.’ They say, ‘Be alert,’ and then out of the other side of their mouth they say, ‘Go about your normal lives.’ To most of us, those messages don’t mesh. They also need to be more specific. When the threat level goes from yellow to orange, tell us what we can do besides being more alert.” Gary Hart, the former Democratic senator who helped compile the report that eventually led to the creation of the department (see January 31, 2001), says: “The idea of using duct tape to protect yourself would resonate only if people could see the government taking action to protect you. But because the government has done so little against terrorism at home, it sounded as if they were saying, ‘You’re on your own.’” Ridge may have gotten the last laugh on Leno’s show, when Leno asked sardonically: “I’m sitting at home in my underpants watching the game and, boop, we’re in yellow. What do I do now?” Ridge replied, “Change shorts.” [New York Times, 3/17/2003]
Entity Tags: US Department of Homeland Security, David Ropeik, Gary Hart, Tom Ridge, George W. Bush, Jay Leno
Category Tags: Terror Alerts
March 17, 2003: President Bush Justifies Imminent US Invasion of Iraq, Claims Iraq Has WMDs and Al-Qaeda Links
In a televised address to the nation, shortly before the US officially begins its invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush justifies the need to use military force. He asserts that the US has “pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war,” but that Iraq “has uniformly defied Security Council resolutions demanding full disarmament.” He maintains that Iraq “continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised” and “has aided, trained, and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al-Qaeda.… Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed.” Bush then gives Saddam Hussein an ultimatum, warning the Iraqi leader that if he and his sons do not leave Iraq within 48 hours, the US will use military force to topple his government. The choice is his, Bush says. “Should Saddam Hussein choose confrontation, the American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war, and every measure will be taken to win it.” He assures Iraqis that the US will liberate them and bring them democracy and warns Iraq’s military not to destroy its country’s oil wells or obey orders to deploy weapons of mass destruction. As to the issue of war crimes, Bush says: “War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, ‘I was just following orders.’” [US President, 3/24/2003]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush
March 17-18, 2003: FBI Alleges Al-Qaeda Likely to Attack to Help Saddam Hussein
On March 17, 2003, the National Alert Level is raised to orange. The FBI warns of terror strikes directed by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein or “allied or sympathetic terrorist organizations, most notably the al-Qaeda network.” This warning clearly attempts to establish a connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist activities of al-Qaeda. Interestingly, this third orange alert comes three days before President Bush invades Iraq, opening what he calls the “central front of the War on Terror.” The attack claim is debunked by future CIA director Porter Goss, then the chair of the House intelligence committee. He states that there is no intelligence which suggests a new attack. [Rolling Stone, 9/21/2006 ] The next day, the Arizona National Guard is alerted and sent to an Arizona nuclear plant because “an attack by al-Qaeda agents [is] imminent.” No attack materializes. [News Hounds, 10/9/2004]
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush, Porter J. Goss, Federal Bureau of Investigation
(Before March 18, 2003): CIA Conducts Major Review of Iraq Intelligence; Finds No Evidence of a Link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda
After the US Department of Defense publishes several reports linking al-Qaeda to Iraq, CIA Director George Tenet orders CIA researchers and analysts—who have maintained that there are no such links—to go through all the agency’s records on Iraq and al-Qaeda and search for evidence of the alleged relationship. CIA researcher Michael Scheuer leads the effort, which combs through about 19,000 documents going back nine or 10 years. Scheuer will later say, “there was no connection between [al-Qaeda] and Saddam. There were indications that al-Qaeda people had transited Iraq, probably with the Iraqis turning a blind eye to it. There were some hints that there was a contact between the head of the intelligence service of the Iraqis with bin Laden when he was in the Sudan, but nothing you could put together and say, ‘Here is a relationship that is similar to the relationship between Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah,’ which was what Doug Feith’s organization was claiming. There was simply nothing to support that.” [Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 11/24/2004; PBS Frontline, 6/20/2006; PBS Frontline, 6/20/2006 Sources: Michael Scheuer]
Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Michael Scheuer, George J. Tenet
Between March 16 and 20, 2003: Associate of 9/11 Hijackers Possibly Escapes US
Gulshair Shukrijumah, Adnan’s father. [Source: Fox News]Suspect Adnan Shukrijumah is able to escape the US despite growing evidence of his involvement with al-Qaeda and even his connection with some 9/11 hijackers. Shukrijumah lives in Miramar, Florida, and neighbors claim to have seen him as recently as March 15 and 16, 2003. For instance, one neighbor, Orville Campbell, says he saw Shukrijumah at a neighborhood barbeque on the afternoon of March 16. On March 20, just four days later, the FBI announces a $5 million reward for Shukrijumah, after he apparently has left the country (see March 21, 2003 and After). Just after the announcement, the New York Times reports, “Residents of Miramar, Fla., said a man who appeared to be Mr. Shukrijumah was living there as recently as last weekend.” [New York Times, 3/21/2003] It is unclear why Shukrijumah was not monitored closely enough to prevent him leaving the US. CNN reports that Shukrijumah’s name first came up in documents recovered after 9/11 associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh was arrested in Pakistan in September 2002. Additionally, his name came up again in documents seized in early March 2003 when 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan. Those documents referred to him as someone who would carry out a suicide attack. Additionally, by March 19, Mohammed identified him as one of his deputies. [CNN, 3/22/2003; US News and World Report, 3/30/2003] But those were hardly the first times US intelligence saw a link between Shukrijumah and al-Qaeda.
His father, Gulshair Shukrijumah, was the imam of a Florida mosque, and appears to have been under suspicion before 9/11 because of his links to the “Blind Sheikh,” Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, and others convicted of roles in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (2000-2001).
From November 2000 to the spring of 2002, the FBI in Florida investigated a group of Muslims it suspected of being terrorists, including Adnan Shukrijumah. Two members of the group were arrested in May 2002 and later found guilty and given prison sentences (see November 2000-Spring 2002). In April and May 2001, the focus was on Shukrijumah, but he was careful and the FBI was only able to prove that he lied on his green card application regarding a prior arrest (see April-May 2001).
An FBI informant, Elie Assaad, infiltrated the mosque run by Adnan’s father in early 2001, and grew suspicious of Adnan and his friend, 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. However, his FBI handlers assigned him easier targets instead (see Early 2001). Assaad claims that shortly after 9/11, he grew very upset after he realized that Atta was one of the hijackers. “I curse on everybody. I destroyed half of my furniture. Uh, I went crazy.” Presumably Assaad would have told his FBI superiors about the link between Shukrijumah and Atta, if they didn’t know about it already. [ABC News, 9/10/2009]
It appears that 9/11 hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi attended the same small mosque as Adnan Shukrijumah and Atta. Shortly after 9/11, the FBI visited the mosque and asked Adnan’s parents if they recognized any of the hijackers and if Adnan knew Atta or had mentioned trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan (see 2000-2001).
In the spring of 2001, the FBI also investigated Shukrijumah in connection with another Florida-based Islamist militant group. While the FBI developed evidence against others in the group, Shukrijumah kept his distance from the main plotters and he could not be linked to their plans (see (Spring 2001)).
Shukrijumah was also seen going to the Miami District Immigration Office with Atta and one other man, who may have been 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah (see May 2, 2001).
One article published in March 2003, shortly after the announcement of the reward money to find Shukrijumah, claims that in the months after 9/11, US agents went to his parents’ Florida home six times to ask about him, but he was never there. Furthermore, his parents claimed he had been gone since before 9/11 and rarely called. His parents also claim he is innocent of any links to Islamic militancy. [US News and World Report, 3/30/2003] It is unclear if the neighbors who knew Shukrijumah were mistaken that he was still in Florida well after 9/11, or if he was able to stay in the US for a long time without the FBI finding him.
Entity Tags: Marwan Alshehhi, Gulshair Shukrijumah, Elie Assaad, Ziad Jarrah, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mohamed Atta, Adnan Shukrijumah
Category Tags: Possible Hijacker Associates in US, 9/11 Investigations, FBI 9/11 Investigation
March 18, 2003: President Bush Sends Letter to Congress Justifying Decision to Invade Iraq
President Bush sends a letter to Congress justifying the invasion of Iraq. The letter is addressed to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and President Pro Tempore of the Senate Ted Stevens (R-AK). In the letter, Bush declares that he has determined that further diplomacy will not “adequately protect the national security of the United States.” Therefore, he is acting to “take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” [US President, 3/24/2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 293] This mimics language from a bill passed by Congress in October 2002 (see October 11, 2002), which granted Bush the power to declare war against Iraq if a link with the 9/11 attacks is shown and several other conditions are met. [US Congress, 10/2/2002] But there is no evidence linking Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, a fact that Bush has previously acknowledged (see January 31, 2003).
Entity Tags: US Congress, George W. Bush, Ted Stevens, Dennis Hastert
March 19, 2003: US and Partners Invade Iraq
A building in Baghdad is bombed during the US invasion of Iraq. [Source: Reuters]The US begins its official invasion of Iraq (see (7:40 a.m.) March 19, 2003). While most observers expect a traditional air assault, the US planners instead launch what they call a “Shock and Awe” combination of air and ground assaults designed to avoid direct confrontations with Iraqi military forces and instead destroy Iraqi military command structures. [CNN, 3/20/2003; CNN, 3/20/2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 302] The initial invasion force consists of 250,000 US forces augmented by 45,000 British troops and small contingents from Poland, Australia, and Denmark, elements of the so-called “coalition of the willing.” [BBC, 3/18/2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 302]
Entity Tags: United States
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation
Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism
March 21, 2003 and After: FBI Offers $5 Million Reward for Information on Atta Associate
The FBI issues a reward of $5 million for information on Adnan Shukrijumah, starting a world-wide manhunt that will last for years. Shukrijumah lived in the same area as most of the 9/11 hijackers and was reportedly seen with Mohamed Atta in the spring of 2001 (see May 2, 2001), when he was being investigated by the FBI over two terrorist plots (see April-May 2001 and (Spring 2001)). Information gleaned from detainees suggests that Shukrijumah is a top al-Qaeda operative who was trained in Afghanistan and is associated with 9/11 architect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Jose Padilla (see June 10, 2002). In May 2004 Attorney General John Ashcroft will even single out Shukrijumah as the most dangerous al-Qaeda operative planning to attack the US. However, despite reported sightings in Central America, he is still on the run in 2006 and believed to be hiding in the tribal areas of Pakistan. [US News and World Report, 4/7/2003; USA Today, 6/15/2003; FrontPage Magazine, 10/27/2003; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 40-41 ; Los Angeles Times, 9/3/2006]
Flight Training - US authorities claim he is a pilot and has been receiving flight training outside the US for several years, though they do not release any evidence to substantiate this. His family insists that he is neither a qualified pilot nor an al-Qaeda operative. [USA Today, 6/15/2003; CNN, 9/5/2003] A senior Bush administration official says the government has evidence Shukrijumah had attended the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, but does not say when. Other Islamist militants, including Zacarias Moussaoui, attended that school before 9/11 (see February 23-June 2001, May 18, 1999 and May 15, 1998). The director of the school claims there is no evidence of a student with any of Shukrijumah’s publicly revealed aliases. [New York Times, 3/21/2003]
Entity Tags: John Ashcroft, Adnan Shukrijumah, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mohamed Atta
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Internal US Security After 9/11
March 24, 2003: CIA Drafts Report about KSM Interrogation; KSM Will Later Change Story regarding Almihdhar
The CIA drafts a report containing statements reportedly made by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) under interrogation at a black site. According to the report, KSM says that 9/11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar did not receive specialized training at a course for al-Qaeda operatives scheduled for inclusion in the 9/11 operation in late 1999 because he had already received the training from KSM. In later statements, KSM will deny this and say he gave Almihdhar no such training, adding that he assumed Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda military commander Mohammed Atef had excused Almihdhar from the training (see Early December 1999). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 157, 493] The report also states that KSM says he sent Zacarias Moussaoui to Malaysia (see September-October 2000), that Jemaah Islamiyah leader Hambali helped Moussaoui when he was in Malaysia, and that KSM recalled Moussaoui from Malaysia when he discovered he was behaving badly there. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 490, 520] The US is already aware that Moussaoui had been to Malaysia, that Hambali and KSM were linked, and that Moussaoui behaved badly in Malaysia. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 3/8/2006; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 3/8/2006] Details of the report will apparently be leaked to the media four days later (see March 28, 2003).
Entity Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Central Intelligence Agency
Category Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Zacarias Moussaoui, High Value Detainees
March 26, 2003: President Bush Turns Down Increased Budget for 9/11 Commission
Time magazine reports that the 9/11 Commission has requested an additional $11 million to add to the $3 million for the commission, and the Bush administration has turned down the request. The request will not be added to a supplemental spending bill. A Republican member of the commission says the decision will make it “look like they have something to hide.” Another commissioner notes that the recent commission on the Columbia shuttle crash will have a $50 million budget. Stephen Push, a leader of the 9/11 victims’ families, says the decision “suggests to me that they see this as a convenient way for allowing the commission to fail. they’ve never wanted the commission and I feel the White House has always been looking for a way to kill it without having their finger on the murder weapon.” The administration has suggested it may grant the money later, but any delay will further slow down the commission’s work. Already, commission members are complaining that scant progress has been made in the four months since the commission started, and they are operating under a deadline. [Time, 3/26/2003] Three days later, it is reported that the Bush administration has agreed to extra funding, but only $9 million, not $11 million. The commission agrees to the reduced amount. [Washington Post, 3/29/2003] The New York Times criticizes such penny-pinching, saying, “Reasonable people might wonder if the White House, having failed in its initial attempt to have Henry Kissinger steer the investigation, may be resorting to budgetary starvation as a tactic to hobble any politically fearless inquiry.” [New York Times, 3/31/2003]
Entity Tags: 9/11 Commission, Stephen Push, Bush administration (43)
March 27, 2003: Security Clearance of 9/11 Commission Members Stalled
It is reported that “most members” of the 9/11 Commission still have not received security clearances. [Washington Post, 3/27/2003] For instance, Slade Gorton, picked in December 2002, is a former senator with a long background in intelligence issues. Fellow commissioner Lee Hamilton says, “It’s kind of astounding that someone like Senator Gorton can’t get immediate clearance. It’s a matter we are concerned about.” The commission is said to be at a “standstill” because of the security clearance issue, and cannot even read the classified findings of the previous 9/11 Congressional Inquiry. [Seattle Times, 3/12/2003]
Entity Tags: 9/11 Commission, Slade Gorton, Lee Hamilton, 9/11 Congressional Inquiry
March 28, 2003: First Details of KSM’s Interrogations Leaked to Press
The first details of the interrogation of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) are leaked to the press and appear in the Washington Post. At least some of the information appears to come from a report on KSM’s interrogation drafted four days ago. According to the Post article, KSM claims that Zacarias Moussaoui, an al-Qaeda operative arrested in the US in August 2001 (see August 16, 2001), was not part of the 9/11 plot and was scheduled for a follow-up attack. He also says that Moussaoui was helped by Jemaah Islamiyah leader Hambali and Yazid Sufaat, one of Hambali’s associates. KSM reportedly says Sufaat attempted to develop biological weapons for al-Qaeda, but failed because he could not obtain a strain of anthrax that could be dispersed as a weapon. This information appears to be based on a CIA report of KSM’s interrogation drafted on March 24, which discussed KSM’s knowledge of Moussaoui’s stay in Malaysia, where he met both Hambali and Sufaat (see March 24, 2003). The Post notes that if KSM’s claim about Moussaoui were true, this could complicate the prosecution of Moussaoui. For example, it quotes former prosecutor Andrew McBride saying that “on the death penalty, it is quite helpful to Moussaoui.” [Washington Post, 3/28/2003] During the Moussaoui trial, the statement about Moussaoui’s non-involvement in the 9/11 operation will be submitted to the jury as a part of a substitution for testimony by KSM. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, 7/31/2006 ] Moussaoui will escape the death penalty by one vote (see May 3, 2006). During this month, KSM is in CIA custody and is waterboarded 183 times over five days (see After March 7, 2003 and April 18, 2009). The claim about Moussaoui is not the full truth, as a communications intercept between KSM and his associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh in July 2001 showed that KSM was considering Moussaoui for the 9/11 plot (see July 20, 2001).
Entity Tags: Andrew McBride, Central Intelligence Agency, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
March 28, 2003: Independence of 9/11 Commission Called Into Question
An article highlights conflicts of interest amongst the commissioners on the 9/11 Commission. It had been previously reported that many of the commissioners had ties to the airline industry (see December 16, 2002), but a number have other ties. “At least three of the ten commissioners serve as directors of international financial or consulting firms, five work for law firms that represent airlines and three have ties to the US military or defense contractors, according to personal financial disclosures they were required to submit.” Bryan Doyle, project manager for the watchdog group Aviation Integrity Project says, “It is simply a failure on the part of the people making the selections to consider the talented pool of non-conflicted individuals.” Commission chairman Thomas Kean says that members are expected to steer clear of discussions that might present even the appearance of a conflict. [Associated Press, 3/28/2003]
Entity Tags: 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean, Bryan Doyle
March 28, 2003: Al-Qaeda Supporter Now In Charge of Security of Nation Closely Allied with US
The Los Angeles Times reports that, ironically, the man in charge of security for the nation where the US bases its headquarters for the Iraq war is a supporter of al-Qaeda. Sheik Abdullah bin Khalid al-Thani is the Interior Minister of Qatar. US Central Command and thousands of US troops are stationed in that country. In 1996, al-Thani was Religious Minister and he apparently let 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) live on his farm (see January-May 1996). Mohammed was tipped off that the US was after him. Some US officials believe al-Thani was the one who helped KSM escape, just as he had assisted other al-Qaeda leaders on other occasions. [Los Angeles Times, 3/28/2003] Another royal family member has sheltered al-Qaeda leaders and given over $1 million to al-Qaeda. KSM was even sheltered by Qatari royalty for two weeks after 9/11 (see Late 2001). [New York Times, 2/6/2003] Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, who has ties to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see February 26, 1993), the Bojinka plot (see January 6, 1995), and also attended the January 2000 al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia (see January 5-8, 2000), was sheltered by al-Thani’s religious ministry in 2000. [Newsweek, 9/30/2002] Former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke says al-Thani “had great sympathy for Osama bin Laden, great sympathy for terrorist groups, was using his personal money and ministry money to transfer to al-Qaeda front groups that were allegedly charities.” However, the US has not attempted to apprehend al-Thani or take any other action against him. [Los Angeles Times, 3/28/2003]
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Richard A. Clarke, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Osama bin Laden, Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani, United States, Ahmad Hikmat Shakir
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Other Government-Militant Collusion
March 30, 2003: Alleged Female Al-Qaeda Sleeper Agent Disappears in Pakistan
Aafia Siddiqui. [Source: FBI]Alleged al-Qaeda member Aafia Siddiqui vanishes in Karachi, Pakistan, with her three children. Although she and her family are Pakistani, she had been a long-time US resident until late 2002, and had even graduated with a biology degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The day after her disappearance, local newspapers will report that an unnamed woman has been taken into custody on terrorism charges, which is unusual since nearly all terrorism suspects have been men. A Pakistan interior ministry spokesman confirms that Siddiqui is the woman who has been arrested. But several days later, both the Pakistan government and the FBI publicly deny that she is being held. Later in 2003, her mother will claim that two days after her disappearance, “a man wearing a motor-bike helmet” arrives at the Siddiqui home in Karachi, and without taking off his helmet, says that she should keep quiet if she ever wants to see her daughter and grandchildren again. Beginning with a Newsweek article in June 2003, Siddiqui and her husband will be accused of having helped al-Qaeda as possible US sleeper agents. Siddiqui’s sister will claim that in 2004 she is told by Pakistan’s interior minister that Siddiqui has been released and will return home shortly. Also in 2004, FBI Director Robert Mueller will announce at a press conference that Siddiqui is wanted for questioning. Siddiqui divorced her long-time husband in 2002. The BBC will later report that, shortly before her disappearance, she married Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, a nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and alleged participant in the 9/11 plot. “Although her family denies this, the BBC has been able to confirm it from security sources and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s family.” In July 2008, she will reappear in mysterious circumstances in Afghanistan, and then be transferred to the US to stand trial for murder (see July 17, 2008). Allegations continue that she was secretly held by the US or Pakistan some or all of the five years between 2003 and 2008. Her three children will not be seen following their disappearance. [BBC, 8/6/2008]
Entity Tags: Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Aafia Siddiqui
9:15 a.m. - 9:45 a.m. March 31, 2003: 9/11 Commission Says It Will Not ‘Point Fingers,’ Family Members Are Disappointed
After his opening comments on the first day of the 9/11 Commission’s first hearing, Chairman Tom Kean says, “We will be following paths, and we will follow those individual paths wherever they lead,” adding: “We may end up holding individual agencies, people, and procedures to account. But our fundamental purpose will not be to point fingers.” According to author Philip Shenon, there is “a rumble in the audience, even a few groans,” as the victims’ family members realize “what the Commission would not do: It did not intend to make a priority of blaming government officials for 9/11.” Shenon will add: “A few of the family advocates cocked their ears, wondering if they had heard Kean correctly. They had pushed so hard to create the Commission because they wanted fingers pointed at the government. And Kean knew it; the families had told him that over and over again in their early meetings. For many families, this investigation was supposed to be all about finger pointing. They wanted strict accountability, especially at the White House, the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, and other agencies that had missed the clues that might have prevented 9/11. The families wanted subpoenas—and indictments and jail sentences, if that was where the facts led.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 99]
Lack of Publicity - This hearing and the next two do not receive much publicity and Commission Chairman Tom Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton will later call them “background policy hearings in front of a C-SPAN audience.” They will later say that at this point the Commission “was not ready to present findings and answers,” since the various staff teams are nowhere near completing their tasks. For example, the team investigating the air defense failure on the day of 9/11 will not even issue a subpoena for the documents it needs until autumn (see Late October 2003 and November 6, 2003). [Kean and Hamilton, 2006, pp. 127-8]
Close to a Disaster - Referring to various problems with the first hearing, including confusion over logistics, low turnout by the public, and the discontent from the victims’ families, Shenon will say that this first public hearing “came close to being a disaster.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 97]
Entity Tags: Philip Shenon, 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean, Lee Hamilton
March 31, 2003: US Forces Overrun Supposed Militant ‘Poison Factory’ in Iraq, but Its Poison Capabilities Appear Overblown
A Kurdish soldier allied with US forces stands on the site where the Sargat training camp used to be. He holds a piece of a US cruise missile that hit the camp. [Source: Scott Peterson / Getty Images]US Special Forces working with local Kurdish forces overrun the small border region of Iraq controlled by the militant group Ansar al-Islam. This is where Secretary of State Colin Powell alleged militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had a ‘poison factory’ near the town of Khurmal where chemical weapons of mass destruction capable of killing thousands were made. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers says, “We think that’s probably where the ricin that was found in London probably came; at least the operatives and maybe some of the formulas came from this site.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld comments, “We’re not certain what we’ll find but we should know more in the next three days - three or four days.” [New York Daily News, 3/31/2003] In a 2007 book, CIA Director George Tenet will claim, “Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, al-Zarqawi’s camp in Khurmal was bombed by the US military. We obtained reliable human intelligence reporting and forensic samples confirming that poisons and toxins had been produced at the camp.” [Tenet, 2007, pp. 277-278] He will further claim that the camp “engaged in production and training in the use of low-level poisons such as cyanide. We had intelligence telling us that al-Zarqawi’s men had tested these poisons on animals and, in at least one case, on one of their own associates. They laughed about how well it worked.” [Tenet, 2007, pp. 350] But Tenet’s claims seem wildly overblown compared to other subsequent news reports about what was found at the camp. In late April 2003, the Los Angeles Times will report that, “Documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times, along with interviews with US and Kurdish intelligence operatives, indicate [Ansar al-Islam] was partly funded and armed from abroad; was experimenting with chemicals, including toxic agents and a cyanide-based body lotion; and had international aspirations. But the documents, statements by imprisoned Ansar guerrillas, and visits to the group’s strongholds before and after the war produced no strong evidence of connections to Baghdad and indicated that Ansar was not a sophisticated terrorist organization. The group was a dedicated, but fledgling, al-Qaeda surrogate lacking the capability to muster a serious threat beyond its mountain borders.” A crude chemical laboratory is found in the village of Sargat, but no evidence of any sophisticated equipment is found. “Tests have revealed the presence of hydrogen cyanide and potassium cyanide, poisons normally used to kill rodents and other pests. The group, according to Kurdish officials, had been experimenting on animals with a cyanide-laced cream. Several jars of peach body lotion lay at the site beside chemicals and a few empty wooden birdcages.” While a lot of documentation is found showing intention to create chemical weapons, the actual capability appears to have been quite low. [Los Angeles Times, 4/27/2003] As the Christian Science Monitor will later conclude, the “‘poison factory’ proved primitive; nothing but substances commonly used to kill rodents were found there.” [Christian Science Monitor, 10/16/2003] Journalist Jason Burke will also later comment, “As one of the first journalists to enter the [al-Qaeda] research facilities at the Darunta camp in eastern Afghanistan in 2001, I was struck by how crude they were. The Ansar al-Islam terrorist group’s alleged chemical weapons factory in northern Iraq, which I inspected the day after its capture in 2003, was even more rudimentary.” [Foreign Policy, 5/2004]
Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers, George J. Tenet, Colin Powell, Ansar al-Islam, Donald Rumsfeld, Jason Burke, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
9:45 a.m.-10:15 a.m. March 31, 2003: New York Officials Testify to 9/11 Commission, Mayor Tries to ‘Blindside’ Inquiry
At its first public hearing, the 9/11 Commission takes testimony from New York Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Pataki arrives early and insists that he be allowed to speak immediately, so Commission Chairman Tom Kean interrupts the commissioners’ opening statements expressing their pride in serving on the investigation. Pataki then reads a prepared statement pledging the state’s co-operation with the investigation and leaves without taking questions. Bloomberg testifies next. He had originally said he would not appear, but would send a written statement to be read by somebody else. Then he agreed to appear, but said he would not take questions. Then he agreed to take questions, but insisted his police and fire commissioners would not accompany him. However, he arrives with both of them and says they will take questions. Author Philip Shenon will comment, “it was clear to the commissioners and the staff that the mayor was trying to blindside them,” as the Commission had not had the chance to prepare questions for the police and fire commissioners, vital witnesses in their inquiry. When Bloomberg enters the room to testify, in Shenon’s words, “In a gesture that seem[s] designed to make his disdain even clearer, he casually tosse[s] his prepared testimony onto the witness table before taking his seat, as if this were a routine meeting of the zoning board.” When he starts, he offers an aggressive defense of the way the city responded to the attack, and sharp criticism of the way federal emergency preparedness funds are distributed. Bloomberg conducts himself in this way throughout the inquiry (see November 2003), and Shenon will write that it is never clear if Bloomberg is “genuinely furious or if his anger [is] a well-choreographed show by the billionaire mayor to intimidate the 9/11 Commission.” The Commission does not schedule testimony from former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani for this day, as it wants to wait until it better understands his performance on the day of the attacks. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 96-98, 100-101]
Entity Tags: 9/11 Commission, George E. Pataki, Michael R. Bloomberg, Philip Shenon, Thomas Kean
11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. March 31, 2003: US Government Draws Harsh Criticism at First 9/11 Commission Hearing
Mindy Kleinberg. [Source: Public domain]Following introductory statements by 9/11 Commissioners (see 9:15 a.m. - 9:45 a.m. March 31, 2003) and questioning of New York officials, several of the victims’ relatives testify on the first day of the Commission’s first hearing. One relative is selected from each of the four organizations they have formed. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 102] The relatives are unhappy and, as the Miami Herald reports, “Several survivors of the attack and victims’ relatives testified that a number of agencies, from federal to local, are ducking responsibility for a series of breakdowns before and during September 11.” [Miami Herald, 3/31/2003] The New York Times suggests that the 9/11 Commission would never have been formed if it were not for the pressure of the 9/11 victims’ relatives. [New York Times, 4/1/2003] Some of the relatives strongly disagree with statements from some commissioners that they should not place blame. For instance, Stephen Push states: “I think this Commission should point fingers.… Some of those people [who failed us] are still in responsible positions in government. Perhaps they shouldn’t be.” [United Press International, 3/31/2003] The most critical testimony comes from 9/11 relative Mindy Kleinberg, but her testimony is only briefly reported on by a few newspapers. [United Press International, 3/31/2003; Newsday, 4/1/2003; New York Times, 4/1/2003; New York Post, 4/1/2003; New Jersey Star-Ledger, 4/1/2003] In her testimony, Kleinberg says: “It has been said that the intelligence agencies have to be right 100 percent of the time and the terrorists only have to get lucky once. This explanation for the devastating attacks of September 11th, simple on its face, is wrong in its value. Because the 9/11 terrorists were not just lucky once: They were lucky over and over again.” She points out the insider trading based on 9/11 foreknowledge, the failure of fighter jets to catch the hijacked planes in time, hijackers getting visas in violation of standard procedures, and other events, and asks how the hijackers could have been lucky so many times. [9/11 Commission, 3/31/2003]
Entity Tags: Mindy Kleinberg, Stephen Push, 9/11 Commission
Category Tags: US Government and 9/11 Criticism, 9/11 Commission, 9/11 Investigations
2:00 p.m. March 31, 2003: First Expert Witness for 9/11 Commission Promotes Iraq War
Abraham Sofaer of the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank, becomes the first expert witness to testify before the 9/11 Commission. He uses this opportunity to express his support for the war in Iraq. Sofaer, a former federal judge and State Department legal adviser, will later say that he was pleased to testify before the Commission and that he knew what an honor it was to be the first expert witness. According to author Philip Shenon, the witness list was drawn up by Philip Zelikow, the Commission’s executive director, who appears to be a supporter of the Iraq war (see June 14, 2002). Despite Sofaer’s experience, Shenon will think it “odd” that he is the first expert witness, as he has “no special expertise on the events of September 11.” Instead, he advocates the recent US invasion of Iraq and champions the concept of “preemptive defense” or “preemptive war,” even against a country that poses no imminent military threat. “The president’s principles are strategically necessary, morally sound, and legally defensible,” Sofaer says. He also criticizes the perceived policy of former President Bill Clinton, saying, “The notion that criminal prosecution could bring a terrorist group like al-Qaeda to justice is absurd.” In the future, he says, when an enemy “rises up to kill you,” the US should “rise up and kill him first.” He calls on the Commission to endorse the preemptive war concept, and, in effect, the invasion of Iraq. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 103-104]
Entity Tags: Philip Zelikow, Abraham Sofaer, 9/11 Commission, Philip Shenon
April 2003: 9/11 Commission’s Zelikow Refuses to Approve Half of Interview Requests for ‘Saudi Connection’ Investigators
Two investigators on the 9/11 Commission, Mike Jacobson and Dana Leseman, compile a list of interviews they want to do to investigate leads indicating that two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, were linked to elements of the Saudi government. The list is submitted to Philip Zelikow, the commission’s executive director, for approval. However, a few days later Zelikow replies that the twenty interviews requested is too much, and they can only do half the interviews. Leseman, a former Justice Department lawyer, is unhappy with this, as it is traditional to demand the widest range of documents and interviews early on, so that reductions can be made later in negotiations if need be.
'We Need the Interviews' - Leseman tells Zelikow that his decision is “very arbitrary” and “crazy,” adding: “Philip, this is ridiculous. We need the interviews. We need these documents. Why are you trying to limit our investigation?” Zelikow says that he does not want to overwhelm federal agencies with document and interview requests at an early stage of the investigation, but, according to author Philip Shenon, after this, “Zelikow was done explaining. He was not in the business of negotiating with staff who worked for him.”
More Conflicts - This is the first of several conflicts between Zelikow and Leseman, who, together with Jacobson, had been on the staff of the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry and had researched this issue there. Shenon will write: “Leseman was that rare thing on the commission: She was not afraid of Zelikow; she would not be intimidated by him. In fact, from the moment she arrived at the commission’s offices on K Street, she seemed to almost relish the daily combat with Zelikow, even if she wondered aloud to her colleagues why there had to be any combat at all.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 109-111]
Later Fired, Evidence Deleted from Final Report - Zelikow will later fire Leseman from the commission for mishandling classified information (see April 2003 and (April 2003)) and will have the evidence of the Saudi connection gathered by Jacobson and Leseman’s successor, Raj De, deleted from the main text of the commission’s report (see June 2004).
Entity Tags: 9/11 Commission, Dana Leseman, Michael Jacobson, Philip Zelikow
Category Tags: Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Bayoumi and Basnan Saudi Connection, 9/11 Commission, Role of Philip Zelikow, 9/11 Investigations
April 2003: British Home Secretary Campaigns to Strip Leading Islamist Radical Abu Hamza of Citizenship
Items seized in a raid on Abu Hamza’s Finsbury Park mosque in January 2003. [Source: Daily Telegraph]After learning some information about the Islamist militant connections of leading London imam Abu Hamza al-Masri, British Home Secretary David Blunkett initiates a campaign against him. Blunkett introduces legislation to have Abu Hamza stripped of his British citizenship, which he acquired unlawfully (see April 29, 1986), and then either deported or interned. However, the British intelligence service MI5 fails to provide Blunkett with all the information it has about Abu Hamza, who has been an informer for MI5 and Special Branch since 1997 (see Early 1997 and Before May 27, 2004). Even after the relevant legislation is passed in April 2003, the process is drawn out by Abu Hamza, who appeals, delays the appeal process by not filing a defense, and then argues the government should pay his legal fees. [O'Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 284-5] A hearing will be held on the case in April 2004 (see April 26, 2004).
Entity Tags: David Blunkett, Abu Hamza al-Masri, UK Security Service (MI5)
Category Tags: Abu Hamza Al-Masri, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism
April 2003: US Intelligence Analysts Complain about Pressure to Tie Iraq to Al-Qaeda
Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA deputy director of the US State Department Office of Counterterrorism, will say at a National Press Club briefing in February 2004: “By April of last year, I was beginning to pick up grumblings from friends inside the intelligence community that there had been pressure applied to analysts to come up with certain conclusions. Specifically, I was told that analysts were pressured to find an operational link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. One analyst, in particular, told me they were repeatedly pressured by the most senior officials in the Department of Defense.” Johnson, who is also a former CIA analyst, adds: “In an e-mail exchange with another friend, I raised the possibility that ‘the Bush administration had bought into a lie.’ My friend, who works within the intelligence community, challenged me on the use of the word, ‘bought,’ and suggested instead that the Bush administration had created the lie.… I have spoken to more than two analysts who have expressed fear of retaliation if they come forward and tell what they know. We know that most of the reasons we were given for going to war were wrong.” [Bamford, 2004, pp. 333-334; Falls Church News-Press, 2/2004 Sources: Larry C. Johnson]
Entity Tags: Larry C. Johnson
April-June 2003: Spanish Authorities Recognize Cell of Future Madrid Bombers but Only Arrest One of Them after Cell Is Linked to Morocco Bombings
In April 2003, Spanish police alert judge Baltasar Garzon to the existence of an Islamist militant cell in Madrid. Garzon has generally led al-Qaeda related investigations in Spain. An intelligence report to Garzon details a cell led by Mustapha Maymouni. Its assistant leaders are said to be Driss Chebli, Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet, and the brothers Hassan and Mohammed Larbi ben Sellam. The cell is linked to the radical Takfir Wal Hijra movement and the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (MICG). The MICG is said to be led by Amer el-Azizi, who escaped arrest in Spain (see Shortly After November 21, 2001), and an international arrest warrant has been issued for him. The cell has links to el-Azizi as well. In fact, the wife of one of the cell members recently told the authorities that Fakhet and others are staying in contact with el-Azizi by e-mail (see January 4, 2003), a lead that apparently is not pursued. In May 2003, suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco, kill 45, and the MICG is quickly identified as the group behind the attacks. Maymouni had gone to Morocco just before the bombings and is arrested there later in May (see Late May-June 19, 2003). On June 25, 2003, Chebli is arrested in Spain for his links to the Casablanca bombings. He will later be accused of a minor role in the 9/11 plot and sentenced to six years in prison (see September 26, 2005). However, the others are not arrested at this time. The police who are monitoring Fakhet will later say they do not understand why Fakhet at least was not arrested after the Casablanca bombings due to his link to Maymouni, who is his brother-in-law. Authorities will claim he was not arrested because there was no evidence he was involved in any plot. [El Mundo (Madrid), 3/3/2007] However, this cell is being monitored by a variety of means, including the use of an informant named Abdelkader Farssaoui, a.k.a. Cartagena (see October 2002-June 2003). Even before the Casablanca bombings, Farssaoui tells his handlers that this cell is discussing launching attacks in Morocco and Spain. [El Mundo (Madrid), 10/18/2004] Furthermore, a 2002 report said that Fakhet was preparing for “violent action” (see 2002). Farssaoui will later claim that he came across evidence that Fakhet was also an informant (see Shortly After October 2003). Fakhet will take over leadership of the group after Maymouni’s arrest and will lead most of them in carrying out the Madrid train bombings (see 7:37-7:42 a.m., March 11, 2004).
Entity Tags: Takfir Wal Hijra, Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet, Mustapha Maymouni, Mohammed Larbi ben Sellam, Driss Chebli, Abdelkader Farssaoui, Amer el-Azizi, Baltasar Garzon, Hassan ben Sellam
April 2003: 9/11 Commission’s Zelikow Blocks Access to Key Document by ‘Saudi Connection’ Investigators
9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow prevents two investigators, Mike Jacobson and Dana Leseman, from viewing a key document they need for their work. Jacobson and Leseman are working on the ‘Saudi Connection’ section of the commission’s investigation, researching leads that there may have been a link between two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, and elements of the government of Saudi Arabia. Zelikow is also involved in another, related dispute with Leseman at this time (see April 2003).
28 Pages - The classified document in question is part of the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 28 pages that were redacted in the final report and concerned possible Saudi government support for two of the 9/11 hijackers (see August 1-3, 2003). The 28 pages were actually written by Jacobson and are obviously relevant to his and Leseman’s work at the 9/11 Commission, but Jacobson cannot remember every detail of what he wrote.
Stalled - Leseman therefore asks Zelikow to get her a copy, but Zelikow fails to do so for weeks, instead concluding a deal with the Justice Department that bans even 9/11 commissioners from some access to the Congressional Inquiry’s files (see Before April 24, 2003). Leseman confronts Zelikow, demanding: “Philip, how are we supposed to do our work if you won’t provide us with basic research material?” Zelikow apparently does not answer, but storms away. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 110-112]
Leseman Later Fired - Leseman later obtains the document through a channel other than Zelikow, and will be fired for this (see (April 2003)).
Entity Tags: Philip Zelikow, 9/11 Commission, Dana Leseman
April 3, 2003: Ex-CIA Director Foresees Many More Wars in Middle East
James Woolsey. [Source: Public domain]Former CIA Director James Woolsey says the US is engaged in a world war, and that it could continue for years: “As we move toward a new Middle East, over the years and, I think, over the decades to come… we will make a lot of people very nervous.” He calls it World War IV (World War III being the Cold War according to neoconservatives like himself ), and says it will be fought against the religious rulers of Iran, the “fascists” of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like al-Qaeda. He singles out the leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, saying, “We want you nervous.” This echoes the rhetoric of the PNAC, of which Woolsey is a supporter, and the singling out of Egypt and Saudi Arabia echoes the rhetoric of the Defense Policy Board, of which he is a member. In July 2002 (see July 10, 2002), a presentation to that board concluded, “Grand strategy for the Middle East: Iraq is the tactical pivot. Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot. Egypt the prize.” [CNN, 4/3/2003; CNN, 4/3/2003]
Entity Tags: Iran, Al-Qaeda, Iraq, Syria, James Woolsey
Category Tags: US Dominance
(April 2003): Zelikow Fires ‘Saudi Connection’ Investigator from 9/11 Commission in Dispute over 28 Redacted Pages from Congressional Inquiry
9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow fires one of the commission’s investigators, Dana Leseman, with whom he has had a number of conflicts (see April 2003). Leseman and a colleague were researching a possible link between two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, and elements of the government of Saudi Arabia.
Blocked - The firing stems from a dispute over the handling of classified information. Leseman asked Zelikow to provide her with a document she needed for her work, 28 redacted pages from the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry report she had helped research herself, but Zelikow had failed to do so for some time (see April 2003 and August 1-3, 2003). Leseman then obtained a copy of the report through a channel other than Zelikow, which is a breach of the commission’s rules on handling classified information. Some colleagues will later say that this is just a minor infraction of the rules, as the document is relevant to Leseman’s work, she has the security clearance to see it, and she keeps it in a safe in the commission’s offices. However, she does not actually have authorisation to have the document at this point.
'Zero-Tolerance Policy' - Zelikow will later say she violated the commission’s “zero-tolerance policy on the handling of classified information,” and that she “committed a set of very serious violations in the handling of the most highly classified information.” Zelikow is supported by the commission’s lawyer Daniel Marcus, as they are both worried that a scandal about the mishandling of classified information could seriously damage the commission’s ability to obtain more classified information, and will be used as a stick to beat the commission by its opponents.
Fired, Kept Secret - Zelikow is informed that Leseman has the document by a staffer on one of the commission’s other teams who has also had a conflict with Leseman, and fires her “only hours” after learning this. Luckily for the commission and Leseman, no word of the firing reaches the investigation’s critics in Congress. Author Philip Shenon will comment, “The fact that the news did not leak was proof of how tightly Zelikow was able to control the flow of information on the commission.”
'Do Not Cross Me' - Shenon will add: “To Leseman’s friends, it seemed that Zelikow had accomplished all of his goals with her departure. He had gotten rid of the one staff member who had emerged early on as his nemesis; he had managed to eject her without attracting the attention of the press corps or the White House. And he had found a way to send a message to the staff: ‘Do not cross me’.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 110-113] Zelikow will later be investigated for mishandling classified information himself, but will apparently be exonerated (see Summer 2004).
Entity Tags: Daniel Marcus, Dana Leseman, Philip Shenon, 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow
April 6, 2003: Iraqi Training Camp Overrun by US Forces; Allegations Facility Was Used to Train Islamist Terrorists Is Found Baseless
Overhead photo of Salman Pak, with erroneous captioning. [Source: The Beasley Firm]US forces overrun the Iraqi military training facility at Salman Pak, just south of Baghdad. The facility has been identified by several Iraqi National Congress defectors as a training facility for foreign terrorists, possibly aligned with al-Qaeda (see November 6-8, 2001). [New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Knight Ridder, 11/2/2005] The day of the raid, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks attempts to give the impression that US forces have found evidence that the camp was used to train terrorists, telling reporters that the camp was hit “in response to information that had been gained by coalition forces from some foreign fighters that we encountered from other country, not Iraq, and we believe that this camp had been used to train these foreign fighters in terror tactics…. The nature of the work being done by some of those people that we captured, their inferences to the type of training that they received, all of these things give us the impression that there was terrorist training that was conducted at Salman Pak.” Brooks says that tanks, armored personnel carriers, buildings used for “command and control and… morale and welfare” were destroyed. “All of that when you roll it together, the reports, where they’re from, why they might be here tell us there’s a linkage between this regime and terrorism and that’s something that we want to break…. There’s no indications of specific organizations that I’m aware of inside of that. We may still find it as with all operations that we conduct into a place, we look for more information after the operation is complete. We’ll pull documents out of it and see what the documents say, if there’s any links or indications. We’ll look and see if there’s any persons that are recovered that may not be Iraqi.” [CNN, 4/6/2003] However, US forces find no evidence whatsoever of any terrorists training activities at the camp. The story had a sensational effect in the media, and helped feed the public impression that the regime of Saddam Hussein was connected in some way with the 9/11 terrorists, but others, from Iraqi spokespersons to former US intelligence officials, asserted before the March 2003 invation that the Salman Pak facility was built, not for training terrorists, but for training Iraqi special forces to combat passenger jet hijackers. The facility formerly housed an old fuselage, generally identified as being from a Boeing 707, used in the training, and has been used in counter-terrorism training since the mid-1980s. A former CIA station chief says the agency assisted the Iraqis in their training: “We were helping our allies everywhere we had a liaison.” The former station chief adds that it is unlikely that the Iraqis, or anyone else, would train for terrorist strikes in an open facility easily spotted by satellite surveillance and human observers. “That’s Hollywood rinky-dink stuff,” he says. “They train in basements. You don’t need a real airplane to practice hijacking. The 9/11 terrorists went to gyms. But to take one back you have to practice on the real thing.” The US forces comb through Salman Pak, and find nothing to indicate that the facility was used for anything except counter-terrorism training. [New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Knight Ridder, 11/2/2005] In 2004, a senior US official will say of the claims about Salman Pak as a terrorist training facility, “We certainly have found nothing to substantiate that.” [Knight Ridder, 3/15/2004] In 2006, the Senate Intelligence Committee will report similar findings (see ISeptember 8, 2006). The CIA doubted reports of Salman Pak being used as a terrorist training camp as early as 2003 (see January 2003). And former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter was debunking those stories in 2002 (see August 2002).
Entity Tags: Senate Intelligence Committee, Saddam Hussein, Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Al-Qaeda, Iraqi National Congress, Vincent Brooks
Shortly After April 9, 2003: US Troops Find Many Forged Documents in Iraq that Attempt to Link Hussein and Al-Qaeda
In 2007, CIA Director George Tenet will write in a book, “Once US forces reached Baghdad (see April 9, 2003), they discovered—stacked where they could easily find them—purported Iraqi intelligence service documents that showed much tighter links between Saddam [Hussein] and [Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi, and Saddam and al-Qaeda.” CIA analysts work with the Secret Service to check the paper and ink, plus to verify the details mentioned in the documents. But “time and again” the documents turn out to be forgeries. “It was obvious that someone was trying to mislead us. But these raw, unevaluated documents that painted a more nefarious picture of Iraq and al-Qaeda continued to show up in the hands of senior [Bush] administration officials without having gone through normal intelligence channels.” [Tenet, 2007, pp. 356] For instance, one forged document found in December 2003 and reported on by the press will purport that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta went to Iraq to be trained by Iraqi intelligence agents (see December 14, 2003). Tenet will not speculate who is behind the forgeries.
Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, Central Intelligence Agency
April 11, 2003-March 2004: Ten Cole Bombing Suspects Escape Prison in Yemen, Then Are Recaptured One Year Later
Fahad al-Quso, far left, Jamal al-Badawi, in center with black cap, and two other militants in a Yemeni prison in February 2005. [Source: Khaled Abdullah / Reuters / Corbis]Ten suspects in the USS Cole bombing escape from prison in Aden, Yemen. The suspects include al-Qaeda operatives Jamal al-Badawi and Fahad al-Quso, both thought to play important roles in the Cole bombing (see October 12, 2000). [Associated Press, 4/11/2003] All ten are recaptured in Yemen in March 2004. [New York Times, 3/20/2004] After al-Badawi is recaptured, some Yemeni officials try unsuccessfully to claim a multimillion-dollar US award. Newsweek will later comment that this suggests the escape was a scam. At the time, al-Badawi apparently is friendly with Colonel Hussein al-Anzi, a top official in the Political Security Organization, Yemen’s version of the FBI. Al-Anzi will later be fired. [Newsweek, 2/13/2006] Al-Quso will later be sentenced to 10 years in prison in Yemen for his role in the Cole attack, while al-Badawi will be given the death penalty. However, al-Badawi will later escape again (see February 3, 2006), then be pardoned, and then imprisoned again (see October 17-29, 2007). Al-Quso also will be secretly freed by the Yemeni government in 2007 (see May 2007). [New York Times, 9/30/2004]
Entity Tags: Jamal al-Badawi, Yemeni Political Security Organization, Hussein al-Anzi, Fahad al-Quso
Category Tags: 2000 USS Cole Bombing, Yemeni Militant Collusion
April 22, 2003: Afghan President Gives Pakistani President List of Taliban Leaders Living in Pakistan, No Action Is Taken on It
Mullah Dadullah Akhund. [Source: Associated Press]Afghan President Hamid Karzai travels to Islamabad, Pakistan, and meets with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. Karzai hands Musharraf a list of Taliban leaders living in Quetta, Pakistan, and urges Musharraf to have them arrested. The list includes the names of senior Taliban leaders Mullah Omar, Mullah Dadullah Akhund, and Mullah Akhter Mohammed Usmani. All are believed to be in Quetta. The list is leaked to the press. The Pakistani government denounces Karzai and denies any Taliban leaders are in Pakistan. The US government declines to back the list, even though the US embassy in Kabul had helped make it. Journalist Ahmed Rashid will later explain: “The Americans were already deeply involved in Iraq and wanted no distractions such as a cat fight between the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan. [The US] was unwilling to push the Pakistanis, and the Afghans were angry that the Americans had allowed Karzai’s credibility to suffer.” [Rashid, 2008, pp. 246]
Entity Tags: Mullah Dadullah Akhund, Hamid Karzai, Mullah Akhter Mohammed Osmani, Mullah Omar, Pervez Musharraf
Category Tags: Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region, Afghanistan
Before April 24, 2003: 9/11 Commission Executive Director Zelikow Cuts off Commissioners’ Access to Congressional Inquiry Files
Tim Roemer. [Source: US Congress]9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow strikes a deal with the Justice Department to cut the 9/11 Commission’s access to files compiled by the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry (see July 24, 2003) until the White House is able to review them. However, he keeps the agreement secret from the commissioners and, when Commissioner Tim Roemer, who had actually sat on the Congressional Inquiry and already seen the material, goes to Capitol Hill to read the files on April 24, he is turned away. Roemer is furious and asks: “Why is our executive director making secret deals with the Justice Department and the White House? He is supposed to be working for us.” [Associated Press, 4/26/2003; Shenon, 2008, pp. 90] He adds, “No entity, individual, or organization should sift through or filter our access to material.” [Associated Press, 4/30/2003] Author Philip Shenon will comment, “Roemer believed, correctly, that it was a sign of much larger struggles to come with Zelikow.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 90]
Entity Tags: Philip Zelikow, 9/11 Commission, Tim Roemer, 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, Philip Shenon
April 29, 2003: Two Key 9/11 Figures Captured in Pakistan
Twenty-five al-Qaeda operatives are captured in Karachi, Pakistan, including two key 9/11 figures. The captured include Tawfiq bin Attash, better known by his nickname Khallad. He is considered one of the masterminds of the USS Cole bombing (see October 12, 2000) and attended a Malaysia summit where the 9/11 plot was discussed (see January 5-8, 2000). Also captured is Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, one of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s nephews. He made travel arrangements for and wired money to many of the 9/11 hijackers. One investigator will later say, “He was turning up everywhere we looked—like a chameleon.” [New York Times, 5/1/2003; Los Angeles Times, 5/21/2006] Both Aziz Ali and bin Attash will be sent to secret CIA prisons and remain there until 2006, when they will be transfered to the Guantanamo Bay prison (see September 2-3, 2006). Bin Attash will be extensively tortured while in US custody in Afghanistan (see April 29 - Mid-May, 2003). The identities and fates of the others captured with them are unknown.
Entity Tags: Khallad bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali
Category Tags: 2000 USS Cole Bombing, High Value Detainees, Key Captures and Deaths, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
Late April 2003: Al-Qaeda Linked Arms Dealer Victor Bout Begins Flying Supplies to Iraq for US Army
In late April 2003, the first civilian cargo planes begin arriving in Baghdad, Iraq, after US-led forces took over the city. As many as sixty civilian flights and seventy military flights arrive at Baghdad International Airport, all of them filled with supplies to replenish the US military effort and for Iraq’s reconstruction. The US military officers in charge of the airport, such as US Air National Guard Major Christopher Walker have no idea how private supply contracts were made or with whom, but they note that most of the pilots appear to be from Russia and various Eastern European countries, flying rugged Russian-made aircraft. On May 17, 2004, the Financial Times reports that many of the planes delivering supplies to US troops in Iraq are actually owned by a Russian named Victor Bout, the world’s biggest illegal arms dealer. The United Nations has placed a ban on all dealings with Bout, due to his links to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and many other militant and rebel groups around the world. Walker has never heard of Bout, but he is tasked to look into the allegations by his superiors. He quickly concludes that many of the planes flying into Baghdad daily are owned by Bout’s front companies, and that such Bout flights have been taking place over since the US reopened the airport. Bout’s companies have contracts flying in tents, food, and other supplies for US firms working for the US military in Iraq, including a large contract to fly supplies for Kellogg, Brown, and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company once run by Vice President Cheney. Bout’s companies also fly for US Air Mobility Command. Walker is reluctant to stop the flow of vital supplies, and leaves the issue to US military contracting officials to hire planes not linked to Bout. [Financial Times, 5/17/2004; Farah and Braun, 2007, pp. 214-224] However, the US military does not stop hiring and using Bout’s planes until about 2007 (see Late April 2003-2007). Walker will later speculate, “If the government really wanted him bad they could have come up with a pretext and seized his planes. But I guess they looked at Victor Bout and figured this guy’s an asshole, but he’s our asshole, so let’s keep him in business.” [Farah and Braun, 2007, pp. 251]
Entity Tags: US Military, Christopher Walker, Kellogg, Brown and Root, Victor Bout
Category Tags: Victor Bout, Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
Late April 2003-2007: US Military Repeatedly Hires Victor Bout Companies for Iraq Supply Flights, Despite Sanctions and Media Reports
Beginning in late April 2003, when the first civilian cargo planes begin arriving in Baghdad (see Late April 2003), through at least 2007, Victor Bout front companies fly supplies into Iraq for the US military. Bout is the world’s biggest arms dealer, with links to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other militant and rebel groups around the world. The United Nations has banned all business dealings with his companies since before 9/11. Around October 2003, the CIA apparently learns that Bout’s planes have been flying into Iraq, but this warning does not lead to any action to stop such flights. [Farah and Braun, 2007, pp. 232]
Bout Flights Exposed by Media - Starting in May 2004, various newspapers occasionally report on how Bout front companies are supplying the US military. Some actions are eventually taken against him. For instance, on July 22, 2004, President Bush signs an executive order declaring Bout a “specially designated person,” permanently freezes his assets, and bans all US business with his companies. [Farah and Braun, 2007, pp. 225, 237]
Continued Collaboration - But the US military continues to hire Bout’s companies for Iraq supply flights. One Bout front company alone is estimated to make about 1,000 flights into US controlled air bases in Iraq by the end of 2004. [Farah and Braun, 2007, pp. 225] A Pentagon spokesman will later confirm that the US military gave at least 500,000 gallons of free airplane fuel to Bout’s pilots. US government contractors pay Bout-controlled companies roughly $60 million to fly supplies into Iraq. [ABC News, 3/6/2008] Journalist Stephen Braun will later claim, “The US military insisted they had no responsibility for Bout’s hiring, because, as [Deputy Defense Secretary] Paul Wolfowitz said, he was a ‘second-tier contractor’-in other words, hired by, say, [Kellogg, Brown, and Root] or FedEx, not directly by the Army or the Marines. But there were other reports of direct contracts. [The Defense Department] made no effort to put Bout on a no-fly list early on, and made only perfunctory follow-up efforts to find out the backgrounds of the companies flying for them.” [Harper's, 7/26/2007]
Bout Flights Continue - In early 2006, it will be reported, “The New Republic has learned that the Defense Department has largely turned a blind eye to Bout’s activities and has continued to supply him with contracts, in violation of [Bush’s] executive order and despite the fact that other, more legitimate air carriers are available.” [New Republic, 1/12/2006] In 2008, Douglas Farah, who co-wrote a 2007 book with Braun about Bout, will tell ABC News that Bout may have worked on behalf of the US government as recently as 2007. [ABC News, 3/6/2008]
Outrage - Gayle Smith of the National Security Council will comment in 2007: “It’s an obscenity. It’s contrary to a smart war on terror. Even if you needed a cut-out (to transport supplies) why would you go to the one on the bottom of the pile, with the most blood on his hands? Because he worked fastest and cheapest? What’s the trade-off? Where’s the morality there?” National Security Council adviser Lee Wolosky, who led a US effort to apprehend Bout before 9/11, will similarly complain, “It befuddles the mind that the Pentagon would continue to work with an organization that both the Clinton and Bush White Houses actively fought to dismantle.” [Farah and Braun, 2007, pp. 237]
Theories - Some officials and experts believe the US military is simply being incompetent by repeatedly hiring Bout. Others suggest there was some kind of secret deal. For instance, one senior Belgian Foreign Ministry official involved in efforts to try to arrest Bout comments: “Not only does Bout have the protection of the US government, he now works for them as well. It’s incredible, amazing. It has to be the only reason why he is still around and free.” [Farah and Braun, 2007, pp. 224-225] In 2006, Bout’s companies will supply weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon (see July 2006) and an al-Qaeda linked militant group in Somalia (see Late July 2006). Bout will finally be arrested by US agents in Thailand in March 2008 (see March 6, 2008).
Entity Tags: Lee Wolosky, US Military, Victor Bout, Gayle Smith, US Department of Defense
Category Tags: Victor Bout, Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics
Key Day of 9/11 Events (102)Key Hijacker Events (145)Key Warnings (95)
Day of 9/11
All Day of 9/11 Events (1393)Dick Cheney (57)Donald Rumsfeld (37)Flight AA 11 (145)Flight AA 77 (152)Flight UA 175 (87)Flight UA 93 (243)George Bush (131)Passenger Phone Calls (74)Pentagon (140)Richard Clarke (35)Shanksville, Pennsylvania (25)Training Exercises (56)World Trade Center (91)
The Alleged 9/11 Hijackers
Alhazmi and Almihdhar (343)Marwan Alshehhi (134)Mohamed Atta (206)Hani Hanjour (72)Ziad Jarrah (74)Other 9/11 Hijackers (172)Possible Hijacker Associates in US (79)Alleged Hijackers' Flight Training (73)Hijacker Contact w Government in US (33)Possible 9/11 Hijacker Funding (42)Hijacker Visas and Immigration (135)
Alhazmi and Almihdhar: Specific Cases
Bayoumi and Basnan Saudi Connection (51)CIA Hiding Alhazmi & Almihdhar (120)Search for Alhazmi/ Almihdhar in US (39)
Al-Qaeda Malaysia Summit (172)Able Danger (60)Sibel Edmonds (61)Phoenix Memo (27)Randy Glass/ Diamondback (8)Robert Wright and Vulgar Betrayal (67)Remote Surveillance (241)Yemen Hub (75)
Before 9/11
Soviet-Afghan War (105)Warning Signs (466)Insider Trading/ Foreknowledge (53)US Air Security (77)Military Exercises (86)Pipeline Politics (67)Other Pre-9/11 Events (64)
Counterterrorism before 9/11
Hunt for Bin Laden (158)Counterterrorism Action Before 9/11 (225)Counterterrorism Policy/Politics (255)
Warning Signs: Specific Cases
Foreign Intelligence Warnings (35)Bush's Aug. 6, 2001 PDB (39)Presidential Level Warnings (31)
The Post-9/11 World
9/11 Investigations (661)9/11 Related Criminal Proceedings (22)9/11 Denials (30)US Government and 9/11 Criticism (67)9/11 Related Lawsuits (24)Media (47)Other Post-9/11 Events (80)
Investigations: Specific Cases
9/11 Commission (257)Role of Philip Zelikow (87)9/11 Congressional Inquiry (41)CIA OIG 9/11 Report (16)FBI 9/11 Investigation (150)WTC Investigation (111)Other 9/11 Investigations (135)
Possible Al-Qaeda-Linked Moles or Informants
Abu Hamza Al-Masri (103)Abu Qatada (36)Ali Mohamed (78)Haroon Rashid Aswat (17)Khalil Deek (20)Luai Sakra (12)Mamoun Darkazanli (36)Nabil Al-Marabh (41)Omar Bakri & Al-Muhajiroun (25)Reda Hassaine (23)Other Possible Moles or Informants (169)
Other Al-Qaeda-Linked Figures
Abu Zubaida (99)Anwar Al-Awlaki (17)Ayman Al-Zawahiri (81)Hambali (39)Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (139)Mohammed Haydar Zammar (44)Mohammed Jamal Khalifa (47)Osama Bin Laden (229)Ramzi Bin Al-Shibh (105)Ramzi Yousef (67)Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman (57)Victor Bout (23)Wadih El-Hage (45)Zacarias Moussaoui (159)
Al-Qaeda by Region
"Lackawanna Six" (13)Al-Qaeda in Balkans (168)Al-Qaeda in Germany (189)Al-Qaeda in Italy (55)Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia (149)Al-Qaeda in Spain (121)Islamist Militancy in Chechnya (50)
Specific Alleged Al-Qaeda Linked Attacks or Plots
1993 WTC Bombing (73)1993 Somalia Fighting (13)1995 Bojinka Plot (78)1998 US Embassy Bombings (121)Millennium Bomb Plots (43)2000 USS Cole Bombing (114)2001 Attempted Shoe Bombing (23)2002 Bali Bombings (36)2004 Madrid Train Bombings (82)2005 7/7 London Bombings (87)
Miscellaneous Al-Qaeda Issues
Alleged Al-Qaeda Linked Attacks (89)Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements (102)Key Captures and Deaths (124)
Geopolitics and Islamic Militancy
US Dominance (112)Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links (255)Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism (83)Israel (61)Pakistan and the ISI (470)Saudi Arabia (249)Terrorism Financing (312)Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism (322)US Intel Links to Islamic Militancy (69)Algerian Militant Collusion (41)Indonesian Militant Collusion (20)Philippine Militant Collusion (74)Yemeni Militant Collusion (47)Other Government-Militant Collusion (23)
Pakistan / ISI: Specific Cases
Pakistani Nukes & Islamic Militancy (37)Pakistani ISI Links to 9/11 (73)Saeed Sheikh (59)Mahmood Ahmed (30)Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region (179)2008 Kabul Indian Embassy Bombing (10)Hunt for Bin Laden in Pakistan (154)
Terrorism Financing: Specific Cases
Al Taqwa Bank (29)Al-Kifah/MAK (54)BCCI (37)BIF (28)BMI and Ptech (21)Bin Laden Family (62)Drugs (71)
'War on Terrorism' Outside Iraq
Afghanistan (299)Drone Use in Pakistan / Afghanistan (53)Destruction of CIA Tapes (92)Escape From Afghanistan (61)High Value Detainees (179)Terror Alerts (50)Counterterrorism Action After 9/11 (353)Counterterrorism Policy/Politics (432)Internal US Security After 9/11 (125)
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Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: Together with Death’s Duel By John Donne
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions is a 1624 prose work by the English writer John Donne, who dedicated it to the future King Charles I. It is a series of reflections that were written as Donne... More > recovered from a serious illness, believed to be either typhus or relapsing fever. (Donne does not clearly identify the disease in his text.) He describes this as a "preternatural birth, in returning to life, from this sickness". The work consists of twenty-three parts ('devotions') describing each stage of the sickness. Each part is further divided into a Meditation, an Expostulation, and a Prayer.< Less
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ITEM IS NOT FOUND IN CACHE: /community/videos/broadcasts-and-movie-trailers/ : ANCILLARY_NAV
>Videos
Broadcasts and movie trailers from the '50s to the present
The Jimmy Fund. We are Boston. We are Hope.
The Jimmy Fund is the headquarters for hope and supports Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in its relentless pursuit of a world without cancer.
Strong as Iron
As they watched each other across Jimmy Fund Way, patients in the Jimmy Fund Clinic and ironworkers constructing a new Dana-Farber building formed a silent but powerful connection. Based on a true story.
As a 7-year-old cancer patient, Dan watched ironworkers spray-paint patients' names on the beams of a new Dana-Farber building. Today, a healthy young man, he explains what Dana-Farber means to him and joins current Jimmy Fund Clinic patients in watching ironworkers paint names on the steel beams of what will become Dana-Farber's new clinical building, the Yawkey Center for Cancer Care.
Radio Broadcast - The voice that launched the Jimmy Fund
During his treatment for cancer in the late 1940s, "Jimmy" longed for a television set so he could watch his favorite baseball team — the Boston Braves. His wish was granted after Ralph Edwards interviewed him on the national "Truth or Consequences" radio show on May 22, 1948.
Joan Crawford
Hollywood legend Joan Crawford stars in this 1953 public service announcement, produced to be shown in New England movie theaters, highlighting the work of the Jimmy Fund Clinic (now part of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute).
Bing Crosby and Ted Williams
Actor Bing Crosby is the friend of Ted Williams in this public service announcement to raise funds for pediatric cancer patients and cancer research at the Jimmy Fund Building (now part of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute).
Hollywood legend James Cagney in a message on behalf of the Jimmy Fund, to support cancer research and pediatric cancer patient care.
Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr, star of The King and I and From Here to Eternity, in a fundraising message for the Jimmy Fund at the Children's Cancer Research Foundation.
In this 1950's public service announcement, television host Ed Sullivan asks movie theater audiences to donate to the Jimmy Fund to support the care of pediatric cancer patients.
Spencer Tracy
Academy Award-winning actor Spencer Tracy, in a 1954 fundraising message on behalf of the Jimmy Fund, to support cancer research and the care of pediatric cancer patients at the Jimmy Fund Building in Boston (now part of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute).
Loretta Young
Hollywood actress Loretta Young appears in this fundraising message, produced to be shown in New England movie theaters on behalf of the Jimmy Fund. Today, the Jimmy Fund supports cancer research and patient care at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Patients and their Pets
A sweet fundraising message on behalf of the animal friends of young patients battling cancer at the Jimmy Fund Clinic at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
In this quirky, poignant short film, produced for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund, hairstylists talk about their work for the benefit of one particular future customer.
Sportscaster Jim Britt presents this message on behalf of the Jimmy Fund to support cancer research and the care of pediatric cancer patients.
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Sign up for My Contact ListSign up for My Contact List
Shop John’s Art
John Drury
Premier Steel Sculptor
Offering Exquisite Horseshoe Metal Art
Add flair to your home or office with artworks from a premier steel sculptor. Known for creating horseshoe metal art, Rutledge Forge | John Drury, Sculptor in Blountville, TN offers exquisite steel sculptures, jewelry, and other artworks. Whether you are looking for wall decorations, pendants, landscape centerpieces, or trophies, count on him to have options for you.
John Drury was born and raised in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains where he spent countless hours exploring the countryside developing a keen appreciation and love for the beauty of nature, the people, and animals of the region. He constantly expressed his view of the world by sketching and painting. As the years passed, he concentrated in watercolors, pencil and charcoal, and metal sculpture.
John attended a small college nestled in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains where he continued his exploration of the natural wonders of the region. He graduated with a degree in Sociology and Secondary Education, and was immediately invited by Uncle Sam’s draft board to serve in the military. Choosing to enter the Air Force, he served for over 20 years as a pilot, base commander, and State Department Representative at bases around the world. As his worldview expanded, he continued to produce award-winning watercolors and metal sculptures that have been exhibited and sold worldwide resulting in individual pieces of his work being included in private collections in numerous countries around the world.
After retirement from the military, John returned to the southern Appalachian region where he trained and practiced as a Family Nurse Practitioner until he was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. He retired from practice to undergo treatment and settled on a small farm where he and his wife rescue abused and neglected horses and Jack Russell Terriers. During his long battle with cancer, he spent many hours watching the rescue horses as they too struggled to regain their health. His admiration for the character and strength of these horses gradually focused his artistic expression on capturing the image and essence of the horse and the horse world. As he grew stronger, he developed a distinctive process of sculpting with horseshoes as a unique method for representing the beauty of the horse’s bond to the wind and earth.
Many sculptors create their work by casting bronze in a mold, which allows numerous pieces of the same work. John begins each sculpture with an idea and bare metal—sometimes with new steel, sometimes with scrap steel he collects in his daily travels, but usually he starts with a mix of new and used horseshoes. After treating the steel horseshoes with acid to expose the bare metal, he forges them to a red-hot temperature and begins the process of bending, hammering, and twisting the glowing metal. He cuts, grinds and welds the forming shape, slowly transforming it into a real life version of the vision in his head. This process continues for days, weeks, and sometimes even months until he is satisfied with the emerging shape, flow and balance of his creation.
Some pieces are then brazed with copper and/or bronze resulting in a brilliant shine. Others are treated with any of a myriad of patinas or metal treatments, creating an infinite variety of finishes, each of which is totally unique. Finally, he meticulously polishes the metal before finally hand rubbing the steel with metal oil and his own formula of wax to preserve and protect his work.
John Drury partners with:
Rutledge Antiques @ Willow Creek
Rutledge Forge Studio
340 Canterbury Dr.
Phone: 423-341-347
Website: johndruryart.com
Willow Creek Antiques
WILLOW CREEK ANTIQUES & COLLECTIBLES, LLC
619 State St,
www.willowcreekbristol.com
Mon–Sat 10am–6pm
Sun 1pm–5pm
www.atlantisjohnsoncity.com
Joe Tedder Farrier Service
Holston Mountain
K9photo.org
Simply Herbals
Inquire About Horseshoe Metal Art
You need not look far to find stunning artworks. Rutledge Forge | John Drury, Sculptor offers a wide variety of masterpieces ranging from pendants to table-sized steel sculptures. Check out his works today. Do you have inquiries about John Drury’s horseshoe metal art? Feel free to contact him by phone or email. He is more than happy to answer your questions.
Rutledge Forge | John Drury, Sculptor
Rutledge Forge Studio, 340 Canterbury
Dr. Blountville, TN 37617
rutledgeforge@charter.net
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← CONCERNED CATHOLICS OF CANBERRA. A Catholic future – Out of hope not fear.
RICHARD BUTLER. Brexit: Wilful Blindness →
KERRY O’BRIEN. We can’t let ourselves off the hook (Part 2)
Part 2 of a speech delivered at The Walkley Fund for Journalism Dinner in Sydney on Friday April 5, 2019.
Every year at the Walkley Awards, we honour a craft that holds power in its various manifestations big and small, to account. We should also, all be prepared to reflect on our own failures.
The Walkley Foundation, as part of its brief to promote quality journalism, seeks to highlight the immense importance of public interest journalism, as practised by quite a long honour roll of investigative reporters and researchers. But that form of journalism is still only one strand of the craft.
The journalism that is most commonly practised in this country today, as it is in all genuinely liberal democracies, is arguably failing at least as often as it’s succeeding. In every under-staffed newsroom where media releases are published with little or no basic fact-checking, it’s failing.
In every doorstop where camera operators are sent to record the shallow and self-serving lines of politicians without a proper, strong journalistic presence, it’s failing. In every regional centre where the presence of well-trained local journalists is too thinly spread, it’s failing. Every time we’re on the phone when we need to be on the beat to see a situation first hand, we’re failing.
Every time we devalue or disrespect the critical skill of sub-editing—in whatever the medium—we are failing our craft.
Every time media organisations reduce the ratio of wise older hands in the newsrooms of Australia to the younger journeymen and women, and the novices, because experience is more expensive, robbing the young of their mentors—the kinds of mentors that journalists of my era took for granted and flourished from—we’re failing.
Has journalism faced a bigger test of its effectiveness in the past 25 years than in its reporting of climate change—an issue arguably bigger than terrorism, bigger than the rise and hopefully (speaking personally) the fall of Donald Trump, bigger than so many other challenges that preoccupy so much of our waking hours and fill up so much of our journalistic space and time—because ultimately, it actually goes to how our planet survives.
Hold our political leaders to account for their failures on this front? Certainly. But we can’t let ourselves off the hook either. Tough subject to cover. Complex to explain to our readers, our viewers and our listeners. Very tough to hold their interest and keep them accurately informed and engaged over years of obfuscation and manipulation, and the fake information fed by vested interests, and the deniers or so-called agnostics, shrieking from their self-constructed pulpits.
But on any honest reflection, by any yardstick, we have to acknowledge our part in a failed democratic process with regard to climate change. I’m not urging hair shirts and self-flagellation (that’s the Catholic coming out in me)—but we should always be about seeing the whole picture of what we do, not just the bits we like about ourselves and our work.
I was a correspondent in the US for the Seven Network as the age of 24-hour news began to dawn. Because we had the Australian rights to CNN at the time, I saw their operation from the inside. I was struck by the amount of time their journalists spent spruiking in front of camera positions around the country as the live cross became increasingly ubiquitous. I was struck by the amount of time that was sucked up by journalists and other commentators filling the airwaves with cheap talk. Much cheaper than boots on the ground, in filling the big black hole of 24-hour news.
Twenty years ago, I returned to CNN in Atlanta as part of a study for the ABC on how news was being gathered in major television newsrooms in Britain and America. And I noticed a large graph on the wall framing the main stairs in the news centre, and the sign above it that read ‘CNN’s Chart of Human History’. When I took a closer look I realised it was actually a ratings chart. And the biggest event in human history according to CNN up to that point, was the day the police chased O. J. Simpson through the streets of Los Angeles after his wife had been murdered.
I’m not just talking about CNN here. I’m talking about the nature of modern news-gathering that’s under more severe pressure than ever before. I’m talking about the age of satellites in television, which while it introduced a greater and more immediate sweep of news coverage, also heightened the shallowness and the promotion of news—even serious news—as entertainment, or infotainment, as it quickly came to be called.
This coincided with another phase of the revolution—the arrival of technology that delivered colour to daily newspapers, followed closely by the marketers who began more and more to dictate what stories should be run to reach this demographic or that demographic—so newspapers could withstand the onslaught of instant television news.
And now we’re all struggling in the internet age; the age of digital disruption—well, traditional media outlets are. The new giants of this media age are doing very nicely indeed. And there’s another huge debate being had about all that.
At one level this is all very exciting. We’re seeing the Crikeys, the Buzzfeeds, the Huffington Posts, the Junkees and all the rest—although even those models are having their troubles evolving into more mature, long-term manifestations of reliable news coverage.
This is the age of the podcast—all those people around the world in their Gucci fitness uniforms listening to in-depth news and analysis as they power walk, or sit in traffic snarls on their way to work, or even as they go to sleep.
We’re actually awash with information—and on this front there are no borders. We can access just about anything we want if we know how, or have the resources to do it. Including fake news—and misinformation of the most toxic kind, feeding the prejudices of the naïve, the ignorant and the fearful. We’ve watched the deeply worrying rise of Donald Trump. We’re watching the rebirth of illiberal democracies in Europe. But we can’t be too derisive from the safety of distance because we’re all only too aware of our own endemic vacuum of leadership in this country.
With all this noise around us, The Walkley Foundation, a small but growing institution, is endeavouring to keep its eye on the ball. The protection and promotion of quality in journalism is our game—at the most basic level as well as at the pinnacle.
We’re not just about acknowledging the best and the brightest through an awards process that had small beginnings more than 60 years ago and now more than ever provides the gold standard that anchors arguably the single most important cornerstone of democracy—we are endeavouring to underwrite that gold standard in a very foundational way, to promote mentoring where it’s in short supply, to assist regional journalism to lift its horizons again, to provide a leg up to quality freelance journalism whose income base has all but collapsed.
That’s one reason we’ve established the Walkley grants to assist freelance journalists with worthwhile projects that might otherwise never see the light of day.
Thank you for joining with The Walkley Foundation in its pursuit of excellence. Thank you for your ongoing support.
Kerry O’Brien is Chair of The Walkley Foundation. He is former editor and host of the 7.30 Report and former host of Four Corners and Lateline, all on the ABC.
This entry was posted in Media. Bookmark the permalink.
3 Responses to KERRY O’BRIEN. We can’t let ourselves off the hook (Part 2)
Vacy Vlazna says:
I expected far better and bolder from O’Brien than the regurgitation of cliches of excuses- human imperfection and the internet age which do not deter journalists and commentators with integrity. Mainstream media including (especially) the ABC, except for the rarest of rare exceptions, spout US propaganda… Assange, Venezuela, Palestine, Syria, corporate interests that instigate climate change etc etc etc.
Rex Williams says:
You are correct, Ms Vlazna. Every news item covered by the ABC has the veneer of US / lapdog Australia there for all to see. It is becoming increasingly obvious as the months go by. It is clearly, the US saying, “Jump Australia” and both Morrison and Shorten, in unison reply, “how high, Trump?”
The ABC now reflects their views.
Rosemary O'Grady says:
We can’t let ourselves off the hook? Oh yes we can! Just take a look at how ‘we’ are reporting Julian Assange today.
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Live At the Grafton
Navigation Episodes About
Chris Walz
October 10, 2016 by Dan Kugler
Nationally acclaimed bluegrass multi-instrumentalist Chris Walz combines a joy of performing with a reverence for America’s musical story. Chris perfected his Scruggs-style banjo playing and guitar flatpicking at a young age as he diligently studied all his musical heroes from Pete Seeger to Mississippi John Hurt to Woody Guthrie to Dave Van Ronk. Whether it is his lightning speed on the banjo’s fretboard, his hard hitting grooves on the guitar or his tender melodic touch on the mandolin, Chris delivers a fulfilling performance. To top it off, Chris is an extraordinary singer, using his rich voice to buoy up a traditional ballad, a unique original composition, or a rousing ‘tear down the house’ bluegrass medley. His many years touring with bluegrass, Grammy nominated Special Consensus, honed his group and solo prowess. A natural born storyteller, Chris has a masterful presence as he weaves his songs and remembrances, one to the next, into a night of music that is not easily forgotten. Chris is a gifted and much sought after teacher at the historic Old Town School of Folk Music and spreads his knowledge and love of music in each community he plays in with well-polished workshops. A rare combination of past and present, Chris is playing music for the future.
October 10, 2016 /Dan Kugler
guitar, bluegrass, blues, woody guthrie, mississippi john hurt, Old Town School, special consensus
Ed Holstein
Ed Holstein has been a stalwart of the Chicago folk music scene for over 40 years. He has written a number of songs including “Jazzman” which have been recorded or performed by the likes of Bette Midler, Bonnie Koloc, Tom Rush, Steve Goodman, and Martin Simpson. He is also a featured performer on the Grammy-winning album Tribute to Steve Goodman. His unique blend of folk songs, blues and humor always entertain.
In the early days of the Chicago Folk Boom Eddie and his late brother Fred performed at legendary clubs like The Earl Of Old Town and Somebody Else’s Troubles where folks like Goodman, John Prine, Bonnie Koloc & others got their start. The Holstein brothers owned a self named club that featured national touring acts until the late ‘80s.
songwriting, chicago, oldtown school, blues
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Why India Is The Preferred Destination For Startups?
From the day former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh liberalized India’s economy back in 1991, it has continuously been growing. Thanks to the onslaught of privatization, globalization and liberalization, India has slowly become the go to spot for outsourcing, FDI and global partnerships. Additionally, ever since the startup culture starting taking over all industries, India has also become an attractive destination for launching a startup. So what is it exactly that makes India such a preferred destination for startups? Well, here are five reasons that might explain this phenomenon easily:
1) Lower Costs of Living
The cost of living in India is markedly lower than its western counterparts. Even when compared to neighboring countries like China, India offers lower costs of living. Needless to say, this is a big attraction as well as an advantage for anyone launching a startup as lower costs of living directly leads to an operational cost that is going to be well within one’s budget. For instance, hiring an office space in Gurgaon will cost nowhere close to the amount it will cost to hire one in New York.
2) Liberalized Economy
While many countries in the west already have liberalized economies, they don’t come with India’s lower costs of living. As such, having an additional liberalized economy becomes that one-two punch that makes it a heaven for startups. Thanks to its liberal economic policies, India has seen an increase in foreign direct investment, globalization and mutual partnerships with firms in other countries. This, first of all, makes it easier to set up a startup in India in the first place. And secondly, it makes it easier to get either venture capital or a partnership from a firm situated in another country.
3) Backing of the Indian Government
On August 15th 2015, Narendra Modi proudly declared from the Red Fort, “Startup India, Stand up India.” His words were a strong indicator of the support and backing that his government would be providing to the Startup Industry. His words became a reality when, on January 16th 2016, he officially launched Startup India. Among other things, this initiative also launched iMADE, an application development platform that has a goal of producing up to 10 lakh apps for Indian startups.
4) Preferred by Students
Another new and emerging trend that has been a great encouragement to founders of startups is the increased likelihood of students preferring to work for a startup over corporates. With the kind of work culture that a startup offers, the flexibility one gets when working for them at a co-working office space and the tendency to see themselves as being a big fish in a small pond, more and more recent graduates are opting to work for startups.
5) A Large Population of Youngsters
India is home to one of the largest population of youngsters. Needless to say, this becomes an advantage for anyone who is looking to launch a startup as it’s more likely that he or she will find young employees who’d be interested, energetic and hard working.
destination for startups
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Anchor & Braille - Braille
Posted May 30th, 2012 by JeffByNight
Unaccepted for Anchor & Braille
**SOLD**
Glenn said about 7 years ago
Dumb of them to not approve this!
A.L.D said about 7 years ago
Glenn said: Dumb of them to not approve this!
tager01 said about 7 years ago
This is entitled to some love!!!
Craig Robson said about 7 years ago
youve done some wicked stuff for them from what ive seen! this is great too!
Jason Carne said about 7 years ago
DOOOM said about 7 years ago
Rad.
atomicchild said about 7 years ago
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Serji Gold said about 7 years ago
Would wear!
sockmonkee said about 7 years ago
alrightok said about 7 years ago
Andrew Haines said about 7 years ago
Colors are perfect!
augie said about 7 years ago
my brain farted and i read it "Alcohol & Braille" boy what is wrong with me? anyways, this is nice.
William Henry said about 7 years ago
Awesome. Reminds me of old Alien Workshop graphics.
FLAMING SKULL said about 7 years ago
Serji Gold said: Would wear!
Greg Abbott said about 7 years ago
Endgame Clothing said about 7 years ago
JeffByNight said about 7 years ago
Adhesive Hippo said about 7 years ago
Love the color and simplicity
migy said about 7 years ago
It's nice to see something new here on mintees.
Joshua Jordan said about 7 years ago
Dude, too good.
SethByrd said about 7 years ago
I love the colors on this one, nice work Jeff!
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You are here: Home | second front | Soldier takes Olympic silver after disqualification is overturned
Soldier takes Olympic silver after disqualification is overturned
Published August 24, 2016 | by gmtiadmin |
Photo by Tim Hipps
Spc. Paul Chelimo of the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program finishes runner-up to Mo Farah of Great Britain to claim the silver medal in the men’s 5,000-meter run with a personal-best time of 13 minutes, 3.90 seconds Aug. 20 at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Farah won the gold in 13:03.30 and Hagos Gebrhiwet of Ethiopia took the bronze in 13:04.35. Chelimo was disqualified from the race but later reinstated and collected his silver medal at the awards ceremony, which was delayed to sort it out.
By Tim Hipps
IMCOM
RIO DE JANEIRO — Spc. Paul Chelimo relied on the strength he developed as a Solder to get through the men’s 5,000-meter run at the Rio Olympic Games, where he eventually claimed the silver medal.
On the way to the medal race, Chelimo ran his personal best time of 13 minutes 19.54 seconds to win his qualifying heat Aug. 17. At the finals, Aug. 20, he pushed past that personal best by more than 15 seconds to finish runner-up to Great Britain’s Mo Farah in 13:03.94.
But his greatest challenge came moments after the race, when a NBC journalist informed him that he had been disqualified for lane infringement.
“Getting the news from the television reporter that I was disqualified, that was the most heartbreaking thing in my life,” said Chelimo, 25, a native of Iten, Kenya, who trains in Beaverton, Oregon as a Soldier in the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program.
The race featured a lot of pushing, shoving and stumbling by numerous runners throughout, and came down to a frenetic sprint to the finish in the final 200 meters.
“It was really tactical two or three laps into the race with two Ethiopians trying to lead,” Chelimo said. “I was trying to stay in between them, but they wouldn’t let me. They kept pushing me and kept blocking me the whole time because they were working as a team.”
Once Farah had worked his way to the front, Chelimo knew he had to work his way out of the box or other runners could pass on the outside to collect the silver and bronze medals.
“I was the guy inside in lane one, the guy inside behind Mo Farah” Chelimo said. “I couldn’t stay there the whole time. I wanted to medal, too, so I had to look for position to get out and go into contention.”
During that process, track officials briefly disqualified Chelimo for stepping on the inside lane line, but the disqualification was overturned upon appeal, and Chelimo won his silver medal.
“They said it was infringement, but going back to what happened is people were pushing back and forth,” Chelimo explained.
The appeal process was the longest wait of his life, Chelimo said. Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning, who attended the games as a member of President Barack Obama’s U.S. Delegation to Brazil, said the entire delegation was pulling for Chelimo.
“I’m only here because of these Army Soldiers,” Fanning said. “That’s the reason I’m part of this delegation. But it was fun for the entire delegation to have an extra reason to cheer, not just for the United States but for the Army, so they were screaming loudly for him: ‘Who’s your Soldier? Who’s your Soldier?’”
One of the delegation members, four-time Olympian and six-time Olympic medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee, believed all along that Chelimo would be reinstated.
“Pushing and shoving is a part of the sport,” Joyner-Kersee said. “That’s what you do, so I was glad to see our track and field federation was on it and got the protest in there. We prevailed, and I was glad to see him up on that podium.”
For Chelimo, now that the Olympics are over, his real work begins. As an Army Soldier and member of the World Class Athlete Program, he will take his medal on tour throughout the U.S. as a trainer and an inspiration to America’s youth.
The WCAP Soldier-Olympians, when not actively training or competing in international competitions, participate in recruiting and training missions. WCAP members recently visited Fort Gordon, Georgia where they assisted with the events at the local Best Warrior Competitions.
“We’re taking the skills and training that we learn in WCAP and teaching them to Soldiers,” said Sgt.1st Class Keith Sanderson, who competed in the rapid fire pistol event at Rio. “We show them how they can apply the lessons we’ve learned in competition to their daily jobs and to the war fighting effort.”
From nutrition to weight training to proper sleep patterns, the Soldier-Olympians remain ambassadors even after they return to their regular units and normal duties.
Liliana Ayalde, U.S. Ambassador of Brazil, said even she was impressed with Chelimo and urged him to “be a role model to let others know that it can be done with hard work, with training, with discipline.”
“Despite the obstacles, you just keep going,” Ayalde told Chelimo the morning after the race. “That takes a lot of mental preparation, and it says a lot about you.”
Chelimo said he was eager to fill that role.
“Especially with all the young high school kids, that’s my main focus right now,” Chelimo told Avalde. “I want to encourage and motivate all of the high school kids. I really want to motivate them and give them confidence…”
Maj. Dan Brown, coach of the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program distance runners, who sweated through the disqualification and reinstatement process along with everyone else, was not surprised by the outcome.
“I believed in my heart special things were going to happen,” Brown said, “and I’m so appreciative and thankful that it did come through. All the training paid off.”
“Hard work and perseverance works,” Chelimo agreed.
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You are here: Home / Celebration Events / Youth Scholarship Awards
The Austin Area Heritage Council is requesting nominations for the MLK Youth Scholarship Awards. The awards are part of Austin’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Community Celebration.
The MLK Youth Scholarship Awards were created to recognize youth in the Austin community for their outstanding commitment and achievement, as well as inspire the next generation.
The award recipients of Applied Materials Foundation Awards will receive a $1000 scholarship courtesy of the Applied Materials Foundation. Award recipients of Seton Healthcare Family Awards will receive a $2000 scholarship courtesy of the Seton Healthcare Family.
DECEMBER 10th is the deadline for the nomination to be received.
Click here to nominate a student
Please email any questions or concerns to youthlegacyawards@gmail.com
These awards are open to all students regardless of race or ethnicity. Nominees from all backgrounds are welcomed and strongly encouraged. Our purpose for this award is to recognize youth “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Nominees must be a junior or senior in high school and no older than nineteen (19) on January 1, 2019. Nominated youth must also reside in the Greater Austin metropolitan area.
The MLK Youth Scholarship Awards awards will be presented at the MLK Youth Scholarship Awards Program scheduled for 3pm-5pm, Saturday, January 19th at ACC Eastview Campus, Building 8000, Multipurpose Room, First Floor, 3401 Webberville Road, Austin, TX 78702.
All of the nominees are invited to lead the MLK Community March 9am Monday, January 21, 2019 starting at the MLK statue on the University of Texas campus, 23rd Street & Speedway.
This application may be located on website www.mlkcelebration.com and distributed to colleagues and friends.
Nominees for the MLK Youth Scholarship Awards must be a junior or senior in high school and no older than nineteen (19) on January 1, 2019.
Persons may be nominated in only one category, per scholarship program, per sponsor.
Nominees should not apply for both Applied Materials Foundation and Seton Healthcare Family awards.
Nominees must be from the greater Austin area.
Nominations must be submitted online no later than December 10, 2018.
Submit transcript or most recent report card with application.
Incomplete applications will not be accepted.
JUDGING GUIDELINES
Judges will make decisions based on the information on the application and transcript/report card.
Only one person will be selected as winner in each category.
All of the information submitted on the application can be publicly shared during the Awards presentation, Confidential information should not be included.
Applied Materials Foundation ($1000 each)
ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE/EDUCATION – The student should have consistently demonstrated high academic achievement. This includes grades, creativity, critical thinking, classroom participation, and other behaviors that contribute to excellence in scholarship.
ARTS – Any youth who has demonstrated outstanding commitment to personal achievement in the artistic disciplines or who has demonstrated an exceptional commitment utilizing art to benefit others in a significant way such as music, drama, visual and performing arts.
COMMUNITY SERVICE — The student should have volunteered his/her time for one or more activities, which were to the immediate benefit of others in the community. This student has made a positive impact on their community through volunteerism. Please document the occasion(s), the participants, and the value of the service in which the student was engaged. Volunteer service should not include paid assignments.
FRED “MITCHIE” MITCHELL BEATING THE ODDS — Any youth who has overcome unusual or overwhelming adversity to achieve personal greatness or contributed in an exceptional way to those in their community.
MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE – Any youth who has demonstrated outstanding commitment to personal/academic achievement; pursuit of learning and using acquired knowledge and skill in the following courses: Honors and AP courses (Ex: Algebra 1 & 2, Geometry, Pre calculus, Calculus, Biology, Chemistry, Physics)
Seton Healthcare Family Awards ($1000 each)
DELL SETON MEDICAL CENTER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN HEALTH SCIENCES AWARD – The student should have consistently demonstrated high academic achievement. This includes grades, creativity, critical thinking, classroom participation, and other behaviors that contribute to excellence in scholarship.
DAUGHTERS OF CHARITY HUMANITARIAN AND SPIRIT AWARD — This award embodies the spirit, values and philosophy of Dr. King. (a) The student should have been involved in activities or other organized efforts in their school or community that have facilitated inclusion and understanding among people of different religious faiths, ethnic backgrounds and racial groups. The student also demonstrated a passion for fairness and justice and compassion for others in need. Or (b) The student was involved with efforts that contributed to the improvement of the quality of life for individuals who have been displaced in our communities. For example, provided support and services to individuals displaced by hurricanes or other disasters/events.
DELL SETON MEDICAL CENTER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN YOUTH LEADERSHIP AWARD — The student should have: (a) Initiated an activity to either meet a need, or provided a service of immediate value to other students in his/her program, or to the School; Or (b) Should have accepted leadership responsibility in the execution of a position or task, which was of value to other students, to his/her program, or to the School. Leadership can also be demonstrated by active participation in a sponsored organization in the student’s area of study.
PHOTOS FROM PREVIOUS AWARD CEREMONIES
2014 MLK Youth Legacy Awards [Back To Gallery]
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BURGLARY AND TRESPASS View Entire Chapter
F.S. 810.145
810.145 Video voyeurism.—
(a) “Broadcast” means electronically transmitting a visual image with the intent that it be viewed by another person.
(b) “Imaging device” means any mechanical, digital, or electronic viewing device; still camera; camcorder; motion picture camera; or any other instrument, equipment, or format capable of recording, storing, or transmitting visual images of another person.
(c) “Place and time when a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy” means a place and time when a reasonable person would believe that he or she could fully disrobe in privacy, without being concerned that the person’s undressing was being viewed, recorded, or broadcasted by another, including, but not limited to, the interior of a residential dwelling, bathroom, changing room, fitting room, dressing room, or tanning booth.
(d) “Privately exposing the body” means exposing a sexual organ.
(2) A person commits the offense of video voyeurism if that person:
(a) For his or her own amusement, entertainment, sexual arousal, gratification, or profit, or for the purpose of degrading or abusing another person, intentionally uses or installs an imaging device to secretly view, broadcast, or record a person, without that person’s knowledge and consent, who is dressing, undressing, or privately exposing the body, at a place and time when that person has a reasonable expectation of privacy;
(b) For the amusement, entertainment, sexual arousal, gratification, or profit of another, or on behalf of another, intentionally permits the use or installation of an imaging device to secretly view, broadcast, or record a person, without that person’s knowledge and consent, who is dressing, undressing, or privately exposing the body, at a place and time when that person has a reasonable expectation of privacy; or
(c) For the amusement, entertainment, sexual arousal, gratification, or profit of oneself or another, or on behalf of oneself or another, intentionally uses an imaging device to secretly view, broadcast, or record under or through the clothing being worn by another person, without that person’s knowledge and consent, for the purpose of viewing the body of, or the undergarments worn by, that person.
(3) A person commits the offense of video voyeurism dissemination if that person, knowing or having reason to believe that an image was created in a manner described in this section, intentionally disseminates, distributes, or transfers the image to another person for the purpose of amusement, entertainment, sexual arousal, gratification, or profit, or for the purpose of degrading or abusing another person.
(4) A person commits the offense of commercial video voyeurism dissemination if that person:
(a) Knowing or having reason to believe that an image was created in a manner described in this section, sells the image for consideration to another person; or
(b) Having created the image in a manner described in this section, disseminates, distributes, or transfers the image to another person for that person to sell the image to others.
(5) This section does not apply to any:
(a) Law enforcement agency conducting surveillance for a law enforcement purpose;
(b) Security system when a written notice is conspicuously posted on the premises stating that a video surveillance system has been installed for the purpose of security for the premises;
(c) Video surveillance device that is installed in such a manner that the presence of the device is clearly and immediately obvious; or
(d) Dissemination, distribution, or transfer of images subject to this section by a provider of an electronic communication service as defined in 18 U.S.C. s. 2510(15), or a provider of a remote computing service as defined in 18 U.S.C. s. 2711(2). For purposes of this section, the exceptions to the definition of “electronic communication” set forth in 18 U.S.C. s. 2510(12)(a), (b), (c), and (d) do not apply, but are included within the definition of the term.
(6) Except as provided in subsections (7) and (8):
(a) A person who is under 19 years of age and who violates this section commits a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.
(b) A person who is 19 years of age or older and who violates this section commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.
(7) A person who violates this section and who has previously been convicted of or adjudicated delinquent for any violation of this section commits a felony of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.
(8)(a) A person who is:
1. Eighteen years of age or older who is responsible for the welfare of a child younger than 16 years of age, regardless of whether the person knows or has reason to know the age of the child, and who commits an offense under this section against that child;
2. Eighteen years of age or older who is employed at a private school as defined in s. 1002.01; a school as defined in s. 1003.01; or a voluntary prekindergarten education program as described in s. 1002.53(3)(a), (b), or (c) and who commits an offense under this section against a student of the private school, school, or voluntary prekindergarten education program; or
3. Twenty-four years of age or older who commits an offense under this section against a child younger than 16 years of age, regardless of whether the person knows or has reason to know the age of the child
commits a felony of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.
(b) A person who violates this subsection and who has previously been convicted of or adjudicated delinquent for any violation of this section commits a felony of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.
(9) For purposes of this section, a person has previously been convicted of or adjudicated delinquent for a violation of this section if the violation resulted in a conviction that was sentenced separately, or an adjudication of delinquency entered separately, prior to the current offense.
History.—s. 1, ch. 2004-39; s. 1, ch. 2008-188; s. 7, ch. 2012-19; s. 1, ch. 2012-39.
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(Redirected from Earthworms)
An earthworm with a well-developed clitellum
An earthworm is a tube-shaped, segmented worm found in the phylum Annelida. They have a world-wide distribution and are commonly found living in soil, feeding on live and dead organic matter. An earthworm's digestive system runs through the length of its body. It conducts respiration through its skin. It has a double transport system composed of coelomic fluid that moves within the fluid-filled coelom and a simple, closed blood circulatory system. It has a central and a peripheral nervous system. The central nervous system consists of two ganglia above the mouth, one on either side, connected to a nerve cord running back along its length to motor neurons and sensory cells in each segment. Large numbers of chemoreceptors are concentrated near its mouth. Circumferential and longitudinal muscles on the periphery of each segment enable the worm to move. Similar sets of muscles line the gut, and their actions move the digesting food toward the worm's anus.[1]
Earthworms are hermaphrodites: each individual carries both male and female sex organs. As invertebrates, they lack either an internal skeleton or exoskeleton, but maintain their structure with fluid-filled coelom chambers that function as a hydrostatic skeleton.
"Earthworm" is the common name for the largest members of Oligochaeta (which is either a class or a subclass depending on the author). In classical systems, they were placed in the order Opisthopora, on the basis of the male pores opening posterior to the female pores, though the internal male segments are anterior to the female. Theoretical cladistic studies have placed them, instead, in the suborder Lumbricina of the order Haplotaxida, but this may again soon change. Folk names for the earthworm include "dew-worm", "rainworm", "night crawler", and "angleworm" (due to its use as fishing bait).
Larger terrestrial earthworms are also called megadriles (which translates to "big worms"), as opposed to the microdriles ("small worms") in the semiaquatic families Tubificidae, Lumbricidae, and Enchytraeidae, among others. The megadriles are characterized by having a distinct clitellum (which is more extensive than that of microdriles) and a vascular system with true capillaries.
1 Anatomy
1.1 Form and function
1.2 Nervous system
1.2.1 Central nervous system
1.2.2 Peripheral nervous system
1.2.3 Sympathetic nervous system
1.2.4 Movement
1.3 Photosensitivity
1.4 Digestive system
1.5 Circulatory system
1.6 Excretory system
1.7 Respiration
2 Life and physiology
2.1 Reproduction
2.2 Locomotion
2.3 Regeneration
3 Taxonomy and distribution
3.1 As an invasive species
4 Ecology
4.1 Environmental impacts
5 Economic impact
Anatomy[edit]
Form and function[edit]
Earthworm head
Depending on the species, an adult earthworm can be from 10 mm (0.39 in) long and 1 mm (0.039 in) wide to 3 m (9.8 ft) long and over 25 mm (0.98 in) wide, but the typical Lumbricus terrestris grows to about 360 mm (14 in) long.[2] Probably the longest worm on confirmed records is Amynthas mekongianus that extends up to 3 m (10 ft) [3] in the mud along the banks of the 4,350 km (2,703 mi) Mekong River in Southeast Asia.
From front to back, the basic shape of the earthworm is a cylindrical tube, divided into a series of segments (called metamerisms) that compartmentalize the body. Furrows are generally[4] externally visible on the body demarking the segments; dorsal pores and nephridiopores exude a fluid that moistens and protects the worm's surface, allowing it to breathe. Except for the mouth and anal segments, each segment carries bristle-like hairs called lateral setae[5] used to anchor parts of the body during movement;[6] species may have four pairs of setae on each segment or more than eight sometimes forming a complete circle of setae per segment.[5] Special ventral setae are used to anchor mating earthworms by their penetration into the bodies of their mates.[citation needed]
Generally, within a species, the number of segments found is consistent across specimens, and individuals are born with the number of segments they will have throughout their lives. The first body segment (segment number 1) features both the earthworm's mouth and, overhanging the mouth, a fleshy lobe called the prostomium, which seals the entrance when the worm is at rest, but is also used to feel and chemically sense the worm's surroundings. Some species of earthworm can even use the prehensile prostomium to grab and drag items such as grasses and leaves into their burrow.
An adult earthworm develops a belt-like glandular swelling, called the clitellum, which covers several segments toward the front part of the animal. This is part of the reproductive system and produces egg capsules. The posterior is most commonly cylindrical like the rest of the body, but depending on the species, may also be quadrangular, octagonal, trapezoidal, or flattened. The last segment is called the periproct; the earthworm's anus, a short vertical slit, is found on this segment.[5]
The exterior of an individual segment is a thin cuticle over skin, commonly pigmented red to brown, which has specialized cells that secrete mucus over the cuticle to keep the body moist and ease movement through soil. Under the skin is a layer of nerve tissue, and two layers of muscles—a thin outer layer of circular muscle, and a much thicker inner layer of longitudinal muscle.[7] Interior to the muscle layer is a fluid-filled chamber called a coelom[8] that by its pressurization provides structure to the worm's boneless body. The segments are separated from each other by septa (the plural of "septum")[9] which are perforated transverse walls, allowing the coelomic fluid to pass between segments.[10] A pair of structures called nephrostomes are located at the back of each septum; a nephric tubule leads from each nephrostome through the septum and into the following segment. This tubule then leads to the main body fluid filtering organ, the nephridium or metanephridium, which removes metabolic waste from the coelomic fluid and expels it through pores called nephridiopores on the worm's sides; usually two nephridia (sometimes more) are found in most segments.[11] At the center of a worm is the digestive tract, which runs straight through from mouth to anus without coiling, and is flanked above and below by blood vessels (the dorsal blood vessel and the ventral blood vessel as well as a subneural blood vessel) and the ventral nerve cord, and is surrounded in each segment by a pair of pallial blood vessels that connect the dorsal to the subneural blood vessels.
Many earthworms can eject coelomic fluid through pores in the back in response to stress; Australian Didymogaster sylvaticus (known as the "blue squirter earthworm") can squirt fluid as high as 30 cm (12 in).[12][10]
Nervous system[edit]
Nervous system of the anterior end of an earthworm
The nervous system of an earthworm is segmented and comprises three parts: the central nervous system (CNS), peripheral nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system.[13][14]
Central nervous system[edit]
The CNS consists of a bilobed brain (cerebral ganglia, or supra-pharyngeal ganglion), sub-pharyngeal ganglia, circum-pharyngeal connectives and a ventral nerve cord.
Earthworms' brains consist of a pair of pear-shaped cerebral ganglia. These are located in the dorsal side of the alimentary canal in the third segment, in a groove between the buccal cavity and pharynx.
A pair of circum-pharyngeal connectives from the brain encircle the pharynx and then connect with a pair of sub-pharyngeal ganglia located below the pharynx in the fourth segment. This arrangement means the brain, sub-pharyngeal ganglia and the circum-pharyngeal connectives form a nerve ring around the pharynx.
The ventral nerve cord (formed by nerve cells and nerve fibres) begins at the sub-pharyngeal ganglia and extends below the alimentary canal to the most posterior body segment. The ventral nerve cord has a swelling, or ganglion, in each segment, i.e. a segmental ganglion, which occurs from the fifth to the last segment of the body. There are also three giant axons, one medial giant axon (MGA) and two lateral giant axons (LGAs) on the mid-dorsal side of the ventral nerve cord. The MGA is 0.07 mm in diameter and transmits in an anterior-posterior direction at a rate of 32.2 m/s. The LGAs are slightly wider at 0.05 mm in diameter and transmit in a posterior-anterior direction at 12.6 m/s. The two LGAs are connected at regular intervals along the body and are therefore considered one giant axon.[15][16]
Peripheral nervous system[edit]
Eight to ten nerves arise from the cerebral ganglia to supply the prostomium, buccal chamber and pharynx.
Three pairs of nerves arise from the subpharyangeal ganglia to supply the 2nd, 3rd and 4th segment.
Three pairs of nerves extend from each segmental ganglion to supply various structures of the segment.
Sympathetic nervous system[edit]
The sympathetic nervous system consists of nerve plexuses in the epidermis and alimentary canal. (A plexus is a web of nerve cells connected together in a two dimensional grid.) The nerves that run along the body wall pass between the outer circular and inner longitudinal muscle layers of the wall. They give off branches that form the intermuscular plexus and the subepidermal plexus. These nerves connect with the circumpharyngeal connective.
Movement[edit]
On the surface, crawling speed varies both within and among individuals. Earthworms crawl faster primarily by taking longer "strides" and a greater frequency of strides. Larger Lumbricus terrestris worms crawl at a greater absolute speed than smaller worms. They achieve this by taking slightly longer strides but with slightly lower stride frequencies.[17]
Touching an earthworm, which causes a "pressure" response as well as (often) a response to the dehydrating quality of the salt on human skin (toxic to earthworms), stimulates the subepidermal nerve plexus which connects to the intermuscular plexus and causes the longitudinal muscles to contact, thereby the writhing movements when we pick up an earthworm. This behaviour is a reflex and does not require the CNS; it occurs even if the nerve cord is removed. Each segment of the earthworm has its own nerve plexus. The plexus of one segment is not connected directly to that of adjacent segments. The nerve cord is required to connect the nervous systems of the segments.[18]
The giant axons carry the fastest signals along the nerve cord. These are emergency signals that initiate reflex escape behaviours. The larger dorsal giant axon conducts signals the fastest, from the rear to the front of the animal. If the rear of the worm is touched, a signal is rapidly sent forwards causing the longitudinal muscles in each segment to contract. This causes the worm to shorten very quickly as an attempt to escape from a predator or other potential threat. The two medial giant axons connect with each other and send signals from the front to the rear. Stimulation of these causes the earthworm to very quickly retreat (perhaps contracting into its burrow to escape a bird).
The presence of a nervous system is essential for an animal to be able to experience nociception or pain. However, other physiological capacities are also required such as opioid sensitivity and central modulation of responses by analgesics.[19] Enkephalin and α-endorphin-like substances have been found in earthworms. Injections of naloxone (an opioid antagonist) inhibit the escape responses of earthworms. This indicates that opioid substances play a role in sensory modulation, similar to that found in many vertebrates.[20]
Photosensitivity[edit]
Earthworms do not have eyes (although some worms do), however, they do have specialized photosensitive cells called "light cells of Hess". These photoreceptor cells have a central intracellular cavity (phaosome) filled with microvilli. As well as the microvilli, there are several sensory cilia in the phaosome which are structurally independent of the microvilli.[21] The photoreceptors are distributed in most parts of the epidermis but are more concentrated on the back and sides of the worm. A relatively small number occur on the ventral surface of the 1st segment. They are most numerous in the prostomium and reduce in density in the first three segments; they are very few in number past the third segment.[18]
Digestive system[edit]
The gut of the earthworm is a straight tube which extends from the worm's mouth to its anus. It is differentiated into a buccal cavity (generally running through the first one or two segments of the earthworm), pharynx (running generally about four segments in length), esophagus, crop, gizzard (usually) and intestine.[22]
Food enters in the mouth. The pharynx acts as a suction pump; its muscular walls draw in food. In the pharynx, the pharyngeal glands secrete mucus. Food moves into the esophagus, where calcium (from the blood and ingested from previous meals) is pumped in to maintain proper blood calcium levels in the blood and food pH. From there the food passes into the crop and gizzard. In the gizzard, strong muscular contractions grind the food with the help of mineral particles ingested along with the food. Once through the gizzard, food continues through the intestine for digestion. The intestine secretes Pepsin to digest proteins, Amylase to digest polysaccharides, Cellulase to digest cellulose, and lipase to digest fats.[1] Earthworms use, in addition to the digestive proteins, a class of surface active compounds called drilodefensins, which help digest plant material.[23] Instead of being coiled like a mammalian intestine, an earthworm's intestine increases surface area to increase nutrient absorption by having many folds running along its length. The intestine has its own pair of muscle layers like the body, but in reverse order—an inner circular layer within an outer longitudinal layer.[24]
Circulatory system[edit]
The earthworm has a dual circulatory system in which both the coelomic fluid and a closed circulatory system carry the food, waste, and respiratory gases. The closed circulatory system has five main blood vessels: the dorsal (top) vessel, which runs above the digestive tract; the ventral (bottom) vessel, which runs below the digestive tract; the subneural vessel, which runs below the ventral nerve cord; and two lateroneural vessels on either side of the nerve cord.[25] The dorsal vessel moves the blood forward, while the other four longitudinal vessels carry the blood rearward. In segments seven through eleven, a pair of aortic arches rings the coelom and acts as hearts, pumping the blood to the ventral vessel that acts as the aorta. The blood consists of ameboid cells and hemoglobin dissolved in the plasma. The second circulatory system derives from the cells of the digestive system that line the coelom. As the digestive cells become full, they release non-living cells of fat into the fluid-filled coelom, where they float freely but can pass through the walls separating each segment, moving food to other parts and assist in wound healing.[26]
Excretory system[edit]
The excretory system contains a pair of nephridia in every segment, except for the first three and the last ones.[27] The three types of nephridia are: integumentary, septal, and pharyngeal. The integumentary nephridia lie attached to the inner side of the body wall in all segments except the first two. The septal nephridia are attached to both sides of the septa behind the 15th segment. The pharyngeal nephridia are attached to fourth, fifth and sixth segments.[27] The waste in the coelom fluid from a forward segment is drawn in by the beating of cilia of the nephrostome. From there it is carried through the septum (wall) via a tube which forms a series of loops entwined by blood capillaries that also transfer waste into the tubule of the nephrostome. The excretory wastes are then finally discharged through a pore on the worm's side.[28]
Respiration[edit]
Earthworms have no special respiratory organs. Gases are exchanged through the moist skin and capillaries, where the oxygen is picked up by the hemoglobin dissolved in the blood plasma and carbon dioxide is released. Water, as well as salts, can also be moved through the skin by active transport.
Life and physiology[edit]
At birth, earthworms emerge small but fully formed, only lacking their sex structures which develop in about 60 to 90 days. They attain full size in about one year. Scientists predict that the average lifespan under field conditions is four to eight years, while most garden varieties live only one to two years.
Reproduction[edit]
Earthworm copulation
Earthworm cocoons from L. terrestris
An earthworm cocoon from L. rubellus
Several common earthworm species are mostly parthenogenetic, meaning that growth and development of embryos happens without fertilization.
Among lumbricid earthworms, parthenogenesis arose from sexual relatives many times.[29] Parthenogenesis in some Aporrectodea trapezoides lineages arose 6.4 to 1.1 million years ago from sexual ancestors.[30]
Mating occurs on the surface, most often at night. Earthworms are hermaphrodites; that is, they have both male and female sexual organs. The sexual organs are located in segments 9 to 15. Earthworms have one or two pairs of testes contained within sacs. The two or four pairs of seminal vesicles produce, store and release the sperm via the male pores. Ovaries and oviducts in segment 13 release eggs via female pores on segment 14, while sperm is expelled from segment 15. One or more pairs of spermathecae are present in segments 9 and 10 (depending on the species) which are internal sacs that receive and store sperm from the other worm during copulation. As a result, segment 15 of one worm exudes sperm into segments 9 and 10 with its storage vesicles of its mate. Some species use external spermatophores for sperm transfer.
In Hormogaster samnitica and Hormogaster elisae transcriptome DNA libraries were sequenced and two sex pheromones, Attractin and Temptin, were detected in all tissue samples of both species.[31] Sex pheromones are probably important in earthworms because they live in an environment where chemical signaling may play a crucial role in attracting a partner and in facilitating outcrossing. Outcrossing would provide the benefit of masking the expression of deleterious recessive mutations in progeny.[32] (Also see complemenation.)
Copulation and reproduction are separate processes in earthworms. The mating pair overlap front ends ventrally and each exchanges sperm with the other. The clitellum becomes very reddish to pinkish in color. Some time after copulation, long after the worms have separated, the clitellum (behind the spermathecae) secretes material which forms a ring around the worm. The worm then backs out of the ring, and as it does so, it injects its own eggs and the other worm's sperm into it. As the worm slips out of the ring, the ends of the cocoon seal to form a vaguely onion-shaped incubator (cocoon) in which the embryonic worms develop.
Locomotion[edit]
Close up of an earthworm in garden soil
Earthworms travel underground by the means of waves of muscular contractions which alternately shorten and lengthen the body (peristalsis). The shortened part is anchored to the surrounding soil by tiny claw-like bristles (setae) set along its segmented length. In all the body segments except the first, last and clitellum, there is a ring of S-shaped setae embedded in the epidermal pit of each segment (perichaetine). The whole burrowing process is aided by the secretion of lubricating mucus. Worms can make gurgling noises underground when disturbed as a result of their movement through their lubricated tunnels. Earthworms move through soil by expanding crevices with force; when forces are measured according to body weight, hatchlings can push 500 times their own body weight whereas large adults can push only 10 times their own body weight.[33]
Regeneration[edit]
Earthworms have the ability to regenerate lost segments, but this ability varies between species and depends on the extent of the damage. Stephenson (1930) devoted a chapter of his monograph to this topic, while G.E. Gates spent 20 years studying regeneration in a variety of species, but “because little interest was shown”, Gates (1972) only published a few of his findings that, nevertheless, show it is theoretically possible to grow two whole worms from a bisected specimen in certain species. Gates’s reports included:
Eisenia fetida (Savigny, 1826) with head regeneration, in an anterior direction, possible at each intersegmental level back to and including 23/24, while tails were regenerated at any levels behind 20/21, i.e., two worms may grow from one.[34]
Lumbricus terrestris Linnaeus, 1758 replacing anterior segments from as far back as 13/14 and 16/17 but tail regeneration was never found.
Perionyx excavatus Perrier, 1872 readily regenerated lost parts of the body, in an anterior direction from as far back as 17/18, and in a posterior direction as far forward as 20/21.
Lampito mauritii Kinberg, 1867 with regeneration in anterior direction at all levels back to 25/26 and tail regeneration from 30/31; head regeneration was sometimes believed to be caused by internal amputation resulting from Sarcophaga sp. larval infestation.
Criodrilus lacuum Hoffmeister, 1845 also has prodigious regenerative capacity with ‘head’ regeneration from as far back as 40/41.[35]
An unidentified Tasmanian earthworm shown growing a replacement head has been reported.[36]
Taxonomy and distribution[edit]
Within the world of taxonomy, the stable 'Classical System' of Michaelsen (1900) and Stephenson (1930) was gradually eroded by the controversy over how to classify earthworms, such that Fender and McKey-Fender (1990) went so far as to say, "The family-level classification of the megascolecid earthworms is in chaos."[37] Over the years, many scientists have developed their own classification systems for earthworms, which led to confusion, and these systems have been and still continue to be revised and updated. The classification system used here which was developed by Blakemore (2000), is a modern reversion to the Classical System that is historically proven and widely accepted.[38]
Categorization of a megadrile earthworm into one of its taxonomic families under suborders Lumbricina and Moniligastrida is based on such features as the makeup of the clitellum, the location and disposition of the sex features (pores, prostatic glands, etc.), number of gizzards, and body shape.[38] Currently, over 6,000 species of terrestrial earthworms are named, as provided in a species name database,[39] but the number of synonyms is unknown.
The families, with their known distributions or origins:[38]
Acanthodrilidae – (Gondwanan or Pangaean?)
Ailoscolecidae – Pyrenees and southeast USA
Almidae – tropical equatorial (South America, Africa, Indo-Asia)
Benhamiinae – Ethiopian, Neotropical (a possible subfamily of Octochaetidae)
Criodrilidae – southwestern Palaearctic: Europe, Middle East, Russia and Siberia to Pacific coast; Japan (Biwadrilus); mainly aquatic
Diplocardiinae/-idae – Gondwanan or Laurasian? (a subfamily of Acanthodrilidae)
Enchytraeidae – cosmopolitan but uncommon in tropics (usually classed with Microdriles)
Eudrilidae – Tropical Africa south of the Sahara
Exxidae – Neotropical: Central America and Caribbean
Glossoscolecidae – Neotropical: Central and South America, Caribbean
Haplotaxidae – cosmopolitan distribution (usually classed with Microdriles)
Hormogastridae – Mediterranean
Kynotidae – Malagasian: Madagascar
Lumbricidae – Holarctic: North America, Europe, Middle East, Central Asia to Japan
Lutodrilidae – Louisiana southeast USA
Megascolecidae – (Pangaean?)
Microchaetidae – Terrestrial in Africa especially South African grasslands
Moniligastridae – Oriental and Indian subregion
Ocnerodrilidae – Neotropics, Africa; India
Octochaetidae – Australasian, Indian, Oriental, Ethiopian, Neotropical
Octochaetinae – Australasian, Indian, Oriental (subfamily if Benhamiinae is accepted)
Sparganophilidae – Nearctic, Neotropical: North and Central America
Tumakidae – Colombia, South America
As an invasive species[edit]
Main articles: Earthworms as invasive species and Invasive earthworms of North America
From a total of around 7,000 species, only about 150 species are widely distributed around the world. These are the peregrine or cosmopolitan earthworms.[40]
Ecology[edit]
Permanent vertical burrow
Earthworms are classified into three main ecophysiological categories: (1) leaf litter- or compost-dwelling worms that are nonburrowing, live at soil-litter interface and eat decomposing organic matter (called Epigeic) e.g. Eisenia fetida; (2) topsoil- or subsoil-dwelling worms that feed (on soil), burrow and cast within soil, creating horizontal burrows in upper 10–30 cm of soil (called Endogeics); and (3) worms that construct permanent deep vertical burrows which they use to visit the surface to obtain plant material for food, such as leaves (called Anecic (meaning "reaching up")), e.g. Lumbricus terrestris.[41]
Earthworm populations depend on both physical and chemical properties of the soil, such as temperature, moisture, pH, salts, aeration, and texture, as well as available food, and the ability of the species to reproduce and disperse. One of the most important environmental factors is pH, but earthworms vary in their preferences. Most favor neutral to slightly acidic soils. Lumbricus terrestris is still present in a pH of 5.4 and Dendrobaena octaedra at a pH of 4.3 and some Megascolecidae are present in extremely acidic humic soils. Soil pH may also influence the numbers of worms that go into diapause. The more acidic the soil, the sooner worms go into diapause and the longer they remain in diapause at a pH of 6.4.
Earthworms are preyed upon by many species of birds (e.g. starlings, thrushes, gulls, crows), snakes, mammals (e.g. bears, foxes, hedgehogs, pigs, moles) and invertebrates (e.g. ground beetles and other beetles, snails, slugs). Earthworms have many internal parasites, including protozoa, platyhelminthes, and nematodes; they can be found in the worms' blood, seminal vesicles, coelom, or intestine, or in their cocoons.
Nitrogenous fertilizers tend to create acidic conditions, which are fatal to the worms, and dead specimens are often found on the surface following the application of substances such as DDT, lime sulphur, and lead arsenate. In Australia, changes in farming practices such as the application of superphosphates on pastures and a switch from pastoral farming to arable farming had a devastating effect on populations of the giant Gippsland earthworm, leading to their classification as a protected species. Globally, certain earthworms populations have been devastated by deviation from organic production and the spraying of synthetic fertilizers and biocides with at least three species now listed as extinct but many more endangered.[42]
Vermicomposting of all organic "wastes" and addition of this organic matter, preferably as a surface mulch , on a regular basis will provide earthworms with their food and nutrient requirements, and will create the optimum conditions of temperature and moisture that will naturally stimulate their activity.
This earthworm activity aerates and mixes the soil, and is conducive to mineralization of nutrients and their uptake by vegetation. Certain species of earthworm come to the surface and graze on the higher concentrations of organic matter present there, mixing it with the mineral soil. Because a high level of organic matter mixing is associated with soil fertility, an abundance of earthworms is generally considered beneficial by farmers and gardeners.[43][44] As long ago as 1881 Charles Darwin wrote: "It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures."[45]
Devil's coach horse beetle preying on Lumbricus sp.
Also, while, as the name suggests, the main habitat of earthworms is in soil, they are not restricted to this habitat. The brandling worm Eisenia fetida lives in decaying plant matter and manure. Arctiostrotus vancouverensis from Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula is generally found in decaying conifer logs. Aporrectodea limicola, Sparganophilus spp., and several others are found in mud in streams. Some species are arboreal, some aquatic and some euryhaline (salt-water tolerant) and littoral (living on the sea-shore, e.g. Pontodrilus litoralis).[46] Even in the soil species, special habitats, such as soils derived from serpentine, have an earthworm fauna of their own.
Environmental impacts[edit]
The major benefits of earthworm activities to soil fertility for agriculture can be summarized as:
Biological: In many soils, earthworms play a major role in the conversion of large pieces of organic matter into rich humus, thus improving soil fertility. This is achieved by the worm's actions of pulling below the surface deposited organic matter such as leaf fall or manure, either for food or to plug its burrow. Once in the burrow, the worm will shred the leaf and partially digest it and mingle it with the earth. Worm casts (see bottom right) can contain 40 percent more humus than the top 9" (23 cm) of soil in which the worm is living.[47]
Faeces in form of casts
Chemical: In addition to dead organic matter, the earthworm also ingests any other soil particles that are small enough—including sand grains up to 1/20 of an inch (1.25 mm)—into its gizzard, wherein those minute fragments of grit grind everything into a fine paste which is then digested in the intestine. When the worm excretes this in the form of casts, deposited on the surface or deeper in the soil, minerals and plant nutrients are changed to an accessible form for plants to use. Investigations in the United States show that fresh earthworm casts are five times richer in available nitrogen, seven times richer in available phosphates, and 11 times richer in available potassium than the surrounding upper 6 inches (150 mm) of soil. In conditions where humus is plentiful, the weight of casts produced may be greater than 4.5 kg (10 lb) per worm per year.[47]
Physical: The earthworm's burrowing creates a multitude of channels through the soil and is of great value in maintaining the soil structure, enabling processes of aeration and drainage. Permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison points out that by sliding in their tunnels, earthworms "act as an innumerable army of pistons pumping air in and out of the soils on a 24-hour cycle (more rapidly at night)".[48] Thus, the earthworm not only creates passages for air and water to traverse the soil, but also modifies the vital organic component that makes a soil healthy (see Bioturbation). Earthworms promote the formation of nutrient-rich casts (globules of soil, stable in soil [mucus]) that have high soil aggregation and soil fertility and quality.[47]
Earthworms accelerate nutrient cycling in the soil-plant system through fragmentation & mixing of plant debris – physical grinding & chemical digestion.[47] The earthworm's existence cannot be taken for granted. Dr. W. E. Shewell-Cooper observed "tremendous numerical differences between adjacent gardens", and worm populations are affected by a host of environmental factors, many of which can be influenced by good management practices on the part of the gardener or farmer.[49]
Darwin estimated that arable land contains up to 53,000 worms per acre (13/m2), but more recent research has produced figures suggesting that even poor soil may support 250,000/acre (62/m2), whilst rich fertile farmland may have up to 1,750,000/acre (432/m2), meaning that the weight of earthworms beneath a farmer's soil could be greater than that of the livestock upon its surface. Richly organic topsoil populations of earthworms are much higher – averaging 500 worms m−2 and up to 400 gm−2 – such that, for the 7 billion of us, each person alive today has support of 7 million earthworms.[50]
The ability to break down organic materials and excrete concentrated nutrients makes the earthworm a functional contributor in restoration projects. In response to ecosystem disturbances, some sites have utilized earthworms to prepare soil for the return of native flora. Research from the Station d'écologie Tropicale de Lamto asserts that the earthworms positively influence the rate of macroaggregate formation, an important feature for soil structure.[51] The stability of aggregates in response to water was also found to be improved when constructed by earthworms.[51]
Earthworms are not native to North America. Their abundance in most of it, introduced from sources such as transplanted soil, has had drastic environmental impacts. Many species, notably American robin, have adapted to feed on earthworms. Where earthworms are present, the fluffy duff layer of slowly decaying leaves is eliminated. This favors the growth of Eurasian species over natives. Earthworms have been named as a factor in the mesophycation and general decline of Eastern forests.
While earthworms have become ubiquitous in North America, some refuges absent of them remain. There is still motivation to prevent their spread in infested areas because new species can have even worse impacts.
Economic impact[edit]
Earthworms being raised at La Chonita Hacienda in Mexico
Various species of worms are used in vermiculture, the practice of feeding organic waste to earthworms to decompose food waste. These are usually Eisenia fetida (or its close relative Eisenia andrei) or the Brandling worm, commonly known as the tiger worm or red wiggler. They are distinct from soil-dwelling earthworms. In the tropics, the African nightcrawler Eudrilus eugeniae [52] and the Indian blue Perionyx excavatus are used.
Earthworms are sold all over the world; the market is sizable. According to Doug Collicut, "In 1980, 370 million worms were exported from Canada, with a Canadian export value of $13 million and an American retail value of $54 million."
Earthworms provide excellent protein for fish, fowl and pigs but were also used traditionally for human consumption. Noke is a culinary term used by the Māori of New Zealand, and refers to earthworms which are considered delicacies for their chiefs.
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Earthworm.
Drilosphere, the part of the soil influenced by earthworm secretions and castings
The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, an 1881 book by Charles Darwin
Soil life
Worm charming
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^ Blakemore, R.J. (2015). "Eco-taxonomic profile of the iconic vermicomposter - the 'African Nightcrawler', Eudrilus eugeniae (Kinberg, 1867)". African Invertebrates 56: 527-548.
Edwards, Clive A., Bohlen, P.J. (Eds.) Biology and Ecology of Earthworms. Springer, 2005. 3rd edition.
Edwards, Clive A. (Ed.) Earthworm Ecology. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2004. Second revised edition. ISBN 0-8493-1819-X
Lee, Keneth E. Earthworms: Their Ecology and Relationships with Soils and Land Use. Academic Press. Sydney, 1985. ISBN 0-12-440860-5
Stewart, Amy. The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 2004. ISBN 1-56512-337-9
{{lt:Sliekas}}
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Earthworms.
Wikispecies: Lumbricina
ADW: Lumbricina
Fauna Europaea: 11870
Fauna Europaea (new): 43cda8a1-df92-479d-b9e7-5b30c6dcd216
ITIS: 69069
WoRMS: 14164
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Earthworm&oldid=905187385"
Soil biology
Invertebrate common names
Paraphyletic groups
Wikipedia articles with NDL identifiers
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Göppingen Gö 9
Gö 9
Research aircraft
National origin
Schempp-Hirth
Ulrich Hütter
Number built
The Göppingen Gö 9 was a German research aircraft built to investigate the practicalities of powering a plane using a pusher propeller located far from the engine and turned by a long driveshaft.
1 Design and development
2 Operational history
3 Specifications (Gö 9)
5.2 Bibliography
Design and development[edit]
In 1937, Claudius Dornier observed that adding extra engines and propellers to an aircraft in an attempt to increase speed would also attract a penalty of greater drag, especially when placing two or more engines within nacelles mounted on the wings. He reasoned that this penalty could be minimized by mounting a second propeller at the rear of an aircraft. In order to prevent tail-heaviness, however, the engine would need to be mounted far ahead of it. Dornier patented this idea and commissioned a test plane to evaluate it.
The aircraft was designed by Dr Ulrich Hütter as a 40% sized, scaled-down version of the Dornier Do 17's fuselage and wing panels without the twin-engine nacelles, and built by Schempp-Hirth. The airframe was entirely of wood and used a retractable tricycle landing gear – one of the earliest non-Heinkel-built German airframe designs to use such an arrangement. Power was supplied by a Hirth HM 60 inverted, air-cooled inline four-cylinder engine mounted within the fuselage near the wings. Other than the engine installation, the only other unusual feature of the aircraft was its all-new, full four-surface cruciform tail, which included a large ventral fin/rudder unit of equal area to the dorsal surface. This fin incorporated a small supplementary tailwheel protruding from the ventral fin's lower tip that assisted in keeping the rear-mounted, four-blade propeller away from the ground during take-off and landing. The Gö 9 carried the civil registration D-EBYW.
Operational history[edit]
Initially towed aloft, flight tests began in June 1941, but later flights operated under its own power. The design validated Dornier's ideas, and he went ahead with his original plan to build a high-performance aircraft with propellers at the front and rear, producing the Dornier Do 335. The eventual fate of the Gö 9 is not known.
Specifications (Gö 9)[edit]
Data from Die Deutsche Luftruestung 1933-1945 Vol.1 - AEG-Dornier[1]
Length: 6.80 m (22 ft 4 in)
Wingspan: 7.20 m (23 ft 7 in)
Gross weight: 720 kg (1,587 lb)
Powerplant: 1 × Hirth HM 60 4-cyl. inverted air-cooled in-line piston engine, 60 kW (80 hp)
Propellers: 4-bladed pusher propeller turned via an extension shaft
Maximum speed: 220 km/h (137 mph; 119 kn)
Aircraft of comparable role, configuration and era
Douglas XB-42
List of military aircraft of Germany
List of World War II military aircraft of Germany
^ Nowarra, Heinz J. (1993). Die Deutsche Luftruestung 1933-1945 Vol.1 - AEG-Dornier. Koblenz: Bernard & Graefe Verlag. ISBN 3-7637-5464-4.
Nowarra, Heinz J. (1993). Die Deutsche Luftruestung 1933-1945 Vol.1 - AEG-Dornier. Koblenz: Bernard & Graefe Verlag. ISBN 3-7637-5464-4.
Selinger, P E. Segelflugzeuge Vom Wolf zum Discus. Motor Buch Verlag, Stuttgart 1989
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Göppingen Gö-9.
Luft46's Göppingen Gö 9 Page, with photos and three-view drawing
Video of Do 335A and Göppingen Gö 9 tests
Schempp-Hirth glider types
Wooden construction
SHK
Standard Austria
GRP construction
Discus 2
Nimbus 2
Mini-Nimbus
Open Cirrus
Standard Cirrus
Ventus-2
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Göppingen_Gö_9&oldid=896060907"
1940s German experimental aircraft
Mid-engined aircraft
World War II experimental aircraft of Germany
Single-engined pusher aircraft
Schempp-Hirth aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1941
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Muammar Gaddafi's response to the 2011 Libyan Civil War
(Redirected from Muammar Gaddafi's response to the Libyan Civil War)
Muammar Gaddafi, leader of Libya before he was killed during the Libyan Civil War
Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) attributed the protests against his rule to people who are "rats" and "cockroaches", terms that have been cited by Hutu radicals of the Tutsi population before the Rwanda genocide began, thus causing unease in the global community. Gaddafi accused his opponents as those who have been influenced by hallucinogenic drugs put in drinks and pills. He specifically referred to substances in milk, coffee and Nescafe. He claimed that Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were distributing these hallucinogenic drugs. He also blamed alcohol, which had been banned in Libya shortly after he took power in 1969.[1][2] Gaddafi also claimed that the protests against his rule were a "colonialist plot" by foreign countries to control oil and "enslave" Libyan people. He had asserted that he will chase down the protesters and cleanse the country "house by house". Gaddafi had also stated that "those who don't love me do not deserve to live". On 22 February 2011, Gaddafi mentioned China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre which crushed the democratic movement led by students and threatened widespread killings against dissidents in an appearance on state television as the revolt against his government consolidated its grip on the eastern half of the country and spread to the suburbs of Tripoli.[3]
Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has stated that family will "fight to the last man and woman and bullet".[4] He denied wrongdoing by government forces. "We are not killing our fellow citizens. We are not dropping bombs on them. We and our loyal army have shown unprecedented tolerance towards our own people, who are already armed with tanks and heavy artillery. But even despite that we do not touch innocent civilians." He said that the largest demonstration the opposition had made was of a few thousand people in Bengazi, and that the opposition was made up of terrorists who publicly executed soldiers of the Libyan army on "dozens of videos" on the Internet. He said that "Libya does not use mercenaries, period", and that half of Libya's population are blacks, some of whom were being falsely labeled as mercenaries. He accused opposition members, whom he called "armed bandits, who are sitting in the tanks", of being "eager to divide the country into two parts — the East and the West."[5]
1 Arms traffic to Gaddafi
2 Treatment of civilians
3 Replacement of unwilling soldiers with mercenaries
4 Other methods of suppressing protests
5 Censorship
6 Government media campaign
Arms traffic to Gaddafi[edit]
A weapons cache from "D.P.R. of Korea" found at the Ajdabiya checkpoint during the Libyan Civil War.
Russia got billions of dollars worth of arms deals with Gaddafi and government officials were also late to condemn the massacres of civilians.[6] The EU's arms trafficking watchdog organization has observed flights between Tripoli and Belarus. Some of the planes had visited a military base in Baranovichi, Belarus, which has a dedicated military base that only handles stockpiled weaponry and military equipment. Gaddafi's sons have attended Belarusian-Russian military exercises before.[7]
Treatment of civilians[edit]
During ongoing international military operations in Libya to enforce a no-fly zone, the National Transitional Council claimed that Gaddafi was importing civilians to Misrata to use as human shields for pro-Gaddafi tanks and soldiers in an effort to deter airstrikes.[8]
Replacement of unwilling soldiers with mercenaries[edit]
Human Rights Watch said it had seen no evidence of mercenaries being used in eastern Libya. This contradicted widespread earlier reports in the international media that African soldiers had been flown in to fight rebels in the region as Gaddafi sought to keep control.
Soon after Gaddafi started to fight against civilians evidence surfaced that Libyan military units have refused to shoot protesters and Gaddafi had hired foreign mercenaries to do the job. Gaddafi's ambassador to India confirmed that defection of military units had indeed led to such a decision. Video footage of this started to leak out of the country.[4]
Nigerians reported advertisements for mercenaries in Nigerian newspapers in the early days of the conflict.[4] One group of mercenaries from Niger, who had been recruited from the streets with promises of money, included a soldier of just 13 years of age.[9] On 18 February, it was reported that armed forces with military members from Chad were operating in Benghazi, having been "paid with 5,000 (Dinars) and provided with the latest car models to 'get rid' of Libyan citizen-demonstrators."[10] On 21 February, a lawyer working in Benghazi said that a local security committee formed by native civilians had taken control of the city and had arrested 36 mercenaries from Chad, Niger and Sudan who were allegedly hired by Gaddafi's body guards to fight in the city.[11] On 22 February, there were reports of mercenaries from Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, Mali, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco, and possibly even Asia and Eastern Europe, fighting in Bayda. Mercenaries allegedly killed 150 people in the city of Bayda.[12] Various other reports told of Chadians operating in Southern Libya, Benghazi and Tripoli.[13] Mercenaries from Chad, Mali and Niger were reportedly working in the rest of eastern Libya.[14] On 23 February, Gaddafi reportedly deployed mercenaries from nearby countries such as Mali, Niger and Chad with some mercenaries from Chad and Niger reportedly in Bengazi and other eastern cities.[14][15] On 24 February, the Aruba School in the coastal town of Shahhat became the prison for almost 200 suspected pro-Gaddafi mercenaries. They are reportedly part of Libya's Khamis Brigade, the well-equipped 32nd brigade led by Khamis Gaddafi.[16] Rebel forces claimed that after the fall of Bin Jawad to Gaddafi's forces, mercenaries publicly raped, mutilated, and executed captured fighters.[17]
Gaddafi's former Chief of Protocol Nouri Al Misrahi stated in an interview with the Al Jazeera that Nigerien, Malian, Chadian and Kenyan mercenaries are among foreign soldiers helping fight the uprising on behalf of Gaddafi.[18] On 25 February, speculation that members of the Zimbabwe National Army were covertly fighting in Libya grew as Zimbabwe’s Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa avoided giving a straight answer to a question posed in Parliament about it.[19] On the same day, the Foreign Ministry of Chad denied allegations that mercenaries were fighting for Gaddafi, although he admitted it was possible that individuals had joined such groups.[20]
According to African Union chairman Jean Ping, the "NTC seems to confuse black people with mercenaries,". Ping said that for the rebels, "All blacks are mercenaries. If you do that, it means (that the) one-third of the population of Libya, which is black, is also mercenaries. They are killing people, normal workers, mistreating them."[21]
In some cases misidentifications have been reported. Peter Bouckaert reported one case of captured soldiers in Bayda who seemed to be from southern Libya.[22] Libya has a significant black population that could be mistaken for mercenaries but are actually serving in the regular army.[23] Also, many Chadian soldiers who fought for Gaddafi in past conflicts with Chad were given Libyan citizenship.[23]
The Daily Telegraph studied the case of a sixteen-year-old captured Chadian child soldier in Bayda. The boy, who had previously been a shepherd in Chad, had gone to a border town to look for work. At a bus stop, a Libyan man had offered him a job and a free flight to Tripoli, but in the end he had been airlifted to shoot opposition members in Eastern Libya. Othman Fadil Othman, the Gaddafi official who had hired the boy in Chad, was captured along the boy in the airport and he claimed he did not know either that they were sent to shoot opposition members. However, according to the Telegraph, "It seemed more likely that Mr Othman was trying to save his skin than tell the truth. A beefy, confident man of 30, with three wives and several children back home – he told us with a smirk – he spent a career as a party organiser in Gaddafi's bizarre Soviet-style dictatorship, telling people what to do. He worked for the youth wing headed by the dictator's son Saeef. Mr Othman still couldn't quite bring himself to condemn the colonel. It was painfully obvious that he was hopelessly unsuited for Gaddafi's attempt to terrorise his own people into submission. Like nearly all the captives Mr Othman had no military training. Unleashing thugs and mercenaries like him had backfired disastrously."[24]
Non-aligned Yugoslavia and its successor Balkan countries have had long and friendly relations with Libya since Josip Broz Tito's era, with cooperation ranging from civil engineering to military trade. In particular, many Yugoslav planes including Soko G-2 Galeb were exported to Libya, and some were shot down during imposing of a no-fly zone.[25] In response to unconfirmed allegations that Gaddafi hired Serbian pilots and training officers during the early stages of the Libyan uprising,[26] the Serbian Ministry of Defence denied that any of its active or retired personnel were participating in the events in Libya, calling the allegations "total stupidity". Serbia has suspended all military trade with Libya, in accordance with UN resolution 1973.[27][28] The rumors of Serbian and Ukrainian military staff training and helping Gaddafi forces have also been heard in Libya at the beginning of the conflict, and were reported by Al Jazeera from two Libyan colonels who defected to Malta.[29][30] However, when asked by Serbian TV Pink, Gaddafi said that opposition forces tried to bribe a Serbian officer to say that he was mercenary for Gaddafi, which he refused, quoting this incident as an example of a failed war propaganda.[31] Miroslav Lazanski, a military expert from ex-Yugoslavia, born in Slovenia but now based in Belgrade, claimed the allegations were nonsense, since Serbian pilots never flew the Sukhoi aircraft that comprised the backbone of the Libyan Air Force.[32]
In June 2011, Amnesty International said it found no evidence of foreign mercenaries being used, saying the black Africans claimed to be "mercenaries" were in fact "sub-Saharan migrants working in Libya," and described the use of mercenaries as a "myth" that "inflamed public opinion" and led to lynchings and executions of black Africans by rebel forces.[33]
Other methods of suppressing protests[edit]
Gaddafi offered an automobile, money and weapons for gangs of three people who will be accompanied by one Gaddafi's officials to drive around Tripoli to deter opposition activities.[34]
The population of some cities were loyal to Gaddafi, one example is his hometown of Sirte which has been well developed.[35] Control over Tripoli came in large part from several elite security brigades, which were well-supplied with arms and training while the regular army was somewhat neglected in order to guard against potential coups.[36] Southwestern Libya contains a large population of sub-Saharan Africans, primarily Chadian refugees who Gaddafi settled there in the 1970s–1980s.[37] Gaddafi had also been recruiting soldiers from among the Tuareg people in southwestern Libya, although the tribe as a whole have announced their support[38] for the protesters.
Internationally, several Latin American nations including Venezuela and Cuba released statements of supports for Gaddafi due to shared social revolutionary backgrounds and alliances.[39][40]
Censorship[edit]
International journalists were banned[41][42] by the Libyan authorities[43] from reporting from Libya except by invitation of the Gaddafi government. Additionally, reports suggest that the Internet was widely disrupted.[44] On 13 February, Gaddafi warned against the use of Facebook, and security organisations arrested several prominent internet activists and bloggers.[45][46][47] The novelist Idris al-Mesmari was arrested hours after giving an interview with Al Jazeera about the police reaction to protests in Benghazi on 15 February.[48] Rolling Internet censorship[49] occurred mostly but not entirely[50] at night; all Internet traffic was abruptly lost on 18 February.[49][51] Furthermore, some satellite phones were jammed.[52] By 8 March, the government had allowed a large number of foreign reporters into Tripoli, however the journalists complained of having their movements restricted and the government has complained of biased reporting.[53]
A BBC News crew was beaten and then lined up against a wall by Gaddafi's soldiers, who then shot next to a journalist's ear and laughed at them.[54]
Government media campaign[edit]
Throughout the uprising, Gaddafi had been able to use the state owned television channel, Al-Jamahiriya, to appear as if he and his forces were in control and to craft a pro-government message. For example, channels that appeal to Libyan youth had broadcast Libyans reciting Gaddafi's historical accomplishments and patriotic songs.[55] On 8 March, the state television broadcast what appeared to be Gaddafi loyalists celebrating in Martyrs' Square in Zawiya; however, analysis determined that the footage was actually shot elsewhere, outside of Zawiya.[56] Analysts speculate that this effort at propaganda may not have much of an effect with a population that is accustomed to such tactics.[55] Gaddafi described the Western intervention as "crusader colonial aggression".[57]
Human rights in Libya under Gaddafi
Human rights violations in the Libyan civil war
Human rights portal
Libya portal
^ Williams, David; Greenhill, Sam (25 February 2011). "Now Gaddafi Blames Hallucinogenic Pills Mixed with Nescafe and bin Laden for Uprisings... Before Ordering Bloody Hit on a Mosque". Daily Mail.
^ "Gaddafi Says Protesters Are on Hallucinogenic Drugs". Reuters. 24 February 2011.
^ "Gaddafi threatens mass killings as popular rebellion spreads". World Socialist Web Site. 23 February 2011.
^ a b c "Special Commentary: Can African Mercenaries Save the Libyan Regime?". The Jamestown Foundation. 23 February 2011.
^ "World To See 'Surprises' In Libya Soon, Says Gaddafi's Son". Bernama. 5 March 2011.
^ "Russia Could Lose Libya Arms Deals". Bangkok Post.
^ "The Tyrant of Belarus: Gaddafi's Friend Far, Far to the North?". Time. 2 March 2011.
^ Karouny, Mariam (21 March 2011). "Misrata rebels say Gaddafi forces use human shield". Reuters. Retrieved 21 March 2011.
^ "Gadhafi Using Foreign Children As Mercenaries In Libya". NPR. 3 March 2011.
^ "Muammar al-Gaddafi is Accused of Hiring Soldiers from Chad, Dozens of People Dead in Benghazi". World News Co. 18 February 2011. Retrieved 23 February 2011.
^ "Benghazi Residents Trash Mercenaries' Barracks". Khaleej Times. 26 February 2011. Retrieved 26 February 2011.
^ Smith, David (22 February 2011). "Has Gaddafi Unleashed a Mercenary Force on Libya?". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 February 2011.
^ "Mercenaries (Soldiers of Fortune, Dogs of War)". Schema-root. 1 July 2009. Retrieved 25 February 2011.
^ a b Baldauf, Scott (23 February 2011). "Qaddafi's Ties to Rebel Groups Scrutinized as 'African Mercenaries' Patrol Libya". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 2 March 2011.
^ "Libya: Who Is Propping Up Gaddafi?". BBC News. Retrieved 25 February 2011.
^ "Libya's Alleged Foreign Mercenaries: More Gaddafi Victims?". The Middle East in Revolt. Time. 22 February 2011. Retrieved 25 February 2011.
^ Chew, Amy (13 March 2011). "'Massacre' of Rebels in Bin Jawad". The Star. Retrieved 14 March 2011.
^ Namunane, Bernard (25 February 2011). "Kenya: 'Dogs of War' Fighting for Gaddafi". Daily Nation (via AllAfrica.com). Retrieved 15 March 2011.
^ "Zimbabwean Army Helping Gaddafi in Libya". The Zimbabwean. Retrieved 25 February 2011.
^ "Live Blog – Libya". Al Jazeera. 25 February 2011. Retrieved 25 February 2011.
^ "AU: Libya rebels killing black workers". CBS News.
^ "HRW: No Mercenaries in Eastern Libya". Radio Netherlands Worldwide. 2 March 2011. Retrieved 5 March 2011.
^ a b Smith, David (22 February 2011). "Has Gaddafi Unleashed a Mercenary Force on Libya?". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 February 2011.
^ Meo, Nick (27 February 2011). "African Mercenaries in Libya Nervously Await Their Fate". The Daily Telegraph.
^ Wheeler, Virginia (25 March 2011). "French Jets Blow Up Libyan Plane". The Sun. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
^ Milosevic, Sasa (28 February 2011). "Serbia: Reactions to the Story of Serbian Mercenaries in Libya". Global Voices Online. Retrieved 11 March 2011.
^ Dagbladet, Svenska (2 March 2011). "The Revolution That Came from Serbia". Presseurop. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
^ Obradovic, Pedja (22 February 2011). "Belgrade Denies Serbian Planes Bombed Libya Protesters". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
^ "Libya: Serb Pilots Used Against Demonstrators". Agenzia Giornalistica Italia. 26 February 2011. Retrieved 24 March 2011.
^ "Defying Gadhafi's Crackdown; Analysis with Dr. Drew Pinsky; Interview with Kevin Smith". CNN.
^ "Gaddafi's Interview for Serbian TV Pink". belgraded.com. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
^ "Let do Gadafijevog rodnog grada (in Serbian). Politika. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
^ Cockburn, Patrick (24 June 2011). "Amnesty questions claim that Gaddafi ordered rape as weapon of war". The Independent. London. Retrieved 26 June 2011.
^ "Armed Pro-Gadhafi Gangs Roll in Libyan Capital". Fox News. Associated Press. 26 February 2011. Retrieved 18 June 2012.
^ Youssef, Nancy A. (28 February 2011). "A Backwater No More, Gadhafi's Hometown Becomes Crossroad". The Miami Herald. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
^ Levinson, Charles (3 March 2011). "Rebels Seek Airstrikes by Foreign Forces". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
^ "Libya, Chad Row over 'Mercenaries'". Afrol.com. 2 March 2011. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
^ "Will Libyan Tribes Decide Gaddafi Fate?". OnIslam.net. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
^ "From Latin America to the Arab World – What's Going On in Libya?". VHeadline.com. 28 February 2011. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
^ Olson, Alexandra (22 February 2011). "Gadhafi's Latin American Leftist Allies Mixed on Libya; Ortega Supportive, Chavez Silent". Canadian Press (via Google News). Retrieved 3 March 2011.
^ "Libya Fights Protesters with Snipers, Grenades". ABC News. Retrieved 23 February 2011.
^ "Libya Witness: 'It's Time for Revolt. We Are Free'". Euronews. 23 February 2011. Retrieved 23 February 2011.
^ Williams, Jon (19 February 2011). "The Editors: The Difficulty of Reporting from Inside Libya". BBC News. Retrieved 23 February 2011.
^ "Auswärtiges Amt – Besorgnis über Gewalt in Libyen" (in German). German Foreign Office. 21 February 2011. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
^ "Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi Warns Against Facebook". Allfacebook.com. 14 February 2011. Retrieved 19 February 2011.
^ "Libyan Dictator Warns Against Using Facebook, Activists Arrested". Arabic Network For Human Rights Informations. 13 February 2011. Retrieved 19 February 2011.
^ "Gaddafi Warns Against Use of Facebook, Activists Arrested". IFEX. Retrieved 19 February 2011.
^ "Libyan Police Stations Torched". Al Jazeera English. 16 February 2011. Archived from the original on 16 February 2011. Retrieved 16 February 2011.
^ a b "Craig Labovitz's Blog". Monkey.org. Retrieved 23 February 2011.
^ Cowie, James (February 2011). "Libyan Disconnect". Renesys. Retrieved 23 February 2011.
^ "Traffic – Google Transparency Report". Google. Retrieved 23 February 2011.
^ "Thuraya Satellite Telecom Says Jammed by Libya". Reuters. 24 February 2011. Retrieved 28 February 2011.
^ Beaumont, Peter (8 March 2011). "Libya Regime Treating Journalists Like Idiots – But Ones Who Are Useful to Them". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
^ Spencer, Richard (9 March 2011). "Libya: BBC Crew Beaten and Given Mock Executions". The Daily Telegraph.
^ a b Mekay, Emad (23 February 2011). "One Libyan Battle Is Fought in Social and News Media". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
^ Kirkpatrick, David (9 March 2011). "Qaddafi Forces Batter Rebels Near Strategic Refinery Town". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 March 2011.
^ "Update 2-Gaddafi Says Will Arm Civilians To Defend Libya". Reuters. 19 March 2011.
Libyan Civil War (2011)
Part of the Arab Spring
15 February–18 March
19 March–31 May
June–15 August
16 August–23 October
National Liberation Army
Free Libyan Air Force
NCLO
Armed Forces of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
Libyan Army
Libyan Air Force
Libyan Navy
Revolutionary Guard Corps
Cyrenaica
First Battle of Benghazi
First Battle of Brega
Battle of Ra's Lanuf
Battle of Bin Jawad
Second Battle of Brega
Battle of Ajdabiya
Second Battle of Benghazi
First Gulf of Sidra offensive
Third Battle of Brega
Battle of Brega–Ajdabiya road
Cyrenaica campaign
Fourth Battle of Brega
Ra's Lanuf raid
Sabha clashes
Fezzan campaign
Battle of Sabha
Ghadames raid
Tripolitania
First Tripoli clashes
Battle of Misrata
First Battle of Zawiya
Nafusa Mountain Campaign
Battle of Wazzin
Battle of Gharyan
Battle of the Misrata frontline
Zliten uprising
Battle of Zliten
Battle of Tawergha
Zawiya skirmish
Msallata clashes
Rebel coastal offensive
Second Battle of Zawiya
Ras Ajdir clashes
Battle of Tripoli
Second Gulf of Sidra offensive
Battle of Sirte
Battle of Bani Walid
Second Tripoli clashes
NATO operations
Operation Ellamy
Opération Harmattan
Operation Mobile
Operation Odyssey Dawn
Operation Unified Protector
Anti-Gaddafi
Mustafa Abdul Jalil
Mahmoud Jibril
Abdul Fatah Younis
Abdul Hafiz Ghoga
Suleiman Mahmoud
Omar El-Hariri
Jalal al-Digheily
Ali Tarhouni
Ali Abd-al-Aziz al-Isawi
Fathi Terbil
Abdelhakim Belhadj
Abu Oweis
Mahdi al-Harati
Pro-Gaddafi
Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi
Khamis Gaddafi
Mutassim Gaddafi
Abdullah Senussi
Ali Sharif al-Rifi
Moussa Ibrahim
Abuzed Omar Dorda
Baghdadi Mahmudi
Mansour Dhao
Saif al-Arab Gaddafi
Ahmed al-Gaddafi al-Qahsi
Mohammed Abdullah al-Senussi
James G. Stavridis
Charles Bouchard
Ralph Jodice
Rinaldo Veri
Mohammed Nabbous
Iman al-Obeidi
Prince Mohammed El Senussi
Prince Idris bin Abdullah al-Senussi
Hussein Sadiq al Musrati
Moussa Koussa
Shukri Ghanem
Places, buildings
and structures
Abu Salim prison
Bab al-Azizia
Fist Crushing a U.S. Fighter Plane Sculpture
Giuliana Bridge
Green Square/Martyrs' Square
Maydan al Shajara
Mitiga International Airport
People's Hall, Tripoli
Domestic responses
Gaddafi's response to the protests
Gaddafi's response to the Civil War
Rape allegations
International reactions
International reactions to military intervention
Protests against military intervention
U.S. reactions to military intervention
International reactions to Gaddafi's death
Factional violence in Libya
2012 Benghazi attack
2014–present Civil War
2017 Manchester Arena bombing
Democratic Party (Libya)
Libyan Freedom and Democracy Campaign
National Transitional Council
Topple the Tyrants
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 65/265
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970
Voice of Free Libya
Zenga Zenga
Italics denote operations or battles related to the military intervention in Libya
Wikiquotes
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Muammar_Gaddafi%27s_response_to_the_2011_Libyan_Civil_War&oldid=902687838"
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In Re Application for Relief Pursuant to N.J.S.A. 33:1-12.18
Opinion Date: September 16, 2008
LIQUOR LICENSE — Failure to timely renew a liquor license can cause loss of the license, but substantial compliance with the renewal provisions, including a licensee’s conduct in reasonably pursuing its available remedies to obtain the license renewal, can serve to toll the renewal deadline.
Named holders of a retail liquor license had last renewed their license for the 2000-2001 term. Applications for renewal for the following two terms were not acted upon in a timely fashion by the municipality. In a contested matter before the Director of the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, the Director found that the municipality’s failure to act timely was a “de facto denial” of the renewal applications. The Director also found the license lapsed in 2001 because of a failure to timely file renewal applications for 2004-2007 and because no appeal was taken for the denial of the 2001-2003 terms. The Director also noted proofs of minimal sales and sales tax paid for the years 1998-2000.
The licensees appealed its petition denial for license renewal, arguing that the law disfavors forfeiture of a liquor license and allows for activation of a license even after extended periods of apparent inactivity. The licensees argued that the primary fault for any license inactivity rested with the municipality who allegedly thwarted their efforts to renovate and sell their premises and license.
The Appellate Division remanded the matter to the lower court on the question of substantial compliance. The Court held that the Director had to evaluate whether the licensees’ conduct in reasonably pursuing their available remedies entitled them, as a matter of fairness, to an opportunity to take practical steps necessary to realize the value of the license.
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Back Book Title The Life of De'Ath
The Life of De'Ath
Author - Majella Cullinane
Country - New Zealand
Publisher - Steele Roberts Aotearoa,New Zealand
Bib. Info - 246p.
After a family tragedy, Theodore De'Ath moves to Otago to live with his grandparents. He becomes fascinated by the Underworld, reading the Inferno, Paradise Lost and Faust. When war breaks out in Europe, unlike his peers, Theodore is not swept up with the fervour to enlist, but when conscription comes in 1916 he is obliged to join the New Zealand Division in France. Although expert on Hell in literature, it is not until confronted with the reality of war that he understands its true meaning. Soon he has to survive as a deserter, risking court martial and a death sentence. The Life of De'Ath draws on historical events: New Zealand military involvement at the Western front, anti-German sentiment during World War I, and the New Zealand soldiers who were shot for desertion between 1916 and 1918. At its heart, though, is the story of a young man going against the tide of social and family pressure, and struggling to express his feelings for Elizabeth Paterson before it's too late.
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Article, FineArt, Literature, Photo » INTRODUCTION TO COLOUR STUDIES
INTRODUCTION TO COLOUR STUDIES
colour studies
A History of Color, Color Wheel, and Psychological Impact of Color
nagennews.com , April 23,2017 / One of the most important communication tools easily picked out by the human eye is color. The Optical Society of America classifies a range of between 7.5 and 10 million hues, which the normal human eye can theoretically distinguish (Eco, 1985). At the same time, the Dictionary of Color (Maerz & Paul, 1953) lists just over 3000 English color names. Gage (1995) suggested that as a result of our inability to call so many colors by name, the modern color systems have resorted to numbers in order to distinguish perceptible differences of hues and values. For many color is a way to express feelings, for others it affects how they feel, and yet for some others the notion of color is so intertwined with culture and religion that color itself takes on profound meaning. According to Nassau (1998):
The term ‘color’ describes at least three subtly different aspects of reality. First, it denotes a property of an object, as in “green grass” . Second, it refers to a characteristic of light rays, as in “grass efficiently reflects green light ... while absorbing light of other colors more or less completely”. And, third, it specifies a class of sensations, as in the brain’s interpretation of the eye’s detection of sunlight selectively reflected from grass results in the perception of green ”
Some contend that the light waves themselves may interact with neural activity causing the manifestation of certain behaviors. Color is a powerful element in graphic design as it can change an observer’s mood and helps to convey messages without words. Advertisers and designers are well aware that consumers are not guided entirely by logic in making purchases, and are driven by less identifiable factors such as emotions. Graphic design, like any other form of art, reflects society and its color usage is tied to how its targeted audience interprets meaning.
The ancient Egyptians have been recorded to have been using color for cures and ailments.They worshiped the sun, knowing that without light there can be no life. They looked at nature and copied it in many aspects of their lives. The floors of their temples were often green - as the grass which then grew alongside their river, the Nile. Blue was a very important color to the Egyptians too; the color of the sky. There are lists on papyrus dating back to 1550 BC of color "cures". The Chinese also apparently practiced Color Healing. The Nei/ching, 2000 years old, records color diagnoses.
The Greeks considered color only as a science. Hippocrates, amongst others, abandoned the metaphysical side of color, concentrating only on the scientific aspect. Aristotle mixed color Some of the early studies and theories about light were done by Aristotle. He discovered that by mixing two colors, a third is produced. He did this with a yellow and blue piece of glass, which when brought together produced green. He also discovered that light travels in waves. Plato and Pythagoras also studied light.
The philosophers Goethe and Schopenhauer wrote on the subject but it is from the work of the chemist Robert Boyle that we know red, yellow and blue to be the primary colors. Earlier, Michelangelo tried to identify them, but included green in his results.
nagennews.com ,
1611, Aron Sigfrid Forsius's Color Wheel , nagennews.com
Aron Sigfrid Forsius was a Finnish astronomer, priest and NeoPlatonist. In a previously undiscovered text, he set out a system of color that included his diagrams. One diagram presents a color sphere that arranges colors by opposing pairs: red and blue, yellow and green, and white and black. His diagrams date from 1611 but lay undiscovered in the Royal Library in Stockholm until until the 20th century; they were unearthed and presented before the first congress of the International Color Association in 1969. He wrote:
If, however, the origin and the relationship of the colors are to be correctly observed, then one must begin with the five basic median colors, which are red, blue, green and yellow, with grey from white and black, and one must heed their grading, and whether they move nearer to the white because of their paleness or nearer to the black because of their darkness.» This is Forsius’ own description of his fundamental thoughts about his system. The construction is, as far as we can tell, the first drawn color-system
1672, Newton's Colour Wheel ,nagennews.com
Isaac Newton (1642-1726) could be credited with the first model of perceptual color space, essentially a color wheel with white in the center. In the late 1660s, he starts experimenting with his ’celebrated phenomenon of colors.’ At the time, people thought that color was a mixture of light and darkness, and that prisms colored light. Hooke was a proponent of this theory of color, and had a scale that went from brilliant red, which was pure white light with the least amount of darkness added, to dull blue, the last step before black, which was the complete extinction of light by darkness. Newton realizes this theory was false. Light enters the prism from the top right, and is refracted by the glass. The violet is bent more than the yellow and red, so the colors separate. Newton set up a prism near his window, and projected a beautiful spectrum 22 feet onto the far wall. Further, to prove that the prism was not coloring the light, he refracted the light back together.
1686 Richard Waller's Colour Chart, nagennews.com
Waller’s intention was to make a plain standard of color nomenclature for descriptive use in natural philosophy. This is the first color illustration to be found in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions. It is a hand-finished pigment spot chart based upon the work of Richard Waller FRS (c.1660-1715) whose 1686 paper ‘A catalog of simple and mixt colours with a proper specimen of each…’ contained the prototype pantones. Waller’s original, presented to the Royal Society, no longer exists: sadly it was painted on glass…
1708 Claude Boutet, Color Wheel, nagennews.com
Artists were fascinated by Newton’s clear demonstration that light alone was responsible for color. His most useful idea for artists was his conceptual arrangement of colors around the circumference of a circle, which allowed the painters’ primaries (red, yellow, blue) to be arranged opposite their complementary colors (e.g. red opposite green), as a way of denoting that each complementary would enhance the other’s effect through optical contrast. This circular diagram became the model for many color systems of the 18th and 19th centuries. Claude Boutet’s painter’s circle of 1708 was probably the first to be based on Newton’s circle. Unable to represent spectral red with any pigment, Boutet substituted two reds – fire-red and crimson – omitting one of Newton’s two blues. To compound the confusion, the colorist evidently misread two of the labels, “orange” and “violet.”
1741, Gautier, color-printed picture, nagennews.com
Gautier's color-printed picture accompanied one of his many anti-Newtonian publications about color theories. The band of color at the center imitates an illustration in Newton's Optics but "proves" Gautier's assertion that all colors cannot be found in Newton's spectrum of light.
J. Heinrich Lambert, strongly influenced by the work of Tobias Mayer, presented the first three-dimensional colour-system in 1772. nagennews.com.
German astronomer and mathematician, Tobias Mayer, gave a lecture in 1758, in which he attempted to identify the exact number of colors the eye could perceive. He stated that there were 12 gradations between each color, having chosen red, yellow and blue as his primary colors (vermillion, massicot and azurite among pigments), with white and black only involved in lightening or darkening colors. They weren’t colors themselves, but “agents” of light and darkness. He believed that different colors only became visible to the eye when 1/12 of a color was mixed with a primary, so red plus 1/12 yellow would yield a new visible color to the eye. No new color would be visible until you got to red plus 2/12 yellow. In Mayer’s system r12 (12 units of red)=red, r6y6=orange, b6y6=green, b6r6=violet, etc. In his system, there were 91 colors created by these formulas. In 1775, Mayer’s color triangle was published.
1810, Goethe’s color wheel, nagennews.com.
Goethe did two experiments to prove his theory that color resulted from the interplay of light and darkness. His observations with a prism showed him that light did not split into seven continuous rainbow hues but that the beam had a red edge, turning to yellow, which became white in the middle until it passed into green shades that darkened to blue along its other edge.
His Theory of Colors, published in 1810 made note of phenomena such as colored shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration. Goethe did not see darkness as the absence of light, but as a polar opposite that interacts with it, causing the sensation of color.
Modern natural science sees darkness as a complete nothingness. According to this view, the light which streams into a dark space has no resistance from the darkness to overcome. Goethe pictures to himself that light and darkness relate to each other like the north and south pole of a magnet. The darkness can weaken the light in its working power. Conversely, the light can limit the energy of the darkness. In both cases color arises.
(Steiner, Goethe’s World View, Chapter III The Phenomena of the World of Colors, 1897)
Yellow is a light which has been dampened by darkness; Blue is a darkness weakened by the light.
Newton’s color wheel contained the seven colors of the rainbow that he observed. Goethe proposed a 6-colour symmetric wheel where the colors were diametrically opposed to each other, as they “reciprocally evoke each other in the eye. Thus, yellow demands violet; orange, blue; red, green; and vice versa: thus… all intermediate gradations reciprocally evoke each other; the simpler color demanding the compound, and vice versa.” (Goethe, Theory of Colors, 1810) This opened the way to color wheels with harmonious and complementary relationships.
1839, Philipp Otto's Color Wheels for Artsts, nagennews.com.
Around the same time as Goethe, Phillip Otto Runge, a German painter and draughtsman, developed his model of 3-dimensional color spheres. Runge was interested in color relationships and felt that artists had been abandoned by scientists because scientists seemed to be solely interested in the properties of color that related to refracted light. His spheres arranged colors by hue and also included black and white, introducing tones, shades and tints into his color system
1839, Chevreul’s colour wheel, nagennews.com.
Michel Eugène Chevreul was a trained chemist who became involved with the process of dyeing when he was appointed as the director of carpet manufacturer, Gobelin. He noted that the colors of the dyes often did not have the effect desired and that this was due to optics and not chemistry. In 1839 he produced his seminal work, De la loi du contrast simultané des couleurs, to provide provide a systematic way to see colors, where he dealt with the “simultaneous contrast” of colors. His work underlined the active role the brain has in the perception of color. He showed that a color will give the color next to it a complementary tint, so that yellow next to green will receive a violet tint. This is where he stated that:
Two adjacent colors, when seen by the eye, will appear as dissimilar as possible.
Chevreul developed a 72-segment color wheel where there are 12 main colours in each segment, further dividing into 6 zones. Each colour is divided into 20 sections to indicate the levels of brightness. He designed a 3-dimensional colour circle (right) that showed the 20 levels of brightness on the flat plane – in the drawing you can see the orange moving toward white. However, rising from the center is a line representing black and it forms an axis with the color that is broken into 10 segments showing the color becoming darker. The numbering system indicates that 0N (N for “nero” or black) is the pure color and it moves toward black in increasing increments of “N” until 9N is almost black (9 parts black with 1 part color) and 10N would be black.
The work of Chevreul, is of particular importance as he experimented with the affects of placing different colors alongside one another. He examined the optical effect which is now used in color printing and color television. It was Chevreul whose experiments formed the scientific basis for the work of impressionist painters such as Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh.
Through Chevruel's research and our own experiences, we know that colors are not static. Colors are similar to people--their personalities change and they can be influenced by close associations. -- Joen Wolfrom in "The Magic Effects of Color."
1905, Albert Munsell's 3-D Colour Wheel, nagennews.com
While attending the Boston Normal Art School in the late 19th century, Albert Munsell was keenly aware that a practical theory of color did not exist. From his own work and experiments, he developed the Munsell Color System. Using his system made it possible to discuss color scientifically. He defined color in terms of Hue, Value and Chroma. Hue was defined as the actual color, red, blue, green, etc. Value was defined as how light or dark a color is. Chroma was defined as how strong or weak a color is. He published a standard color atlas defining the Munsell Color Standard which, before his work, had been an impossible task.
His work was embraced by the scientific community. In 1914 he was invited to present his findings to the scientific communities of England, France and Germany. His theory is still taught today.
In the 20th century the Swiss artist Johannes Itten, who worked and taught at the Bauhaus School of Art in Germany, continued Chevreul's analysis and established the rules of color theory as they are now taught in art and design schools throughout the world. Itten is attributed with being the first person to associate colors with four types of people. However, the best known of Itten's work is probably the twelve point color wheel which is in wide use today on paint charts for home decorators, in dyeing kits and in hairdressers' color charts. Itten would have approved of this development as he sought to establish an objective approach to support our intuitive sense of color. He likened his rules to those governing music, in particular, the analogy between his seven different types of color and the musicians' scales and rules of musical harmony.
1921, Johannes Itten' Color Wheel, nagennews.com.Johannes Itten was a Swiss painter, textile designer, teacher, writer and theorist, and a contemporary of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. He studied under Adolf Hölzel, a German artist and painter, before joining the Bauhaus in 1919. Among Itten’s many contributions as a color theorist is his consideration of the psychological characterstics of colors; he felt that characteristics of a color could influence how a person feels when they perceive that colour. He believed that people didn’t need training to find their own “subjective colors.” One of his major contributions was on the color wheel. This 12-colour wheel is his expansion of Hölzel’s color wheel and it uses red, yellow and blue as its primary colors. There are also 3 secondary colors (mixing the 3 primary) of green, orange, and violet and 6 tertiary colours (mixing a primary with a secondary color), which are red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet and red-violet. Primary colors are positioned equidistant from one another and are connected by a bridge using secondary and tertiary colors primary color wheel.
PRIMARY COLORS Red, yellow and blue :: In traditional color theory, these are the 3 pigment colors that can not be mixed or formed by any combination of other colors. All other colors are derived from these 3 hues secondary color wheel
SECONDARY COLORS Orange, green and violet :: Colors created by a mixture of two primaries. tertiary color wheel
TERTIARY COLORS Red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet and red-violet :: Colors created by a mixture of primary and secondary hues.
COMPLEMENTARY COLORS Colors located opposite each other on a color wheel.
ANALOGOUS COLORS Colors located close together on a color wheel.
Psychological Effects of Color on Viewers
nagennews.com , The popular, applied, and scientific literature are replete with statements regarding the content of color associations. For any given color, these associations are multifarious and, at times, contradictory, making clear conclusions about color associations and their implications elusive. Research suggests that clarity on this issue may be gained by taking context into consideration. It is likely that color carries different meanings in different contexts and, therefore, that color has different implications for feelings, thoughts, and behaviors in different contexts.( Elliot et al, 2007)
Color is ubiquitously present in our visual experience of the world. It is thus not surprising that over the past century or so various scientific properties of colour have been studied intensively, yet the psychological impacts of colour have not yet fully explored (Wright, 1998), We know very little about the effect of color on moods, behaviour, and thinking (Fehrman & Fehrman, 2004; Whitfield & Wiltshire, 1990). Some authors claim that people make up their minds within 90 seconds of their initial interactions with either people or products, and about 62-90 percent of the assessment is based on colors alone. Although, one may question the validity of such generalized type of claims, which are not factoring elements like income, culture, age as well as other pertinent factors, nevertheless, it is reasonable to believe that tasteful use of colors in a balanced design can be an advantage for differentiating products in the minds of certain types of consumers with finer tastes. Colour also impact moods and feelings towards certain products, you may prefer your milk in a white container, because of concerns about cleanliness and its association with health. But if you suggest to a Persian (as the above Chart suggest) that:
Yellow shines with optimism, enlightenment, and happiness. Shades of golden yellow carry the promise of a positive future. Yellow will advance from surrounding colors and instill optimism and energy, as well as spark creative thoughts
She may look at you in total disbelief, since for more than six millennium, yellow in her culture has been a symbolical representation of weakness and malaise. In fact, at the start of every new year, Persians jump over small bonfires wishing "the vigor of your redness to me, the yellowness of my malaise to you". In France
"La rose jaune représente le mensonge, la trahison, pour se faire pardonner une infidélité"
In font of traffic lights a green signal means you can go but the yellow light warns you of danger, and tells you to stop! In fact, a growing body of empirical research indicates that the diversity of cultural and personal experiences are the main determinants of attitudes and feelings towards various colours. According to these studies consumers try to improve facets of their self - image by purchasing and using commercial brands that offer them such a possibility of improvement . Furthermore, research on self - image congruence suggests :
Because negative stereotypical images appear to feed into purchase-related decision processes at early stages, due caution should be exerted in primary data collection and brand positioning. Primary data collection should capture both positive and negative brand-related meanings attributed by consumers. Because the results show that undesired congruity has an incremental explanatory effect, positive versus negative symbolic meanings are clearly not just “two sides of the same coin”. Consequently, brand positioning should define its strategy by simultaneously maximizing both the closeness to desired symbolic meanings and the distance to undesired symbolic associations (Bosnjak and Brand, 2008).
Some have argued that certain colors convey the idea or feeling of luxury. However, as Cornell (2002) argues:
'Luxury is particularly slippery to define. A strong element of human involvement, very limited supply and the recognition of value by others are key components ... So between premium and luxury, in marketing terms, is a difference of degree.'
In other words, it is positive symbolic meaning and the recognition of value by others that determines what is luxury or what is an undesirable product, and color may play a minor role in this framework. Moreover, as Vigneron and Johnson, (2004) argue the perception of what is and is not a luxury brand, as well as the amount of luxury contained in a brand, may be dependent on the context and the people concerned.
In fact, there are no universal link from a particular color to a specific emotional impact.
Nevertheless, Woodson, Tillman, et al. (1992) have argued that
Although color researchers have not always been able to quantify the precise effects of various colors or light levels on humans, their research and experience seem to indicate that certain colors and light conditions often elicit typical repeatable reactions”
Thus, the relationship between brands and color may be related to both typical repeatable reactions and on the perceived appropriateness of the color being used for the particular brand by a culture. According to some studies it’s far more important for a brand’s colors to support the image that a designer wants to portray instead of trying to align with stereotypical color associations.
Furthermore, researchers have found that predicting consumer reaction to color appropriateness in relation to the product is far more important than the individual color itself, and that there is a real connection between the use of colors and customers’ perceptions of a brand’s personality.
Color and Moods
nagennews.com , Some empirical studies claim that shopping environments can evoke mood responses in consumers (Machleit and Eroglu, 2000) and that these moods, in turn, impact shoppers behaviours and their buying patterns (Donovan and Rossiter 1982, Darden and Babin 1994, Sherman, Mathur and Smith 1997). Studies on environmental psychology suggest that shoppers have one of two responses to an atmosphere: (i) approach, (ii) avoidance (Turley & Milliman, 2000). Approach and avoidance behaviors can create four different sets of outcomes: (1) a desire to stay or leave; (2) a desire to explore and interact or a tendency to want to leave and not explore the store; (3) a desire to communicate with others or to ignore them; and (4) feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction (Hoffman & Turley, 2002). Hoffman and Turley (2002) recognized color as one of four atmospherics of any facility. Some studies claim store-interior color influences feelings, store and merchandise image, simulated purchases, purchasing rates, time spent in the store and retail display attraction (Bellizzi, Crowley and Hasty 1983, Bellizzi and Hite 1992, Crowley 1993), it is still unclear which emotions can be evoked by colors in the store interior. Indeed, the color stimuli used in previous studies did not represent a broad-based and balanced sample of color stimuli.
Color and Performance
nagennews.com , Many researches try to explore the impact of color on performance, attitude and productivity of workers, students or athletes. According to some psychologists, our physiological reactions to color are part of the unconscious that contains memories and ideas inherited from our ancestors over the course of evolution. in other words they are biologically inherited from the cumulative experiences of our species with our environments. Kurt Goldstein (1942) observed that patients with Parkinson’s disease and other organic diseases of the central nervous system responded in a different way when they were exposed to green or red colors. He noticed that the red color had a tendency to worsen his patients’ pathological condition and green seemed to improve it. Based on his experiments and observations with a very small sample (3-5) of these brain-damaged individuals, Goldstein attempted to develop a theory that could be applied for all people. Thus, theorized that red (and yellow) relative to green (and blue) would impair performance on activities in which exactness is required . Several researchers, however, criticized the study noting that Goldstein’s sample was too small, the color stimuli were inconsistently placed on pieces of colored paper, colored walls, or colored clothing, and the observations were never accompanied with any meaningful statistical analysis (Nakshian, 1964). Beach, Wise, and Wise (1988) noted that:
“Goldstein’s theory was based on the notion that there existed a one to one mapping between color states and emotional states, which seems to be a gross oversimplification of the complex processes linking color and behavior”
Color as stimulant
nagennews.com , In 1908, psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson discovered that mild electrical shocks could be used to motivate rats to complete a maze, but when the electrical shocks became too strong, the rats would scurry around in random directions to escape. The experiment demonstrated that increasing stress and arousal levels could help focus motivation and attention on the task at hand, but only up to a certain point, They summarized their findings in a formulation known as Yerkes-Dodson Law, which suggests that there is a relationship between performance and arousal. Increased arousal can help improve performance, but only up to a certain point. At the point when arousal becomes excessive, performance diminishes. Extending the law to the field of colors, some researchers viewed longer wavelength colors (red, orange) as arousing, whereas shorter wavelength colors (green, blue) as calming, and thus inferred that longer wavelength colors, relative to shorter wavelength colors, impair performance on complex tasks.
Soldat, Sinclair, and Mark (1997; see also Sinclair, Soldat, and Mark,1998) presented reason in tasks from the Graduate Record Examination on colored paper and observed that an upbeat red fostered heuristic processing, whereas a depressing blue fostered systematic processing. Hill and Barton(2005) on the other hand have argued that red coloration is a sexually selected, testosterone-dependent signal of male quality in a variety of animals, and in some non-human species a male's dominance can be experimentally increased by attaching artificial red stimuli. They claim that a similar effect can influence the outcome of physical contests in humans — across a range of sports, they also claim to have that wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning, and the results indicate not only that sexual selection may have influenced the evolution of human response to colors, but also that the color of sportswear needs to be taken into account to ensure a level playing field in sport.
In three studies on the effect of color of environment at four homogeneous elementary schools in Wetaskiwin, Alberta, Canada during the 1982-1983 academic school year, Wohlfarth found a significant trend in reduction of the average reported incidence of aggressive and destructive behavior in warm light yellow and a warm light blue painted classrooms. Rosenstein,' in a study of the effect of color on performance, found significant effects on mood. Fabrics in four colors, medium blue, bright red, bright yellow, and neutral (burlap), were used to line the rooms in which subjects took the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). AJI of the studied groups but one, reported themselves to be calm and in good moods while in the blue room. While in the red room, all of the groups but one, reported themselves to be in better moods than when in the yellow and neutral rooms.
Several studies have been conducted on the effects of environmental color on productivity and mood in the workplace. Kwallek and Lewis investigated the effects of bright red, bright green, and white painted walls in otherwise identical offices on production and mood of workers. Subjects in the white office made more errors on a clerical test than subjects in the red office. Kwallek and Lewis also found that the subjects working in the bright red office had significantly lower confusion-bewilderment post-test scores when compared with those working in the bright green office.
To find evidence of change in emotional states due to color, Jacobs and Blandino asked 110 men and 121 women undergraduates to evaluate their moods by completing the Profile of Mood States. The same test was given to all subjects, however, subjects were told that different tests were on different colored paper; blue, green, canary, and red, and that the study was designed to assess the consistency of forms used in psychological testing. Control forms were printed on white paper. Forms were randomly distributed to students. The results showed that the red and green colors significantly affected fatigue states, with green resulting in highest fatigue scores and red resulting in lowest fatigue scores. ----------- by wenny chendran rao
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Academic/Literary quotes
"If you don't agree that the ideal educational environment is one where all parents are self-reliant then you might need me to say a few words about how vouchers would affect Catholic schools. I grew up in Ontario, Canada. Catholic schools there have long received public support: non-Catholic religious and independent schools don't. But in Ontario, almost without exception, these Catholic schools are Catholic in name only. In curriculum, including the health curriculum, they are virtual carbon copies of the government schools. In fact, some parents believe the sex-ed in the government schools is tamer. The bishop has virtually no control over the schools: he is but one vote on a huge board dominated by Catholic teachers-union types."
- Douglas D. Dewey, Executive Vice President, Children's Scholarship Fund, speaking at a Faith & Reason Institute sponsored debate and discussion on the potential benefits and dangers of government vouchers for Catholic schools, 19 May 2000.
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"
- Quotation from Animal Farm, by George Orwell, first published in 1946.
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Our Climate Voices
SARA | NEW YORK, NEW YORK
This interview was conducted by Aletta Brady on April 14, 2017. Katy Bullard contributed to the production of this story.
Sara is a co-founder of the Sunrise movement, an organizer with IfNotNow, and a Croatian New Yorker. This is her story:
“My name is Sara Blazevic and I’m from New York City. I grew up here. My father is from Croatia. My extended family lives in a rural part of Croatia that has been threatened by flooding. The area is under-protected and if anything happens there, it will be under-reported.
During my junior year of college, I was sitting in bed during finals week working on a paper. I was going through my Facebook feed, as one does during finals, and I saw a YouTube video that one of my cousins posted. I clicked on it. I didn’t know what I was looking at. It was a cellphone video taken out of a helicopter flying over a flood zone. I could see this muddy, brown sea with debris floating in it. As the helicopter dropped lower and lower, I realized that the “debris” was people standing on rooftops because the water had risen that high. A massive storm – the kind of storm that only hits once in a thousand years - had hit the Balkans and thousands of people were evacuated and had their homes flooded.
The people in the video looked just like my family. There were old ladies wearing black dresses and head kerchiefs. I felt a ton of fear that my family, that the village where my grandmothers are from and where my cousins live, could have been struck by the storm. I tracked it over the next couple of days. It didn’t end up hitting my family’s village, but what was really striking was that it was so hard to find coverage of the storm. The only thing I could find was when Novak Djokovic, after Wimbledon or the Open or one of those big tennis matches, was talking to the courtside press. He turned to the cameras and said, “You shouldn’t be covering this. You should be covering my country and my people who are dying right now and losing their lives.” For the first time in my life I realized, “wow, my family’s home, this place where I have physical and emotional roots, could literally be swept away by flood waters and no one would know. No one would talk about it.”
Sara in Novigrad, Croatia as a kid.
I thought about the house that my grandma grew up in, where her family hid Partisans in the walls of their house during World War II, where the fascists descended on her village and set up barracks. All that history would just be lost. That was really jarring and striking to realize. I felt really vulnerable. Croatia is one of those parts of the world where terrible things happen and no one talks about it. Most people don’t care about it or even know it exists.
My family back in Croatia didn’t talk much about the flooding. There was this laissez-faire attitude from my cousin who posted the video like, “Yup, this is happening. We will see if it comes this way.” People aren’t neurotic in Croatia the way they are in New York City where I grew up. In NYC, everybody that I know, relative to the rest of the world, is a huge worrier. People move very fast and worry a lot about everything. I remember when Hurricane Sandy was coming towards NYC, every single person I knew was stocking up on all this stuff. People were freaking out.
During the floods in Croatia I remember being like, “why is nobody acting alarmed? Why is my dad not calling me about this? Why isn’t this more of a thing?” My friend in Croatia said that most people were like, “well, if it comes, we’re screwed, and if it doesn’t, we’ll all be great.”
Croatians in their early twenties grew up during a massive civil war. My cousins spent a lot of their childhood in bomb shelters. Their dad has stories about diving in front of his kids to protect them from sniper fire and shield them from shattering windows. Older people grew up during World War II or with parents who lived through WWII. It’s a place where the memory of war and violence is pretty close at hand. There is a widespread belief that we can only do so much to change our future and the world around us. There is a sense of, “why would we get so worried when we can’t control it?”
Sara with cousins in Croatia as a kid.
When I visited Croatia in the summers as a kid, I spent a lot of time playing on the river bank, the same banks that have been flooding more frequently in the past few years. My family’s house is right by this river called Dobra, which means “good.” I remember catching fish in my bucket. I would sit in the water where it was shallow and watch the baby fish swim across my bucket. I remember catching them and putting them back, catching them and putting them back. I would fish with my great-uncle, Ujo. Sometimes we would stand on the bridge—it’s a very little bridge—and fish down the river. I jumped off the bridge into the water when the water was high enough.
I heard all of these stories from my grandmother about that river: that’s where my family would bathe back in the day, that’s where the cows would go to drink water, that’s where beer would get cooled before refrigeration. We had photographs of my grandmother and her brother when they were kids standing in the river washing their hair. I remember feeling moved that this tiny little river could hold so much.
One summer when I was a kid, before I left to go back to New York, early in the morning before our car left to drive to the airport, I ran down to the river. I stood there and meditated on it and said, “Hey, I’ll miss you. I’ll see you next year.” I filled a little jar with water and sand to take. I wanted to carry it with me everywhere.
As I got older, it became sadder to leave Croatia because I knew it would be a whole year until I saw my family again. The person I’m closest to is my grandmother. She’s very tough. She and my grandfather met in the Communist Youth Party and she was a spy for the Partisans when she was thirteen. She carried messages across Nazi lines, across fascist lines. She really liked taking care of me and my little sister, cooking for us, and showing us off to her friends. I would sleep next to her when I was little. I remember her singing me to sleep with different Croatian songs. There’s a baker that comes through the village every morning, and drives this truck that sells bread from the city nearby. At six in the morning, my grandma would go out with a basket and buy different kinds of bread and pastries. Sometimes I would go with her and she would get me jelly donuts and bread shaped like different animals, like lobsters and crabs.
Sara's grandfather, who was a commissar in the Partisans, when he was 23.
I went back last summer in the first half of August. My grandfather passed away in 2015, so the last two summers I’ve been there have been different. People are getting older and sicker, and I am also older and more independent. When I visit now, after the floods, I feel like my time is more precious. I am aware that this place might not be there for me forever. I hear more stories from relatives about heat waves and big storms. For the most part, people don’t talk about climate change. They talk about other things related to the climate crisis, like the weather, and the food they’re growing. My uncle, who’s a hunter, talks about changes in the forest and with the animals. But, everybody in Croatia really believes in global warming and is like, “of course this is happening.”
The flooding in Croatia really deepened my commitment to fighting the fossil fuel industry and fighting to stop the climate crisis because I realized that nobody outside of Croatia was going to fight for my family or for that place. It lit a fire under me to do that, to take seriously the power that I hold as a young person in the United States, and to do everything I can to fight to protect the people and the places that I love and care about.
My biggest advice for people who want to get involved in local climate organizing work is don’t be afraid to talk to people. Figure out what people care about and what they believe in, and share with them what you care about and what you believe in. I’ve seen a lot of people who are deeply concerned about climate change go down the route of only talking to people that already agree with them. There are so many reasons for that. But, my advice would be don’t fall into that trap, even if it’s difficult to talk with people who disagree with you, you know? Any strategy that is only about reaching people who are already convinced isn’t going to make a difference. Figure out how to speak in the language of the people you’re trying to build with."
The Dobra River near Sara's family's home.
Croatia is responsible for only 0.06% of global carbon dioxide emissions, but the country is sharply affected by climate change[1]. Rising temperatures, more frequent dry spells and droughts, severe storms, flooding, and other extreme weather events have already begun to threaten Croatia, and the rest of the Balkans[2].
Climate researchers and meteorologists have drawn a direct line between climate change and increased flooding in the Balkans. As air and water temperatures rise, the ocean is more prone to evaporation and the air is able to hold more water, leading to more moisture accumulation in the air and larger deluges when rains[3].
The impacts of climate change create enormous health and safety risks in Croatia. A 2003 heat wave, for example, was responsible for an estimated 185 deaths in Croatia alone[4], and the 2014 flood killed more than 40 people and displaced tens of thousands throughout the region[5]. Additionally, there has been a rise in vector-borne and infectious diseases throughout the Balkans as temperatures have risen[6].
The changing climate could have severe consequences for economic security in Croatia. Two industries expected to be hit particularly hard are farming and tourism, the latter comprising a fifth of the country’s GDP and more than a quarter of its employment. The UNDP predicts that farmers will lose crops due to changing weather patterns and more severe weather events, threatening their livelihood and raising food prices. Tourists are expected to increasingly avoid Croatian beaches as the heat becomes more extreme[7].
In response to the dangers posed by climate change, steps have been taken to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy[8]. Croatia is developing a Low-Emission Development Strategy in accordance with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. A focus on renewables and energy efficiency in Croatia could create up to 80,000 green jobs[9].
[1] Ina Vukic. “Croatia Negatively Affected by Climate Change.” Croatia, the War, and the Future. 2 December 2015. https://inavukic.com/2015/12/02/croatia-negatively-affected-by-climate-change/
[2] Zoï Environment Network. “Climate Change in the West Balkans.” United Nations Environment Programme. 2012. http://www.zoinet.org/web/sites/default/files/publications/Climate-change-west-balkans.pdf.
[3] Peter Thomson. “The Balkans’ Flooding is Linked to Climate Change. And Here’s How.” PRI. 20 May 2014. https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-05-20/balkans-flooding-linked-climate-change-and-heres-how
[4] United Nations Development Programme. “Climate Change in Croatia: New Human Development Report Launched.” United Nations Development Programme. 16 Feb. 2009. http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2009/02/16/climate-change-in-croatia-new-human-development-report-launched.html
[5] Alan Taylor. “Balkans Struck by Worst Flooding in 120 Years.” The Atlantic. 20 May 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/05/balkans-struck-by-worst-flooding-in-120-years/100739/
[6] Zoï Environment Network.
[7] United Nations Development Programme.
[9] Ina Vukic
1. Share Sara's Story.
2. Check out and donate to Sunrise, a movement Sara co-founded of young people in the United States uniting to stop the climate crisis. Sunrise has a 4-year plan to make climate action an urgent priority in every corner of the country, expose the fossil fuel executives who have purchased politicians and blocked progress, and build a movement strong enough to elect a people's government and pass an agenda for our health, home, and future.
3. Sign and share the Pledge to Protect Our Home and Resist Trump by organizing in your district this summer.
4. Send Sara an email at sara@sunrisemovement.org to let her know if you are interested in taking on a dedicated role this summer -- especially if you are interested in digital and distributed organizing, social media, action planning, and logistics.
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Older PostEVAN | O’AHU, HAWAII
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Timeout on Friday
Jasimuddin’s 43rd death anniv today
Cultural Correspondent | Published: 00:00, Mar 14,2019
Jashimuddin
The 43rd death anniversary of late eminent Bengali poet Jasimuddin will be observed today.
Jasimuddin, popularly known as Palli Kabi (The Rural Bard) for his poems depicting life in rural areas, was born on January 1, 1903 at Tambulkhana village of Faridpur district in the then British India. The poet died on March 13, 1976 in Dhaka.
Jasimuddin is considered as one of the most important poets of Bangla literature. He started writing from an early age. His acclaimed poem Kabar, depicting a conversation between a grandfather and his grandson, was included in the entrance Bengali textbook when he was still a student of the Calcutta University.
Nakshi Kanthar Maath (Field of the Embroidered Quilt), penned by Jasimuddin, is considered a masterpiece and has been translated into many different languages.
Jasimuddin made significant contribution to Bengali music scene. He composed numerous songs depicting the tradition of rural Bengal and wrote a number of patriotic and Islamic songs.
He also collected folk literature till 1937 while working as an assistant research fellow under noted folk researcher Dinesh Chandra Sen. He collected more than 10,000 folk songs, some of which has been included in his song compilations namely Jari Gaan and Murshida Gaan.
Besides, he worked with Abbas Uddin, the most popular folk singer of Bengal, and created some of the greatest gems in Bengali folk music.
Jasimuddin received numerous awards for his contributions in the literary arena of the country including President’s Award for Pride of Performance, Pakistan (1958), DLitt by Rabindra Bharati University (1969), Ekushey Padak (1976) and Independence Award (1978).
The poet had a bright academic and professional career also. He completed matriculation in 1921 from Faridpur Zila School. He completed IA from Rajendra College in 1924, and BA and MA in Bangla from the University of Calcutta in 1929 and 1931 respectively.
He joined the Dhaka University as a lecturer in 1938 and taught there till 1944. He left the job and joined the department of information and broadcasting and worked there until his retirement in 1962 as deputy director.
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7 BSEC puts only 2-year lock-in on placement shares
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North London Mums is the place for everything of interest to North London Mums and North London Dads. We want to help other parents to find the best activities to do with their families, the best shops and websites to visit, and the most child friendly restaurants to eat in. We believe in supporting local businesses and other mumpreneurs and in building communities.
Mumpreneurs
In The Night Garden Live at Brent Cross - don't miss it!
This morning we caught the Ninky Nonk and headed off to see In the Night Garden Live at Brent Cross, we weren't disappointed. I took my eighteen month old daughter who is a big fan of the TV show and a friend whose daughter had never seen it. Both children were utterly transfixed by this beautifully staged production that brings the characters to life.
There are four showings every day and the show runs until 22 July so don't miss your chance to go if your children are fans (or even if not).
The show is in a purpose built arena with no formal seating, and lasts 50 minutes so is a very good introduction to live performance for little children. Children were able to move around fairly freely in the showing we went to because it wasn't full. The format is very similar to the television show so children know what to expect and the loud cheering and clapping every time one of the main characters appeared on stage made it seem more like a rock concert than a children's show. My daughter was beside herself with glee when Iggle Piggle came on and couldn't quite believe her eyes that her hero was there in front of her eyes. Seeing her face light up like that made it a real joy for me.
I was very impressed with the costumes, props and the way in which the whole space is used and don't think they could have done anything better to bring the show to life for children. I was also pleased that merchandise was not pushed too heavily before or after the performance, which can ruin theatre sometimes when you say no to buying yet another toy with flashing lights that breaks the minute you get it home. Added extras like bubbles made it even more exciting. Most children there were under 3, which is probably the best age for this.
On until 22 July, some performances are sold out but lots of tickets still available. See full listings here.
Posted by By Anonymous Thursday, 12 July 2012
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957 N. Grand Ave.
Tel: 626.455.0126 Fax:626.455.0943
PIQE’s Riverside regional office was founded in 1998. Since its inception, the Riverside office has served over 314 schools in 31 school districts within the counties of Riverside, and San Bernardino. This office has graduated over 54,112 parents from PIQE’s programs, thus enhancing the education of approximately 162,336 students.
Lilian Esther Hernandez – Executive Director
Lilian Esther Hernandez is Executive Director of PIQE’s Riverside and San Gabriel Valley regional offices, a dual-role in which she has thrived for the last nine years. In addition to managing operations and personnel, she partners closely with senior management to plan the future growth of PIQE’s presence in her regions, as well as its strategic response to education and industry trends. She led PIQE’s expansion into the counties of Riverside, San Bernardino and Los Angeles and was responsible for equipping the Riverside and San Gabriel Valley offices with the capacity to deliver PIQE’s services in multiple languages other than English, including Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Cantonese and Chinese.
After joining PIQE in 1999 as a facilitator, Ms. Hernandez went on to serve as an associate director before being promoted to her current position. Throughout the years, Ms. Hernandez has participated in countless education and community committees promoting the critical role parents play in the education of their children. Prior to coming onboard at PIQE, she worked for the Upland Unified School District in the English Language Development Program. In 2016, she is expected to complete a B.A. in Theological Studies.
Born and raised in Honduras, Ms. Hernandez was an elementary school teacher for over four years in El Salvador, a job that gave her much joy, especially when teaching children to read and cultivating within them the love of books. She enjoys helping others and through her community involvement she has participated in numerous conventions empowering women to overcome obstacles. She is a gifted inspirational speaker and has led workshops in Mexico, Cuba, Honduras, and El Salvador, as well in various regions of the United States. In her spare time, she enjoys volunteering in orphanages and helping children in need. She is a proud mother of two grown children, Caleb and Joshua.
Lilian Esther Hernandez
Email:lhernandez@piqe.org
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Pittsburgh Throwback
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Sommore Headlines the Pittsburgh Improv
7/12/2019 @ 7:30PM - 12:00 AM - 7/14/2019 Improv - 166 E Bridge St., Homestead, PA 15120
Sommore reigns as the undisputed “Queen of Comedy.” This trendsetting, highly acclaimed veteran entertainer is widely considered one of America’s top comedic female entertainers. With a winning combination of class and sass, Sommore offers audiences a hilarious, yet piercing look at today's issues from a woman’s perspective. She is frank and fearless in her routines, tackling topics that range from the mundane to the controversial with wit, intelligence and style. Praised by critics, respected by her peers and adored by a diverse fan base, she performs her stand-up act to sold-out audiences across the country. Oprah Winfrey proclaimed her “a force to be reckoned with in the new millennium.” In 2002, Sommore made her film debut in Friday After Next. She has also been featured in a number of other films including, Family Reunion, Soul Plane, Something New, and Dirty Laundry. Sommore has been a featured guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The View and Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. Other noteworthy accomplishments for Sommore include several appearances on the sitcoms The Hughleys and The Parkers, HBO\'s SNAPS and MTV\'s Wild \'N Out. Sommore also participated in season six of VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club, Comedy Central\'s Roast of Flavor Flav. More than a comedienne, Sommore is a writer, producer and entrepreneur. She wrote and produced her very own comedy specials, The Queen Stands Alone, in 2008 and Chandelier Status in 2012. Both were a filmed version of her stand-up act, which debut to rave reviews on Comedy Central and Showtime Networks respectively. Both DVD’s are currently in stores now. Visit: https://www.facebook.com/QueenSommore/. Watch: https://youtu.be/6oHmiJLrEAk. Showtimes: Fri. 7:30PM & 9:45PM / Sat. 7:00PM & 9:30PM \/ Sun. 7:00PM Tickets: $25 (Special Event) / VIP: $35 / Call: 412-462-5233
Pittsburgh Sports Stadiums
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Nuru Kenya Country Director Receives Acumen Fellowship
By Billy Williams January 31, 2018 Press Releases No Comments
Isebania, Kenya—Pauline Wambeti, Nuru Kenya’s Country Director, has been eagerly awaiting the announcement of some big news on the leadership development front. She is one of less than a dozen East African women leaders to be selected to be Acumen East Africa Fellows for 2018-2019. She was selected from a shortlisted group of approximately 200 applicants and will begin her first workshop with Acumen in late February 2018.
Pauline has been working in the realm of community development for more than a decade and has been working for Nuru Kenya since 2013. In 2015, as Western staff exited Kenya, Pauline and her team began preparations for scaling to new communities, and they have brought continued innovation and adaptive learning to serving rural communities living in extreme poverty.
When asked about the selection process with Acumen, she said it was “quite intensive.” Applications were from leaders in South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda, and after applying online, candidates conducted phone interviews, and shortlisted candidates were invited for a day-long in person interview.
She is hoping to take lessons learned from the Acumen program to help her navigate the complexities of achieving sustainable development in the remote, rural communities where Nuru Kenya operates. She believes that she will grow in her competency in effectively influencing generational change as well. “(The fellowship) is unique in that the fellows have the opportunity to learn as they work hence they are able to apply immediately and more effectively what they learn to their work.”
Nuru International staff were able to celebrate Pauline and this opportunity during Nuru’s Annual Staff Summit held in early January in central Texas.
The Acumen Fellowship Program works to equip “extraordinary leaders with the capacity to positively transform society.” To learn more about the program please visit Acumen’s website.
Awards and HonorsNuru Kenya
About Billy Williams
Strategic Partnership Director — Billy has spearheaded our Strategic Partnerships since the organization's inception and catalyzed Nuru's growth from a handful of volunteers to thousands of poverty fighters. As Nuru’s lead advocate and storyteller, Billy has been invited to share at events around the country. Billy is as passionate about ending extreme poverty as he is about his home state of West Virginia. You can follow Billy on Twitter @chanchanchepon.
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Democrats Strengthen Domination of Indianapolis Northside Townships
I finally got around to looking at the Marion County (Indianapolis) election results from November. I may write a few columns on the subject. Today's is about changing party fortunes in the nine Marion County townships.
At the turn of the century, Republicans dominated the township boards in 8 of the 9 townships, i.e. all the townships except Center Township. Now the story is that the Democrats dominate all the townships with the exception of the three southernmost, Decatur, Perry and Franklin.
This year, the number of township board seats changed from 7 to 5. That didn't help Republican prospects any, however . While the Democrats lost a seat in Pike, the party increased its domination in Washington, Warren and Lawrence Township. Below are the results:
Township Republican Democrat
Center 0 5
Decatur 5 0
Franklin 5 0
Lawrence 1 4
Perry 5 0
Pike 0 5
Warren 1 4
Wayne 1 4
Posted by Paul K. Ogden at 4:46 PM 2 comments:
Trump Campaign May Have Coordinated with Russians on Release of Information Damaging to Clinton Campaign
CNN reports:
The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, US officials told CNN.
This is partly what FBI Director James Comey was referring to when he made a bombshell announcement Monday before Congress that the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, according to one source.
The FBI is now reviewing that information, which includes human intelligence, travel,
business and phone records and accounts of in-person meetings, according to those U.S. officials. The information is raising the suspicions of FBI counterintelligence investigators that the coordination may have taken place, though officials cautioned that the information was not conclusive and that the investigation is ongoing.
In his statement on Monday Comey said the FBI began looking into possible coordination between Trump campaign associates and suspected Russian operatives because the bureau had gathered "a credible allegation of wrongdoing or reasonable basis to believe an American may be acting as an agent of a foreign power."
One law enforcement official said the information in hand suggests "people connected to the campaign were in contact and it appeared they were giving the thumbs up to release information when it was ready." But other U.S. officials who spoke to CNN say it's premature to draw that inference from the information gathered so far since it's largely circumstantial.
The FBI cannot yet prove that collusion took place, but the information suggesting collusion is now a large focus of the investigation, the officials said.
The FBI has already been investigating four former Trump campaign associates -- Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Carter Page -- for contacts with Russians known to US intelligence. All four have denied improper contacts and CNN has not confirmed any of them are the subjects of the information the FBI is reviewing.
Yesterday in a bizarre turn of events House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) briefed President Trump on intelligence he had seen in which names of the Trump transition team (of which Nunes himself was a member) had appeared in intelligence intercepts relating to foreign targets, intercepts he didn't bother to share with anyone else on the committee. While this was in fact old news, Nunes held a press conference to claim that the information somewhat supported Trump's claim that Trump Tower phones were wiretapped by President Obama. In the next breath, however, Nunes said that the information did not show Trump's claim was true.
The big development though may well be that Nunes has shown himself to be an agent of President Trump and, thus, unable to conduct a fair and impartial investigation of matters relating to the Trump campaign. Nunes might lose his chairmanship as a result of the stunt he pulled yesterday. At the very least he made the appointment of a independent committee much more likely.
Posted by Paul K. Ogden at 9:30 AM 11 comments:
A "Big, Gray Cloud" Descends Over the Trump Presidency
Today, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that there exists a current FBI investigation into possible coordination between members of Trump's campaign team and Russian officials in the latter's interference into the 2016 election. Fox News reports:
FBI Director James Comey said during a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee today that there is an ongoing investigation into possible "coordination" between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia.
Comey confirmed that the FBI is investigating Russia's efforts to interfere in the 2016
FBI Director James Comey
presidential election.
"That includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts," he stated.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), who was a member of the Trump transition team, complained that Comey's testimony created a "big, gray cloud" over the White House and urged a quick conclusion to the investigation.
Comey also confirmed that Trump's tweets claiming former President Trump had ordered his phones "wiretapped" at the Trump Tower were simply not true. Also confirmed as inaccurate was the new claim that British intelligence had wiretapped Trump at President Obama's request.
When the media begins examining more closely Trump campaign connections to Russian officials, , expect a few names to come to the forefront quickly, most notably Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Carter Page. In an apparent attempt to head off damaging association, administration spokesman Sean Spicer today incredulously noted that Manafort had only a "limited role" with the Trump campaign. A mighty strange way to characterize the former MANAGER of the Trump campaign.
Posted by Paul K. Ogden at 7:38 PM 15 comments:
Soccer Goaltender Signed After Conviction for Having Girlfriend Killed, Fed to His Dogs
I guess the next time the NFL is criticized for not taking domestic violence seriously enough, the league can say it is not as bad as soccer. The New York Daily News reports on an incredible story out of Brazil:
Bruno Fernandes de Souza
Second-tier Brazilian soccer club Boa Esporte has come under fire for signing goalkeeper Bruno Fernandes de Souza, who was convicted for ordering the 2010 killing of his ex-girlfriend and having her body fed to his dogs, to a two-year contract shortly after his release from prison, according to a report from The Guardian.
Bruno's lawyer was able to get the soccer player released from prison after serving seven years of a 22-year sentence because the courts had failed to rule on his appeal.
The victim of Bruno's brutal crime, Eliza Samudio, had been suing him for child support. Samudio then went missing, and Bruno admitted to his involvement in the plan that resulted in her death.
Boa Esporte's president, Rone Moraes da Costa, said in a statement that the club was helping Bruno return to society by giving him the "dignity of work." The statement did not mention Samudio or the murder of her.
Posted by Paul K. Ogden at 10:29 PM 1 comment:
Carmel and Indianapolis Go Round and Round About Roundabouts
The Indianapolis Star reports:
An Indianapolis City-County councilwoman is trying to stop Carmel from building several roundabouts along the border between the two cities.
Christine Scales has refused to sign an interlocal agreement to allow Carmel to build roundabouts at 96th Street's intersections with Hazel Dell Parkway, Gray Road, Delegates Row and Randall Drive. As the local district representative, Indianapolis is following her lead.
Scales doesn't think traffic is congested enough along the corridor to warrant the roundabouts, and she is concerned that area businesses will lose customers if they are
Carmel Roundabout at 126th Street and Keystone (www.carmel.in.gov)
built. She thinks motorists are more likely to shop on the commercial corridor if they have time to look around while waiting at traffic signals.
Her stance has led to a clash with Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard that was highlighted in an email exchange between the two obtained by IndyStar.
"My opinion, which is shared by many, is that while (roundabouts) may serve well in some locations, it doesn't mean they serve well as replacements for each and every stop sign or light," Scales wrote in an email to Brainard. "The existence of 100 roundabouts (and counting) in a city the size of Carmel is a lot of roundabouts."
I have said before that the creation of roundabouts by Mayor Brainard has been the best thing he did in office. Prior to the roundabouts traffic flow in and around Carmel was dreadful. However, after two recent trips to Carmel, I find myself agreeing with Councilor Scales. It seemed like every Carmel intersection I drove through had a roundabout, including ones that would have been much better served with traditional traffic devices.
Meanwhile Mayor Brainard indicates he may try to proceed with the roundabouts anyway, despite opposition by Scales and the City of Indianapolis. The Star article continues:
Brainard thinks he can build the roundabouts without Indianapolis' permission because state law places Carmel in control of improvements on its southern border. Carmel also isn't asking for any help from Indianapolis with funding.
Scales, though, said Indianapolis officials disagree that he can move forward without an interlocal agreement and will fight him if he tries.
Brainard hopes to convince Scales and Indianapolis to sign on. But he says he'll find a way to build the roundabouts regardless.
"If necessary," he wrote in an email to Scales obtained by IndyStar, "we would simply move the roundabouts a few feet north."
VP Pence Shows Pres. Trump How Conservatives Can Successfully Handle The Liberal Media
WASHINGTON – Vice President Mike Pence joked Saturday night that the most embarrassing part of the recent news that he used a personal email account while Indiana’s governor is that millions of Americans learned he was one of the few people in the country to still have an AOL account.
Vice President Mike Pence
“My wife said it was good for my image,” Pence said at the Gridiron Club dinner, a white-tie dinner of speeches, skits and songs put on by Washington's oldest journalism organization. “She said now America knows I’m not stuck in the ‘50s. I’m just stuck in the ‘90s.”
Pence also read some of the comments made on Twitter after IndyStar broke the story Thursday that raised questions about the security and government transparency of the AOL account, which was hacked last summer.
Among the social media slams: “Your grandma is hipper than Mike Pence.” Another said: “This is the most I’ve heard about American Online since I last saw the free disks on a counter at Blockbuster. #MakeAOLGreatAgain.”
Pence was the headline speaker at the dinner, which takes a humorous look at the political scene. He wore a black tie to the white-tie event, which he said he thought he could get away with until House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi asked him to refill her coffee.
Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who represented the Republicans, said she’s impressed that Pence never needs a teleprompter. “Maybe that’s because every speech begins with, `Let me explain what the president meant to say,’” Ernst said. “And thank you for that.
The Mike Pence I remember from law school was an outspoken, unapologetic conservative. But he also had an engaging personality and a wonderful sense of humor that won over even die-hard liberals at that school. I am not sure where Pence's personality and sense of humor went during his four years as Governor (I blame his advisers who didn't know how to use Pence's greatest assets), but they appear to have returned as Vice President. It is good that they did. He will need those tools given the train wreck that the Trump presidency appears to be.
Pence's performance at the Gridiron shows how conservatives should handle the media. No doubt most journalists have a liberal-bent and want to see conservative politicians fail. But journalists also have many other things that influence their writing, even more so than political philosophy. Pence appears to understand that and knows that winning them over as a "nice guy" goes a long way to developing more positive news coverage.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions Met Twice With Russian Ambassador in 2016 While Member of Trump Campaign Team
In what appears to be a direct contradiction to his confirmation testimony, it is now being reported that Attorney Genera Jeff Sessions twice met with a Russian ambassador in 2016, while a member of the Trump campaign. The Washington Post reports:
Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney
Attorney General Jeff Sessions
One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.
The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself.
When Sessions spoke with Kislyak in July and September, the senator was a senior member of the influential Armed Services Committee as well as one of Trump’s top foreign policy advisers. Sessions played a prominent role supporting Trump on the stump after formally joining the campaign in February 2016.
At his Jan. 10 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) what he would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign.“I’m not aware of any of those activities,” he responded. He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”
In January, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) asked Sessions for answers to written questions. “Several of the President-elect’s nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?” Leahy wrote.
Sessions responded with one word: "No."
It is difficult to conclude that Sessions' testimony was anything but untruthful. To complicate matters, it appears Sessions' himself could be a focus of an investigation into Trump's Russian ties. These developments will only increase the push for the appointment of a special prosecutor to probe the Trump campaigns' interaction with Russian officials leading up to the 2016 election.
Indiana's Government Ranks Best in the Nation
Indiana's government is the best in the nation, according to a new U.S. News & World Report list of "Best States."
The survey ranked the 50 states in seven key categories. Massachusetts' No. 2 ranking in health care and No. 1 ranking in education were key reasons why it's at the top of the list. Indiana ranked No. 22, just behind Delaware and Rhode Island.
Indiana didn't do as well in health care (41) and education (27), but two areas where Hoosiers shone, according to the web-based media company, were in government (No. 1) and opportunity (No. 4).
Indiana's excellent credit rating, low pension fund liability, budget transparency, use of digital technology and overall fiscal stability were key to its success in the government category. The opportunity category included areas such as economic opportunity, equality and affordability.
I've long had to listen to the nonsense from Hoosier critics that Indiana has the "worst legislature," a description often attributed to the late Nuvo editor Harrison Ullmann. As someone who worked at the Indiana General Assembly and taught about how state legislatures across the country operate, I have always known that what happens at our General Assembly is not unique to this state. The operational and substantive issues that arise in the Indiana General Assembly aren't any different from those dealt with by other state legislatures. Indiana's legislature and executive branches, for all their flaws, operate remarkably well when compared to other states. It is good to see the U.S. News and World Report set the record straight.
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Radical Islam screwing up the quest for global utopia?
There is a liberal progressive global vision for the world in which all religious beliefs, starting with Christianity, are wholly squelched. Those running this political and public relations campaign have the nation of Israel and American Christians in their sights. They continue to shape public opinion in such a way that the influence of Christianity will finally fall prey to 'science' and 'hate speech' as Israel loses its wingman (AMERICA) in their fight for self preservation.
All the worlds problems can be solved, after all, if we could just annihilate all those pesky religions....
Looks like Allah hasn't got the memo!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-blasphemy-and-the-law-of-fanatics/2015/01/08/b0c14e38-9770-11e4-aabd-d0b93ff613d5_story.html
The global elite may think they can save their most daunting task for last, but the Jihad train waits for no one!
http://www.worldtribune.com/2014/11/16/uae-bans-obama-aligned-cair-86-insurgency-groups-ties-brotherhood/
In the meantime, as Barry remains on the down low, the rest of the free world has united.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2905678/America-snubs-historic-Paris-rally-Holder-skipped-early-Kerry-India-Obama-Biden-just-stayed-home-leave-no-U-S-presence-anti-terror-march-joined-global-leaders.html?printingPage=true
Public opinion is a fragile thing. It takes just one accurately reported act of terror to upend the whole Utopian deception...I mean, momentum.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2015-01-08/europe-s-islam-debate-erupts-as-paris-killers-at-large
It's not too difficult to stir up some propagandized antisemitism and paint a vigilant and militarily reactive Israel as some uncompromising War Machine blindly and thoughtlessly picking off Muslims (especially women and children). But that is merely a gross and deplorable meme perpetuated by the global elites and shameless leftists controlling the media.
It is also fairly simple to shakeup the local and national majority opinion that traditional marriage should stand. With a little help from their Hollywood friends and activist appointees, anything is possible (and that includes crushing the First Amendment and our whole Judeo-Christian foundation of common law and natural order).
But in the end, it just took a few French cartoonists to push the envelope and show the world that there are some divides that are not so easily manipulated. We will never speak the same 'secularized' language; there is simply too much hate and dissention for these godless humanists to continue to forward their agenda uninterrupted.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/11/18/muslim-groups-seek-to-co-opt-ferguson-protests-says-watchdog-group/
Now we are reminded that evil takes on various forms (subtle, sensual, and excessively violent – to name a few). The culture may tolerate the aborted fetus and the sexually indoctrinated child but eventually it all becomes too much to bear. Eventually, mass misery reigns.
Evil does exist. It lies in the hearts of all men. It just so happens that every now and then an evil act occurs that is just too hard to ignore.
And the day will come that mankind will no longer have an answer......
When appeasement fails, to whom shall you go?
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You Have To Be In It To Win It.
Author: Rich | Posted at: 6:00 AM | Filed Under: AIGA, public relations, sean adams, social media, unlv
As surprising at it will seem to many graphic designers, most communication professionals are unfamiliar with Sean Adams. They don't know he is a partner at AdamsMorioka in Beverly Hills.
They don't know he has been recognized by every major design competition and publication, ranging from Communication Arts to Graphis. They don't know he has had a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art or that he teaches at the Art Center College of Design. And they don't know that he is president ex officio and past national board member of AIGA, assuming they have ever heard of AIGA.
They do, however, know some of AdamsMorioka clients. They include the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Adobe, Gap, Frank Gehry Partners, Nickelodeon, Sundance, Target, USC, and The Walt Disney Company to name a few. And on any given day, his work influences people not only in his profession, but also in the products, services, and experiences they choose to purchase.
So why don't more people know him or follow him on Twitter?
The reason is three-fold. First, the greater field of marketing and communication is so expansive and siloed that it is not uncommon for leaders inside different niches to never meet or even know of each other. Second, the number of people you 'know' isn't nearly as important as which ones. And third, this prevailing notion that social media is an indicator of influence is a lie.
There are much better ways leave a sustainable impact in a profession and blaze a trail that some people will undoubtedly recognize as a legacy that will inspire others. Adams has done that. And after hearing him speak a few weeks ago at a Mohawk Paper - AIGA Las Vegas sponsored event, it's exceptionally clear that he will continue to do so.
The wealth of information he shared about his career path, design philosophy, and business approach was only matched by his ability to connect with the audience. It's also the mark of a good teacher.
It's also the mark of a professional who understood early on that in order to succeed in your career — particularly if it is anywhere close to marketing and communication (social media, public relations, design, etc.) — you have to be in it to win it. For Adams, that meant immersing himself in his profession as a leader in organizations like AIGA and at colleges like Art Center College of Design.
It was through those organizations that Adams was able to immerse himself in his profession to learn, lead, and influence design. It's very similar to what I encourage students to do every year too.
The three most important sectors in which to become involved.
Years ago, I used to suggest that students, interns, and employees become involved in at least one professional and one civic organization. But at minimum, I no longer believe two is really enough to remain competitive. Three is a better number because many answers can be found outside the field.
1. Profession. Becoming involved in the profession is the easiest way to remain immersed in the profession. And there is no shortage of professional organizations in the field of marketing and communication, ranging from the American Marketing Association and American Advertising Federation to the International Association of Business Communicators and Public Relations Society of America. AIGA, by the way, is one of the oldest. It's celebrating 100 years this year.
Joining any one or two of these organizations (or related niche organizations) provides an opportunity to develop a professional network, discuss trends, and sometimes forecast changes to come. Don't stop at becoming a member. Become immersed by serving as a volunteer.
2. Industry. Since communication doesn't happen in a vacuum, it's also important to join an organization that isn't related to your profession but is related to your field. While many students seemed surprised to learn that some of their future peers join communication-related organizations but not organizations within their own industry, people in the field sometimes forget.
If you are working in communication for a bank, it's important to become involved in finance-related associations. The same holds true for emergency medical, hospitality, technology, or whatever. And for those that work at an agency or firm? They ought to survey a cross section of their clients and become involved in whichever industries seem prevalent.
3. Community. Last but not least, professionals who excel tend to give back to the communities where they live, work, and play. This almost always includes becoming involved with at least one nonprofit organization or civic agency that benefits their community. It's especially worthwhile for communication professionals too. There is no shortage of nonprofits that could use the help.
To be clear, any commitment ought to be in addition to the corporate philanthropy encouraged by the company. It's one thing to volunteer your time and talent to your office place, but quite another to make a personal commitment to an organization regardless of where you work. Pick something important to you and make a difference.
Good companies support professional and community involvement.
Every now and again, I meet people who tell me that their employers won't support it. If you find that to be the case, then you might be working for the wrong company. Savvy organizations know that the best professionals tend to be those who are involved and not isolated. Flex time is not negotiable.
By becoming involved in at least one organization in each sector, you will find out very quickly that influence isn't built by online scoring systems as much as the relationships you make offline first. Or, as Sean Adams said during his speech a few weeks ago: You have to be in it to win it.
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Why Drop 'Communication' From The Crisis Communication Plan?
Author: Rich | Posted at: 6:00 AM | Filed Under: case study, Chevron, crisis communication, public relations
As the Chevron pizza remediation story continues to capture more headlines on CNN, Forbes, and Newsweek, there are plenty of public relations practitioners anxious to turn the tragedy into a worst case practice. Indeed, offering coupons for free pizza and soda is so dismal it almost defies belief.
Even so, it extraordinarily difficult to turn the living case study into a real life lesson plan when there is another lesson for anyone who believes crisis communication is a core component of public relations. What is the real lesson behind the Chevron pizza coupon debacle being reported by the news?
Don't be content with only the crisis communication plan. Write the crisis plan.
Before we consider the significance of this lesson, let's recap some of the events as they happened. It mostly played out over eight days.
February 11. A fire was reported at one of the Chevron fracking wells in Green County, Pa. One employee was injured and another was unaccounted for. Employees immediately responded to the fire and called in assistance from Wild Well Control. They also opened a hotline for neighbors to contact.
By 10:50 p.m., the company was able to report details leading up to the incident, clarified that the missing employee was a contractor, and the company continued to issue assurances that appropriate measures were taken.
February 12-14. As the severity of the fire escalated, the company began to monitor the air, surface waters, and noise in the area for impact while stressing that there was no evidence of an increased safety risk beyond the immediate fire. Chevron also provided a generalized update that recognized the impact the incident has had on the local community. The worker was still unaccounted for.
February 16. The two wells stopped burning, but the company reported it was premature to speculate what caused the flames to go out. (It is likely that the fuel source ran out before the wells could be capped.) At the same time, area residents received hand-delivered letters from the company, which included coupons for one free pizza and one two-liter drink. One worker is still missing.
February 17-19. As headlines appeared about the pizza coupon given to approximately 100 residents, Chevron continued to provide updates and communicate with local residents. Late in the day on Feb. 19, investigators found evidence of human remains near the location. The company relinquished questions regarding the remains to local law enforcement.
While most media outlets are focused on the remediation offer of a pizza coupon that Chevron later called a token of resident appreciation for their patience, the real error isn't in allowing community outreach to mitigate neighbor concerns, but either a flawed crisis plan, lack of empathy, or insufficient incident command oversight. Regardless of which proves to be true, it opens an invaluable lesson.
Communication is a small part of a modern crisis plan. Get used to it.
While I have always been supportive (if not insistent) that organizations develop crisis communication plans, it is also true that most crisis communication plans are only as good as the communication plan they support. The reason this is true is because any crisis communication is only a very small part of any much larger crisis plan.
To be clear, while the size and scope may vary depending on the incident, most crisis plans include for incident command and four sections: operations, planning, logistics, and finance. Communication, specifically public information officers, generally support incident command (along with safety and liaison officers). If there is a breakdown in any section, communication will likely be a casualty.
Four years ago in the wake of the Gulf Coast oil spill, I suggested that public relations and crisis communication step up their skill sets by learning the four tenets of disaster planning. Although all four are still important, incident command procedures have evolved and public relations professionals and crisis communicators ought to have updated their skill sets along the way.
In other words, not only should an incident public information officer understand the crisis communication plan, but they also need to understand every aspect of the crisis plan and be prepared to report on the progress being made by each section based on input from the incident commander. Even better than knowing the crisis plan, crisis communicators ought to ask to get involved in writing it.
If Chevron had done so in this case, it's much more likely that it would have not been preemptive in their offer of pizza remediation. And even if community outreach wanted to be preemptive, incident command or someone from another section might have advised against letting them eat pie (even if a few hardened neighbors said they planned to enjoy a slice). What do you think?
Social Change Starts Long Before The Message.
Author: Rich | Posted at: 6:00 AM | Filed Under: Philanthropy, research, social change
One of the biggest promises made by social media is that it can affect social change. There is some truth to the idea. I've developed social change projects, online and offline, on more than one occasion.
People really can change the world, but it's almost never the way marketers or social media pros think. It takes significantly more effort than a single disruptive advertising campaign. It requires a bigger outcome than asking people to sign a petition. It deserves more than a single direct outcome.
All those things help, sure. But real social change happens at a deeper level.
There is growing evidence to suggest that the foundation for social change — the decision to share a campaign, sign on with support, or take sustainable action — is made long before any marketer sits down to write a message. According to a new study by Walden University, if social change engagement is modeled to and started at a young age, it will lead to more involvement as adults.
The concept isn't new. While working with AmeriCorps, we placed significant value on engaging a legacy of service, which was defined as a lifetime commitment to volunteerism and philanthropic service that is passed down from one generation to the next. Not all social change is accidental.
The study from Walden University provides some proof of concept. People largely agree.
• 80 percent of social change agents say they have done something to engage in positive social change because they want to set an example for their children.
• 75 percent of adults who attended college or a university say they participated in social change activities while they were students at the college or university.
• 73 percent of social change agents say they engage in positive social change because it is how their parents and family raised them to be.
• 73 percent of adults consider education to be one of the most important positive social change topics today, citing awareness and knowledge as the biggest barrier to participation.
• 70 percent of adults who attended high school or secondary school participated in positive social change activities or volunteered while they were students in high school or secondary school.
There are six prevailing types of change agents. Each one has unique needs.
The survey responses tell part of a developing story. Social change happens early, often, and with the intent of establishing a legacy. In effect, the decision to support a social change effort is largely based upon how early, how often, and who or what inspired the initial engagement. And, according to the study, these factors produce six different kinds of social change agents to identify, reach, and engage.
Change Makers. People who commit their lives to positive social change and may be involved in many different causes. They believe strongly in their ability to make a real difference in their communities, feel happy as a result of their involvement, and prefer to be directly involved.
Faith Givers. Faith inspires their desire to support positive social change and feel there is a moral obligation to affect the community. They consider giving back to their communities an important part of their faith, do so to set an example for their children, and prefer making contributions in person.
Conscious Consumers. These individuals demonstrate social change though behavior, such as seeking out products and services from companies perceived as behaving responsibly toward people and the environment. They promote social change by example, are proponents of social justice (anti-discrimination, civil rights), and are generally supportive of the environment.
Purposeful Participants. These are people who are more pragmatic about social change because they see it as a means to support their own educational or career goals. As such, they are more likely to be motivated by recognition, clearly defined objectives, and specific commitments. They are also more likely to take on higher levels of personal sacrifice and risk in pursuing social change.
Casual Contributors. This group is the least likely to adopt a lifelong commitment to positive social change but more likely to become involved in a specific community need over the short term. They see social change as important but tend to take action as one-time responders to protect or provide assistance to their community.
Change Spectators. These individuals have been involved in social change at some point in their lives but may not be active now. They are not motivated by a personal commitment to social change, do not recognize their contributions as impactful, and are more likely to support a friend in favor of social change than be motivated by change.
What this means to organizations that develop campaigns to support social change.
We found that the study has two primary takeaways for organizations and agencies. The first reinforces a need to invest in the development of legacy change agents — elementary school students who will become active in social change by the time they enter high school or secondary school as well as their parents who are more likely to lead by example during this stage of development.
The second takeaway is as challenging as it is important. It requires the communication plan to consider how different levels of interaction or touch points could better align with each change agent type and thereby maximize their level of support.
For example, while short-term need-based communication can shore up support from casual contributors (provided the ask isn't too frequent), change makers are more likely to need frequent opportunities to provide continual support. If you leave them idle too long, they will start looking to change the world with a different organization.
The net benefits are twofold. The latter ensures you reach more than one-sixth of your potential supporters while the former is a long-term investment that has some immediate benefits along with dividends that pay off in as a little as four years. Specifically, it costs significantly less to engage someone familiar with a need than it does to convince them that a change is needed.
As a side note, Walden University has attached a quiz to the study. The intent is to help define which of the six categories you are most likely to fit. I found the test to be a bit wonky, mostly because of one shortfall. Some people might fit in more than one of the categories identified.
Why Did Some Super Bowl Ads Swim While Others Sank?
Author: Rich | Posted at: 6:00 AM | Filed Under: advertising, copywriting
USA Today released the results of its Ad Meter, an industry tool designed to capture public opinion surrounding Super Bowl ads. Nowadays, the popularity measurement is cited most often as an indicator of which advertisements won and which lost on their $4 million bid for attention.
What's missing from previous years is a foil that some serious marketers once appreciated. For a few years, HCD Research attempted to provide deeper insight into what makes advertisements work by measuring creativity, emotion, memorability, and involvement.
The Ad Meter really doesn't have depth in its methodology, but it still provides a baseline. In previous years, the top five effective advertisements were generally among the top 25 percent in popularity.
Top Five Super Bowl Ads for 2014
1. Budweiser "Puppy Love," score 8.29 | 42 million YouTube views
2. Doritos "Cowboy Kid," score 7.58 | 1.5 million YouTube views
3. Budweiser "Hero's Welcome," score 7.21 | 750,000 YouTube views
4. Doritos "Time Machine," score 7.13 | 2.2 million YouTube views
5. Radio Shack – "Phone Call," score 7.00 | 1.2 million YouTube views
Alongside the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter, Budweiser "Puppy Love" also won most TiVo commercial replays and social media scores kept by the Super Bowl Digital Index at ListenFirst. And Puppy Love wasn't the only big win by Budweiser. "A Hero's Welcome: Full Story" contributed to some 44.3 million views on its YouTube channel (as of Feb. 3). It also ranked high among the best commercials according to Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch list that put "Phone Call" on top.
Rounding out the top ten are "Sixth Sense" by Hyundai, "Gracie" by General Mills, "Empowering" by Microsoft, "Going All The Way" by Coca-Cola, and "Soundcheck" by Pepsi. Conversely, Dreamworks, GoDaddy, Sprint, Subway, and Bud Light rounded out the bottom.
Writing Effective Television Commercials
So where did some advertisers go right and some go wrong? The biggest winner of the evening across almost any measure was "Puppy Love" by Budweiser. It easily won in emotion, memorability, and share-ability. The only area where it really doesn't win is in creativity, but only because the commercial is a rewrite of a familiar storyline for Budweiser. It frequently taps animal friendship stories.
In fact, it was a friendship between a bull and a horse growing up that helped Budweiser capture the top spot in 2010. "Bull" is arguably the better of the two, despite also being a borrowed and recast idea.
Even so, the formula for Budweiser has been working all these years for a reason. When you dig deeper and compare the top ten commercials to each other, there are some apparent consistencies.
1. Emotive. As with all top advertisements, the best of them have positive messages that attempt to make an emotional connection, with the exception of Pepsi. The lowest rated commercials do not make the connection or, in some cases, like Chevy's ill-advised "Romance" commercial about studding bulls, are very negative.
2. Authenticity. All of the top advertisements are true to their brands, especially Radio Shack (which only gave up points to anyone who doesn't know the 80s). The bottom commercials tried to be bigger than the brand, setting viewers up with big stories or big celebrities before weak payoffs.
3. Connectivity. Almost all of the top ads work hard to make a connection between the public and their product. They pull you into a story, relationship, and place they take up in your life (like Gracie by General Mills). The bottom ads aim for push messages before screaming "look at me."
4. Creativity. Every year someone tries to convince me that creative is the key to great advertisements. While creativity is important, it seldom comes in the form of special effects or celebrating itself. The one exception this year is "Soundcheck" by Pepsi (simply because it is so well done). Lower down on the list are those commercials that the authors smugly claim are clever like GoDaddy.
5. Youthful Promise. Where nostalgia once attracted significant attention because Americans were longing for what they knew just a few years prior, smart advertisers replaced the recipe with the promise of youth. Some people will claim that "kids" made the commercials work, but there is something deeper at work here. Americans aren't necessarily growing up as much as they are growing out of some hard years.
All in all, what worked this year isn't all that different from what worked four years ago. The differences are present, but subtle. And, in fact, it is in this subtlety that you can find the real genius of advertising — making minute-to-minute changes in direction to keep pace with public sentiment.
At $4 million per commercial, you would think such in-depth understanding of the public would be mandatory. It's not. The vast majority of Super Bowl commercials this year were too concerned with social share-ability and safety to be truly effective. Of them all, Cheerios took the biggest risk.
Some might say Coca-Cola deserves such honors for singing America The Beautiful in Spanish, Tagalog and Hebrew. I disagree, only because Coca-Cola seems to be trying to create controversy with the English-only crowd whereas Cheerios was making a play for our hearts. There's a difference.
Great advertising is a tricky business. And while Americans weren't treated to the best Super Bowl commercials this year (or the best Super Bowl), there were several that showed hints of greatness — good enough that you might learn something about communication anyway. What do you think?
Why Drop 'Communication' From The Crisis Communica...
Why Did Some Super Bowl Ads Swim While Others Sank...
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Home Resources News pages Spotlight on: Asbestos contract
Spotlight on: Asbestos contract
We're currently renewing our asbestos framework which is out to tender until 11 June.
Our construction team works hard to support our Scotland’s local authorities in sourcing the wide range of goods and services they need to maintain their extensive building stock in their local areas, as well as upgrade projects they’re taking forward.
We’re very proud of the comprehensive portfolio of construction contracts we have built over the past ten years. One of the long-established contracts in this portfolio is our asbestos framework, which has been supporting our members since its launch in early 2011.
The framework is currently out to tender as we work towards its renewal, offering opportunities to suppliers across three lots: surveys; removal and disposal; and analytical services.
Asbestos is one of the most regulated industries in the UK. It’s crucial we use our experience and expertise in this area to continue to support councils and housing associations in ensuring housing stock and other public buildings are kept up to date in terms of asbestos surveys, removal, and testing.
Existing framework
The current framework has been in place since 2014 and has seen around £16m worth of spend with overall savings of around £3m generated collectively for our members.
Several key suppliers in the market have taken part in the framework, as well as SMEs.
The framework ensures quality and compliance with legislation covered by United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) accreditation and HSE licences.
The renewal framework
The renewal builds on previous generations by fully incorporating new legislation, guidance (including the revised HSE analysts' guide), certification, and codes of practice. Our member councils have been key in shaping this new framework. Council technical staff and SEPA have also been fully consulted.
We’ve had confirmation from 29 Scottish Local Authorities that they will use the renewal framework, which has a forecast spend of £48m over four years.
The renewal also has a new-look rates schedule following consultation with councils and suppliers. It will now include mobilisation and clearance set up costs. Council technical staff were key in designing this.
Tender closes on 11 June with the framework set to be live from November 2018. Full details are available on Public Contracts Scotlnd.
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White House says Obama is Christian, prays daily
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama is a Christian who prays daily, a White House official said Thursday, trying to tamp down growing doubts about the president’s religion.
A new poll showed that nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, believe Obama is Muslim. That was up from 11 percent who said so in March 2009. The survey also showed that just 34 percent said Obama is Christian, down from 48 percent who said so last year. The largest share of people, 43 percent, said they don’t know his religion.
White House spokesman Bill Burton said most Americans care more about the economy and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and “they are not reading a lot of news about what religion the president is.” He commented on Air Force One as Obama headed for a vacation in Massachusetts on Martha’s Vineyard.
Burton added, “The president is obviously a Christian. He prays everyday.”
The survey, conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and its affiliated Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, is based on interviews conducted before the controversy over whether Muslims should be permitted to construct a mosque near the World Trade Center site. Obama has said he believes Muslims have the right to build an Islamic center there, though he’s also said he won’t take a position on whether they should actually build it.
In a separate poll by Time magazine/ABT SRBI conducted Monday and Tuesday – after Obama’s comments about the mosque – 24 percent said they think he is Muslim, 47 percent said they think he is Christian and 24 percent didn’t know or didn’t respond.
In addition, 61 percent opposed building the Muslim center near the Trade Center site and 26 percent said they favor it.
The Pew poll found that about three in 10 of Obama’s fiercest political rivals, Republicans and conservatives, say he is a Muslim. That is up significantly from last year and far higher than the share of Democrats and liberals who say so. But even among his supporters, the number saying he is a Christian has fallen since 2009, with just 43 percent of blacks and 46 percent of Democrats saying he is Christian.
Among independents, 18 percent say Obama is Muslim – up from 10 percent last year.
Pew analysts attribute the findings to attacks by his opponents and Obama’s limited attendance at religious services, particularly in contrast with Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, whose worship was more public.
Andrew Kohut, the Pew Research Center’s director, said the confusion partly reflects “the intensification of negative views about Obama among his critics.” Alan Cooperman, the Pew Forum’s associate director for research, said that with the public hearing little about Obama’s religion, “maybe there’s more possibility for other people to make suggestions that the president is this or he’s really that or he’s really a Muslim.”
Obama is the Christian son of a Kenyan Muslim father and a Kansas mother. From age 6 to 10, Obama lived in predominantly Muslim Indonesia with his mother and Indonesian stepfather. His full name, Barack Hussein Obama, sounds Muslim to many.
On Wednesday, White House officials did not provide on-the-record comments on the survey but prompted Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell of Houston to call The Associated Press.
Caldwell, who said he has known Obama for years, said the president is a Christian who prays every day. He said he was not sure where the public confusion about the president’s religion came from, but he called false media reports about it “a 24-hour noise box committed to presenting the president in a false light.”
Six in 10 of those saying Obama is a Muslim said they got the information from the media, with the largest portion – 16 percent – saying it was on television. Eleven percent said they learned it from Obama’s behavior and words.
Despite the confusion about Obama’s religion, there is noteworthy support for how he uses it to make decisions. Nearly half, or 48 percent, said he relies on his religion the right amount when making policy choices, 21 percent said he uses it too little and 11 percent too much.
Obama is seen as less reliant overall than Bush was on religion. Even so, the 48 percent who say Obama uses it appropriately for decisions is similar to the 53 percent who said the same about Bush in 2004. Just over half in the new poll said Obama mentions his faith and prayer the right amount, about the same as said so about Bush in 2006.
At the same time, the poll provides broad indications that the public feels religion is playing a diminished role in politics today, with fewer people than in 2008 saying the Democratic and Republican parties are friendly toward religion.
With elections for control of Congress just over two months away, the poll contains optimistic news for Republicans. Half of white non-Hispanic Catholics, plus three in 10 unaffiliated with a religion and a third of Jews, support the GOP – all up since 2008.
The Democratic Party is seen as friendly to religion by 26 percent, while 43 percent say the same about the GOP. That’s a 9 percentage point drop for Republicans since 2008, and 12 points lower for Democrats.
Fifty-two percent say churches should stay away from politics, a reversal of the slim majorities that supported churches’ political involvement from 1996 to 2006.
The poll, overseen by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, involved landline and cell phone interviews with 3,003 randomly chosen adults. It was conducted July 21-Aug. 5 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
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Joint SKOLKOVO and HKUST Case Studies Published in Harvard Business Review
Moscow, May 17, 2019 – Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO and HKUST Business School have published joint case studies on Harvard Business Review’s global platform. The online platform, part of the Harvard Business Publishing initiative, brings together management case studies from business schools around the world. Fittingly, the two newly-published cases were co-written by alumni of the SKOLKOVO Business School, now managers at major firms.
Accelerating Russia: The Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF)
This collaboration between professors from the SKOLKOVO Business School and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) focuses on the establishment of the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF), its growth model and key objectives. The case study offers an insight into the specifics and challenges of entrepreneurship in emerging markets, the state’s role in developing ecosystems and encouraging innovation, and the performance indicators of start-up accelerators. The man at the helm of the IIDF, Kirill Varlamov, a Russian techpreneur, is himself an alumnus of the SKOLKOVO Business School.
J.T. Li, Senior Professor of Management at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).
Tomas Casas, Professor of Macroeconomics, Director of the SKOLKOVO EMBA and MBA International Module in China, Professor at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and University of Toronto, Canada.
Ekaterina Gerasimova, Researcher at the SKOLKOVO Business School.
MediaRus — a case study analysing the challenges of corporate governance by examining the involvement of management board members in a state-owned company
This joint HKUST–SKOLKOVO case study tells the story of MediaRus’s establishment and development. The company’s history reflects the evolving role of the Board of Directors and their movement away from the stakeholder model of corporate governance towards the shareholder model. The case study discusses the role of independent directors in the management board of a Russian state-owned corporation, gives a sense of existing management practices and their evolution, and covers the key challenges that independent directors face today.
Steven DeKrey, Senior Associate Dean and Adjunct Professor of Management at the HKUST Business School, Chairperson of the International Academic Council of the SKOLKOVO Business School.
Dmitry Yusov, a SKOLKOVO alumnus, Director of Standpoint, a consulting company. Dmitry boasts more than 8 years of experience working on Boards of Directors.
Yulia Ponomareva, Researcher at the SKOLKOVO Business School.
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University Policies ›
Human Subjects in Research
Ruben Armiñana, President
Current Issue Date
The purpose of this document is to provide information and set forth policies and procedures to insure that human subjects participating in research activities conducted at and/or sponsored by the University or its auxiliaries are protected from undue risks and deprivation of personal rights and dignity.
Section 474 of the National Research Act, Public Law 93-348, dated July 12, 1974, calls for all institutions applying for federal funding to have on-site permanent review boards which “review biomedical and behavioral research involving human subjects in order to protect the rights of the human subjects on such research.”
Institutional Responsibilities
At Sonoma State University (SSU), the administrative authority for the protection of human subjects, in funded as well as non-funded research, has been delegated to the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. The Provost has appointed the Institutional Review Board for the Rights of Human Subjects, which works under the sponsorship of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) to ensure the protection of the rights of human subjects and serves as the University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) for purposes of local, state, and federal requirements. The Chairperson of the IRB is appointed by the Provost to guide IRB activities and to ensure compliance with all relevant policies, procedures, and government regulations. The Associate Vice-President of ORSP serves as the University’s Institutional Signatory Official for purposes of federal regulation.
The IRB’s charge is to facilitate scientific inquiry while preserving the dignity of individuals and the rights of various social groups. It has the ultimate responsibility to determine risk with regard to human subject research conducted at and/or under the sponsorship of the University or its auxiliaries.
Structure of the IRB
In compliance with federal regulation, the IRB:
Must be comprised of at least five persons with varying backgrounds to assure complete and adequate review of activities commonly conducted by the institution.
Must be sufficiently qualified through the experience and expertise of its members, and the diversity of its members (including consideration of race, gender, and cultural backgrounds and sensitivity to such issues as community attitudes) to promote respect for its advice and counsel in safeguarding the rights and welfare of human subjects.
Must not consist entirely of men or entirely of women, nor can it consist entirely of members of one profession.
Must include at least one member whose primary concerns are in scientific areas and at least one member whose primary concerns are in nonscientific areas.
Must have at least one member who is not otherwise affiliated with the institution and who is not part of the immediate family of a person who is affiliated with the institution.
Must not have a member participate in its initial or continuing review of any project in which the member has a conflicting interest, except to provide information requested by the IRB.
May, at its discretion, invite individuals with competence in special areas to assist in the review of issues that require expertise beyond or in addition to that available on the IRB. These individuals may not vote with the IRB.
The IRB Chairperson, members, staff, and human subject research investigators must complete appropriate education related to the protection of human subjects before reviewing or conducting human subject research. The IRB Chairperson will make the determination as to what constitutes appropriate education and whether it has been completed.
The IRB Chairperson will ensure the existence of adequate education and oversight mechanisms (appropriate to the nature and volume of the research being conducted) to verify that IRB members, staff, investigators and key personnel maintain continuing knowledge of, and comply with, relevant federal regulations, Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) guidance, other applicable guidance, state and local law, and IRB determinations and policies for protection of human subjects.
Human Subject Involvement
There is human subject involvement when human beings are asked to participate: Research proposals for which the question of human subject involvement is itself uncertain or ambiguous must be submitted for review.
Physically in an activity or to donate their tissue, organs, fluids, and other bodily material.
When information is sought from them directly (as through interview, questionnaire) or indirectly (as through observation).
When information concerning specific, individually identifiable human beings is asked for from third parties—whether through access to files, data banks, or other means—or through direct inquiry of third parties concerning the individuals in question.
Ethical Principles For The Use Of Human Subjects In Research
It is the responsibility of the individual investigator to ensure that appropriate ethical principles are adhered to in the conduct of research involving human subjects. The investigator is responsible for the ethical treatment, and prevention of negligent treatment, of research subjects by collaborators, assistants, students, or employees who are assisting in the research of the investigator, as well as his or her own behavior.
The University is guided by the ethical principles regarding all research involving human subjects as set forth in the report of The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research entitled “Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research.” The University is also guided by the Nuremberg Code and the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki: “Recommendations Guiding Medical Doctors in Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects.”
The primary ethical principles that must be considered in all research involving human subjects include:
Ensuring the participation of human subjects is voluntary, occurring as a result of free choice, without compulsion or obligation, based upon disclosure of relevant information in a clear, concise, and understandable way.
Protecting the subjects from physical and mental discomfort, harm, or danger.
Designing projects with the intent that the knowledge gained will benefit the subjects and/or a larger community and outweigh any risk to the subjects.
Conducting research in a fair and equitable manner, so that selection of subjects does not overburden, over-utilize, unfairly favor or discriminate against any subject pool.
Honoring commitments made to subjects, contributors, or collaborators in a research project relative to its design and the confidentiality of any information about subjects gathered during the investigation.
Scope of the Review
Under Auspices of the University
A.1. When human subject research is conducted and/or sponsored by University employees, auxiliary employees, and/or students (including student/faculty collaborative research) under the auspices of the University, a protocol describing the research must be submitted to the IRB for review and approval.
A.2. Activities that are sponsored by an outside agency and which utilize SSU employee time, facilities, resources and/or students are considered to be conducted under the auspices of both SSU and the outside agency. In this case, approval must be obtained from the IRB of both SSU and the outside agency.
Extramural Support
Researchers requesting extramural support for activities involving human subjects under the auspices of the University are required to contact the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs to obtain campus endorsement of their proposal. Approval of the use of human subjects prior to submission of the proposal may be required at the discretion of the ORSP for studies deemed to entail high risk to the subjects. For all other proposals, approval of the use of human subjects must be requested at least one month prior to commencement of the project.
All research involving human subjects which is designed, in whole or in part, to develop or contribute to generalized knowledge through publication or presentation in any medium must receive IRB approval prior to initiation whether it is conducted by faculty, students, or staff. The type of review required depends upon the nature of the research, the subjects, and the risk imposed on the subjects. Research intended solely for classroom use (with no possibility of further disclosure or publication) and conference/workshop evaluation surveys do not require IRB review.
Research involving the use of human subjects falls into three review categories: (1) research that qualifies for exemption from federal regulations; (2) research that qualifies for expedited IRB review; and (3) research that requires full IRB review. Information on the circumstances that qualify a research study for a particular review category is listed in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 45, sections 46.101.2(b) and 46.110, and provided as an Appendix to the IRB approval application form that may be obtained from ORSP or may be downloaded from the ORSP website. In all cases investigators must submit a protocol and receive approval, even if the proposed research is perceived by the investigator to be exempt from federal regulations. The review procedure and the length of time required for review varies with each category. Expedited review is conducted solely by the IRB
Chairperson; IRB members are advised on a monthly basis of protocols approved via expedited review.
An adequate standard of informed consent and confidentiality must be maintained for all research involving human subjects, even that which is exempt from federal regulations. See item B.2 under section X. Application and Reporting Details, for details.
IRB Review Criteria
In order to approve a research project involving human subjects, the IRB must assure itself of the following:
Risks to subjects are minimized: (i) by using procedures which are consistent with sound research design and which do not necessarily expose subjects to risk, and (ii) whenever appropriate, by using procedures already being performed on the subjects for diagnostic or treatment purposes.
Risks to subjects are reasonable in relation to anticipated benefits, if any, to subjects, and the importance of the knowledge that may be reasonably expected to result.
Selection of subjects is equitable.
Informed consent will be sought from each prospective subject or the subject’s legally authorized representative.
Informed consent will be appropriately documented.
When appropriate, the research plan makes adequate provision for monitoring the data collected to ensure the safety of subjects.
When appropriate, there are adequate provisions to protect the privacy of subjects to maintain the confidentiality of data.
The IRB review process is not particularly concerned with the nature of a research topic, as long as the rights and welfare of the subjects are adequately protected and the protocol will be conducted in full compliance with Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) regulations.
Notification of Approval or Disapproval
The signature of the IRB Chairperson on the investigator’s protocol indicates approval of research. The IRB will notify investigators of disapproval in writing, including a statement of the reasons for its decision. The investigator will be given an opportunity to respond in person or in writing.
Suspension/termination of IRB approval
The IRB has the authority to suspend or terminate approval of research that is not being conducted in accordance with its requirements or that has been associated with unexpected serious harm to subjects. Suspensions or terminations of approval will be made in writing, will include a statement of the reasons for the IRB’s actions, and will be reported to the investigator, the Institutional Signatory Official, and, in instances involving federal support, the department or agency head.
Application and Reporting Procedures
Researchers are required to submit a protocol describing their proposed research or activity involving human subjects. Student non-collaborative research protocols must first be submitted to the faculty sponsor and to the department review committee, if one exists, for review and approval.
Deadlines for Submission of Protocols
The protocol must be received in the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs one month before the research is scheduled to begin.
The IRB requires four documents for each new study involving human subjects: (1) the Application for Approval, (2) the Protocol Summary Sheet, (3) the protocol, and (4) a copy of the consent form or request for waiver of written informed consent. The Application and Protocol Summary forms are self-explanatory and are available from the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, Nichols Hall, Room 146. The forms and application guidelines may also be downloaded from the ORSP website
B.1. The Protocol
The protocol is a statement of the investigator’s responsibilities toward the human subjects involved in the proposed research and must address the items and issues delineated by the Protocol Requirements in the application packet. The protocol should be limited to five or fewer pages. Extramural grant applications typically do not address themselves to the issues of concern to the IRB and should not be submitted in lieu of a completed protocol.
B.2 The Consent Form
Except as provided elsewhere in this policy, no investigator may involve a human being as a subject in research unless the investigator has obtained the legally effective informed consent of the subject. Informed consent means the knowing consent of an individual or his/her legally authorized representative so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice without undue inducement or any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, or other form of constraint or coercion. A sample consent form is included in the application packet available from ORSP.
In lieu of a consent form, the investigator may submit a request for waiver or alteration of the signed informed consent requirement, with sufficient information to enable the IRB Chairperson to determine (i) the research involves minimal risk to the subjects, (ii) the waiver or alteration of requirement will not adversely affect the rights and welfare of the subjects; (iii) the research could not practically be carried out without the waiver or alteration; and (iv) whenever appropriate, the subjects will be provided with additional pertinent information after participation. At the discretion of the IRB Chairperson, the signed consent requirement may be waived, or the investigator may be required to provide subjects with a written statement regarding the research instead of obtaining a signed consent form.
Additional supporting documents may be included such as questionnaires, signed letters of participation and agreement by participating outside institutions or SSU departments and facilities, consultants, physicians, sponsors, faculty advisors, personal interview statements, debriefing procedures, and any other applicable material. Only one copy of each document is required.
Additional documentation is required for research that is federaly funded. ORSP staff should be consulted for current requirements and guidance.
C.1 Changes in Research Protocol
Any change in protocol which affects the human subjects must be requested by the investigator in writing and approved by the IRB prior to implementation except where an immediate change is necessary to eliminate a hazard to subjects. If protocol change requires changes in consent form(s), the new consent form(s) should be attached to the written request.
C.2 Unanticipated Problems Involving Risks
It is the responsibility of the investigator to immediately report to the IRB any unanticipated problems involving risks to subjects or others involved in the research.
C.3 Submission of a Report of Injury
If a subject suffers an injury during research, the investigator mut take immediate action to assist the subject, and notify the IRB in writing of the injury within 48 hours.
C.4 Reporting Non-Compliance with IRB Policies and Procedures
Any incident of non-compliance with IRB policies and procedures must be reported immediately to the IRB.
C.5 Continuing Review and Submission of Annual Update
Expedited and full board applications are approved for a maximum period of one year. For projects which continue beyond one year, it is the responsibility of the investigator to submit to the IRB an annual update and request for extension of protocol approval. The first update is due 12 months following the date the application was approved.
The IRB has the authority to determine on an individual basis whether or not a research project requires review more often than annually or verification from sources other than the investigator(s) that no material changes have occurred since previous IRB review. In such cases the IRB will establish an appropriate monitoring procedure that may include observation of the consent process, observation of ongoing research, and review of research records.
IRB Records
D.1 Scope of Records
The IRB will prepare and maintain adequate documentation of IRB activities, including the following: (i) copies of all research protocols, approved sample consent forms, progress reports submitted by investigators, and reports of injuries to subjects; (ii) minutes of IRB meetings, of sufficient detail to show attendance at the meetings, actions taken by the IRB, vote on these actions, basis for requiring changes or disapproving research, and a written summary of the discussion of controverted issues and their resolution; (iii) a list of IRB members identified by name, earned degrees, representative capacity, indications of experience such as board certifications, licenses, etc., sufficient to describe each member’s chief anticipated contributions to IRB deliberations, and any employment or other relationship between each member and SSU.
D.2 Records Retention
IRB files pertaining to approved applications are maintained for a period of three years beyond the last approved end-date and then destroyed. Files regarding denied applications are kept for a period of three years following the date of application and then destroyed.
Updated June 27, 2007 by SSU.policies@sonoma.edu
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Navigation Home About Works News & Events Etc. Contact
July 15, 2018 by Robert Rankin
Even with the absence of a music festival in my schedule this summer, it has none the less been a pretty busy summer. I understand it's technically midsummer but nothing is about to let up anytime soon. Most of my time has been taken up writing and thinking about how to go about writing two big pieces; a new piano concerto for Kevin Madison and a new piece for high school wind ensemble. The first work (the piano concerto currently entitled Shelter) is slated to be the longest piece of music I've written, 18 minutes. There is also the added psychological barrier of dealing with the tried and true question...how does a concerto work? What is the role of the soloist? What is the role of a soloist that is also kind of a mini orchestra itself? The piece is inspired by an amazing book I read over the summer by Matthew Desmond entitled Evicted. I want the role of the three percussionist to function as a sort of Greek chorus that violently rejects the questions asked by the piano. In the end, I don't want the piece to have a #message, but rather clearly has a strong emotional pull. I really want to give Kevin a piece that allows him to show every angle of his multilayered musical talents. More to come about this piece...
The second piece, a new work for high school wind ensemble, is commissioned by Greg Jenner and the Garner High School Wind Ensemble in North Carolina. Very little is known about this piece right now (yikes...I have time) but Greg Jenner and I have decided to open up this commission up to create a consortium of bands that can participate in the creation of the piece. There is an entire page dedicated to the consortium...so if you are interested...click here.
July 15, 2018 /Robert Rankin
For email updates about concerts and such
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NIBS States Proposed ABA Resolution to Make Codes and Standards Free Could Reduce Safety
July 28, 2016 by RoofingAdmin2 Leave a Comment
The National Institute of Building Sciences issued an open letter to delegates attending the American Bar Association (ABA) Annual Meeting in August informing of the potential impacts if they vote to support a proposed resolution. The resolution—which advocates that copyrighted codes and standards incorporated by reference in legislation and regulation be made available for free—would alter the way codes and standards are developed in the United States.
In the U.S. construction industry alone, there are hundreds of copyrighted codes and standards that impact everything from seismic requirements and wind loads to water use and life safety. The standards developing organizations (SDOs) that develop these codes and standards have thousands of members, employees and volunteers that participate in the process to incorporate best practices and lessons learned to improve the standards. Each industry, from aeronautics and agricultural to electronics and telecommunications, has a similar structure and industry participation to address their specific needs. Such standards improve safety, drive innovation and improve commerce, both domestically and around the world.
The U.S. Government recognizes the benefit of private industry standards development, as directed by the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act (NTTAA, P.L. 104-113) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-119.
If the ABA’s suggested resolution and related advocacy campaign is successful, private-sector-developed standards would be subject to new requirements due to their incorporation by reference in legislation and regulation, and the ability for SDOs to recoup development costs would change considerably.
The development of codes and standards is expensive. Today, the cost is born by those who are ultimately impacted by the standards (whether by participating in the process or purchasing the resulting document). By making such information free online, the ABA resolution would hamper cost recovery through such mechanisms. The result would be that private-sector organizations may no longer be able to invest in the development process, leaving existing standards to remain stagnant (and thus inhibiting innovation) and shifting the responsibility (and expense) of developing future standards to the government.
ABA’s proposed resolution attempts to mitigate any copyright concerns by encouraging government agencies to negotiate licenses with SDOs. However, this change would require agencies to hire staff and implement contracting mechanisms, making it necessary for tax payers to cover the cost of standards development.
The National Institute of Building Sciences—which was established by the U.S. Congress to work with both the public and private sectors to advance building science and the design, construction and operations of buildings to meet national goals of health, safety and welfare—is extremely concerned that the ABA is advocating a one-size-fits-all legislative vehicle that will alter the long-standing tradition of private-sector-developed standards in the United States. The result could reduce safety, increase costs and add a burden to the government and tax-paying citizens.
In lieu of moving forward with the resolution, the Institute suggests the ABA focus on engaging in a meaningful dialogue with the SDO community to help address the changing nature of access to copyrighted materials through the internet and other electronic sources, and, after taking the long-term goals and impacts into consideration, identify a mutually acceptable path forward.
Read the letter.
Filed Under: Industry News Tagged With: aba, aeronautics, agricultural, American Bar Association, building science, codes, commerce, construction, contracts, copyright, copyrighted codes, copyrighted standards, design, electronics, health, innovation, life safety, national institute of building sciences, National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act, Office of Management and Budget, operations, safety, seismic requirements, standards, standards developing organizations, telecommunications, water use, welfare, wind loads
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Home Kansas News Agriculture The International Year of Soils: Soils Support Buildings and Infrastructure
photo credit - K-State Research and Extension
The International Year of Soils: Soils Support Buildings and Infrastructure
Posted By: Editoron: June 03, 2015 In: Agriculture, Kansas NewsNo Comments
MANHATTAN, Kan. – Soils are a crucial component for agriculture and food production. Soils support all kinds of life. From an engineering perspective, soils are also important, as they provide the groundwork for any type of building or structure.
“No matter if it’s a road, a building, a bridge or a levee, it’s supported on the native soils you have available,” said Stacey Kulesza, a geotechnical engineer who is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Kansas State University.
Engineers must perform soil tests at a building site before construction can begin. This is why all students majoring in civil engineering must complete courses such as soil mechanics—a course Kulesza teaches to undergraduate students at K-State.
Those students who want to specialize in geotechnical engineering, a branch of civil engineering focused on the behavior of earth materials, will further study how to evaluate a building site, collect more data related to soils and design earth-retaining structures, as examples. The relationship between knowledge of soils and the field of engineering fits the May theme for the 2015 International Year of Soils, “Soils Support Buildings and Infrastructure.”
Soils support all projects, big and small
Kulesza said all building projects require a drill rig to take soil samples so they can be classified. The scale of the project determines how deep to drill and how many samples are needed.
“You can’t change the soils you have,” she explained. “You just have to adapt your structure to work with them.”
A small residential structure, for example, might require obtaining one borehole per street. A neighborhood with many houses might require drilling 15 to 20 feet deep to classify the soil and understand where water is located.
The water table affects how a structure will behave, Kulesza said, as will the presence of soils that expand when wet and shrink as they dry out. These expansive soils are typically more clay-like. Clay soils also take many years to properly settle below a structure compared to soils that contain more sand and allow water to escape quickly.
Damages to structures due to expansive soils are similar to damages caused by frost heave, she said.
“In Kansas, we have issues of frost heave, so if you have certain soils that are susceptible to heaving when it gets cold outside, that could affect your house,” Kulesza said. Fine-particle soils of the silty and loamy types are examples.
An even larger project, such as a campus building, would require drilling multiple boreholes, she said, and drilling much deeper to understand the depth and variability of the bedrock below the surface.
“There’s always more information we can gather and more tests we want to run,” Kulesza said. “Typically, geotechnical is a small part of any kind of structure or plans that you have for your building.”
She added that engineers always account for some movement and amount of unknowns in structures to reduce risk.
Support for other types of structures
Levees are other important structures that prevent the overflow of water, and soils are used to build these structures. Kulesza, who studies levees, said many were built long ago with no design in mind.
“How we design a levee today is have an inside where water can’t get through, so use a clay-like soil,” she said. “Then we put a more stable soil on the outside.”
To help prevent soil erosion, levees are often covered with grasses.
“It’s important to remember that your levees are not designed to be over-topped and have water flowing over them,” Kulesza said. “They are designed to temporarily hold back water, and then for (the water) to go away. You can’t have erosion eat away at your levee.”
Kulesza said there is currently more than 100,000 miles of levee in the United States. To help keep levees in good shape, it is best to leave them alone and keep them free of debris.
Roads and bridges are other important structures that must have a stable foundation. Erosion around a bridge foundation, called scour, is often caused by water flow.
Kulesza said large rock, or riprap, is used to pile around the bridge to enhance stability. Another solution is to replace the soil and cover it with a large plastic grid to make it more erosion-resistant.
“Going back and fixing structures for scour is complicated,” she said. “A lot of times we design to accept scour is going to occur. We monitor the bridge for scour, especially in the event of a flood.”
To watch a video interview with Kulesza, log on to the K-State Research and Extension YouTube page (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwW6W_UA3Ks&feature=youtu.be). The Soil Science Society of America has numerous resources for the public, teachers and children about soil and each monthly theme for the International Year of Soils. Log on to www.soils.org.
Tags: agriculturegeotechnical engineeringleveessoil
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Food Critics: The Best Patios In Kansas City In 2019
Olson Named Assistant Secretary of Agriculture
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Tag: "Forever Media"
TALKERS | July 12, 2019
President Trump Vents About Social Media’s Treatment of Conservatives; Michael Harrison Speaks with Attendee Sebastian Gorka. Yesterday’s White House “Social Media Summit” (7/11) provided a platform for President Trump to complain to numerous invited conservative social media commentators (and a few considered to be “notorious”) that conservatives aren’t getting a fair shake on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google. The president wondered aloud whether Twitter is exerting influence to suppress the popularity of his own Tweets. He also told the gathering that he would be bringing representative of those social media firms to the White House to talk with them about the problem. The only person in attendance that TALKERS magazine can confirm has a connection to talk radio was Salem Radio Network’s Sebastian Gorka, himself a former Trump advisor. (He was involved in a verbal spat in the Rose Garden with Playboy writer Brian Karem.) TALKERS publisher Michael Harrison spoke with Gorka moments after the meeting wrapped and got his thoughts on the summit. Hear that conversation here.
WEEI, Boston Lets Longtime Morning Host Gerry Callahan Go; WAAF’s Greg Hill to Take Over Morning Duties. Big changes in mornings in Boston as Entercom let’s longtime sports talk WEEI, Boston personality Gerry Callahan go and moves Greg Hill over from sister rock WAAF to handle the morning show, effective July 29. Callahan had been hosting the show with Mike Mutnansky, who returns to hosting the evening show. Hill will be joined by co-host Danielle Murr and a rotating group of additional contributors. Hill says, “I am thrilled to embark on the next chapter in my career in Boston. WEEI is a legendary Boston station and one of the country’s first sports stations. I am excited to anchor mornings moving forward. I also want to thank WAAF and all of the listeners and co-workers who have made the last 28 years so amazing.” Callahan tweeted the news of his departure Friday afternoon, writing: “Well, that was fun. After 20 years in morning drive, I did my last show on WEEI this morning. Thanks to all who listened. Unfortunately, this ain’t a movie. Sometimes the bad guys win. Much more to come.” Callahan was originally partnered with John Dennis, who exited the station in 2016. But the WEEI morning show’s best ratings versus Beasley’s WBZ-FM “98.5 The Sports Hub” came with Callahan partnered with Kirk Minihane. He left the morning show last fall. The Boston Globe reports that the 2019 Spring Book (April, May, June) numbers from Nielsen for Men 25-54 saw “Mut & Callahan” garner a 6.5 share, compared to WBZ-FM crosstown competitors “Toucher & Rich,” who tallied a 9.1 share. No word yet from WEEI about its plans for morning drive.
Talkers 2019: Telling the Story Videos Continue Posting Today with Sports Talk Superstar Jim Rome’s Keynote Address. TALKERS is continuing to post key speeches, presentations and sessions from the recent 22nd annual edition of the talk media industry’s longest-running and most-important national convention – Talkers 2019: Telling the Story. Today’s (7/12) post presents the special keynote address delivered by CBS Sports Radio syndicated host Jim Rome with an introduction from Yappy Days author/college professor Bernadette Duncan. Posted yesterday: panel discussion titled “Generating Talk Radio Revenue in 2019” featuring (in alphabetical order) Asa Andrew, host, AsaRx; Vince Benedetto, CEO, Bold Gold Media Group; Suzanne Grimes, EVP/marketing, Cumulus Media and president, Westwood One; and Dave Robinett, chief marketing officer, #250-America’s Mobile Speed Dial. The panel is moderated by Erica Farber, president and CEO of the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) and introduced by renown independent station owner Michael Zwerling of KSCO/KOMY, Santa Cruz, CA. Also already posted: special keynote address by Key Networks syndicated personality Bill O’ Reilly; one-on-one discussion, “Sports Talk Radio’s Role in Popular Culture” featuring a conversation between Mark Chernoff, senior VP/programming WFAN/Entercom, NY and captain/sports format, CBS Sports Radio and Mike Thomas, PD, WBZ-FM “98.5 The Sports Hub,” Boston and brand manager/spoken word, podcasts, esports, Beasley Broadcasting with Kate Delaney, host, GCN and correspondent NBC Sports Radio, serving as facilitator; panel discussion, “Broadcasting and Podcasting,” featuring (in alphabetical order) Greg Batusic, chief operating officer, PodcastOne; Steven Goldstein, founder/CEO Amplifi Media; Michael Czarnecki, program director, WONK-FM, Washington, DC and iHeartRadio Podcast Channel; and Craig Schwalb, former program director WABC, New York and WPRO, Providence with moderation by Mike Kinosian, managing editor/West Coast bureau chief, TALKERS; keynote “fireside chat” in which TALKERS publisher Michael Harrison interviews Premiere Networks/Fox News Channel star Sean Hannity in a casual one-on-one conversation introduced by DC Radio Company executive director Victoria Jones; opening address titled, “Telling the Story,” delivered by Lee Habeeb, host and producer of the successful syndicated program, “Our American Stories;” RAB president/CEO Erica Farber receiving the Woman of the Year award and SiriusXM Satellite Radio star “Cousin” Bruce Morrow receiving the Lifetime Achievement award. The convention took place in New York City on Friday, June 7 and was one of the most positively received in the event’s colorful history. TALKERS plans to add one or two videos per day to those posted until all the major events of the conference are posted here at Talkers.com where they will remain on view for the rest of the year. To see the videos and convention video page, please click here.
Soren Petro Promoted to Afternoon Drive at WHB-AM, Kansas City. Midday host Soren Petro is taking his “The Program” to the afternoon drive daypart at Union Broadcasting’s WHB-AM, Kansas City, effective Monday (7/15). Petro moves to the slot vacated by Kevin Keitzman, who left the station in the aftermath of his controversial comments about Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid’s family. Producer/host Kurtis Seaboldt and technical producer Jed Marshall will be part of the new afternoon show. Union Broadcasting president Chad Boeger says, “Soren is the consummate professional and is one of the best sports radio talk show hosts in the country. We are thrilled to have Soren move to the afternoon time slot to what we think is the best lineup of local sports talk anywhere.” The station plans to announce a new midday show in the near future.
New Installment of “The Michael Harrison Wrap” for Week of July 8-12 Now Posted. The recently launched, one-hour weekend radio show, “The Michael Harrison Wrap: An Overview of the National Conversation,” analyzing the hot talk media topics of this past week (July 1-5) is now posted on the website of its flagship station, iHeartMedia‘s WONK-FM, Washington, DC. It currently airs on WONK-FM in the key position of Friday at 6:00 pm as a dynamic programming punctuation mark of the week’s conversation and is also heard on several other stations around the country including KSCO, Santa Cruz; the Virginia Talk Radio Network; and Pioneer Valley Radio in Western Massachusetts. Hosted by TALKERS magazine’s iconic publisher, this week’s installment (titled “Heavy Traffic!”) features a lineup of guests that includes TALKERS executive editor Kevin Casey; radio talk show hosts Sebastian Gorka of Salem Radio Network, Martha Zoller of WDUN, Athens, GA and Kate Delaney of GCN and NBC Sports Radio; and investigative reporter Petr Svab of the Epoch Times. The non-partisan-but-hard-hitting program explores multiple opinions along the spectrum of contemporary American political and social thought. For more information about the program, call Barbara Kurland at 413-565-5413. To listen to it in its entirety, please click here.
Public Voting for Radio Hall of Fame Begins Monday. Voting in two categories for induction into the Radio Hall of Fame in which the public participates – Spoken Word Format On Air Personality and Music Format On-Air Personality – begins Monday (7/15) and runs through July 28. The nominees for Spoken Word Format On-Air Personality are: Joe Madison, Scott Slade, Stephanie Miller, and Suzyn Waldman. The nominees for Music Format On-Air Personality are: Hollywood Hamilton, Lon Helton, The Mark and Brian Show, and Ryan Seacrest. The winners will be inducted in November. Radio Hall of Fame chairman Kraig Kitchin says, “Listener engagement is an important part of this process as they’re given an opportunity to directly support their favorite on-air personality.” There are four categories also being voted on by a panel comprised of nearly 1,000 industry professionals. See more here.
TALKERS News Notes. The appearance at two events in Chicago by former Trump advisor Roger Stone with WLS-AM, Chicago morning host Mancow Muller is getting some attention from Chicago media writer Robert Feder. He notes that in addition to the “STONE FREE: Mancow & Roger Stone – Uncensored” event taking place on Sunday July 21 (tickets range from $100 to $500), there’s a pricier, separate event happening. Mancow is hosting an already-sold-out, $1,000 per plate fundraiser for Stone’s legal defense. (He’s been indicted on charges of lying to congress and obstruction of justice.) Mancow says his motivation in hosting the event isn’t political but about freedom of speech…..Forever Media’s Wilmington, Delaware news/talk WDEL-AM/FM is named Best Station for News, Best Station for Sports in Delaware Today Magazine’s Best of Delaware Upstate awards. Also, midday talk show host Rick Jensen won the Best Talk Show Host honors…..New York Times and Conde Nast-published travel writer Daniel Scheffler teams with iHeartMedia to debut, “Everywhere,” an iHeartRadio Original travel podcast that will take listeners on an adventure across the globe. The 26-episode series’ mission is to support travelers in their quest to overcome fears and ditch preconceptions about travel…..Westwood One and Subnation announce a new, original podcast called, “The Voice of Esports,” hosted by gaming legend Paul “ReDeYe” Chaloner. WWO says “The Voice of Esports” will “highlight the pioneers of one of today’s hottest lifestyle categories as famous esports industry expert and gameplay commentator ReDeYe entices legends of esports to lift the lid on what’s gone before and what’s to come.”…..SiriusXM and Netflix announce the first original program to broadcast exclusively on the newly launched Netflix Is A Joke Radio channel. Popular comedians Tom Papa and Fortune Feimster are co-hosting, “What A Joke with Papa and Fortune,” weekdays from 10:00 am – 12:00 pm ET…..Cumulus Media’s sports talk KESN-FM “ESPN Radio Dallas” is “the new official radio broadcast home of the NFL in Dallas-Fort Worth” with the addition of the “Prime Time NFL Package” from Westwood One. The station is airing “Sunday Night Football,” “Thursday Night Football,” and “Monday Night Football.” It is also airing every NFL playoff game and the 2020 Super Bowl.
Cool News Opportunity: FOX News Headlines 24/7 Seeks Freelance Writer. The job posting says: “We are looking for a freelance writer to join the Fox News Headlines 24/7 team. As a writer, you will be a crucial member of our broadcast team. You will write news for our national news network, conceptualizing, writing, compiling enterprise stories, fact checking, and building show content newscasts for “FOX News Headlines 24/7.” You may be the right candidate if you have the right attitude and understand the level of commitment required to be successful in this role. Your passion for national and international news is bar none! Please note this is a shift-based role, including overnight and weekend shifts. You will work some holidays and must be available off-hours in the event of major breaking news.” See more information and apply here.
Jeffrey Epstein Case Top News/Talk Story for Week of July 8-12. The sex trafficking charges leveled against Jeffrey Epstein and who in his circle of friends might get caught up was the most-talked-about story on news/talk radio this week, landing atop the Talkers TenTM. At #2 this week was the Southern border crisis and the planned ICE raids. Coming in at #3 was the U.S. Women’s Soccer victory and the related issues of gender, equal pay and more, followed by the 2020 presidential race and race relations at #4. The Talkers TenTM is a weekly chart of the top stories and people discussed on news/talk radio during the week and is the result of ongoing research from TALKERS magazine. It is published every Friday at Talkers.com. See this week’s entire chart here.
News/Talk Radio Consultant Greg Moceri Is This Week’s Guest on Harrison Podcast. One of the most influential programmers of the modern era in the news/talk radio format, Greg Moceri, is this week’s guest on the award-winning PodcastOne series “The Michael Harrison Interview.” Moceri is the founder and owner of the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Moceri Media, a national consultation firm that for the past 20 years has provided programming advice and talent coaching to a number of clients including Cox Media. Prior to being a consultant, Moceri served eight years as program director of Cox Media’s WSB-AM, Atlanta. For a couple of years before that he was news and program director of WTIC-AM, Hartford where he and Michael Harrison met and worked together in the early 1990s. In this long-form conversation, Harrison and Moceri go deep into the nuts and bolts of the talk format (as well as their own backgrounds) discussing the direction and future of spoken word radio, the state of journalism, the role of podcasting as it relates to broadcasters, the care and nurturing of talent and more. Don’t miss this! To listen to the podcast in its entirety, please click here or click on the player box marked “The Michael Harrison Interview” located in the right-hand column of the TALKERS email newsletter and every page of Talkers.com.
Music Radio News and Career Moves. A new CHR station debuts in the West Palm Beach market as Hubbard Radio unveils “Party 96.3” on WMBX-HD2 and translator W242CI. The station is being anchored in mornings by the Seattle-based, syndicated “Brooke and Jubal” show. Core artists include: Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Drake, Ariana Grande, Shawn Mendes, Post Malone, Khalid, Billie Eilish, and more…..Fort Myers adult contemporary WJPT has a new program director as Beasley Media Group bestows that title upon Matt Mangas, who also program the company’s rock WRXK and hosts the midday program there. Beasley Fort Myers operations manager Adam Star says, “Matt has been serving as program director for both stations in the interim and has been doing a tremendous job. It was an easy decision for us.” Also, at WJPT, the company names Ralph Marino assistant program director and morning drive personality, effective July 15. Marino recently exited AC WQRC, Cape Cod where he’d been hosting the morning show…..At Stephens Media Group’s 80s-formatted KTSO, Tulsa, Josh Venable is named program director. He continues his programming and morning show duties on sister alternative rock KMYZ “Z104.5 The Edge.” Stephens SVP of programming Bob Thornton comments, “Josh has been involved in the ‘Totally Awesome 80s’ brand since its inception in 2016, so this promotion was an easy one for us. Josh is smart, passionate, and one of the best programmers in the country.”…..Tampa Bay radio personality Mason Dixon is pictured below (seated) signing a new, multi-year deal to continue hosting the morning show on the company’s classic hits WRBQ “Q105.” Assisting him with his signature are (from l-r): program director Ted Cannarozzi, VP/market manager Steve Triplett, and operations manager Travis Daily.
June 2019 PPM Data – Round Two. June 2019 ratings information has been released for Washington (D.C.), Boston, Miami, Seattle, Detroit, Phoenix, Minneapolis, San Diego, Tampa, Denver, Baltimore, and St. Louis. Nielsen Audio’s June 2019 survey period covered May 23 – June 19. See all the 6+ numbers from subscribing stations here. Meanwhile, managing editor Mike Kinosian (Kinosian@TALKERS.com) provides his “Takeaways” from all 12 of these PPM markets.
Spoken-Word Formats – The collective +2.5 that Cumulus Media news/talk WMAL accrued through three straight “Holiday” 2018 through March 2019 improvements (4.3 – 5.7 – 6.6 – 6.8, 6+) virtually vanishes (-2.4) in three successive March through June decreases (6.8 – 5.5 – 5.2 – 4.4, fifth to seventh, 6+). Nonetheless, March’s 6.8 is WMAL’s best 6+-stat in the PPM-era. After posting a .2 (6+) in August 2018, Radio One’s WOL “News Talk – Where Information Is Power” is unlisted for the 11th sweep in succession.
Recapturing three-tenths of the eight-tenths squandered in May (3.1 – 3.4, 6+), Entercom sports talk/Nationals flagship WJFK-FM “106.7 The Fan” jumps from #16 to #13. In four straight sweeps without a loss, Radio One’s similarly-formatted WTEM “980 The Team” nearly doubles (+.4) its 6+ AQH share (.5 – .7 – .8 – .8 – .9, 6+) and cracks the top twenty (#22 to #20).
Setting the pace in the Nation’s Capital the sixth straight time, Hubbard Broadcasting all-news WTOP nevertheless falters for the fifth month in a row and is an overall -2.2 in that January 2019 through June 2019 stretch (10.4 – 9.8 – 9.7 – 8.7 – 8.7 – 8.2, 6+). January 2019’s 10.4 is its best 6+-performance since March 2018 (10.4, as well). The March 2019 through June 2019 topline for Entercom business news WDCH is: .4 – .5 – .4 – .5 (#25 to #24, 6+).
Although down nine-tenths via three successive slips (8.9 – 8.7 – 8.4 – 8.0, 6+), American University-owned news/talk WAMU continues in the runner-up slot. Prior to gaining three-tenths in March, “The Mind Is Our Medium” was -2.2 (“Holiday” 2018); +2.5 (January 2019); and -1.2 (February).
Washington, DC Music Formats – In addition to being an overall +1.4 through three gains in succession (3.2 – 3.6 – 3.7 – 4.6, 6+) and progressing from ninth to sixth, iHeartMedia CHR WITH “Hot 99.5” has its best 6+-showing in nearly two years (4.6, as well in August 2017). Co-owned adult contemporary WASH “97.1 – Washington’s Variety” logs its third straight sweep without a loss for a collective gain of nine-tenths (4.4 – 4.5 – 4.5 – 5.3, seventh to fifth, 6+) and has its strongest 6+-performance (5.3) since “Holiday” 2018 (10.4). Still in that iHeartMedia cluster, WMZQ “98.7 Today’s Best Country” is +1.3 through four consecutive improvements (2.8 – 3.1 – 3.3 – 3.5 – 4.1, 6+) and enters the top ten (#11 to #9). Owing to four straight gains, Entercom rhythmic CHR WPGC is up seven-tenths (3.0 – 3.1 – 3.3 – 3.6 – 3.7, 6+) and continues in tenth-place. When the sale of Cumulus Media hot AC WRQX “Mix 107.3 More Music – More Variety” to Educational Media Foundation was finalized, the station transitioned to contemporary Christian (now WLVW “Positive & Encouraging K-Love”). In its final sweep (May 2019) before the hot AC-to-contemporary Christian transition, “Mix” added six-tenths (3.5 – 4.1, 6+) and exited as a top ten station (#11 to #8). Its January 2019 through May 2019 topline was 3.5 – 4.1 – 3.5 – 3.5 – 4.1 (6+). WLVW erodes by -1.9 (4.1 – 2.2, #8 to #17, 6+), the largest (6+) May 2019 – June 2019 falloff by any station in the 24 PPM-markets we’ve analyzed thus far. When Atlantic Gateway Communications contemporary Christian WGTS dropped one-tenth in May, it halted four straight bumps that yielded an overall +1.8 (3.5 – 3.6 – 3.9 – 4.6 – 5.3, 6+). Now in June, however, “91.9 Christian Music Radio” plummets by -1.0 (5.2 – 4.2, fifth to eighth, 6+). WGTS wiped away four straight September 2018 through “Holiday” 2018 declines that resulted in a -1.4 (4.9 – 4.5 – 4.0 – 3.8 – 3.5, 6+). While it is locked at #3 for the seventh time in a row, Radio One urban AC WMMJ is down a cumulative seven-tenths in three consecutive dips (8.2 – 7.8 – 7.7 – 7.5, 6+). Immediately prior to this skid, “Majic” cobbled together six successive increases that yielded a +1.8 (6.4 – 6.7 – 6.8 – 7.4 – 7.5 – 7.9 – 8.2, 6+). After dropping one-tenth in back-to-back reports (6.5 – 6.4 – 6.3, 6+), Howard University’s similarly-programmed WHUR regained that deficit with a May pickup of two-tenths but falters by four-tenths in June (6.5 – 6.1, 6+) and repeats in fourth-place. Its March loss of one-tenth suspended three successive increases that accounted for a +1.2 (5.3 – 6.2 – 6.4 – 6.5, 6+). Maryland-licensed Manning Broadcasting classic hits-oldies WWEG surfaced in print in January and reeled off four straight up or flat trends for a net gain of four-tenths (.6 – .9 – .9 – .9 – 1.0, 6+), but “106.9 The Eagle” returns one-tenth to .9 (#19 to #20, 6+).
Spoken-Word Formats – Steady at #12, iHeartMedia news/talk WRKO “AM 680 – The Voice of Boston” has an overall gain of six-tenths in six successive up or flat trends (2.1 – 2.2 – 2.2 – 2.4 – 2.5 – 2.7 – 2.7, 6+). November 2018’s 3.2 is its best 6+-stat since 3.3 in November 2014). Down or flat the past four monthlies for a loss of two-tenths (.6 – .5 – .4 – .4 – .4, 6+), co-owned WXKS-AM “Talk 1200” is up one-tenth to .5 (#27 to #26, 6+).
Eight recent shifts for Beasley Media Group-owned WBZ-FM “98.5 The Sports Hub” include +.9 (October 2018); +.8 (November); -1.0 (December); +.5 (“Holiday” 2018); +1.6 (January 2019); -.8 (February); +.8 (May); and now -1.4 in June (7.0 – 5.6, third to fourth, 6+). “The Sports Hub” is the lead station of the Stanley Cup runner-up Bruins; Super Bowl champion New England Patriots; and the Celtics. A combined eight-tenths in April/May (3.2 – 3.8 – 4.0, 6+), Entercom-owned sports talk WEEI-FM is off one-tenth (4.0 – 3.9, 6+) and carries on in eighth-place. The flagship of the 2018 World Series champion Boston Red Sox has been -.5 (September 2018); +.5 (October); +.6 (November); -2.0 (December); -.7 (“Holiday” 2018); +1.7 (January 2019); -1.0 (February); -.5 (March); and +.6 (April).
This marks the fourth successive month that WBZ-AM has logged a 5.0 (6+); “News Radio 1030” is anchored in sixth-place. The iHeartMedia-owned news-talk hybrid was +1.3 in January/February (4.3 – 5.5 – 5.6, 6+).
Flat at #11, Boston University news/talk WBUR forfeits half of the two-tenths it picked up in May (3.5 – 3.4, -.1, 6+). Similarly, WGBH Educational Foundation news/talk WGBH, which gained four-tenths in May, relinquishes 50% of that margin in June (2.4 – 2.2, -.2, #15 to #16, 6+).
Boston Music Formats – In 6.1 – 6.4 range in each of the last five sweeps (6.1 – 6.3 – 6.4 – 6.1 – 6.2, 6+), Entercom adult contemporary WMJX “Magic 106.7 – Today’s Hits/Yesterday’s Favorites” (fourth to third, 6+) breaks out a June improvement of seven-tenths to 6.9, its highest 6+-stat since “Holiday” 2018’s 14.5. May’s first-place tie is broken as Beasley Media Group classic hits-oldies WROR “105.7 – 80s & More” gains six-tenths (7.6 – 8.2, steady at #1, 6+) and iHeartMedia-owned CHR WXKS-FM “Kiss 108 – Boston’s #1 Hit Music Station” falters by four-tenths (7.6 – 7.2, first to second, 6+). By dropping two-tenths in May, WROR snapped at four a consecutive string of up or flat trends that netted a +2.2 (5.6 – 6.2 – 6.8 – 7.8 – 7.8, 6+). A one-half share increase in May took “Kiss 108” to 7.6, its strongest 6+-performance since August 2018’s 7.8. Boston’s (6+) pacesetters thus far this calendar year have been: WXKS-FM (January, 7.3, 6+); WXKS-FM (February, 7.4, 6+); WROR (March, 7.8, 6+); WROR (April, 7.8, 6+); WROR and WXKS-FM (May, 7.6, 6+); and WROR (June, 8.2, 6+). Meanwhile, WXKS-FM’s format rival, Entercom’s WODS “103.3 Amp Radio,” is down or flat the fifth straight time for a net loss of four-tenths (2.5 – 2.4 – 2.4 – 2.2 – 2.1 – 2.1, 6+) yet advances from #19 to #17. While off one-half share (6.0 – 5.5, 6+), iHeartMedia-owned WZLX “Classic Rock 100.7” continues in fifth-place. In the market’s country contest, Beasley Media Group’s WKLB regains all but one-tenth of May’s -.4 (4.4 – 4.7, +.3, 6+) and remains in seventh-place. “Country 102.5” was a cumulative +1.3 in four straight bumps (3.5 – 3.6 – 3.7 – 4.2 – 4.8, 6+). Six successive sweeps without a loss by iHeartMedia-owned WBWL netted six-tenths (1.8 – 1.8 – 1.8 – 1.8 – 1.9 – 2.2 – 2.4, 6+), but “101.7 The Bull Boston’s #1 For New Hit Country” sputters by three-tenths to 2.1 (#15 to #17, 6+). May’s 2.4 is the highest 6+-share for “The Bull” since July 2018’s 2.5. Up seven-tenths in five successive positive or flat trends (1.3 – 1.6 – 1.6 – 1.9 – 2.0 – 2.0, 6+), Cumulus Media hot AC WXLO ends the streak by surrendering three-tenths to 1.7 (flat at #20, 6+). The 2.0 that “104.5 XLO” posted in May is its best 6+-stat since November 2014 (2.0, as well). Falling from #18 to #19, iHeartMedia rhythmic CHR WJMN “Jam’n 94.5” cedes a collective -1.1 in five straight down or flat moves (3.1 – 2.8 – 2.3 – 2.2 – 2.2 – 2.0, 6+).
English-Language Spoken-Word Formats – Repeating May’s 2.6 (6+), iHeartMedia news/talk WIOD “News Radio 620 – Miami’s News, Traffic, & Weather Station” falls from #17 to #18.
In seven successive sweeps without a loss, Entercom’s WAXY “Sports Talk 790 The Ticket” nets three-tenths (.6 – .6 – .6 – .7 – .7 – .8 – .9 – .9, 6+) and continues at #25. Flat at #29, co-owned WQAM “Sports Radio 560” has a January 2019 through June 2019 topline of .6 – .5 – .7 – .5 – .6 – .5 (6+).
Up two-tenths in four straight up or flat reports (2.1 – 2.2 – 2.3 – 2.3 – 2.3, 6+), Dade County School Board news/talk WLRN remains at #20.
Miami Music Formats – Completely erasing April/May’s combined -.6 (7.4 – 7.3 – 6.8, 6+) with a June increase of eight-tenths to 7.6 (6+), WFEZ “Easy 93.1” is #1 the sixth consecutive ratings period (including a three-way tie at #1 in February). Eight-tenths is a common fluctuation for the Cox Media Group-owned adult contemporary outlet as it was down eight-tenths in February and then up by that magnitude in March (7.4 – 6.6 – 7.4, 6+). Entering the “Holiday” 2018 sweep, “Easy 93.1” finished on top seven straight times. On the positive side, Entercom’s similarly-formatted WLYF is in third-place the fourth month in a row. The downside is that “101.5 Lite FM” is an overall -1.2 in four straight sweeps without an increase (6.6 – 6.2 – 6.2 – 6.1 – 5.4, 6+). Adult contemporary outlets “Easy” and “Lite” traded places with each other in January, as WFEZ went from second to first and WLYF segued from first to second. Consequently, an adult contemporary controls or has a share of Miami’s lead position (6+) for the 14th straight ratings period. Not only is iHeartMedia Spanish contemporary WZTU -1.7 in four straight drops (5.1 – 4.8 – 4.7 – 4.1 – 3.4, 6+), “Tu 94.9” fades from the top ten (#7 to #12) with its weakest 6+-stat since October 2017 (3.4, as well). By gaining four-tenths in May, Spanish Broadcasting System’s WCMQ interrupted four successive down or flat moves that resulted in a -1.0 (6.1 – 5.8 – 5.7 – 5.7 – 5.1, 6+). “Zeta 92.3” falters by six-tenths in June (5.5 – 4.9, 6+) but stays in fifth-place. Co-owned Spanish tropical WXDJ is off nine-tenths in four straight down or flat trends (4.9 – 4.8 – 4.1 – 4.1 – 4.0, 6+) as “El Zol 106.7” falls from a three-way tie at #7 to #8. Still in that SBS cluster, Spanish contemporary WRMA “Ritmo 95.7” falters by seven-tenths in four consecutive sweeps without an increase (3.4 – 3.3 – 2.8 – 2.8 – 2.7, 6+) but actually climbs from #16 to #15. Repeating in seventh-place, Cox Media Group urban contemporary WEDR “99 Jamz” is a collective -1.1 through five straight negative or neutral moves (5.2 – 4.7 – 4.5 – 4.4 – 4.1 – 4.1, 6+). Its format challenger, iHeartMedia-owned WMIB “103.5 The Beat,” hasn’t had an increase the last three ratings periods and is down three-tenths in that March through June stretch (2.9 – 2.9 – 2.6 – 2.6, #17 to #16, 6+). Up a cumulative nine-tenths in three straight up or flat trends (2.9 – 3.5 – 3.5 – 3.8, 6+), Cox Media Group CHR WFLC “Hits 97.3” advances from tenth to ninth with its best 6+ showing (3.8) since its 4.0 in December 2017. “Hits 97.3” responded to March’s one-tenth loss with an April increase of six-tenths. Meanwhile, iHeartMedia-owned/similarly-formatted WHYI “Y-100 Miami’s #1 Hit Music Station,” which posted a half-share increase in May, returns 80% of that improvement (3.0 – 2.6, -.4, 6+) and slips from #15 to #16. When “Y-100” added one-tenth in March, it curtailed five straight reports without an increase for a collective loss of nine-tenths (3.4 – 3.3 – 2.9 – 2.9 – 2.9 – 2.5, 6+).
Spoken-Word Formats – Unchanged in fifth-place, Bonneville news/talk KIRO -FM has a March 2019 through June 2019 topline of 4.8 – 4.8 – 4.9 – 4.6 (6+); this follows February 2019’s 5.9 (6+). Co-owned KTTH lost roughly 43% (-.9) of its 6+-stat due to three straight down or flat trends (2.1 – 1.4 – 1.2 – 1.2, 6+), but “Conservative Talk Radio” picks up two-tenths to 1.4 (#23 to #22, 6+). This is the fourth straight down or flat report for Sinclair Broadcast Group-owned KVI “Talk Radio 570,” which has lost one-half share since February (1.6 – 1.3 – 1.2 – 1.2 – 1.1, #23 to #24, 6+).
Having plummeted by nine-tenths in May, Bonneville sports talk/Mariners’ flagship KIRO-AM “ESPN 710” levels off by repeating May’s 6+ AQH share (3.4) and market rank (#13). With its 6+ stat sliced by more than 50% (-.8) via three setbacks in succession (1.4 – 1.3 – 1.2 – .6, 6+), iHeartMedia-owned KJR-AM “Seattle’s Sports Radio 950” slumps from #23 to #27.
Off four-tenths in April/May (3.1 – 2.8 – 2.7, 6+), Sinclair Broadcast Group all-news KOMO adds one-tenth to 2.8 (#17 to #16, 6+).
It is a May-only stay at #1 for Northwest Public Radio news/talk KUOW, which sputters by one-half share (6.1 – 5.6, 6+) and segues from first to third. In May, KUOW rebounded from March/April’s combined -2.3 with a gain of four-tenths. KUOW shifted to #2 in April after three months in a row at #1.
Seattle Music Formats – A collective -1.0 in four successive down or flat trends (7.0 – 6.8 – 6.8 – 6.6 – 6.0, 6+), Hubbard Broadcasting CHR KQMV “MOViN’ 92.5 – Seattle’s #1 Hit Music Station” ends the slide with a gain of one-tenth to 6.1 (6+) and advances from second to a first-place tie. “MOViN’” made it to #1 in April, the first time it reached the lead spot since November 2018. As noted, KQMV isn’t alone in the pacesetter position. It is sharing the penthouse with iHeartMedia-owned KZOK “102.5 Seattle’s Classic Rock Station,” which is +2.4 as a result of seven straight upticks (3.7 – 3.9 – 4.4 – 4.5 – 4.8 – 5.6 – 6.0 – 6.1, second to first, 6+). Immediately in advance of this positive run, KZOK was -1.6 in four consecutive ratings periods without an increase (5.3 – 5.1 – 4.9 – 4.9 – 3.7, 6+). Just as they were in May, Entercom adult contemporary KSWD “94.1 The Sound” (flat at 4.5, seventh to sixth, 6+) and Hubbard Broadcasting’s similarly-formatted KRWM “Warm 106.9” (unchanged at 4.4 and #9, 6+) are separated by one-tenth. “The Sound” was an overall +1.5 through three consecutive increases (3.7 – 3.8 – 5.1 – 5.2, 6+) before eroding by -1.1 in April. Prior to the May sweep, “Warm 106.9” recorded a 4.8 (6+) in three of the previous four reports (4.8 – 4.0 – 4.8 – 4.8, 6+) and was #1 in December and “Holiday” 2018. The five most recent shifts for Classic Radio, Inc.-owned KING “98.1 Listener-Supported Classical Music” are +.9 (February); -.5 (March); +.7 (April) -.6 (May); and +.7 in June (2.5 – 3.2, #19 to #14, 6+). By way of contrast, its October 2018 through January 2019 topline was a consistent 2.2 – 2.1 – 2.2 – 2.0 – 2.0 (6+). After being an overall -1.1 via four straight sweeps without an increase (4.7 – 4.3 – 4.3 – 4.1 – 3.6, 6+), Entercom alternative KNDD “107.7 The End” pulls the plug with a +.4 to 4.0 (steady at #12, 6+). On the heels of posting a +.9 in May (4.1 – 5.0, 6+), Entercom’s KKWF “100.7 The Wolf – #1 For Country” surrenders one-half share to 4.5 (fourth to sixth, 6+). Prior to April, when it regressed by six-tenths, “The Wolf” was a cumulative +1.4 as a result of three straight upticks (3.3- 4.3 – 4.5 – 4.7, 6+). Just three-tenths behind “The Wolf” is Hubbard Broadcasting’s KNUC “New Country 98.9 The Bull,” which has exactly doubled (+2.1) its 6+ AQH share in seven successive up or flat sweeps (2.1 – 2.1 – 2.4 – 2.8 – 3.3 – 3.5 – 4.0 – 4.2, #10 to #11, 6+). In three consecutive positive or neutral trends, co-owned adult standards KIXI almost doubled (+.6) its 6+-stat (.7 – .7 – .7 – 1.3, 6+), but “AM 880” drops one-tenth to 1.2 (#22 to #23, 6+). In six straight sweeps without an increase, Sinclair Broadcast Group hot AC KPLZ is a collective -2.2 (5.1 – 3.8 – 3.7 – 3.1 – 3.1 – 2.9 – 2.9, 6+) but “Star 101.5 Today’s Best Mix” advances from #16 to #15.
Spoken-Word Formats – This is the fifth straight sweep in which Cumulus Media’s WJR “News Talk 760” has recorded a negative or neutral trend and is -1.1 since the first of the year (3.7 – 3.5 – 3.5 – 3.5 – 3.1 – 2.6, #16 to #17, 6+).
Locked on 5.0 (6+) in February and March and then on 5.4 (6+) April and May, Entercom sports talk/Tigers flagship WXYT-FM“97.1 The Ticket” falters by seven-tenths to 4.7 (sixth to ninth, 6+).
For the third time in the last four sweeps, co-owned WWJ “News Radio 950” erodes by eight-tenths (6.2 – 5.4, fourth to fifth, 6+). It did so in both March and April (7.7 – 6.9 – 6.1, 6+). Even with the -.8, WWJ had a March-only stay in first-place.
Michigan Public Media news/talk WUOM regains the one-tenth it dropped in May (1.6 – 1.5 – 1.6, 6+) and remains at #20. May’s -.1 ended four consecutive fluctuations of three-tenths (1.6 – 1.9 – 1.6 – 1.3 – 1.6, 6+). This is the third time in the last four ratings periods that Wayne State University news/talk WDET has had a shift of one-tenth (1.5 – 1.4 – 1.3 – 1.1 – 1.2, #22 to #21, 6+).
Detroit Music Formats – At the same time that Entercom adult contemporary WDZH “98.7 The Breeze” improves by seven-tenths and cracks the top ten (#12 to #8, 6+), iHeartMedia’s similarly-formatted WNIC “The Best Variety of the ‘80s, ‘90s, & Today” forfeits six-tenths (6.5 – 5.9, second to third, 6+). In early-November (2018), CHR WDZH “Amp Radio” became adult contemporary “98.7 The Breeze” and it has more than doubled (+2.5) its 6+ AQH in eight successive reports without a loss (2.3 – 2.7 – 2.7 – 2.9 – 3.6 – 4.0 – 4.0 – 4.1 – 4.8, 6+). After its 6+ AQH share eroded by nearly two-thirds (-11.8) in four successive sweeps (17.9 – 7.1 – 6.6 – 6.2 – 6.1, 6+), WNIC answered with a May increase of four-tenths. Its “Holiday” 2018 17.9 is the largest 6+ AQH share by any Detroit station in the PPM-era. On top in December 2018 and “Holiday” 2018, WNIC more than tripled (+12.2) its 6+-share via four straight increases (5.7 – 6.2 – 6.6 – 12.2 – 17.9, 6+). In addition to “The Breeze,” Entercom classic hits-oldies WOMC “104.3 Detroit’s Greatest Hits” notches a May 2019 – June 2019 increase of seven-tenths (5.9, seventh to third, 6+), thus halting three consecutive down or flat reports that resulted in a loss of two-tenths (5.4 – 5.4 – 5.2 – 5.2, 6+). In the country tussle, Entercom-owned WYCD “99.5 – Detroit Country Music” is a combined +.4 in May/June (4.9 – 5.1 – 5.3, eighth to seventh, 6+), while Cumulus Media’s WDRQ “93.1 Nash FM” is +1.2 through four consecutive bumps (1.6 – 1.9 – 2.4 – 2.6 – 2.8, #17 to #16, 6+). This is the best 6+-showing for “Nash FM” since June 2018 (2.8, as well). Ever since iHeartMedia debuted WLLZ as “106.7 – Detroit’s Wheels,” the classic rocker has had a (6+) February 2019 through June 2019 topline of 1.5 – 3.4 – 3.8 – 3.7 – 4.3 (#13 to #11, 6+). Down or flat the past three months for a -1.4 (7.8 – 6.5 – 6.4 – 6.4, 6+), Beasley Media Group-owned WCSX “94.7 – Detroit’s Classic Rock” ends the slide with a +.1 to 6.5 (third to second, 6+). In March, WCSX eroded by -1.3 to shift from first to second. Its March/April decline of -1.5 followed back-to-back gains of nine-tenths (6.0 – 6.9 – 7.8, 6+). “Detroit’s Classic Rock” spent four straight months at #1 before being dislodged in September 2018. Without a loss the fourth time in succession for an overall +1.4 (5.5 – 6.0 – 6.1 – 6.9 – 6.9, 6+), iHeartMedia urban AC WMXD “Mix 92.3” repeats at #1. Its format challenger, Radio One-owned WDMK “105.9 Kiss-FM,” which was +1.0 in four straight improvements (2.7 – 2.8 – 2.9 – 3.2 – 3.7, 6+), drops one-tenth to 3.6 (#13 to #14, 6+). In May, “Kiss” had its best 6+-stat since June 2018 (3.7, as well). Unchanged at #9, Beasley Media Group’s WRIF “Rocks Detroit,” which faltered by -1.5 in four successive down or flat sweeps (6.0 – 5.9 – 4.9 – 4.5 – 4.5, 6+), pulls the plug with a +.2 to 4.7 (6+). While it is flat at #15, iHeartMedia urban contemporary WJLB “97.9 – Detroit’s Hip-Hop and R&B” is a collective -1.0 through three straight declines (4.1 – 3.9 – 3.3 – 3.1, 6+).
Spoken-Word Formats – A hefty loss of eight-tenths (4.0 – 3.2, 6+) nudges Bonneville news/talk KTAR-FM out of the top ten (#10 to #12). Four-tenths behind KTAR-FM is iHeartMedia’s KFYI “News Talk 550,” which is off three-tenths following May’s half-share increase (3.1 – 2.8, #14 to #13, 6+).
Following three straight gains for a collective +1.1 (2.0 – 2.3 – 2.4 – 3.1, 6+), Bonneville sports talk/Arizona Diamondbacks flagship KMVP-FM “98.7 Arizona Sports” forfeits nine-tenths to 2.2 (#14 to #20, 6+); May’s 3.1 was its strongest 6+-showing since September 2018 (3.1, as well).
For the fourth straight sweep, Maricopa County Community College news/talk KJZZ has a fluctuation of one-tenth (3.6 – 3.5 – 3.4 – 3.5 – 3.6, #12 to #11, 6+).
Phoenix Music Formats – The wild ride continues for iHeartMedia adult hits KYOT, whose six most recent shifts are -1.2 (“Holiday” 2018); +1.6 (January/February); -.8 (March); +.7 (April) -1.2 (May); and +1.2 in June (5.4 – 6.2, 6+). Moreover, “95.5 The Mountain – We Play Everything” progresses from third to first. “The Mountain” had been at #1 three ratings periods in succession before being ousted in May. It takes over from Hubbard Broadcasting’s KSLX “Classic Rock 100.7,” which has a May-only stay at the top (flat at 6.1, first to third, 6+). An April +1.2 fully erased its January – February – March -1.2 (6.5 – 5.4 – 5.3 6+). A collective +1.2 via three straight upticks (5.3 – 5.5 – 5.9 – 6.5, 6+), iHeartMedia adult contemporary KESZ remains in the runner-up slot. Progressing from fifth to fourth, Entercom classic hits-oldies KOOL “94.5 Phoenix Classic Hits” is a combined +1.3 in three positive spikes in succession (4.0 – 4.1 – 5.0 – 5.3, 6+). Off nine tenths in three straight decreases (5.1 – 4.5 – 4.3 – 4.2, 6+), iHeartMedia’s KNIX “102.5 Today’s Best Country” halts the skid with a +.1 to 4.3 (eighth to seventh, 6+). After being up one-half share in May (2.8 – 3.3, 6+), Entravision regional Mexican KLNZ “La Tricolor 103.5” relinquishes eight-tenths to 2.5 (#13 to #16, 6+). Sputtering by seven-tenths each are iHeartMedia CHR KZZP “104.7 Kiss-FM” (5.3 – 4.6, fourth to fifth, 6+) and Maricopa County Community College classical KBAQ “89.5 K-Bach,” which loses more than half (-1.3) its 6+ AQH share in four straight drops (2.4 – 2.3 – 2.2 – 1.8 – 1.1, #26, 6+). In each of the last 13 sweeps, “Kiss” was between a 5.0 – 5.7 (6+). The three latest shifts by Entercom rhythmic CHR KALV “Live 101.5” are -.6 (April); +1.2 (May); and -.6 in June (4.5 – 3.9, seventh to eighth, 6+). April’s loss curtailed three successive up or flat sweeps that accounted for a gain of nine-tenths (3.0 – 3.4 – 3.5 – 3.6 – 3.9, 6+).
Spoken-Word Formats – Despite being +2.1 via three consecutive upticks (3.3 – 4.8 – 5.2 – 5.4, 6+), Entercom-owned/Twins flagship WCCO “News Radio 830” backslides from eighth to ninth. Four straight decreases by Hubbard Broadcasting’s KTMY account for a net loss of -1.1 (3.4 – 3.2 – 2.9 – 2.7 – 2.3, #14 to #17, 6+); “My Talk 107.1” was a combined +1.2 in January/February (2.2 – 3.3 – 3.4, 6+). It is tied with iHeartMedia’s KTLK “Twin Cities News Talk AM 1130,” which is -1.0 in five straight down or flat trends (3.3 – 3.3 – 2.8 – 2.6 – 2.4 – 2.3, flat at #17, 6+).
Repeating May’s 4.1 (6+), iHeartMedia’s KFXN “Sports Radio 100.3 K-Fan” continues at #12. Likewise, Hubbard Broadcasting sports talk KSTP-AM “ESPN 1500” echoes its May stats of .7 (6+) and a #24 ranking.
A combined -.4 in April/May (4.7 – 4.6 – 4.3, 6+), Minnesota Public Radio news/talk KNOW roars back with a robust +1.2 to 5.5 (6+) and leaps back into the top ten (#11 to #7).
Minneapolis Music Formats – Anchored at #13, Entercom’s country-formatted KMNB“102.9 The Wolf,” which lost eight-tenths in four successive down or neutral trends (3.7 – 3.4 – 2.9 – 2.9 – 2.9, 6+), halts the skid with a gain of four-tenths to 3.3 (6+). Albeit flat at 6.7 (6+), Hubbard Broadcasting’s KSTP-FM vaults from third to first. “KS-95,” which faltered by eight-tenths in May, held or shared the top spot in January, March, and April. This calendar year, “KS-95” has been +1.9 (January); -.8 (February); +.6 (March); +.5 (April); and -.8 (May). Meanwhile, iHeartMedia-owned/similarly-programmed KTCZ “Cities 97.1,” which lost two-tenths in May, is flat at 4.5 (6+), but departs the top ten (#10 to #11). Shifts this calendar year for “Cities 97.1” include +1.2 (January) -.5 (February); +.2 (March); +.5 (April); and -.2 (May). Dislodged by KSTP-FM from the top spot are iHeartMedia-owned classic hits-oldies outlet KQQL “Kool 108” (6.8 – 6.6, -.2, first to second, 6+) and Cumulus Media-owned KQRS “Minnesota’s Classic Rock” (6.8 – 5.9, -.9, first to fifth, 6+). After approximately 54% (-6.8) of its 6+ AQH share vanished through four straight negative or flat trends (12.6 – 6.3 – 6.3 – 6.3 – 5.8, 6+), “Kool 108” logged a +1.0 in May. Meanwhile, entering the June sweep, “Minnesota’s Classic Rock” was +1.3 in three straight upticks (5.5 – 5.6 – 6.7 – 6.8, 6+). Prior to April’s 6.7, KQRS had been within five-share range (6+) in each of the previous 13 sweeps. May’s 6.8 was the best 6+-stat for “Minnesota’s Classic Rock” since December 2016’s 6.9. Down or flat the fourth time in a row for an overall -1.5 (7.0 – 7.0 – 6.4 – 6.1 – 5.5, 6+), iHeartMedia CHR KDWB “101.3 The Twin Cities’ #1 Hit Music Station” skids from fifth to seventh. A loss of eight-tenths (2.2 – 1.4, 6+) by KBEM not only forces “Jazz 88 FM” out of the top twenty (#18 to #21), it takes the Minneapolis Public Schools outlet to its lowest 6+-stat since “Holiday” 2018 (1.4, as well).
Spoken-Word Formats – Following a +1.0 via three straight increases (4.0 – 4.2 – 4.4 – 5.0, 6+), iHeartMedia news/talk KOGO “News Radio 600” relinquishes two-tenths to 4.8 (6+) yet advances from sixth to fifth. An overall +.9 as a result of four successive increases (1.6 – 1.9 – 2.0 – 2.4 – 2.5, 6+), Tegna news/talk KFMB- AM “AM 760” is now a combined -.5 in May/June (2.5 – 2.3 – 2.0, #17 to #19, 6+). The (ultra-consistent) December 2018 through June 2019 San Diego topline for iHeartMedia Los Angeles’ similarly-formatted KFI “AM 640” is: 1.2 – 1.2 – 1.2 – 1.1 – 1.2 -1.0 – 1.1 – 1.0 (#22 to #23, 6+).
Immediately after tripling (+1.4) its 6+ AQH share in three straight advances (.7 – .9 – 1.7 – 2.1, 6+), Entercom-owned/Padres flagship KWFN “97.3 The Fan” loses one-tenth to 2.0 (6+) but remains at #19.
Meanwhile, iHeartMedia’s KLSD “Fox Sports 1360 San Diego’s Sports Station” falters by two-tenths to .8 (#24 to #25, 6+), thus suspending three consecutive improvements that yielded six-tenths (.4 – .5 – .8 – 1.0, 6+).
Significant ups/down continue for San Diego State University-owned news/talk KPBS, which has been -.6 (December 2018); -1.1 (“Holiday” 2018); +2.1 (January 2019); -1.7 (April); +.9 (May); and now -.7 in June (6.9 – 6.2, 6+). Nonetheless, KPBS is #1 for the sixth month in a row.
San Diego Music Formats – A mere one-tenth from the lead, Entercom classic hits-oldies KXSN “Sunny 98.1 – San Diego’s Greatest Hits” is a collective +1.4 in four successive improvements (4.7 – 5.0 – 5.9 – 6.0 – 6.1, steady at #2, 6+). By registering a gain of seven-tenths to 4.2 (#14 to #11, 6+), adult contemporary cluster-mate KYXY applies the brakes to three straight negative or neutral trends that accounted for a loss of seven-tenths (4.2 – 3.9 – 3.9 – 3.5, 6+). Still in that Entercom cluster, in four upticks in succession, KBZT “Alt 94.9 – San Diego’s Alternative” nets +1.3 (2.6 – 2.8 – 3.1 – 3.7 – 3.9, #11 to #12, 6+). Steady at #3, iHeartMedia CHR KHTS “Channel 93.3 – San Diego’s #1 Hit Music Station” is a combined +1.2 in four consecutive sweeps without a loss (4.3 – 4.8 – 5.5 – 5.5 – 5.5, 6+), directly after a cumulative -2.3 as a result of four straight decreases (6.6 – 6.0 – 4.6 – 4.5 – 4.3, 6+). Meanwhile, co-owned KGB “San Diego’s Classic Rock” is -1.6 in four drops in a row (5.9 – 5.3 – 4.5 – 4.4 – 4.3, flat at #10, 6+), following three consecutive improvements that yielded a +2.2 (3.7 – 3.8 – 4.5 – 5.9, 6+). A combined +.7 in May/June (2.9 – 3.3 – 3.6, 6+), urban contemporary sibling KSSX “Jam’n 95.7” regresses by nine-tenths to 2.7 (#12 to #15, 6+). Without an increase the fourth time in a row, Entercom-owned KSON “103.7 San Diego’s #1 New Country” is a collective -1.6 since February (6.1 – 5.8 – 5.8 – 5.0 – 4.5, sixth to seventh, 6+). Local Media San Diego-programmed CHR XHTZ “Z-90.3 Today’s Hit Music” (eighth to seventh) continues an alternating up/down pattern that commenced in “Holiday” 2018 (3.8 – 4.2 – 3.9 – 4.3 – 4.1 – 4.7 – 4.5, 6+).
Spoken-Word Formats – Slipping from #14 to #15, iHeartMedia-owned WFLA “970 Tampa Bay’s News Radio” is a collective -1.5 in three straight sweeps without an increase (4.5 – 3.6 – 3.0 – 3.0, 6+), immediately after three successive gains led to a +1.4 (3.1 – 3.6 – 4.3 – 4.5, 6+). Four-tenths behind WFLA is Cox Media Group news/talk WHPT “102.5 The Bone – Real, Raw, Radio,” which rebounds from May’s -.8 with a June increase of three-tenths (2.3 – 2.6, #16 to #17, 6+).
The flagship of the Rays – iHeartMedia-owned WDAE “620 Tampa Bay’s Sports Radio” – has been -.4 (March); +.9 (April); -.4 (May); and now +.5 in June (2.2 – 2.7, #17 to #16, 6+).
Following three straight declines in which it lost six-tenths (2.1 – 1.9 – 1.7 – 1.5, 6+), University of South Florida news/talk WUSF picks up two-tenths to 1.7 (flat at #20, 6+).
Tampa Music Formats – Owing to three straight improvements (4.0 – 4.3 – 4.4 – 5.4, ninth to fifth, 6+), iHeartMedia hot AC WMTX “Mix 100.7” is +1.4 and reaches the five-share level (5.4, 6+) for the first time since February 2018’s 5.2. By gaining seven-tenths to 6.1 (third to second, 6+), Beasley Media Group’s WQYK “99.5 Tampa Bay’s New Country Hits” suspends three consecutive setbacks that accounted for a -1.0 (6.4 – 5.6 – 5.5 – 5.4, 6+). Notwithstanding that it falters seven-tenths (9.3 – 8.6, 6+), Cox Media Group adult contemporary WDUV “Lite Favorites” is #1 for the 82nd straight time but is below a nine-share (8.6, 6+) for the first time since October 2018’s 8.9. Its May gain of three-tenths curtailed four straight negative trends that resulted in a -4.7 (13.7 – 11.8 – 11.6 – 10.6 – 9.0, 6+). WDUV’s 13.7 in “Holiday” 2018 is the highest 6+-stat for any Tampa station since WDUV’s 14.9 in “Holiday” 2015. Co-owned WXGL “107.3 The Eagle – Tampa Bay’s Classic Hits” is an overall -1.8 in three straight negative or neutral moves (7.5 – 6.6 – 6.6 – 5.7, second to third, 6+). Prior to the March report, “The Eagle” was an overall -1.5 in five successive sweeps without an increase (6.9 – 6.6 – 6.0 – 5.7 – 5.4 – 5.4, 6+). Up three-tenths in May, iHeartMedia CHR WFLZ “93.3 Tampa Bay’s #1 Hit Music Channel” surrenders one-half share (4.3 – 3.8, #12 to #13, 6+). Its format foe, Cox Media Group’s WPOI “Hot 101.5 – Tampa Bay’s New Hit Music,” is off four-tenths to 4.1 (seventh to tenth, 6+), thus curtailing three straight bumps that produced a +1.3 (3.2 – 3.4 – 4.1 – 4.5, 6+). A collective +1.2 through three consecutive increases (3.2 – 3.4 – 3.5 – 4.4, 6+), iHeartMedia’s WXTB “98 Rock” forfeits four-tenths to 4.0 (6+) and departs the top ten (#9 to #12). Unchanged at #9, urban contemporary cluster-mate WBTP “95.7 The Beat,” which was +1.3 in seven successive sweeps without a loss (3.1 – 3.2 – 3.6 – 3.7 – 4.2 – 4.2 – 4.3 – 4.4, 6+), loses two-tenths to 4.2 (6+). Beasley Media Group classic rocker WPBB “98.7 The Shark” is up an overall nine-tenths in three straight sweeps without a loss (1.6 – 1.6 – 2.1 – 2.5, steady at #18, 6+) and has its highest 6+-showing (2.5) since “Holiday” 2018’s 4.6. Having more than doubled (+.7) its 6+ AQH share in four straight sweeps without a loss (.5 – .6 – .7 – .7 – 1.2, 6+), The Diocese of St. Petersburg-owned contemporary Christian WBVM “90.5 Spirit FM – Tampa Bay’s Hit Christian Music” falters by three-tenths to .9 (6+) but stays at #21.
Spoken-Word Formats – Regaining May’s loss of three-tenths (5.2 – 4.9 – 5.2, 6+), iHeartMedia news/talk and Colorado Rockies flagship KOA “Colorado’s News, Traffic, & Weather Station” progresses from sixth to fifth. Co-owned KHOW “Talk Radio 630” has a “Holiday” 2018 through June 2019 topline of 1.1 – 1.4 – 1.4 – 1.1 – 1.3 – 1.3 – 1.1 (#23 to #21, 6+).
After posting a May gain of four-tenths to halt three straight decreases accounting for a -1.5 (4.1 – 3.3 – 2.9 – 2.6, 6+), Bonneville-owned KKFN “Sports Radio 104.3 The Fan” regresses by six-tenths (3.0 – 2.4, #16 to #18, 6+). KSE Radio Ventures’ KKSE-FM nearly tripled (+.5) February’s 6+ stat in three consecutive bumps (.3 – .4 – .6 – .8, 6+) but “Attitude Sports Radio 92.5” has May’s .8 (6+) sliced in half to .4 (#26 to #29, 6+).
A massive -1.6 (6.2 – 4.6, 6+) sends Colorado Public Radio news/talk KCFR tumbling from first to sixth. A combined +1.2 in January/February (6.4 – 7.1 – 7.6, 6+), KCFR was #1 in September 2018, October, and November before segueing to #2 in December. Community Radio for Northern Colorado news/talk KUNC, which logged a 1.5 (6+) in three of the last four ratings periods (1.5 – 1.8 – 1.5 – 1.5, 6+), is off four-tenths to 1.1 (6+) and exits the top twenty (#19 to #21).
Denver Music Formats – After netting +1.4 in four straight up or flat trends (4.3 – 4.6 – 5.0 – 5.7 – 5.7, 6+), KYGO regressed by seven-tenths in May. The Bonneville country outlet roars back in June though with a +1.0 (5.0 – 6.0, 6+) and storms from fifth to first with its highest 6+-stat since September 2018 (6.0, as well). It is a similar scenario for iHeartMedia’s KRFX. In four straight sweeps without a loss, “Classic Rock 103.5 The Fox” was +1.4 (4.0 – 4.0 – 4.6 – 5.2 – 5.4, 6+). It dropped one-half share in May only to roar back in June with a +.9 (4.9 – 5.8, sixth to second, 6+). “The Fox” is two-tenths behind frontrunner KYGO and two-tenths ahead of Entercom’s similarly-programmed KQMT “99.5 The Mountain,” which has gained nine-tenths in three straight up or flat sweeps (4.7 – 5.2 – 5.2 – 5.6, flat at #3, 6+). Immediately after erasing its +.7 in four successive up or flat moves (2.6 – 2.7 – 3.1 – 3.1 – 3.3, 6+) with a May loss of seven-tenths, Educational Media Foundation contemporary Christian KLDV “Positive & Encouraging K-Love” posts a half-gain increase (2.6 – 3.1, #18 to #17, 6+). A combined +.6 in April/May (4.6 – 4.9 – 5.2, 6+), iHeartMedia triple A KBCO “97.3 World Class Rock” flounders by eight-tenths to 4.4 (6+) and drifts from third to tenth. A loss of six-tenths (1.5 – .9, 6+) forces Colorado Public Radio classical KVOD off the top twenty (#19 to #24). Owing to five straight up or flat trends (2.9 – 2.9 – 3.0 – 3.8 – 4.6 – 4.6, 6+), KQKS was a collective +1.7, but the Entercom rhythmic CHR forfeits four-tenths to 4.2 (6+) and departs the top ten (#8 to #12).
Spoken-Word Formats – The heretofore consistent January 2019 through May 2019 topline (2.7 – 2.8 – 2.7 – 2.7 – 2.8, 6+) for Hearst Television news/talk WBAL “News Radio – Expect More” is jolted owing to a loss of seven- tenths to 2.1 (#11 to #12, 6+). Off by seven-tenths as well is independent news/talk WCBM “680 Stimulating Talk – Breaking News,” which is a collective -1.9 in five straight sweeps without an increase (3.4 – 3.4 – 3.1 – 3.0 – 2.2 – 1.5, #13 to #15, 6+). Even though it gains one-tenth (.3 – .4, 6+), Cumulus Media Washington, DC news/talk WMAL backslides from #28 to #29.
Returning May’s one-tenth increase (4.4 – 4.5 – 4.4, 6+), Entercom sports talk/Orioles flagship WJZ-FM “105.7 The Fan” continues at #9.
On the heels of April/May’s +1.0 (.9 – 1.6 – 1.9, 6+), co-owned business news WDCH coughs up 50% of that increase (1.4, -.5, #15 to #18, 6+).
Down one-half share (each) in back-to-back reports (3.4 – 2.9 – 2.4, 6+), Your Public Radio news/talk WYPR “88.1 Your NPR News Station” is now a combined +.9 in May/June (2.4 – 2.6 – 3.3, #12 to #11, 6+). American University-owned news/talk WAMU recaptures the one-tenth it lost in May (1.2 – 1.1 – 1.2, #20 to #19, 6+).
Baltimore Music Formats – Not only does an increase of eight-tenths (7.3 – 8.1, 6+) propel Radio One urban AC WWIN-FM to its best 6+-stat (8.1) since January 2019’s 9.0, “Magic 95.9” advances from second to first. It displaces urban contemporary sibling WERQ “92 Q Jams,” which had been the market leader the past four sweeps but trades places with “Magic.” Immediately after posting a +2.2 in March/April (7.6 – 8.3 – 9.8, 6+), “92 Q Jams” slumps to a -1.8 in May/June (9.8 – 8.8 – 8.0, 6+). In May, it reached the nine-share level (9.8, 6+) for the first time since July 2016’s 9.2. As noted above in the Washington, DC summary, Cumulus Media hot AC WRQX “Mix 107.3 More Music – More Variety” is now Educational Media Foundation-owned contemporary Christian WLVW “Positive & Encouraging K-Love.” In its debut contemporary Christian report, the former hot AC – which reached a 1.4 (6+) in May – erodes by nine-tenths to .5 (6+) and fades from Baltimore’s top twenty (#18 to #27). Shamrock Communications-owned WZBA regresses by nine-tenths as a result of four straight down or flat moves (6.2 – 5.8 – 5.6 – 5.3 – 5.3, 6+) but “100.7 The Bay – Baltimore’s Classic Rock Station” progresses from seventh to sixth. Dropping from fifth to eighth, Hearst Television’s WIYY “98 Rock” (-.6 in June) continues a down/up pattern it started in December 2018 (4.3 – 4.0 – 5.1 – 4.7 – 5.0 – 4.7 – 5.4 – 4.8, 6+). In four straight down or flat moves (6.3 – 5.9 – 5.9 – 5.8 – 5.8, 6+), iHeartMedia’s WPOC “93.1 Today’s Best Country” has lost one-half share and slips from third to fourth, while co-owned CHR WZFT “Z-104.3 Baltimore’s #1 Hit Music Station” is off seven-tenths in four sweeps in a row without an increase (4.6 – 4.3 – 4.3 – 4.2 – 3.9, flat at #10, 6+). This is the tenth sweep in a row that Peter and John Radio Fellowship contemporary Christian WRBS-FM is unlisted; “95.1 Shine FM – Baltimore’s Positive Hits Station” was #13 in August 2018 (2.6, 6+).
Spoken-Word Formats – April’s gigantic +2.2 by Entercom news/talk KMOX “The Voice of St. Louis” has been whittled by 50% (-1.1) in May/June (7.3 – 6.6 – 6.2, 6+) but the flagship of the Cardinals and Stanley Cup-winning Blues advances from a three-way tie at #3 to #2. KMOX had an April-only stay at #1. Flat at #18, co-owned KFTK “FM News Talk 97.1” wipes away May’s increase of two-tenths (2.1 – 2.3 – 2.1, 6+.
After back-to-back losses of one-half share (4.1 – 3.6 – 3.1, 6+), Hubbard Broadcasting sports talk WXOS is a combined +.6 in three straight upticks (3.1 – 3.2 – 3.4 – 3.7, steady at #15, 6+). Starting later this year, “101 Sports” becomes the flagship of the Blues.
University of Missouri news/talk KWMU repeats May’s 6+ AQH share (3.3) and market rank (#16).
St. Louis Music Formats – The eight most recent shifts for Hubbard Broadcasting’s KSHE are +.5 (December); -.7 (Holiday” 2018); +2.0 (January 2019); -.5 (February); +1.3 (March); -1.6 (April); +.1 (May); and now +.9 in June (7.4 – 8.3, 6+) as “95 Real Rock Radio” repeats at #1. KSHE was tied for February’s top spot with iHeartMedia classic hits-oldies KLOU, and, in March, took sole possession of first-place. Then, in April, KSHE again had to share the lead – on that occasion with Entercom news/talk KMOX – but has had sole possession of the top spot in May and June. In each of the last 20 ratings periods, iHeartMedia urban AC KATZ-FM has been within two-share territory (6+), but “100.3 The Beat” gains six-tenths to 3.2 (flat at #17, 6+) and reaches the three-share level for the first time since November 2017’s 3.0 (6+). In a bit of a reversal from what happened in May, iHeartMedia’s KSD “93.7 The Bull – #1 For New Country” is up one-half share (4.2 – 4.7, #12 to #10, 6+), while Hubbard Broadcasting’s WIL “New Country 92.3” erodes by eight-tenths (6.6 – 5.8, third to sixth, 6+). Compare that to this time last month when KSD regressed by seven-tenths and WIL improved by eight-tenths. The five most recent fluctuations for “The Bull” are +.5 (February); -.5 (March); +.9 (April); -.7 (May); and +.5 (June). The alternating (6+) December 2018 through June 2019 down/up pattern for WIL includes: 6.1 – 5.8 – 6.0 – 5.4 – 6.1 – 5.8 – 6.6 – 5.8. A cumulative -2.0 via four straight decreases (7.9 – 7.6 – 6.8 – 6.2 – 5.9, 6+), iHeartMedia classic hits-oldies KLOU “103.3 St. Louis’ Greatest Hits” ends the slide with a +.1 to 6.0 (#6 to the three-way scrum at #3, 6+). In six straight sweeps without a loss, co-owned KLLT “Alt 104.9” nets two-tenths (1.7 – 1.7 – 1.8 – 1.8 – 1.9 – 1.9 – 1.9, flat at #19, 6+). After extending its consecutive string of upticks to five – and more than doubling (+2.6) its 6+ AQH share in that timeframe (2.5 – 3.4 – 3.7 – 4.4 – 4.7 – 5.1, 6+) – Entercom CHR WNOU surrenders nearly half (-1.2) that increase (3.9, 6+). “Now 96.3 All The Hits” spirals from the top ten (#9 to #14). Even though its May increase of six-tenths is erased in its entirety (6.0 – 6.6 – 6.0, 6+), Hubbard Broadcasting’s KPNT “105.7 The Point – Everything Alternative” remains in third-place. It is tied there with Gateway Creative Broadcasting contemporary Christian KLJY “99.1 Joy FM,” which is a combined -1.2 in May/June (7.2 – 6.7 – 6.0, second to third, 6+). By dropping three-tenths to 5.3 (seventh to eighth, 6+), Entercom hot AC KYKY “Y-98” suspends three straight bumps that netted a +1.0 (4.6 – 4.7 – 5.1 – 5.6, 6+).
iHeartMedia Flips ‘Orange and Blue 760’ to ‘Freedom 93.7.’ Denver’s KDSP-AM changes calls to KDFD-AM and – with the addition of FM translator K229BS, Lakewood – flips to news/talk as “Freedom 93.7 Real News, Real Talk.” The station had been a Denver Broncos-centric sports talk station for the past two years. It began stunting Monday (7/8) with a rotation of pop and rock songs with the word “freedom” in the title. iHeartMedia has not issued a press release on the changes and it’s unclear exactly what the lineup will be but there’s been speculation that Premiere Networks’ Rush Limbaugh program will move from sister news/talk KOA to anchor the lineup.
BIA Advisory Services Revises 2019 U.S. Local Ad Forecast; Radio Projected to Get $14.5 Billion. Media consulting firm BIA Advisory Services updates its 2019 U.S. Local Advertising Forecast, predicting that the total local media marketplace in 2019 will be “slightly stronger than expected earlier in the year, with ad revenue reaching approximately $148.8 billion.” The firm cites “a strong economy, an early start to the 2020 election, and most notably, increases in mobile and mobile-social advertising” as causes for the improved projections. As usual, direct mail leads the pack with an estimated 25% share of that ($37.2 billion). Local radio is expected to get 9.8% of the total, or about $14.5 billion, thanks to online efforts by radio stations. BIA SVP and chief economist Mark Fratrik comments, “It can be surprising to see that direct mail continues as such an important medium. However, it directly targets more households than any other channel and mobilizes local consumers to make purchases, especially when combined with campaigns that make use of digital platforms. The key for revenue growth (and protection) today is not just to look at the media in your sector, but across all local media because you compete across all ad channels today.”
Talkers 2019: Telling the Story Videos Continues Posting Today with “Sports Talk Radio’s Role in Popular Culture” One-On-One Discussion. TALKERS is continuing to post key speeches, presentations and sessions from the recent 22nd annual edition of the talk media industry’s longest-running and most-important national convention – Talkers 2019: Telling the Story. Today’s (7/9) post presents the one-on-one discussion titled, “Sports Talk Radio’s Role in Popular Culture” featuring a conversation between Mark Chernoff, senior VP/programming WFAN/Entercom, NY and captain/sports format, CBS Sports Radio and Mike Thomas, PD, WBZ-FM “98.5 The Sports Hub”, Boston and brand manager/spoken word, podcasts, esports, Beasley Broadcasting. Kate Delaney, host, GCN and correspondent NBC Sports Radio, serves as facilitator. Posted yesterday: “Broadcasting and Podcasting,” featuring (in alphabetical order) Greg Batusic, chief operating officer, PodcastOne; Steven Goldstein, founder/CEO Amplifi Media; Michael Czarnecki, program director, WONK-FM, Washington, DC and iHeartRadio Podcast Channel; and Craig Schwalb, former program director WABC, New York and WPRO, Providence. The discussion is moderated by Mike Kinosian, managing editor/West Coast bureau chief, TALKERS. Already posted: The convention’s keynote chat in which TALKERS publisher Michael Harrison interviews Premiere Networks/Fox News Channel star Sean Hannity in a casual one-on-one conversation. The two discuss a variety of topics including Hannity’s special relationship with President Donald J. Trump; what it takes to be successful on both radio and television talk media; the challenges facing talk radio in terms of ratings and marketing; Hannity’s feelings about his life and career; plus more. The session is introduced by DC Radio Company executive director Victoria Jones. Also already posted on the page: The convention’s official opening address titled, “Telling the Story,” delivered by one of the industry’s great storytellers, Lee Habeeb, host and producer of the tremendously successful syndicated program, “Our American Stories” as well as RAB president/CEO Erica Farber receiving the Woman of the Year award and SiriusXM Satellite Radio star “Cousin” Bruce Morrow receiving the Lifetime Achievement award. The convention took place in New York City on Friday, June 7 and was one of the most positively received in the event’s colorful history. TALKERS plans to add one or two videos per day to those posted until all the major events of the conference are posted here at Talkers.com. To see the videos and convention video page, please click here.
‘98.5 The Sports Hub’ Adds FOX Sports Radio Shows for Overnights. The Beasley Media Group sports talker announces it is adding FOX Sports Radio’s “The Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon” for the 12:00 midnight to 2:00 am slot and “The Ben Maller Show to air from 2:00 am to 6:00 am, effective July 18. WBZ-FM, Boston will also air overnight programming from FOX Sports Radio on weekends. Beasley national spoken-word brand manager Mike Thomas says, “For the second time in our 10-year history, ‘The Sports Hub’ will partner with FOX Sports Radio for late-night programming. We’re happy to have FSR’s compelling brand of sports talk back on ‘The Sports Hub’ to keep our listeners informed and entertained.”
Sutterfield Appointed GSM for Cox Media Group’s Tulsa Cluster. Sales pro Phillip Sutterfield is promoted to general sales manager for Cox Media Group’s Tulsa station group that includes news/talk KRMG-AM/FM three music brands and Cox’s three television stations in the market. CMG Tulsa director of sales Joe Muller states, “Phillip has been an integral part of the CMG sales team for many years and has always been one of the most consistent leaders on the team. He has built outstanding relationships in the community and is a creative force for our clients. I know Phillip will thrive in this new role and help guide us through the next phase of our sales growth.”
TALKERS News Notes. Former White House aide to President Obama (and current executive producer of Funny or Die D.C.) Brad Jenkins teams up with PodcastOne to create a new podcast titled, “Fired Up!” PodcastOne says, “Jenkins and his guests will dig deep to explore political issues and other things that get them fired up to love, laugh, and inspire.” PodcastOne CEO Peter Morris says, “Brad is a dynamic, outspoken, intelligent ball of fire! His passion for igniting high energy and intelligent conversation is perfect for the podcast format, and is sure to get both his guests and listeners as fired up as he is when it comes to politics and other topics we all care about.”…..Skyview Networks and The Howard Hughes Corporation’s Triple-A baseball club the Las Vegas Aviators, announce today a multi-year contract for the team to use Skyview’s inventory management and live read capture software, AdView. The Aviators – an affiliate of the Oakland A’s – play in the Pacific Coast League…..Voice and audio content provider SpokenLayer announces that Andy Lipset joins the company as CEO. He takes over for SpokenLayer founder Will Mayo, who continues with the company as chief strategy officer. Lipset served for the past six years with Pandora.
CORRECTION: Yesterday, TALKERS magazine reported on the programming changes at Forever Media’s WXDE-FM, Lewes “Delaware 105.9.” In doing so we wrote that Ed Tyll’s early afternoon show was cancelled by the station. Program director Dan Gaffney tells TALKERS that Tyll was not let go but resigned from his program.
2020 Presidential Race, Epstein Arrest, Trump Tax Returns, UK Ambassador Leak, Immigration Policy/Detention Facilities; Iran Nuclear Ambitions, California Earthquakes, Women’s Soccer Pay Issue Among Top News/Talk Stories Yesterday (7/8). The 2020 presidential race and the Democrats running for their party’s nomination; the arrest of billionaire hedge fund managerJeffrey Epstein on charges of sex trafficking; New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signs a law allowing Congress access to President Trump’s New York tax returns; the leak of a cable from UK Ambassador Kim Darroch calling President Trump “inept” and “clumsy”; the Trump Administration’s immigration policies and the controversy over conditions at border detention centers; Iran’s continuing progress in enriching uranium; the Southern California earthquakes; and the issue of pay disparity between the men’s and women’s U.S. Soccer team were some of the most-talked-about stories on news/talk radio yesterday, according to ongoing research from TALKERS magazine.
Music Radio News and Career Moves. Tallahassee has a new music station as iHeartMedia turns WTLY-AM/W243EG into classic hip hop and R&B as “Throwback 96.5.” The station will feature hip hop and R&B from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. Station program director D – Strong says, “Throwback hip hop and R&B is what’s hot right now and I’m glad that we’re the ones that get to bring that to Tallahassee!”.…..Some new acts are being added to the 2019 iHeartRadio Music Festival taking place Friday, September 20 and Saturday, September 21 at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena. Hootie & The Blowfish, Marshmello, and Steve Aoki with special guests Darren Criss and Monsta X have been added to the lineup…..Westwood One’s syndicated “Country Gold with Terri Clark” hits the 165-station affiliation mark with the addition of WCCQ-FM, Crest Hill, Illinois (Chicago market); WDRQ-FM, Detroit; WNKN-FM, Cincinnati; WSM-FM, Nashville; WPUR-FM, Atlantic City; KTJJ-FM, Farmington-St. Louis; and KXKC-FM, Lafayette, Louisiana.
Talkers 2019: Telling the Story Videos Continues Posting Today with “Radio Broadcasting and Podcasting” Panel Discussion. TALKERS is continuing to post key speeches, presentations and sessions from the recent 22nd annual edition of the talk media industry’s longest-running and most-important national convention – Talkers 2019: Telling the Story. Today’s (7/8) post presents the panel discussion titled, “Radio Broadcasting and Podcasting,” featuring (in alphabetical order) Greg Batusic, chief operating officer, PodcastOne; Steven Goldstein, founder/CEO Amplifi Media; Michael Czarnecki, program director, WONK-FM, Washington, DC and iHeartRadio Podcast Channel; and Craig Schwalb, former program director WABC, New York and WPRO, Providence. The discussion is moderated by Mike Kinosian, managing editor/West Coast bureau chief, TALKERS. Already posted: The convention’s keynote chat in which TALKERS publisher Michael Harrison interviews Premiere Networks/Fox News Channel star Sean Hannity in a casual one-on-one conversation. The two discuss a variety of topics including Hannity’s special relationship with President Donald J. Trump; what it takes to be successful on both radio and television talk media; the challenges facing talk radio in terms of ratings and marketing; Hannity’s feelings about his life and career; plus more. The session is introduced by DC Radio Company executive director Victoria Jones. Also already posted on the page: The convention’s official opening address titled, “Telling the Story,” delivered by one of the industry’s great storytellers, Lee Habeeb, host and producer of the tremendously successful syndicated program, “Our American Stories” as well as RAB president/CEO Erica Farber receiving the Woman of the Year award and SiriusXM Satellite Radio star “Cousin” Bruce Morrow receiving the Lifetime Achievement award. The convention took place in New York City on Friday, June 7 and was one of the most positively received in the event’s colorful history. TALKERS plans to add one or two videos per day to those posted until all the major events of the conference are posted here at Talkers.com. To see the videos and convention video page, please click here.
‘Delaware 105.9’ Ends Local Susan Monday Show; Adds Syndicated Programming. The new owner of news/talk WXDE-FM, Lewes “Delaware 105.9” is dropping local talk personality Susan Monday. At the same time, early afternoon host Ed Tyll resigns from the station that Forever Media acquired along with nine other signals from Delmarva Broadcasting for $18.5 million earlier this year. WXDE is adding Salem Radio Network’s Mike Gallagher show in the late morning daypart and the Compass Media Networks-syndicated “Markley, van Camp and Robbins” show in the 12:00 noon to 3:00 pm slot. Monday is ready for her next opportunity. She can be reached at suemo1955@gmail.com.
SB Nation Radio Launches New Afternoon Show. Current SB Nation Radio personalities Cody Stoots and Jake Asman are being paired up to co-host “The Main Event with Cody Stoots and Jake Asman” show in the SB Nation Radio lineup. The network is operated by Houston-based Gow Media. Stoots has been with Gow’ Sportsmap and Asman has been hosting the network’s 7:00 pm ET “The Power Hour” program. The new show airs from 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm ET. Gow Media and SB Nation Radio CEO David Gow comments, “It’s been a joy listening to Jake and Cody in various roles the last couple of years. They both are so versatile. The perfect combination of humor and constructive sports debate. It’s going to be a very entertaining program.”
Levin Broadcasts from Israel. Pictured above is Westwood One nationally syndicated radio star Mark Levin (left) interviewing British intelligence and military officer Colonel Richard Kemp (right) in the Christian Broadcasting Network studios in Jerusalem. The two discussed Iran, the war in Afghanistan, and Kemp’s collaboration with the CIA and Israeli intelligence and defense agencies. Kemp was one of a number of expert guests Levin interviewed during his international remote broadcast.
Confer Radio Institute Opens Today. Today at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, 25 students are beginning the 10-day Confer Radio Talent Institute in which they will learn from a group of more than 40 broadcast professionals, including: Kristin Cantrell, CEO of CapCity Communications and Seven Mountains Media and Jim Loftus, COO of Seven Mountains Media; Lynn Deppen, president of Forever Media; Joe Bell, VP/market manager of Beasley Media Group Philadelphia; Karen Richards, VP/sales, Cumulus Media Harrisburg; Jon Zellner, president of programming operations, National Programming Group, iHeartMedia New York; Shelly Easton, VP of music programming, Entercom Philadelphia; Brian Check, SVP of programming, iHeartMedia Philadelphia; Eric Johnson, program director of Beasley Media Group’s WPEN-FM, Philadelphia “97.5 The Fanatic,” and many more. The institute is being underwritten by the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters and Kerby Confer to underwrite the institute. Lifelong broadcaster Kirby Confer (pictured at right teaching at a previous institute) says, “We want to make a difference and give this next generation a firm foundation in the industry. We are going to birth a whole new generation of radio people and are so pleased the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters offer both their time and financial support, investing in radio’s future.” All students will be certified Radio Marketing Professionals after completing the RMP sales training course from the RAB.
Beasley Unveils New XP Studio in Detroit. The new Beasley Media Group broadcast space pictured above will serve as the official headquarters for Beasley’s nationally syndicated Esports lifestyle-driven program, “Checkpoint XP.” The program is seen daily on Twitch and heard weekly on 74 affiliate stations via the Sun Broadcast Group network, and via a lineup of original content Esports-focused podcasts. Seen sitting in the state-of-the-art studios are (from l-r): “Checkpoint XP” personalities Norris Howard and Joe Sloan, Beasley CEO Caroline Beasley, Checkpoint XP’s Robbie Landis and Nate Bender.
Media Staffing Network and Radio Ink Partner for 2019 Radio Sales Compensation Study. The 2019 Radio Sales Compensation Study results will be presented at this year’s NAB/RAB Radio Show in Dallas. It’s a partnership between Media Staffing Network (MSN) and our friends at Radio Ink. The study begins with a two-minute survey for managers and sellers that launches today (7/8) and runs through Friday, July 26. The goal of the study is to guide radio owners, operators, and managers to develop sales compensation packages that attract – and keep – the best candidates, including those from younger demographics, in today’s highly competitive hiring landscape. All survey participants will be entered in a random drawing to win one of three licenses to MSN’s Local Sales Recruitment Online Learning Program. Radio Ink EVP and president/publisher Deborah Parenti says, “We are delighted to team up with MSN in a project that will hopefully help provide guidance, especially to smaller groups and individual stations, in crafting the kind of compensation packages that encourage young people to consider radio sales as a career path. With so much competition from digital media, making radio ‘sexier’ to prospective hires has to, first and foremost, include a more competitive pay structure.” To access the survey, click here.
WTEM, Washington Adds FOX Sports Radio Programming. Washington, DC sports talker WTEM “The Team 980” adds evening and overnight programming from FOX Sports Radio to its daily program schedule. Effective immediately, the Radio One-owned station begins airing “The Odd Couple with Chris Broussard and Rob Parker” in the 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm slot, “The Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon” from 10:00 pm to 2:00 am, and “The Ben Maller Show” in the 2:00 am to 6:00 am daypart. The station also airs FOX Sports Radio’s full lineup of weekend programming when play-by-play sports is not on the schedule.
NAB to Honor Mary Quass with National Radio Award. At this year’s NAB Radio Show in Dallas, NRG Media chairman and CEO Mary Quass will receive the National Radio Award from the National Association of Broadcasters. The award – given for “outstanding leadership in the radio industry” – will be presented during the September 25 luncheon program, “2020 and Beyond: Insights from the Top.” NAB president and CEO Gordon Smith says, “We are pleased to honor Mary Quass for her many achievements and impact on radio. She is a true catalyst in our industry who exemplifies the meaning of the National Radio Award through her leadership, integrity and success.”
Trump’s Fourth of July Celebration, 2020 Presidential Race, Iran Nuclear Ambitions, California Earthquakes, U.K. Ambassador’s Trump Criticisms, Jeffrey Epstein Arrest, and U.S. Women’s Soccer Victory Among Top News/Talk Stories Over the Weekend. The Washington, DC Fourth of July celebration, including President Trump’s speech and the military component; the Democrats vying to challenge Trump in 2020; Iran’s uranium enrichment program and tensions with the U.S.; the earthquakes in Southern California since the July 4 temblor; British Ambassador Kim Darroch’s criticism of President Trump; the arrest of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein on sexual assault charges; and the U.S. Women’s Soccer team’s World Cup victory were some of the most-talked-about stories on news/talk radio over the holiday weekend, according to ongoing research from TALKERS magazine.
Music Radio News and Career Moves. Air personality Jasmine Lee is named co-host of the “Big Mama and the Wild Bunch” morning show on Beasley Media Group’s CHR WXKB, Fort Myers “B103.9.” She was most recently morning host at Stillwater Broadcasting’s CHR KSPI-FM, Stillwater, Oklahoma. WXKB operations manager Adam Star comments, “Jasmine has great charm and charisma on the air. Her energy and fun personality is infectious. She is the final piece that we were looking to add to ‘Big Mama and The Wild Bunch Morning Show.’”…..In the Salisbury-Ocean City, Maryland market, Don Harrison is the new brand manager at Adams Radio’s rock WZBH “The Beach” and classic rock WGBG “Big 107.7.” He was most recently operations manager at Townsquare Media’s operations in the Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyoming markets. Harrison says, “I’m honored to join Adams Radio Group and be working with the entire team. It’s refreshing to be part of a company that believes in local radio, super-serving the community, and creating a great working environment. I also can’t wait to team up with Lisa Layne – she’s a rock star.”…..iHeartMedia Boston brings Hisham Fayed aboard as director of marketing to work with the cluster’s music brands: WXKS-FM “Kiss 108,” WJMN-FM “JAM’N 94.5,” WBWL-FM “101.7 The Bull,” WZLX-FM, and WKAF-FM. In this role, Fayed will work closely with the promotions, events, sales, and programming teams in developing and executing marketing plans. iHeartMedia VP of marketing Adam Ralston says, “Hisham has a proven track record of impactful marketing campaign creation and execution in Boston. We are thrilled to add him to our superstar marketing team, and we know he will contribute to our brands’ ongoing success.”
TALKERS | May 22, 2019
PPM Analysis: All-News. TALKERS magazine managing editor Mike Kinosian presents a look at the performances of radio stations based on data from Nielsen Audio’s April 2019 PPM survey, today focusing on the all-news format. The performance of the all-news format is very important to Entercom as it owns nine of the 12 all-news stations in our panel. Almost 60% of these stations went down (weekly, 6+ AQH share) from the March PPM survey to April. Comparing April 2018 to this year, 6+ ratings movement was even, with half the stations going up and the other half going down. Hubbard Radio’s WTOP-FM, Washington again ranks #1 in its market (the only all-newser to do so this month), while Entercom’s KCBS-AM, San Francisco and WWJ-AM, Detroit both ranked #2 in their markets. See Mike Kinosian’s full report here.
Cumulus Asks FCC to Allow Up to 100% Foreign Investment. The FCC has a rule that no more than 25% of an American broadcast entity can be owned by foreign investors. As Cumulus Media emerged from Chapter 11 reorganization in 2018, foreign ownership of its voting stock was no more than 22.5%. The company made sure of that in order to facilitate the proceedings. Now, Cumulus is asking the FCC to allow foreign investment of up to 100%. The FCC public notice states, “Cumulus now requests approval to permit up to a 100 percent aggregate foreign investment to enable holders of warrants and non-voting stock to convert or exercise these instruments in exchange for voting stock and allow non-U.S. persons or entities to hold up to 100 percent of its voting stock and capital stock generally in the future. Specifically, Cumulus explains that upon grant of the Petition, the special warrants would be automatically exchanged, and foreign ownership of Cumulus immediately following such exchanges would then be approximately 34 percent on a voting basis and 31 percent on an equity basis. Notwithstanding that the foreign ownership which would result from exercise of the special warrants is expected to be much less than 100 percent, Cumulus states that it is requesting a ruling that would permit non-U.S. persons or entities to hold up to and including 100 percent of its voting stock and 100 percent of its capital stock generally. Cumulus believes that elimination of the overall limitation on foreign ownership of its shares will, inter alia, enhance the market liquidity of its stock and ‘provide the Company with the greatest degree of flexibility in accessing foreign investment capital.’ Cumulus asserts that grant of the Petition is entirely consistent with the public interest. In support of the Petition, Cumulus asserts that grant of the Petition is consistent with the reorganization plan, which has enabled Cumulus to emerge from bankruptcy in a stronger financial condition, and which, in turn, will enable Cumulus to raise capital, enhance its programming, better serve the public, and compete with non-FCC regulated entities on a more level playing field. Cumulus also maintains that grant of the Petition aligns with U.S. foreign trade policy and the U.S. government’s desire to ‘promote inbound foreign investment’ and encourage reciprocity with U.S. trading partners.” The public comment period is open through July 8.
Alpha Media Stations Moving into Chicagoland Mall. After almost two years of negotiations, the local village board in Gurnee, Illinois (near the Illinois-Wisconsin border) has voted to pay Alpha Media $200,000 to assist in the cost of moving its four north suburban stations – news/talk WLIP-AM, Spanish sports talk WKRS-AM, rock WIIL-FM, and hot AC WXLC-FM – into space at the Gurnee Mills mall complex. According to a report in the DailyHerald, mall owner Simon Property Group is paying Alpha $600,000 to help with the cost of the estimated $847,000 renovation project. In return, Alpha will produce at least 32 public events at the mall to drive foot traffic and will air ads for the mall.
TALKERS News Notes. The Kirk Minihane–Entercom relationship appears to be turning sour again with the sports media personality now threatening to take legal action to get the platform he desires. Brandon Contes at Barrett Sports Media writes an account of Minihane’s displeasure over his situation at Entercom that he expressed while broadcasting recently on Periscope. Minihane wants his own “network” on Entercom’s Radio.com platform within a month or he says he’ll sue. Minihane officially left the WEEI, Boston morning show last fall. At the time, Entercom said it wanted Minihane to do a show on Radio.com…..Media personality Michele Tafoya – whose work includes serving as co-host of “The Tom Barnard Show” on Cumulus Media’s rock KQRS, Minneapolis – was honored Monday at the 40th Annual Sports Emmy Awards in New York with the Outstanding Sports Personality award for her work as an NBC Sports sideline reporter for NFL games. Tafoya also won the award in 2012 and 2014. Cumulus VP, classic rock and Twin Cities operations manager Scott Jameson says, “All of us at Cumulus Minneapolis are very proud of Michele winning this prestigious Emmy award. We’re quite fortunate having her on our legendary morning show hosted by National Hall of Fame inductee Tom Barnard and the rest of the morning team.”…..Westwood One News picks up another honor for exceptional reporting as the organization and correspondent Jim Roope receive a Deadline Club Award for best “Radio or Audio Feature Reporting.” The award recognizes Roope’s 2018 report, “Las Vegas: Remembering and Healing,” in which he returned to Las Vegas one year after the deadly mass shooting and spoke with the community and the victims about how they were remembering, coping, and healing. The Deadline Club Award is bestowed by the NY Society of Professional Journalists for reporting across all media platforms, including newspapers, magazines, radio, digital, and TV…..Radio personality Walter Sterling is guest starring on news/talk KFBK, Sacramento this holiday weekend. He’s sitting in for Pat Walsh on both Friday and Monday from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm. Sterling’s syndicated program is heard Sunday evenings on the iHeartMedia station…..Forever Media closes on its acquisition of the 10-station group in Delaware and Maryland it purchased from Steinman Communications for $18.5 million. The signals include news/talk WDEL-AM/FM, Wilmington and news/talk WXDE-FM, Lewes, Delaware. Michael J. Bergner of Bergner & Co. was the exclusive broker for the deal.
ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT TO REGISTER: Talkers 2019: Telling the Story Nearing a Sellout! The 22nd annual installment of the talk media industry’s longest-running and most important national convention is on the verge of being sold out. The final deadline for registrations being accepted is this Friday, May 24 at 5:00 pm ET. According to TALKERS VP/executive editor Kevin Casey, “In order to maintain the intimacy and effectiveness of this heritage event, it must be open only to members of the media industries and be in a special type of venue with limited seating and capacity. We have resisted the impulse to grow this event beyond that level of efficiency. That is one of the reasons it is so popular and has enjoyed such amazing longevity.” To obtain registration information and avoid being shut out before the deadline, call Barbara Kurland at 413-565-5413. For an up to the minute agenda, please click here.
Trump Financial Records Subpoena, Dems Impeachment Talk, U.S.-Iran Tensions, U.S.-China Tariff Battle, 2020 Election Politics, New Anti-Abortion Laws, and NBA/NHL Playoffs Among Top News/Talk Stories Yesterday (5/21). The request from congressional Democrats for President Trump’s tax returns and financial records; key Democrats battle House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over impeachment possibility; Iran’s increased production of enriched uranium and the possibility of U.S. military action against it; the trade war being waged between the U.S. and China; the Democrats vying to challenge President Trump in 2020; the new, restrictive anti-abortion laws being passed in several states; and NBA/NHL playoffs action were some of the most-talked-about stories on news/talk radio yesterday, according to ongoing research from TALKERS magazine.
Music Radio News and Career Moves. In Philadelphia, iHeartMedia names programming pro Brandon “Buster” Satterfield program director for CHR WIOQ-FM “Q102,” effective June 17. Satterfield moves north from his most recent position with the company as APD for CHR WFLZ-FM, Tampa. iHeartMedia Philadelphia SVP for programming Brian Check says, “Brandon brings a unique combination of top 40 radio experience on and off the air, as well as knowledge of the market and passion for everything Philly. His dedication to the brand and keen eye for programming and the latest music make him the perfect fit.”…..Cox Media Group’s urban contemporary WALR-FM, Atlanta “KISS 104.1” brings two-time Grammy nominee and radio personality Monie Love aboard to host the 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm show, effective today (5/22). Station director of branding and programming Terri Avery comments, “We are so excited to have Monie Love join the ‘KISS 104.1’ team. Her love of hip-hop, entertaining personality and star power make her a great addition to our afternoons here in Atlanta.”…..Westwood One’s internationally syndicated “The Ty Bentli Show” announces Adrian Kulp joins the show as senior executive producer. WWO says Kulp brings a wealth of creative experience across multiple entertainment mediums to the show. He served for almost 10 years as a television executive with positions including vice president of TV development at Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions, vice president of TV development at Chelsea Handler’s Borderline Amazing, and a stint at CBS’s “The Late Late Show.” NASH Network director of programming John Shomby says, “Ty Bentli continues to build a team that is focused on maximizing creativity! Adrian brings a different perspective to the table that will help the show build a unique vision and bring that to our listeners each morning!”
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A Vanessa by any other name....
Yad Vashem Hall of Names (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I was told that I was named after the daughter of one of my uncle's girlfriends. A little girl named Vanessa who said turnips taste like gasoline. Glamorous, isn't it? I have never been much of a fan of my name, but what can you do about it? Legally changing it is an option I suppose, but it's expensive and names are gifts given by our parents. There is thought, so much of it usually, that goes into naming a child. I don't think I could just toss that kind of gift away.
In the past few years it just got shortened to Nessa, which suits me at this time in my life. Still me, just a little different as I find myself. Nessa is way better than some of the nicknames I've had growing up. Nessie Monster, Nessie Bo - this one I still get sometimes-, Bocephus, and the dreaded Baby Boo... yeah, no I can't even write it. That last one my Daddy called me and my standard response has been "I hate that name!" for 34 years. Those are mostly family nicknames. Friends have dubbed me Nessalene, Snotty Nessa - I think that came from a weird name generator, but it stuck for years-, and a few interesting others have come from friends. The people I love are the best.
When it came to naming my own children, it was a process both times. The Boy was named Cassie Michelle because we were told he was a girl. We called him that for months. His actual name involves Legends of the Fall, his Dad's childhood mentor, and his Dad's middle name/name of my best guy friend from high school. When we told people he had two middle names people gave us the LOOK. You know, the "are you stupid" look. I have always though his name is amazing and wouldn't change it if I had the chance. Little Miss, we talked names for months, mostly because we didn't believe it when we were told she was a girl. I can't remember the boy name we had picked for her, but she was Megan Danielle until we were driving to the hospital to have her. It was very spur of the moment. Still, she is her, I can't imagine either of them as anyone else.
Do names make us who we are? With a nickname like Snotty Nessa I really hope not! How were you named? How did you name your kids? what sort of nicknames do you have? I know I'm not the only bad one with a name story floating around.
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Exposing more feminist myths, "women are better leaders".....
I found a site on facebook, female supremacy, actually they hide their true identity, it should be called radical left wing lesbian female supremacy, not that I want to demean anyone, but to hide their real idealism is not been honest in the first place. Looking at the photo album, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out man hatred is the primary goal....
Now....
OH! REALLY!!!
Patriarchy has a different meaning to many people, I cannot speak for all, I only speak for what I was thought about Patriarchy or Matriarchy for that matter....To us, Native People, this is what it means, Patriarchs and Matriarchs, are not those who suppress anyone as the lowly feminist would want you to believe, they are Elders who pass on the wisdom of their years to the young...and when they twist these "honorable" words for their own battles with their inferiority complex, they "insult" us.
Now that said...
Let's start with female war leader in history...you might find they run parallel to men.
· In the 9th century BC, according the legendary history of Britain, Queen Gwendolen gathered an army and fought her ex-husband, Locrinus, in a civil war for the throne of Britain. She defeated him and became the monarch
· In 334 BC, Ada of Caria allied with Alexander the Great and led the siege to reclaim her throne
· In 131 BC, Cleopatra II of Egypt led a rebellion against Ptolemy VIII Physcon and drove him and Cleopatra III out of Egypt.
· In 42 BC, Fulvia, wife of Mark Antony, organized an uprising against Augustus
· In 14, Mother Lü led a peasant rebellion against Wang Mang of the Western Han Dynasty.
· In 40, the Trưng Sisters successfully rebelled against the Chinese Han-Dynasty rule
· In 60–61, Boudica, a Celtic chieftain in Britain, led a massive uprising against the occupying Roman forces
· In 69–70, Veleda of the Germanic Bructeri tribe wielded a great deal of influence in the Batavian rebellion.
· In 270, Zenobia, Syrian queen of the Palmyrene Empire led a revolt against the Roman Empire.
· In 378, Queen Mavia led a rebellion against the Roman army.
· In the late-10th century: Judith rebels against the Axumite Dynasty in Ethiopia.
· 15th century Maire o Ciaragain leads Irish clans in rebellion.[13]
· In 1429, Joan of Arc led the French army[14] in a revolt[15] against the occupation of the English during the Hundred Years' War.
· In 1461, Queen Margaret of Anjou recaptured the throne twice in the Second Battle of St Albans and again in the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 for the House of Lancaster.[16]
· In 1539, Gaitana of the Paez led the indigenous people of northern Cauca, Colombia in armed resistance againstcolonization by the Spanish. Her monument sculpted by Rodrigo Arenas stands in Neiva, the capital of Huila inColombia.
· In 1572, Kenau Simonsdochter Hasselaer (1526-1588/1589), a Dutch widow running her family’s lumber-trading and shipwharf in Haarlem, Holland, since 1962. During the 80-year long national war of liberation of the Netherlands, she took a leading role in the defense of her besieged city in 1572-73. She is said to have fought with lance and sword, and headed a force of 300 women pouring boiling-hot tar over the enemy storming city walls. Sixteen years later, on a journey to buy lumber in Norway, she was killed by pirates.
· In 1630, Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba from the Kingdom of Matamba led a series of revolts against the Portuguese. She aligned with the Dutch Republic, forming the first African-European alliance against another European aggressor.[17]
· In 1720–1739, Granny Nanny, a spiritual leader of the Maroons of Jamaica, leads rebel slaves in First Maroon Waragainst the British.[18]
· In 1748, Marretje Arents leads the Pachtersoproer.
· In 1763, Gabriela Silang led a revolution against the Spanish to establish an independent Ilocos, which was started by his husband, Diego Silang in after her husband was assassinated in 1763.
· In 1778, Baltazara Chuiza leads a rebellion against the Spanish in Ecuador.[19]
· In 1780, Huillac Ñusca of the Kolla tribe rebels against the Spanish in Chile.
· In 1781, Manuela Beltrán, a Neogranadine (now Colombia) peasant leads revolt against the Spanish Government and sparks the Revolt of the Comuneros.
· In 1782, Bartolina Sisa, an Aymara woman who led an indigenous uprising against the Spanish in Bolivia, is captured and executed.
· On October 25, 1785, Toypurina, a Tongva medicine woman rebels against the Spanish, leading an attack against Mission San Gabriel Arcángel.
· In 1796-1798, Wang Cong'er is the leader and commander of the White Lotus rebellion in China.
· In 1799, Bibi Sahib Kaur was a Sikh princess and Prime Minister who led armies into battle against the British
· In 1803, Lorenza Avemanay leads a revolt against Spanish occupation in Ecuador
· In 1819 Antonia Santos, a Neogranadine (now Colombia) peasant, galvanized, organized, and led the rebel guerrillas in the Province of Socorro against the invading Spanish troops
· In 1821, Laskarina Bouboulina, was a Greek naval commander who led her own troops during the Greek War of Independence until the fall of the fort on November 13, 1822. Posthumously, she became an Admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy.
· In 1824, Kittur Chennamma led an armed rebellion against the British in response to the Doctrine of lapse.
· In 1831, Countess Emilia Plater creates her own group to fight in the Polish November Uprising. She becomes commanding officer of a company of infantryin the rank of captain.
· In 1854, during the Crimean War, Kara Fatima led an army of 300 Kurdish cavalrymen in a rebellion against the Ottomans
· In 1857–1858, Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi was one of the leaders of the Indian rebellion of 1857. Begum Hazrat Mahal also led a band of her supporters against the British in the revolt.
· In 1871, Gregoria Apaza, an Aymara woman, leads an uprising against the Spanish in Bolivia.
· In 1896, Shona spiritual leader Nehanda Nyakasikana rebels against colonization of Zimbabwe
• In 1900, Yaa Asantewaa leads the Ashanti in rebellion against the British.
• In 1950, Blanca Canales leads the Jayuya Uprising in Puerto Rico against the Federal government of the United States. After leading rebel forces, she was arrested for the murder of a police officer and the wounding of three others.
• In 1958, Ani Pachen was a Tibetan Buddhist nun who led a guerrilla rebellion of 600 fighters on horseback againstCommunist Chinese tanks.
• In 1986-1987, Alice Auma leads a rebellion against Ugandan government forces.
• On January 1, 1994, Comandante Ramona commanded the occupation of the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas Mexico in an uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
So!!!! If mothers ruled the world there would be no god damn (pardon my french) wars in the first place...RIGHT? Well, let's look at female leaders who were...mothers. Let's see if they were any different.
There has been women political leaders throughout history. Like their male counterparts, some were good leaders, others weren’t. It’s a myth that women possess an inborn trait that makes them ‘good people’, simply because ‘good’ is a matter of character, not gender.
Irene of Athens (8th century): had her son blinded so she could become empress of the Byzantine empire.
Isabella I (15th century): expelled all Jews and Muslims from Spain; began the colonization of the New World; initiated the Spanish inquisition, killing thousands through torture and burning at the stake.
Mary I Bloody Mary (16th Century): burned thousands of religious dissenters at the stake; waged war in Ireland and France.
Nzinga Mbandi (17th Century): had her brother killed so she could ascend the throne of Angola.
Catherine the Great (18th Century): engaged expansive military campaigns through central Asia and Eastern Europe; brutally quelled rebellions throughout the Russian empire.
Empress Dowager Cixi (19th Century): killed political rivals; may have killed her own son to ascend the throne; her penchant for fine luxuries almost broke the Chinese state treasury.
Golda Meir the original Iron Lady (20th Century): led Israel in the 1973 war, considered Palestine a British fabrication and famously declared, “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people”.
Indira Gandhi (20th Century): led India in war against Pakistan; waged an internal campaign against Sikh communities in India; imprisoned political foes and censored the press; tested nuclear weapons.
Margaret Thatcher the Iron Lady (20th century):Falklands war; contributed to the Cold War buildup of nuclear weapons in Europe,supported foreign dictators like Augusto Pinochet.
Benazir Bhutto (20th Century): removed twice from office of Pakistani Prime Minister on grounds of corruption; allowed intermediaries to smuggle uranium enrichment data to North Korea;supported the Taliban’s rise in Afghanistan.
Condoleezza Rice (20th Century): as National Security Advisor of the United States she pushed for the 2003 invasion of Iraq (based on its supposed possession of WMDs); authorized the use of illegal torture techniques such as waterboarding of detainees.
Let me say, I am not trying to demean women....
The point here is women are not better leaders than men, or vise versa, because there is no difference between us outside of gender, we are "humans" we think alike and behave the same way, we have the same dreams and aspirations, we evolved side by side, therefore we think alike. It is the ridiculous notion of the radical feminist that we are different, or one is better than the other, this philosophy is meant to keep us divided, they thrive on this to keep their power, not to mention their salaries.
As we see in history, there is not one degree of difference between a man and a woman who are in power, both can be "equally" good or bad.
If we recognize that we think alike, that the divisions are non existent, we could achieve a better life for all, especially the young.
The mangina and the feminist must keep us divided in order to keep the illusion of power, this is nothing new, it's been around since the dawn of civilisation, one tribe against the other. In this case the new tribal differences been gender... They can always find the sub intellectual who will play that game.
What these people with inferiority complexes represent is our faults in not recognizing that together we have achieved so much, but we could do better if only we did not listen or give credence to those who divide us for personal power.
We are all a strand in the web of life, divided the web is weak, together we keep life thriving for a better tomorrow.
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The People's Club - The People's Club, Forest Green Rovers. Make Forest Green Rovers The People's Club
“ It's not fantasy football. It's reality football. ”
How can you help Forest Green Rovers?
Taking Forest Green Rovers into League football
As any Forest Green fan will know, Rovers' 10 year stay in the Conference marks the peak of the club's history. Since being promoted twice in two years in 1997 & 1998, Forest Green have made the Conference their home striving to reach the Football League proper every year, but without ever reaching the play-offs even - a continual source of frustration for the fans.
The club enjoys a loyal fan base - attendance this season are around 1,100 on average - and a good start to the 2007/08 season sees them in with a chance of promotion... but will their challenge fade once again?
If you would like the chance to help put Forest Green Rovers on the path to glory and have a say in the future of the club, then maybe The People's Club can help.
Forest Green Rovers - The People's Club?
If our members choose Forest Green Rovers to be The People's Club, then what will we do?
You can expect gate receipts at home games to go up as members travel to see games and boost the attendance figures. Innovative commercial activities will bring in additional revenue and the very nature of The People's Club concept will naturally mean Forest Green Rovers will receive a massive publicity boost as the local and national media all monitor the success of the club.
We're giving you the opportunity to take Forest Green Rovers forwards - and, who knows, maybe one day we'll be boarding coaches to take us to Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge and Villa Park every other Saturday.
Most importantly, what we won't do is change Forest Green Rovers for the worse. We're all football fans and we fully understand the importance of the heritage and identity of the club and the feeling of belonging that each and every Forest Green Rovers fan feels. We certainly won't be relocating the team to Milton Keynes or mucking around with the club crest.
As politicians are fond of saying, your vote truly counts. The People's Club is built entirely on the concept that the fans know best and the collective decision making power that our members have will ensure success for many years to come.
At the moment, Forest Green Rovers is not The People's Club. It can only become so if you sign up and choose Forest Green Rovers as the club you think we should make a bid for once we have enough members and therefore enough funds to do so.
Register for free and select Forest Green Rovers as your choice for the club we should buy. Then tell all your friends about us - their votes count too! If Forest Green Rovers is one of the most popular choices, it stands a very good chance of attracting substantial investment.
We're also on the lookout for a representative in Nailsworth to encourage fans to sign up, so please contact us if you think you can get enough fans behind you and make Forest Green Rovers The People's Club.
Forest Green Rovers Latest News
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Iran Ranked World’s Top Money Laundering Risk, Despite Relaxing of Financial Sanctions
by TheTower.org Staff | 07.29.16 12:16 pm
Iran was ranked as the world’s top global money laundering threat by the Basel Institute on Governance this week, marking the third straight year that the Islamic Republic held the position.
The 2016 Basel Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Index identified Iran as the highest money laundering risk out of 149 countries surveyed, The Wall Street Journal reported. A statement (.pdf) accompanying the index explained that “Although a majority of countries legally comply with current AML/countering terrorism financing (CTF) standards, they fall short in the effective implementation and enforcement of these laws.”
According to the Journal, companies are hesitant to resume commercial ties with Iran because of money laundering concerns.
The publication of the index comes a month after the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global anti-money laundering watchdog, suspended financial countermeasures against Iran for one year. At the time, sanctions experts Mark Dubowitz and Toby Dershowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) wrote that the decision to temporarily suspend sanctions rather than totally remove Iran from the FATF’s high-risk blacklist indicated that the country “still has a long way to go before it’s safe to do business there.”
Dershowitz and Saeed Ghasseminejad, an associate fellow at FDD, wrote earlier this week that Iran is attempting to convince nations that it is serious about complying with FATF standards, including on combating the financing of terrorist groups, by referring to recent legislation passed by its parliament. However, according to Abdolmahdi Arjmandnejad, the Central Bank of Iran’s deputy for anti-money laundering affairs, “liberation organizations are not subject to this law and the Supreme National Security Council decides who is a terrorist.”
Since Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that has targeted Western interests for over 30 years, is considered a “liberalization organization” by Iran, Dershowitz and Ghasseminejad observed that the country is merely using “wordplay not to cease terrorism but to justify it.”
Iran has complained that it has not received the benefits it should have from sanctions relief after all nuclear-related sanctions were lifted from the country in January. Some Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Central Bank of Iran governor Valiollah Seif, have threatened that the nuclear deal could collapse if Iran doesn’t receive more investment and further sanctions relief.
However, many financial sanctions were imposed on Iran before nuclear sanctions were imposed as a reaction to the country’s money laundering and financing of terrorist groups. The New York Times editorial board asserted in April that Iran’s corruption was responsible for the country’s economic problems. Similarly, Stuart Levey, President Barack Obama’s former undersecretary of the treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence and now the chief legal officer of HSBC Bank, wrote in The Wall Street Journal in May that because Iran remained a risk for “financial-crime risks and the underlying conduct,” his company had “no intention of doing any new business involving Iran.” The Journal, CNBC, and other outlets reported a few days later that other European banks were hesitant to do business with Iran because of the risks involved.
An International Monetary Fund official also told Iranian authorities in May that “the best thing the government [of Iran] can do, and the banks can do, is to bring those standards up to international levels and try to reassure foreign partners, banks and otherwise that Iran’s banks are safe to deal with.”
Despite the limitations that corruption-related sanctions impose on Iran, nuclear-related sanctions relief has provided the Iranian economy with enough of a boost to possibly grow by four percent per year for the next five years. The Central Bank of Iran earmarked much of that sanctions relief for military spending, which is expected to grow by 90 percent next year.
[ Photo: Ivar Husevåg Døskeland / Flickr ]
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Israeli President Rivlin Visits Cyprus, Says Security Cooperation Makes the Middle East “Safer”
Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin paid a brief visit to Cyprus and hailed the alliance between the two nations, The Jerusalem Post reported Tuesday.
Rivlin, the third Israeli president to visit the island nation — previously Ezer Weizman visited in 1998 and Shimon Peres in 2011 — was received by President Nicos Anastasiades.
After joking that the meeting could have been a little tense because Israel beat out Cyprus in last year’s Eurovision song contest, Rivlin expressed his wishes to meet Anastasiades in Tel Aviv during this year’s competition.
“The relations between our two countries have never been better,” Rivlin said, referring to the cooperation between Israel and Cyprus in the field of security cooperation and the fight against terror. This cooperation means that “Cyprus, Israel and the Middle East are safer,” the president said. “Now we looking forward to share the fruits of growth and prosperity.”
Rivlin also noted the economic cooperation between the two nations, including more than $650 million in trade and 250,000 Israelis visiting Cyprus each year.
“This bilateral strategic partnership is now a trilateral one, together with Greece, and it can be expanded in to a larger partnership,” Rivlin observed. “Energy cooperation with parties in the eastern Mediterranean can make a great difference for the people of Cyprus, Israel, Greece, Italy, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. We look forward to making progress in all these areas of cooperation for the security and prosperity of our two nations and for the stability of the Mediterranean.”
“Your visit is an important milestone in the relations between our countries,” Anastasiades told Rivlin. “During our meeting, we exchanged ideas not only on the warm relations we already have but also on ways to deepen them. Our peoples have an ancient and strong bond. After the Holocaust, the Cypriot people took in many survivors of that terrible tragedy, and many babies were born here. Today, we are in a new era of partnership based on our shared values. Together, we will deepen our cooperation in a range of fields – security, intelligence, energy and many more. Israel is an important strategic partner for us and an important power in regional security. We will continue to deepen relations facing the various emerging challenges as well as the opportunities they present.”
While in Cyprus, Rivlin attended a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary since the last detention camp for Jewish immigrants was closed following World War II.
[Photo: Reuven Rivlin / Twitter ]
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Browse: Home / Food safety bill invokes Codex harmonization and grants FDA authority to police food safety of foreign nations
Juri Lina – In the Shadow of Hermes
Fixed and a “must see” for all serious students of REAL history. This outstanding video from the author of “Under the Sign of Scorpio” challenges many modern myths. With English subtitles
The Illuminati Chronicles Part 1
A historical countdown to the New World Order
Category: Essential Reading, The New World Order
Americans are training Syria rebels in Jordan: Spiegel
This was shortly before they joined Islamic State
Category: Behind The "News", Essential Reading, Syria
Before and after the “Holocaust”: Jewish population numbers in 1933 and 1948
During the time Hitler was supposed to have killed six million Jews — between 1933 and 1948 — the world’s Jewish population actually increased from 15,315,000 to 15,753,000
The Anglo-Saxon Mission Part I
Bill Ryan talks to a former City of London insider who participated in a meeting where the elite’s plans for depopulation were discussed. The meeting, which took place in 2005, also discussed a planned financial collapse
The Total Solar Eclipse in Scorpio, November 13th, 2012
Normally we wouldn’t post anything so arcane. But for those who don’t believe in astrology we suggest your read this with a mind open to events currently unfolding in the world
Category: Commentary, Essential Reading, The Unexplained: esoteric and hidden knowledge
Do John and Tony Podesta Have a Connection with Missing Child, Madeleine McCann?
Explosive allegations made against Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. Backed by some convincing evidence
Category: Essential Reading, Sexual abuse/historic sexual abuse
Al Qaeda – The Database
By Wayne Madsen on May 15, 2009
Pierre-Henry Bunel, a former agent for French military intelligence, tells of the origins of Al Qaeda and its ultimate purpose
Category: "The War on Terror", Essential Reading
Food safety bill invokes Codex harmonization and grants FDA authority to police food safety of foreign nations
Mike Adams – Natural News December 29, 2010
Of all the talk about S.510, virtually no one has actually read the language in the bill – especially not those lawmakers who voted for it. The more you read from this bill, the more surreal it all becomes. For example, did you know there’s a global FDA power grab agenda hidden in the Food Safety Modernization Act? Keep reading and I’ll quote text straight out of the bill itself.
Section 305 is entitled “BUILDING CAPACITY OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS WITH RESPECT TO FOOD SAFETY” and it gives the FDA authority to set up offices in foreign countries and then dictate the food safety plans of foreign governments. It says, specifically, on page 217 of the bill (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-…):
SEC. 308. FOREIGN OFFICES OF THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION.
(a) IN GENERAL. – The Secretary shall establish offices of the Food and Drug Administration in foreign countries selected by the Secretary.
It then goes on to say:
(a) The Secretary shall, not later than 2 years of the date of enactment of this Act, develop a comprehensive plan to expand the technical, scientific, and regulatory food safety capacity of foreign governments, and their respective food industries, from which foods are exported to the United States.
Huh? The FDA is now going to run the food safety programs of foreign governments? Look out, world: I’m from the FDA and I’m here to help!
Homeland Security and U.S. Treasury also involved
So who is involved in creating this? Believe it or not, the global “food safety” plan is to be developed under consultation to the Department of Homeland Security as well as the U.S. Treasury. As the bill states:
(b) Consultation – In developing the plan under subsection (a), the Secretary shall consult with the Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the United States Trade Representative, and the Secretary of Commerce, representatives of the food industry, appropriate foreign government officials, nongovernmental organizations that represent the interests of consumers, and other stakeholders.
You might reasonably wonder “What does the Department of Homeland Security have to do with the FDA’s food safety plan?” Or “Why is the U.S. Treasury involved in the food supply?” Learn more about the Federal Reserve and you’ll have the answers to these questions. I don’t have space for all the details here, but read Ed Griffin’s book and visit http://www.realityzone.com if you really want to know what’s behind a lot of this.
Codex harmonization, data sharing and more
So what does this global food safety plan actually entail? It’s all spelled out right in the language of the law. You can view this yourself on page 195 of the bill text in the PDF file at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-…
(c) Plan – The plan developed under subsection (a) shall include, as appropriate, the following:
• “Provisions for secure electronic data sharing.”
This is so that the FDA can electronically track and monitor the food production activities of foreign nations. That way, if somebody in Spain tries to sell raw almonds to the USA, the FDA can make sure those almonds get irradiated or fumigated with chemicals first. Because raw almonds are so dangerous they have actually been outlawed in America (http://www.naturalnews.com/021776.html).
• “Training of foreign governments and food producers on United States requirements for safe food.”
This is designed to shove the FDA’s “dead food” agenda down the throats of other nations. The FDA, you see, believes that the only safe food is dead food — that’s why, along with the USDA, they have declared war on raw milk, raw almonds and many raw vegetables (http://www.naturalnews.com/023015_f…).
Now, with this law, the FDA will begin pushing its dead foods agenda globally, essentially exporting the FDA’s agenda of death and disease by making sure other nations destroy the nutritive qualities of their food supply in the same way the U.S. is doing. It’s all great for the global Big Pharma profiteers, of course. The more disease they can spread around the world, the more money they’ll make from selling medications.
Codex Alimentarius is also promoted in the bill
The “Plan” described in this bill continues with the following:
• “Recommendations on whether and how to harmonize requirements under the Codex Alimentarius.”
This is included so that the FDA will “harmonize” the U.S. food and dietary supplement industries with global Codex requirements which outlaw virtually all healthy doses of vitamins and minerals. Under full Codex “harmonization,” America will be left with a dead food supply and the health food stores will be virtually stripped bare of dietary supplements. Selling vitamin D at a reasonable dose such as 4,000 IU per capsule will be criminalized and products will be seized and destroyed by FDA agents who recruit local law enforcement to bring in the firepower.
All this will, of course, ensure a diseased, nutritionally-deficient U.S. population. This actually seems to be the goal the FDA has been trying to achieve all along because the more diseased the population, the more money gets collected by Big Pharma for “treating” sick people with medication and chemotherapy.
It’s all right in the bill!
The text mentioned in this article is taken straight from the bill itself. You can search for it at http://thomas.loc.gov by searching for “S.510” as the bill number.
It makes me wonder why some food book authors so wholeheartedly supported this bill. Why were so many progressives on the left so enamored with this law? Didn’t they realize this was a huge FDA power expansion that would destroy many small farms and put farmers out of business while subjecting the USA to possible Codex harmonization?
Did they even know the FDA is now on a global food-killing agenda that will seek to pasteurize, fumigate, cook or kill virtually every piece of food that enters the United States?
Did they not know that the bill does absolutely nothing to limit the use of chemical pesticides on imported food? According to the FDA’s stance on all this, foods laced with DDT and other pesticides are perfectly “safe” for human consumption, but foods teeming with probiotics — such as raw milk — are deadly and dangerous! (Seriously…)
How is it that popular food book authors and food documentary producers could possibly support this bill? Do they also think small dairy farmers who sell raw milk should be criminalized? Do they agree with the Codex harmonization agenda? Do they think the FDA should run the world’s food safety systems and that the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Treasury should be shaping our global food safety agenda?
You really just have to shake your head and wonder about the true intentions of some people. I just have to ask: Were the supporters of this bill really so naive that they could somehow believe the FDA would actually seek to protect small, local organic farms? What about raw milk producers? What about the single-family farms that must now apply to the FDA for exemption status by authoring research reports, collecting tax returns and producing a pile of documentation the FDA will soon require?
Let me just say it bluntly: The Food Safety Modernization Act is the destroyer of local organic farming. It will gut small farms and local farms, greatly increasing the price of local organic food while decreasing America’s food security. Farmers’ Markets will be targeted by FDA agents who raid the operations of local farmers and imprison them for not having the right paperwork. Families will be destroyed, and those who have been successful at local food production will scale back their operations in a desperate effort to duck under the $500,000 / year rule (which can easily be surpassed by producing just ten acres of organic carrots, by the way).
The real agenda behind the bill
From another point of view, however, this bill is doing exactly what it was supposed to do: Destroy small farms, wipe out family farm operations, imprison raw milk producers and centralize food production in the hands of the big corporate food producers whose operations are steeped in pesticides and soil degradation.
This bill should have been called the “Big Agriculture Monopoly Act” because that’s what it does. It will ensure that America’s food supply will be controlled by Monsanto, DuPont and other agricultural giants who have been at odds with small organic farms for years.
The global food control agenda is a conspiracy, not a theory
It’s all part of the global food control agenda that we now know to be 100% true based on the leaked Wikileaks cables which revealed that the U.S. government conspired to push GMOs into Europe and “create a retaliatory target list” for any nation that resisted GMOs (such as France). Read that full report right here on NaturalNews: http://www.naturalnews.com/030828_G…
Thanks to Wikileaks, we now know that the global GMO conspiracy is quite real. It’s something that U.S. diplomats and government officials scheme on in order to appease their corporate masters in the agriculture industry. Now, with the Food Safety Modernization Act, this global conspiracy extends beyond GMOs and encompasses the global food supply, too.
It has become clear that U.S. lawmakers and bureaucrats will not stop until they have killed the entire global food supply, rendering living foods, raw foods and dietary supplements illegal or impossibly difficult to grow. You can thank your U.S. Congresspeople and Senators for all this, of course. In the end, every Senator in office today caved in and voted to pass this bill. You can also thank those who publicly promoted this bill even while having no real idea of the horrors they were supporting.
Such begins a new era of global food destruction headed by what can only be called the most dangerous government agency in North America: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration. If they do to your food what they’ve done to prescription drugs, annual food deaths will increase to over 100,000 a year.
Watch for the FDA to now set up enforcement offices in nations all around the world and start outlawing living foods on a global scale (if they can get away with it).
Also, watch for a new push for Codex harmonization which is a truly evil agenda to criminalize healing foods and nutritional supplements that prevent and even reverse chronic disease.
Posted in Health and the New World Order
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You are here: Home / Music / Remembering Pandit Ravi Shankar 1920-2012
Remembering Pandit Ravi Shankar 1920-2012
December 30, 2012 | by Chandvankar and Yardumian | Filed Under: Music | Leave a Comment
“When a pigeon flies, his wings beat in taal (Rhythmic cycle). You can count the matras if you don’t believe me. And such a sweet voice! God has invested such a treasure of music in each of his creations that man can take armfuls away but never exhaust it. Goddess Saraswati has given me a little too. But not as much as I would have liked. Just when I began to draw something from the ocean of music, my time was up. This is the trouble, when the fruit of a man’s lifelong labor ripens. Who can understand God’s ways? But one thing I have understood a little. There is a fruit, the custard apple. I like it very much. I eat it and throw the seeds outside the window. And one day I look and there’s another tree of the same fruit. With new fruits on its branches. I eat it and others enjoy it too. This music also is like that. It is not the property of one, it belongs to so many.”
— Ustad Allauddin Khan Saheb, Guru of Ali Akbar Khan Saheb, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Annpurna Devi.
A YOGI, A SITAR PLAYER AND THE CITY OF BOMBAY, by Suresh Chandvankar
Ravi Shankar (1920-2012) had a unique relationship with the city of Bombay from where he sailed for Europe and the USA in early 1930’s. He has written about his life in this city in his autobiography ‘Raga Mala’ [First Welcome Rain Edition, 1999]. After 1938, he spent six to seven years of rigorous training and practice under the strict and watchful eyes of Ustad Baba Allauddin Khan (1862-1972). By 1944, he started giving regular performances over All India Radio (AIR) Lucknow. However within a year he moved to Bombay with wife, Annapurna, and two-year- old son Shubhendra. He took a job in the recording company ‘His Master’s Voice’ in Bombay as an apprentice in the music department. Around this time he met Kamla Sastri who had come with her elder sister Laxmi Sastri who had married to Ravi’s middle brother Rajendra alias Mejda. They were staying at Malad, suburb of Bombay. Ravi and Kamla knew each other from Almora days. Soon, they became more and more drawn to each other. This was to create a strained relation with Annapurna leading to a separation.
By this time, his elder brother Uday Shankar had closed his institute at Almora and some dancers and musicians joined the Indian People’s Theater Association (IPTA) of Bombay. Ravi Shankar saw this as an opportunity to expand his musical and cultural horizons and also joined the group. He was engaged to prepare a score for a ballet named ‘India Immortal’ on behalf of IPTA. He was then commissioned to prepare the musical score for a Chetan Anand’s film ‘Neecha Nagar’ (The City Below) produced by India Pictures, Bombay. Although some songs were featured in the film, the songs were not issued on disc records. However, the next film ‘Dharti ke Lal’ (Children of The Earth), produced by IPTA again with Ravi Shankar as Music Director, had several songs and were released on ‘Young India’ label disc records. He toured with the ballet ‘India Immortal’, performing in Bombay and Calcutta but left the IPTA in early 1946. It had been a wonderful one year period until he felt the crunch of the Communist Party politics.
During this period he was asked to rewrite the tune of a well known song, ‘Sare Jahanse Accha Hindustan Hamara’ (Our India is the best place in the world).The original poem was written by Mohammad Iqbal in 1904. The old tune was long, drawn out and did not have enough strength. It was sung in a very slow tempo. The new melody was catchy and gave the song a brighter mood. Popularized via the airways of All India Radio, it gradually became treated as a national song, especially after independence. It was played everywhere in its new arrangement and became extremely popular. (It is still popular today. Unfortunately many people are not aware and rarely give Raviji due credit. Recently he was shocked to read on the inlay card of a cassette brought out by HMV India, featuring nationalistic songs by Lata Mangeshkar, that the music credit for ‘Sare Jahanse Accha’ was ‘Traditional’!).
It was here in Bombay that he created his first new raga ‘Nat Bhairav’. He had started the ‘Kinnara School of Music’ at Breach Candy. In AIR Bombay, he met Alla Rakha, a Music Director and a fine Tabla player. Their friendship and the association were to last for decades. During his Bombay days, he stayed at the Madgavkar Bunglow in Borivali for three years and experienced the joy that can be found in full family life. A greater joy was derived from creating a new production based on Pandit Nehru’s book, ‘The Discovery of India’. This was sponsored and supported by Indian National Theater (INT), the cultural wing of Indian National Congress. INT arranged a show in Delhi for the meeting of the Asian Conference in March 1947. Many great leaders including Gandiji, Nehru, Patel, Rajaji and Radhakrishnan attended and the show was a grand success.
During this period, starting from May 1947, many great national events occurred and simultaneously most of Raviji’s major struggles began. On 15th August, all his family and friends were glued to the radio listening to Nehru’s famous ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech to the nation. He was hurt deeply by the partition and later by the assassination of Gandhiji. He had very hard times since he had no financial backing except for what he was bringing home from his sitar recitals. He was helped by two dear friends, Shantaram Ullal and Batukbhai Diwanji, as well as Harihar Rao, one of his first disciples. As he had no telephone, he would often travel in a local electric train to Churchgate and then walk two to three miles to meet them. Usually he would meet them in lunch hours and had nice snacks. It was through these friends that he was trying to get as many sitar recitals as possible in music circles and wealthy private homes, or in other towns. He never forgot the love, affection and help received from them. (Incidentally, he inquired after these friends when he addressed a press meet at the Taj a few years ago when he came to play at Shanmukhananda Auditorium. Diwanji, now 95, is still happily with us and stays at Nalasopara. It was the ‘Suburban Music Circle’ based in Santacruz which hosted Ravi Shankar’s concerts in the early fifties. Shantaram Ullal was one of the founder members of the music circle).
Ravi was undergoing through a deep crisis materially, emotionally and spiritually and that led him to plan for a suicidal attempt. He carefully formulated and decided to throw himself under a running train, fixing the date and even going to the extent of preparing final letters to the family members and the police. But before the chosen day, he underwent an extraordinary encounter with a man who was to turn his life around. Passing by his Borivli house one afternoon in 1948, the spiritual guru and a yogi named ‘Tatbaba’ (so named for his robe made from ‘tat’ or a sackcloth) stopped and asked if he could use his bathroom. Entranced by the appearance and the aura surrounding this strange visitor, Ravi readily agreed to play sitar for him, forgetting completely that he had agreed to perform in front of the Prince of Jodhpur that evening for a generous fee. Yet somehow the yogi knew of both Ravi’s missed concert and his plans for suicide. After the recital he told him, ‘The money you missed tonight will come back to you many more times over. Don’t do anything foolish’. And then there was no looking back. At the end of 1948, he was appointed as a Director of Music at AIR Delhi, composed music for Satyajit Ray’s ‘Apu Trilogy’ films before leaving for west. The rest as might be said is all History with several dozens of recordings from 78rpm to CD era, films and other cultural performances.
Many more years passed. As he started staying abroad and playing fusion items with world renowned musicians like Yehudi Menuhin or Philip Glass belonging to other systems, he began to be criticized by orthodox musicians from Bombay either for reasons of dogma or out of envy. Ravi would often visit Bombay during the winter and would give purely classical performances at traditional venues like ‘Chhabildas High School’ at Dadar or ‘Brahman Sahayak Sangh’ near Shivaji Park to prove his credentials as a traditionally trained musician. Such concerts would begin at 9 pm and go on till the wee hours.
He would treat Bombay folks to ragas like ‘Yaman’, ‘Bageshri’, ‘ Malkauns’ and ‘Bhairavi’. Sometimes there would be two coffee breaks and yet he and his tabla accompanist Alla Rakha would play on energetically till the time when one could hear the clinking of the milk bottles arriving from the Aarey and Worli dairy outside. It was Ravi Shankar’s participation at the ‘Jan Fest’ hosted by the Indian Music Group led by young students of Xavier College in South Bombay which really gave a big boost to the event. One recalls his marathon performances at this festival on 25th January every year in the last session. He would begin by 1 pm and would go on till sunrise. When he began the moon would be high in the ascendant and as he signed off, the gentle rays of the morning sun would caress one’s body. The music lovers in Bombay would forever cherish the sunrise which they experienced with ‘Sitar Yogi – Pandit Ravi Shankar’.
‘Raga Mala’ – The Autobiography of Ravi Shankar, Edited and Introduced by George Harrison, [First Welcome Rain Edition, 1999].
The Record News – Publication of ‘Society of Indian record Collectors’, Vol. 2001 pages 95-107. Ed. Suresh Chandvankar
http://hindi-movies-songs.com/sirc/TRN-2001-Single-PDF-File-page-66-to-131-2001.pdf
Amrendra Dhaneshwar, in ‘Hindustan Times’ dated 13.12.2012
CULTURAL EMMISARY, by Aram Yardumian
Pandit Ravi Shankar, the man who changed 20th century music perhaps more than any other, died on December 11th 2012. Born in Varanasi on April 7th 1920 into a Brahmin family, Ravi toured Europe and America at an early age with his choreographer brother, Uday, with whom he learned to dance and play, very basically, the sitar. It was not until the great Allauddin Khan joined the troupe in 1934 that he begun to receive serious musical training. Ravi abandoned his brother’s troupe in 1938 for a life to devotion to the musical arts as part of Khan’s gurukul, where he learned the sitar and surbahar. Allauddin Khan’s son, Ali Akbar Khan—perhaps the second most well-known Indian musician outside India, received training with him, and their first public concert was performed together in 1939.
Living modestly and unpretentiously in Bombay throughout the 1940s, Raviji may well at this time have allowed himself to blend into the thick and barely-charted narrative of 20th century Indian musical history, but these were fertile times. Recording technologies had experienced fantastic developments since it was introduced only a few decades before, as had the availability of film stock and cameras. Within a decade he had begun making a series of historic recordings for HMV India, had founded the Indian National Orchestra and composed for it, and had written music and served as musical director for several Hindi films.
Yehudi Menuhin came to learn of the young artist and invited him to perform at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955, as a part of a Ford Foundation-sponsored event celebrating Indian classical music. For reasons not entirely clear, he declined and sent Ali Akbar Khan in his place. Khan’s famous performance there, accompanied by table player Chatur Lal, was greeted with a recording contract and an American television appearance, as well as a great deal of awed appreciation. This, according to Ravi, inspired him to depart India for his first world tour, designed specifically to reach smaller audiences and educate them on the subject of Indian classical music. It was during this tour that Ravi recorded his first full LP and met George Harrison, whose incorporation of aspects of the raga into the Beatles’ music has had an incalculable effect on modern music. But if we consider the impact of Ravi’s recordings—either through the Beatles, or independently—on The Byrds, The Velvet Underground, The Rolling Stones, The Incredible String Band, the Kinks, and the Doors, not to mention the playing style of Yehudi Menuhin, we have opened a very wide door very widely.
Raga Bhupal Todi Tala Ardha Jaital, 1969
http://www.timesquotidian.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/01%20-%20Raga%20Bhupal%20Todi%20Tala%20Ardha%20Jaital.mp3
The influence did not stop there. The sharp turning of Philip Glass to his inversion of rhythmic and harmonic structures (and thus his contribution to the development of Minimalism) had everything to do with his collaborative work with Ravi in the mid-1960s. Similarly, though less well understood, the adroit complexity of latterday John Coltrane owed a debt to an intuitive understanding of the ragas he heard on Ravi’s recordings—a debt Coltrane felt he owed to the extent of naming his son after Ravi. The very notion of genre cross-pollenation—ever so recent, and now ever so trendy—is indeed the fruit of his innovations.
As an innovator, Ravi formed a distinctive style from bass octave fretting and Carnatic rhythms (as well, apparently, as entirely novel rhythms). As a purist, he did carry in his heart and mind the centuries of tradition taught to him, even if his innovations were what made him, and even if perhaps there are others, less well known, whose clarity and melody surpass his. Raviji claimed he felt like a kind of cultural emissary to the West (a term he used rather loosely), on a mission to bring about a deeper comprehension and appreciation for not only the music itself, but the spirituality it carried. His critics have often failed to understand it was this he saw as his life’s work; not becoming the world’s greatest virtuoso. And it is through his artful and tireless practice of education, paradoxically, that he will be best remembered.
Tagged With: Aram Yardumian, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Suresh Chandvankar, Ustad Allauddin Khan Saheb
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You are here: Home / Performance / Dance / Beyond Category
October 15, 2018 | by Sean Hughes | Filed Under: Dance, Music | 4 Comments
David Roussève: Halfway to Dawn, REDCAT, October 4, 2018 —
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington deserved his royal nickname. Throughout his fifty-year reign as America’s premier composer/pianist/band leader and goodwill ambassador to the world, Ellington spoke and carried himself in a courtly, regal manner. He routinely used the “royal we” when acknowledging applause from his audiences–as in, “we love you madly”–and referred to himself, with amused and characteristic noblesse oblige, simply as “our pianist.” He was charming and grandiose, elegant and hip.
In truth, the princely Ellington’s empire was actually quite small; it consisted of about fifteen loyal musicians, all with virtually lifetime jobs, and a retinue that included a barber, a road manager and a band boy who looked after everyone’s instruments and luggage. Backstage for nearly three decades, there was also a small, quiet, bespectacled man named Billy Strayhorn who seemed to be more comfortable in the shadows. His original songs, brilliant orchestrations and creative intelligence enabled mid-career Ellington to refresh and enhance the band. He therefore earned the highest of all Ellington compliments: Strayhorn was “beyond category.”
On October 4th in downtown Los Angeles, REDCAT presented the world premiere of Halfway to Dawn, a multi-media look at Strayhorn’s rather bittersweet life. Written, choreographed and directed by David Rousseve and performed ably by Reality, his company of nine dancers, the show is a biography portrayed through dance, fifteen Strayhorn songs and words and images projected on a screen. Rousseve writes that he was “seeking to excavate the deeper truths of the life of this famously private, out and gay, artist, thinker and activist”. He definitely accomplishes his goal in “Halfway to Dawn”. If not entirely “beyond category”, the work deserves high marks for its exuberant dancers, its absorbing sound mix and for bringing Strayhorn out of the shadows, for his fans and neophytes alike.
One of eight children—three others died in infancy—of a loving mother and an abusive father, Strayhorn was born with rickets in 1915 into near-poverty in Ohio. He grew up in Pittsburgh but his eighth through eleventh summers were spent in the peaceful North Carolina home of his grandparents where a piano in the house captivated young Bill. He worked at two after-school jobs back in Pittsburgh so he could buy sheet music, lessons and his own piano before he was twelve. (“You can’t learn to play one if you haven’t got one” he later recalled.). He wrote popular songs, played in a trio with two friends and continued his classical music studies. Smart and determined, he awed an audience when he performed Grieg’s Piano concerto flawlessly. In 1935, he created his high school’s graduation show, called “Fantastic Rhythm”, for which he wrote and arranged ten songs. Soon after, backers produced a limited but larger version of the show and Strayhorn was on his way as a composer.
The shy, delicate Strayhorn tried to hide his nascent homosexuality but it was hardly a secret from close friends. He was so talented and kind that everyone was fond of him. He dealt with his complicated feelings by writing private song lyrics , refining one of them, Lush Life, from 1936 until 1939. The result is still remarkable, eight decades later: sophisticated, world-weary lyrics, beautiful, advanced musical ideas and a stunning, adult understanding of deep, human emotions. The song was one of Strayhorn’s calling cards when he met Ellington briefly at a theater in 1938. At their second meeting months later, Ellington said: “You’re with me” and had Strayhorn move into his family’s New York home.
Rousseve, a Princeton graduate and Guggenheim Fellow, begins “Halfway to Dawn” at this historical point, (although Strayhorn, for more privacy, had soon moved to his own apartment.) The stage fills with nine dancers in black tights and shorts and the five men and four women move about the stage with athletic ease; they dance alone, work in pairs or trios and combine at times into unified, larger groups. It is as if one is watching a rehearsal with the dancers loosening up, doing time steps, having fun, moving freely; they each appear equally happy whether dancing with one another or alone. That self-sufficiency seemed to be a point Rousseve continued to make about Strayhorn.
Throughout the evening, dancers are almost always on stage, moving to the excellent recorded music, and often pondering the screen behind them which displays occasional images of cocktail glasses and swirling cigarette smoke and important facts about Strayhorn’s life in bold, black letters. Scenes of Harlem life in the 1940s, enacted through dance, suggest “rent parties” and a raid by police, likely to bust reported gay activity. At times, a single male dancer evokes Strayhorn’s loneliness. The effect is sublime.
There were, however, two segments in the first act that seemed to have been added simply to elongate it. First, a dancer broke “the fourth wall” and spoke at length directly to the audience in a kind of jokey, familiar way. Second, a dancer with a glass of water “gargled” Take The A-Train, Strayhorn’s tune that became Ellington’s theme song. The former was clearly a filler and, while silly, had no apparent reason to be in the show. The latter, aside from being one of the funniest bits I have ever seen, anywhere, also interrupted the overall mood of the piece. Both interludes could be excised without being missed.
The second act, which opens with the ensemble doing their “rehearsal” dances again, this time in white outfits, features more abstract images on the screen including cigarettes burning down to the nub and glasses overflowing with booze. Strayhorn was an alcoholic, seldom without a drink and, at only 51 years of age, his life was cut short by esophageal cancer. The video art and screen concepts by Cari Ann Shim Sham* are effective but, as an audience member near me commented, “it’s time to retire that Sad Clown image forever.”
Movements suggest the long-lasting, private relationships Strayhorn had with a couple of men, “tinged with the sadness”–to use his own words–explained on the screen: despite invaluable contributions to Ellington, Strayhorn’s name was rarely if ever on the sheet music of songs he wrote, denying him copyrights and revenue. Although Ellington paid for rent, clothes, food and travel for Strayhorn throughout their contract-free relationship, he clearly took advantage of his co-creator and “right-hand”. Insults from an ignorant publicist about Strayhorn’s homosexuality only made things worse. All this came at a time when Strayhorn was having late-night discussions with Martin Luther King and devoting his time and money to the civil rights cause.
After a chilly stand-off with Ellington, Strayhorn visited Paris many times and spent long periods in Hollywood. He was an intimate of Lena Horne and she always admitted that Strayhorn educated her, improved her vocal abilities and was the true love of her life. Frank Sinatra’s eagerness to sign Strayhorn to his new Reprise Records label was the final straw for Ellington. Adjustments were made, credit was finally, publicly given and their artistic arrangement continued. The two worked in tandem, as they had before, on several suites of music, the film score of “Anatomy of a Murder” and on special arrangements for tours around the world.
The sound design in “Halfway to Dawn”, by d. Sabela Grimes, is quite moving at times, the highlight surely being Lush Life in the middle of the second act. The song is sung exquisitely by Ella Fitzgerald, accompanied by pianist Oscar Peterson. Mirroring the break-down in Strayhorn’s life and health, more elements are blended into the audio mix: labored breath, the awkward first recording of the song, by Nat “King” Cole, and a swirl of sounds that suggest confused, drunken, late-night record-playing by a man whose life is coming to an end. “As Strayhorn’s life begins to unravel,” says Rousseve, “the piece begins to unravel as well. It’s more abstract and surreal.”
The nine outstanding dancers deserve to be named. They are: Bernard Brown, Raymond Ejiofor, Dezare Foster, Jasmine Jawato, Kevin Le, Julio Medina, Samantha Mohr, Leanne Iacovetta Poirer and Kevin Williamson. In one or another configuration, they are on-stage and physically active for the entire performance. Despite Rousseve’s program note that “There is no relationship between the timeline” (the words on the screen) “and the dances beyond their tone, textures and throughlines of emotion”, it would be less confusing to the audience if the overhead data was more aligned with the dancers’ movements. (At times in the 1940s and ’50s-set first act, for example, the information on the screen refers to events in the 1960s of the second act.)
David Rousseve , a Professor of Choreography at UCLA, founded his dance/ theatre company, Reality, in 1988. Together, they have presented commissioned ballet and theatre works throughout the world. He is also a published writer, has directed several short films and has received scores of awards and multiple NEA grants. He writes “As a gay citizen of color who grew up at the apex of the civil rights movement, above all else my work hopes to create an empathetic conversation that transcends the boundaries of difference to communicate on the level of the heart.” (Strayhorn would have appreciated that thought as well as Rousseve’s conception for this show.)
“Halfway to Dawn”—a favorite phrase of Strayhorn’s—is an important work of art, quite moving at times, wonderfully danced and a must-see for anyone interested in black history, American jazz, homophobia and two important cultural icons of the twentieth century–one of them world-renowned, the other almost a mystery to the public. Some in the audience, this viewer included, felt the show could be improved with a couple of clarifications and cuts–mentioned above—perhaps even combining the two slightly trimmed sections into a tighter evening, without an intermission. That said, “Halfway to Dawn” is the heartfelt and heart-breaking homage that Billy Strayhorn’s charmed but difficult life richly deserves.
Tagged With: Billy Strayhorn, David Roussève, Halfway to Dawn, Lush Life, Reality, RedCat, Sean Hughes
mona Houghton says:
This is a wonderful piece–sure made me want to get a ticket!
Kathleen Devlin says:
Thank you, Mr. Hughes, for your article on David Rousseve’s dance biography of the tragic and talented Billy Strayhorn.
DVaccarino says:
Great review, empathetic and devoted to the subject.
Strayhorn is one of the best but an under championed musician – GO Strayhorn!!
Thanks for this terrific tribute for all involved. Sorry to have missed it.
Christine McBurney says:
A wonderful, informative article on a genius
who somehow has stayed in the shadows since his
death. A much-deserved homage to Mr. Strayhorn
and to those amazing dancers!
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Uncle Sam’s Hiring Practices
December 18th, 2013 | Bruce Vail
A pair of reports released this week show that the federal government routinely ignores worker safety and labor law violations when awarding contracts to private companies—and that American taxpayers are cheated in the process.
The first comes from the staff of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) Committee, which conducted a yearlong investigation of federal contracting records. Unveiled Wednesday by HELP Chairman Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the report provides a long list of specific companies that break safety and labor laws yet continue to receive big government contracts. In particular, it names 49 law-breaking contractors that got more than $81 billion from Uncle Sam in 2012 alone—including AT&T, Home Depot and GM.
The HELP report was paired with one from the Center For American Progress (CAP) Action Fund, a Democratic Party advocacy group, which examined whether government contractors are actually fulfilling their contracts. The CAP report found that a number of companies shortchange taxpayers through poor performance, and names specific companies that stand out in this respect, including Lockheed Martin and KBR. Some of these scofflaw companies, such as international oil giant BP, overlapped with the HELP report lists.
The CAP report was presented Wednesday by Chairman John Podesta in a joint appearance with Harkin at CAP’s Washington D.C. headquarters.
Both Harkin and Podesta trace the origin of their respective reports to a 2010 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) that analyzed official data on safety and labor law violations by government contractors. That GAO report found that known violators routinely received new government contracts. It failed to name the specific contractor companies guilty of violations, however, and the HELP report was designed to provide the public with those names, as well as to bring the information up to date through 2012, according to Harkin. CAP report co-author David Madland says his effort “provides a nice complement” to the HELP analysis by highlighting that the contracting problem is not solely a labor issue, but also one of good government administration and the concern of taxpayers over wasteful spending.
The names of federal contractors guilty of fatal worker safety violations will be familiar to most Working In These Times readers. Harkin began his presentation by pointing to the workplace deaths of 10 employees in three separate incidents at the facilities of laundry operator Cintas Corp., shipbuilder ST Engineering Ltd. and oil refiner Tesoro Corp. Despite these deaths, all three companies received federal contracts in 2012, with Tesoro alone getting $463 million last year, the report states. A lengthier list of safety violators (some fatal, some non-fatal) includes international oil giant BP, commodities conglomerate Louis Dreyfus Group, beef and chicken processor Tyson Foods, auto manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler, and defense contractor General Dynamics. Eighteen such companies received almost $23 billion in federal contracts between 2006 and 2013, the report details.
Harkin pointed out that of 18 companies with terrible safety records, only one, BP, had ever been barred from federal contracts—and that suspension from new contracts was spurred by the environmental damage from the 2010 Deep Water Horizon oil rig explosion, not from the safety violations (although 10 workers were killed). Federal contracting officers routinely ignore the bad worker safety records of companies competing for government business, he added, and reforms are needed to correct the problem.
Similar issues are raised when analyzing the records on wage-and-hour law violations, according to both HELP and CAP. Again the HELP report unearths many household names from the Department of Labor records of companies obliged to make back wage payments to workers for legal violations. Among them are Hewlett-Packard Co., AT&T, General Dynamics, Nestle S.A., Lockheed Martin Corp., Cerberus Capital Management, and Home Depot Inc. A group of the 32 worst offenders received $73.1 billion from the federal government between 2007 and 2012, the HELP report says.
Harkin conceded that not all violations are so serious that contractors should be punished by exclusion from government business. Some violations apparently arise from simple errors, unavoidable accidents or other benign sources, he said. However, when the Labor Department finds willful and repeated violations, it can assess civil penalties. Harkin suggested that the contractors penalized in this way should receive special scrutiny before any new contracts are awarded. HELP researchers came up with the names of Sprint Nextel Corp, UnitedHealth Group, Marriott International, C&S Wholesalers Inc., Acosta Inc. and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center as examples of contractors already assessed for “severe and repeated” violations of labor law. Together, those six companies received about $470 million in federal contracts in 2012 alone, the report said.
Like the safety violators, none of the wage-and-hour labor-law violators have been barred from the further government contracts, Harkin emphasized. “There is an existing legal requirement (that contractors obey labor law) but it’s clear to me that compliance is not being considered” when new contracts are awarded, he said.
CAP came up with some of the same names when it separately analyzed the government data and “found that the companies with the worst records of harming workers were also guilty of shortchanging taxpayers through poor performance on government contracts and similar business agreements in ways that defraud the government and otherwise provide a bad value for taxpayers.”
Cited in this regard were:
KBR, a construction and defense contractor notable for its work in Iraq and Afghanistan, which received $11.4 billion in contracts between 2009 and 2013
BP, the international oil giant, which received $4.6 billion in contracts (plus $433 million in offshore oil and gas leases) 2009-20013
Corrections Corporation of America or CCA, the nation’s largest operator of private prisons, which got $2.3 billion in government contracts 2009-2013
Akai Security, notable for its agreements to provide private security at Department of Justice facilities nationwide, which got $3.6 billion on government contracts 2009-2013
Wackenhut Services, whose subsidiary ArmorGroup of North America provides private security guards at U.S. embassies overseas, which got $1.7 billion 2009-2012
Lockheed Martin, a diversified military contractor, which got $170 billion 2009-2013
Group Health Cooperative, a health maintenance organization (HMO), which got $20.2 million 2009-2012
Both Harkin and Podesta were full of righteous indignation about this state of affairs at their joint appearance Wednesday, but neither offered any sweeping new proposals to fix the problem. The HELP report states that existing law allows federal contract administrators to exclude offending companies and suggests that improved reporting and database management by the Labor Department could make it easier to bar scofflaw companies. It also proposes that President Barack Obama issue several small-scale executive orders that would streamline the process of legally excluding some companies. The CAP conclusion was even less ambitious, merely blaming “weak guidance and lax enforcement of the regulations” for the chronic contracting problems.
It’s possible that in ignoring the possibility of stronger federal laws, both reports implicitly recognized the impracticality of any new legislative initiative in Washington’s current political environment.
CAP’s Madland tells Working In These Times that the new reports represent a continuing effort by Democrats to wrestle with the contracting issue. Reform proposals early in the Obama administration known as “high road” contracting were abandoned in the face of political opposition, he says, but the need to make reforms to the contract process remains. “Workers are being killed because companies cut corners. …The system is broken and needs to be reformed.”
This article was originally printed on Working In These Times on December 12, 2013. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Bruce Vail is a Baltimore-based freelance writer with decades of experience covering labor and business stories for newspapers, magazines and new media. He was a reporter for Bloomberg BNA’s Daily Labor Report, covering collective bargaining issues in a wide range of industries, and a maritime industry reporter and editor for the Journal of Commerce, serving both in the newspaper’s New York City headquarters and in the Washington, D.C. bureau.
Tags: Center for American Progress, GAO, labor laws, Senate HELP Committee, worker safety
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 18th, 2013 at 1:08 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One Response to “Uncle Sam’s Hiring Practices”
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Noldo
"Finwe" by Kimberly
Other names Ñoldóran
Titles High King of the Noldor
Location Tirion
Language Common Eldarin and Quenya
Birth Between Y.T. 1050 and 1102
Rule Y.T. 1105 - 1495
Death Y.T. 1495 (aged between 445/4,293 and 393/3,765 years)
House Founded the House of Finwë
Spouse Míriel Serindë
Children Fëanor (by Míriel)
Findis, Fingolfin, Írimë and Finarfin (by Indis)
Hair color Black
Eye color Bright blue-grey[1]
Gallery Images of Finwë
Finwe Noldoran.mp3
By Ardamir. (Help; more articles)
"But Melkor was also there, and he came to the house of Fëanor and there he slew Finwë King of the Noldor before his doors, and spilled the first blood in the Blessed Realm; for Finwë alone had not fled from the horror of the Dark. "
― The Silmarillion, Of the Flight of the Noldor
Finwë (Q, pron. N [ˈfinwe], V [ˈɸinwe]) was the first High King of the Noldor, who led his people on the journey from Middle-earth to Valinor in the blessed realm of Aman. He was a great friend of Elwë, who would later become the King of Doriath.
1.1 Life in Middle-earth
1.2 Life in Valinor
3 Genealogy
4 Other Versions of the Legendarium
[edit] Life in Middle-earth
The first Elves awoke in Middle-earth near the bay of the Sea of Helcar, called Cuiviénen, in Y.T. 1050[2]. Oromë, The Huntsman of the Valar, while traveling near the Orocarni mountains, discovered the Elves and bonded friendship with their kin.
Later, as the Valar decided to call the first Children of Ilúvatar in Valinor, regarding this call with suspicion, Oromë selected three elves to follow him into Aman and report back what they have seen, in the hopes that they could assuage the fears which were seeded into the hearts of the elves by Melkor. The three elven ambassadors were Ingwë, Finwë and Elwë, who would later become kings of the three factions into which the elven race was split.[3]
Enamored by the wonders of Valinor, Finwë and his other two companions returned towards the Middle-earth and attempted to convince their respective peoples to follow them back into Aman. Those who agreed to follow Oromë received the name Eldar. Among them were Finwë's people, who would eventually become known as the Noldor. They later became students of Aulë the Smith.[3] Finwë's eldest son, Fëanor, would become the greatest craftsman among the Elves of Valinor.[4]
[edit] Life in Valinor
Finwë's Heraldic Device
Upon arriving in the blessed realm of Aman, Finwë was troubled only by the separation from his friend Elwë who chose to remain in Beleriand. The Noldor settled on the hill of Túna, raised for them by the Valar and, led by Finwë, they lived in the city of Tirion, which they shared with the Vanyar. It was during the building of Finwë's house that the masons found the earth-gems from which they crafted countless jewels to be given freely for the enrichment of Valinor. Later, Ingwë and his people left the city of Tirion and Finwë remained the only king to rule in Tirion.[4]
Finwë's first wife was Míriel Serindë, skilled in all things that required fineness. From their love a son was born, Curufinwë, who would later become known as Fëanor. As he was brought into the world, he depleted Míriel's strength and zest for life and she requested to be allowed to rest in the gardens of Lórien. Finwë was deeply saddened by this event. He did not wish to leave the young child without a mother, nor did he want him to be their last. But as his wife explained that what would have nourished many children, was all invested in Fëanor, he had no other choice but to accept her request. And thus Míriel, with Manwë's counsel, was placed asleep in Irmo's gardens. Her fëa eventually departed from her body and she became the first person to die in Aman.[5]
Steamey - Finwë Mourning Míriel
This was a shocking event for all those present in Valinor, as never one of their own had died of free will. For some time, Finwë lived in sorrow and he often visited Míriel's body, but as his loneliness and lack of joy increased, he stopped seeing her altogether. His entire love now rested with his son, Fëanor, who grew up to be mighty and skilled in all things of hands and mind. He married Nerdanel and gave Finwë seven grandchildren.
But Finwë was not content in living alone and he sought to marry for the second time. His second wife was Indis the Fair, a golden haired Vanya, whom he loved and rejoiced in. She gave him two sons, Fingolfin and Finarfin, and two daughters, Findis and Írimë[6]. Though he was now blissful again, the shadow of Míriel never left the House, especially since Fëanor opposed his father's second marriage.
The sons of Finwë never lived together and never shared close bonds. After the later events surrounding the Silmarils many blamed Finwë and his desire to have a second wife for the dreadful future misfortune of all those of his House. These accusations had no real merit, as Finwë had always loved his eldest son above all others, and the events surrounding his death would prove it.
[edit] Death
After three ages of imprisonment, Melkor was released from the duress of Mandos and, as he gained the trust of the Valar again, he was eventually allowed to roam freely in Valinor.[5] The treacherous Melkor lusted for the Silmarils, those three great jewels made by the hands of Fëanor, at the might of his skill, and ever he sought a way to steal them. He had sown such lies that all the Noldor began to feel strife and mistrust, against themselves, against the other Elves, and even against the Valar.
The House of Finwë was no exception. There were already grounds of argument between his sons, and these events only served to deepen these rifts. Finwë called a council and tried to moderate them towards one another. For the moment, his action seemed to be crowned with success, as Fingolfin bowed before Finwë, both privately and publically, to silence the mistrust and arguments he had in regards to his eldest brother. Soon after that the Valar called Fëanor to answer for his words against them. The stem of the evil was exposed and Melkor's covert actions revealed. However, Fëanor too was sentenced to twelve years of exile, and he removed himself north, to the fortress of Formenos. Due to the great love he had for his eldest son, Finwë renounced his throne as the King of the Noldor and followed Fëanor into exile.[7]
In his fixation to have the Silmarils for himself, Melkor went as far as to claim them at the gates of Formenos. He was fiercely rejected by Fëanor, while Finwë sent messengers to Manwë. It was during a time of festival, that Melkor returned. All the people of Valinor were engaged in the festivities except Finwë, who, out of devotion for Fëanor and bitterness for his son's exile, chose to remain in Formenos, thus refusing to obey Manwë's call.[8] After Melkor and Ungoliant destroyed the Two Trees of Valinor, they headed towards Formenos. Alone Finwë had the courage to stand before the horror of the Darkness. There, before the doors of Formenos, the former King of the Noldor had been killed and the first blood was spilled in the realm of Aman. Melkor forcefully entered the fortress and stole the Silmarils, sending the Blessed Realm into darkness and causing the Noldor to depart from Valinor.[9]
After his death, Finwë dwelt for a time in the Halls of Mandos where he met Míriel, his first wife. Later, when the Valar agreed that Finwë should be brought back to life, he instead decided not to, thus giving Míriel a chance to be reincarnated.[10]
The name Finwë is said to be one of the oldest recorded names of the Eldar. It is not certain if Finwë had any clear meaning, but it can be analyzed as fin- (derived from Common Eldarin PHIN "hair") + -wë (suffix generally used for male names).[11]
The title Ñoldóran, "King of the Ñoldor", was an other recorded name of Finwë.[12] It is apparently a compound of Noldo and aran ("king").[13]
Finwë had two wives. His first was Míriel, who passed away soon after bearing their only child: Fëanor. His second wife was Indis, of the Vanyar, who bore him two sons: Fingolfin and Finarfin, and two daughters: Findis and Írimë.
b. Y.T.
d. Y.T. 1170
Y.T. 1169 - 1497
Y.T. 1190 - F.A. 456
b. Y.T. 1230
[edit] Other Versions of the Legendarium
In the first drafts of the genealogy, Finwë had four sons: the youngest was named Finrun, but he was dropped after that, thus Finrod (later Finarfin) was Finwë's youngest son from then on.
In a later version, Finwë had three daughters by Indis: Findis (as their first child), Faniel (as their third), and Finvain (as their youngest).[14] In yet later versions, Faniel was apparently dropped, while Findis and Finvain were kept. Finvain (renamed Írimë) was moved to after Fingolfin, thus Finarfin was once again the youngest child of Finwë.
↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Peoples of Middle-earth, "The Shibboleth of Fëanor", p. 357, note 17
↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), Morgoth's Ring, "Part Two. The Annals of Aman: Second section of the Annals of Aman", pp. 71-4
↑ 3.0 3.1 J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Silmarillion, "Quenta Silmarillion: Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor"
↑ 4.0 4.1 J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Silmarillion, "Quenta Silmarillion: Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalië"
↑ 5.0 5.1 J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Silmarillion, "Quenta Silmarillion: Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor"
↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Peoples of Middle-earth, "The Shibboleth of Fëanor", The names of Finwë's descendants
↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Silmarillion, "Quenta Silmarillion: Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor"
↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Silmarillion, "Quenta Silmarillion: Of the Flight of the Noldor"
↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), Morgoth's Ring, "Part Three. The Later Quenta Silmarillion: (II) The Second Phase: The Earliest Version of the Story of Finwë and Míriel", p. 207
↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Peoples of Middle-earth, "The Shibboleth of Fëanor", p. 340
↑ Helge Fauskanger, "Quettaparma Quenyallo", Ardalambion (accessed 17 July 2019)
↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Peoples of Middle-earth, "The Shibboleth of Fëanor", p. 359 note 26
House of Finwë
Born: Between Y.T. 1050 and 1102 Died: Y.T. 1495
Position created High King of the Noldor
Y.T. 1105 – Y.T. 1495 Followed by:
Retrieved from "http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Finw%C3%AB"
Categories: Pronounced articles | Articles with IPA | Characters in The Book of Lost Tales | Characters in The Silmarillion | Noldor | House of Finwë | Quenya names | First Age characters
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Collapse from Within
Loss of Liberty
Radical Islam
Chronology of Obama's Overt Actions to Enable Radical Muslim Brotherhood to Infiltrate the US Gov't
H/T Commieblaster
Accuracyinmedia
Many in the media are condemning Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and four other congressmen who sent a letter to the State Department Deputy Inspector General, and the IGs of four other agencies, calling for investigations into the possible infiltration by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) of the State Department and other agencies.
What’s gotten the most attention is the fact that the letter to the State Department singled out Huma Abedin, the State Department’s Deputy Chief of Staff, who has been a close aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton going all the way back to her time as First Lady, during the Clinton administration. Abedin is also the wife of the disgraced former congressman from New York, Anthony Weiner.
This has caused quite a ruckus, with charges of McCarthyism hurled at Rep. Bachmann, and a split among Republicans, including Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, plus Speaker of the House John Boehner, who have sharply criticized Bachmann and the letters she and the others have sent. The Left is having a field day, the conservatives and Republicans are scrambling to contain the issue.
But there is a bigger picture here. Should we care if indeed the Muslim Brotherhood has gained a foothold throughout the Middle East, and if they wield significant influence within the Obama administration? Or does that make us Islamophobic? What shouldn’t get lost in all this are the policies of the Obama administration that have helped facilitate the ascendency of the Muslim Brotherhood, particularly in Egypt. Investor’s Business Daily has made it abundantly clear that that is exactly what has taken place. In the editorial, titled “How Obama Engineered Mideast Radicalization,” they lay out the following timeline:
2009: The Brotherhood’s spiritual leader — Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi — writes an open letter to Obama arguing terrorism is a direct response to U.S. foreign policy.
2009: Obama travels to Cairo to deliver apologetic speech to Muslims, and infuriates the Mubarak regime by inviting banned Brotherhood leaders to attend. Obama deliberately snubs Mubarak, who was neither present nor mentioned. He also snubs Israel during the Mideast trip.
2009: Obama appoints a Brotherhood-tied Islamist — Rashad Hussain — as U.S. envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which supports the Brotherhood.
2010: State Department lifts visa ban on Tariq Ramadan, suspected terrorist and Egyptian-born grandson of Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna.
2010: Hussain meets with Ramadan at American-sponsored conference attended by U.S. and Brotherhood officials.
2010: Hussain meets with the Brotherhood’s grand mufti in Egypt.
2010: Obama meets one-on-one with Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who later remarks on Nile TV: “The American president told me in confidence that he is a Muslim.”
2010: The Brotherhood’s supreme guide calls for jihad against the U.S.
2011: Qaradawi calls for “days of rage” against Mubarak and other pro-Western regimes throughout Mideast.
2011: Riots erupt in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Crowds organized by the Brotherhood demand Mubarak’s ouster, storm buildings.
2011: The White House fails to back longtime ally Mubarak, who flees Cairo.
2011: White House sends intelligence czar James Clapper to Capitol Hill to whitewash the Brotherhood’s extremism. Clapper testifies the group is moderate, “largely secular.”
2011: Qaradawi, exiled from Egypt for 30 years, is given a hero’s welcome in Tahrir Square, where he raises the banner of jihad.
2011: Through his State Department office, William Taylor — Clinton’s special coordinator for Middle East transitions and a longtime associate of Brotherhood apologists —gives Brotherhood and other Egyptian Islamists special training to prepare for the post-Mubarak elections.
2011: The Brotherhood wins control of Egyptian parliament, vows to tear up Egypt’s 30-year peace treaty with Israel and reestablishes ties with Hamas, Hezbollah.
2011: Obama gives Mideast speech demanding Israel relinquish land to Palestinians, while still refusing to visit Israel.
2011: Justice Department pulls plug on further prosecution of U.S.-based Brotherhood front groups identified as collaborators in conspiracy to funnel millions to Hamas.
2011: In a shocking first, the State Department formalizes ties with Egypt’s Brotherhood, letting diplomats deal directly with Brotherhood party officials in Cairo.
April 2012: The administration quietly releases $1.5 billion in foreign aid to the new Egyptian regime.
June 2012: Morsi wins presidency amid widespread reports of electoral fraud and voter intimidation by gun-toting Brotherhood thugs — including blockades of entire streets to prevent Christians from going to the polls. The Obama administration turns a blind eye, recognizes Morsi as victor.
June 2012: In a victory speech, Morsi vows to instate Shariah law, turning Egypt into an Islamic theocracy, and also promises to free jailed terrorists. He also demands Obama free World Trade Center terrorist and Brotherhood leader Omar Abdel-Rahman, a.k.a. the Blind Sheik, from U.S. prison.
June 2012: State grants visa to banned Egyptian terrorist who joins a delegation of Brotherhood officials from Egypt. They’re all invited to the White House to meet with Obama’s deputy national security adviser, who listens to their demands for the release of the Blind Sheik.
July 2012: Obama invites Morsi to visit the White House this September.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s sudden ascendancy in the Mideast didn’t happen organically. It was helped along by a U.S. president sympathetic to its interests over those of Israel and his own country.”
This is what should be being debated, and investigated. Sure, some people will take issue with certain of the characterizations in the IBD timeline. But it is hard to deny the overall truth of it.
In March of 2011, in an AIM Report titled “Media Playing Crucial Role in Middle East Uprisings,” I wrote that “Maybe in the next presidential election, we will be debating ‘who lost Egypt.’ But preferably, we’ll be debating instead whether a thriving and peaceful democracy in Egypt should be credited to George Bush’s democracy agenda or to Barack Obama, for wisely guiding the transition.”
At the time, the MB claimed they were not going to run a candidate for president if Mubarak went away, but that turned out not to be true. While many in the media tried to convince us back then what a moderate force the Brotherhood was, it should be recalled that it is the oldest Islamist group, “founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, who became a great admirer of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime. Following an attempted assassination of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954, the group was outlawed in Egypt.”
The man who was elected last year to head the MB in Egypt was Mohammed Badie. Here is what he said in a sermon in 2010: “Arab and Muslim regimes are betraying their people by failing to confront the Muslim’s real enemies—not only Israel, but the United States. Waging jihad against both of these infidels is a commandment of Allah that cannot be disregarded. Governments have no right to stop their people from fighting the U.S.”
The point is, the media are eager to use this story as another way to attack the GOP. That’s what they do. But let’s see if they’ll show some intellectual honesty and look also at the underlying issue: Should we care if the U.S. government maintains close ties with the MB, both internally and externally, and has supported their ascendancy in the Middle East?
Labels: Collapse from Within Constitution Loss of Liberty Muslim Brotherhood Obama Radical Islam
Front porch envy: 10 affordable ideas for making the neighbors jealous
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HomeThe Conscientious ObjectorOscar Nominee Randall Wallace to Direct ‘The Conscientious Objector’
Oscar Nominee Randall Wallace to Direct ‘The Conscientious Objector’
May 25, 2012 Paul Martin The Conscientious Objector 0
“Braveheart” writer Randall Wallace will direct “The Conscientious Objector” for Walden Media, Walden confirmed to TheWrap.
The film tells the true story of Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector in American history to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. Doss served in WWII, joining the army as a medic. He was ostracized by his fellow soldiers because of his refusal to kill or even carry a gun. He proved his courage, saving 75 men at the Battle of Okinawa.
Drafted in 1942, the Seventh-day Adventist became a medic because he refused to carry a weapon into combat.
Wallace earned his lone Oscar nomination as a writer, penning the script for “Braveheart,” but his directing credits include “The Man in the Iron Mask,” “We Were Soldiers” and “Secretariat.” He wrote the first two but not the latter.
Aaron Schneider had previously been attached to direct.
The script was written by Robert Schenkkan, who wrote the Pulitzer-winning play The Kentucky Cycles and whose script credits include The Pacific and The Quiet American. The film is a co-production between Pandemonium and Permut Presentations, and is being produced by Bill Mechanic, David Permut and Terry Benedict (who directed the 2004 documentary bearing the same title). Steve Longi is co-producer.
Desmond Doss
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The Screwtape Letters coming to Walden Media?
June 30, 2006 Paul Martin The Screwtape Letters 0
In a recent interview with Refocus and Adam Erickson, Ralph Winter revealed that they are currently in talks with Randall Wallace (writer of Braveheart) to write/direct “The Screwtape Letters” movie and for Walden Media to […]
Aaron Schneider to Direct ‘The Conscientious Objector’ for Walden Media
November 18, 2011 Paul Martin The Conscientious Objector 0
Nearly two years ago, Walden Media president Micheal Flaherty told me the story of a script that he had, which he considered a dream project. As he told me and others the story, everyone was […]
November 30, 2014 Paul Martin Hacksaw Ridge, The Conscientious Objector 2
The Conscientious Objector is a movie that’s been in the works since at least early 2010. A while back it seemed like it was finally going to be moving forward, and now it’s possibly going to have […]
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Assassin-In-Chief: Obama Can Kill US Citizens
It has been reported today that Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed in Yemen, along with four other terrorists. While there are many who will rejoice at hearing this news, in reality they should be fearful as al-Awlaki was an American citizen. His death at the hands of the US government sets a precedent while allows for the US government to indiscriminately kill American citizens if they are deemed a “threat to national security.”
The authority to kill US citizens abroad was given to the CIA by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks. President Bush would allow for the killings “if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests.” However, this is completely illegal as in 1981 then-President Reagan passed Executive Order 12333 which stated that "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination." Yet President Obama continued this illegal policy as in 2010 he took "the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them."
While some may argue that strong evidence existed that al-Awlaki was "involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests," the fact of the matter is that the US goes around the world killing anyone whom it deems a terrorist and this is quite worrisome. The definition of terrorist does not have to be someone like al-Awlaki, it could be
Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush’s [or Obama's] list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government’s policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.
According to an FBI memo released in 2003, an antiwar group were viewed as terrorists due to their opposition to the war in Iraq. Thus, anyone could easily be labeled a terrorist just for something as simple as opposing the government and potentially be a target for assassination.
And people say that America isn't becoming a police state.
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EXPLORE NORTHAMPTON Co
The scenic Eastern Shore of Virginia is a 70-mile peninsula off of Virginia's coast, surrounded by the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Accomack County is located on the northern portion of the Eastern Shore, while Northampton County is on the southern portion. The Coastal Virginia - Eastern Shore region is accessible via the 17.5-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.
The Shore is a place that has somehow managed to remain relatively unchanged through the times. Its pristine condition is mainly a result of the surrounding waters of the Chesapeake Bay and the County's isolation to large East Coast metropolises such as Virginia's Tidewater Area (Virginia Beach & Norfolk). Generations of families have been left to their own and have created a rich tradition of living off the land through farming and fishing. For centuries a unique harmony, between mankind and nature, has evolved from these circumstances.
Northampton County's central location on the Eastern Seaboard places it less than a 1-day drive from areas such as New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Northampton County contains numerous natural and cultural sites, including two large public parks, Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge and Kiptopeke State Park, located at the southern end of the county. Historic townships, such as Eastville, Cheriton and Cape Charles contain buildings that speak to more than 350 years of architectural design in the United States.
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Great Works of Western Art
The Years
The Museums
Text by Deanna MacDonald
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Diego Velázquez: Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Pink Gown, 1653/54
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
In 1522 Emperor Charles V divided the Habsburg lands that he had inherited from his grandfather, Maximilian I, with his brother, Ferdinand I. The House of Austria, which controlled about a third of Europe, was thus split into a Spanish and an Austrian line. To keep all of that territory in Habsburg hands, the two branches intermarried for several generations and this portrait of the two-year-old Infanta Margarita Teresa (1651–1673) played a part in this dynastic alliance.
The Infanta Margarita Teresa was the first child of King Philip IV of Spain (1605–1665) and his second wife (and niece) the Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria (1639–1696). From infancy Margarita Teresa was engaged to her cousin and uncle, the future Emperor Leopold I. The Madrid court sent portraits of the Infanta at regular intervals to Leopold in Vienna, and as a result, the Kunsthistorisches Museum has three pictures of the princess by the great Seville-born artist, Velázquez, who was both a courtier and court painter to the Spanish Habsburgs from 1629 until his death.
In keeping with the traditions of period court portraiture, the little girl is posed to suggest royal bearing: rigidly upright, surrounded by luxury, with one hand resting on a table, the other holding a closed fan. She is dressed in the fashion of the day in a layered pink dress with silver brocade and black lace (children were generally dressed in miniature versions of adult fashion). The formality of the pose and setting however is contrasted by Velázquez’s loose, yet masterful, brushwork. While the Infanta’s face is startlingly focused, much of the painting – her dress, the carpet, the flowers - are composed of near Impressionistic daubs of colour. The blue drapery in the background is produced with broad brushstrokes and a play of light and shadow. But when viewed from a distance, the Infanta comes to life, a coherent and living presence.
It was not easy to be a successful court painter. The artist’s first task was to be a clever propagandist, for any royal portrait must promote the dynasty. This must be accomplished while flattering the subject, regardless of their actual appearance. In a portrait for a potential spouse, the subject’s pleasing appearance was even more important. There was little room left for observing character or psychology. Yet, somehow, Velázquez could do it all. Even with a toddler exhibiting the droopy Habsburg eyes, stiffly dressed and formally posed, he captures a sense of childhood in the preciousness of her tiny hands and rosy cheeks and the poignancy of a small child encased by the duties of dynasty.
Margarita Teresa was painted many times by Velázquez before his death in 1660, including the famous Las Meninas (Prado, Madrid). She married Leopold I in 1666 and died in 1673, giving birth to her seventh child.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
1653 Aelbert Cuyp: Starting for the Hunt, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
1654 Rembrandt: Hendrickje Stoffels bathing in a Stream, London, National Gallery
1654 Johannes Vermeer: Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland
Spanish Seventeenth Century Painting
Further Paintings of Interest
Family Before a House in Delft
Interior with a Woman drinking with Two Men
© Great Works of Western Art 2019
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Movies for Music Makers
|In Music
I was driving my son to school one day this week and was thinking of an upcoming music project I want to start. To get inspired, I started thinking of what some of my favorite movies are where music plays a key role, almost like one of the key actors. I think that leading up to this project I might start to rewatch these.
All of the links below are to Amazon Video unless noted.
Documentaries & Biopics
808 The Movie
Documentary about the Roland 808 drum machine and the music it inspired.
The Art of Listening (YouTube)
Documentary film about the journey music takes to reach a listener’s ear, from the intent of an instrument maker and composer, to the producers and engineers who capture and preserve an artist’s voice.
The documentary about the music of Cuba. Ry Cooder brings together an ensemble of legendary musicians from Cuba to record an album and perform at Carnegie Hall.
This is a biopic about Ian Curtis of Joy Division.
Depeche Mode – The Dark Progression
How Music Works (YouTube)
Documentary series where Howard Goodal talks about music theory and how music works, delivered in a simple digestible way for a music listener’s perspective.
1. Melody
2. Rhythm
3. Harmony
Explained (Netflix)
Episode 1, “Music” talks about the unique ability of humans among the animal kingdom to universally discern and understand music and dance.
Documentary Joy Division assembled from interviews and footage of the band’s perfo rmance. Tells the story of the 70s Manchester scene that led to the forming of the band, through their short lived success, the end of the band after the suicide of Ian Curtis, and their reassembly as New Order.
Documentary about the making of film scores, featuring Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, John Williams, Quincy Jones, and Trent Reznor.
Sigur Rós: Heima
Documentary about the band’s tour around Iceland in the summer of 2006.
Searching for Sugarman
Documentary about the search for recording artist Sixto Rodriguez, whose work in the 60’s and 70’s went unrecognized in the U.S., but became an underground phenomenon over decades in South Africa.
Sound City
Dave Grohl’s documentary about the production studio in Van Nuys, California where work was produced by Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac and Nirvana.
It’s an incredible spectacle and homage to the music of a generation that preceded me, and it’s probably also one of the best music documentaries ever made. Not sure if the confluence of music, social, and political climate that made up this festival and experience could ever happen again.
24 Hour Party People
Movie set in the Manchester music scene from the 80s’ to 90’s, mostly about the music coming out of Factory Records and the The Haçienda club.
Story of the downfall of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as orchestrated by his nemesis, the less talented but politically favored Antonin Salieri.
The story of a band fronted by Frank, a dude wearing a huge papier mâché head and their rocky journey towards greatness or maybe destruction.
Hustle and Flow
The story of a Memphis pimp in mid-life crisis attempting to become a successful rapper.
A love story set in a Dublin bathed in the music of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová.
A wild ride following a jazz drummer’s journey to become great and the abusive conservatory instructor that tries to push him to his limits.
Charlie Ahearn’s film that captures the birth of hip hop art, music, dance and culture in this 1980s New York City classic.
Guilty Pleasure Movies
Have any music-related movies that you think I should add to the list? Let me know in the comments below.
movies music
Moonshoes Boogieland
François K’s Top 137 Funky Records
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Home•Government urged to review its...
Government urged to review its work and health priorities
Britain’s manufacturers are urging the Government to place more emphasis in the UK’s industrial strategy on helping the working age population stay fit, healthy and productive, on the back of a new survey showing a key plank of its plan for getting employees back to work is failing to be embraced by companies, especially SMEs.
The call was made by EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation on the back of the UK’s biggest business survey on sickness absence published today and ahead of the evaluation findings of the Fit for Work Service being carried out for Government by the Institute of Employment Studies.
The EEF says keeping people fit, healthy and productive is a key element of improving manufacturers productive performance / Picture: Getty/iStock
Terry Woolmer, Head of Health & Safety Policy at EEF, commented: “Keeping people fit, healthy and productive is a key element of improving the UK’s productive performance for the overall benefit of the UK economy. Whilst the Fit for Work Service has a key role to play as part of this, companies are clearly not persuaded of the benefits of using it, either because they already have some form of occupational health provision or, they are content to rely on the NHS.
“As such Government needs to review its work and health priorities as part of the development of the wider industrial strategy. This would help improve the productive potential of the economy and reduce the burden on an overstretched NHS.”
According to the survey, whilst over three quarters of companies (77%) are aware of the Fit for Work Service, only a quarter of those aware would use it, whilst an equal number said they would not use it at all. Furthermore, of the fourteen companies in the survey that had used the service only three agreed it had enabled their employees to return to work early. In contrast over a third of companies (36%) still rely entirely on the NHS to provide medical treatment for their employees.
EEF believes that a healthy and productive workforce is an important component of an industrial strategy and overall economic growth. The Fit for Work Service can contribute to this by tackling the most common causes of long-term absence and could also provide the framework for helping more people with disabilities and long-term health conditions into the workplace. This would help improve the productive potential of the economy and reduce the burden on an overstretched NHS.
There is a lack of engagement by Government with both employers and GPs. There is also a view that the current £500 tax exemption to pay for interventions recommended by the service is not a ‘real’ benefit. These are just two of the factors preventing a wider uptake of the service.
EEF has also made the following recommendations:
• The Fit for Work service has to do more to engage with manufacturers and make it clear how engagement with the service will result in employees returning to work earlier.
• There needs to be a serious consideration about whether an expanded Fit for Work service has a place in helping companies employ more individuals with disabilities and/or long-term health conditions.
• The government’s strategy towards older workers should form part of the overall work and health agenda, and the government should consider how incentivising employers to introduce health and well-being programmes will be of particular benefit to older workers who might otherwise leave the world of work.
• Financial or other incentives need to considered to encourage employers to try new and creative ways of supporting more people with disabilities and health conditions in work. The government should assess the viability and practicality of a variety of financial incentives to see which offers the greatest benefit to the UK economy at a macro-economic level.
The survey also shows that companies are upping their efforts to enhance the work and wellbeing of employees over 50 so they can continue to retain their services and address long-term health issues.
Almost half of employers (46%) offer flexible working, whilst almost a third (32%) have invested in workplace modifications and over a quarter (28%) have health promotion arrangements in place. Given skills shortages, and the potential for more limited access to EU workers post Brexit these efforts are likely to increase.
EEF also continues to believe that fiscal incentives have a key role to play in encouraging companies to pay for employee health and wellbeing programmes. Almost four fifths of companies would pay for workplace adjustments, rehabilitation or private medical treatments if financial incentives were introduced whilst just over a quarter (28%) of companies said that financial incentives would help them recruit or retain people with disabilities and health conditions.
The most popular incentive, noted by almost half of companies was employer/government matched funding.
Key findings of the EEF Survey
• Over three quarters of companies are aware of the Fit for Work Service but only a quarter of those aware said they would use it
• Only 14 out of 264 companies had used the Fit for Work service
• Just 3 companies who had used the service said employees had returned to work earlier
• Over a third (38%) of companies rely entirely on the NHS to medically treat employees
• No barriers to employing disabled workers or those with long term health issues by over a third (36%) of companies
• Employers increasingly offering flexible working and workplace modifications for workers over 50
• Almost half of companies (47%) said employer/government matched funding would encourage them to contribute to the cost of employee health and well-being programmes
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Category Archives: Thriller
Posted on July 5, 2019 by badblokebob
Fede Alvarez | 115 mins | streaming (HD) | 2.39:1 | USA, Germany & Sweden / English | 15 / R
I love a bit of context to frame a review, but crikey, I can’t be arsed to recap the turbulent history of this particular franchise. Heck, it doesn’t even have a proper name! Officially it was the Millennium Trilogy, but that didn’t seem to stick (especially when it went past three books). The original Swedish films have been bundled as “The Girl” trilogy, owing to the formula of their English language titles. For this latest incarnation, they chose to label it “A New Dragon Tattoo Story”, I guess reasoning that “Dragon Tattoo” was a more unique identifier than “The Girl” (not wrongly).
The status of this film itself is equally confused. Is it a reboot? A sequel? If so, to what? I mean, it’s adapted from the fourth book, but only the first has been filmed in English (as is this movie), so is this now meant to be the second story? But as there doesn’t seem to be a Swedish language adaptation forthcoming, maybe this is intended to be a fourth one after all? Frankly, I suspect the filmmakers would rather we didn’t ask. The film makes little or no acknowledgement of any specific predecessors (aside from the fact that the recurring characters already know each other), instead diving headlong into a new, standalone story. Well, standalone-ish, because a lot of what occurs comes out of the past of Lisbeth Salander, the titular girl; and the events of her past were a key feature of some of the other stories as well, so…! Well, that you can’t escape your past, however much you might try, is sort of a theme here, I guess, so maybe we can kindly say it’s only appropriate.
Whichever films or books you take in before this one, I don’t think Spider’s Web is a good jumping-on point. It assumes we have familiarity with the lead characters — hacker Lisbeth Salander (now played by Claire Foy) and investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (now played by Sverrir Gudnason), and their relationship, or lack thereof — which is a barrier to it being newcomer friendly. Anyway, the actual storyline sees Lisbeth being hired to steal a dangerous computer program from the CIA, which leads to all sorts of trouble with crime gangs and spies and whatnot.
Where the first three Millennium / Girl / Dragon Tattoo stories were all fundamentally crime thrillers, Spider’s Web opens up the storytelling world into much more fanciful realms. It’s a bit like they’ve tried to make Salander a kind of freelance female James Bond, using her l33t h4x0r skillz to stop evil cyber-terrorists. It also helps that she’s pretty handy on a motorbike and with a gun. How? Just because. Unfortunately, an element of ‘just because’ powers too much of the film, with fundamental flaws in even its basic setup: the computer program she has to steal is uncopyable, hence the she has to steal it, but that’s (apparently) not even possible. I guess the writers just thought “eh, it sounds plausible”, but, well, it didn’t sound plausible to me, and apparently it is indeed not possible to create a program that can’t be copied, so there we go.
And yet, if you can suspend your disbelief, Spider’s Web is mostly enjoyable while it’s on. There are plenty of twists and turns in the plot — few, if any, are genuinely surprising, but it keeps it ticking over; as do the running about and shooting at things. It’s nothing special as action-thrillers go, but I’ve seen a lot worse. They’ve plumped for an R rating, in keeping with the darker adult themes the series is known for, but it’s a funny one: some of it feels tamed down as if they were aiming for a PG-13 (it’s scrupulous about never showing Lisbeth naked, even when she is), but there are some swears and the odd burst of violence that would never have got past at the lower certificate. Arguably that kind of half-heartedness extends to the whole experience.
Consequently, I feel kinda bad for Claire Foy in the lead role. After her acclaim in The Crown I can see she must’ve had big opportunities calling, but I imagine was also keen to show her range after becoming famous for such a particular kind of role. Lisbeth Salander is about as big a 180 from Queen Elizabeth II as you can get, right? However, she has big shoes to fill. Lisbeth is a potentially complex role, much desired by actresses keen for some meaty material (well, there was tough competition when they were casting the US remake of Dragon Tattoo, anyway), but both Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara have put a firm stamp on it already (the latter even secured an Oscar nomination). I’d wager Foy is up to the task, although the screenplay doesn’t give her a whole lot to work with. Giving Lisbeth some (more) familial conflicts sounds potentially weighty, but the actual material doesn’t dig into it a whole lot.
As for the rest of the cast, the fact they’ve cast someone you’ve probably never heard of as Blomkvist, the role previously played by a hot-off-Bond Daniel Craig, shows how he has a downgraded part to play here. The rest of the supporting cast includes a few somewhat more familiar faces, like Stephen Merchant, LaKeith Stanfield, and Sylvia Hoeks, all of whom are fine with what they’re given, but, as I say, it’s not exactly something to write home about.
Once upon a time Dragon Tattoo was a darling of the pop culture world, the books attracting a tonne of attention, the Swedish films going down very well, and the star-studded US remake suitably hyped up. Its shine has waned since then (possibly as a result of said US remake underperforming at the box office, which is a whole other can of worms), and now Spider’s Web is probably too little too late to revive it — certainly, it fared poorly with both critics (40% on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (a paltry $35 million worldwide). To say it deserved better might be overselling it, but there is value here, at least for any undemanding fans of the action-thriller genre.
The Girl in the Spider’s Web is available on Sky Cinema from today.
Posted in 2010s, 2019, 3 stars, Action, adaptations, Crime, Thriller | Tagged Claire Foy, Fede Alvarez, Lisbeth Salander, Sverrir Gudnason, Sweden, The Girl in the Spider's Web | 1 Reply
Peter Weir | 108 mins | streaming (HD) | 16:9 | USA / English | 15 / R
Witness is, I think, one of those (many) films that used to be pretty well-known but hardly anyone seems to talk about anymore. I guess it falls into that bracket of being “very good, but not great”, and, devoid of the kind of cult appeal that can keep good-not-great movies popular for decades, it’s kind of slipped off the radar.
It’s the story of an 8-year-old Amish boy (Lukas Haas) who, while travelling with his mother (Kelly McGillis) through Philadelphia, happens to witness the murder of an undercover cop. The case is handed to Detective John Book (Harrison Ford), who manages to get the boy to ID the murderer, but that puts the trio in danger, so they hide out among the Amish community.
With such a storyline, the film could descend into a culture-clash comedy — the big city cop chafing against historical rural life — but, while that clash is certainly in play, it’s not milked for laughs. Rather, the film is about Book experiencing a way of life so different to his own, and it changing his perspective on the world. Indeed, with the focus it gives to Amish ways, the film almost seems like it wanted to be a documentary about that community as much as a story. Certainly, the crime plot is a little rote, though it builds to a thrilling climax, with a definite touch of “modern Western” about the film’s style and structure. Additionally, the burgeoning romance between Book and the boy’s mother is touchingly and believably handled.
Ford gives a good performance, though I didn’t think it was that far outside his usual wheelhouse, actually. Sure, this is a drama where he plays a real-world cop rather than an adventure flick where he’s a dashing space smuggler or a swashbuckling matinee idol, but he’s still a bit of a charming rogue who eventually reveals his good heart. Or maybe Ford is just so effortlessly good that he makes it look easy. Among the rest of the cast, look out for a baby-faced Viggo Mortensen, popping up briefly with no lines.
The film’s only significant downside is a horrible synth score by Maurice Jarre. Maybe it’d be fine in itself, if ever so ’80s, but it’s an ill fit with the film’s theme about the appeal of traditional ways of life.
Otherwise, Witness is, as I said, a good-but-not-great kind of drama; a more-than-solid effort from all involved, but not so remarkable that it’s endured among Great Movies. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, mind. Certainly, in our present era of Western cinema where that sort of dramatic movie is falling by the wayside as studios focus solely on mega-budgeted effects spectacles, this kind of film feels all the more wanted.
Posted in 1980s, 2018, 4 stars, Crime, Drama, Romance, Thriller | Tagged Amish, Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Lukas Haas, Peter Weir, Viggo Mortensen, Witness | 2 Replies
Tim Story | 111 mins | streaming (HD) | 2.39:1 | USA / English | 15 / R
I wrote recently about Shaft 2000 (I’m gonna start calling it that, even if nobody else does), the turn-of-the-millennium attempt to reboot the ’70s blaxploitation classic. It didn’t really take off, for various reasons, but I think it’s a pretty solid thriller in its own right. Now, 19 years later, they’ve decided to try again, only this time they’ve thrown away the spirit of the original in favour of an intergenerational buddy comedy.
John Shaft Jr (Jessie T. Usher) is a bookish FBI data analyst whose dad, John Shaft (Samuel L. Jackson), abandoned him when he was a baby so he could go off galavanting with other women and solving crime while looking cool. Down the years he’s sent Jr presents like condoms and a box of porn mags — he’s that kind of dad. (Is that a kind of dad, or is it just a caricature of one?) Anyway, after Jr’s former-junkie best friend dies of an apparent overdose, everyone else believes it was a relapse, but Jr isn’t convinced. Struggling to investigate on his own, he turns to his estranged father for help.
Where Jackson’s Shaft was once a cool dude kicking ass and taking names (or whatever it is cool dude PIs did in the early ’00s), here they’ve turned him into a bit of a throwback dinosaur, spouting politically incorrect opinions with every other line of dialogue. This film does acknowledge the existence of the 2000 movie (an opening montage covering the last 30 years of the Shafts’ lives includes shots from that film to show Shaft Sr quitting the police), but it doesn’t feel like the same character we saw back then — he’s much more of a caricature of an outdated sex-obsessed oldie here. At times it’s like someone adapted one of those facile “millennials are to blame for everything” articles into a movie; or at least copy-pasted it into Shaft Sr’s dialogue.
This aspect has come in for much consternation among the film’s wider critical reception, but, eh, I dunno — the crap Shaft comes out with is definitely being played for laughs, with other characters eye-rolling (and similar) at most of what he says and does. At the same time, Jr’s character arc still comes down to “manning up” in the way his father wants him to. For instance: he hates guns, but when assassins attack at a restaurant, he borrows his date’s handbag-sized pistol and takes them out with expert marksmanship, before throwing the gun down in disgust. Put another way, the film is having its cake and eating it — it knows these old-fashioned ideals are, well, old-fashioned, but it’s gonna let them play out anyway. Even the plot pretends to be kinda modern by suggesting it might all have something to do with terrorism and radicalising Muslims — though as that’s been a plot driver for nigh on 20 years now, maybe it stretches the idea of “modern”. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because really that’s a red herring to cover up a standard drug smuggling affair.
The film’s best bit comes at the end, when Richard Roundtree’s OG Shaft gets roped into things for no particularly good reason. But it doesn’t matter, because granddad Shaft’s antics, and the banter between all three generations, is the most entertaining part of the movie. It certainly helps cover for the TV-movie-esque quality of the action scenes. It’s a shame the film waited so long to get him involved.
So Shaft 2019 is antiquated in myriad different ways, be it the values espoused by its co-lead or the general tone and content of its story. It didn’t need to be like that — Shaft may’ve been born in the ’70s, but I don’t think the very nature of the character requires him to still embody ’70 values. Nonetheless, if you don’t let that stuff bother you too much, the result is a moderately entertaining watch — nothing special (the other two films with the same title are both better), but a passably humorous 110 minutes.
Shaft is available on Netflix everywhere (except the US) now.
Posted in 2010s, 2019, 3 stars, Action, Comedy, Crime, Thriller | Tagged Jessie T. Usher, Netflix, Richard Roundtree, Samuel L. Jackson, Shaft, Shaft (2019), Tim Story | 1 Reply
John Singleton | 99 mins | streaming (HD) | 2.39:1 | USA & Germany / English | 18 / R
With there now being another ‘reboot’ for the black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks (released a couple of weeks ago in the US, and available on Netflix today in the rest of the world), I thought it was about time I got round to the first ‘reboot’ (I saw the original yonks ago, long before this blog existed). I’ve put ‘reboot’ in inverted commas both times there because, despite the unadorned titles of both the 2000 and 2019 films, both are actually continuations of the ’70s original: Samuel L. Jackson plays John Shaft II, the nephew of the original Shaft, played by Richard Roundtree, who pops by for a cameo here. Jackson and Roundtree reprise their roles again in Shaft 2019-flavour, alongside Jessie Usher as John Shaft III.
(Would it’ve been cool if they’d actually called this Shaft 2000? I feel like it would’ve. Maybe by the year 2000 the idea of sticking 2000 on a title to make it cool/futuristic was over, I dunno, but I feel like it would’ve worked. And because they didn’t, we’ve now got three movies called simply Shaft that all exist in the same continuity. Madness.)
Anyway, back to the first time they rebooted-but-didn’t Shaft. Jackson’s character isn’t actually a private dick, but a proper copper… that is until sleazy rich-kid Walter Wade Jr (a hot-off-American Psycho Christian Bale) literally gets away with murder, prompting Shaft Jr to go freelance to catch his man.
This Shaft is almost 20 years old now (obviously), and yet all the white privilege bullshit that drives its story makes it feel like it could’ve been made yesterday. (Why are you so enable to evolve societally, America?) Other than that apparently-eternal timeliness, it’s a pretty standard kinda thriller, with most of its charm coming via an array of likeable performances. As well as the reliably cool Jackson and reliably psychopathic Bale, there are memorable early-career turns from Jeffrey Wright and Toni Collette, plus Vanessa Williams as Shaft’s cop colleague who lends a hand even after he leaves the force.
The original Shaft spawned two big-screen sequels and seven more TV movies, but there was no such future for the new incarnation: Jackson’s disappointment with the film, plus a box office performance that was regarded as mediocre (although it opened at #1 and returned over $100 million off its $46 million budget), was enough to scupper a planned follow-up… at least until this year’s reboot-that-isn’t. Reportedly that’s not so great either (with a 31% score on Rotten Tomatoes, a 6th place opening in the US, and of course going directly to Netflix everywhere else), but, given the series’ history, I wouldn’t write Shaft off just yet. After the 29-year gap between Shaft Mk.I and Shaft Mk.II, and then 19 years between Shaft Mk.II and Shaft Mk.III, maybe in 2028 we’ll be treated to a film about child detective John Shaft IV. Naturally, the film itself will just be called Shaft.
Posted in 2000s, 2019, 3 stars, Action, Crime, Thriller | Tagged Christian Bale, John Singleton, Samuel L. Jackson, Shaft, Shaft (2000) | Leave a reply
Tony Scott | 121 mins | Blu-ray | 2.40:1 | USA & France / English & Italian | 18
Directed by Tony Scott from Quentin Tarantino’s first screenplay,* True Romance is pretty much everything you’d expect from an early Quentin Tarantino screenplay directed by Tony Scott. It stars Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette as a pair of Bonnie and Clyde-ish lovers, who accidentally steal a load of cocaine from her pimp and end up on the run from the mob.
At first blush, I’d say this feels much more like a Tarantino movie than a Scott one. It’s all there in the dialogue, the subject matter, the characters — it’s everything you’d expect from early QT: verbose, funny, littered with pop culture references, violent. It’s well paced, too; not exactly whip-crack fast, but also never slow or draggy. It is shot more like a Scott flick than a QT one, but only somewhat — it lacks both the slick flashiness we associate with Scott’s early work (Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II) and the grungy hyper-editing of his later stuff (Man on Fire, Domino). That said, some scenes (like one between Arquette and James Gandolfini’s underboss in a motel room, for example) are shot like Tony Scott to the nines, reiterating my opening point.
Other observations: There’s one helluva supporting cast — it’s just littered with famous names in roles that only last a scene or two. (I could list them, but that might spoil the fun.) The sweet plinky-plonky score by Hans Zimmer is so unlike either his normal stuff or this genre of movie, which is no bad thing. On its original release the film was cut by about two minutes to get an R rating, with the original cut eventually released “unrated” on home formats, sometimes labelled the “director’s cut”. All the differences are relatively short trims to do with violence (full details here). The “director’s cut” is the only one that’s ever been released on DVD or Blu-ray anywhere, thus making the distinction between “theatrical” or “director’s cut” pretty much moot at this point… or at any point in the last 20 years, frankly.
It’s got a funny old trailer, too: it’s centred around a bunch of made-up numbers that have no basis in the film (“60 cops, 40 agents, 30 mobsters”), it mostly features the film’s climax, and it doesn’t once mention Quentin Tarantino — I guess “from the writer of Reservoir Dogs” wasn’t considered a selling point just the year after it came out. (Though obviously it was in the UK — just see the poster atop this review.)
Of course, nowadays it’s often regarded as “a Tarantino movie” — the copy I own is part of the Tarantino XX Blu-ray set, for instance. I wonder if that ‘divided authorship’ is why, while the film does have it’s fans, it’s not widely talked about as much as some of either man’s other work: it’s not wholly a Tony Scott film, but, without QT actually behind the camera, it’s not really a Tarantino one either. Personally, I’m a fan of both men’s work, so of course it was up my alley. I don’t think it’s the best from either of them, but mixing together the distinct styles of two such trend-setting iconoclasts does produce a unique blend.
True Romance was viewed as part of my Blindspot 2018 project.
* True Romance came out between Reservoir Dogs and Natural Born Killers, but apparently QT wrote this first, then when he failed to get funding for it he wrote NBK, then when he also failed to sell that he wrote Reservoir Dogs. Another version says True Romance and NBK started out as one huge movie, written in Tarantino’s familiar chapter-based non-chronological style, until QT and his friend Roger Avery realised just how long it was and decided to divide it in two. ^
Posted in 1990s, 2018, 4 stars, alternate & director's cuts, Crime, Drama, Romance, Thriller | Tagged blindspot, Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Quentin Tarantino, Tony Scott, True Romance | 5 Replies
2019 #9
Brian Henson | 91 mins | streaming (HD) | 2.39:1 | USA & China / English | 15 / R
The Muppets meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit meets an R rating in this black comedy murder mystery from director Brian “son of Jim” Henson. Set in a world where Muppet-esque (but not actual Muppets, because IP rights) puppets co-exist alongside humans, disgraced puppet cop turned private investigator Phil Phillips (performed by Bill Barretta, which, let’s be honest, is a better name for a comedy private eye than the one they’ve actually used) stumbles onto a spate of connected puppet murders, and must reluctantly team up with his former partner, human detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy), to crack the case.
The mystery that drives the plot isn’t too bad, including a neat twist/reveal that’s perhaps guessable but not terribly so. It does hew closely to the tropes and clichés of the noir genre, which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, as it’s not a straight crime movie I don’t think it’s a problem for it to recycle all those things when it has fresh comedy to hang off them, or if it’s somehow riffing off familiar elements but with the puppet stuff, but often it isn’t that clever.
Nonetheless, there are some legitimately funny bits along the way, often found among the riffs on the puppet thing (for example: one of the victims is drowned, and before bagging the body they ring him out). Unfortunately it isn’t funny as often as it should be, too often relying on worn or lacklustre humour. I mean, it tries to run with the old playground favourite “idiots say what?” as a running gag. It also leans on puppets being lewd and crude as the extent of the gag, which simply isn’t that funny in itself, partly because it isn’t as original as the film seems to think it is (cf. Team America, Avenue Q).
While The Happytime Murders isn’t close to the echelons of quality where you’d find Roger Rabbit or the best of the Muppets, it’s also not a total washout. From behind-the-scenes stuff I’ve read it sounds like a lot of effort was expended on filming it, making sure the puppets could interact with the humans and so on, and those technical aspects are first rate. It’s just a shame the same level of innovation wasn’t poured into screenplay. I didn’t hate it, but it doesn’t live up to its potential either.
The Happytime Murders is available on Netflix UK from today.
Posted in 2010s, Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Thriller, 3 stars, 2019 | Tagged Brian Henson, Elizabeth Banks, Melissa McCarthy, Muppets, puppets, The Happytime Murders | Leave a reply
Review Roundup
As foretold in my most recent progress report, June is off to a slow start here at 100 Films. Or a non-start, really, as I’ve yet to watch any films this month and this is my first post since the 1st. Hopefully it won’t stay that way all month (I’ve got my Blindspot and WDYMYHS tasks to get on with, if nothing else).
For the time being, here a handful of reviews of things I watched over a year ago but have only just written up:
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Joel Coen | 103 mins | streaming (HD) | 2.39:1 | UK, France & USA / English | 12 / PG-13
The eighth movie from the Coen brothers (eighth, and yet they still weren’t being allowed a shared directing credit! No wonder that stupid DGA rule pisses people off) is one of their movies that I found less objectionable. Oh, sure, most of their stuff that I’ve reviewed I’ve given four stars (as well as a couple of threes), but that’s more out of admiration than affection — for whatever reason, their style, so popular with many cineastes, just doesn’t quite work for me; even when I like one of their films there’s often still something about it I find faintly irritating.
Anyway, for this one they decided to adapt Homer’s Odyssey, but set in the American Deep South during the Great Depression. Apparently neither of the brothers had ever actually read The Odyssey, instead knowing it through cultural osmosis and film adaptations, which is perhaps why the film bears strikingly minimal resemblance to its supposed source text. Rather, this is a story about songs, hitchhiking, and casual animal cruelty, in which the KKK is defeated by the power of old-timey music. Hurrah!
It’s mostly fairly amusing. If it was all meant to signify something, I don’t know what — it just seemed a pretty fun romp. I thought some of the music was okay. (Other people liked the latter more. Considerably more: the “soundtrack became an unlikely blockbuster, even surpassing the success of the film. By early 2001, it had sold five million copies, spawned a documentary film, three follow-up albums (O Sister and O Sister 2), two concert tours, and won Country Music Awards for Album of the Year and Single of the Year. It also won five Grammys, including Album of the Year, and hit #1 on the Billboard album charts the week of March 15 2002, 63 weeks after its release and over a year after the release of the film.” Jesus…)
Anyway, that’s why it gets 4 stars. I liked it. Didn’t love it. Laughed a bit. Not a lot. Some of the music was alright. Not all of it. Naturally it’s well made (Roger Deakins!) without being exceptionally anything. Harsher critics might say that amounts to a 3, but I’m a nice guy.
Robert Zemeckis | 119 mins | streaming (HD) | 2.39:1 | USA, UK & China / English & French | 15 / R
Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard star as a pair of intelligence agents who fall in love in Mr. & Mrs. Smith: WW2 Edition. Settling down together in England, all is lovely for them… until one comes under suspicion of working for the enemy…
Overall Allied is a very decent spy thriller, let down somewhat by a middle section that’s lacking in the requisite tension and a twee monologue coda. But the first 40 minutes, set in Morocco and depicting the mission where the lovers first meet, are pretty great; there’s plenty of neat little tradecraft touches scattered throughout; and there are some pretty visuals too. There are also some moments that are marred by more CGI than should be necessary for a WW2 drama, but hey-ho, it’s a Robert Zemeckis film.
That said, Brad Pitt’s performance is a bit… off. He never really seems connected with the material. Perhaps he was trying to play old-fashioned stoic, but too often it comes across as bored. It also constantly looked like he’d been digitally de-aged, but maybe that’s because I was watching a 720p stream; or maybe he had been, though goodness knows why they’d bother.
Anyway, these are niggles, so how much they bother you will affect your personal enjoyment. I still liked the film a lot nonetheless.
Doug Liman | 109 mins | streaming (HD) | 1.85:1 | USA & Japan / English & Spanish | 15 / R
Described by director Doug Liman as “a fun lie based on a true story,” American Made is the obviously-not-that-truthful-then ‘true story’ of Barry Seal, a pilot who was recruited by the CIA to do some spying and ended up becoming a major cocaine smuggler in the ’80s.
Starring ever-charismatic Tom Cruise as Seal, the film turns a potentially serious bit of history (as I understand it, the events underpinning this tale fed into the infamous Iran-Contra affair) into an entertaining romp. Indeed, the seriousness of the ending is a bit of a tonal jerk after all the lightness that came before, which I guess is the downside of having to stick to the facts.
Still, it’s such a fun watch on the whole — a sliver long, perhaps, even though it’s comfortably under two hours, but it does have a lot of story to get through. Parts of that come via some spectacular montages, which convey chunks of story succinctly and are enjoyable in their own right. Liman doesn’t get a whole lot of attention nowadays, I think, but it seems he’s still got it where it counts.
Posted in 2000s, 2010s, 2018, 4 stars, Action, Adventure, Comedy, Crime, Music, Romance, Thriller, true stories, War | Tagged Allied, American Made, Brad Pitt, Coen brothers, Doug Liman, George Clooney, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Robert Zemeckis, Tom Cruise | 2 Replies
Leigh Whannell | 100 mins | streaming (HD) | 2.35:1 | Australia / English | 15 / R
Leigh Whannell is best known for co-creating the Saw and Insidious franchises, so he steps outside of his horror stomping ground to write and direct this cyberpunk action-thriller. It’s set in the kind of near future where we have self-driving cars (and similar tech), but there are still people who prefer the old ways, like mechanic Grey (Logan Marshall-Green), who makes his living restoring classic cars for people like tech genius and entrepreneur Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson). After an incident leaves Grey paralysed, Eron offers to help by implanting him with a cutting-edge top-secret chip he’s developed called STEM. It works even better than expected, and Grey begins to use his newfound abilities to hunt for the men who did this to him.
On one level, Upgrade is a straightforward sci-fi action-thriller, following Grey’s investigation as it leads him to some shady figures who have near-future tech of their own, and then they fight. While that may seem simplistic, it’s full of neat little touches, particular in the action’s choreography — it almost begs a rewatch just to see everything that’s going on in the frantic fight scenes. I don’t mean “frantic” in the over-cut, can’t-see-shit sense of so many action sequences in the last couple of decades — in fact, Whannell often uses wide shots and long-ish takes — but there’s so much going on, with the characters making decisions at such speed (boosted by that body-modifying tech), that parts do become a bit of a blur.
On another level, the film has something to say about the technology that drives its storyline. Okay, maybe it doesn’t have a lot to say, and if you’re well-versed in sci-fi they’re not necessarily original comments either, but it poses questions and makes you think about what could be just around the corner, and what value it might have, or what danger it might pose. Plus it pushes the story into some interesting places; places a low-budget Australian-produced movie can go that other mainstream-minded sci-fi/action flicks wouldn’t dare. If you’ve ever seen a Saw film then you can guess that Whannell likes twists, especially of the “sting in the tail” variety, and Upgrade has more than its fair share of last-minute switcheroos. How many you see coming is up to you — one seemed glaringly obvious to me, but anticipating that ‘reveal’ blinded me to some more that came after.
Combining those two levels renders Upgrade a strong mix of straight-up action thrills and thought-provoking near-future sci-fi. A definite must-see for genre fans.
Upgrade is available on Sky Cinema from today.
Posted in 2010s, 2019, 4 stars, Action, Sci-fi, Thriller, world cinema | Tagged Australia, cyberpunk, Leigh Whannell, Logan Marshall-Green, Upgrade | 2 Replies
Patrick Hughes | 118 mins | streaming (HD) | 2.39:1 | USA, Netherlands, China & Bulgaria / English, Russian & Spanish | 15 / R
With a daft-ish title and promotional campaign that definitely amped up the comedy, you might be surprised to learn that The Hitman’s Bodyguard started life as a drama. Yep, apparently so. Then, a few weeks prior to filming, the script underwent a “frantic” two-week rewrite to be remixed into a comedy. The end result is kind of a mixed bag, which, all things considered, makes sense.
The hitman of the title is Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson), who agrees to testify against a dictator (Gary Oldman, underused) in exchange for the release of his wife from prison. While being transported through (of all places) Coventry, Kincaid and his escort are ambushed. The one surviving agent calls in Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) to help. Bryce is a private bodyguard — formerly to elite clients, until Kincaid assassinated one of them. Suffice to say, the two don’t get along. Cue banter as the mismatched pair face more tribulations on their way to The Hague.
So, it’s a buddy action comedy, a well-worn genre, and The Hitman’s Bodyguard has nothing new to add to it. That said, while the antics may not be especially original, they’re not badly done. The film offers few big laughs, but there are one or two, and a couple of smiles. On the other hand, it’s a good 20 minutes too long (it needs to sacrifice some of the chatter, maybe some of the flashbacks, and definitely at least one action sequence) and some bits are inappropriately grim (random murder of parents? Photos of mass executions?) I guess those tonal inadequacies are the legacy of the last-minute rewrites, but, still, someone should’ve fixed that.
The action centrepiece is a rather good stunt-filled five-way chase between Jackson in a speedboat, Reynolds on a motorbike, Russian hit men, Interpol agents, and the Amsterdam police in cars. It’s not going to be challenging the John Wicks of this world for classic status, but it thrills enough. What seems like the climax is another pretty good one, as it intercuts a car chase with a hardware store fight that makes full use of the tools on hand. (I say “seems like” because it has another shoot-out after they finally make it to The Hague — like I said, it’s at least one action scene too long.)
Apparently The Hitman’s Bodyguard only cost $30 million, which is $5 million less than The Hurricane Heist (which I watched on the same evening, hence the comparison). But this film looks considerably more expensive than the other, and it has several considerably bigger-name stars too. I guess some people just know how to spend money better than others. This comparison is also relevant for my final score, because it again calls into question my non-use of half-stars on this blog. On Letterboxd I rated The Hurricane Heist as 2.5 and The Hitman’s Bodyguard as 3.5, a whole star different, but here they both get rounded to the same score. Well, no one said life was fair.
Ryan Reynold’s latest law enforcement-adjacent role is as the voice of the eponymous character in Detective Pikachu, in cinemas now.
Posted in 2018, 3 stars, Action, Comedy, Thriller | Tagged Gary Oldman, Patrick Hughes, Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, The Hitman's Bodyguard | 2 Replies
Jon Turteltaub | 113 mins | download (HD+3D) | 2.39:1 | USA & China / English & Mandarin | 12 / PG-13
Jason Statham vs. a giant prehistoric shark — what more do you need to know?
Okay, well, despite the obvious pulp-blockbuster nature of this premise, it’s actually based on a novel, which was originally published in 1997 and so I guess arrived in a wave of post-Jurassic Park interest in man vs. prehistoric creatures thrillers. Well, Jurassic Park and the other obvious comparison, Jaws, were also both adapted from novels, so perhaps it’s not so weird after all. I’d never heard of the book before, but apparently it has a dedicated fanbase (there are multiple sequels), who were disappointed with this film because it makes some radical changes to the source material. Clearly, I’m not the right person to make that comparison.
Judged as a film in its own right, then, I thought it was a ton of fun. You know what you’re getting into with that pitch, and doubly so if you’ve watched the trailer. This isn’t some thought-provoking docu-drama about “what if we really discovered a prehistoric creature still lived?” This isn’t even Jaws, a relatively grounded adventure movie about normal people defeating a larger-than-average killer shark. This is a movie about a super-high-tech underwater research facility that accidentally unleashes a prehistoric monster and then all the scientists and submariners and whatnot on board have to track it down and stop it. This is a move about Jason Statham fighting a giant shark.
All of that said, some people have criticised the movie for not being quite as daft or out there as they wanted from a B-movie-inspired effects spectacular. I guess that’s a real “your mileage will vary” situation. Personally, I had a lot of fun with it. It keeps things more grounded than the utter batshit craziness of, say, Sharknado, but it’s clearly still allowing itself to have fun with the situations and concepts. It also doesn’t feel too samey, which considering there are only so many ways to interact with a giant shark is some kind of achievement.
Other criticisms I’ve read include that it’s too slow to get going, focusing on undersea rescues rather than getting straight to Stath-on-shark action. Again, this was something I actually liked about the film — that it allowed at least some time to build the Meg up as a mysterious unseen force (and, in the grand scheme of things, not that much time — this isn’t Jaws). It also gave the film a certain scope and scale. It’s not like this shark rocks up and they defeat it in an afternoon — the plot spread out over a couple of days, at least. I don’t know, there’s just something I like about that pacing.
Also, the film is a Chinese co-production, and so features many major and minor Chinese characters, and the climax is set in the vicinity of a Chinese beach. I’ve seen people criticise this aspect of the film because… um… Yeah, not liking that aspect smacks of racism, let’s be honest. I’m not saying everyone who dislikes The Meg is a racist — that would be stupid — but some reviews I’ve seen come with this slightly weird sense that part of the reason they dislike it is because it’s 50% (if that) a Chinese blockbuster.
At the end of the day, I come back to what I said at the start: it’s a movie about a giant prehistoric shark being unleashed and attacking humans, and Jason Statham has to fight it. That’s all. It delivered on that in spades for me and I had a great time with it. And I guess tied to that pulpiness, if you have the option and enjoy the effect, I thought it looked fantastic in 3D.
The Meg is available on Sky Cinema from today.
Posted in 2010s, 2019, 3D, 4 stars, Action, adaptations, Adventure, Horror, Sci-fi, Thriller | Tagged Jason Statham, Jon Turteltaub, Sharks, The Meg | 4 Replies
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Scooter Braun Once Feared Justin Bieber Would Overdose: ‘I Thought He Was Going to Die’
Jemal Countess, Getty Images
Though Justin Bieber has since reigned in his once-wild antics, there was a time when his manager, Scooter Braun, feared for his life almost every day.
"There was a time when I would go to sleep almost every night — when he had the money to fly away from me — and I was worried every night that I was going to lose him," he said during an appearance on Van Lathan's The Red Pill Podcast. "I thought he was going to die. I thought he was going to sleep one night and that he would have so much crap in his system that he would not wake up the next morning."
Braun's comments come after a string of overdoses involving Bieber's peers. Demi Lovato was hospitalized after a reported overdose in late July, and Mac Miller died on Friday (Sept. 7) after an apparent overdose at the age of 26. (His official cause of death is pending toxicology results, which are expected to be returned in four to six weeks).
Bieber, meanwhile, went through a series of incidents around 2014. In January of that year, he was charged for a DUI, resisting arrest without violence, and driving with an expired license while drag racing a Lamborghini in Miami; a toxicology reported allegedly showed pot and pills in his system. A few months later, Bieber also allegedly assaulted a limousine driver and was charged with misdemeanor vandalism for throwing eggs at a neighbor's house.
Fortunately, he seems to have mellowed out in recent years.
Celebrities Who Smiled in Their Mugshots
Source: Scooter Braun Once Feared Justin Bieber Would Overdose: ‘I Thought He Was Going to Die’
Filed Under: justin bieber, scooter braun
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Efforts underway to save Gulf Coast sea turtles
The Monterey Bay Aquarium is taking a great interest in the turtle egg rescue effort along the Gulf Coast where biologists at beaches in Florida and Alabama have begun the delicate and unprecedented work of evacuating turtle eggs in the oil spill region.
Veronica Franklin, senior aquarist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, says there are five sea turtle species that can be found in the gulf and each one is threatened or endangered.
If the eggs buried in the sand hatch, it is the natural instinct of the young turtles to get as far out into the open ocean as possible and that path would take them directly in the danger zone of oil contaminated water.
"Once they hit the water, they are known to swim for 48 hours straight at a very high speed just to get away from the surf line," Franklin said.
In an effort to keep the turtles from making that dangerous journey, biologists are unearthing the eggs at various beaches and carefully packing them in coolers for transport to Florida's Kennedy Space Center where they will incubate and if all goes well, be released into the Atlantic Ocean.
Monterey Bay Aquarium's veterinarian Mike Murray says the transport and care for the eggs is critical to save the next generation of sea turtles.
"They have to watch out for humidity so these eggs don't lose too much water too quickly because the egg shell is just like a bird egg and relatively porous," he said.
There are an estimated 70,000 turtles eggs to be rescued. It's unknown how many of them will actually survive the hatching process and how many may need additional care.
If needed, the Monterey Bay Aquarium is on standby to provide assistance for the gulf turtles. Franklin says it could be anything from a place to recover before release or provide more extensive medical care.
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Netherlands takes up the EU Presidency amidst both ambitions and concerns over transparency
Last week, the European Commission met the Dutch chambers of parliament behind closed doors, at the latter’s request.
Last week, the European Commission visited the Netherlands for a series of meetings at the opening of the Dutch EU Presidency that covers the first half of 2016. An opening ceremony, including the taking of the traditional group photo, took place at Amsterdam’s stately Museum of Maritime History.
This official reception however appears to have been a rare public occasion during the Commission’s stay in the Netherlands.
Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported that the debate between the Dutch States-General (combining both the lower and the upper houses of parliament) and the European Commission was to take place behind closed doors.
According to NRC Handelsblad, spokespersons of the parliament argue that this will allow for a more truthful and open exchange of views. This is remarkable, the paper points out, as the meeting was set to be a debate rather than a negotiation. It concludes:
It may be considered hilarious that the European Commission, which is often dismissed in the Netherlands as a bureaucratic monster, holds a democratic mirror in the face of the Dutch parliament. But above all, it is a disgrace for the parliament.
In line with convention, the Dutch presidency has also opened its own presidency website. This website contains a detailed agenda of meetings over the coming half year and a document register searchable by date and by key words. At the time of writing, the register contained 16 documents. Among these was a presidency programme of priorities. This programme referred 12 times to the terms “transparency”, “transparent” and “open”, in contexts as diverse as European decision making, finance, defence, and the rule of law. Earlier this year, the Netherlands backed a plan launched by a number of member states to reinvigorate the transparency of Council decision making, igniting hopes of progress among transparency advocates. With the closed-door session however, the Netherlands, traditionally a transparency-friendly country, seems to have started off on the wrong foot. It remains to be seen whether the Dutch government will prove more willing than its parliament to promote transparent European deliberation.
This piece was previously published on the Open Government in the EU blog. Minor adjustments have been made to reflect changes during the past week.
Maarten Hillebrandt is a PhD Researcher at the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance.
Author : acelg
Institutions, Member States, transparency
ACELG
Provides insights on European Law from an academic perspective. Discusses the latest developments in the context of the surrounding legal and political systems as well as wider structures of (global) governance
About: ACELG
The ACELG Blog is a forum where more than 25 researchers from the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance (ACELG) provide you with perspectives on topical (European) issues.
The ACELG is a Centre of Excellence established by the Law Faculty of University of Amsterdam in 2009. Our ambition is to advance and expand academic research on significant issues of societal relevance. More importantly, we want to link this academic research back to the community and contribute to the broader public debate. Hence, our blog themes include but are not limited to: constitutional developments in the European Union, internal market analysis, foreign relations of the EU, administrative law and governance, and EU citizenship. Since we strive for a dialogue beyond the academic community, your feedback and questions are very welcome!
For more information about our work, recent events and more - please check our website here.
ECHR accession
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The complications of a Brexit delay that runs into the European Parliament elections by Leonard Besselink and Bastian Michel
Antarctica: Has the Court of Justice Got Cold Feet? by Christina Eckes
Case C-244/17 – Commission v Council: The Centre of Gravity Test Revisited in the Context of Article 218 (9) TFEU by Pieter Jan Kuijper
Case C-57/16P ClientEarth v Commission: Citizen’s participation in EU decision-making and the Commission’s right of initiative by Laurens Ankersmit
#VoteYes4EU values – #VoteYes4Hungary by Kati Cseres
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Phillips Ready to Implement Donald in Defense
Posted on September 15, 2017 by Los Angeles
Aaron Donald is back on the practice field this week and defensive coordinator Wade Phillips said on Thursday he can tell the unit has already gotten an emotional lift from the defensive tackle’s presence.
“I think the first thing Aaron brings is just him being back, everybody is excited about it,” Phillips said on Thursday. “Now, how much he can play and what a big difference it’ll make in the first ball game, I don’t know that. But, I think it just kind of energized our team and our players that he’s back playing football. He is a great player, but the mental part of it I think helped everybody.”
That falls in line with what defensive tackle Michael Brockers and outside linebacker Robert Quinn said after Wednesday’s session, where both reported Donald looked like his usual self at practice.
Phillips said it’s likely Donald will be on a type of “pitch count,” limiting his number of snaps in order to keep him fresh and healthy. Through two practices, however, Phillips noted he hasn’t detected many signs of fatigue from Donald on the practice field.
“It’s a number of plays and we’ll see how he is,” He looked to be in good shape. You know, football shape and shape are two different things because you’re carrying a lot more weight with pads on and so forth. But, he doesn’t seem to be bothered too much by the reps we’re giving him in practice. It’s not wearing him out, so we’ll make sure in the ball game that we watch him.”
Head coach Sean McVay echoed the same sentiment on Thursday afternoon.
“Aaron was good,” he said. “Being able to put the pads on, moving around — we had a good, physical practice today on both sides of the football and ’99’ looked good again today.”
Running back Todd Gurley joked Donald should be in good shape after reporting to the team last Saturday.
“He better have fresh legs,” Gurley said with a laugh. “He’s an incredible player. His quickness, his speed – you can’t coach or teach that. He’s just a dominate player and that’s just how he’s always been since he’s been in this league.”
Though Donald did not participate in much of the Rams’ offseason program and was not present for training camp, Phillips said he’s not concerned with the defensive tackle’s mastery of the new 3-4 scheme. And with a player of Donald’s caliber, Phillips joked there’s not much you need to tell him anyway.
“When he goes in there, we tell him, ‘Go.’ It’s not real complicated for him,” Phillips said with a chuckle. “No seriously, he knows the defense pretty well already. There’s a few things that he had to clean up, but a lot of his play is one-on-one, beat the guy in front of you.”
Posted in LA Rams, Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Sports, Rams, Sports NewsTagged Football, LA Rams, Los Angeles Rams, NFL, Rams, Sports, Sports News
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2008 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
Honduras is a constitutional, multiparty democracy with a population of approximately 7.7 million. In 2005 Liberal Party candidate Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales won the presidency in elections that were considered generally free and fair by international and domestic observers. The Liberal and National parties continued to dominate the politics of the country. While civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces, there were instances in which elements of the security forces acted independently of government authority.
The following human rights problems were reported: unlawful killings by members of the police and government agents; arbitrary and summary killings committed by vigilantes and former members of the security forces; violence against detainees by security forces; harsh prison conditions; corruption and impunity within the security forces; failure to provide due process of law; lengthy pretrial detention; politicization of the judiciary, judicial corruption, and institutional weakness; erosion of press freedom; corruption in the legislative and executive branches; government restrictions on recognition of some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); violence and discrimination against women; child prostitution and abuse; trafficking in persons; discrimination against indigenous communities; violence and discrimination against persons based on sexual orientation; ineffective enforcement of labor laws; and child labor.
RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom From:
a. Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life
There were reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, particularly of youths and children by vigilante groups that may have included members of the security forces. Casa Alianza reported that at least eight such cases involved security forces. The Prosecutor's Office pressed charges in some cases, but there were no known convictions during the year, and Casa Alianza had no data regarding sentences issued in the case of child and youth murders. The government has a Special Unit of Investigation of Child Murders, but the investigative process seldom identified the perpetrators.
Through August the NGO Casa Alianza reported the killings of 86 minors under age 18 and 273 youths ages 19-22. Casa Alianza reported that more than 78 percent of the killings were committed by unknown assailants, 9 percent by acquaintances, 5 percent by private security forces, 2 percent by government forces; 8 percent were attributed to gang violence.
Several groups and families of juvenile victims claimed to have provided public prosecutors with evidence of collusion between police elements and business leaders in perpetrating killings. The Ministry of Public Security stated that it investigated individual police officers for participation in killings of street youth; however, there was no information available on the outcome of the investigations.
In midyear a Tegucigalpa court dismissed all charges against retired colonel Alexander Hernandez Santos, a member of the disbanded Intelligence Battalion 3-16, for human rights violations, forced disappearances, and assassinations in the 1980s of 184 persons.
While observers linked some killings of high-profile targets, such as environmentalists, labor leaders, attorneys, and politicians, to organized crime and narcotics traffickers, other cases were apparently politically motivated.
On July 11, two unknown assailants killed attorney Marco Antonio in front of witnesses; he was the 17th legal professional killed up to that date.
In July unknown assailants outside the town of Juticalpa ambushed and killed Shamir Guifarro Ramirez, Henry Arturo Chacon, and Nelda Ochoa--the son, father-in-law, and mother-in-law, respectively, of environmentalist Mario Guifarro, who was himself killed in September 2007. Guifarro Ramirez was the only witness to his father's killing. There were no suspects in either of the Guifarro killing cases. Public Ministry investigations identified Yuny Alexander Sanchez, Jorge Tejada Pacheco, and Jose Angel Rosa Pacheco as the principal suspects in Mario Guifarro's killing and indicated that Mario Guifarro may have had illicit business dealings with Rosa Pacheco.
In the run-up to the November 30 primary elections, there were several politically motivated killings, which analysts interpreted as a "message" from organized crime for the Liberal Party and President Zelaya in particular to stop maneuvering to remain in power. On November 12, vice mayoral candidate Danilo Edgardo Castro Hernandez was killed in La Lima. On November 14, Julio Cesar Padilla, Liberal Party candidate for mayor of Morazan, Yoro Department, was killed. On November 22, masked gunmen killed Mario Fernando Hernandez Bonilla, a Liberal Party congressional deputy and one of four congressional vice presidents.
There were developments in several high-profile killings in earlier years. On October 14, authorities in Chiapas, Mexico, arrested Rodolfo "Fofo" Humberto Salinas Castejon, a principal suspect in the 2007 killing of army Captain Alejandro Humberto Zavala, a bodyguard of President Zelaya. Salinas Castejon remained in pretrial detention at year's end. Investigations also identified as suspects Juan Ramon Castejon Mendozo (who died in June 2007) and Darwin Alexander Villalta, who remained at large.
The Public Ministry ordered the arrest of David Portillo in connection with the June 2007 killing of Garifuna leader Felix Ordonez Suazo in Punta Piedras, Colon Department. Portillo remained at large at year's end.
Authorities identified Carlos Alberto Navas Gonzalez as the principal suspect in the November 2007 killing of Regional Red Cross President Jose Raul Carranza Soto in Puerto Cortes. There were no known developments in the prosecution of the case, but Navas Gonzales remained in prison on illegal arms charges. The only witness for the case was killed two days after testifying to the police.
On July 1, a court convicted four policemen of the 2006 killings of Heraldo Zuniga and Roger Murillo, two environmentalists working to protect the forest in Olancho Province. The policemen, Linton Omar Caceres Rodriguez, Rolando Antonio Tejeda Padilla, Juan Jose Talavera Zavala, and Jose Arcadio Gonzales, faced sentences of 20 to 30 years' imprisonment. However, between July 21 and 24, Caceres, Talavera, and Gonzales escaped from prison, and their whereabouts remained unknown at year's end.
On April 29, authorities arrested Italo Ivan Lemus Santos (who had just been deported to the country) for the killing of environmentalist Carlos Luna in 1998. Other suspects including Jorge Adolfo Chavez and the alleged intellectual author, Jose Angel Rosa, remained free, and there were no known developments in the prosecution of the case.
Violent crime continued to fuel the growth of private unlicensed security guard services and vigilante groups that allegedly patrolled neighborhoods and municipalities to deter crime. Human rights organizations asserted that some citizen security councils (neighborhood protection groups), as well as private security companies, with ties to former and current military or police officials, acted with the complicity of police as vigilantes or death squads to use lethal force against supposed habitual criminals.
On June 11, Irene Ramirez, a member of the Aguan Campesino Movement (MCA), was killed in Trujillo. She had previously received a number of threats from local land owners and large-scale ranchers in the region. There were no known developments in the case.
On August 5, 11 persons were killed in a massacre stemming from a land dispute between the family of police official Henry Osortos and the MCA in Silin, Colon Department. After the killings, the government reportedly negotiated a payment to the ranchers of over 75 million lempira (approximately $3.9 million) to allow the peasants to stay on the land, receive legal titles, and obtain permission to construct 400 new homes. On October 17, authorities arrested Jose Isabel Morales Lopez on charges of planning the Silin massacre. According to the public prosecutor, 31 other peasants, all members of the MCA, were also charged with aggravated arson and the murder of the 11 victims.
On October 2, 9, and 14, unknown assailants killed three land-rights activists and community leaders, Fredis Osorto, Elias Murcia, and Ubence Aguilar, in the Cofradia sector of Cortes Department.
b. Disappearance
Through May 22, authorities reported receiving 227 cases of disappearances of minors: Some disappearances were thought to be criminally-motivated abductions killings, and others were attributed to voluntary acts of persons leaving the country for employment elsewhere.
On October 6, Jose Alfredo Guevera, Carlos Lazo and Hector Herrera disappeared reportedly after being detained by police officers.
There was no information, and none was expected, in the 2007 disappearance of Milton Elias Cardona from his house in Siquatepeque, Comayagua.
There was no information, and none was expected, regarding the disappearances in 2006 of Panamanian nationals Jose Camilo Miranda, David Rodrigo Villalobos Valladares, and Jorge Luis Villalobos Valladares (all last seen in the custody of Roatan police) or of Jorge Ruiz Rosales, former advisor of the National Association of Farmers of Honduras, and Elvis Zepeda Barrientos, both of whom government authorities had detained.
On December 5, the government published a decree that created the National Reparations Program, which was to consider specific cases of deaths and disappearances for reparations; the program directors not been named by year's end.
c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
Although the constitution and law prohibit such practices, there were instances in which government officials employed them, including police beatings and other abuse of detainees.
On July 23, policemen fatally beat Carlos Enrique Mayorga of Copan. Officer Wilson Rubio arrested Mayorga and took him to the local police station where five other policemen beat Mayorga on the head, stomach, and genitalia before releasing him. Mayorga died hours later at the hospital; Rubio was suspended from duty.
Both Marvin Javier Martinez Bermudez and Jose Santiago Lopez Villalobo remained in prison pending trial on charges of killing Judge Alba Leticia Bueso. Allegations that security authorities tortured them in August 2007 to compel a confession were not confirmed. Two other suspects, Ruben Antonio Pineda Hernandez and Olvin Alexander Lopez Moreno, involved in the killing of Judge Leticia Bueso remained at large.
In December 2007 the Public Ministry charged five police officers for the torture and illegal detention of several members of the NGO Lesbian-Gay Rainbow Association of Comayaguela. There were no known developments in the case.
Prison conditions were harsh, and prison security was poor. Human rights groups reported that prisoners suffered from severe overcrowding, malnutrition, and lack of adequate sanitation. On July 11, the Special Prosecutor for Human Rights announced an investigation of a basement cell possibly used as an inhumane holding cell in the remote village of Villa Vieja; however, a Public Ministry investigation determined there was no conclusive evidence of torture or human rights violations.
Prisoners were subject to other abuses, including rape by other inmates. Adequate food or other basic necessities were not provided. Prison escapes through bribery or other means continued to occur. On October 23, the NGO Center for Torture Prevention and Rehabilitation reported that seven of 10 inmates were tortured or otherwise abused in, or on their way to, prisons and jails. Their report also found that municipal and preventative police routinely rounded up vulnerable or "delinquent" youth (for example, gay, lesbian, transsexual, sex workers, and drug addicts) without cause or explanation of their rights.
Several prison officials, including Wilfredo Maradiaga Oseguera and Aldo Rodolfo Oliva Rodriguez, were under investigation for abusing their authority and permitting prisoners illegal furlough privileges.
Prison disturbances, caused primarily by harsh conditions and intergang violence, occurred in the larger facilities of San Pedro Sula, Tegucigalpa, and Choluteca. Through October 27, the Ministry of Public Security reported that 39 prisoners had been killed while incarcerated, in most cases due to rival gang violence.
Prison authorities attempted to hold prisoners from opposing gangs in different facilities or in different areas of the same prison to reduce intergang tensions and violence. On April 26, nine prisoners died in the San Pedro Sula penitentiary in a riot between common criminals and gang members.
Persons with mental illnesses, as well as those with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, were held among the general prison population. Human rights organizations charged that prison officials used excessive force against prisoners, including beatings, as well as isolation and threats. There were credible reports that security officials condoned rapes and other physical assaults on detainees who were homosexuals.
Female prisoners generally were held in separate facilities under conditions similar to those of male prisoners but, unlike their male counterparts, did not have conjugal visit privileges. At certain lower-security prisons, women were held with the general population. Children up to age two were permitted to stay with their mothers in prison. Pretrial detainees generally were held together with convicted prisoners.
While the government operated four juvenile detention centers, minors were sometimes detained with adults.
Overcrowding remained a problem, as judges tended to place minors in detention centers in the absence of other educational or reform programs.
The government generally permitted prison visits by independent local and international human rights observers, and such visits occurred during the year.
d. Arbitrary Arrest or Detention
The constitution and law prohibit arbitrary arrest and detention, but the authorities at times failed to enforce these prohibitions effectively.
The Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH) alleged that an undetermined number of security officials had arrested arbitrarily, and sometimes tortured, more than two dozen persons, under the government's Operation National program. The program consists of sets of different police operatives ordered by the government to monitor the population in different sectors of the major cities.
Police arrested persons based on such factors as forms of dress and types of tattoos.
On September 29, policemen wearing ski masks allegedly arrested Mario Alvarez, Nelson Alvarez, Heliodoro Amador, and Alonso Andino, peasant land-rights activists with the Union and Strength Campesino Association, in the town of Suntule, Francisco Morazan Department. The following day, according to credible media reports, another police squad came to the house of the group's secretary general and forced his wife at gunpoint to sign documents that handed over the group's lands in 60 days. There was no known investigation.
Role of the Police and Security Apparatus
The Ministry of Public Security oversees police operations, including those of the Preventive Police, Criminal Investigation Division (DGIC), Transit Police, Frontier Police, Tourist Police, and Prison Police. Corruption and impunity were serious problems within the security forces. The new Police Law approved in October restructured the Ministry of Security, resulting in creation of an Office of Internal Affairs (IA) answering directly to the minister.
The IA investigates allegations of illegal activities committed by members of the police force. The Preventive Police and the DGIC each have an office of professional responsibility that conducts internal reviews of police misconduct.
According to the Public Ministry, during the year 312 reports were filed against the police with the Special Prosecutor for Human Rights, of which 163 cases were investigated and 43 were discovered to have merit. The majority of these reports involved excessive use of force, unlawful detention, and extortion.
On April 17, during the march for striking prosecutors, an armed man threatened and unsuccessfully attempted to force educational leader Sergio Rivera into a vehicle. Witnesses said that the vehicle was full of government elite Special Forces agents.
On June 6, a court found guilty and sentenced 21 of the 43 members of the government implicated in the 2003 "El Porvenir Jail Massacre"; those sentenced included the chief of police of La Ceiba and the police commissioner.
On September 10, after infiltrating an Autonomous National University of Honduras (UNAH) union meeting, two plainclothes National Police officers were identified and found to be carrying a list of more than 130 recognized leaders from various sectors of civil society named as "dangerous" on the list. The list included the crossed-out name of slain labor leader Altagracia Fuentes with the written words "dead" next to her name.
The Ministry of Security reported that during the year authorities prosecuted 268 police officers for offenses ranging from abuse of authority to drug trafficking, rape, and homicide.
Gang violence and intimidation, notably on public transport, remained serious problems and led the government to station security officers on many public buses. In some instances police lethally targeted youth and minors, often with impunity.
Arrest and Detention
The law provides that police may arrest a person only with a court order, unless the arrest is by order of a prosecutor, made during the commission of a crime, made when there is strong suspicion that a person has committed a crime and may try to evade criminal prosecution, or made when the person is caught with evidence related to a crime. Police must clearly inform the person of the grounds for the arrest and bring a detainee before a competent authority within 24 hours. The prosecutor has 24 hours to decide if there is probable cause for an indictment, and a judge then has 24 hours to decide whether to issue a temporary detention order that can last up to six days, by which time the judge must hold a pretrial hearing to examine probable cause and make a decision on whether pretrial detention should continue. The law provides for bail for persons charged with felonies and the right of prisoners to prompt access to family members. Although the law also provides that prisoners have the right of prompt access to a lawyer of their choice and, if indigent, to state-provided counsel, these requirements were not always followed in practice.
Lengthy pretrial detention was a serious problem. During the year approximately 53 percent of the prison population awaited trial. The law mandates the release from prison of any detainee whose case has not come to trial and whose time in detention exceeds the maximum prison sentence for the crime of which he is accused. Judicial inefficiency and corruption and lack of sufficient resources delayed proceedings in the criminal justice system. According to the Supreme Court of Justice, of 271,000 cases filed with the DGIC in 2007, only 6,000 reached trial. Of the 6,000 cases, however, 80 percent resulted in sentences.
As a result of trial delays, many pretrial detainees already had served time in prison equivalent to the maximum allowable for the crime for which they were accused. Many prisoners remained in jail after being acquitted or having completed their sentences due to the failure of officials to process their releases.
e. Denial of Fair Public Trial
Although the constitution and the law provide for an independent judiciary, the judicial system was poorly funded and staffed, inadequately equipped, often ineffective, and subject to patronage, corruption, and political influence.
Low wages and lack of internal controls rendered judicial officials susceptible to bribery, and powerful special interests exercised influence in the outcomes of court proceedings.
There are 12 appeals courts, 77 courts of first instance with general jurisdiction, and 330 justice of the peace courts with limited jurisdiction. The Supreme Court of Justice names all lower court judges. The media and various civil society groups continued to express concern that the eight-to-seven split between the National and Liberal parties in the Supreme Court of Justice resulted in politicized rulings and contributed to corruption in public and private institutions.
The law provides for the right to a fair public trial. Although the law provides that the accused is presumed innocent and has the right to an initial hearing by a judge, to bail, to consult with legal counsel in a timely manner, to have a lawyer provided by the state if necessary, and a right to appeal, these rights frequently were not observed.
Although the law prohibits cases from proceeding where a suspect lacks legal representation, the government allocated minimal resources to the prosecutors. As a result the public defender was not able to meet the demand for legal assistance to those unable to afford representation.
Political Prisoners and Detainees
There were no reports of political prisoners or detainees.
Civil Judicial Procedures and Remedies
There is an independent and impartial judiciary in civil matters, including access to a court to seek damages for a cessation of a human rights violation. There were no such cases reported during the year.
CODEH and the NGO Committee on Detained and Missing Relatives were the only organizations that brought charges against human rights violators by seeking monetary damages. A litigant can bring such charges when the criminal court determines that damages may be sought.
f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence
Although the constitution and law generally prohibit such actions, a legal exception allows entry at any time in the event of an emergency or to prevent the commission of a crime. There continued to be credible charges that police personnel occasionally failed to obtain the required authorization before entering a private home.
Garifuna and other indigenous rights leaders continued to complain that the government failed to redress previous actions by private and public security forces that dislodged farmers and indigenous groups who claimed ownership of lands based on land reform laws or ancestral titles to property (see section 5).
Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:
a. Freedom of Speech and Press
The constitution and the law generally provide for freedom of speech and of the press, and there was substantial press freedom in the country. However, there were reports of government intimidation of journalists, government takeovers of television transmission frequencies, and journalistic self-censorship. The law prohibits demonstrators from making statements that could incite persons to riot.
Some journalists acknowledged practicing self-censorship when their reporting could challenge the political or economic interests of media owners. There were no reports that international media were prohibited from operating freely.
A small number of powerful business magnates with intersecting commercial, political, and family ties owned most of the country's news media. The government influenced media coverage of its activities through the granting or denial of access to government officials, creating a situation in which the media was so closely interrelated and linked to the political system that the powerful magnates strongly influenced the news agenda and thereby elections and political decisions.
In August the National Commission of Telecommunications (Conatel), disregarding a judge's ruling, transferred the rights to broadcast on Channel Eight from a private enterprise, Teleunsa, to the Office of the President. Earlier in the year, Conatel refused to release the broadcast rights of Channel 12 to their owner, the Eldi business firm. On November 20, a court ruling ordered Conatel to turn over the broadcasting rights to Eldi; however, Conatel had not complied by year's end.
On September 11, NGOs published two reports describing threats to media freedom by the practice of "official publicity." The reports detailed how the government guided press coverage through greater access and advertising revenue for those producing favorable reporting while denying access or making legal threats against those who did not. The reports noted that "official publicity" had increased and was worsened by concentration of media ownership.
On November 17, President Zelaya announced that he would seek to regulate the media through legislative means to counter a "culture of death" propagated by the media with support of National Congress President Roberto Micheletti.
NGOs reported that the government also gave substantial sums of money to selected members of the media who covered their stories in the manner they requested. The government exerted considerable influence on the print media through granting or withholding publicly funded official advertisements.
The news media continued to suffer from venality, politicization, and outside influences. According to NGOs, government ministers and other high-ranking officials obtained press silence through hiring journalists as public affairs assistants at high salaries and paid journalists to investigate or suppress news stories.
Some media members claimed that, when they attempted to report in depth on national politicians or official corruption, they were occasionally denied access to government information. Access to the presidential palace and to the president, especially on international visits, was limited to the "friendly" press and was arbitrarily awarded and withdrawn by presidential palace staff.
Thelma Mejia, a member of the National Anti-Corruption Council and former director of the NGO C-Libre, reported that at least three dozen journalists, many of them in rural areas, were subjected to threats and intimidation during the year.
On January 1, two unidentified men shot and killed Jose Fernando Gonzales, the owner of Radio Mega in Trinidad, Santa Barbara Department. The local press reported that local police had identified but had not apprehended the perpetrators.
In April in Santa Rosa de Copan, Copan Department, reporter Carlos Roberto Chinchilla of Channel 12 news and his cameraman, Marlon Dubon, received several death threats from two armed men wearing masks, warning them that they had five days to get out of town before being killed.
In May the Director of Radio Globo Sandra Maribel Sanchez announced that she and her family had received threats and had been repeatedly followed by unmarked vehicles due to her support for the prosecutors' hunger strike that began on April 7 (see section 3).
On October 27, authorities arrested German David Almendarez as a suspect in the October 2007 killing of Radio Cadena Voces journalist Carlos Salgado. At year's end Almendarez remained in custody at the Tamara National Penitentiary awaiting trial.
There were no government restrictions on access to the Internet or reports that the government monitored e-mail or Internet chat rooms. Individuals and groups could engage in the peaceful expression of views via the Internet, including by e-mail. According to the May National Institute of Statistics Household Survey, 10 percent of the population had access to the Internet.
Academic Freedom and Cultural Events
There were no government restrictions on academic freedom or cultural events.
b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association
Freedom of Assembly
The constitution and law provide for freedom of assembly, and the government generally respected this right.
The constitution and the law generally provide for freedom of association, and the government generally respected this right in practice. The criminal association law, however, prohibits illicit association and prescribes prison terms of three to 12 years. Human rights organizations criticized the law and its implementation as an undue restriction on the right to associate freely, while gay rights advocacy groups expressed concerns that the law could be used to criminalize social activities and organizations of the gay community. During the year authorities applied the law prohibiting illicit associations to arrest individuals for being members of Mara Salvatrucha and other gangs. The government used criminal code reforms outlawing illicit association to arrest and take land away from suspected gang members, farmers, and persons from indigenous communities.
c. Freedom of Religion
The constitution and law provide for freedom of religion, and the government generally respected this right in practice. The government requires foreign missionaries to obtain entry and residence permits.
Societal Abuses and Discrimination
There were no reports of discrimination or violence against religious groups, including anti-Semitic acts. There was a very small Jewish population.
For a more detailed discussion, see the 2008 International Religious Freedom Report at 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/irf/rpt.
d. Freedom of Movement, Internally Displaced Persons, Protection of Refugees, and Stateless Persons
The constitution and law provide for freedom of movement within the country, foreign travel, emigration, and repatriation, and the government generally respected these rights in practice.
The law does not explicitly prohibit forced internal or external exile, but the government did not employ this practice.
Protection of Refugees
The law provides for the granting of asylum or refugee status in accordance with the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 protocol, and the government has established a system for providing protection to refugees. In practice the government provided protection against the expulsion or return of refugees to countries where their lives or freedom would be threatened and granted refugee status or asylum. Through November 19, the Office of Migration reviewed no applications for refugee status. The government cooperated with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and other humanitarian organizations in assisting refugees and asylum seekers.
On November 4, authorities detained eight South Africans with false passports at the Guatemala border. The individuals subsequently filed for asylum. As of November 20, they remained in jail but were being assisted by CODEH while awaiting a decision on their applications.
Section 3 Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to Change Their Government
The constitution and law provide citizens with the right to change their government peacefully, and citizens exercised this right in practice through periodic, free, and fair elections held on the basis of nearly universal suffrage. Active members of the clergy and of the military and civilian security forces are not permitted to vote.
Elections and Political Participation
In November 2005 Liberal Party presidential candidate Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales won in elections, which international observers considered generally free and fair. Observers noted irregularities at approximately 1,100 ballot boxes but no systemic patterns of fraud. Political parties could operate without restriction or outside interference.
Women participated actively in politics. There were 31 women in the 128-seat National Congress, and 16 women presided over congressional committees. Eight of the 15 members of the Supreme Court of Justice, including its president, were women. There were three female secretaries of state, six female vice ministers, one female general police commissioner, and five female ambassadors.
There were two Garifuna and one Lenca members of the National Congress.
Government Corruption and Transparency
The law provides criminal penalties for corruption; however, the government did not implement the law effectively, and officials engaged in corrupt practices with impunity. The executive and legislative branches were subject to corruption and political influence. There was a widespread perception that the country's anticorruption institutions had not taken the steps necessary to combat corruption and were unwilling or lacked the professional capacity to investigate, arrest, and prosecute those involved in high-level corruption. The World Bank's worldwide governance indicators reflected that corruption was a serious problem.
Many observers argued that the considerable institutional control exercised by the country's elite created the potential for abuse of the country's institutions and democratic governance.
In April a network trafficking Cuban immigrants through the country to the United States was identified. At least 15 Cubans allegedly received fraudulent work or residency visas from the Honduran consul in Havana. In July five of the parties implicated in the scandal resigned, including the minister of migration and immigration law, the secretary general of migration, the secretary general of the Chancellery, and the consul in Havana. Investigations by the prosecutor against organized crime remained pending at year's end.
On April 7, four public prosecutors set up tents on the ground floor of the congressional building and started a hunger strike to protest alleged corruption within the government. The protest quickly gained strength with 40 participants by the end of April; the protesters called for an independent audit of the Public Ministry and the removal of Attorney General Leonidas Rosa Bautista and Adjunct Prosecutor Omar Cerna. Public prosecutors ended their 38-day strike on May 14 shortly after the National Congress passed two measures meeting many of the strikers' demands.
On August 11, a court ordered the detention of Guillermo Seamman, the former head of the Civil Aeronautical Authority, pending trial for 39 charges of abuse of authority. Seamman allegedly approved more than 39 certifications for airline employees, nationals of Peru and Venezuela, who had not completed requirements for receiving licenses and had entered the country to file the paperwork, as required by law. At year's end Seamann had been released pending trial.
There was no information available on the Supreme Accounting Tribunal's investigation into charges made in 2007 that 13 mayors misused poverty reduction funds provided by donor countries.
In August a court found the former mayor of Tegucigalpa, Oscar Acosta, guilty of fraud for buying land at an overvalued price without a public bid and in September sentenced him to four years in prison, but permitted him to pay 14,600 lempiras (approximately $800) to cancel the sentence.
There were no known developments in the anticorruption prosecutor's investigation, which began in 2007, of the National Registry of Persons for illegally collecting money from persons for birth certificates and national identity cards.
Section 4 Governmental Attitude Regarding International and Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations of Human Rights
A wide variety of domestic and international human rights groups operated in the country, investigating and publishing their findings on human rights cases. Government officials generally cooperated with NGOs and, with certain notable exceptions, were usually responsive to NGO views. In practice government bureaucracy delayed the registration for some civil society organizations, including gay and lesbian advocacy groups.
On April 2, an unidentified gunman shot and killed Luis Gustavo Galeano Romero, an educator and promoter for the Tocoa, Colon, departmental delegation for the National Human Rights Commission (CONADEH). Human Rights Commissioner Ramon Custodio petitioned the Inter-American Human Rights Commission for help protecting Romero's colleagues, and the Ibero-American Ombudsman Organization called for an investigation into Romero's killing.
Throughout the year the Association for a More Just Society (ASJ) continued to receive threats. On January 31, authorities arrested Cesar Amador, an investigative police agent and former SETECH security company employee, and Ramon Solis, a SETECH employee, on charges of killing ASJ attorney Dionisio Diaz Garcia in 2006. At year's end the two were in custody awaiting trial.
The government cooperated with international organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose representatives visited the country several times during the year.
The National Human Rights Commission, an autonomous government institution, was headed by Human Rights Commissioner Ramon Custodio Lopez. The commission's director had open access to all civilian and military institutions and detention centers and functioned with complete immunity and without government or political party interference. The government generally cooperated with, but allocated inadequate financial or other resources to, the commission. In March Custodio delivered the commission's annual human rights report, which criticized the high level of violence in the country. On June 22, Custodio warned that the country was becoming a "narcostate" and stated that there was proof that at least three drug cartels had already infiltrated the national police. The legislature was responsive to the report's findings. The public placed substantial trust in the pronouncements of the commission but was dissatisfied that the government provided the commission with inadequate resources to perform its duties effectively.
Section 5 Discrimination, Societal Abuses, and Trafficking in Persons
The law prohibits discrimination based on race, gender, disability, language, or social status; however, in practice it was not effectively enforced. Political, military, and social elites generally enjoyed impunity under the legal system; women experienced social and economic discrimination.
The law criminalizes all forms of rape, including spousal rape. With the exception of spousal rape, which is evaluated on a case-by-case basis, rape is considered a public crime. A rapist can be prosecuted even if the victim does not press charges. The penalties for rape range from three to nine years' imprisonment, and the courts enforced these penalties in practice.
Violence against women, including systematic killing (femicides), became increasingly widespread. The law criminalizes domestic violence with two to four years' imprisonment. The only legal sanctions for lesser forms of domestic abuse are community service and 24-hour preventive detention if the violator is caught in the act. The law provides a maximum sentence of three years' imprisonment for disobeying a restraining order connected with the crime of intrafamilial violence.
The government did not enforce the law effectively with regard to domestic abuse. The Public Ministry stated that domestic violence accounted for most of the complaints it received and estimated that complaints during the year would exceed the more than 8,000 recorded in 2007. On June 4, the Public Ministry announced it was dedicating 27 prosecutors to cover the growing trend of femicides.
While announcing their campaign to bring an end to "femicides," the Center of Women's Rights and the Center for Women's Studies reported that 171 women had been killed through November 18 and that 90 percent of the deaths went unpunished.
The government worked with CARE and other NGOs to provide specialized training to police officials on enforcing the law relating to domestic violence. Two facilities, both operated by NGOs, provided shelter for battered women. The shelter in Tegucigalpa could accommodate 20 women and their families. Additionally, six other private centers for battered women offered legal, medical, and psychological assistance. There were 61 civil society NGOs grouped under the Women's Collective against Violence involved in combating violence against women.
Although adult prostitution is legal and relatively widespread, the law prohibits promoting or facilitating for purposes of prostitution. Women were trafficked for sexual exploitation and debt bondage.
The law prohibits sexual harassment in the workplace and provides penalties of one to three years' imprisonment. Sexual harassment continued to be a problem, but the government did not effectively enforce the law.
Although the law accords women and men equal rights under the law, including property rights in divorce cases, in practice women did not enjoy such rights.
Most employed women worked in lower-status and lower-paid informal occupations, such as domestic service, without legal protections or regulations. Women were represented in small numbers in most professions, and cultural attitudes limited their career opportunities. By law women have equal access with men to educational opportunities. The law requires employers to pay women equal wages for equivalent work, but employers often classified women's jobs as less demanding than those of men to justify women's lower salaries. According to the National Institute of Statistics 2008 Household Survey, women's salaries were 87 percent of those for men. Despite legal protections against such practices, workers in the textile export industries continued to report that they were required to take pregnancy tests as a condition for employment.
The National Women's Institute develops women's and gender policy. Several NGOs actively addressed women's issues, including the Center for the Study of Women-Honduras, which dealt with trafficking in persons, commercial sexual exploitation, garment factory employees, and domestic workers.
The government was committed to children's rights and welfare.
The law provides for free, universal, and compulsory education through age 15; however, a 2008 National Institute of Statistics study estimated that 59 percent of children ages five to 18 attended some type of school or learning center, while 90 percent of those five to 12 attended school.
Child abuse was a serious problem. The law establishes prison sentences of up to three years for persons convicted of child abuse. There was no information available regarding the number of reported cases of child abuse.
Abuse of youth and children in poor neighborhoods and by gangs remained a serious problem. Police and members of the general population engaged in violence against poor youth and children. Casa Alianza reported that 66 percent of street children had been assaulted by police. Human rights groups alleged credibly that individual members of the security forces and civilians used unwarranted lethal force against supposed habitual criminals or suspected gang members, as well as against other youths not known to be involved in criminal activity (see section 1.a.).
Trafficking in children for commercial sexual exploitation and child prostitution was a problem. Child labor was a problem, particularly in coffee and melon cultivation, fishing, lobster diving, and limestone and lime production.
On August 26, Raul Edgardo Aragon was charged with aggravated sexual assault against children. Aragon was the former administrator of the New Hope Center that takes care of at-risk youth.
In August the Education Commission of the National Congress announced an official inquiry into the sexual abuse of students by professors. There were 10 documented testimonies of these cases in the Public Ministry. On December 3, authorities arrested Professor Rene Arturo Valderramos for sexually abusing his students.
On October 31, the government distributed to the media the names of approximately 100 suspects of sexual crimes against children who remained at large.
The law outlaws "illicit associations," including gang and organized crime membership, for which it prescribes prison terms ranging from three to 12 years. Year-end statistics indicated that there were approximately 36,000 gang members, many of them minors. The NGO Washington Office on Latin America estimated that gangs were responsible for 15 percent of violent crime in the country. Gang membership was primarily confined to the Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula areas.
The government and children's rights organizations estimated that there were 20,000 street children, only half of whom had shelter. An Inter-American Development Bank study reported that 88 percent of street children used illegal substances, including glue inhalants and marijuana. Many street children were sexually molested or exploited. According to the UN Children's Fund, more than 2,700 children emigrated unaccompanied during the year.
The municipal administration of Tegucigalpa operated 12 temporary shelters with a capacity for 240 children. Casa Alianza operated three shelters (with a capacity for 175 children) for victims of commercial sexual exploitation, street children, and children with substance abuse problems. The NGO Feed the Children operated a shelter for 40 boys in La Ceiba. Casa Alianza estimated that on average 85 to 100 formerly trafficked girls (ages 12-17) stayed at their shelters and participated in recovery programs. Casa Alianza provided assistance to approximately 2,500 children yearly, attempting to reintegrate as many as possible with their families. Other private organizations and centers of the Institute of Children and the Family also housed street children and cared for approximately 2,500 children.
Although the law criminalizes trafficking in persons, there were reports that persons were trafficked from, through, and within the country.
The country was principally a source and transit country for women and children trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. Women and children were trafficked to Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and also internally, most often from rural to urban settings. Most foreign victims trafficked into Honduras came from neighboring countries. During the year the government returned dozens of trafficking victims from Mexico and Guatemala. In the Tegucigalpa metropolitan area, an estimated several hundred children were victims of commercial sexual exploitation.
Gangs, organized crime, and human smugglers were reportedly among the principal traffickers for purposes of commercial sexual exploitation. There were reports that families sold their daughters for purposes of trafficking. On February 9, Emilio Fiallos Pina and his wife Dora Rutilia Sauceda Fiallos were arrested for allegedly selling their nine-year-old daughter to attorney Conrado Zelava Castellon for sexual exploitation.
International trafficking was undertaken by land; the government maintained control of the country's land borders only at specific crossings. Trafficking was conducted using valid and forged documents.
The law sets penalties and defines offenses related to trafficking, including incest, lechery, abuse, prostitution, pornography, and knowingly infecting someone with HIV/AIDS. Punishments include fines ranging from 100,000 to 500,000 lempiras (approximately $5,300 to $26,500) and imprisonment for four to 20 years. The law was not enforced effectively. Inadequate government funding to combat trafficking, corruption, and routine dismissal of government employees limited the government's ability to address trafficking.
A reorganization in the Special Prosecutor's Office for Children in Tegucigalpa assigns antitrafficking responsibilities to one district attorney, two lawyers, three Public Ministry investigators, and two DGIC agents. In San Pedro Sula, two district attorneys cover trafficking issues, while one attorney does so in Choluteca.
The Division Against Abuse, Trafficking, and Commercial Sexual Exploitation, a unit of the criminal investigative police, conducted detection operations throughout the country including highways, airports, ports, and hotels.
During the year, 10 sexual exploitation cases were tried in Tegucigalpa, and 48 cases remained open. There were 32 formal complaints and investigations outside of Tegucigalpa through September.
On August 26, authorities charged Juventina Alicia Cruz Barahona for trafficking an unknown number of women to Guatemala. She was convicted and sentenced to a 10-year prison term.
On November 10, Blanca Azucena Merio Amador and her daughter Gloria Floriscelda Varela Amador were arrested for selling minor girls to men for sexual exploitation. They were allegedly linked to a much larger trafficking operation. While arresting the traffickers, the authorities were able to liberate one minor girl who was being sexually exploited.
The government referred at least seven child trafficking victims to the IOM for repatriation and referred dozens of victims each month to both government- and NGO-run shelters for assistance. One child was repatriated from Guatemala and six from Mexico; one for commercial sexual exploitation and the rest for labor trafficking. In the year ending in September, Casa Alianza cared for 245 young girls rescued from sexual exploitation.
Since 2006 the government has conducted antitrafficking training for approximately 7,000 police, prosecutors, and judges and 10,000 students. The government also coordinated with NGOs and the IOM to place victims in shelters and provide them with reintegration assistance. The Intra-Institutional Task Force on Trafficking developed a protocol for Assistance to the Victims of Commercial Sexual Exploitation, while the government's Institute for the Family focused on reintegrating child victims back into their families and society.
The law prohibits discrimination against persons with physical and mental disabilities in employment, education, access to health care, or the provision of other state services, but the government did not adequately enforce these provisions. The illiteracy rate for persons with disabilities was estimated at 51 percent, compared with 19 percent among the general population.
Statutory provisions make it illegal for an employer to discriminate against a worker based on disability. During the year there were no reports of discrimination against persons with disabilities in employment, education, access to health care, or the provision of other state services. The law requires access to buildings for persons with disabilities. In practice few buildings were accessible.
Although the law requires the Ministry of Governance and Justice to maintain an office for persons with disabilities, the government did not provide funds or staff to operate the office. There is a commissioner for persons with disabilities in the presidential palace, and the Human Rights Commission of the National Congress also focused on matters of importance to persons with disabilities.
On October 10, the Honduran Association of Deaf persons marched on the Autonomous National University of Honduras to demonstrate against their exclusion from the education system, citizen participation, dignified work, and the media. The group estimated that approximately 85 percent of an estimated 75,000 local deaf persons were denied these rights.
Congresswoman Dayana Burke, a Garifuna blinded at the age of 15, was the first woman with disabilities to become a member of Congress. She advocated reform efforts for the rights of persons with disabilities.
Approximately 621,000 persons, constituting 8 percent of the general population, were members of indigenous and other ethnic groups. These groups, including the Miskitos, Tawahkas, Pech, Tolupans, Lencas, Chortis, Nahual, Islanders, and Garifunas, lived in 362 communities and generally had little or no political power to make decisions affecting their lands, cultures, traditions, and the allocation of natural resources.
Most indigenous lands were owned communally, providing land use rights to individual members of the ethnic community. Indigenous land titles often were defined poorly in documents dating back to the mid-19th century. Lack of clear title fostered encroachment and expropriation conflicts among landless nonindigenous settlers, powerful business elites, and government entities interested in exploiting coastlines, forests, and other lands traditionally occupied or utilized by indigenous and other ethnic communities. Indigenous and nonindigenous communities criticized the government's alleged complicity in the exploitation of timber and other natural resources on these lands. Amnesty International (AI) reported the use of politically motivated criminal charges to detain indigenous persons. AI stated that these detentions often were intended to "obstruct the efforts of indigenous leaders to secure recognition of their communities' claim to communal land titles."
There were several protests by Garifuna and other indigenous groups regarding land rights disputes and perceived government discrimination. Garifuna leaders continued to petition the government regarding their concerns about large-scale commercial development undertaken on coastal lands traditionally occupied and utilized by their communities. The government permitted tourism development by private local and foreign business interests on the disputed lands, using 100-year leases designed to revert to the Garifuna after the expiration of that period of time. Garifuna leaders continued to report to the government and NGOs harassment, threats, and assaults.
In March unknown actors killed two Tolupan youths, Jose Mastul and Geovanny Banegas Sevilla, who purportedly belonged to a group dedicated to reclaiming the Tolupan tribe's ancestral land. No arrests were made in the case.
On June 5, Garifuna activist Santos Feliciano Aguilar Alvares was abducted, beaten, and threatened by 10 private security guards employed by a real estate company in San Juan Tela, Atlantida Department. Immediately prior to the beating, Santos had participated in a community assembly meant to facilitate dialogue between the community and the company.
On June 23, almost 3,000 Maya-Chorti armed with stones and spears closed the Copan Ruins to protest the government's violation of the terms of their 1997 land-rights agreement, which, they claimed, provided them with only 35 percent of the land they were promised.
On September 24, armed forces personnel patrolling the Cuero y Salado wildlife preserve allegedly shot at eight Garifuna fishermen with M-16 assault rifles, killing Guillermo Morales Herrera. The Garifuna asserted that the incident illustrated a pattern of discriminatory harassment on the part of local officials acting in conjunction with business interests aimed at driving the group from their traditional lands to permit construction of industrial and hotel ventures. Authorities apprehended three of the four soldiers implicated in the killing, while the fourth fled the area. Garifuna leaders held meetings in October with military leaders who agreed to respect traditional Garifuna rights.
The government undertook minimal efforts to work with indigenous persons to address concerns regarding ownership and use of traditional lands. The courts commonly denied legal recourse to indigenous persons and often favored nonindigenous parties of means and influence. Failure to obtain legal redress frequently led indigenous persons to attempt to regain land through invasions of private property, which led the authorities to retaliate forcefully.
Other Societal Abuses and Discrimination
There are no discriminatory laws based on sexual orientation, but in practice social discrimination against persons based on sexual orientation was widespread. Many NGOs indicated that hate crimes increased, particularly during political campaign season when minorities became political targets. Representatives of NGOs focusing on sexual diversity rights asserted that security forces killed and abused their members. In cases where lesbians, gays, and transgender persons were found dead, the prosecutor often encountered serious difficulties because the victims had either concealed their identity or sexual orientation or, in many cases, were hiding from their families.
Criminal investigations did not recognize a "transgender" category. Sexual diversity rights groups asserted that security forces, government agencies, and private employers engaged in antigay discriminatory hiring practices. These groups also reported that intimidation, fear of reprisal, and police corruption made gay and lesbian victims of abuse reluctant to file charges or proceed with prosecutions.
The government stopped requiring that, as a condition for legal registration, sexual diversity rights organizations remove any reference in their bylaws to promoting respect for the rights of gay, lesbian, or transgender persons.
In October transvestite and gay rights groups filed a complaint with the Committee on Human Rights asking that authorities remove the ban on having national identity card photographs taken with make-up and feminine accessories.
There were multiple killings or attacks on persons presumably because of their sexual orientation. The sexual diversity rights organization, Lesbian-Gay Rainbow Association of Comayaguela, asserted that between January and March, unknown actors killed seven homosexuals because of their sexuality and that a number of gay persons had fled the country out of fear of social and security-force persecution. On October 30, an attacker killed Yasmin, a transgender sex worker in Camayaguela, and the following day an attacker shot Bibi, another transgender sex worker, in the center of Comayaguela. On December 18, a transgender sex worker, Cynthia Nicole, was attacked by three men with pipes and clubs after hailing a cab in Comayaguela.
In March 2007 police beat and detained Donny Reyes, the treasurer of the Lesbian-Gay Rainbow Association of Comayaguela. Police then reportedly jailed Reyes in a cell with 57 gang members who raped and beat him. The only witness to Reyes's initial arrest was killed in October 2007. Reyes filed a formal complaint, which at the urging of the Supreme Court, Internal Affairs investigated. The investigation concluded that, while Reyes had many of the symptoms of being raped, it could not definitively determine it took place during his detention. During the course of the investigation, the offices of the Lesbian-Gay Rainbow Association offices were burglarized, and all archives and computers were stolen. Internal Affairs cited five policemen, Nelson Daniel Gaitan Sosa, Hill Lainez Nunez, Walker Josue Reyes, Denis Esau Cruz Varela, and Walter Cruz Espina, for dereliction of duty.
There was no reported societal violence or discrimination against person with HIV/AIDS.
On October 17, unknown assailants killed two youths associated with the punk subculture "Emo."
Job-related age discrimination remained a serious problem.
Section 6 Worker Rights
a. The Right of Association
The law provides for the right of workers to form and join unions of their choice, but in practice workers exercised this right with difficulty. The law prohibits members of the armed forces and the police force from forming labor unions and also prohibits public service employees from presenting union organizing petitions or participating in collective bargaining. According to MOL statistics, there were 519 unions representing approximately 8 percent of the work force, excluding the agriculture sector, and as of July approximately 13 percent of the 133,000 apparel assembly workforce was unionized.
The law prohibits coexistence of more than two trade unions at a single enterprise, requires 30 or more workers to constitute a trade union, prohibits foreign nationals from holding union offices, requires that union officials be employed in the economic activity of the business the union represents, and restricts unions in agricultural enterprises with fewer than 10 employees.
Union leaders were occasionally subjected to violence and threats. On May 23, Julio Paz killed Israel Garcia, leader of the National Association of Honduran Farmworkers (ANACH) labor group. The killing was motivated by a National Agrarian Institute land-use ruling favorable to ANACH.
On April 23, unknown masked assailants shot to death Altagracia Fuentes, secretary general for the Honduran Workers' Federation, and two companions, labor leader Yolanda Sanchez, and their driver, Juan Bautista Aceituno. On May 17, Maynor Celin Hernandez Matute, a suspect in the shooting, was arrested on an unrelated robbery charge. In April the homicide prosecutor's office issued a warrant for the arrest of 11 car-theft gang members for the killing of Altagracia Fuentes and her companions. Gang members were arrested and charged with the killing and attempted robbery. Despite these arrests circumstantial evidence suggested that organized crime or nefarious elements within the labor movement committed the killing.
The law provides for the right to strike, and workers exercised this right in practice. The law prohibits strikes in a wide range of economic activities deemed essential services and any others that in the government's opinion affect individual rights to security, health, education, economic, or social life.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) criticized the law's denial of the right to strike to workers in the petroleum sector and to government workers, other than employees of state-owned enterprises. Although civil servants occasionally engaged in illegal work stoppages without experiencing reprisals, the MOL has the power to declare the protest illegal and dismiss the protesting workers. The legal restrictions on strikes include a prohibition on labor federations and confederations from calling strikes and a requirement that a two-thirds majority of the votes of the total membership of the trade union call a strike.
In September a teachers strike over back wages paralyzed the school system and accounted for a loss of more than 40 school days ending early October.
b. The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively
The law provides for the right to organize and to bargain collectively, but the government did not protect this right in practice. Although the law requires that an employer begin collective bargaining once workers establish a union, employers often refused to engage in bargaining.
Although the law prohibits employer retribution for engaging in trade union activity, it was a common practice with employers threatening to close unionized companies and harassing or dismissing workers seeking to unionize. Some foreign companies closed operations when notified that workers sought union representation.
The MOL can reach administrative decisions and fine companies for unfair dismissal, but only a court can order reinstatement of workers. Employers often failed to comply with court orders requiring them to reinstate workers fired for engaging in union activity; failure to reinstate workers was a serious problem.
Although the law prohibits blacklisting, there was credible evidence that apparel assembly factory employers blacklisted employees seeking to form unions. There were reports of apparel assembly workers allegedly fired for union activity who were hired for one or two weeks and then dismissed with no explanation. Apparel assembly company employees reported seeing computer records that included previous union membership in personnel records. Some employers informed previously unionized workers that they were unemployable because of their previous union activity.
The government did not allocate adequate resources to the Ministry of Labor (MOL) for labor inspectors to perform their duties. The country's labor inspectorate offices did not have financial resources to cover travel for inspections and requested that the government provide transport facilities and other necessities to enable inspectors to carry out their duties.
In March the original members of the SitraFHIA union were fired without reason and then reinstated by Honduran Foundation for Agricultural Investment (FHIA). In the following months, 13 more unionists were similarly dismissed without cause while the SitraFHIA awaited official registration with the MOL. In July SitraFHIA received official registration. In October SitraFHIA was broken by FHIA management with nine of the last affiliates remaining on October 1, leaving only the president and two members. FHIA allegedly paid the affiliates to renounce union membership and return under new nonunion contracts.
On February 8,60 unionists of the Alcoa Factory were unlawfully dismissed. The workers were eventually reinstated and given their back pay. In July Alcoa Inc. announced it would cease operations at maquila plants in El Progreso and Choloma, and on August 22, Alcoa closed those plants and dismissed all 1,800 workers. On September 12, the Alcoa plant union leader, Lorna Jackson, received death threats in the form of text messages and was shot at by two unidentified men. At year's end Jackson remained in hiding, and a Public Ministry investigation continued.
On May 12, Honduran Women's Collective filed a report citing the Productos San Jose textile factory in San Pedro Sula for human rights and labor law violations; it outlined a systematic covering up of work-related health and injury reports.
In October Jerzees Choloma, a local subsidiary of Fruit of the Loom, closed its plant four months after the plant's union received its official registry from the MOL in July. Earlier in the year, workers were fired from Jerzees Choloma without reason. In October SITRAJERZEES, the newly registered union at the SitraJerzees Plant in Choloma, was in the midst of its first collective bargaining negotiations when management broke off negotiations and declared that the plant would close within six months. Workers alleged that management had made more than 100 threats to union members, indicating the plant would close if the union was formed.
The law provides additional restrictions on strikes in the 102 registered export processing zones (EPZs) and 19 industrial parks operating as EPZs. An additional 26 companies that provided services for industrial parks had their own free zones, outside the industrial parks. In the absence of unions and collective bargaining, several companies in the EPZs instituted solidarity associations that, to some extent, functioned as company unions for the purposes of setting wages and negotiating working conditions. Other EPZ companies used the minimum wage to set starting salaries and adjusted wage scales by negotiating with common groups of plant workers and other employees based on seniority, skills, categories of work, and other criteria.
c. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor
The law generally prohibits forced or compulsory labor, including by children; however, there were reports of trafficking in children for commercial sexual exploitation and of child prostitution. Human rights organizations frequently reported that, in the private security and household sectors, workers were typically obliged to work more than 60 hours a week and only earn the legal limit of 44 hours.
d. Prohibition of Child Labor and Minimum Age for Employment
The law regulates child labor and provides that minors between the ages of 14 to 18 cannot work unless authorities determine that the work is indispensable for the family's income and will not conflict with schooling. The constitution and the law establish the maximum work hours for children under age 18 as six hours daily and 30 hours weekly. Parents or a legal guardian can request special permission from the MOL to allow children between the ages of 14 and 15 to work, so long as the ministry performs a home study to ensure that the child demonstrates economic necessity to work, and that the child will not work outside of the country or in hazardous conditions, including offshore fishing. Through September the MOL had authorized 36 child workers and conducted 28 home visits.
The law prohibits night work and overtime for minors under age 16 and requires that employers in areas with more than 20 school-age children working at their business facility provide a location for a school. In practice the vast majority of children worked without ministry permits.
The government did not devote adequate resources or inspectors at the institutions to follow up, prevent, or monitor compliance of labor laws.
The MOL did not effectively enforce child labor laws outside the apparel assembly sector, and there were frequent violations of the child labor laws. The ILO expressed concern about the government's decision to appoint child labor inspectors only to offices in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula and requested that it comply with the legislative requirement to conduct child labor inspections, even by using nonspecialized labor inspectors.
Census results issued in May by the National Statistics Institute reported that 13 percent of children ages five to 17 worked, of whom 76 percent were boys; 74 percent of child labor occurred in rural areas. The average monthly wage of a child worker in an urban zone was 2,199 lempira (approximately $115), compared with 1,471 lempira ($78) in rural areas.
Most working children were employed in agriculture (56 percent); others engaged in commercial activities (18 percent), manufacturing (9 percent), and services (8 percent). Children often worked harvesting melons, coffee, and sugarcane or rummaging at garbage dumps; working in the forestry, hunting, and fishing sectors; and working as deckhands and divers in the lobster industry. Children also peddled goods such as fruit, begged, washed cars, and hauled loads. Some were employed in limestone and lime production. Children, predominantly girls, also worked as domestic servants, where they were sometimes subject to maltreatment by third-party employers. Many children worked out of economic necessity alongside other family members.
An international NGO collaborated with several local civil society groups in executing a program to strengthen the capacity of the government and civil society to withdraw and prevent children from engaging in hazardous labor through the provision of educational services.
The government conducted social and educational programs to reach at-risk children, including a school grant program to provide money for school supplies for very poor families, and an alternative schooling program using radio and long-distance learning for children in distant rural areas with few schools. Government measures had minimal impact on diminishing child labor in light of extreme poverty, famine conditions in rural areas, and a lack of jobs for school graduates.
e. Acceptable Conditions of Work
On December 26, the government announced an 11 percent general increase in the minimum wage to 5,500 lempira (approximately $290) per month to be effective January 1, 2009. The increase put the private sector minimum wage (not including agriculture) on par with the public sector minimum wage. In the agricultural sector, employers often did not pay the minimum wage.
The daily minimum wage scale is divided into 10 sectors based on the size of the worker's place of employment. The scale ranged between 55 lempiras (approximately $2.88) for unskilled labor and 135 lempiras ($7.13) for workers in financial and insurance companies.
The law prescribes a maximum 44-hour workweek and at least one 24-hour rest period for every six days of work. The law requires overtime payment for hours in excess of the standard, and there are prohibitions on excessive compulsory overtime. Employers frequently ignored these regulations due to the high level of unemployment and underemployment and the lack of effective enforcement by the MOL. There were credible allegations of compulsory overtime at apparel assembly factories (particularly for women, who comprised approximately 65 percent of that sector's workforce), in the private security sector, and among household workers. Foreign workers enjoyed equal protection under the law.
The MOL is responsible for enforcing national occupational health and safety laws but did not do so consistently or effectively. Worker safety standards were enforced poorly, particularly in the construction industry, in garment assembly sector, and in agriculture production activities. There were complaints that foreign factory managers in EPZs and other private industrial facilities failed to comply with occupational health and safety regulations. Workers in pineapple production and other commercial agriculture enterprises alleged blacklisting by employers if they complained to the authorities about working conditions. The NGO Honduran Women's Collective reported that large numbers of apparel assembly workers had back, neck, and carpal tunnel syndrome as well as respiratory (including tuberculosis), digestive, and skin diseases. These health problems were attributed to air contaminated by fine dust and fabric fuzz, noise, lack of ventilation, lack of protective equipment, and extreme temperatures.
The law does not provide workers with the right to leave a dangerous work situation without jeopardy to continued employment.
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The Constitution declares the "official religion of Iran is Islam, and the doctrine followed is that of Ja'fari (Twelver) Shi'ism." The Government restricts freedom of religion.
There was no substantive change in the status of respect for religious freedom during the reporting period. Members of the country's religious minorities--including Sunni and Sufi Muslims, Baha'is, Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians--reported imprisonment, harassment, intimidation, and discrimination based on their religious beliefs. Government actions created a threatening atmosphere for some religious minorities, especially Baha'is, Jews, and evangelical Christians.
The U.S. Government makes clear its objections to the Government's treatment of religious minorities through public statements, support for relevant U.N. and nongovernmental organization (NGO) efforts, as well as diplomatic initiatives among all states concerned about religious freedom in the country. Since 1999, the Secretary of State has designated Iran as a "Country of Particular Concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act for its particularly severe violations of religious freedom.
In December 2003, the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 58/195 on the human rights situation in the country that expressed serious concern about the continued discrimination against religious minorities by the Government. In the fall of 2004, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the human rights situation in Iran.
The country has an area of approximately631,660 square miles, and its population is an estimated 69 million. The population is approximately 97 percent Muslim, of which an estimated 89 percent are Shi'a and 8 percent are Sunni, mostly Turkmen, Arabs, Baluchs, and Kurds living in the southwest, southeast, and northwest. Sufi Brotherhoods are popular, but there are no reliable figures available regarding the size of the Sufi population.
According to the country's most recent official national census, taken in 1996, there were an estimated 59.8 million Muslims, 30,000 Zoroastrians, 79,000 Christians, and 13,000 Jews, with 28,000 "others" and 47,000 "not stated."
Baha'is, Jews, Christians, Mandaeans, and Zoroastrians constitute less than 1 percent of the population combined. The largest non-Muslim minority is the Baha'i community, which has an estimated 300,000 to 350,000 adherents throughout the country. Credible estimates on the size of the Jewish community vary from 20,000 to 30,000. This figure represents a substantial reduction from the estimated 75,000 to 80,000 Jews who resided in the country prior to the 1979 Islamic revolution. According to U.N. figures, there are approximately 300,000 Christians, the majority of whom are ethnic Armenians. Unofficial estimates indicate an Assyrian Christian population of approximately 10,000. There also are Protestant denominations, including evangelical churches. The U.N. Special Representative reported that Christians are emigrating at an estimated rate of 15,000 to 20,000 per year. The Mandaeans, a community whose religion draws on pre-Christian gnostic beliefs, number approximately 5,000 to 10,000 persons, with members residing primarily in Khuzestan in the southwest.
The Government estimates the Zoroastrian community at approximately 30,000 to 35,000 adherents; however, Zoroastrian groups cite an estimated 60,000 adherents. Zoroastrians mainly are ethnic Persians concentrated in the cities of Tehran, Kerman, and Yazd. Zoroastrianism was the official religion of the pre-Islamic Sassanid Empire and thus played a central role in the country's history.
Section II. Status of Religious Freedom
The Government restricts freedom of religion. The Constitution declares the "official religion of Iran is Islam and the doctrine followed is that of Ja'fari (Twelver) Shi'ism." All laws and regulations must be consistent with the official interpretation of the Shari'a (Islamic law). The Constitution states that "within the limits of the law," Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians are the only recognized religious minorities who are guaranteed freedom to practice their religion; however, members of these recognized minority religious groups have reported imprisonment, harassment, intimidation, and discrimination based on their religious beliefs. Adherents of religions not recognized by the Constitution do not enjoy freedom to practice their beliefs. This restriction seriously affects adherents of the Baha'i Faith, which the Government regards as a heretical Islamic group with a political orientation that is antagonistic to the country's Islamic revolution. However, Baha'is view themselves not as Muslims, but as an independent religion with origins in the Shi'a Islamic tradition. Government officials have stated that, as individuals, all Baha'is are entitled to their beliefs and are protected under the articles of the Constitution as citizens; however, the Government has continued to prohibit Baha'is from teaching and practicing their faith.
The tricameral government structure is ruled over by a supreme religious jurisconsult, or "Supreme Leader." This Supreme Leader, chosen by a group of 83 Islamic scholars, oversees the State's decision-making process. All acts of the Majlis (legislative body or parliament) must be reviewed for conformity with Islamic law and the Constitution by the Council of Guardians, which is composed of six clerics appointed by the Supreme Leader, as well as six Muslim jurists (legal scholars) nominated by the Head of the Judiciary and approved by the Majlis.
The Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance (Ershad) and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) monitor religious activity closely. Adherents of recognized religious minorities are not required to register individually with the Government; however, their communal, religious, and cultural events and organizations, including schools, are monitored closely. Registration of Baha'is is a police function. The Government has pressured evangelical Christian groups to compile and submit membership lists for their congregations, but evangelicals have resisted this demand. Non-Muslim owners of grocery shops are required to indicate their religious affiliation on the fronts of their shops.
By law and practice, religious minorities are not allowed to be elected to a representative body or to hold senior government or military positions; however, 5 of a total 270 seats in the Majlis are reserved for religious minorities. Three of these seats are reserved for members of the Christian faith, two seats for the country's Armenian Christians, and one for Assyrians and Chaldeans. There is also one seat for a member of the Jewish faith, and one for a member of the Zoroastrian faith. While members of the Sunni Muslim minority do not have reserved seats in the Majlis, they are allowed to serve in the body. Members of religious minorities, including Sunni Muslims, are allowed to vote. All of Iran's minority religions, including Sunni Muslims, are barred from being elected President.
All religious minorities suffer varying degrees of officially sanctioned discrimination, particularly in the areas of employment, education, and housing. The Government does not protect the right of citizens to change or renounce their religious faith. Apostasy, specifically conversion from Islam, may be punishable by death; however, there were no reported cases of the death penalty being applied for apostasy during the reporting period.
Members of religious minorities, excluding Sunni Muslims, are prevented from serving in the judiciary and security services and from becoming public school principals. Applicants for public sector employment are screened for their adherence to and knowledge of Islam. Government workers who do not observe Islam's principles and rules are subject to penalties. The Constitution states that the country's army must be Islamic and must recruit individuals who are committed to the objectives of the Islamic revolution; however, in practice no religious minorities are exempt from military service.
University applicants are required to pass an examination in Islamic theology, which limits the access of most religious minorities to higher education, although all public school students, including non-Muslims, must study Islam. The Government generally allows recognized religious minorities to conduct religious education for their adherents. This includes separate and privately funded Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian schools; however, Baha'i schools are not allowed. The Ministry of Education, which imposes certain curriculum requirements, supervises these schools. With few exceptions, the directors of such private schools must be Muslim. Attendance at the schools is not mandatory for recognized religious minorities. The Ministry of Education must approve all textbooks used in coursework, including religious texts. Recognized religious minorities may provide religious instruction in non-Persian languages, but such texts require approval by the authorities. This approval requirement sometimes imposes significant translation expenses on minority communities.
The legal system discriminates against religious minorities, who receive lower awards than Muslims in injury and death lawsuits and incur heavier punishments. In January 2005, the Expediency Council approved appending a Note to Article 297 of the 1991 Islamic Punishments Act, authorizing collection of equal "blood money" (diyeh) for the death of Muslims and non-Muslims. All women and Baha'i men were excluded from the equalization provisions of the bill. According to law, Baha'i blood is considered "Mobah," meaning it can be spilled with impunity.
Sunni Muslims are the largest religious minority in the country, claiming a membership of approximately five and a half million (8 percent of the population), consisting mostly of Turkmen, Arabs, Baluchs, and Kurds living in the southwest, southeast, and northwest. The Constitution provides Sunni Muslims a large degree of religious freedom, although it forbids a Sunni Muslim from becoming President. Sunnis claim that the Government discriminates against them; however, it is difficult to distinguish whether the cause for discrimination is religious or ethnic since most Sunnis are also members of ethnic minorities. Sunnis cite the lack of a Sunni mosque in Tehran, despite the presence of over 1 million adherents there, as a prominent example of this discrimination. Sunnis also have cited the lack of Sunni representation in appointed offices in provinces where they form a majority, such as Kurdistan province, as well as their reported inability to obtain senior governmental positions. In addition, Sunnis have charged that the state broadcasting company, Voice and Vision, airs programming insulting to them.
In April 2004, Sunni Majlis representatives sent a letter to Supreme Leader Khamene'i decrying the lack of Sunni presence in the executive and judiciary branches of government, especially in higher-ranking positions in embassies, universities, and other institutions. They called on Khamene'i to issue a decree halting anti-Sunni propaganda in the mass media, books, and publications; the measure would include the state-run media. The Sunni representatives also requested adherence to the constitutional articles ensuring equal treatment of all ethnic groups.
The Baha'i Faith originated in the country during the 1840s as a reformist movement within Shi'a Islam. The Government considers Baha'is to be apostates because of their claim to a valid religious revelation subsequent to that of Muhammed, despite the fact that Baha'is do not consider themselves to be Muslim. Additionally, the Baha'i Faith is defined by the Government as a political "sect," linked to the Pahlavi regime and hence counterrevolutionary. A 2001 Ministry of Justice report stated in part that Baha'is would be permitted to enroll in schools only if they did not identify themselves as Baha'is, and that Baha'is preferably should be enrolled in schools with a strong and imposing religious ideology. The report also stated that Baha'is must be excluded or expelled from universities, either in the admission process or during the course of their studies, once their identity becomes known.
Baha'is may not teach or practice their faith or maintain links with coreligionists abroad. The fact that the Baha'i world headquarters (established by the founder of the Baha'i Faith in the 19th century, in what was then Ottoman‑controlled Palestine) is situated in what is now the state of Israel exposes Baha'is to government charges of "espionage on behalf of Zionism." These charges were more acute when Baha'is were caught communicating with or sending monetary contributions to the Baha'i headquarters.
Baha'is were banned from government employment. In addition, Baha'is were regularly denied compensation for injury or criminal victimization.
The Government allows recognized religious minorities to establish community centers and certain self-financed cultural, social, athletic, or charitable associations. However, the Government prohibits the Baha'i community from official assembly and from maintaining administrative institutions by actively closing such Baha'i institutions. Since the Baha'i Faith has no clergy, the denial of the right to form such institutions and elect officers threatens its existence in the country.
Broad restrictions on Baha'is undermine their ability to function as a community. Baha'is repeatedly have been offered relief from mistreatment in exchange for recanting their faith.
Baha'i cemeteries, holy places, historical sites, administrative centers, and other assets were seized shortly after the 1979 Revolution. No properties have been returned, and many have been destroyed. Baha'is were not allowed to bury and honor their dead in keeping with their religious tradition. Baha'i graveyards in Yazd and other cities have been desecrated, and the Government did not seek to identify or punish the perpetrators. Public and private universities continue to deny admittance to Baha'i students. In July 2004, for the first time, Baha'i applicants were permitted to take part in the nationwide exam for entrance into state-run universities. However, for those students who passed the exam, "Islam" was pre-printed as a prospective student's religious affiliation on the form authorizing their matriculation. This action precluded Baha'i enrollment in the country's state-run universities since a tenet of Baha'ism is to not deny one's faith.
In principle, but with some exceptions, there is little restriction of or interference with Jewish religious practice; however, education of Jewish children has become more difficult in recent years. The Government reportedly allows Hebrew instruction, recognizing that it is necessary for Jewish religious practice. However, it strongly discourages the distribution of Hebrew texts, in practice making it difficult to teach the language. Moreover, the Government has required that in conformity with the schedule of other schools, several Jewish schools must remain open on Saturdays, which violates Jewish law.
Jewish citizens are permitted to obtain passports and to travel outside the country, but they often are denied the multiple-exit permits normally issued to other citizens. With the exception of certain business travelers, the authorities require Jews to obtain clearance and pay additional fees before each trip abroad. The Government appears concerned about the emigration of Jewish citizens and permission generally is not granted for all members of a Jewish family to travel outside the country at the same time.
According to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees' (UNHCR) background paper on the country, the Mandaeans are regarded as Christians and are included among the country's three recognized religious minorities. However, Mandaeans regard themselves not as Christians but as adherents of a religion that predates Christianity in both belief and practice. Mandaeans enjoyed official support as a distinct religion prior to the Revolution, but their legal status as a religion since then has been the subject of debate in the Majlis and has not been clarified. The small community faces discrimination similar to that faced by the country's other religious minorities. There were reports that members of the Mandaean community experienced societal discrimination and pressure to convert to Islam, and they often are denied access to higher education. Mandaean refugees have reported specific religious freedom violations and concerns, such as being forced to observe Islamic fasting rituals and to pray in Islamic fashion, both in direct violation of Mandaean teaching.
Sufi organizations outside the country remain concerned about government repression of Sufi religious practices, including the constant harassment and intimidation of prominent Sufi leaders by the intelligence and security services.
The Government propagates an interpretation of Islam that effectively deprives women of some rights granted to men. Gender segregation is enforced generally throughout the country without regard to religious affiliation and can be burdensome for those who do not follow strict Islamic religious codes; however, as a practical matter these prohibitions have loosened in recent years. Women must ride in a reserved section on public buses and enter public buildings, universities, and airports through separate entrances. Violators of these restrictions face punishments such as flogging or monetary fines. Women are prohibited from attending male sporting events, although this restriction does not appear to be enforced universally. Women are not free to choose what they wear in public, although enforcement of rules for conservative Islamic dress has eased in recent years. Women are subject to harassment by the authorities if their dress or behavior is considered inappropriate and are sentenced to flogging or imprisonment for such violations. Showing pictures of women in the media, including foreign women, who are not dressed in accordance with conservative Islamic dress norms, is prohibited by law. There are penalties, including flogging and monetary fines, for failure to observe norms of Islamic dress at work
Legally, the testimony of a woman is worth only half that of a man in court. A married woman must obtain the written consent of her husband before she may travel outside the country. The law provides for stoning for adultery; however, in 2002 the Government suspended this practice.
Although a male can marry at age 15 and above without parental consent, the 1991 Civil Law states that a virgin female, even over 18 years of age, needs the consent of her father or grandfather to wed, unless she is willing to go to court to get a ruling allowing her to marry without this consent.
Women have the right to divorce, and regulations promulgated in 1984 substantially broadened the grounds on which a woman may seek a divorce. However, a husband is not required to cite a reason for divorcing his wife. In 1986 the Government issued a 12‑point "contract" to serve as a model for marriage and divorce, which limits the privileges accorded to men by custom and traditional interpretations of Islamic law. The model contract also recognized a divorced woman's right to a share in the property that couples acquire during their marriage and to increased alimony rights. Women who remarry are forced to give up custody of children from earlier marriages to the child's father. The law allows for the granting of custody of minor children to the mother in certain divorce cases in which the father is proven unfit to care for the child.
Many female Muslims are seeking to eliminate laws and practices that discriminate against women, arguing that relegating women to a lesser status due to, interalia, their being considered "deficient in reason" is not a precept of Islam, but rather a non-Islamic accretion to Islamic practices.
The property rights of Baha'is are generally disregarded, and they suffer frequent government harassment and persecution. Since 1979 the Government has confiscated large numbers of private and business properties belonging to Baha'is.
Numerous Baha'i homes reportedly have been seized and handed over to an agency of Supreme Leader Khamene'i. Sources indicate that property was confiscated in Rafsanjan, Kerman, Marv-Dasht, and Yazd. Several Baha'i farmers in the southern part of the country were arrested, and one who was jailed for several days was only freed after paying a fine. Authorities reportedly also confiscated Baha'i properties in Kata, forced several families to leave their homes and farmlands, imprisoned some farmers, and did not permit others to harvest their crops. In one instance, a Baha'i woman from Isfahan, who legally traveled abroad, returned to find that her home had been confiscated. The Government also has seized private homes in which Baha'i youth classes were held despite the owners having proper ownership documents. The Baha'i community claims the Government's seizure of Baha'i personal property and its denial of Baha'i access to education and employment are eroding the economic base of the community.
The Government harassed the Baha'i community by arbitrarily arresting Baha'is, charging them with violating Islamic penal code Articles 500 and 698, relating to activities against the State and spreading falsehood, respectively. Often, the charges were not dropped upon release and those with charges still pending against them reportedly feared rearrest at any time.
In February 2004, authorities initiated the destruction of the tomb of Quddus, a Baha'i holy site. Local Baha'is attempted to prevent the destruction through legal channels, but the tomb was destroyed in the interim. The Baha'is were not allowed permission to enter the site and retrieve the remains of this revered Baha'i figure. In June 2004, the house of Mizra Buzarg-e-Nuri, father of the faith's founder, was destroyed without notice. The house was confiscated before by the Government and was of great religious significance because the founder of the Baha'i Faith, Baha'u'llah, had lived there.
According to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States, since 1979 more than 200 Baha'is have been killed, 15 have disappeared and are presumed dead, and more than 10,000 Baha'is have been dismissed from government and university jobs. The Government continued to imprison and detain Baha'is based on their religious beliefs.
In July 2004, a Baha'i optician in Hamadan was reportedly kidnapped and brutally attacked by five individuals, who threatened him with death if he did not recant his faith and convert to Islam. Local authorities were unwilling to pursue the case and a local judicial official told him "it would cost him dearly" if he chose to pursue his complaint against the assailants.
In November 2004, for the first time, the Baha'i community wrote an open letter to the government of the Islamic Republic, addressed to President Khatami, seeking an end to Baha'i-focused human rights and religious freedom abuses. Numerous anecdotal reports indicated a marked increase in government persecution of Baha'is after this letter. Much of this anti-Baha'i activity focused on Yazd, presumably due to Yazdi Baha'is having presented Yazd intelligence-security officials with a copy of the letter.
In December 2004 and January 2005, nine Baha'is in Yazd were arrested and briefly detained, with their homes searched and some possessions confiscated. On January 14, authorities summoned, questioned, and released another Yazd Baha'i, and four days later on January 18, four individuals came to his home and beat him with batons, inflicting severe injuries to his face, back, and arms. The same individuals, equipped with batons and communication devices, also attacked the home of another Baha'i later that day. On that same day, these same persons went to the home of a third Baha'i and attacked him with batons, causing serious head wounds. This third Baha'i was attacked again on January 25; on January 27 his shop was set on fire.
On February 2 and 3, the Baha'i cemetery in Yazd was destroyed, with cars driven over the graves, tombstones smashed, and the remains of the interred left exposed. Two days later, a gravestone was removed and left in front of a Baha'i's home, along with a threatening letter. The Baha'i community filed a complaint with authorities at the national level, but no action was taken. These events coincided with the launch of a campaign of defamation against the Baha'i Faith in government-controlled media.
In February, two Baha'is were released from prison after serving almost 15 years on charges related to their religious beliefs.
In March, a series of Baha'i arrests and imprisonments began throughout the country. In Tehran on March 6, intelligence officials arrested and took into custody three prominent Baha'is, and another was arrested and imprisoned on March 16. Agents conducted prolonged searches of their homes and confiscated documents, books, and other belongings. They were all detained without charge, and released after having posted bail.
On March 8, one of the Baha'is previously arrested and briefly detained (for having distributed the open letter from the Baha'i community to President Khatami), received a three-year sentence and was incarcerated in Evin prison. Another Baha'i previously arrested and detained, was tried in absentia and given a one-year sentence for the same alleged offence. Neither of these men had access to lawyers nor to any form of legal counsel.
On April 25, five more Baha'is were arrested and imprisoned, all members of farming families whose properties had been confiscated in the village of Kata, when they obeyed a summons and came to the court for hearings concerning their grievances. On May 3, four more Baha'is from Kata answered a similar summons and appeared before a court in the same province. The judge asked them if they would relinquish their property, and the four Baha'is responded that they would not do so because the homes and land had belonged to their forefathers. The judge ordered their arrest and detention. Legal action was taken on their behalf, and on May 30, all nine farmers were released from prison after a business license had been used as collateral.
On May 16, eight Baha'is were summoned to appear before the office of the Public Prosecutor in the city of Semnan, and the next day another Baha'i in that city received a similar summons. They were charged with "creating anxiety in the minds of the public and those of the Iranian officials" and distributing "propaganda against the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran" for having distributed copies of the November 2004 open letter to various Iranian officials. When they arrived at the Prosecutor's office on May 18, they were asked to post bail for their release. Concerned that this could lead to further arrests and bail demands affecting other Baha'is, they declined to do so. They were detained and subsequently freed on May 20 2005, with the understanding that they would appear for a hearing at a later date.
In total, between March and Juneapproximately 35 Baha'is were arrested, charged, and released pending trial, with the charges typically being "causing anxiety in the minds of the public and of officials," and "spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran." By the end of the reporting period, Mehran Kawsari and Zabihullah Mahrami, the latter of whom was arrested in 1995 and convicted of apostasy in 1996 because of his adherence to the Baha'i Faith, were the only two Baha'is remaining in jail due to charges relating to their beliefs. Mahrami continued to serve his life sentence, which was commuted from a death sentence by President Khatami in 1999. There were also 36 Baha'is released on bail and awaiting trial.
The Government vigilantly enforces its prohibition on proselytizing activities by evangelical Christians by closing their churches and arresting Christian converts. Members of evangelical congregations have been required to carry membership cards, photocopies of which must be provided to the authorities. Worshippers are subject to identity checks by authorities posted outside congregation centers. The Government has restricted meetings for evangelical services to Sundays, and church officials have been ordered to inform the Ministry of Information and Islamic Guidance before admitting new members to their congregations.
Conversion of a Muslim to a non-Muslim religion is considered apostasy under the law and is punishable by the death penalty, although it is unclear whether this punishment has been enforced in recent years. Similarly, non-Muslims may not proselytize Muslims without putting their own lives at risk. Evangelical church leaders are subject to pressure from authorities to sign pledges that they will not evangelize Muslims or allow Muslims to attend church services.
In previous years, the Government harassed churchgoers in Tehran, in particular worshippers of the capital's Assembly of God congregation. This harassment has included conspicuous monitoring outside Christian premises by Revolutionary Guards to discourage Muslims or converts from entering church premises, as well as demands for the presentation of the identity papers of worshippers inside. In May 2004, there were reports of the arrest of several dozen evangelical Christians in the north, including a Christian pastor, his wife, and their two teenage children in Chalous, in Mazandaran Province. Many of those arrested were released later in May, and the pastor and his family were released in July, after six weeks in detention. One press source reported that authorities ordered those jailed to stop meeting for worship and to "stop talking about Jesus."
On September 9 2004, security officials raided the annual general conference of the country's Assemblies of God Church, arresting approximately 85 religious leaders gathered at the church's denominational center in Karaj. After fingerprinting and questioning, authorities released all but 10 pastors later that day. Of these, nine were released on September 12. Assemblies of God Pastor Hamid Pourmand, a former Muslim of Assyrian Christian background who converted to Christianity nearly 25 years ago and who led a congregation in Bushehr, was the only detainee not released. In November 2004, Pourmand, who was also a non-commissioned officer in the Army, was moved to a military prison. In late January 2005 he was tried in a military court on charges of espionage. On February 16 he was found guilty of espionage and sentenced to 3 years, and was transferred to Evin Prison to serve his sentence. A military appeals court subsequently affirmed the verdict and the sentence. As a consequence, Pourmand faced automatic discharge from the army and forfeit of his entire income, pension, and housing for his family. In mid-April, Iranian authorities abandoned preliminary hearings against Pourmand before a Tehran General and Revolutionary Court on two separate charges of apostasy and proselytizing, both capital crimes, reportedly after news of his trial leaked out to the international press. In early May, he was transferred from Tehran to his home city of Bushehr to stand trial in a General and Revolutionary Court on these charges. On May 28, that court acquitted Pourmand on apostasy and proselytizing charges, and he was sent back to Tehran's Evin Prison to serve out the remainder ofhis 3-year prison sentence.
In 2000, 10 of 13 Jews arrested in 1999 were convicted on charges of illegal contact with Israel, conspiracy to form an illegal organization, and recruiting agents. Along with 2 Muslim defendants, the 10 Jews received prison sentences ranging from 4 to 13 years. An appeals court subsequently overturned the convictions for forming an illegal organization and recruiting agents, but it upheld the convictions for illegal contacts with Israel with reduced sentences. One of the 10 was released in February 2001 and another in January 2002, both upon completion of their prison terms. Three additional prisoners were released before the end of their sentences in October 2002. In April 2003, it was announced that the last five were to be released. It is not clear if the eight who were released before the completion of their sentences were fully pardoned or were released provisionally. During and shortly after the trial, Jewish-owned businesses in Tehran and Shiraz were targets of vandalism and boycotts, and Jews reportedly suffered personal harassment and intimidation. There were no reports of vandalism or similar harassment during the reporting period.
Numerous Sunni clerics have been killed in recent years, some allegedly by government agents. While the exact reason for their murders is unknown, most Sunni Muslims in the country belong to ethnic minorities who historically have suffered abuse by the central government.
There were no reports of government harassment of the Zoroastrian community during the reporting period; however, the community remains unable to convene a Spiritual Assembly to manage its religious affairs for fear of official retaliation, and there were reports of discrimination in employment and education. In June 2004, Zoroastrians were able to make, apparently without government interference, their annual pilgrimage to one of the holiest sites of their faith, the temple of Chak-Chak (near the city of Yazd).
The Government carefully monitors the statements and views of the country's senior Shi'a religious leaders. Several Shi'a religious leaders have been under house arrest for years, including Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was released after 5 years of house arrest in January 2003.
The Special Clerical Court (SCC) system, established in 1987 to investigate offenses and crimes committed by clerics and which the Supreme Leader oversees directly, is not provided for in the Constitution and operates outside the domain of the judiciary. In particular, critics alleged that the clerical courts were used to prosecute certain clerics for expressing controversial ideas and for participating in activities outside the area of religion, including journalism.
On February 6, the special clerical court agreed to the conditional release (parole) of prominent dissident cleric Hojatoleslam Hassan Yussefi Eshkevari; he had served two thirds of his 7-year sentence and was therefore eligible for parole under the law. The cleric had been arrested in 2000, charged with the capital crimes of apostasy and "corruption on earth," in conjunction with speeches he had made in a 2000 conference on reform in Berlin.
Laws based on religion have been used to stifle freedom of expression. Independent newspapers and magazines have been closed, and leading publishers and journalists were imprisoned on vague charges of "insulting Islam" or "calling into question the Islamic foundation of the Republic." In 2002, academic Hashem Aghajari was sentenced to death for blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammed, based on a speech in which he challenged Muslims not to blindly follow the clergy, provoking an international and domestic outcry. In February 2003, his death sentence was revoked by the Supreme Court, but the case was sent back to the lower court for retrial. He was retried in July 2003 on charges that did not include apostasy and was sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment, 2 of which were suspended, and 5 years of additional "deprivation of social right" (meaning that he could not teach or write books or articles). His time served was counted towards his 3-year sentence; the court converted the remainder of the time to a fine.
Forced Religious Conversions
There were no reports of forced religious conversion, including of minor U.S. citizens who had been abducted or illegally removed from the United States, or of the refusal to allow such citizens to be returned to the United States.
However, a child born to a Muslim father automatically is considered a Muslim. Also, Baha'is were repeatedly offered relief from mistreatment in exchange for recanting their faith.
Abuses by Terrorist Organizations
There were no reported abuses targeted at specific religions by terrorist organizations during the reporting period.
Section III. Societal Attitudes
The continuous presence of the country's pre‑Islamic, non‑Muslim communities, such as Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians, has accustomed the population to the participation of non-Muslims in society; however, government actions continued to create a threatening atmosphere for some religious minorities.
While Jews are a recognized religious minority, allegations of official discrimination are frequent. The Government's anti‑Israel policies, along with a perception among radical Muslims that all Jewish citizens support Zionism and the state of Israel, create a hostile atmosphere for the small community. For example, during the reporting period, many newspapers celebrated the one-hundredth anniversary of the anti-Semitic publication "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Jewish leaders reportedly are reluctant to draw attention to official mistreatment of their community due to fear of government reprisal.
The Jewish community has been reduced to less than one-half of its prerevolutionary size. Some of this emigration is connected with the larger, general waves of departures following the establishment of the Islamic Republic, but some also stems from continued anti-Semitism on the part of the Government and within society.
In December 2004, the country's Sahar 1 TV station began airing a weekly series titled "For You, Palestine," or "Zahra's Blue Eyes," set in Israel and the West Bank. Produced in Farsi and subsequently translated into Arabic, this series depicted Israeli government, military, and civilian personnel harvesting organs from Palestinian children for the benefit of Israeli officials. Other anti-Semitic series shown on state-run Iranian television during this period included "The People of the Cave," a supposedly historical drama series, and "Al-Shatat." "Al-Shatat," originally broadcasted by Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV channel, portrayed the Jewish people as being responsible for most the world's problems, via their conspiring to achieve political and economic domination over the world.
In April, Ayatollah Hossein Nouri-Hamedani, one of the country's leading religious authorities, told a group of clerics that "one should fight the Jews and vanquish them," to prepare the ground and to hasten the advent of the Hidden Imam.
On April 13, Representative Maurice Motamed, who represents Jews in the Majlis, complained that Iran's state television was broadcasting anti-Semitic programs. According to the press, Motamed claimed that "insulting Jews and attributing false things to them in television serials over the past 12 years has not only hurt the feelings of the Jewish community but has also led to the emigration of a considerable percentage of the Jewish community." Motamed also claimed that repeated complaints about this problem have not had the desired effect.
The Government's anti-Israel policies and the trial of 13 Jews in 2000, along with the perception among some of the country's radicalized elements that Jews support Zionism and the state of Israel, created a threatening atmosphere for the Jewish community (see Section II). Many Jews have sought to limit their contact with or support for the state of Israel out of fear of reprisal. Recent anti-American and anti-Israeli demonstrations have included the denunciation of Jews themselves as opposed to the past practice of denouncing only "Israel" and "Zionism," adding to the threatening atmosphere for the community.
Sunni Muslims encounter religious discrimination at the local, provincial, and national levels, and there were reports of discrimination against practitioners of the Sufi tradition during the reporting period. Sufis were also targeted by the country's intelligence and security services.
In June 2003, an interfaith delegation of American Christians, Jews, and Muslims traveled to meet with religious, political, and cultural leaders. In April 2005, an interfaith delegation of Muslims, Christians, and Jews paid a return visit to the United States, attending an interfaith conference in Washington, D.C.
The United States has no diplomatic relations with the country, and thus it cannot raise directly the restrictions that the Government places on religious freedom and other abuses the Government commits against adherents of minority religions. The U.S. Government makes its position clear in public statements and reports, support for relevant U.N. and NGO efforts, and diplomatic initiatives to press for an end to government abuses.
From 1982 to 2001, the U.S. Government co-sponsored a resolution each year regarding the human rights situation in the country offered by the European Union at the annual meeting of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). It passed every year until 2002, when the United States did not have a seat on the Commission, and the resolution failed passage by one vote. The U.S. supported a similar resolution offered each year during the U.N. General Assembly until the fall of 2002, when no resolution was tabled. The U.S. Government strongly supported the work of the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for Iran and called on the Government to grant him admission and allow him to conduct his research during the period of his mandate, which expired with the defeat of the resolution at the UNCHR in 2002. There also was no resolution on the country at the UNCHR in the spring of 2003. In 2003 the Canadian Government introduced a resolution censuring the country's human rights policies, which was passed by the U.N. General Assembly. The U.S. remains supportive of efforts to raise the human rights situation whenever appropriate within international organizations.
On numerous occasions, the U.S. State Department spokesman has addressed the situation of the Baha'i and Jewish communities in the country. The U.S. Government has encouraged other governments to make similar statements and has urged them to raise the issue of religious freedom in discussions with the Government.
Since 1999, the Secretary of State has designated Iran as a "Country of Particular Concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act for particularly severe violations of religious freedom.
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10 Ways We Unintentionally Make Singles Feel Invisible in the Church
By Brenda Rodgers, This content first appeared on iBelieve.com and is used here with permission. To view the original visit: https://www.ibelieve.com/relationships/10-ways-we-unintentionally-make-singles-feel-invisible-in-the-church.html
I dreaded Sunday; it was my least favorite day of the week. I went to church, but not Bible study because there wasn't a class for me. I sat on the pew alone watching married couples in front of me holding hands. Then I quietly slipped out. After all, I was single.
I was most aware of my singleness when I went to church on Sunday mornings. It was like a sign hung from my neck, tagging me as someone to treat with kid-gloves or to not engage at all.
That was about 10 years ago, and since then, there has been more conversation about singleness in the church. This is good. However, we need to keep this topic in the front of our minds or else we'll miss an entire group of people who need discipling and shepherding just as much as anyone else.
Here are 10 ways we unintentionally make singles feel invisible in the church:
Photo Credit: Unsplash/Palon Youth
1. Believe They Have Ulterior Motives
After a training session on serving in the children's ministry, I went up to the male speaker to ask a question about what he was teaching us. He was fidgety and short with his answers – obviously uncomfortable. After that awkward interaction, I thought more about it, wondering why he acted that way. Then it hit me – I was a single woman talking to a married man. The room was filled with people, and my question was about the training he presented, but he may have seen me as someone with ulterior motives.
There's no doubt that Christian men and women, single and married, need to be vigilant of snares from the enemy. He is prowling around like a lion waiting to kill, steal, and destroy our families, ministries, and callings. It is prudent and wise to treat interactions with the opposite sex, married or single, differently so that Satan does not get a foothold. However, we cannot operate under the fear that single people always have an ulterior motive when talking to someone of the opposite sex. Single people are not out to find a spouse or steal a spouse no matter the cost. We shouldn't treat them as if they are.
Photo Credit: Unsplash/Michael Mims
2. Don't Include Them in Sermon Examples
I've sat in church listening to sermons and thought, "What about the people who are single?" I used to be one of those people, and it was disheartening to hear a sermon where the emphasis of all life's struggles centered around being a spouse and parent. When we ignore an entire group of people in our congregations, it shows that we do not see them or understand them.
Pastors and other church leaders, along with the congregation, should make understanding the needs of singles a priority so that they can address their needs in sermons and in other places within the church. This is how we love them. The opportunity is before us to disciple people before they are married so that, by God's grace, they make wise and healthy decisions and build strong marriages and families in the future. To ignore this group of people is a missed opportunity.
Plus, single people can teach married people so much about modern culture that they may not realize in the context of marriage and family. I have found for myself that family life creates a sort of bubble where I become sheltered from issues in the world. Singles can help pop that bubble.
Photo Credit: Unsplash/Avel Chuklanov
3. Don't Talk to Them Like Adults
Once at a social event, I was the only single woman. As I stood with a group of the women, one of them declared, "We really shouldn't be talking about this with Brenda here." Humiliation covered my face. She put me in a different category and made me feel like a child. The best way to understand singles is to befriend them not out of pity or even mentorship, but out of genuine desire for their friendship. Just treat them like you would any other adult and treat their friendship like any other friendship.
Photo Credit: Unsplash/Gabriel Ecraela
4. Convey the Message that Singleness is a Sin
The message that singleness is a sin is subtle, but it's there. I believe culture has a lot to do with this. The truth is people are waiting longer to get married for self-focused reasons - to travel, get advanced degrees, move up in a career, accumulate wealth, and enjoy the freedom of singleness. However, rushing into marriage or marrying an unequally yoked person can be an act of disobedience just as much as staying single for selfish reasons. Remember, the Bible tells us that people should not be unequally yoked (2 Corinthians 6:14).
The decision to marry or stay single is a matter of the heart. I don't mean the romantic heart, but your heart relationship with Jesus. It's an act of obedience. An act of worship. An act of service. A person's decision to marry is uniquely personal. It will look different as God leads people differently.
The state of singleness itself is not sinful. It does not inherently mean that a person is selfish or wants to date around or sow their oats. After all, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 7:38 that a person who stays single does even better than a person who marries.
Photo Credit: Unsplash
5. Believe They are Doing Something Wrong or Something is Wrong with Them
People make the most inappropriate statements to single people.
"Why are you still single?"
"Are you dating anyone yet?"
"That biological clock is ticking!"
"You're too pretty to be single!"
"When are you going to get married?"
"Anyone would be lucky to have you."
"You can't be too picky!"
"They're not going to come knocking at your door!"
Comments like these convey the message that something needs to be done. There's a problem to fix, and the single person needs to figure it out and fix it. For someone who is single, and especially someone who is single but wants to be married, these comments are discouraging. Singleness isn't a problem. It's a calling, possibly a seasonal calling, and it's a gift.
6. Assume They are Involved in Sexual Sin
I get it. According to statistics, most singles, even Christian singles in a church congregation, are engaging in premarital sex. However, when we assume that, for instance, a 30-year-old who has been dating someone for a year has to be involved in premarital sex, we diminish the power of the Holy Spirit and what the Word of God tells us.
It is possible to date someone without having sex with them. Is it hard and does it get harder the longer you date? Of course. But we shouldn't charge singles with a sin we assume upon them because of their singleness.
7. Convey the Message that Sanctification Only Comes Through Marriage
We have a tendency in the Western church to put these "rules" around our relationship with God and even put callings He established for us above our relationship with Him. For example, marriage and parenthood are often thought of as the highest callings, when in fact this is nowhere in the Bible. Are they high callings? Yes, extremely high callings. However, singleness is also an extremely high calling.
Our highest calling is to glorify God in all that we say or do (Colossians 3:17) and through this, He wants to sanctify us. Sanctification does not come through one path. It is a process regardless of our season of life.
8. Don't Allow Them to Lead
Singleness does not equal irresponsibility. It also doesn't mean that a person hasn't fully grown up. So it shouldn't limit a person in leadership opportunities in the church. If anything, single people may be in a position to devote more focused attention on leadership roles depending on their other responsibilities. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 7:32, "The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord." The calling of single people is to seek to please the Lord without distraction. Leadership service is a calling for those who are single.
Photo Credit: Unsplash/Mehrdad Haghighi
9. Group Them with the Wrong Age Group
There's nothing worse to be 28 years old and put in a group with college-aged singles or singles in their 50’s, but this happened to me many times when I was single. Often there's not enough singles to make a "singles group," but there doesn't have to be a group just for singles. Single people want to be included with people their own age regardless of their season in life. It's a misconception that single people do not want to interact with family life. This is a missed part of their lives and often welcomed. And on the other side, children especially often benefit from having other adults in their lives.
Photo Credit: Unsplash/Vladislav Nikonov
10. Don't Serve Them
The bottom line is that in general, we're not serving singles well. One of the biggest struggles in singleness is that there's not the support you'd have from a spouse. Many singles do not live close to their parents, siblings, or other family members. They need us to serve them in practical ways but also by befriending them and loving them well. The best way we can serve singles is by treating their lives with the same honor we treat other people's.
Brenda Rodgers considers herself a “recovering single” after years as a single woman chasing after marriage instead of chasing after Jesus. Now her passion is to mentor young women to live purposefully and grow in their relationship with God and others. Brenda has been married for five years to a heart transplant hero and is the mom of a toddler girl miracle. She is also the author of the eBook, Fall for Him: 25 Challenges from a Recovering Single. You can also read more on Brenda’s blog, www.TripleBraidedLife.com and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
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Tag: Phil Loden
But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big b…
But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.
We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.
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September 29, 2011 / annotationnation / 5 Comments
book by Garth Stein
“To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live…When I am a person, that is how I will live my life.”
~ Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain (160)
Enzo is a dog; a dog, like any other – without a dexterous tongue or opposable thumbs. But he witnesses his life with the mind and intentions of a person. He knows that dogs are the last incarnation of souls before they become human, and he is ready – eager, even – to move into his next incarnation. But, his soul, as a dog, has a purpose and a lot left to learn, as is evidenced by one of the most touching, charming contemporary stories. Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants, wrote of The Art of Racing in the Rain, “[This story] has everything: love, tragedy, redemption, danger, and – most especially – the canine narrator Enzo. This old soul of a dog has much to teach us about being human. I loved this book” (from “Praise for The Art of Racing in the Rain” preceding the text). Gruen’s list of included elements in the book is dead on, though it’s her noting of what Enzo’s soul has to teach us that really hits the nail on the head: much.
The story opens in Enzo’s voice letting us know that, while he can’t speak, he can communicate. And, by the end of the first chapter, his personality and perception of humanity is clear and engaging, and already offering some foresight into the story and its tone.
“I close my eyes and listen vaguely in a half sleep as he does the things he does before he sleeps each night. Brushing and squirting and splashing. So many things. People and their rituals. They cling to things so hard sometimes” (8).
Stein’s created a terrifically reliable narrator in Enzo. He is clear on what he knows, thinks, doesn’t know, or confuses him. The typical unreliable nature of a first-person (or, dog) account goes out the window as Enzo honestly shares his witness and role in the Swift family’s life. And he sets up his story by evaluating himself and his species. “I like to think I came from a determined gene pool” (11). Stein’s given Enzo charge of the Swift family from just before its inception throughout an unimaginable tragedy. Denny, Enzo’s master, is a semi-professional racecar driver. Stein uses Denny’s character, his and Enzo’s bond,
“I laid my head on his leg and looked up at him.
“Sometimes I think you actually understand me,” he said. “It’s like there’s a person inside there. Like you know everything.”
I do, I said to myself. I do” (61).
and Enzo’s love of racing as a way to deliver metaphor after metaphor for life and the human (or dog) experience. “But I am a racer at heart, and a racer will never let something that has already happened affect what is happening now” (75).
Stein’s success in the story lies in the true voice of Enzo and his ability to honestly and emotionally recant his experience and understanding of his place and his (and the Swift family’s) life. Language (and lack of) is the means, not the barrier, for a soul that can’t talk. “The human language, as precise as it is with its thousands of words, can still be so wonderfully vague” (288). Throughout the narrative, Enzo’s character and voice drive the story; at breakneck speeds and recovery paces, the dog works the reader through some of the most poignant examples of what it is to live, and how to prepare for what comes next.
Perhaps Stein’s greatest achievement in The Art of Racing in the Rain is Enzo’s reconciling of life as a racecar driver at heart, especially life when it comes in unexpected and derailing ways:
“A driver must have faith. In his talent, judgment, the judgment of those around him…himself…
As the gravel trap rushes at him, the driver must make decisions that will impact his race, his future…What is to be done?
The driver must accept his fate. He must accept the fact that mistakes have been made. Misjudgments. Poor decisions. A confluence of circumstances has landed him in this position. A driver must accept it all and be willing to pay the price for it. He must go off-track.
…At this moment, a driver feels tremendous crisis. He must get back on the gas. He must get back on the track.
…A winner, a champion, will accept his fate. He will continue with his wheels in the dirt. He will do his best to maintain his line and gradually get himself back on the track when it is safe to do so. Yes, he loses a few places in the race. Yes, he is at a disadvantage. But he is still racing. He is still alive.
The race is long. It is better to drive within oneself and finish the race behind others that it is to drive to hard and crash” (290-291).
With an impassioned narrator, wit, and sensitivity, Stein manages a story arc that is both smooth and satisfying, heart-warming and heart-wrenching. And by the end of the story, the reader is left asking the same question Enzo is left asking: “Have I squandered my dogness? Have I forsaken my nature for my desires? Have I made a mistake by anticipating my future and shunning my present” (315)? The answer for Enzo is as elusive as it is for anyone. But it’s also not what matters most. What matters most is understanding and living the truth: “The car goes where they eyes go” (321).
Of course, writers must the same dogged pursuit of answering those questions, and Stein’s success for other writers is the example of giving the story direction that’s worth following. Stylistically and structural, the story is sound. But it’s in the creation of the story’s narrator, the voice of Enzo that Stein accomplished something to which all writer’s aspire – an authentic and original voice, a sympathetic heart, a truly created and wholly pure, wholly winning protagonist. For entertainment’s sake, it would be foolish for any reader to pass The Art of Racing in the Rain. For writers hoping to one day write that one, true, open-hearted character, there are few examples out there that demonstrate it as well, as uncontrived, and as warmly.
The Corrections
September 2, 2011 September 2, 2011 / annotationnation / Leave a comment
book by Jonathan Franzen
annotation by Talya Jankovits
It started off as a crush. I was feeling flustered and warm with each rich sentence, his detailed imagery, the way sound greeted me through my eyes and I discovered that a stack of bills could be made interesting. At the same time, I also found myself rolling my eyes and skimming eagerly to reach the next relevant scene or narrative. Jonathan Franzen’s The Correctionsis an exhausting work of fiction that left me both panting and out of breath with want for more as well as feeling condescended to and abused. I was in turmoil reading this novel; was I in love or was I being driven mad? I decided it was okay to feel both.
My Infatuation:
Franzen’s novel is a story without a story. A funny thing happened while reading. I kept wondering when it was all going to come together and at first I was disappointed to find out it never actually comes together but still works brilliantly. Franzen takes a family of five, two aging parents, and three adult children and reveals the stories of these characters’ lives through the ultimate, larger but mostly irrelevant story of a quickly ailing and demented father who meets his end by the final chapter of the book.
Recently, I am finding myself drawn to novels, short stories or creative pieces that don’t have an ultimate goal of selling you on some sort of convoluted and dizzying plot, but find the story in the mundane, the every day, life as we know it. (Granted there were some grand elements, but when you’re talking about a novel that is close to 600 pages, 40-80 pages of grandeur is really not much to talk about.) This fiction was not fiction at all. I felt as if somewhere, someone is living one of these lives. They were so real, so devastatingly flawed, a smorgasbord of richly textured humanity. I almost felt a part of this dysfunctional group of fictive genes.Franzen paid attention to the nuances that don’t usually get attention and made a novel of it, a particularly lengthy novel of it.
From the first sentence, I knew I was in for a writing treat. Franzen is so detailed that you can hardly go more than a few sentences without being greeted by a beautiful image, a clever metaphor or a breathtaking string of adjectives and nouns. Just after reading a few pages I wanted to run to my own novel and find ways to make it “prettier” to enhance my images and descriptions, to pay attention to the sound of a screeching tire or the color of a mole on an elbow. I was so driven to write after reading that I did. I’m pretty sure that’s enough in it of itself to assert a bit of an infatuation. But infatuation is usually fickle.
My Contempt:
If I had to read one page more of this novel I would have thrown this book in the dishwasher, cleaned it up and made Franzen wash his mouth out with soap. About a quarter of the way through this book, I began to feel like I was out on a date with a gorgeous guy who was smart and funny, but by the time the appetizer arrives I realize he is dominating the conversation to hear himself talk about and assert his own cultured, well rounded intellect and opinion on just about anything. Franzen is a great writer, but at times I felt that entire scenes were inserted totally unnecessarily; I began to feel taken advantage of, as if Franzen created strikingly different characters only in order to assert himself in all things. The character of Chip seemed to be invented purely for Franzen’s philosophical appetite. I felt drained reading hypothetical conversations between Chip and his grad students that went on for pages discussing the ethical responsibilities in mass media commercialism. Greg was an opportunity to explore stocks and business (where I had to read through an entire conference on an imaginary drug with irrelevant characters participating in banter with the drug reps,) Denise was a field day for sexual appetite and food connoisseurship and Aurthur became less of a character and more of an excuse to explore scatological images. Reading this novel was like having my eyes held open and being force fed information. Now, either this actually happened – characters were created to feed Franzen’s frantic appetite for self assertion – or something went terribly wrong during editing.
I am currently in the revision stage of my novel and have gone through multiple drafts and something that comes up frequently is finding irrelevant scenes or lengthy narratives that don’t contribute to the characters, the plot or my readers need to relate to the characters and the plot. What frustrated me in Franzen’s novel is that I felt I was reading lengthy narrative that didn’t at all enhance the reading experience for me and left me feeling drained, so drained that all the beautiful writing I was so excited about at first began to fade before me and leave only the constant barrage of information. My lesson – don’t overload, everything in moderation. Even the luscious writing began to become too much.
My Compromise:
I thought annotating the novel would help me gain clarity on my perspective and writerly gains or losses, but I’m still as torn as before. There will be a second date – I will read Franzen again, to feed my need for glitzy, detailed writing but I will also remind myself during my revision process of the importance of staying honest to my characters and stories, small or great, and staying committed to making sure every page of my novel matters. Because at the end of a novel, its not how much you’ve written or how much you know, but how well you know what you write.
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Home Sports Clayton Kershaw Wife, Age, Height, Net Worth, Children, Other Facts
Clayton Kershaw Wife, Age, Height, Net Worth, Children, Other Facts
Put at par, Basketball, Football, and Baseball are America’s most cherished sports, and if you find yourself at the fore of any of these games, then celebrity-status is inevitable. One of those enjoying that is Clayton Kershaw, a professional baseball pitcher playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball (MLB). Fresh from high school, Kershaw joined the Dodgers during the 2006 draft as one of the most promising prospects of the year. His left-handed starting pitches has given him an advantage in major Baseball leagues since 2008.
What’s more, Kershaw has received three Cy Young Awards and the Most Valuable Player Award for the 2014 National League. Plus, he’s been listed as one of the best pitchers in baseball in the US. Here are a few interesting details you probably didn’t know about Clayton Kershaw.
Clayton Kershaw’s Biography, Age
Clayton Kershaw was born— Clayton Edward Kershaw— in Dallas, Texas, on March 19, 1988, to parents, Christopher George and Marianne Kershaw. However, a ten-year-old Kershaw watched his parent’s marriage cave-in to divorce. And he had to live with his mother for the most part of his childhood. Growing up, Kershaw attended Highland Park High School and played on the school’s baseball team and also the centre for Detroit Lions quarterback on the varsity football team. Kershaw also played as a pitcher for America’s Baseball’s Junior National Team in the Pan American Championship.
Through much grit and hard work, Kershaw became one of the most promising high school pitchers in 2006, when he struck a 13–0 record with an earned run average (ERA) of 0.77, and logged 139 strikeouts in 64 innings pitched. USA Today named Kershaw as “High School Baseball Player of the Year”, and the Gatorade National Player of the Year for baseball. The twenty-year-old was selected by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 2006 draft— he was the seventh overall pick in that year’s draft. Although he had agreed to a scholarship with Texas A&M University, he had to turn it down to sign up with the Dodgers. The agreement had a signing bonus of over $2.3 million. Until 2010, it was the largest bonus to any Dodgers draft pick.
Clayton Kershaw’s Career
Kershaw got his start playing for Gulf Coast League (GCL) Dodgers where he kept the records as one of the best prospects of the GCL. The following year, he was promoted to the Great Lakes Loons. That year, he played in the Midwest League All-Star Game as well as the All-Star Futures Game. Only a few months later, Kershaw got another big move to the Double-A Jacksonville Suns in the Southern League. There, his incredible performance made him one of the top prospects in the Dodgers organization.
In May 2008, Clayton Kershaw debuted with the Dodgers in a match against the St. Louis Cardinals. The talented player was reportedly the youngest in the MLB, a stint he maintained into 2009. In 2009, Kershaw kicked off the season playing against the St. Louis Cardinals in that year’s National League Division Series (NLDS). By the end of the 2010 season, Kershaw’s performance had earned him a spot as the Opening Day Starter for the 2011 season. Quite a big deal for a player his age.
In 2011, Clayton Kershaw became the recipient of several awards and recognitions, including the 2011 Players Choice Award for “Most Outstanding National League pitcher.” What’s more? He also became the first Dodger to win the National League’s pitching Triple Crown since 1966; when it was last received by Sandy Koufax. In 2017, Clayton Kershaw received the Warren Spahn Award as the Best left-handed pitcher in MLB for the fourth time. That same year, he was selected for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. It would be the seventh consecutive time since 2011 and the second highest record in the Dodger’s history.
As of 2019, sources reveal Clayton Kershaw’s actual net worth to be $60 million. However, his annual salary has varied over the years, from $390,000 in 2008 to $26 million in 2016. Much of which comes from his baseball career and other endorsement deals. In November 2018, Kershaw signed a three-year $93 million extension with the Dodgers.
Wife and Children
Clayton Kershaw and his daughter, Cali Ann, and son, Charley Clayton.
Clayton Kershaw has been married to his high school sweetheart, Ellen Melson, since December 4, 2010. Ellen attended Texas A&M, the very school whose scholarship offer Kershaw had turned down years earlier, to go play for the LA Dodgers. After dating seven years, they were married in a wedding ceremony held at the Highland Park Presbyterian Church and a grand reception at Royal Oaks Country Club in their home city of Dallas. Together, they have Two children; Cali Ann (b. January 23, 2015) and Charley Clayton (b. November 19, 2016).
Height and Other Facts About Clayton Kershaw
Height and Body Measurement
Now over thirty, Kershaw continues to maintain that sturdy, muscular build. He stands 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 meters) tall and weighs 228 pounds (100 kg). Despite the weight, this guy throws himself up like a paper. He has brown hair and dark-brown eyes.
See also: Jose Altuv- Bio, Wife, Family, Height, Weight, Salary, Net Worth, Age, Wiki
As a devout Christian and a member of the Methodist church, Clayton Kershaw is deeply spiritual. In 2012, Kershaw and his wife, Ellen, built an orphanage home, Hope’s Home, in Zambia’s capital city, Lusaka. In 2013, the couple launched a yearly charity ping pong tournament, “Ping Pong 4 Purpose.” The goal is to raise funds for many humanitarian projects. In January of 2012, they also co-wrote a book, Arise: Live Out Your Faith and Dreams on Whatever Field You Find Yourself. It diaries the couple’s convictions as Christians and humanitarians.
Tim Duncan Wife, Girlfriend, Age, Height, Net Worth, Kids, Is He Gay?
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‘I do not know how to carry myself with confidence when I go out into the world. Any sense of self I have is often shattered within minutes’ … Roxane Gay. Photograph: Jennifer Silverberg/The Guardian
Roxane Gay: ‘Public discourse rarely allows for nuance. And see where that’s gotten us’
The writer whose radical honesty has won fans across the globe talks about writing as a cry for help, using books to fight racism and why she rejects ‘identity politics’
Aida Edemariam
Thu 27 Dec 2018 03.59 EST
There is a story in Roxane Gay’s second collection of short fiction, Difficult Women, in which a big, strong man who works in a quarry goes for a walk on the beach and, seeing an extra glint in the sand, discovers a woman made of glass. He falls in love, marries her, they have a glass child. At meals, he marvels, watching the food travel through their bodies. When he holds her he does so gently, and not just because he must. A quirk of nature – that lightning striking sand can make glass – becomes an inspired vehicle for preoccupations that recur throughout Gay’s work: that love means not being seen through, but seen, and heard for yourself; that bodies are both breakable and a possible source of redemption.
Gay’s stories often take the form of fable although, on her first visit to London, she is quick to reject that as any appeal to universality. “In fact, it’s the opposite,” she says. “As a black woman, as a black queer woman, specificity is incredibly important, because diverse experiences are rarely seen in literature.” She agrees that fairytale “informs all of my fiction work” – there is the woman married to an identical twin whose brother takes turns coming to her bed in the belief she doesn’t notice, or the woman who is also a knife, or the miner so despairing of his life underground that he projects himself into the sun and puts it out – “because in the original fairytales there’s oftentimes a lot of suffering before you get to any kind of resolution or solace”. But details ground the stories, in the rural midwest, for example, or a gated community in Florida, or a strip club in Baltimore. “What we tend to forget is that we all deal with a lot of the same things,” she says. “We all deal with complicated relationships, with children, with the loss of children, with love and suffering. We have a lot in common, and I do think literature allows us to have some sort of shared empathy.”
Since Gay arrived in London she has appeared at the Royal Festival Hall in front of an audience of 1,800 and tweeted her first impressions of the city to her 539,000 Twitter followers. “Still buzzing from seeing Roxane Gay speak last night at @southbankcentre,” one fan tweeted. “She has a unique capacity to be inspirational yet completely relatable. I am thankful for her.” They are drawn by her voice – direct, often funny, sometimes angry, always thoughtful – and her radical candidness about her own life and struggles, on display in her breakthrough collection of essays, Bad Feminist, as well as her memoir, Hunger, and her fiction. And they come out to bat for her when she feels impugned, especially by the press – so much so that they feel like invisible, judging witnesses to our conversation, conducted at the flashy riverfront offices of Gay’s UK publisher.
Haitian connection … the stories in Roxane Gay’s collection Ayiti are drenched in a physical sense of the place.Photograph: John Seaton Callahan/Getty Images
Meeting her is thus already overdetermined, and made more complicated by a presence that seems, on this cold bright morning, not much like the writing voice: Gay makes little eye contact. She waits for the tape to be turned on and answers questions dutifully. At the same time I know, from Twitter, that jetlag and newness have caused two days of insomnia. And I should have been prepared, from her writing, for the frequent split between a disembodied freedom on the page and an unease in the world; the way in which her fame and imposing 1.9 metres (6ft 3in) frame are undercut, as she put it in a recent essay about her decision to have weight-loss surgery, by the fact that “the moment I step outside the safety of my home, I hate how visible I am, how people treat me, how they stare and comment both loudly and under their breath … I do not know how to carry myself with confidence when I go out into the world. Any sense of self I have is often shattered within minutes, and then I am all insecurities and fears, wishing myself into a more socially acceptable form.”
Gay is the oldest of three children born to Haitian parents who arrived in the US when they were still in their teens. “Everything good and strong about me starts with my parents,” as Gay puts it in Hunger, her 2017 “Memoir of (My) Body”. Her father was a successful and eventually very well off civil engineer, and her mother a home-maker. They moved a lot for his work, but spent summers in Haiti, and the stories in Gay’s first collection, Ayiti (2011), are drenched both in a physical sense of that country, and of the small humiliations of recent immigrants. Gay had written stories since she was tiny, drawing villages on napkins and describing the inhabitants; she read and read – Little House on the Prairie, Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley High stories. She was “respectful, studious, hardworking”. They went to church, she excelled at school. She was a good Haitian daughter.
Gay is fascinating on the “goodness” of girls – as a societal requirement, as an often impossible standard; on how often being good is a matter of being “one who knows how to play by the rules and cares to be seen to be playing by the rules”; who knows how to be liked. (Philip Roth novels? Lauded, yet full of unlikable men, she has written. Woe betide the female novelist who tries the same thing.) Above all, on goodness as vulnerability, not least because she knows, in the most visceral way possible, what that can mean. One day, when she was 12, a handsome classmate took her on a bike ride to an abandoned shack in the woods where a pack of other boys, fuelled by drink, were waiting. “There is a before and an after,” she writes, in Hunger. “In the after I was broken, shattered, and silent.”
At Yale, she was eating compulsively, defending herself by building her body into an impregnable fortress
She returned home, where she performed “good”, but could not shut the experience away. In high school, she says now, “I wrote a series of truly insane stories. Always about young girls being violated in terrible ways. It was a cry for help.” Thankfully, she was heard by a teacher who both encouraged her to keep writing and walked her over to a counsellor. The experience still comes out in her stories, her essays, in her bestselling 2014 novel, An Untamed State; vulnerabilities and terrible violations played through different scenarios, with different endings: husbands gentle, loving, preternaturally understanding; perpetrators found and jailed (which did not happen for her).
She got into nearly every Ivy League college she applied for (and cried, overhearing her acceptance at Yale instantly dismissed by a classmate as affirmative action). She was also eating, compulsively, defending herself by building her body into an impregnable fortress that at its largest, she says in Hunger, weighed 577lbs (262kg). After a year she dropped out of Yale, unable to cope. She had met an older man on the internet, and went to be with him. For a year, until her parents tracked her down, she supported herself, working with other “lost girls” on phone sex lines, finding a community that accepted and understood her, beginning to blog, in those very early days of the internet. She was beginning, too, the long discovery that would sustain her, that “through writing, I was, finally, able to get respect for the content of my character”.
Watch Roxane Gay Ted talk: Confessions of a Bad Feminist
It is hard to read the abuse Gay gets for her size. If there is anything useful in the experience it is, she has said, in the way it engenders empathy, for other lives, for difficult lives, for different lives. Reading, she says now, does the same – fiction mostly, but also non-fiction, “because you just think, ‘Oh my gosh, imagine if that were my life, imagine if that were my children, how would I feel?’ A lot of times when we see narrow-mindedness, when we see racism, when we see xenophobia, these are people who are not well read.” Perhaps we could prescribe fiction classes – “that would be great – give each and every racist in the world a syllabus. Beloved by Toni Morrison. Tony Judt on world war two.” As for herself, “I read everything. The No 1 thing I tell my students” – until this autumn, when she announced she was quitting, she taught at Purdue University, Indiana – “is read diversely. And I’m not talking about demographics, though that’s part of it. Aesthetic diversity, genre diversity. It matters because it just makes us better informed, and it protects us from our worst instincts.”
She reserves a particular ire for those who read only literary fiction. “Oh, but it exactly applies to them. Anybody who tells me, ‘I only read literary fiction,’ I’m just like, ‘Well, you’re an asshole. What are we going to talk about?’ Literary fiction – a lot of it’s not that good! I read good books. And they may not be the best written, but they tell a really good story. My favourite thing to read is spy thrillers, which I just love. I also read romance novels, because they are fun, and they are sweet, and they’ve got a happy ending, most of the time. The world is shit, so – I need that happy ending.”
When it comes to literary writers, Gay is drawn to those who have an acute social eye – Edith Wharton in The House of Mirth, Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy (“It’s not a perfect novel, but it’s a perfect political novel, and it just showed me what you can accomplish with fiction”), Zadie Smith’s NW. Gay writes the way she reads, she says, deliberately moving from genre to genre – short stories, a novel, essays, Marvel comics, movies and TV (she is adapting stories from Difficult Women for a TV anthology, and one has been optioned for a feature film). It is a concerted and self-aware bid not to be pigeonholed in any way.
Not that it stops people from trying. Having written difficult, revealing things about herself, Gay largely refuses to discuss them further in interviews. “We rarely see men, even when they write memoir, having to bare themselves even further to get attention,” she says. Nor are they assumed to be an authority only on the self. “When a lot of women try to write straight non-fiction, people say: ‘Where’s the personal? Why aren’t you putting yourself into it?’” She is wonderfully cutting in Ayiti about the ways in which western readers insist on reading only through race, or background, requiring of writers from elsewhere a representation (of entire countries, or classes of people) that would never be required of a white man – and at the same time refusing to see them as capable of anything beyond that. “Yeah. People tend to have a very singular narrative of who someone is, and so people of colour, women of colour, queer people, are only expected to write about identity-based things, and the struggles of that identity. And when you write a narrative that challenges people’s expectations of who you are and your subject’s position, then all of a sudden they get confused and think, ‘This isn’t realistic,’ because they don’t understand that we contain multitudes.”
She rejects the very phrase “identity politics”: “It’s used like a weapon. What it means is, ‘I don’t want to think about your concerns. I don’t want to have to extend my empathy.’” Instead, she argues, everyone, on all sides, has to try to understand and accept complication, fight against dichotomies, essentialism. “We have to think with nuance, and unfortunately public discourse rarely allows for nuance. And see where that has gotten us.”
Roxane Gay: meet the bad feminist
If she rejects a responsibility to represent, she does take, very seriously, a responsibility to make opportunities for others like her. “Because oftentimes I’m the first or the only – so I cannot be the last.” So she invites younger, up-and-coming writers on stage with her, or writes “specific things into my contracts, like you have to hire a black publicist. To make sure that publishing houses start to diversify.”
She has written about how rarely writers of colour get to speak at all – finding, for instance, that in 2012, 90% of the books reviewed in the New York Times were by white writers. Next year, her book of writing advice called, simply, How to Be Heard, will be published. Who does she want to hear her? Who does she write for? “I write the kinds of things I want to see in the world, that I would love to read. So, yeah – I write for myself”
• To order Roxane Gay’s Ayiti for £11.43 (RRP £12.99, Corsair) or Hunger for £7.91 (RRP £8.99, Corsair) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
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After less playing time, senior hopes for ‘lasting impact’
Published August 31, 2017 June 22, 2019 by AustinAmpeloquio in Articles, Sports, The Temple News
CLICK HERE to view this article in its native format.
When a player suddenly receives less playing time, it usually has to do with that player’s inability to perform well during games. For Janine Simmons, that was not the case.
Simmons started 28 matches and played in 99 sets as a sophomore in 2015. The 6-foot-1-inch middle blocker ranked second on the team with 86 blocks that year, but the following season she saw significantly less playing time. Last year as a junior, Simmons played in just 17 matches and participated in 45 sets.
The Owls added two transfers before the 2016 season, including middle blocker Iva Deak. She played in 26 matches and 92 sets during her sophomore season, finishing third on the team in blocks. Eight different Owls also entered last season having played at least 100 sets at the Division I level.
“We’ve had new people come on to the team and contribute in different ways,” Simmons said. “We tried to look at different lineups, seeing who was the best fit for which particular match. There were opponents where I wasn’t really the best option, so in that case, someone else was going to go in and play.”
“It’s not that she didn’t become a better player, she actually became a better player,” coach Bakeer Ganesharatnam said. “But the team itself got better as a well.”
The Owls opened their season last weekend. Simmons’ 53.8 percent attack rate led the team in its win against Northeastern University on Friday. She led Temple with five blocks in Saturday’s loss to the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and hit 54.5 percent in Temple’s loss to the University of Maryland Saturday night.
Though Simmons played less in 2016, the team performed well against better competition compared to 2015. Last season, the Owls finished with a 22-8 record and placed 47th in the Ratings Percentage Index rankings, 25 spots better than their No. 72 in 2015.
Despite the lesser role, Simmons still felt like an effective player even while she was not on the court. Instead of worrying about playing time, Simmons made the best of her situation and stayed involved on the sidelines by motivating her teammates. In the weeks leading up to the 2017 season, Simmons continued to put the team first by helping the team’s three freshmen get acclimated to the college lifestyle.
Ganesharatnam acknowledged how valuable a player like Simmons is, and said she “is very significant on the court and even off the court as well.”
Four players are competing for two starting spots at middle blocker, but each of them are expected to contribute this season. Simmons, along with Deak, junior Carla Guennewig and freshman Baleigh Jean-Philippe will share the responsibility at middle blocker throughout Temple’s 29-match schedule.
Ganesharatnam said Simmons is “going to get her fair share of playing time.” She plans on making an abiding impression on the program for her senior season, but will embrace whatever role is given to her this year.
“I would love to go and play and do well, and be ranked as far as blocking again because that’s something that I feel I excel in,” Simmons said. “But I really just want to make some sort of a lasting impact.”
AustinAmpeloquio
is a freelance journalist, filmmaker, videographer and photographer based in the United States.
Tags: Athletics, Austin Ampeloquio, Division I, NCAA, NCAA Division I, Sports, TEMPLE UNIVERSITY, Temple Volleyball, Volleyball, Women's Sports
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Y. and Zhu, R. and Zotov, N. and Zucker, M. and Zweizig, J. and Weinstein, Alan J. (2005) Search for gravitational waves from primordial black hole binary coalescences in the galactic halo. Physical Review D, 72 (8). Art. No. 082002. ISSN 0556-2821. http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:ABBprd05c
Use this Persistent URL to link to this item: http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:ABBprd05c
We use data from the second science run of the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors to search for the gravitational waves from primordial black hole binary coalescence with component masses in the range 0.2–1.0M☉. The analysis requires a signal to be found in the data from both LIGO observatories, according to a set of coincidence criteria. No inspiral signals were found. Assuming a spherical halo with core radius 5 kpc extending to 50 kpc containing nonspinning black holes with masses in the range 0.2–1.0M☉, we place an observational upper limit on the rate of primordial black hole coalescence of 63 per year per Milky Way halo (MWH) with 90% confidence.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.72.082002 DOI Article
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.72.082002 Publisher Article
Adhikari, Rana X. 0000-0002-5731-5076
Billingsley, G. 0000-0002-4141-2744
Kalogera, V. 0000-0001-9236-5469
Kozak, D. 0000-0003-3118-8950
Libbrecht, K. 0000-0002-8744-3298
Quetschke, V. 0000-0002-8012-4868
Tanner, D. B. 0000-0003-1940-4710
Vallisneri, M. 0000-0002-4162-0033
Williams, R. 0000-0002-9145-8580
Zucker, M. 0000-0002-2544-1596
Zweizig, J. 0000-0002-1521-3397
Weinstein, Alan J. 0000-0002-0928-6784
© 2005 American Physical Society. Received 30 May 2005; published 25 October 2005. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the United States National Science Foundation for the construction and operation of the LIGO Laboratory and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society, and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction and operation of the GEO600 detector. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of the research by these agencies and by the Australian Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, the Department of Science and Technology of India, the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Research Corporation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
TAPIR, LIGO
NSF UNSPECIFIED
Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) UNSPECIFIED
Max-Planck-Society UNSPECIFIED
State of Niedersachsen/Germany UNSPECIFIED
Australian Research Council UNSPECIFIED
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) UNSPECIFIED
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (India) UNSPECIFIED
Department of Science and Technology (India) UNSPECIFIED
Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (MEC) UNSPECIFIED
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation UNSPECIFIED
Leverhulme Trust UNSPECIFIED
David and Lucile Packard Foundation UNSPECIFIED
Research Corporation UNSPECIFIED
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation UNSPECIFIED
Issue or Number:
CaltechAUTHORS:ABBprd05c
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:ABBprd05c
Tony Diaz
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Português (Portuguese, Portugal)
you are here: home » Impact » Stories » Reflections from the President – June 2019
Click here to view/download a print version of this letter.
Dear AWR Friend,
“I’ll beat you if I want to!” yelled Maria’s husband. She stared at him in fear and disbelief. How could she tell anyone about her husband’s abuse? After all, he was the local Adventist pastor!
To add insult to injury, Maria discovered that in addition to beating her, he was having an affair. When this became known, he lost his job and abandoned Maria. Her heart became bitter, and once her husband walked out of their home, Maria walked out of the church vowing never to return.
Eventually, she met a wonderful man who truly loved her. Chuck was a well-respected ex-military professional who worked for the local police department in the narcotics division. They married and had two children. Life was good, and her troubles seemed behind her.
Then, the unthinkable happened. Their oldest son had just graduated from first grade, and friends and family were invited to the house after the ceremony to celebrate the happy occasion. As Maria and Chuck returned home, their car was suddenly ambushed. Gunfire erupted, and Chuck threw himself over Maria to protect her. Their car was riddled with more than 40 bullets, and when it was over, Chuck was dead.
The attack was in retaliation for a drug bust he had directed.
Maria’s life had been scarred by unthinkable tragedy. In utter despair, she chose to do something she would have never imagined.
Maria survived unscathed, and providentially, so did her children who had been riding with relatives in another car. But the loss of her husband left Maria heartbroken and in complete despair. Then her mother died.
This was too much. Her pain was unbearable, and in her anguish, she did the irrational. Out of her mind with grief, and prompted by a friend, she decided to try to contact her dead husband and her mother.
Maria received a cell phone message from her sister, Esther. It contained a link to a message of hope from AWR.
In denial of the truths she had once known, Maria lit some candles and tried the incantations she believed would bring back her loved ones. It appeared to her that she had succeeded, but the messages she received through her séances brought little comfort. Soon, depression settled in like a suffocating blanket. Life had little meaning for her other than taking care of her children’s basic needs.
Months passed, and one day Maria received a cell phone message from her older sister, Esther. It was an AWR360°/TMI sermon, and as Maria listened, she felt strangely comforted. From then on, every week she received a message, and began to look forward to them.
Then, one day Maria received a sermon on the state of the dead. She was away from home running errands, and as she listened to the presentation, a sense of horror overwhelmed her at what she had done. Feeling deeply convicted, she ran home, destroyed her worship candles and fell to her knees, begging God to forgive her for talking to demon spirits.
She had once known the truth, but in her grief and bitterness, she hadn’t cared. Now she was afraid it might be too late for her.
That Sabbath, Maria gathered up her courage and walked into a Seventh-day Adventist church with her children in tow. After that, they never missed a service and attended faithfully.
Meanwhile, Maria began sending the AWR360° presentations she received to friends and acquaintances. Many of them showed real interest and in turn forwarded the messages to others as well. Her contacts grew and grew as her ministry expanded. She was now an AWR360° ambassador, sharing evangelistic sermons with an ever-growing number of people.
Maria fell to her knees asking God to take away her hatred and bitterness. She asked God forgive those who had wronged her.
Then one day, Maria had a troubling thought. She tried to brush it off, but it persisted. She felt like God was telling her to forgive the people who had wronged her. There ensued a real struggle in her heart, because there was hatred there for the people who had killed Chuck, and a deep resentment toward her abusive first husband.
Finally, through her tears, she gave her hatred and bitterness to God. Then, she set out to find the people who for so long had consumed so many of her waking hours with thoughts of revenge. She wrote to each one, telling them she forgave them, and asking if they wanted to receive messages of hope. They all agreed—not one of them refused!
Today, Maria sends AWR’s precious truth-filled messages to not only the killers of her second husband, but to her first husband as well. They have all expressed amazement at her forgiving spirit, and are humbled that she is willing to send them these messages of hope.
Recently Maria’s ex-husband (the former pastor), called Pastor Samuel—whose voice is on some of AWR’s evangelistic sermons—and said, “Pastor, I have no idea what to say about these messages. I just want you to know that my ex-wife’s forgiveness and kindness have shocked me. I am now attending church again. Please pray for me.”
What a wonderful hope-filled testimony! “The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
Maria’s story is the “tip of the iceberg,” because in just two years, AWR’s cell phone evangelism has grown from zero participants to more than 500,000 people! What began in Africa with just one of our lay evangelists reaching out to the Dutch Afrikaans of Namibia (Transmissions, Winter 2017), has grown throughout the world with huge ripple effects!
Around the world, lay members are learning how to use their cell phones as evangelistic tools to reach their friends and neighbors.
Last year alone, we conducted cell phone evangelism training seminars in Africa, Europe, Latin America and in the USA—and requests keep coming!
The amazing thing is that tens of thousands of people who receive these messages are sending them—with just the click of a button—to their phone contacts, who in turn send them to theirs, so that it has gotten completely out of control—and I mean that in a good way! God’s Bible truths are being shared willy-nilly everywhere, unstoppable, and spreading like autumn leaves.
It has gotten so that we receive reports every week of someone walking into an Adventist church and requesting baptism. When asked, “Do you know what it means to be baptized?” They usually respond, “Yes! Someone has been sending me these wonderful messages on my cell phone through WhatsApp.”
In Namibia alone, as a result of the ripple effects of just one person—our lone lay evangelist—sharing these messages, more than 3,000 people have requested baptism!
If we have learned anything as we watch this phenomenon mushroom into a gigantic worldwide ongoing evangelistic series, it’s that the work is not ours, but God’s. He is taking what we do and running with it. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing—sharing this wonderful message—and God’s Spirit does the rest!
Ellen White wrote many years ago, “In this work all the angels of heaven are ready to cooperate. All the resources of heaven are at the command of those who are seeking to save the lost. Angels will help you to reach the most careless and the most hardened. And when one is brought back to God, all heaven is made glad; seraphs and cherubs touch their golden harps, and sing praises to God and the Lamb for their mercy and loving-kindness to the children of men” (Christ’s Object Lessons, 197).
What a privilege for you and me to work together with the angels in the greatest calling ever—the saving of souls! And we believe this is just the beginning, because one day soon, the earth will be lighted with the knowledge of truth, and every person on the planet will have a chance to make a decision and stand for Jesus.
Thank you for supporting the work of Adventist World Radio.
Together we can make a difference in the lives of people like Maria, and even in the most hardened hearts, because nothing is impossible with God.
Yours in the Blessed Hope,
Duane McKey
The incredible story of Maria (above) is just a sample of what is happening through AWR’s cell phone evangelism initiative. The audio sermons are being received and forwarded throughout the world to family and friends at lightning speed, so that their reach has become impossible for us to track—but not so for Heaven who keeps record of every sincere heart! Thank you for making such a significant difference in the lives of so many people. Jesus is coming soon, and that’s the best news of all!
Click here to check out our latest videos on YouTube.
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Help AWR make a significant impact on more lives all over the world
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Equip newly baptized believers in Zambia by supplying Bibles they can read in their own language.
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INTERLUDE intro: “getting from there to here” – Sound FX!
By Jonathan Lane July 6, 2019 July 14th, 2019 Fan Films
If you liked last week’s blog about the previs that went into the opening 19-second VFX sequence for my Axanar Universe fan film INTERLUDE, then you’re probably going to find this week’s blog just as fascinating.
But first, a reminder to please donate to our GoFundMe campaign (we’re nearly halfway to our $19.5K goal—just cracked $8.7K!)…
https://www.gofundme.com/interlude
Okay, let’s get this blog rolling!
I really feel like I’m walking with giants. This is totally my first rodeo. I’ve never executive produced a fan film (or any film) before. BUT!!! Through goodwill, good fortune, good nature, or just blind luck, I’ve managed to attract some incredibly skilled and experienced people to direct, produce, do casting, create visual FX, and take on other important tasks to make Interlude amazing. And isn’t that what fan films are all about—bringing together people who love Star Trek?
Three of those tasks were still required for completing the opening sequence for Interlude. My CGI guy, LEWIS ANDERSON (not his real name), had already produced this amazing VFX masterpiece…
But of course, there was no sound yet. We still needed music, sound effects, and someone to mix them together so that the music didn’t overwhelm the sounds of the engines/torpedoes/explosions…and also vice versa. These three tasks were the job of two of my “giants”: KEVIN CROXTON and MARK EDWARD LEWIS.
Kevin is a musical composer who has won an Emmy Award (and yes, I will say that over and over and over again!) and now teaches music in Arkansas. Last year, he wrote and directed the musical Star Trek fan film THE BUNNY INCIDENT starring his 4th and 5th grade music students.
Mark was the sound-mixer on PRELUDE TO AXANAR. He also did editing and sound-mixing on two episodes of Star Trek: New Voyages (plus dozens of other independent films and shorts), and will be doing the editing for the upcoming Axanar sequels. Mark has access to all of the original sound effects for Prelude, and he was happy to mix them into my fan film, too.
The only question now was kind of a chicken-and-egg one: who works on the opening sequence next? Does Kevin write the music first, or does Mark add the sound effects first?
Apparently, you can do it either way. But Kevin requested, if Mark didn’t mind, that Mark add the sound effects first. That way, Kevin could compose his music specifically to allow for more or less volume in certain places as the other noises rose and fell.
Mark was fine with that, so the plan now was for Mark to do the sound effects first, Kevin would then compose the music, and finally Mark would mix everything together for a perfect balance. And I would just get out of the way and let these two maestros work their magic. (Well, not entirely. But more on that next week.)
Before Mark tackled my project, however, he asked me for a favor. Granted, Mark was already doing me a MAJOR favor…as he usually gets paid the really big bucks, and CBS says I can’t pay anyone. So pretty much, whatever Mark was gonna ask me, the answer was almost certainly gonna be a “Yes!”
But it turned out to be not only a “yes” but a “totally, absolutely, 1,000% YES!!”
Mark wanted to work on my project LIVE (virtually) in front of his students, showing them the process of actually adding sound FX for a client’s project as he did it, and I was invited to watch, as well. Not only that, but Mark said I could post the video here on Fan Film Factor to share with all of you. HOW AWESOME IS THAT????
By the way, when I say “students,” I mean the members of his Cinema Sound Education and Resource Group. Joining is free and gets your foot in the door to access countless articles and purchase 85 hours of video tutorials, lectures, and secrets of the audio-for-film industry. Authored and presented by Mark Edward Lewis and produced by education provider MZed, Cinema Sound is committed to supporting independent media creatives by teaching skills that enhance their production so much that they can compete with Hollywood big-budgeted projects. If you’re into doing sound for your projects and want to take your skills to the next level, you should check them out. (Yep, free plug! But seriously, if you’re into audio production, check them out.)
Anyway, Mark wanted to teach his members through example, working on my project for two hours, live, explaining all the steps while using Adobe Audition (one of the industry standard tools for smaller projects not requiring more than 50 audio channels).
At my request, Mark was able to set up a private stream on Facebook, inviting only the members of the Cinema Sound group. That way, I could still unveil my opening VFX sequence the following month without it having sat publicly on YouTube for five weeks.
What you’re about to see is—at least in my opinion—absolutely fascinating! You literally get to watch, step by step, as sound effects are added to my VFX video. It’s kinda like watching one of those PBS painting shows where the artist keeps adding things, and each time he paints a new tree or adds snow to a mountain or a reflection to a lake, you say, “Oh, that’s perfect! You can totally stop painting now.” And then he adds something else, and you say, “Holy crap…that’s even better! Okay, now you can stop.” And he keeps adding stuff for the next half hour, and it looks better each time.
I’ve included the full video, but if you want to save yourself some time, you can jump in at the 1:05 minute point where the cool stuff starts and watch for 30 minutes…or however long you’d like. Or you can just jump around. I think it’s all really cool!
Next week, the third and final part, as we add the music!
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Greenhouse Gas Levels Keep Accelerating
Weekly CO₂ (carbon dioxide) levels at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, in May, 2019, reached 415.39 ppm, as above image shows. An ominous trendline points at 420 ppm in 2020.
The daily average CO₂ level recorded by NOAA at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, on May 15, 2019, was 415.64 ppm, as above image shows. The image below also shows hourly average levels from April 15, 2019, to May 15, 2019.
Current CO₂ levels far exceed levels that were common during the past 800,000 years, as the image below shows. CO₂ levels moved between roughly 180 and 280 ppm, while the temperature went up and down by some 10°C or 18°F.
The daily average CO₂ level recorded by scripps.ucsd.edu at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, on May 13, 2019, was 415.5 ppm and the May 15, 2019, level was 415.7 ppm. On May 14, 2019, one hourly average exceeded 417 ppm.
The situation is dire
This level of 417 ppm is 139 ppm above the CO₂ level in the year 1750 and more than 157 ppm above what the CO₂ level would have been if levels had followed a natural trend. As shown by the inset (from Ruddiman et al.) in above image, a natural trend points at levels below 260 ppm.
Furthermore, methane levels are rising even faster than CO₂ levels. While CO₂ levels did rise by 146% since 1750, methane levels did rise by 257% since that time and there is much potential for an even faster rise in methane levels due to seafloor hydrate releases. Levels of nitrous oxide also keep rising rapidly.
Such a rise in greenhouse gas levels has historically corresponded with more than 10°C or 18°F of warming, when looking at greenhouse gas levels and temperatures over the past 800,000 years, as illustrated by the image below.
Given that a 100 ppm rise in CO₂ did historically cause temperatures to rise by 10°C or 18°F, how much warming would be in line with a 157 ppm CO₂ and how fast could such a rise unfold?
A temperature of 10°C or 18° above 1750 seems in line with such high greenhouse gas levels. This is illustrated by above graph, based on 420,000 years of ice core data from Vostok, Antarctica, and as the post What Does Abrupt Climate Change Look Like? describes.
Why isn't it much warmer now? Why hasn't such a rise happened yet? Oceans and ice are still holding off such a rise, by absorbing huge amounts of warming. Of 1993-2003 warming, 95.5% was absorbed by oceans and ice. However, ocean stratification and ice loss are making the atmosphere take up more and more heat.
There are further warming elements, in addition to the accelerating rise in greenhouse gas levels. Mentioned above is the loss of the snow and ice cover. The domino effect is a popular way to demonstrate a chain reaction. It is typically sequential and typically uses dominoes that are equal in size. A chain reaction can be achieved with solid dominoes each as much as 1.5 times larger than the previous one. The exponential function is discussed in the video below by Guy McPherson. Rather than following a linear order, warming elements can be self-reinforcing feedback loops and can influence each other in ways that multiply (rather than pass on) their impact, which can speed up the temperature rise exponentially.
So, how fast and by how much could temperatures rise? As oceans and ice are taking up ever less heat, rapid warming of the lower troposphere could occur very soon. When including the joint impact of all warming elements, as described in a recent post, abrupt climate change could result in a rise of as much as 18°C or 32.4°F by 2026. This could cause most life on Earth (including humans) to go extinct within years.
Next to carbon dioxide, there are further greenhouse gases. Methane is important, because of its high short-term potency as a greenhouse gas and because methane levels in the atmosphere have hugely risen since 1750, and especially recently, as illustrated by the image on the right.
Carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) levels in the atmosphere in 2017 were, respectively, 257%, 146% and 122% their 1750 levels.
A recent study by Turetsky et al. concludes that, since sudden collapse releases more carbon per square metre because it disrupts stockpiles deep in frozen layers, and since abrupt thawing releases more methane than gradual thawing does, the impact of thawing permafrost on Earth’s climate could be twice that expected from current models.
As said, there also is a huge and growing danger of large abrupt methane releases from clathrates contained in sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.
As illustrated by the image below, methane levels are rising and this rise is accelerating.
The graph shows July 1983 through December 2018 monthly global methane means at sea level, with added trend. Higher methane means can occur at higher altitude than at sea level. On Sep 3, 2018, daily methane means as high as 1905 ppb were recorded at 307 mb, an altitude at which some of the strongest growth in methane has occurred, as discussed in earlier posts such as this one.
The recent rise in methane is the more worrying in the light of recent research that calculates that methane's radiative forcing is about 25% higher than reported in IPCC AR5, implying that methane's GWP (global warming potential) over 10 years may be well over 150 times as much as CO₂.
Next to carbon dioxide and methane, there are further greenhouse gases, of which nitrous oxide is particularly important. Nitrous oxide is up to 300 times as potent as a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide and has a lifetime of 121 years. Several recent studies point at the danger of huge releases of nitrous oxide from permafrost.
According to a 2017 study by Voigt et al., Arctic permafrost contains vast amounts of nitrogen (more than 67 billion tons). Warming of the Arctic permafrost is accelerating, causing rapid thaw of permafrost soils, and this now threatens to cause huge releases of nitrous oxide to the atmosphere. The study concluded that nitrous oxide emissions in the Arctic are likely substantial and underestimated, and show high potential to increase with permafrost thaw.
In the video below, Paul Beckwith discusses nitrous oxide.
In the video below, Paul Beckwith discusses the recent study by Wilkerson et al.
The study by Wilkerson et al. shows that nitrous oxide emissions from thawing Alaskan permafrost are about twelve times higher than previously assumed. A 2018 study by Yang et al. points at the danger of large nitrous oxide releases from thawing permafrost in Tibet. Even more nitrous oxide could be released from Antarctica. The danger is illustrated by the image below, which shows that massive amounts of nitrous oxide were recorded over Antarctica on April 29, 2019.
Depletion of the Ozone Layer
In addition to being a potent greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide is also an ozone depleting substance (ODS). As the left panel of the image below shows, growth in the levels of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) has slowed over the years, yet their impact will continue for a long time, given their long atmospheric lifetime (55 years for CFC-11 and 140 years for CFC-12). Since nitrous oxide levels continue to increase in the atmosphere, while the impact of CFC-11 and CFC-12 is slowly decreasing over time, the impact (as an ODS) of nitrous oxide has relatively grown, as the right panel of the image below shows.
[ from an earlier post ]
James Anderson, co-recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on ozone depletion, said in 2018 that "we have five years to save ourselves from climate change".
Comprehensive Action
In conclusion, while it's important to reduce emissions of all greenhouse gases, reducing emissions of methane and nitrous oxide is particularly important. To both reduce polluting emissions and to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and oceans, the Climate Plan recommends feebates as depicted in the image below. As the image also mentions, further lines of action will be needed to avoid a rapid rise in temperature.
Meanwhile, Arctic sea ice reached a new record low for April, as illustrated by the NSIDC image below.
In the video below, Guy McPherson describes what threatens to eventuate soon. This is an edit of the April 22, 2019, video in which Guy McPherson was interviewed by Peter B. Collins for the community television station in Marin County, California.
In the video below, Guy McPherson gives a presentation at the Center for Spiritual Living, in Chico, April 28, 2019.
The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as described in the Climate Plan.
• Climate Plan
• Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release, by Merritt Turetsky et al. (30 April 2019)
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01313-4
• Permafrost nitrous oxide emissions observed on a landscape scale using the airborne eddy-covariance method, by Jordan Wilkerson et al. (April 3, 2019)
https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/19/4257/2019/
• Can natural or anthropogenic explanations of late-Holocene CO2 and CH4 increases be falsified?, by William Ruddiman et al. (2011)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0959683610387172
• Radiative forcing of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide: A significant revision of the methane radiative forcing, by Etminan et al. (2016)https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL071930
• Magnitude and Pathways of Increased Nitrous Oxide Emissions from Uplands Following Permafrost Thaw, by Guibiao Yang et al. (July 9, 2018)
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b02271
• Increased nitrous oxide emissions from Arctic peatlands after permafrost thaw, by Carolina Voigt et al.
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/05/23/1702902114
• We Have Five Years To Save Ourselves From Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says - James Anderson (January 15, 2018)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2018/01/15/carbon-pollution-has-shoved-the-climate-backward-at-least-12-million-years-harvard-scientist-says/
• A rise of 18°C or 32.4°F by 2026?
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-rise-of-18c-or-324f-by-2026.html
• Care for the Ozone Layer
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/01/care-for-the-ozone-layer.html
• What Does Runaway Warming Look Like?
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2018/10/what-does-runaway-warming-look-like.html
• Rapid ice loss in early April leads to new record low - NSIDC
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2019/05/rapid-ice-loss-in-early-april-leads-to-new-record-low/
Posted by Sam Carana at 4:36 PM
Labels: Arctic, carbon dioxide, extent, Guy McPherson, James Anderson, methane, multi-year, nitrous oxide, ocean heat, ozone, Paul Beckwith, sea ice
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David Ayer and the ‘Suicide Squad’ cast respond to negative reviews
David Ayer already weighed in on the negative Suicide Squad reviews on Twitter, but last night at the London premiere of the movie, Reuters caught up with him and some of the cast to get their take.
Everyone pretty much gave the same answer — they made this movie for fans, not critics. David Ayer even takes a jab at some of those critics. Check out the video above or some excerpts below for more.
“The critics have been absolutely horrific, they’re really, really horrible. You know, I just don’t think they like superhero movies,” Cara Delevingne said. “It doesn’t really matter what the critics say at the end of the day. It’s the fans that we made this movie for.”
“At the end of the day critical acclaim is really nice, but we made it for the fans. If the fans like it then we did our job,” Margot Robbie replied.
David Ayer added, “I made the movie for real people who live in the real world. I made the movie for people who actually love movies and go and see movies. The movie’s a lot of fun and the fans are really going to enjoy this.”
“I think people had expectations that may have been different, but I’m excited for the fans to get to vote,” Will Smith said.
Digital Spy caught up with some other members of the cast. Jay Hernandez, who plays El Diablo, said that the critics can kiss his ass!
SOURCE: Reuters, Digital Spy
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