http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-29/unions-members-march-demand-bankers-fix-the-mess-correct-.html
Unions Members March, Demand Bankers ‘Fix The Mess’
April 29, 2010
By Holly Rosenkrantz
April 29 (Bloomberg) -- AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka led thousands of labor-union protesters in a march on Wall Street, chanting that investment banks must “fix the mess that you made” by paying more taxes and lending more money.
“It’s time for special taxes for bank bonuses,” Trumka said today at a rally outside City Hall that began after floor trading ended at the New York Stock Exchange. “When you engage in rampant and risky speculation, you are going to pay your fair share in taxes.”
The rally caps a drive by the nation’s largest organization of labor unions called the “Make Wall Street Pay” campaign. Protesters, some dressed as pirates, today held signs saying “Break Up Megabanks” and “Hey Big Banks -- Less Bail, More Jail.” Rallies have targeted Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the most profitable securities firm, and the five biggest U.S. banks.
Trumka started the march yelling “Let’s let Wall Street hear us, all the way down to the bull” at Bowling Green, the scheduled end point for the protest.
Police estimated more than 7,500 people gathered in the park south of City Hall, before the crowd headed south past the stock exchange carrying signs reading “Reclaim Our Democracy” and “Hold Banks Accountable.”
“They are tax dodgers, they aren’t putting anything back into the community,” said Otis J. Loweryberg, 84, a former International Business Machines Corp. worker in Delaware. “They only think about self -- self-motivation, self-preservation. How do these guys go home at night when people have no food on the table.”
‘Fed Up’
Wayne Usilton, 63, a former Chrysler Corp. worker from Delaware, said he joined more than 40 other union members from his state for the event traveling by bus to the event.
“The average person on Main Street is just fed up with big business and Wall Street manipulation,” Usilton said.
Brendan Plunkett, 46, a corporate bond trader, was heading home to Essex Falls, New Jersey, as the marchers walked down Broadway.
“If they care so much about the country, they should go to work and be productive and stop with the protests,” he said. “It’s all nonsense to me, and it always will be.”
The AFL-CIO, the 11-million-member labor federation, is urging Congress to impose a transaction tax on securities trading to help cover the $900 billion cost for a government jobs program they want lawmakers to create.
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has said he opposes the transaction tax, though Trumka told reporters today it is picking up interest within the Obama administration. “We talk about it all the time,” Trumka said. “The conversation is getting better and more analytical.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business lobbying group, opposes the tax, which it says would hurt more than bankers.
“Wall Street must create” and “not destroy real lives, real hopes, real dreams,” Trumka said. “The bankers, the brokers, and big shots on Wall Street must understand.”
--With assistance from Esme E. Deprez and Moira Herbst in New York. Editors: Steve Geimann, Romaine Bostick
To contact the reporter on this story: Holly Rosenkrantz in New York at hrosenkrantz@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at lliebert@bloomberg.net.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Heartsick? An Estonian Pharmacy May Have A Cure
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126306293
Heartsick? An Estonian Pharmacy May Have A Cure
Ulle Noodapera is a pharmacist at Town Hall Pharmacy, which first opened for business in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1422. It's famous for selling aphrodisiacs — but even more famous for a piece of almond candy that allegedly cures those who are lovestruck.
David Greene
April 28, 2010
At an international summit, leaders often have time to get out and explore. But the NATO foreign ministers who met in the former Soviet state of Estonia last week were running behind schedule because of the volcanic ash cloud hovering over Europe. They were happy to have made it at all.
"The only regret I have is that I had to spend all my time in meetings, instead of enjoying Tallinn once again," said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, referring to Estonia's small capital on the Baltic Sea.
I escaped the meetings long enough to look around — and I'm happy the foreign ministers didn't.
Surely, they would have stopped at a major attraction in the town's cobblestone square — the Raeapteek, or Town Hall Pharmacy.
The Town Hall Pharmacy in Estonia's capital may be Europe's oldest continuously operating pharmacy.
My guide, local historian Juri Kuuskemaa, told me the place opened in 1422 and may well be Europe's longest continuously operating pharmacy. Legend has it that in the 18th century, a former owner, Dr. Johann Burchart V, nearly saved a Russian czar.
"When Peter the Great, Russian emperor, was dying and nobody could help him, he called Johann V," Kuuskemaa said.
But things didn't work out. The czar died before Burchart arrived.
The pharmacy is also legendary for its herbs, wine and medicines — and its love drugs.
"You can go to pharmacy and buy special materials, so-called aphrodisiacom, and when you give to her or her, it is fate. Both could do nothing against it. And lady would love you to the end of their lives," Kuuskemaa explained.
But that's not all. "When you have two or three wives, for example, and you see one is happy but two are unhappy, you can buy here special materials to give to these two unhappies and they forget you, and they could find happiness with another man, not with you," Kuuskemaa said. "So it stops the love. It is an anti-aphrodisiacom, yeah. So love could be regulated with drugs."
On display inside, readily available, was the pharmacy's famous anti-aphrodisiac. Each individually wrapped piece of candy is packed with the secret ingredient: almond powder. People struck by love use it to cure themselves.
"How long we have sold it? ... I think 500 years," said pharmacist Ulle Noodapera.
But Noodapera said visitors will also just come in and taste it — despite the risk. That's why I was worried about the foreign ministers dropping by.
Noodapera says she didn't see any of the world leaders partake of the anti-love confection.
Which is a good thing. The last place you'd want to kill the love is at a meeting of the NATO military alliance. Kuuskemaa agreed.
"Love has more power as rockets in the world and it is the main power of the world and for humanity, and this power really can protect us," he says. "Love. Not rockets."
Heartsick? An Estonian Pharmacy May Have A Cure
Ulle Noodapera is a pharmacist at Town Hall Pharmacy, which first opened for business in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1422. It's famous for selling aphrodisiacs — but even more famous for a piece of almond candy that allegedly cures those who are lovestruck.
David Greene
April 28, 2010
At an international summit, leaders often have time to get out and explore. But the NATO foreign ministers who met in the former Soviet state of Estonia last week were running behind schedule because of the volcanic ash cloud hovering over Europe. They were happy to have made it at all.
"The only regret I have is that I had to spend all my time in meetings, instead of enjoying Tallinn once again," said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, referring to Estonia's small capital on the Baltic Sea.
I escaped the meetings long enough to look around — and I'm happy the foreign ministers didn't.
Surely, they would have stopped at a major attraction in the town's cobblestone square — the Raeapteek, or Town Hall Pharmacy.
The Town Hall Pharmacy in Estonia's capital may be Europe's oldest continuously operating pharmacy.
My guide, local historian Juri Kuuskemaa, told me the place opened in 1422 and may well be Europe's longest continuously operating pharmacy. Legend has it that in the 18th century, a former owner, Dr. Johann Burchart V, nearly saved a Russian czar.
"When Peter the Great, Russian emperor, was dying and nobody could help him, he called Johann V," Kuuskemaa said.
But things didn't work out. The czar died before Burchart arrived.
The pharmacy is also legendary for its herbs, wine and medicines — and its love drugs.
"You can go to pharmacy and buy special materials, so-called aphrodisiacom, and when you give to her or her, it is fate. Both could do nothing against it. And lady would love you to the end of their lives," Kuuskemaa explained.
But that's not all. "When you have two or three wives, for example, and you see one is happy but two are unhappy, you can buy here special materials to give to these two unhappies and they forget you, and they could find happiness with another man, not with you," Kuuskemaa said. "So it stops the love. It is an anti-aphrodisiacom, yeah. So love could be regulated with drugs."
On display inside, readily available, was the pharmacy's famous anti-aphrodisiac. Each individually wrapped piece of candy is packed with the secret ingredient: almond powder. People struck by love use it to cure themselves.
"How long we have sold it? ... I think 500 years," said pharmacist Ulle Noodapera.
But Noodapera said visitors will also just come in and taste it — despite the risk. That's why I was worried about the foreign ministers dropping by.
Noodapera says she didn't see any of the world leaders partake of the anti-love confection.
Which is a good thing. The last place you'd want to kill the love is at a meeting of the NATO military alliance. Kuuskemaa agreed.
"Love has more power as rockets in the world and it is the main power of the world and for humanity, and this power really can protect us," he says. "Love. Not rockets."
BabeWatch: Christina Hendricks
Is Christina the sexiest woman on the planet? Look at these Esquire.com photos and decide...
In Which Freddy Krueger Tells Us About Serial Killers and Makeup Removal
http://techland.com/2010/04/29/freddy-krueger
In Which Freddy Krueger Tells Us About Serial Killers and Makeup Removal
Steven James Snyder
April 29, 2010
Freddy Krueger is one of those indelible movie monsters – an iconic boogeyman for the ages, instantly recognizable with his black fedora, striped sweater, razor-fingered glove and melted face.
He's a freaky sight to behold, stalking his victims through their dreams, but in the ninth big screen chapter of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, arriving in theaters Friday as a remake of the 1984 original, Freddy is getting a reboot all his own. For the first time, actor Robert Englund has stepped aside – making room for critically-acclaimed thespian Jackie Earle Haley (Bad News Bears, Little Children, Watchmen, Shutter Island) to step into that familiar hat – and those bloody gloves.
You've played some dark characters in the past, but what was it about Freddy Krueger that enticed you to take the plunge into horror?
I actually first heard about this on the Internet – there were fans who were saying, ‘Hey, this guy would be just right for Freddy,' and I looked at all of this and I didn't even know they were remaking “Nightmare on Elm Street.” So I called my agent and mentioned this, and he said, ‘You know what, they've already been talking to me about this,' and there was this little voice in my head that said: How can you not play Freddy Krueger? He's such an iconic, twisted, legendary character – he's the main character in our collective campfire story. He's everything we love about those creepy bedtime stories – there's something we love about monsters like this, and I wanted to be a part of that.
But how do you even begin to prepare to do something like this? For most people who love these movies, Krueger is the guy they shield their eyes from. So what is it like to be on the flip-side of that, to be the guy who is stirring all this fear?
I actually first set out to get inside his head. [Director] Samuel Bayer sent me a book on serial killers, and I really keyed in on Edmund Kemper, and I started doing the work that an actor does, of trying to figure out why Freddy's mind is broken, and what makes him tick. And then I logged on to YouTube and saw this trailer of a movie being made about Kemper, and it had this look of a slasher film, and it just ticked me off, to see that they were kind of sensationalizing this real human being.
It was at that moment where I think I started to realize: Oh, I'm playing the boogeyman. My job isn't to make Freddy believable, it's to make him a monster. So thank god, I don't need to worry about the larger social commentary; I need to connect with the demon, and that was a really freeing moment, where I found a way to embrace the fact that I was playing that mythological bogeyman.
Did that translate to a moment on set – where you had to take a couple steps back and really process the fact that you were playing one of those great movie icons? Were there any out of body moments for you, where you had to pinch yourself?
Oh yeah, there were plenty of moments where you just have to take a moment and say, ‘I can't believe I'm in the middle of this,' but my favorite sequence is probably the pharmacy scene. There's this new concept in this film of micro-naps, where characters are so exhausted that they are dreaming but don't know they're dreaming, and that was fun – taking Freddy out of your standard nightmare and putting him instead in this everyday setting.
Did you set up a Freddy Krueger marathon for yourself, to get reacquainted with the character? I'm wondering how much you leaned on all the things that Robert Englund has already done with this character.
I mostly re-watched that first film, I wanted to really get into that tone. Sam wanted to embrace the more serious and darker aspects of that first original story, so I just tried to get in there and own it. One fun part of this remake, however, was that the original is such an amazing classic and it really set the stage for the franchise, but part of the fun comes from how inexpensive it was, and the sensibilities that came along with a movie that was trying to save money. With our film, we could approach the same story with a much bigger budget, and take it to the next level. So I think fans of the original will appreciate this movie that's thinking a little bigger.
Throughout your career, you've created characters that have required you to negotiate such limitations and handicaps. I think of Rorschach, where your face was covered, and even “Shutter Island,” where you're so confined to the shadows. Even here, as Freddy, you're acting under a mountain of makeup. How do you approach this as an actor, when you're so limited and confined? It's almost like acting with one arm tied behind your back.
You approach it in the same kind of way, even when there's shadows or when you're limited, you do the work of an actor to connect with the character internally and then hope that it shows externally. The one that was really challenging was Rorschach, since basically there was a sock covering my face. But in a weird kind of way, you use all those things as tools. The makeup with Freddy is so articulate that it actually becomes an extension of your face.
In “Nightmare on Elm Street,” the challenge wasn't working with all of that makeup once it was applied, but rather the glue that's involved in putting it on and taking it off. It would take me 3.5 hours to get the makeup on, and then another hour to take it off, since they try to be meticulous so that the glue didn't rip my skin. But after a couple weeks, after you've spent 50 or 60 hours in the makeup chair, you know it's getting bad when your skin isn't just burning at the end, when they apply alcohol, but also when they put the glue on. Your skin gets so sensitive and exposed that it's just excruciating. But you try to channel some of that pain and use it for those few seconds when the camera's rolling and there you are as Freddy, waving your razor blades, making people scream.
SHADOW MASTERS
http://ileneproctor.net/
Media Contact, Ilene Proctor
Daniel Estulin Bravely Journeys Again to the Epicenter of Hell to Author SHADOW MASTERS
How governments and their intelligence agencies are working with international drug dealers and terrorists for mutual benefit and profit
Daniel Estulin is a dangerous man to the status quo. Possessed, obsessed, tenacious and courageous, an award-winning international journalist, he is a man who thrives on controversy. He is our preeminent historian of the global elite, a scholar of remarkable breadth and erudition and one of the world’s most outspoken public intellectuals. Estulin doesn’t mince words and he doesn’t hold back when naming names, like David Rockefeller, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, and when identifying the cauldrons of chaos they have created. He exposes these and other “Shadow Masters” among the secret global power elite as the coolly vicious orchestrators of wars, terrorism, and grand-scale theft. Estulin also details the mind-boggling sums of money they reap from the proceeds of drug trafficking.
Served by minions with recognizable names like Oliver North, the Shadow Masters further their agendas using public monies and government resources around the world as if they personally owned them. Meanwhile, banks launder hundreds of billions of narco-dollars yearly. And perpetrators meet annually and off the record to discuss how to move their agendas forward. These Shadow Masters are well represented in Daniel Estulin’s first book, The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, currently being made into a 100-million-dollar motion picture by Halcyon. Now, in page after page of Shadow Masters, Estulin provides equally egregious revelations.
Major actions of the last two decades are revealed as “move/countermove” in a grisly game of geopolitics, set against the background of a crumbling Soviet Union, a nascent Russia, bizarre assassinations, wars and diamond, drugs and arms smuggling.
Estulin documents how Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, working with the International Monetary Fund, deliberately set up the circumstances for the massive transfer of Russia’s wealth into secret US and other offshore bank accounts, leaving a collapsed economy and millions of people penniless and starving by the early 1990s. This agenda had been prearranged at a number of Bilderberg gatherings.
Mind-blowing from the beginning, Estulin’s book takes an even more astounding contemporary turn with his account of the sensationalistic nature of the international vilification campaign against Victor Bout, reputedly the largest weaponry dealer in the world. A former junior lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force, this “Lord of War” (yes, the movie character played by Nicholas Cage was supposedly based on Bout) began an aviation transport business in Africa after the fall of the USSR. As conflicts raged all over the continent and airlines pulled out, Bout gained control of almost all the air transport business in Africa. When his business profile heightened in two areas of great interest to the Bilderberger’s Shadow Masters—arms and air transport—Bout now found himself an international pariah. An intense worldwide defamation campaign was launched, encompassing UN reports, press accounts, and a book titled Merchant of Death, by Douglas Farah who admittedly never met or interviewed Bout. The book’s nickname for Bout is constantly parroted in the US media.
Suddenly intelligence officials considered the patsy Bout to be one of the world’s greatest threats to US interests, in the same league as al Qaeda kingpin Osama bin Laden. Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest; the United Nations Security Council restricted his travel; President George W. Bush signed an Executive Order calling for Bout’s nonexistent US assets to be frozen. After the Washington Times and the Miami Herald printed erroneous reports connecting him to attempts by FARC rebels in Columbia to buy uranium for a dirty bomb, Bout was arrested in Thailand in 2008 in a US-led sting operation, and his extradition was requested. Estulin, the only Western journalist to regularly attend the Thai extradition proceedings, chronicles the mysterious mix of super espionage and Keystone Kops antics comprising the US moves against Bout, and resulting in Thai refusal of extradition, US appeals, and Bout’s continuing residence in a Bangkok prison.
Unquestionably, Bout is the man the media most want to talk to, the million-dollar interview, the Pulitzer Prize, the Emmy interview. Well, Daniel Estulin has interviewed Bout extensively for Shadow Masters, and tells an amazing story of what happens when the Shadow Master’s wish a person out of the way.
If this all sounds crazy, read Shadow Masters carefully. Estulin is inarguably the world’s most daring and experienced reporter on the global power elite. He meticulously documents his reporting and has developed sources other journalists don’t even know exist. Asked why he practices such a difficult and controversial brand of journalism, Estulin replies, “Because universal corruption and abuse of power and privileges at the deepest levels of society must be exposed and because I refuse to turn my back on inhumanity and violence.”
Estulin doesn’t just inspire us, he informs us with his intelligence, authenticity, generosity and compassion.
Publisher TrineDay, 347 pp, $24.95 USD.
Media Contact, Ilene Proctor
Daniel Estulin Bravely Journeys Again to the Epicenter of Hell to Author SHADOW MASTERS
How governments and their intelligence agencies are working with international drug dealers and terrorists for mutual benefit and profit
Daniel Estulin is a dangerous man to the status quo. Possessed, obsessed, tenacious and courageous, an award-winning international journalist, he is a man who thrives on controversy. He is our preeminent historian of the global elite, a scholar of remarkable breadth and erudition and one of the world’s most outspoken public intellectuals. Estulin doesn’t mince words and he doesn’t hold back when naming names, like David Rockefeller, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, and when identifying the cauldrons of chaos they have created. He exposes these and other “Shadow Masters” among the secret global power elite as the coolly vicious orchestrators of wars, terrorism, and grand-scale theft. Estulin also details the mind-boggling sums of money they reap from the proceeds of drug trafficking.
Served by minions with recognizable names like Oliver North, the Shadow Masters further their agendas using public monies and government resources around the world as if they personally owned them. Meanwhile, banks launder hundreds of billions of narco-dollars yearly. And perpetrators meet annually and off the record to discuss how to move their agendas forward. These Shadow Masters are well represented in Daniel Estulin’s first book, The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, currently being made into a 100-million-dollar motion picture by Halcyon. Now, in page after page of Shadow Masters, Estulin provides equally egregious revelations.
Major actions of the last two decades are revealed as “move/countermove” in a grisly game of geopolitics, set against the background of a crumbling Soviet Union, a nascent Russia, bizarre assassinations, wars and diamond, drugs and arms smuggling.
Estulin documents how Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, working with the International Monetary Fund, deliberately set up the circumstances for the massive transfer of Russia’s wealth into secret US and other offshore bank accounts, leaving a collapsed economy and millions of people penniless and starving by the early 1990s. This agenda had been prearranged at a number of Bilderberg gatherings.
Mind-blowing from the beginning, Estulin’s book takes an even more astounding contemporary turn with his account of the sensationalistic nature of the international vilification campaign against Victor Bout, reputedly the largest weaponry dealer in the world. A former junior lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force, this “Lord of War” (yes, the movie character played by Nicholas Cage was supposedly based on Bout) began an aviation transport business in Africa after the fall of the USSR. As conflicts raged all over the continent and airlines pulled out, Bout gained control of almost all the air transport business in Africa. When his business profile heightened in two areas of great interest to the Bilderberger’s Shadow Masters—arms and air transport—Bout now found himself an international pariah. An intense worldwide defamation campaign was launched, encompassing UN reports, press accounts, and a book titled Merchant of Death, by Douglas Farah who admittedly never met or interviewed Bout. The book’s nickname for Bout is constantly parroted in the US media.
Suddenly intelligence officials considered the patsy Bout to be one of the world’s greatest threats to US interests, in the same league as al Qaeda kingpin Osama bin Laden. Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest; the United Nations Security Council restricted his travel; President George W. Bush signed an Executive Order calling for Bout’s nonexistent US assets to be frozen. After the Washington Times and the Miami Herald printed erroneous reports connecting him to attempts by FARC rebels in Columbia to buy uranium for a dirty bomb, Bout was arrested in Thailand in 2008 in a US-led sting operation, and his extradition was requested. Estulin, the only Western journalist to regularly attend the Thai extradition proceedings, chronicles the mysterious mix of super espionage and Keystone Kops antics comprising the US moves against Bout, and resulting in Thai refusal of extradition, US appeals, and Bout’s continuing residence in a Bangkok prison.
Unquestionably, Bout is the man the media most want to talk to, the million-dollar interview, the Pulitzer Prize, the Emmy interview. Well, Daniel Estulin has interviewed Bout extensively for Shadow Masters, and tells an amazing story of what happens when the Shadow Master’s wish a person out of the way.
If this all sounds crazy, read Shadow Masters carefully. Estulin is inarguably the world’s most daring and experienced reporter on the global power elite. He meticulously documents his reporting and has developed sources other journalists don’t even know exist. Asked why he practices such a difficult and controversial brand of journalism, Estulin replies, “Because universal corruption and abuse of power and privileges at the deepest levels of society must be exposed and because I refuse to turn my back on inhumanity and violence.”
Estulin doesn’t just inspire us, he informs us with his intelligence, authenticity, generosity and compassion.
Publisher TrineDay, 347 pp, $24.95 USD.
The lowdown from Hightower
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5827.shtml
The lowdown from Hightower
By Michael Winship
Online Journal Guest Writer
May 3, 2010
I first became aware of Jim Hightower more than 20 years ago, during the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. The Democrats were nominating Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis to run for president against Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, and at the time Dukakis looked like he had a pretty good chance at the White House.
This was before a series of events did him in, including the notorious Willie Horton ad that attacked Dukakis for a Massachusetts weekend furlough prison program that allowed a convicted murderer back on the street, where he robbed and raped.
And it was before Dukakis bobbled a harsh debate question about what he would do if his own wife Kitty was raped and murdered. And it was before he was photographed atop an Abrams tank wearing a helmet that made him look like he was starring in “Snoopy III: This Time It’s Personal.”
All of that misery lay ahead. The Democrats were still in giddy spirits during the convention and had a high old time poking fun at Bush, Sr. That was when the late Ann Richards, then the Texas state treasurer, famously lamented, “Poor George! He can’t help it - he was born with a silver foot in his mouth!”
But it was the convention speech by Hightower that I especially remember. He was the Texas agriculture commissioner in those days -- an important job in the Lone Star State -- and described Bush as a “toothache of a man,” a cruel but remarkable metaphor. And he said that Bush behaved like someone who was “born on third base and thought he hit a triple . . . He is threatening to lead this country from tweedle-dum to tweedle-dumber.”
Maybe Hightower didn’t originate those lines (as Milton Berle used to say, “When you steal from me, you steal twice”), but he delivered them with a gusto akin to genuine authorship and over the years has come up with enough original material of his own to absolve him -- mostly -- from the sin of occasional joke-filching.
Now others steal from him. It was Jim, I believe, who came up with the notion that all elected officials be required to wear brightly colored, NASCAR-like jumpsuits with the corporate logos of their biggest campaign contributors, an idea I’ve heard appropriated by several others without proper attribution. And I think it was Jim who first said of George W. Bush, “If ignorance ever reaches $40 a barrel, I want the drilling rights to his head.” (On hearing that another politician was learning Spanish, Hightower is supposed to have remarked, “Oh good. Now he’ll be bi-ignorant.”)
These days, Jim Hightower broadcasts daily radio commentaries and edits “The Hightower Lowdown,” an invaluable monthly newsletter. With the passing of both Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, he has became the funniest person in Texas politics -- intentionally, that is. But it is his steadfast advocacy of progressive politics, his unyielding embrace of the old time gospel of populism, that made him an especially appropriate guest on the final edition of the PBS series, BILL MOYERS JOURNAL.
“Here’s what populism is not,” he told my colleague Bill Moyers. “It is not just an incoherent outburst of anger. And certainly it is not anger that is funded and organized by corporate front groups, as the initial tea party effort [was], and as most of it is still today -- though there is legitimate anger within it, in terms of the people who are there. But what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government.
“ . . . One big difference between real populism and . . . the tea party thing is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can’t say, ‘Let’s get rid of government.’ You need to be saying, ‘Let’s take over government.’”
As Hightower’s fond of saying, the water won’t clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek. “I see the central issue in politics to be the rise of corporate power,” he reiterated. “Overwhelming, overweening corporate power that is running roughshod over the workaday people of the country. They think they’re the top dogs, and we’re a bunch of fire hydrants, you know?”
Of President Obama he said, “It’s odd to me that we’ve got a president who ran from the outside and won, and now is trying to govern from the inside. You can’t do progressive government from the inside. You have to rally those outsiders and make them a force . . . Our heavyweight is the people themselves. They’ve got the fat cats, but we’ve got the alley cats . . .”
This past weekend, Jim was honored at Texas State University-San Marcos with an exhibition celebrating his life’s work as a populist journalist, historian and advocate. They’re calling the event “Swim Against the Current” because, as Moyers says, “That’s what he does.”
In fact, “Swim Against the Current” also is the title of Hightower’s most recent book, subtitled, “Even a Dead Fish Can Go with the Flow.” He comes from a long history of flow resisters, a critical, American political tradition. “I go all the way back to Thomas Paine,” he said. “I mean, that was kind of the ultimate rebellion, when the media tool was a pamphlet.” The men who wrote the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence “didn’t create democracy. [They] made democracy possible.
“What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people . . . Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie . . . Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it’s down to us.
“These are agitators. They extended democracy decade after decade. You know, sometimes we get in the midst of these fights. We think we’re making no progress. But . . . you look back, we’ve made a lot of progress . . . The agitator after all is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out. So, we need a lot more agitation. . . .
“We can battle back against the powers. But it’s not just going to a rally and shouting. It’s organizing and it’s thinking. And reaching out to others. And building a real people’s movement.”
Michael Winship was senior writer of the weekly public affairs program, Bill Moyers Journal, which concluded last Friday night on PBS.
The lowdown from Hightower
By Michael Winship
Online Journal Guest Writer
May 3, 2010
I first became aware of Jim Hightower more than 20 years ago, during the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. The Democrats were nominating Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis to run for president against Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, and at the time Dukakis looked like he had a pretty good chance at the White House.
This was before a series of events did him in, including the notorious Willie Horton ad that attacked Dukakis for a Massachusetts weekend furlough prison program that allowed a convicted murderer back on the street, where he robbed and raped.
And it was before Dukakis bobbled a harsh debate question about what he would do if his own wife Kitty was raped and murdered. And it was before he was photographed atop an Abrams tank wearing a helmet that made him look like he was starring in “Snoopy III: This Time It’s Personal.”
All of that misery lay ahead. The Democrats were still in giddy spirits during the convention and had a high old time poking fun at Bush, Sr. That was when the late Ann Richards, then the Texas state treasurer, famously lamented, “Poor George! He can’t help it - he was born with a silver foot in his mouth!”
But it was the convention speech by Hightower that I especially remember. He was the Texas agriculture commissioner in those days -- an important job in the Lone Star State -- and described Bush as a “toothache of a man,” a cruel but remarkable metaphor. And he said that Bush behaved like someone who was “born on third base and thought he hit a triple . . . He is threatening to lead this country from tweedle-dum to tweedle-dumber.”
Maybe Hightower didn’t originate those lines (as Milton Berle used to say, “When you steal from me, you steal twice”), but he delivered them with a gusto akin to genuine authorship and over the years has come up with enough original material of his own to absolve him -- mostly -- from the sin of occasional joke-filching.
Now others steal from him. It was Jim, I believe, who came up with the notion that all elected officials be required to wear brightly colored, NASCAR-like jumpsuits with the corporate logos of their biggest campaign contributors, an idea I’ve heard appropriated by several others without proper attribution. And I think it was Jim who first said of George W. Bush, “If ignorance ever reaches $40 a barrel, I want the drilling rights to his head.” (On hearing that another politician was learning Spanish, Hightower is supposed to have remarked, “Oh good. Now he’ll be bi-ignorant.”)
These days, Jim Hightower broadcasts daily radio commentaries and edits “The Hightower Lowdown,” an invaluable monthly newsletter. With the passing of both Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, he has became the funniest person in Texas politics -- intentionally, that is. But it is his steadfast advocacy of progressive politics, his unyielding embrace of the old time gospel of populism, that made him an especially appropriate guest on the final edition of the PBS series, BILL MOYERS JOURNAL.
“Here’s what populism is not,” he told my colleague Bill Moyers. “It is not just an incoherent outburst of anger. And certainly it is not anger that is funded and organized by corporate front groups, as the initial tea party effort [was], and as most of it is still today -- though there is legitimate anger within it, in terms of the people who are there. But what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government.
“ . . . One big difference between real populism and . . . the tea party thing is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can’t say, ‘Let’s get rid of government.’ You need to be saying, ‘Let’s take over government.’”
As Hightower’s fond of saying, the water won’t clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek. “I see the central issue in politics to be the rise of corporate power,” he reiterated. “Overwhelming, overweening corporate power that is running roughshod over the workaday people of the country. They think they’re the top dogs, and we’re a bunch of fire hydrants, you know?”
Of President Obama he said, “It’s odd to me that we’ve got a president who ran from the outside and won, and now is trying to govern from the inside. You can’t do progressive government from the inside. You have to rally those outsiders and make them a force . . . Our heavyweight is the people themselves. They’ve got the fat cats, but we’ve got the alley cats . . .”
This past weekend, Jim was honored at Texas State University-San Marcos with an exhibition celebrating his life’s work as a populist journalist, historian and advocate. They’re calling the event “Swim Against the Current” because, as Moyers says, “That’s what he does.”
In fact, “Swim Against the Current” also is the title of Hightower’s most recent book, subtitled, “Even a Dead Fish Can Go with the Flow.” He comes from a long history of flow resisters, a critical, American political tradition. “I go all the way back to Thomas Paine,” he said. “I mean, that was kind of the ultimate rebellion, when the media tool was a pamphlet.” The men who wrote the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence “didn’t create democracy. [They] made democracy possible.
“What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people . . . Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie . . . Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it’s down to us.
“These are agitators. They extended democracy decade after decade. You know, sometimes we get in the midst of these fights. We think we’re making no progress. But . . . you look back, we’ve made a lot of progress . . . The agitator after all is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out. So, we need a lot more agitation. . . .
“We can battle back against the powers. But it’s not just going to a rally and shouting. It’s organizing and it’s thinking. And reaching out to others. And building a real people’s movement.”
Michael Winship was senior writer of the weekly public affairs program, Bill Moyers Journal, which concluded last Friday night on PBS.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Loch Ness monster is real: former Scottish police chief
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0427/Loch-Ness-monster-is-real-former-Scottish-police-chief
Loch Ness monster is real: former Scottish police chief
Newly published documents reveal that a Scottish police official in the 1930s believed 'beyond doubt' that the Loch Ness monster existed. Expert Loren Coleman says it reveals the government's longstanding policy to protect the mythic beast.
By Stephen Kurczy, Correspondent / April 27, 2010
The revelation that a former Scottish police chief believed in the Loch Ness monster and was concerned for its survival underscores how Scottish authorities have sought to protect the iconic beast, says Loren Coleman, a leading experts on mythic animals.
“The Scottish government has long been interested in protecting Nessie,” says Loren Coleman, who is co-author of The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep. “This just reinforces this whole notion (that) the officials in Scotland take this creature very seriously.”
Newly publicized documents reveal that a former Scottish police chief believed that the existence of the Loch Ness monster was “beyond doubt” but its protection could not be ensured.
William Fraser, chief constable of Inverness-shire Constabulary in the 1930s, wrote a letter expressing fears that a London man might kill the beast with a large harpoon gun. "That there is some strange creature in Loch Ness seems now beyond doubt, but that the police have any power to protect it is very doubtful," Mr. Fraser wrote.
To be sure, most biologists believe Nessie to be a myth, and nothing more, pointing out that large animals typically leave large remains when they die. No "monster" carcass has ever been found.
But as recently as 1999, Scottish authorities took steps to ensure the safety of their tourist-attracting monster, Mr. Coleman told the Monitor in a telephone interview from Portland, Maine, where he runs the International Cryptozoology Museum.
In 1999, Coleman was set to go on a Nessie-search expedition in a homemade submarine with Dan Scott Taylor. Thirty years earlier, while diving deep in Loch Ness in a one-man submarine, Mr. Taylor had said he undoubtedly bumped into the monster. Now, he wanted to bring with him both a secondary observer – Coleman – and a harpoon so he could take a DNA sample of the beast.
When Scottish authorities caught wind of Taylor’s plan, they revoked his exploration permits and the submarine trip never materialized. Taylor died in 2005.
“There’s always been the sense that quietly…they were taking the reports more validly. There was a serious acknowledgment that the Loch Ness monster exists,” says Coleman.
While the submarine trip never happened, Coleman still presided over a two-week surface expedition in 1999. He interviewed 38 people who claimed to have seen the monster then or in the past, and of those sightings Coleman says eight appeared valid.
Sightings often describe the monster’s iconic neck sprouting from the lake, but Coleman says experts agree that those sightings are only of an otter’s tail or a water bird’s neck. In his opinion, the Loch Ness monster is something like a whale or a walrus.
But sightings have dropped of late. There was only one "credible" reported sighting of the creature in 2009, causing enthusiasts to fear the monster may be dead, reported The Telegraph.
American officials, too, have had their odd beliefs and close encounters with the third kind. The Vermont legislature voted in 1982 to protect the legendary beast “Champ” of Lake Champlain. And current Representative Dennis Kucinich and former presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan have all seen UFOs.
Coleman says that new animal discoveries show that humans still have a lot to learn about the world. Just three weeks ago, scientists reported that they had discovered a new species of giant lizard in the Philippines. Coleman says that the finding underscored how strange animals – from Big Foot to Yeti to the Loch Ness monster – may still be lurking beneath our noses.
“There are animals out there that will surprise us in the future,” he says.
Playboy's Hugh Hefner helps rescue Hollywood sign
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100426/people_nm/us_hollywood_sign
Playboy's Hugh Hefner helps rescue Hollywood sign
Mon Apr 26, 2010
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner on Monday donated the last $900,000 sought by a conservation group for a land purchase needed to save the famed vista of the Hollywood sign from being spoiled by development.
Hefner's key role in reaching the group's fund-raising goal was announced by Los Angeles city officials, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land at a news conference in the Hollywood Hills.
The land trust needed to collect a total of $12.5 million by this Friday under a deal with a group of Chicago investors who bought the 1,820-foot (555-meter) ridge, called Cahuenga Peak, from the estate of billionaire Howard Hughes in 2002.
The trust will now purchase the 138-acre (56-hectare) adjacent parcel and turn it over to the city to be incorporated into the surrounding Griffith Park, preventing any construction that would mar the postcard-perfect view of the Hollywood sign nearby.
"My childhood dreams and fantasies came from the movies, and the images created in Hollywood had a major influence on my life and Playboy," Hefner said in a statement. "As I've said before, the Hollywood sign is Hollywood's Eiffel Tower and I'm pleased to help preserve such an important cultural landmark."
Other private donors to the Hollywood sign preservation effort included actor Tom Hanks and director Steven Spielberg, the land trust said.
(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Todd Eastham)
Playboy's Hugh Hefner helps rescue Hollywood sign
Mon Apr 26, 2010
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner on Monday donated the last $900,000 sought by a conservation group for a land purchase needed to save the famed vista of the Hollywood sign from being spoiled by development.
Hefner's key role in reaching the group's fund-raising goal was announced by Los Angeles city officials, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land at a news conference in the Hollywood Hills.
The land trust needed to collect a total of $12.5 million by this Friday under a deal with a group of Chicago investors who bought the 1,820-foot (555-meter) ridge, called Cahuenga Peak, from the estate of billionaire Howard Hughes in 2002.
The trust will now purchase the 138-acre (56-hectare) adjacent parcel and turn it over to the city to be incorporated into the surrounding Griffith Park, preventing any construction that would mar the postcard-perfect view of the Hollywood sign nearby.
"My childhood dreams and fantasies came from the movies, and the images created in Hollywood had a major influence on my life and Playboy," Hefner said in a statement. "As I've said before, the Hollywood sign is Hollywood's Eiffel Tower and I'm pleased to help preserve such an important cultural landmark."
Other private donors to the Hollywood sign preservation effort included actor Tom Hanks and director Steven Spielberg, the land trust said.
(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Todd Eastham)
Hidden Wisdom: The Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Email: newbooks@disinfo.com
Web: http://www.hidden-wisdom.com/
"The best book about the secret tradition I've read for many years.
Tim Wallace-Murphy writes with style, passion and truth. A magnificent achievement."
— Graham Hancock, author of Fingerprints of the Gods
NEW YORK (APRIL 26, 2010) — From Egyptian mythology to Jewish mysticism, Rome and Greece to the Druids and the Gnostics, Tim Wallace-Murphy exposes a fascinating lineage of hidden mysteries and secret societies, continuing through the Templars, Rosicrucians and Freemasons to our modern visionaries. This hidden stream of spirituality and that of sacred knowledge are inseparably entwined to form the single most important continuous strand in the entire Western esoteric tradition.
This tradition exerted a seminal influence on the thinking of the builders of the great cathedrals, leading teachers in ecclesiastical schools, on philosophers, playwrights and poets such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Blake and W. B. Yeats, on artists and renaissance giants such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. It is also the root from which sprang alchemy and modern science.
Now, as more people than ever are looking to find information on the alternatives to the dominant dogmas that have told us what to think and how to behave, as faith has been questioned by religious scandals, economic meltdowns and an environmental catastrophes, Wallace-Murphy reveals the secrets of the masters, including invaluable spiritual insights to everyday life that have been hidden throughout the ages. He shows us who kept this spiritual tradition alive despite appalling persecution, so that we in the 21st century might benefit from its accumulated fruits and ennoble our lives by emulating their example.
For review copies, or to interview author and Freemason Tim Wallace-Murphy please send an email to newbooks@disinfo.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tim Wallace-Murphy is an international bestselling author known for his deep knowledge of Rosslyn, the Knights Templar, Sacred Geometry and Rex Deus.
The Disinformation Company Ltd. is active in TV production, book publishing and home entertainment. It is most widely recognized for its distribution of books and videos on subjects not usually covered by the traditional media. Recent DVD exclusives from The Disinformation Company include Danny Schechter's Plunder: The Crime of Our Time, Robert Greenwald's Rethink Afghanistan and the Disinformation-produced 2012: Science Or Superstition.
# # #
Title: Hidden Wisdom: The Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition
Author: Tim Wallace-Murphy
Category: History / Mind-Body-Spirit
ISBN: 978-1934708-48-4
PUB DATE: MAY 2010
Brilliant thoughts, comments, or a story suggestion? Go to www.disinfo.com.
Email: newbooks@disinfo.com
Web: http://www.hidden-wisdom.com/
"The best book about the secret tradition I've read for many years.
Tim Wallace-Murphy writes with style, passion and truth. A magnificent achievement."
— Graham Hancock, author of Fingerprints of the Gods
NEW YORK (APRIL 26, 2010) — From Egyptian mythology to Jewish mysticism, Rome and Greece to the Druids and the Gnostics, Tim Wallace-Murphy exposes a fascinating lineage of hidden mysteries and secret societies, continuing through the Templars, Rosicrucians and Freemasons to our modern visionaries. This hidden stream of spirituality and that of sacred knowledge are inseparably entwined to form the single most important continuous strand in the entire Western esoteric tradition.
This tradition exerted a seminal influence on the thinking of the builders of the great cathedrals, leading teachers in ecclesiastical schools, on philosophers, playwrights and poets such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Blake and W. B. Yeats, on artists and renaissance giants such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. It is also the root from which sprang alchemy and modern science.
Now, as more people than ever are looking to find information on the alternatives to the dominant dogmas that have told us what to think and how to behave, as faith has been questioned by religious scandals, economic meltdowns and an environmental catastrophes, Wallace-Murphy reveals the secrets of the masters, including invaluable spiritual insights to everyday life that have been hidden throughout the ages. He shows us who kept this spiritual tradition alive despite appalling persecution, so that we in the 21st century might benefit from its accumulated fruits and ennoble our lives by emulating their example.
For review copies, or to interview author and Freemason Tim Wallace-Murphy please send an email to newbooks@disinfo.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tim Wallace-Murphy is an international bestselling author known for his deep knowledge of Rosslyn, the Knights Templar, Sacred Geometry and Rex Deus.
The Disinformation Company Ltd. is active in TV production, book publishing and home entertainment. It is most widely recognized for its distribution of books and videos on subjects not usually covered by the traditional media. Recent DVD exclusives from The Disinformation Company include Danny Schechter's Plunder: The Crime of Our Time, Robert Greenwald's Rethink Afghanistan and the Disinformation-produced 2012: Science Or Superstition.
# # #
Title: Hidden Wisdom: The Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition
Author: Tim Wallace-Murphy
Category: History / Mind-Body-Spirit
ISBN: 978-1934708-48-4
PUB DATE: MAY 2010
Brilliant thoughts, comments, or a story suggestion? Go to www.disinfo.com.
Is Time Travel Possible?
http://news.discovery.com/space/is-time-travel-possible.html
Is Time Travel Possible?
Analysis by Robert Lamb | Thu Apr 22, 2010
It's not glamorous, but it's time travel.
From summer blockbusters to sensational science headlines, modern culture is constantly inundated with tales of time travel. But when you boil down the physics involved, is it possible to travel through time?
To answer this question, I tracked down theoretical physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies, author of "How to Build a Time Machine."
We are all time travelers
"The short answer is that time travel into the future is not only possible, it's been done, and we've known about it for over a century," says Davies. "The reason that the public doesn’t seem to know about it is because the amount of time travel involved is so pitifully small that it doesn't make for a 'Doctor Who' style adventure."
A phenomenon called time dilation is the key here. Time passes more slowly the closer you approach the speed of light -- an unbreakable cosmic speed limit. As such, the hands of a clock in a speeding train would move more slowly than those in a stationary clock. The difference would not be humanly noticeable, but when the train pulled back into the station, the two clocks would be off by billionths of a second. If such a train could attain 99.999 percent light speed, only 1 year would pass onboard for every 223 years back at the train station.
But speed isn't the only factor that affects time. On a much smaller scale, mass also influences time. Time slows down the closer you are to the center of a massive object.
"Time runs a little bit faster in space than it does down on Earth," Davies says. "It runs a little faster on the roof than it does in the basement, and that's a measurable effect."
A clock aboard an orbiting satellite experiences time dilation due to both the speed of its orbit and its greater distance from the center of Earth's gravity.
"Both gravity and speed can give you a means of jumping ahead," Davies says. "So in principle, if you had enough money, you could get to the year 3000 in as short a time as you like -- one year, one month, whatever it takes. It is only a question of money and engineering."
Forward, not back?
Time travel into the future is an established and fundamental aspect of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Scientists have tested and retested this in both experimental and practical settings. But what about time travel in the opposite direction?
"Going back in to the past is a whole different kettle of fish." Davies says. "There's nothing in Einstein's theory, which is the best theory that we have about the nature of time, which precludes it. There's nothing in even his general theory of relativity, published in 1915, which precludes travel back into the past, but many scientists are deeply uneasy about it because of all the well-known paradoxes that it unleashes."
For instance, imagine going back in time and killing your own mother. Then she'd never give birth to you, and just how would you have been able to travel back in time to commit matricide in the first place?
Wormholes as spacetime shortcuts
Davies surmises that, given our current understanding of the nature of time and physics, time travel into the past simply isn't possible. But the universe is full of mysteries, and one of them -- the hypothetical wormhole -- might just permit such a journey.
"This is a little bit like a tunnel or shortcut between two distant points," Davies says, "So for example, if I had a wormhole here in my hotel room and I jumped through it I wouldn't come out on Pennsylvania Avenue, I'd maybe come out near the other side of the galaxy."
Scientists have theorized that such a shortcut through time and space could be turned into a time machine.
"If a worm hole could exist and could be traversable, then it would provide a means of going back in time," Davies says. "So it all hinges on whether stable wormholes are a reality or if there's some aspect of physics -- not relativity, because there's nothing wrong from that point of view -- but some other aspect of physics might intercede and prevent the wormhole from forming. That's an open question."
World-famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has proposed that wormholes occurring at a quantum level could theoretically provide a foothold for time travel, but University of California at Santa Barbara physicist Andrew Cleland urges caution on that front.
"I'm an experimentalist, and physics is ultimately an experimental science," Cleland says. "Any predictions that are made based on mathematics or on philosophical or intellectual speculation have to pass the test of experiment, and I am certainly not aware of any experiment that demonstrated the possibility of traveling backward in time."
Cause and effect
Cleland also points out that the fundamental principle of causality stands in the way of travel into the past. The entire universe, as we understand it, is beholden to this rule.
"Something occurs first and the outcome of that occurrence happens afterward," Cleland says, "and there has never to my knowledge been an experiment that came out different from that. I am not aware of any experimental tests of quantum mechanics that have shown any violation of causality, in spite of the fact that many experiments could reveal such a violation."
Still, in the same way that time dilation isn't flashy enough to seem like time travel into the future, the public often overlooks a very common means of "traveling" into the past.
"In a sense, astronomers are always traveling backward in time, but it is in a way that most people are not so excited about," Cleland says. "When we measure the cosmic microwave background, we're looking back more than 10 billion years in time. That's how long it took for the light to reach us."
A number of questions about time travel remain unanswered. Will time tourists from the future ever show up to help us out? We'll just have to wait and see. But if they come here using a wormhole time machine, we'll have to build one first. After all, you couldn't cross a bridge if only one side had been completed, right?
"Theoretically, it would take more than 100 years to create a 100-years' time difference between the two ends of a wormhole," Davies says, "so there's no way that our descendants could come back and tell us we're wrong about this."
Is Time Travel Possible?
Analysis by Robert Lamb | Thu Apr 22, 2010
It's not glamorous, but it's time travel.
From summer blockbusters to sensational science headlines, modern culture is constantly inundated with tales of time travel. But when you boil down the physics involved, is it possible to travel through time?
To answer this question, I tracked down theoretical physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies, author of "How to Build a Time Machine."
We are all time travelers
"The short answer is that time travel into the future is not only possible, it's been done, and we've known about it for over a century," says Davies. "The reason that the public doesn’t seem to know about it is because the amount of time travel involved is so pitifully small that it doesn't make for a 'Doctor Who' style adventure."
A phenomenon called time dilation is the key here. Time passes more slowly the closer you approach the speed of light -- an unbreakable cosmic speed limit. As such, the hands of a clock in a speeding train would move more slowly than those in a stationary clock. The difference would not be humanly noticeable, but when the train pulled back into the station, the two clocks would be off by billionths of a second. If such a train could attain 99.999 percent light speed, only 1 year would pass onboard for every 223 years back at the train station.
But speed isn't the only factor that affects time. On a much smaller scale, mass also influences time. Time slows down the closer you are to the center of a massive object.
"Time runs a little bit faster in space than it does down on Earth," Davies says. "It runs a little faster on the roof than it does in the basement, and that's a measurable effect."
A clock aboard an orbiting satellite experiences time dilation due to both the speed of its orbit and its greater distance from the center of Earth's gravity.
"Both gravity and speed can give you a means of jumping ahead," Davies says. "So in principle, if you had enough money, you could get to the year 3000 in as short a time as you like -- one year, one month, whatever it takes. It is only a question of money and engineering."
Forward, not back?
Time travel into the future is an established and fundamental aspect of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Scientists have tested and retested this in both experimental and practical settings. But what about time travel in the opposite direction?
"Going back in to the past is a whole different kettle of fish." Davies says. "There's nothing in Einstein's theory, which is the best theory that we have about the nature of time, which precludes it. There's nothing in even his general theory of relativity, published in 1915, which precludes travel back into the past, but many scientists are deeply uneasy about it because of all the well-known paradoxes that it unleashes."
For instance, imagine going back in time and killing your own mother. Then she'd never give birth to you, and just how would you have been able to travel back in time to commit matricide in the first place?
Wormholes as spacetime shortcuts
Davies surmises that, given our current understanding of the nature of time and physics, time travel into the past simply isn't possible. But the universe is full of mysteries, and one of them -- the hypothetical wormhole -- might just permit such a journey.
"This is a little bit like a tunnel or shortcut between two distant points," Davies says, "So for example, if I had a wormhole here in my hotel room and I jumped through it I wouldn't come out on Pennsylvania Avenue, I'd maybe come out near the other side of the galaxy."
Scientists have theorized that such a shortcut through time and space could be turned into a time machine.
"If a worm hole could exist and could be traversable, then it would provide a means of going back in time," Davies says. "So it all hinges on whether stable wormholes are a reality or if there's some aspect of physics -- not relativity, because there's nothing wrong from that point of view -- but some other aspect of physics might intercede and prevent the wormhole from forming. That's an open question."
World-famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has proposed that wormholes occurring at a quantum level could theoretically provide a foothold for time travel, but University of California at Santa Barbara physicist Andrew Cleland urges caution on that front.
"I'm an experimentalist, and physics is ultimately an experimental science," Cleland says. "Any predictions that are made based on mathematics or on philosophical or intellectual speculation have to pass the test of experiment, and I am certainly not aware of any experiment that demonstrated the possibility of traveling backward in time."
Cause and effect
Cleland also points out that the fundamental principle of causality stands in the way of travel into the past. The entire universe, as we understand it, is beholden to this rule.
"Something occurs first and the outcome of that occurrence happens afterward," Cleland says, "and there has never to my knowledge been an experiment that came out different from that. I am not aware of any experimental tests of quantum mechanics that have shown any violation of causality, in spite of the fact that many experiments could reveal such a violation."
Still, in the same way that time dilation isn't flashy enough to seem like time travel into the future, the public often overlooks a very common means of "traveling" into the past.
"In a sense, astronomers are always traveling backward in time, but it is in a way that most people are not so excited about," Cleland says. "When we measure the cosmic microwave background, we're looking back more than 10 billion years in time. That's how long it took for the light to reach us."
A number of questions about time travel remain unanswered. Will time tourists from the future ever show up to help us out? We'll just have to wait and see. But if they come here using a wormhole time machine, we'll have to build one first. After all, you couldn't cross a bridge if only one side had been completed, right?
"Theoretically, it would take more than 100 years to create a 100-years' time difference between the two ends of a wormhole," Davies says, "so there's no way that our descendants could come back and tell us we're wrong about this."
Don’t Call It ‘Pot’ in This Circle; It’s a Profession
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/us/24pot.html
Don’t Call It ‘Pot’ in This Circle; It’s a Profession
JESSE McKINLEY
April 23, 2010
OAKLAND, Calif. — Like hip-hop, health food and snowboarding, marijuana is going corporate.
As more and more states allow medical use of the drug, and California considers outright legalization, marijuana’s supporters are pushing hard to burnish the image of pot by franchising dispensaries and building brands; establishing consulting, lobbying and law firms; setting up trade shows and a seminar circuit; and constructing a range of other marijuana-related businesses.
Boosters say it is all part of a concerted effort to trade the drug’s trippy, hippie counterculture past for what they believe will inevitably be a more buttoned-up future.
“I don’t possess a Nehru jacket, I’ve never grown a goatee, I’ve never grown my hair past the nape of my neck,” Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws said. “And I don’t like patchouli.”
Steve DeAngelo, the president of CannBe — a marketing, lobbying and consulting firm here — will not even use the word “marijuana.” Calling it pejorative, he prefers the scientific term “cannabis.”
“We want to make it safe, seemly and responsible,” Mr. DeAngelo said of marijuana.
That extends to his main dispensary and headquarters, the Harborside Health Center in Oakland, with its bright fluorescent lights, a clean, spare design, and a raft of other services including chiropractic care and yoga classes. On a recent Friday, the center was packed, with a line of about 50 people waiting as the workers behind the counter walked other customers through the various buds, brownies and baked goods that were for sale.
“If we can’t demonstrate professionalism and legitimacy, we’re never going to gain the trust of our citizens,” Mr. DeAngelo said. “And without that trust, we’re never going to get where we need to go.”
The ultimate destination, for many supporters, is legalization. Californians will decide in November if that is where they want to go, when they vote on a ballot measure that would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana.
Regardless of the outcome, CannBe says it expects to expand its business model nationwide to become what admirers say will be “the McDonald’s of marijuana.”
The for-profit company is made up of four proprietors of nonprofit dispensaries and their lawyer. Mr. DeAngelo calls them an “A-team of cannabis professionals.”
In late March, it helped lobby the City Council in San Jose, the nation’s 10th-largest city, to pass ordinances regulating dispensaries, a crucial step toward a legitimate industry. And last week at a cannabis conference in Rhode Island, Mr. DeAngelo was diversifying his product line, introducing a kind of “pot lite” with less psychoactive agents than regular marijuana and thus popular with what he calls “cannabis-naïve patients.”
John Lovell, a California lobbyist who represents two major police groups that oppose legalization, scoffed at the notion that marijuana proponents were cleaning up their act or gaining traction with the public, citing a recent decision by the Los Angeles City Council to sharply curtail the number of medical marijuana dispensaries there.
“They are a neighborhood blight,” he said. “Here you have dispensaries that have cash and dope. So, duh? Is it any surprise that they’ve been magnets for crime?”
But advocates call that characterization unfair and outdated.
“This is an emerging business opportunity, as it would be in any other area,” said Ethan Nadelmann, the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which favors legalization.
In California, dispensaries already employ all manner of business gimmicks to survive in an increasingly competitive market. West Coast Cannabis, a trade magazine, has dozens of advertisements for daily specials, free samples, home delivery, gift certificates, scientific testimonials, yoga classes, hypnotherapy, Reiki sessions, coupons, recipes and, of course — being California — free parking.
There are also new schools and seminars that can be used as credit for required continuing education classes for doctors and lawyers.
That includes the Cannabis Law Institute, which was certified last month by the California state bar. It was co-founded by Omar Figueroa, a graduate of Yale University and Stanford law school, who is hosting a seminar in Sonoma County in June that promises to teach attendees about “this fascinating area of the law.”
Mr. Figueroa, who said he was voted “most likely to fail a Senate confirmation hearing” at Stanford, said he was earning a good living in marijuana law, but was in it for the experience. “My passion has always been cannabis,” he said. “It’s the world’s most interesting law job.”
But it is not just California. Business is also booming in Colorado, which has seen an explosion in the number of dispensaries in the last year. That rapid expansion has alarmed some authorities and sent legislators scrambling to pass new regulations, but has been a boon for law firms like Kumin Sommers L.L.P. in San Francisco, which has merged with Warren C. Edson, a lawyer in Denver representing about 300 Colorado dispensaries. Mr. Edson said many of his clients were curious about decidedly staid fields like workers’ compensation, tax withholding and occupational safety.
“There’s this real Al Capone fear that they’re going to get our guys, not on marijuana, but on something else,” Mr. Edson said, referring to how Capone was eventually charged with tax evasion rather than criminal activity.
The federal government continues to oppose any decriminalization of the drug. And while the Obama administration has signaled some leeway when it comes to medical marijuana, raids on dispensaries and growers by law enforcement agencies are still common — even in California, where the industry effectively began in 1996, with the passage of the landmark Proposition 215, which legalized medical marijuana.
Today, rules vary widely in the 14 states that allow medical marijuana, and a final vote on legalization is pending in the District of Columbia. Some states require sellers to prove nonprofit status — often as a collective or cooperative — and all states require that patients have a recommendation from a physician. But even those in favor of medical marijuana believe that the system is ripe for abuse or even unintentional lawbreaking.
“Almost all the dispensaries in California are illegal,” said William Panzer, an Oakland lawyer who helped draft Proposition 215. “They’re sole proprietorships, not collectives.”
Mr. Nadelmann’s organization, the Drug Policy Alliance, says it does not take a position on whether those who sell the drug should be nonprofit or not. But he added, “The key people involved are not becoming personally wealthy.”
A version of this article appeared in print on April 24, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.
Don’t Call It ‘Pot’ in This Circle; It’s a Profession
JESSE McKINLEY
April 23, 2010
OAKLAND, Calif. — Like hip-hop, health food and snowboarding, marijuana is going corporate.
As more and more states allow medical use of the drug, and California considers outright legalization, marijuana’s supporters are pushing hard to burnish the image of pot by franchising dispensaries and building brands; establishing consulting, lobbying and law firms; setting up trade shows and a seminar circuit; and constructing a range of other marijuana-related businesses.
Boosters say it is all part of a concerted effort to trade the drug’s trippy, hippie counterculture past for what they believe will inevitably be a more buttoned-up future.
“I don’t possess a Nehru jacket, I’ve never grown a goatee, I’ve never grown my hair past the nape of my neck,” Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws said. “And I don’t like patchouli.”
Steve DeAngelo, the president of CannBe — a marketing, lobbying and consulting firm here — will not even use the word “marijuana.” Calling it pejorative, he prefers the scientific term “cannabis.”
“We want to make it safe, seemly and responsible,” Mr. DeAngelo said of marijuana.
That extends to his main dispensary and headquarters, the Harborside Health Center in Oakland, with its bright fluorescent lights, a clean, spare design, and a raft of other services including chiropractic care and yoga classes. On a recent Friday, the center was packed, with a line of about 50 people waiting as the workers behind the counter walked other customers through the various buds, brownies and baked goods that were for sale.
“If we can’t demonstrate professionalism and legitimacy, we’re never going to gain the trust of our citizens,” Mr. DeAngelo said. “And without that trust, we’re never going to get where we need to go.”
The ultimate destination, for many supporters, is legalization. Californians will decide in November if that is where they want to go, when they vote on a ballot measure that would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana.
Regardless of the outcome, CannBe says it expects to expand its business model nationwide to become what admirers say will be “the McDonald’s of marijuana.”
The for-profit company is made up of four proprietors of nonprofit dispensaries and their lawyer. Mr. DeAngelo calls them an “A-team of cannabis professionals.”
In late March, it helped lobby the City Council in San Jose, the nation’s 10th-largest city, to pass ordinances regulating dispensaries, a crucial step toward a legitimate industry. And last week at a cannabis conference in Rhode Island, Mr. DeAngelo was diversifying his product line, introducing a kind of “pot lite” with less psychoactive agents than regular marijuana and thus popular with what he calls “cannabis-naïve patients.”
John Lovell, a California lobbyist who represents two major police groups that oppose legalization, scoffed at the notion that marijuana proponents were cleaning up their act or gaining traction with the public, citing a recent decision by the Los Angeles City Council to sharply curtail the number of medical marijuana dispensaries there.
“They are a neighborhood blight,” he said. “Here you have dispensaries that have cash and dope. So, duh? Is it any surprise that they’ve been magnets for crime?”
But advocates call that characterization unfair and outdated.
“This is an emerging business opportunity, as it would be in any other area,” said Ethan Nadelmann, the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which favors legalization.
In California, dispensaries already employ all manner of business gimmicks to survive in an increasingly competitive market. West Coast Cannabis, a trade magazine, has dozens of advertisements for daily specials, free samples, home delivery, gift certificates, scientific testimonials, yoga classes, hypnotherapy, Reiki sessions, coupons, recipes and, of course — being California — free parking.
There are also new schools and seminars that can be used as credit for required continuing education classes for doctors and lawyers.
That includes the Cannabis Law Institute, which was certified last month by the California state bar. It was co-founded by Omar Figueroa, a graduate of Yale University and Stanford law school, who is hosting a seminar in Sonoma County in June that promises to teach attendees about “this fascinating area of the law.”
Mr. Figueroa, who said he was voted “most likely to fail a Senate confirmation hearing” at Stanford, said he was earning a good living in marijuana law, but was in it for the experience. “My passion has always been cannabis,” he said. “It’s the world’s most interesting law job.”
But it is not just California. Business is also booming in Colorado, which has seen an explosion in the number of dispensaries in the last year. That rapid expansion has alarmed some authorities and sent legislators scrambling to pass new regulations, but has been a boon for law firms like Kumin Sommers L.L.P. in San Francisco, which has merged with Warren C. Edson, a lawyer in Denver representing about 300 Colorado dispensaries. Mr. Edson said many of his clients were curious about decidedly staid fields like workers’ compensation, tax withholding and occupational safety.
“There’s this real Al Capone fear that they’re going to get our guys, not on marijuana, but on something else,” Mr. Edson said, referring to how Capone was eventually charged with tax evasion rather than criminal activity.
The federal government continues to oppose any decriminalization of the drug. And while the Obama administration has signaled some leeway when it comes to medical marijuana, raids on dispensaries and growers by law enforcement agencies are still common — even in California, where the industry effectively began in 1996, with the passage of the landmark Proposition 215, which legalized medical marijuana.
Today, rules vary widely in the 14 states that allow medical marijuana, and a final vote on legalization is pending in the District of Columbia. Some states require sellers to prove nonprofit status — often as a collective or cooperative — and all states require that patients have a recommendation from a physician. But even those in favor of medical marijuana believe that the system is ripe for abuse or even unintentional lawbreaking.
“Almost all the dispensaries in California are illegal,” said William Panzer, an Oakland lawyer who helped draft Proposition 215. “They’re sole proprietorships, not collectives.”
Mr. Nadelmann’s organization, the Drug Policy Alliance, says it does not take a position on whether those who sell the drug should be nonprofit or not. But he added, “The key people involved are not becoming personally wealthy.”
A version of this article appeared in print on April 24, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.
Santa Clara County says no to fast-food toys
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/27/MNLA1D5QFV.DTL
Santa Clara County says no to fast-food toys
Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
No toy for you, Junior.
Not if you live in unincorporated Santa Clara County, where the Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ban restaurants from giving away toys with children's meals that exceed set levels of calories, fat, salt and sugar.
The ordinance, which the board passed by a 3-2 vote, is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation. The target is the fast-food industry and what critics call its practice of marketing unhealthful food to children and fueling an epidemic of obesity among the young.
"This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food and prizes," said the law's author, Supervisor Ken Yeager. "Obviously, toys in and of themselves do not make children obese. But it is unfair to parents and children to use toys to capture the tastes of children when they are young and get them hooked on eating high-sugar, high-fat foods early in life."
$1,000 fine for violations
Representatives for the California Restaurant Association, whose members include chains that opposed the ordinance, have 90 days to offer an alternative to the legislation. Violations under the version the board approved Tuesday would be punishable by fines of as much as $1,000 for each meal sold with a toy.
Yeager said he hopes the law will inspire cities and counties across the country to follow suit like "ripples that create a wave."
The law bans toy giveaways in children's meals that contain more than 485 calories, derive more than 35 percent of their calories from fat or 10 percent from added sweeteners, or have more than 600 mg of sodium. The totals are based on children's health standards set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Of the 151 restaurants in unincorporated Santa Clara County that are covered by the law, a dozen are part of fast-food chains that offer children's meals.
The county was among the first in the nation two years ago to require restaurants to display nutritional values on menus, legislation that has since been adopted by other jurisdictions, said Miguel Marquez, acting county counsel.
Marquez said his office has been contacted by officials from Orange County, Chicago and New York City about Yeager's toys ordinance. In San Francisco on Tuesday, Supervisor Eric Mar asked the city attorney to draft legislation similar to Santa Clara County's law.
"Just as with menu labeling, this is clearly within our authority," Marquez said. "We're on firm legal ground here."
Marquez said enforcement will be the job of county public health inspectors.
Possibility of alternative
Members of the California Restaurant Association were unsure if they will offer an alternative to the ordinance, said Amalia Chamorro, the association's director of governmental affairs.
"If the point is to get a dialogue going with the industry about health, that dialogue is already ongoing," Chamorro said. "If the point is to solve childhood obesity, taking away a toy isn't going to help."
Chamorro said her members will "obey the laws of the land," but she said she feared the new ordinance could unintentionally punish all child-friendly restaurants. "Where does it stop? Restaurants that offer crayons and coloring books?"
At least one parent, interviewed at a Burger King on Race Street and West San Carlos in an unincorporated area near San Jose, agreed with the restaurant group that the law amounted to government overreaching.
"I don't need politicians to tell me what I can and can't buy for my kid," said Chris Mackey, who bought his daughter, Cattie, a Kids Meal that included an "Iron Man 2" action figure. "We don't come in here every day, and I don't associate giving my daughter a toy with giving her bad food. This is a private matter between me and my child."
Mixed reactions to law
But Chris Markato of San Jose, 18, who said he sometimes buys children's meals for the smaller portions and value, said the law sounded like a good idea. "It's kind of sad when you see really big kids," he said. "They probably shouldn't eat so much sugar."
The supervisors suggested that Chamorro's restaurant group come back to the county with a plan that promotes more healthful food choices to keep the toys.
Supervisor Don Gage, who voted against the ordinance, said he would rather see county funding go toward teaching parents how to buy and prepare more healthful foods.
"If we're going to attack the problem, we need to do it with education of parents, not by taking a toy away from the kids," Gage said. "I agree obesity is a major problem, but it's not a 3-year-old who's buying the meals."
Kids' food freebies
A new Santa Clara County law bans restaurants from giving away toys with children's meals under these conditions:
Calories: A meal has more than 485 calories, a single food item has more than 200 calories, or a drink has more than 120 calories.
Salt: The meal has more than 600 mg of sodium, or a single food item more than 480 mg.
Fat: More than 35 percent of a meal's calories comes from fat.
Sugar: More than 10 percent of a meal's calories comes from added sweeteners.
E-mail Justin Berton at jberton@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Santa Clara County says no to fast-food toys
Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
No toy for you, Junior.
Not if you live in unincorporated Santa Clara County, where the Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ban restaurants from giving away toys with children's meals that exceed set levels of calories, fat, salt and sugar.
The ordinance, which the board passed by a 3-2 vote, is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation. The target is the fast-food industry and what critics call its practice of marketing unhealthful food to children and fueling an epidemic of obesity among the young.
"This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food and prizes," said the law's author, Supervisor Ken Yeager. "Obviously, toys in and of themselves do not make children obese. But it is unfair to parents and children to use toys to capture the tastes of children when they are young and get them hooked on eating high-sugar, high-fat foods early in life."
$1,000 fine for violations
Representatives for the California Restaurant Association, whose members include chains that opposed the ordinance, have 90 days to offer an alternative to the legislation. Violations under the version the board approved Tuesday would be punishable by fines of as much as $1,000 for each meal sold with a toy.
Yeager said he hopes the law will inspire cities and counties across the country to follow suit like "ripples that create a wave."
The law bans toy giveaways in children's meals that contain more than 485 calories, derive more than 35 percent of their calories from fat or 10 percent from added sweeteners, or have more than 600 mg of sodium. The totals are based on children's health standards set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Of the 151 restaurants in unincorporated Santa Clara County that are covered by the law, a dozen are part of fast-food chains that offer children's meals.
The county was among the first in the nation two years ago to require restaurants to display nutritional values on menus, legislation that has since been adopted by other jurisdictions, said Miguel Marquez, acting county counsel.
Marquez said his office has been contacted by officials from Orange County, Chicago and New York City about Yeager's toys ordinance. In San Francisco on Tuesday, Supervisor Eric Mar asked the city attorney to draft legislation similar to Santa Clara County's law.
"Just as with menu labeling, this is clearly within our authority," Marquez said. "We're on firm legal ground here."
Marquez said enforcement will be the job of county public health inspectors.
Possibility of alternative
Members of the California Restaurant Association were unsure if they will offer an alternative to the ordinance, said Amalia Chamorro, the association's director of governmental affairs.
"If the point is to get a dialogue going with the industry about health, that dialogue is already ongoing," Chamorro said. "If the point is to solve childhood obesity, taking away a toy isn't going to help."
Chamorro said her members will "obey the laws of the land," but she said she feared the new ordinance could unintentionally punish all child-friendly restaurants. "Where does it stop? Restaurants that offer crayons and coloring books?"
At least one parent, interviewed at a Burger King on Race Street and West San Carlos in an unincorporated area near San Jose, agreed with the restaurant group that the law amounted to government overreaching.
"I don't need politicians to tell me what I can and can't buy for my kid," said Chris Mackey, who bought his daughter, Cattie, a Kids Meal that included an "Iron Man 2" action figure. "We don't come in here every day, and I don't associate giving my daughter a toy with giving her bad food. This is a private matter between me and my child."
Mixed reactions to law
But Chris Markato of San Jose, 18, who said he sometimes buys children's meals for the smaller portions and value, said the law sounded like a good idea. "It's kind of sad when you see really big kids," he said. "They probably shouldn't eat so much sugar."
The supervisors suggested that Chamorro's restaurant group come back to the county with a plan that promotes more healthful food choices to keep the toys.
Supervisor Don Gage, who voted against the ordinance, said he would rather see county funding go toward teaching parents how to buy and prepare more healthful foods.
"If we're going to attack the problem, we need to do it with education of parents, not by taking a toy away from the kids," Gage said. "I agree obesity is a major problem, but it's not a 3-year-old who's buying the meals."
Kids' food freebies
A new Santa Clara County law bans restaurants from giving away toys with children's meals under these conditions:
Calories: A meal has more than 485 calories, a single food item has more than 200 calories, or a drink has more than 120 calories.
Salt: The meal has more than 600 mg of sodium, or a single food item more than 480 mg.
Fat: More than 35 percent of a meal's calories comes from fat.
Sugar: More than 10 percent of a meal's calories comes from added sweeteners.
E-mail Justin Berton at jberton@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Was Shakespeare's ghost writer ... Shakespeare?
http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/books/04/26/shakespeare.battle/
Was Shakespeare's ghost writer ... Shakespeare?
By Todd Leopold, CNN
April 26, 2010
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Author of new "Contested Will" wrote book to go through -- and debunk -- anti-Stratford theories
Because of holes in record, much not known about William Shakespeare the person
Some question the Bard's authorship of plays, poems; "so much is at stake"
(CNN) -- To most people, the literary debate over who wrote the works of William Shakespeare would appear to be much ado about nothing. After all, the play's the thing, right? What does it matter who wrote it?
To James Shapiro, however, it matters a great deal.
The Columbia University professor and Shakespeare scholar spent 15 years working on his 2005 book, "A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599." The work exhaustively details a key year in the Bard's career, when he wrote "Henry V" and "Julius Caesar" and became the man thought of as history's greatest English-language dramatist.
And yet he couldn't convince the doubters, who believe that the name "William Shakespeare" is a front for the real author.
"I thought I did a damned good job showing that it could only have been Shakespeare who wrote the plays we attributed to him," he said. "And I naively thought, that will slow people down who think that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare. And they kind of stepped around it.
"And I thought, I have to stop and really address this."
The result is Shapiro's new book, "Contested Will." In it, Shapiro chronicles the history of the anti-Stratfordian movement, which has believed that any number of people -- the essayist Francis Bacon, the nobleman the Earl of Oxford, Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe -- wrote the plays ascribed to the glovemaker's son from Stratford-upon-Avon, born 446 years ago. It's a theory that has attracted some famous minds -- including Mark Twain and Sigmund Freud -- and will soon be coming to the screen as Roland ("2012") Emmerich's latest film, "Anonymous."
To the anti-Stratfordians, Shakespeare -- who left behind, by modern standards, relatively little in the way of personal records -- was too unworldly, too unromantic (in his will, he famously left his widow his "second best bed"), too ordinary to have written some of the greatest plays and poems known to man. It's a theory Shapiro roundly rejects. He says that modern audiences are reading Shakespeare through modern sensibilities, believing that the author's work is autobiographical -- which was not the case in Shakespeare's day.
"We read today anachronistically -- we expect to find things in books that were written 400 years ago that people writing 400 years ago would not have put in those books," he says. "But the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries were not [autobiographical]. ... They made stuff up based on stories they read."
The distinction is important, he adds.
"Part of the authorship question is about trying to find whose life you can line up with the life of the author of the plays. Oxfordians will say, hey, our guy had three daughters and was captured by pirates. Your guy had two daughters and was never captured by pirates. Therefore, our guy has a greater likelihood to have written the plays. And that way madness lies, because then you end up with 50 or 60 contenders."
Naturally, Oxfordians disagree. Shapiro's book has been wounded in its Amazon rankings by reviewers who don't believe Shapiro's thesis and criticized by anti-Stratfordian websites.
"I do think there is an authorship question," says Michael Egan, a retired English professor who edits the Oxfordian, the journal of the Shakespeare Oxford Society. Though he considers himself a Stratfordian, he says he's "open-minded" about the issue and criticizes Shapiro for some of the arguments in "Contested Will."
"The case for Oxford derives from the fact that almost everything we know about Shakespeare of Stratford doesn't seem connectible to the author of the plays," he says. "It's that gap between what we could infer about the author, and what we know about Shakespeare of Stratford, which has raised the questions."
It's a battle that has, as Shapiro records, been filled with partisan rhetoric and bad blood since it began a little more than 200 years ago. Twain, for example, wrote a short book on the subject; his contemporary, Henry James, also questioned Shakespeare's authorship. Others have created elaborate codes or sought biographical parallels. The Stratfordians stand by their proof; the anti-Stratfordians fill in the gaps.
In that respect, the battle over Shakespeare has much in common with other disputes. Kathy Olmsted, a history professor at the University of California-Davis and the author of "Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy," observes that, in American history, conspiracy theories have often arisen from a perceived lack of information.
"When people don't have that information or can't get it, they like to sort of speculate on what the real story is," she says. "People see those blank spots and they want to fill them in."
And in for a penny, in for a pound, she adds: "It becomes like a religion. People who believe in these theories really get invested in them, and they don't want to account for evidence that doesn't fit their thesis."
Which is why, for Shapiro, it's so important to establish that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.
"So much is at stake in Shakespeare. In the great game of capture the literary flag, this is it," he says. "If you can say something about Shakespeare, you can say something about how English literature and literature in general works."
He's particularly leery about Emmerich's film, which is in production and stars Vanessa Redgrave, Rhys Ifans and Derek Jacobi -- the latter a noted Shakespeare doubter.
"It's going to be a disaster movie for people who teach Shakespeare," he says. "In the great rock-paper-scissor of movie and book, movie beats book."
Still, he's hopeful that "Contested Will" will have an impact. "You can't win that battle. But I can wage it, at any rate."
Nevertheless, he's ready to put the Baconians, Oxfordians, Marlovians and other anti-Stratfordians behind him.
"I can't wait to get back to Shakespeare and writing a book. I actually get smarter wrestling with Shakespeare's words -- it's very thrilling," he says. "But spending five years thinking about people's fantasies did not make me smarter at all. ... Was it worth it? Probably. As long as the next book goes well."
Was Shakespeare's ghost writer ... Shakespeare?
By Todd Leopold, CNN
April 26, 2010
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Author of new "Contested Will" wrote book to go through -- and debunk -- anti-Stratford theories
Because of holes in record, much not known about William Shakespeare the person
Some question the Bard's authorship of plays, poems; "so much is at stake"
(CNN) -- To most people, the literary debate over who wrote the works of William Shakespeare would appear to be much ado about nothing. After all, the play's the thing, right? What does it matter who wrote it?
To James Shapiro, however, it matters a great deal.
The Columbia University professor and Shakespeare scholar spent 15 years working on his 2005 book, "A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599." The work exhaustively details a key year in the Bard's career, when he wrote "Henry V" and "Julius Caesar" and became the man thought of as history's greatest English-language dramatist.
And yet he couldn't convince the doubters, who believe that the name "William Shakespeare" is a front for the real author.
"I thought I did a damned good job showing that it could only have been Shakespeare who wrote the plays we attributed to him," he said. "And I naively thought, that will slow people down who think that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare. And they kind of stepped around it.
"And I thought, I have to stop and really address this."
The result is Shapiro's new book, "Contested Will." In it, Shapiro chronicles the history of the anti-Stratfordian movement, which has believed that any number of people -- the essayist Francis Bacon, the nobleman the Earl of Oxford, Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe -- wrote the plays ascribed to the glovemaker's son from Stratford-upon-Avon, born 446 years ago. It's a theory that has attracted some famous minds -- including Mark Twain and Sigmund Freud -- and will soon be coming to the screen as Roland ("2012") Emmerich's latest film, "Anonymous."
To the anti-Stratfordians, Shakespeare -- who left behind, by modern standards, relatively little in the way of personal records -- was too unworldly, too unromantic (in his will, he famously left his widow his "second best bed"), too ordinary to have written some of the greatest plays and poems known to man. It's a theory Shapiro roundly rejects. He says that modern audiences are reading Shakespeare through modern sensibilities, believing that the author's work is autobiographical -- which was not the case in Shakespeare's day.
"We read today anachronistically -- we expect to find things in books that were written 400 years ago that people writing 400 years ago would not have put in those books," he says. "But the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries were not [autobiographical]. ... They made stuff up based on stories they read."
The distinction is important, he adds.
"Part of the authorship question is about trying to find whose life you can line up with the life of the author of the plays. Oxfordians will say, hey, our guy had three daughters and was captured by pirates. Your guy had two daughters and was never captured by pirates. Therefore, our guy has a greater likelihood to have written the plays. And that way madness lies, because then you end up with 50 or 60 contenders."
Naturally, Oxfordians disagree. Shapiro's book has been wounded in its Amazon rankings by reviewers who don't believe Shapiro's thesis and criticized by anti-Stratfordian websites.
"I do think there is an authorship question," says Michael Egan, a retired English professor who edits the Oxfordian, the journal of the Shakespeare Oxford Society. Though he considers himself a Stratfordian, he says he's "open-minded" about the issue and criticizes Shapiro for some of the arguments in "Contested Will."
"The case for Oxford derives from the fact that almost everything we know about Shakespeare of Stratford doesn't seem connectible to the author of the plays," he says. "It's that gap between what we could infer about the author, and what we know about Shakespeare of Stratford, which has raised the questions."
It's a battle that has, as Shapiro records, been filled with partisan rhetoric and bad blood since it began a little more than 200 years ago. Twain, for example, wrote a short book on the subject; his contemporary, Henry James, also questioned Shakespeare's authorship. Others have created elaborate codes or sought biographical parallels. The Stratfordians stand by their proof; the anti-Stratfordians fill in the gaps.
In that respect, the battle over Shakespeare has much in common with other disputes. Kathy Olmsted, a history professor at the University of California-Davis and the author of "Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy," observes that, in American history, conspiracy theories have often arisen from a perceived lack of information.
"When people don't have that information or can't get it, they like to sort of speculate on what the real story is," she says. "People see those blank spots and they want to fill them in."
And in for a penny, in for a pound, she adds: "It becomes like a religion. People who believe in these theories really get invested in them, and they don't want to account for evidence that doesn't fit their thesis."
Which is why, for Shapiro, it's so important to establish that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.
"So much is at stake in Shakespeare. In the great game of capture the literary flag, this is it," he says. "If you can say something about Shakespeare, you can say something about how English literature and literature in general works."
He's particularly leery about Emmerich's film, which is in production and stars Vanessa Redgrave, Rhys Ifans and Derek Jacobi -- the latter a noted Shakespeare doubter.
"It's going to be a disaster movie for people who teach Shakespeare," he says. "In the great rock-paper-scissor of movie and book, movie beats book."
Still, he's hopeful that "Contested Will" will have an impact. "You can't win that battle. But I can wage it, at any rate."
Nevertheless, he's ready to put the Baconians, Oxfordians, Marlovians and other anti-Stratfordians behind him.
"I can't wait to get back to Shakespeare and writing a book. I actually get smarter wrestling with Shakespeare's words -- it's very thrilling," he says. "But spending five years thinking about people's fantasies did not make me smarter at all. ... Was it worth it? Probably. As long as the next book goes well."
Roethlisberger wasn't a popular Steeler, even before all this
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Roethlisberger-wasn-t-a-popular-Steeler-even-be
Mon Apr 26, 2010
Roethlisberger wasn't a popular Steeler, even before all this
By MJD
Some former Pittsburgh Steelers teammates are kicking Ben Roethlisberger while he's down, telling ESPN that Roethlisberger wasn't well-liked in the locker room while they were there.
Kelly Naqi did a story for ESPN's "Outside the Lines" over the weekend, focusing on Roethlisberger's image and reputation. She talked to former Steelers running back Najeh Davenport, former Steelers safety about Mike Logan and some other people around the area. Here are some of the highlights.
• Davenport estimated that about 60 percent of the locker room felt like Roethlisberger thought he was "bigger than the team" and not focused on winning.
• Davenport also discussed a time when Joey Porter called out Roethlisberger in a team meeting for being the last one in to practice and the first one to leave. Porter also accused Roethlisberger of not being dedicated to the team and criticized him for not fraternizing with his teammates.
• Mike Logan confirmed the incident where Porter addressed Roethlisberger and said that all the things Porter mentioned were already being talked about in the locker room.
• Someone identified only as "a close friend of a Steelers player" said that the reason Roethlisberger had a bodyguard was because of an incident where a man put a gun to Roethlisberger's head because Roethlisberger was involved with the man's girlfriend.
• Naqi spoke with people who work at Pittsburgh bars and nightclubs, and they described Ben as someone who was condescending to the staffs and rude to other customers. One bar owner said Roethlisberger always expected he and his entourage to be given free food and drinks.
Roethlisberger wouldn't talk to ESPN for the story. Neither would Joey Porter. Roethlisberger did release a statement today about his suspension, though, apologizing to his teammates and fans, and vowing to comply with the terms of the suspension.
This is the kind of report that wouldn't ever see the light of day if there weren't some other dastardly story about the guy. That's not to say that it isn't true -- Kelly Naqi's a fine reporter -- but is it a big deal? Should we care?
After all, no one said anything about Roethlisberger-related locker room troubles when the Steelers were winning Super Bowls. Maybe this is just a mountain-out-of-a-molehill thing that surfaces now because it's convenient and fits the "Roethlisberger as dirtball" narrative.
If there's any practical issue here, I think it's this: If Roethlisberger has to mend some fences in the Steelers locker room, perhaps it'll be even tougher than expected. If someone didn't like him before the sexual assault allegations, it's hard to imagine they'll warm up to the guy now, no matter what he does.
We'll just have to wait and see how that plays out. Locker rooms have been divided over less.
Mon Apr 26, 2010
Roethlisberger wasn't a popular Steeler, even before all this
By MJD
Some former Pittsburgh Steelers teammates are kicking Ben Roethlisberger while he's down, telling ESPN that Roethlisberger wasn't well-liked in the locker room while they were there.
Kelly Naqi did a story for ESPN's "Outside the Lines" over the weekend, focusing on Roethlisberger's image and reputation. She talked to former Steelers running back Najeh Davenport, former Steelers safety about Mike Logan and some other people around the area. Here are some of the highlights.
• Davenport estimated that about 60 percent of the locker room felt like Roethlisberger thought he was "bigger than the team" and not focused on winning.
• Davenport also discussed a time when Joey Porter called out Roethlisberger in a team meeting for being the last one in to practice and the first one to leave. Porter also accused Roethlisberger of not being dedicated to the team and criticized him for not fraternizing with his teammates.
• Mike Logan confirmed the incident where Porter addressed Roethlisberger and said that all the things Porter mentioned were already being talked about in the locker room.
• Someone identified only as "a close friend of a Steelers player" said that the reason Roethlisberger had a bodyguard was because of an incident where a man put a gun to Roethlisberger's head because Roethlisberger was involved with the man's girlfriend.
• Naqi spoke with people who work at Pittsburgh bars and nightclubs, and they described Ben as someone who was condescending to the staffs and rude to other customers. One bar owner said Roethlisberger always expected he and his entourage to be given free food and drinks.
Roethlisberger wouldn't talk to ESPN for the story. Neither would Joey Porter. Roethlisberger did release a statement today about his suspension, though, apologizing to his teammates and fans, and vowing to comply with the terms of the suspension.
This is the kind of report that wouldn't ever see the light of day if there weren't some other dastardly story about the guy. That's not to say that it isn't true -- Kelly Naqi's a fine reporter -- but is it a big deal? Should we care?
After all, no one said anything about Roethlisberger-related locker room troubles when the Steelers were winning Super Bowls. Maybe this is just a mountain-out-of-a-molehill thing that surfaces now because it's convenient and fits the "Roethlisberger as dirtball" narrative.
If there's any practical issue here, I think it's this: If Roethlisberger has to mend some fences in the Steelers locker room, perhaps it'll be even tougher than expected. If someone didn't like him before the sexual assault allegations, it's hard to imagine they'll warm up to the guy now, no matter what he does.
We'll just have to wait and see how that plays out. Locker rooms have been divided over less.
Great Quotes: Alfred Hitchcock
"The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.”
Thanks to Paul Kimball for the above...
Thanks to Paul Kimball for the above...
Advertising Slogan of the Year
"This little maneuver is entirely ill-conceived. Well done." Heineken Beer
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1315793544?bctid=72755678001
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1315793544?bctid=72755678001
WaterCar Movie
WaterCar Movie
A film, music video and companion book that goes in search of:
A car that uses water 4 fuel
The Goal: To drive this 72 Mustang cross country powered by water. Steve Schappert and Alexandra Bruce are forming BIOS WaterCar Entertainment LLC. in order to produce a film, music video and companion book about the project. Exploring the many stories both myth and legend that have surfaced over the years and focusing on how this technology will affect everyday people.
The process of creating the BIOS WaterCar began in Brookfield CT with Schappert and old friend and now crew chief for the WaterCar project, Steve Melycher. The first steps to driving a 72' Mustang cross country is, getting it to run and run well, Melycher was instrumental to this process. As a former Crew Chief for a MR2 racing team and owner of of a 67 Firebird with 475 horses his knowledge and belief in the project are much appreciated! We will spend the next month comparing the different technologies available for hydrogen generators and install our best in class amidst the 17 live bands and bike and car rally at GREEN FEST in New Haven on June 4-6 2010, please come see us! Then we will begin our journey zigzagging across the country meeting with folks in the hydrogen industry, picking up hints where we can. The story is one of hope and the reality is that water and sunlight is all the energy we will ever need. Over 2000 people from all over the world have lent their support to this project in the first 9 days.
Can one million minds working together find the answer to the energy crisis? Typically scientists work alone, I am asking everyone to work together, share ideas, create a worldwide think tank with one goal. Use the universe's most abundant element to create safe, useful energy...hydrogen on demand. Hydrogen made on site without need for dangerous storage tanks. Uses include welding, home heating and yes automotive applications. Lets face it, if the technology worked, it could power anything including freight trains and cargo ships.
Grass Roots Project: We aren't waiting for giant corporate sponsors, although we happily await the phone calls, we are taking things in to our own hands and asking the people of the world to help anyway they know how. Could you send a few bucks for car parts, give us a warm bed and a cold beer, a private garage each night (don't want to park it outside a hotel and wonder if it will be there in the morning : ). Are you in the automotive industry and familiar with sand blasting, auto body, engines, brakes, anything at all? The car will be a work in progress, it will be a joint creation and we hope to piece together the technology and the car along the way. We aren't doing this to file a patent, we are doing it to prove that mankind can do anything we set our minds to. This is worth investigating. I am asking you to send this to everyone you know, knowledge is power. See What NASA had to say about Using Hydrogen in a car in 1977
What we have:
An original 72 Mustang with a straight six and a ram air hood.
new tires, brakes, radiator, solenoid, distributor, carburetor, new shocks, struts. Purchase and work over 8 years, about $9000. 2000 Cherokee sport that we will install a hydrogen generator in and use as our chase vehicle. If budget allows we also have access to a 1967 Firebird with 450 horsepower that would go along way toward scientific research.
What we need:
The water car is a grass roots effort to find the answers to the energy crisis. Instead of one big corporate sponsor how about we all pitch in? Great advertising potential from the adventure, Countless interviews, our music video, movie and companion book.
What we need:
Music...old cassette deck and one speaker in the middle of the dash, just not cutting it for cross country trip. Paint and minor body work, although the black primer has a very blues brothers feel to it!
Transmission slips (feels like seals), Rebuild the engine would be nice (it runs but doesn't have all the power it had out of the show room. Remember this is a gas crunch Mustang from 1972, it only had 99 horsepower on a good day. A new engine with 420 horses running on water would be pretty cool!)
New rag top
Interior not bad, but could use a makeover
Hydrogen technology
need to reregister, go through emissions (never been a problem) and put insurance on it, I'll know more soon.
You can make a huge difference simply by sharing this with someone.
Care to share or lend support? If you have information you would like to share or would simply like to lend your support for the project go to http://worldwidethinktank.blogspot.com and add a post, or add it to our Facebook group. Stan Meyers allegedly developed a car that could run on water using a water fuel cell. To be clear we have not built mine yet, we are searching for answers, can you help? There is a great deal of disinformation on this subject floating around.
Learning is Fun damental: Think I learned that from "big bird" on sesame street when I was 4 years old. This is serious business, however; an idol of mine once said, “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” - Mahatma Gandhi So I am gonna make this as fun as possible while educating as many people as possible. I also feel compelled to quote 2 other idols of mine, Jake & Elwood,
Elwood: It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank a gas, half a pack a cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses.
Jake: Hit it.
Elwood: They're not gonna catch us. We're on a mission from God.
Yup, that's right Gandhi & the Blues Brothers, can't get more soul than that! Click here for a sound track suggestion and don't forget to sing along!
Music Video Concept: Lots of clips from cross country trip, GreenFest using the basic concept of the environmental ballet infused with the BIOS theme song, "Let's Go"
Some of what I know: Fortunately this changes daily, but here is the cliff notes version. What I have been told, read or viewed on youtube so far. Stan Myers mysteriously died of food poisoning the day after getting a $ 30 million grant from the dept of defense to build a research facility. His patent is readily available on Google Patents but there are pieces missing. We just received further information on the where abouts of the car and his notes...more soon! Honestly the story reads like a dime store version of a Greek classic. Stan Died 12 years ago, how many soldiers have we sent to the middle east since then to defend oil.
Have I been told my life will be in danger for doing this...yes I have, many times, but knowledge is power. There already have been many patents filed by people all over the world, and Dan Nocera is currently working on the issue with funding from the recovery act. So please don't kill the messenger. : )
Learn more about the technology from the world's leader in artificial photosynthesis, Dan Nocera. Intro to Dan Nocera and the future of energy.
Personalized Energy: MIT Professor Dan Nocera believes he can solve the worlds energy problems with an Olympic-sized pool of water. Nocera and his research team have identified a simple technique for powering the Earth inexpensively by using the sun to split water and store energy - making the large-scale deployment of personalized solar energy possible
*
Can you please help us?
Send an email to abetterworld@biosislife.org
It would be greatly appreciated if you could send us a few bucks through PayPal?
Personally my finances are on life support so every penny counts! I was building a green living expo when the market crashed, lost everything. Sorry this is not a tax deductible donation, yet, it is called a gift : ) (can't afford the $400 for the 501c3 to file non profit status, but that is on the list.) The BIOS Organization is currently in the concept stage and we plan to file Non profit & Corporate docs in a few months. Find out more
Thank you in advance...
EU/IMF want tougher Greek austerity for deal - union
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE63S17H20100429
EU/IMF want tougher Greek austerity for deal - union
Wed, Apr 28 2010
* Proposals target bonuses, some worth a month's pay
* Hikes to VAT, excise taxes, also under discussion
* EU/IMF deal expected to be finalised within days
By Lefteris Papadimas and Dina Kyriakidou
ATHENS, April 29 (Reuters) - Greece will impose steeper salary cuts and new austerity measures to clinch a three-year, multi-billion euro aid deal and avoid default, union officials said on Thursday, vowing protests.
Prime Minister George Papandreou met unions to discuss the European Union and International Monetary Fund bailout, expected to be finalised within days, to prepare the ground for what are set to be unpopular measures.
"We realised we stand before a done deal," said Ilias Iliopoulos, secretary general of the ADEDY public sector union after the meeting. "This will acutely burden people, and what is worse, unfairly."
Unionists said Papandreou told them measures requested by the EU/IMF team include abolishing Christmas and Easter bonuses together worth two months' pay, a rise in VAT and other steps to cut the budget deficit by 10 percent of GDP in 2010 and 2011.
"They want Greece to cut the deficit by 10 percentage points in 2010 and 2011 ... so that Greece can go back and borrow on markets in the third year of the programme," said one union official who requested anonymity.
Revelations in October by the new socialist government that the budget deficit was much bigger than expected launched Greece into a debt crisis that is threatening global markets.
The initial 12.7 percent deficit of gross domestic product for 2009 was revised to 13.6 percent last month, undermining Greek targets to bring the gap below 3 percent of GDP by 2012 by cutting it to 8.7 percent in 2010 and 5.6 percent in 2011.
DEBT EXPIRING
Investors are closely watching the talks for details on whether the aid will start in time for Greece to refinance an 8.5 billion euro bond coming due on May 19 and if the deal will be big enough to handle Athens' 300 billion euro debt pile.
Greek bond interest rates have hit record highs as a result of the crisis, making borrowing on markets prohibitive.
The euro zone member state has already cut public sector wages, hiked taxes, frozen pensions and taken other steps to cut the deficit by around a third this year, despite widespread opposition from Greeks.
Sources close to the talks said earlier on Thursday the measures being discussed include hiking Value Added Tax by 2-4 percentage points from 21 percent currently, and a rise of at least 10 percent on fuel, tobacco and alcohol taxes.
"All these are on the table," said one of the sources, who requested anonymity. "They are not final yet."
Union officials said a three-year public sector wage freeze was also being discussed.
The elimination of Christmas and Easter bonuses, the equivalent to 13th and 14th monthly salaries, would mean an additional 10 percent cut in public sector base salaries over an already agreed 4 percent cut, saving the state about 1.4 billion euros a year.
"The talks are tough," government spokesman George Petalotis told reporters. "No one can guarantee anything, we know how difficult the country's situation is."
In Brussels, Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said the EU should complete talks with Greece "within days" on a financial aid package, conditional on Greece cutting its deficit. He gave no details of the package.
On Wednesday, Germany's Green party parliamentary leader cited IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn as saying the aid package would be worth 100-120 billion euros ($133-160 billion) over three years, with 45 billion euros expected in the first year.
Cuts were also aimed at Greece's system of public wage allowances, which often include generous extra pay for activities such as using computers or getting to work on time.
These are primarily meant to keep base salaries and pensions low, and a 5-15 percent cut could save the state about 300 million euros a year.
More measures are bound to meet resistance. Opinion polls show a majority of Greeks oppose outside aid and expect the rescue package to hit living standards. Unions have pledged strikes and many analysts fear violent protests come autumn.
"It's a disaster! The government has crossed the line," said Despina Spanou, a member of the public sector union ADEDY board. "We can't live this way. We will fight these measures with all our might, because this is a battle for survival."
(Additional reporting by Renee Maltezou; writing by Dina Kyriakidou; editing by Stephen Nisbet)
EU/IMF want tougher Greek austerity for deal - union
Wed, Apr 28 2010
* Proposals target bonuses, some worth a month's pay
* Hikes to VAT, excise taxes, also under discussion
* EU/IMF deal expected to be finalised within days
By Lefteris Papadimas and Dina Kyriakidou
ATHENS, April 29 (Reuters) - Greece will impose steeper salary cuts and new austerity measures to clinch a three-year, multi-billion euro aid deal and avoid default, union officials said on Thursday, vowing protests.
Prime Minister George Papandreou met unions to discuss the European Union and International Monetary Fund bailout, expected to be finalised within days, to prepare the ground for what are set to be unpopular measures.
"We realised we stand before a done deal," said Ilias Iliopoulos, secretary general of the ADEDY public sector union after the meeting. "This will acutely burden people, and what is worse, unfairly."
Unionists said Papandreou told them measures requested by the EU/IMF team include abolishing Christmas and Easter bonuses together worth two months' pay, a rise in VAT and other steps to cut the budget deficit by 10 percent of GDP in 2010 and 2011.
"They want Greece to cut the deficit by 10 percentage points in 2010 and 2011 ... so that Greece can go back and borrow on markets in the third year of the programme," said one union official who requested anonymity.
Revelations in October by the new socialist government that the budget deficit was much bigger than expected launched Greece into a debt crisis that is threatening global markets.
The initial 12.7 percent deficit of gross domestic product for 2009 was revised to 13.6 percent last month, undermining Greek targets to bring the gap below 3 percent of GDP by 2012 by cutting it to 8.7 percent in 2010 and 5.6 percent in 2011.
DEBT EXPIRING
Investors are closely watching the talks for details on whether the aid will start in time for Greece to refinance an 8.5 billion euro bond coming due on May 19 and if the deal will be big enough to handle Athens' 300 billion euro debt pile.
Greek bond interest rates have hit record highs as a result of the crisis, making borrowing on markets prohibitive.
The euro zone member state has already cut public sector wages, hiked taxes, frozen pensions and taken other steps to cut the deficit by around a third this year, despite widespread opposition from Greeks.
Sources close to the talks said earlier on Thursday the measures being discussed include hiking Value Added Tax by 2-4 percentage points from 21 percent currently, and a rise of at least 10 percent on fuel, tobacco and alcohol taxes.
"All these are on the table," said one of the sources, who requested anonymity. "They are not final yet."
Union officials said a three-year public sector wage freeze was also being discussed.
The elimination of Christmas and Easter bonuses, the equivalent to 13th and 14th monthly salaries, would mean an additional 10 percent cut in public sector base salaries over an already agreed 4 percent cut, saving the state about 1.4 billion euros a year.
"The talks are tough," government spokesman George Petalotis told reporters. "No one can guarantee anything, we know how difficult the country's situation is."
In Brussels, Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said the EU should complete talks with Greece "within days" on a financial aid package, conditional on Greece cutting its deficit. He gave no details of the package.
On Wednesday, Germany's Green party parliamentary leader cited IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn as saying the aid package would be worth 100-120 billion euros ($133-160 billion) over three years, with 45 billion euros expected in the first year.
Cuts were also aimed at Greece's system of public wage allowances, which often include generous extra pay for activities such as using computers or getting to work on time.
These are primarily meant to keep base salaries and pensions low, and a 5-15 percent cut could save the state about 300 million euros a year.
More measures are bound to meet resistance. Opinion polls show a majority of Greeks oppose outside aid and expect the rescue package to hit living standards. Unions have pledged strikes and many analysts fear violent protests come autumn.
"It's a disaster! The government has crossed the line," said Despina Spanou, a member of the public sector union ADEDY board. "We can't live this way. We will fight these measures with all our might, because this is a battle for survival."
(Additional reporting by Renee Maltezou; writing by Dina Kyriakidou; editing by Stephen Nisbet)
The right court fight
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/25/AR2010042502987.html
The right court fight
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Monday, April 26, 2010
The genius of American conservatives over the past 30 years has been their understanding that the most effective way to change the country is to change the terms of our political debate. On issue after issue, they have done just that.
Sensible regulation was cast as a dangerous quest for government control. Modest measures to alleviate poverty became schemes to lock the poor into "dependency." Advocates of social insurance were condemned as socialists. Government was said to be under the sway of a distant "them," even though in a democracy, government is the realm of "us." And attempts to achieve a bit more economic equality were pronounced as assaults on liberty.
Nowhere has the conservative intellectual offensive been more effective than in transforming our discussion of the judiciary. That is why the coming clash over President Obama's next Supreme Court nominee is so important.
The test of success for liberals should not simply be winning the confirmation battle. This fight must be the beginning of a long-term effort to expose how radically conservatives have altered our understanding of what the Supreme Court does and how it does it.
Above all, it should become clear that the danger of judicial activism now comes from the right, not the left. It is conservatives, not liberals, who are using the courts to overturn the decisions made by democratically elected bodies in areas such as pay discrimination, school integration, antitrust laws and worker safety regulation.
If anyone doubted that the Supreme Court's current conservative majority wants to impose its view no matter what Congress or state legislatures decide -- or what earlier precedents held -- its decision in the Citizens United case should end all qualms.
In granting corporations an essentially unlimited right to spend money to influence the outcome of elections, that ruling defied decades of legal precedents and congressional enactments. The non-elected branch of government decided it didn't like existing legislation, so it legislated on its own.
Justice John Paul Stevens, whose retirement will open up a seat on the court, offered one of the finest dissents of a distinguished career when he noted that to arrive at the result it did, the court majority not only violated precedent but also had to reach beyond the case at hand to do so.
"Essentially, five Justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law," Stevens wrote. Now that is judicial activism.
Stevens added: "In a democratic society, the longstanding consensus on the need to limit corporate campaign spending should outweigh the wooden application of judge-made rules." Citizens United is an extreme case of a general tendency: Conservative judges are regularly invoking their alleged fealty to the "original" intentions of the Founders as a battering ram against attempts to limit the power of large corporations. Such entities were not even in the imaginations of those who wrote the Constitution. To claim to know what the Founders would have made of Exxon Mobil or Goldman Sachs or PepsiCo is an exercise in arrogance.
What liberals forgot during the years when their side dominated the judiciary is that for much of our history, the courts have played a conservative role. But today's conservatives have not forgotten this legacy. Their goal is to overturn the past 70 years of judicial understandings and bring us back to a time when courts voided minimum-wage laws and all manner of other economic regulations.
In his eerily relevant new book on the struggle between Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Supreme Court, "Supreme Power," Jeff Shesol reminds us that the conservatives of that day were "imbued with a sense that they were saving civilization from Bolsheviks, collectivists and other sundry radicals." One suspects that the current conservative court majority has a similar view of its mission.
So this time around, let's have a new court debate that focuses on more than just where a nominee stands on Roe v. Wade. Let's remember that the truly "elitist" judges are the ones who protect the privileges of the powerful over the right of Congress to legislate on behalf of workers, consumers and the environment. Let's ignore the claims of conservatives that they are opposed to "legislating from the bench," since it's their judges who are now doing the legislating. If liberals can't successfully challenge conservatives on first principles, they'll never win the fights that matter.
ejdionne@washpost.com
The right court fight
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Monday, April 26, 2010
The genius of American conservatives over the past 30 years has been their understanding that the most effective way to change the country is to change the terms of our political debate. On issue after issue, they have done just that.
Sensible regulation was cast as a dangerous quest for government control. Modest measures to alleviate poverty became schemes to lock the poor into "dependency." Advocates of social insurance were condemned as socialists. Government was said to be under the sway of a distant "them," even though in a democracy, government is the realm of "us." And attempts to achieve a bit more economic equality were pronounced as assaults on liberty.
Nowhere has the conservative intellectual offensive been more effective than in transforming our discussion of the judiciary. That is why the coming clash over President Obama's next Supreme Court nominee is so important.
The test of success for liberals should not simply be winning the confirmation battle. This fight must be the beginning of a long-term effort to expose how radically conservatives have altered our understanding of what the Supreme Court does and how it does it.
Above all, it should become clear that the danger of judicial activism now comes from the right, not the left. It is conservatives, not liberals, who are using the courts to overturn the decisions made by democratically elected bodies in areas such as pay discrimination, school integration, antitrust laws and worker safety regulation.
If anyone doubted that the Supreme Court's current conservative majority wants to impose its view no matter what Congress or state legislatures decide -- or what earlier precedents held -- its decision in the Citizens United case should end all qualms.
In granting corporations an essentially unlimited right to spend money to influence the outcome of elections, that ruling defied decades of legal precedents and congressional enactments. The non-elected branch of government decided it didn't like existing legislation, so it legislated on its own.
Justice John Paul Stevens, whose retirement will open up a seat on the court, offered one of the finest dissents of a distinguished career when he noted that to arrive at the result it did, the court majority not only violated precedent but also had to reach beyond the case at hand to do so.
"Essentially, five Justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law," Stevens wrote. Now that is judicial activism.
Stevens added: "In a democratic society, the longstanding consensus on the need to limit corporate campaign spending should outweigh the wooden application of judge-made rules." Citizens United is an extreme case of a general tendency: Conservative judges are regularly invoking their alleged fealty to the "original" intentions of the Founders as a battering ram against attempts to limit the power of large corporations. Such entities were not even in the imaginations of those who wrote the Constitution. To claim to know what the Founders would have made of Exxon Mobil or Goldman Sachs or PepsiCo is an exercise in arrogance.
What liberals forgot during the years when their side dominated the judiciary is that for much of our history, the courts have played a conservative role. But today's conservatives have not forgotten this legacy. Their goal is to overturn the past 70 years of judicial understandings and bring us back to a time when courts voided minimum-wage laws and all manner of other economic regulations.
In his eerily relevant new book on the struggle between Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Supreme Court, "Supreme Power," Jeff Shesol reminds us that the conservatives of that day were "imbued with a sense that they were saving civilization from Bolsheviks, collectivists and other sundry radicals." One suspects that the current conservative court majority has a similar view of its mission.
So this time around, let's have a new court debate that focuses on more than just where a nominee stands on Roe v. Wade. Let's remember that the truly "elitist" judges are the ones who protect the privileges of the powerful over the right of Congress to legislate on behalf of workers, consumers and the environment. Let's ignore the claims of conservatives that they are opposed to "legislating from the bench," since it's their judges who are now doing the legislating. If liberals can't successfully challenge conservatives on first principles, they'll never win the fights that matter.
ejdionne@washpost.com
ObamaCare Mulligan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704133804575198322718759844.html
APRIL 26, 2010
ObamaCare Mulligan
About those lower insurance costs we promised...
When President Obama signed his health-care reform last month, he declared it will "lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government." So why, barely a month later, are Democrats scrambling to pass a new bill that would impose price controls on insurance?
In now-they-tell-us hearings on Tuesday, the Senate health committee debated a bill that would give states the power to reject premium increases that state regulators determine are "unreasonable." The White House proposed this just before the final Obama- Care scramble, but it couldn't be included because it violated the procedural rules that Democrats abused to pass the bill.
Some 27 states currently have some form of rate review in the individual and small-business markets, but they generally don't leverage it in a political way because insolvent insurers are expensive for states and bankruptcies limit consumer choices. One exception is Massachusetts: Governor Deval Patrick is now using this regulatory power to create de facto price controls and assail the state's insurers as cover for the explosive costs resulting from the ObamaCare prototype the Bay State passed in 2006.
National Democrats now want the power to do the same across the country, because they know how unrealistic their cost-control claims really are. Democrats are petrified they'll get the blame they deserve when insurance costs inevitably spike. So the purpose of this latest Senate bill is to have a pre-emptive political response on hand.
ObamaCare includes several new cost-driving mandates that take effect immediately, including expanding family coverage for children as old as 26 and banning consumer co-payments for preventive care. Democrats are bragging about these "benefits," but they aren't free and their cost will be built into premiums. And those are merely teasers for the many Washington-created dysfunctions that will soon distort insurance markets.
In Massachusetts, Mr. Patrick says his price-control sally will be followed by reviewing what doctors and hospitals charge—or in other words for price controls on the medical services that make up most health spending. ObamaCare will gradually move in the same direction.
Or maybe not so gradually, judging by the study released last last week by Richard Foster, the Obama Administration's Medicare actuary. Mr. Foster predicts net national health spending will increase by about 1% annually above the status quo that is already estimated to be $4.7 trillion in 2019. This is one more rebuke to the White House fantasy that a new entitlement will lower health costs.
"Although several provisions would help to reduce health care cost growth, their impact would be more than offset through 2019 by the higher health expenditures resulting from the coverage expansions," Mr. Foster writes—and that's assuming everything goes according to plan. He considers it "plausible and even probable" that prices in the private market will rise as greater demand due to subsidized coverage runs into the relatively fixed supply of doctors and hospitals.
Most of ObamaCare's unrealistic "savings" come from cranking down the way Medicare calculates its price controls, and Mr. Foster writes that they'll grow "more slowly than, and in a way that was unrelated to, the providers' costs of furnishing services to beneficiaries." He expects that 15% of hospital budgets may be driven into deficits, thus "possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries." Isn't reform grand?
The official who will preside over this fiscal trainwreck is Donald Berwick, the Harvard professor and chief of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement who the White House has nominated to run Medicare. Dr. Berwick explained in an interview last year that the British National Health Service has "developed very good and very disciplined, scientifically grounded, policy-connected models for the evaluation of medical treatments from which we ought to learn." He added that "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care—the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly."
In fact, the real choice with medical care, as with any good or service, is between rationing via politics and bureaucratic lines or via a competitive market and prices. As Democrats are showing by trying to pass a new insurance bill, they want all U.S. health care to function like price-controlled Medicare. Dr. Berwick's job as the country's largest purchaser of health care will be to find ways to offset the higher insurance and medical costs that ObamaCare's subsidies and mandates will cause, which will inevitably mean political rationing of care.
In a 17-minute, 2,600-word answer to a question about tax increases in Charlotte, North Carolina earlier this month, Mr. Obama mentioned that "what we've done is we've embedded in how Medicare reimburses, how Medicaid reimburses, all these ideas to actually reduce the costs of care." The embedding via price controls is already underway.
APRIL 26, 2010
ObamaCare Mulligan
About those lower insurance costs we promised...
When President Obama signed his health-care reform last month, he declared it will "lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government." So why, barely a month later, are Democrats scrambling to pass a new bill that would impose price controls on insurance?
In now-they-tell-us hearings on Tuesday, the Senate health committee debated a bill that would give states the power to reject premium increases that state regulators determine are "unreasonable." The White House proposed this just before the final Obama- Care scramble, but it couldn't be included because it violated the procedural rules that Democrats abused to pass the bill.
Some 27 states currently have some form of rate review in the individual and small-business markets, but they generally don't leverage it in a political way because insolvent insurers are expensive for states and bankruptcies limit consumer choices. One exception is Massachusetts: Governor Deval Patrick is now using this regulatory power to create de facto price controls and assail the state's insurers as cover for the explosive costs resulting from the ObamaCare prototype the Bay State passed in 2006.
National Democrats now want the power to do the same across the country, because they know how unrealistic their cost-control claims really are. Democrats are petrified they'll get the blame they deserve when insurance costs inevitably spike. So the purpose of this latest Senate bill is to have a pre-emptive political response on hand.
ObamaCare includes several new cost-driving mandates that take effect immediately, including expanding family coverage for children as old as 26 and banning consumer co-payments for preventive care. Democrats are bragging about these "benefits," but they aren't free and their cost will be built into premiums. And those are merely teasers for the many Washington-created dysfunctions that will soon distort insurance markets.
In Massachusetts, Mr. Patrick says his price-control sally will be followed by reviewing what doctors and hospitals charge—or in other words for price controls on the medical services that make up most health spending. ObamaCare will gradually move in the same direction.
Or maybe not so gradually, judging by the study released last last week by Richard Foster, the Obama Administration's Medicare actuary. Mr. Foster predicts net national health spending will increase by about 1% annually above the status quo that is already estimated to be $4.7 trillion in 2019. This is one more rebuke to the White House fantasy that a new entitlement will lower health costs.
"Although several provisions would help to reduce health care cost growth, their impact would be more than offset through 2019 by the higher health expenditures resulting from the coverage expansions," Mr. Foster writes—and that's assuming everything goes according to plan. He considers it "plausible and even probable" that prices in the private market will rise as greater demand due to subsidized coverage runs into the relatively fixed supply of doctors and hospitals.
Most of ObamaCare's unrealistic "savings" come from cranking down the way Medicare calculates its price controls, and Mr. Foster writes that they'll grow "more slowly than, and in a way that was unrelated to, the providers' costs of furnishing services to beneficiaries." He expects that 15% of hospital budgets may be driven into deficits, thus "possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries." Isn't reform grand?
The official who will preside over this fiscal trainwreck is Donald Berwick, the Harvard professor and chief of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement who the White House has nominated to run Medicare. Dr. Berwick explained in an interview last year that the British National Health Service has "developed very good and very disciplined, scientifically grounded, policy-connected models for the evaluation of medical treatments from which we ought to learn." He added that "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care—the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly."
In fact, the real choice with medical care, as with any good or service, is between rationing via politics and bureaucratic lines or via a competitive market and prices. As Democrats are showing by trying to pass a new insurance bill, they want all U.S. health care to function like price-controlled Medicare. Dr. Berwick's job as the country's largest purchaser of health care will be to find ways to offset the higher insurance and medical costs that ObamaCare's subsidies and mandates will cause, which will inevitably mean political rationing of care.
In a 17-minute, 2,600-word answer to a question about tax increases in Charlotte, North Carolina earlier this month, Mr. Obama mentioned that "what we've done is we've embedded in how Medicare reimburses, how Medicaid reimburses, all these ideas to actually reduce the costs of care." The embedding via price controls is already underway.
Socialism vs. Corporatism
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=806
Socialism vs. Corporatism
By Ron Paul
04/27/10
Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist.
Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses. Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government. In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers.
A careful examination of the policies pursued by the Obama administration and his allies in Congress shows that their agenda is corporatist. For example, the health care bill that recently passed does not establish a Canadian-style government-run single payer health care system. Instead, it relies on mandates forcing every American to purchase private health insurance or pay a fine. It also includes subsidies for low-income Americans and government-run health care "exchanges". Contrary to the claims of the proponents of the health care bill, large insurance and pharmaceutical companies were enthusiastic supporters of many provisions of this legislation because they knew in the end their bottom lines would be enriched by Obamacare.
Similarly, Obama's "cap-and-trade" legislation provides subsidies and specials privileges to large businesses that engage in "carbon trading." This is why large corporations, such as General Electric support cap-and-trade.
To call the President a corporatist is not to soft-pedal criticism of his administration. It is merely a more accurate description of the President's agenda.
When he is a called a socialist, the President and his defenders can easily deflect that charge by pointing out that the historical meaning of socialism is government ownership of industry; under the President's policies, industry remains in nominally private hands. Using the more accurate term -- corporatism -- forces the President to defend his policies that increase government control of private industries and expand de facto subsidies to big businesses. This also promotes the understanding that though the current system may not be pure socialism, neither is it free-market since government controls the private sector through taxes, regulations, and subsidies, and has done so for decades.
Using precise terms can prevent future statists from successfully blaming the inevitable failure of their programs on the remnants of the free market that are still allowed to exist. We must not allow the disastrous results of corporatism to be ascribed incorrectly to free market capitalism or used as a justification for more government expansion. Most importantly, we must learn what freedom really is and educate others on how infringements on our economic liberties caused our economic woes in the first place. Government is the problem; it cannot be the solution.
Socialism vs. Corporatism
By Ron Paul
04/27/10
Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist.
Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses. Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government. In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers.
A careful examination of the policies pursued by the Obama administration and his allies in Congress shows that their agenda is corporatist. For example, the health care bill that recently passed does not establish a Canadian-style government-run single payer health care system. Instead, it relies on mandates forcing every American to purchase private health insurance or pay a fine. It also includes subsidies for low-income Americans and government-run health care "exchanges". Contrary to the claims of the proponents of the health care bill, large insurance and pharmaceutical companies were enthusiastic supporters of many provisions of this legislation because they knew in the end their bottom lines would be enriched by Obamacare.
Similarly, Obama's "cap-and-trade" legislation provides subsidies and specials privileges to large businesses that engage in "carbon trading." This is why large corporations, such as General Electric support cap-and-trade.
To call the President a corporatist is not to soft-pedal criticism of his administration. It is merely a more accurate description of the President's agenda.
When he is a called a socialist, the President and his defenders can easily deflect that charge by pointing out that the historical meaning of socialism is government ownership of industry; under the President's policies, industry remains in nominally private hands. Using the more accurate term -- corporatism -- forces the President to defend his policies that increase government control of private industries and expand de facto subsidies to big businesses. This also promotes the understanding that though the current system may not be pure socialism, neither is it free-market since government controls the private sector through taxes, regulations, and subsidies, and has done so for decades.
Using precise terms can prevent future statists from successfully blaming the inevitable failure of their programs on the remnants of the free market that are still allowed to exist. We must not allow the disastrous results of corporatism to be ascribed incorrectly to free market capitalism or used as a justification for more government expansion. Most importantly, we must learn what freedom really is and educate others on how infringements on our economic liberties caused our economic woes in the first place. Government is the problem; it cannot be the solution.
18 veterans commit suicide each day
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/04/military_veterans_suicide_042210w/
18 veterans commit suicide each day
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Monday Apr 26, 2010
Troubling new data show there are an average of 950 suicide attempts each month by veterans who are receiving some type of treatment from the Veterans Affairs Department.
Seven percent of the attempts are successful, and 11 percent of those who don’t succeed on the first attempt try again within nine months.
The numbers, which come at a time when VA is strengthening its suicide prevention programs, show about 18 veteran suicides a day, about five by veterans who are receiving VA care.
Access to care appears to be a key factor, officials said, noting that once a veteran is inside the VA care program, screening programs are in place to identify those with problems, and special efforts are made to track those considered at high risk, such as monitoring whether they are keeping appointments.
A key part of the new data shows the suicide rate is lower for veterans aged 18 to 29 who are using VA health care services than those who are not. That leads VA officials to believe that about 250 lives have been saved each year as a result of VA treatment.
VA’s suicide hotline has been receiving about 10,000 calls a month from current and former service members. The number is 1-800-273-8255. Service members and veterans should push 1 for veterans’ services.
Dr. Janet Kemp, VA’s national suicide prevention coordinator, credits the hotline with rescuing 7,000 veterans who were in the act of suicide — in addition to referrals, counseling and other help.
Suicide attempts by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans remains a key area of concern. In fiscal 2009, which ended Sept. 30, there were 1,621 suicide attempts by men and 247 by women who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, with 94 men and four women dying.
In general, VA officials said, women attempt suicide more often, but men are more likely to succeed in the attempt, mainly because women use less lethal and less violent means while men are more likely to use firearms.
Suicide attempts among veterans appear to follow those trends, officials said.
18 veterans commit suicide each day
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Monday Apr 26, 2010
Troubling new data show there are an average of 950 suicide attempts each month by veterans who are receiving some type of treatment from the Veterans Affairs Department.
Seven percent of the attempts are successful, and 11 percent of those who don’t succeed on the first attempt try again within nine months.
The numbers, which come at a time when VA is strengthening its suicide prevention programs, show about 18 veteran suicides a day, about five by veterans who are receiving VA care.
Access to care appears to be a key factor, officials said, noting that once a veteran is inside the VA care program, screening programs are in place to identify those with problems, and special efforts are made to track those considered at high risk, such as monitoring whether they are keeping appointments.
A key part of the new data shows the suicide rate is lower for veterans aged 18 to 29 who are using VA health care services than those who are not. That leads VA officials to believe that about 250 lives have been saved each year as a result of VA treatment.
VA’s suicide hotline has been receiving about 10,000 calls a month from current and former service members. The number is 1-800-273-8255. Service members and veterans should push 1 for veterans’ services.
Dr. Janet Kemp, VA’s national suicide prevention coordinator, credits the hotline with rescuing 7,000 veterans who were in the act of suicide — in addition to referrals, counseling and other help.
Suicide attempts by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans remains a key area of concern. In fiscal 2009, which ended Sept. 30, there were 1,621 suicide attempts by men and 247 by women who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, with 94 men and four women dying.
In general, VA officials said, women attempt suicide more often, but men are more likely to succeed in the attempt, mainly because women use less lethal and less violent means while men are more likely to use firearms.
Suicide attempts among veterans appear to follow those trends, officials said.
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