Friday, September 11, 2009

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Stephen Elliott: Notes on Book Publishing in a Socially Networked World Top
About That Lending Library: A few months ago, sitting on a bunch of advance copies of my new book, The Adderall Diaries , copies that were supposed to go to well placed media outlets, I decided to start The Adderall Diaries Lending Library . My plan was to allow anyone who wanted to read an advance copy of the book the opportunity to do so, provided they forwarded the book within a week to the next reader. I didn't realize it at the time, but what I was doing played right into the new publishing environment, an environment that is still uncharted and mysterious. A brave new democratic book world where everyone is a potential reviewer. Since then a lot of authors (and book publicists) have asked about the program, wondering if it's a good or bad thing to let anyone who wants to read an advance copy of your book for free. Here's some answers for those interested in planning their own lending library. What is it a success? Absolutely. 400 people signed up for advance copies. It enabled me to interact directly with people who read The Adderall Diaries, which is incredibly fulfilling for an author. One reader started a facebook group called " I Read an Advance Copy of The Adderall Diaries ." The Lending Library itself got written up in a bunch of publications, which was surprising because I wasn't doing it as a marketing stunt. I was doing it because I wanted people to read my book. But maybe that's the same thing. I think of "marketing" as something you do for someone else. Wanting to share your art is something that predates the term and probably goes back to cave drawings. I ended up doing a lot of interviews and people wrote reviews of the book before the book was available. HTMLGIANT even hosted a conversation about the book . Some people told me this was a bad idea. I was getting too much press at a point when people couldn't yet purchase the book. I think the jury is still out on that. But it seemed OK to me. I was glad people were reviewing the book in advance. I figure when a book comes out people talk about it for a month, but you have four months before that happens to initiate a conversation. When I was told I should do a large book tour, rather than going from bookstore to bookstore I sent a note to the 400 advance readers of the book. Now I'm doing a cross-country tour of readings and events primarily in people's homes. It's a lot less lonely, I think, to have someone responsible for your event in each town. And I'll probably sleep on their couches (there's no budget for hotel rooms). These are mostly people I haven't met who liked the book enough to invite me into their homes. Hopefully none of them are crazy. They're probably thinking the same thing about me. Of course, I want to support local independent bookstores so often I'll try to get the local store involved in the event. Book People, for example, is selling books at the Austin House Party September 22. Was it worth it? That depends on what you hope to get out of it. For me it was worth it. But it's expensive and it takes a huge amount of time. My publisher picked up the shipping costs, which came to about $800. The way the lending library was setup we paid the initial postage. But the real cost was in time. It took a lot of time to do this. I had to make a giant spread sheet (actually, a word document with a huge table). It turns out most people won't forward the book to the next person without a gentle nudge. I didn't realize that at first. I thought I could just send books, send addresses, and let the library run itself. But it doesn't work that way. Still, compared to the traditional route of sending galley copies to "opinion makers" it was very efficient. Instead of getting one read for every five books you send out I was getting five reads for every one book. Still... you would think that if people agreed to read the book and forward it within a week that most of them would do that. Not true. Not even remotely true. I had to keep track of where the book was in the chain, notice when someone didn't receive the book, contact members and remind them how easy it was to purchase postage online. The most common excuses for not sending the book on time were, "I'm in the process of moving" and "I've been out of town." My favorite was the person who requested a book and then volunteered for a three month stint with the forest service. But hey, nobody's perfect. I once robbed a comic book store. Ultimately, the thing you really have to ask is if you have the time to deal with this. It's basically a customer service job. You have to field notes from people asking where the book is, then go figure it out and respond to them. It can take ten hours a week. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't believe in the book. I feel certain The Adderall Diaries is the best book I've ever written. Part true crime part memoir. It's at once the tale of Hans Reiser a brilliant computer programmer accused of killing his wife, an investigation into a murder my father confessed to in his own unpublished memoir, and a journey into the meaning of identity. It's filled with false confessions and thoughts on what is and isn't knowable. But more than anything it's a book about being a writer. One thing to remember: If you don't write the right book nothing will work. The reader has to connect with the work. I would advise against putting significant time and resources into a work you don't really believe in. Got any advice? Why yes, yes I do. If you want to do a lending library tell everyone they have to forward the book using priority mail. I didn't realize this until after two months. This will result in far fewer lost books. It's $4.95 as opposed to $3.07, depending on the size of the book. But it can reduce shipping time from ten days to two. Figure the average time with a book to be closer to seventeen days, including shipping. Organize based on city and state. People should send the book to people that live close to them. Often this enables people just to hand off the book, rather than using the mail. Send everyone an email every Friday asking if they've received the book and forwarded it to the next person. Once someone says they've forwarded the book, take them off the list. Don't spam people. Just because they signed up to read an advance copy of your book doesn't mean they want to hear from you every time you update your tour or get a review. It's not cool to add people to your mailing list. I think it's OK to send everybody in the group one email when your book becomes available and also if you're doing a reading in their town. That's exactly two non-lending library emails. That's just my opinion. In those emails you could also ask them to join your mailing list, if you have one. After that you should really leave the nice people alone. What are you doing with the galleys now that it's over? Asking the last person with the book to mail it to someone with an income of less than $25,000 who can't afford to buy a hardcover. When I said that I would do this almost all the copies were requested right away, but I'm still collecting addresses in case anyone wants to donate a copy of the book to someone who can't afford their own. Would you do it again? In a heartbeat. But I'd have to write another book first. More on Books
 
Christopher Herbert and Victoria Kataoka Rebuffet: Weekly Foreign Affairs Round-Up Top
These Past Two Week's Top Stories in Foreign Affairs: A New Strategy for Afghanistan and A Rare Bit of Good News Out of Pakistan SI Analysis: The US Senior Commander in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal submitted his assessment report on the US/NATO AfPaq situation and called for a new strategy. Details of the report have yet to really emerge, however a change in tide of political will -- both in the US and abroad -- for the effort in Afghanistan has been palpable in recent weeks. McChrystal's task is greater now that Hamid Karzai has emerged as the likely victor of the Afghan Presidential elections and this news is being met with reports of massive fraud and a UN call for a partial recount. To add insult to injury, a botched NATO air raid on Taliban in Kunduz did nothing to help. Regardless of growing dissent for the war, McChrystal will likely call for an increase in foreign troops . In a rare bit of good news, there were reports of mass surrender of Taliban militants after the arrest of key Taliban leaders in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. This suggests that coordinated police and military action may be finally bearing some fruit following months of fighting. Analysis in Brief: Mugabe's Coup SI Analysis: Hopes -- that the new South African President, Jacob Zuma, and his 14 cohorts of Southern African Development Community would put greater pressure on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to respect a power-sharing agreement with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai -- were dashed . Clearly Mr. Mugabe remains in clear and unchecked control of his failing country. Japan's Elections SI Analysis: The reactionary Democratic Party of Japan was elected in a landslide victory over the Liberal Democratic Party. Prime Minister-elect Yukio Hatoyama is faced with the daunting task of saving a flailing Japanese economy with diminishing demographics and inspiring a disenfranchised and nostalgic population. Most analysts fear the DPJ is better suited to winning elections than taking on the task at hand. Under the Radar: Colombia's Referendum with Undemocratic Tendencies ? SI Analysis: President Alvaro Uribe, who is the latest Latin American leader to come down with Swine Flu, seemed closer to being able to hold a referendum that would allow him to run for a third term . Meanwhile, many analysts note that Colombian agreements with the US to allow anti-narcotic US military operations to be launched fromColombian military bases have fueled the arms race in South America . Potential arms deals sought by Venezuela and Brazil in particular have drawn attention recently. Honduras Crisis Endures SI Analysis: After the failed diplomatic effort to broker a peace deal and a return for ousted President Jose Manuel Zelaya led by Costa Rica President Oscar Arias and a delegation from the Organization of American States (OAS), the US has cut all aid to Honduras . US Secretary of State Clinton will meet with Zelaya soon to discuss what else the US will do to pressure the coup leaders to retrench. De facto President Roberto Micheletti says he is planning to call new Presidential elections in November. Yemen's Enduring Crisis SI Analysis: Poor management and strategy in confronting ethnic Houthis in the northern Saada Province is pushing tribal rivals of the central Sunni government to ally with the rebels. Furthermore, the moderate Shia group may now be receiving support from Iran. And Saudi Arabia is weighing in by supporting the government offensive. This conflict will likely escalate in the coming weeks, and risks conflagration with the fighting against foreign and domestic Sunni militias in the southern part of the country. This briefing can be seen in the Huffington Post and on the Simple Intelligence site. More on Afghanistan
 
Modiba: Cheick Hamala Diabate 'Takes It Slow,' as Buzz for New Album Picks up Top
By Ian Merkel Cheick Hamala Diabate , a Malian jeli or caste musician, released his second solo album in the U.S. after his Grammy-nominated collaboration From Mali to America with Bob Carlin. He plays several instruments, but is most comfortable with his ngoni , a three-stringed lute that may have been the precursor to the banjo. Aside from the new channels that he has reached by way of recordings and concerts, Cheick maintains his traditional role of West African griot in oral history, societal intervention, and, most notably, marriages and other celebrations. Nonetheless, with the images on his album of modern telecommunications and means of transportation, he presents himself as something new -- an individual who exploits technology to preserve and evolve his culture. I took some time to talk to him about his new album Ake Doni Doni -- "Take it Slow"-- the role of griots in contemporary society, and some of the challenges facing his community, here in the U.S. and back in Mali. Modiba: Cheick, how long have you been based in Washington, D.C.? Cheick Hamala Diabate: I came in 1995. Mod: Fourteen years ago, there must have been considerably fewer Malians in D.C. Without having established yourself as a musician in the U.S. and without the necessary Malian population requiring your services in wedding ceremonies, etc., how did you support yourself? CD: When I came, I found a Senegalese friend who was a musician here. Even though he played kora , his father played the ngoni . And when he found out that I was from Mali and played the ngoni , he was very happy. He would come over to learn Malian music, and I would play with him. He opened a lot of doors for me, and little by little I carved out a place for myself. It took a long time, but, as they say, "the little bird makes its bed." Mod: Can you speak a little about how your familial education as a griot influenced you--especially in encouraging you to look abroad, away from your native country? Your uncle Djelimady Tounkara in many incorporated the guitar into the jeli tradition in Mali, but what were you looking for in the U.S.? CD: Griots have always been an important part of musical culture in Mali and should continue to be wherever they are. Our music exists not only to be sung, but also to show respect and to maintain history. When I came to Washington, there were some Malians there--and the embassy. As a griot, wherever I go I respect (praise) others, and they listen to what I say. It's as if we're still in Mali. I was born a griot, I will die a griot, and I hope that my work will continue the greatness of jeliw in the U.S. Mod: In Mande society, it's easy to understand that hunters (donsow) would be interested in finding new game, territory, etc. But the jeliw ( jeli plural) have typically remained close to security. As a griot, what exactly were you looking for in the U.S.? CD: When I came to the U.S., I hoped to use my speech and music to share my culture. First of all, my ambition was to speak English. We Malians really love English, and some American singers even remind us of griots. We might not understand exactly what they are saying, but we do appreciate the sense of it. By learning English and making music in America, I hoped to do the same thing. Mod: The 21st century is one of unprecedented growth for West African groups in Western cities like New York. You speak a lot of the difficulty of immigration in your track "Tounka Mani" (Rokia Traoré also sings about this on her new album Tchamantché ). Could you talk a little bit about the myth of rags to riches and your experience with it? CD: "Tounka Mani" means that leaving one's country to live abroad isn't a good thing. As a new member of society, you are like a child that is born. Let's take the example of a Malian coming to the U.S. On the plane he no longer hears Bamana nor French, and once landed, he realizes that everyone speaks English. Even if he needs a drink of water, he won't know how to ask for it--it's not easy. And our parents in Mali don't understand how much we work in America. After we've paid for our rent, automobile, clothing, and food, they expect us to send money back to them. They think that we have a lot of spare money, and that if we're not sending any we're keeping it to ourselves. You do your best, but really, it's better when you're in your own country. I'm very grateful for the opportunities that I've had--to play at places like the Kennedy Center--but everyone can't expect those kinds of opportunities. Mod: In your view, has the economic crisis affected the impressions that Malians have of the U.S. as the land of opportunity -- even with the election of Obama, which Malians are generally very happy about? CD: We're living in tumultuous times. I try not to discourage people from coming to the U.S., because it's not my place. As a griot, I do feel an obligation to let them know what's going on. The U.S. isn't what it was before, but I have a lot of faith that things will improve. It's a great country, and I just hope that the economy improves--because if things are not good here it affects all other countries. People should be able to come here, but it should be controlled. Mod: One of the songs on your new album praises Amadou Toumani Touré, the current president of the Republic and the military leader who made possible the return to democracy in 1992. In the U.S. music more often than not serves to criticize politicians in power. I recognize all that A.T.T. has accomplished, but I hope you don't mind me asking: what need there is to praise a president that won 70% of the popular vote? CD: He is a president that has a lot of respect for his culture. I'm also very well placed to serve as his griot in the U.S. Whenever he comes to the U.S., he lets me know and I meet him--Washington, New York, wherever he is. I typically let other Malians know if his visit, I introduce him like an ambassador, and then he speaks. Before greeting everyone, he says "I salute my great griot Cheick Hamala Diabate." He never forgets who he is. He always remembers his role as jatigi (benefactor would be one interpretation), and no matter how tired he is, he finds time for his community. It's always good to thank people for their good deeds. Mod: With the implementation of certain new instruments--I think it is the first time that Malian music has employed the tabla (Indian percussion instrument)--you're in the process of making new sounds. CD: First of all, music doesn't have borders. I have the opportunity to be in a diverse place like the U.S. where I can interact with Indian people--whereas in Mali it's only possible to see them at the cinema. In Mali, traditional instruments like the dundun sound like the tabla, and so I decided to invite a friend of mine over to play on the album. I also had an American sing on the album. The more people and styles that are involved in music, the more people will be interested in it. Mod: The question of new technology is very apparent on your new album. The first person that I knew with an iPhone, by the way, was kora player Ballake Sissoko. You present yourself holding your ngoni , while talking on the phone with a plane overhead. In Mali, Internet cafes have sprouted up everywhere and everyone wants a cellular phone. Certainly these technologies are important for Mali's progress, but they also cost Malians a lot of money. How should Malians balance their goals for development with the risk of spending too much money on western companies' services? CD: It had been awhile since I went to Mali, and when I went back I saw almost everyone in villages--tiny, isolated villages--with cellular phones. I have a big family and everyone has a cell phone--children going to school, mothers with nothing to do. We have to embrace the technologies of tomorrow. It's critical that everyone understand the Internet. Now, when I go back to Mali, I learn "secrets" about my phone that I never knew in the U.S. It's definitely progress, but at the same time that there should always be new technology, we should pay attention to how it enters our lives. Cheick's new album definitely realizes this balance. Fortunately the progress and the very technologies that promise to provide new opportunities in Africa also signify an era where African music is sincerely breaking through in the Western world. But of course, just as title Ake Doni Doni suggests, it likely will not be overnight.
 
Dan Abrams: The Unedited Truth: Why MSNBC Re-Airs 9/11 Coverage Top
Isn't it ghastly? Will we be accused of capitalizing on the nation's grief? Is it still too soon? Those were just some of the questions we faced when deciding whether to replay NBC's 9/11 coverage when I was General Manager of MSNBC back in 2006. As I watched MSNBC air that coverage for a fourth year today, many of those same questions remain. It wasn't an easy call. After retrieving the tapes and watching the first four hours from that morning, beginning with the "reports" of a plane crash, it was clear the coverage from the morning was beyond mesmerizing. Seeing the events unfold in real time on television forces us to relive those emotions and feelings moment by moment. In the initial minutes we retain a glimmer of hope that maybe - just maybe - it isn't quite as bad as it seems. As time passes, however, those shooting pains re-emerge as each terrifying detail of the morning unfolds, ultimately leading to the conclusion that it is that bad, and worse. The NBC anchor and reporting team handled it as well as anyone could have hoped. They were careful, methodical, at times overtly saddened but always calm. I knew people would watch the replay, but when dealing with 9/11 we all knew the decision could not and would not be one based on ratings. The question had to be, is it the right thing to do? Some have called it gruesome or ghoulish, even referring to it as " death porn ". Maybe so, but it also really happened. New York City is spending well over a half billion dollars to create a memorial to ensure we never forget that day. What better way to assure that happens, than by watching the event, as it happened for most, on television? It's powerful and disturbing because it's so real. Simply put, there is no way to sanitize that day, and to do so would be a disservice. That does not mean the country was ready for the replay in the first couple of years after 9/11. The difference? In 2003, for example, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were getting underway, 9/11 was still effectively news, not history. At what point does that definition change? It's tough to say. In 2006, 9/11 was not being covered or discussed nearly as often and it had just started to feel it was fading into the background for many. No one was forced to watch MSNBC coverage. I watched it for the fourth year in a row. Many others will have chosen to change the channel. But in a world where cable news is often consumed with internecine and sometimes invented squabbles, seeing one of the most important moments in American history as it aired, in real time, seems to be exactly what cable news can and should do best. Originally posted on Mediaite . More on MSNBC
 
Denver Condo Owner Discovers He's Been Living In And Renovating The Wrong Unit Top
DENVER - He bought his first home, spent $30,000 fixing it up, and now, six months later, Jonathon Kyte has learned the home doesn't belong to him.
 
Behemoth Blogs Taking Over The Blogosphere Top
Almost everyone weighing in agreed that blogging has become more corporate, more ossified, and increasingly indistinguishable from the mainstream media. Ezra Klein (formerly of The American Prospect, now of The Washington Post) noted, "The place has professionalized."
 
This Week In Animals: The Fastest Mammal, A Colony Of Scorpions, New Species, And More! (PHOTOS) Top
We posted some fun animal stories this week on HuffPost Green, from the world's fastest cheetah to celebrity pets and a house filled with scorpions. Be sure to check out the photos and videos, and vote for your favorite! Get HuffPost Green On Facebook and Twitter! More on Cats
 
9/11 Remembered: Photos From The Day (PHOTOS) Top
Rain mixed with tears in New York today as mourners commemorated the 8th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Below are images from the memorial at the World Trade Center site and around the area. The Huffington Post is also asking for readers to submit their own photos and memories of the tragic event here . More on Joe Biden
 
Mark Weisbrot: Morgenthau's Axis Debunked Top
From my colleague Jake Johnston: below is the text of Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau's September 9 Wall Street Journal op-ed, " The Emerging Axis of Iran and Venezuela ," with rebuttals for 21 statements in the text. Points number 9, 11, 15, 20, and 8, and 4 are worth noting because they all deal with allegations made by Morgenthau that are either complete fabrications or without evidence. Others are grossly misleading statements; most important are numbers 1, 3, 15, 18, and 19. One other point worth emphasizing: Brazil is on the same page with Venezuela regarding Iran, as is most of the world. Brazil's foreign minister went to Iran last December, where he publicly defended Iran's right to enrich uranium, and announced that expanding commercial and other ties to Iran were "a foreign policy priority" for Brazil. And President Lula himself also defended Iran. Below are two articles quoting Lula that show his opposition to U.S. (and European) bullying, sanctions, etc. against Iran - from just the last week. ________________________________ OPINION * SEPTEMBER 9, 2009 The Emerging Axis of Iran and Venezuela ROBERT M. MORGENTHAU The diplomatic ties between Iran and Venezuela go back almost 50 years and until recently amounted to little more than the routine exchange of diplomats. With the election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, the relationship dramatically changed. [1) In fact, the relationship deepened before this, during the Presidency of Mohammad Khatami. A meeting with Khatami and Chávez in 2004 saw the agreement for both the development bank, as well as the tractor production . With the election of Ahmadinejad, Chávez was worried the agreements might be threatened .] Today Mr. Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez have created a cozy financial, political and military partnership rooted in a shared anti-American animus [2) This is just rhetoric, the vast majority of the agreements are economic in nature. Two large oil producers are natural allies.]. Now is the time to develop policies in this country to ensure this partnership produces no poisonous fruit. Signs of the evolving partnership began to emerge in 2006, when Venezuela joined Cuba and Syria as the only nations to vote against a U.N. Atomic Energy Agency resolution to report Iran to the Security Council over its failures to abide U.N. sanctions to curtail its nuclear program. [3) This is very misleading: this was a vote of only the Board of the UN Atomic Energy Agency. The vote was 27-3, with 5 abstentions. Most importantly, if this were a UN vote, the vast majority of the United Nations today would vote with Venezuela, Cuba, and Syria on this point. Morgenthau makes it look as if Venezuela is isolated on this issue; in fact it is in the large majority.] A year later, during a visit by Mr. Chávez to Tehran, the two nations declared an "axis of unity" against the U.S. and Ecuador [4) Ecuador? This must be a typo, or else this is the strongest evidence that Morgenthau doesn't know what he is talking about. This doesn't say much for the WSJ editors, however, that they missed this]. And in June of this year, while protesters lined the streets of Tehran following the substantial allegations of fraud in the re-election of Mr. Ahmadinejad, Mr. Chávez publicly offered him support [5)As did others, notably President Lula da Silva of Brazil] . As the regime cracked down on political dissent, jailing, torturing and killing protesters, Venezuela stood with the Iranian hard-liners [6) This is misleading, Chávez recognized the elections - for which no credible evidence has been provided demonstrating that they were stolen - but never said he supported jailing or torturing or killing protesters] . Meanwhile, Iranian investments in Venezuela have been rising. The two countries have signed various Memoranda of Understanding on technology development, cooperation on banking and finance, and oil and gas exploration and refining [7) Even the State Department acknowledges that each country has a sovereign right to have relations with any country it chooses] . In April 2008, the two countries also signed a Memorandum of Understanding pledging full military support and cooperation. United Press International reported in August that Iranian military advisers have been embedded with Venezuelan troops. [8) The UPI article is very similar to this one. UPI, like the Washington Times , is now owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church and sometimes prints unsubstantiated allegations. This is not a reliable source.] According to a report published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in December of last year, Venezuela has an estimated 50,000 tons of unmined uranium. There is speculation in the Carnegie report that Venezuela could be mining uranium for Iran. < strong>[9) These are complete fabrications, with absolutely no evidence presented.] The Iranians have also opened International Development Bank in Caracas under the Spanish name Banco Internacional de Desarrollo C.A., an independent subsidiary of Export Development Bank of Iran. [10) This was agreed to before Ahmadinejad became President] Last October the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed economic sanctions against both of these Iranian banks for providing or attempting to provide financial services to Iran's Ministry of Defense and its Armed Forces Logistics--the two Iranian military entities tasked with advancing Iran's nuclear ambitions. My office has been told that that over the past three years a number of Iranian-owned and controlled factories have sprung up in remote and undeveloped parts of Venezuela--ideal locations for the illicit production of weapons [11) No evidence has been presented that such plants are being used for anything other than what they are supposed to be used for] . Evidence of the type of activity conducted inside the factories is limited. But we should be concerned, especially in light of an incident in December 2008. Turkish authorities detained an Iranian vessel bound for Venezuela after discovering lab equipment capable of producing explosives packed inside 22 containers marked "tractor parts." The containers also allegedly contained barrels labeled with "danger" signs [12) Many chemicals are dangerous, so this is not proof of anything. Note also he uses the word "allegedly," making this an even further stretch. ] . I think it is safe to assume that this was a lucky catch--and that most often shipments of this kind reach their destination in Venezuela. A recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) study reported a high level of corruption within the Venezuelan government, military and law enforcement that has allowed that country to become a major transshipment route for trafficking cocaine out of Colombia. [13) There is no news here. Venezuela sits between the largest cocaine-producing nation in the world, Colombia, with which it shares a 1300-mile-long border, and the largest cocaine-consuming nation, the U.S. Venezuela long has been, and invariably long will be, a major transshipment route for cocaine simply due to geographic proximity.] Intelligence gathered by my office strongly supports the conclusion that Hezbollah supporters in South America are engaged in the trafficking of narcotics [14) The largest narcotic traffickers in Latin America are based in Mexico and Colombia. Note also the non sequitur here: what does this have to do with Venezuela?] . The GAO study also confirms allegations of Venezuelan support for FARC, the Colombian terrorist insurgency group that finances its operations through narcotics trafficking, extortion and kidnapping. [15) The GAO report does not confirm any allegations - it merely presents allegations. To date, the U.S. government has presented no evidence that Venezuela has provided any material aid to the FARC. Since the State Department has repeatedly demonstrated that they are no fans of Hugo Chávez, we have to assume that they would present evidence if they had any.] In a raid on a FARC training camp this July, Colombian military operatives recovered Swedish-made anti-tank rocket launchers sold to Venezuela in the 1980s. Sweden believes this demonstrates a violation of the end-user agreement by Venezuela, as the Swedish manufacturer was never authorized to sell arms to Colombia. [16) Chávez addressed this directly : the weapons had been stationed at a military outpost that was raided in 1995, whatever was there was stolen. For the last 40 years, guerrillas in Colombia have stolen weapons inside Venezuela. There is no evidence that this has increased under Chávez.] Venezuelan Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami, a Venezuelan of Syrian origin, lamely called the allegations a "media show," and "part of a campaign against our people, our government and our institutions." [17) It is racist for Morgenthau to mention El Aissami's heritage. What if someone wrote, "Morgenthau, an American of Jewish origin, has written a diatribe against Iran and Venezuela?" That would rightfully be considered anti-Semitic.] In the past several years Iranian entities have employed a pervasive system of deceitful and fraudulent practices to move money all over the world without detection. The regime has done this, I believe, to pay for materials necessary to develop nuclear weapons, long-range missiles, and road-side bombs. Venezuela has an established financial system that Iran, with the help of Mr. Chávez's government, can exploit to avoid economic sanctions. [18) Morgenthau does not distinguish between UN sanctions, which target the Iranian nuclear program, and U.S. sanctions, which are broader. Venezuela is under absolutely no obligation to abide by U.S. sanctions.] Consider, for example, the United Kingdom bank Lloyds TSB. From 2001 to 2004, on behalf of Iranian banks and their customers, the bank admitted in a statement of facts to my office that it intentionally altered wire transfer information to hide the identity of its clients. This allowed the illegal transfer of more than $300 million of Iranian cash despite economic sanctions prohibiting Iranian access to the U.S. financial system. In January, Lloyds entered into deferred prosecution agreements with my office and the Justice Department to resolve the investigation. In April, we also announced the indictment of a company called Limmt, and its manager, Li Fang Wei. The U.S. government had banned Limmt from engaging in transactions with or through the U.S. financial system because of its role in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to Iran. But our investigation revealed that Li Fang Wei and Limmt used aliases and shell companies to deceive banks into processing payments related to the shipment of banned missile, nuclear and so-called dual use materials to subsidiary organizations of the Iranian Defense Industries Organization. (Limmt, through the international press, has denied the allegations in the indictment.) The tactics used in these cases should send a strong signal to law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and military commands throughout the world about the style and level of deception the Iranians' employ. Based on information developed by my office, we believe that the Iranians, with the help of Venezuela, are now engaged in similar sanctions-busting schemes. Why is Hugo Chávez willing to open up his country to a foreign nation with little shared history or culture? I believe it is because his regime is bent on becoming a regional power, and is fanatical in its approach to dealing with the U.S. The diplomatic overture of President Barack Obama in shaking Mr. Chávez's hand in April at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago is no reason to assume the threat has diminished. In fact, with the groundwork laid years ago, we are entering a period where the fruits of the Iran-Venezuela bond will begin to ripen. That means two of the world's most dangerous regimes [19) Good luck finding any knowledgeable foreign policy expert, even in Washington, that would call Venezuela one of the most dangerous regimes in the world] , the self-described "axis of unity," will be acting together in our backyard on the development of nuclear and missile technology. [20) This is ridiculous - no evidence has been presented that this will happen.] And it seems that terrorist groups have found the perfect operating ground for training and planning, and financing their activities through narco-trafficking. [21) What about Mexico, where drug cartels are running large parts of the country and is directly south of the U.S.? Or Colombia, a narco-paramilitary state, with drug-dealers high up in the government?] The Iranian nuclear and long-range missile threats, and creeping Iranian influence in the Western Hemisphere, cannot be overlooked. My office and other law-enforcement agencies can help ensure that money laundering, terror financing, and sanctions violations are not ignored, and that criminals and the banks that aid Iran will be discovered and prosecuted. But U.S. law enforcement alone is not enough to counter the threat. The public needs to be aware of Iran's growing presence in Latin America. Moreover, the U.S. and the international community must strongly consider ways to monitor and sanction Venezuela's banking system. Failure to act will leave open a window susceptible to money laundering by the Iranian government, the narcotics organizations with ties to corrupt elements in the Venezuelan government, and the terrorist organizations that Iran supports openly. --Mr. Morgenthau is the Manhattan district attorney. This op-ed is adapted from a speech yesterday at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. ____________________________________________ 'Big power' Brazil stands by Iran, Venezuela: Lula Marc Burleigh, AFP, September 3, 2009 Brasilia - Brazil is poised to become one of the 21st century's great powers, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told AFP, as he fended off international criticism of its role as a "conciliator" in dealings with Iran and Venezuela. [...] And with those ambitions comes a flexing of muscles in the international arena said Lula, 63, one of the principal opponents to the West's increasing pressure on Iran over that country's nuclear program. Soon, probably this month, he is to host Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the latter's first overseas trip since being declared the winner of disputed June 12 elections. Lula slammed a renewed push by the United States and European countries for sanctions against Iran over fears its nuclear program was hiding the development of atomic weapon. "We need to convince them politically. They can't be backed into a wall," he said. "This policy of 'all or nothing' doesn't exist." Iran had a right to peaceful nuclear energy, he insisted, adding that he believed the US-led criticism of its arch-foe in the Middle East was reminiscent of Washington's fallacious justification for
 
UBS To Shut Its New York Art Gallery Top
The UBS art gallery, located in the lobby of its building at 1285 Avenue of the Americas, New York City, will close after the current exhibition, "Jack Tworkov: Against Extremes -- Five Decades of Painting," finishes at the end of October. This decision follows recently announced cost-cutting measures, including headcount reductions, organisational realignments, savings initiatives and change programs.
 
Tom Porteous: The Colonel, Human Rights and Lockerbie Top
LONDON -- The Scottish government may well have been legally obliged to release the terminally ill convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, if his illness meant his continued detention would lead to inhuman or degrading treatment (though nothing required sending him home to a hero's welcome). But questions still abound about accountability for the Lockerbie bombing. And as Libya celebrated the 40th anniversary of Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi's rule last week, the furor over al-Megrahi's release has only deepened the suspicions of deal making and compromise that have tainted the West's decade-long efforts to rehabilitate Libya. Ten years ago -Qaddafi surrendered al-Megrahi, and another Libyan, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, to face a Scottish trial in the Netherlands on charges of involvement in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The act was designed, and accepted by the West, as a symbol of Libya's renunciation of its sponsorship of terrorism. Al-Megrahi was convicted, and Fhimah acquitted. In 2003, UN economic sanctions imposed against Libya after Lockerbie were dropped. The interface between, on one hand, the rehabilitation of Libya and, on the other, the surrender, trial, conviction and release of Al-Megrahi is murky to say the least. Many of the relatives of the victims complain that the only person convicted of the Lockerbie murders has now walked free in a process driven by political expediency. Others question why greater efforts were not made to pursue accountability for those who ordered the bombing. In reality, political expediency has been the name of the game in the rush to embrace Gaddafi. The West has welcomed the colonel's cooperation: the renunciation of an alleged program to build nuclear weapons; assistance in counter-terrorism efforts; offers of new energy and defense opportunities for Western companies; Libyan investment in the West; help in stemming the flow of African migrants across the Mediterranean. But very little has been said about human rights. Libya remains a country where no political opposition, dissent or criticism of the government is tolerated, where torture is widely practiced, where political prisoners are not released on compassionate grounds, but rather languish in prison for years after show trials or no trials -- many held incommunicado, unaccounted for to their relatives. Yet in recent years Western criticism of Libya's human rights record has been mute. True, some of the worst excesses of the past, such as the kidnapping and assassination of political exiles, have been curtailed. Proposals for legislative reform are being prepared, and the authorities have started trying to address some of the worst past abuses by compensating victims' families. The rehabilitation by the West, with its greater international scrutiny of Libya's human rights record, may account for these changes. But in two areas Western influence on human rights in Libya may have been negative. First, the UK and the US have both signaled by the conduct of their own forces in Iraq and elsewhere that protecting human rights is not a priority when it comes to fighting terrorism. The US has even engaged with Tripoli in the rendition of suspected Libyan terrorists from CIA "black sites" in Afghanistan to Libya, where Human Rights Watch researchers found them confined in Abu Salim prison earlier this year. Second, the European Union turns a blind eye to inhuman and degrading conditions for migrants in Libyan detention centers because it likes Libyan cooperation in stemming the flow of African migration to Europe via Libya. Human Rights Watch has documented these human rights violations, including frequent allegations of beatings, demands for bribes, overcrowding and unsanitary conditions, and accounts of people being dumped in the desert. Italy has even begun forcibly returning boat migrants to Libya without screening to determine if they need the kind of protection that Libya (which has neither signed the 1951 Refugee Convention nor developed any asylum law or procedure) has shown itself unwilling to provide. This is a clear breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits European states from sending people to countries where they are likely to be subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. The public relations disaster of the release and hero's welcome of al-Megrahi should be a wake up call for the UK and others to pay more attention to principles and less attention to short term expediency in re-engaging with Libya. There is an opportunity to do this by insisting on strong language on human rights in the upcoming negotiations on an EU-Libya partnership agreement. We will probably never know the full truth about the Lockerbie bombing and who ordered it, but it's not too late for the West to make improvement of relations with Libya conditional on the improvement of human rights of ordinary Libyans and an end to Libya's brutal treatment of African refugees and migrants. Tom Porteous is London Director of Human Rights Watch.
 
Nancy Snow: Joe Wilson, You're No Joe Nye Top
I got a lot of razzing yesterday about Joe Wilson from my Syracuse University students. We were talking about persuasion and influence, what to do and what not to do and how my fellow South Carolinian was in the "not to do" category. I shared that I have mingled with Congressmen Joe Wilson at family gatherings over Thanksgiving in the Palmetto state. Let's just say he's sort of "kin" through marriage. So "say it ain't so Joe" isn't enough today. But apparently people are saying too much because when I just checked, Joe Wilson's Web site was down (http://www.joewilson.house.gov/) with this message: Due to exceptionally high traffic, this site is temporarily unavailable. Please come back shortly. Will do, Congressman. Don't you know that finger wagging is as ineffective a form of communication as shoe-throwing? It may be spontaneous but it's just not wise. It may make you an instant YouTube sensation, but that's not always a resume builder with the likes of waterskiing squirrels and Diet Coke and Mentos igniters. While Joe Wilson quickly apologized to President Obama for his irrational mind hiccup--which Obama graciously accepted--it still left a bitter taste in my mouth. Remember, this is a congressman from South Carolina. I've got a South Carolina accent. I earned my undergraduate degree from Clemson University (Go Tigers!) And my Tigers lost last night to Georgia Tech. Do I need to remind anyone about one South Carolina governor who said he was going hiking, or about a man and a horse named Sugar? It's been one long, hot and bothered summer in SC and we just don't need this piling on. We don't need public spectacles. We need public diplomats. On this, the eighth anniversary of 9/11, we need to become soft power high rollers, the way Joe Nye implores us. We've come a long way from October 2001 and that rhetorical inward-looking phrase: Why do they hate us? Joseph Nye and I served on a BBC Panel four years ago that asked the question, "Does the US rule the world?" A lot of good vibrations have come our way since then. But we still need our daily affirmations. Here's the bumper sticker moment. Soft is the new smart. Guernica magazine describes Joe Nye like a Benjamin Franklin of our time: Tall, thin, rarely seen without a suit or a smart, brightly striped tie, Nye has a handsome face with warm, creased eyes. Balding on top, he wears his hair short on the sides and looks much younger than his sunny seventy-one years. After listening carefully to a question, he speaks in perfectly measured sentences that reveal a mind at peace with its own work, as well as someone accustomed to repeating an idea for new audiences or listeners. Colleagues at Harvard, where he still teaches, have called him "elegant," "patrician, " and "wise," and see a practical and hugely influential application of his work. Harsh is dumb. Soft power is this century's fuel efficiency for the global mind. Inspired by Joe Nye, who will be on our campus next weekend, Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor called on our SU students to think about their roles as influential agents of change for the public good. It will require that you look outward, connect to others here and everywhere, as your wired generation can do so well. You have to be the world's best public diplomats, and you need to start right away. You need to prepare for the world in the world. It's not too early---in fact, it's the right time---to start bending things in the service of a better day -- building long term relationships at every level that open the doors to communication, problem-solving and change. Public diplomats, that's what you need to be. But to do that, you will need to listen as well as talk, interact across chasms, and make yourselves vulnerable, letting the tables turn on who is the expert and who is the novice, playing many roles beyond the familiar student and teacher. How do you start the conversations, large and small, weighty and trivial, that constitute good public diplomacy? Imagine if that other Joe had thought about starting his "conversation" with the president that way?! I promise you this: If I see Joe Wilson this Thanksgiving, I'll make sure not to shout out or finger point as I reach for the pecan pie. Dr. Nancy Snow is Associate Professor of Public Diplomacy in the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. She is the author/editor of six books, including The Arrogance of American Power , Information War , and Propaganda, Inc.
 
Peter Diamandis: Launching Commercial Space Flight: Part Two -- Dumitru Popescu Builds His Dream Rocket Top
To commemorate the 5th anniversary of the winning of the Ansari X PRIZE, every week through October 2, read the inspirational stories of the visionaries and heroes who turned their "crazy ideas" into a reality. Guest Blogger Dumitru Popescu: In 2000, I recruited a highly educated and skilled Aerospace team; started a small commercial space organization in a country where that is unprecedented; and dedicated all of my spare time and money to a contest I was sure we would not win. THAT is the power of incentivized competition. I first heard about the X PRIZE Foundation by pure coincidence. My wife and I were surfing the web in an internet cafe when my search for rocket engines unearthed the Ansari X PRIZE website, which would change my life forever. I learned about the competition to privately launch a rocket into sub-orbit. As someone with a lifelong passion for Aviation and Astronautics, as well as a degree from the Aerospace University in Bucharest, I have always wanted to build civilian rockets, but in Romania this sort of activity is limited to the military. I knew competing in this contest would require a lot of technical expertise. I also knew that securing the funding would be difficult as there are very limited opportunities in the EU for entrepreneurs interested in starting small, commercial space businesses. If we went forward, we would do so with our own wallets. Despite these hurdles, my wife and I teamed up with University students to create ARCA, a private organization that would eventually build a rocket to compete for the Ansari X PRIZE. From the beginning, my colleagues were skeptical about whether or not we could make ARCA a serious organization, let alone be a serious contender in the X PRIZE competition. Regardless, it was a great opportunity to gain experience and learn about space, so we decided to move forward. My dream to build rockets became a reality. Early on we did not talk publicly about what we intended to do. We waited until we could leverage the product of our work to increase our credibility. After completing a small pressurized tank, we showed it to various potential sponsors and succeeded in convincing them to donate money and to sponsor our team for a few years. The donations and sponsorship amounts weren't very big, but they enabled us to keep going. After we completed our first rocket, we were ready to share our achievements publicly. The press and our community became excited when they witnessed our engine tests. It was that moment when others began to realize what was possible. With a half a year remaining in the competition, I attended a meeting with the other teams competing for the Ansari X PRIZE. On that day, I told Burt Rutan, designer of Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne, in the presence of all the competitors, that he would win the competition. This was hard for a lot of people to accept, but I was right. One of my colleagues was in attendance for the first flight of SpaceShipOne, and he carried with him the support of our whole team. We wanted very much for Burt and his team to succeed (my team and I were very concerned when their vehicle began to spin out of control). In the end, Burt and his team claimed the $10 Million Ansari X PRIZE. A lot of teams were disappointed as they found themselves suddenly left without a main objective. We at ARCA decided to keep moving forward. In 2006, I had the opportunity to speak with Peter Diamandis at the X PRIZE Cup. I expressed my hope to him that the X PRIZE would initiate another space-based competition in which ARCA could compete. By the end of 2007, this hope was realized when I learned about the $30 Million Google Lunar X PRIZE. Once again, I said, "Let's go forward with this competition." I had listened, learned and taken the best from the teams in the Ansari X PRIZE and five years later, I am armed with that knowledge and ready for a new competition...a competition with larger ambitions. This time our sights are set on the Moon. And when the time comes for us to launch our space probe to the Moon, I will decorate that probe with a picture that was taken in Los Angeles of myself and the other Ansari space pioneers back in 2004. And after the probe lands on the Moon, I plan to call each one of them to say that, "Your picture is on the Moon and it's looking at you!" Then we will laugh together just as in the days of the Ansari X PRIZE Competition.  Next week we will hear from Lori Garver, NASA Administrator.  Other guest bloggers in this series include Anousheh Ansari, Ansari X PRIZE title sponsor;  Brian Binnie, the astronaut who flew in the Ansari X PRIZE winning flight and Will Garver, President of Virgin Galactic, the personal space tourism company now licensing the Ansari X PRIZE winning SpaceShipOne design and technology.
 
John Ridley: Forget a "Fat Tax." Tax the Fat. Top
A thought as the health care debate reignites. I promise you I'm not trying to malign fat people, or the weight challenged or Hefty Americans. Trying not to malign them, mostly because there are so many of them. Obese people in America now outnumber the merely fat. The National Center for Health Statistics reported this year that more than 34 percent of Americans are obese, compared to 32.7 percent who are "just" overweight. Just under 6 percent are "extremely" obese. The bottom line is that we're a slovenly lot and getting more so by the year. The financial hit on health care is pretty staggering. A study by the Center for Disease Control released at their first ever "Fat Summit" in July finds: The prevalence of obesity rose 37% between 1998 and 2006, and medical costs climbed to about 9.1% of all U.S. medical costs. Obese people spent 42% more than people of normal weight on medical costs in 2006. With all the talk -- and screaming and gun-toting -- that's going on around the health care reform debate, maybe the answer as to how to pay for it is orbiting our ever-expanding guts. A tax on the fat. If you're out of shape, you've got to carry your weight, so to speak. Why tax, after all, the purveyors of junk food as we have cigarette manufactures? While there's no such thing as a safe cigarette, a cheat day full of Whoppers, Jolt cola and Doritos won't kill you. For those who want the Feds to "keep their Government hands off my medicare," this hits them directly in the organ of self-reliance. Except for a true sliver of individuals with medical conditions -- who would be opted out (and not by a death panel) -- obesity is a lifestyle choice. Yes, it's hard to stay in shape, but it's also hard to raise kids. That doesn't mean you get to drop them off at your local fire station when they get to be a handful. For those who say there's no standard for determining obesity, there is . And for those who say that taxing the fat isn't fair, I say: how fair is it that healthy people are subsidizing the lifestyles of the fat? The CDC estimates the medical costs of obesity had risen to $147 billion per year by 2008. Writing in the New York Times , David Leonhardt breaks that down to $1,250 per American household, mostly in taxes and insurance premiums. That's three times the cost of an annual membership at a gym I recently joined in Manhattan. Why am I paying that so somebody else can squat on their hind end? The odds of any elected official actually raising this logical solution to the health-care problem? You thought there was some yelling going on before at town hall meetings. Wait until lazy Americans have to take responsibility for their expanded state. More on Health Care
 
Chi-Town Daily News Abandoning Non-Profit Model In Shakeup Top
The local news site Chi-Town Daily News is abandoning its non-profit structure four years after launching, saying its business model is unsustainable. "We've concluded that, as a nonprofit, we cannot raise the money we need to build a truly robust local news organization that provides comprehensive local coverage," editor and founder Geoff Dougherty wrote in a statement posted to the organization's web site. The entire staff was laid off Thursday, Gapers Block and the A.V. Club report. Former Daily News reporter Peter Sachs , whose education coverage uncovered scandals at the City Colleges, told the A.V. Club that the staff would not be compensated for this week's work. In his statement , Dougherty wrote that the editorial team is planning to launch a for-profit local news effort soon. The site, Dougherty wrote, requires between $1 million and $2 million a year to operate at its existing level. Last year he said it raised around $300,000 and prospects for this recession year looked even worse. Dougherty had been an advocate for the non-profit journalism model and as recently as April the site was hailed by Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz as "pioneering a new form of low-cost, street-level reporting." Former reporter Fernando Diaz , who left the Daily News to work for the Tribune blog network ChicagoNow , defended the non-profit model and blamed a more common news business ailment for the original site's demise: As with the majority of news organizations today, Chi-Town was undone by the management.
 
Kyle Orton Will Start Sunday Against Cincinnati Top
Barring a stitch problem in pregame warmups, Kyle Orton will be the Broncos' starting quarterback Sunday against the Cincinnati Bengals.
 
Giles Slade: 2009, Apocalypse Now Top
With everyone focused on the tiniest green shoots of economic recovery, on health care or on why it is not okay to shout 'liar' at the president, few people have had time to keep up with events in the natural world. And yet this is the year -2009- when climate change has begun to show us what 'ugly' really means. Arctic ice has disappeared at such a phenomenal rate that not only are polar bears endangered, but Alaskan walruses are now grounded on the state's northwest coast. The next step will be their death. Methane seeps in northern lakes are bubbling this intensive greenhouse gas into earth's atmosphere since permafrost no longer traps it on the bottom of Arctic lakes. California is simultaneously in flame and suffering its third year of drought. Both events are states-of-emergency, but there are no federal funds in sight so the Golden State walks the knife-edge of an economic and environmental abyss. Lack of water has already decimated agriculture in the Imperial Valley. This year, too, the ocean is warmer and more acidic so fish stocks have declined radically. Greenland's Helheim glaciers have reached a top speed of 30 meters per year and raising sea levels well beyond the IPCC's predictions. In British Columbia, salmon runs have shrunk to nothing and this has impacted the grizzly population. Grizzlies rely on fall's salmon feast to hyperphaginate (pig out) in order to pack on pounds of fat before they retire for the winter. This fall there are fewer bears, and many fewer cubs. Even less of these will survive the winter hibernation. Of hibernating bears, native people along this coast say, "they dream the world into being." Of course this sounds fanciful, but I don't know how I feel about living in a world without grizzly bears or their dreams. They are amazing survivors and have been on the run, adapting to new surroundings squeezing themselves northward, since the early years of the nineteenth century when they were chased out of America's high plains. Canadians welcomed them ungraciously as we once also welcomed Sitting Bull. This fall, I believe that in the backs of people's minds there is a growing fear that we -- North America, the world -- are approaching some cataclysm. I write about the human migrations that will result from future environmental collapse of our continent in my forthcoming book, North American Ark, but most people, I believe, already share a vague sense of some overwhelming danger that hovers slightly beyond the horizon. Hollywood is responding to this fear. The fall of 2009 sees the return of apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic films in a very big way. The last time Hollywood leaned into this genre occurred following the Soviet Union's test of a nuclear weapon in the summer of 1949. Early in 1951, The Day The Earth Stood Still scared the bejesus out of American filmgoers. Then, throughout the fifties, a few other movies addressed the problem of nuclear destruction directly while horror films raised similar problems in the themes of alien invasions or human mutations derived from uncontrolled radioactivity. The movies I like best from that period document how the fear of a nuclear apocalypse had taken up a menacing position at the back of America's psyche. I heartily recommend Captive Women (1952); The Day the World Ended (1953); and On the Beach (1959). Fifty years later, an unprecedented bumper crop for end-of-the-world movies is pressing itself onto the movie-going public, and I find myself thinking 'I know why.' The Copenhagen conference is billed as humanity's last chance to reverse climate change, but many fear we have already reached a global tipping point. Our films reflect this. Even if you don't count Wall-E (2008), there's 9 currently in release; 2012 (to be released on Nov. 13) and The Road (to be released on Nov. 25) "9," produced by Tim Burton, is the full length realization of a short student film by Shane Acker that's still available on YouTube. It's visually stunning and shows the impact that Burton will have on filmmakers of the coming generation. I'm blown away by the visual freshness of this film and hope that Mr. Acker will follow Guillermo Del Toro in making at least one uncompromising and completely original film like Pan's Labyrinth (2002) before moving on to more commercial pursuits like Hellboy II (which I might as well confess I also loved). 2012 , a film by Roland Emmerich, another director who won acclaim for a short student film before going on to create Independence Day (1996) and Day After Tomorrow (2004) doesn't promise very much. Emmerich, who turned down the opportunity to make Spiderman in favor of (phleh!) Stargate , claims he makes pure entertainment films which he describes as 'popcorn.' He relies on screen-filling special effects and his scripts are characterized by illogical plots, wooden dialogue, thin characters, and various other recognizable failings of large-budget genre films. Mr. Thumbs, Roger Ebert, compared Emmerich humorously to Ed Wood the inept director of some truly terrible fifties 'B' movies starring Bela Lugosi. (Emmerich, incidentally, retaliated by naming a character 'Ebert" in his awful adaptation of Godzilla (1998)). The post-apocalyptic movie with the greatest promise this fall is the film version of Cormac McCarthy's excellent book The Road. Because its release date has shifted so frequently The Road has already been reviewed in Esquire by Tom Chiarelli and in the Guardian by Xan Brooks. Chiarelli, who writes nice prose calls it 'The Most Important Movie of the Year.' More recently, Xan Brooks has called the film version of The Road "haunting, harrowing and powerful. His equally powerful review can be retrieved here. So, so far I have two dates with my wife this fall: the opening of The Road on November 25; and a talk by David Suzuki about a feature film he was involved with on Dec. 10. The world is still ending, of course, but there's probably just enough time to catch a good flick and that's what I intend to do. Of course, I'll let you know what I think about both of them. Please let me know what you think about 9 and 2012 . More on Health Care
 
Alex Henry: Wine, Music, and the Terroiriste Threat Top
Being a little behind in my reading, I have only recently started getting through the books I received for my birthday last year. One of these, Bordeaux/Burgundy: A Vintage Rivalry , was an excellent short book by a geographer and former president of the Sorbonne, Jean-Robert Pitte. Of the many interesting and well-researched things Pitte has to say, perhaps the most surprising is that terroir , that principle sacred to French winemakers, isn't everything. Terroir , in case you avoid wine columns in newspapers, is the idea that each vineyard or region has special qualities in its soil and environment that shape the wine's characteristics. The French for some time have argued the superiority of their wines on terroiriste grounds: only French soil can produce wines of character and authenticity; hence, no upstart winery in America or New Zealand is worthy of consideration. Even an American, such as Jonathan Nossiter in his entertaining documentary Mondovino , can be seduced by the romance of the land. Nossiter pits the earthy eccentrics of Burgundy and the Languedoc against the modern, monolithic, all-Merlot-all-the-time school of certain Bordeaux and New World producers. The film Sideways incorporates some of the same thinking. Thus one might not expect the French wine historian Roger Dion to say, as Pitte quotes approvingly, "The role of the land...scarcely goes beyond that of the material used in making a work of art." Pitte is not out to do a terroir take-down, but rather to restore some balance to the conversation. He emphasizes the human role in wine's evolution and shows how, in even the most hallowed terroirs , producers' decisions and consumers' choices have done as much as the land itself to produce these regions' distinctive wines. As Dion puts it: "There is more history than geography in a bottle of wine." This skirmish between what one might simplistically call the purists and the moderates brings to mind similar debates in other contexts, for example, in the performance of classical music. Most of us would accept that a performer brings something of her own to a piece of music, but there are those who would insist that a musician's job is simply to perform the music as it is written. One finds this argument being made in some of the most rarefied quarters, such as in the journals of Sviatoslav Richter, the great pianist, who admired his colleague Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's performance of a Schubert sonata because it "reproduced the score exactly." The irony in Richter's case is that he was one of the most distinctive pianists of his time, whose style was imitated by a generation of Moscow Conservatory students. Michelangeli too was a great individualist. Indeed, most good musicians are, and the idea that we can prefer one musician to another confirms this view. The notion of a pure interpretation, then, is as illusory as that of a pure wine, since the score, like the land, allows for numerous valid choices to be made between the lines, or the vines as may be the case. The question, then, becomes one of quality and preference: whose intervention do I like most? Whose style is best-suited to the material (grapes, notes) in question? If I like Richter's playing, which I do, it is not because he disappears and presents me with Bach, pure and simple; it is because he makes such appropriate decisions and shows such evident love towards the music. In the same way, we often find that the greatest landscape paintings are not those that reproduce a scene precisely, but rather those in which the artist's distinctive feeling for the subject is most palpable. This lack of distinctiveness is what Nossiter, in Mondovino , seems to finds most abhorrent in the work of Michel Rolland, the wine consultant who is forever shuttling from estate to estate in his chauffeured Mercedes. The problem is not that Rolland is interventionist, which he is, but that he is always interventionist in the same way, dispensing the same advice to plant more Merlot and "Micro-oxygenate! Micro-oxygenate!" whether the client is in Saint-Emilion or Bangalore. I would suspect that arguments for purity and authenticity have grown more frequent as the world has grown more, for lack of a better word, impure. For every Michel Rolland there must be some charmingly crusty holdout in the Burgundy countryside; for every showman like Lang Lang there must be an early-music festival somewhere. It is a kind of opposite and equal reaction that would, I think, make the ancient Greeks, those lovers of both good music and good wine, glad to have lived in simpler times. More on Greece
 
Michelle Obama's Purple Converse At Community Service Project (PHOTOS) Top
The president and first lady marked the eighth anniversary of September 11th on Friday by highlighting community service. The first lady promised George Washington University students that if they completed 100,000 hours of community service this year, she'd speak at their graduation in May. The first lady and president also painted a house with Habitat for Humanity volunteers, where the president got white paint on his dress shoes and Mrs. Obama wore funky purple Converse sneakers. For more info on how you can volunteer, visit www.iparticipate.org Follow HuffPost Style on Twitter and become a fan of HuffPost Style on Facebook ! More on Michelle Obama Style
 
Bernie Bulkin: Tax or Trade to Cut Carbon? Top
Part of the debate over how to best tackle climate change in the US, EU and other developed countries is around the question of tax or trade. Do we up the tax on gasoline, or for that matter on electricity or heating oil, do we put big taxes on refineries and chemical plants and steel mills who are enormous energy users? Well, we can all understand taxes, even members of Congress understand taxes. And I think they all think they understand the consequences of 'carbon taxes', namely, stuff that is energy intensive becomes more expensive, people use less of it, and members of Congress who voted for it become unpopular. But what about this cap and trade thing? First of all, the idea is pretty simple. Big energy users (to start with, like those steel mills or refineries) are told that next year they can only emit, say 90% of what they are emitting this year. That is the 'cap'. They can find ways to make the reductions themselves, or they can go out in to the marketplace (which has to be created) and buy permits to emit more. That is the 'trade'. Now why would anyone prefer this cap and trade method to the good old fashioned tax method? I think there are a few reasons, some obvious, some more subtle. First of all, when we tax, we expect a demand response, put up prices and consumption goes down. Some of you will remember back several years when there was discussion of a five cent (about 4% at the time) a gallon tax on gasoline, which was shouted down, in order to curb demand. Instead of this, we let our friends in OPEC impose a 100% price increase on us. In effect, a tax with the revenues going to them rather than to our own government. And did that giant whack generate a dramatic fall in demand? It did not. The key problem with using carbon tax to curb demand, hence reduce emissions, is that we have very poor understanding of how the consumers will react to the higher price - in economist speak we don't understand the elasticity of demand very well, and we have proved this over and over. But with trading the reduction is guaranteed. If we have 1,000 permits to emit greenhouse gases today, and we withdraw 100 of them from the system next year, and let users compete to buy the remaining 900 permits, either from the government or from each other, well, we just know that next year emissions will be 90% of this year, maximum. And we can do that again the following year. And there is another advantage of trading. This was first pointed out by Michael Porter and Claas van der Linde in an article in Harvard Business Review in 1995. Trading, market mechanisms, make managers ask tough questions of their team. If I am managing a refinery and my energy manager comes to me and says we need to go buy some permits to get down to our cap, what do I do? Probably I talk to one of my friends who is managing another refinery and say 'Boy, this cap and trade thing is tough, we have to go buy permits', and if he says, 'Oh, well, my guy tells me we have excess permits because we have found ways to generate savings beyond our cap', well, I go right back and tell my energy manager he better look harder at our energy use before he goes and buys anything. Cap and Trade is a way to motivate industry to be more efficient, and more innovative. And that has to be a good thing.
 
Andy Borowitz: Wilson Shouts 'You Lie' After Wife Fakes Orgasm Top
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) courted controversy again today as he reportedly shouted "You lie" during a sexual encounter in which his wife pretended to have an orgasm. While details of Rep. Wilson's latest outburst are sketchy at best, congressional experts say that it is totally against the decorum of the House of Representatives to speak out during a spouse's faked orgasm. But the South Carolina congressman got a vote of support from a fellow Republican lawmaker, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), who told reporters, "It's so rare for a Republican politician to have sex with his own wife, we should applaud it when it happens." In a related story, President Obama said that Rep. Wilson's outburst during his speech Wednesday night was "productive," adding, "Joe Wilson highlighted the need for mental health care." More here . More on Health Care
 
Craig and Marc Kielburger: The Importance of Brushing and Bonds Top
Laura Levine's four-year-old is learning to brush her teeth everyday and how to protect herself from predatory lenders. Preschool might seem a bit early to start thinking about mortgages. But, even though she doesn't really understand the complexities of gingivitis or subprime, the habits her mother is instilling will lead to a lifetime of oral and financial health. "As the mom of a preschooler, we learn about brushing teeth. We don't expect them to understand why but they understand that it's a good habit," explains Levine, executive director of the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy. "With something like saving, if we teach kids that it's also a good habit, it's a mindset we can develop even if they don't know how to diversify a portfolio." When the markets crashed last October, it became apparent that across the United States families had been taken advantage of by predatory lenders. As funds became harder to borrow, our collective debts began to feel more like a toothache. Today, we're starting to recover. Fixing the decay hasn't been easy and that's why we need to take a closer look at prevention. The best way ease the blow of a future crisis is to focus on improving our financial literacy. As the head of Just$tart and an appointee to the President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, Levine has been touting the benefits of this knowledge. But, in a 2008 survey conducted by the coalition, U.S. high school seniors correctly answered only 48.3 per cent of questions. In Canada, financial literacy courses are usually high school electives or addressed briefly in other courses. That's starting to change. In June the first global financial literacy summit brought together leaders including White House senior advisors and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to discuss bringing the "language of money" into American homes. Plus, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has emphasized that consumer protection is one side of a "two-sided" coin. "The other part is financial literacy, making sure people understand what is disclosed to them," he said. For Levine, that means starting young. Her toddler might not be able to speak the "language of money" but she does know that two-sided coin can be put in her piggybank and saved for something special. Once Levine's daughter is ready to move beyond these basics, Jeannine Glista has a show for her to watch. Biz Kid$ is based in Seattle and uses sketch comedy to teach young people about more complex topics like credit, entrepreneurship and even the green economy. "We're always trying to underscore saving, paying yourself first and having a plan," says Glista, the show's executive producer. "The show really captures kids' attention with these kooky, random elements." Making finance entertaining is no easy feat. But, through sketches that play on pop culture references like Star Trek or the Sopranos as well as profiles of young entrepreneurs, Biz Kid$ is able to teach and captivate their young audience. "The biggest thing we're trying to get across is not to have money for the sake of having money. It's not about greed or glamour," says Glista. "It's about taking charge of your financial future." That's exactly what Levine wants her daughter to do. "With financial literacy, you don't have to be a do-it-yourself money manager. But a literate consumer knows when and where to get help," says Levine. We all want to protect our kids from everything from cavities to colds. In the last year, we've add global financial crisis to that long list parental worries. Luckily, the best way to protect them is by teaching them the basics and remembering it's never too early to start. "That's the silver lining of the recession," says Levine. "If it makes people more aware and more pro-active, it's a good thing." More on The Recession
 
J. Richard Stevens: Considering Lies and Liars ... Top
Wednesday evening, as I watched the president's speech on health care before a joint gathering of Congress, I was struck by the muted partisanship and rancor coming from both sides of the aisle. Don't get me wrong, I find it endemic to our national character that so many members of our leadership will launch invectives through media coverage and public speeches and then act so reserved in a personal confrontation with their political opposition. Which brings me to the outburst by South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson, who shouted from his seat, "You lie! " It was a startling moment. I, like many observers, was taken aback by that exchange, though not for the "breach of decorum" so widely derided by so many in the following hours and days. Personally, I think our democracy may at times be too controlled, with certain speakers allowed access to the public sphere at certain times. In my opinion, much remains unsaid in our public space, which is likely one of the reasons the pseudo-public space (cable news, talk radio, email chain letters, etc.) tend towards naked partisanship and nastiness. No, I found the moment interesting for framing and content reasons. By choosing (or not choosing, the Congressman says he simply was caught up in the moment ) to shout "You lie!" instead of "That's wrong!" or "I disagree!," the Congressman demonstrated one behavior responsible for why this discourse surrounding the health care debate has been so heated and divisive. When one frames disagreement in terms of a moral claim about another person, rather than on the arguments themselves, it presents a closed approach to the offered discourse. In other words, there's not much room for the consideration of the other's views, much less a real chance of mutual understanding and compromise. I remember hearing an NPR segment a few months back between a representative of the NRA and a representative from the ACLU. They had been invited to discuss the lapse and proposed reinstatement of the federal assault weapons ban. As the segment drew on, I was struck by how many times the NRA spokesman exclaimed, "That's a lie!" and how many times the ACLU spokesman responded "That's simply not true." The contrast was striking. Not that progressives have the monopoly on the high ground nor the conservatives on the low ground. I've heard plenty from each side stoop low to claim "lies" (who can forget the infamous "Bush lied and people died!" t-shirts? ), and certain members of both sides of the aisle frame their remarks in terms of factual disputes and disagreements over evidence. I wish, just once, someone in President Obama's position (or even former President Bush's position) would take an opportunity like the occurrence Wednesday night to say: Excuse me, sir! As I implore my progressive friends and my conservative friends to come together, let me offer you a suggestion about your choice in rhetoric. We may disagree on the evidence supporting your claim or mine. We may disagree about the intentions or likely policy outcomes of the plans under scrutiny. But you cannot claim to know what I know, what my intentions are, or that I am willfully disregarding what I do know in order to offer deceit. You simply don't know me well enough to make that claim. It is precisely this style of rhetoric that polarizes our policy debates and prevents compromise. I understand why President Obama could not make such a statement. It sounds haughty even as I write it. Politically, it's better to allow such a remark to pass unchallenged and put faith in the listener to discern the difference between the two approaches. But I wonder if we're putting too much faith in the casual listener. I've heard so much discourse in recent years drawing upon the assertion of "lies," "liars," and "deceit." And precious little about the possibility of "misunderstanding," "misinformed," or even "disagreement." In some of these cases, the frame is an accurate representation of the facts. Sometimes we do know from writings or reports what someone knew when his or her words reflected another interpretation of reality. But I submit these cases appear to be the minority of accusations of "lies." I fear by not allowing space in our discourse for misunderstandings, differing levels of information access, different ideological approaches to evidence or even simply errors in logic, we proclaim we know the person better than they themselves do, and limit our ability to understand precisely why it is we disagree with another. This failing, in turn, leads to crude stereotypes of one's opposition. When one follows the path of such a line of discourse (by looking into reader discussion forums, engaging in casual political discussions, or observing the interactions at some of our town hall meetings), it is not hard to find definitive and sweeping declarations about the nature of "liberals" or "conservatives" that bear little resemblance to the people to whom those labels are attached. In other words, by reducing political arguments and political operatives to moralized frames about their character ("liar"), we undermine our ability to interact with each other's ideas, and reduce the strengths of a vibrant democracy to a shallow shouting match where political muscle alone determines political outcomes. And when that happens, the moral argument that wins the day is not the one based upon the clearest logic, or the most principled approach, but rather the loudest voice. More on Barack Obama
 
Charles Pelton Resigns: Washington Post Marketing Executive Resigns After 'Salons' Incident Top
The marketing executive at the center of a controversial series of Washington Post-sponsored dinner "salons" has resigned from the newspaper some 10 weeks after the events were canceled, The Post said Friday. More on Newspapers
 
Deborah Plummer: EQ Deficit Threatens Health Care Reform Top
Anyone who knows me would know that I am an emotional person with a lot of passion for justice, so I understand the emotional context from which Rep. Joe Wilson was rooted in his outburst last evening during the President's speech. Yet, my solid Catholic school upbringing and authoritative parents taught me a lot about respect and when to keep my mouth shut. I do not know anything about Representative Wilson but I heard Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe remark that Joe Wilson is typically a quiet guy. Perhaps this is true. What is certain is that he chose a bad time to speak up. I have written a lot about the need for embracing diversity competencies -- holding multiple realities, marrying intention and impact, using privilege as a life skill, moving from certainty to curiosity -- in order to manage the complexities of our current global reality. The current health care debate and the Rep.Wilson's outburst underscores the need for these competencies if we are going to continue to maintain our status as a leading nation. But let me tell you, I was seriously concerned last evening about our capacity to do so witnessing how differences were managed by some of our civic leaders. Now, more than ever, their emotional intelligence (EQ) needs to be enhanced. Whatever the details of the health care bill, our ability to shape the future will be determined by how we interact and treat those with whom we most vehemently disagree. President Obama and Senator John McCain are roles model in this regard -- treating fierce opponents with respect regardless of ideology. President Obama didn't react, accepted the apology and used it as yet another reminder of how we need to engage one another in this debate. Senator McCain quickly denounced the action and called for an immediate apology. No matter how much we know or think we know about the details of the health care reform bill, the content will have no meaning if the process for change is so disruptive. Effective process requires emotional intelligence from those participating in the change effort. This is a deficit area we need to pay close attention to and not merely label it as the game of politics. No matter what the outcome for this reform, low EQ on the part of our civic leaders will threaten not only our future for health care but the foundation of our democracy.
 
World In Photos: September 11, 2009 Top
Here is the HuffPost's selection of photos of today's news and events from every corner of the globe. Check back Monday through Friday for this HuffPost World feature. Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter!
 
Tabby Biddle: Women as Peacemakers Top
Historically speaking, women have been left out of the most important conversations regarding war and peace until fairly recently. (Only 17 percent of the seats in the US Congress are held by women - and that's the most it's ever been.) As more women are coming into positions of power around the world, I believe there is the strong potential that future conversations on the topic will be different. Instead of the focus being on, "How do we gain power over a nation?" I think the conversations will more likely focus on, "How do we gain power with a nation?" Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D ., former clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco, has said: "Women as a gender have an ability to physiologically be the more empathic gender. It has to do with when stress occurs. Men as a gender go to 'fight or flight,' and ever since the research was done at UCLA in 1991, we know that women tend, when stressed, to want to talk to other women closest to them, and that when they do, the stress level goes down, and the maternal bonding hormone -- oxytocin -- goes up." She concludes: "Essentially if there is ever going to be a peace negotiated well in this world, women have to be at the table." Some would disagree with the thesis that women are better peacemakers than men. In fact, I have been challenged on this subject by several men who insist that women are more jealous than men, bear grudges longer, and can be "vicious psychological warriors" -- meaning they have long memories for perceived slights and don't give up a fight. One male friend said: "Women are more territorial than men, particularly when it comes to protecting their children. I mean, look at a New York mom trying to get her kid into preschool. She'll kill to do that!" While I agree that women, like men, are competitive and have a strong warrior spirit, I do think there is a difference in how those characteristics get played out. As brought out by the research project mentioned above it seems that men go to "fight or fight" and women talk. For example, in 1994 in Rwanda, 800,000 people were massacred. There were orphanages filled with children. Women got together to talk about how to reconcile the situation. They decided that they needed to adopt these orphaned children whether they were Tutsi or Hutu -- in other words, no matter what side they were on. Women played a pivotal role in reconstructing Rwanda. And in that country, they now make up the largest percentage of women in government leadership compared to anywhere else in the world -- 56 percent in the parliament and one third of all the cabinet positions including foreign minister, education minister, Supreme Court chief and police commissioner general. And what about a woman's ability to hold a grudge? How does that contribute to peace? Some may think it doesn't -- at least not directly -- but things get interesting when we examine this grudge-holding ability. One explanation for it comes from Christiane Northrup, M.D., women's health expert and author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom : "Men compartmentalize their feelings, but women remember everything," she says. Research has also shown us that women's brains are more wired for communication and interconnection. This could mean there's a greater capacity for empathy in women as compared to men. Although holding a grudge isn't a good thing, seeing things long-term and as interrelated can be positive traits for peacemaking. When we can see the bigger picture, we see that every child is in fact our child . As a result, the borders of fear and hatred dissolve, and we move toward power with all nations. "We have been training for this job all our lives, negotiating home and community with empathy and a willingness to compromise," says Marie Wilson, Founder of The White House Project , a non-profit organization that aims to advance women's leadership. I think it's important to mention that I am not promoting the idea that men are the war-makers and women are the peacemakers and that men should cede their power so women can be the leaders and rule the world. Frankly, I think anyone who is thinking along those lines is repeating a non-supportive divisive pattern. I am suggesting that with more women at the table of diplomatic, economic, and political leadership -- who take with them their natural feminine strengths of compassion, empathy, and unconditional love - we will see some great changes taking place. More on Hillary Clinton
 
Michelle Obama Challenges GWU Students To Community Service Top
WASHINGTON — First lady Michelle Obama has a deal for George Washington University students: Perform 100,000 hours of community service during the this school year and she'll speak at their graduation ceremony next May. Mrs. Obama's challenge coincides with the end of President Barack Obama's summer service initiative, United We Serve. The president and first lady have been encouraging people across the country to volunteer in their communities. The offer also coincides with GWU's annual Freshman Day of Service. More than 1,500 first-year students are expected to participate in community service projects in the Washington, D.C., area on Friday and Saturday, with a special emphasis on helping veterans and military families. More on Michelle Obama
 
Elizabeth Debold: The Divine Feminine, Unveiled Top
Will embracing woman-centered spirituality take us beyond patriarchy? I remember this one Sunday afternoon in 1988 with the sharp vividness that memory usually reserves for truly significant or disastrous events. But this was such a small thing. I was in the bathtub reading the New York Times when I came across an announcement stating that the weekly "Hers" column, which was the only place in the whole newspaper that specifically reflected women's thinking, would no longer appear every week because, in the name of equity, it would alternate with a new "About Men" column. To my own surprise, I burst into tears, sobbing almost uncontrollably. My partner came running, wondering what calamity could possibly have befallen me in the bathtub. He laughed when I told him what my trouble was. "But don't you get it?" I cried. "The entire New York Times is about men!" I don't know why I had such a strong reaction to this -- maybe because it was a definitive sign that the fresh inrush of women's concerns that had flooded into the mainstream since the sixties was slowing to a trickle, mixing with everything else, losing its bracing quality. I'm sure my response was unusual, but it touches on an experience shared by so many women: the strange, sometimes enraging sense of living in a culture that rarely reflects one's priorities, concerns, and deeper desires. Despite the progress made in these last four decades, Western culture still suffers from male bias -- from Our Father in Heaven and the occupants of the Oval Office to the ravaging of Mother Nature and the ever-intensifying sexual objectification of women (and girls). The recipe for cultural change has been pretty much "add women and stir" -- as if reaching some balance in the numbers of men and women in public life, which has not even happened, would transform the basic ethos of our culture and shift the course of history. Over the last twenty years, however, something deeper has started stirring in women, a motivation to change culture at its roots. The goal is to create a new spiritual and ethical context that would balance and heal our hyper-masculine world through honoring the feminine as sacred. This means a variety of things, and different women (or groups of women) have identified the feminine in different ways. There are some who see the Divine Feminine in the unique life-sustaining roles that have emerged from our biological role as mothers. Others speak of a feminine principle that is a force in the human psyche and a fundamental aspect of the manifest world. And still others are engaged in reclaiming or re-creating rituals to celebrate ancient goddesses, to make this feminine divinity more visible and conscious. Common to all (or most) is the sense that the sacred is not to be found in a transcendent realm out there somewhere but that the sacred is immanent to life. Thus these forms of spirituality celebrate the very human endeavor of trying to realize unity with nature and with one another--often celebrating the body, sexuality, and relationship. All told, it's an unprecedented phenomenon. Never before in Western history have women actively insisted that the sacred dimension of life reflect their (our) gender. And from what I can tell, the same generation of women who advocated for social change in the last century -- my boomer sisters -- are the vast majority of those engaged in this experiment in cultural and consciousness change. In response to a recent issue of this magazine, Woman: A Cultural, Philosophical, and Spiritual Exploration , quite a few women (and men) wrote us to point out that the next step for women, and our culture, is a reclamation of the feminine. There is no doubt that, at this point, many of the ills of our world come from an emphasis on the more negative aspects of masculinity that have come forth in modernity -- rationality divorced from human connection, competition, hierarchies of power over others, and separation on multiple dimensions. But what does it mean to say that the feminine is the answer? This too easily sets up a polarizing dichotomy of its own -- equating the masculine with what is bad and the feminine with good. And while the "masculine" and "feminine" are not synonymous with "man" and "woman," we know that they are very much related. We can't forget that women and men created history together -- including the structures of patriarchy that we now see as so destructive. Given how strongly some of our readers felt about the need to bring forward the feminine, however, I began to wonder if I actually understood what they meant or if I had overlooked something. Or perhaps it is just semantics, and we are speaking about the same thing but using different terminology. We all share a desire to move beyond patriarchy and see that as critical to our individual and collective evolution (or even survival). The question that I want to address is: How do we create a post-patriarchal culture? And how does that relate to the Divine Feminine or feminine principle? The Feminine Principle From what I gather, most of these new woman-created spiritual paths implicitly or explicitly rely on the groundbreaking theoretical work of psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961). Jung, who pioneered the theory that all of humanity shares a deep psychic realm that he called the collective unconscious, assumed that the feminine and masculine are ontological principles so profound to life that one could easily see them as inherently sacred. They describe two fundamental ways of being, two types of psychic energy, often represented by female and male images called archetypes. The masculine doesn't necessarily mean men, nor the feminine women, but they are closely related, because at the physical level, the female body is an expression of the feminine principle and the male body is the expression of the masculine principle. Jung saw archetypes as "images of the instincts" and therefore as universal, operating in the psyches of every human being. According to Jungian analysis, archetypal images appear in dream and myth. They are rooted in our unique individual histories as well as in the collective unconscious, the shared reservoir of humanity's journey. That is why images of the mother are so prevalent in our dreams and symbols -- each of us has a mother, and every generation of humans has been mothered. More importantly, perhaps, Jung believed that the archetypes come from a more essential realm of existence, and through their interactions with us in dreams and symbols, they can guide us. While the difference between the masculine and feminine may seem self-evident, I haven't found it to be all that clear. Some, like Ken Wilber, note that men are more naturally aligned with Eros, which he considers to be the creative instinct, and that women are more aligned with Agape, compassion. Others divide Being and Doing into feminine and masculine, respectively. Jung apparently believed that the feminine was Eros and the masculine Logos, which crudely corresponds with emotions and intellect. Jung's preeminent student, Erich Neumann, argued that the masculine is focused consciousness and the feminine is diffuse awareness. Generally, it seems, the masculine is related to agency, assertion, and intense directed focus, and the feminine is related to receptivity, containment, and an encompassing depth of being, both of which are related to the reproductive roles men and women have played since time immemorial. They are psychological expressions of our bodies--men up and out, women down and in. That our bodies are the fundamental substrate through which we create our sense of self is no surprise. The pioneering developmental psychologist Jean Piaget and his wife, Valentine Châtenay, carefully documented how the capacity for abstraction, including speech, is built on infants' bodily engagement with objects and people. Erik Erikson, a protégéeric of Anna Freud, noted decades ago that when boys and girls play with blocks, boys tend to build towers and girls create enclosures. One's bodily experience in infancy, mediated by culture, forms the deepest layer of self, which is why so many brilliant psychological explorers -- such as Piaget and Erikson, as well as Freud, Margaret Mahler, Daniel Stern, Jacques Lacan, and many more -- have tried so hard to understand how this happens. Even before research showed how male and female brains were wired differently, the fact that certain personality qualities or characteristics would be consistently found in women or men made sense because of our different bodily experience. This is expressed in culture in myriad ways -- from the desire expressed by so many men throughout history to penetrate into new territory or the desire in women to create and decorate homes. Our experience of being differently embodied has shaped our psyches and our culture. The issue of embodiment, and how it determines who we are as women and men, has been a long-time interest of mine. My academic work, as part of Carol Gilligan's research collaborative on women's and girls' development, was about embodiment and the different way of knowing that girls and women have, compared with the norms of male culture. I saw how as girls' bodies mature and their minds develop the capacity to holistically grasp cultural ideals and expectations for women, they "hit the wall of patriarchal culture," as we called it, and cut off from themselves in order to pass through its narrow door. Most of us have learned that if we want to have success, be attractive, and feel secure, we have to dissociate from certain feelings (such as anger or vulnerability), from a real connection to sexuality, and from our own perspective on reality. We have learned how to create ourselves as objects in male culture. Paradoxically, the focus of our subjectivity has been a self-objectification, constantly reflecting the image (or images) that will get us what we want. For girls not to have to go through this dark passage to become women in patriarchy, we women would have to undo these dissociations to find a new, whole sense of ourselves. That's why I'm puzzled when I hear that the feminine principle is rooted in the experience of embodiment -- or is embodiment itself. From a certain point of view, my value as a woman in patriarchy has only ever been about my body or my capacity to have sex and to bear and nurture children. Women's souls and spirits are shaped to be nurturing vessels and to exist in relationship -- which makes this our deepest level of conditioning, one that is almost completely unconscious. Resorting to traits that have developed in women, by virtue of our capacity to give birth and nurture life, over the thousands of years in which our primary value has been to reproduce doesn't seem to get us beyond patriarchy. How, then, would bringing forth the feminine principle--if it is rooted in this most conditioned aspect of self--take us to a new culture? Finish reading this article . More on Spirituality
 
Joel B. Schwartzberg: Rwanda's President on Past Horror and Present Hope Top
As part of its investigation of a breakthrough health care innovation in Rwanda , NOW on PBS host David Brancaccio interviews Rwandan President Paul Kagame about why he believes universal health care in Rwanda is crucial for the country's social, political, and economic advancement. President Kagame also discusses international aid, and his vision for a healthy, financially-independent Rwanda. "Prosperity depends mainly and largely on people," Kagame tells Brancaccio. "So, our people must be healthy, must be educated, and must have skills in order for that resource to develop." See the interview below, and watch the full report this weekend.
 
Robert Rodi: The Joy of Jill & Julia Top
Jill Sobule and Julia Sweeney might not at first seem an ideal show-business team; the experiential divide between comics and musicians is sufficiently wide that you rarely find them even attempting to forge a bond. (That Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis remain the most successful such duo isn't exactly inspirational.) But when you give the matter a moment's thought, you begin to see some common ground between the two performers: Sweeney, remember, glanced the Zeitgeist with her portrayal of a sexually ambiguous character named Pat; and Sobule scored a hit with her sexually ambiguous single, "I Kissed a Girl." More substantively, now both are forty-something women in an industry largely blind to anyone over thirty, and while each retains a certain girlishness--Sweeney's breathy, often giggling line delivery, and Sobule's bright, insouciant vocals--beneath the surface there's nothing gamine about them. Sweeney, after all, is a woman who's faced down both cancer and organized religion (as she's related in two bravura one-woman shows, God Said Ha! and Letting Go of God) and Sobule, marginalized by the mainstream recording industry, boldly went her own way, and has just released a CD (California Years), immaculately produced by Don Was, that she financed herself entirely through small donations from her fans (many of whom are explicitly thanked on the disc's concluding cut, "The Donor Song"). Spines of iron, then, despite Sweeney's self-deprecating stammer and Sobule's diminutive stature (she's taken to playing a very small guitar, possibly to de-emphasize her slightness). And no wonder the two should have formed a mutual admiration society; or that the admiration has developed into a partnership, to wit: The Jill and Julia Show, an occasional revue that has frequently played Chicagoland venues (thanks to Sweeney's new residency here; she's comfortably ensconced in Wilmette with her husband and daughter). On a cool night in early September they came together for the latest outing (accompanied by the leonine bassist David Carpenter) on the intimate and gorgeously lit stage at SPACE in Evanston. Sweeney, whose hair now gleams silver, wore a charcoal grey skirt and an equally dusky shirt tied at the waist; Sobule, still radiantly blond, was in a short, summery blue print dress with red trim. I didn't really know what to expect; how does a show featuring both a monologist and a musician structure itself? But it became apparent fairly quickly that the framework of the show was fluid, allowing both performers to engage the audience--and each other--as the spirit moved them; with the result that they often seemed as surprised as the audience with the direction it took. After an opening theme song in which the women declared their mutual ardor (Sobule: "I'm a big fan, I even rented Pat"), Sobule opened with a song from her new album, "Where Is Bobbie Gentry?" a paean to the country-pop diva that's set to the chord changes of her 1967 mega-hit, "Ode to Billie Joe." "I'm the baby who was thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge," she sang, and while it got a laugh--it's a camp reference, isn't it?--it's also confessional: Sobule was paying tribute to her influences, a bit self-consciously because she's aware of having surpassed them. (Later, Joey Heatherton was invoked as well.) This led to Sweeney musing darkly on the "scrutiny that fame brings" and how her goal was accordingly "to get a lot of fame and then withdraw myself from it" to demonstrate her disdain. Again, the expressive Sweeney shrug--this time saying, Oh well, that didn't work out. She's an absolute master of this kind of offhand self-mockery, and manages to deliver it disarmingly sweetly, without any trace of mawkish humility. She struck a similar note in her story of attending the 25th anniversary of Saturday Night Live on her own, only to take refuge for more than an hour in the otherwise empty studio because the ferocious social Darwinism on display at the pre-party was just too much for her. Throughout the night, there was a kind of loose reciprocity to Sobule's songs and Sweeney's stories; nothing so rigid as a thematic back-and-forth--just enough resonance to keep the whole thing coherent. Sweeney, for instance, delivered a painfully funny piece on how she belatedly tried to bring her adopted daughter, Mulan, up to speed on American Christmas traditions (something she'd resisted earlier because, she says, Santa Claus is just "a starter god"). Mulan's sheer horror at the idea of there being an old man somewhere who is "always watching you" and who will creep into their house on Christmas night eventually evolved into a realization that it's all just a myth, and then again, in the paradoxical way of children, into feigned belief (so that she can fit in with her peers). Sobule followed, entirely appropriately, with a lovely number in which she sang "I wonder where the wonder wandered off to." Mulan herself appeared at the break to push CD sales, and was breathless in her excitement that she could give us a $5 discount. It's hard to resist a sales pitch from an eight-year-old. Not that there was much resistance on offer, by that point. Sweeney's mother is one of the more memorable "characters" from her one-woman shows and I was glad that a few more anecdotes about that inimitable lady found their way into the second half; but I hadn't expected Jill's mother to make an even more indelible appearance. At the end of Sobule's song about having had to wear orthopedic shoes as a child ("Big shoes, I'll never forgive / My mother made me wear big shoes"), Sweeney held her cell phone up to the mic so that Jill's mother could rap a rebuttal ("Big shoes, if I hadn't made you / You'd be wearing Dr. Scholl's today"). By the end of the evening, it felt as though we'd had a kind of catharsis, despite the lightness of tone and the often meandering subject matter; but then these are two powerful, confident performers at the top of their game--who, in addition, complement each other wonderfully (Sweeney's warmth, for instance, balancing Sobule's folk-goddess coolness). I'd come in the company of my friends Annie and Kevin, who are friends of Julia's through her husband Michael, and who had spent the previous day taking both Jill and Julia through the Art Institute--which Annie, as an art archivist, knows as expertly as most of us know Wrigleyville side streets on game day. That's a lot of Jill and Julia for a single weekend. Funny, then, how much I envied them. The Jill and Julia Show will return later in the year. For news of upcoming appearances, see Jill's website, www.jillsobule.com , or Julia's, www.juliasweeney.com .
 
Studies Show Facebook Improves Intelligence, Tweeting Weakens Memory Top
Playing video war games and solving Sudoku may have the same effect as keeping up to date with Facebook, according to Dr Tracy Alloway. But text messaging, micro-blogging on ''Twitter'' and watching YouTube were all likely to weaken ''working memory''. More on Twitter
 
Magda Abu-Fadil: Farouk El-Baz: From Egypt's deserts to the moon and back Top
Is the Arab world heading for more desertification and will future wars erupt over water, as predicted by analysts, rather than oil? Not entirely. The region's dryness goes back 5,000 years, said Dr. Farouk El-Baz, a leading international expert on the subject, who nevertheless urged serious study of weather cycles, in a bid to adapt to the Earth's changing environment and the major forces affecting it. "Further, we should become aware of the changes that result from human activities and attempt to ameliorate their effects on the environment of our life-giving planet," he said. Farouk El-Baz in Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter (faroukelbaz.com) With climate change taking its toll on world resources, and weather patterns wreaking havoc, El-Baz said humans must realize what they're imposing on the Earth if they are to ensure sustainable development and self-preservation, since natural resources are finite. He plans to highlight the issue at the Arab Environment 2009 conference organized by the Arab Forum for Environment & Development (www.afedonline.org) in Beirut, Lebanon this November that will precede the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. It's natural for El-Baz, who began studying the Earth as a geologist, before turning to outer space as supervisor of lunar science planning and operations at Bellcomm, Inc., a division of AT&T, that conducted systems analysis for NASA. Apollo 11's lunar landing (NASA) At NASA he helped select Apollo 11's landing craft touchdown location. So how does a geologist make that stratospheric leap and reconcile scientific curiosity with religion and religious skeptics? "In reality, I never left geology. My Ph.D. was about how to characterize mineral deposits such as lead and zinc," he said of his landing sites selection based on geological significance. He was also responsible for training astronauts in making meaningful observations about their lunar environment, so it was a perfect fit lasting from 1967 to 1972. "All along, I never encountered anything in science that contradicts religion," El Baz said. "Anyone who strongly believes in the power of creation has no problem with scientific details. The two are not mutually exclusive." Farouk El-Baz with Apollo 17 crew (faroukelbaz.com) El-Baz was known as "the King" to the astronauts he trained during the Apollo program. While circling the moon with Mission 15, astronaut Alfred Worden said, "After the King's training, I feel like I've been here before." In Tom Hanks' HBO TV series "From the Earth to the Moon," El-Baz' role as Apollo astronaut trainer was featured in a segment entitled "The Brain of Farouk El-Baz," and a shuttle craft named "El-Baz" soared through the popular TV program "Star Trek: The Next Generation." El-Baz went on to plan photography and observations of the Earth's features from space, and advancing the techniques of orbital photography. His various experiences fed his interest to study the world's deserts and how to explore for groundwater in an increasingly parched Arab world. Geology was the common thread. The 71-year-old Egyptian-American, who is Research Professor and Director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, is just as keen today about the wonders of science as when he began studying chemistry and geology at Ain Shams University decades ago. El-Baz at Boston University (Saab) In an address, while accepting an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at the American University of Beirut, El-Baz said creation of a knowledge society in the Arab world was the only guarantee for a brighter future. "There is no question that what we need most in the Arab world is a first-rate education. I am the product of such an education. My teachers and professors taught me how to carefully observe, investigate and conduct meaningful research." El-Baz said Arabs of the past had learned from their forebears and worked diligently to add to human knowledge. In so doing, they established the basis of Western civilization. "Encouraging excellence and rewarding innovation increases the potential of a nation," he emphasized. Farouk El-Baz awarded honorary doctorate by AUB President Peter Dorman (Abu-Fadil) Asked how realistic that was in impoverished developing countries -- many in the Arab world -- where national budgets often go to defense acquisitions, or are spent solidifying governments' grip on power, El-Baz said creation of such a society did not require vast wealth. "It only needs leadership, long-term vision, and loyalty to the professions," he explained, noting that poorer and less-endowed nations like Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea exemplified knowledge societies on a par with highly advanced European countries. To that end, he encourages renewed interest in space exploration, despite doubts about its necessity in times of financial hardship. The misconception is that spending money on missions into space is extravagant, he said, because little thought is given to how funds are appropriated and what the by-products of such endeavors are -- with creation of jobs at all levels being a prime example. "It is instructive to note that nations that initiated major space efforts have greatly benefited economically," El-Baz explained, pointing to Japan, India and China where war, chronic famine, and a huge population could have crippled those countries, but whose major space efforts 30 years ago had thrust them into the technical and economic big leagues. So, 40 years after the lunar landing, are young people interested in what was achieved back then? El-Baz, whose list of accomplishments is staggeringly impressive and too long to enumerate (www.faroukelbaz.com), strikes a positive note. "The younger generation of today is fascinated by space exploration and members of that generation ask the most probing questions," he said of his encounters with students. But fascination should be coupled with a good science education. Asked if enough was being spent on teaching science in the U.S., Europe and Arab world, and whether India, China and Russia had jumped ahead of the West, El-Baz said funding was adequate in the developed world, totaling 2% of GDP. "In the Arab world in general, this amount is about 0.2% of GDP, which means (it) should be multiplied ten times," he said, explaining that fewer than 25% of students entered science fields. More on Indonesia
 
Joe Wilson's New Reality Show (VIDEO) Top
You may have thought Joe Wilson's career was in trouble now that he shouted, "You lie!" at the president during a joint session of Congress, but, despite what F. Scott Fitzgerald said, reality TV has afforded many Americans second acts and Joe Wilson is no exception. WATCH: "YOU LIE"with Joe Wilson from Corbin Bernsen Get More Hilarity From Funny or Die! The Fourth Flop Top Obama Says "Skip School To Stay In School Gus Porter, American Legend with Thomas Haden Church More on Funny Or Die
 
Elin Suleymanov: Making History in Person: A view from Azerbaijan Top
A year has passed since both major parties in United States politics held their nominating conventions. Looking back on the rancorous, contentious presidential election last year with the benefit of hindsight being 20-20, among the factors that made it truly special and the most important in recent memory, is the diversity of both tickets. And while the nation is now wrapped up in debates over health care reform, how to stimulate the sluggish economy and what the best course of action is in Afghanistan, we should take a moment to reflect on the truly historic nature of last year's election. Regardless of political views and opinions, the fact that an African-American stood as the Democratic presidential nominee and now sits as the President, while a woman was the vice presidential choice for the Republican Party, embodies important symbolism for the entire world. Such symbolism should not be underestimated or overlooked. After all, if specific policies change or if they are forgotten years from now, the changing dynamic of who can become the leader of this powerful nation will be nothing less than historic. Even today it is clear that the most outstanding characteristic of politics in 2008 and 2009 is the prominent role of women's leadership. Beginning with Senator Hillary Clinton's run for the White House and later appointment as the senior most diplomat in the U.S., women have energized and enriched America's political process. Women have finally become full partners in the American political process. This resonates far beyond America's borders because the world is watching the U.S. political process very carefully. Some are watching because the United States is a global power, which has an impact on many nations; others watch because the diversity makes the election so much more interesting. For the people of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the prominent role of women in the American election followed by the appointment of so many women to President Obama's cabinet, 7 in all, has an added significance. The reason is that the Azerbaijanis recently celebrated the 91st anniversary of establishing the first democratic parliamentary republic in the Muslim world. It was also more than 90 years ago that the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, which soon afterward was annexed and abolished by the Bolsheviks, granted equal voting rights for men and women alike. In so doing, Azerbaijan had pioneered a fundamental principle of equality for the region and beyond. Building on this tradition, Azerbaijan's First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva initiated an international forum on expanding the role of women in cross-cultural dialogue in 2008. The event organized jointly with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku brought together leaders of diverse backgrounds, including many women who serve in Azerbaijan's parliament and government to brainstorm how to promote global understanding through making women leaders more vocal. It is hard to say whether the Forum participants would agree with Sarah Palin's political views or those of Hillary Clinton or Janet Napolitano or Kathleen Sebelius, and others, but they, most likely, can relate to the challenge of being a working mother and would appreciate their strong leadership skills. That alone lays the foundation for a different tone of a global conversation. Today, I am not sure what the specific political positions of the first voters in Azerbaijan in 1918 were, nor who they voted for. One thing is certain: more than 90 years ago, they made history by personally pioneering change. Almost a century later, that still matters a lot. Elin Suleymanov is Azerbaijan's first Consul General to Los Angeles and 13 Western States, including the State of Alaska. For more information on the Consulate General of Azerbaijan in Los Angeles, please visit www.azconsulatela.org . More on Barack Obama
 
Jennifer Connelly's See-Through, Nipply Dress: Love It Or Leave It? (PHOTOS, POLL) Top
The Toronto Film Festival opened Thursday night and Jennifer Connelly attended the premiere of her new movie 'Creation,' a Charles Darwin biopic costarring Paul Bettany. Her curve-hugging, see-through red dress showed just how well she was created. PHOTOS: Get HuffPost Entertainment On Facebook and Twitter! More on Celebrity Skin
 
Regina Weinreich: Crude Top
The name of this riveting documentary, the latest by Joe Berlinger, puns on its subject, oil, at the same time that it indicts an industry for its indifference to a people and part of our planet it views as expendable. In Ecuador, in a place that was once a paradise, slick inky pools stagnate where fresh water used to flow, and people die like flies. The water is an undrinkable brown, and children suffer incurable skin disease or succumb to cancer. An on-going lawsuit against Chevron (which purchased Texaco), for drilling in the '60's and '70's provides a narrative thread with a charismatic cast of characters including a native, Pablo Fajardo, an attorney whose brother was assassinated because he tried to investigate "the situation." Fajardo received the 2008 Goldman Environmental Prize and is honored at a concert by Sting. At the time he was thinking, Who is Sting? What are the Police? "Crude" opened this week. The actress and movie producer Trudie Styler who with her husband Sting created The Rainforest Foundation attended the screening. In Crude, she is seen wearing a white scarf; speaking with the Ecuadorian people, she promises to bring their message to our world. Knowing this is just a temporary measure, she brings water containers to catch fresh rain. The real goal is to have Chevron clean up the mess. I asked her what were the conditions of her visit. "You have to wear layers," she told me, "to prevent being bitten by chiggers. We stayed in pensiones and ate fruit. The Amazon is unspeakably hot, and then there's the pervasive smell of gasoline." Joe Berlinger said that after he became aware of the problem, he could no longer return to his home in Westchester, to his children who each have their own room, without addressing this egregious situation. Documentaries always depend upon those found gems, in this case, Sara McMillan, Chevron's Chief Environmental Scientist who attests without irony, without question, that she would never condone the actions of a company in polluting, or behaving negligently or criminally. Of course there are those who will take her at her word and believe that the Ecuadorians are seizing the moment to make big bucks from a huge, wealthy corporation. That's why you have to see this film. She provides great humor and the filmmakers use her commentary judiciously. When I say how much I enjoyed her interview, Berlinger smiles wryly and says, "yeah, she drank the Kool-Aid."
 
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand: Turning Tragedy Into Compassionate Action Top
This morning, as I listened to the names read aloud at Ground Zero, I was mindful of the devastating loss that each loved one continues to experience and the profound pain we all share. September 11th will always live in the hearts and minds of all Americans but none more than those who lost loved ones on that day eight years ago. Yet as we remember the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters who were taken from us so suddenly, we must not forget that their passions and dreams were left for those closest to them to honor and pursue. So many family members and friends have so often chosen to serve and improve their communities to honor their loved ones. Time and time again, we have seen those closest to the victims inspired to work for causes and concerns, advocate for and volunteer on behalf of missions near to the hearts of their loved ones, choosing acts of kindness and respect to respond to something so incomprehensibly evil. These responses were not just limited to those who lost someone in this tragedy. Millions of Americans witnessed the horror of September 11th and were moved to make the world a better place. They have taken up service as a memorial to the victims, honoring their lives by improving the lives of others. Whether it be young people who lost parents in the attacks who went to New Orleans and reached out to victims of Hurricane Katrina; whether it be first responders here in New York who continue their service to this day, putting their lives in harm's way in order to carry on the essential, life-saving work of their lost or sick comrades; or whether it be the simple act of volunteering to help those who need it the most, these actions are personal expressions, a means of turning a senseless tragedy into millions of acts of compassion and unity. I can think of no greater tribute to the victims of September 11th than in the positive and inspirational actions that millions of Americans have taken on their behalf both today and year round, honoring their dreams, and making a difference as a testament to their legacy. That's why I was so proud to support the Edward M Kennedy Serve America Act, which established September 11th as the National Day of Service and Remembrance. In this time of crisis and uncertainty, so many people feel the need to contribute to the greater good. We will harness these millions of hearts and minds to honor the memories of the victims of 9/11. When we create hope and opportunity in the lives of others, we allow love, decency and promise to triumph over cowardice and hate. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." I applaud the families, friends and fellow Americans of those victims for choosing light and love through service as a means of honoring these victims on this day. More on Ted Kennedy
 
Marnia Robinson: Sure Ways To Stay In Love Top
As my husband and I stroked a live alligator resting calmly on a trainer's lap at a fair, I asked the guy why it was so tame. "I pet it daily. If I didn't, it would quickly be wild again, and wouldn't allow this," he explained. Only months earlier I had begun to comprehend the power of bonding behaviors (skin-to-skin contact, gentle stroking and so forth). These subconscious signals, or attachment cues, speak directly to the only part of the brain that can fall in love or stay in love (the limbic system ). They make emotional ties surprisingly effortless--once any initial defensiveness dissolves. And bonding behaviors are good medicine for relaxing our defense mechanisms, too. Here's a dramatic example: Adoptive parents had been struggling for years with a Romanian orphan with reactive attachment disorder. Violent, he put over 1000 holes in his bedroom walls, and as he grew bigger his mother had to hire a body guard. Finally, in his teens, the parents tried daily attachment cues. After three weeks, he finally bonded with his parents and began to form healthy peer relationships as well. But until I met that gator I thought bonding behaviors were purely a mammal thing. To survive, mammal infants need regular contact with Mom's mammaries until they are ready to be weaned. Bonding behaviors are the way mammal infants attach to their caregivers . These signals work by encouraging the release of neurochemicals (including oxytocin), which relax our inner guardian, making a bond possible. They are the way we humans fall in love with our parents and children. Caregiver-infant signals include affectionate touch, grooming, soothing sounds, nurturing, eye contact, and so forth. In rare pair-bonding mammals like us, bonding cues serve a secondary function as well. They're part of the reason we generally stay in love at least long enough for both parents to attach to any kids. Honeymoon neurochemistry also plays a role, but it's like a booster shot that wears off. In contrast, bonding behaviors can sustain bonds indefinitely. In lovers, bonding behaviors look different than they do between caregiver and infant, yet parallels are evident: · smiling, with eye contact · kissing with lips and tongues · skin-to-skin contact · providing a service or treat without being asked · wordless sounds of contentment and pleasure · stroking with intent to comfort · overlooking an error, or forgiving · touching and sucking of nipples/breasts · gentle intercourse · hugging or spooning, and so on There are some curious aspects to these potent signals. First, in order to sustain the sparkle in a relationship these behaviors need to occur daily, or almost daily--just as the alligator trainer observed. Second, they need not occur for long, or be particularly effortful, but they must be genuinely selfless . Even holding each other in stillness at the end of a long, busy day can exchange the subconscious message that your relationship is gratifying. Third, there's evidence that the more you use bonding behaviors, the more sensitive your brain becomes to the neurochemicals that help you feel relaxed and loving. (In contrast, intense stimulation can bring on satiety and cravings for novelty .) Fourth, some items on the list above sound like foreplay, but in one important sense they are not. Foreplay is geared toward building sexual tension and climax--which sets off a subtle cycle of neurochemical changes (and perception shifts) before the brain returns to equilibrium. In contrast, bonding behaviors are geared toward relaxation . They work best when they soothe an old part of the primitive brain known as the amygdala. The amygdala's job is to keep our guard up , unless it is reassured regularly. Yes, it also relaxes temporarily during and immediately after a passionate encounter. After all, fertilization is our genes' top priority. However, regular, non-goal oriented contact seems to be more effective as a bonding behavior than declining bursts of fiery passion. Indeed, loving foreplay followed by intense orgasm can actually send contradictory subconscious signals ("I'm in love," followed by feeling fed up with your partner during the days following). These may account for the "attraction-repulsion" phenomenon lovers often notice after their initial honeymoon high wanes. Interestingly, selfless exchanges of affection not only bond, but can give rise to the ecstatic experiences sacred sex lovers sometimes report. Said a friend who experimented: Though it was after 11 PM, we cuddled. For about two hours. I had experiences that I do not have immediate words for. Rich, deep, full. Subtle. Powerful. Moving. Meaningful. Pointing to greater connection with all life. We were in connection. In the same wave, as she put it, like a flock of birds wheeling in the sky as if with one mind. Whether or not you experience ecstasy, bonding behaviors are a practical means of restoring and sustaining the harmonious sparkle in your relationship. Combine them with gentle lovemaking interspersed with relaxation (and a minimum of sexual satiety signals via orgasm), and you may find that you can sustain the harmony in your relationship with surprising ease. Maybe those rare "swans" (couples who effortlessly stay together harmoniously) are largely made, not born. Certainly, I now carefully ponder news stories like this one about a couple married happily for over 80 years. The journalist reported that, "The couple never went to bed without a kiss and cuddle." Hmmm...cause or effect? More on Relationships
 
Republican Strategist Backs Miller Over "Disrespectful Partisan Idiot" Top
Former Bush and McCain strategist Mark McKinnon wants the congressman who shouted at Obama out of office and out of his party--and he's donating $1,000 to his opponent. Make Joe Wilson pay. More on Barack Obama
 
Maggie Van Ostrand: Republican Nutters Reunion Top
The Republican Party's planned another attack on America last night, appears to be the number one topic this morning. When congressman Puppet shouted out his vile and lying accusation, it was designed to distract Americans from talking about the President's speech. They succeeded. The planned outburst is what we are talking about, instead of the President's plans to revamp our Country's sorry health situation. We must ask ourselves why we listen to anyone as undisciplined, arrogant, and hateful as the congressman from South Carolina. The Republicans chose their point man well. Congressman Puppet delivered even better than the civilians whose disruptive outbursts at town hall meetings across the nation made headlines. What a lousy example of democracy for the rest of the world to see, as panning cameras caught many of these elected Republicans snickering, grimacing, and waving papers in the air. It looked like a reunion for graduates of Nutter High. Now, can we please drop these boys' lowjinks and discuss what our President said Wednesday night? Can we push the nutters back under the ground from which they oozed? More on Health Care
 
Beth Arnold: Letter From Paris: Josephine Baker Back in Paris (This Time as A Man) Top
If you can get away for a day or so, it might be a good plan to fly to Paris and spend the evening at J osephine Baker 's new Casino show. You would have plenty to think about on the return trip, for the revue contains something of everything..." ---Janet Flanner It was a beautiful bang of an evening with swishy chorus girls covering luminous curvy skin with a parade of splendid costumes, a hilarious magician, tap-dancing black men in top hats and tails, a sultry French singer, Trois Dandy Chanteurs , and a silent-era black-and-white movie short, not to mention the burlesque strip teasers who looked as if they'd stepped out of the 1930's with its glamorous fizz. Modern burlesque diva Dita Von Teese headlined this extraordinary show at the historic Casino de Paris, which opened on September 7th and will be playing until the 17th. Get your tickets here , Madame et Monsieur. The Casino itself is red-velvet-and-crystal-chandelier sumptuous and begs for glitzy shows. From Wikipedia : It was at the beginning of the First World War, however, that the modern Casino de Paris began to take shape, when the venue was converted into a cinema and music hall. The bombardments of the First World War caused performances to be interrupted, and it is when they resumed that the revue forma, which lasted through a good part of the twentieth century was established. Over the decades, performers who have played the Casino de Paris have included Mistinguett, Maurice Chevalier, Josephine Baker, Tino Rossi, Line Renaud, and Zizi Jeanmaire; writers who have contributed work have included Serge Gainsbourg and Jean Ferrat; Yves Saint Laurent designed for the Casino in the 70s, and poster artists have included Erté and Jules Chéret. Another American burlesque star is the author and artistic director of this show. Let me introduce you to Gentry Lane : Born in Hollywood, this petite pin‐up has called Paris home for the last 11 years. Gentry is credited for having established the Burlesque renaissance in Paris. Her eponymous shows & parties are the talk of the town, frequented by celebrities and the Parisian jet set. Gentry is the founder of the "École Supérieur de Burlesque," Paris' first Burlesque school. She trains scores of women each week in the art of effeuillage, vintage style and stage presence. Ladies, who wants to sign up? Ms. Lane herself elegantly stripped, but Ms. Von Teese literally took the audience's breath away with her voluptuously frolicsome splashing in the giant martini glass of her Cointreauversial number. Lucky, for us, the tasty cocktails were offered in the lobby as a Cointreauversial promotion, and who didn't want one after seeing that spectacle. Ms. Von Teese also presented her new Opium Den show, which was an explosion of Occidental sensuality. She adorns herself in gowns of 300,000 glittering Swarovski crystals and mile high Christian Louboutin stilettos, makeup and hair ever so flawlessly perfected. But our champagne coupes runnethed over when the taut-bodied café-crème-skinned new Josephine Baker a.k.a. Brian Scott Bagley leapt onto and around the stage in his J.B. wig and skirt made of a string of artificial bananas, as Ms. Baker once had in her famous Danse Sauvage . This professional dancer owned the stage with his smooth and powerful movement that pulsed with a primal energy that Ms. Baker herself evidently possessed. According to his page on MySpace , she is one of his spiritual heroes. I certainly see why, and he may have been channeling her. He was so sauvage and hot himself. The new "Black Pearl," one of the many monikers of which Ms. Baker was known, showed real star power. What Janet Flanner said about Josephine Baker in one of her New Yorker Letter From Paris entries could well be said about Brian Scott Bagley: At the Casino, beautifully costumed, staged, chorused, in a fair way to becoming what is called an artiste, she is far from that unknown chorus girl, selected by Miguel Covarrubias, who a few summers ago made her Paris debut carried in upside down "à poil," and doing the split. She is far from the banana-belt costume that made her the idol of Berlin, Barcelona, Budapest--but she is not far from being the Casino's dream girl. Mistinguett can now, though we hope she won't take things easy during her late sixties. For in Miss Baker the French revue has apparently finally found its new star. Beth Arnold lives and writes in Paris. To see more of her work, go to www.betharnold.com . More on France
 
Jay Michaelson: Keep Your Shoes On: A Modest Proposal for Rational Airport Security Top
The vibe has changed at the airport. In the first years after 9/11, there was a tension in the security lines: each time we took our laptops out of their bags, we remembered what happened in September. Whatever our politics, we grimly adjusted to the new reality. Then came the War on Terror, in its expanded form, and with its many political overtones. Gradually, as 9/11 moved from being a national tragedy to a justification for military activity, many of us came to suspect that the Department of Homeland Security was acting and reacting for political reasons -- raising threat levels and increasing security protocols not to protect us, but to keep us scared. Once a paranoid fantasy of civil libertarians, this has now been shown to be the case . So, as we were ordered to remove our shoes, based on one thwarted hijacking attempt -- which probably couldn't have worked in the first place -- we started to scowl. As we watched wheelchair-bound elderly people hobbling through the X-ray, we started to wonder whether there wasn't a better way to keep our skies safe. Now, on September 11, 2009, as I tramped through the security line here at Boston's Logan Airport, I've noticed a new tone emerging, which I've felt, eavedropped on, and observed many times over th last few months: the unmistakable sense of a system that has outlived its usefulness. Not, to be sure, because the threats are no longer there. But because this is not the way to deal with them. The rest of the world is laughing at us. Literally, in some cases -- when I reflexively took my shoes off at a security line in Berlin, the guard chuckled. Stupid American. More generally, we Americans need a reality check. If El Al, the Israeli airline with more reason to be cautious than any other, and more advanced in its anti-terrorism procedures than any other -- if this airline doesn't fret over a tube of toothpaste in my carry-on, then why must the TSA? Of course, El Al also racially profiles. As regular passengers know, everyone boarding an El Al plane is quizzed by a mean security official whose sole task is to unsettle you enough so that, for one moment, he or she can see if you're up to no good. Not surprisingly, the quiz is harsher for Muhammads than for Michaelsons, which is why many Arabs avoid El Al at all costs. So perhaps theirs is not a system we want to emulate. But surely there is some middle ground between America's absurd zero-tolerance policy and one which would lead to the kind of profiling we rightly find objectionable. And surely now, on this first 9/11 of the post-Bush era, is the time to find it. Let's do the math. Thirteen minutes for every airline passenger in America (Michelle Obama's recent estimate -- http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/04/michelle-obama-speeches.html) adds up to 434,000 lost hours every day. At an average wage of $16.75, that means we're losing $7,269,500 in productivity every day while we stand in line and fret. (Of course, many in line are unemployed, but a disproportionate number also earn a whole lot more than $16.75 per hour.) That's $2.6 billion per year -- at a very conservative rate. It's also dehumanizing, infantilizing, annoying, and worse. It may seem like a small thing, but the invasive procedures at every airport terminal keep us that much more afraid. No one likes to be searched, and while Terminal C is certainly not a checkpoint on the West Bank, it's one more incursion on our personal liberty by the state, one more coerced "consent" imposed upon all of us by unelected officials. Of course, the TSA and HSD are just doing their jobs -- but the nature of those jobs inevitably causes its officials to be overprotective and overcautious. If just one terrorist smuggles explosives in his shoes, just imagine if you're the bureaucrat who recommended we stop the x-rays. What's needed, then, is leadership. The Obama administration should replace zero-risk with a balancing of costs and benefits, just as many government agencies have done for years in environmental and other forms of regulation. Such balancing should take place on the macro-level, as policies are set, and on the micro-level, as experienced security professionals are given more discretion in individual cases. Of course, the balance should, of course, remain very, very conservative -- because the costs of a single failure are huge. But a rational policy would give discretion to security guards not to force the little old lady out of her wheelchair, and not to confiscate sealed bottles of Poland Spring. It would allow us to keep our shoes on, take more than a shot glass of shampoo on the plane, and save us millions of dollars a day in lost time. It would also spare the humiliating, degrading sight of wheelchair-bound passengers being forced to hobble through metal detectors while their chairs are disassembled. Enough is enough. Now, if a year's experience with a more discretionary policy yields a raft of unacceptable statistics -- profiling being the most obvious of wrongs -- it should be reexamined, or security guards can be better trained. But the danger of abuse is insufficient reason to maintain the current system; it's a reason to proceed carefully. We now know that the Bush administration used our homeland security apparatus for its own political gain -- an outrage made all the more outrageous by its labeling of its opponents as unpatriotic, naive, or worse. These political motives distorted the process of securing our nation's safety in the skies. Now, as we near the first September 11 of the Obama presidency, there is an opportunity for a fresh start. Responsible security professionals know how to do their jobs. Let's end zero tolerance, and let them do so.
 
Jane Hamsher: Will Harry Reid Lose His Senate Seat To Take the Hit on Health Care? Top
Harry Reid is losing in the polls in his own state of Nevada to almost any GOP opponent for the 2010 Senate race, and Danny Tarkanian leads him 49-38 in the polls. Charlie Cook just downgraded his 2010 race to a tossup . But that brings up an interesting question.  There are two health care bills in the Senate, one written by Max Baucus's Finance Committee (which includes provisions from a back-room price gouging deal with PhRMA and a $3800 fine on Americans for being uninsured ) and one written by Ted Kennedy's HELP Committee (which includes the cost control measure of a public plan).  Kennedy worked on the HELP Committee bill up to his death and was committed to its passage, and many have said that a public option program should be named in his honor . It will be up to Harry Reid as Majority Leader to combine thse bills in some fashion for the Senate to vote on as a whole.   And at that time, Reid is either going to choose to include the HELP Committee's public option that the insurance industry vigorously opposes, or go with the Baucus bill that was authored by a former WellPoint VP.  Today, Reid endorsed the oo-op plan put forward in the House by Blue Dog Mike Ross . Members of the Senate have said repeatedly that "we don't have the votes" for a public option as their justification for passing an insurance industry bailout bill.  But as Congress Matters notes , this must mean that there are Democratic Senators who are willing to join with the Republicans and filibuster the Kennedy public option: To say that no plan with a public option can pass the Senate means -- when there are 60 Democratic votes -- that Democrats like Bayh and Baucus will have to stand with Republicans in filibustering a public option in order to prevent it from getting to a vote. Unless Bayh and Baucus are saying there aren't 50 votes for it, either, which is certainly something I haven't heard said yet. Chris Bowers has been keeping track of where each Senator stands , and he reports that no Democratic Senators "oppose" the public option.  They just say the votes aren't there.  So who are these Senators? Will we ever get a chance to find out? The Majority Leader keeps his job by making his fellow Democratic Senators happy, and keeping them from being put in an awkward position is job one.  Democratic Senators who won't even publicly say they oppose the public option are not going to want to be put on the spot.  They will want him to protect them from taking the political hit for casting a vote against the Kennedy HELP bill.  So when Harry Reid settles on how he will combine the bills, is he willing to incur the wrath of those who will claim that he's shielding his fellow Senators by excluding it?  Can he take the hit in his own state from a brutal assault of attack ads that will certainly ensue, claiming he's facilitating an insurance industry bailout by excluding a provision that would have contained costs?  When the Nevada public learns that he's personally responsible for fining them $3800 if they refuse to pay for expensive premiums from Blue Cross, how will his poll numbers fare? In short, will doing what it takes to save his Majority Leader status make Harry Reid lose his Senate Seat?   Jane Hamsher blogs at firedoglake.com   More on Ted Kennedy
 
Jeff Schweitzer: You Lie! Top
Imagine the setting.  Feel the history in the pomp and circumstance of a presidential entrance into the chambers of the House of Representatives.  Consider the deep respect commanded by the office of the presidency.  Tradition runs deep and all in attendance rise to their feet as our leader makes his way to the podium. President George W. Bush stands before his audience and a nation reeling from economic collapse and declares that our banking system is sound.  Max Baucus stands up and yells, “You lie!” Now consider the Republican response to such an outrage.  Our imagination need not wander far. The cable news outlets would be flooded with conservatives choking with rage.  Pompous talking heads would express indignant fury.  Accusations of treason would fly like sparks at a July 4 party.  Democrats would be called un-American, unpatriotic, Communists.   Right wing radio would be saturated with angry callers, fueled by the demagoguery of talking heads fanning the flames of hate.  Pious calls for apology would ring out.  The incident would dominate all news coverage, serving as the perfect excuse for misdirection and misinformation.  All discussion of the issues of the day would cease in the onslaught of righteous indignation that anybody would dare dishonor the presidency with such a disgusting display of disrespect. Let nobody have any doubt that an outburst against Bush in a speech before a joint session of the Congress would lead to this inevitable Republican response.  Visualize the flapping jowls of Rush Limbaugh, the bloated face of Glenn Beck and the heavy smirk of Sean Hannity as they bleat on about the real America, and how Republicans would never soil sacred tradition like those radical Democrats. Let us then listen carefully to the reaction to the outburst by South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson as President Obama spoke to the nation.  Wait…  Yes, that is indeed a deafening silence I hear in the distance.  Instead of a fire hose of protests, we heard some muted grumbling from John McCain and Rep.  Jerry Lewis that Wilson was disrespectful.  Some moderate Republicans have suggested the behavior warrants further scrutiny to determine if any sanctions are warranted.  But where is the outrage on the airways, on cable news and in the blogosphere?  Where is the red-faced fury?  Where are the calls for immediate apologies? The double standard held by Republicans has gone too far. This hyper-partisanship is destroying our ability to solve our most pressing problems.  Republicans have become delusional in thinking that anything done by the GOP is righteous and all actions on the left are threats to our life and liberty.  Reason has been thrown out the door, replaced with a blinded, single-minded and hateful view of the world.  They openly wish for Obama to fail, which if in reverse they would decry as anti-American.  They actively seek to derail health care reform of any kind, no matter the cost of inaction to the nation’s long-term prosperity.  They have redefined hypocrisy by ignoring failures on the right and blatantly lying about the left, often accusing Democrats of the very abuses perpetrated by Republicans.  Think of the response to Joe Wilson’s ridiculous behavior.  Think of family values, Mark Sanford and John Ensign.  Speaking of which, why hasn’t Joe Wilson cried out “You lie!” when Mark Sanford speaks?  Fox News routinely called Bush protesters unpatriotic, but applauded the tea party protests against Obama.  We must no longer abide this repulsive blind bias and hypocritical intolerance. President Obama said the time for action is now.  He is right, and so too is it time to abandon any pretense of bipartisanship.  We need to push the Republicans aside so that we may govern responsibly.  Obama tried mightily to engage the other side, and in return he is denigrated as a Communist.  A dialogue requires at least two parties; otherwise one is talking to oneself.  That is now the case.  Republicans no longer represent a viable partner in governing.  After eight years of Bush the GOP’s commitment to small government, lower taxes and a balanced budget is comical.  Those ideals remain desirable, but only the Democrats can ultimately deliver in the context of responsible leadership.  Immediately following Obama’s address, the Republican response shamelessly continued to talk about government “rationing” when nothing of the kind is being remotely considered in any of the health care proposals. The Party of family values is gagging on a never-ending series of extra-marital affairs both gay and straight.  The conservative Supreme Court is indifferent to innocents being executed even when DNA evidence clearly exonerates the accused. Cheney is on the stump justifying torture, even that done outside the grotesque guidelines he approved.  The GOP has become a parody if itself, a Saturday Night Live skit. The GOP is now the Party of lies, misinformation, misdirection, torture, infidelity, illegal wars, bloated government, higher taxes, broken health care, and murder of the innocent.  What a platform. President Obama needs to move on.  His attempt to engage the Republicans was worthy, and could have been successful if the other side was open to reasonable compromise.  Instead the GOP is committed to destructive opposition.  We need to move beyond the false story of the right and leave the GOP behind to wallow in its hateful brew of disinformation and hypocrisy while responsible Democrats take the country into the future. More on Health Care
 
Baucus Makes A Grab For Climate Bill Top
For liberal Democrats unhappy with the way Max Baucus is handling health care reform, here's another dose of bad news: He's got his hands on climate and energy, too.
 
Glock Faces Embezzlement, Tax Evasion Allegations Top
Behind the Glock phenomenon, however, is another story, one rife with intrigue and allegations of wrongdoing. The company's hidden history raises questions about its taxpayer-financed law-and-order franchise. Is this a company that deserves the patronage of America's police? Does Glock merit the lucrative loyalty of private American gun buyers? The Glock tale also underscores the difficulty U.S. regulators have overseeing complex international businesses.
 
Christine Pelosi: 9/11 Eight Years After Top
Eight years on, the horrific attacks of 9/11 are affecting the American psyche in ways we have yet to fully appreciate. Americans have struggled with crafting a new relationship with ourselves and others and drafting a new balance of liberty and security. Eight years ago this morning, I was sitting in my boss Congressman John Tierney's office when our scheduler came in and told us a plane had hit the World Trade Center. As we turned on the TV and speculated as to whether it was an accident, we saw the second plane tilt to the side and crash into the second tower. With the tilt of that plane our world went off-kilter, and we have been trying to right ourselves ever since. The indelible images of the next few hours - firefighters and other first responders racing into the towers, smoke rising from the Pentagon, tanks materializing on the Capitol grounds, a plane brought down in Pennsylvania, hushed briefings at Capitol police headquarters, Congressional staff streaming through new security checkpoints to the Capitol steps where our bipartisan leaders sang God Bless America, vigils for the dead and missing, people lining up to give blood to survivors too few to need their donations, grainy video of the attackers showing the new face of terror, and thousands of stories telling the shared horror on an endless cable loop. On 9/11/01, as Americans mourned loved ones and feared future attacks, nearly all resolved not to let the terrorists change our way of life. Resolve was our common purpose. Over the years, the politics of the wars, the PATRIOT Act, the 9/11 Commission, torture, taunts of "9/10" and related swiftboating, and calls for impeachment all eroded that unity. It was inevitable that our philosophical differences would yield different approaches to interpersonal relationships and national security policy, but it was not and is not inevitable that we demonize each other when, quite frankly - we are not the problem - the terrorists are. Fear and loathing of "the other" manifest in this week's anti-immigrant rant at the President must be tamed. There are plenty of fights we can have without the ad hominem attacks which don't bring us any closer to balancing liberty and security for the common good.
 
Annie Leibovitz Settles With Art Capital Group Top
NEW YORK — Celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz has won an extension on a $24 million loan in a financial dispute that threatened her rights to her famous images, the two sides said in a joint statement Friday. Leibovitz and the company, Art Capital Group, said the 59-year-old photographer had been given more time to repay the loan. The loan's deadline passed on Tuesday, but both parties had continued to work to try to resolve the dispute. The statement did not specify the date of the loan extension. "In these challenging times I am appreciative to Art Capital for all they have done to resolve this matter and for their cooperation and continued support," Leibovitz said in the statement. Her spokesman Matthew Hiltzik declined to comment on specifics of the deal. Leibovitz's portraits have regularly graced the covers of Vanity Fair, Vogue and Rolling Stone. One of her most famous images depicts a nude John Lennon cuddling with a clothed Yoko Ono just hours before he was fatally shot. Last year, Leibovitz put up as collateral three Manhattan townhouses, an upstate New York property and the copyright to every picture she has ever taken – or will take – to secure the loan. Art Capital sued her in July, claiming she had breached an agreement that authorized it to act as the agent in the sale of her photography and real estate. On Friday, Art Capital said that it withdrew the lawsuit and that Leibovitz could retain the copyright to her work. Leibovitz has "purchased from Art Capital its rights to act as exclusive agent in the sale of her real property and copyrights," the company said. "Ms. Leibovitz will therefore retain control of those assets within the context of the loan agreement which shall prevail until satisfied." "We're gratified to be able to further assist Ms. Leibovitz to achieve financial stability," Art Capital CEO Ian Peck said in the statement. More on Annie Leibovitz
 
Penelope Cruz: Pregnant Or Not? (PHOTOS, POLL) Top
Strategically placed pleats or no baby bump at all? Rumors have been swirling for months that Penelope Cruz is pregnant with Javier Bardem's child, but the actress showed up at the Toronto Film Festival premiere of her new movie 'Broken Embraces' in an ambiguously draped dress and refused to answer questions about her possible pregnancy . Cruz was also seen smoking with new mother Salma Hayek on Wednesday in LA. But she's European and that's cooler over there, so. PHOTO: Get HuffPost Entertainment On Facebook and Twitter!
 
Eight Years Later: Are We Safe? Critics Say Airport Screens Just 'Security Theater' Top
While the technology to screen passengers has become more advanced and the check-in lines a little shorter, the question of whether flying is terrorism-proof remains.
 
Afghanistan Buys $4.2 Million Condo In Trump World Tower Top
The Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the United Nations has a lovely new apartment. According to two deeds filed Friday, the group spent $4,235,000 on a 2,840-square-foot apartment at Trump World Tower, plus a $5.4 million commercial space at 633 Third Avenue. More on Afghanistan
 
Ross Robertson: The World I Built from Darkness Top
An Interview with Zoltan Torey The last thing I saw with complete clarity was a glint of light in the flood of acid that engulfed my face. I recall reeling back, gasping for air with my nose, mouth, and eyes full of the stuff, coughing and spluttering. It tore off my conjunctivas, the thin film covering the corneas, in an instant and then began rapidly to eat its way into both eyes. I no longer had even a split second of clear sight; there was only a jagged, broken, dirty-glass effect, as though at night a passing truck had splashed muddy water across my windscreen and the wipers couldn't clear the mess. Unaware that I had also swallowed a mouthful of the solution and that my vocal cords were being eaten, and with the evil cascade still coming at me, I spun around, beginning to notice a fast-thickening fog passing over my eyes. At this point my consciousness exploded in a sense of catastrophe. There was no thought in that instant, just fragments, faces of people dear to me, and a sickening feeling of this being the end. Then the fog closed in. How simple it sounds, and how terrible it was, sucked by a relentless force ever deeper into darkness. It was the destruction of the visual world and my life in it. --Zoltan Torey The accident that changed Zoltan Torey's life forever took place in a factory in Sydney, Australia, on a wind-whipped winter night in 1951. While he was hauling a forty-four-gallon drum of battery acid along a track overhead, the plug suddenly failed and came loose, showering his face with corrosive fire. Vision splintering, unable to speak above a whisper, he slowly felt his way along the floor. The seconds passed by in surreal procession. Tick. Down the stairs. No time for panic or pain. Tick. The foreman found him and helped him to the locker room, where they tried to wash his eyes out under the shower, clothes and all. It was useless. Tick. Complicated. They were driving in a car. Tick. At the hospital. Everything was falling inward, shouts and silences, snippets of questions he couldn't answer. "What did you say the acid was?" Tick. Do something, he thought, collapsing toward unconsciousness. He was only twenty-one years old. Laying cramped and feverish in his hospital bed, slowly deteriorating toward death, Zoltan Torey pondered his predicament. This Hungarian émigré, who had escaped the darkening clouds of the Cold War little more than a year earlier, would never see again -- at least not in the old way. His doctors explained that instead of shutting down with the loss of sight, the visual cortex often goes haywire, conjuring up vivid hallucinations that can disorient and overwhelm the newly blind. For this reason, they warned, it was imperative that he leave all visual imagery behind and rebuild his mental representation of reality using hearing and touch. But Torey balked at this advice. With no one to guide him, no plans or maps to follow, he actually went in the exact opposite direction. He would train himself, he decided, to simply picture the world around him through his now hyperactive visual imagination. It was an act of shocking originality and creative courage, and with it, his extraordinary journey beyond the limits of blindness began. "From the moment his bandages come off," writes neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks in his foreword to Torey's autobiography Out of Darkness , Torey "sets himself, with extraordinary tenacity, to taming his now heightened imagery, shaping it into a supple, reliable tool for living and thinking. In doing so he not only compensates himself for the loss of his sight, but develops what is almost a new sense, a new faculty of mind." That new sense -- in essence, the ability to see without seeing -- would enable him to live a life unlike any blind person had ever lived before, going sightseeing, enjoying tennis on television, composing elaborate prose on a typewriter, even climbing up on his rooftop by himself, to his neighbors' amazement and alarm, and replacing all the gutters. It carried him through honors degrees in psychology and philosophy, brought him success as a professional psychologist, and ultimately made it possible for him to tackle one of the most intractable problems known to science and philosophy alike -- the riddle of the nature and origins of consciousness. In fact, Torey would eventually embark on a painstaking twenty-five-year quest to decipher the workings of the conscious mind, an all-consuming mission that finally bore fruit with his publication of The Crucible of Consciousness (1999). Boldly attempting to demystify the physical process by which the human brain gives rise to self-reflective thought, his magnum opus was praised by Nobel laureates and favorably compared to the breakthroughs of both Darwin and Einstein. Yet interestingly, this major work of materialist science was inspired by a seemingly nonmaterial event -- a vision of literally cosmic proportions that came to him late one night during his first few weeks in that Sydney hospital bed. Laying all his doubts and questions on the table, he began to reflect on his situation in light of a context far beyond his own small life, catalyzing a profound state of contemplation in which the very structures of the evolving universe began to open before him. It was a revelation that made visible what Torey calls the "unmistakable directionality" behind the evolutionary process, and it galvanized his passion to further that process through better understanding human consciousness, which he saw as its leading edge. As he describes in his autobiography, it was the power of this experience that pulled him back from the brink of death. Torey is a hard-nosed scientist, and he refuses to interpret this life-changing event in religious terms. Nevertheless, it has many of the characteristics of a spiritual awakening, not least because it blessed him with an unshakable energy and confidence that seem to have stayed with him ever since. Whatever we call it, it was the source of his drive and determination to fathom, through the unique window of his inner vision, the active role each of us has to play in the creative unfolding of the cosmos. "Fate is one thing," writes this unusual blind man who has seen so deeply into the mysteries of life and evolution. "What we make of it is another." Finish reading this article . More on Spirituality
 
Senior White House Adviser: Wilson "A Pimple On The Ass Of Progress" Top
The White House hits the road for health care reform, and speaks out--proclaiming the town halls didn't matter, and branding Joe Wilson "a pimple on the ass of progress." With his big health-care speech behind him, President Obama and his senior aides are mapping his fall strategy. A time-honored White House dilemma looms. Should he spend most of his time rallying the public, or twisting arms and slapping backs on Capitol Hill?
 
Drew Barrymore Loves Ellen Page's Body Top
"Whip It" director Drew Barrymore and film star Ellen Page grace the cover of Marie Clare, give an interview and share a kiss in the October issue. Drew told the magazine how great Page's body is: "Ellen has such a beautiful body, and I personally battled with my own body image for years. I used to tell myself, 'You can't wear anything sleeveless or strapless.; And all of a sudden I was like, 'What if I just didn't send such negative messages to my brain and said, wear it and enjoy it?' And now I'm more comfortable in clothes than ever." Drew added, "She was in her frickin' bra and with an open jacket and hot-pink shorts, skating around the rink with red lips and... and she was sexy as a mother.... a feral creature. It was great. " PHOTO:
 
Paul Slansky: This Preposterous Week In Review: Bachmann, Big Food & Blagojevich Top
American Idol • it's beginning to look like Paula Abdul really isn't coming back to Anderson, Pastor Steve • karma catches up with and smacks upside the head after vile preaching by -- "I hate Barack Obama ... God wants me to hate Barack Obama ... God hates Barack Obama!" -- prompts investigation into business practices of and things are found out about that could have tax consequences for Archerd, Army • death of at the age of 87 Ashcroft, former Attorney General John • lawsuit can be filed against , according to a federal-appeals-court ruling, for the "repugnant" evidence-free preventive detention of American Muslims by Bachmann, Representative Michele • claim by that Democrats seek the defeat of in 2010 because they fear the possible ascension to the presidency of , rather than the more likely explanation that they're simply appalled by the relentless barrage of batty statements by Big Food • laughable inclusion by of Froot Loops and other sugary cereals on "Smart Choices" list of ostensibly more nutritious items Blagojevich, Rod • compilation of amusing bits from the new book by means now you don't have to buy it, like you were ever going to • highlight of appearance by on The View is guest host Meghan McCain -- yep, her again -- saying, "You definitely must feel like you didn't do anything wrong, I mean, to write a book and whatever, like, that's how secure you are that this is something else" Democrats • humiliating failure of to utter a peep of outrage at deranged parents opposed to schoolkids being addressed by the President of the United States unless he's reading them an upside-down book about a goat when he really has much more important things he should be tending to Duvall, Michael • unawareness of that cameras were capturing boastful descriptions by of simultaneous sexual escapades with two female lobbyists ("So, I am getting into spanking her. Yeah, I like it," to give just one printable example) leads to apology by ("I deeply regret the comments I made in what I believed to be a private conversation"), then to resignation by from the California Assembly (where, of course, family values had been staunchly espoused by) and then, since the law might look askance at trading votes for sex, to a ridiculous denial by ("My decision to resign is in no way an admission that I had an affair or affairs. My offense was engaging in inappropriate story-telling") For much more, including the long-awaited return of Orly Taitz, click here . More on Week In Review
 
Debra Eschmeyer: Transforming the Tray: What Kids Eat Means Something Top
Michelle Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, "Renegade Lunch Lady" Ann Cooper, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, and countless others have been drawing attention to a critical component of our health and educational system: lunch. Our kids are taught the food pyramid and to eat the colors of the rainbow, but they get a different message when the lunch bell rings. More than 30 percent of American children are overweight or obese, and for some low-income children, school food accounts for more than half of their daily calories. Millions across the country are calling for change. On Labor Day, more than 300 eat-in's organized by Slow Food chapters across the U.S. raised a collective fork for school lunch reform. On Tuesday, Obama addressed the nation's students to stress the importance of education and making the most of it. His speech should have include the education offered in the cafeteria. Today, One Tray, the national campaign to improve child nutrition by encouraging a more direct connection between local farms and federal nutrition, launched two short videos that explain the significance school food has in kids' diets and seeks to ensure that those calories consumed are healthy ones. " Lunch Encounters ," a spoof of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and " Priceless ," a MasterCard parody, were created by three of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Food and Society Fellows , Shalini Kantayya, Nicole Betancourt and me. The goal is to raise awareness of Farm to School programs for the upcoming reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act by depicting the cafeteria tray as the centerpiece for a reformed school food system that supports healthy children, local farms and smart schools. As kids go back to school, and Congress goes back to work this week, the videos are timely and clear: if you want a healthier America, start by taking action at OneTray.org . Healthy, local, sustainably produced school food can improve the health of kids, develop new marketing opportunities for farmers and support the local economy. The Child Nutrition Act, which expires September 30, determines what more than 30 million children eat at school five days a week, 180 days a year, making school meals a critical entry point for improving children's health. The 2004 Child Nutrition Act included one provision on Farm to School (section 122): a seed grant program with $10 million in discretionary funding. Farm to School is a win-win for everyone. Farm to School programs address many critical issues of our society: the health of our children, economic success of our farm communities and environmental footprint of food traveling long distances. Unfortunately, the 2004 Act's Farm to School provision failed to receive an appropriation. In the current reauthorization appeal, One Tray requests that Congress enact $50 million in mandatory funding for section 122. This would fund 100 to 500 projects per year, up to $100,000 each, to cover start-up costs for Farm to School programs. These competitive, one-time grants will allow schools to develop vendor relationships with nearby farmers, plan seasonal menus and promotional materials, start school gardens and develop hands-on nutrition education to demonstrate the important interrelationship between nutrition and agriculture. "As a mother of two young girls, I take care of 'What's for dinner, Mom?' and know that the answer will shape their future. I expect Congress's answer for lunch to reflect that same future," said Nicole Betancourt, CEO and Founder of ParentEarth . "We hope that these videos will mobilize moms around the country to take a stand for Farm to School." The One Tray campaign advocates for Congress to adopt future policy solutions that support: Mandatory Funding for Farm to School Programs Increased Reimbursement Rates Strengthened Nutrition Standards for School Meal Programs and Competitive Foods It's great that families that shop at Whole Foods can now donate to Ann Coopers' School Lunch Revolution campaign. I donated last week, but that's not the point. Those families can generally afford to pack local, organic lunches for their kids if they aren't happy with the meals served in school. But what about the 21 million kids that are on free and reduced meals? What about their health? What about their food community from home to school? Low-income or rich, rural or urban or suburban, vulnerable or privileged kids -- they are all our future. Every child, no matter her family income or school district, deserves a healthy meal. One tray, one future.
 
Steve Nunn, Former GOP Lawmaker, Found Shot Hours After Ex-Fiancee's Death Top
State police have charged former Kentucky GOP lawmaker Steve Nunn with violating a protective order after his former girlfriend was found shot to death in downtown Lexington. Nunn was found shot in Barren County , according to Jay Blanton, spokesman for Gov. Steve Beshear. Lt. David Jude said Nunn has not been charged with the slaying. State police are working with Lexington investigators to determine "if there's any connection" between Nunn and the slaying. The Fayette County Coroner's Office says 29-year-old Amanda Ross was fatally shot in Lexington at 6:36 a.m. Friday. The cause of death was listed as a gunshot wound and the death was being investigated as a homicide. Nunn ran unsuccessfully for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2003. He lost a bid for re-election to the state House in 2006 after 15 years as a state representative. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!
 
Alex Geana: Retailers Learn that Open Bar Does Not Equal Sales: Fashion's Night Out is a Bust Top
Click here for pictures of the night and all the celebrity sightings, including Rachel Zoe, Grace Coddington, Andre Leon Talley, Nicky Hilton, Diana Von Furstenberg. Fashion's Night Out might have been a boon to freegans, cater waiters, DJs and taxi cab drivers -- but not to the beguiled retailer. I was hoping I'd write a different post. I spent much of my night searching for people with gobs of shopping bags as encouraged by the public service announcement. There was even supposed to be free transportation to get the laden shopper home so they could safely go out for more. This was Anna Wintour's push to revitalize an industry that needs the consumer. After all, the ad pages of Vogue are shrinking quicker then a cheep polyester blend in the dryer. United Colors of Benetton didn't get the memo that sales weren't taking place -- they offered a 20% discount. Banana Republic offered 25% from anything in the store, with someone greeting shoppers and mentioning it's Fashion's Night Out. Both stores were full. The stores who packed the house and had lines around the block offered open bars, hors d'oeuvres, live entertainment, and celebrity appearances. Cole Haan had cupcakes, a DJ, and champagne. This was the first time I started asking people if they were going to spend money and shop. Two girls said, "maybe," one man tried on shoes while clutching the Banana Republic Sale bag. Versace had living models in the window and a velvet rope to keep the riff-raff out. Lot's of drinking, not much shopping. One girl bought a Fashion's Night Out shirt and happily clutched her Versace bag. At Cartier the same story -- lot's of booze, little spending. I asked a clerk if anyone was buying. With little confidence, she said, "some people." PR people manned the gate at Ferragamo and poured Veuve Clicquot. This is the first time I saw someone holding more then one shopping bag. Four guys whizzed by on their way to the next store. Nine West scored with a Lucky magazine party. Instead of going in I tried to track down and snap pictures of cute guys laden with shopping bags zooming out of Zara. I was hoping this would trend, in fact it was the last time I would see people carry this many bags. Henri Bendel had a crowd, mini-burgers and light shopping. Customers were puzzled by bacon-wrapped dates while stalking the catering kitchen. The shop clerks all looked very happy though. Maybe they were selling. Prada was mobbed by the sighting of Grace Coddington. The line at Bergdorf's snaked around the block and inside it was quite crazy with Rachel Zoe, André Leon Talley and Nicky Hilton to name just a few of the celebs that stopped by. André was overseeing an Alice in Wonderland style craps game. Somehow this through the looking glass moment felt appropriate. On my way out a very drunk man was trying to pick up a very sober cocktail waitress. The Fashion's Night Out shirt might have been the best selling item of the night. But at $30 a pop, does it really help Versace's bottom line? I waited for the A train downtown, the city's arteries clogged with cabs. I listened to a homeless man with a striking voice sing, "It's all right," and "we need to believe." I arrived in the Meatpacking district, stumbling on Moschino's palm reader and the line of people waiting to get in. Somehow more people seemed to be waiting in line then were actually in the store. At Adam, Adam Lippe's store, movie lights hit the sky and I finally snapped a picture of an actual credit card transaction and someone buying something, although it was fleeting. Hugo had a burlesque show and some very tired musicians. Alexander McQueen's open bar was packed and drunk people felt up the clothes. Poker player, Beth Shak, was eager to have her picture snapped. I obliged. Stella McCartney was a madhouse with a pizza truck outside and a very obliging press gaggle waiting to snap pics. There were PR people manning the press rope and the common man was not allowed in. At Jeffery, I found another shopper at the register. In this bastion of luxury and frivolous spending, they were studding Current Elliott jeans and waiting for Hugh Jackman. The cashier said people had been buying all night; I was kicked out for snapping a picture of their sole shopper. As I left, some passersby mentioned that one of the bartenders was drunk or high. I laughed out loud. Diane Von Furstenberg sat on the steps of her store and took pictures with young ladies and adoring fans, she looked happy but tired. Then it started to mist and drizzle and I had to put away my camera. I heard that Opening Ceremony did well and that the block parties were fun. I popped into a cab and got an amicable driver. I asked him about the night. At the beginning he picked up an excited retailer. Then he proceeded to pick up people excited about free food. Business was good for him. I asked if he picked up people full of shopping bags at any time during the night -- enough bags to cover the copious amounts of free booze, food and celebrity appearances. He said no. For more of my coverage of Spring Fashion Week . More on Fashion Week
 

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