“Do I have to do something this time?” Sobbed Marie. She was in tears sitting in the dark bathroom while he snored contentedly in bed. He had gone to Happy Hour again. Things are [...]]]> The following is a work in progress discussing some prevalent, though not very well known, issues involved with domestic violence.

“Do I have to do something this time?” Sobbed Marie.
She was in tears sitting in the dark bathroom while he snored contentedly in bed.
He had gone to Happy Hour again. Things are especially hard when he stops for drinks after work, and comes home drunk. You see Marie’s husband is an angry drunk.
“I can’t believe what he did to the poor dog. The kids were terrorized.” Marie told Kathy at the Hotline. “It all started when he said he was sick of always having string beans. String beans! Then he began screaming and cursing. He kept getting louder until my little ones got scared. I was trying to stay out of his way but then he twists the dog’s ear yelling at my daughters to stop crying or he’ll break the dog’s neck.”
Then it happened. “As I rushed by him to pick up my crying daughter he pushed me into the refrigerator. Hard. Before I knew what I was doing I turned to face him but he lashed out and punched me right in the face.”
“I am at the end of my rope. Next time it could be one of my daughters he hits. But what can I do? He’ll know if I call my parents. I can’t call anyone else. No one will believe me. The neighbors think he’s Mr. Wonderful. They’ll think I started it. That it’s my fault. Maybe … maybe it is my fault? I know he doesn’t like string beans. And he said he was sorry. He really seemed sincere about changing. He promised he’d never do it again. He even made those chocolate raspberry sundaes we all love. He works so hard for us and he said this was a bad week. I had to have done something? ”
No one should ever have to deal with this. Period.
But the sad truth is that there are those living in our community who do. For them, doing something about it can be as frightening as the abuse. In a lot of cases the victims of domestic violence face retributions, the loss of their homes and personal possessions, the loss of their financial support, and separation from their family and friends.
“No one should ever have to deal with this. Period. No one. Ever.”
This is what Kathy told Marie when she called (631) 666-8833, the 24-hour Hotline to the Suffolk County Coalition Against Domestic Violence. But Marie felt that she didn’t want to involve the police. She was just not ready to act.
“We can’t tell someone what to do.” Explained Kathy. “Our role during this period is first and foremost to educate the victims. Marie needs to hear that this is not her fault. It is her husband who is attacking her and he will keep doing it until he decides to stop, or someone forces him to. To him the abuse is all about exerting greater power and control over his household.”
“Also it is important that we explain to Marie all her options and what each one entails. There are a lot of misconceptions out there that we have to debunk.”
Such as?
“That just leaving is always the safest option. It isn’t. (According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) about 75% of calls to law enforcement for intervention occur after separation.)
A short time later Kathy received a second call from Marie. “My friend really wants me to do something right now. We were at the supermarket and he kept calling me and screaming and cursing telling me I better get home or else.”
“Do you need to call the police?”
“I can’t. My husband knows the Commander of our precinct. They go hunting together.”
“Does your husband have guns in the house?”
“Yes. Three rifles and a handgun that he keeps locked in his office.” (The American Bar Association reports that access to firearms increases the risk of intimate partner homicide by over 500 per cent.)
“Our priority is to help you to be safe. If you can’t go to the precinct maybe you would consider going to Family Court for an Order of Protection.”
“Court? My husband’s pretty tight with the DA, too.”
“But Family Court doesn’t have to involve the DA. We could petition the court for a civil Order of Protection. Not a criminal one.”
“He is a powerful lawyer. I bet he knows someone at Family Court, too. He contributes to so many judges’ election campaigns I’m sure one of them’s in Family Court.” (The NCADV reports that it is true that people with annual incomes less than $25,000 are three times more likely to report violence than those with incomes greater than $50,000. But 22% of middle-class divorce papers cite violence as the reason for the filing. NCADV noted that people with fewer resources would likely have fewer options and need to rely more on the public avenues to deal with the abuse. They also tend to worry less about the typical stigma attached to being a victim.)
Yet there is no ‘typical’ victim. Approximately two million people are physically assaulted by their intimate partner every year. The victims come from all races, creeds, sexes, and income levels. Recently we’ve read reports of an actor, a mayor, and a governor’s aide involved in abuse accusations. Domestic violence happens in every community. Including yours.
While recognizing that there is no ‘typical’ victim, Marla and Kathy are very clear as to what is consistent in virtually all domestic violence cases.
“It is called the ‘Cycle of Violence.’ After a sudden violent incident, the abuser will apologize and promise to change but then the tension starts building again until another attack. And there is more to domestic violence besides yelling, slapping, punching, and kicking.” Kathy said.
“Understanding the cycle as we do, we have to remember that it is just as true that each relationship is different. These situations usually also include emotional and psychological control.” Continued Marla, Kathy’s supervisor. “The victim is usually indoctrinated slowly into a powerless situation. The abuser is someone who is extremely jealous. They belittle and isolate their partners cutting the victim off from family, friends, and money. They constantly check up on the victim to keep track of where they go, what they do, and who they see. Sometimes even stalking the victim wherever he or she may go. These activities commonly precede the yelling and the physical abuse. The victim gets trapped because the intensity grows gradually and it can be hard for a victim to see where it came from and where it’s going. And that insecurity creates additional duress in people from Marie’s social standing.” (Charlotte Fedders offers additional sources of duress for ‘white collar’ victims in her book “Shattered Dreams.” They typically have a greater fear of isolation from their community. Being disbelieved, ashamed, condemned, and abandoned by their friends and family all loom as a life sentence for women in a middle class family. She usually can’t conceive of anyone in her circle hitting a member of his family but this only reinforces her own isolation.)
But Marie, with the help of a friend, had reached the point where her fear of doing something to stop her husband had just overtaken her fear of not doing something.
Where can she go next?
Kathy referred her to the SCCADV Advocate on duty, Bram, at (631) 666-7181.
“First and foremost, my job is to help you maintain your safety. We’re can discuss an array of options to help you accomplish this. But I don’t know your husband or your situation. So I’ll help you develop a plan of action and then we’ll be right beside you if you need us.” Said Bram.
A valuable legal tool in the effort to protect domestic violence victims is an Order of Protection. (A Department of Justice survey cited that 86% of women stated that the abuse stopped or greatly diminished after the order was issued.)
There are two types of orders:
• First is the ‘Refrain From’ Order. This allows Marie’s husband to stay in the house but he can’t hit or threaten and it requires no harassment or reckless endangerment. They can also ask to attach a clause about his drinking so that could be considered a violation also.
• The other is a ‘Stay Away’ Order. It includes everything in the ‘Refrain From Order’ but it also means he can’t come near her or contact her. Any violation of either of these Orders and she can call the police to get him arrested.
Marie was still concerned about her husband’s legal and police contacts interfering with her safety. And the safety of her children.
“Has he ever hit them?” Bram asked.
“No, but he really bullies and screams at them. I was trying to comfort my five year-old when he hit me.”
“This may seem harsh, but the State considers exposing children to abusive acts as neglectful. According to the courts, you as a parent have a responsibility to act to stop the violence or you, the victim of the violence, could be determined to be neglecting the children if you don’t do something.”
“But what can I do?”
“You can file a petition for an Order of Protection.”
“But I don’t know what I’m doing. Can someone help me?” Asked Marie.
“Yes. One of our advocates will accompany you through the whole process. But it can be a complicated process. If you go through a criminal complaint the police and the District Attorney’s office get involved. But you can also petition Family Court for a civil Order. It has the same protections but it doesn’t have criminal implications if the offender defies the order. He would still be required to surrender his firearms to the Sheriff’s Office and you can include a restriction on his drinking in the petition.”
“You can guarantee me no police?”
“If he complies with the order, no police.”
“Can I go there today?”
“We’ll have an Advocate meet you there at 2 pm. And there is day care there if you need to bring your children.”
Marie just started putting one foot in front of the other. Get into the car. Drive to the school. Then to the office to sign her daughters out. Show the girls a brave face to minimize their discomfort. She’d thought of stopping to get them an ice cream or something but she needed that time for the drive to the Suffolk County court complex in Islip. She was barely able to control the angst that was trying to burst from her heart. She found courage and determination to compete her mission from hearing the girls chatting and giggling together in the back seat. “I have to, for them.”

by Tyree Harris

When people think of giving back to the community, they think sandwich lines, clean-up service, and financial charity.

Though all of these are great and important, there is no better way to give back to your community than with the very talents you are practicing for [...]]]> Giving back through journalism

by Tyree Harris

When people think of giving back to the community, they think sandwich lines, clean-up service, and financial charity.

Though all of these are great and important, there is no better way to give back to your community than with the very talents you are practicing for your career.

Give back with what you do best.

I spent my first week of summer at the Oregon State University campus being journalistically revived by 24 bright-eyed, teenaged writers. For the past three years, I’ve dedicated June 19th through the 27th to the High School Journalism Institute, a joint effort between the Oregonian and Oregon State to promote newsroom diversity. It is, without question, the most cultural journalistic experience possible in Oregon — students in the program are all from underrepresented backgrounds.

It’s an amazing thing to witness; Lars Larson hated on it — so we must be doing something right out there. In just eight days, these amateur journalists are required to produce a 40-page, professional-grade paper. Each student is required to write a profile about another camper, a news story, a blog post, and several are even required to write columns. The kids work in pairs on the stories and are placed under the wing of a professional as an editor.

Yeah, this definitely ain’t outdoor school — no singing and taking hikes at this camp.

I participated as a writer in 2008, and I loved it so much, that I came back the next two years to RA for it. Though my job description only required me to make sure the kids get from the newsroom to their meals and back to the dorms in which they reside in, I offer my talents as much as I can — editing pieces, working with columns and even writing blogs for the online site.

That paper, and the campers’ motive, mean the world to me. In a nation where one-third of the population is a minority, newsrooms are just 13.26 percent minority. Because the media is only effective and relevant if it adequately represents its community, this is a waving red flag.

In a Hispanic Link News Service article titled, “Non-white Journalists Affected Most by Newspaper Cutbacks,” Rosalba Ruiz points out that though “personnel employed by the daily press declined by about 11 percent, from 46,700 to 41,500; among non whites, it dropped 12.6%, from 6,300 to 5,500, down more than 25 percent from its peak of 7,400 in 2006.”

We are losing our journalistic diversity, and our ability to adequately represent the nation in which we reside in is at risk.

This is an issue I take very seriously; as a minority journalist, I needed to find some way to give hope to the future and inspire more journalists from underrepresented backgrounds to acquire the skills they need to succeed in the newsroom. This camp is my way to do just that. A lot of those kids in that institute continue to pursue careers in journalism, and next year, three students I’ve watched in that newsroom will be incoming freshmen at our school.

Knowing that I was a part of the camp that helped them realize what they wanted to do is very enriching.

It reminds me why I want to be a journalist — even though my odds of getting a job right now are about the same as Steve Nash’s chances of winning a slam dunk contest.

Being there and giving so much of my energy made me realize how college students should think about community service: Our career talents, and objectives, ought to be practiced and shared when we do acts of charity.

If you learned that you are fascinated with something and talented at it, what better way to express that passion than to display that experience with people and give back using it?

Are you a pre-med student? Volunteer at a hospital or work with the Red Cross.

Are you an environmental science major? There are probably a billion things you can do in the Eugene area that can help the environment.

Pre-education? Ask around about ways in which you can help out local school districts.

Don’t be afraid to try something new or start your own cause because great things have to start somewhere.

Both the community and we as students would benefit most from us finding causes that relate to our passions and future. Don’t do things just because they “look good”; do them because they feel good and they are good for your development as a person and a professional.

For me, knowing that I have the honor of spending every summer making a difference in something I take very seriously keeps me energized and motivated to keep making strides in my own career.

You don’t have to give out a million dollars, clean up every street corner, or suck your veins dry of blood to be a charitable person. All you have to do is showcase your love for your career and the community while guiding others on the right path to success.

by Tyree Harris

The following is part two of a three-part series. See part one here.

With faint screams and smoke coming from the forests and villages surrounding, Simon Mudahogora, his sister, and his friend’s family all loaded up into a canoe, which had to be sunk to hide [...]]]> River separates life from death

by Tyree Harris

The following is part two of a three-part series. See part one here.

With faint screams and smoke coming from the forests and villages surrounding, Simon Mudahogora, his sister, and his friend’s family all loaded up into a canoe, which had to be sunk to hide from the Hutu. They were heading to a refugee camp in Burundi, where many other Tutsi fled.

The border between Burundi and Rwanda was marked by a river — a river so dirtied with death that they had to move carcasses out of the canoe’s way to get across the river.

Simon knew he had to stay tough: “There was no crying.”

Crossing into Burundi, however, didn’t mean safety. The group then had to travel through two hours of swamplands, where the Hutu were often hiding and killing fleeing Tutsi. The thick vegetation and knee-high mud trenched and brushed across their fear-riddled bodies.

Simon’s sister was a teary mess; at the tender age of 7, she was fleeing from her family and everything she knew, knowing that it was virtually impossible for things to return to the way they were.

“There was zero hope that (my family) would make it,” Simon said. The group finally arrived at the camp after two hours of silently sloshing through the marshes.

For about six months, Simon and his sister slept in U.N.-provided white tents.

There were no blankets.

There were no pillows.

There was no soccer.

And every meal was identical: corn flour soup — for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

“It was fucking disgusting,” Simon said, nodding his head in disapproval, “Everyone was hungry 24/7.”

During his stay at the camp, not one family member was ever found. They had all been slain.

All 60 of them.

Simon’s tone takes a more somber, careful tone whenever he brings this up. The thought of his family’s murder puts a cold look on his face: “I’m still kinda bitter.”

Recognizing their absence permanently changed Simon’s role in life. His childhood was practically over — before he had even hit puberty.

Simon had an aunt and uncle who left Rwanda in 1975 for school in Sacramento, Calif. Somehow, she learned that he and his sister were alive, and she began to coordinate efforts to get them out of Africa. She connected them with her friend who lived in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, and he allowed them to leave the camp and stay with him and his family for a while.

“His wife didn’t like us,” Simon said. He had to do all the chores in the house, while her children did nothing. But Simon stuck to the lesson his mother taught him while he was attending school in the midsts of a war: “No bitching, no crying; you had to do what you had to do.”

Shortly afterward, the family moved to Rwanda. It was Simon’s first time back home in more than a year.

While in Rwanda, Simon went to the area his family had once called home. The jungle had consumed the long-vacated and burned down houses.

The farmland was no more; decades of blood, sweat and tears that his family put forth to make a living were wiped out in a matter of moments.

“It was depressing” Simon said, “That’s where I grew up. That’s my whole life right there …”

He stops mid sentence and looks down: It still haunts him.

“Everything was gone.”

To this day, he hasn’t gone back to the village.

Simon and his sister moved to his grandmother’s house. Because she was married to a Hutu man, she had received help escaping and survived the genocide.

While Simon was living there, he discovered that one of his cousins in the village actually survived. They saw her picture at a local orphanage.

The little girl had been smart enough at age three, to call every passerby mommy or daddy and make them feel bad enough to carry her along to wherever they were going.

Somehow she ended up in safety, but no one knows how she did it.

It had been three years since the genocide. Simon’s aunt in America was still working out ways to get them to Sacramento, and they found their cousin just in time. Shortly after, his aunt successfully found a family capable of taking in the three young refugees.

Finally, the three of them were escaping the war-tattered lands of Rwanda. They were heading to America — where a whole new series of challenges lay ahead.

by Tyree Harris

The following is part two of a three-part series. See part one here.

With faint screams and smoke coming from the forests and villages surrounding, Simon Mudahogora, his sister, and his friend’s family all loaded up into a canoe, which had to be sunk to hide from the Hutu. They were heading to a refugee camp in Burundi, where many other Tutsi fled.

The border between Burundi and Rwanda was marked by a river — a river so dirtied with death that they had to move carcasses out of the canoe’s way to get across the river.

Simon knew he had to stay tough: “There was no crying.”

Crossing into Burundi, however, didn’t mean safety. The group then had to travel through two hours of swamplands, where the Hutu were often hiding and killing fleeing Tutsi. The thick vegetation and knee-high mud trenched and brushed across their fear-riddled bodies.

Simon’s sister was a teary mess; at the tender age of 7, she was fleeing from her family and everything she knew, knowing that it was virtually impossible for things to return to the way they were.

“There was zero hope that (my family) would make it,” Simon said. The group finally arrived at the camp after two hours of silently sloshing through the marshes.

For about six months, Simon and his sister slept in U.N.-provided white tents.

There were no blankets.

There were no pillows.

There was no soccer.

And every meal was identical: corn flour soup — for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

“It was fucking disgusting,” Simon said, nodding his head in disapproval, “Everyone was hungry 24/7.”

During his stay at the camp, not one family member was ever found. They had all been slain.

All 60 of them.

Simon’s tone takes a more somber, careful tone whenever he brings this up. The thought of his family’s murder puts a cold look on his face: “I’m still kinda bitter.”

Recognizing their absence permanently changed Simon’s role in life. His childhood was practically over — before he had even hit puberty.

Simon had an aunt and uncle who left Rwanda in 1975 for school in Sacramento, Calif. Somehow, she learned that he and his sister were alive, and she began to coordinate efforts to get them out of Africa. She connected them with her friend who lived in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, and he allowed them to leave the camp and stay with him and his family for a while.

“His wife didn’t like us,” Simon said. He had to do all the chores in the house, while her children did nothing. But Simon stuck to the lesson his mother taught him while he was attending school in the midsts of a war: “No bitching, no crying; you had to do what you had to do.”

Shortly afterward, the family moved to Rwanda. It was Simon’s first time back home in more than a year.

While in Rwanda, Simon went to the area his family had once called home. The jungle had consumed the long-vacated and burned down houses.

The farmland was no more; decades of blood, sweat and tears that his family put forth to make a living were wiped out in a matter of moments.

“It was depressing” Simon said, “That’s where I grew up. That’s my whole life right there …”

He stops mid sentence and looks down: It still haunts him.

“Everything was gone.”

To this day, he hasn’t gone back to the village.

Simon and his sister moved to his grandmother’s house. Because she was married to a Hutu man, she had received help escaping and survived the genocide.

While Simon was living there, he discovered that one of his cousins in the village actually survived. They saw her picture at a local orphanage.

The little girl had been smart enough at age three, to call every passerby mommy or daddy and make them feel bad enough to carry her along to wherever they were going.

Somehow she ended up in safety, but no one knows how she did it.

It had been three years since the genocide. Simon’s aunt in America was still working out ways to get them to Sacramento, and they found their cousin just in time. Shortly after, his aunt successfully found a family capable of taking in the three young refugees.

Finally, the three of them were escaping the war-tattered lands of Rwanda. They were heading to America — where a whole new series of challenges lay ahead.

by Tyree Harris

“Everybody got along,” said Simon Mudahogora, describing the Rwandan village he grew up in, “It was a poor and peaceful life.” The 26-year-old economics major’s hometown included about 60 of his family members.

Daily life was as simple as it gets: Simon and the other children [...]]]> Leaving family, genocide behind

by Tyree Harris

“Everybody got along,” said Simon Mudahogora, describing the Rwandan village he grew up in, “It was a poor and peaceful life.” The 26-year-old economics major’s hometown included about 60 of his family members.

Daily life was as simple as it gets: Simon and the other children in his family woke up at 6:30 a.m. and walked a mile to the river to fetch some water for the day. He’d get back, take a cold shower, have his morning tea and bread, and arrive to school at 8:30 ready for class.

For hours, young Simon sat on bench made of dirt, in a room stuffed with 35 students. His family farmed while he was at school.

“That’s the only life I lived. I had no complaints at all,” he said.

In the evening, when the blistering sun cooled down, all the kids got together for a game of soccer — with a slight catch.

“We didn’t even have a ball,” he said. The kids would tie rubber bands around plastic bags and do their best to shape the concoction like a ball. “It was the only sport we could play.”

Though they had far less money and minimal resources, Simon believes that Rwandans prior to the war were happier than Americans are today: “Here, you have to do so much to live a normal life.”

Rwanda was divided primarily into two tribes of people, the Hutu (85 percent of the population) and the Tutsi (15 percent of the population and the group that Simon’s family belonged to). They had a history of war, but at the time, they lived together tranquilly. They were neighbors, they were classmates, and quite often, they were friends.

But that peace Simon described was ruined when the civil war reignited in 1994. Tutsi, who were relocated in Uganda in the first war in 1959, wanted to come back to Rwanda. When the Hutu refused to let them in, the Tutsi in Uganda formed an army and began attempting to penetrate the border.

For Simon’s family, 60 men, women and children in a row of houses, everything began to unravel. Their lives were at stake every waking moment.

Fearing that the Tutsi residing in Rwanda would aid the invaders from Uganda, radio stations in Rwanda began telling Hutu to kill their Tutsi neighbors to prevent this from happening.

Simon’s family had to flee home at night and sleep in the jungles. They didn’t want to be slain in the night like many other Tutsi.

Not a wink of sleep came their way in those thick jungles — they were petrified by the humming of low-hovering military-grade helicopters.

When 6:30 struck, however, life continued regularly: He walked to the river, got water, ate and went to school — even though just the night before, he was silently tucked into an African jungle, wondering if he’d live to see another day.

At school, the Hutu children often told Simon and the three other Tutsi children that they were going to kill them, and that they were going to die soon. When Simon told the teachers, they did nothing about it.

They were Hutu too.

Obviously, during all this, school was the last thing on his mind. His life was threatened 24/7, but his mother never stopped sending him. He remembers being upset, feeling like she didn’t love him, but in retrospect, he understands.

“She was doing what was best for me,” Simon said, “Get over my fear, be a man, you know?”

And boy, did he need that fearlessness.

April 1994 was a rainy month in Rwanda. Not rain like Oregon, but rain like monsoon.

Roadblocks had been set up throughout Rwanda. They were checking IDs and refusing Tutsi access to the roads. Tutsi began fleeing south to the country of Burundi. Simon’s family knew they had to follow suit, but they didn’t know the conditions of the roads, or how difficult the roadblocks were to evade.

They had to send a scout — Simon was elected to do so, but he refused to do it alone, so they agreed to send him with his little sister.

There he was: carrying out a life-or-death stealth operation with his younger sister — before he was even 10 years old.

Sneaking through those farms and fields, avoiding the roads at all costs, he could hear the blood-curdling screams of his people, the infernos blazing their homes and bodies.

Entire families were lined up and impaled by a single stick.

They finally arrived to a friend’s house which was located near the border of Rwanda and Burundi, but his friend informed them that with that the only time to leave was right then and there — there was no chance later. Simon and his sister could either leave with his friend to Burundi right then, or go back home and be stranded for death with his family.

And so, with heavy hearts, he and his sister prepared to leave the country and family they loved so much, thinking that it was unlikely they’d ever see them again — and they were right.

“You don’t want Hannibal Lecter [...]]]> This is one of those movies that I watch whenever it comes on. I think it’s because the story is interesting but more than that it is the acting. I read the book twice but when I watch the movie I see human nature at its best and worse.

“You don’t want Hannibal Lecter inside your head.” But he is there, he is always there. It was important for Jodi Foster’s character to remember that. It was more important than the rules about touching the glass and giving him anything or accepting anything from him. Your pulse races as you watch because you know there are characters out there locked away in prison dungeons because society doesn’t know what else to do with them. For many people their brilliance overwhelms them and allows their minds to slip off the charts and not relate to normal humans. they do as they please because they think they are superior. You see that whenever there is a shot of the great Anthony Hopkins face. It is scary as hell.

But the movie is scary as hell and not because of what you see. It is what you don’t see that makes it a classic. We do not see Dr. Letcher perform his cannibalistic acts. We hear it in his voice, see it in his eyes. Hopkins created a character worth remembering, worth fearing. Jodi foster looks like she is about to wet her pants when he says: “I ate his liver with some fave beans and a nice Chianti.” From that moment on she is his student even though she doesn’t desire to be.

I enjoy the chemistry between Foster and Hopkins. But more than that I enjoy the movie because it works the imagination, something most modern scary movies don’t do. And something that didn’t happen with the sequels to “Silence of the Lambs”. We had to witness horrid acts by Lecter which could have remained unseen as far as I am concerned.  One of these acts takes place in one of my favorite places in Italy. The next time I visit it will not be the same.

I am all for less is more. In songs, in stories, in movies. I do not always need to hear the things you are going to do to your girl when you get her alone. Any idiot who has any sexual education will know what can happen once you, as Teddy Pendegrass said, “Turn off the lights.” I do not need to see the act of murder or sex you know it was done. there are ways talented artists, writers and actors can get the point across.

Maybe that is what I like about this movie- a little class, a lot of suspense.

But enough of this talk. It’s about to come on and I don’t want to miss it. I have over 300 DVD’s and don’t have this one. I must treat myself to it so that one Saturday night when it is pouring rain or frightfully cold I can sit with a bowl of popcorn and/or my favorite Malbec wine and learn something new from the bad doctor. For me that would be better than a movie that starts on a dark and stormy night. It is all in the way the story is told that makes it so much fund to watch.

Even if it scares tha pants off of you.

On July 11, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) announced that it had launched “a national advertising campaign as part of a broader effort to showcase the dedication and personal histories of scientists studying climate change.”

I know quite a few climatologists and meteorologists and the [...]]]> The Union of Concerned Propagandists

By Alan Caruba

On July 11, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) announced that it had launched “a national advertising campaign as part of a broader effort to showcase the dedication and personal histories of scientists studying climate change.”

I know quite a few climatologists and meteorologists and the ones I know have been courageously refuting the global warming fraud for years, even decades. Beyond them, thousands of comparable scientists have signed petitions and statements to the effect that global warming was and is a hoax.

The UCS campaign, however, is “an effort to educate the public about the work scientists undertaken in their efforts to document and understand human-caused global warming.” Excuse me, but there isn’t any human-caused global warming. There isn’t any global warming insofar as the Earth has been cooling for the past decade.

The UCA is part of a broad pushback against the November 2009 revelations that have since become known as “Climategate.” Thousands of leaked emails among a tiny band of rogue scientists, primarily from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) and Penn State University ripped away their curtain of respectability.

Writing about it in the July 12 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Patrick J. Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences of the University of Virginia from 1980-2007, characterized the emails as “suggesting some of the world’s leading climate scientists engaged in professional misconduct, data manipulation and jiggering of both the scientific literature and climatic data to paint what scientist Ken Briffa called ‘a nice, tidy story’ of climate history.”

Michaels, now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, was being polite when he used the word “suggesting.” The emails between the scientists involved in Climategate were damning evidence that they were engaged in a huge fraud.

That fraud is now been whitewashed by supposedly independent panels reviewing the emails and activities between Penn State’s Prof. Michael Mann, the CRU’s Phil Jones, and Ken Briffa, and others. On May 29, 2008, Jones emailed Prof. Mann under the subject line, “IPCC & FOI” asking him to delete any emails he had had with Briffa regarding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in order to thwart any Freedom of Information inquiries.

The so-called independent panels, mindful of the millions of dollars in climate change research grant funding that both Jones and Mann had brought in for their respective universities, saw no evil, heard no evil, and read no evil.

As a full-fledged partner in the global warming hoax, back in November 2009 when the emails were leaked, Francesca Grifo, a senior scientist and director of the UCS Scientific Integrity Program, was asked by Science Insider what she thought. She declined to be interviewed, but later issued a statement through a spokesperson.

“We expect a high degree of scientific integrity by scientists, whether they be in university labs or federal offices. But what may or may no have happened does not change the science—ice sheets are melting, sea level is rising and the top ten hottest years since 1880 include 2001 through 2008.”

Not so. As reported on July 16 by The Heartland Institute’s James Taylor, “In the Northern Hemisphere, Arctic sea ice is currently 19 percent below the 30-year average. In the South Hemisphere, however, Antarctic sea ice has grown to a record extent, continuing a parent of growth that has been ongoing since NASA launched the NOAA satellite instruments in 1979. The growth in Antarctica is so extensive that the poles as a whole have more total ice than the 30-year average.”

Just what is the Union of Concerned Scientists? According to DiscoverTheNetwork.org, the UCS “is a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization with more than 100,000 members. Seeing its mission as building a ‘cleaner, healthier environment and a safer world”, the UCA takes public stands, purportedly based on scientific research, regarding a variety of political and health-related issues.”

The UCS was founded in 1969 by students and faculty members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to oppose U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. By 1998, it was assuring the public that American analysts had exaggerated North Korea’s ability to produce nuclear weapons.”

So the UCS is essentially a leftist propagandist organization that is anti-war, anti-nuclear and missile defense, and totally political in its opposition to any Republican administration. Of the signers of a document, “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making”, decrying the Bush administration, “more than half were financial contributors to the Democratic Party, Democratic candidates, or a variety of leftist causes.”

The UCS continues to cling to the view that “Global warming is one of the most serious challenges facing us today. To protect the health and economic well-being of current and future generations, we must reduce our emissions of heat-trapping gases by using the technology, know-how, and practical solutions already at our disposal.”

There is no global warming. The so-called greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, extremely minor factors, play no role in climate change within an atmosphere composed primarily of water vapor.

I suggest a name change. The UCS should call itself the Union of Concerned Propagandists.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The New York Transit Authority cut and slashed and moved and dissolved so many bus and train lines in the City that it is surprising we can get anywhere. Then the weekend comes and the shut down a lot of places to do work so that not only do you have [...]]]> No they are not.

The New York Transit Authority cut and slashed and moved and dissolved so many bus and train lines in the City that it is surprising we can get anywhere. Then the weekend comes and the shut down a lot of places to do work so that not only do you have to wait forever to get around but you are never really sure where you are going.

New York has become a great traveling inconvenience if not a nightmare. And they wnat more money!

I am complaining about the best subway system in the world. Lately several stations have been upgraded with audio to let you know when to expect the next train. Unfortunately the wait between trains is longer and the temperature underground keeps rising. This heat wave has set many minds on fire waiting for cool trains- which sometimes don’t even have cool cars.

Riding the bus is no better since one must wait in the hot sun sucking in fumes from passing cars and trucks. Yesterday they took the bus I was on out of service because the back door didn’t work. This morning I took the train to go to a different area and there were so many people waiting for it I wondered when the last one had passed.

It had been 8 minutes. And 8 minutes during rush hour is enough time to swell the population on the subway platform. People kept coming and coming and the trains didn’t. In the days before cuts one could hold back and wait for a less crowded train to arrive one minute later. But these days train are 5, 6 and 8 minutes apart. Underground is an oven and every now and then subways stop running because someone passed out.

We cannot win!

Things are going to get worse. From sweating tod eath in the summer to freezing in the winter MTA riders will never find a happy place on the trains or buses. We will adjust to the waits because we have to. But the weather, another thing destroyed by greedy man, is going to always work against us. Perhaps now those New Yorkers with a few extra pounds on the mid-sections will think twice before standing underground after that big New York meal.

Is this the only way to get us to get rid of weight?

We have been witnesses to a continuing use of class warfare by those in government, abetted by the media and an assortment of special interest groups and individuals. In this essay we will consider the methods they use to establish the terms relating to redistribution of income.  

Utilizing [...]]]> Redistribution of Income
By Ben Cerruti

We have been witnesses to a continuing use of class warfare by those in government, abetted by the media and an assortment of special interest groups and individuals. In this essay we will consider the methods they use to establish the terms relating to redistribution of income.  

Utilizing effective divisive tactics they initially obfuscate their intentions by using the term “wealth” in place of “income” when proposing material changes in the income tax code. Taxing income derived from accumulated wealth does not alter that wealth. They next establish three main category of classes; rich, middle class and poor. If one were to pay close attention, he or she would find that they rather conveniently alter the dividing lines to suit the subject for which they are advocates.

It should be apparent that attempting to establish classes by simplistic definition is ludicrous. Is a person earning $1,000,000 a year in his twenties as rich as one earning the same amount in his or her sixties? The person in their sixties may have had to spend many years working up from under six figure annual income to reach this income level and the person in their twenties may find that in later years his or her income may fall to sub six figure level. A poor person at a young age may become affluent with time and an affluent person may suffer financial reverses that will throw him or her into what is presently considered the poor class.

There are many other factors, such as age, education, marital status, number of dependents, physical capability, race, national prosperity, war or national emergency, that affects the financial status of any person at any given time during their lifetime.

It should be apparent the because of these factors, which for want of a better name we can call dynamic natural demographics, any fair and effective redistribution of income is impossible. The fact is that the use of class to define favors or penalties those in government may dispense is divisive and counter productive. It pits citizen against citizen and serves to only benefit those in government utilizing these tactics.

It would rationally appear more productive for government if their actions would be directed towards supporting the movement of those at the lower end of the income scale, at any given time, up into higher levels of income. How obvious it should be that this result can be effected by more reliance on the overall growth of our national private sector wealth, wherein there is then more to share for every citizen; this rather than limiting growth by draining excessive wealth from the private sector that is then used in non-productive fashions.

Those in government that control these actions that interfere with the manufacturing of private sector wealth, that benefit all in the private sector, do so in the guise of “fairness”. The disingenuous use of this word is more clearly understood when one understands that in this process a substantial portion of the private sector wealth taken by those in government is dispensed to those respective special interests to which favors are owed. This very fact should also dispel that mistaken feeling by some that Government can create private sector wealth better than the private sector itself.

The obvious sometimes has to be explained. It is rather difficult to understand why people whom one would believe are well educated, especially those in the media, would not understand some of the following truths. People who accumulate excess income, unless they bury it or put it under their mattress, must place it back in circulation. They do this either by putting it in the bank, purchasing assets such as real estate, stocks and bonds, or by investing in assets and personnel for their own business. Just the fact that the excess income is in circulation allows for its use by the rest of the private sector to promote increased business, create jobs and overall increased financial wealth.

If this excess income is confiscated through taxes it is not allowed to work to effect this increased private sector prosperity. Again, to explain the obvious, this counter productive action by those in government is only taken to benefit their own personal position and agenda since, in factual truth, it does not provide the beneficial advantage that it professes to those in the private sector. It is necessary to understand that the government bureaucracy does not produce any revenue, it is supported solely by the taxes it collects. It is by its nature inefficient and self serving since those employed in it benefit personally in income and career longevity by its existence and growth.

I hope there are those who read these words who still have hope and faith that there are among us leaders, new or old, that will arise to condemn the use of class warfare by those in government, and in the political arena, to serve their own rather than the interests of the citizens of this country which they disingenuously portray they do.

For months now, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the owner and editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, has been writing increasingly desperate pleas for the Obama administration to do something about the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East and the world, [...]]]> U.S. Looks Weak as Iran Flips Off the World

By Alan Caruba

For months now, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the owner and editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, has been writing increasingly desperate pleas for the Obama administration to do something about the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East and the world, Iran.

“When Barack Obama became president, Iran had perhaps several thousand centrifuges enriching uranium. Now it may have thousands more,” wrote Zuckerman in the August edition. “What’s at stake here is too menacing for the world to delude itself that Iran will somehow change course. It won’t.”

It must be very frustrating to be a multi-millionaire media mogul and yet unable to do much about an impending disaster other than warn about it. My sense is that it falls on deaf ears at the White House.

Anyone as dense as Obama should not be allowed to be Commander-in-Chief, but he is and, worse for America and all other nations, he likely has no idea of the dangers involved in reducing the nation’s military capabilities at a time when Iran is closing in on becoming a nuclear threat to the Middle East and beyond.

“So, if Iran succeeds,” warns Zuckerman, “it would be seen as a major defeat and open our government to doubts about its power and resolve to shape events in the Middle East. Friends would respond by distancing themselves from Washington; foes would aggressively challenge U.S. policies.”

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, David Kay, the man who led the U.N. inspections after the Persian Gulf War and later led the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group following the 2003 invasion, dismantled the Obama administration claims that either economic sanctions or a weapons inspection program in Iran will deter the Iranians. “As a former weapons inspector, I have very bad news: A weapons inspection regime in Iran will not work.”

Don’t look to the United Nations to do anything. “Even after Iran’s 20-year-long clandestine program started to be revealed the IAEA inspectors have had a hard time getting United Nations authority to confront the Islamic Republic.”

“The blunt truth,” said Kay, “is that weapons inspections simply cannot prevent a government in charge of a large country from developing nuclear weapons.” It didn’t even stop a small country, North Korea, from doing so.

Does anyone believe that President Obama will support an Israeli attack on Iran to degrade its ability to complete its goal of acquiring nuclear weapons?

Does anyone know the extent to which the President is trying to reduce the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons? Or the capability of the U.S. Air Force to respond to a threat to the peace anywhere in the world?

The only time this president has shown any “leadership” was in response to criticism by the former head of the forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McCrystal. Meanwhile, the cost cutting in the Pentagon continues relentlessly.

All this reeks of the weakness shown by Great Britain and European leaders in the face of the obvious aggression by Hitler’s Nazi regime in the 1930s.

A January 31, 2008 article in The Economist, “Has Iran Won?” asked, “Who would have thought that a friendless theocracy with a Holocaust-denying president, which hangs teenagers in public and stones women to death, could run diplomatic circles around America and its European allies.”

The answer is that it’s easy when nations display the same gutless response of earlier generations and the weakness of the present administration.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

My sermon today is about helping one another. Now I know each and every one of you thinks you are a kind soul with a good heart and you help your fellow man. Some of you might even say this sermon is not necessary. You might even say I am preaching to the [...]]]> Brethren:

My sermon today is about helping one another. Now I know each and every one of you thinks you are a kind soul with a good heart and you help your fellow man. Some of you might even say this sermon is not necessary. You might even say I am preaching to the choir because you know what I mean. But, alas, I don’t think you really understand what I truly mean when I say helping your fellow man. I am not just speaking about the person on the street where you toss a few coins into his or her cup and walk pass thinking ‘I did a good deed’ as you do what Lot’s wife should have done and not look back.  Those people’s lives may have been touched by your temporary kindness but Brothers and Sisters, I am talking about those closest to you that you mistreat and ignore in their time of need. I am talking about helping everybody in every way.I see the perplexed looks on your faces. Not confused but perplexed. What is she speaking about, you say. I got my no good brother-in-law a job so my sister wouldn’t have to work herself to death or go on welfare to feed the six kids she has by him. Or you are reminding yourself of the neighbor who borrowed your chain saw and never gave it back until you asked. You spoke unkind words to your wife about how that so and so let it rust and didn’t take care of it. You even swore not to loan it to him again. You are perplexed because of my words about helping each other because you think you help.

But can you do it without cause?  You helped your sister’s husband so they wouldn’t have to ask you for money, embarrass you by being on welfare or, God forbid, have to move in with you. Can you do it without malice? You lent your neighbor some other tools all the while saying under your breath that he was going to destroy them. Can you just help- period???

Now you look confused. What is she talking about, you’re thinking. I help all the time. And I am here to tell you Brothers and Sisters that you do not help. You hinder. You hinder each other’s progress by holding back the real help that you could give. You give just a little when you could easily give much more. You give a little because you think that guarantees your seat in heaven. But I am hear to tell you that God don’t like no ugly. And he ain’t too fond of pretty either. Sure it is safe to say God helps those who helps themselves, but sometimes those helping themselves need a helping hand.

Start with the man or woman on the street that you toss your coins to so you feel good. Why are they out there? Have you ever bothered to ask? Sometimes they are really truly hunger and homeless. It would be easy to buy them a sandwich or offer them some of the food you have in your overstuffed shopping cart. Knowing you actually helped fill an empty belly, and it took so little of your time, is a much deeper richer feeling of joy. That is the real help you can give.

What about your friends who are writers trying to market or sell their books? All their lives they have waited to see their works in print and they ask you to buy a copy, to read it, maybe even to review it. You think: this is asking a lot of me. If the writer is my friend and wants me to read it and review it why doesn’t he give it to me? Then you realize that with some publishing houses the authors have to purchase the books then sell them because they can’t always get a distribution deal to bookstores.

Okay, you decide. I’ll be a good friend and buy a copy. But I am not going to read it NOW. My life is too busy, too full to stop and watch someone else’s life grow. I’ll get to it. One day. Hey, I bought the book, what more can they ask?

They shouldn’t have to ask you for anything, my Brethren. You should be willing to help them move up the ladder of life without being so jealous. That’s right. Jealous with a capitol ‘J’. You still haven’t published your dream novel. You are still working a 9 to 5 and this friend, this author that stuck their neck out to fulfill their dreams, is working on becoming a literary superstar. They still have a day job, still have a life to lead, still are trying to be your friend. But you must hinder them because they figured out how to live their dream and you haven’t. Let someone else help, you say. Let another friend read the book and review it. Let someone else be a true friend.

Now think about how many times that new author has done things for you- without caring how much it took them out of their way. You were sick and they brought you food- your favorite food that they cooked themselves because they knew it would make you feel better. You say I was ill that’s different than buying a book or reading their book. You say: I could have died without food.  I say to you their dreams will die without fuel from you. Their souls need to be fed with the kind words of others to remain alive in a very competitive market. They need your help.

And even if they never went out on a limb for you, ever, what is wrong with you turning the other cheek and being gracious? What is wrong with you being a good person and doing a favor that will never get returned just because another person asked?

What is wrong with wishing your Brothers and Sisters well when they have never wished you a good day?

If we are blessed with the ability to help we should. Without being asked, without being forced. And especially without thinking what will this cost me. I say to you today do what you can for your fellow man. Help them become better at what they are doing by supporting them in their hour of need be it sickness or standing on a corner trying to sell a book. Don’t worry about a reward. There isn’t one. Just do it because it lightens the spirit and tingles the soul. Smile when you read that book because someone worked hard to create it. Love what they did to make themselves happy and the fact that they shared it with you.

Help each other in these ways Brothers and Sisters. It is the very best way to help yourselves.

Amen

by Bob Grant

I need to go shopping but what hat to wear -

maybe I’ll ask my good friend Pooh Bear?

I might be young – I might be short,

I love to shop – bet on it, sport.

Been walking, you know, now for a while

No problem [...]]]> What Hat to Wear?

by Bob Grant

I need to go shopping but what hat to wear -

maybe I’ll ask my good friend Pooh Bear?

I might be young – I might be short,

I love to shop – bet on it, sport.

Been walking, you know, now for a while

No problem with the carpet or with the tile

Got some words that I use as my own

Will have many more when I’m fully grown

I have my own purse if the truth be told -

pretty good for almost being one year old

But what hat to wear – it’s an unwritten oath -

when one is in doubt – one needs to take both.

It [...]]]> There may only be two universal rules of history. The first is that the entire wealth of the world will inevitably concentrate into fewer and fewer hands until a revolution takes place. The second is that hardly ever does a conventional army defeat a guerrilla force, so that revolution will indeed take place.

It is yet another example of the inherent cyclicality of nature (thank you, Freddie Nietzsche) – the concentration of power leads to the revolution that overthrows it, typically led by only a few ardent folk who then find power concentrating into their hands instead. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say.

At the moment, all the power in the book publishing industry is in the hands of the major publishing houses whose first intent is profit. However, as Bruce Springsteen and others argued when Sony took over their record label a decade ago, art is about a lot more than money.

Art is first and foremost about self-expression and communication and, if that is what you are after, there is no better time to be a writer – $10-15 and your book is in print globally.

The trouble is the next bit – how do you bring to people’s attention that your book is up for sale in a world crowded out by absolutely dead novelists, like Tom Clancy and John Grisham, and a whole mass of more-or-less brain-dead celebrity ones?

This is where organisations like Struggling Authors come in. With a name like that you just know that their intent is to advance the armed struggle on behalf of the little guy – to foment the revolution – and you would be right.

Struggling Authors was set up by Richard Grayling to provide authors with resources to help them write their books, get them published, and publicise themselves – a worthy cause indeed.

Struggling Authors found us over at Night Publishing when somebody whispered into Teresa Geering’s ear that we had set ourselves up to publish the unpublishable – great books the mass publishers wouldn’t touch because they would never fit into blister packs and ship in pallet loads from supermarkets. Thus we proudly declare that we are the guys who publish books too good to be published by anybody else.

Several months later it has proved a very fruitful partnership.

We have just published Teresa Geering’s own very wonderful ‘The Eye of Erasmus’, every review of which starts ‘I don’t normally read books in this genre, but I loved it ….’. Erasmus is a beguiling and mesmerising time travel romance which addresses the very circularity of time – in fact, it has even given me a decent grasp of that concept. I have also described it as a fantasy shaggy dog story because you get sucked in by the enchanting telling of the tale, wondering whether there will ever be punchline, and yes indeedy, there is, more or less at the end, well maybe more sort of in the middle, or even at the beginning. That’s circularity for you.

‘The Eye of Erasmus’ – Teresa Geering

The other book which was suggested to us by Richard over at Struggling Authors is Carolyn Allen’s ‘Knifing the Famous!’ which I have likened to a chat on the lawn of an English country garden with the author’s father, John Watson, one of the world’s pioneers in plastic surgery. Did you know that the whole plastic surgery industry sprung up from the need to reconstruct the skin of pilots burnt alive when they were shot down in flames during World War II? Well, you do now. Fortunately for us, John Watson was also an excellent raconteur with a hawk’s eye for precise and entertaining details. The first part of the book is where he recounts his wartime exploits as a medical officer in India, Burma and the Far East. The second part is where Carolyn Allen describes her relationship with her father and the issues in his life, including whether he operated on Lord Lucan just before Lucan vanished, whether he helped spirit out of Czechoslovakia a secret daughter of ‘Prague Spring’ leader Alexander Dubcek, and how he dealt with his own shame over having sired an autistic son. All in all, it is a sharply intimate account of a reserved and somewhat psychologically evasive man.

‘Knifing the Famous’ – Carolyn Allen

The third book suggested to us by Struggling Richard is an unreliable Californian ‘dude and bong’ autobiography from David Kupisiewicz called ‘Becoming Johnny Nova’ which we will publish in a month or so. It’s all about everybody calling each other ‘Dude’ once every sentence, taking drugs and chasing women, or should that be the other way around – chasing drugs and taking women. Actually, it is about a lot more than that, as you might guess. Unreliable? Yes, it’s that old quip that if you can remember the 1960s, you weren’t there.
And our other books of the moment?

Well, there are lots, but if you have ever worked in a moaning, groaning bureaucracy, you should enjoy George Fripley’s ‘You Can’t Polish A Turd’ (a civil servant’s manual) – I wish I had read it years ago; it would have saved me a lot of pointless corporate enthusiasm …….

‘You Can’t Polish A Turd’ – George Fripley

We also have a very powerful family drama where a seven year old girl who is dying of leukemia realises she will be very lonely in heaven because she doesn’t know anybody there. She therefore asks her father if he will come to heaven with her, and he says yes he will. This is getting rave reviews for being warm and tragic without ever becoming mawkish ……

‘Simon’s Choice’ – Charlotte Castle

And then we have Kathleen McKenna’s riotous comic-horror-murder mystery-social satire – ‘The Wedding Gift’ – which delivers several out-loud guffaws an hour; hell yeah, and several kilo-watts up the spine too. To be strictly honest, that is one scary ghost wielding …… shoot, I’d love to tell you more, but …..

‘The Wedding Gift’ – Kathleen McKenna

Come on over: http://www.strugglingauthors.co.uk, http://nightreading.ning.com and http://www.nightpublishing.com

Bottom line Apple said, if you hold the phone in a particular way you get less signal, and then they showed 3 other competitors have [...]]]> Sorry, Maybe PWND isn’t in your vocabulary, it means severely beaten in an embarrassing way.  That’s what happened at the Apple press conference today concerning the iPhone 4 antenna.

Bottom line Apple said, if you hold the phone in a particular way you get less signal, and then they showed 3 other competitors have the same problem and pointed out the problem was universal to all cell phones. They said if you want a “bumper” case that solves the problem, they’ll give you one for free.  If you’re still unhappy they will refund your money cheerfully, no questions asked.  There will be no recall, no cover-up, and by the way we’ve sold 3 million so far and only gotten mention of the problem from .55% of the buyers.  Returns to the Apple store are so negligible it’s difficult to calculate them.

As much as some technical media outlets believed that they had manufactured the best story of the year, when the principals of the company under attack can use the word “Bullshit” about your story, in public, you’re loosing.

Several media outlets got spanked publicly at 1 pm eastern time.  Among them were the New York Times, Bloomberg news service, Engadget and Gizmodo.  The Times earned the “bullshit”, Bloomberg’s story about a cover up of “a known problem” earned the title “A Crock” from Steve Jobs himself.  Bloomberg has been so far unable to substantiate their story and the Times, oh dear, the Times was making it up again?  Damn it guys, go to your room!

As for Engadget and Gizmodo (if you’ve ever heard of them), the first embarrassed themselves through their questioning at the news conference, which was an attempt to pound apple with damming questions about a problem that had already been proven to exist in all cell phones.  Gizmodo’s particular lashing came through a Youtube video played at the beginning of the conference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKIcaejkpD4.

Well worth watching, a short but very good song composed by the “Song a day mann”.  As were the expressions on the various media pundit’s faces when it turned out this was not going to be a public apology, or a media flaying, the emperor was fighting back.

I’m not ashamed to say it does my heart good to see the media put in their place, especially lately.  So much of what we hear, see and read is manufactured michigas.  It all about eyes on the page or screen, let the truth be damned. I’m part of the media, and I wanted to dance to the song!

I’m sure the backlash will be terrific, Apple is probably sharpening their lawyers right now.  So far I’ve heard everything from the “Song a day mann” is secretly in Apple’s pocket, to this is the next big stage of the “master cover-up.”  Yeah, taking care of your customers is always a sign of a master cover-up.

It was fun to see and will be even more fun to follow in the days to come.

From the iPhone 4 antenna song:

If you don’t want an iPhone 4

Don’t buy it

If you bought one and you don’t like it

Take it back.

Take it back

Take it back

But you know you wont.

Copyright Prentiss Gray 2009

Prentiss Gray is a writer and columnist and currently writes the Domesti-Tech Blog for Gannett.  He can be reached through his website at www.prentissgray.com

by Bob Grant

Farmer Judd worked in the mud to keep his garden pure,

Don’t mix or match, you’ll surely catch, disease he was for sure.

Sam the Slug worked in his mud but with a different mind,

For what he saw – there was no flaw – for Sam the Slug [...]]]> Farmer Judd

by Bob Grant

Farmer Judd worked in the mud to keep his garden pure,

Don’t mix or match, you’ll surely catch, disease he was for sure.

Sam the Slug worked in his mud but with a different mind,

For what he saw – there was no flaw – for Sam the Slug was blind.

For days on end Old Judd would bend to keep his seeds in sync,

He’d cuss, and fuss, when Sam moved on and set his seeds to link.

Corn in the morn – for Judd to scorn – the peas and carrots too,

Combining seeds, and weeds in one, as in his mouth he’d chew.

As time went on, and seeds he spun, Judd hated what he saw,

Until The Fair – and he was there – the countries biggest draw.

He took the credit – you can bet it – and the first to tell,

I am the one – see what I’ve done – my plants that make you well.

by Bob Grant

The Little Site that thought they could,

went online to do some good.

Started out with ups and downs,

got some smiles – got some frowns.

Writers came and writers went,

Some to speak and some to vent.

Limits none on what to post,

Theory was we’d get [...]]]> The Little Site

by Bob Grant

The Little Site that thought they could,

went online to do some good.

Started out with ups and downs,

got some smiles – got some frowns.

Writers came and writers went,

Some to speak and some to vent.

Limits none on what to post,

Theory was we’d get the most.

Doubts are none for what’s been done,

Not for profit – just for fun.

We’re here for one – we’re here for all,

We’re in it for the really long haul.

PR Week publishes monthly editions in addition to its other news services and the July issue is devoted to “The most powerful people in PR.” All industries have their major players, so there is nothing surprising that public relations would also have its heavy hitters, but [...]]]> Public Relations and the World

By Alan Caruba

PR Week publishes monthly editions in addition to its other news services and the July issue is devoted to “The most powerful people in PR.” All industries have their major players, so there is nothing surprising that public relations would also have its heavy hitters, but there are some interesting insights to be gleaned from the list of the twenty-five chosen.

I have plied the magic arts and crafts of public relations since the 1970s when I gave up the notion of ever making a decent living as a journalist. Journalism offers tons of ego satisfaction, but the pay was bad back then and, by comparison with other professions, not much better today.

The major players are, not surprisingly, the ones in charge of projecting and protecting a corporate “image”, otherwise known as perception. Number one on the list is Katie Cotton, the VP of worldwide corporate communications for Apple. She is teamed with Steve Jobs its cofounder and CEO because, together, they are the dynamic due of PR for a company that is testimony to American innovation and enterprise. It’s a very good choice.

Corporate PR folk on the list include Leslie Dach, VP for Wal-Mart; Jon Iwata, VP for IBM; Ed Skyler, Executive VP for Citigroup; Sally Susman, Senior VP for Pfizer; Chris Hassell fpr Procter & Gamble; Gary Sheffer, VP for GE; Bill Margaritis, VP for FedEx; Rachel Whetstone, VP for Google, Julie Hamp, Senior VP for PepsiCo; and Teri Everett, SVP of News Corporation.

One thing should particularly be obvious and which continues throughout the list is the role of women at very high levels, even if men continue to dominate these positions. Of particular interest is the inclusion of Stephanie Cutter among the “most powerful” as an Assistant to the President for Special Projects. That is president as in President of the United States of America. While Robert Gibbs is in the spotlight as Obama’s spokesperson, Cutter played an essential role in his campaign and now in his administration.

Of the top twenty-five named, nine were women. That’s progress.

Among the other “power principals”, there are the expected CEOs of major agencies such as Richard Edelman of Edelman; Harris Diamond, CEO of Shandwick Worldwide; Mark Penn, CEO of Burson-Marsteller, Paul Taaffe, CEO of Hill & Knowlton; and Margery Kraus, CEO of APCO Worldwide. It is worth noting that these public relations firms operate on a global basis.

In a recent public television documentary on George P. Schultz who served in many top posts, including Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan, he noted that while people think cabinet members have a lot of power, their primary power is the ability to persuade people to support their policies. I cite this because the U.S. government employs a small army of “communications” people whose job is to marshal support. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C. probably has more PR agencies per square mile than any other city in the nation.

Persuasion is the cash crop of public relations and perhaps the most interesting new trend is the creation of a whole new breed of PR folk whose expertise is in “social media” which is to say PR focused on using websites like Facebook, My Space, and Twitter to spread the message. There’s a lot of outreach to influential bloggers as well. The emergence of the Internet has been one of the major changes affecting the profession.

Time was if a PR guy or gal “placed” a story with the wire services or a major newspaper such as The New York Times, Washington Post or Los Angeles Times, or a news magazine like Newsweek or Time that was sufficient to affect events. The loss of numerous daily newspapers and the shriveling of others have altered that dynamic. The news magazines are in their death throes.

A major contributor to this is the loss of credibility these news dynamos have brought upon themselves by pushing hoaxes such as global warming or in giving unexamined support to political agendas depending on who was in office. Investigative reporting is virtually a thing of the past as news organizations trim their staffs to the bare minimum.

The recent virtual black-out on news about the New Black Panthers and the failure of the Department of Justice to pursue voter tampering charges is yet another reason fewer and fewer television viewers turn to the network news shows for, well, news.

The rise of conservative talk radio speaks to the fact that a majority of Americans self-identify as politically conservative. The popularity of leading news and opinion websites that serve this audience is testimony to the power of public opinion.

Meanwhile the PR power players, in corporations, trade associations, special interest organizations, and in agencies, are hard at work seeking to influence public opinion.

Ultimately, however, it comes down to the quality of products and services, the actions taken by government, and the state of the economy that determines what the public thinks and does.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

This is the link to see it on google maps That’s a better way to look at it because you can zoom in and out, plus move around.

Robert W. Walker is a graduate of Chicago’s Wells High School, Northwestern University, and the NU’s Graduate Masters in English Education program.  Rob has taught writing in all its permutations (“All writing is creative writing but not all writing sings,” he says.) from composition and developmental [...]]]> Weighing Up Traditional Publishing & Ebook Publishing

Robert W. Walker is a graduate of Chicago’s Wells High School, Northwestern University, and the NU’s Graduate Masters in English Education program.  Rob has taught writing in all its permutations (“All writing is creative writing but not all writing sings,” he says.) from composition and developmental to a study of the literary masters to creative and advanced creative writing.  His first novel was one only an arrogant youth could have conceived — a sequel to Huckleberry Finn (now published as Daniel & The Wrongway Railway, Royal Fireworks Press, NY), but his first suspense-techno-thriller-sf-mystery came in 1979, after college, a novel that won no awards entitled SUB-ZERO.
 
In any non-traditional publishing as in ebook publication, there is no such thing as “an advance against royalties”.  In Traditional Publishing as we know, now often termed DTB’s by our younger generations, ie. Dead Tree Books the “advance” has always been there. This is a significant difference. For the older generation, my generation, the first phrase that comes to mind for the author is “an advance against royalties” and what this means is the author gets a lump sum “loan payment” to start work on the process of crafting a book or novel. However, in ebook non-traditional publishing wherein everything is lower case, there are NO advances. In fact, in “non-publishing” as some like to call it, there are a lot of “NO’s” to the traditional model.
However, before we get too far afield, an advance against a royalty of a $100, 000 is a thing of beauty on the surface. No doubt about that. A writer can rejoice. However if it is for four books to be written over four years, that’s pretty much slave wages or $25,000 a year, which if one is independently wealthy makes for nice pen money. Not so with most people who are attempting to make a living (no joke) at writing.
To the midlist author who wins this arrangement or spin of the publishing wheel, 25,000 a year does not go far. It’s about minimum wage if that. Whereas in ebook publishing, there are NO advances and no paying back of that 25,000 a year either. On the one hand, your publisher grants you a “loan” to be paid back via your royalties (if royalties even occur); on the other hand, every cent of an advance must be paid back to the publisher via your royalties, and until that hundred thousand is worked off by your royalties (if at all) you see no additional funds from royalties. Should your sales be too low to return that advance to your publisher, you are both left with a bad business loan, and your name or reputation as a writer is mud thereafter.
 
The above is one area where traditional and non-traditional publishing go in very different directions. But there are far more differences for the writer as businessman as well. Below are some of the glaring differences other than no advances.
 
Traditional Publishing — Ebook Publishing

They contract for all rights including ebook — You are in a partnership with Kindle/other
Your royalty rate for paper is 10 percent/12 hardcover — Your royalty rate is 70 percent
Your chance of having returns is 100% & remainders too — So few returns, negligible/no remainders
Your chance of getting a rejection letter 90 to 100% — No rejection letters
Professional, topnotch editorial help at no charge — Editorial help at your expense
Author pockets 10-12% of a $25 book — Author pockets 70% of 2.99/3.99

(* This means an author makes more on each 2.99 ebook than each 25 traditional book)
9 months to 2 yrs. from acceptance final MS til pub date — Author publishes when s/he wishes
Publisher determines everything on cover — Author decides all cover art matters
Publisher writes copy/description of book — Author writes copy/description
Publisher can/often does change title — Author determines title
Publisher determines price of book — Author determines price
Publisher dictates/curtails length of book — Author determines length
Publisher’s royalty statement routinely confusing — Ebook gives clear daily sales report
Publisher’s royalty statement not seen for 6-12 months — Ebook statement daily report
Royalty statement/payment confusing 90% of the time — Payout arrangement clear

 
Allow me to add some other hard-won lessons regarding the above points. Publisher determines design matters such as single or multiple volumes or a series, and in ebook publishing, the author has control over such issues as series, stand-alone, or three volumes in one.
These differences are due in large part to the medium.  The medium is the message. What I can add is that with traditional publishing comes “traditional” notions of prestige, as in “real book publication” grants a writer a certain prestige among readers, critics, and other writers. However, a new attitude is being seen, an attitude among readers and writers that says the text is of tantamount importance, not the way a book is delivered. While this notion and ebook publishing have been around now for approximately thirty to forty years, young people, new generations, are embracing it completely. The idea that a book delivered in sixty seconds on a Kindle reader is as viable a piece of writing as if it is delivered between the covers of a hardbound book—or can be. This is something of a radical shift not in publishing but in readers.
 
Many traditional publishers either do not get this or simply wish to fight for the old standards of ‘proper’ format and delivery of books. In the past and now, many people believe that a book showing up in hardcover is a better book, better vetted, better edited and certainly written better. However, we have all encountered hardbound books riddled with problems from grammar to concept. More and more, readers are learning about the struggle that goes on behind the writing of a novel, the research, the rewrites, the editing, vetting and more rewrites that go into the creation of an ebook by a writer, and while some ebooks display a lack of talent, nowadays more and more display genius “outside the bun” or in this case “outside the covers”. Never judge a book by its cover takes on a whole new meaning, despite the fact ebook cover graphics has spawned a whole  new ‘industry’ as has ebook digital platform and editing services.
Publishing with a major traditional publisher certainly can win one respect and sometimes critical acclaim, neither of which are automatically going to increase sales, but awards and accolades are a wonderful thing. However, the drawbacks can be many for the author, not the least being a far smaller percentage (12 vs. 70).  Notably, traditional publishers, since the state-of-the-art Kindle device has skyrocketed in sales are suddenly insisting contractually that authors turn over their electronic rights to the publisher. Some authors have been savvy to maintain their ebook rights regardless. However, traditional publishers holding your ebook rights—especially the majors—as a rule will set your ebook price far too high to the detriment of ebook sales.
E-readers are savvy and will turn away in droves if an ebook is priced too high. Several of my books are saddled with this problem as the publisher set the price, while ebooks priced by me are selling a thousand books a month nowadays. In short, the e-reading public will seldom to never purchase a e-novel or e-book priced at the same or nearly the same as the paper or hardbound book. Not to mention that an author will always make more money putting his ebook rights to work on his own rather than through a publisher.
Working directly with Amazon.com, the author is basically given—at no charge—the opportunity to become a franchise. Most midlist authors are given no advertising budget, no coop monies, nothing as any ad dollars go for the stars alone. With Amazon/Kindle and other ebook publishers, every ebook an author places on digital platform gains instant distribution (distribution with traditional publishers presents both publisher and author with stripped, returned books, a nightmare in bookkeeping, and a sure path to remainders). Reading a royalty statement from a traditional publisher is always a guessing game; reading the daily ‘ticker’ on each ebook with your name on it is as easy as reading the stock market and about as addictive. Going back to Ebook distribution. Distribution is advertising is distribution in the ebook world. It is entirely virtual and online. With Kindle ads going out on national TV and Kindles being used as props in major motion pictures, the author can only benefit more.
There are no doubt many other comparison points between traditional and non-traditional publishing but you know what?  Non-traditional modes of publication are getting to be part of the mainstream and hardly ‘non’ anymore.  Many authors are going the Indie Author/Publisher route as it makes perfect economical sense to do so. This is especially true for authors with large backlists of otherwise dead books known as out of prints. Already edited and vetted books that have seen returns, remainder days, used bookstore days—all of which pulls money from the pocket of authors. Now such lost titles are working for authors to the tune of thousands going back into the author’s pocket.
 
I hope this little compare/contrast blog has been of help to you personally if not professionally. Hope to see you on facebook, twitter, and elsewhere online –
 
Robert W. Walker
Children of Salem, Killer Instinct, Cutting Edge, and soon at a Kindle near you, Titanic 2012
www.robertwalkerbooks.com – Free first 14 chapters of Titanic 2012 available here

Seventy-eight days and counting since a certain hole goes unplugged and the planet is threatened with destruction and mass panic and flight of humans since the birds are drenched in oil and jobs are lost and the people can’t eat oily food and the unemployment numbers go up and up and the [...]]]> Oily Hole

Seventy-eight days and counting
since a certain hole goes unplugged
and the planet is threatened with
destruction and mass panic and
flight of humans since the birds
are drenched in oil and jobs are lost
and the people can’t eat oily food
and the unemployment numbers
go up and up
and the people lose their businesses
and livelihoods and their homes
and while hopes go down and down
but not down enough to reach
a leaky little hole, not even in
a manned craft with spidery arms
that can hold one solitary man,
(maybe he’s another scrawny Russian man)
chewing bubble gum and armed
with a wrench, a screwdriver, and duct tape
who can get his little craft close enough to
the hole and using its spidery arms
and his wrench and duct tape
he attempts to plug the hole
and upon realizing that the duct tape
will not hold against the oil,
he pauses to ponder the situation
…
and then he gets out of his tiny
one manned craft, with its spidery arms,
and sans a swimsuit or oxygen tank
(because they would have been too many
items to include in his tiny craft with him)
he makes his way to the leak
pulls wrench free from a spidery arm,
extracts gum from mouth,
dives in head first into the spewing oil,
some light clanging noise is heard
before the oil leak ceases,
man smiles and gives the thumbs up
into camera near the leak,
man is seen getting back into craft,
craft rises to surface,
man steps out of tiny craft,
with its spidery arms,
shakes hand of the president of the united states,
ignores the representatives from the oil company
and then shouts in their faces,
I TOLD YOU, PLUG THE DAMN HOLE ALREADY!
before being led away by the police and secret service.
Forgive me.  I am not a proponent of duct tape and bubble gum to repair
everything, nor am I making light of this disaster in the Gulf and which
is threatening coastal beaches and shorelines and people’s lives.  It
just seems to me that certainly, by now, a craft of some sort should
have been built and a small crew ( maybe as small as one person) could
get down there and plug the hole.  This is not rocket science people.

Also, there is a call-out to others who want to write their own poems
or prose about the Gulf Coast and this oil spill disaster (nightmare)
and wish to contribute those pieces to a site being set up for online
publishing.  Please send your poems/submissions to:
chicagopoetry@chicagopoetry.com.

I hope that those of you that read my piece enjoyed it and that it
motivates you to write.