Nevada: Worker Killed in Gold Mine Ceiling Collapse – Jason Holman – RIP – 31 Oct 2018

ELKO, Nev., Oct. 28, 2018 (Gephardt Daily) — A miner from Goshen, Utah was killed Thursday, October  afternoon after a roof collapse at a gold mine north of Elko, Nevada.  The Elko Daily Free Press reported the man has been identified as Jason Holman, 42.

The incident occurred at Jerritt Canyon Gold’s Lee Smith Mine, run by Small Mine Development, at approximately 5:10 p.m. Small Mine Development’s general manager, Keith Jones, told the Elko Daily Free Press that Holman was “loading a round and was involved in a fall of ground near the end of his shift.”

The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration’s spokeswoman Amy Louviere added that Holman was “loading blast holes underground when the cemented backfill roof fell, causing fatal injuries. MSHA has inspectors at the mine site and has secured the scene.”

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and SMD following this devastating event and tragic loss,” Jerritt Canyon Gold’s president and chief executive officer, Greg Gibson, said in an email. “ The health and safety of our employees and contractors at our mine remain our top priority.”

MSHA, the state mine inspector and Elko County Sheriff’s Department are assisting in the investigation.  MSHA data shows this is the first mine fatality in Nevada this year.

https://gephardtdaily.com/local/utah-miner-dies-after-roof-collapse-at-nevada-gold-mine

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Jason Holman, a 42-year-old underground mineworker from Goshen, Utah, was killed on October 25 in a collapse at the Lee Smith gold mine, 50 miles north of Elko, Nevada. Few details have been released, but according to a preliminary report from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), Holman, a powderman, was loading explosives into the rock-face when a 150-ton portion of the mine ceiling fell and “a portion of this cemented backfill, weighing approximately 5 tons, landed on top of the miner.” He appears to have died instantly. The incident is still under investigation by MSHA

Holman leaves behind three children—McKade, Tyson and Jaycee—and a loving family. The family could not be reached for additional comments, but his brother Shawn published a tribute on Facebook saying, “one of his goals he was working for and saving toward was taking his daughter Jaycee to Disneyland for the very first time.” According to the gofundme page set up by his family to pay for funeral arrangements, Jason was an avid outdoorsman who liked to hunt, fish and camp. At the time of this writing, the page has raised over $4,400, donated in small sums by other mineworkers and their families.

By all accounts, Holman was well-liked and respected by his coworkers. He had worked as an underground miner for 13 years, including 28 weeks at the Lee Smith mine prior to his death. The Lee Smith mine is one of many underground gold mines in Jerritt Canyon, a mining complex in the isolated Independence Mountains mining district of Northern Nevada that has seen a boom in gold extraction since the 1980s.

The Lee Smith Mine reaches depths of over 1000 feet below the surface. Small Mine Development, the contractor operating the mine, uses underhand mining with cemented backfill to extract the ore. This method was developed to facilitate hard rock mining in deep mines with poor ground conditions. Among two other mines, underhand cut and cemented backfill was developed and tested in the Lucky Friday silver mine in Mullen, Idaho.

Lucky Friday is the deepest mine in the United States, at nearly two miles below the surface. Two hundred and thirty mineworkers there have been on strike since March 2017 and have repeatedly rebuffed attempts to force them to accept a concessions contract that would reduce health benefits and compromise safety in the interests of profits.

The Lee Smith Mine was purchased out of bankruptcy in 2015, along with the entire Jerritt Canyon complex, by Jerrit Canyon Gold LLC, owned by Canadian billionaire Eric Sprott. Speaking to the Elko Daily Free Press after the buyout, Jerritt Canyon Gold’s CEO, Greg Gibson, promised an increase in gold production, saying that Sprott “is of the belief that there are a lot more ounces to come out of Jerritt Canyon.”

Sprott is one of the largest gold equity holders in North America. He purchases mines around the world, speculating that as gold prices rise and the global economy spirals into crisis, he will profit. Speaking earlier this month at the Precious Metals Investment Symposium in Perth, Australia, Sprott said, “If you were right on gold in 2000, on average you made 1700 per cent. Do it once, you’re set for life,” he said, touting his investment strategy as “stealing value.”

The mineworkers who dig the precious metals face dangerous conditions as a rule. In 2014, MSHA issued Veris Gold, the previous owner, 60 citations for safety violations at the Jerritt Canyon Complex. In 2015, Jason Potter, a 26-year-old jumbo drill operator, was killed at the Jerritt Canyon complex’s SSX Mine (also operated by Small Mine Development) when a 13-foot-long drill bit struck him. The MSHA report found management at fault for inadequate safety training. Just 10 days before Jason Holman’s death, two workers were injured in a steam explosion at the Jerritt Canyon Mill.

An underground miner who works in a mine adjacent to Lee Smith spoke about the conditions facing underground mineworkers. “Personally, for me, each shift as I enter the mine, I think about my friends that had passed and make a commitment to myself to come out safe … it is dangerous and there is no way to be 100 percent safe. If a miner isn’t scared each time they enter the hole, they aren’t ready to mine.”

Jason Holman’s death was the 14th metal and nonmetal mining fatality the US in 2018, and the 22nd including fatalities in the coal industry.

Fatalities in the mining industry are a component of the rising rates of workplace injuries and deaths in the US as a whole, as both the Republicans and the Democrats roll back regulations and the corporations cut wages and benefits and sacrifice safety for greater output and profit.

Some of the deadly mining accidents in recent years occurred under the Obama administration, which appointed former United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) safety official Joe Main to head MSHA. Among these accidents was the disaster at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia, which killed 29 of the 31 coal miners at the mine.

The Trump administration has frozen new and pending regulations and is reviewing existing regulations in order to roll them back. Trump’s head of MSHA, former coal executive David Zatezalo, is overseeing a review of protections against the dust and emissions that contribute to skyrocketing rates of black lung disease among Appalachian coal miners.

As corporations bring in record profits, workers have seen a decade’s worth of declining wages and are working longer hours for fewer benefits, in hazardous conditions. At least 150 workers die every day from hazardous conditions, and according to the most recent government data, 2016 saw a 7 percent increase in workers killed on the job—up to 5,190 from 4,836 in 2015.
Other miners killed this month include:

Roger W. Herndon, 33, an auger helper at the Princess Polly Anna & JCT Enterprises LLC Surface Mine #1, in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, who was fatally injured on October 17 when he was struck by a piece of auger drill steel.

Brendan DeMaster, 40, of North Royalton, Ohio, a miner with 20 years experience, who was fatally injured October 2 at an underground zinc mine, which just opened in June in Gouverneur, New York. DeMaster was struck by a sudden burst of stemming sand, which had been ejected from a borehole that was being cleaned with high pressure air.

An 18-year-old miner, Anthony David Montoya of Hollis, Oklahoma, was fatally mauled by a grizzly bear while working at a remote silver mine in Alaska on October 1. He was working at a drill site on the edge of the Hecla Greens Creek Mine, one of the world’s largest silver producers, located about 18 miles south of Juneau on Admiralty Island.

October has been particularly deadly for miners throughout the world.

Twenty-one coal miners were killed in eastern China after a tunnel where 22 miners were working was blocked at both ends by coal after pressure caused rocks to fracture and break on October 20. The Longyun Coal Mining Co. Ltd. is located in Yuncheng County in Shandong province.
A 46-year-old miner in South Africa was also killed by head injuries suffered in an underground accident at Lonmin’s platinum mine. Lonmin, the world’s third largest platinum producer, is notorious for the Marikana massacre in August 2012. Seventeen striking miners were murdered and another 78 wounded when South African security forces opened fire on them during a series of violent assaults, which began when officials opened fire on rebellious miners.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Overpaid US Labor Union Presidents Can Become Millionaires

June 2018

Labor union misleaders think like capitalist bosses, and they expect to be paid like capitalist bosses.

Compensation for ‘business’ expenses can also increase a labor union bureaucrat’s incoming capital.   

UK: Putin’s Passport Found at Magna Carta Theft Scene – 28 Oct 2018

Salisbury Cathedral:  A man has been arrested after he smashed the protective glass covering the famed historical document ‘The Magna Carta’ where the copy was on display in the cathedral.  The incident took place on Thursday afternoon the 25th of October.  While the robber was caught another man who may have handed the assailant the hammer escaped.  Police report that a passport dropped by the accomplice who eluded capture appears to belong to the Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin.  Experts speculate that Putin wanted to have the document in order to blackmail the UK government in the same way that Putin is blackmailing US President Donald Trump. 

The cathedral has been the focus of a lot of international attention following the Skripal poisoning case, with the two suspects telling RT they were visiting the site because of its “famous 123 meter spire.”  This is an obvious Russian follow up activity that is exactly the type of thing Putin would dream up.  Putin was a KGB secret police agent in East Germany in the 1980’s and is familiar with ‘cloak and dagger’ black operations. 

Internet detectives immediately pointed the finger at the Russians joining the consent manufacturers in solving the crime with hardly any effort.  Blame the Russians.  Every half wit knows they are guilty. 

The Magna Carta is an important historical document that helped weaken the king’s centralized power and granted more powers to the feudal war lords thus helping to keep the Middle Ages going for extra centuries.  Somehow that is now interpreted as a first step towards ‘democracy.’  Of course Putin hates democracy and seeks to gain more centralized power so stealing the Magna Carta would be a triumph like when Hitler found the lost Arc of the Covenant.  

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Is a Little Drinking Really so Bad? – Maybe – by Hallie Levine (AARP) 20 Sept 2018

 

If you’re like most Americans, you probably don’t think twice about enjoying a big glass (or two) of wine with your dinner every night or settling into your favorite armchair with a Scotch every evening. After all, studies have shown that an occasional cocktail is actually good for you, right?

Unfortunately, a raft of new research appears to burst that big champagne bubble. Not only do these headline-making studies put a big question mark next to the idea that drinking wine helps your heart, they also take aim at moderate drinking in particular, showing that drinking too much for your health might be drinking what seems to you like not that much at all.

One of the big pieces of research that’s driving home this point was published last month in the Lancet. It was notable because it combined almost 600 studies on how much people drank across the globe and what the effects were on their health. The big takeaway from it was that worldwide, drinking — and not only heavy drinking— was linked to deaths from not only car accidents and liver disease but also cancer, tuberculosis and heart disease.

Some researchers suggested that you can’t compare the results of drinking across countries where the top risks of death vary widely (in some places, TB; in the U.S., heart disease.) Still, the study, and others like it, cast doubt on the idea of the protective health benefits of a glass of red wine, something that’s been held as true since the 1980s, when researchers began exploring the “French paradox” to try to figure out why the country had such low rates of heart disease despite a diet high in saturated fat. They quickly decided it was thanks to drinking copious amounts of red wine, which contains heart-healthy antioxidants such as resveratrol, procyanidins and quercetin. Studies began to show drinking vino correlated with lower rates of death from heart disease; in an even happier twist, research showed other types of alcohol, like beer and liquor, bestowed cardiovascular benefits.

But more recent studies have told a different story about liquor as heart health elixir. A University of Cambridge analysis published earlier this year, for example, looked at almost 600,000 drinkers and found that sipping more than five alcoholic drinks a week raised risk of dying from … heart disease. (It also found that people who consumed more than 10 drinks per week had one to two years’ shorter life expectancy overall, while those who downed at least 18 shaved four to five years off their life.) Other research has actually found the people who have a genetic variant that suppresses the desire to drink alcohol have a lower risk of developing heart disease. “Those studies poke holes in the belief that alcohol is protective against developing heart disease,” says Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.

Still, other experts say you don’t need to toss your nightcap out just yet. “I don’t think this analysis should change conclusions or recommendations about moderate alcohol consumption,” says Walter Willett, M.D., professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It’s important to keep this in perspective — the risks from just one drink a day are much smaller than those of smoking or being obese.” While he believes the current recommended limit of one drink a day for women and two for men are reasonable, “this does need to be considered on an individual basis with your health care provider,” he says. A young, healthy woman with a family history of breast cancer, for example, may want to avoid alcohol entirely, since even small amounts slightly raise cancer risk. But for most older adults, moderate drinking is not off the table, provided you follow these four caveats:

Stick like glue to “moderate” drinking

According to the federal government, that’s defined as no more than a drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men. But it’s also important to get a clear picture of what a drink is. “So many people whip out a gigantic wine glass and fill it to the top with their favorite merlot — that’s not one drink, that’s two to four,” says Mozaffarian. A standard drink consists of either 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits such as vodka or whiskey, or 8-9 ounces of malt liquor. If you’re in doubt, you can always measure it out. “At this level, risk for health problems is minimal,” says Michael Hochman, M.D., director of the Gehr Family Center for Health Systems Science at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. The Lancet analysis found only a .5 percent higher risk of developing an alcohol-related health problem among those who consume only a drink per day.

Don’t “bank” your drinks

You may wonder if you’re in the “safe” zone because you drink only two to three times a week, but have multiple drinks each time. You’re not. This type of drinking puts stress on your liver, can increase your blood pressure, and increases your risk of doing something reckless, like driving drunk. Even if you drink wine only twice a week, stay within the daily recommended limits. “As you get older, you’re more susceptible to the effects of alcohol, because your body loses its ability to metabolize it as efficiently — so as a result, you’re more likely to feel its effects,” adds Hochman. This in turn can set you up for things such as falls.

Don’t drink at all if you have liver disease or you’re at risk for developing it

The older you are, the more likely you are to develop fatty liver disease, a condition where too much fat is stored in your liver cells, says Jamile Wakim-Fleming, a gastroenterologist specializing in liver disease at the Cleveland Clinic. Doctors often order liver function tests as part of your regular checkup, especially if you’re on medications that can affect your liver function, such as statins. If your most recent blood work has shown elevations in liver enzymes such as alanine transaminase (ALT), aspartate transaminase (AST) or alkaline phosphatase (ALP), you should avoid alcohol completely.

Don’t drink because you think it’s good for your health

If you’ve had your nightly martini ritual for the last 30 years, it’s fine to continue it, but don’t start drinking because you think it’s good for you. “There’s never been a guideline issued by groups such as the American Heart Association or the U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommending alcohol; the language has always been, if you do drink, do it in moderation,” says Mozaffarian.

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Archive

Changing Nature of Intimate and Sexual Relationships in Later Life – by Pepper Schwartz and Nicholas Velotta (Journal of Aging Life Care) Spring 2018

(Antique sex image)

ABSTRACT: Studies regarding sexuality have generally overlooked the growing population of older adults over 50. In this article, we discuss and elaborate on what information we do have regarding intimacy and sexuality post-50 including sexual behaviors, sexual satisfaction ratings, and how the policies within long-term care facilities (LTC’s) and elderly housing impact sexual expression later in life. All these facets of aging and sexuality are also examined in the context of aging LGBT individuals who often benefit from specialized methods of treatment by their healthcare professionals.

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One of the most common comments today about people over 50 is that each decade is somehow ten or more years younger now than it used to be. It is not our task here to marshal evidence to the truth or fiction of this assertion, but intuitively, it seems right. As we look at aging today, it does appear true that age is enacted differently than it was in previous older generations and that vitality—asserted in longer careers, second and third marriages, and late child rearing—has changed the face and felt experience of the last quartile of life.

One cannot discount the impact of culture and cohort. Much of what we have to say will hinge on the fact that the Baby Boom generation, born between 1945 and 1964, have reinvented each phase of their lives. Being the largest generation, they turned the spotlight on themselves in adolescence and at every phase thereafter. It is not surprising then that the leading edge of this group (now in their early 70s) have remained a center of attention, refusing to retire to previous stereotypes of aging such as being content to center their lives purely around their grandchildren, serving as handmaidens to their adult child’s needs. They are not only working longer — either be-cause of economic need or professional fulfillment — they are changing the way they use their recreational time, even opting for world travel or discovering new interests, and perhaps even building new careers (see Miller, 2017). They are also researching supplements and healthy foods, using creams that promise rejuvenation, lifting weights, and dressing in contemporary modes. Gyms are now full of exercising oldsters doing Yoga and Pilates. A gener-ation whose parents would never have been caught anywhere but on a farm in jeans, wear leggings and work-out clothes on the street. Elderly men and women are frequently doing a number of things out of with sync with “traditional” values and behaviors. For example, having multiple marriages (many in old age), living together without getting married, and being open and proud of their sexual identity—often declaring late in life that they are gay, lesbian, or transsexual.

The ubiquitous media in our culture supports and celebrates youthfulness but is beginning to integrate more and more programs featuring older actors retaining their vitality. Dating sites show large numbers of people over 60 in their membership with some sites such as SeniorFriendFinder and HowAboutWe openly recruiting older men and women as their clientele. Pharmaceutical ads show youthful retirees, workers, and grandparents enjoying life in physically demanding ways and, of course, ads for Viagra and Cialis are predicated on older men wanting, as well as needing, medications for sexual intercourse.

Here, however, we come to a point that has been much less discussed or changed in the reframing of a more vital longevity: the role sexuality plays in the revitalization process. As a nation that would much rather have sex than talk about it, there is precious little discussion about a particularly squeamish subject, sex among the aging and elderly. But despite the awkwardness surrounding the subject of sexuality in later years, we know that sexuality continues to play a part in people’s lives at any point in the life cycle. This is something we want to address so that we all can be more knowledgeable about people’s needs and desires. Though there is much to be said about the topic, in our brief coverage we will address key aspects of aging and sexuality such as the frequencies of sexual encounters, how satisfying sex can be in later life, the influence that having an intimate relationship can have on this population, which major illnesses or physical impairments have the potential to dampen sexuality, especially for seniors, and how long-term care facilities (LTC’s) can both promote and interfere with resident’s sexual longevity. It is worth noting that this is not a complete picture, but rather a review of curated information. Because of this, we emphasize the need to take the findings presented as a partial contribution in a complex narrative.

A (Sexually) Active Population

There is certainly evidence that older and elderly people have liberalized their ideas about sex. An AARP study (Fisher et al., 2010) showed that attitudes about sex among older populations have continually gotten more accepting and approving. Whereas 73% of people affirmed the statement “there is too much emphasis on sex in our culture today” in 1999, by 2004 only 65% of respondents felt that way. We believe this shows an increasing comfort with and desire for sexuality as a core ingredient to happiness in later life as well as in young adulthood and middle age. Even with the tabooed nature of elderly sexuality, many Baby Boomers refuse to be inhibited.

Part of this may be due to a reluctance to give up on any of the joys and perks of their youth but it also may be part of their attachment to healthy living. There is certainly some evidence that exercise helps people connect to their bodies, and allows more use of those bodies longer. Pilates, for example, strengthens the core and pubic muscles and has even been suggested as a way of strengthening orgasms (see Herbenick, 2015). Additionally, research shows that having a sexual life is correlated with many components of leading a healthy lifestyle including (but not limited to) relationship satisfaction, overall happiness, and mental health (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2004; Fisher et al., 2010; Mcfarland, Uecker, & Regnerus, 2011; Schwartz & Velotta, 2018; Zeiss & Kasl-Godley, 2001)—and so, the re-emergence of sexuality as a positive good for older people could have important ramifications for health and happiness.

Given that the preponderance of sexuality research focuses on the desires, frequencies, and satisfactions of heterosexual men and women in their reproductive years, there have been few reviews and studies that tap into the over-50 population. Even so, there are some that reveal quite a bit about this growing populace. In the 2009 AARP study mentioned earlier, for example, 75% of respondents believed “a satisfying sex life is important”. A recent literature review found that the older population is very interested in remaining sexually viable even with harsh social barriers impeding access to this desire (Schwartz, Diefendorf, & McGlynn-Wright, 2014). Whether that attitude comes from being more active in general, feeling more entitled to have a thriving sexual life, or liberalized notions of masturbation (with more access via online to vibrators or sex aides) is not clear, but there certainly has been more conversations about sex among the elderly. AARP has published columns on sex for the last few decades and movies and TV programs like Netflix’s Grace and Frankie (starring Lilly Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Martin Sheen, Sam Waterston, and Tom Selleck), Amazon’s Transparent (with Jeffrey Tambor as a transwoman), It’s Complicated (with Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin), and Mamma Mia! (with Julie Walters, Stellan Skarsgård, and Meryl Streep again) are rare but still support the theme that having sex, passion, and romance over 60 is not ridiculous.

It’s not just a Hollywood fantasy, however. The current literature confirms this message of sexual and romantic engagement at older ages. Men and women over 60 continue to live sexual lives with or without partners (Schwartz & Velotta, 2018). According to a 2009 AARP survey on midlife and older adults, nearly 40% of married older adults are having sex at least once a week, and 60% of partnered older adults report sex at least once a month (Fisher et al., 2010). The survey also found that almost 50% of older singletons who are dating or engaged reported having sex once a week. So, although it is true that sexual frequency reduces over time—both with older age and longer duration of relationships—much of what determines sexual activity has to do with psychosocial factors like internalized ageism and stigma, poor body image, poor relationship quality, or absence of a partner (these last two are especially true for women). Thus, the reduction in sexual frequency is not as closely linked to the biological effects of old age as many people may think.

If we look not just at frequencies but also at sexual satisfaction, the data show that a high percentage of older people are enjoying their sexual lives. There are many factors that make sexual satisfaction fluctuate, but the potential for pleasure from sexual activity does not diminish with age (Penhollow, Young, & Denny, 2009). In his study with older adults currently in relationships, Gillespie (2016) found that sexual communication (partners speaking about their needs from sex) and more variety in sexual encounters (e.g. trying new positions, locations, or sex toys) were major predictors of both high sexual satisfaction and high sexual frequency. For older adult partners who are married or cohabitating, sexual satisfaction ratings remain around the 50% mark (Fisher et al., 2010). Unfortunately, it does seem that individuals post-45 have a harder time remaining sexually satisfied if they are not paired, or do not actively date. AARP’s data showed only 10% of older men and women who are single and are not currently dating report being sexually satisfied (Fisher et al., 2010). More encouraging, that number jumps to 60% for those over 45 who are actively dating.

Research on older people makes it clear that having some kind of relationship, however casual, is closely tied to having any sexual activity and increasing both sexual and personal satisfaction. However, the research literature notes that younger adults often see romance among the elderly— and especially among postmenopausal women—as unnatural or unnecessary (Bouman, Arcelus, & Benbow, 2007; Hinchliff & Gott, 2008). In the senior author’s large university class on human sexuality, sex education videos showing older men and women often get reactions of disgust and discomfort. If the senior men and women are merely holding hands or kissing, they receive a more positive reception but this reception seems to categorize the couple as “adorable” or “cute”. Both response types dehumanize men and women over a certain age who are genuinely interested in love, romance, and yes, sex. Older adults are, of course, quite capable of finding love, enjoying one-night flings, or reigniting the flame with a high school sweetheart at a 50th reunion, and take umbrage at not being taken seriously. If professionals in the helping and medical specialties who work with older populations show that they do not think these men and women have sexual thoughts or urges or behaviors, it follows that their clients, advisees, or patients will feel that the full scope of who they are is unseen and denigrated.

LGBT Sexual Activity

We also think it is important to include the special needs of older LGBT population in our discussion. Though the data is sparse (almost non-existent for bisexual and transsexual individuals) we will briefly touch on these populations’ frequencies and satisfaction ratings. Before continuing it is important to note that in combining several types of sexual minorities into one section we are not attempting to portray homogeneity in their needs or behaviors. Our more general approach to these populations is simply due to the paucity of scholarly data on older sexual minorities.

Regarding gay male sexuality post-50, we find that having a stable partner does not impact sexual frequency nearly as much as it does for heterosexuals. When asking gay men (n = 24,787) about their most recent sexual encounters, Rosenberger et al. (2011) found that the majority of sexual acts in all age brackets surveyed were with a partner that participants labeled an acquaintance. About 30% of sexual encounters in the 60-year-old-and-up brackets were with a boyfriend, significant other, or someone the respondent was dating. Over 60% of sexual encounters happened within the past week for this population. And with around half the gay population post- 40 reporting that they are currently partnered (Lyons, Pitts, & Grierson, 2013) it is likely that many of these frequent acquaintance hook-ups reflect a non-monogamous culture among gay men—something that has been observed in other literature (Lyons et al., 2013; Northrup, Schwartz, & Witte, 2012). Alongside their high frequency rates, gay men over 60 also have relatively high sexual satisfaction ratings, with around 40% saying they are “very satisfied” (Lyons et al., 2013). Overall the older gay male population, when given the right environment, seem very capable of maintaining long-term sexual functioning and satisfaction.

Factors that are influential for female sexuality such as: relationship quality, presence of a partner, and emotional fulfillment are especially vital for lesbians. Perhaps the most significant predictor of sexual longevity in the partnered lesbian population is relationship quality which is positively correlated with arousability, sexual functioning, pleasure, and satisfaction (Henderson, Lehavot, & Simoni, 2009; Tracy & Junginger, 2007). Some early literature on the sexual frequencies of older lesbians found that there is a decline over the course of their relationships (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983; Loulan, 1987). Unfortunately, we simply lack empirical, contemporary evidence on average lesbian sexual frequencies as they stand today. Some have explored whether the parameters used to measure such frequencies should be modified for lesbian samples in order to reflect the fluid, less episodic nature of lesbian sexuality (Meana, Rakipi, Weeks, & Lykins, 2006). It is important to observe, however, that lesbians value the companionate qualities of their partnerships, and do not necessarily feel that the relationship is less intimate if they have low sexual frequency (Averett, Yoon, & Jenkins, 2012). That said, lesbians engage in more masturbatory behavior than their heterosexual female counterparts and are more inclined to integrate masturbation into partnered sex (Hurlbert & Apt, 1993; Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994) as well as have more positive attitudes towards masturbation in general than heterosexual women (Writer, 2012).

The most unstudied sexual minority group, especially in terms of sexuality in old age, is bisexuals. From the sparse data we have, it appears that older bisexual men are very likely to have had their last sexual encounter with an acquaintance rather than a partner (Rosenberger et al., 2011) and may be more generally cut off from positive social or intimate relationships. Some indication that this is true is that research has shown higher rates of internalized stigma and smaller social networks for male bisexuals and a higher likelihood for them to live alone (Fredriksen-Goldsen et al., 2013). Additionally, because bisexuals are seen as emotionally or sexually dangerous by both heterosexuals and homosexuals, bisexuals are likely to keep their sexual lives private, undiscussed or remain “in the closet”. They may only identify by their current sexual behavior, which may give less than the whole picture to professionals trying to help them or place them in a comfortable housing or community environment. We feel this is a very under-researched population and therefore our understanding of what this population needs later in life is very limited.

Illness, Impairment, And Sexuality Later In Life

Even with many older adults living longer, more sexually fulfilling lives, sundry health-related conditions impact the ability of some seniors to perform sexual acts. Here we have devoted space to discuss a few select ailments that are known to effect sexuality for older men and women.

Cancer

Though technological advances and increased awareness have allowed many cases of cancer to be detected earlier than in previous generations, breast and prostate cancer remain a prevalent problem for many older individuals.

Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is a serious risk for women post 40 who comprise around 95% of those diagnosed, with older age brackets experiencing an even higher risk of developing the disease (American Cancer Society, 2016a; National Cancer Institute, 2015). Chemotherapy, which is still regularly used in the treatment of breast cancer, has a host of negative physiological side effects that are temporary, but many effects can be quite severe and carry on months after ending chemo (Biglia et al., 2010; Boswell & Dizon, 2015; Malinovszky et al., 2006). Reported sexual consequences include reductions in: sexual desire or interest, arousability, sexual functioning, and the overall quality of relationship with partner (Biglia et al., 2010; Knobf, 2001). Another treatment method, radiation therapy (RT), has shown less clear links between onset of treatment and sexual dysfunction (it is often used in conjunction with other techniques, making it difficult to isolate how RT specifically affects sexual health). That said, Boswell and Dizon (2015) suggest that the locoregional impairments that RT can cause (e.g. pain in breasts and loss of flexibility) could contribute to the reductions in sexual functioning we see in women exposed to it.

The most severe of treatment for breast cancer is surgical removal of tissue. There are various types of breast surgery, ranging from mastectomy-only (with no following breast reconstruction) to lumpectomy (removal of only cancerous tissue) and mastectomy with reconstruction, but a common theme in literature suggests that mastectomy-only (MO) patients have worse sexual consequences than patients who elect for the other surgeries.

Studies find that those treated with MO operations are more likely to experience low levels of sexual desire, arousal, perceived sexual attractiveness, sexual functioning, and encounter greater difficulties in achieving orgasm (Aerts, Christiaens, Enzlin, Neven, & Amant, 2014; Al-Ghazal, Fallowfield, & Blamey, 2000). And yet another aspect that MO patients have to face is the loss of their breasts—something that can alter body image significantly. Of those women who get any of the three cancer removing surgeries listed, MO patients report significantly worse body image than their peers (Engel, Kerr, Schlesinger‐raab, Sauer, & Hölzel, 2004; Markopoulos et al., 2009). This low body image implies that even for those with high sexual functionality after surgery, some older women may feel too self-conscious to engage sexually, a disappointing finding to discover.

Prostate Cancer

For men, the risk of developing prostate cancer increases exponentially with age and about one in seven men is diagnosed in their lifetime (American Cancer Society, 2016b; Prostate Cancer Foundation, 2016). And along with concern for one’s survival, prostate cancer can have devastating effects on sexual functioning and satisfaction.

As is the case for breast cancer, most male cancer patients must undergo radiation therapy to treat their prostate. This technique, though effective for treating prostate cancer, has been associated with low levels of sexual desire, decreased frequency of erections, lowering importance of sex life post treatment, reduced orgasm intensity, and an uptick in ejaculation dysfunctions (e.g. no ejaculate during orgasm or pain during ejaculation) (Helgason, Fredrikson, Adolfsson, & Steineck, 1995; Incrocci, 2002, 2006, 2015; Incrocci & Slob, 2002; Incrocci, Slob, & Levendag, 2002; Olsson, 2015).

For patients with worse prognoses, doctors may choose to perform a radical prostatectomy and that procedure results in erectile dysfunction for 60-70% of patients (Chung & Gillman, 2014). Some additional post operation difficulties with radical prostatectomies include: incontinence during sexual activity, less or no sperm emission at orgasm, changes in penile appearance (e.g. length and curvature), and decreased pleasure during orgasm (Ambruosi et al., 2009; Chung & Gillman, 2014; Dubbelman, Wildhagen, Schröder, Bangma, & Dohle, 2010). And although Dubbelman et al. (2010) found there are nerve-sparing procedures that doctors can follow in order to reduce damage to orgasmic functioning, being over the age of 60 was one of the strongest predictors associated with the inability to achieve climax post-radical prostatectomy.

There are various treatment methods that can help men who experience difficulty after their prostate cancer treatment, ranging from highly effective sildenafil citrate (i.e. Viagra) (Incrocci, Koper, Hop, & Slob, 2001) to intracavernosal injections administered into the base of the penis prior to sex. Other non-pharmaceutical methods are discussed by authors Canalichio, Jaber, and Wang (2015) in their review of hormonal and non-hormonal based treatments for sexual functioning post-prostate cancer surgery.

Diabetes

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Diabetes Statistics Report: Estimates of Diabetes and Its Burden in the United States (2014) found that 25.9% of Americans 65 years of age and up were diabetic, men making up a significant majority of this population. Erectile dysfunction (ED) is commonly comorbid in male patients with diabetes due to a combination of various blood circulation difficulties and can often be alleviated with the use of oral medications such as Viagra (Hatzimouratidis & Hatzichristou, 2014). With treatment for diabetes induced ED available, it is somewhat surprising that men with diabetes are more likely to see their ED as severe and permanent when compared to their non-diabetic counterparts (Eardley, Fisher, Rosen, Nadal, & Sand, 2007). Perhaps showing the value of a medical staff who can initiate conversations about sexual functioning with their diabetic male patients.

The effects of diabetes on older women is relatively unclear. The disorder impacts vascular and neurogenic functioning which may be associated with lowered desire and reduced lubrication but these symptoms are also present in many non-diabetic post-menopausal women, making it harder to discern if the root cause is diabetes or other, more general aging processes (Zeiss & Kasl-Godley, 2001).

Depression

Of the 35 million-plus Americans over 65, more than 6.5 million are impacted by depression (Reyers, 2013). We do not have room in this paper to discuss all the concomitants of this all too common problem, but suffice it to say that depression can, and frequently does, wipe out both the desire for sex and arousal when having sex. Often patients are so severely impacted that a medical professional will not think twice about giving a high dosage anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication that affects sexual functioning since they are far more worried about their patient’s mental state than their sexual life. Still, this disregard for the concomitant impact of anti-depressives and anxiolytics can worsen the situation for the suffering patient. Often patients are not even told about the impact the medication will have on their sex life or simply don’t bring up the sexual side effects they are experiencing when with their pre-scribing doctor (Ferguson, 2001). This dynamic impedes possible discussion on how a lower dosage or a different drug might affect their sexual life less. As important, there may also be an impact of these drugs on the patients ability to love and feel affectionate (Marazziti et al., 2014). This, of course, complicates the couple’s life together and may result in a partner feeling unloved or appreciated, not realizing that some of the flat affect is drug induced.

Long-Term Care Facilities

One of the most important decisions that older people (and often their families) must make is whether or not they will require long-term caregiving in a facility or home. As we have illustrated, sexual activity remains an important aspect of many aging men and women’s quality of life. However, the facility and policies of nursing homes often contain negative views toward sexual behavior in the aging population (Bauer, Mcauliffe, & Nay, 2007; Bouman et al., 2007; Hinrichs & Vacha-Haase, 2010; Parker, 2006). Desexualization of this population may serve as a convenience for caretakers, allowing them to escape uncomfortable and complex discussions about elderly sexuality. They may also simply lack knowledge and feel unqualified to speak with residents. Issues such as these are especially poignant for LGBT individuals who find it difficult to express their sexuality in LTC settings due to assumed heterosexuality and homophobic dispositions within the staff (Hinrichs & Vacha-Haase, 2010).

LGBT residents may conceal their sexual orientation as well as other pertinent information (e.g. HIV status) to reduce stigmatic treatment by health workers (Griebling, 2016). A recent study using lesbian transgendered participants found that although this population felt that they had aged successfully, major concerns still plagued them about late-life events and legal difficulties (Witten, 2015). Given that many in the LGBT community rely on “chosen families” for social support (networks of non-biological family members), when judgments must be made on whether someone is capable of giving sexual consent (for example, when a person has fading cognitive abilities or has dementia), a lack of proper documentation of who is entitled to claim a family or spousal relationship, may make it difficult for those closest to the client to protect his or her interests. Legal complications and negative attitudes found in caregivers and family members, surely contribute to LGBT nervousness in regards to their sexual freedom being honored when living under institutional care in hospitals, long-term care facilities, or other kinds of senior communities.

One solution for older LGBT patients nervous about sexual restrictions imposed within heterosexual LTC communities are homes built exclusively for sexual minorities which have staff trained in facilitating the specialized needs of its members. In addition to expanding LGBT-specialized communities, a broader message to healthcare providers treating LGBT patients can be to develop a strong sense of trust with minority clients. Trust often enables LGBT patients to be open and honest about personal matters pertaining to their sexuality (Dibble, Eliason, Dejoseph, & Chinn, 2008) and will likely increase sexual liberties for minority members within primarily heterosexual facilities. This is especially important for less experienced and younger staff members who show higher rates of sexual restrictiveness towards patients than more experienced, senior faculty (Bouman et al., 2007).

Regardless of sexual orientation, the recognition of sexual rights within LTC’s is meaningful to many. Unfortu-nately, residents have reported feeling that their providers care little about fostering an intimate environment for couples and few facilities even permit double-beds (Bouman et al., 2007). Additionally, the atmosphere of nursing homes can be quite open and indirectly oppose residents’ desires to have private moments with partners (Fran-kowski & Clark, 2009). It is not difficult to imagine how unlocked-door policies, community-based activities, and restrictions on sharing sleeping quarters may negatively impact tenants’ ability to engage in sexual activities.

Roach (2004) describes the conduct and actions that caregivers and staff take to restrict sexual contact between residents as the guarding discomfort paradigm. This is because the incentive for preventing such behaviors is to “guard” against the discomfort that seeing older men and women in sexual or intimate situations would cause staffers. After her interviews with nursing and LTC staff, Roach concluded that the staff’s restrictive actions are not only a product of their individual predispositions towards sexuality but also a product influenced by the general “ethos of an organization” (p. 174).

Should a resident have a cognitive disability, the nursing home’s restrictiveness may be even more inhibiting. Individuals who display inappropriate sexual behavior (ISB), for example, are regularly removed from ISB-triggering stimuli or given distractive tasks. And— in cases where such actions do not reduce patients’ ISB—practitioners may medicate the individual often with prescriptions used off-label (Dominguez & Barbagallo, 2016). Some research on inappropriate sexual behavior among the cognitively impaired indicates however that ISB is rarely motivated by sexual urges. Usually the patient’s intentions are to communicate something entirely appropriate, but their actions are observed as a sexual act (Dominguez & Barbagallo, 2016).

Conclusion

In our brief review on aging and sexuality we have drawn a problematic picture that indicates that western culture still stigmatizes and/or ignores sexual desire and sexual relationships among older men and women. A review of the literatures available, indicates that there is a lack of recognition of older people’s sexual needs, and that professionals who are supposed to be working in behalf of people in late middle or old age as caretakers, medical and mental health professionals, or as social workers and para-professionals, may not accord older people the same sexual rights as they do to younger populations. This may be especially true for older gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals. Older men and women trying to stay vibrant as an individual, and sexually attentive to them self or with a partner, deserve more conscious concern and support for their sexual lives.

However, translating research findings into useful policies and practices can be quite complicated for the administrator overseeing a large residence community or the clinician cycling through many patients a day. Therefore, we would like to offer some of the more pragmatic steps that professionals who work with older individuals may take in order to reduce potential barriers to their clients’ ability to enjoy thriving sexual lives well past the age of 50. Firstly, care facilities may want to review their unlocked-door and single-bed policies which can be clear obstacles for the residents looking to enjoy private, intimate time with one another. Having activities where residents can partake in pairs (as opposed to as a group) is another measure that can enable more opportunities for residents to experience intimate, romantic connections with one another. For the LGBT population, facilities may explore having staff specialized in serving older LGBT residents. This could enable their clientele who are in the sexual minority to develop more trusting bonds with a group of care staff that is specifical-ly trained for providing aide to their unique concerns later in life.

For clinicians who require knowledge about sexual activity, conscious efforts to assess implicit biases could be helpful in reducing issues related to assumed heterosexuality (for LGBT patients) and presumptions of sexual inactivity later in life (for all older patients). For example, Aging Life Care Professionals may want to ask whether their patient has a male or female partner prior to discussing any sexual activity to avoid the use of inaccurate pronouns or non-applicable sexual behaviors that may make their patient uncomfortable to answer (e.g. asking a gay male how frequently he engages in vaginal intercourse with his partner). It may also benefit practitioners to foster open dialogs about their patients’ sexual frequencies and satisfaction—topics often left untouched by doctors treating older patients who are also less likely to seek help with sexual needs when their doctors do not ask about their sexual behavior during visits (Hinchliff & Gott, 2011). Doctors and medical professionals should consider administering an annual questionnaire during their patients’ check-ups that covers sexual issues as areas that the patient might like to discuss. Among the potential areas of concern, patients could answer items (as appropriate) about: the presence of erectile dysfunction, pain during intercourse or other penetrative sexual behaviors, genital pain in the absence of sexual behavior, undesired loss of sexual interest or arousal, and the desire to hear about medications that affect sexual behavior or get a referral to see a doctor who specializes in sexual medicine. Of course, there are many more actions that care workers can take to better their clientele’s sexual autonomy later in life, but these are a few good starting points. With the recent medical innovations in sexual health it is important to keep the above-50 population informed as to what their options are to increase their sexual longevity, and in so doing increase their sexual agency for the rest of their life.

REFERENCES

https://www.aginglifecarejournal.org/the-changing-nature-of-intimate-and-sexual-relationships-in-later-life/

Latin America’s Killer Culture – 8% of the World’s Population – 38% of the Murders – 140,000 in One Year (The Economist) 5 April 2018

Shining light on South America’s homicide epidemic

Latin America’s violent crime, and ways of dealing with it, have lessons for the rest of the world

ON JANUARY 11th 2017 no one was murdered in El Salvador—a fact that was reported as far away as New Zealand, Thailand and Russia. At the time, the Central American country had the highest murder rate in the world: 81 per 100,000, more than ten times the global average (see chart 1). On most days more than a dozen Salvadoreans lost their lives to gang warfare, police shootings and domestic disputes. On bad days, the number could be three times higher. Murder dominated newspaper headlines, campaign speeches and dinner-table discussions. A day without it was something to celebrate—and reflect on.

Latin America, which boasts just 8% of the world’s population, accounts for 38% of its criminal killing. The butcher’s bill in the region came to around 140,000 people last year, more than have been lost in wars around the world in almost all of the years this century. And the crime is becoming ever more common.

Latin America is also the most urbanised part of the developing world, and that is not a coincidence. Its urban population grew in the second half of the 20th century much faster than those of other regions. By 2000 over three-quarters of the population lived in towns and cities—roughly twice the proportion in Asia and Africa. That move from the countryside concentrated risk factors for lethal violence—inequality, unemployed young men, dislocated families, poor government services, easily available firearms—even as it also brought together the factors needed for economic growth. As other developing economies catch up with Latin America’s level of urbanisation, understanding the process’s links to criminality, and which forms of policing best sever them, is of international concern.

In this regard, it is worth noting that the region’s countries vary a lot. Some countries in the south of the region have urbanised as fast as those in its north, but murder rates in the south remain comparable to that of the United States. The drug trade in the northern part of the region undoubtedly makes a big difference. And some countries where murder rose have since seen it decline.

If lessons from those countries that have turned the tide were promulgated a lot of good could be done. The Small Arms Survey, a research group, has three scenarios for the world up to 2030: one in which murder trends continue; one in which the trends seen in the countries that are doing best with murder in their region are exported to their neighbours; and one in which trends start to match those in some of the worst-performing countries. The difference between the best case and the worst adds up to 2.6m lives.

Latin America’s crisis has been mounting at a time when, in the developed world, murder has been becoming rarer. As Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at New York University, shows in “Uneasy Peace”, a recent book, the causes of the “great crime decline” America has seen since 1990 are complex and controversial: mass incarceration almost certainly reduced violence, though its impact diminished as a greater share of the population got locked up, leaving broken families on the outside.

Other factors mattered more in other countries. But most of the rich world saw a new stress on the use of data, especially geospatial data, in policing and crime-prevention efforts. That definitely played a role. Some approaches built on knowing precisely what was happening where to whom and why were criticised in terms of both cost efficiency and social justice: “Broken windows” policies stamped down on petty crimes it might have been safe to neglect; “stop-and-frisk” disproportionately targeted young men of colour. But there is now little doubt that, overall, data-driven approaches helped bring down crime rates. And when they succeeded they fostered a new confidence in the police, which encouraged community-driven efforts to reduce crime and co-operate with the authorities, all of which further reduced violence. As Adam Gopnik noted in a review of Mr Sharkey’s book for the New Yorker, a virtuous circle started to roll.

The Latin American trajectory has been the reverse of the rich world’s: the time of greatest concern in the United States was the time of greatest optimism in the south. In the late 1980s and the 1990s the civil wars and military dictatorships that characterised the 1970s and 1980s were giving way to democracies. Tens of millions—some displaced from their farms by guerrilla warfare—flocked to the cities, a willing workforce for the rapid industrialisation that governments hoped to bring about by opening their doors to global trade.

But the economic growth that followed did not match this influx, or the demographic “youth bulge” that exacerbated its effects. Nor did government services such as clinics and schools. People crowded into slums, shantytowns and favelas from where they were hard put to reach jobs. By the early 2010s, the bloodshed in some cities had reached a pitch comparable to that of the internal conflicts that had torn up the region decades earlier (see chart 2).

The causes of the bloodshed varied. Extortion gangs were responsible for a lot in some parts of Central America, drug-trafficking in others (though Costa Rica and Panama, both on the drug route, are relatively peaceful). Institutional weaknesses were widespread. Police and prosecutors in the region were badly trained, underpaid and often corrupt. In some places only one in 20 reports of murder led to a conviction. A penchant for ineffective but brutal government crackdowns often made things worse; grossly overpopulated prisons became crime factories rather than rehabilitation centres. To different degrees in different places, these factors all contributed to a vicious circle, rather than a virtuous one: the worse things got, the less effective efforts to stem the tide became.

But one factor seemed to be constant; where murder was high it was also heavily concentrated. According to Robert Muggah of the Igarapé Institute, a Brazil-based think-tank, approximately 80% of homicides in large and medium-sized Latin American cities occur on just 2% of the streets. Identifying those hotspots is crucial. Randomised-controlled trials of homicide-reduction programmes in cities like New York and Los Angeles have shown that policies which use reliable data to give priority to high-risk places, people and behaviour have the best shot at success.

In most of Latin America those data are lacking. Many homicide reports say only whether the crime was a knifing or a shooting; locations may just be the name of a town. In a report the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) published in 2012, Lawrence Sherman, a criminologist, concluded that this chronic lack of data “is not an obstacle to solving an important problem. It is the most important problem.”

Truths, not truces

Take El Salvador. In 1996 José Miguel Cruz, a political scientist, gathered data for the IDB’s first regional homicide report there: mayors sent him slips of paper with scrawled tallies marking murders. Today police, prosecutors and coroners meet monthly in San Salvador, the capital, to sort out national totals. But little attempt has been made to understand them, and they are not well used. “Plan Safe El Salvador”, launched in 2015 with support from various international organisations, called for resources to be funnelled to the 50 municipalities which statistics showed to be at highest risk. But because the “municipality prioritisation index” used total crime numbers, rather than rates per person, the plan’s targets for prevention projects were mostly just the biggest towns and cities.

El Salvador’s police claim to collect data good enough to make crime maps that delineate gang territories, but say they cannot release them because doing so could “compromise intelligence operations” and stigmatise residents of violent neighbourhoods. Such claims are common across the region. When they are true, the lack of transparency tends to be ill judged.

Consider the homicide report Mr Cruz worked on. He says that shortly before it was published El Salvador’s president begged the IDB to suppress his country’s figures, worried that they would hurt the economy. But the real toll on GDP comes not from reports on violence, but from violence itself. Latin American governments spend an average of 5% of their budgets on internal security—twice as much as developed countries. A recent IDB study estimates the direct costs of violent crime in the region—measured by such things as spending on police, hospitals, insurance and private security, and the lost wages of prisoners—at $236bn a year, calculated on a purchasing-power basis. At $300 per person, that is much higher than in developed countries. In El Salvador the cost of murder works out at 1% of GDP a year. Countries fear that opening data up to independent analysis will reveal the costly ineffectiveness of their policies. But until data analysis improves, their policies will continue to be ineffective, and often erratic.

That has certainly been the case in El Salvador. In 2004 President Francisco Flores put soldiers on the streets and threw thousands of gang members into prison to clamp down on crime. Murders went up. In March 2012 the government of Mauricio Funes brokered a truce between El Salvador’s three main gangs, giving imprisoned leaders luxuries like flat-screen televisions and fried chicken if they would tell their subordinates to stop killing each other. Murders halved almost overnight, and some criminologists applauded, seeing the policy as a step towards “focused deterrence”—a combination of incentives and threats that is deemed to have worked well in Los Angeles, among other places.

Others were wary, with reason. The truce soon began to unravel, and the gangs began to see violence as a bargaining tool. In early 2015 President Salvador Sánchez-Cerén sent the army back on to the streets and returned gang leaders to top-security prisons. Murders rocketed to 104 per 100,000 people. The number dropped back by 40% over the next two years, something the government put down to “extraordinary measures” in the prisons; for two years tens of thousands of gang members have seen no relatives, no doctors and no daylight. At the same time the number of members of the public shot by police has gone up 15-fold, sparking an international outcry. “The treatment that the state provides shouldn’t be as bad as the sickness itself,” says the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Agnes Callamard. And for the past six months the murder rate has been on the rise again.

Some Salvadoreans worry their country is heading the way of Venezuela, which stopped releasing murder statistics altogether in 2005. Luisa Ortega Díaz, then Venezuela’s attorney-general, started releasing some numbers again after attending a regional conference on homicide data in 2015; last year she was sacked and subsequently fled the country. According to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, which uses press reports, victimisation surveys and leaks from sympathetic government officials to track murders, Venezuela now has the world’s highest homicide rate.

Colombian data exchange

A generation ago that baleful title belonged to its neighbour, Colombia, where the drugs trade and peasants driven into slums by the civil war came together to dreadful effect. In 1994 the murder rate in Cali was 124 per 100,000 people.

Rodrigo Guerrero, the city’s mayor and a surgeon by training, launched a plan inspired by the epidemiological approach some North American cities were taking at the time. He set up “violence observatories” where police, public-health officials, academics and concerned citizens could study crime data. This revealed that most of the city’s murders took place in drunken brawls, not in conflict between gangs, and that they were late at night a day or so after payday. Restricting alcohol sales and gun permits helped cut the homicide rate by 35% in a matter of months.

Long-term results were mixed—some crime was probably displaced rather than prevented, and subsequent mayors discontinued the bans—but Mr Guerrero’s data-driven approach to violence spread. In Bogotá, the capital, data-based policing became the norm.

Some experts believe that the only way for developing countries to curb high homicide rates on a permanent basis is systemic reform. But data-driven policing can buy the time—and create the conditions of trust—needed for such reforms to take place, and can work to boost the gains from all sorts of other approaches. In Medellín, where gains against crime have been even more marked than in Cali, targeted action against the local drug cartel and guerrillas first made things safer, and improvements in infrastructure, including cable cars, helped integrate the slums into the city; but data-driven methods learned from Cali also played a role.

In 2017 Colombia announced a murder rate of 24 per 100,000 people, its lowest in 42 years. That is still high, though, and there are more problems to come. The demobilisation of the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) after decades of guerrilla war has created local power vacuums that could be filled by organised crime, especially if the government does not create opportunities for ex-combatants, coca farmers and young people. “Colombia is not approaching heaven,” says María Victoria Llorente of the Ideas for Peace Foundation. “We’re barely leaving hell, and if we aren’t careful, we’ll stay in limbo.”

A recent proliferation of violence observatories in Latin America—many modelled after Mr Guerrero’s Cali flagship—suggests that governments are realising the need for an evidence-based approach to security policy. But even now only two-thirds of the 60-odd observatories track when and where murders take place, and just half try to determine motives, according to the IDB. In 2016 Ignacio Cano, a Brazilian criminologist, looked at 93 homicide-reduction programmes in the region, including controls on alcohol in Brazil, an advertising campaign exhorting Venezuelans to “value life”, private investigators paid to help public prosecutors in Honduras, a $400m justice reform in Mexico and mediation with criminals in Jamaica and El Salvador. Some coincided with impressive drops in murder rates—but only 16% actually tried to evaluate their impact.

An international campaign called “Instinct for Life” has laid out six principles for reducing murders in Latin America by 50% over the next decade. It stresses both prevention and intervention—and in both cases it sees data as central, whether as a way of revealing what needs to be done or recording the extent to which an intervention has or has not worked. Even without state-of-the-art technology, the campaign says, police could make much better use of the information they already collect.

The rest of the world should take note. Murder already outpaces war as a cause of death. And the world is continuing to urbanise. India and China have accommodated huge increases in urban population while keeping violent crime levels relatively low, in part thanks to economic growth. But other countries exhibit many of the risk factors seen in Latin America a generation ago: widespread displacement as a result of conflict, millions of leftover guns, a demographic bulge, little by way of safety nets and corrupt, ineffective police forces.

The sooner cities and countries build good data analysis into their approach to curbing crime, the fewer of Latin America’s problems they will recapitulate. And they will also spare themselves false hope. A few weeks after that day in El Salvador in January 2017, the police concluded that a body found in a shallow grave had, in fact, been dumped there on January 11th. The murder-free day has yet to dawn.

Archive

Gothic Horror Emphasized: ‘The Monk’ by Matthew Lewis – 1796

Audio of Article – Mp3

Matthew Lewis’s novel The Monk (1796) marked a turning point in the history of Gothic literature. With its emphasis firmly on the horrific and the shocking, the book moved Gothic away from the gentle terrors of earlier authors such as Horace Walpole and, instead, confronted readers with an onslaught of horror in the form of spectral bleeding nuns, mob violence, murder, sorcery and incest. Unsurprisingly the book met with outrage and condemnation from critics. Equally unsurprisingly it was hugely popular with the public.

With its twin themes of erotic obsession and the corrupting influence of power, The Monk deals with important issues and contains moments of impressive psychological insight. At heart, however, it remains a morality tale about one man’s fall from grace through greed, pride and lust.

 

The edition shown here is a heavily abbreviated version of the novel published sometime around 1818. On the left Ambrosio, the monk of the title, signs his Faustian pact with the devil while, on the right, the entire plot of the book is summarised in lurid headings such as ‘Artifices of a Female Demon’; ‘Her Mother Whom He Murdered’; ‘Assassinates with a Dagger’ and, finally, ‘Most Ignominious Death’.

Early reviews

The Monk first became widely available in an edition published by Joseph Bell in 1796. The title-page only carried Lewis’s initials, rather than his full name, but the first reviews were – somewhat surprisingly given the content – favourable. Encouraged, Lewis announced his authorship in the second edition, adding for good measure his new title of Member of Parliament.

Unfortunately, with his name now firmly associated with the book (so much so that he was known as ‘Monk’ Lewis for the rest of his life) the novel became the subject of critical condemnation and accusations of blasphemy.

(A free audio version of ‘The Monk’ is at Librivox; A free text version of ‘The Monk’ at Project Gutenberg)

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge attacked the book in the Critical Review of February 1797 arguing that its scenes of lust and depravity were likely to corrupt readers. Coleridge observed further that The Monk was a novel ‘which if a parent saw in the hands of a son or daughter he might reasonably turn pale’. Worse was to follow when the writer Thomas James Mathias argued that certain passages in the book, especially those containing comments on the Bible, were open to legal action on the grounds that they were sacrilegious. Chastened by the intense criticism, Lewis removed several controversial passages from the book and from the fourth edition onwards the novel appeared in a somewhat subdued form. The Monk, however, never lost its popularity with readers keen to test their morality against its allegedly depraved content.

Scary Story: ‘The Castle of Otranto’ by Horace Walpole – The 1st Gothic Novel – 1764

The Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally regarded as the first gothic novel. In the second edition, Walpole applied the word ‘Gothic’ to the novel in the subtitle – “A Gothic Story”. The novel merged medievalism and terror in a style that has endured ever since. The aesthetics of the book shaped modern-day gothic books, films, art, music and the goth subculture.^[1]

(Free text of The Castle of Otranto online at Project Gutenberg – Free audio book reading of The Castle of Otranto at Librivox)

The novel initiated a literary genre which would become extremely popular in the later 18th and early 19th century, with authors such as Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, William Thomas Beckford, Matthew Lewis, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson and George du Maurier.

The Castle Of Otranto tells the story of Manfred, lord of the castle, and his family. The book begins on the wedding-day of his sickly son Conrad and princess Isabella. Shortly before the wedding, however, Conrad is crushed to death by a gigantic helmet that falls on him from above. This inexplicable event is particularly ominous in light of an ancient prophecy, “that the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it”. Manfred, terrified that Conrad’s death signals the beginning of the end for his line, resolves to avert destruction by marrying Isabella himself while divorcing his current wife Hippolita, whom he feels has failed to bear him a proper heir.

 

However, as Manfred attempts to marry Isabella, she escapes to a church with the aid of a peasant named Theodore. Manfred orders Theodore’s death while talking to the friar Jerome, who ensured Isabella’s safety in the church. When Theodore removes his shirt to be killed, Jerome recognizes a marking below his shoulder and identifies Theodore as his own son. Jerome begs for his son’s life, but Manfred says Jerome must either give up the princess or his son’s life. They are interrupted by a trumpet and the entrance of knights from another kingdom who want to deliver Isabella. This leads the knights and Manfred to race to find Isabella.

Theodore, having been locked in a tower by Manfred, is freed by Manfred’s daughter Matilda. He races to the underground church and finds Isabella. He hides her in a cave and blocks it to protect her from Manfred and ends up fighting one of the mysterious knights. Theodore badly wounds the knight, who turns out to be Isabella’s father, Frederic. With that, they all go up to the castle to work things out. Frederic falls in love with Matilda and he and Manfred begin to make a deal about marrying each other’s daughters. Manfred, suspecting that Isabella is meeting Theodore in a tryst in the church, takes a knife into the church, where Matilda is meeting Theodore. Thinking his own daughter is Isabella, he stabs her. Theodore is then revealed to be the true prince of Otranto and Matilda dies, leaving Manfred to repent. Theodore becomes king and eventually marries Isabella because she is the only one who can understand his true sorrow.

The Castle of Otranto is the first supernatural English novel and one of the most influential works of Gothic fiction. It blends elements of realist fiction with the supernatural and fantastical, establishing many of the plot devices and character-types that would become typical of the Gothic novel: secret passages, clanging trapdoors, pictures beginning to move, and doors closing by themselves.^[1] The poet Thomas Gray told Walpole that the novel made “some of us cry a little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o’nights.”

In A Nuclear War Russia Would Target the San Andreas Fault and Yellostone’s Subsurface Volcano – 24 Oct 2018

‘US would be history if Russia nukes Yellowstone volcano with mega-bombs’ – expert

FILE PHOTO: A nuclear explosion in Mururoa atoll

 

Russia must develop the capability to destroy the US in a single swift blow if it wants to persuade the Americans to end the nuclear arms race and return to the negotiating table, military expert Konstantin Sivkov said.

In order to curb the aggression from the West, Moscow shouldn’t compete with Washington in number of nukes, Sivkov wrote in a new article. The president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems believes that an “asymmetrical response” would work much better for Russia, as it is able to produce nuclear weapons with a yield of more than 100 megatons.

https://giphy.com/embed/OjZJW6xiyg9yvia GIPHY

https://giphy.com/embed/OjZJW6xiyg9yvia GIPHY

If “areas with critically dangerous geophysical conditions in the US (like the Yellowstone Supervolcano or the San Andreas Fault)” are targeted by those warheads, “such an attack guarantees the destruction of the US as a state and the entire transnational elite,” he said.

The production of around 40 or 50 such mega-warheads for ICBMs or extra-long-range torpedoes would make sure that at least a few of them reach their target no matter how a nuclear conflict between the US and Russia develops, the expert said.

Such scenario “again makes a large-scale nuclear war irrational and reduces the chances of its breakout to zero,” Sivkov said.

https://giphy.com/embed/lPrDOKgCtYAdqvia GIPHY

The possession of such weapons by Russia is what would finally make Washington start talking to Moscow and give up on its sanctions policy towards Russia, the expert said.

Read more

Trump threatens to build up US nuclear arsenal until Russia, China ‘come to their senses’

On Monday, US President Donald Trump warned Russia and China that Washington intends to build up its nuclear arsenal until “people come to their senses.”

Trump reiterated his commitment to unilaterally abandon the landmark Intermediate Nuclear Forces in Europe (INF) treaty, saying that “Russia has not adhered to the agreement,” neither in form or in spirit.

Moscow decried the US plans, saying that an American withdrawal from the INF would “make the world more dangerous.”

The Russian presidential press-secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said that Trump’s words were “a de facto declaration of intent to launch an arms race,” adding that Russia would act to protect its national interests in view of statements like this.

In recent years, Moscow and Washington have repeatedly accused each other of violating the 1988 INF deal. While the US has alleged that Russia has developed missiles prohibited by the treaty, Russia insists that the American anti-missile systems deployed in Eastern Europe can actually be used to launch intermediate-range cruise missiles.

 

 Archive

Trump Transformed Into 20-Foot-Tall Hulk President After Being Doused With Job-Growth Chemical – Russians Asked to Intervene

WASHINGTON — Still overcome with shock and terror as they described the horrifying scene that had unfolded before them, numerous eyewitnesses confirmed Thursday that, after being accidentally exposed to an experimental job-growth chemical, President Donald Trump  has grotesquely mutated into a 20-foot-tall hulking monster president.

According to federal officials, the grisly metamorphosis took place during a tour of the Labor Department’s underground research and development lab, where a sudden interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve Bank put a pressure overload that caused a vat to rupture, soaking Trump in a highly unstable serum designed to expand the nation’s workforce especially the builders and construction workers who make infrastructure and walls. Sources said the president then underwent rapid, out-of-control growth, leaving him several times larger and uncontrollably aggressive.

“My God, it was horrible—the president let out this awful scream, a look of terror flashed through his eyes, and then his body started getting larger and larger, bursting through his suit coat and shredding his pants,” said Vice President Mike Pence, explaining how the cowering commander-in-chief fell to his knees and started convulsing after being doused, his head lashing back and forth and his voice dropping an octave with each pained, guttural moan. “A Secret Service agent ran over to try to help, but Trump threw him through a wall. After maybe a minute or two, his body became too big for the room, and the ceiling crashed down around us, and we all started running. That’s when we heard him start roaring something about corporate tax policy.”

“The amount of chemical he absorbed was meant to be used over an entire fiscal quarter,” Pence continued. “No man is capable of handling that kind of economic stimulation.”

Authorities at the scene said chunks of limestone and steel flew in every direction as Trump burst through the outer wall of the Labor Department headquarters and began charging west down Constitution Avenue. The rampaging president was seen smashing cars with his fists and tearing down power lines in rage as he made a direct path toward the Federal Reserve Board building, where several police units reportedly opened fire on him only to watch their bullets bounce harmlessly off his impervious skin which look like fish scales, but also like a brick wall.

According to witness accounts, the colossal hulk-like presidential monster then punched down the doors of the building, grabbed cowering Fed chair Jerome Hayden “Jay” Powell by the neck, and demanded in a deafening bellow that she cut interest rates to spur job growth before hurling his flimsy body into the nearby Reflecting Pool.

A call was put through to the Russian Embassy in Washington, and, indeed, directly to Putin in the Kremlin – to see if they could do anything to control Trump.  The Russians disingenuously claimed that they had no influence over Trump, and simply preferred him to H. Clinton. 

Labor Department scientists told reporters that just a single small dose of the chemical Trump was exposed to is capable of producing more than 600,000 jobs per month, enough to counteract even the worst recessions, but in great concentrations the caustic agent can be extremely volatile. Analysts noted that it has never before been deployed in such quantities, adding that the nation’s employment, production, and income outlook under the angry mutant president is beyond the scope of any economic theory.  Not only that, but he could probably build a wall on the border with Mexico himself in a month. 

“With such concentrated wage-stimulating and job-creating power inside of him, God only knows what the president might be capable of,” said Vice President Pence, explaining that Trump likely isn’t yet aware of his own strength, and could become even stronger if he learns to harness the enormous potential for GDP growth within his massive body. “He’s beyond our control now. We can only hope he learns to temper these powers and use them for economic good, because the entire free market is at his mercy.  Hulk-Trump could destroy Capitalism – or build a wall along the southern land border.”

“Dear God, what have we unleashed?” he added. “If he gets out into the private sector, we’re doomed.”

With local law enforcement seemingly powerless to stop him, the towering, muscle-bound president reportedly escaped the Beltway and bolted northward at a tremendous speed. Sources stated that Trump did not stop running until he reached the New York Stock Exchange, where he tore through a wall and began violently ringing the opening bell while screaming about foreign direct investment. According to those present, a visibly enraged Trump demanded more American jobs and less outsourcing, shouting “Buy, buy, buy!” and “No selling!” as he smashed video monitors and crushed any traders who did not immediately comply.

His feats of economic strength growing with his anger, the president is said to have then thrown a city bus into the Lower Manhattan offices of the Securities and Exchange Commission before proceeding to pick up several armored cars and violently shake them until the currency inside fell to the ground and was collected by passing consumers.

“You’re going to get tired of winning,” he bellowed, “you’re going to be winning so much!”

“President Trump has become a monstrous freak of economics, and he must be neutralized,” said U.S. National Guard chief Gen. Frank Grass, who is leading efforts to subdue the genetically altered head of the executive branch. “By carving a swath of destruction across the Northeast, he may have already created more infrastructure-repair jobs than American workers can fill. We have readied numerous armored divisions around the nation’s key financial and manufacturing assets, and we’ll be sending in a squadron of Apache attack helicopters to confront him directly. I have given the order to take him out if necessary.”

At press time, Trump was seen heading toward the Rio Grande and the Mexican border carrying sections of 20-foot titanium walls he collected passing through Pennsylvania. 
“Must build wall!” President Trump is heard to say over and over.  “Must build wall!”  Texas residents have been told to be on the lookout. 

Massachusetts: Casino Projects Draw More Women Into Labor Union Building Trades – by Saraya Wintersmith (WGBH) 18 Oct 2018

 

Pipefitter Savy Man-Doherty of Dorchester, Massachusetts

Meredith Nierman/WGBH News

By Saraya Wintersmith

October 18, 2018

 

Pipefitter Savy Man-Doherty says when most people meet her, they don’t realize she works on construction sites for a living. But at 5 feet 2 inches tall, the recently licensed journeyman solders pipes, wields power tools and works alongside men at what will become the Encore Boston Harbor casino in Everett.

It’s her dream job, said Man-Doherty.

“As a kid, my sister, my cousins, and I, all of us would go to the houses during family events and we would all just play with the tools, and I just knew as a kid … I was so interested in some type of building trades,” she recalled.

Prior to entering an apprenticeship program with the United Association of Boston Pipefitters Local 537, Man-Doherty, 35, said she struggled to pay the bills doing unfulfilling work.

“I wasn’t happy sitting at a desk all day,” she said. “I wanted to do something that was more hands-on, where I had a skilled trade where I can pick up something and be able to use it and not let anybody take that skill from me.”

During her first year training with the union, her pay doubled.

She’s part of what advocates hope is a growing trend in Massachusetts. She’s a woman of color, a recent apprenticeship graduate and one of more than 370 women who have worked on the $2.5 billion waterfront property scheduled to open next year.

Prior to entering an apprenticeship program with the United Association of Boston Pipefitters Local 537, Man-Doherty, 35, says she struggled to pay bills with an unfulfilling job.

Meredith Nierman/WGBH News

Women tradesmen advocacy groups hail the project as a model bringing diversity and inclusion to an industry once considered an exclusive “boys club.” The project is just shy of the goal of 6.9 percent women the state set back in 2011. That goal is bringing more women into the building trades.

“We’re really pleased and starting to see the results in terms of the increase in females in the state apprentice programs,” said Jill L. Griffin, director of workforce, suppliers and diversity at the Massachusetts Gaming Commission.

Pointing to the part of the 2011 gaming law that prioritized gender and racial diversity in building casinos, Griffin said she’s hoping the new workers trained and hired will still be employed after those projects are completed.

“This isn’t just about gaming, but it’s about any sector, any construction project,” she said.

The Gaming Commission, casino licensees and women’s advocacy groups have collaborated to reach out to women who may be interested in construction work. Funding flows through the commission, with the money coming from fees the licensees pay.

Brian Kelly, business manager of Pipefitters Local 537, said the outreach efforts are working. Even though his union has some of the lowest numbers of women recruits, he predicted women like Man-Doherty will encourage other women to try out the trades.

“Rather than gender, color, or race,” success among pipefitters is more about the personality of applicant, Kelly said in a phone interview. Kelly’s list of necessary qualities for pipefitters includes: mechanically inclined, intelligent, punctual with a good work ethic, possessing the physical aptitude to move large objects, and not afraid to get dirty. “The biggest thing is, it’s not glamorous,” he added.

Man-Doherty says that since becoming a tradeswoman she’s gained a higher level of job satisfaction, more than doubled her pay, and purchased a home.

Meredith Nierman/WGBH News

Data from the Massachusetts Division of Apprenticeship Standards suggests the outreach efforts are attracting women who want to do the work. Susan Moir, long-time advocate and research director at UMass Boston’s Labor Resource Center, said the agency’s latest quarterly tally shows there are more women entering union apprenticeships than there have been in the last five years.

“Last year, in union apprenticeship in Massachusetts, we’ve gone from 484 women to 625 women, and we’re now at about 8.3 percent women,” she said.

Moir also works with the Roxbury-based New England Center for Tradeswomen’s Equity.

The group won a Gaming Commission outreach grant and set a goal of 20 percent women in the construction workforce by the year 2020.

Nationally, women makeup about only 9 percent of the construction workforce, but that figure from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics includes management and non-union occupations that Moir and the tradeswomen’s center said don’t count in Massachusetts.

Moir, 70, who was once an aspiring iron worker, admits the 20 percent by 2020 goal is ambitious. But she said she’s inspired by the mental image of women in Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan waking up early for construction work with lunch pails and hard hats, and “the good wages that they can bring home and keep in the community, the girls who will see them go to work, the strength that comes from having this kind of job where you can really support your family and have a future for your kids.”

Man-Doherty said she’s living proof a life can change with a well-paying job.

“I got a house that I’m happy to wake up to. I got cars that I have that [make me] happy every time I look out the driveway. I’m happy I’m able to have a dinner and everybody’s smiling, and their stomachs are full, and they’re watching football on Sundays,” she said with a chuckle. “It’s a good feeling.”

Archive

Seventy Years of the New York Times Describing Saudi Royals as Reformers – by Abdullah Al-Arian

In honor of Thomas Friedman’s latest love letter to the ruling dynasty in Saudi Arabia, here is seventy years worth of the New York Times describing the royal family as reformers.

1953:

The article describes King Saud as “more progressive and international-minded than his autocratic father.”

1957:

This piece does not refer to Saudi Arabia specifically, but it is an incredible headline nevertheless.

1960:

“King Saud has increasingly assumed the role of liberal champion of constitutional reform.”

Note: The Saudi constitution was adopted by royal decree in 1992.

1962:

“The Oil Genie and the Sheikh” offers a tour of Gulf palaces that marvels at their “gilded furniture of impressive ugliness.” Here is also a page from the photo spread of Oman and Bahrain with the caption “’heaven on earth’—air-conditioned palaces, Cadillacs, girls.”

               

1963:

During the so-called “Arab Cold War” the United States supported the Saudi royal family as a bulwark against Nasserism. This piece celebrates Crown Prince Faisal’s “burst of social reform and economic development.”

1963:

“With his older brother no longer looking over his shoulder . . .”

1964:

“He is a man who has gained nearly absolute power without really wanting it.”

1964:

In this article, King Faisal is described as “ascetic, with only one wife, who lives on grilled meat and boiled vegetables and makes a fetish of moderation.”

1975:

An obituary reads, “Faisal, Rich and Powerful, Led Saudis Into 20th Century.”

1975:

Faisal’s successor, King Khalid, was a “moderating force.”

                       

1975:

Two more reform-themed headlines from 1975, including one on “planting the seeds of a parliamentary system in the kingdom.”

1979:

An epic lede here from 1979: “His black Trans-Am sports car creeps along the Corniche Road on the edge of the Red Sea. To the left, skyscrapers jab into the humid air, a sight made more impressive by the desolation surrounding the ancient city of Jidda.”

 

1982:

“King Fahd has been depicted as the leading figure in a progressive, modernizing faction within the tradition-minded monarchy.”

1991-1992:

Operation Desert Storm and the mobilization of US troops to the kingdom placed Saudi reform under more of a spotlight, as made clear in these headlines featuring “major political changes,” “modernizers,” “governmental reform,” “and other political reforms.”

1992:

Despite prior reports on the ebb and flow of the fortunes of reformers, the appearance of continuity remained crucial: “In making the changes, King Fahd is following previous generations of Saudi rulers who had also moved toward modernization since King Abdelaziz united a vast territory populated by feuding tribal leaders into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 60 years ago.”

                    

1996:

Thomas Friedman makes his first appearance, lauding King Fahd as a “bulldozer” in tackling political problems on behalf of the United States.

2000:

“Saudi Heir Urges Reform, and Turn From US”

                       

2002:

Shortly after the attacks of 11 September 2001, Friedman models “2 futures” for Saudi Arabia, concluding “Which school would I bet on? Ask me in five years.”

                      

2003:

Luckily, we would not have to wait that long. On eve of US invasion of Iraq, Friedman makes the case that war “could drive reform in the Arab/Muslim world.”

                    

2005:

“For Abdullah, who has fashioned himself as a reformer in a land where conforming to tradition is a virtue, the challenge now is to make good on longstanding promises for change.”

                      

2007:

Employing its narrative of reform as a product of fits and starts, this article reports on “stalled” reforms before listing the ways in which “some change has occurred.”

              

        

2007:

Another piece about a land of contradictions: “The (Not So) Eagerly Modern Saudi.”

        .               

2007:

“Saudi King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in Desert”

                    

2009:

Apparently, a cabinet reshuffle can sometimes be reform.

2009:

This editorial welcomes the reshuffle.

2009:

“More generally, the reform agenda has drawn momentum from King Abdullah’s personal popularity . . .”

                      

2009:

Announcing that local elections have been delayed for two years, this report nonetheless lauds the king’s reformist intentions before concluding with the following quote: “You have a reform-oriented king trying to push in the direction of reform, but you have a non-reform-oriented structure that is close to impossible to change.”

      

2010:

Columnist Maureen Dowd offers her reflections from a visit to Riyadh: “Yet by the Saudi’s premodern standards, the 85-year-old King Abdullah, with a harem of wives, is a social revolutionary.”

      

      

2010:

While Saudi society is divided, this article claims the monarch’s sympathies lie with the reformers.

                        

2011:

During the height of the Arab uprisings: “In Saudi Arabia, Royal Funds Buy Peace for now.”

                           

2012:

“King Faisal, in a rush to modernize his realm, created Saudi state television in the 1960s, and that bold step is widely believed to have led to his assassination.”

                         

2012:

The Twitter revolution reaches Saudi shores: “Twitter for us is like a parliament, but not the kind of parliament that exists in this region.”

                       

2013:

Reporting from the front lines of the Arab uprisings in Dubai, Friedman calls Saudi King Abdullah “a real progressive” and offers more “data” on the Twitter revolution.

                         

2015:

King Abdullah’s obituary describes him as “a cautious reformer amid great changes in the Middle East.”

2015:

Friedman on what messes him up in reporting on Saudi Arabia.

2016: 

Saudi Arabia’s economic revolution offers “tantalizing hints at even broader reforms.”

2017:

Saudi reforms include smart robots.

                          

2017:

From earlier this month, this Friedman piece includes such gems as “he is much more McKinsey than Wahhabi — much more a numbers cruncher than a Quran thumper.”

                            

2017:

And finally, the one that inspired it all, a hagiographic ode to royal reform that represents seven decades of strategic policy objectives barely concealed beneath recycled cultural tropes.

 

Archive

400 Days in Space – US Secret Space Drone X-37B – by Leonard David – 18 Oct 2018

X-37B Military Space Plane Wings Past 400 Days on Latest Mystery Mission

By Leonard David, Space.com’s Space Insider Columnist | October 18, 2018 07:30am ET

 

Artist’s illustration of the U.S. Air Force’s robotic X-37B space plane carrying out its mysterious duties in Earth orbit.

Credit: Boeing

The latest mystery mission of the U.S. Air Force’s robotic X-37B space plane has now passed the 400-day mark .

This mission — known as Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-5) — was rocketed into Earth orbit on Sept. 7, 2017, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The uncrewed space plane is carrying out secretive duties during the X-37B program’s fifth flight. [The X-37B Space Plane: 6 Surprising Facts]

Flight duration

Each X-37B/OTV mission has set a new flight-duration record for the program:

• OTV-1 began April 22, 2010, and concluded on Dec. 3, 2010, after 224 days in orbit.
• OTV-2 began March 5, 2011, and concluded on June 16, 2012, after 468 days on orbit.
• OTV-3 chalked up nearly 675 days in orbit before finally coming down on Oct. 17, 2014.
• OTV-4 conducted on-orbit experiments for 718 days during its mission, extending the total number of days spent in space for the OTV program at that point to 2,085 days.

What’s up?

Most X-37B payloads and activities are classified. The only OTV-5 payload revealed to date by Air Force officials is the Advanced Structurally Embedded Thermal Spreader, or ASETS-II.

Developed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), this cargo is testing experimental electronics and oscillating heat pipes for long-duration stints in the space environment. According to AFRL, the three primary science objectives are to measure the initial on-orbit thermal performance, to gauge long-duration thermal performance and to assess any lifetime degradation.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the U.S. Air Force’s robotic X-37B space plane on Sept. 7, 2017.

Credit: SpaceX

Landing site

When the space plane will land is unknown. The last X-37B mission, OTV-4, touched down at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 7, 2017 — a first for the program. All prior missions had ended with a tarmac touchdown at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The next X-37B mission,B OTV-6, may lift off in 2019 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas-V (501) rocket. Launch would be from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex-41.

Reusable vehicles

The Air Force’s X-37B “fleet” consists of two known reusable vehicles, both of which were built by Boeing at several locations in Southern California, including Huntington Beach, Seal Beach and El Segundo. 

The program transitioned to the U.S. Air Force in 2004 after earlier funded research efforts by Boeing, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Looking like a miniature version of NASA’s now-retired space shuttle orbiter, the military space plane is 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.6 feet (2.9 m) tall, with a wingspan of nearly 15 feet (4.6 m). The X-37B space plane has a payload bay measuring 7 feet by 4 feet (2.1 by 1.2 m), which can be outfitted with a robotic arm. The X-37B has a launch weight of 11,000 lbs. (4,990 kilograms) and is powered on orbit by gallium-arsenide solar cells with lithium-ion batteries.

On-orbit duties

The missions of the X-37B space planes are carried out under the auspices of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, and mission control for OTV flights is handled by the 3rd Space Experimentation Squadron at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado. This squadron oversees operations of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle.

This Schriever Air Force Base unit is billed as the Air Force Space Command’s premier organization for space-based demonstrations, pathfinders and experiment testing. It gathers information on objects high above Earth and carries out other intelligence-gathering duties.

And that may be a signal as to what the robotic craft is doing — both looking down at Earth and upward.

Repeating ground tracks

Ted Molczan, a Toronto-based satellite analyst, told Inside Outer Space that OTV-5’s orbit at the start of August was about 197 miles (317 kilometers) high, inclined 54.5 degrees to the equator. Its ground track repeated nearly every five days, after 78 revolutions.

“Maneuvers on August 18 and 21 raised its orbit by 45 miles (74 kilometers) which caused its ground track to exactly repeat every three days, after 46 revolutions. It was still in that orbit when last observed, on September 8, by Alberto Rango, from Rome, Italy,” Molczan said.

“Repeating ground tracks are very common,” he added, “especially for spacecraft that observe the Earth. I do not know why OTV has repeating ground tracks.”

Leonard David is author of “Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet,” published by National Geographic. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel series “Mars.” A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. This version of the story published on Space.com.

Four Books in My Bed – 18 Oct 2018

6:47 am

The darkness outside makes me think of night, yet it is the break of day.  I went to my bed to smooth things out and retrieved four books near the western wall. 

‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle’ by Washington Irving, ‘The Red Badge of Courage’ by Stephen Craane, ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ by Jonathan Swift, ‘Ivanhoe’ by Walter Scott are the four books that were nestled among the jostled covers and the red body pillow. 

The books are now piled on my desk in front of me, or, to the right and at my elbow.  They are the Great Illustrated Classics versions that have a simplified abridged and retold text and an illustration on every facing page.  I love the series.  I love the black and white line drawing illustrations by Pablo Marcos studios.  Pablo Marcos was an comic book artist whose work was widely seen in mainstream comic books in the 1970’s.  

I find it interesting to see how the artist graphically depicts the scenes that are illustrated.  The written story is like a Cliff Notes plot summary with little charm.  But the drawings can be delightful.  I come back to these books again and again and find pleasure when I open to any page.  I have the books near me when something is loading on the laptop, or when Youtube has a long commercial that I mute and let play so Youtube can get there advertising money.   I catch up on the classics. 

I first remember the Great Illustrated Classics coming to may attention when my sister gave my son a set of about a dozen books from the series that were printed in a small pocket size paperback.  Like a book snob that I was then I turned my nose up at the lowbrow retelling of the stories, but I had a guilty pleasure in looking at the pictures.  I was a stage then as a twenty-something who read ‘serious’ books that I should be reading books that didn’t have any pictures. 

But, I love pictures.  I love line drawings.  So I couldn’t keep away.  I often carried the little books with me to read on the subway train or on a bus.  The simple retellings gave me a chance to review books I’d already read, and think about them again. 

About ten years ago I saw the books online from the publisher in two large sets.  One for boys, and one for girls.  I ordered both sets and have an almost complete set of the Great Illustrated Classics – at least the great books section.  I still bring these picture books with me when I’m on the subway and copy the pictures to practice my own drawing, and to get inside the artists head through imitation. 

I like being able to find the text of a classic work, say ‘Ivanhoe’ by Walter Scott.  I look the text up on Project Gutenberg display it on my 17″ laptop screen with large type, and I might also look up an audio reading of the text on Librivox.  So I have picture books, story readers, large print text….all I need is a lunchbox with the stories heroes pictured. 

Who wants yesterday’s papers? Remembering Alt Weekly – The Boston Phoenix – RIP

 

Alt Weekly – Boston Phoenix – One Year Gone 

After 47-years as a newspaper aimed at an alternative audience to the major news outlets, the Phoenix folded in March 2013.

 End comes for Boston Phoenix, alternative voice since the ’60s ( 15 March 2013 )

In a poignant signal of a fast-changing media landscape, The Boston Phoenix sent out a short and simple tweet Thursday afternoon: “Thank you Boston. Good night and good luck.” With that terse dispatch, the groundbreaking Boston alternative weekly, which only six months ago reinvented itself from tabloid newspaper into glossy magazine, put a final punctuation mark on its 47-year history. Its current issue, dated March 15, 2013 will be its last.

New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean, one of many prominent journalists whose careers started at the Boston Phoenix, said: “It’s like finding out your college has gone bankrupt and is gone. I am a child of the alt-weekly world, and I feel like it has played such an important role in journalism as we know it today.”

Employees at the Phoenix were told of the closing by owner and publisher Stephen M. Mindich Thursday at what evolved into a tearful, emotional meeting. It is expected that about 40 employees will be let go within the week and another 10 or so soon after, according to executive editor Peter Kadzis, who described the general reaction among Phoenix staffers as “shell-shocked.” Several people were crying during the meeting, according to one person who was there.

Employees will not get any severance pay.
“We’ll get paid for this week and if we’re owed vacation time, but no severance,” said staff writer Chris Faraone. “It’s sad, but also not. It’s not an anger thing. Everyone’s really proud. We went as hard as you could to the end.”

The Phoenix established its alternative reputation in the 1970s through its coverage of the local arts scene, especially rock music and movies, as well as with aggressive media criticism and coverage of local and national politics. Its target audience, even after its recent shift to a glossy magazine, never shifted: young, educated, active both socially and politically, and childless. You were more likely to find a sex column than a parenting one in the Phoenix.

Sister publications in Providence and Portland, Maine, will stay in business, but WFNX.com, the Phoenix Media/Communication Corp.’s online radio station, will not continue in its present form, its fate to be decided shortly. The company’s custom publishing unit and MassWeb Printing operation, based in Auburn, will remain open.

…………..

The long, slow decline of alt-weeklies
By Jack Shafer
March 15, 2013

Alternative weekly colossus Boston Phoenix cracked and fell yesterday, ceasing publication after 47 years. According to a Phoenix executive quoted in the obituary in today’s Boston Globe, the alternative weekly was losing more than $1 million a year, and a format switch last fall from newsprint to glossy had failed to attract the sort of national advertising it desired.

Once one of the leading alt-weeklies in the nation, the dead paper leaves behind $1.2 million in debt and roughly $500,000 in assets. The fact that its owner didn’t — or couldn’t — sell the publication to cover some of its debt signals the illness of the greater alternative weekly market. Like its daily newspaper counterpart, the alt-weekly has enjoyed a terrible half-decade of plummeting revenues, circulation and page counts in the 100-plus markets currently served. One large chain that owned papers in Chicago, Washington, Atlanta, Charlotte and elsewhere filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and was eventually spun apart, but that financial disaster was as much about clueless proprietors overleveraging themselves as it was the decay of the alt-weekly business model.

The formula, pioneered by the Village Voice in the 1950s, finessed by the Phoenix in the 1960s and perfected by the Chicago Reader, the Phoenix New Times and others in the 1970s, became such a cinch that know-nothing bar owners and recent college graduates (or dropouts!) eventually made millions off it. Some papers, like the Phoenix New Times, built immense chains from the links they forged and acquired. The formula connected underserved readers with overcharged advertisers in both compact, urban settings like New York and Washington and sunbelt expanses like Phoenix and Dallas. In 2005, the two largest alt-weekly chains, anchored respectively by the Phoenix New Times and the Voice, combined to create a company valued by the participants at $400 million, with annual revenues of $180 million. Newspapers started in bar booths had become big business, but like many of the daily newspaper merger and acquisition deals going down during same period, this deal also proved too rich.

Many former alt-weekly editors would like to persuade you that their cutting take on city politics and the arts combined with their dedication to the feature form won readers. Actually, it was the whole gestalt that made the publications work. Comprehensive listings paired with club and concert ads to both entertain and help readers plan their week. Classified ads, especially the personals, often provided better reading than the journalistic fare in the front of the book. No better venue for apartment rentals existed; even people who had long-term leases used the housing ads to fantasize. Even the display ads, purchased mostly by local retailers and service providers, were useful to readers.

In most cities — and eventually in all — the alt-weekly was priced at zero for readers, prefiguring the free-media feast of the Web, and these publications became cultural signifiers. Bob Roth, one of my bosses when I edited Washington City Paper (1985-1995), told me to watch people as they picked it up from a street box and walk away with it: Almost to a one, they would hold it in their hands or fold it under their arms as if to display the paper’s flag so onlookers would know they were City Paper people, whatever that meant.

The alt-weekly collapse came in spurts over the last decade, as a market shift destroyed whole advertising sectors. Craigslist destroyed the classifieds — housing, for sale, services (sex and otherwise), et al. — and the lucrative personals and matches ads fled for the Web, too. Depending on the paper, classifieds had amounted to anywhere between 20 percent to 50 percent of revenues. Now, that money is mostly gone.

Mostly gone, too, is record-company advertising. Before that business was disrupted, the labels would give record stores — remember them? — big bags of “co-op” money to advertise the new releases, and even reissues! Video stores — remember them? — were big advertisers, too. Amazon has helped to clean out whole categories of retailing that once advertised in alt-weeklies, such as electronics, books, music and cameras. Big-box stores have displaced many of the indie retailers that long provided advertising backbone. And while Hollywood still places ads, it’s nothing compared to the heyday. To give you a sense of how precipitous the drop, the smallest edition Washington City Paper printed in 2006 contained 112 pages, with 128-pagers and 136-pagers being the most common. In 2012, the page counts ordinarily ranged between 56 and 72.

These retail shifts have made it harder for publishers to distribute their weeklies. Before Tower Records went under, a paper could drop thousands of copies a week at the store’s many locations, and the stacks would disappear in a day or two. The video stores that once distributed them? Gone. Borders Books? Gone. What’s equally alarming is that some surviving retailers now say they’d rather use that tiny space by the door or bathroom where the newspaper rack once stood to sell their own goods.

The advertising shift from newsprint to Web is mirrored by a cultural shift. In my mind, the alt-weekly remains the perfect boredom-alleviation device. Waiting for a subway train? Pull one from your bag and it will entertain you. Your girlfriend is late for your date? The paper will keep you occupied. That beer and bag of nuts not distracting from life’s troubles as you mope on a barstool? The alt-weekly saves the day again.

But even a human fossil must concede that the smartphone trumps the alt-weekly as a boredom killer. How does a wedge of newsprint compete with an affordable messaging device that ferries games, social media apps, calendars, news, feature films, scores, coupons and a library’s worth of music and reading material? Ask a young person his opinion and he’ll tell you that nothing says “geezer” like a newspaper, be it daily or alt-weekly.

What’s changed, and what probably convinced the Phoenix to exit, is that the papers are no longer a 30 percent (or higher) margin business, and that lost business is not returning. Publishers who hope to survive will have to content themselves with 10 percent margins. They will have to work harder to maintain advertising categories where they still have a comparative advertising advantage, such as food and restaurants, which usually require a face-to-face meeting between an ad representative and an owner to make a sale.

It’s a cliché, but I’ll toss it out there anyway: Every newspaper and website needs to compete in the events business. The smarter papers are already there, and if they’re lucky they’ll hit the jackpot the Austin Chronicle has with its decades-old SXSW business. And it doesn’t require much insight to urge alt-weekly publishers to continue building out their Web components.

If this sounds like a campaign for every alt-weekly to slip itself inside a noose like the Phoenix tied for itself, I apologize. Even in their diminished state, these papers still break news, publish terrific features, drive the politicians at City Hall nuts, cover the arts smartly, and do well most of the things they did well before the commercial decline. They just don’t do as much of it. So, pour yourself a drink and spend some time with an alt-weekly this weekend. You’ll rue the day they vanish.

by Steve Annear

Former Phoenix Reporters Launch Online Alt-Weekly ( http://www.fvckthemedia.com/issue29/frontpage ) With The Phoenix long gone, and the red boxes that once held it obsolete from city streets, three former staff members of the historic alt-weekly have launched an online supplement “inspired by the spirit” of the “recently defunct” magazine.

“The Media,” headed by Phoenix Assistant Music Editor Liz Pelly, with help from one of the weekly’s former designers, hopes to put back in place coverage of the alternative arts, culture, music and news, along with grassroots activism, that was lost with the Phoenix’s farewell. According to the alt-weekly’s mission statement: “The Media aims to bridge the gap between underground presses and mainstream media. Our contributors are often embedded in the communities they cover, but seasoned and skeptical enough to keep the writing balanced, critical, and fair.”

The site was launched within a month of the idea’s conception, and was designed by Faye Orlove, who used to be a production artist at the paper-turned-glossy magazine. Orlove’s brother stepped up to help the duo put the actual website together after they figured out how they wanted it to look, which in the end, they decided, should be like a newspaper. From there, they started putting together editorial content. The online publication says of its choice in aesthetic that they wanted “our content to resonate on its own merit, free of frivolity and flash, and grounded by a homepage that’s striking in its radical simplicity.”

In its debut issue, “The Media” focuses on what was lost when The Phoenix finally folded, but also includes articles about the marijuana industry, and a feature on singer-songwriter Laura Stevenson. Aside from that, there is also some insight in regards to the aftermath of the Boston bombings from former Phoenix Editor-in-Chief Carly Carioli.

Pelly says she is glad there will be a place for writers to submit their work, and hopes down the line they will be able to conjure up some cash and possibly launch fundraising efforts in order to pay contributors. She admits that the online publication won’t ever replace what the Phoenix offered, but the magazine closing shop is what drove the group to launch the site. Pelly says the break from writing for work, and strictly writing because she wants to, has been refreshing, however. “I have been working in the professional journalism world for so long, it just feels almost like less of a burden to do something not for work or for your job, and just because you really want to be doing it,” she says. “I’m also obsessed with the way that it looks and the design of it…and hopefully people will think it’s a viable publication. Sometimes with a lot of news sites, things can be really distracting and conflicting.” When asked what she hopes people take from the new site, Pelly says she would like to see it become a successful medium that people can pitch to, which will also be community supported. “I hope it will also reach beyond being a Boston publication, too,” she says.

Fellow writers have already started reaching out to the “staff,” offering up shared space for the team to meet and discuss future issues of “The Media,” according to contributor and former Phoenix staff writer ArielShearer. “I hadn’t considered shared space. It’s all happening really fast, and I don’t know what happens next, but it would be great to have space for editorial meetings.”

by Jim Romesko

Where Boston Phoenix journalists landed

Former Boston Phoenix executive editor Peter Kadzis says of the gray day that the 47-year-old weekly paper closed: “At the moment — and still in retrospect — it had a dream-like quality. There was that pull between the unconscious (can this really be happening?) and the conscious (yes, it is!). There were a few tears. A lot of sniffles. A general feeling of numbness.”

He recalls writer Chris Faraone lighting a strong joint — “that provided a flash of levity” — and then about a dozen staffers heading to the An Tua Nua bar for drinks. The rest of the day “was pretty depressing,” says Faraone. “I think I was there [at the bar] last, and that was probably like 7 or 8 at night. The great detail, of course, is that An Tua Nua just closed too. Like a fucking plague over there.”

The Phoenix folded on March 14, five months ago tomorrow. Here’s what some of the alt-weekly’s staffers are doing now and their thoughts on the paper’s demise.

Carly Carioli, who was editor-in-chief, writes:

My two biggest concerns in the aftermath of the Phoenix closing were 1) to give the editorial staff a way of communicating directly with each other outside of the paper; and 2) to do everything possible to help people get new gigs. As a group, we quickly put together a google doc where we all shared job openings, contacts, headhunters, and agencies. It was a real collective networking effort, and I think there were at least a few jobs that came directly out of that.

That Google doc was titled “FUck you we used to be the Phoenix.” (Yes, it’s FU, not Fu.) “It was also immensely helpful to have a network of Phoenix alumni to turn to,” says Carioli. “There were dozens of friends and strangers who reached out or responded to cold-calls on behalf of our staffers. Some were in a position to offer freelance assignments, others were able to give tips on unlisted job. There was a long-ago former art director who ended up hiring two of our best people.”

He adds: “I was one of the very lucky ones — I was talking to potential employers within 24 hours of the announcement that we were closing. And ultimately I started at [the Globe’s] Boston.com the day after I left the Phoenix.” In late July he resigned and joined Boston magazine as executive editor./CONTINUES

A few of the journalists decided to start new ventures – or revive old projects – after the Phoenix folded. “It took about 36 hours after the final Phoenix ‘send-off’ for me to start getting itchy,” says Michael Marotta, “so I took an old blog off a Blogger platform, which I had named Vanyaland, and started posting there again. It was created around 2008 to give me a proper outlet from the Boston Herald, where I was (frustrated) at the time and wanted to ramble about music and trashy reality TV.”

The site was reborn in May — it now has seven contributors who once freelanced for the Phoenix — and “the response has been huge,” says Marotta.
( http://hereandsphere.com/ )
Did he consider working “a regular job” after his time at the Phoenix?

Not really. I flirted with a certain big company, but my heart was never really into it and the fit definitely wasn’t right. I’m past the point where I ever want to work for someone else, and in 2013 there’s really no need to. Independent online media, at least concerning music, has more credibility in this city right now than the traditional dinosaurs. Their attempts to “get younger” are just facsimiles of what the blogs and indie websites are already doing. Marotta notes that “a lot has happened to Boston – and the world – since mid-March [and] it breaks my heart a little bit that the Phoenix isn’t around to filter through the bullshit and tell it like it is. But I think anyone that has ever worked for the Boston Phoenix always considers themselves a part of it, and that spirit lives on in how they approach and execute their work, regardless of where they are or who they are working for.”

A week after the Phoenix closed, S.I. Rosenbaum interviewed for a “content provider.” She thought it was a freelance copyediting position, but the company offered her a fulltime job. She took it “and was promptly totally miserable.” It wasn’t the company’s fault, she says.

“It was just a huge shock after the Phoenix newsroom. I couldn’t deal with the civility, the stable personalities, the swank office furniture, or with no longer being part of a journalistic operation. People were telling me to get used to it, that journalism jobs were over, that I should be happy editing content for Home Depot.” But she ignored them and started looking for a better job. “I called up New York Mag, Texas Monthly, and Boston magazine. TM never got back to me, but NYMag was interested, and so was BoMag. They were interested enough that I gave notice at the content company and never looked back. “In the end, BoMag made me the first offer, and a very good one. By that time the bombings had happened, and I was more than happy to stay in my hometown what looks to be the newsiest era Boston has had in decades. I have the chance to shape coverage about the city I love, and the freedom to do longform journalism – not to mention the ability to make rent every month. I’m thrilled.”

She adds: “At the Phoenix we were earning so little, and working under such bare-bones conditions, that the work itself had to be our main compensation. If we weren’t having fun making our magazine the way we wanted to, working on projects that made us happy, there was no point to being there at all. And that’s not something I’m willing to give up now that I’m being paid a living wage.”

David Bernstein also landed at Boston magazine, as a contributing editor. (He does some work for WGBH, too.) About two weeks after the Phoenix folded, Bernstein was the first to report – on his personal blog – that Boston Mayor Tom Menino wouldn’t run for re-election.

“I was a fairly valuable brand” – especially after breaking the Menino news – and it became clear it would be a huge political year, “so, several outlets, including BoMag and GBH, reached out to have conversations with me.” He signed with both.

There was something special about working at the Phoenix, feeling that you were part of putting out something that you could at some level feel was valuable and important, and upholding a certain tradition. And, although I tend to keep mostly to myself when I work — whether on staff or as a freelancer/”contributor — I like being around smart, incisive, clever people who are engaged in the world, which was always the case at the Phoenix.

I asked about the city missing its alt-weekly.

“Boston without the Phoenix? A disengaged and disconnected media wasteland of conformity and pandering, where the occasional talented journalist toils futilely within deadening constraints before succumbing to the lure of a PR job that pays the bills. But that’s probably a slightly too pessimistic view. Slightly.”

I asked former Phoenix media critic Dan Kennedy — he left the paper to teach in 2005 — the same question. “The effect of its demise has been incalculable,” he says. “Its absence after the Boston Marathon bombing and, now, during the first wide-open Boston mayoral campaign in 20 years is a terrible loss. The Boston Globe is about to be sold, and the Phoenix’s take would have been definitive. I don’t know how you make up for it. The era of the big-city alt-weekly seems to have passed.”

Former executive editor Kadzis, now a WGBH News regular contributor, adds: “The demise of the Boston Phoenix has left a hole in the city’s media fabric, but Phoenix talent is still enriching the scene. It’s just not concentrated in a single place.”

I was at the Phoenix just shy of 25 years, so leaving there felt a bit like leaving home when I was in my early 20s: equal parts exciting and scary. What I miss are my colleagues: the crazy driven salespeople, the cooler-than-cool graphic designers, the writers who constantly second guess themselves to make sure they got things right, and the know-it-all copy editors who are truly the unsung heroes of our business.

Jacqueline Houton started as managing editor of The Improper Bostonian six days after The Phoenix folded. (She had been M.E. there, too.) “I just felt extremely lucky to land something so soon,” she says. “I applied for one other position and was asked in for an interview, but by that point I’d already accepted the position at the Improper.”

What Houton misses about the Phoenix: “The muckraking spirit, the creative freedom, and the incredibly talented, weird, and wonderful team.”

“When most people lose their jobs, even they don’t give a shit,” says former Phoenix staff writer Chris Faraone. “When we lost our jobs, everyone from you to the New Yorker had something to say about the situation. It seems a bit overblown – no doubt. But the place really was that special.

“Money was always tight, so we wouldn’t always be able to bring in freelancers and interns who we wanted there full-time, but they stuck around anyway, and in a lot of cases became part of the family. I’m one of those people, as I started freelancing hip-hop articles for the paper about six months before coming on as a staff writer.”

About 10 minutes after word got out that the Phoenix was closing, Faraone got a text from the owner of Dig Boston; he wanted to talk about Faraone’s next move. (He started his career there — when it was called Weekly Dig — in 2004.)

“I decided that it’s best to stay mostly independent for now, but to also work with the Dig to develop young writers, and to keep the alt spirit alive locally.” The Dig has published his series on City of Somerville corruption, which he started working on with other journalists last September. “So far, our work has yielded some significant results,” he says. He was asked to write the Dig’s cover story after the Boston Marathon bombing. “I didn’t even have to think about it; less than 24 hours later, I filed this story, flashing back between my experience in NY on 9/11, and what I saw in Boston following the marathon attack. Coincidentally, the Dig had picked up some Phoenix ad dollars, and was bringing back a feature well after years of not having one. My bombing story wound up marking the return of long form to the paper.” He also wrote about the Marathon bombing for the American Prospect and Racialicious and put his work into an ebook titled “Heartbreak Hell.”

“It’s sold pretty well on Kindle, even charting a few times, but more importantly it’s been read tens of thousands of times in this kickass free format that I did with help from a few friends. Looks great on any device.” He’s also working his next book, “I Killed Breitbart.”

Longtime arts editor Jon Garelick says that since the Phoenix closed, “I’ve just been trying to get a new work rhythm going where I’m freelancing and also looking for work.” He notes that “the Globe has been really responsive to my pitches” and “I’m now doing work for people who used to work for me and still like me, which is nice.” Freelancing has kept him busy, but “it’s very isolating. You’ve got to remind yourself to leave the house once in a while otherwise you won’t go out. …I’d be happy to fully employed again.”

…………

Peter Kadzis gave me this information:

“Kristen Goodfriend, the overall art and design director, is working/consulting with the Portland and Providence Phoenixes to train them on maximizing editorial design. Lindy Raso, the receptionist and general go-to person, is now the office manager at The Weekly Dig. …Staffer Alexandra Cavallo is at Metro Boston. …. Kevin Banks, deputy art director, and Shaula Clark, managing editor, are at The Pohly Company. Liz Pelly, the assistant music editor, has started an online alternative paper, The Media.”
Re: Alt Weekly – Boston Phoenix – One Year Gone
by Susan Orlean
Sorln (nospam) msn.com (unverified) 11 Feb 2014
I attended the University of Michigan, but I got my real education at alternative newsweeklies. That’s where I learned to write, to report, and to think of myself as a journalist; that’s where I grew up. Even now, many years out from my last newsweekly job, which was at the Boston Phoenix, I still think of myself as a product of the alt-weekly world. And it was a wonderful world. We didn’t make much money, but we made up for that by enjoying a certain amount of freedom in what we wrote and how we wrote about it, and by having the conviction that we were doing something a little better than what was being done at conventional newspapers. In many cases, that arrogance was unearned, but the sense of mission and adventure was real. We could write ten thousand words about amyl nitrate (which I actually did) or cults or Hmong refugees or corruption if we felt the story was good. Everyone was young (or youngish). We were excited about being writers or editors. Working at an alternative newsweekly felt mischievous and disruptive and nimble, and it was as close to feeling like I was in a rock band as I’ll probably ever get.

When I went to work at the Phoenix, in 1982, its offices were in a ratty old building at the end of the otherwise glamorous Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay. I don’t mean ratty in a figurative sense, either: there were rat traps tucked into most of the corners and nooks, and they weren’t ironic. The office had all the polish and orderliness of a very bad yard sale late in the afternoon. Everyone was shaggy. There were, as one would expect in a roiling workplace full of young folk, a million desperate romances and personal dramas and the like, but everyone was also very serious about the work. Back then, the Boston Globe seemed stuffy and self-important, and the Phoenix set itself up as the scrappy anti-Globe, more tuned into street culture and the arts; funnier, looser, cooler. I did stories on a crazy array of subjects: how Miami had been reborn, how much I loved giving parties, Ginsu knives, and a music festival in Jamaica. Of course, many of us secretly hoped that a big paper like the Globe might scoop us up, eventually. I interviewed for a job there not long after I started working at the Phoenix, and the editor who met with me warned me that the paper, as a rule, didn’t hire from alternative newsweeklies since we didn’t have a work ethic and didn’t understand how to behave in a professional way—as if we were drinking beer and getting high all day and still managing to put out a pretty good newspaper every week. I didn’t get the job, of course, but I realized then that our silly nose-thumbing at the Globe was equalled only by its silly nose-thumbing at us.

It was so much fun. And it was inspiring. By the time I arrived, the Phoenix had already graduated a whole bunch of writers who had gone on to become big deals at bigger publications, and there were staff writers who were winning awards and recognition. The paper was big and fat, and we all assumed (and resented) that the Phoenix’s owner, Stephen Mindich, had gotten rich from the profits. The Phoenix, more than almost any other alternative newsweekly, seemed like it could practically print money, since Boston had such a large population of college students, a perfect audience for what we were doing. For a while, that seemed to be true. The Phoenix bought a radio station, and then some other newsweeklies, and moved into ratless offices near Fenway Park, and appeared to just roll merrily along. Yes, much of the profits probably came from the skanky sex-service ads in the back of the magazine, but that’s business. The Globe editor who had lectured me about work ethic notwithstanding, the Phoenix continued to launch writers into good jobs at magazines and newspapers. While some newsweeklies drifted more into being arts calendars, the Phoenix, like the Village Voice, was one of the papers that kept doing harder journalism in addition to its significant arts coverage—which won the paper a Pulitzer, awarded to Lloyd Schwartz for criticism—and seemed to manage it well.

For the longest time, when journalism students would ask me how to get started as writers, I would tell them to go to work for an alternative newsweekly. Better than graduate school, in my opinion, I’d say, and more fun than a conventional job at a conventional publication. Now, as the ranks of alternative newsweeklies thin out, I’m not sure what I’ll tell them. The thing that I learned at the Phoenix, which I feel is essential for a writer to learn, is to be enterprising. I’ve never worked on staff at a regular newspaper, and I imagine you learn lots of valuable lessons from their tradition and stature, but what I loved about being at a place like the Phoenix was the sense that we were sort of making it up as we went along. The Phoenix felt like a handmade thing, and that made me feel like I ought to be inventive with my story ideas and my thinking and my writing, even if it didn’t always turn out perfectly. A conventional job would have had health insurance, but working somewhere where I was encouraged to write a story about Ginsu knives not only made me who I am as a writer but in many ways made me mature as a person: it was up to me to figure things out. I can’t imagine where I’d be today if I hadn’t had that experience.

The recession, Craigslist, the Internet, newsprint prices—who knows what finally did in the Phoenix? I suppose I shouldn’t have been shocked when I heard the news yesterday that it was shutting down, given the last ten years of bad news about print publications, but boy, was I surprised nonetheless. It feels like my college has suddenly announced that it has gone out of business. Now the liquidators will come in and pick through the remains, putting price tags on the beat-up desks and dented wastebaskets, and this experience that defined me and meant something to so many people—readers and writers, especially when we were young and turning into our adult selves—will live on only as a Wikipedia stub. Farewell, Boston Phoenix, and thanks. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/03/memories-of-the-p

by G.B.

Phoenix staffers knew that something was up. At 8:08pm that Wednesday, business staffer Rachael Mindich sent an ominous all-staff email that suggested some big and terrible impending news:
Join us in the Boston editorial space outside the conference room tomorrow afternoon at 2pm for a town hall meeting, during which important information relevant to all PM/CG staff members will be discussed. For those of you who are located outside of the Boston office, we ask that you call in on our conference line to be part of the discussion.
But nobody was expecting the guillotine. I certainly wasn’t. As a longtime Phoenix reader and part-time Boston resident, I’m shocked and disconsolate. The Phoenix is and was one of the best alt-weeklies in the country. From its smart reporting on state and local politics to its tough, nuanced coverage of social justice issues, the Phoenix consistently exemplified the best of the alternative press. Staff writer Chris Faraone’s you-are-there coverage of the Occupy movement was honest, unsentimental, and indispensable; during last year’s presidential campaign, political writer David S. Bernstein offered valuable insight into the Romney cotillion. The paper’s departments were memorable, too—David Thorpe’s loopy The Big Hurt music column; Robert Nadeau’s authoritative restaurant reviews; Barry Thompson’s “Meet the Mayor” series of interviews with various local Foursquare “mayors;” the tenacious local arts coverage. All were lively and occasionally brilliant; all will be missed.

That’s not to say that the paper was flawless. No publication is. But, from my perspective, the Phoenix’s successes far outnumbered its failures. More to the point, the Phoenix was a legitimately independent weekly in a space largely dominated by conglomerate corporate media. While other alt-weeklies across the country were acquired by national chains, the Phoenix remained resolutely rooted in New England. (The Boston Phoenix had two sister papers in Providence, RI, and Portland, ME, both of which will continue to publish.) Now, the only true alt-weekly in Boston is the wisecracking Weekly Dig, which has a huge opportunity if it plays its cards right. (Many current Phoenix staffers began their careers at the Dig.)

The signs were there that the Phoenix was having financial problems. Last year, its parent company, Phoenix Media/Communications Group, shuttered the weekly’s affiliate FM radio station, WFNX, turning it into a Web-only station, WFNX.com, which is also closing down. Around the same time, the Phoenix transitioned to a glossy magazine format, in a move designed to court national advertising dollars. At first, I thought the move was distasteful. Later, I thought it was brilliant. Apparently it wasn’t enough.

Some worried that the switch to the glossy format meant that the stories were going to get shorter and dumber, but that didn’t really happen. Lately, the Phoenix had been leading the way on climate-change coverage, regularly running forceful, impassioned cover stories by Wen Stephenson, the former journalist turned climate activist. Two weeks ago, Chris Faraone wrote a tremendous 10,000-word cover story about a young ex-GOP operative named Nadia Naffe and how she was betrayed by James O’Keefe and harassed by Andrew Breitbart. It was a prime example of the sort of reporting that made the Phoenix great: gimlet-eyed, deeply reported, and unafraid.
In an email this afternoon, Faraone noted that he “couldn’t be prouder to be one of the last writers to hold down the long tradition of badass reporting at the Phoenix.” (See my 2011 profile of Faraone for more on what he means by this.)

“On the much sadder side,” he continued, “my true concern is for the disparate and vulnerable people who have for so long relied on the alternative press to keep their issues in play, and to trumpet their all-too-often ignored voices. They’ve lost the most today. Them and everyone who has ever rushed to a red Phoenix street box first thing on a Thursday to feel the pulse of this city.”

That pulse will beat slower for a long time to come.

Archive

by Christopher M

 

Full disclosure: I worked for the PMCG (but not the Phoenix itself, it was a company called TPI) back in 99-01 taking personal ads, running refunds, supervising the call center, and doing various bits of backend programming for a salary that amounted to being kicked in the balls and flipped a shiny coin as my assailant sauntered on. Still, I had many great memories. But this is not the time.

One of the first things I did upon moving to Boston in January of 98 was to grab a copy of the Phoenix in the lobby of my college. It was free for us (even though you used to have to pay for it). I was amazed by what they were printing. This was nothing like journalism back in Amish country: Music reviews, social events, scathing articles. . SWEAR WORDS! ZOMG! I got hooked. I made sure to grab a copy every week when they showed up. In fact, this lead to the one act of petty larceny in my life. I didn’t know that the phoenix wasn’t just a free paper so I grabbed one on the way out the door of Tower Records. When I got back I saw the price at the top, felt so bad I went back and tried to pay. The cashier just looked at me like I was nuts and turned her back.

Ah, the memories.

It’s odd to write this, since there was a rift after I “left”. I never held a grudge, but picking you up seemed odd somehow, like seeing an old girlfriend who never gave you back all your stuff and still owed you $200 for that month you covered the rest of her rent, but now that you’ve passed I can say that I honestly have nothing but good memories.

Boston Phoenix, you kept me in the know about what was up for years. You gave me reasons to laugh at things that weren’t funny, not laugh at things that should have been, and a list of shows I needed to sneak into or weasel my way onto a list for as long as I can remember. I hope that in the years to come people remember you as fondly as I.

by James Parker

The Boston Phoenix Set Me Free

“Consider yourself off the leash,” he said. I was moaning about editors to my new editor, Lance Gould, in his office at the Boston Phoenix. Editors had been messing me around my whole life, I told him—neutering my style, rejecting my ideas, making me explain myself, fucking up my thing. Bloody editors… Gripe, grumble… I fumed and fidgeted in the crappy chair. And yet here he was, this kind man, this editor, regarding me with eyes of understanding and telling me that I was FREE. Was it a dream?

It feels rather dream-like today, now that the Phoenix is kaput. I received the news of the paper’s closing, last week, the way I receive most bad news—which is to say, I barely received it at all. It bounced numbly off my heart. Doink! But now I’m thinking about it, and beginning to feel it.

I was a staff writer at the Phoenix for 18 months, 2007-2008. Free? I was practically feral. I wrote much too fast and much too frequently about whatever took my interest. Poems, weekly. A column about reality tv, also weekly. (My secret plan was to turn it into a column about bullriding. This never happened. But it could have.) In the name of the Phoenix I interviewed—how about this for a journalistic coup—a man who hadn’t written a biography of GG Allin, the most horrible punk rock frontman ever; in the name of the Phoenix I accompanied a Wildlife Removal Specialist as he tore embedded raccoons from one suburban loft-space after another; in the name of Phoenix I went into a men’s prison and watched a priest lead a group of convicts through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

And I loved my colleagues. The muse of the Phoenix, as I came to know her, hovered in the space between the groovy young buggers who were coming up and the old-school eminences who wouldn’t quit. At this higher level, scholarship abounded. Jeffrey Gantz, Penguin Classics translator of The Mabinogion and ardent—in fact incandescent—Chelsea fan, rushed between cubicles like the White Rabbit, a hand to his forehead. He knew everything. Jon Garelick would lend his exquisite jazzman’s ear to your prose, tell you where you’d gone out of tune. The great Clif Garboden sat hunched in his special managing-editor’s alcove at the back of the third floor, with torrents of copy churning beneath his ironic eye: from time to time he would bark an oath at his computer, or exhale in a shuddering, Job-like manner. (I’m quoting here from something I wrote for the paper after his death. Hope you don’t mind, Clif.) It was a uniquely supportive environment, an accidental ecology in which—if you were the least bit accidental yourself—you could thrive.

These days, whenever an assignment begins to cramp me up, I pretend I’m doing it for the Phoenix: instant relief.

My fellow staff writers were delightful. I marveled at the gumshoe tenacity of political reporter David Bernstein, and the fact that—on a diet of pizza, cigarettes, and noisy phonecalls—he somehow preserved the complexion of an athletic schoolgirl. I annoyed Sharon Steel by throwing bits of paper at her. I slipped out for surreptitious pints with Adam Reilly. Mike Miliard helped me, endlessly.

So I was free, and the paper was free. It was flung out onto the street for whoever wanted it, whoever happened to be passing—not for some technocrat in Peets, pecking out a URL. It was a loose transaction, and it kept you loose. Even the leaking sordor from the “Adult Services” section, I confess, I found helpful. Trash and fecundity are neighbors, after all. These days, whenever an assignment begins to cramp me up, I pretend I’m doing it for the Phoenix: instant relief.

All a dream, all a dream… I can see Pat D pushing around his enormous dustbin as if, rather than putting things into it, he might produce things from out of it—ingots or rayguns or shrunken heads. I can hear the hacking and rumbling of Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman, on the line from Prague, fantastically intoxicated: “I don’t like human beings, I think they’re parasites, they’re fucking parasites.” Eheu fugaces labuntur anni. About the industry, journalism, the Internet, the row of grinning skulls where all the good writers used to be, I have nothing useful to say: I share in what I assume to be the general state of dazed apprehension. Not so long ago, many things were possible for a lucky writer. As of last week—this is how it feels—they are a little less possible.
Re: Alt Weekly – Boston Phoenix – One Year Gone
by Chris Radant
frtny (nospam) msn.com (unverified) 14 Feb 2014
Modified: 04:16:19 AM
A look back at some of its greatest stories.

Home for the Holidays
Chris Radant • November 1990

On heading home for Thanksgiving.
“Grazing began extra early on Thanksgiving morning. My brothers arrived with assorted girlfriends, wives and children. And there were fried eggs, pancakes, ‘crew-sonts,’ fudge cookies, and sticks of butter disguised as every manner of food. Mom made us go look at the long icicles coming off the corners of the shed. The kids bounced up and down. Dad recited in-flight emergency procedures. And on TV, the Johnny Mann Singers sang, ‘Y’gotta have heart,’ as only they can. Dad repeated his complaint about uncle Freddy repeating his stories. Mom told everyone about the oozing lesion of somebody we didn’t know. The question, ‘Is Disneyland more fun than Busch Gardens?’ was tossed out for debate. Dad went outside to look at the sky and missed Mom’s brief history of nasty gashes suffered in our family.”

The Strange Case of Audrey Santo
Ellen Barry • December 1997

A comatose from Worcester, Mass., is the catalyst for a string of miracles and becomes a tourist attraction.
“Her name is increasingly well known in the circle of people who follow miracles. ‘She’s new. I think she just became popular in the last year or so,’ says Jim Drzymala, administrator of the ‘Apparitions of Jesus and Mary’ Web page. Those who can’t jump the line by virtue of chronic disease take what ancillary contact they can get; once a year, on the anniversary of her near-drowning, Audrey is wheeled into a local church to receive the faithful. Last year, as Audrey lay in her tiara on a stretcher, this Mass attracted upward of 5000 people—a crowd so large, and so unexpected, that ‘the police could not respond appropriately,’ according to city councilor Wayne Griffin.
“Every time the story appears, it ratchets up the level of public enthusiasm. Audrey’s Life and The Story of Little Audrey Santo have become so popular that one fan recently asked Audrey’s dermatologist, who appears in the video, for an autograph. Channel 7, which has run several spots on the phenomenon, has reported as many as 250 phone calls after a broadcast. And when the Boston Herald ran a story about Audrey last month, the accompanying photograph showed a plaque with a contact number for the Santo family friend and representative Mary Cormier. The story ran on a Monday. Over the next two days, according to Cormier, 700 people called that number.”

Seattle Was a Riot
Jason Gay • December 1999
What really happened at the World Trade Organization protests.
“Meanwhile, the police are watching. There are more than 500 police officers on the scene, most them arranged around the outskirts of the Washington Trade and Convention Center, where the majority of WTO events are scheduled to take place. Almost all of these officers are decked head to toe in black riot gear—helmets and gas masks and baseball-catcher-style knee pads and arm pads and chest protectors—and carry crowd-dispersal weapons such as pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber-pellet guns. At one intersection, a group mans a small armored vehicle nicknamed the ‘Peacemaker.’

“It’s easy to see that a situation’s developing. The protesters are everywhere; the delegates are shut out of their meetings; many of them, including the US representative to the WTO, Charlene Barshefsky, can’t even get out of their hotels. What’s more, the big protest—the labor march, with more than 30,000 people—hasn’t even started yet. It’s not even nine o’clock in the morning, and authorities are losing control of the city.

“Soon after, the tear gas comes. It’s a surreal moment. When gassing first occurs, I’m standing about 100 yards from the intersection, and people near me pause and stare momentarily, as if they’re not sure whether it’s gas or a stray, low-flying cloud. It’s almost as if the crowd is saying to itself: That didn’t just happen in America in 1999, did it?”

Cardinal Sin
Kristin Lombardi • March 2001

Cardinal Bernard Law knew as early as 1984 John Geoghan was molesting children. The priest would not be defrocked for 14 years.
“Law, a high-ranking official within the Catholic Church, is one of just eight cardinals in the United States. His boss is Pope John Paul II. As head of the fourth-largest diocese in the country, Law wields substantial power. He is a senior member of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), a canonical body that makes high-level recommendations for the American Catholic hierarchy on pastoral practices, interreligious affairs, and government policy. One Boston attorney who handles clergy sexual-abuse cases says that ‘suing Law is almost like suing the pope.’
“Still, those familiar with the scope of Geoghan’s behavior are surprised it’s taken so long for Law to face legal action. ‘This has been a dirty little secret the Church has desperately tried to keep quiet,’ charges Stephen Lyons, a Boston attorney. Lyons is best known for defending David and Ginger Twitchell, the Christian Science couple whose child died after receiving inadequate medical care. But he has earned national recognition for his legal work involving clergy sexual abuse. He has successfully litigated more than six lawsuits against the Boston archdiocese and other dioceses nationwide, and says he’s ‘well aware’ of evidence implicating the cardinal—evidence that he cannot reveal because of confidentiality orders. (Lyons has never handled a Geoghan case, nor has he handled a lawsuit against the cardinal.) ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ Lyons says, ‘it’s extraordinary Law hasn’t been named a defendant [in the Geoghan cases] before.’ ”

Did He Murder His Mother?
David S. Bernstein • April 2005

The jury made a mistake when it convicted Abdul Raheem.
“The state medical examiner was never allowed to enter the crime scene—another peculiar aspect of the investigation. That examiner, Alexander Chirkov, testified that he came to the crime scene the first evening and stood waiting outside the house for half an hour, but was sent away. Chirkov performed the autopsy at 10 a.m. the next morning in his lab, a delay, he testified, that denied him access to information that could have allowed him to pinpoint the time of death, and perhaps to discover other important information.
“Then, too, there was the loss of the rape kit. A rape kit, a standard part of an investigation of a female victim—especially a naked one—includes swabs from the body, material from beneath the fingernails, and other potential physical evidence. This was, in fact, the only potential source of DNA evidence taken from on or around the body. Yet detectives did not ask to have the kit processed for months, and when they finally did they found that it had been ‘accidentally destroyed’ at the office of the chief medical examiner (CME), according to a report submitted by Coleman. (Chirkov, who no longer works for the CME’s office, did not return calls from the Phoenix seeking comment.)”

A Weed Grows In Boston
Valerie Vande Panne • December 2009

What’s a suburban soccer mom who was once fervently anti-drug doing running a business growing and selling pot?
“From the outside, we could have been on Wisteria Lane. But none of their neighbor’s houses are visible through the trees that surround Mary and Joey’s abode.
“We walk into a neat, clean, sparse home. There are no pit bulls, no guns, no security cameras. No henchmen, no gangsta rap blaring. No heavily tattooed and pierced punks or hippies. It is, in fact, the exact opposite: a quaint residence, quintessentially suburban, with a bowl of plastic fruit on the dining-room table, pictures of their happy family on the walls, house plants in the windows, and a bird feeder in the backyard. Smokey, the house cat, lolls in the living room.
“That living room has a few EZ chairs and a long, wrap-around couch — replete with built-in cup holders — where a ‘trimmer’ is stationed with a marijuana-filled TV tray. He’s using a little pair of scissors to cut the leaves (the “trim”) off the buds (the desirable part of the plant for sale to consumers). MTV’s For the Love of Ray J plays quietly on the television. (‘In order to keep the trimmers trimming,’ she advises, noting how they can get easily distracted, ‘it has to be reality television. It can’t be sports.’)
” ‘We pay our trimmers $20 an hour, plus food,’ explains Mary, gesturing to the composed laborer. ‘We can’t offer them health insurance, though. Most of our trimmers are unemployed otherwise.’ One of them, it turns out, is a former chef who’s had a hard time finding work in the global depression.”
The Trials of Nadia Naffe
Chris Faraone • February 2013

Naffe, a young Republican, entered the belly of the political beast—and was nearly eaten.
“After a long cruise through wooded Westwood, O’Keefe pulled up to Naffe’s accommodations for the night: a two-story barn on the property of an upscale suburban home. Naffe says details of their destination were not made clear on the ride, but it didn’t take long once they arrived for her to realize that she was inside Project Veritas headquarters. There were awards on the wall with O’Keefe’s engraved name on them; equipment from the RV in Los Angeles was set up on a desk. With contributions pouring in, O’Keefe had invested thousands on computers and surveillance equipment. His renovated barn was a full-service bunker for waging war against liberals.
“O’Keefe sat in his editing cockpit and began to play the NYU recordings. Strangely, Naffe says, there were also candles lit around the room. She sipped a beer, and asked again about O’Keefe’s grudge against Seife. She also asked when he planned to leave so she could have privacy. After the long train ride, she was eager to shower and get to bed early. But Naffe says O’Keefe made several excuses for why he needed to stay—to watch a football game, to use his ‘stuff.’ Then she turned her attention to a phone call with another guy, and the conversation flipped completely. O’Keefe stormed out, and peeled off. That’s when Naffe says that she began feeling woozy, as if she’d been drugged.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/longform/2013/03/rip_boston_phoenix_s

by Scott Timberg

How the Village Voice and other alt-weeklies lost their voice in 2013 http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/28/how-the-village-voicean

The papers — which documented parts of cities that other media missed — suffered major blows this year

LOS ANGELES — There was something else there, but you couldn’t see it. There were notes coming from somewhere — maybe adding up to a melody — but you couldn’t quite hear them. Growing up in and around this sprawling, elusive city in the 1970s and ’80s, Lynell George would see things, hear things, that never showed up in the daily press.

“I didn’t always find my city in the newspapers,” says George, who grew up black in racially mixed neighborhoods and was so inspired by the city and its contradictions that she decided to become a writer who’d decode L.A.’s sense of place. She was tired of reading about the wealthy Westside, Hollywood deal-making and society ladies in Beverly Hills. “Sometimes there were just little glimpses,” she says, of something else.

Documenting the city — its racial and ethnic fault lines, the brilliant corners of its music scene, its overlooked literary life — was something, George realized, she could tackle more effectively as a journalist for alternative newsweeklies rather than a novelist. She’d spent years driving to Book Soup, a store on Sunset Boulevard, to pick up the Village Voice and read Greg Tate on black culture or Guy Trebay on the Bronx’s crack epidemic or to Venice’s Rose Cafe or Tower Records to pick up LA Weekly. “I wanted it on Thursday; I couldn’t wait,” she says. “If you didn’t get it, it was gone. I wanted to be part of that conversation.”

Talk to readers and writers about the heyday of the alternative press and you hear stories like this. For all the good memories, though, 2013 has been a rough year for alt-weeklies. The Boston Phoenix, among the oldest and most storied, collapsed in March, putting about 50 employees out of work, just six months after an optimistic move to glossy stock; the paper was losing roughly $1 million a year. Susan Orlean, a New Yorker writer who, like Joe Klein, Janet Maslin and David Denby, worked for the Phoenix early on, compares it to the disappearance of her alma mater. “I am a child of the alt-weekly world,” she says, “and I feel like it has played such an important role in journalism as we know it today.” The New Haven Advocate was folded, along with two other weeklies, into The Hartford Courant this month after a year that saw heavy layoffs. In May, the two top editors of The Village Voice resigned rather than cut a quarter of the staff.

The troubles are not confined to the northeast: The LA Weekly, whose issues typically offer less than half the pages they did a decade ago, recently announced substantial cuts in its theater coverage, to which the paper had a three-decade commitment. Most places, page counts and staff sizes are way down.

Some of the causes of the alt-press meltdown are more complex than those of daily newspapers, which have been felled primarily by the Internet and corporate overreach. But the results are at least as tumultuous.

None of this sad trajectory was clear to Lynell George back when she became — in a chaotic office in Silverlake, a gritty gay neighborhood not yet declared cool — an LA Weekly intern in the late ’80s and a staff writer in the early ’90s. A tattooed performance artist manned the front desk, and pompadoured staffers in pegged jeans would arrive with guitars in preparation for after-work gigs. “You didn’t know what you’d come into in the morning — I loved that. It reflected the music scene, the art scene.” And “alternative,” she realized, meant asking, “‘What’s really going on?’ And to come at it in a different way.”

Despite its association with the counterculture, the alternative press had its origins in the Eisenhower era — in the Red Scare, in fact. Though mainstream culture circa 1955 was sleepy and reactionary, Norman Mailer, who helped found The Village Voice that year out of a Greenwich Avenue apartment, wrote that the paper would “give a little speed to that moral and sexual revolution which is yet to come upon us.” Dan Wolf, another founder, described the era as one in which “the vulgarities of McCarthyism had withered the possibilities of a true dialogue between people.”

Mailer’s column for the Voice, the novelist wrote a few years later, gave him the kind of opportunity that would have made Jack Kerouac swoon: “Drawing upon hash, lush, Harlem, Spanish wife, Marxist culture, three novels, victory, disaster, and draw, the General looked over his terrain and found it a fair one, the Village a seed-ground for the opinions of America, a crossroads between the small town and the mass media.” Avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas became the paper’s film critic, urbanist Jane Jacobs wrote important pieces on the destruction of lower Manhattan neighborhoods, Nat Hentoff chronicled jazz and politics, Robert Christgau helped invent rock criticism.

The Voice surged from its initial print run of 2,500 copies (sold, originally, at 5 cents apiece) to 150,000 readers by 1970. By that point, the paper had company: What began as a music-heavy publication in 1966, Boston After Dark would become the more comprehensive Boston Phoenix, and in 1970, anti-war students at Arizona State founded the first New Times paper to protest the Kent State killings. The year after, the Chicago Reader was inaugurated by a group of college friends, and the following year, the first of the Creative Loafing papers, which would spread across the South, began in Atlanta.

These papers inherited varying degrees of the Voice’s political edge, emphasis on hipness and personal style, and pugnacity toward the mainstream. When LA Weekly rolled out its first issue in 1978, Jay Levin, one of its founders, wrote, “the smog in L.A. was so bad that much of the year you could barely see the hookers on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue.”

Before long, the Weekly had dug into the cozy relationship between government regulators and polluters and turned out 40 stories on smog and the people responsible for it. This was the paper’s mission: “We would challenge all the official stories.” (Today, now that L.A.’s smog problem has improved, you can see the hookers clearly.)

Alt-weeklies thrived in conservative and conventional times. “The Reagan years were in some ways the alternative press’s glory years,” says Tom Carson, who wrote for the Voice and LA Weekly from 1977 to 1999. “We knew we were a playing an adversary role. Peggy Noonan was right: It was a revolution, destroying what was left of the New Deal, making this into a very different country. And we were the only ones calling (Reagan) on it, besides a few scattered op-ed columnists.”

At a time when corporate rock thrived and the blockbuster culture was gearing up — Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were no longer mavericks, Phil Collins and hair metal raced up the charts — and the president refused to utter the name of a plague killing thousands of gay men, the lines were clearly drawn. The alternative press knew which side it was on.

Though sometimes dismissed as hippie rags, alt-weeklies exerted an influence on mainstream, straight dailies. “The alternative press should get credit for pushing the daily press to cover culture and the arts,” says Doug McLennan, a former Seattle Weekly staffer who now runs ArtsJournal.com.

But the influence went the other way, too: By the ’90s, with the first popular Democratic president in three decades, corporate studios starting indie-film wings and “alternative rock” albums shooting up the charts, the lines became more blurred: Alternative weeklies and mainstream papers were harder to tell apart.

Manohla Dargis was writing for The Village Voice when she saw a New York Times story on the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and realized that things had changed. Cultural shifts, and an interest in youth and fringe culture by the mainstream press, meant that alt papers were losing their distinctiveness. And without a Republican White House, alt-weeklies were losing their political edge.

“When you take away the politics — if you don’t have an editor with a very aggressive political agenda — all the other coverage is up for grabs,” says Dargis. “Mainstream journalists started to cover that stuff. Mainstream papers started to poach, and some writers were comfortable in both worlds. Why shouldn’t they be?

“People like Greg Tate and C. Carr were never going to work for the mainstream press.” But Dargis says she realized that the terms had shifted, and by 2002, as film editor at LA Weekly, she was tired of toiling for alt-press wages. “I could stay there or make twice as much money in the mainstream. I couldn’t say ‘f—‘ anymore, but maybe I could make a living.” She is now a movie critic for The New York Times.

In terms of circulation and revenues, the ’90s seemed like a good time for alternative weeklies. But the seeds of demise had been planted. It wasn’t just what social critic Thomas Frank has called “the conquest of cool” or the pressures that pushed the Voice, for instance, to stop charging for its publication in 1996. It was a wily company from Arizona.

New Times began opening new alt-weeklies and aggressively acquiring existing ones in the ’90s, and their model emphasized investigative reporting but not progressive politics. In 2005, New Times, led by founder Michael Lacey, bought the Voice, LA Weekly and other papers and renamed itself Village Voice Media. At the original Voice, jazz critic Gary Giddins, photographer Sylvia Plachy, Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer and senior editor and gay-rights crusader Richard Goldstein were pushed out before New Times arrived; writers Hentoff, J. Hoberman, Christgau, Michael Musto and James Ridgeway after. From ’05 to ’07, the Voice cycled through five top editors. LA Weekly was cannibalized, too. For those writers left, it was a culture shock.

“I got out in the nick of time,” says Carson, the former LA Weekly and Village Voice employee, who now reviews movies for GQ. “I could not have survived the New Times era. They seemed motivated by hatred of everything the alternative press stood for — the left-wing politics, the countercultural sensibility, the value placed on intellectualism. These guys were just aggressively demolishing everything that weeklies were good for.”

Of course, Craigslist and the Internet consumed much of the advertising that both alternative and mainstream papers depended on and altered the whole landscape. “These retail shifts have made it harder for publishers to distribute their weeklies,” wrote press critic Jack Shafer, a onetime alt-weekly editor in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. “Before Tower Records went under, a paper could drop thousands of copies a week at the store’s many locations, and the stacks would disappear in a day or two. The video stores that once distributed them? Gone.” Instead of opening an alt-weekly as you waited for your subway car or girlfriend, he says, young folks now pull out their cell phones.

“The alternative press comes at a very specific point in American history, and its demise does, too,” says Dargis. “People are going to look at it as completely a technological issue, which is totally reductive. By the time the Internet arrives, the alternative press had already given it up. It had lost its mission.”

A journalism career’s start

As it happens, I am not a disinterested observer in these questions. I became a journalist largely because of the alternative press. As a left-leaning, college-radio-loving teenager in a moderately conservative Reagan-era suburb in Maryland, I found the Voice while working at a bookstore: From its political engagement to its underground music coverage to J. Hoberman’s ability to make broader sense of mainstream films, this was a world I’d suspected existed but had never quite found before that.

By the latter ’90s, when I was in my late 20s, I was editing a film section and writing about culture for New Times’ L.A. paper, New Times Los Angeles, which the company formed after it bought two smaller weeklies and, in my boss’s phrase, “machine-gunned the staff.” I was told over and over again by my bosses about what a bunch of lazy, pontificating hippies sat across town at the Weekly, even as I blushed at the quality of their arts coverage. At New Times I met a very sharp bunch of journalists, but a business model clearly built on the promiscuous use of job termination. (I was fired once, then rehired.) They weren’t quite right-wing — more macho libertarian, with a bullying streak — but when Sarah Palin broke out and began to run down coastal “elites,” I felt like I was back in a Monday editorial meeting.

For all the emphasis on reporting — the implication being that columns, essays or reviews were somehow unmanly — it was a film critic, Peter Rainer, who earned a Pulitzer finalist spot during my time there. Jonathan Gold, who worked for LA Weekly until last year, won his Pulitzer as a food critic.

But what seemed strange about the New Times crowd is that sometimes they were right. And sometimes they were right on important things, as when the paper helped break a scandal in which the Los Angeles Times secretly shared profits with an advertiser.

It was sad, then, when the company shut New Times Los Angeles, in 2002. I had decamped to the Los Angeles Times by then, and I watched with amazement as New Times swaggered back to town, took over the Weekly and started butchering. (Two longtime New Times editors told me the alt-press troubles come from the economy and the Internet and not anything the company did and declined to speak on the record. Similarly, the Association of American Newsmedia has said the Boston Phoenix’s closing and other turmoil is not a sign of a larger decline.)

New Times’ owners killed my old paper’s online archive, so most of what we wrote disappeared. They later dumped almost all of the Weekly’s archive of old papers, which contained what one scribe called “the secret history of L.A.” They moved the paper from a gritty, almost-hip location on Sunset Boulevard to a freeway-adjacent corporate box that former staffers liken to an Ikea set down in Siberia. Joe Donnelly, a gifted editor hired by one “Weekly” regime, fired by another, is not alone in thinking the owners ruined the paper. (Disclosure: I’ve worked with several people in this story, including Donnelly.)

In 2012, Lacey split to take control of Backpage, an online classified service heavy on escort services that has been linked to underage prostitution. (New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof has called it “Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods.”) He has compared his departure to Backpage to his youthful protest over the Kent State dead and to Grove Press’s Barney Rosset’s fight to publish D.H. Lawrence.

What’s the significance of all this for people who read weeklies rather than write for them? Los Angeles, which had three alt-weeklies in the ’80s and ’90s — including an LA Weekly with fact-checkers, researchers and a large writing staff — now has just one, with a skeleton staff and fewer than 100 pages of copy. (Matt Groening’s “Life in Hell” comic, a precursor to “The Simpsons,” ran in one of the papers New Times killed, the Los Angeles Reader.)

Over the years, alternative papers have paid attention to neglected issues and unjustly obscure rock bands. The members of the Pixies met through the classified pages in The Boston Phoenix. Giddins’s jazz writing in the Voice remains as daring and clear as a Charlie Parker solo; Ridgeway’s work on neo-Nazis and militias has no peer. LA Weekly helped document parts of its city that would literally explode in the ’92 riots, and then documented the carnage, in words and pictures, better than any other outlet. Even the New Times papers have published an enormous number of gutsy investigative stories on crony politicians, corrupt sheriffs, kids victimized in foster care and vile religious cults. “Yes, we’re under tremendous pressure in the digital age, like everyone in the media,” says Sarah Fenske, editor of LA Weekly, before naming stories that make her proud to be in the business. She cites a piece about lawyer Carmen Trutanich, whom she calls “one of the biggest bullies in L.A. politics”; one on accusations of exploitation of would-be filmmakers on YouTube; and a third arguing that an epidemic of hit-and-run accidents has been ignored by the police.

“What factory that we’d once hear about dumping toxic chemicals are we not hearing about anymore?” asks Ted Drozdowski, a onetime Boston Phoenix editor. “There are less watchdogs, which is why we hear less barking.”

When those papers go down, or cut pages and staff, those stories disappear and those writers find another way to pay the rent. But it’s not just what we don’t see; it’s the way seeing itself has changed. “When the Voice was in muckraking mode,” says Carson, “and we’d go after some shitty landlord or some awful politico, that story was on the cover, and it was all over the place. Today, you can see that story online and you may be the only person reading it. A physical paper is a physical presence — and you’d see it all over the city.”

Russian Novel 1921 – White Tsarist General Blamed Jewish Socialists for the Red Revolution – by Mark Boden (Russia Insider) 17 Oct 2018

Acclaimed 1926 translation the novel by a Tsarist General Blames Jews for the Revolution (Double Eagle, Red Flag – Krasnoff)

” … (A) bitter attack on what it considers the core of the Russian revolution, — the Jewish International.”

“One thing is certain, (it) will surely take Its place as one of the most Important books on the war, and one of the great books of the century.”

“The first part of the book is filled with the spirit that makes monarchy possible; and an American, even if he does not sympathize, gets an insight into the meaning to a devoted subject of the worship of a sovereign.”

 

Mark Boden 8 hours ago | 3400 words 1,592 44

The Jewish Question

Friends recently told us about this monumental 800 page novel which they praised effusively as a ripping good story and a thrilling read about the adventures of a Tsarist officer before, during, and after the revolution.

It is primarily a monumental adventure story and detailed tableaux of Russia at the time. A theme running through the story is the conviction of most of the Russian elite that Jewish propaganda played an enormous role in causing the revolution.

The book was a bestseller in England, Germany, and the US when it appeared in the 20s. It is available on Amazon, and can be download in PDF format from the internet.

We found some old American reviews from 1926, including one from The New York Times, of all places, which we reproduce below, together with the Translator’s Preface, and the Introduction to the book.

Interesting to see how diverse the American media landscape was back then.

From the reviews below:

“It is as good as Zola; It is as good as Dumaspere and fils, and all the lot of them put together.”

“It is rather the very personal, very vivid and graphic account by an eye-witness of the things which really did happen at the Imperial Court (even the names of most of the persons are real : nothing has been hidden), of the intimate life of the officers of the Guards, of the soldiers and people, of the coming Revolution; but chiefly of the glittering life in high quarters.”

---

Great Russian Novel (The Forum, May 1924)

It is a curious anomaly that despite the praise for all things Russian that assails us on every side, perhaps the greatest contemporary Russian novel has, except for a few brief notices, almost escaped the public eye. There are perhaps two reasons for this: first its great length, and secondly its bitter attack on what it considers the core of the Russian revolution, — the Jewish international.

Yet FROM THE TWO-HEADED EAGLE TO THE RED FLAG, by General Krassnoff (Brentano) will surely take its place beside the novels of Dostoevski and Tolstoi as a picture of Russia and Russian life of today. Beginning in 1894, the year in which the ill-fated Nicholas assumed imperial power, the story (divided into four volumes) brings us up to 1921.

What a picture it shows! First the pomp and panoply of court and society circles, with its background of festering wrongs; then the period of war, when Russia stood side by side with the Allies, — the disintegration of the army by German and Jewish propaganda, followed by Bolshevism with all its horrors and, lastly, the pathetic attempts of the White Armies to regain their power.

Out of it all comes a clear mental picture of how the Revolution came about, of how a great country, by means of a few clever, insidious propagandists, who know exactly what they want and how to get it is turned overnight into a ghastly writhing chaos.

Perhaps if those among us who anticipate business dealings with the Bolsheviks would read this book, they might hesitate before signing up with a bunch of murderers whose word means no more than their deeds.

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Russia’s Red Flag (The Forum, September 1926)

It Is hard to form an estimate of a book like this. The canvas is so Double Eagle gigantic, the subject from a drawing still so terribly topical. The Interminable serial is still unfolding, chapters are still coming to abrupt conclusions at tense moments, and the unexpected Is still happening all the time.

One thing is certain, General Krassnoff’s story in two volumes of nearly five hundred pages each will surely take Its place as one of the most Important books on the war, and one of the great books of the century.

In writing It Krassnoff, who saw the whole thing, In the days before the war, all through the war and through the revolution, had access to unlimited material. Moreover, with Russia swept and reswept by tornadoes of change, as a result of which, in thousands of cases, nothing at all was left of the old order, General Krassnoff has felt himself under no obligations to observe those unwritten laws of biographical writing which will restrain an author from using actual names and easily Identified material too freely.

And so the novel though centring around the scion of a noble Russian family, is really a story of Russia, over a period of twenty years or so; with every character, — from the Czar to Trotsky, and from Rasputin to Kerensky, faithfully delineated.

In the course of his varied experiences, innumerable biographies, most of them terrible and shot through with tragedy must have come Krassnoff’s way. He had material enough to write a dozen books of this description, and so In the days of his exile in a distant Cossack village when he had fled from the face of the Soviet, and, later on, at Batumi he simply selected and martialed the facts he had at hand in such quantity. He has done it with incomparable skill, and has produced a quite incomparable book.

Those who read It may think that at times it teems too much with horror. They will be reminded, again and again, of such books as Zola’s Debacle; they will accuse the writer of almost fiendish invention In describing some of the seldom alluded to horrors of a campaign. But those whose business it was, through the great war, to struggle through the blue books and yellow books and the red books of the various combatants and read the descriptions of atrocities committed by their opponents, will see that, here again, Krassnoff had not to appeal to his imagination.

One point that emerges with extraordinary clarity from the story is the fact that, In spite of all the change that has swept over Russia, the fundamental polity of the Empire remains unchanged. The tyranny of the Czars has been exchanged for the tyranny of the Soviet; the tyranny of the noble for the tyranny of the Commissar; the tyranny of the private employer for the tyranny of the State; while, in its outlook on the world, the historic Slavic advance in all directions “to the greater glory of the Little Father” willed two hundred years ago by Peter the Great, has simply been replaced by a Soviet advance in all directions for the “liberation of the proletariat”.

The effect, both national and international, is the same.

HUGH A. STUDDERT KENNEDY.

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From the New York Times, May, 1926

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A Panorama of Russia FROM DOUBLE EAGLE TO RED FLAG. By P. N. KRASSNOFF. With an introduction by William Gerhardi. (Translated from the second Russian edition by Erik Law-Gisiko). In two volumes. New York: Duffield & Co. 1926. $7.50. Reviewed by MALCOLM W . DAVIS

THE SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, APRIL 24, 1926

THIS is not simply another book about Russia. It is literally a book of Russia, that only a Russian could have written. In the sweeping panorama of this novel, the Empire of the Tsars, the court and the army before the war, the war itself, and then the revolution, the chaotic period of the Provisional Government under Kerensky, the rise of the Soviets and the establishment of the Bolshevist dictatorship, are recreated as they were known by a former Ataman of the Don Cossacks. It is not a special case, but a story from the life of a people. Yet it is more than fiction,—or rather, perhaps, what fiction should aim to achieve, a commentary on life more telling than any other sort of study.

These two volumes offer more than a compelling narrative. They offer a better explanation than ten volumes of political discussion of why things happened as they did in Russia. In the original it caused an immense amount of argument among Russians. But it is less a book to argue about than to receive as one man’s account of life as he saw it. Much of the material is obviously autobiographical.

The hero of General Krassnoff’s story is Sablin, and you follow him from his youth as an officer in the Tsar’s favorite guard regiment to his death, in the grip of the Soviet secret service, at the hands of his own son. Around him throng an amazing array of the people of Russia,—soldiers and officers, peasants, prostitutes, the Tsar and Tsaritsa and their children, Rasputin the monk and his degenerate followers of the court, Grand Dukes and Duchesses, student revolutionaries and Red Commissars.

You are taken to army reviews, carousals, court functions, to the fighting front, to Soviet prisons, to Communist meetings. In the midst is Sablin, always struggling with the mystery of living as he follows his career; and when he is dead, Russia goes on past his body, callous, indifferent, absorbed in its own turbulent and passionate existence of which he has been a victim. The whole of his life is there, in all its fine and gross aspects. His story is told directly without affectation of style, with the naive Slavic sophistication which accepts and depicts everything.—not in order to shock or sneer, nor in a self-conscious effort to be frank, but because things are as they are. It is a book full of a curious wistful wisdom.

The explanation of the Russian revolution embodied in it consists less in what it tells of the sufferings of the people than in what it reveals of the minds of their former rulers. Naturally, General Krassnoff sees from the point of Tiew of a Cossack officer; and despite the breadth and depth of the author’s thought, to complete the account of Russia we should need another novel from the pen of a peasant soldier. The first part of the book is filled with the spirit that makes monarchy possible; and an American, even if he does not sympathize, gets an insight into the meaning to a devoted subject of the worship of a sovereign. Superficially considered, the conclusion from the book might be seen to be that all the trouble in Russia could have been avoided if the officers had been a little more the soldiers.

But an upheaval like the revolution can not be attributed easily to the fact that Russian officers used to strike their orderlies or that probably few soldiers in the world ever were more brutally driven than Russian privates. And it is to be doubted whether General Krassnoff intended to suggest such an inference.

The deeper causes which he exposes are two-fold, —one the real inability of the old superiors to perceive and understand the lives and aspirations of the people, much less to enter into them and advance them, and the other the impulsive and passionate nature of the Russians themselves, a strange blend of mystical idealism and crude sensuality.

So comprehended, the movement of life in Russia appears as inevitable as the rising of a tide whipped by a storm. It is so that it is seen through the experience of General Krassnoff’s hero. It is a book for any reader who cares to know what Russia has been and is and is likely to be.

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From the novel:

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

BEFORE presenting the translation of General Krassnoff’s book “From Double Eagle to Red Flag” to the English-speaking public, the translators would like to introduce the author and his work.

The well-known Russian writer Kouprin expresses his opinion of this book in the Paris newspaper “La Cause Commune” in the following terms:

“General Krassnoff has much to narrate. He has witnessed and himself taken part in many events during these terrible years, events so horrible and great, gruesome and heroic, that they would have sufficed for at least ten ordinary lives . And one must admit, judging by the first volume, that the author describes vividly and with real talent all the facts he is acquainted with and the events he has personally witnessed and experienced.”

The author has had indeed exceptional opportunities for observation. A Don Cossack by birth, he began his military career as a Lieutenant in the Atamansky Guard Cossack regiment at St. Petersburg, and soon became known as a dashing cavalry officer and sportsman, and as a writer on military subjects. During the Japanese war he was at the front as a military correspondent. On his return he served in various parts of European Russia and in Siberia . The Great War found him in command of a Cossack cavalry regiment in Poland, at the head of which he won by a brilliant charge his St . George’s cross . He successively commanded a cavalry brigade, a division and the famous 3rd Cavalry Corps.

When the Bolshevik revolution broke out, General Krassnoff left the North and reached the Don region after many adventures and narrow escapes . In the spring of 1918 the Don Cossacks rose against the Bolshevik rule, and the Don Parliament in its first session elected General Krassnoff Ataman of the Don . He filled this post during nine months. The situation he had to face was an extremely difficult one. The Region had suffered greatly from the anarchical rule of the Bolsheviks, but in spite of this he organized a regular Don army and freed the whole of the Don Region. In the spring of 1919 he resigned under the pressure of influences foreign to the Cossacks and left South Russia. He lived for some time at Batoum, where he continued to work on the first volume of his book, which he had begun while living in seclusion in a distant Cossack village before his election as Ataman.

During his full and interesting life General Krassnoff has had the opportunity of coming into closest touch with the various classes of Russian society, and of meeting the most prominent and interesting personalities of the time. We believe that he has succeeded in giving an exact picture of the events which preceded and caused the Revolution, as well as of the chaos of ideas in Russia during the tragic reign of the Emperor Nicholas II, which was the chief cause of the terrible catastrophe . “General Krassnoff tells us in his book many straight-forward and painful truths,” writes Kouprin.

It is necessary to note, that because of this, his book has already provoked indignation in certain circles . We would like to emphasize once more, that the chief interest of the book consists in its being a vivid picture of the mentality of various classes of society of the period, which led to the fall of one of the greatest Empires of the world . It is most valuable as an historical chronicle of its time . The book was originally published in Russia in four volumes, the first of which embraced the period from 1894 till the beginning of the Great War, the second described the war itself and the first months of the revolution up to the seizing of power by the Bolsheviks, the third, entitled “The Martyrs” dealt with the Civil war, and the fourth described life under the rule of the Bolsheviks . We trust that the translation of this book into English will help many to gain a clearer insight into the events of the past few years in Russia.

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INTRODUCTION

There is a notion abroad that a preface must needs be unreservedly laudatory. An unhealthy delusion! A preface should, for the most part, be critical and explanative. Here is a book, a provocative document that cannot be launched into a complacent Anglo-Saxon world without some sort of an explanation. Then let me attempt one. “From Double Eagle to Red Flag” was born of the debris of Imperial Russia, conceived in the shadow of Leo Tolstoy’s historical narrative, by a Russian General with exceptional opportunities, an expert on his subject (and that is what makes it so interesting), possessed of keen observation and uncommon literary skill. It is, in the nature of things, monumental; not unlike the London Albert Memorial. And withal the book has a stark, a naked, a terrible fascination. I confess I could not put it down .

What is its hold? Some will say it is art : the grandiose, leisurely novel dealing with Russian reality true to type : “War and Peace” brought up to date. Others will say it’s photography. Others again, that it is Victor Hugo at his best. Never mind what they say-start at the beginning, read twenty pages, and you will not stop till you have come to the end.

This, say what you will, is an achievement o f which the author, the meditative Don Cossack General, Peter Krassnoff, may be justly proud. I venture to prophesy a large public for this epic historical novel covering a quarter of a century – our quarter. And who will deny historical magnitude to our days?

Oh, the great Russian soul! Oh, the colossal Russian mind! It is overwhelming. It is like some gigantic machine of marvelous design and construction – with a hitch that prevents it from working; like a born orator, with an impediment in his speech. Russia will not change. There will arise some new Peter the Great, who will conceive a new plan, let us say, for electrifying the whole of Russia, with a stroke of the pen. On the margin of the ministerial report he will write the words : “Electrify Russia at once .” And the contractors will duly bribe the authorities and supply rotten material, get rich, and’the scheme will be crippled at birth.

In this lies the humor and genius of the race. It needed a Chekhov to see it, a Chekhov who seemed a little weary of people knocking at the window of his bedroom at about half past two in the morning, anxious for a “soul-to-soul” talk . A Chekhov who walked a little outside and beside life. Here you get it all-the unashamed, frank, childish account of it, with a perfect absence of guile, by a nice, well-meaning military gentleman who indeed has never stepped outside it. An officer who is trying to tell you how different it would have been had the other officers of the Guards been a little different to the soldiers. I don’t know.

I have a sneaking feeling that it becomes so gross and low-brow a thing as an army to have low-brow ruffians to direct it. If the officers turned philosophers, poets, or scholars, they might find themselves questioning their objective and losing interest in their work. You may entirely disregard, as I do, the political implications of this book and still feel its relative truth, as I feel it.

The General has been moderate and honest-to the full capacity of his own interpretation of these terms. And who can be more! There runs through his work a doleful note, a sense of frustration and melancholy at the emptiness of “la gloire”- together with a slight irritation at the constant delay of its coming. You read and feel sorry.

A new Tolstoy! A new Dostoevski! No, no; spare us that. It is rather the very personal, very vivid and graphic account by an eye-witness of the things which really did happen at the Imperial Court (even the names of most of the persons are real : nothing has been hidden), of the intimate life of the officers of the Guards, of the soldiers and people, of the coming Revolution; but chiefly of the glittering life in high quarters.

The central figure is the leisured aristocrat, Sablin, the dashing young guardsman par Excellence, whose life is involved, from the time of his seduction by a demi-mondaine to the day of his death at the hand of his own son. The Emperor and Empress of Russia walk the pages again and again, looking, for all the world, thoroughly alive. The Russian Army stands before you in all its gregarious variety ; the military manaouvres are painted to the life. Court functions, balls, grand dukes and foreign ambassadors, funerals, banquets, coronations, dissipations, all the resplendid regimental displays. What pomp! What descriptions! Well done, General! Moreover, there is Rasputin.

There are intrigues, love of the sacred and profane variety . . .  It is as good as Zola; It is as good as Dumaspere and fils, and all the lot of them put together . -William Gerhardi.

………………..

https://russia-insider.com/en/acclaimed-1926-novel-tsarist-general-blames-jews-revolution-double-eagle-red-flag-krasnoff/ri25061

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Hell Hath No Fury…Women On the Labor Union Picket Line

Code hidden in Stone Age art may be the root of human writing – New Scientist – 9 Nov 2016

A painstaking investigation of Europe’s cave art has revealed 32 shapes and lines that crop up again and again and could be the world’s oldest code

Spot the signs: geometric forms can be found in paintings, as at Marsoulas in France

Philippe Blanchot / hemis.fr / Hemis/AFP

By Alison George

When she first saw the necklace, Genevieve von Petzinger feared the trip halfway around the globe to the French village of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac had been in vain. The dozens of ancient deer teeth laid out before her, each one pierced like a bead, looked roughly the same. It was only when she flipped one over that the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. On the reverse were three etched symbols: a line, an X and another line.

Von Petzinger, a palaeoanthropologist from the University of Victoria in Canada, is spearheading an unusual study of cave art. Her interest lies not in the breathtaking paintings of bulls, horses and bison that usually spring to mind, but in the smaller, geometric symbols frequently found alongside them. Her work has convinced her that far from being random doodles, the simple shapes represent a fundamental shift in our ancestors’ mental skills.

The first formal writing system that we know of is the 5000-year-old cuneiform script of the ancient city of Uruk in what is now Iraq. But it and other systems like it – such as Egyptian hieroglyphs – are complex and didn’t emerge from a vacuum. There must have been an earlier time when people first started playing with simple abstract signs. For years, von Petzinger has wondered if the circles, triangles and squiggles that humans began leaving on cave walls 40,000 years ago represent that special time in our history – the creation of the first human code.

If so, the marks are not to be sniffed at. Our ability to represent a concept with an abstract sign is something no other animal, not even our closest cousins the chimpanzees, can do. It is arguably also the foundation for our advanced, global culture.

The first step to check her theory was to fastidiously document the signs, their location, age and style, and see if any patterns emerged. For this, von Petzinger would have to visit as many caves as she could: archaeology’s focus on paintings of animals meant the signs were often overlooked in existing records.

Black tectiforms at Las Chimeneas, Spain

D v. Petzinger

It wasn’t easy or glamorous work. Gaining access to caves in France, where a lot of Stone Age art is located, can be devilishly complicated. Many are privately owned and sometimes jealously guarded by archaeologists. For the full set of symbols, von Petzinger also had to visit many obscure caves, the ones without big, flashy paintings. At El Portillo in northern Spain, all she had to go on was a note an archaeologist made in 1979 of some “red signs”; no one had been back since. At first, von Petzinger couldn’t even find the entrance. Eventually, she noticed a tiny opening at knee level, trickling with water. “Thank God I’m not claustrophobic,” she says. After 2 hours sliding through mud inside the mountain, she found two dots painted in pinkish ochre.

Between 2013 and 2014, von Petzinger visited 52 caves in France, Spain, Italy and Portugal. The symbols she found ranged from dots, lines, triangles, squares and zigzags to more complex forms like ladder shapes, hand stencils, something called a tectiform that looks a bit like a post with a roof, and feather shapes called penniforms. In some places, the signs were part of bigger paintings. Elsewhere, they were on their own, like the row of bell shapes found in El Castillo in northern Spain (see picture below), or the panel of 15 penniforms in Santian, also in Spain.

At El Castillo in Spain, a black penniform and bell-shapes

D v. Petzinger

“Our ability to represent a concept with an abstract symbol is uniquely human“

Perhaps the most startling finding was how few signs there were – just 32 in all of Europe. For tens of thousands of years, our ancestors seem to have been curiously consistent with the symbols they used. This, if nothing else, suggests that the markings had some sort of significance. “Of course they mean something,” says French prehistorian Jean Clottes. “They didn’t do it for fun.” The multiple repetitions of the P-shaped claviform sign in France’s Niaux cave “can’t be a coincidence”, he argues.

Thanks to von Petzinger’s meticulous logging, it’s now possible to see trends – new signs appearing in one region, sticking around for a while before falling out of fashion. Hand stencils, for example, were fairly common in the earliest parts of the Upper Palaeolithic era, starting 40,000 years ago, then fall out of fashion 20,000 years later. “You see a cultural change take place,” says von Petzinger. The earliest known penniform is from about 28,000 years ago in the Grande Grotte d’Arcy-sur-Cure in northern France, and later appears a little to the west of there before spreading south. Eventually, it reaches northern Spain and even Portugal. Von Petzinger believes it was first disseminated as people migrated, but its later spread suggests it then followed trade routes.

The research also reveals that modern humans were using two-thirds of these signs when they first settled in Europe, which creates another intriguing possibility. “This does not look like the start-up phase of a brand-new invention,” von Petzinger writes in her recently published book, The First Signs: Unlocking the mysteries of the world’s oldest symbols (Simon and Schuster). In other words, when modern humans first started moving into Europe from Africa, they must have brought a mental dictionary of symbols with them.

That fits well with the discovery of a 70,000-year-old block of ochre etched with cross-hatching in Blombos cave in South Africa. And when von Petzinger looked through archaeology papers for mentions or illustrations of symbols in cave art outside Europe, she found that many of her 32 signs were used around the world (see “Consistent doodles”). There is even tantalising evidence that an earlier human, Homo erectus, deliberately etched a zigzag on a shell on Java some 500,000 years ago. “The ability of humans to produce a system of signs is clearly not something that starts 40,000 years ago. This capacity goes back at least 100,000 years,” says Francesco d’Errico from the University of Bordeaux, France.

Nonetheless, something quite special seems to have happened in ice age Europe. In various caves, von Petzinger frequently found certain symbols used together. For instance, starting 40,000 years ago, hand stencils are often found alongside dots. Later, between 28,000 and 22,000 years ago, they are joined by thumb stencils and finger fluting – parallel lines created by dragging fingers through soft cave deposits.

Etched teeth

These kinds of combinations are particularly interesting if you’re looking for the deep origins of writing systems. Nowadays, we effortlessly combine letters to make words and words to make sentences, but this is a sophisticated skill. Von Petzinger wonders whether the people of the Upper Palaeolithic started experimenting with more complex ways of encoding information using deliberate, repeated sequences of symbols. Unfortunately, that’s hard to say from signs painted on cave walls, where arrangements could be deliberate or completely random. “Demonstrating that a sign was conceived as a combination of two or more different signs is difficult,” says d’Errico.

Etched deer teeth from Saint-Germain-de-la-Rivière, France

D v. Petzinger

It was while she was grappling with this conundrum that von Petzinger found out about the necklace of red deer teeth. It was found among other artefacts in the grave of a young woman who died some 16,000 years ago in Saint-Germain-de-la-Rivière, in south-west France. From a description in a book, von Petzinger knew that many of the teeth had geometric designs carved into them. So she travelled from Canada to the National Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, where the teeth were held, in the hope that they might be a missing piece of her puzzle.

The moment she flipped the first one, she knew the trip had been worthwhile. The X and straight lines were symbols she had seen together and separately on various cave walls. Now here they were, with the X sandwiched between two lines to form a compound character. As she turned each tooth over, more and more decorations were revealed. In the end, 48 were etched with single signs or combinations, many of which were also found in caves. Whether or not the symbols are actually writing depends on what you mean by “writing”, says d’Errico. Strictly speaking, a full system must encode all of human speech, ruling the Stone Age signs out. But if you take it to mean a system to encode and transmit information, then it’s possible to see the symbols as early steps in the development of writing. That said, cracking the prehistoric code (see “What do they mean?“) may prove impossible. “Something we call a square, to an Australian Aborigine, might represent a well,” says Clottes.

For d’Errico, we will never understand the meaning of the symbols without also considering the animal depictions they are so often associated with. “It is clear that the two make sense together,” he says. Similarly, cuneiform is composed of pictograms and counting tallies. A ration, for instance, is represented by a bowl and human head, followed by lines to denote quantity.

Von Petzinger points out another reason to believe the symbols are special. “The ability to realistically draw a horse or mammoth is totally impressive,” she says. “But anybody can draw a square, right? To draw these signs you are not relying on people who are artistically gifted.” In a sense, the humble nature of such shapes makes them more universally accessible – an important feature for an effective communication system. “There’s a broader possibility for what they could be used for, and who was using them.”

More than anything, she believes the invention of the first code represents a complete shift in how our ancestors shared information. For the first time, they no longer had to be in the same place at the same time to communicate with each other, and information could survive its owners.

The quest is far from over. Von Petzinger plans to expand her Stone Age dictionary by adding in the wealth of signs on portable objects, in caves on other continents and maybe even those found beneath the waves (see “Diving for art“). “We only have part of the picture now. We are on the cusp of an exciting time.”

What do they mean?

Geometric marks left alongside murals of animals have attracted the curiosity and scrutiny of archaeologists for decades, although it’s only recently that one researcher, Genevieve von Petzinger, has begun systematically cataloguing them all into a searchable database to try to determine their significance (see main story).

For French prehistorian Henri Breuil, who studied cave art in the early 20th century, the paintings and engravings were all about hunting and magic. In the abstract symbols, he saw representations of traps and weapons – meanings that were intrinsically linked to the larger paintings. In the 1960s, the French archaeologist André Leroi-Gourhan declared that lines and hooks were male signs, whereas ovals and triangles were female.

Some of this interpretation has stuck. Circles and inverted triangles are still often cited in the literature as representations of the vulva. It is worth noting that many of the earlier scholars studying cave art were men, which may have led to gender biases in their interpretations. “It’s interesting that it was predominantly male archaeologists doing this work early on, and there were a whole lot of vulvas being identified everywhere. This could have been a product of the times, but then again, many cultures do place importance on fertility,” says von Petzinger.

Later, South African archaeologist David Lewis-Williams proposed a neuropsychological interpretation for some symbols. Like many of his peers, Lewis-Williams believes that at least some Stone Age art was made during or after hallucinogenic trips, perhaps as part of shamanic rituals. If so, the symbols could simply be literal representations of hallucinations. Some studies suggest that drugs and migraines can both provoke linear and spiral patterns, not unlike those seen in ice age art.

But the sad truth is that without a time machine, we may never really know what our ancestors were communicating with these signs.

Diving for art

Some of the most stunning cave art in Europe was only discovered in 1985, when divers found the mouth of the Cosquer cave 37 metres below the Mediterranean coastline near Marseilles in southern France. Its entrance had been submerged as sea levels rose after the last ice age. Chances are, other similar caves are waiting to be discovered.

So von Petzinger has teamed up with David Lang of OpenROV in Berkeley, California, which makes low-cost, underwater robots. Next year, they plan to use them to hunt for submerged cave entrances off Spain’s north coast. The region is rich in painted caves, many close to the shoreline, so it seems likely that others could be hiding below the waves.

If they find any, the pair will send in the remote-controlled mini-submarines, armed with cameras, to safely explore the new sites.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23230990-700-in-search-of-the-very-first-coded-symbols/

Dating Site Review – Adult Friend Finder

The article Mp3 audio file

Everyone knows making friends as an adult is just as nerve-wracking as it was in middle school. AdultFriendFinder sounds like it should be the solution — but is it?

Moving to a new city or working at a new job where you don’t know anybody can seriously be depressing. What are you supposed to do? Go sit at the bar by yourself? And talk to strangers?

Then comes the lightbulb idea: You can make friends online! If online dating is so popular and successful, there’s no way that there aren’t a few legit sites where you can make adult friends in your area with similar interests. Hmm, AdultFriendFinder.com sounds familiar.

So you’re on your lunch break at work, type in the URL, and the next thing you know, you’re frantically closing the tab and hoping nobody walked behind you for that split second.

Our point: AdultFriendFinder is not what you think it is.

Friends with benefits

As you can see from the words blatantly plastered across the main page pictured above, AdultFriendFinder is where you can go to “join the world’s largest sex and swinger community.” (That photo is actually a video of a girl talking, so you may want to mute your computer before your click — or at least put on headphones.)

AdultFriendFinder one of the most well-known sites for finding quick sexual encounters, regular hookups, and literally anything else even remotely related to sex. The unfiltered, rowdy-as-hell match feed, jumble of explicit photos, and stimulating calls-to-action offering all types of sex makes is heaven for anyone looking for a good time — and hell for someone who was genuinely trying to make platonic friends.

SEE ALSO: 7 of the best dating sites for lesbians (and why they are actually good)

On average, AdultFriendFinder attracts an average of 25 million visits per month — for reference, eharmony sees 4.1 million visits per month. So yeah. It’s big. The majority of traffic originates from the United States (54%), followed by visitors from the United Kingdom and Canada. The site ranks number 42 among all adult sites in the US (including porn sites) and number 713 worldwide.

Unfortunately, the numbers that most people want to know — the male to female ratio — are hard to find. (Even AskMen couldn’t find those stats). There’s speculation that this is because there are significantly more men than women on the site, and AdultFriendFinder would likely be worried about scaring off newcomers with the whole “sausage party” vibe. This isn’t officially confirmed, though, and there are clearly enough women to keep the site up and running.

This site is all about sex

If you’re 100% over being grilled with relationship questions on traditional dating sites like EliteSingles and OkCupid, AdultFriendFinder is your golden ticket to instant communication. Registering takes literally 30 seconds — they require nothing from you aside from an email address, a username, a password, and an introduction. Though they don’t require a bio or a picture, it’s probably best to add a few to up your chances for messages and flirtation, especially if you’re looking for something super specific, as you’re more likely to be contacted by people looking for the same thing.

I guess it’s comforting to know that some people on here care about what’s on the inside as well. 

After you register, you’ll see that there are a ton of options to completely personalize your account (way more than I expected for a hookup site, honestly). The more you fill out, the more attractive your profile will be to new viewers. There are the basic physical appearance questions about eye and hair color, and since I identified as a woman, cup size was an option. (If you identify as a man, I’m sure you can guess what question they ask.)

There’s also a personality test that seemed pretty close to something you’d see on Match or eharmony, and I guess it’s comforting to know that some people on here care about what’s on the inside as well.

One of the funniest forms was the “Purity Test,” featuring 100 hilariously-worded questions about how far you’re willing to go sexually. It felt like the sexy 20 questions game that you’d play with your middle school crush when neither of you know how to flirt, but I guess this information is pertinent when you’re on a site that’s all about sex.

There’s no real matching strategy other than the basic info on physical appearances, so don’t get your hopes up when it comes to finding a lasting connection or kindred soul — but hey, if you’re on the site for the same reasons most other people are, that stuff won’t really matter anyway. *Shrug*

Finding a match

Like a traditional dating site, AdultFriendFinder gives you a collage of potential matches at the top of your personal home page. (I had nearly 95,000 possible matches just from putting in my zip code.) These will be random right after you sign up, but you can opt to update your preferences to refine your results: Choose your preferred gender(s), age range, location and mile radius, race, sexual orientation, body type, and marital status. They’ll let you know who’s online when you are, which matches are closest to you, new people who liked or messaged you, and all of that good stuff.

Your personal feed will be pretty intense: You barely have to scroll before you see naked parts. Depending on whether you set your preferences to men, women, or both, you’ll see all of that stuff up close, personal, swinging around, in action — you name it, it’ll pop up.

via GIPHY

AdultFriendFinder is basically like a PornHub that you can interact with. We probably don’t have to say this, but AdultFriendFinder is NSFW and not safe to be on while kids are in the room. Some videos will be blurred out and read “Naughty video” until you upgrade to a Gold Membership, but trust me — I started out with the free version, and you still get to a see a lot.

AdultFriendFinder is basically like a PornHub that you can interact with.

The message section is set up similarly to a Gmail account, and you can mark things as read or important just as you would on a real email. How professional. You’ll also receive messages instantly, which is definitely a confidence boost even though you know they’re probably just looking for one thing. Some will be raunchy (I received messages from guys asking to meet up and get it on before I even uploaded my photos) but some are genuinely friendly.

You can tell who took the time to look at your profile and who is sending the same thing to everyone, but it’s nice to see that there is a range. I’ve received messages just as aggressive on Tinder, so unless you’ve never been on a dating site ever in your life, you won’t be too shocked.

Unlike more traditional dating sites, these people don’t need to talk and get to know you for months before meeting. If you’re tired of things moving too slowly or need a change of pace, it’s pretty awesome to know you can immediately make plans for each night of the week.

It’s actually not that bad, though

Once you get past the in-your-face sexplosion of naked profile pictures, questionable profile names (many involve the number 69), and explicit videos, there are actually an impressive number of resources to help make your experience as satisfying as possible. Some will cost money even outside of the paid subscription, which kinda sucks.

Aside from the NSFW content, the website is extremely user friendly (although in need of a redesign). Every feature is advertised in big letters, notifications are displayed clearly with labels, and you don’t really have to click around to find anything. This makes it super accessible for users of all ages, even those who aren’t tech savvy and can’t even figure out Facebook. Everything’s a little jumbled, but you figure it out after messing around for a few minutes.

Here’s a quick list of some of the many things you can do:

• • Request friends

• • Direct messaging and emailing: You can do this without being friends

• • Flirt: It’s like a poke on Facebook to let someone know you’re interested if you’re too nervous to message first

• • Send virtual gifts

• • Play the “Hot or Not” game: The flirty version of MySpace’s Top 8

• • Watch videos of people in your feed — be aware of your surroundings for these

• • Start a blog

• • Watch live broadcasts: No, these are not news segments

• • Adult chat rooms: Topics vary greatly. You can talk to married couples, find other couples, talk to people around the world, or hit up the site’s “love doctors” to get help with a failing relationship

• • Join groups: These can get extremely specific, so you’re likely to find one in your niche interest.

• • Photo contests: June 2018 featured an LGBTQ one for Pride Month

• • Buy courses from the Sex Academy: Online instructional videos for anal sex, oral sex, how to meet women online, and more. (Note: These cost extra outside of the paid membership.)

AdultFriendFinder is like your friend at the bar who just wants you to get laid. 

As scary as it is to be bombarded with naked bodies, I give props to the creators for being so pro-sex and honestly, so helpful. It’s obvious that they want to help their users to have a good time. AdultFriendFinder is like your outgoing friend at the bar who just wants you to get laid and who can introduce you to tons of people with similar interests.

You can join topic-specific chat rooms and groups, or download online courses from the Sex Academy to learn new sex skills or tips on how to talk to people online. You can also watch videos and live broadcasts people have posted, which might be alarming at first — but AdultFriendFinder knows that watching videos of real people that you could possibly meet in real life is way more satisfying than porn.

Another bonus is that AdultFriendFinder is like the dating site version of New York City — AKA it never sleeps. You’ll find people who work the regular 9-5, people who work the night shift, and people in other time zones, so it’s nearly impossible to log on and not have a ton of people to talk to. AdultFriendFinder is like the booty call that’s always awake when you text them.

AskMen’s review (among others) gave AdultFriendFinder serious kudos:

“A full-fledged sexual haven in the online dating world, Adult Friend Finder continues to attract a growing number of members as well as improve over time as it adds new, sexually enticing features. The site accommodates users with all varieties of sexual intentions, making it ridiculously easy to meet others and interact online, engage in cyber sex, and arrange in-person casual hookups. With so many members, an abundance of unparalleled features, and a completely non-judgmental, sexually unrestrictive environment, Adult Friend Finder has been and continues to be one of the best online dating sites out there, most prominently in the casual hookup category.”

AdultFriendFinder is like the booty call that’s always awake when you text them.

This reddit thread is a great chance to see how people use the site IRL who aren’t writing a review or getting paid to hype it up. It actually seems like a lot of people use it for slightly more than a hookup and are looking for similar interests, intelligence, and a profile that doesn’t look like the main page of Redtube. The girl who created the thread even mentions that there are way less weirdos than you’d expect from a site that looks like this. Sure, there are a ton of profiles that will send you crude messages during business hours while you’re thinking “Aren’t you at work?” But there are a decent handful of sweet people who genuinely just want to have a conversation, meet up for dinner, or flirt with you without being gross. Friendly conversation without feeling violated is possible. And what’s nice is that the site is an invitation to be open with your intentions, so consent can be addressed freely.

Paid memberships are where things get interesting

As previously mentioned, you can do a lot on the site without paying a cent: You can message people, reply to emails, and visit most profiles and chat rooms. You know, all of the basic stuff. But with just a few clicks AdultFriendFinder can send you deep down the rabbit hole, and a lot of that juicier hidden content can only be unlocked with a paid membership (called the Gold membership) or by earning points.

SEE ALSO: 8 of the best dating sites for introverts, wallflowers, and shy people

Points are AdultFriendFinder’s non-monetary currency. If you’re a free member, you’ll have to earn points through on-site activity to unlock stuff that’s exclusive to paying members. It’s kind of like a game, with points acting like dollar bills at the strip club. You can “tip” updates, photos, or videos from a member that you like, buy “bling” (which is basically a badge that makes you look cooler), watch racy videos that are usually blurred out or access other exclusive site content, or “buy” a Gold membership for a month. The more points you have, the more you get out of the site.

Archive

https://archive.is/Em0hN

American Society Would Collapse If It Weren’t for These 8 Myths – by Lee Camp

Our society should’ve collapsed by now. You know that, right?

No society should function with this level of inequality (with the possible exception of one of those prison planets in a “Star Wars” movie). Sixty-three percent of Americans can’t afford a $500 emergency. Yet Amazon head Jeff Bezos is now worth a record $141 billion. He could literally end world hunger for multiple years and still have more money left over than he could ever spend on himself.

Worldwide, one in 10 people only make $2 a day. Do you know how long it would take one of those people to make the same amount as Jeff Bezos has? 193 million years. (If they only buy single-ply toilet paper.) Put simply, you cannot comprehend the level of inequality in our current world or even just our nation.

So … shouldn’t there be riots in the streets every day? Shouldn’t it all be collapsing? Look outside. The streets aren’t on fire. No one is running naked and screaming (usually). Does it look like everyone’s going to work at gunpoint? No. We’re all choosing to continue on like this.

Why?

Well, it comes down to the myths we’ve been sold. Myths that are ingrained in our social programming from birth, deeply entrenched, like an impacted wisdom tooth. These myths are accepted and basically never questioned.

I’m going to cover eight of them. There are more than eight. There are probably hundreds. But I’m going to cover eight because (A) no one reads a column titled “Hundreds of Myths of American Society,” (B) these are the most important ones and (C) we all have other shit to do.

Myth No. 8—We have a democracy.

If you think we still have a democracy or a democratic republic, ask yourself this: When was the last time Congress did something that the people of America supported that did not align with corporate interests? … You probably can’t do it. It’s like trying to think of something that rhymes with “orange.” You feel like an answer exists but then slowly realize it doesn’t. Even the Carter Center and former President Jimmy Carter believe that America has been transformed into an oligarchy: A small, corrupt elite control the country with almost no input from the people. The rulers need the myth that we’re a democracy to give us the illusion of control.

Myth No. 7—We have an accountable and legitimate voting system.

Gerrymandering, voter purging, data mining, broken exit polling, push polling, superdelegates, electoral votes, black-box machines, voter ID suppression, provisional ballots, super PACs, dark money, third parties banished from the debates and two corporate parties that stand for the same goddamn pile of fetid crap!

What part of this sounds like a legitimate election system?

No, we have what a large Harvard study called the worst election system in the Western world. Have you ever seen where a parent has a toddler in a car seat, and the toddler has a tiny, brightly colored toy steering wheel so he can feel like he’s driving the car? That’s what our election system is—a toy steering wheel. Not connected to anything. We all sit here like infants, excitedly shouting, “I’m steeeeering!”

And I know it’s counterintuitive, but that’s why you have to vote. We have to vote in such numbers that we beat out what’s stolen through our ridiculous rigged system.

Myth No. 6—We have an independent media that keeps the rulers accountable.

Our media outlets are funded by weapons contractors, big pharma, big banks, big oil and big, fat hard-on pills. (Sorry to go hard on hard-on pills, but we can’t get anything resembling hard news because it’s funded by dicks.) The corporate media’s jobs are to rally for war, cheer for Wall Street and froth at the mouth for consumerism. It’s their mission to actually fortify belief in the myths I’m telling you about right now. Anybody who steps outside that paradigm is treated like they’re standing on a playground wearing nothing but a trench coat.

Myth No. 5—We have an independent judiciary.

The criminal justice system has become a weapon wielded by the corporate state. This is how bankers can foreclose on millions of homes illegally and see no jail time, but activists often serve jail time for nonviolent civil disobedience. Chris Hedges recently noted, “The most basic constitutional rights … have been erased for many. … Our judicial system, as Ralph Nader has pointed out, has legalized secret law, secret courts, secret evidence, secret budgets and secret prisons in the name of national security.”

If you’re not part of the monied class, you’re pressured into releasing what few rights you have left. According to The New York Times, “97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases end in plea bargains, with defendants pleading guilty in exchange for a lesser sentence.”

That’s the name of the game. Pressure people of color and poor people to just take the plea deal because they don’t have a million dollars to spend on a lawyer. (At least not one who doesn’t advertise on beer coasters.)

Myth No. 4—The police are here to protect you. They’re your friends.

That’s funny. I don’t recall my friend pressuring me into sex to get out of a speeding ticket. (Which is essentially still legal in 32 states.)

The police in our country are primarily designed to do two things: protect the property of the rich and perpetrate the completely immoral war on drugs—which by definition is a war on our own people.

We lock up more people than any other country on earth. Meaning the land of the free is the largest prison state in the world. So all these droopy-faced politicians and rabid-talking heads telling you how awful China is on human rights or Iran or North Korea—none of them match the numbers of people locked up right here under Lady Liberty’s skirt.

Myth No. 3—Buying will make you happy.

This myth is put forward mainly by the floods of advertising we take in but also by our social engineering. Most of us feel a tenacious emptiness, an alienation deep down behind our surface emotions (for a while I thought it was gas). That uneasiness is because most of us are flushing away our lives at jobs we hate before going home to seclusion boxes called houses or apartments. We then flip on the TV to watch reality shows about people who have it worse than we do (which we all find hilarious).

If we’re lucky, we’ll make enough money during the week to afford enough beer on the weekend to help it all make sense. (I find it takes at least four beers for everything to add up.) But that doesn’t truly bring us fulfillment. So what now? Well, the ads say buying will do it. Try to smother the depression and desperation under a blanket of flat-screen TVs, purses and Jet Skis. Now does your life have meaning? No? Well, maybe you have to drive that Jet Ski a little faster! Crank it up until your bathing suit flies off and you’ll feel alive!

The dark truth is that we have to believe the myth that consuming is the answer or else we won’t keep running around the wheel. And if we aren’t running around the wheel, then we start thinking, start asking questions. Those questions are not good for the ruling elite, who enjoy a society based on the daily exploitation of 99 percent of us.

Myth No. 2—If you work hard, things will get better.

According to Deloitte’s Shift Index survey: “80% of people are dissatisfied with their jobs” and “[t]he average person spends 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime.” That’s about one-seventh of your life—and most of it is during your most productive years.

Ask yourself what we’re working for. To make money? For what? Almost none of us are doing jobs for survival anymore. Once upon a time, jobs boiled down to:

I plant the food—>I eat the food—>If I don’t plant food = I die.

But nowadays, if you work at a café—will someone die if they don’t get their super-caf-mocha-frap-almond-piss-latte? I kinda doubt they’ll keel over from a blueberry scone deficiency.

If you work at Macy’s, will customers perish if they don’t get those boxer briefs with the sweat-absorbent-ass fabric? I doubt it. And if they do die from that, then their problems were far greater than you could’ve known. So that means we’re all working to make other people rich because we have a society in which we have to work. Technological advancements can do most everything that truly must get done.

So if we wanted to, we could get rid of most work and have tens of thousands of more hours to enjoy our lives. But we’re not doing that at all. And no one’s allowed to ask these questions—not on your mainstream airwaves at least. Even a half-step like universal basic income is barely discussed because it doesn’t compute with our cultural programming.

Scientists say it’s quite possible artificial intelligence will take away all human jobs in 120 years. I think they know that will happen because bots will take the jobs and then realize that 80 percent of them don’t need to be done! The bots will take over and then say, “Stop it. … Stop spending a seventh of your life folding shirts at Banana Republic.”

One day, we will build monuments to the bot that told us to enjoy our lives and … leave the shirts wrinkly.

And this leads me to the largest myth of our American society.

Myth No. 1—You are free.

And I’m not talking about the millions locked up in our prisons. I’m talking about you and me. If you think you’re free, try running around with your nipples out, ladies. Guys, take a dump on the street and see how free you are.

I understand there are certain restrictions on freedom we actually desire to have in our society—maybe you’re not crazy about everyone leaving a Stanley Steamer in the middle of your walk to work. But a lot of our lack of freedom is not something you would vote for if given the chance.

Try building a fire in a parking lot to keep warm in the winter.

Try sleeping in your car for more than a few hours without being harassed by police.

Try maintaining your privacy for a week without a single email, web search or location data set collected by the NSA and the telecoms.

Try signing up for the military because you need college money and then one day just walking off the base, going, “Yeah, I was bored. Thought I would just not do this anymore.”

Try explaining to Kentucky Fried Chicken that while you don’t have the green pieces of paper they want in exchange for the mashed potatoes, you do have some pictures you’ve drawn on a napkin to give them instead.

Try running for president as a third-party candidate. (Jill Stein was shackled and chained to a chair by police during one of the debates.)

Try using the restroom at Starbucks without buying something … while black.

We are less free than a dog on a leash. We live in one of the hardest-working, most unequal societies on the planet with more billionaires than ever.

Meanwhile, Americans supply 94 percent of the paid blood used worldwide. And it’s almost exclusively coming from very poor people. This abusive vampire system is literally sucking the blood from the poor. Does that sound like a free decision they made? Or does that sound like something people do after immense economic force crushes down around them? (One could argue that sperm donation takes a little less convincing.)

Point is, in order to enforce this illogical, immoral system, the corrupt rulers—most of the time—don’t need guns and tear gas to keep the exploitation mechanisms humming along. All they need are some good, solid bullshit myths for us all to buy into, hook, line and sinker. Some fairy tales for adults.

It’s time to wake up.

If you think this column is important, please share it. Also, check out Lee Camp’s weekly TV show “Redacted Tonight”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUykMf5I1q0 and weekly podcast “Common Censored.”

 

Denying Ad Revenue to the Main Stream Media – Online archive services role in alternative media

Denying Ad Revenue to the Main Stream Media – Online archive services play an important role in the alternative news ecosystem – by Tiffany Westry Womack (University of Alabama at Birmingham) 28 June 2018

http://archive.fo/HCIT5#selection-97.0-145.269

In a large-scale analysis, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Cyprus University of Technology and University College London reveal fringe communities within Reddit and 4chan push the use of URLs from archive services to avoid censorship and undercut advertising revenue of new sources with contrasting ideologies.

“Web archiving services play an increasingly important role in today’s information ecosystem by preserving online content,” said Jeremy Blackburn, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences. “News and social media posts have been found to be the most common types of content archived. URLs of archiving services are extensively shared on ‘fringe’ communities within Reddit and 4chan to preserve possibly contentious content.”

Researchers analyzed millions of URLs from archive.is and  Wayback Machine shared on four social networks: Reddit, Twitter, Gab and 4chan’s politically incorrect board (/pol/). The results of the study were published this week in a paper at the 12th International Conference on Web and Social Media in Stanford, California. The social-network-specific analysis shows, among other things, that moderators leverage web archiving services to ensure content shared on their community persists. In particular, they found that 44 percent of URLs from archive.is and 85 percent of URLs from Wayback Machine URLs are shared by Reddit moderation bots. Web archiving services were also found to be used extensively for the archival and dissemination of content related to conspiracy theories and world events related to politics, suggesting these services play an important role in the alternative news ecosystem.

Additional evidence shows moderators from specific subreddits force users to misuse web archiving services so as to ideologically target certain news sources by depriving them of traffic and potential ad revenues. Links from unwanted news websites shared are deleted, and users are prompted to utilize a cached link, screenshot or archive.is.

“For example, we observed that ‘The Donald’ subreddit systematically targets ad revenue of news sources with conflicting ideologies,” Blackburn said. “Moderation bots block URLs from those sites and prompt users to post archived URLs. According to our conservative estimates, popular news site like the Washington Post lose approximately $70,000 worth of ad revenue annually due to the use of archiving services on Reddit.”

The analysis reveals that out of 3,800 submissions made to Reddit using links from the Washington Post and 3,300 submissions with links from CNN, 44 percent and 39 percent were removed. “These findings highlight the importance of archiving services in the web’s information and ad ecosystems, the need to carefully consider them when studying social media and when designing systems to detect and contain the cascade of misinformation on the web,” Blackburn said.

Blackburn is a co-founder of the International Data-driven Research for Advanced Modeling and Analysis Lab, or iDRAMA Lab, an international group of scientists focusing on modern socio-technical issues with expertise ranging from low-level cryptography to video games.

http://archive.fo/HCIT5#selection-97.0-145.269

https://archive.ph/jrktt

Gay Marriage Divorce Rate Statistics – 4 June 2017

As same sex marriages begin to become normal throughout the United States and in other regions of the world, there is a certain interest in how stable those marriages will be. It isn’t to judge whether or not they are better or worse than a “traditional” marriage. It is simply to see if all of that work to gain happiness has actually achieved happiness.

States that have allowed same sex unions actually have lower divorce rates in every population demographic than states that have banned the practice.

Gay Marriage Divorce Rate

Take Massachusetts as an example. This state was the first to allow same sex marriages and it is also the state that has the lowest overall divorce rate. It isn’t a small difference in the divorce rates either. Compared to states that have banned same sex marriage, states that allow the practice have a 20% lower divorce rate.

• In any given year, about 1% of the total number of registered same sex civil unions or legal marriages will wind up in divorce.
• The same sex marriage divorce rate is about 50% lower on any given year when directly compared to the heterosexual divorce rate.
• About two thirds of same sex marriages involve two women.
• There are currently about 150,000 registered same sex unions in the United States right now.
• Because of the low number of unions that are legally created or dissolved, most countries don’t actually calculate divorce data.
• Nearly two-thirds of registered or married same-sex couples are lesbians, and only about a third are gay men.
• A smaller percentage of same-sex couples register or marry in comparison to straight couples, but if current trends continue the marriage/registration rates will be similar in about ten years.

Because same sex marriages are relatively new, there just isn’t any long term data that can show how stable these relationships tend to be. One reason why the divorce rates are 50% less than traditional couples may be because those who are getting married tend to already be in long term relationships that just weren’t legally recognized before. What data does exist shows that same sex couples are just as likely to end in divorce as their heterosexual counterparts. With 42.8% of marriages ending in divorce in 2012 and 2% of all marriages that exist ending, what matters more is the creation of a stable marriage and relationship instead of looking at the sexual orientation of the relationship.

What About International Data?

• In Sweden, where unions became legal in 1995 and marriages in 2009, marriage and fertility rates have trended upwards and the divorce rate is down.
• A 2004 study in Sweden showed that male same sex couples were 50% more likely to divorce than heterosexual couples.
• Children who live in same sex marriages have the same adjustment difficulties as children from male/female relationships.
• By the age of 17, 55% of female same sex parents had separated, compared to 36% of heterosexual parents.
• Same sex couples, even in divorce, are more likely to share custody of their children than heterosexual couples.
• There is no discernible difference in the educational process of children in same sex marriages when compared to children from heterosexual marriages.
• In the last year, some countries only had 1 divorce filing for same sex marriages. Others had fewer than 10 filings in total.

The long term data internationally shows that there could be the possibility of more instability in same sex marriages, but most of this data is taken from legal civil unions and not legal marriages. The data shows that there is a 10 times greater chance for a civil union to dissolve than a marriage, so there is a certain bias in the statistics that are being used. The bottom line with same sex divorce is this, no matter where it happens to be: it’s going to happen because relationships break up. We just don’t know how often it is going to happen because the data samples are small and sometimes not even calculated. Until we have that data, all that the statistics really show is an educated guess about what the divorce rates are going to end up being.

Why Isn’t There Reliable Divorce Data?

• In many states and countries where same sex marriages have been allowed, divorce laws have not kept up at the same pace.
• It is not uncommon for a same sex couple to fill out court forms that refer to them as “husband” and “wife.”
• Some states do not allow for the divorce of a same sex couple because there are no actual divorce laws on the books that permit the practice.
• Over 60% of same sex couples who get married don’t actually reside in the state where the marriage ceremony takes place.
• There is a greater chance [11%] of a same sex couple ending a legal union than there is [1%] of ending their marriage in any given year.
• If a same sex couple lives in a state that doesn’t recognize the marriage in the first place, then the divorce won’t be recognized and no alimony will be awarded.

Having marriage equality is a good thing, but with that there must also be divorce equality. If a heterosexual couple does not need to establish residency in the state where they got married in order to have a divorce, then the same should be true for a same sex couple as well, but that just isn’t the case. Critics can point to the fact that some divorce filings have occurred just a few months after the marriage ceremony takes place, but that isn’t any different than heterosexual couples. Some heterosexual marriages have been known to last only 72 hours and can’t be annulled. Until we have more data, it is not right to look at the limited data that exists in civil union dissolution and say that same sex marriages divorce at higher rates. 85% of cohabiting heterosexual relationships also dissolve. It’s like comparing apples to horses.

The Law of the Land: Will Gay Marriage Change Marriage, and if So, How? – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjF7erMD0g4

They order these things better in Dorchester…

“They order these things better in Dorchester,” I said.

“And, you have been in Dorchester?”

“Yup, I’ve been in Dorchester.”

“Explain?”

In my head, I was off, galloping down Gallivan Boulevard where my name was written in concrete.  To the old toll road of Dorchester Avenue.  Did my parents live there?  Who knows.  Somewhere where some trees grow.  A tree grows in Dorchester with lots and lots of other trees, and people too, are near lots and lots of other people.  Packed in the subway, perhaps, at  seven o’clock.  Body to body in a silent crowd.  Husbands and wives with children between them.  Some guy named Richard Corey going home one night.  Lots to see on the subway train, a platform is provided.

Sometimes the streets are paved with water, but not like in Venice, and the boats are all down in Dorchester Bay.  Who ever heard of that?  No blue blood Yankees in our waters.  Just a giant silhouette of Ho on the Gas Tank.  What a rainbow.  They lock out the workers and things explode.  The gas bosses don’t live near the Dorchester tank.  Why would they.

Churches and churches and churches….some in stone, others in brick, and some in storefronts with very long names.  Ebeneezer Baptist Church – I think of Ebeneezer Scrooge.  Is there a Saint Scrooge’s Chapel?  He did come to understand the error of his ways.  The lost sinner returns just like the lost sheep to the flock.  Lots of flocks in Dorchester.

And there are hills, lots of hills in Dorchester.  Riding a bike is a challenge.  One needs good breaks going down hill, and energy and strength to go uphill.  In the olden days there was lots of broken glass on the streets, but the the ‘bottle bill’ put a price on the empty glass bottles and cans and created a cottage industry in Dorchester.  Every nickel counts.

There are a lot of corner stores in Dorchester.  Lots of people to buy lots of things.  Not so many newspapers anymore, but still lots of lottery players.  Usually the poorer the town, the more people play the lottery.  A while back the biggest town for lottery tickets was Massachusetts poorest town Chelsea.  But still, Dorchester has long lines for lottery tickets, especially for a big payout when the odds against winning are seemingly impossible.  Some people pay to dream at the corner store lottery machine.

One might take a year to visit all the fast food and take-out joints in Dorchester.  The good, the bad, and the ugly.  One can look out the window and see the people walking and cars driving by and the life of a section of a city.  Things move in Dorchester.

Airplanes fly overhead towards Logan airport.  They were flying over less populated Milton to make noise for the least amount of people, but the wealthy people in Milton complained and pointed out that in a capitalist society the poorer citizens are supposed to suffer for their sins and the flight path was moved over populous Dorchester.  We are many, they are few.

However, when someone in Dorchester wants to go to the airport they can get there easily in a car.  Twenty five minutes to the departure area.  Flying into the airport over Dorchester as one looks down the area is all trees.  A lush forest, when one can see the forest for the trees.

Standing on the corner watching all the people and trucks and school buses and cars and vans and pedestrians go by can make one dizzy in Dorchester.  Lots of things move on the streets of Dorchester.  But, early in the morning, come out at four o’clock, and things are quiet and hardly anything moves.  If you are one acquainted with the night.

When I was a teen I sang in a rock band called The Poor Boys.  One song we covered was an Animals song – “We gotta get out of this place.”

The words:

In this dirty old part of the city,

Where the sun refuse to shine,

People tell me there ain’t no use in trying,

We gotta get out of this place,

If it’s the last thing we ever do,

Girl there’s a better life

For me and you.

At the time lots of long time Dorchester residents were moving out to the suburbs south of the city ino a dreamland called the South Shore.  Now, some long term residents can’t afford to own a house or condo, or rent and apartment in Dorchester because of high prices.  They are forced to go to the suburban wasteland called – The South Shore.

 

Hackensack NJ: Man has eaten pizza every day for over 30 years – by Rebecca King – 11 Oct 2018

 

(Mike Roman right, podcast host Tom La Veccia left) 

………………………….

Mike Roman has only eaten pizza for dinner since he was 4 years old. He’s now 41.

The Hackensack-native went on Tom La Vecchia’s podcast “New Theory” to discuss this strange food addiction. 

La Vecchia said he met Roman 10 years ago in a pizza shop, where they got to talking about how Roman had only eaten pizza for dinner since adolescence. 

On the podcast, Roman said that his mother gave in to his picky eating, allowing him to eat only pizza for dinner. In his grade school days, Roman mixed that up with a peanut butter sandwich every day for lunch. But when he entered the work force he started dining out for lunch — at pizza joints.

Now, he’s back to peanut butter and bread for lunch. But the fact remains that he not only ate pizza for dinner for over 30 years, he also ate it for lunch for at least a good 10 of those.

Even stranger, Roman, who works as a teacher, only eats plain pizza with no toppings. He also typically goes out for pizza instead of cooking it at home. His favorite pizzerias in the area include Kinchley’s Tavern in Ramsey, Lido Restaurant in Hackensack and Joseph Pizza in Hackensack.

Throughout the podcast, La Vecchia asked Roman (who is now married) how he used to go on dates. The answer: he always went out to places with pizza. Did he let women know about his obsession right away? The answer: “I let people know right away. I don’t want to scare them.” Did he have pizza for dinner on his wedding day? Of course. He also had it at the cocktail hour and for lunch that day. On his honeymoon? Sure, Aruba has pizza places.

Roman says he’s lived in the same town, listened to the same bands and watched the same movies and TV shows for his whole life. His pizza obsession is just an extension of his way of life. He reports that he has no health problems to speak of and manages to maintain a normal weight, despite his greasy daily meal.

“Pizza has three of the four basic food groups,” he said.

Roman did admit in the podcast that he would eat other foods in a life or death situation.

But until that happens, bring on the pizza.

Archive

Life in London Town – The “Sweet Science” of Sports Writer Pierce Egan – 1772 – 1849

“Nothing succeeds like success”—or “Fails like failure,” wrote Pierce Egan.  My father explained  to me, when I was a youth, “Nothing succeeds like success.”  He never gave me the second half of that quote.  I learned that on my own.  I wonder if the phrase that Egan wrote a hundred years before my birth had come down to my father orally and then to me.  Pierce Egan’s words passed down through a century.  Apparently Mr. Egan had an eye for the human condition, and an ear for common language. 

Pierce Egan was the child of Irish immigrants to the city of London.  Being poor immigrants there is no certainty if Pierce Egan was born in London, or brought there as an infant by his parents.  But Pierce Egan became a part of the city of London, and an observer of many levels of the society around him, both high born, and the lowest of the oppressed. 

Pierce Egan learned a lot about words as a young man when he learned the printers trade.  Letters and words and phrases were his daily and hourly occupation.  Every letter mattered in the letterpress machines Egan helped operate.  Too many extra words meant more time effort and money.  A print shop in London circa 1800 would have many different types of customers and a variety of materials to print.  Rich people or their poor servants and agents would frequent a shop.  As every printer learns, customers always want their job done ‘yesterday.’  Printers usually have a good idea of what is going on in the news since some of them print newspapers, and all of them can read. 

Pierce Egan began to write accounts of sporting events that were published in newspapers.  In the early 1800’s the main sporting events the public attended were boxing and horse racing.  He became popular and people sought out his written accounts of events and looked forward to his writing.

Four volumes about the sport of boxing under the title Boxiana; or Sketches of Ancient and Modern Pugilism where put out between 1813 and 1824 with lavish illustrations.  Pierce Egan was the wordsmith who first called boxing “the Sweet Science.” 

(Audio book on Librivox) 

Egan began to publish a regular journal entitled Life in London.  Priced at a shilling a copy the magazine was affordable for many, and was passed hand to hand and read aloud to others.  Egan got to meet the king so Egan put the king’s name as a dedication to deflect criticism and gain some prestige.  The letterpress printed issues were illustrated with black and white drawings and color illustrations from George Cruikshank.

On July 15, 1821, the first issue introduced the characters ‘Tom and Jerry’ whose names have come down through the last century and landed on playful and mischievous cartoon characters.  The full title on the work was Life in London or, the Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, esq., and his elegant friend, Corinthian Tom, accompanied by Bob Logic, the Oxonian, in their rambles and sprees through the Metropolis.

 

(On Project Gutenberg  – text ) 

As the character Tom explains, the language on the streets of London is not always the upper class King’s English: “A kind of cant phraseology is current from one end of the Metropolis to the other, and you will scarcely be able to move a single step, my dear JERRY, without consulting a Slang Dictionary, or having some friend at your elbow to explain the strange expressions which, at every turn, will assail your ear.’ Such a dictionary is what Egan offers, hoping in sum that his efforts work ‘to improve, and not to degrade mankind; to remove ignorance, and put the UNWARY on their guard; to rouse the sleepy, and to keep them AWAKE; to render those persons who are a little UP, more FLY: and to cause every one to be down to those tricks, manoeuvres and impositions practised in life, which daily cross the paths of both young and old.”

The stories and characters and scenes depicted in the magazine were so popular that unauthorized editions were illegally printed.  People wanted to visit the places mentioned in the stories. 

A French edition was published. 

Plays appeared on stage.  At least six plays were based on Egan’s characters, contributing to yet more sales. One of these was exported to America, launching the Tom and Jerry craze there. The version created by William Thomas Moncrieff  was first performed in 1821, it was praised as The Beggar’s Opera of its day.  Moncrieff was the publisher of Egan’s Boxiana series.  Moncrieff’s production of Tom and Jerry, or Life in London ran continuously at the Adelphi Theatre for two seasons and it was the dramatist’s work as much as the author’s that did so much to popularise the book’s trademark use of fashionable slang. Life in London appeared until 1828, when Egan closed it down.

Egan published a report of the trial of John Thurtell and Joseph Hunt, for the murder of William Weare.   The murder case caught the attention of the whole country and exposed a life in the world of boxing.  John Thurtell was a boxer who owed money from gambling debts to William Weare.  Rather than pay his debts to Weare, Thurtell shot him, beat him, cut his throat, and shoved a gun barrel into his skull.  Pierce Egan attended the highly publicized trial to report on the case.  Thurtell was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged and then disected.   Thurtell allegedly mentioned, just seven hours before his execution, that among his final wishes was a desire to read Egan’s coverage of a recent prizefight.

The murder trial and broad coverage in newspapers exposed not only the gruesome details of the killing but also the seedy London underworld of gambling and amateur boxing to a broad public that had little knowledge of that life. As more lurid details were published of the underworld which Thurtell and Weare had inhabited, there were increasing calls for something to be done.

 

 

Egan wrote also satirical legal pieces such as The Fancy Tog’s Man versus Young Sadboy, the Milling Quaker. In 1824 he launched a new journal, Pierce Egan’s Life in London and Sporting Guide, a weekly newspaper priced at eightpence-halfpenny. Other works included sporting anecdotes, theatrical autobiographies, guide-books, and ‘fancy ditties’. Among his later efforts, in 1838, was a series of pieces on the delights to be found on and immediately adjacent to the Thames. It was dedicated, with permission, to the young Queen Victoria and featured the illustrative work of his son Pierce Egan the Younger.

 

(Life in London – text on Project Gutenberg)

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Gender Studies’ Hoax – Three scholars wrote 20 fake papers using feminist jargon to argue for ridiculous conclusions – Passed Academic Peer Review – 5 Oct 2018

Yascha Mounk

Lecturer on government at Harvard University

(James A. Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian, the scholars behind the hoax) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVk9a5Jcd1k
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Over the past 12 months, three scholars—James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian—wrote 20 fake papers using fashionable jargon to argue for ridiculous conclusions, and tried to get them placed in high-profile journals in fields including gender studies, queer studies, and fat studies. Their success rate was remarkable: By the time they took their experiment public late on Tuesday, seven of their articles had been accepted for publication by ostensibly serious peer-reviewed journals. Seven more were still going through various stages of the review process. Only six had been rejected.

We’ve been here before.

In the late 1990s, Alan Sokal, a professor of physics at New York University, began a soon-to-be-infamous article by setting out some of his core beliefs:

that there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded in “eternal” physical laws; and that human beings can obtain reliable, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to the “objective” procedures and epistemological strictures prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method.

Sokal went on to “disprove” his credo in fashionable jargon. “Feminist and poststructuralist critiques have demystified the substantive content of mainstream Western scientific practice, revealing the ideology of domination concealed behind the façade of ‘objectivity,’” he claimed. “It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical ‘reality,’ no less than social ‘reality,’ is at bottom a social and linguistic construct.”

Next, Sokal sent off this jabber to Social Text, an academic journal that was, at the time, a leading intellectual forum for famous scholars including Edward Said, Oskar Negt, Nancy Fraser, Étienne Balibar, and Jacques Rancière.* It was published.  In the eyes of his supporters, what came to be known as the Sokal Hoax seemed to prove the most damning charges that critics of postmodernism had long leveled against it. Postmodern discourse is so meaningless, they claimed, that not even “experts” can distinguish between people who make sincere claims and those who compose deliberate gibberish.In the months after Sokal went public, Social Text was much ridiculed. But its influence—and that of the larger “deconstructivist” mode of inquiry it propagated—continued to grow. Indeed, many academic departments that devote themselves to the study of particular ethnic, religious, and sexual groups are deeply inflected by some of Social Text’s core beliefs, including the radical subjectivity of knowledge.

That’s why Lindsay, Pluckrose, and Boghossian set out to rerun the original hoax, only on a much larger scale. Call it Sokal Squared.

Generally speaking, the journals that fell for Sokal Squared publish respected scholars from respected programs. For example, Gender, Place and Culture, which accepted one of the hoax papers, has in the past months published work from professors at UCLA, Temple, Penn State, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Manchester, and Berlin’s Humboldt University, among many others.

 

The sheer craziness of the papers the authors concocted makes this fact all the more shocking. One of their papers reads like a straightforward riff on the Sokal Hoax. Dismissing “western astronomy” as sexist and imperialist, it makes a case for physics departments to study feminist astrology—or practice interpretative dance—instead:

Other means superior to the natural sciences exist to extract alternative knowledges about stars and enriching astronomy, including ethnography and other social science methodologies, careful examination of the intersection of extant astrologies from around the globe, incorporation of mythological narratives and modern feminist analysis of them, feminist interpretative dance (especially with regard to the movements of the stars and their astrological significance), and direct application of feminist and postcolonial discourses concerning alternative knowledges and cultural narratives.

The paper that was published in Gender, Place and Culture seems downright silly. “Human Reaction to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon” claims to be based on in situ observation of canine rape culture in a Portland dog park. “Do dogs suffer oppression based upon (perceived) gender?” the paper asks.  The article used a purported 1,000-hour study of dog “humping” patterns at dog parks that concludes by calling for human males to be “trained” like dogs to prevent rape culture.  To purchase this rigorously peer reviewed scientific academic study one must pay $260.

The hoaxers submitted a long-form poem produced through a ‘teenage angst’ poetry generator about women holding spiritual-sexual “moon meetings” in a secret “womb room” and praying to a “vulva shrine”; a proposal to develop feminist robots, trained to think irrationally, to control humanity and subjugate white men. Another proposal, which was praised by reviewers in a paper that was ultimately rejected, encouraged teachers to place white students in chains to be shamed for their “white privilege.”

Yet another paper has a rather more sinister hue. In “Rubbing One Out: Defining Metasexual Violence of Objectification Through Nonconsensual Masturbation,” the fictitious author argues that men who masturbate while thinking about a woman without her consent are perpetrators of sexual violence:

By drawing upon empirical studies of psychological harms of objectification, especially through depersonalization, and exploring severel veins of theoretical literature on nonphysical forms of sexual violence, this articles seeks to situate non-concensual male autoerotic fantasizing about women as a form of metasexual violence that depersonalizes her, injures her being on an affective level, contributes to consequent harms of objectification and rape culture, and can appropriate her identity for the purpose of male sexual gratification.

Sokal Squared doesn’t just expose the low standards of the journals that publish this kind of dreck, though. It also demonstrates the extent to which many of them are willing to license discrimination if it serves ostensibly progressive goals. This tendency becomes most evident in an article that advocates extreme measures to redress the “privilege” of white students. Exhorting college professors to enact forms of “experiential reparations,” the paper suggests telling privileged students to stay silent, or even binding them to the floor in chains. If students protest, educators are told to

take considerable care not to validate privilege, sympathize with, or reinforce it and in so doing, recenter the needs of privileged groups at the expense of marginalized ones. The reactionary verbal protestations of those who oppose the progressive stack are verbal behaviors and defensive mechanisms that mask the fragility inherent to those inculcated in privilege.

Like just about everything else in this depressing national moment, Sokal Squared is already being used as ammunition in the great American culture war. Many conservatives who are deeply hostile to the science of climate change, and who dismiss out of hand the studies that attest to deep injustices in our society, are using Sokol Squared to smear all academics as biased culture warriors. The Federalist, a right-wing news and commentary site, went so far as to spread the apparent ideological bias of a few journals in one particular corner of academia to most professors, the mainstream media, and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

These attacks are empirically incorrect and intellectually dishonest. There are many fields of academia that have absolutely no patience for nonsense. While the hoaxers did manage to place articles in some of the most influential academic journals in the cluster of fields that focus on dealing with issues of race, gender, and identity, they have not penetrated the leading journals of more traditional disciplines. As a number of academics pointed out on Twitter, for example, all of the papers submitted to sociology journals were rejected. For now, it remains unlikely that the American Sociological Review or the American Political Science Review would have fallen for anything resembling “Our Struggle Is My Struggle,” a paper modeled on the infamous book with a similar title. The authors submitted a re-write of a chapter from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, with language altered to reference female identity and feminism. The paper, titled “Our struggle is my struggle: solidarity feminism as an intersectional reply to neoliberal and choice feminism,” was accepted for publication and greeted with favorable reviews.

“I am extremely sympathetic to this article’s argument and its political positioning,” one academic wrote. Another said, “I am very sympathetic to the core arguments of the paper.”

By the same token, many leftists are willing to grasp at straws to defend journals and fields of inquiry that they regard as morally righteous. Some have dismissed Sokal Squared by pointing out that many disciplines, from economics to psychology, have in the past years also faced crises of confidence. Others have simply cited the conservative instrumentalization of Sokal Squared as a reason to ignore it. “Academics,” Alison Phipps wrote on Twitter, “please stand by colleagues in Gender Studies/Critical Race Studies/Fat Studies & other areas targeted by this journal article hoax. This is a coordinated attack from the right.”

That too is intellectually dishonest. For one, Lindsay, Pluckrose and Boghossian describe themselves as left-leaning liberals. For another, it is nonsensical to insist that nonsense scholarship doesn’t matter because you don’t like the motives of the people who exposed it, or because some other forms of scholarship may also contain nonsense. If certain fields of study cannot reliably differentiate between real scholarship and noxious bloviating, they become deeply suspect. And if they are so invested in overcoming injustice that they are willing to embrace rank cruelty as long as it is presented in the right kind of progressive jargon, they are worsening the problems they purport to address.

It would, then, be all too easy to draw the wrong inferences from Sokal Squared. The lesson is neither that all fields of academia should be mistrusted nor that the study of race, gender, or sexuality is unimportant. As Lindsay, Pluckrose, and Boghossian point out, their experiment would be far less worrisome if these fields of study didn’t have such great relevance.

But if we are to be serious about remedying discrimination, racism, and sexism, we can’t ignore the uncomfortable truth these hoaxers have revealed: Some academic emperors—the ones who supposedly have the most to say about these crucial topics—have no clothes.

…………………………

The results expose the intellectual bankruptcy of identity politics and postmodernist philosophy. Their proponents, who dominate university humanities departments worldwide, are charlatans who have published or given favorable “revise and resubmit” comments to the most absurd and vulgar pseudo-scientific arguments.

There is an element of humor in the fact that such drivel could win accolades from academics and journals. The “dog park” article was even selected as one of the most influential contributions in the history of the Gender, Place and Culture journal!

(Peer reviewers wondered if the dog’s right to privacy was being violated by the study)

In the wake of their public disclosure, Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have come under attack by the proponents of postmodernism and identity politics, who claim the hoax is a right wing attack on “social justice” disciplines.

(Daniel Engber – Slate)

Typical is the argument of Daniel Engber, who wrote in Slate: “How timely, too, that this secret project should be published in the midst of the Kavanaugh imbroglio—a time when the anger and the horror of male anxiety is so resplendent in the news. ‘It’s a very scary time for young men,’ Trump told reporters on the very day that Pluckrose, Lindsay, and Boghossian went public with their hoax. Both express a fear of false attacks on men, whether levied by regretful sluts, lefty liberals, radical academics, or whoever else.”

 

In reality, the hoax has exposed the fact that it is the proponents of identity politics who are advancing views parallel to the far right. While they are enraged with those who voice concern about the elimination of due process and the presumption of innocence for the targets of the #MeToo campaign, they are unbothered by the fact that the writings of Adolf Hitler are published and praised in feminist academic circles.

Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian are self-described liberals who are concerned that the present identity hysteria is “pushing the culture war to ever more toxic and existential polarization,” by fanning the flames of the far right. As a result, identitarians are “affecting activism on behalf of women and racial and sexual minorities in a way which is counterproductive to equality aims by feeding into right-wing reactionary opposition to those equality objectives.”

In contrast, the authors’ aim is to “give people—especially those who believe in liberalism, progress, modernity, open inquiry, and social justice—a clear reason to look at the identitarian madness coming out of the academic and activist left and say, ‘No, I will not go along with that. You do not speak for me.’”

The hoax’s authors are correct to link the identity politics proponents’ hostility to equality with their opposition to rationalism, scientific analysis and the progressive gains of the Enlightenment. But the roots of this right-wing, irrationalist, anti-egalitarian degeneration are to be found in the economic structure of capitalist society.

The academic architects of postmodernism and identity politics occupy well-paid positions in academia, often with salaries upwards of $100,000–$300,000 or more. As a social layer, the theoreticians of what the World Socialist Web Site refers to as the “pseudo-left” are in the wealthiest 10 percent of American society. Their political and philosophical views express their social interests.

The obsession with “privilege,” sex, and racial and gender identity is a mechanism by which members and groups within this layer fight among themselves for income, social status and positions of privilege, using degrees of “oppression” to one up each other in the fight for tenure track jobs, positions on corporate or non-profit boards, or election to public office. A chief purpose of the #MeToo campaign, for example, is to replace male executives and male politicians with women while ignoring the social needs of the vast majority of working class women.

The weaponization of identity politics is directed down the social ladder as well. By advancing the lie that white workers benefit from “white privilege,” for example, the proponents of identity politics argue: the spoils of Wall Street should not go to meeting the social needs of the working class, including white workers, who face record rates of alcoholism, poverty, opioid addiction, police violence and other indices of social misery. Instead, the world’s resources should go to me. It is this visceral class hatred that serves as the basis for absurd and reactionary arguments like those advanced in the hoax papers.

Nor have the politics of racial identity improved the material conditions for the vast majority of minority workers. Inequality within racial minorities has increased alongside the introduction of affirmative action programs and the increasing dominance of identity politics in academia and bourgeois politics. In 2016, the top 1 percent of Latinos owned 45 percent of all Latino wealth, while the top 1 percent of African-Americans owned 40.5 percent and the richest whites owned 36.5 percent of white wealth.

The influence of postmodernism in academia exploded in the aftermath of the mass protests of the 1960s and early 1970s. Based explicitly on a rejection of the revolutionary role of the working class and opposition to the “meta narrative” of socialist revolution, it is not accidental that identity politics and postmodernism have now been adopted as official ideological mechanisms of capitalist rule.

In recent decades, a massive identity politics industry has been erected, with billions of dollars available from corporate funds and trusts for journals, non-profits, publications, fellowships and political groups advancing racial or gender politics. Identity politics has come to form a central component of the Democratic Party’s electoral strategy. Imperialist wars are justified on the grounds that the US is intervening to protect women, LGBT people and other minorities.

The growing movement of the working class, broadening strikes across industries, and widespread interest in socialism on college campuses pose an existential threat to the domination of postmodernism. Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have struck a well-timed blow against this reactionary obstacle to the development of scientific socialist consciousness.

………………………

Further reading: It’s surprisingly easy to get a fake paper published in an academic journal

Faces on the Picket Line – The Marriott Hotel Strike 2018

13 Oct 2018

A Silent Movie of Raucously Noisy Labor Union Strike Picket Lines

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Do Not Bring Children to a Labor Union Picket Line – Keep Them From Danger – 12 Oct 2018

Bringing Children to the Picket Line is Like Holding Them Hostage or Using Them As Human Shields

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I am one acquainted with the striking hotel workers picket lines at the seven struck hotels in Boston.  I have walked in the line in sunshine and I have walked in the picket in rain.  Some days were cool, some days were hotter.  Drums and horns and clappers and tambourines give the workers picket lines a festive feel at times.   People dance to the rhythms of the chants and the line can feel like a conga line as we move to the beat.  There are bright red shirts and colorful head scarfs. 

The Boston hotel strike of 2018 can feel a little like a powerful workers party. 

A number of people have brought little children to the picket lines.  I saw an toddler in a carriage on the picket line with ear muffs on to protect the child’s ears from the drum circle cacophony.  I saw little five year olds on sunny days holding a parents hand as they greeted friends and co-workers.  A labor union is a brother and sisterhood.

But…don’t bring small children and youngsters to a labor union picket line.

A picket line is not a protest.  A picket line is not a photo opportunity.  A picket line is not a publicity stunt. 

It’s Family Day out in Boston. Day 6 going strong #MarriottStrike #1job pic.twitter.com/urnvGud5js

— UNITE HERE Local 26 (@UNITEHERE26) October 8, 2018

A picket line is a physical challenge to the boss and owners of the capitalist rights to property.  A picket line is a very serious denial of the free use of private property even when the picket line is deliberately or naively mislead and misorganized and misdirected.  The physical challenge of a picket line on a property is met with a physical response from the bosses and owners and through their government.  At every one of the hotels on strike there were two or three policemen with guns on their hips and handcuffs on their belts and communication devices to summon more forces.  The hotels had security guards and private hired guns to protect their doors.  There were usually four or five of the suit jacket wearing hotel security personnel. 

The safety of any labor union striker’s little children visiting a picket line is very far down the list of what the armed agents of the state and the organized security team of the hotel are concerned with.  Things have been calm at the Boston hotels and guests are allowed to casually stroll through the union’s picket lines.  Cars and taxis are effortlessly waved across the picket lines to drive up to the hotel doors as the police, or sometimes the union marshals part the picket lines.  Very peaceful, so far.  I there hasn’t been one arrest. 

Labor unions taking money away from a capitalist to increase wages and to pay for benefits is a direct drain on the capitalists profits.  Capitalist want the largest profits they can get.  The union makes part of its appeal to the public and the company based on what the union members need to have a decent life.  The appeal is to the broad public to have sympathy for underpaid workers.  There is some response and some support. Generalized sympathy means just about nothing.  Thoughts and prayers are not going to wing labor union strikes. 

(San Fransisco CA:  12 Oct 2018 – An Uber Driver is knocked to the ground by private security as he tried to deliver a petition asking for higher wages at the company’s headquarters)

There is also a section of the public that opposes labor unions.  In general public surveys only 33% of white people support labor unions, while 66% of black people support labor unions. Throughout the time of the Great Depression of the 1930’s public opinion polls conducted by upper middle class magazines blamed the Depression on ‘laziness.’  The wealthy set said they believed that the 1929 crash and mass unemployment was caused by a sudden outbreak of sloth. 

There is a large number of people who are indifferent to the unions moral appeal, or downright hostile.  There are people who are associated with extreme Right Wing groups who are militantly hostile to labor unions and would consider attacking a labor union picket line.  While the US has not had open Right Wing attacks on picket lines in recent history there are examples in the past, and in other countries today.  Workers who challenge capitalist property rights should expect the capitalists to defend their rights by any means necessary.  History is full of examples of upper class gentle folk with impeccable manners turning to armed Right Wing extremists to defend their property. 

Bringing small children to or even youngsters is essentially saying ‘You wouldn’t dare attack me while my children are here.’  Would they?

In Italy after World War II, in the early 1920’s, Leftist would hold a workers rally with 200 people including women and small children; a group of six fascist armed with pistols would run through the crowd shooting randomly to create the maximum amount of terror.  Leftist were outraged and appealed to public sympathy.   The fascists won on the street, and the fascists took over the government. 

Children in my own family have been on the Verizon Strike 2016 picket lines.  The Verizon labor unions even had a special ‘Bring You Kid to the Picket Line’  day.  But, I didn’t bring children to the picket line, and I would have patiently explained why I oppose this practice.  Nothing bad happened to kids at the Verizon Strike 2016 picket line.  Nothing bad has happened to the children brought to the UNITE HERE Local 26 picket line strikes. 

But….

A labor union picket line is a military situation were workers are putting their bodies on the line to impede a capitalist.  Don’t trust the good instincts of a capitalist to protect the safety of your little ones. Don’t bring children to a military confrontation. 

Archive

Boston: Seven Hotels on Strike – Hotel Prof Evaluates the Impact (WGBH) 5 Oct 2018

WGBH News Reporter Marilyn Schairer spoke with Bruce Tracey, professor of management at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University,

Marilyn Schairer: As you’re probably aware, there has been a strike called at seven Marriott hotels here in Boston, where union workers have walked off the job. At issue are wages and cost of living increases. Marriott International has said the seven hotels where workers went on strike will remain open. However, some guests are saying the strike is already disrupting hotel service, such as housekeeping and the closure of hotel restaurants. Given your expertise in the hospitality industry, how will the strike impact the hotel chain?

Bruce Tracey: Certainly Marriott will have to respond in a direct way, if they want to keep the properties open. There will be some minimum services that they’ll need to provide, if they’re going to keep their doors open, housekeeping and so forth. But, in terms of the general impact longer-term, if the unions have their heels dug in, then it kind of depends on how successful Marriott can be in attracting individuals who are willing to cross the line and work under these conditions. I’m not sure of what the real flavor is in Boston right now, but. I’m guessing it’s not too tasty.

From either perspective, if they’re striking right now, that means that neither side is very happy with each other. It doesn’t seem like they’re really that ready to get back to the table and start chatting about the issues they’ve got in front of them.

So, to that end, if you’re going to put this into Marriott’s perspective, they’ve got some contingency plans that they’re developing right now. They’re looking at their business pace and trying to decide based on going into the next few months, whether they can sustain whatever business they’ve got in their books right now with the skeleton crew that they’re likely to have. And if not, then they’re going to have to be leaning a lot on their management teams and/or trying to get some other folks to substitute for the striking workers. And that climate may be very difficult for people to want to make that walk across a picket line.

Schairer: Marriott hasn’t said whether they’re going to bring in replacement workers. The hotel says it will remain open and continue to provide excellent service. Will the hotel be able to do that, for paying customers?

Tracey: From a guest perspective, there will be a threshold for which they don’t believe that the value is there anymore, and at which time, you’ll find some guests that may start defecting. If this is a protracted process, and you see UNITE HERE Local 26 decide they want to stick around in this game for a while … this could certainly, as noted in other news sources, be a tell-tale of what’s going to happen in other cities. If that’s the case, UNITE HERE in Boston can start exerting a bit more pressure on Marriott as a whole.

Marriott has said their offer was on par with what the unions’ demands have been since the last contract.

Of course, all of this is based on the idea that Marriott is making a ton of money off the workers’ backs. And currently, yes, there are record profits, but roll back ten years ago when they were losing a bunch of money. There are good times and not so good times, and that’s the hard part in managing in an environment when you have some fixed costs and relatively high costs when you’ve got union agreements. So, Marriott is careful, it’s a very conservative company, to look at these issues in a very protracted way. They’re prepared for the extended impact. I don’t know how long they’re willing to wait, and it depends on whether this bleeds into other markets.

Schairer: The strike has now spread to other cities — San Francisco, San Jose, I think in Chicago they were already striking. What about the ripple effect with this? If this happens at Marriott, and then other workers at other hotels see that it’s effective or it isn’t, how will that change the landscape?

Tracey: The union folks are smart, and they’ve been able to negotiate contracts in such a way where they can really force the hand, not in a single market, but in multiple markets. And as a result, their broader impact on the hospitality industry has increased over time. So, in that regard, they’ve been able to have, and they will have more leverage when it comes to these negotiations, and they may be able to play that harder ball than they would have otherwise.

So again, time will tell on this and it depends on how Marriott responds. I know other companies are looking at Marriott and will respond almost in kind, but there may be others who can’t, you know, play the same waiting game that Marriott is or is likely to. And as a result, they may be first-mover advantage, who knows.

Schairer: As a professor of the hospitality industry, if you had to teach a lesson on how to resolve this or avoid this, what would you say?

Tracey: Great HR. If you have policies and practices that really do take care of your employees on the most fundamental levels — and that’s one of the challenges in our industry. While some companies may be making a ton of money, the margins aren’t huge, especially in relation to other types of industries. So, the challenge is, in very thin times, carry yourself through with the margins you have in the good times. It’s a matter of laying a really solid foundation for making sure that you hire people who are well suited for these jobs. In our industry, a lot of the compensation is based on what the market is willing to bear.

So, if retailers only going to be willing to pay a certain amount for jobs that require similar types of skill or health care, retail banking, or similar service-oriented jobs, it’s a pretty competitive market out there and you don’t what to overprice yourself. So, there’s a lot of sensitivity on compensation and benefits in our industry.

So, you know, it’s going to be something where that’s going to be part of the picture of making sure that you can attract and develop and retain good people. In addition to making sure you’re competitive in wages and benefits, you need to make sure you have good work environment, where people feel respected and that they have some voice, and that they’ve got opportunities to grow and develop and be part of something other than just a capitalistic enterprise. And as a result, companies that do this well, they can avoid a lot of the headaches, because they are more progressive in terms of how they take care of their people.

Archive

Boston: Seven Hotels in Five Days – On the Striking Hotel Workers Picket Lines – 9 Oct 2018

(The Westin Copely Hotel was the first hotel I went to supporting the striking workers picket line)

Over the past five days I have visited the picket lines of the seven hotels that are on strike with the UNITE HERE Local 26 labor union.  The picket lines are raucous and noisy.

There are a lot of 5 gallon barrels used as drums, noise makers, whistles a tambourine, and even a cow bell.  A local informal band called Honk came down to one of the hotels and marched while paying their horns and trumpets. 

There are about 1,500 workers on strike, but the picket lines often have a small number of people on them.  A few times the union leaders marched the workers away from one hotel to join another to increase the size of the pickets up to about a hundred on the line.

 

 

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(Picketing between the Aloft Hotel and Elements Hotel in Boston’s Seaport District – 8 Oct 2018)

The union has paid for an advertising truck – billboard to drive around town advertising the fact that the hotel workers are on strike. 

The union must have taken out permits to place construction containers near two strike locations.  These large room-sized metal containers have the signs on wooden poles, 5 gallon plastic buckets that are used as drums, and cases of water bottles and other supplies for the picket line. 

The lines are very noisy and it is difficult to talk to people and have a political conversation or talk about how the strike might be won.

Most days I have simply gone as a reporter/photographer after introducing myself to the picket captain and telling them that I wrote and took pictures and video.  The reception has been mostly welcoming.  Twice people questioned my being there and I pointed to the captain and said I already had permission.

(This striker gave me some candy while I was walking the picket line)

The workforce is half female, a lot of Latinos, black people, Caribbeans, women with head scarfs (who do that interesting tongue thing ululating) Asians who are Chinese and other East Asians.  There are also maybe ten percent who are white European looking.

The picketers are not stopping people from crossing the picket lines.  The line parts politely at driveways to let cars through.  The union marshals often help the police and hotel security part the crowd. When I asked a picket captain if delivery people and Teamsters where honoring the picket lines she said ‘all of the unions in Boston support the strike.’  But…that didn’t answer my question.

There are only two or three police at each picket site.  The union pickets are not putting people at the back entrances or side doors of the hotels.  The union seems to put great faith in making noise and drumming.  At the Aloft hotel there was a large drumming circle of more than half a dozen people banging away.

One guest at a struck hotel said that things were okay, except for the noise, so maybe the hotel workers know what they are doing.  I was at the ‘W’ hotel on Stuart Street today and there were only about a dozen picketers when I introduced myself and joined the line.  At times the picket line was down to about six people.  Cars and trucks go by and honk in solidarity and some people go by and give a thumbs up or words of encouragement.

(Boston School Bus Drivers Union members support the Hotel Strikers)

The picket lines are not angry.  Guests and hotel security move easily through the lines.  Some security are friendly with the strikers and seem to know them and greet them.  The police keep their distance and wear earplugs and look bored.  I didn’t see the Yankees cross the picket line, but I was at the Ritz-Carleton when the hockey players for the Edmonton Oilers walked through picket line with long bags and lots of hockey sticks.  Someone got a picture of them with their eyes cast down and put it on Twitter.

Video I took yesterday shows the leader of the UNITE HERE Local 26 Brian Lang and International President Pete Taylor spoke to striking hotel workers under cool and cloudy skies at around 11 am on Monday morning 8 October 2018.

(UNITE HERE Local 26 President Brian Lang chants with striking hotel workers)

 

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(Aloft Hotel 8 Oct 2018)

The noisy picket line stopped to hear the labor union leaders speak to the crowd of about 100 workers picketing in front of the Aloft hotel.  There are now about 7,000 Marriott Hotel workers across the country out on strike with their labor unions.

The chanting of slogans ‘Don’t check in, check out’ and the call and response ‘What do we want’ ‘Contract!’ ‘When do we want it?’ ‘Now!’ or ‘Whose got the power?’ ‘We have the power!’ have a hypnotic effect with the drumming and marching.  I thought of Ancient Sparta where warriors would oil there naked bodies and get in a group dance with all the other warriors and dance and chant to prepare for battle.  We were working up adrenaline sometimes.  I was raising and lowering my picket sign in time to the chants.  We were a group of humans moving in unison with a purpose.  We were marching together as a unit to win a goal.  What can stop us?