Here is an excellent op-ed piece on the heroism of the student movement leaders in Venezuela:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/opinion/30krauze.html?ex=1356670800&en=2e78eb83a399ff2d&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Monday, December 31, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
2007 Baby's First X-mas
I am currently in the small town where I grew up, which is in sunny SW Florida. Here, bumperstickers prominently placed on cars admonish me to "KEEP CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS," roadside advertisements exclaim "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" and a visit to TARGET or the Olive Garden turns into a political battle for the soul of America as my pleasantly non-committal "Happy Holidays" is met with an emphatic "MERRY CHRISTMAS!"
Besides the quaint reactionary politics laced (like poison) with fanatical holiday flavor, I enjoy the local news, such as the full-page photo spread "2007 Baby's First Christmas!" (presumably all of the babies are Christian? WTF?!?!?) And though usually I find some of my favorite unique names in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, among telenovela characters or actors, etc. I was pleasantly surprised to find the following:
Dalton Lee
Makayla
Kadie
Camp Ross (as my sister cleverly noted, this is a name that only a drag queen should have)
Kyla
Kaleem Ta'Ree
DaQuan LaShawn
Fabulous.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Fever
The article below (forwarded by one of my favorite readers) about the spread of formerly unknown "tropical mosquito-borne" disesases in Italy reminds me of Somerset Maugham's "The Painted Veil" where "noble" technologically-advanced British risk their lives in Cholera-ravaged 1920s China. The characters however express a violently racist disdain and disgust towards the poor villagers throught the text. (In the movie, however, the narrative was cleaned up and turned into a banal Hollywood love story.) Below, the New York Times finally realizes that so-called tropical diseases are worrisome. Because they are affecting wealthy Italians. The story raises the possibility that "immigration, globalization and global warming" have led to the Europeans' succumbing to these sinister and exotic illnesess. It is only a problem when the white people get ill, because until now, I haven't read articles about these diseases in the paper. And dengue fever in particular is as common as the flu in PR - most of my family members have suffered from dengue fever, but of course, when the Italians get it, it's a crisis!!!!!
I love how globalization is only framed in terms of possible disadvantages to Westerners but no mention is made about its effects on the rest of the world. And though the journalist tries to be "fair and balanced" by speculating about other possible causes, the impression left on the reader is that non-white or non-Western people are impure, polluted, agents of contagion, and that through contact with them either through immigration or travel, diseases spread. These tropes go back to the Bubonic Plague I am sure, definitely if you read Elaine Showalter's book on the fin de siecle and syphillis, or take a look at the responses to the AIDS crisis and more recently Bird Flu, you can find similar types of responses. I think there is more in common with the last cases, given the racialized terms used to describe the alleged agents of contagion.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 23, 2007
As Earth Warms Up, Tropical Virus Moves to Italy
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
CASTIGLIONE DI CERVIA, Italy — Panic was spreading this August through this tidy village of 2,000 as one person after another fell ill with weeks of high fever, exhaustion and excruciating bone pain, just as most of Italy was enjoying Ferragosto, its most important summer holiday.
“At one point, I simply couldn’t stand up to get out of the car,” said Antonio Ciano, 62, an elegant retiree in a pashmina scarf and trendy blue glasses. “I fell. I thought, O.K., my time is up. I’m going to die. It was really that dramatic.”
By midmonth, more than 100 people had come down with the same malady. Although the worst symptoms dissipated after a couple of weeks, no doctor could figure out what was wrong.
People blamed pollution in the river. They denounced the government. But most of all they blamed recent immigrants from tropical Africa for bringing the pestilence to their sleepy settlement of pastel stucco homes.
“Why immigrants?” asked Rina Ventura, who owns a shop selling shoes and purses. “I kept thinking of these terrible diseases that you see on TV, like malaria. We were terrified. There was no name and no treatment.”
Oddly, the villagers were both right and wrong. After a month of investigation, Italian public health officials discovered that the people of Castiglione di Cervia were, in fact, suffering from a tropical disease, chikungunya, a relative of dengue fever normally found in the Indian Ocean region. But the immigrants spreading the disease were not humans but insects: tiger mosquitoes, who can thrive in a warming Europe.
Aided by global warming and globalization, Castiglione di Cervia has the dubious distinction of playing host to the first outbreak in modern Europe of a disease that had previously been seen only in the tropics.
“By the time we got back the name and surname of the virus, our outbreak was over,” said Dr. Rafaella Angelini, director of the regional public health department in Ravenna. “When they told us it was chikungunya, it was not a problem for Ravenna any more. But I thought: this is a big problem for Europe.”
The epidemic proved that tropical viruses are now able to spread in new areas, far north of their previous range. The tiger mosquito, which first arrived in Ravenna three years ago, is thriving across southern Europe and even in France and Switzerland.
And if chikungunya can spread to Castiglione — “a place not special in any way,” Dr. Angelini said — there is no reason why it cannot go to other Italian villages. There is no reason why dengue, an even more debilitating tropical disease, cannot as well.
“This is the first case of an epidemic of a tropical disease in a developed, European country,” said Dr. Roberto Bertollini, director of the World Health Organization’s Health and Environment program. “Climate change creates conditions that make it easier for this mosquito to survive and it opens the door to diseases that didn’t exist here previously. This is a real issue. Now, today. It is not something a crazy environmentalist is warning about.”
Was he shocked to discover chikungunya in Italy, his native land? “We knew this would happen sooner or later,” he said. “We just didn’t know where or when.”
It certainly caught this town off guard on Aug. 9, when public health officials in Ravenna received an angry call from Stefano Merlo, who owns the gas station.
“Within 100 meters of my home, there were more than 30 people with fevers over 40 degrees,” or 104 Fahrenheit, said Mr. Merlo, 47. “I wanted to know what was going on. I knew it couldn’t be normal.”
August is not the season for high fevers, Dr. Angelini agreed, and within days of interviewing patients she was intrigued.
“The stories were so similar and so dramatic,” she said. “But we had no clue it was something tropical.”
Hard-working shopkeepers could not get out of bed because their hips hurt so much. Able-bodied men could not lift spoons to their mouths. (Months later, many still have debilitating joint pain.)
From the start, doctors suspected that the disease was spread by insects, rather than people. While almost all homes had one person who was ill, family members seemed not to catch the disease from one another.
They initially focused on sand flies, since the disease clustered on streets by the river.
Canceling their traditional mid-August vacations (in Italy, a true sign of panic), health officials sent off blood samples, called national infectious-disease experts, searched the Internet and set out traps to see what insects were in the neighborhood. The first surprise was that the insect traps contained not sand flies but tiger mosquitoes, and huge numbers of them.
The scientific survey confirmed what residents of Castiglione had come to accept as a horrible nuisance, though not a deadly threat.
“In the last three or four years, you couldn’t live on these streets because the mosquitoes were so bad,” said Rino Ricchi, a road worker who fell ill, standing at the entrance to his neatly tended garden, where mosquito traps have now replaced decorative fountains. “We used to delight in having a garden or a porch to eat dinner. You couldn’t this year, you’d get eaten alive.”
Said Dr. Angelini: “They were treating the mosquitoes like an annoyance. They knew that mosquitoes could spread tropical diseases but they had peace of mind because they knew this didn’t happen in Italy.”
Ravenna immediately set about killing the bugs in the hopes of containing the epidemic. Workers sprayed insecticides and went into each family’s garden, emptying flower pots, fountains and the rainwater collection barrels to remove the mosquitoes’ breeding ground.
By early September, there were no new cases in Castiglione di Cervia. But there were a number of mini-epidemics in the region — in Ravenna, Cesena and Rimini — set off by tiger mosquitoes there. Each was controlled in the same way.
By that point, the doctors had cataloged the patients’ symptoms and tried to match them to mosquito-borne diseases.
“We realized,” Dr. Angelini said, “we were seeing a photocopy of an outbreak on Réunion,” a French island in the Indian Ocean where more than 10,000 people have contracted chikungunya in the last two years. Blood tests confirmed the diagnosis. By summer’s end, home-grown chikungunya had been diagnosed in nearly 300 Italians.
Chikungunya is spread when tiger mosquitoes drink blood from an infected person and, if conditions are right, pass the virus on when they bite again. Tiger mosquitoes first came to southern Italy with shipments of tires from Albania about a decade ago but their habitat has expanded steadily northward as temperatures have risen.
But the doctors were baffled by how chikungunya made its way into mosquitoes in northern Italy since no one in Castiglione di Cervia had been abroad. In the past two years France, especially Paris, has had a number of imported cases of chikungunya, in travelers returning from Réunion. But the disease has never spread in France, because the mosquito cannot thrive there yet.
Eventually investigators discovered a link: one of the first men to fall ill in Castiglione di Cervia had been visited by a feverish relative in early July. That relative, an Italian, had previously traveled to Kerala, India. Chikungunya traveled to Italy in his blood, but climatic conditions are now such that it can spread and find a home here.
Now it is winter in Castiglione di Cervia, near freezing as the sun went down on a recent evening and Christmas lights glowed across the piazza. There are no mosquitoes now.
But dozens of residents still suffer from arthritis, a known complication of chikungunya.
Mr. Ricchi, the road worker, says he still has trouble clenching his fists, and his left ankle has horrible pains. Three people in the town died after getting the virus, Mr. Merlo said, although all of those victims had other illnesses as well.
From the start, townspeople noticed that the very elderly never got the disease. Now it makes sense: “If all you do is walk the 50 yards from your home to the church, there’s not much chance to get bitten,” said Mr. Ciano, the retiree.
But the biggest mystery is whether chikungunya will emerge here next summer. In the tropics, it is a year-round disease, since the mosquitoes breed continually. But the virus can winter over in mosquito eggs, too, and no one knows if there are reservoirs of sleeping eggs in some pool of water in Italy.
With climate change at hand, Dr. Bertollini said, chikungunya will surely be back somewhere in Europe again.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/world/europe/23virus.html?ex=1356066000&en=ca727de283557522&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
I love how globalization is only framed in terms of possible disadvantages to Westerners but no mention is made about its effects on the rest of the world. And though the journalist tries to be "fair and balanced" by speculating about other possible causes, the impression left on the reader is that non-white or non-Western people are impure, polluted, agents of contagion, and that through contact with them either through immigration or travel, diseases spread. These tropes go back to the Bubonic Plague I am sure, definitely if you read Elaine Showalter's book on the fin de siecle and syphillis, or take a look at the responses to the AIDS crisis and more recently Bird Flu, you can find similar types of responses. I think there is more in common with the last cases, given the racialized terms used to describe the alleged agents of contagion.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 23, 2007
As Earth Warms Up, Tropical Virus Moves to Italy
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
CASTIGLIONE DI CERVIA, Italy — Panic was spreading this August through this tidy village of 2,000 as one person after another fell ill with weeks of high fever, exhaustion and excruciating bone pain, just as most of Italy was enjoying Ferragosto, its most important summer holiday.
“At one point, I simply couldn’t stand up to get out of the car,” said Antonio Ciano, 62, an elegant retiree in a pashmina scarf and trendy blue glasses. “I fell. I thought, O.K., my time is up. I’m going to die. It was really that dramatic.”
By midmonth, more than 100 people had come down with the same malady. Although the worst symptoms dissipated after a couple of weeks, no doctor could figure out what was wrong.
People blamed pollution in the river. They denounced the government. But most of all they blamed recent immigrants from tropical Africa for bringing the pestilence to their sleepy settlement of pastel stucco homes.
“Why immigrants?” asked Rina Ventura, who owns a shop selling shoes and purses. “I kept thinking of these terrible diseases that you see on TV, like malaria. We were terrified. There was no name and no treatment.”
Oddly, the villagers were both right and wrong. After a month of investigation, Italian public health officials discovered that the people of Castiglione di Cervia were, in fact, suffering from a tropical disease, chikungunya, a relative of dengue fever normally found in the Indian Ocean region. But the immigrants spreading the disease were not humans but insects: tiger mosquitoes, who can thrive in a warming Europe.
Aided by global warming and globalization, Castiglione di Cervia has the dubious distinction of playing host to the first outbreak in modern Europe of a disease that had previously been seen only in the tropics.
“By the time we got back the name and surname of the virus, our outbreak was over,” said Dr. Rafaella Angelini, director of the regional public health department in Ravenna. “When they told us it was chikungunya, it was not a problem for Ravenna any more. But I thought: this is a big problem for Europe.”
The epidemic proved that tropical viruses are now able to spread in new areas, far north of their previous range. The tiger mosquito, which first arrived in Ravenna three years ago, is thriving across southern Europe and even in France and Switzerland.
And if chikungunya can spread to Castiglione — “a place not special in any way,” Dr. Angelini said — there is no reason why it cannot go to other Italian villages. There is no reason why dengue, an even more debilitating tropical disease, cannot as well.
“This is the first case of an epidemic of a tropical disease in a developed, European country,” said Dr. Roberto Bertollini, director of the World Health Organization’s Health and Environment program. “Climate change creates conditions that make it easier for this mosquito to survive and it opens the door to diseases that didn’t exist here previously. This is a real issue. Now, today. It is not something a crazy environmentalist is warning about.”
Was he shocked to discover chikungunya in Italy, his native land? “We knew this would happen sooner or later,” he said. “We just didn’t know where or when.”
It certainly caught this town off guard on Aug. 9, when public health officials in Ravenna received an angry call from Stefano Merlo, who owns the gas station.
“Within 100 meters of my home, there were more than 30 people with fevers over 40 degrees,” or 104 Fahrenheit, said Mr. Merlo, 47. “I wanted to know what was going on. I knew it couldn’t be normal.”
August is not the season for high fevers, Dr. Angelini agreed, and within days of interviewing patients she was intrigued.
“The stories were so similar and so dramatic,” she said. “But we had no clue it was something tropical.”
Hard-working shopkeepers could not get out of bed because their hips hurt so much. Able-bodied men could not lift spoons to their mouths. (Months later, many still have debilitating joint pain.)
From the start, doctors suspected that the disease was spread by insects, rather than people. While almost all homes had one person who was ill, family members seemed not to catch the disease from one another.
They initially focused on sand flies, since the disease clustered on streets by the river.
Canceling their traditional mid-August vacations (in Italy, a true sign of panic), health officials sent off blood samples, called national infectious-disease experts, searched the Internet and set out traps to see what insects were in the neighborhood. The first surprise was that the insect traps contained not sand flies but tiger mosquitoes, and huge numbers of them.
The scientific survey confirmed what residents of Castiglione had come to accept as a horrible nuisance, though not a deadly threat.
“In the last three or four years, you couldn’t live on these streets because the mosquitoes were so bad,” said Rino Ricchi, a road worker who fell ill, standing at the entrance to his neatly tended garden, where mosquito traps have now replaced decorative fountains. “We used to delight in having a garden or a porch to eat dinner. You couldn’t this year, you’d get eaten alive.”
Said Dr. Angelini: “They were treating the mosquitoes like an annoyance. They knew that mosquitoes could spread tropical diseases but they had peace of mind because they knew this didn’t happen in Italy.”
Ravenna immediately set about killing the bugs in the hopes of containing the epidemic. Workers sprayed insecticides and went into each family’s garden, emptying flower pots, fountains and the rainwater collection barrels to remove the mosquitoes’ breeding ground.
By early September, there were no new cases in Castiglione di Cervia. But there were a number of mini-epidemics in the region — in Ravenna, Cesena and Rimini — set off by tiger mosquitoes there. Each was controlled in the same way.
By that point, the doctors had cataloged the patients’ symptoms and tried to match them to mosquito-borne diseases.
“We realized,” Dr. Angelini said, “we were seeing a photocopy of an outbreak on Réunion,” a French island in the Indian Ocean where more than 10,000 people have contracted chikungunya in the last two years. Blood tests confirmed the diagnosis. By summer’s end, home-grown chikungunya had been diagnosed in nearly 300 Italians.
Chikungunya is spread when tiger mosquitoes drink blood from an infected person and, if conditions are right, pass the virus on when they bite again. Tiger mosquitoes first came to southern Italy with shipments of tires from Albania about a decade ago but their habitat has expanded steadily northward as temperatures have risen.
But the doctors were baffled by how chikungunya made its way into mosquitoes in northern Italy since no one in Castiglione di Cervia had been abroad. In the past two years France, especially Paris, has had a number of imported cases of chikungunya, in travelers returning from Réunion. But the disease has never spread in France, because the mosquito cannot thrive there yet.
Eventually investigators discovered a link: one of the first men to fall ill in Castiglione di Cervia had been visited by a feverish relative in early July. That relative, an Italian, had previously traveled to Kerala, India. Chikungunya traveled to Italy in his blood, but climatic conditions are now such that it can spread and find a home here.
Now it is winter in Castiglione di Cervia, near freezing as the sun went down on a recent evening and Christmas lights glowed across the piazza. There are no mosquitoes now.
But dozens of residents still suffer from arthritis, a known complication of chikungunya.
Mr. Ricchi, the road worker, says he still has trouble clenching his fists, and his left ankle has horrible pains. Three people in the town died after getting the virus, Mr. Merlo said, although all of those victims had other illnesses as well.
From the start, townspeople noticed that the very elderly never got the disease. Now it makes sense: “If all you do is walk the 50 yards from your home to the church, there’s not much chance to get bitten,” said Mr. Ciano, the retiree.
But the biggest mystery is whether chikungunya will emerge here next summer. In the tropics, it is a year-round disease, since the mosquitoes breed continually. But the virus can winter over in mosquito eggs, too, and no one knows if there are reservoirs of sleeping eggs in some pool of water in Italy.
With climate change at hand, Dr. Bertollini said, chikungunya will surely be back somewhere in Europe again.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/world/europe/23virus.html?ex=1356066000&en=ca727de283557522&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Thursday, December 20, 2007
BREAKING NEWS - Ingrid Marie did not lie!
I'd like to send a shout out to my fellow Boricua Pageantry Fan, who shared this REUTERS news article first thing this morning. This is the very same friend that I literally watch Miss Universe with over the telephone - yes, sadly she lives across the freaking country, so we swap staccato bursts of bitchery during commerical breaks. Yet this very friend says I should not have a blog because I need to write my (academic) book instead. Here's to you, mami chula!:
I don't know what I love most about this story, the fact that it made REUTERS, the names of the police personnel, Eddie, Ivonne, etc., the quotes at the end about how people are just "fanatical" and "passionate" about pageantry? I am just glad our girl Ingrid Marie has been vindicated, and, if all goes well, we will wipe the floor with Venezuela at Miss Universe!!
_________________________________________
Probe: Beauty queen clothes were sprayed
By LILLIAM IRIZARRY, Associated Press Writer Wed Dec 19, 3:04 PM ET
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - After a flurry of accusations and skepticism, an exhaustive investigation has determined that someone did try to sabotage a beauty contestant's bid for the Miss Puerto Rico Universe by dousing her garments with pepper spray, police said Wednesday.
The attempt failed because Ingrid Marie Rivera maintained her composure while appearing before judges and cameras, then went backstage to remove her clothes and apply ice bags to her swollen and splotched face and body. She went on to win the crown last month.
Police will present the results of their three-week-long investigation to the district attorney, who will decide whether to file charges against the suspect, a volunteer at the pageant, said San Juan police detective Ivonne Reyes. Reyes refused to identify the volunteer or discuss a possible motive.
A black gown and the bathing suit that Rivera wore during the competition's final round tested positive for pepper spray, validating her claims of sabotage, police said. Allegations of sabotage were earlier questioned when another dress and a makeup brush tested negative for pepper spray.
"Miss Puerto Rico Universe was speaking the truth. She was being sincere about the allegations," Lt. Eddie Hernandez, a San Juan police spokesman, said Wednesday.
Extensive interviews led police to focus their suspicions on the volunteer and not a rival contestant, Hernandez said, adding that the pepper spray was likely applied when contestants and their assistants left the changing room. Five pageant officials who handled the clothes also were affected by the spray, he said.
About five volunteers worked during the competition, said pageant director Magali Febles, adding that organizers will screen volunteers more carefully because "there are some people who are very fanatical" about the contestants.
"We generate a lot of passion," she added.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Ingrid Marie Has Some Esplainin To Do.../Miss Puerto Rico...Petite?
She seems very much on the defensive...and is offering to take a polygraph. Stay tuned.
Luis Santiago author of a guide to pageantry
PETITE GUIDE TO PAGEANTRY:
By the way, during my brief visit to the Island I was lucky to get a few gems in the El Nuevo Dia newspaper including an article about Luis Santiago, Producer of Miss Puerto Rico Petite (aren't most Misses in PR petite, like me, Petite Maoiste?) and Miss Puerto Rico Teen (love how this is all in English?!) published a "Guia Completa de competencia y entrenamiento para certamenes de belleza" (only $49.95!) Sadly I never made it to BORDERS in Plaza Las Americas - the largest mall in Latin America- so I don't have a copy of this invaluable guide to Pageantry to which I can refer. Santiago is the Evil Genius behind Ingrid Marie's Meteoric Rise. According to the article he has also trained Queens like Joyceline Montero, Yizette Cifredo and Roselyn Sanchez. If I were not in the arts, I think I would have become an anthropologist and done a dissertation on naming practices in Puerto Rico. Awesome. And in the same newspaper's social section called "MAGACIN" (the "i" of course has an accent) I found yet more poetic nomenclature just two of my favorites are YAMIL and YARANIKS (the latter sounds like a potentially lethal type of sushi).
Ingrid Marie's Pageantry Mentor, Santiago's resume is as follows, he helped Ingrid Marie win Miss Global Queen, and three of his other Puerto Rican pageantry proteges also won at Miss Global Teen, and Miss Global Petite. This must-read pageantry bible gives tips on potential questions, pageantry walk, how to choose hair and makeup, and "Pensamientos para Jesus" as well as "Pensamientos para una reina" for inspirational reading.
MISS AMERICA: REALITY CHECK
Now I have learned that on January 4, TLC is launching a Reality TV series called "Miss America: Reality Check" that involves behind-the-scenes make-overs of misses. I may just have to watch this, but it could easily become a pageantry addiction.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Chavez drags Venezuela backwards part II
According to local and international media, Hugo Chavez is blocking the publication of newspapers critical of his regime, see below. Other related news include the soaring inflation, which has led to scarcity of basic food items like milk, and now, toilet paper. So here, we get ridiculously wealthy museum patrons endowing a (formerly radical alternative) museum's new building by having the "named bathroom" (see post below) while in Venezuela, people cannot afford to buy toilet paper.
By Fabiola Sanchez
ASSOCIATED PRESS
12:22 p.m. December 11, 2007
CARACAS, Venezuela – A newspaper critical of President Hugo Chavez's government said Tuesday it is being forced to stop printing because officials have failed to authorize U.S. dollars it needs to buy newsprint. Publisher and editor David Natera said the government has a clear political motivation for not cooperating with his regional daily, Correo del Caroni, which has long taken a critical stance.
The paper in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz said its print edition will not be published Wednesday because of the lack of newsprint, though it will continue to post news to its Web site. Chavez's government imposed currency exchange controls in 2003, requiring Venezuelans and companies to request state authorization to trade local currency for dollars at the official rate – which holds the Venezuelan bolivar steady at nearly three times the black-market rate.
The head of the government commission that handles requests for dollars acknowledged on Tuesday that there had been delays in processing applications. Manuel Barroso blamed computer problems, but he did not address the newspaper's situation. Natera, who is also a leader among Venezuelan newspaper publishers and has repeatedly accused the government of trying to push aside critical news media, said, “This regime does not allow dissidence,”
An official at Venezuela's information ministry said no response was immediately available. Chavez's government has consistently denied violating press freedoms, noting that most news outlets remain in private hands and many newspapers and radio stations take an anti-Chavez line. Natera said he believes the government is getting back at him for reports he has prepared for the Inter American Press Association warning of threats to press freedom.
The Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders expressed concern, calling on Barroso to “do what is necessary to get things moving and to allow the Correo del Caroni to resume publishing.”“We hope that exchange controls, like the allocation of state advertising, has not been turned into a way of penalizing publications for their editorial policies,” the group said in a statement.
Natera said three other regional newspapers are facing a similar shortage of newsprint and have only a few weeks' worth in stock because they have been unable to obtain dollars through the government to buy more.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20071211-1222-venezuela-newspaper.html
By Fabiola Sanchez
ASSOCIATED PRESS
12:22 p.m. December 11, 2007
CARACAS, Venezuela – A newspaper critical of President Hugo Chavez's government said Tuesday it is being forced to stop printing because officials have failed to authorize U.S. dollars it needs to buy newsprint. Publisher and editor David Natera said the government has a clear political motivation for not cooperating with his regional daily, Correo del Caroni, which has long taken a critical stance.
The paper in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz said its print edition will not be published Wednesday because of the lack of newsprint, though it will continue to post news to its Web site. Chavez's government imposed currency exchange controls in 2003, requiring Venezuelans and companies to request state authorization to trade local currency for dollars at the official rate – which holds the Venezuelan bolivar steady at nearly three times the black-market rate.
The head of the government commission that handles requests for dollars acknowledged on Tuesday that there had been delays in processing applications. Manuel Barroso blamed computer problems, but he did not address the newspaper's situation. Natera, who is also a leader among Venezuelan newspaper publishers and has repeatedly accused the government of trying to push aside critical news media, said, “This regime does not allow dissidence,”
An official at Venezuela's information ministry said no response was immediately available. Chavez's government has consistently denied violating press freedoms, noting that most news outlets remain in private hands and many newspapers and radio stations take an anti-Chavez line. Natera said he believes the government is getting back at him for reports he has prepared for the Inter American Press Association warning of threats to press freedom.
The Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders expressed concern, calling on Barroso to “do what is necessary to get things moving and to allow the Correo del Caroni to resume publishing.”“We hope that exchange controls, like the allocation of state advertising, has not been turned into a way of penalizing publications for their editorial policies,” the group said in a statement.
Natera said three other regional newspapers are facing a similar shortage of newsprint and have only a few weeks' worth in stock because they have been unable to obtain dollars through the government to buy more.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20071211-1222-venezuela-newspaper.html
Monday, December 10, 2007
Cultural Revolution Tchotchkes
Since I got onto the subject [see post immediately below this] of the talking (or more accurately, delusionally ranting) Hugo Chavez doll, I had to go back to the phenomena of collecting schlock related to sinister murderous dictators, in this case Mao. There is at least one site where one can pay up to hundreds of dollars to buy original or reproduction porcelains depicting the leader, his subordinates and revolutionary characters, many of them related to the Cultural Revolution period. Despite the political incorrectness of what I am about to say, I admit that I happen to be attracted to them for their hideously tastelessly realistic and rhetorical value, not to mention their lurid colors. It's Communist Lladro! In many of these figures, Mao looks a bit like a drag queen wearing red lipstick. The question is, given my family history, would I be offended if I went to somebody's house and they had a bust of Franco displayed knowingly as campy kitsch memorabilia?
this is the site that sells the figurines:
http://www.1930shanghai.com/catalog.html
If you want to know about the iconography of Mao, how contemporary people in China view it, and the ways in which contemporary artists reinterpret this imagery, read this amazing article "Personal Mao" by an expert on the subject, Francesca Dal Lago:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0425/is_2_58/ai_55427197/pg_1
Chavez makes Venezuela go even further backwards....
The megalomanical and deluded dictator Hugo Chavez is at it again, derailed by the crushing defeat of his attempt to turn Venezuela into a "Socialist" dictatorship, now he is literally micro-managing people's lives by turning the clock back on his countrymen, thus interfering with every aspect of their lives. Of course he has already implemented many policies that have done far more damage, and the food shortages are just one example of this. People have to be subjected to his bizarre rambling cadenas that go on for hours and pre-empt regularly-scheduled programming on TV and radio, sometimes he even sings, other times he makes threats of violence. Now he is convinced that changing the clocks back one half hour will make a revolutionary change in the "working people's" lives but in fact it is creating a huge hassle. (see below) This half-hour change means that he isn't on the same time zone as the USA.
But if you think this initiative is deluded and narcissistic, check this out - be warned some of the people in the video, if you understand Spanish, are actually saying that children love Chavez and are attracted by the doll!!! This reminds me of the ubiquitous Mao figurines - my personal faves are the glow in the dark plastic ones, the great leader was always watching!
_________________________________________________________________
Venezuelans Reset Clocks With Chavez's New Time Zone (Update1)
By Matthew Walter
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aBSMuIWEBYk0&refer=latin_america
Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelans began their work week at a new hour after President Hugo Chavez ordered clocks set back, creating a time zone unique to the South American country.
Chavez says setting clocks back half an hour will allow school children to wake up with the sun and ease poor Venezuelans' pre-dawn commute. Since the decree's publication on Nov. 27, businesses have struggled to update time-sensitive computer systems.
Chavez, who says time zones were created by ``imperialists,'' has also changed the country's name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and redesigned its coat of arms and national flag in his bid to create a ``21st century socialist'' society. Some Venezuelans say the time change is part of Chavez's drive to put his mark on every aspect of the country's national identity.
``It's a political whim,'' said Yanitza Lopez, 27, an accountant for a cosmetics company in Caracas. ``It's not going to make any difference for any kids.''
Airlines and travel agencies were still calling and e- mailed passengers last week to notify them about flight changes, and the Caracas stock exchange had to update its software to ensure trades ran smoothly today.
``The time change is going to affect many flights, and lots of airlines still haven't changed their timetables,'' said Roberto Pulido, country manager for Copa Airlines and president of Venezuela's airline association. ``This is an additional cost, because we've had to update all of our reservation systems.''
Authority
Venezuela joins a handful of countries, including India, Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka that don't set their time in increments of one hour from Greenwich Mean Time.
``This affects even the biological functioning of the body,'' the president said yesterday, according to the state news wire. ``It's scientifically proven.
Local media spent the past week focusing on the aftermath of a Dec. 2 national referendum, in which voters rejected the president's plan to overhaul the constitution to allow him to run for re-election indefinitely, contributing to confusion about yesterday's change.
Chavez has changed the start date for the new time zone at least once, and in a national address he mistakenly said the plan was to turn clocks forward by half an hour.
``I don't really understand the point, but nothing with this president surprises me,'' said Rafael Sucre, 39, a doctor, as he exited a subway station last week in the Chacao commercial district of the nation's capital, Caracas.
To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Walter in Caracas at mwalter4@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: December 10, 2007 08:30 EST
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Puerto Ricans - cheap labor with US Passports!
above: images from the Puerto Rican Tourism Company website, generic tropical beachscape and the logo they've designed to reinforce their slogan "US passport not required"
I see an ironic parallel between the recent efforts made by US meat-packing plants to recruit Island-based Puerto Ricans to replace deported or jailed undocumented immigrants and the Puerto Rico Tourism Company's latest campaign. (see below for article on the meat-packing plants) The latter attempt to rebrand the Island starts with the catchy slogan "EXPLORE BEYOND THE SHORE" but what particularly fascinated me when I recently saw a typically sterotypical commecial filled with lush tropical foliage, scantily clad natives dancing, carnival festivities and pale tourists lounging poolside is that at the bottom right I read: US PASSPORT NOT REQUIRED.
So for the US citizen no passport is required to travel to the island to enjoy hedonism and escape, and for the colonial US subject residing in the Island, a passport IS required to slave away in unhealthy and grim conditions in a meat-packing company. The fact that islanders cannot earn a decent wage at home, thanks to years of "management" of and alterations to, its economy to better suit US interests, so they have to migrate to the so-called Mainland especially beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, is probably unknown to the average American who wants to avoid post-9/11 visa and passport hassles. Lest we forget, even Bush the Second didn't have a passport prior to becoming President. Who needs to travel abroad when we have everything we want right here?
"US dollars accepted" the PR Tourism Company trumpets, and "Just a short hop away." The fact that US citizens would have to be TOLD that this about their own colony which they invaded in 1898 is still shocking for me to contemplate. Only people in the US would be so uneducated that they would not know about their own colonial territory.
An even deeper irony is the fact that thanks to "Operation Bootstrap" launched in 1947 Puerto Rico's economy shifted from agrarian to industrial and manufacturing, and of course tourism is 7 % of its income. Then pharmaceutical plants, garment factories and the like set up shop on the Island, enjoying its cheap labor, US federal tax breaks while polluting the land and in the case of pharmaceuticals using locals as guinea pigs. Until NAFTA and globalization, when outsourcing to other less-developed areas became more profitable and then our colonial status and federal laws made using the locals as cheap labor less attractive.
So thanks to the backlash against undocumente workers, US companies remember that they have poor unemployed citizens in a nearby colony, again.
This is the 411 on the Island, according to the CIA and then the PR Tourism Company-
The CIA blurb is PRICELESS especially the section about the racial make-up: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/rq.html
PR Tourism Company: http://www.gotopuertorico.com/tourism-puerto-rico.php
__________________________
From National Public Radio
Nation
Meat Processors Look to Puerto Rico for Workers
by Jennifer Ludden
Morning Edition, December 6, 2007 ·
A year ago, immigration agents arrested more than 1,200 illegal workers at Swift meat-packing plants in six states.
The arrests set off a debate about whether immigrants take the grueling jobs away from Americans. Republican presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter said last summer that the day after the raids, Americans were lined up to get their $18-an-hour jobs back.
In reality, the meat-packing plants pay an average hourly rate of $11 or $12 — and no one is lining up to work there.
Many plants, even those that were not raided, must still recruit heavily for legal workers.
In July, a Cargill plant in Beardstown, Ill., began running advertisements in Puerto Rico's capital city, San Juan.
Officials then flew over to conduct interviews there and in four other towns.
Andrea Agosto heard about the jobs and was among the first group of Puerto Ricans that Cargill flew to its pork-processing plant in August.
"It was for a change and for a better life for my three children," she says.
Agosto has doubled her salary.
Puerto Ricans Settle in Illinois
Maria Clayton had been the Beardstown plant's only Puerto Rican employee. She has been shuttling back and forth to the airport to pick up the new arrivals and help them get settled. So far, 50 people have made the trip.
Clayton says even the drive from the airport through Illinois' rural corn and bean country is something of a culture shock.
"Last night, I picked up two people, and they were amazed: 'Oh, my God, it's pitch black, it's pitch black. This is so far, are we there yet?' "
Clayton says they all ask, "What do you do for fun?" She tells them there isn't much to do. "But I always tell them, 'You know, if you want to change (your) life, and you want to save money (and) feel safe — this is a good place to be.' "
Cargill spokesman Mark Klein says the company has long had to recruit outside its plants' locations and targets places with high unemployment. Puerto Ricans make good candidates because they are U.S. citizens and many have experience in the industry.
"What interested us about Puerto Rico was there was a pork plant in Corozal that had closed a while back, and we wanted to hire people that had meat experience," Klein says. He says he does not think any of his competitors know that, but he expects word to get around.
Mark Grey, who studies the meat-packing industry at the University of Northern Iowa, says there is a premium on finding legal workers because of the crackdown on illegal immigrants.
"A lot of people in the industry have told me that they're running scared. They've looked at the potential for they, themselves, to become arrested — the managers, the recruiters, everyone else," Grey says.
Grey says the industry is doing more to weed out illegal workers, but that cuts into a thin profit margin of 1 percent to 3 percent. To make money, you need to cut up a lot of animals, and that takes a lot of people, he says.
Grey says most of the Americans who lined up to get meat-industry jobs after the Swift raids never got out of training, or they got to the floor and lasted just a few hours — not days.
Difficult Transition
In Beardstown, the transition for the new Puerto Rican workers has not been all smooth.
Shelly Heideman, who organizes aid for immigrants through the Elizabeth Ann Seton Program, says she has had to expand her efforts to secure donations because the incoming Puerto Ricans need so much.
"First of all, they said (they need) winter clothing, especially for their children," she says. They also need furnishings, pots and pans, linens, towels, sheets, blankets and almost anything you need to establish a home, Heideman says.
Agosto says a couple of the other Puerto Rican workers who came with her in August have already gone back.
"They didn't like the work, and it's so cold inside the factory. We weren't really prepared for that," she says.
But Agosto says it is worth it for her. She recently brought one son over from Puerto Rico, and he plans to start work at the Cargill plant in January. She hopes to bring her two other children next summer.
_______________
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Charo - The Greatest Spanish Entertainer of the 20th Century and Andy Warhol The Greatest Entertainer of the 20th Century
Charo Baeza, fiery flamenco guitarrist, trained with Andres Segovia, was discovered by band leader Xavier Cugat in the 1960s and launched to international stardom in the 1970s thanks to fabulous records featuring her Spanish flamenco guitar meets 1970s disco stylings meets easy listening. She appeared in talk shows, charming Carson et al with her heavy Ejpaneeesh Akzent, big blond hair toss, plunging necklines, and lukewarm casino/stripper/vedette choreographies. Her signature phrase, understandable in any language: CUCHI CUCHI.
My father, whose accent is in fact similar to hers, was convinced that SHE was faking it to charm the Americans. In any event, for me it was a revelation to see a Spaniard, any Spaniard on American TV growing up in here in the late 70s and early 80s. Her fame was cemented thanks to a recurring role as APRIL on The Love Boat. She was a demure secretary suddently thrust into the limelight when, as Julie frantically tried to find a substitute for the shipboard disco's entertainment (this is of course, on those rare episodes where Ethel Merman wasn't a guest), she shed her glasses and Dress for Success garb and scantily clad in sequins shook her big blond mane and her booty. Her guitar-shaped body was featured in one album cover, where, nude, she was perfectly "clothed" by her Spanish guitar, held close to her chest.
In the late 1970s, I was a child visiting New Orleans for Mardi Gras and both my dad and I were super bummed out when Charo had to cancel her appearance in the parade due to a chest cold. Fortunately, she resurfaced on The Surreal Life and the GEICO commercial and you can check out her fabulous website: http://www.charo.com . She is still producing records, by the way.
And I am NOT kidding about Ethel Merman, to wit:
However, possibly the GREATEST moment in the Love Boat's history is the Andy Warhol cameo, which for me had been the Holy Grail of TV watching and thanks to you tube and google, here it is!!!!!
www.DICKIPEDIA.org - AWESOME SITE!!!!!!
Below is the entry for Donald Trump from www.dickipedia.org.
Honestly, I don't know how I lived life without this site for almost 40 years. It is the most awesome thing. Ever. There are of course a plethora of dicks to choose running the gamut from the Axis of Dick Evil: Ronald Reagan, Cheney etc. to entertainers like Tucker Carlson and David Blaine (trivia: his mom, like me, is half Spanish/half Puerto Rican and his dad is Jewish, though this should in theory be a dreamy combo, something went terribly wrong, but go to the site and see for yourself!), and historical figures like the Pilgrims.
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American businessman, real estate developer, television personality, author and dick.
Contents
1 Overview and business
2 Career
3 Family
4 Feuds
5 Trivia
Overview and business
Trump rose to fame as a builder and real-estate developer. His buildings are known for their aesthetic touches commonly considered “classy” in many parts of the dick community. They feature gold fixtures, gold windows, gold signs and gold marble. Trump really likes gold.
About his first signature skyscraper, The Trump Tower, he said, “When people see the beautiful marble in Trump Tower, they usually have no idea what I went through personally to achieve the end result. No one cares about the blood, sweat, and tears that art or beauty require.”
Even for a dick, Trump is widely considered to be a braggart with an outsized and unwarranted opinion of himself and his talents. This is thought to be reason for the common theme linking the names of his many properties and businesses. They include:
• Trump Palace
• Trump Parc
• Trump Park Avenue
• Trump Tower
• Trump World Tower
• Trump Star Tower
• Trump Plaza
• Trump Grande
• Trump Place
• Trump Taj Mahal
• Trump Marina
• Trump Casino
• Trump Island Villas
• Trump Elite Tower
• Trump Tower Variations
• Trump Ice bottled water
• Trump Vodka
• Trump Shuttle
• Trump Golf
• Trump Magazine
• Trump Cologne for Men
• The Donald J. Trump Signature Men’s Collection
Trump considers himself the consummate dealmaker. “Deals are my art form,” he has written, “other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.” That, and having sexual intercourse with curiously "mannish" women.
Career
Trump portrays himself as a self-made man, but, in fact, he started his career at his father's successful real-estate company, the Trump Organization. While it is true that since then he has been successful in finding other wealthy dicks to buy apartments and condos in his many dick buildings, he is not as successful or as wealthy as he portrays himself to be.
In 2005, the journalist Timothy L. O’Brien, a staff writer for The New York Times, published the book “TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald.” In the book O’Brien claimed that Trump was not, as he claims, a billionaire, and worth only $250 million. Trump filed suit against O’Brien for “libel” in 2006. The suit is still pending.
Not in dispute is the fact that Trump’s businesses have been in and out of bankruptcy court since the early 1990’s. In 1991, The Taj Mahal Casino, which Trump financed largely with high-interest junk bonds, was forced into bankruptcy. In 1992, the Trump Plaza Hotel was forced to reorganize under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan after being unable to meet it dept payments. In 2004, Trump Hotels was also forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. About that bankruptcy he said, “I don't think it's a failure, it's a success." This confusion with opposites is considered by many to be a possible explanation for his taste in women.
In 2004, Trump became the Executive Producer of the NBC show “The Apprentice,” a reality show in which contestants vie to see who is the biggest dick, as judged by Trump. Participants are dismissed from the show with the signature phrase, “You’re fired,” which Trump has tried to trademark. In 2007, ratings were down significantly from 2006, and the show was last among the networks in its timeslot. Perhaps this is because all of the women on the show, instead of competing to win, are focusing their energies on having sex with Trump: “All of the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted with me -- consciously or unconsciously,” said Trump. “That's to be expected.”
Family
In 1977, Trump married Ivana Zelnickova, whom he also branded with the “Trump” name. Ivana, a Czechoslovakian peroxide blond with a penchant for plastic surgery and international playboy wastrels, nicknamed Trump “The Donald.” They had three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka (sic) and Eric. Ivanka later claimed to be a “fashion model.”
Though Ivana was also a dick, and shared The Donald’s love of the dick aesthetic, it was not enough to keep the marriage together. In the early 1990’s, Trump began having sexual intercourse with a woman named Marla Maples. She was an “actress,” because she had appeared in a movie called “Maximum Overdrive,” in which she played a character named “2nd Woman.” Ivana filed for divorce shortly after, and Trump and Maples were married in 1993.
Though Trump was unsuccessful in branding Maples with the Trump name, he was able to inseminate her. In 1993, Maples gave birth to Trump’s fourth dick progeny, “Tiffany” (sic). Trump and Maples divorced in 1999.
Trump soon started dating Melanie Knauss, a Slovenian woman who looks like a Slovenian man. She/He became Trump new trophy wife in 2004. She is seven years older than Donald Trump, Jr. It is known that she allowed the aging Trump, who has unnaturally-colored orange hair styled in a bizarre comb-over, to penetrate her at least once, as she gave birth to Trump’s fifth dick offspring, Barron (sic) William Trump, in 2006.
About Barron, Trump had this to say in 2007: "He's strong, he's smart, he's tough, he's vicious, he's violent -- all of the ingredients you need to be an entrepreneur, and most importantly, hopefully he's smart because smart is really the ingredient,"
Feuds
In the 1980’s Spy Magazine, edited by Graydon Carter and Kurt Anderson, dubbed Trump a “short-fingered vulgarian.” In 2006, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Spy, Trump was asked about the moniker. Trump’s reply, which he has had 25 years to think about, was, in the opinion of many, as classy as the gold marble in Trump Tower: “In fact, my fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.” It is presumed he is talking about his penis.
In 2006 and 2007, Trump was engaged in a feud with Rosie O’Donnell, former co-host of the talk show "The View." On the show O’Donnell claimed that Trump orchestrated a controversy with the Miss Universe pageant, which he owns, in order to generate publicity for the season premier of “The Apprentice.” Trump's reply was no less trenchant than his retort to Carter and Anderson, calling O’Donnell “fat,” a “slob,” and an “animal,” “very unattractive,” and “a pigface.” He then claimed “I never went bankrupt” and threatened that either he or one of “his friends” would soon “steal” the openly-gay O’Donnell’s girlfriend away. Given Trump's relationships with Ivana Trump and Melanie Knauss, this was not considered to be an idle threat.
Trivia
In the 1980’s Trump retained the legal services of Roy Cohn, former chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, closeted self-hating homosexual and a symbol of pure evil. Their meetings are generally considered to be some of the few times in which Trump has not been the worst person in the room.
Dickipedia.org Home
Dickipedia is a production of 236.com
Honestly, I don't know how I lived life without this site for almost 40 years. It is the most awesome thing. Ever. There are of course a plethora of dicks to choose running the gamut from the Axis of Dick Evil: Ronald Reagan, Cheney etc. to entertainers like Tucker Carlson and David Blaine (trivia: his mom, like me, is half Spanish/half Puerto Rican and his dad is Jewish, though this should in theory be a dreamy combo, something went terribly wrong, but go to the site and see for yourself!), and historical figures like the Pilgrims.
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American businessman, real estate developer, television personality, author and dick.
Contents
1 Overview and business
2 Career
3 Family
4 Feuds
5 Trivia
Overview and business
Trump rose to fame as a builder and real-estate developer. His buildings are known for their aesthetic touches commonly considered “classy” in many parts of the dick community. They feature gold fixtures, gold windows, gold signs and gold marble. Trump really likes gold.
About his first signature skyscraper, The Trump Tower, he said, “When people see the beautiful marble in Trump Tower, they usually have no idea what I went through personally to achieve the end result. No one cares about the blood, sweat, and tears that art or beauty require.”
Even for a dick, Trump is widely considered to be a braggart with an outsized and unwarranted opinion of himself and his talents. This is thought to be reason for the common theme linking the names of his many properties and businesses. They include:
• Trump Palace
• Trump Parc
• Trump Park Avenue
• Trump Tower
• Trump World Tower
• Trump Star Tower
• Trump Plaza
• Trump Grande
• Trump Place
• Trump Taj Mahal
• Trump Marina
• Trump Casino
• Trump Island Villas
• Trump Elite Tower
• Trump Tower Variations
• Trump Ice bottled water
• Trump Vodka
• Trump Shuttle
• Trump Golf
• Trump Magazine
• Trump Cologne for Men
• The Donald J. Trump Signature Men’s Collection
Trump considers himself the consummate dealmaker. “Deals are my art form,” he has written, “other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.” That, and having sexual intercourse with curiously "mannish" women.
Career
Trump portrays himself as a self-made man, but, in fact, he started his career at his father's successful real-estate company, the Trump Organization. While it is true that since then he has been successful in finding other wealthy dicks to buy apartments and condos in his many dick buildings, he is not as successful or as wealthy as he portrays himself to be.
In 2005, the journalist Timothy L. O’Brien, a staff writer for The New York Times, published the book “TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald.” In the book O’Brien claimed that Trump was not, as he claims, a billionaire, and worth only $250 million. Trump filed suit against O’Brien for “libel” in 2006. The suit is still pending.
Not in dispute is the fact that Trump’s businesses have been in and out of bankruptcy court since the early 1990’s. In 1991, The Taj Mahal Casino, which Trump financed largely with high-interest junk bonds, was forced into bankruptcy. In 1992, the Trump Plaza Hotel was forced to reorganize under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan after being unable to meet it dept payments. In 2004, Trump Hotels was also forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. About that bankruptcy he said, “I don't think it's a failure, it's a success." This confusion with opposites is considered by many to be a possible explanation for his taste in women.
In 2004, Trump became the Executive Producer of the NBC show “The Apprentice,” a reality show in which contestants vie to see who is the biggest dick, as judged by Trump. Participants are dismissed from the show with the signature phrase, “You’re fired,” which Trump has tried to trademark. In 2007, ratings were down significantly from 2006, and the show was last among the networks in its timeslot. Perhaps this is because all of the women on the show, instead of competing to win, are focusing their energies on having sex with Trump: “All of the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted with me -- consciously or unconsciously,” said Trump. “That's to be expected.”
Family
In 1977, Trump married Ivana Zelnickova, whom he also branded with the “Trump” name. Ivana, a Czechoslovakian peroxide blond with a penchant for plastic surgery and international playboy wastrels, nicknamed Trump “The Donald.” They had three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka (sic) and Eric. Ivanka later claimed to be a “fashion model.”
Though Ivana was also a dick, and shared The Donald’s love of the dick aesthetic, it was not enough to keep the marriage together. In the early 1990’s, Trump began having sexual intercourse with a woman named Marla Maples. She was an “actress,” because she had appeared in a movie called “Maximum Overdrive,” in which she played a character named “2nd Woman.” Ivana filed for divorce shortly after, and Trump and Maples were married in 1993.
Though Trump was unsuccessful in branding Maples with the Trump name, he was able to inseminate her. In 1993, Maples gave birth to Trump’s fourth dick progeny, “Tiffany” (sic). Trump and Maples divorced in 1999.
Trump soon started dating Melanie Knauss, a Slovenian woman who looks like a Slovenian man. She/He became Trump new trophy wife in 2004. She is seven years older than Donald Trump, Jr. It is known that she allowed the aging Trump, who has unnaturally-colored orange hair styled in a bizarre comb-over, to penetrate her at least once, as she gave birth to Trump’s fifth dick offspring, Barron (sic) William Trump, in 2006.
About Barron, Trump had this to say in 2007: "He's strong, he's smart, he's tough, he's vicious, he's violent -- all of the ingredients you need to be an entrepreneur, and most importantly, hopefully he's smart because smart is really the ingredient,"
Feuds
In the 1980’s Spy Magazine, edited by Graydon Carter and Kurt Anderson, dubbed Trump a “short-fingered vulgarian.” In 2006, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Spy, Trump was asked about the moniker. Trump’s reply, which he has had 25 years to think about, was, in the opinion of many, as classy as the gold marble in Trump Tower: “In fact, my fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.” It is presumed he is talking about his penis.
In 2006 and 2007, Trump was engaged in a feud with Rosie O’Donnell, former co-host of the talk show "The View." On the show O’Donnell claimed that Trump orchestrated a controversy with the Miss Universe pageant, which he owns, in order to generate publicity for the season premier of “The Apprentice.” Trump's reply was no less trenchant than his retort to Carter and Anderson, calling O’Donnell “fat,” a “slob,” and an “animal,” “very unattractive,” and “a pigface.” He then claimed “I never went bankrupt” and threatened that either he or one of “his friends” would soon “steal” the openly-gay O’Donnell’s girlfriend away. Given Trump's relationships with Ivana Trump and Melanie Knauss, this was not considered to be an idle threat.
Trivia
In the 1980’s Trump retained the legal services of Roy Cohn, former chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, closeted self-hating homosexual and a symbol of pure evil. Their meetings are generally considered to be some of the few times in which Trump has not been the worst person in the room.
Dickipedia.org Home
Dickipedia is a production of 236.com
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Extraterrestial Summit in Lajas, PR
(if you click on the photo above you should be able to see read the article, which is priceless)
I have always wondered about the obsession with extraterrestials that seems to prevail among sectors of my fellow Puerto Rican population. Whenever I visit, I am mesmerized by the wide variety of OVNI or UFO-related periodicals avaiable at the check-out line at the local PUEBLO supermarket or Farmacia Moscoso racks. From my childhood I recall being terrified by stories of the hybrid monster the garadiabolo and more recently we heard about the chupacabras. There are also the stories of UFO landings all over the Island that are somehow linked to it being in the Bermuda Triangle. And now I have belatedly learned that since 2005 a gentleman in Lajas has taken it to the next level, making plans for an OVNIPUERTO and today he is hosting a summit for those who have like him had contact with those from outer space.
I accidentally came across this hysterical bit of real news when I was on the El Nuevo Dia website reading local news from the Island, which of course then led me to You Tube. There, I found a terrifying but apparently not fake piece of footage from a show called "A Calson Quitao" where three men are discussing - with a total lack of irony I might add- the logistics for establishing said OVNIPUERTO on the Island:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n175BBi28eY
Miss Puerto Rico Places Within Top 15 in Miss World Pageant
Breaking News:
Miss Puerto Rico, Jennifer Guevera, placed in the top 15 finalists for Miss World. Here she is, proving my point that, for Puerto Ricans, metallics and animal prints are neutrals.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Is This Why Chavez Wants to Police the Names Given to Kids in Venezuela?
Anyone who has read this blog knows that I am fascinated by what the NY Times calls "the culture of naming" in Latin America. The German, French or faux composite Spanish/French/German names spelled in a hybrid Spanish manner of some of my Puerto Rican relatives, those I read on name tags at the Asssociated Super Market, or see on the screen while watching Miss Universe...they all obsess me. Reyna, Yesenia, Jeanmarie, Delorean, Elvis, Harold, you name it! And now in Spain, too, my compatriots name their children Yonatan, or Yenifer. Fabulous.
Thanks to Simon Romero in Caracas, we learned that the dictator Chavez wants to curtail such practices and limit approved Revolutionary Bolivarian names to a set list. (see below under Real News/Miss Universe). His disgruntled Congressman Iroshima Perez is offended. And now we learn that the leader of the student group opposing the regime is named STALIN Gonzalez. Obviouly, this is pronounced EHS-TAH-LEEN. You cannot make this stuff up. Realismo Magico at its best. And I have been told by my beloved Venezuelan friends that there are cases of telenovela writers who are also avant-garde theatre authors with names like IBSEN (that would be their first name of course). I remember meeting a man from Peru who went by the first name LENIN. So the heroic student leader Stalin isn't an exception.
The Wall Street Journal
To Oppose Chávez, Youth In Caracas Rally Behind Stalin
That's Ivan Stalin González, Student-Movement Leader; A Broad Dissent on Campus
By JOHN LYONS and JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA
November 24, 2007; Page A1
CARACAS, Venezuela -- As Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez attempts to push through what he calls 21st-Century Socialism, his biggest obstacle is an army of students led by a leftist named Stalin. Ivan Stalin González, who prefers to be called just plain Stalin, is president of the student body at the Central University of Venezuela, or UCV, Venezuela's biggest public university. During the past few weeks, Mr. González and other student leaders here have organized protest marches by tens of thousands of students opposed to a constitutional referendum set for Dec. 2. The proposed changes would dramatically expand Mr. Chávez's power and allow him to seek perpetual re-election.
The student movement has taken the government by surprise, highlighting an embarrassing irony for the fiery Mr. Chávez: University students, long a bastion of the left here as in the rest of Latin America, are overwhelmingly opposed to him. They have also emerged, along with the Catholic Church, as among the last major opposition to Mr. Chávez in a country where he already controls the congress, courts, army and most media outlets.
Students like Mr. González have traditionally played an outsized role in Latin America's turbulent politics. In the 1950s, University of Havana students led a struggle against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Fidel Castro, who forced Mr. Batista from power -- and who is Mr. Chávez's revered mentor -- got his start as a student leader at the university. In Mexico, a massacre of students and other protestors in 1968 helped inspire the creation of half a dozen small guerilla groups in the 1970s. And in Venezuela, UCV holds an important place in political history. In 1957, a student strike that began here eventually led to the downfall of dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Half a century later, many Venezuelans hope Mr. Chávez will meet his political Stalingrad at UCV. "Student struggles have always preceded great historical changes," says Fernando Ochoa, a former defense minister who was jailed when he participated in the 1957 strike as a high school student.
Anti-Chávez sentiment on Venezuelan campuses burst into the open in May, when the government pulled the plug on RCTV, a television network critical of Mr. Chávez. Tens of thousands of students viewed the move as a blow to freedom of speech. They were also alarmed by Mr. Chávez's promises that the "revolution within the university" would be next -- likely expanding government control over areas like the curriculum. They took to the streets, creating a protest movement in campuses across the country. The Dec. 2 referendum has sparked a round of new protests. Caught off guard, Mr. Chávez has called the students "terrorists" and written them off as "pampered, rich mama's boys." UCV, which charges no tuition, has a range of students, from the scions of businessmen to the sons of taxi drivers.
Mr. Chávez's description also hardly fits Mr. González. The 27-year-old, sixth-year law student grew up in a poor household that dreamed of a Communist Venezuela. His father, a print-machine operator, was a high-ranking member of the Bandera Roja, or Red Flag, a hard-line Marxist-Leninist party that maintained a guerrilla force until as recently as the mid-1990s. Its members revered Josef Stalin as well as Albania's xenophobic Enver Hoxha. As a boy, Mr. González remembers packing off to marches with his sisters, Dolores Engels and Ilyich, named in honor of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. As a young man, Mr. González burnished his leftist credentials, joining Marxist youth groups and following his father into the Bandera Roja. He traveled to Socialist youth conferences in Latin America. Mr. González was still in his teens when Mr. Chávez was voted into office in late 1998. Even then, he says, he was skeptical about Mr. Chávez's socialist rhetoric, as are many Venezuelan leftists. Mr. Chávez, a lieutenant colonel who had staged an unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992, would be more authoritarian than egalitarian, Mr. González reasoned.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119586925917802724.html
Thanks to Simon Romero in Caracas, we learned that the dictator Chavez wants to curtail such practices and limit approved Revolutionary Bolivarian names to a set list. (see below under Real News/Miss Universe). His disgruntled Congressman Iroshima Perez is offended. And now we learn that the leader of the student group opposing the regime is named STALIN Gonzalez. Obviouly, this is pronounced EHS-TAH-LEEN. You cannot make this stuff up. Realismo Magico at its best. And I have been told by my beloved Venezuelan friends that there are cases of telenovela writers who are also avant-garde theatre authors with names like IBSEN (that would be their first name of course). I remember meeting a man from Peru who went by the first name LENIN. So the heroic student leader Stalin isn't an exception.
The Wall Street Journal
To Oppose Chávez, Youth In Caracas Rally Behind Stalin
That's Ivan Stalin González, Student-Movement Leader; A Broad Dissent on Campus
By JOHN LYONS and JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA
November 24, 2007; Page A1
CARACAS, Venezuela -- As Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez attempts to push through what he calls 21st-Century Socialism, his biggest obstacle is an army of students led by a leftist named Stalin. Ivan Stalin González, who prefers to be called just plain Stalin, is president of the student body at the Central University of Venezuela, or UCV, Venezuela's biggest public university. During the past few weeks, Mr. González and other student leaders here have organized protest marches by tens of thousands of students opposed to a constitutional referendum set for Dec. 2. The proposed changes would dramatically expand Mr. Chávez's power and allow him to seek perpetual re-election.
The student movement has taken the government by surprise, highlighting an embarrassing irony for the fiery Mr. Chávez: University students, long a bastion of the left here as in the rest of Latin America, are overwhelmingly opposed to him. They have also emerged, along with the Catholic Church, as among the last major opposition to Mr. Chávez in a country where he already controls the congress, courts, army and most media outlets.
Students like Mr. González have traditionally played an outsized role in Latin America's turbulent politics. In the 1950s, University of Havana students led a struggle against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Fidel Castro, who forced Mr. Batista from power -- and who is Mr. Chávez's revered mentor -- got his start as a student leader at the university. In Mexico, a massacre of students and other protestors in 1968 helped inspire the creation of half a dozen small guerilla groups in the 1970s. And in Venezuela, UCV holds an important place in political history. In 1957, a student strike that began here eventually led to the downfall of dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Half a century later, many Venezuelans hope Mr. Chávez will meet his political Stalingrad at UCV. "Student struggles have always preceded great historical changes," says Fernando Ochoa, a former defense minister who was jailed when he participated in the 1957 strike as a high school student.
Anti-Chávez sentiment on Venezuelan campuses burst into the open in May, when the government pulled the plug on RCTV, a television network critical of Mr. Chávez. Tens of thousands of students viewed the move as a blow to freedom of speech. They were also alarmed by Mr. Chávez's promises that the "revolution within the university" would be next -- likely expanding government control over areas like the curriculum. They took to the streets, creating a protest movement in campuses across the country. The Dec. 2 referendum has sparked a round of new protests. Caught off guard, Mr. Chávez has called the students "terrorists" and written them off as "pampered, rich mama's boys." UCV, which charges no tuition, has a range of students, from the scions of businessmen to the sons of taxi drivers.
Mr. Chávez's description also hardly fits Mr. González. The 27-year-old, sixth-year law student grew up in a poor household that dreamed of a Communist Venezuela. His father, a print-machine operator, was a high-ranking member of the Bandera Roja, or Red Flag, a hard-line Marxist-Leninist party that maintained a guerrilla force until as recently as the mid-1990s. Its members revered Josef Stalin as well as Albania's xenophobic Enver Hoxha. As a boy, Mr. González remembers packing off to marches with his sisters, Dolores Engels and Ilyich, named in honor of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. As a young man, Mr. González burnished his leftist credentials, joining Marxist youth groups and following his father into the Bandera Roja. He traveled to Socialist youth conferences in Latin America. Mr. González was still in his teens when Mr. Chávez was voted into office in late 1998. Even then, he says, he was skeptical about Mr. Chávez's socialist rhetoric, as are many Venezuelan leftists. Mr. Chávez, a lieutenant colonel who had staged an unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992, would be more authoritarian than egalitarian, Mr. González reasoned.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119586925917802724.html
Breaking News! The Pollocks Are Fake!
The totally Nerdolicious and charismatic forensic scientist James Martin wittily proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is something the Matter with the Pollocks!!!
If you want the straight story, the cache of alleged Jackson Pollock works found by the son of artists who were friends with the late Abstract Expressionist has been disputed for years, generating controversies among art historians, gallerists, curators, conservators, scientists and lawyers. Many of the disputed works are on view at the Boston College Museum in a show called Pollock Matters. But at a Standing Room Only panel organized by the International Foundation for Art Research, which I was extremely fortunate to attend, a leading expert on Pollock and two scientists raised serious questions against the attribution.
Here is the link to the NYTimes article:
Scientist Presents Case Against Possible Pollocks
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: November 29, 2007
A large group of paintings discovered several years ago and thought by some to be by Jackson Pollock included many containing paints and materials that were not available until after the artist’s death in 1956.
For full story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/arts/29pollock.html?ex=1354078800&en=e6e960a6e1929ed1&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
The brilliant art historian and Pollock expert Pepe Karmel began the evening's lectures by demonstrating that the focus on materials since the works were first unveiled means that the issue of connoisseurship has been overlooked. He showed how, looking carefully at the color, composition, application of paint, and condition of the works, one can compare those with Matter provenance to known Pollocks and find notable differences between the two. Giving very specific examples, he demonstrated why there is something the matter with the Matter pictures which look like the work of someone who has taken Greenberg's paradigm of "all overness" literally, there are problems with scale, with the grounds used, and many other issues.
The works look more like Herbert Matter's known pictures than Pollock's, so, he suggested, could they be works by Matter experimenting "in the manner of Pollock"?
Then Richard Newman, a scientist from the MFA Boston spoke, he was very impartial in tone and summarized various studies conducted by scientists on these works.
Finally, James Martin presented for the first time the results of his research. He had allegedly been threatened with lawsuits if he spoke publicly about his research. This of course made listening to its unveiling all the more exciting. Martin, who works with the FBI among other institutions, combined police-type research, interviews, and the like, with hundreds of scientific tests. He enraptured the entire room, you could hear a pin drop, and there were gasps as he developed his arguments. It was like a live artworld version of CSI!!! Who knew that science could be so exciting? It is when a life-or-death issue is at stake: do we or do we not have a new body of work by one of the canonized Masters of American art? If so, how many millions are they worth?
Martin went over many inconsistencies in Alex Matter's stories regarding the date(s) the works were found and the location(s) where they were found. He also mentioned that he examined the warehouse records of the storage where they were found and that Matter and his mother had access to the space (this led me to ask if they knew the works were there all along or perhaps placed them there after Herbert Matter died?) He conclusively showed that the boards used in some of these works were not produced until the mid 1970s, he also discussed at length the pigments. Most of those were from the mid-1970s or later. Then and thankfully using layman's terms as much as he could, he explained why he learned that many of the works include these pigments from the 1970s-80s at the lowest layer, and then are covered over with pigments available starting in the 1960s. Some of these pigments available only as of the 1970s are used for the initials "JP" in some works. He added that for some, this type of situation may raise questions of intentional misattribution and fraud.
Of course, to my recollection, all three were careful not to literally say that the works are fake, but they presented scholarly arguments that convinced me for one, that they are.
I felt like I had been a witness to a historic event that will be part of art history.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Am I a Masochist? Miss PR Universe Asks
Update:
On Wed. news broke that several people questioned whether Ingrid Marie was actually attacked. Some called it a hoax.
She appeared on the TODAY show, hopefully the video URL below will be permanent. Don't miss the Second Runner Up, who looks like an understudy for the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Update:
On Saturday, news broke that THERE WAS NO PEPPER SPRAY on either her gown or her make up brush!
On Wed. news broke that several people questioned whether Ingrid Marie was actually attacked. Some called it a hoax.
She appeared on the TODAY show, hopefully the video URL below will be permanent. Don't miss the Second Runner Up, who looks like an understudy for the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Update:
On Saturday, news broke that THERE WAS NO PEPPER SPRAY on either her gown or her make up brush!
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
"Am I a masochist?" new Miss Puerto Rico Universe Asks
Yesterday international wire services ran the spectacular story from Puerto Rico - the top contender for the Miss Puerto Rico Universe title, 24 year old Ingrid Marie Rivera, was doused with pepper spray introduced into her clothes and make-up. Attack of hives and itching notwithstanding, Ingrid Marie rocked it. Without losing her professional compusure, she stepped up on stage, finished her desfile, ran backstage, applied ice to the affected areas to combat the attack, and took the win that will lead her to represent us in the Miss Universe pageant. This news coverage has allowed my friends and me to enjoy reading the typical Islander names mentioned in the coverage, note that the queen is called Ingrid Marie, the use of German, French and English names is prevalent, thus the PR rep for the police is called Stephen Alvarez, the agent in charge Erick Vazquez, the head of the pageant, Harold Rosario. Then we have what I would call the "creatively capitalist-inflected names" such as that of Miss Arecibo: Delorean Torres. Clearly, she was born in the mid-eighties, and her parents were car buffs.
At the press conference following her win, Miss PR Universe asked rhetorically "Am I a Masochist?" in true telenovela fashion. Today's Island papers breathlessly explain that a police investigation is underway since besides the attack on Ingrid Marie, there was a bomb threat called in. When I was a kid, the bomb threats were made by pro-Independence guerrillas or allegedly staged by Romero Barcelo's government to make the independentistas look guilty. It seems that now the struggle is to represent the Island on the international stage that is Miss Universe. El Nuevo Dia also boasted that the story has received international coverage. Last night, I saw this story run on both BBC America (following a story about Chavez's sham vote to turn Venezuela into a Socialist dictatorship) and then on Anderson Cooper 360. AC seemed fascinated by the story, like any self-respecting gay man, and underscored Ingrid Marie's sang froid. But I wondered: why is this the only time they talk about the Island over here? It's as if it doesn't exist. Intelligent and well-educated Americans - living in NY a city that has more Puerto Ricans than the Island itself - ask me if we have a Puerto Rican passport (ask artist Adal Maldonado, who cleverly invents his own), what currency we use, and other surreal questions. Countless people I speak to do not know that PR is a US colony. I see it appear sometimes in USAToday (the McDonald's of newspapers as an ex used to call it) beneath the states, as a "territory."
As the story below from Reuters notes, "Beauty competitions are important stuff in Puert Rico," noting that Islanders have the "autonomy" to send a Delegate to Miss Universe- but not however, to have voting representatives in Congress. Thus Islanders fighting in Irak did not have the right to vote for the President or Congressmen that sent them to die. Another little-known fact, imaginary American reader!
So, are we masochists? I ask myself, obsessing on our "win" in the international arena of Miss Universe, which temporarily distracts us from obsessing on the question of our status vis a vis the US? Staging plebiscite pageants with the contestants "Commonwealth" "Independence" or "Statehood" that are non-binding in the US government's eyes, and which indeed, are rarely even noted by the the US media. When we call ourselves "Estado Libre Asociado" - Free Associated State, but USA Today and the US government refers to us as a "territory." On BBC's "Globe Trekker" they refer to the Puerto Ricans living in NYC: "100 years ago, the US opened its borders to Puerto Ricans, granting them US citizenship." Nice shout out from one waning imperial colonizing power to another! As if the US suddenly decided to generously open its doors, when they took the Island by force and gave citizenship in 1917, just in time to get islanders to go to war as cannon fodder.
By the way, Miss Venezuela is our top competitor, they've won 4 times. But we've won 5 times (Marisol Malaret, 1970, Deborah Carthy-Deu, 1985, Dayanara Torres, 1993, Denise Quinones, 2001, and Zuleyka Rivera, 2006 )!!!
Puerto Rican wins beauty contest despite sabotage
Mon Nov 26, 2007 2:27pm EST
By John Marino
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Someone doused her make-up and clothes with pepper spray, but Ingrid Marie Rivera put on a happy face and managed to win the beauty pageant that selected Puerto Rico's representative in the Miss Universe contest.
The 24-year-old from the town of Dorado was all smiles in front of the audience and judges during the competition, which ended on Friday when she beat 29 rivals. But backstage, she had to strip off her clothes and ice down her face and body to fight swelling and hives.
Pageant officials have vowed to get to the bottom of the attempted sabotage that tainted the pageant, an event that inspires passions in the U.S. Caribbean territory. Puerto Rico has produced five Miss Universe winners.
"It was a lot of sacrifice, and my tears were genuine," Rivera told reporters at a news conference on Sunday.
"At one point, I asked, 'Am I a masochist?' But I said regardless of the results, this is my goal. The more rocks there are in my path, the more thanks I will give to God for sustaining me."
Pageant organizers say they suspected a member of the team handling one of Rivera's competitors was responsible.
Magali Febles, director of the Miss Puerto Rico Universe Pageant, said the person behind the "vile act" was "from inside."
"I am going to investigate this until the final consequences. When we have everything, I will announce who the person is because someone with these instincts is capable of anything."
Organizers also said Rivera's bags, containing clothing and credit cards, were stolen, and that a bomb threat called in on Thursday forced the cancellation of some preliminary events. Police were investigating the bomb threat.
Beauty competitions are important stuff in Puerto Rico.
The ability to field a Miss Universe competitor from Puerto Rico, as well as Olympic sports teams, is a factor in the island's endless political debate, brought about by its status as a U.S. territory with aspects of a state and an independent country.
The events are widely watched, the winners are front page news and the local press is filled with speculation about favorites in the days prior to the competition.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Spanish Surnames Surge- Garcias Are Catching Up With Joneses
More from the NYTImes on the "culture of naming" in this case, about the encroaching list of Spanish surnames that appear on the US census of most common names. As someone with a so-called Hispanic surname, I find this very gratifying although my name doesn't appear in the interactive graphic (to go to the graphic, follow the permalink below). Now we're up to 13% (of those counted on the Census there must be millions more on the DL?) of the population, Lou Dobbs must be apoplectic over this. As usual with the NYTimes, buried within the text there is a completely absurd moment:
"As recently as 1950, more Americans were employed as blacksmiths than as psychotherapists." What, then, are we supposed to do with this factoid? Move to Buenos Aires, where there is "the highest ratio of psychologists and psychotherapists per person in the world"? (source: http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/37/10/15)
I can only hope that some of the Venezuelans with the names no longer approved by the dictator Chavez's Revolutionary Bolivarian Nomenclature (see below for post under Real News/Miss Universe) will find a means to emigrate to the US so that they can not only have "freedom" but also add to our percentage of Hispanic sunames: Iroshima Perez - welcome!
__________________________________________________________
In U.S. Name Count, Garcias Are Catching Up With Joneses
By SAM ROBERTS
Published: November 17, 2007
Step aside Moore and Taylor. Welcome Garcia and Rodriguez.
Smith remains the most common surname in the United States, according to a new analysis released yesterday by the Census Bureau. But for the first time, two Hispanic surnames — Garcia and Rodriguez — are among the top 10 most common in the nation, and Martinez nearly edged out Wilson for 10th place.
The number of Hispanics living in the United States grew by 58 percent in the 1990s to nearly 13 percent of the total population, and cracking the list of top 10 names suggests just how pervasively the Latino migration has permeated everyday American culture.
Garcia moved to No. 8 in 2000, up from No. 18, and Rodriguez jumped to No. 9 from 22nd place. The number of Hispanic surnames among the top 25 doubled, to 6.
Compiling the rankings is a cumbersome task, in part because of confidentiality and accuracy issues, according to the Census Bureau, and it is only the second time it has prepared such a list. While the historical record is sketchy, several demographers said it was probably the first time that any non-Anglo name was among the 10 most common in the nation. “It’s difficult to say, but it’s probably likely,” said Robert A. Kominski, assistant chief of social characteristics for the census.
Luis Padilla, 48, a banker who has lived in Miami since he arrived from Colombia 14 years ago, greeted the ascendance of Hispanic surnames enthusiastically.
“It shows we’re getting stronger,” Mr. Padilla said. “If there’s that many of us to outnumber the Anglo names, it’s a great thing.”
Reinaldo M. Valdes, a board member of the Miami-based Spanish American League Against Discrimination, said the milestone “gives the Hispanic community a standing within the social structure of the country.”
“People of Hispanic descent who hardly speak Spanish are more eager to take their Hispanic last names,” he said. “Today, kids identify more with their roots than they did before.”
Demographers pointed to more than one factor in explaining the increase in Hispanic surnames.
Generations ago, immigration officials sometimes arbitrarily Anglicized or simplified names when foreigners arrived from Europe.
“The movie studios used to demand that their employees have standard Waspy names,” said Justin Kaplan, an historian and co-author of “The Language of Names.”
“Now, look at Renée Zellweger,” Mr. Kaplan said.
And because recent Hispanic and Asian immigrants might consider themselves more identifiable by their physical characteristics than Europeans do, they are less likely to change their surnames, though they often choose Anglicized first names for their children.
The latest surname count also signaled the growing number of Asians in America. The surname Lee ranked No. 22, with the number of Lees about equally divided between whites and Asians. Lee is a familiar name in China and Korea and in all its variations is described as the most common surname in the world.
Altogether, the census found six million surnames in the United States. Among those, 151,000 were shared by a hundred or more Americans. Four million were held by only one person.
“The names tell us that we’re a richly diverse culture,” Mr. Kominski said.
But the fact that about 1 in every 25 Americans is named Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Miller or Davis “suggests that there’s a durability in the family of man,” Mr. Kaplan, the author, said. A million Americans share each of those seven names. An additional 268 last names are common to 10,000 or more people. Together, those 275 names account for one in four Americans.
As the population of the United States ballooned by more than 30 million in the 1990s, more Murphys and Cohens were counted when the decade ended than when it began.
Smith — which would be even more common if all its variations, like Schmidt and Schmitt, were tallied — is among the names derived from occupations (Miller, which ranks No. 7, is another). Among the most famous early bearers of the name was Capt. John Smith, who helped establish the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown, Va., 400 years ago. As recently as 1950, more Americans were employed as blacksmiths than as psychotherapists.
In 1984, according to the Social Security Administration, nearly 3.4 million Smiths lived in the United States. In 1990, the census counted 2.5 million. By 2000, the Smith population had declined to fewer than 2.4 million. The durability of some of the most common names in American history may also have been perpetuated because slaves either adopted or retained the surnames of their owners. About one in five Smiths are black, as are about one in three Johnsons, Browns, and Joneses and nearly half the people named Williams.
The Census Bureau’s analysis found that some surnames were especially associated with race and ethnicity.
More than 96 percent of Yoders, Kruegers, Muellers, Kochs, Schwartzes, Schmitts and Novaks were white. Nearly 90 percent of the Washingtons were black, as were 75 percent of the Jeffersons, 66 percent of the Bookers, 54 percent of the Banks and 53 percent of the Mosleys.
Terry Aguayo contributed reporting from Miami.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17surnames.html?ex=1353042000&en=ec5870741a27e1e1&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
"As recently as 1950, more Americans were employed as blacksmiths than as psychotherapists." What, then, are we supposed to do with this factoid? Move to Buenos Aires, where there is "the highest ratio of psychologists and psychotherapists per person in the world"? (source: http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/37/10/15)
I can only hope that some of the Venezuelans with the names no longer approved by the dictator Chavez's Revolutionary Bolivarian Nomenclature (see below for post under Real News/Miss Universe) will find a means to emigrate to the US so that they can not only have "freedom" but also add to our percentage of Hispanic sunames: Iroshima Perez - welcome!
__________________________________________________________
In U.S. Name Count, Garcias Are Catching Up With Joneses
By SAM ROBERTS
Published: November 17, 2007
Step aside Moore and Taylor. Welcome Garcia and Rodriguez.
Smith remains the most common surname in the United States, according to a new analysis released yesterday by the Census Bureau. But for the first time, two Hispanic surnames — Garcia and Rodriguez — are among the top 10 most common in the nation, and Martinez nearly edged out Wilson for 10th place.
The number of Hispanics living in the United States grew by 58 percent in the 1990s to nearly 13 percent of the total population, and cracking the list of top 10 names suggests just how pervasively the Latino migration has permeated everyday American culture.
Garcia moved to No. 8 in 2000, up from No. 18, and Rodriguez jumped to No. 9 from 22nd place. The number of Hispanic surnames among the top 25 doubled, to 6.
Compiling the rankings is a cumbersome task, in part because of confidentiality and accuracy issues, according to the Census Bureau, and it is only the second time it has prepared such a list. While the historical record is sketchy, several demographers said it was probably the first time that any non-Anglo name was among the 10 most common in the nation. “It’s difficult to say, but it’s probably likely,” said Robert A. Kominski, assistant chief of social characteristics for the census.
Luis Padilla, 48, a banker who has lived in Miami since he arrived from Colombia 14 years ago, greeted the ascendance of Hispanic surnames enthusiastically.
“It shows we’re getting stronger,” Mr. Padilla said. “If there’s that many of us to outnumber the Anglo names, it’s a great thing.”
Reinaldo M. Valdes, a board member of the Miami-based Spanish American League Against Discrimination, said the milestone “gives the Hispanic community a standing within the social structure of the country.”
“People of Hispanic descent who hardly speak Spanish are more eager to take their Hispanic last names,” he said. “Today, kids identify more with their roots than they did before.”
Demographers pointed to more than one factor in explaining the increase in Hispanic surnames.
Generations ago, immigration officials sometimes arbitrarily Anglicized or simplified names when foreigners arrived from Europe.
“The movie studios used to demand that their employees have standard Waspy names,” said Justin Kaplan, an historian and co-author of “The Language of Names.”
“Now, look at Renée Zellweger,” Mr. Kaplan said.
And because recent Hispanic and Asian immigrants might consider themselves more identifiable by their physical characteristics than Europeans do, they are less likely to change their surnames, though they often choose Anglicized first names for their children.
The latest surname count also signaled the growing number of Asians in America. The surname Lee ranked No. 22, with the number of Lees about equally divided between whites and Asians. Lee is a familiar name in China and Korea and in all its variations is described as the most common surname in the world.
Altogether, the census found six million surnames in the United States. Among those, 151,000 were shared by a hundred or more Americans. Four million were held by only one person.
“The names tell us that we’re a richly diverse culture,” Mr. Kominski said.
But the fact that about 1 in every 25 Americans is named Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Miller or Davis “suggests that there’s a durability in the family of man,” Mr. Kaplan, the author, said. A million Americans share each of those seven names. An additional 268 last names are common to 10,000 or more people. Together, those 275 names account for one in four Americans.
As the population of the United States ballooned by more than 30 million in the 1990s, more Murphys and Cohens were counted when the decade ended than when it began.
Smith — which would be even more common if all its variations, like Schmidt and Schmitt, were tallied — is among the names derived from occupations (Miller, which ranks No. 7, is another). Among the most famous early bearers of the name was Capt. John Smith, who helped establish the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown, Va., 400 years ago. As recently as 1950, more Americans were employed as blacksmiths than as psychotherapists.
In 1984, according to the Social Security Administration, nearly 3.4 million Smiths lived in the United States. In 1990, the census counted 2.5 million. By 2000, the Smith population had declined to fewer than 2.4 million. The durability of some of the most common names in American history may also have been perpetuated because slaves either adopted or retained the surnames of their owners. About one in five Smiths are black, as are about one in three Johnsons, Browns, and Joneses and nearly half the people named Williams.
The Census Bureau’s analysis found that some surnames were especially associated with race and ethnicity.
More than 96 percent of Yoders, Kruegers, Muellers, Kochs, Schwartzes, Schmitts and Novaks were white. Nearly 90 percent of the Washingtons were black, as were 75 percent of the Jeffersons, 66 percent of the Bookers, 54 percent of the Banks and 53 percent of the Mosleys.
Terry Aguayo contributed reporting from Miami.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17surnames.html?ex=1353042000&en=ec5870741a27e1e1&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
New Spanish Civil War videogame
Several people who know about my obsession with the Spanish Civil War wrote or forwarded articles about a new Spanish Civil War video game. The creators claim that the game is scholarly, based on historical research, and designed it so that you can choose which side you fight on, the fascists or the Republicans. So you can fight the war over and decide who wins. My sister pointed out that no one would dare make a video game where one would fight WWII and get to choose "Hitler" or the "Allies"!
Yet when it comes to Spain, things are murky. Abroad and within the country many still minimize what happened or justify and indeed long for the longest-running fascist dictatorship of the 20th century - Franco ruled from 1939-1975. Half a million people or more fled to exile, historians estimate that another half a million were killed, tens of thousands were in concetration camps, languished for decades in prisons, worked as slave laborers, were summarily shot without trial, starved by being disallowed to work and through expropriation of their belongings. Censorship prevailed, women were denied basic freedoms (until the early 1970s they could not carry out legal procedures or obtain passports without their husband's approval, and there was no divorce until Franco died). This is just a brief summary there was more. (A great book is called Victimas de la Guerra Civil that includes essays by several historians; and La Iglesia de Franco by Julian Casanova which details the shameful collaboration of the Catholic Church in maintaing not just the state propaganda apparatus but also the prison system).
I have an "excuse" to be obsessed: my family were Republicans, many fought on that side, including my grandfather, which led me as a teen to begin to read about this event. My grandfather got angry the one time I asked about the war - he was a quiet gentle soul and this is only time I ever saw him lose his temper. Since he refused to discuss the matter, being the stubborn person that I am, I resolved to find out more. For about 26 years I have been reading and then going to archives to find papers related to relatives' military service, and political activities. This is typical for what is known as the Grandchildren's Generation. Theorists who write about the inter-generational nature of trauma discuss the ways in which those of us who didn't experience the event directly feel compelled to understand what happened when the direct survivors are too devastated, fearful or unable to discuss the matter. And the generation that follows in the case of Spain was often also kept in the dark about their parents' activities and since Franco's regime lasted 40 years, brainwashed in the schools to believe his propaganda. So, unlike other genocides, the survivors and their children have NOT been able to discuss the matter, fully understand what happened, see perpetrators prosecuted, have truth and reconciliation committees, public trials and the like.
In terms of finding information, I have been able to de-brief other family members, so I have vague stories that don't provide the kind of hard facts that would allow me to follow up in an archive. This type of hearsay gives me a general sense of what is for me extremely gratifying: my family were Reds! This information of course makes it extremely easy for me to process these tragedies, unanbiguous as it is, and I know many of my friends either do not know anything, or have split families, some Franco partisans or collaborators, other Republican sympathizers. Some of my dearest friends are: a child of Italian Fascists who came to support Franco during the war, a grandchild of a Republican mayor of a town who was shot, etc. But we are all friends which proves Franco didn't win despite the horrifying situation in present-day Spain, where democracy is built on forgetting and injustice.
My family research was facilitated to some extent by the fascists' extreme efficiency, which led them to create archives to document and orchestrate their repressive state apparatus. So for example in Salamanca are papers organized by province containing materials belonging to organizations loyal to the legal Republican government, left or center left political parties, groups, union members, subscribers to certain magazines and papers, Masons, etc. all collected as Franco's forces occupied areas. Obsessively organized and in many cases underlined with red pencils, with photographs taken from IDs glued onto albums, information cross-referenced in typed index cards, you can reconstruct why your grandfather was watched by the police, disallowed from working, jailed, etc. So in the case of my granfather, I found an index card (there are 3 million of them) with his name with the references to boxes, files and folios typed beneath, so Politico-Social, Alicante, etc. The documents are: records of the 1936 election where the Republican Left Popular Front alliance legally won. He was representing his party - a moderate left entity - in a district as a supervisor to vouch for the legality of the voting and he signed off on the results. I recognized his signature. He signed his sentence without knowing it. At another archive, I found his brother who has the same name as my father. This archive has some records related to prison sentences. The various papers tracked his sentence and location: he was sent to a concentration camp, then to a prison, later he was given life parole, and internal exile, which meant he could never return to his home town. He didn't live long after he was released the conditions in the camps and jails were such that many didn't survive to see parole. I still have to connect the dots, but in the Salamanca archive I found a paper where a comrade had vouched for his political reliability. This detailed the degree to which he was committed to the Republic and metioned that he joined the same moderate left party as my grandfather, in 1932. He also was at the same electoral site and signed the same document as my granfather. This apparently was enough. Imagine if you voted for Al Gore and that was enough to shoot you on sight, or send you a slave labor camp and leave your family starving.
However, because the "Transition" to "democracy" in Spain was negotiated thanks to a pact of silence and general amnesty, what scholars call a "Pact of Forgetting" was agreed to by politicians and thus the fascists remain unpunished. They have also in many cases been allowed to control access to certain archives, so the full information remains off limits. Now, thanks to the Socialists, a law is about to be passed known as the Law for the Recuperation of Historial Memory. This does not overturn sentences, call for trials for human rights abuses, promise reparations or anything of the kind, but is mostly symbolic. Public entities must remove images of Franco or of his regime, for example, and archives must give full access to victims or their families. Again, imagine that you live in Germany and there are still portaits of Hitler or swastikas in towns throughout the country. Governmental entities must not obstruct the exhumation of the tens of thousands of remains of people killed under the dictatorship. The costliness of doing DNA testing to identify remains already thwarts the volunteer efforts being carried out to return relatives' bodies to families.
Neo-Nazi and Fascist groups are allowed to hold public demonstrations in Spain. Recently, a group murdered a young man who was at an anti-fascist protest. Anti-fascists then requested a permit from the Right-Wing Madrid mayor's office to hold a demonstration but were denied. The Right-Wing Mayor of Madrid DID however grant permission to fascists who held their annual salute to Franco and the leader of the paramilitary fascist Falange Party, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera for the anniversary of their deaths November 20. This is one of countless examples of the ways in which members of the Right Wing party flagrantly display their support for the dictatorship. Several have recently stated their opposition for the Law of Historical Memory and defended Franco's dictatorship as necessary for Spain.
To see a video about the video game, pardon the redundancy, you can go to the site below:
http://videos.abc.es/informaciondecontenido.php?con=2969
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Fatal Abstraction?
I just came back from the PINTA art fair. The question: is the name a reference to Columbus' vessel on which he sailed to the New World, or, is it a play on the Spanish for "to paint" was not answered. But I THINK it may be the latter since the vast majority of works on display, were in fact, paintings. And not just any paintings, but abstract geometric paintings. So, I asked myself, is this a Fatal Abstraction?
Of course, if we see the patrons who chaired the gala committee for the art fair, among them is the prominent Venezuelan collector Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, who through her collecting, patronage, support for academic, publication and curatorial endeavors, has put geometric abstraction on the map. And thanks to her pretty-much single-handed generosity, MoMA finally realized that Latin American art should be part of their agenda. Finally.
As she has said in more than one interview, her love of art she grew up with in Venezuela coincides with her goal to show North Americans that Latin American art is not the "Chiquita Banana" "folkloric" figurative (mostly Mexican) art. She particularly loathes Frida Kahlo. (ay, bendito! poor Frida, as if it wasn't bad enough that her entire work and life have been totally trivialized -Hayden Herrera's bio should have been called "Frida, Diego, he's just not that into you") So now we can study these amazing works of art, which when I was in school people barely spoke about, frankly, though these were NOT excluded from big surveys like the one in England in 1989 or at MoMA in 1992. And works that 10 years ago no one was selling, especially not selling, now proliferate in the auctions, and completely dominate this fair. If someone was to walk into the fair who knew nothing about Latin American art, they would walk away thinking: wow, these people really are suffering from Fatal Abstraction! And, that the only countries that produce art or deal in it, are in the Southern Cone. To be fair, I did see ONE Mexican artist represented, Gunther Gerszo.
Then there was my favorite thing about fairs (as you my imaginary reader recall from my discussion of the Asian Art Fair) - the "VIP Lounge." The one at PINTA was PRICELESS. Because I took it to be a neo-Conceptual art piece which in an ironic way was poking fun at corporate sposorships and the privatization of culture. And I was thinking this because of a work by the fabulous artist Yoshua Okon, who made a video that comprised solely of logos for corporate and Mexican governmental entitities with a voice over that read their names out loud, acknowleging their support in an endless loop. But of course it wasn't it was just a clever way to display the names of the corporate partners.
Let's talk about the fashion, so we were Latin Americans and there was a lot of tight black skirts or dresses, a lot of cleavage (uncharacteristically, I didn't take my colleagues and friends on a one-way trip down the Panama Canal but instead wore a high-necked top), lots of rhinestones, very high heels, and what I like to call Puerto Rican neutrals - animal prints and metallics. To a Puerto Rican, this is the equivalent of Navy Blue or Camel. So if Diana Vreeland was still with us, she'd make a maxim about this like she did with "Pink is the Navy Blue of India." There were a lot of really bad face-lifts worn by women with unnatural shades of yellow hair. And furs.
And it's not an art fair until something or somebody gets hurt: I heard many many glasses shatter and break, someone literally fell into a booth, a professor at an Ivy League University told me that he bumped into a Soto while looking at another, and the little sculpture fell to the ground! So fatal abstraction it is.
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