660: Clog the Pipes

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Fri, 10 Oct 2014 18:19

We are very proud to announce that as part of the 10th annual People's Choice Podcast Awards Ceremony we will include our first ever class of inductees into the Podcasting Hall of Fame.

In a year of big news for #NMX we think this is HUGE NEWS!

On April 14th 2015 we will induct the first class of honorees into The Podcasting Hall of Fame at the Podcast Awards Show. The event will be held at the Westgate Resort & Casino in Las Vegas Nevada as part of New Media Expo #NMX side-by-side with the NAB Show. and NAB Show.

We have been talking about creating a podcasting hall of fame for a few years now. With this being the 10th annual Podcast Awards, and the co-location with NAB Show next year, it just felt like the time had come to start canonizing and celebrating the icons and pioneers of the podcasting community in a formal setting. The Podcast Awards is the obvious forum to do that. The Podcast Hall of Fame is a way to document the history of podcasting and recognize the people who have contributed to the art, science and community of podcasting and podcasters. Eligible nominees would include podcasters, technology innovators, and others who have pioneered the medium. The Podcasting Hall of Fame is also a way for the entire podcasting community to say thank you to the pioneers.''

So here is the big question. Who are the first three people you think should be inducted into the Podcasting Hall of Fame?

NDAA and Overturning of Smith-Mundt Act

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA) allows for materials produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to be released within U.S. borders and strikes down a long-time ban on the dissemination of such material in the country.[14][15][16]

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Sun, 21 Sep 2014 15:00

Propaganda in the United States is propaganda spread by government and media entities within the United States. Propaganda is information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to influence opinions. Propaganda is not only in advertising; it is also in radio, newspaper, posters, books, and anything else that might be sent out to the widespread public.

Domestic[edit]World War I[edit]The first large-scale use of propaganda by the U.S. government came during World War I. The government enlisted the help of citizens and children to help promote war bonds and stamps to help stimulate the economy. To keep the prices of war supplies down, the U.S. government produced posters that encouraged people to reduce waste and grow their own vegetables in "victory gardens." The public skepticism that was generated by the heavy-handed tactics of the Committee on Public Information would lead the postwar government to officially abandon the use of propaganda.[1]

World War II[edit]During World War II the U.S. officially had no propaganda, but the Roosevelt government used means to circumvent this official line. One such propaganda tool was the publicly owned but government funded Writers' War Board (WWB). The activities of the WWB were so extensive that it has been called the "greatest propaganda machine in history".[1]Why We Fight is a famous series of US government propaganda films made to justify US involvement in World War II.

In 1944 (lasting until 1948) prominent US policy makers launched a domestic propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the U.S. public to agree to a harsh peace for the German people, for example by removing the common view of the German people and the Nazi party as separate entities.[2] The core in this campaign was the Writers' War Board which was closely associated with the Roosevelt administration.[2]

Another means was the United States Office of War Information that Roosevelt established in June 1942, whose mandate was to promote understanding of the war policies under the director Elmer Davies. It dealt with posters, press, movies, exhibitions, and produced often slanted material conforming to US wartime purposes. Other large and influential non-governmental organizations during the war and immediate post war period were the Society for the Prevention of World War III and the Council on Books in Wartime.

Cold War[edit]During the Cold War, the U.S. government produced vast amounts of propaganda against communism and the Soviet bloc. Much of this propaganda was directed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover, who himself wrote the anti-communist tract Masters of Deceit. The FBI's COINTELPRO arm solicited journalists to produce fake news items discrediting communists and affiliated groups, such as H. Bruce Franklin and the Venceremos Organization.

War on Drugs[edit]The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, originally established by the National Narcotics Leadership Act of 1988,[3][4] but now conducted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy under the Drug-Free Media Campaign Act of 1998,[5] is a domestic propaganda campaign designed to "influence the attitudes of the public and the news media with respect to drug abuse" and for "reducing and preventing drug abuse among young people in the United States".[6][7] The Media Campaign cooperates with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and other government and non-government organizations.[8]

Iraq War[edit]In early 2002, the U.S. Department of Defense launched an information operation, colloquially referred to as the Pentagon military analyst program.[9] The goal of the operation is "to spread the administrations's talking points on Iraq by briefing ... retired commanders for network and cable television appearances," where they have been presented as independent analysts.[10] On 22 May 2008, after this program was revealed in the New York Times, the House passed an amendment that would make permanent a domestic propaganda ban that until now has been enacted annually in the military authorization bill.[11]

The Shared values initiative was a public relations campaign that was intended to sell a "new" America to Muslims around the world by showing that American Muslims were living happily and freely, without persecution, in post-9/11 America.[12] Funded by the United States Department of State, the campaign created a public relations front group known as Council of American Muslims for Understanding (CAMU). The campaign was divided in phases; the first of which consisted of five mini-documentaries for television, radio, and print with shared values messages for key Muslim countries.[13]

NDAA and Overturning of Smith-Mundt Act[edit]The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA) allows for materials produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to be released within U.S. borders and strikes down a long-time ban on the dissemination of such material in the country.[14][15][16]

Ad Council[edit]The Ad Council, an American non-profit organization that distributes public service announcements on behalf of various private and federal government agency sponsors, has been labeled as "little more than a domestic propaganda arm of the federal government" given the Ad Council's historically close collaboration with the President of the United States and the federal government.[17]

International[edit]Through several international broadcasting operations, the US disseminates American cultural information, official positions on international affairs, and daily summaries of international news. These operations fall under the International Broadcasting Bureau, the successor of the United States Information Agency, established in 1953. IBB's operations include Voice of America, Radio Liberty, Alhurra and other programs. They broadcast mainly to countries where the United States finds that information about international events is limited, either due to poor infrastructure or government censorship. The Smith-Mundt Act prohibits the Voice of America from disseminating information to US citizens that was produced specifically for a foreign audience.

During the Cold War the US ran covert propaganda campaigns in countries that appeared likely to become Soviet satellites, such as Italy, Afghanistan, and Chile.

Recently The Pentagon announced the creation of a new unit aimed at spreading propaganda about supposedly "inaccurate" stories being spread about the Iraq War. These "inaccuracies" have been blamed on the enemy trying to decrease support for the war. Donald Rumsfeld has been quoted as saying these stories are something that keeps him up at night.[18]

Psychological operations[edit]The US military defines psychological operations, or PSYOP, as:

planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.[19]

The Smith-Mundt Act, adopted in 1948, explicitly forbids information and psychological operations aimed at the US public.[20][21][22] Nevertheless, the current easy access to news and information from around the globe, makes it difficult to guarantee PSYOP programs do not reach the US public. Or, in the words of Army Col. James A. Treadwell, who commanded the U.S. military psyops unit in Iraq in 2003, in the Washington Post:

There's always going to be a certain amount of bleed-over with the global information environment.[23]

Agence France Presse reported on U.S. propaganda campaigns that:

The Pentagon acknowledged in a newly declassified document that the US public is increasingly exposed to propaganda disseminated overseas in psychological operations.[24]

Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved the document referred to, which is titled "Information Operations Roadmap." [22][24] The document acknowledges the Smith-Mundt Act, but fails to offer any way of limiting the effect PSYOP programs have on domestic audiences.[20][21][25]

Several incidents in 2003 were documented by Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel, which he saw as information-warfare campaigns that were intended for "foreign populations and the American public." Truth from These Podia,[26] as the treatise was called, reported that the way the Iraq war was fought resembled a political campaign, stressing the message instead of the truth.[22]

See also[edit]References[edit]^ abThomas Howell, The Writers' War Board: U.S. Domestic Propaganda in World War II, Historian, Volume 59 Issue 4, Pages 795 - 813^ abSteven Casey, (2005), The Campaign to sell a harsh peace for Germany to the American public, 1944 - 1948, [online]. London: LSE Research Online. [Available online at http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/archive/00000736] Originally published in History, 90 (297). pp. 62-92 (2005) Blackwell Publishing^National Narcotics Leadership Act of 1988 of the Anti''Drug Abuse Act of 1988, Pub.L. 100''690, 102 Stat. 4181, enacted November 18, 1988^Gamboa, Anthony H. (January 4, 2005), B-303495, Office of National Drug Control Policy '-- Video News Release, Government Accountability Office, footnote 6, page 3 ^Drug-Free Media Campaign Act of 1998 (Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999), Pub.L. 105''277, 112 Stat. 268, enacted October 21, 1998^Gamboa, Anthony H. (January 4, 2005), B-303495, Office of National Drug Control Policy '-- Video News Release, Government Accountability Office, pp. 9''10 ^Drug-Free Media Campaign Act of 1998 of the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, Pub.L. 105''277, 112 Stat. 268, enacted October 21, 1998^Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 2006, Pub.L. 109''469, 120 Stat. 3501, enacted December 29, 2006, codified at 21 U.S.C. § 1708^Barstow, David (2008-04-20). "Message Machine: Behind Analysts, the Pentagon's Hidden Hand". New York Times. ^Sessions, David (2008-04-20). "Onward T.V. Soldiers: The New York Times exposes a multi-armed Pentagon message machine". Slate. ^Barstow, David (2008-05-24). "2 Inquiries Set on Pentagon Publicity Effort". New York Times. ^Rampton, Sheldon (October 17, 2007). "Shared Values Revisited". Center for Media and Democracy. ^"U.S. Reaches Out to Muslim World with Shared Values Initiative". America.gov. January 16, 2003.

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Sat, 11 Oct 2014 10:47

Lindsay Mills, the girlfriend of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, in Hawaii. Photograph: Splash/Luis Silos III

The mystery of the whereabouts of Edward Snowden's long-time girlfriend is solved in a documentary that premiered in New York on Friday night: she has been living with the national security whistleblower in Russia since July.

The surprise revelation in the documentary, filmed by Laura Poitras, upends the widespread assumption that Snowden had deserted Lindsay Mills and that she, in a fit of pique, fled Hawaii where they had been living to stay with her parents in mainland US.

Since Snowden, a former NSA contractor, outed himself last year as being behind the biggest leak in US intelligence history, Mills has remained silent, giving no interviews or any hints of her feelings on the subject of her boyfriend or his actions.

The two-hour long documentary, Citizenfour, shows Mills living in Russia with Snowden.

When the Guardian met Snowden in Moscow in July, Snowden suggested the relationship was more complex than the view constantly recycled in the media of a woman abandoned and hinted that the two were not in fact estranged.

Citizenfour offers a fly-on-the wall account of Snowden. Poitras filmed him at the Mira hotel in Hong Kong last year during interviews with journalists that resulted in a series of stories in the Guardian about the extent of surveillance by the US and British intelligence agencies as well as the internet and telecom companies. The revelations started a worldwide debate about the balance between surveillance and privacy.

Poitras captures the tension in his room at the Mira '' where then-Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald and I interviewed him '' and in his final minutes at the hotel before he fled after being tipped off that hordes of media were about to arrive. She also filmed at the Guardian in London ahead of publication of one of the most explosive of the stories arising from Snowden's revelations, and in Moscow, where Snowden is now in exile.

Snowden has been reluctant to talk about his personal life, preferring the media focus to be on wider debate about surveillance rather than him. But Poitras's portrayal is both personal and sympathetic.

In his first comment about the documentary, which Poitras had shown to him in advance, Snowden told the Guardian: ''I hope people won't see this as a story about heroism. It's actually a story about what ordinary people can do in extraordinary circumstances.''

Snowden was working as an NSA contractor in Hawaii where Mills joined him. A dancer, she posted many details and photographs about herself and him on the web.

She was still in Hawaii when news broke from Hong Kong that he was the whistleblower. Days earlier, authorities, suspicious about his prolonged absence from work, had visited their home.

On her blog, subtitled, 'Adventures of a world-travelling, pole-dancing superhero,' she wrote that she felt ''sick, exhausted and carrying the weight of the world''. Shortly afterwards, she took the blog down.

The two appear to have been together since at least 2009, living part of the time near Baltimore before moving to Hawaii in 2012.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:25

EditDirected by Cast (in credits order) Produced by Cinematography by Film Editing by Production Management Sound Department Visual Effects by Editorial Department Other crew

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:32

Jeffrey Skoll,OC (born January 16, 1965) is a Canadian engineer, internet entrepreneur and film producer. He is currently based in Los Angeles, California.[1] With an estimated net worth of $US 3.8 billion (as of September 2013), Skoll was ranked by Forbes as the 7th wealthiest Canadian and 347th in the world.[2]

He was the first employee and also first president of internet auction firm eBay, and used the wealth this gave him to become a philanthropist, particularly through the Skoll Foundation, and his media company Participant Media.

Early life[edit]Jeff Skoll was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada into a Jewish family,[3][4] his mother a teacher[5] and his father a chemical company owner who sold industrial chemicals.[6] The family settled in Toronto in the late seventies.

When Jeff Skoll was fourteen his father was diagnosed with cancer which prompted him to discuss with his son how much he regretted not having had the time to do everything he had planned in life. A keen reader, Skoll was influenced by authors such as Aldous Huxley and Ayn Rand and intended to become an author writing motivational books and books on tackling the world's problems.[citation needed]

He graduated with a BASc with honors in 1987 from the University of Toronto's electrical engineering program. While an undergraduate student, he co-edited the engineering students' satirical newspaper The Toike Oike. He paid his way through college by pumping gas in North York, Ontario. After graduating he backpacked around the world for several months before returning and founding two businesses in Toronto: Skoll Engineering, an information technology consulting firm and Micros on the Move Ltd., a computer rental firm.

He left Canada in 1993 to earn a Masters of Business Administration degree at Stanford Business School, graduating in 1995. After Stanford he went to work at Knight-Ridder where he was working on internet projects for the publishing company.

Skoll's eBay era[edit]In 1996 Skoll met eBay's founder Pierre Omidyar who hired him as the company's first president and first full-time employee. While eBay was already profitable at the time Skoll joined, he wrote the business plan that eBay followed from its emergence as a start-up to a great success. He remained President until the arrival of Meg Whitman in January 1998 when he became Vice President, Strategic Planning and Analysis until back problems necessitated his departure from full-time employment at the company. In 1998, he championed the creation of the eBay Foundation which was allocated pre-IPO stock now worth $32 million. Once eBay's second largest stockholder, behind Omidyar, he subsequently cashed out a portion of his company holdings, yielding him around $2 billion.[5][7]

Participant Media[edit]Skoll is also the founder, owner and chairman of Participant Media (formerly Participant Productions), a Los Angeles based media company he created to fund feature films and documentaries that promote social values while still being commercially viable. Its first three films were Syriana; Good Night, and Good Luck; and North Country, along with the documentary Murderball. These films accounted for 11 Oscar nominations in 2006.

Subsequent films have included An Inconvenient Truth, American Gun, Fast Food Nation, and The World According to Sesame Street. An Inconvenient Truth won two Oscars in 2007 and has been credited with extending the public debate over climate change. Other films in 2007 included Charlie Wilson's War with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, The Kite Runner directed by Marc Forster, Angels in the Dust about an AIDS orphanage in South Africa, Darfur Now about the genocide in Darfur with Don Cheadle, and Man from Plains, a film about Jimmy Carter directed by Academy Award winning director Jonathan Demme.

Films in 2008 included The Visitor, by Thomas McCarthy with Richard Jenkins and Hiam Abbass; Chicago 10, based on the 1968 Democratic convention protests; Standard Operating Procedure, a documentary about Abu Ghraib by Errol Morris; The Cove, a documentary about the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan; The Crazies, an updated version of the George A. Romero biotoxin thriller from 1973; and Pressure Cooker, a documentary about an inner-city school cooking contest, set in Philadelphia. One announced 2010 release, set for Earth Day on April 22, is Oceans, a documentary about the oceans by Jacques Perrin, director of the Oscar-winning Winged Migration.

Films in 2010 included Waiting for "Superman". In 2011, through a 50-50 partnership with Image Nation Abu Dhabi,[8] the company produced Contagion and The Help, both commercial successes and the latter getting multiple Oscar nominations, including best picture. In 2012, the company produced through its partnership with Image Nation Abu Dhabi, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Participant Media produced Lincoln, which garnered 12 Oscar nominations including best picture for the producers.[9] The company has released 43 films and garnered 35 Oscar nominations, while contributing to social change.

The company also has publishing and television divisions, and operates Takepart.com, an online site catering to social activists.

Philanthropy[edit]Skoll is a noted philanthropist and has been honoured many times for his generosity. He has given the eponymous Skoll Foundation approximately $1 billion of eBay stock since its formation in 1999. The Foundation supports "social entrepreneurship". Skoll chairs the Foundation and today makes grants in excess of $80 million per year. The Skoll Foundation's assets rank it as the largest foundation for social entrepreneurship in the world.

Skoll's largest charitable donation was a $30 million contribution to the Alliance for Climate Protection Campaign.

Skoll's recent honors and awards include The Producers Guild of America Visionary Award (2009), Time Magazine's 100 People of the Year (2006), Wired Magazine's Rave Award (2006), the National Leadership Award for Commonwealth Club Silicon Valley (2004) and the Outstanding Philanthropist Award from the International Association of Fundraising Professionals (2003). In 2003, Skoll was the commencement speaker and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Toronto.

In addition, Skoll has financed The Gandhi Project in partnership with Relief International which created a dubbed version in Arabic of the film Gandhi. They used Palestinian voice actors and artists to make the film particularly relevant to Palestinians. With Skoll's support, it is being screened throughout Palestine to promote non-violence, self-reliance, economic development, and empowerment.

Other interests[edit]Skoll owns a Tesla Roadster from Tesla Motors, a battery electric sportscar, the third Tesla off the line P2/VINF003.[10] He is also an investor in the company.

Honours[edit]In 2011, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada "for his generous commitment to social causes and for his innovative practice of philanthropy".

See also[edit]References[edit]^ abForbes Billionaires: "Jeffrey Skoll" September 2013^Forbes^Calcalist.co.il^Biography, ,The History of Computing Project^ ab"The thinking man's movie mogul", Telegraph Magazine 26 August 2006^Cohen, Adam, The Perfect Store: Inside Ebay, ISBN 0-316-16493-3^Malone, Michael S., "The indie movie mogul", Wired magazine, February 2006.^"Participant, Imagenation form $250 mln film-financing fund"^"Oscar nominations are not the goal: Participant Media CEO", Marketplace, February 21, 2013. Interview by Kai Ryssdal with Participant CEO Jim Berk. Retrieved 2012-02-21.^Tesla Motors - press roomExternal links[edit]PersondataNameSkoll, JeffreyAlternative namesShort descriptionCanadian businessmanDate of birth1965-01-16Place of birthMontreal, QuebecDate of deathPlace of death

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:29

Overview (3)Mini Bio (1)Steven Soderbergh was born on January 14, 1963, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, the second of six children and, while still at a very young age, his family moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father, Peter Soderbergh, was a professor and the dean of the College of Education at Louisiana State University. While still in high school, around the age of 15, Soderbergh enrolled in the university's film animation class and began making short 16-millimeter films with second-hand equipment, one of which was the short film "Janitor". After graduating high school, he went to Hollywood, where he worked as a freelance editor. His time there was brief and, shortly after, he returned home and continued making short films and writing scripts.

His first major break was in 1986 when the rock group Yes assigned him to shoot a full-length concert film for the band, which eventually earned him a Grammy nomination for the video, Yes: 9012 Live (1985). Following this achievement, Soderbergh filmed Winston (1987), the short-subject film that he would later expand into Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), a film that earned him the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or Award, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Over the next six years, he was married to actress Betsy Brantley and had a daughter named Sarah Soderbergh, who was born in 1990.

Also during this time, he made such films as Kafka (1991), King of the Hill (1993), The Underneath (1995) and Gray's Anatomy (1996), which many believed to be disappointments. In 1998, Soderbergh made Out of Sight (1998), his most critically and commercially successful film since Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). Then, in 2000, Soderbergh directed two major motion pictures that are now his most successful films to date: Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000). These films were both nominated for Best Picture Oscars at the 2001 Academy Awards and gave him the first twin director Oscar nomination in almost 60 years and the first ever win. He won the Oscar for Best Director for Traffic (2000) at the 2001 Oscars.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Ray Roon

Spouse (2)Trade Mark (5)Frequently uses jump-cuts

Often acts as his own cinematographer under the pseudonym "Peter Andrews"

Trivia (16)Father, Peter Soderbergh, was a professor and dean of the College of Education at Louisiana State University where Steven took some classes.His paternal grandfather was a Swedish immigrant ("Soderbergh" is a Swedish surname).

Became the youngest winner ever of the Palme d'Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival for Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), his feature film directorial debut. He was 26.Daughter Sarah Soderbergh (born in February 1990) with Betsy Brantley.Elected first vice president of the Directors Guild of America in March 2002.

Ranked #39 in Premiere's 2003 annual Power 100 List. Had ranked #35 in 2002.

Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003

Was offered the chance to direct Quiz Show (1994), with Tim Robbins in the role of Charles Van Doren.Was a member of the dramatic jury at Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival in Utah in 1990, just one year after he had apologetically unveiled Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), his directorial debut, which he then considered to be unpolished and technically incomplete.He and his producing partner George Clooney have decided to close down their Section Eight production company after six years of working partnership. [August 2006].Is the only director to have had two films (Traffic (2000) and Erin Brockovich (2000)) receive Best Director nominations in the same year for the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, and the Directors' Guild of America.He has acknowledged that he fathered a baby girl born in 2010 with an Australian woman named Frances Anderson despite being married to Jules Asner.Personal Quotes (39)On DVD audio commentaries: "Would I, growing up, like to have had access to stuff on DVDs like this? Oh God, yeah! It's better than any film school, I think."

Well, I think a part of you has to be scared, it keeps you alert; otherwise you become complacent. So absolutely, I'm purposefully going after things and doing things that I'm not sure if it's going to come off or not. Certainly Full Frontal was one of those. That was pure experimentation, that's the kind of film that you make going in where you know that a lot of people are not going to like it because it's an exploration of the contract that exists between the film-maker and the audience and what happens when you violate that contract.

There are certain directors - Spielberg, David Fincher, John McTiernan - who sort of see things in three dimensions, and I was watching their films and sort of breaking them down to see how they laid sequences out, and how they paid attention to things like lens length, where the eyelines were, when the camera moved, how they cut, how they led your eye from one part of the frame to another....there've been a lot of questions about commercial films and non-commercial films, and I've never really made that separation in my mind. There's no question that when you read a piece of material, you have ideas about how it should be realised ... certainly when I read the script for Ocean's Eleven, I thought if this was realised the way it should, then it would appeal to a lot of people. Then you get involved in a film like Solaris and if you realise it the way it should be realised, then it won't appeal to a lot of people. But what are you going to do? You have to go at it...

I learned from Richard Lester that as your career goes on, you learn more about how things can go wrong, but you never learn how things can go right. And it's really disorienting.[on his decision to direct Out of Sight (1998)] It was a very conscious decision on my part to try and climb my way out of the arthouse ghetto, which can be as much of a trap as making blockbuster films. And I was very aware that at that point in my career, half the business was off limits to me."If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed.

I'm not a world-class cinematographer, but the momentum and the closeness to the actors ... I'm so close to them that I can just whisper to them while we're in the middle of a take.

I'm process-driven, I'm not result-driven.

I find it hilarious that most of the stuff being written about movies is how conventional they are, and then you have people ... they are upset that something's not conventional.

This is a good moment to comment on the cottage industry that has sprung up around "How To" ... Screenwriting manuals. I think of this because Robert Towne's script (Chinatown (1974)) is often cited as a great template (which it is) but, invariably, with no understanding or acknowledgment of the role film editing has in shaping a finished work.So any discussion that omits this issue shows a palpable lack of experience in the actual making of films on the part of the scriptwriting teacher/author.

I certainly get the sensation that we've kind of hit a wall in the last 20 years. Obviously, people are pushing the technical side of it - and when Avatar (2009) comes out that'll be a game-changer for sure - but in terms of the grammar of cinema, I haven't seen anything made since the late '70s or early '80s that I felt was really pushing the ball forward. That doesn't mean I haven't seen some good movies, but I don't feel like there's been a new wave of of how stories are told cinematically. Some of the recent Godard stuff is pretty extraordinary, Notre musique (2004) was really, really beautiful and he got at something at the end of that movie that I wasn't sure you could get at in a movie. But what's the audience for that? How many people are interested in watching somebody make that attempt? I'm frustrated by what's going on in the business, in terms of what's getting made, and I'm frustrated by my own inability to break through to something else.I think it's a real privilege to make a living doing this job. It's a great job - the best I can think of, actually. You walk into a room and say, "I'm imagining this," and they give you millions of dollars to go out and make it real. That's a pretty good gig. I have certain standards - sometimes I hit them and sometimes I don't. I don't think being precious is really good for any artform. So I believe in being really prepared, working hard, doing everything I can think of to improve it, but staying on budget, staying on schedule, and when it's over, it's over and I'm onto the next thing. I'm really dispassionate about it, in that regard. I haven't seen a great benefit in my own work in agonising over things. I've seen more of a benefit in my work, for moving quickly. It's harder to be pretentious when you're moving really fast.

One of the reasons the business is in the condition it's in now is a lack of vision about how to deal with talent. Instead of trying to identify, on a project-by-project basis, what is going to work, studios ought to be betting on talent and making deals that have specific financial parameters within which the talent can do whatever they want, if they prove themselves able to generate a profit. Because if you'd financed all of my films, you're up - significantly up, actually. That's the way you should be running this business. Because in point of fact - any rat-based lab experiment about probability will tell you this - you increase your chances of missing when you choose films individually. They should be betting on the career of somebody. By definition the really smart people in this business are the ones making the stuff. That has to be the case. Making it is harder than sitting in an office and deciding what should be made. It doesn't mean I should walk around feeling like a smart guy. I'm just saying that's a reality you have to understand when you try and convince somebody to give you money to make a movie: you know more about making movies than they do - by definition. When you combine that with the fact that we're in a very tricky economic time, there's a lot of fear in the room. So when you talk about things that are difficult to describe in writing but are crucial to the creative success of a movie, that's tricky. You're saying, "You're just going to have to trust me..." I don't like to say those words, and they don't like to hear them, and there's no question that in the last two years there are certain words in meetings that you can't say. Words like "elevated", "smart", "better". You literally can't indicate at any point that you're going to do anything that won't be understood by a below-average-intelligence audience member. You really have watch what you say.

I'd argue my failures have been more on a conceptual level than on an execution level. I have made some mistakes that, in retrospect, come from overestimating the appeal of a certain idea. The Good German (2006) is a failure because the idea isn't simple enough to attract enough people to return its investment. The execution of it is fine, but it's clear that there just aren't enough people in the world wondering, "What if Michael Curtiz could do anything he wanted?" That's my fault for not seeing the target was just way too small. It's frustrating to watch The Good German lose every nickel that was spent on it, because Warners were very supportive on it. And I don't like losing people money.[on Contagion (2011)] Everybody felt there was a place for an ultrarealistic film about this subject. Nobody hesitated. Uncharacteristically it happened very quickly, considering what the business is like for adult dramas. So it made me feel like maybe we're on to something.It was fun during a preview [of Contagion (2011)] to watch the lights come up and have 400 people realize that they were next to a bunch of strangers and that they had all touched everything. You could tell they weren't very happy about it.Things are so prescribed in movies. I don't care who's financing it, there's always a list: "Here's a list of names who would be good for that part." It's so boring. Shouldn't we be growing new crops here? That's why I love this cast, and building this movie ["Haywire"] around Gina [Carano]. Let's open up the field a bit!

[on his reported sabbatical/"retirement" from filmmaking] I'm not going to stop making things. I just need to come at it from a different direction. I don't think change can be incremental. I need to tear it all down and start again. I tried that after "The Underneath," with "Schizopolis," and that felt like my second "first" film, and that reverberated [in my work] for quite a long time. But even that explosion [of creativity] has started to ... has stopped expanding, and I've started to retract. I feel like I'm not moving forward. Plus, it's not as fun as it used to be.I wish movies mattered more. I wish they were more influential. I mean, they do influence things, but only things that are not that important, such as how people talk, how they dress. But in terms of having a real role in the ongoing debate about how everything should work, how lives should work, they're not influential. There was a period where I felt that the movies coming out were as good as any novel, as any form of serious art that you could look at, and I'm particularly frustrated by my inability to create something at that level. I watch older movies regularly, depending what I'm working on, for inspiration. But I'm just not that inspired right now.

[on his reported sabbatical or "retirement" from filmmaking] It's a combination of things. It's feeling out of sync with everything that's going on this business at every level. I could probably deal with that if I really felt that I was evolving into something better. Like I said, I'm better now than I was when I started. I'm better than I was five years ago... but at stuff that's superficial - craft. You know, filtering, problem solving... that stuff I'm better at. But in terms of making something that's just off the chart, I'm not. That's not a shift or change that's going to take place incrementally. It requires some form of amputation. So I just need to stop for a while.

[on making genre films and not being interested in making "serious" or "important" films anymore] Somebody just sent me one of those books that just came out on Pauline Kael, who I didn't always agree with but I was always interested in what she had to say. And, look, she was a big proponent, especially at a time when it was not fashionable in the '60s. She would say, "I'm getting a lot more out of these lowbrow movies that aren't supposed to be taken seriously than I am these A-level important films. They just feel more alive." And I agree.Maybe since "Che," my interest in and appetite for "serious" movies, making them, has really dropped. I just feel like I want to have more fun as a filmmaker and I'd like to make things that are more fun for the audience. I don't need to be taken anymore seriously that I am. I don't have to prove my important-film bonafides anymore. And so, since "Che," I've been looking for stuff that's more fun. Even "Contagion" to me was a more "genre" movie. I mean, that's my version of a disaster-horror movie. It's how I would do it. The stuff I have coming up, since "Che," I haven't made what I would consider a serious movie by Academy standard. I have no interest in that.

[on categorizing films by genre] That can become a very facile exercise and one that doesn't really take into account certain kinds of filmmakers. Pick any of the people that we think are very, very good, if they go and make something that's a genre film, you know that it's not going to be just that.The only two categories I have are good and bad. No other categories exist for me in terms of scale, content or intent. The only thing that matters to me is whether it's any good.

And look, there are times when that's hard. It's hard to root for assholes and sometimes it's harder still to see something bad made my somebody who's really great. I remember reading that unauthorized Led Zeppelin biography that came out in the '80s. I couldn't listen to their music for a year after I read that book. Seriously, it was so disturbing. I took me a year to go, look, I don't care.

If you're looking for fair, you're in the wrong universe.

[on striving for realism in his filmmaking] I just think that's the first question we ask when we start something. What's real? Let's start with the world. Knowing that it's a movie, we may have to recalibrate. But I want know in every instance what's real, what would really be happening. Usually, that's good enough. It's not very often that you feel, "Oh, we got to tweak that."I'm less prone to change things now that I would have been 10, 15 years ago. "Moneyball" is the perfect example of that. At the end of the day, part of my problem with that was my refusal to do something that didn't happen. I wanted the movie to be absolutely accurate in every particular.

[on Gina Carano in 'Haywire'] You're dealing with a cage fighter. You never know what you're going to get. But she seemed pretty normal, sincere. She knows what to do with her body. And she knows what to do with her eyes. So I felt we were going to be fine.

Even with a trained actor it's dangerous to get them thinking too much. You don't want them thinking, you want them doing.

[on achieving reality on film] What's real? Let's start with the world. Knowing that it's a movie, we may have to recalibrate. But I know in every instance what's real. What would be happening. Usually, that's good enough. It's not very often that you feel 'Oh, we've got to tweak that'.

[observation, 2012] I just feel I want to have more fun as a filmmaker, and I'd like to make things that are more fun for the audience. I don't need to be taken anymore seriously than I am.

The only two categories I have are good and bad. No other categories exist for me in terms of scale, content or intent. The only thing that matters to me is whether it's good.

[on Magic Mike (2012), his film about male-strippers] We were looking for the right people who had some buzz behind them. They also had to be able to do what we wanted them to do. But we got real lucky. All those guys were great and have brought something specific to the movie. There's nothing like shared humiliation to bond and these guys bonded very quickly. As soon as we started rehearsing the numbers, you rally around each other because it's so embarrassing. It's terrifying. Then once you've done it, you're in. You've just got to jump off the cliff.[on if he feels he understands what audiences want] No. I've tried to get better about weighing what I think the accessibility of an idea is against the cost of executing it. I've tried to be smarter about that, because if you're not smart about that, you're going to be unemployed. But I'm still mystified about what works for people. And I'm not talking about my movies, I'm talking in general. I'm mystified by the stuff that doesn't work. I'm mystified by what's going on in the critical side, too. Stuff I like is getting trashed and stuff that is being praised I think is terrible. I don't really feel in sync with what's happening, but at the same time, what I think keeps me afloat is that I try not to be, and don't want to be, very indulgent. I try to make the films as lean as possible, and to not spend a lot of time crawling up my own ass creatively.

[on what he feels is his most underrated film] I don't know. My sense of [critical reaction] since Traffic (2000) is based on a vague understanding of what the response is, because I stopped reading reviews about my own movies. I read stuff about other people's movies. My sense is that The Good German (2006) was not fully understood. Probably of all of them, that would be the one. There are other things that have been lambasted that I think had things wrong with them, but [The Good German], creatively, from my standpoint, is a very unified piece, and was, again, from my viewpoint, successful at what it was trying to do. It's a weird thing to say, but it would appear to me axiomatic that if you understood fully what I was doing and appreciated it, you would like it. But that issue was more in the forefront because it needed critical support to work commercially, and it didn't get it. So it lost every nickel. The lesson coming out of that one for me was that you should never assume anything coming from a critical standpoint. You should go into everything assuming you're going to get crushed. It's like when people talk about Obama. My whole attitude is, "You should govern like you aren't going to get a second term." I make every movie like it's the last one. "If this was the last movie, what decision would I make?" That's how I make my decisions.[on realism/accuracy in film and if one can make a movie too smart for audiences] ... As sort of airtight as the science is, there used to be a lot more of it, and what we found out was people started tuning out. There was a tipping point where they became overwhelmed and they just stopped paying attention completely, so we had to back off of some of that and make sure. But again, it was kind of trial and error to try and find this balance of enough science to make it feel real and make it feel scary, but not so much that you were going, 'Hey man, give me a break.'... I think when you're dealing with a certain kind of material, yeah. That was the case here. Like I said, there were versions where there was just too much technical information, and we were expecting people to sort of assimilate and retain information that a journalist might not assimilate or retain, and we didn't know that. You just gotta show it to people who are not your friends to figure that out.

[on his relationship with writers] I like them to be around constantly [on set] whenever possible. Some of them are really happy to do that, and some of them don't want to be around at all. But that's really the fun part to me, is to have somebody there to keep calibrating, to keep trying to make it better, to keep asking the questions, "Is this the best version of this idea?" I'm very, very protective of them, and also, if you look at my list of films, on a percentage basis, I would argue that I had more sole credits either to a writer or a writing team than any other director you can find. I have never replaced a writer.

[on studios replacing writers more often than directors] Yeah, they are, more than filmmakers, which I don't understand why writers are so angry at directors all the time. In my experience, it's usually the studio that's going, "Yeah, let's throw this person under the bus and get somebody new." I wouldn't allow that to happen.

[on working with actors who are also writers and if it is preferable in any way] No, it's a huge benefit. I mean, Scott [Z. Burns] would be the first to tell you. In a couple of cases in "Contagion" we'd have a scene that he and Matt [Damon] and I would sort of re-tool on the set based on what we were thinking that day. To have someone like Matt who's not looking at it from the point of view of, "I'm the movie star," but who's someone who has written and is very sort of savvy about how movies work and how narrative works. It's great to have that person in the conversation to be able to talk about the movie on a macro level and not just the thing that we're doing right now. That's just a huge plus for a filmmaker. I mean, he's very bright. ...He [Matt Damon] understands that stuff. It's something he thinks about a lot, and his instincts are good. My opinion is if you can get him, you should get him.

American movie audiences now just don't seem to be very interested in any kind of ambiguity or any kind of real complexity of character or narrative - I'm talking in large numbers, there are always some, but enough to make hits out of movies that have those qualities. I think those qualities are now being seen on television and that people who want to see stories that have those kinds of qualities are watching television.

[on being asked "have you met any naturally great leaders?"] George Clooney. He inspires people. He listens. He's generous. He's loyal. He's funny, which is crucial. He solves problems better than anyone I know. That's why people keep telling him to run for office, but he's too smart for that. If there were 500 of him, you could take over an entire country - but of course three weeks later you'd lose it again because of all the parties.When you have no one in your life who you can call and say, 'I'm scared,' then your life is uninteresting, unfulfilling, superficial. You need somebody you can trust enough to say, 'I need help.'

[on his reason for retirement, 2013] Cinema, as I define it and as something that inspired me, is under assault by the studios and, from what I can tell, with the full support of the audience.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:27

Editors' SpotlightFall TV Premiere WeekMany of your favorite shows are coming back, along with plenty of series premieres. Here's a list of the shows premiering between Monday, October 6 and Sunday, October 12.

See the full list >>

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Sat, 11 Oct 2014 12:05

Yeah, My GF's a SupermodelAnd I'm Damn Proud Of It10/10/2014 11:20 AM PDT BY TMZ STAFFEXCLUSIVE

Petra Nemcova is one of the most beautiful women in the world ... which makes Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe one of the luckiest men, and the guy's got no problem admitting it.

The supermodel went public with their relationship a few months ago -- which has to give Lamothe a huge leg up in meetings with other heads of state, right? We got the PM in Washington, DC on Thursday, and asked him if that's the case.

LL's no fool ... he played it like a good boyfriend should.

One tip for the Prime Minister, who was leaving the World Bank when we shot him. Next time bring Petra! Nerdy bankers melt for supermodels ... like most of us.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 14:05

The anger that erupted in the streets of Port-au-Prince on Jun. 5,10, and 19 also flared in the streets of New York on Thursday, Jun. 19, 2014.

Over 100 Haitians and North American activists, mobilized with only 48 hours notice, protested against the Happy Hearts Fund of super-model Petra Nemcova awarding Haitian President Michel Martelly a prize for his ''leadership in education'' in a sumptuous Manhattan ceremony. The foundation also gave the former President Bill Clinton a ''Lifetime Achievement Award.''

One of the main chants of the demonstrators on 42nd Street outside the Cipriani restaurant was ''Clinton, where is the money for reconstruction?'' The answer was ''in whose pockets?''

Clinton was responsible for overseeing the billions of dollars in aid pledged to Haiti after the devastating earthquake there four years ago. While rubble has finally been cleared from the streets, some 200,000 people still live in tents. Only a fraction of the permanent housing promised and needed has been built. Those built are often poorly designed, badly located, or incomplete.

Some schools and other public buildings have been replaced. The jobs promised shortly after the disaster were scattered and temporary.

Some of the demonstrators' signs and chants charged that President Barack Obama has continued the Clinton policy toward Haiti i.e. neo-liberalism.

Image: From left to right, Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe, President Michel Martelly, and singer Sheryl Crow at one of the fundraiser's 52 tables. The event brought in $2.5 million for the Happy Hearts Fund

Another issue raised both in Port-au-Prince and New York was the United Nations ''peacekeeping'' force, which has now been in Haiti over a decade. Haiti is at peace, demonstrators point out; the UN is just in Haiti to ''enforce'' the U.S. agenda there. Events in both Haiti and New York called for the MINUSTAH military occupation of the UN to leave Haiti immediately. Clinton is the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy to Haiti.

In October 2010, the UN brought cholera to Haiti by the dumping untreated feces in Haiti's largest river. To date, more than 830,000 Haitians have been sickened from cholera, while more than 8,000 have died. Despite the overwhelming evidence of its guilt, the UN has refused any form of redress for Haitian cholera victims with strong support from the United States and other imperialist powers on the UN Security Council.

As one sign said: ''Reparations: the UN is standing on a lie. The UN knows, the UN is responsible, the UN is guilty!''

For the Jun. 19 protesters, the prize given to Martelly for his ''initiative'' in the domain of education is an ''insult'' not just to the Haitian diaspora in the United States but to the people living in Haiti.

Another charge raised in both Haiti and New York is that Martelly is a thief. Although the theft is unlikely to be proven in a court of law while he is president (a judge investigating his corruption suspiciously died one year ago), it is clear that President Martelly loves ostentatious luxury in the numerous trips abroad he makes. He reportedly gives himself a per diem expense account of $20,000. (Haiti Sentinel, December 13, 2012). This per diem does not cover other regular members of his entourage, like his wife. They get their own.

Image: On June 19, demonstrators rallied outside the Cipriani restaurant on 42nd Street to denounce the ceremony honoring Haitian president Michel Martelly and former US president Bill Clinton

''The ceremony inside the Cipriani restaurant is disgusting and hypocritical,'' said Ray Laforest of the International Support Haiti Network (ISHN), one of the organizations that called the New York rally.

''Petra Nemcova, as Prime Minister Lamothe's girlfriend, is a part of the Martelly government. Martelly himself calls her his Ambassador. The Martelly government is just giving itself an award, carrying out yet another charade, thinking that we Haitians are to stupid to understand the bluff. We hope that some of the clueless celebrities inside hear our voices.''

Many protesters in Port-au-Prince were teachers who have not been paid for months and students who came to support them.

The Cipriani restaurant, where the ceremony took place prize, is owned by an international company with a long history of conflict with Local 6 of the union UNITE-HERE and has been repeatedly prosecuted for how it distributes tips and salaries. It is often used for bourgeois celebrations.

The ceremony itself was conducted by Petra Nemcova, who founded the Happy Hearts Fund ten years ago. The event attracted a number of celebrities such as actress Naomi Watts, figure skater Scott Hamilton, radio personality Dr. Ruth, singers Sheryl Crow and Bono, and members of the musical group Black Eyed Peas.

According to the''Page 6'" column of the New York Post, ''when Nemcova auctioned off a trip to Ibiza on a private jet (complete with a seven-night stay on a yacht) for $85,000, she said she'd throw in a kiss, but then brandished a red ruler and told the crowd she'd spank the lucky winner if they ponied up $100,000.''

With tickets sales and the auction, the foundation raised $2.5 million, according to the Daily News.

Designer Donna Karan, reading from a script clearly given to her by the government, claimed that the Martelly government ''has increased school attendance from 46% in 2012 to 83% in 2013 while subsidizing over 1.4 million school children's tuition,'' statistics which are as precise as they are suspicious. The Martelly/Lamothe government is infamous for throwing out concocted figures to give their propaganda an allure of reality. Martelly has ''truly uplifted the country,'' Ms. Karan said.

She then presented the award to Martelly, who took the floor to say that ''today I am here to talk about children's education, which is the centerpiece of my vision for Haiti.'' To prove it, Martelly explained that ''my first act on May 14, 2011 was to inaugurate with Petra the Happy Hearts School.'' Making the inauguration of the school of his business partner's girlfriend's NGO is not exactly presidential.

During the ceremony, President Martelly sang two duets with Haitian singer Wyclef Jean: ''Let It Be Me'' and ''No Woman, No Cry.'' Protesters booed Wyclef when he entered the restaurant. Martelly, Lamothe, and Clinton found it wiser to enter through a rear door.

Mr. Clinton, presented by Ms. Nemcova, also spoke after receiving his award.

The Dessalines Coordination (KOD), KAKOLA, and ISHN were among the Haitian groups sponsoring the New York rally, which also included many members of the Lavalas Family chapter in New York. The International Action Center, the ANSWER Coalition, Harlem Tenants Council, and Socialist Action were among the North American groups who supported and came out for the rally.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 14:43

Last night, Petra Nemcova, John Legend, Naomi Watts, Sheryl Crow, Donna Karan, Vivienne Tam, Coco Rocha, Karlie Kloss, and more stepped out to mark 10 years of achievement following the Indian Ocean tsunami at the Happy Hearts Fund Gala in New York City. Started by Nemcova in 2006, the Happy Hearts Fund works to rebuild schools in areas impacted by natural disasters and just reached its 85 school milestone. ''I think we've all watched Petra's story and were just in awe of her strength,'' Crow tells InStyle.com. ''She represents a whole population of people that really suffered, but she's carrying on in a really positive way, and I love what she's doing.''

President Bill Clinton received the evening's top honor, the lifetime achievement award for his work with natural disasters. ''He inspired many people to help after the Tsunami, which gave birth to the Happy Hearts Fund. He was very instrumental after Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti,'' says Nemcova (below, with Clinton).

Guests hit the dance floor when Apl.de.ap of the Black Eyed Peas performed the hit song ''I've Got a Feeling,'' and Sheryl Crow sang the favorite ''I'm Gonna Soak Up the Sun.'' Michel Martelly, president of the Republic of Haiti, surprised guests by singing a rendition of Elvis's ''Let It Be Me'' with Wyclef Jean. Auction items included two coveted tickets to the sexiest fashion event of the year: the 2014 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, which will be held in London this December.

''At the beginning we had the goal to build one school, and I never expected that it would end up being 85 schools. After tonight, hopefully that will grow to 100 schools,'' Nemcova shares with InStyle.com. ''It really shows that when you come together, you can create anything. It really demonstrates the power of togetherness.'' Learn how you can support the cause by visiting happyheartsfund.org.

Plus, see more celebrities at this week's hottest parties in our gallery!

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 14:42

July 3, 2014

Haitian President Michel Martelly issued a decree on June 10, 2014, setting parliamentary and local elections for October 26, 2014. Prompt elections are much needed in Haiti'--one-third of the seats in Parliament and all local mayors have already termed out''but elections will only remedy Haiti's political crisis if they are run fairly by a lawfully mandated electoral council. The current Provisional Electoral Council is highly contested with serious and well-founded concerns about its legitimacy, calling into question whether it can run fair and inclusive elections.

The following ''Frequently Asked Questions'' (FAQs) provide a legal analysis of the proposed plan for elections in Haiti, including the El Rancho Accord, the new electoral law and Provisional Electoral Council.

What is at stake in these elections?Why has it taken so long to plan elections?What is the El Rancho Accord?Why have some members of the Haitian Senate refused to approve the El Rancho Accord and disapprove of the proposed Provisional Electoral Council (CEP)?What is the composition of the current El Rancho Provisional Electoral Council?How are political parties being excluded in the electoral process?Will the Duvalier political party enter the upcoming elections?What can the international community do to support fair and timely elections in Haiti?

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What is at stake in these elections?

Elections in Haiti are long overdue. Elections for all local offices and one-third of the Senate seats, whose terms expired in 2011, have still not been held. [i]

Without timely elections, the Senate has struggled to obtain a quorum since 2012, when one-third of its 30 seats expired (per Article 102 of the Haitian Constitution, Parliament may not make decisions or pass resolutions without a majority of each of the two houses being present[ii]).The terms of some 130 local mayors also expired in 2012. Those seats have been filled by ''municipal agents,'' who were appointed by President Martelly.The terms of another one-third of the Senate and all 99 members of the House of Deputies will expire in early 2015 without elections this year.

Why has it taken so long to plan elections?

Elections have been delayed for many reasons, but the principal roadblock has been the lack of an electoral council to start the election process. According to parliamentarians, political opposition and human rights groups, President Martelly has stalled elections since he came into office by facilitating unlawful electoral council appointments and creating political stalemates.

A set of 2010 constitutional amendments provided for a new selection process for a Permanent Electoral Council, which would be selected from three branches of government (executive, legislative and judiciary). The amendments were controversial because members of Parliament stated that the amendments that were published differed from those adopted in session.[iii] Amidst pressure from the U.S. and other governments, President Martelly formally adopted the contested amendments in 2012.

Many of the Permanent Electoral Council appointments in 2012 were fraught with controversy. One council member was forced to resign following a rape accusation by his employee.[iv] According to members of Parliament, the judicial branch's selections are not independent because President Martelly illegally named three Supreme Court justices (one was over the maximum age and the other two were not selected from the official lists submitted by the Senate as required by Article 175 of the Constitution), including the Chief Justice Anel Alexis Joseph, in 2012. His appointments allowed President Martelly to influence the nomination of the new judicial council, which is headed by Justice Joseph, and which named the council's judicial members. Moreover, without one-third of the Senate, the legislature had difficulty appointing their three members. As a result the permanent council was nonfunctional and unable to hold elections.

To remedy the electoral council crisis, President Martelly appointed a bicameral commission in October 2012, the Coll¨ge Transitoire du Conseil ‰lectoral Permanent (CTCEP), charged with passing a new electoral law.[v] The CTCEP submitted a proposed electoral law to a Presidential commission July 1, 2013. A presidential commission submitted the proposed law to the House of Deputies days before its last session of the year, leaving very little time for the House to approve the law. While the Prime Minister declared that the electoral law was adopted, House members say there was never an affirming vote.[vi] The Senate never approved the electoral law, resulting in another political stalemate at the end of 2013.

Parliamentarians argue that President Martelly's administration has benefitted from the lack of elections; President Martelly has operated without the standard checks and balances of power such as parliamentary oversight. He also has control over the 130 mayors he appointed. Executive control over the electoral council will also favor President Martelly's political party.

What is the El Rancho Accord?

A series of ''inter-Haitian dialogues,'' led by the Catholic Bishop's Conference of Haiti, Cardinal Chibly Langlois, political parties, parliamentarians, and members of civil society took place in January and February 2014, to discuss a plan for elections. Many of the dialogue participants signed the dialogue's outcome document, the El Rancho Accord (''the Accord'') on March 14, 2014. The Senate has not signed or approved the Accord.[vii]

The El Rancho Accord sets October 26, 2014 as Election Day for two-thirds of the Senate, the House of Deputies and local elections, and proposes a Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) to be appointed by the three branches of government. The Accord also provides for the approval of amendments to the 2013 electoral law by the executive branch, both chambers of Parliament, the CEP and political parties.

Why have some members of the Haitian Senate refused to approve the El Rancho Accord and disapprove of the proposed Provisional Electoral Council (CEP)?

Many parliamentarians, including six of the 20 sitting senators (called the G6) oppose the El Rancho Accord on constitutional grounds.[viii] The Accord has not been approved by both houses of Parliament and any provision that conflicts with the Haitian Constitution is invalid (Under Article 282 of the Constitution, the Constitution can only be amended by two-thirds of each of the two Houses in Parliament).[ix]

The El Rancho manner of appointing councilors to the CEP conflicts with the manner in the Constitution. The El Rancho CEP is appointed from the three branches of government, whereas the Constitutional CEP is designated from nine different sectors of society (Executive Branch, Episcopal Conference, Advisory Council, Supreme Court, human rights; Council of the University, journalist associations; Protestant religions, and National Council of Cooperatives).[x] Every election since the Constitution was enacted in 1987 has been run by a provisional council named by different sectors.

Parliamentarians also object to Article 12 of the Accord, which provides that if both branches of Parliament do not approve amendments to the electoral law within 10 days of signature of the agreement, the law is automatically on hold and the CEP is allowed to override the lack of approval and move forward with elections.[xi] Given that the term of one-third of the Senate expired, the Senate claims that Article 12 is a loophole to evade Parliamentarian approval.

President Martelly appears to have invoked Article 12 on June 10, 2014, when he signed a presidential decree setting the elections for October 26, and confirming a CEP with only seven of the nine required members.[xii] Opposition leaders call the Accord an electoral coup d'(C)tat.

What is the composition of the current El Rancho Provisional Electoral Council?

The El Rancho CEP currently has only seven of the required nine members: two members from the legislative branch, two members from the judicial branch, and three members from the executive branch. Two of the nine members, Leopold Berlanger (judicial branch) and Nehemy Joseph (legislative branch) have refused to be sworn in because of concerns about the process for selecting councilors. In order to accommodate these concerns on June 11, 2014, the judicial council voted 5-2 to replace one of its other members. Although Chief Justice Joseph participated in this vote, after President Martelly objected, Justice Joseph annulled the vote the following day.

The CEP generated additional controversy by selecting Frizto Canton as President. Canton, a lawyer for former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, was nominated to the council by the executive.[xiii]

How are political parties being excluded in the electoral process?

Coalitions of political parties have issued public statements denouncing the El Rancho Accord, claiming exclusion from the electoral process and demanding a provisional electoral council that is independent and selected pursuant to the Constitution. They claim that the exclusion started during the El Rancho dialogue. Several parties that observed or participated in the El Rancho talks walked out to protest that parties not aligned with the current government were being ignored.[xiv]

On June 16, 2014, CEP President Fritzo Canton announced June 25, 2014 as the registration deadline for political parties.[xv] The deadline provides an impossible dilemma for political parties. Either they register with an electoral council whose appointment violates the Constitution and is controlled by the executive branch, indicating prospects for unfair elections, or they boycott the registration to pressure the government to appoint a lawful and independent body, risking exclusion.

Will the Duvalier political party enter the upcoming elections?

The old political party founded under the Duvalier dictatorship (''National Unity Party''), says it plans to enter candidates in the upcoming elections. Jean-Claude ''Baby Doc'' Duvalier, who faces criminal charges for murder, disappearances and torture under his regime, attended the party's ceremony when it announced that its candidates would run ''at all levels'' in the legislative and local elections.[xvi] President Martelly has presented Duvalier at public events as an elder statesman and has renewed Duvalier's diplomatic passport.[xvii]

What can the international community do to support fair and timely elections in Haiti?

Progress in earthquake reconstruction, stabilizing Haiti's democracy and ending poverty will only be possible if the upcoming elections in Haiti are prompt, fair and inclusive. Unfortunately the upcoming elections are on the road to further undermining Haiti's democracy rather than stabilizing it.

These elections must not repeat the errors of the last.[xviii] Illegitimate elections in 2010, contaminated by a corrupt electoral council, illegal exclusion of political parties,[xix] ballot-stuffing[xx] and an arbitrary recount by the Organization of American States,[xxi] set Haiti on its way to its current political crisis. A month before the 2010 elections, 45 members of the U.S. Congress, most of them Democrats, warned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that supporting flawed elections ''will come back to haunt the international community'' by generating unrest and threatening the implementation of earthquake reconstruction projects. The U.S. government funded the elections anyway to the tune of $15 million.

The U.S. can support rule of law and democracy by conditioning election funding on a lawful and independent electoral council that can run fair and inclusive elections.

Haitian voters have tried to communicate their opposition to illegitimate elections in many ways: boycotting the 2009, 2010 and 2011 votes, demonstrating in the streets, and rejecting the elections in the press and in political meetings. They will keep trying until they find a way to make their government, and the international community, listen.

[ii] Haitian Constitution of 1987, Article 102.

[v]Haiti- Elections : Swearing in, installation, and (C)lection of members of the Bureau of CTCP, HaitiLibre.com, April 30, 2013, http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-8385-haiti-elections-swearing-in-installation-and-election-of-members-of-the-bureau-of-ctcep.html. See alsoTo rebuild Haiti, Restoring Democracy is a Must, Bloomberg, April 7, 2013, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-07/to-rebuild-haiti-restoring-democracy-is-a-must.html.

[vii]Ha¯ti '' Politique : Le Core Group >> salue l'accord inter-haitien (texte int(C)gral de l'accord), HaitiLibre (Mar 21, 2014), http://www.haitilibre.com/article-10763-haiti-politique-le-core-group-salue-l-accord-inter-haitien-texte-integral-de-l-accord.html.

[viii]Haiti '' Politic : The dialogue between the Executive and the Senate ends in failure, HaitiLibre (Jun. 5, 2014), http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-11302-haiti-politic-the-dialogue-between-the-executive-and-the-senate-ends-in-failure.html.

[ix] Haitian Constitution of 1987, Article 282.

[x] Haitian Constitution of 1987, Article 289.

[xi]Ha¯ti '' Politique : Le Core Group >> salue l'accord inter-haitien (texte int(C)gral de l'accord), HaitiLibre (Mar 21, 2014), http://www.haitilibre.com/article-10763-haiti-politique-le-core-group-salue-l-accord-inter-haitien-texte-integral-de-l-accord.html.

[xii]Haiti- Elections: The opposition parties denounced the decision of President Martelly, Haiti Libre (Jun. 12, 2014), http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-11358-haiti-elections-the-opposition-parties-denounced-the-decision-of-president-martelly.html.

[xiii]Martelly Appoints Duvalier Lawyer to Oversee Elections, Center for Economic and Policy Research (May 6, 2014), http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/martelly-appoints-duvalier-lawyer-to-oversee-elections.

[xiv]Fanmi Lavalas, Fusion, Inite et d'autres partis r(C)clament la formation d'un nouveau CEP, Le Nouvelliste (May 14, 2014), http://lenouvelliste.com/lenouvelliste/article/130943/Fanmi-Lavalas-Fusion-Inite-et-dautres-partis-reclament-la-formation-dun-nouveau-CEP.html.

[xv]Haiti '' Notice : Registration of political parties and candidates for BED and BEC, last deadline, HaitiLibre (Jun. 18, 2014), http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-11397-haiti-notice-registration-of-political-parties-and-candidates-for-bed-and-bec-last-deadline.html.

[xvi] Evens Sanon and Trenton Daniel, Old Duvalier party plans to run in Haiti election, The Associated Press (Apr. 24, 2014), http://news.yahoo.com/old-duvalier-party-plans-run-haiti-election-173735217.html.

[xvii] Randal C. Archibold, Haitian Dictator May Be Charged with Human Rights Crimes, Court Says, The New York Times (Feb. 20, 2014), http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/world/americas/haitian-dictator-may-be-charged-with-human-rights-crimes-court-says.html.

[xix] Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, Haiti's November 28 Elections: Trying to Legitimize the Illegitimate (Nov. 22, 2010), http://www.ijdh.org/haiti's-november-28-elections-trying-to-legitimize-the-illegitimate-ijdh/#.UjoNJBb_5Rc.

[xxi] Dan Beeton and Georgianne Nienaber, Haiti's Doctored Elections, Seen from the Inside: An Interview with Ricardo Seitenfus, Dissent Magazine (Feb. 24, 2014), http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/haitis-doctored-elections-seen-from-the-inside-an-interview-with-ricardo-seitenfus.

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What is this?The GuideStar Exchange allows nonprofits to regularly update key information directly to GuideStar. It provides richer and broader information about their programs, impact, finances, people and more.

GuideStar SummaryBasic Organization InformationHappy Hearts Fund, Inc. Organization Name provided in the GuideStar Exchange* as of 05/03/2012: Happy Hearts Fund, Inc.Organization Name as listed in the IRS Business Master File as of 08/11/2014: HAPPY HEARTS FUND INC

* The GuideStar Exchange allows nonprofits to regularly update key information directly to GuideStar. It provides richer and broader information about their programs, impact, finances, people and more.

Physical Address:New York, NY 10014 EIN:20-5072728Web URL:www.happyheartsfund.org NTEE Category:M Public Safety, Disaster Preparedness and ReliefM20 Disaster Preparedness and Relief ServicesB Educational InstitutionsB24 Primary/Elementary SchoolsRuling Year:2006 Sign in or create an account to see this organization's full address, contact information, and more!

Mission StatementHappy Hearts Fund is a non-profit foundation dedicated to improving children's lives through educational and sustainable programs in natural disaster areas.

Legitimacy InformationThis organization is registered with the IRS.

This organization is required to file an IRS Form 990 or 990-EZ.

Institutional funders should note that an organization's inclusion on GuideStar.org does not satisfy IRS Rev. Proc. 2011-33 for identifying supporting organizations.

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Annual Revenue & Expenses (IRS Form 990, July 2012)Fiscal Year Starting: July 01, 2012Fiscal Year Ending: June 30, 2013

Total Revenue$3,040,550

Total Expenses$2,737,172

Revenue & ExpensesRevenue and expense information has not been provided by the nonprofit. Click here if you are associated with this organization and want to provide this information.

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Forms 990 Received from the IRS IRS Form 990 is an annual document used by approximately one-third of all public charities to report information about their finances and operations to the federal government. GuideStar uses data from Form 990 to populate its database with financial information about nonprofit organizations. Posting Form 990 images on the GuideStar website is an ongoing process.

Forms 990 Provided by the NonprofitFinancial StatementsAudited Financial Statement is not available for this organization.

Formation Documents A Letter of Determination is a letter from the IRS to a nonprofit organization stating that the organization has successfully applied for tax-exempt status. In this document the IRS indicates under which section of the Internal Revenue Code an organization is qualified.

Letter of Determination is not available for this organization.

What is this?The GuideStar Exchange allows nonprofits to regularly update key information directly to GuideStar. It provides richer and broader information about their programs, impact, finances, people and more.

The GuideStar Exchange allows nonprofits to regularly update key information directly to GuideStar. It provides richer and broader information about their programs, impact, finances, people and more. May 2012)

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The GuideStar Exchange allows nonprofits to regularly update key information directly to GuideStar. It provides richer and broader information about their programs, impact, finances, people and more.

GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section, which enables organizations and donors to transparently share information about essential board leadership practices.

Board Orientation & EducationWhy does this matter? Without clarity around their responsibilities and expectations, board members are not positioned to succeed. They may find themselves challenged to fulfill their governance responsibilities or frustrated by the expectations that the organization has set for them. BoardSource recommends that every new board member participate in a formal orientation process, and that all board members sign a pledge or agreement committing to their board service and to all of the responsibilities and expectations that come with service. Ideally, board members also should participate in a formal governance training program prior to serving on a board.

Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations?Response Not ProvidedCEO OversightWhy does this matter? Oversight and management of the chief executive is one of the board's most important legal responsibilities. The CEO or executive director is the board's single employee, and - just like any other employer/employee relationship - regular and written assessment is critical to ensuring that the chief executive and board are communicating openly about goals and performance. BoardSource recommends that boards conduct formal, written reviews of their chief executives on an annual basis, which should include an in-person discussion with the chief executive and distribution of the written evaluation to the full board.

Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year?Response Not ProvidedEthics & TransparencyWhy does this matter? A commitment to handling conflicts of interests is essential to creating an organizational culture of transparency. Boards should create and follow a policy for identifying and handling conflicts of interest, whether real or perceived. BoardSource recommends that organizations review the conflict-of-interest statement and require signed disclosures from all board members and senior staff on an annual basis.

Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements within the past year?Response Not ProvidedBoard CompositionWhy does this matter? The best boards are composed of individuals who bring a variety of skills, perspectives, backgrounds, and resources to tackle the complex and strategic challenges confronting their organizations. BoardSource recommends that boards commit to diversity and inclusion by establishing written policies and practices, which include strategic and intentional recruitment of diverse board members, continual commitment to inclusivity, and equal access to board leadership opportunities.

Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership?Response Not ProvidedBoard PerformanceWhy does this matter? Boards need to regularly assess their own performance. Doing so ensures that they are being intentional about how they govern their organization, which is a critical component of effective board leadership. BoardSource recommends that a board conduct a self-assessment of its performance a minimum of once every three years to ensure that it is staying on track with its roles and responsibilities.

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Highest Paid Employees & Their Compensation (IRS Form 990)Highest Paid Employee data is not available for this organization.

People information was last updated by the nonprofit in May 2012

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ProgramsProgram: Self-Sustaining Schools (GuideStar Exchange,The GuideStar Exchange allows nonprofits to regularly update key information directly to GuideStar. It provides richer and broader information about their programs, impact, finances, people and more. May 2012)

Budget:--Category:Population Served:Children Only (5 - 14 years)Program Description:

HHF helps children to rebuild their lives through the Self-Sustaining School Model, which has three key components: Education, Technology and Sustainability. Self-Sustaining School Model 1. EDUCATION HHF identifies schools in areas adversely affected by natural disasters and builds or rebuilds them in a disaster-proof way allowing children to be safe and to begin the healing and recovery process. Education and safe educational facilities are the best investments we can make in the effort to overcome and prevent the damaging consequences of natural disasters and poverty. 2. TECHNOLOGY Within each school, HHF establishes a computer lab with the needed IT software, hardware adn training in order to create more opportunities for children to have better educational and employment options in their lives. 3. SUSTAINABILITY HHF focuses on assurance of sustainability for schools. If governmental support is lacking in this area, HHF creates independence through its sustainability initiatives. HHF incubates and fosters a community-oriented business as a programmatic companion to the new schools, thereby ensuring a long-term funding stream for the maintenance and development of the school, and by extension, the community.

Program Long-Term Success:

Globally, HHF is active in nine countries and has built/rebuilt 47 schools and kindergartens, with eight currently under construction. Since inception our programs have benefited more than 31,000 children and 334,000 community members.

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Program Success Monitored by:

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Impact Summary from the NonprofitGlobally, HHF is active in nine countries and has built/rebuilt 47 schools and kindergartens, with eight currently under construction. Since inception our programs have benefited more than 31,000 children and 334,000 community members.

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Other Ways To DonatePay By Check, Mail to:Happy Hearts FundP.O. Box 725New York, NY 10014

Non-Cash Financial Gifts:We're open to receiving gifts of stock, real estate, life insurance, life income gifts, and bequests.

Corporate Sponsorships & In-Kind Contributions:We've worked with a number of companies to team up together on important fundraising campaigns for HHF. Let us know your ideas and we'd be happy to work with you.

Questions? Email [email protected].

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Petra NěmcovNěmcov in 2012

BornPetra Němcov(1979-06-24) 24 June 1979 (age 35)Karvin, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic)[1]Modeling informationHeight5 ft 10 in (1.78 m)[1]Weight117 lb/53 kgHair colorBrown[1]Eye colorHazel[1]Measurements33B''24''34 (US)84''61''86.5 (EU)[1]ManagerONE Model Management(New York, Los Angeles, Miami, London, Paris, Milan); Unique One, Mikas, View ManagementPetra Němcov (Czech pronunciation:[Ëpɛtra Ëɲɛmtsovaː]; born 24 June 1979) is a Czech model, television host, and philanthropist. Following injuries in Thailand by a tsunami resulting from the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, during which her fianc(C) the photographer Simon Atlee was killed, Němcov founded and now chairs the Happy Hearts Fund.

Early life[edit]Petra Němcov was born 24 June 1979, in Karvin, then Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. She grew up in Karvin in the Moravian''Silesian Region with her sister Olga.

Modeling[edit]Scouted on the streets of Prague by NEXT Model Management, upon signing she moved to Milan, Italy. After winning the 1995 Czech Elite Model Look, she returned to Milan where her career flourished.

She has featured in campaigns for: Benetton, Bulgari, Cartier, Clarins, Cortefiel, Dirk Bikkembergs, Fortunoff, Graff, Hewlett Packard/Intel, HS, Intimissimi, John Lewis, Lancaster, La Perla, La Senza, Maidenform, Max Factor, Pantene Pro-V, Passport, Playtex, Rampage, Schwarzkopf, Victoria's Secret, and Wild Orchid.[2] Additionally, she has appeared on the covers of Madame Figaro, Elle, Shape, Cosmopolitan, Flare, Vegas, Glamour, FHM, and Sports Illustrated.[2]

From 2000 to 2004, she worked for designers Lolita Lempicka, Gai Mattiolo Erreuno, Matthew Williamson, Custo Barceloa, Blunauta, Dirk Bikkembergs, Gugliemo Cappone, Luciano soprani, Marina Babini, Yumi Katsura, Akadius, and Michino Koshino.[2]

Němcov globally broke-through outside the fashion industry after featuring on the cover of the 2003 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, from a shoot in Barbados by Walter Iooss. She also appeared in the 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 editions.[1] In addition to working with world class photographers on her Sports Illustrated shoots, she was the object/subject of Joanne Gair's body painting work.[3]

Petra is currently signed to Mikas in Stockholm, View Management in Barcelona, Unique One in Prague, and "Next Model Management" in London, Paris, Milan, New York, Miami, and Los Angeles.

Television[edit]In 2001, the up-and-coming model appeared on British television series Absolutely Fabulous.[4] On 3 June 2004, she was one of the telecast judges during the 53rd annual Miss Universe competition in Quito, Ecuador. In 2007, she was the host of TLC's A Model Life. On 7 July 2007 she was a presenter at the American leg of Live Earth and appeared in the music video "Misfit" by American indie group Elefant.[1] She is currently working with HP computers to produce a multi-million dollar TV and web campaign.[5]

She was a contestant on season 12 of Dancing with the Stars and her professional dance partner was Dmitry Chaplin.[6][7] She was voted off in the 5th week of the competition and came in 8th place. Dancing with the Stars performances:

Other ventures[edit]In 2005, Němcov released her autobiography Love Always, Petra (ISBN 0446579130) published December 2005, which tells of her early life under Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, her entrance into the field of fashion and modeling, and her breakthrough into Sports Illustrated, which was her springboard to becoming a supermodel. She also tells of her life with Simon Atlee and how they fell in love and became engaged to marry.

In 2008, Němcov partnered with New York agency Aglow Properties to sell two apartments around the $25 million mark.[8]

Personal life[edit]Němcov is multilingual and speaks Czech, Slovak, Polish, English, French and Italian. In December 2010, she became engaged to English actor Jamie Belman.[9] In April 2012, it was announced that Němcov and Belman had ended their engagement.[10] On 2 May 2013 in an interview, Haiti's Prime MinisterLaurent Lamothe confirmed that he and Němcov are in a relationship.[11]

2004 tsunami[edit]During the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, Němcov was at the Khao Lak resort in Thailand with her main photographer and fianc(C), Simon Atlee, when the tsunami struck where they were staying. Initially, Atlee was presumed missing, but his body was found and identified on 3 March 2005, on the shores of Sumatra (near the epicenter of the earthquake that caused the tsunami).[citation needed]

Atlee had drowned, and Němcov suffered a broken pelvis and serious internal injuries, but she managed to hold onto the top of a palm tree, reportedly for eight hours, until she was rescued by Thai civilians and airlifted to an inland hospital nearby.[12] Němcov spent three weeks in a Thai hospital, and then flew home to the Czech Republic, where she spent an additional three weeks in the hospital. Němcov's first interview after her near-death experience was with Diane Sawyer on ABC's Primetime Live, on 9 March 2005. She has also spoken of her experiences on the Larry King Live program on CNN.

Philanthropy[edit]In 2005, Němcov created the Happy Hearts Fund (HHF), a charitable organization and campaign formed after her survival and recovery from the Tsunami of 2004. When Němcov returned to Thailand a few months after the tsunami, she witnessed families without homes, children without parents and entire communities swept away. She was most affected by the children and sought to figure out a way to help them rebuild their lives and bring back hope and opportunity. Unsatisfied with the response of organizations that were unable to specify which children, or even which country, would benefit, Němcov set out to create her own entity and structured it so that all administrative costs would be underwritten, thereby ensuring that 100% of all donations received would be directed to children's programming.[13] She also helped in the recovery efforts of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 with HHF.

On 12 November 2007 Němcov visited Haiti alongside Haitian-born musician Wyclef Jean as part of a charity-sponsored event. The inauguration of a computer lab and an eatery in the slums of Port-au-Prince were funded and sponsored by Jean's Y(C)le Ha¯ti Foundation and Němcov's Happy Hearts Fund.

On 15 December 2009, Němcov and HHF Executive Director Phillip Caputo launched the "Bring Happiness Back!" campaign at the United Nations to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami. That same day, Němcov and Caputo also participated in the closing bell ceremonies at NASDAQ where the "Bring Happiness Back!" Campaign was also highlighted.[14]

In 2008 she went with Happy Hearts Fund to Peru to help children who were affected by the 2007 Peru earthquake.

In June 2012, she was designated in a private ceremony by president of Haiti, Michel Martelly and Prime Minister, Laurent Lamothe as Ambassador-at-Large for Haiti for her work with Happy Hearts Fund.[15]

Glamour magazine awarded Němcov a "Survivor Award" in 2005 for her charity work following her tsunami ordeal.

In November 2011, Němcov was appointed as Honorary Consul from the Czech Republic to Haiti by the government of Haiti.

Němcov is a supporter of the NY- and DC-based nonprofit Only Make Believe. Only Make Believe is a 501(c)(3) organization that creates and performs interactive plays in children's hospitals and care facilities. In 2012, Němcov acted as the face of Only Make Believe in lighting the Empire State Building and received the James Hammerstein Award, for her outstanding dedication to children in need, at the 2012 "Make Believe on Broadway" Gala. She also acted as the Celebrity Ambassador for Only Make Believe at Bloomberg Tradebook's 2nd Annual Charity Day.[citation needed]

References[edit]External links[edit]PersondataNameNěmcov, PetraAlternative namesShort descriptionCzech fashion modelDate of birth24 June 1979Place of birthKarvin, CzechoslovakiaDate of deathPlace of death

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Laurent Salvador Lamothe (born 14 August 1972) is a Haitian political figure who has served in the government of Haiti as Minister of Foreign Affairs since October 2011, having been appointed Prime Minister on 4 May 2012.[1] Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of the company Global Voice Group.[2][3]

Life and career[edit]Son of Louis G. Lamothe, a doctor in Spanish literature and the founder of the Lope de Vega Institute, and of Ghislaine Fortuney Lamothe, a painter, Lamothe was born in Port-au-Prince. He grew up in an academic and artistic, but also athletic, environment. His elder brother, Ruben, served as captain of the Haitian Davis Cup tennis team for some time. A tennis player himself, Laurent Lamothe represented his country at the Davis Cup in 1994 and 1995.[4]

At the same point in time, Lamothe left Haiti to complete his tertiary studies in the United States. After obtaining a bachelor's degree in political sciences at Barry University in Miami, he turned to business management and obtained a master's degree with an honorable mention from Saint Thomas University.[5][citation needed] He was said to be a "keen, analytical and articulate student, a gentleman and a people person".[5]

Two years after obtaining his master's degree in business management, he founded the telecommunications company Global Voice Group with his business partner, Patrice Baker.[4] The company started out as a small telecommunications company and is today a worldwide provider of technological solutions in emerging markets and developing countries.[6] Through his company, Global Voice Group, he introduced telecoms governance technologies in Africa which allow regulation agencies to manage the sector in terms of control, tariff equity and transparency. This earned him a nomination as Ernst & Young ''Entrepreneur of the Year'' in May 2008.[7]

Political career[edit]His involvement in the political and social life of Haiti subsequently led him to accept the position of Special Advisor to Haitian President Michel Martelly.[7] In order to achieve more and to avoid conflicts of interest, Laurent Lamothe resigned from his businesses and considers himself as a former businessman.[3] He also became a member of the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (CIRH).

In September 2011, Lamothe and former United States President Bill Clinton co-chaired the Presidential Advisory Council for the Economic Development and Investment in Haiti launched by President Martelly on September 8, 2011 to help redevelop Haiti by making it more attractive to foreign companies and investors.[8]

Subsequently, Lamothe was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship of Haiti. On October 26, 2011, he made his first speech as the new Minister of Foreign Affairs during his installation ceremony, which took place in Bois-Verna, Haiti.[9] He is viewed as "competent and dynamic minister" and a "talented entrepreneur with the vision to move Haiti forward"[10]

On March 1, 2012, Lamothe was designated as the Prime Minister of Haiti by President Michel Martelly following the resignation of Prime Minister Garry Conille.[11]

Following a controversy concerning the nationality of certain senators and ministers from Haiti, the Preliminary Report of the Senate Committee on Nationality published March 8, 2012, in Port-au-Prince is clear: the documents of Laurent Lamothe's nationality within the concerned service of the State are all complete.[12] The senatorial commission charged to verify the conformity of Laurent Lamothe's documents is composed of senators Francky Exius, William Jeanty, Jean-Baptiste Bien-Aim(C), K(C)ly C. Bastien, M(C)lius Hyppolite, Jean Rodolphe Joazile and Lucas Saint-Vil. The commission has been formed following a private meeting led by senator Fran§ois Anick Joseph.[13]

On 10 April 2012, the Senate endorsed his nomination with 19 votes in favour to 3 votes against.[14] The Chamber of Deputies endorsed him 62 to 3 on 3 May 2012.[15] He was formally appointed on 4 May 2012.[1]

On 24 September 2013, the Senate voted his impeachment for his alleged involvement in the death of Judge Jean Serge Joseph, died of a stroke Saturday, July 13, 2013.[16]

Personal life[edit]On 2 May 2013, in an interview with Ticket Magazine, Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe confirmed that he and Czech model Petra Němcov are a couple. Lamothe is the father of two daughters, Linka and Lara.

References[edit]PersondataNameLamothe, LaurentAlternative namesShort descriptionHaitian Prime MinisterDate of birth14 August 1972Place of birthPort-au-Prince, HaitiDate of deathPlace of death

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Google Map of Port-au-Prince, Haiti - Nations Online ProjectThe city was founded by the French in 1749, it became capital of the new republic in 1806. Port-au-Prince has a population of about 1.2 million inhabitants and more than 2.5 to 3 million live in its metropolitan area, including the rapid growing slums on the hillsides above the city.Haiti Demographics Profile 2014 - MundiMajor cities - population, PORT-AU-PRINCE (capital) 2.207 million (2011). Sex ratio, at birth: 1.01 male(s)/female 0-14 years: 1.01 male(s)/female 15-24 years: 1 ...Haiti - CIAhttps://www.cia.gov/library/.../ha.htmlCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA)

Jun 22, 2014 - Features map and brief descriptions of the geography, people, government, economy, communications, transportation, military and ...Haiti - City Populationwww.citypopulation.de/Haiti.htmlHaiti, HTI, Port-au-Prince, 27,065, 4,328,756, 5,053,791, 8,373,750, 9,923,243 ... The population figures do not consider the effects of the 2010 earthquake.Haiti PEOPLE 2014, CIA World Factbook - Theodora.comwww.theodora.com/wfbcurrent/haiti/haiti_people.htmlnote: roughly half of the population practices voodoo ... [see also: Population growth rate country ranks ] ... PORT-AU-PRINCE (capital) 2.143 million (2010).Port-au-Prince

Capital of Haiti

Port-au-Prince; is the capital and largest city of the Caribbean country of Haiti. The city's population was 897,859 as of the 2009 census, and was officially estimated to have reached 942,194 in 2012.WikipediaArea:13.92 sq miles (36.04 km²)

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Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 '' November 16, 2006) was an American economist, statistician, and writer who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades. He was a recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, and is known for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and the complexity of stabilization policy.[1] As a leader of the Chicago school of economics, he profoundly influenced the research agenda of the economics profession. A survey of economists ranked Friedman as the second most popular economist of the twentieth century after John Maynard Keynes,[2] and The Economist described him as "the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century ... possibly of all of it."[3]

Friedman's challenges to what he later called "naive Keynesian" (as opposed to New Keynesian) theory[4] began with his 1950s reinterpretation of the consumption function, and he became the main advocate opposing Keynesian government policies.[5] In the late 1960s, he described his own approach (along with all of mainstream economics) as using "Keynesian language and apparatus" yet rejecting its "initial" conclusions.[6]

During the 1960s, he promoted an alternative macroeconomic policy known as "monetarism". He theorized there existed a "natural" rate of unemployment and argued that governments could only increase employment above this rate, e.g., by increasing aggregate demand, only for as long as inflation was accelerating.[7] He argued that the Phillips curve was, in the long run, vertical at the "natural rate" and predicted what would come to be known as stagflation.[8] Though opposed to the existence of the Federal Reserve System, Friedman argued that, given that it does exist, a steady, small expansion of the money supply was the only wise policy.[9]

Friedman was an economic adviser to Republican U.S. President Ronald Reagan. His political philosophy extolled the virtues of a free market economic system with minimal intervention. He once stated that his role in eliminating U.S. conscription was his proudest accomplishment, and his support for school choice led him to found the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman advocated policies such as a volunteer military, freely floating exchange rates, abolition of medical licenses, a negative income tax, and school vouchers.[10] His ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation influenced government policies, especially during the 1980s. His monetary theory influenced the Federal Reserve's response to the global financial crisis of 2007''08.[11] In the field of statistics, Friedman developed the sequential sampling method of analysis.

Milton Friedman's works include many monographs, books, scholarly articles, papers, magazine columns, television programs, videos, and lectures, and cover a broad range of topics of microeconomics, macroeconomics, economic history, and public policy issues. His books and essays were widely read, and have had an international influence, including in former Communist states.[12][13][14][15]

Early life[edit]Friedman was born in Brooklyn, New York, to recent Jewish immigrants Sra Ethel (n(C)e Landau) and Jenő Saul Friedman,[16] from Beregszsz in Carpathian Ruthania, Kingdom of Hungary (now Berehove in Ukraine), both of whom worked as dry goods merchants. Shortly after Milton's birth, the family relocated to Rahway, New Jersey. In his early teens, Friedman was injured in a car accident, which scarred his upper lip.[17] A talented student, Friedman graduated from Rahway High School in 1928, just before his 16th birthday.[18][19]

In 1932 Friedman graduated from Rutgers University, where he specialized in Mathematics and Economics and initially intended to become an actuary. During his time at Rutgers, Friedman became influenced by two economics professors, Arthur F. Burns and Homer Jones, who convinced him that modern economics could help end the Great Depression.

After graduating from Rutgers, Friedman was offered two scholarships to do graduate work '-- one in mathematics at Brown University and the other in economics at the University of Chicago.[20] Friedman chose the latter, thus earning a Master of Arts degree in 1933. He was strongly influenced by Jacob Viner, Frank Knight, and Henry Simons. It was at Chicago that Friedman met his future wife, economist Rose Director. During the 1933''1934 academic year he had a fellowship at Columbia University, where he studied statistics with renowned statistician and economist Harold Hotelling. He was back in Chicago for the 1934''1935 academic year, working as a research assistant for Henry Schultz, who was then working on Theory and Measurement of Demand. That year, Friedman formed what would prove to be lifelong friendships with George Stigler and W. Allen Wallis.[21]

Public service[edit]Friedman was initially unable to find academic employment, so in 1935 he followed his friend W. Allen Wallis to Washington, where Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal was "a lifesaver" for many young economists.[22] At this stage, Friedman said that he and his wife "regarded the job-creation programs such as the WPA, CCC, and PWA appropriate responses to the critical situation," but not "the price- and wage-fixing measures of the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration."[23] Foreshadowing his later ideas, he believed price controls interfered with an essential signaling mechanism to help resources be used where they were most valued. Indeed, Friedman later concluded that all government intervention associated with the New Deal was "the wrong cure for the wrong disease," arguing that the money supply should simply have been expanded, instead of contracted.[24]

In the publication, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867''1960 by Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz, they argue that the Great Depression was caused by monetary contraction, which was the consequence of poor policymaking by the Federal Reserve System and the continuous crises of the banking system.[25]

During 1935, he began work for the National Resources Committee, which was then working on a large consumer budget survey. Ideas from this project later became a part of his Theory of the Consumption Function. Friedman began employment with the National Bureau of Economic Research during autumn 1937 to assist Simon Kuznets in his work on professional income. This work resulted in their jointly authored publication Incomes from Independent Professional Practice, which introduced the concepts of permanent and transitory income, a major component of the Permanent Income Hypothesis that Friedman worked out in greater detail in the 1950s. The book hypothesizes that professional licensing artificially restricts the supply of services and raises prices.

During 1940, Friedman was appointed an assistant professor teaching Economics at the University of Wisconsin''Madison, but encountered antisemitism in the Economics department and decided to return to government service.[26][27] From 1941 to 1943 Friedman worked on wartime tax policy for the Federal Government, as an advisor to senior officials of the United States Department of the Treasury. As a Treasury spokesman during 1942 he advocated a Keynesian policy of taxation. He helped to invent the payroll withholding tax system, since the federal government badly needed money in order to fight the war.[28] He later said, "I have no apologies for it, but I really wish we hadn't found it necessary and I wish there were some way of abolishing withholding now."[29]

Academic career[edit]Early years[edit]In 1940, Friedman accepted a position at the University of Wisconsin''Madison, but left because of differences with faculty regarding United States involvement in World War II. Friedman believed the United States should enter the war.[30] In 1943, Friedman joined the Division of War Research at Columbia University (headed by W. Allen Wallis and Harold Hotelling), where he spent the rest of World War II working as a mathematical statistician, focusing on problems of weapons design, military tactics, and metallurgical experiments.[30][31]

In 1945, Friedman submitted Incomes from Independent Professional Practice (co-authored with Kuznets and completed during 1940) to Columbia as his doctoral dissertation. The university awarded him a PhD in 1946. Friedman spent the 1945''1946 academic year teaching at the University of Minnesota (where his friend George Stigler was employed). On February 12, 1945, his son, David D. Friedman was born.

University of Chicago[edit]In 1946, Friedman accepted an offer to teach economic theory at the University of Chicago (a position opened by departure of his former professor Jacob Viner to Princeton University). Friedman would work for the University of Chicago for the next 30 years. There he contributed to the establishment of an intellectual community that produced a number of Nobel Prize winners, known collectively as the Chicago school of economics.

At that time, Arthur F. Burns, who was then the head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, asked Friedman to rejoin the Bureau's staff. He accepted the invitation, and assumed responsibility for the Bureau's inquiry into the role of money in the business cycle. As a result, he initiated the "Workshop in Money and Banking" (the "Chicago Workshop"), which promoted a revival of monetary studies. During the latter half of the 1940s, Friedman began a collaboration with Anna Schwartz, an economic historian at the Bureau, that would ultimately result in the 1963 publication of a book co-authored by Friedman and Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867''1960.

Friedman spent the 1954''1955 academic year as a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. At the time, the Cambridge economics faculty was divided into a Keynesian majority (including Joan Robinson and Richard Kahn) and an anti-Keynesian minority (headed by Dennis Robertson). Friedman speculated that he was invited to the fellowship, because his views were unacceptable to both of the Cambridge factions. Later his weekly columns for Newsweek magazine (1966''84) were well read and increasingly influential among political and business people.[32] From 1968 to 1978, he and Paul Samuelson participated in the Economics Cassette Series, a biweekly subscription series where the economist would discuss the days' issues for about a half-hour at a time.[33][34]

Friedman was an economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater during 1964.

Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences[edit]Friedman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, the sole recipient for 1976, "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy."[1]

Retirement[edit]In 1977, at the age of 65, Friedman retired from the University of Chicago after teaching there for 30 years. He and his wife moved to San Francisco where he became a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. From 1977 on, he was affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. During the same year, Friedman was approached by the Free To Choose Network and asked to create a television program presenting his economic and social philosophy.

The Friedmans worked on this project for the next three years, and during 1980, the ten-part series, titled Free to Choose, was broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The companion book to the series (co-authored by Milton and his wife, Rose Friedman), also titled Free To Choose, was the bestselling nonfiction book of 1980 and has since been translated into 14 foreign languages.

Friedman served as an unofficial adviser to Ronald Reagan during his 1980 presidential campaign, and then served on the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board for the rest of the Reagan Administration. In 1988 he received the National Medal of Science and Reagan honored him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Milton Friedman is known now as one of the most influential economists of the 20th century.[35][36] Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Friedman continued to write editorials and appear on television. He made several visits to Eastern Europe and to China, where he also advised governments. He was also for many years a Trustee of the Philadelphia Society.[37][38][39]

Scholarly contributions[edit]Economics[edit]Friedman was best known for reviving interest in the money supply as a determinant of the nominal value of output, that is, the quantity theory of money. Monetarism is the set of views associated with modern quantity theory. Its origins can be traced back to the 16th-century School of Salamanca or even further; however, Friedman's contribution is largely responsible for its modern popularization. He co-authored, with Anna Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867''1960 (1963), which was an examination of the role of the money supply and economic activity in the U.S. history. A striking conclusion of their research was regarding the way in which money supply fluctuations are contributing to economic fluctuations. Several regression studies with David Meiselman during the 1960s suggested the primacy of the money supply over investment and government spending in determining consumption and output. These challenged a prevailing but largely untested view on their relative importance. Friedman's empirical research and some theory supported the conclusion that the short-run effect of a change of the money supply was primarily on output but that the longer-run effect was primarily on the price level.

Friedman was the main proponent of the monetarist school of economics. He maintained that there is a close and stable association between inflation and the money supply, mainly that inflation could be avoided with proper regulation of the monetary base's growth rate. He famously used the analogy of "dropping money out of a helicopter.",[40] in order to avoid dealing with money injection mechanisms and other factors that would overcomplicate his models.

Friedman's arguments were designed to counter the popular concept of Cost-push inflation, that the increased General Price Level at the time was the result of increases in the price of oil, or increases in wages; as he wrote,

Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.

'--Milton Friedman, 1963.[41]Friedman rejected the use of fiscal policy as a tool of demand management; and he held that the government's role in the guidance of the economy should be restricted severely. Friedman wrote extensively on the Great Depression, which he termed the Great Contraction, arguing that it had been caused by an ordinary financial shock whose duration and seriousness were greatly increased by the subsequent contraction of the money supply caused by the misguided policies of the directors of the Federal Reserve.

The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933 ... Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government.

'--Milton Friedman, Two Lucky People, 233[42]Friedman also argued for the cessation of government intervention in currency markets, thereby spawning an enormous literature on the subject, as well as promoting the practice of freely floating exchange rates. His close friend George Stigler explained, "As is customary in science, he did not win a full victory, in part because research was directed along different lines by the theory of rational expectations, a newer approach developed by Robert Lucas, also at the University of Chicago."[43]

Friedman was also known for his work on the consumption function, the permanent income hypothesis (1957), which Friedman himself referred to as his best scientific work.[44] This work contended that rational consumers would spend a proportional amount of what they perceived to be their permanent income. Windfall gains would mostly be saved. Tax reductions likewise, as rational consumers would predict that taxes would have to increase later to balance public finances. Other important contributions include his critique of the Phillips curve and the concept of the natural rate of unemployment (1968). This critique associated his name, together with that of Edmund Phelps, with the insight that a government that brings about greater inflation cannot permanently reduce unemployment by doing so. Unemployment may be temporarily lower, if the inflation is a surprise, but in the long run unemployment will be determined by the frictions and imperfections of the labor market.

Friedman's essay "The Methodology of Positive Economics" (1953) provided the epistemological pattern for his own subsequent research and to a degree that of the Chicago School. There he argued that economics as science should be free of value judgments for it to be objective. Moreover, a useful economic theory should be judged not by its descriptive realism but by its simplicity and fruitfulness as an engine of prediction. That is, students should measure the accuracy of its predictions, rather than the 'soundness of its assumptions'. His argument was part of an ongoing debate among such statisticians as Jerzy Neyman, Leonard Savage, and Ronald Fisher.[45]

Statistics[edit]One of his most famous contributions to statistics is sequential sampling. Friedman did statistical work at the Division of War Research at Columbia. He and his colleagues came up with a sampling technique, known as sequential sampling, which became, in the words of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, "the standard analysis of quality control inspection". The dictionary adds, "Like many of Friedman's contributions, in retrospect it seems remarkably simple and obvious to apply basic economic ideas to quality control; that however is a measure of his genius."[46]

Public policy positions[edit]Federal Reserve[edit]Friedman believed that the Federal Reserve should be abolished[47] but if the money supply was to be centrally controlled (as by the Federal Reserve System) that the preferable way to do it would be with a mechanical system that would keep the quantity of money increasing at a steady rate. However, instead of government involvement at all, he was open to a real, non-government, gold standard where money is produced by the private market: "A real gold standard is thoroughly consistent with [classical] liberal principles and I, for one, am entirely in favor of measures promoting its development." He did however add this caveat, "Let me emphasize that this note is not a plea for a return to a gold standard ... I regard a return to a gold standard as neither desirable nor feasible '-- with the one exception that it might become feasible if the doomsday predictions of hyperinflation under our present system should prove correct."[48] He said the reason that it was not feasible was because "there is essentially no government in the world that is willing to surrender control over its domestic monetary policy." However, it could be done if "you could re-establish a world in which government's budget accounted for 10 percent of the national income, in which laissez-faire reigned, in which governments did not interfere with economic activities and in which full employment policies had been relegated to the dustbin ..."[48]

Friedman was considered sympathetic to free banking.[49]

He was critical of the Federal Reserve's influence on the economics profession. In a 1993 letter to University of Texas economics professor and former House Banking Committee investigator Robert Auerbach, Friedman wrote:

I cannot disagree with you that having something like 500 economists is extremely unhealthy. As you say, it is not conducive to independent, objective research. You and I know there has been censorship of the material published. Equally important, the location of the economists in the Federal Reserve has had a significant influence on the kind of research they do, biasing that research toward noncontroversial technical papers on method as opposed to substantive papers on policy and results.[50]

School choice[edit]In his 1955 article "The Role of Government in Education" Friedman proposed supplementing publicly operated schools with privately run but publicly funded schools through a system of school vouchers.[51] Reforms similar to those proposed in the article were implemented in, for example, Chile in 1981 and Sweden in 1992.[52] In 1996, Friedman, together with his wife, founded The Foundation for Educational Choice to advocate school choice and vouchers.

Conscription[edit]Milton Friedman was a major proponent of a volunteer military, stating that the draft was "inconsistent with a free society."[53][54] In Capitalism and Freedom, he argued that conscription is inequitable and arbitrary, preventing young men from shaping their lives as they see fit.[55] During the Nixon administration he headed the committee to research a conversion to paid/volunteer armed force. He would later state that his role in eliminating the conscription in the United States was his proudest accomplishment.[9] Friedman did, however, believe a nation could compel military training as a reserve in case of war time.[55]

Foreign policy[edit]Biographer Lanny Ebenstein noted a drift over time in Friedman's views from an interventionist to a more cautious foreign policy.[56] He supported US involvement in the Second World War and initially supported a hard line against Communism, but moderated over time.[56] He opposed the Gulf War and the Iraq War.[56] In a spring 2006 interview, Friedman said that the USA's stature in the world had been eroded by the Iraq War, but that it might be improved if Iraq were to become a peaceful independent country.[57]

Libertarianism and the Republican Party[edit]He served as a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board starting at 1981. In 1988, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science. He said that he was a libertarian philosophically, but a member of the U.S. Republican Party for the sake of "expediency" ("I am a libertarian with a small 'l' and a Republican with a capital 'R.' And I am a Republican with a capital 'R' on grounds of expediency, not on principle.") But, he said, "I think the term classical liberal is also equally applicable. I don't really care very much what I'm called. I'm much more interested in having people thinking about the ideas, rather than the person."[58]

Public goods and monopoly[edit]Friedman was supportive of the state provision of some public goods that private businesses are not considered as being able to provide. However, he argued that many of the services performed by government could be performed better by the private sector. Above all, if some public goods are provided by the state, he believed that they should not be a legal monopoly where private competition is prohibited; for example, he wrote:

There is no way to justify our present public monopoly of the post office. It may be argued that the carrying of mail is a technical monopoly and that a government monopoly is the least of evils. Along these lines, one could perhaps justify a government post office, but not the present law, which makes it illegal for anybody else to carry the mail. If the delivery of mail is a technical monopoly, no one else will be able to succeed in competition with the government. If it is not, there is no reason why the government should be engaged in it. The only way to find out is to leave other people free to enter.

Social security, welfare programs, and negative income tax[edit]After 1960 Friedman attacked Social Security from a free market view stating that it had created welfare dependency.[59]

Friedman proposed the replacement of the existing U.S. welfare system with a negative income tax, a progressive tax system in which the poor receive a basic living income from the government.[60] According to the New York Times, Friedman's views in this regard were grounded in a belief that while "market forces ... accomplish wonderful things", they "cannot ensure a distribution of income that enables all citizens to meet basic economic needs".[60]

Drug policy[edit]Friedman also supported libertarian policies such as legalization of drugs and prostitution. During 2005, Friedman and more than 500 other economists advocated discussions regarding the economic benefits of the legalization of marijuana.[61]

LGBT rights[edit]Friedman was also a supporter of gay rights.[62][63] He specifically supported same-sex marriage, saying on the issue, "I do not believe there should be any discrimination against gays."[63]

Economic freedom[edit]Michael Walker of the Fraser Institute and Friedman hosted a series of conferences from 1986 to 1994. The goal was to create a clear definition of economic freedom and a method for measuring it. Eventually this resulted in the first report on worldwide economic freedom, Economic Freedom in the World[1]. This annual report has since provided data for numerous peer-reviewed studies and has influenced policy in several nations.

Along with sixteen other distinguished economists he opposed the Copyright Term Extension Act and filed an amicus brief in Eldred v. Ashcroft.[64] He supported the inclusion of the word "no-brainer" in the brief.[65]

Friedman argued for stronger basic legal (constitutional) protection of economic rights and freedoms in order to further promote industrial-commercial growth and prosperity and buttress democracy and freedom and the rule of law generally in society.[66]

Honors, recognition, and influence[edit]George H. Nash, a leading historian of American conservatism, says that by, "the end of the 1960s he was probably the most highly regarded and influential conservative scholar in the country, and one of the few with an international reputation."[67] Friedman allowed the libertarian Cato Institute to use his name for its biannual Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty beginning in 2001. A Friedman Prize was given to the late British economist Peter Bauer in 2002, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto in 2004, Mart Laar, former Estonian Prime Minister in 2006 and a young Venezuelan student Yon Goicoechea in 2008. His wife Rose, sister of Aaron Director, with whom he initiated the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, served on the international selection committee.[68][69] Friedman was also a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Upon the death of Friedman, Harvard President Lawrence Summers called Friedman "The Great Liberator" saying "... any honest Democrat will admit that we are now all Friedmanites." He said Friedman's great popular contribution was "in convincing people of the importance of allowing free markets to operate."[70]

In 2013 Stephen Moore, a member of the editorial forward of the Wall Street Journal said, "Quoting the most-revered champion of free-market economics since Adam Smith has become a little like quoting the Bible." He adds, "There are sometimes multiple and conflicting interpretations."[71]

Hong Kong[edit]Friedman once said, "If you want to see capitalism in action, go to Hong Kong."[72] He wrote in 1990 that the Hong Kong economy was perhaps the best example of a free market economy.[73]

One month before his death, he wrote the article "Hong Kong Wrong '' What would Cowperthwaite say?" in the Wall Street Journal, criticizing Donald Tsang, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, for abandoning "positive noninterventionism."[74] Tsang later said he was merely changing the slogan to "big market, small government," where small government is defined as less than 20% of GDP. In a debate between Tsang and his rival, Alan Leong, before the 2007 Chief Executive election, Leong introduced the topic and jokingly accused Tsang of angering Friedman to death.

Chile[edit]During 1975, two years after the military coup that brought military dictator President Augusto Pinochet to power and ended the government of Salvador Allende, the economy of Chile experienced a severe crisis. Friedman and Arnold Harberger accepted an invitation of a private Chilean foundation to visit Chile and speak on principles of economic freedom.[75] He spent seven days in Chile giving a series of lectures at the Universidad Cat"lica de Chile. and the (National) University of Chile. One of the lectures was entitled "The Fragility of Freedom" and according to Friedman, "dealt with precisely the threat to freedom from a centralized military government."[76]

During his visit Friedman met with Pinochet, who asked him for his "... opinions about Chile's economic situation and policies".[citation needed]

In an April 21, 1975, letter to Pinochet that Friedman wrote to comply with Pinochet's request, Friedman considered the "key economic problems of Chile are clearly ... inflation and the promotion of a healthy social market economy".[77] He stated that "There is only one way to end inflation: by drastically reducing the rate of increase of the quantity of money ..." and that "... cutting government spending is by far and away the most desirable way to reduce the fiscal deficit, because it ... strengthens the private sector thereby laying the foundations for healthy economic growth".[77] As to how rapidly inflation should be ended, Friedman felt that "for Chile where inflation is raging at 10-20% a month ... gradualism is not feasible. It would involve so painful an operation over so long a period that the patient would not survive." Choosing "a brief period of higher unemployment..." was the lesser evil.. and that "the experience of Germany, ... of Brazil ..., of the post-war adjustment in the U.S. ... all argue for shock treatment". In the letter Friedman recommended to deliver what the shock approach with "... a package to eliminate the surprise and to relieve acute distress" and "... for definiteness let me sketch the contents of a package proposal ... to be taken as illustrative" although his knowledge of Chile was "too limited to enable [him] to be precise or comprehensive". He listed a "sample proposal" of 8 monetary and fiscal measures including "the removal of as many as obstacles as possible that now hinder the private market. For example, suspend ... the present law against discharging employees". He closed, stating "Such a shock program could end inflation in months". His letter suggested that cutting spending to reduce the fiscal deficit would result in less transitional unemployment than raising taxes.

Sergio de Castro, a Chilean Chicago School graduate, became the nation's Minister of Finance in 1975. During his six-year tenure, foreign investment increased, restrictions were placed on striking and labor unions, and GDP rose yearly.[78] A foreign exchange program was created between the Catholic University of Chile and the University of Chicago. Many other Chicago School alumni were appointed government posts during and after the Pinochet years; others taught its economic doctrine at Chilean universities. They became known as the Chicago Boys.[79]

Friedman did not criticize Pinochet's dictatorship at the time, nor the assassinations, illegal imprisonments, torture, or other atrocities that were well known by then.[80] In 1976 Friedman defended his unofficial adviser position with: "I do not consider it as evil for an economist to render technical economic advice to the Chilean Government, any more than I would regard it as evil for a physician to give technical medical advice to the Chilean Government to help end a medical plague."[81]

Friedman defended his activity in Chile on the grounds that, in his opinion, the adoption of free market policies not only improved the economic situation of Chile but also contributed to the amelioration of Pinochet's rule and to the eventual transition to a democratic government during 1990. That idea is included in Capitalism and Freedom, in which he declared that economic freedom is not only desirable in itself but is also a necessary condition for political freedom. In his 1980 documentary Free to Choose, he said the following: "Chile is not a politically free system, and I do not condone the system. But the people there are freer than the people in Communist societies because government plays a smaller role. ... The conditions of the people in the past few years has been getting better and not worse. They would be still better to get rid of the junta and to be able to have a free democratic system."[82][83] In 1984, Friedman stated that he has "never refrained from criticizing the political system in Chile."[76] In 1991 he said: "I have nothing good to say about the political regime that Pinochet imposed. It was a terrible political regime. The real miracle of Chile is not how well it has done economically; the real miracle of Chile is that a military junta was willing to go against its principles and support a free market regime designed by principled believers in a free market. [...] In Chile, the drive for political freedom, that was generated by economic freedom and the resulting economic success, ultimately resulted in a referendum that introduced political democracy. Now, at long last, Chile has all three things: political freedom, human freedom and economic freedom. Chile will continue to be an interesting experiment to watch to see whether it can keep all three or whether, now that it has political freedom,that political freedom will tend to be used to destroy or reduce economic freedom."[84] He stressed that the lectures he gave in Chile were the same lectures he later gave in China and other socialist states.[85]

During the 2000 PBS documentary The Commanding Heights (based on the book), Friedman continued to argue that "free markets would undermine [Pinochet's] political centralization and political control.",[86][87] and that criticism over his role in Chile missed his main contention that freer markets resulted in freer people, and that Chile's unfree economy had caused the military government. Friedman suggested that the economic liberalization he advocated caused the end of military rule and a free Chile.[88]

Iceland[edit]Friedman visited Iceland during the autumn of 1984, met with important Icelanders and gave a lecture at the University of Iceland on the "tyranny of the status quo." He participated in a lively television debate on August 31, 1984 with socialist intellectuals, including 'lafur Ragnar Gr­msson, who later became the president of Iceland.[89] When they complained that a fee was charged for attending his lecture at the University and that, hitherto, lectures by visiting scholars had been free-of-charge, Friedman replied that previous lectures had not been free-of-charge in a meaningful sense: lectures always have related costs. What mattered was whether attendees or non-attendees covered those costs. Friedman thought that it was fairer that only those who attended paid. In this discussion Friedman also stated that he did not receive any money for delivering that lecture.

Estonia[edit]Although Friedman never visited Estonia, his book Free to Choose exercised a great influence on that nation's then 32-year-old prime minister, Mart Laar, who has claimed that it was the only book on economics he had read before taking office. Laar's reforms are often credited with responsibility for transforming Estonia from an impoverished Soviet Republic to the "Baltic Tiger." A prime element of Laar's program was introduction of the flat tax. Laar won the 2006 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, awarded by the Cato Institute.[90]

United Kingdom[edit]After 1950 Friedman was frequently invited to lecture in Britain, and by the 1970s his ideas had gained widespread attention in conservative circles. For example he was a regular speaker at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a libertarian think tank. Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher closely followed IEA programs and ideas, and met Friedman there in 1978. He also strongly influenced Keith Joseph, who became Thatcher's senior advisor on economic affairs, as well as Alan Walters and Patrick Minford, two other key advisers. Major newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph,The Times, and The Financial Times all promulgated Friedman's monetarist ideas to British decision-makers. Friedman's ideas strongly influenced Thatcher and her allies when she became Prime Minister in 1979.[91][92]

Criticism[edit]Econometrician David Hendry criticized part of Friedman's and Anna Schwartz's 1982 Monetary Trends.[93] When asked about it during an interview with Icelandic TV in 1984, Friedman said that the critique applied to a different problem than that which he and Schwartz had tackled, and was thus not relevant,[94] and also pointed to the (as of 1984) lack of consequential peer review amongst econometricians on Hendry's work.[95] In 2006, Hendry stated that Friedman was guilty of "serious errors" of misunderstanding that meant "the t-ratios he reported for UK money demand were overstated by nearly 100 per cent", and said that, in a paper published in 1991 with Neil Ericsson,[96] he had refuted "almost every empirical claim ['...] made about UK money demand" by Friedman and Schwartz.[97] A 2004 paper updated and confirmed the validity of the Hendry''Ericsson findings through 2000.[98]

After Friedman's death in 2006, KeynesianNobel laureatePaul Krugman praised Friedman as a "great economist and a great man," and acknowledged his many, widely accepted contributions to empirical economics. Nonetheless, Krugman criticized Friedman, writing that "he slipped all too easily into claiming both that markets always work and that only markets work. It's extremely hard to find cases in which Friedman acknowledged the possibility that markets could go wrong, or that government intervention could serve a useful purpose."[99]

In her book The Shock Doctrine, author and social activist Naomi Klein criticized Friedman's economic liberalism, identifying it with the principles that guided the economic restructuring that followed the military coups in countries such as Chile and Indonesia. Based on their assessments of the extent to which what she calls "neoliberal policies" contributed to income disparities and inequality, both Klein and Noam Chomsky have suggested that the primary role of what they call "neoliberalism" was as an ideological cover for capital accumulation by multinational corporations.[100]

Chilean economist Orlando Letelier asserted that Pinochet's dictatorship resorted to oppression because of popular opposition to Chicago School policies in Chile.[101] After a 1991 speech on drug legalisation, Friedman answered a question on his involvement with the Pinochet regime, saying that he was never an advisor to Pinochet (also mentioned in his 1984 Iceland interview[76]), but that a group of his students at the University of Chicago were involved in Chile's economic reforms. Friedman credited these reforms with high levels of economic growth and with the establishment of democracy that has subsequently occurred in Chile.[102][103]

Personal life[edit]According to a 2007 article in Commentary magazine, his "parents were moderately observant [Jews], but Friedman, after an intense burst of childhood piety, rejected religion altogether."[104] He described himself as an agnostic.[105]

Friedman wrote extensively of his life and experiences, especially in 1998 in his memoirs with his wife Rose, titled Two Lucky People. He died of heart failure at the age of 94 years in San Francisco on November 16, 2006.[106] He was survived by his wife (who died on August 18, 2009) and their two children, David, who is an anarcho-capitalist economist, and Janet. David's son, Patri Friedman, was the executive director of the The Seasteading Institute from 2008''2011.[107]

Selected bibliography[edit]A Theory of the Consumption Function (1957)A Program for Monetary Stability (Fordham University Press, 1960) 110 pp. online versionCapitalism and Freedom (1962), highly influential series of essays that established Friedman's position on major issues of public policy excerptsA Monetary History of the United States, 1867''1960, with Anna J. Schwartz, 1963; part 3 reprinted as The Great Contraction"The Role of Monetary Policy." American Economic Review, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar., 1968), pp. 1''17 JSTOR presidential address to American Economics Association"Inflation and Unemployment: Nobel lecture", 1977, Journal of Political Economy. Vol. 85, pp. 451''72. JSTORFree to Choose: A personal statement, with Rose Friedman, (1980), highly influential restatement of policy viewsThe Essence of Friedman, essays edited by Kurt R. Leube, (1987) (ISBN 0-8179-8662-6)Two Lucky People: Memoirs (with Rose Friedman) ISBN 0-226-26414-9 (1998) excerpt and text searchMilton Friedman on Economics: Selected Papers by Milton Friedman, edited by Gary S. Becker (2008)See also[edit]^ ab"Milton Friedman on nobelprize.org". Nobel Prize. 1976. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^Davis, William L, Bob Figgins, David Hedengren, and Daniel B. Klein. "Economic Professors' Favorite Economic Thinkers, Journals, and Blogs", Econ Journal Watch 8(2): 126''146, May 2011.^"Milton Friedman, a giant among economists". The Economist. November 23, 2006. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^"Milton Friedman". Commanding Heights. PBS. October 1, 2000. Retrieved September 19, 2011. ^Milton Friedman'--Economist as Public Intellectual^Mark Skousen (2009-02-28). The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers. M.E. Sharpe. p. 407. ISBN 0-7656-2227-0. ^Among macroeconomists, the "natural" rate has been increasingly replaced by James Tobin's NAIRU, the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment, which is seen as having fewer normative connotations.^Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman stated that, "In 1968 in one of the decisive intellectual achievements of postwar economics, Friedman not only showed why the apparent tradeoff embodied in the idea of the Phillips curve was wrong; he also predicted the emergence of combined inflation and high unemployment ... dubbed 'stagflation.'' Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectations (1995) p 43 online^ abDoherty, Brian (June 1, 1995). "Best of Both Worlds". Reason Magazine. Retrieved October 24, 2009 ^Milton Friedman (1912''2006)^Bullock, Penn (November 17, 2009). "Bernanke's Philosopher". Reason Magazine. Retrieved February 4, 2010 ^"Capitalism and Friedman" (editorial), The Wall Street Journal November 17, 2006^Vclav Klaus (January 29, 2007). "Remarks at Milton Friedman Memorial Service". Retrieved August 22, 2008. ^Johan Norberg, Defaming Milton Friedman: Naomi Klein's disastrous yet popular polemic against the great free market economist, Reason Magazine, Washington, D.C., Oct. 2008^Friedman 1999, p. 506^"Who's who in American Jewry". 1980. ^Alan O. Ebenstein, Milton Friedman: a biography (2007) p. 10.^Eamonn Butler, Milton Friedman (2011) ch 1^Alan O. Ebenstein, Milton Friedman: a biography (2007) pp. 5''12^"Milton Friedman and his start in economics". Young America's Foundation. August 2006. Retrieved March 12, 2012. ^Ebenstein, Milton Friedman: a biography (2007) pp. 13''30^Feeney, Mark (November 16, 2006). "Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman dies at 94". The Boston Globe. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^Friedman 1999, p. 59^"Right from the Start? What Milton Friedman can teach progressives." (PDF). J. Bradford DeLong. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^Bernanke 2004, p. 7^Friedman 1999, p. 42^Friedman 1999, pp. 84''85^Milton Friedman; Rose D. Friedman (1999). Two Lucky People: Memoirs. University of Chicago Press. pp. 122''23. ISBN 9780226264158. ^Doherty, Brian (June 1995). "Best of Both Worlds". Reason. Retrieved July 28, 2010. ^ ab"Milton Friedman Biography - Academy of Achievement". Achievement.org. Retrieved 2014-04-22. ^Philip Mirowski (2002). Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science. Cambridge University Press. pp. 202''3. ISBN 9780521775267. ^CATO, "Letter from Washington," National Review, September 19, 1980, Vol. 32 Issue 19, p. 1119^Rose and Milton Friedman^Inventory of the Paul A. Samuelson Papers, 1933''2010 and undated | Finding Aids | Rubenstein Library^"Milton Friedman: An enduring legacy". The Economist. November 17, 2006. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^Sullivan, Patricia (November 17, 2006). "Economist Touted Laissez-Faire Policy". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^Milton Friedman '' Biography | Cato Institute^Trustees^Milton Friedman^Optimum Quantity of Money. Aldine Publishing Company. 1969. p. 4. ^Friedman, Milton. Inflation: Causes and Consequences. New York: Asia Publishing House.^"Milton Friedman: END THE FED". Themoneymasters.com. Retrieved 2014-04-22. ^Friedman, Milton (1969). Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist. Aldine Publishing Company. p. 4. ^"Charlie Rose Show". December 26, 2005.^David Teira, "Milton Friedman, the Statistical Methodologist," History of Political Economy (2007) 39#3 pp. 511''527,^The Life and Times of Milton Friedman '' Remembering the 20th century's most influential libertarian^"My first preference would be to abolish the Federal Reserve" on YouTube^ abEbeling, Richard. "Monetary Central Planning and the State, Part 27: Milton Friedman's Second Thoughts on the Costs of Paper Money". Retrieved 6 October 2014. ^http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2008/5/cj28n2-12.pdf^Grim, Ryan (September 7, 2009) Priceless: How The Federal Reserve Bought The Economics Profession, Huffington Post^Leonard Ross and Richard Zeckhauser (December 1970). "Review: Education Vouchers". The Yale Law Journal80 (2): 451''461. doi:10.2307/795126. JSTOR 795126. ^Martin Carnoy (August 1998). "National Voucher Plans in Chile and Sweden: Did Privatization Reforms Make for Better Education?". Comparative Education Review42 (3): 309''337. doi:10.1086/447510. JSTOR 1189163. ^Milton Friedman (1991). The War on Drugs. America's Drug Forum. ^Rostker, Bernard (2006). I Want You!: The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force. Rand Corporation. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-8330-3895-1. ^ abFriedman, Milton (November 15, 2002). Capitalism and Freedom. University Of Chicago Press. p. 36. ^ abcEbenstein, Lanny (2007). Milton Friedman: a biography. New York: St. Martin's Press. pp. 231''232. ISBN 978-0-230-60409-4. ^Ebenstein, Lanny (2007). Milton Friedman: a biography. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 243. ISBN 978-0-230-60409-4. ^"Friedman and Freedom". Queen's Journal. Archived from the original on August 11, 2006. Retrieved February 20, 2008. , Interview with Peter Jaworski. The Journal, Queen's University, March 15, 2002 '' Issue 37, Volume 129^Milton Friedman; Rose D. Friedman (1962). Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition. U. of Chicago Press. pp. 182''87. ISBN 9780226264189. ^ abFrank, Robert H (2006-11-23). "The Other Milton Friedman: A Conservative With a Social Welfare Program". New York Times (The New York Times). ^"An open letter". Prohibition Costs. Retrieved November 9, 2012. ^"Milton Friedman". Liberal Democratic Party (Australia). Retrieved February 19, 2013. ^ abAlan O. Ebenstein, Milton Friedman: A Biography (2007) pp. 228^"In the Supreme Court of the United States". Harvard Law School. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^Lessig, Lawrence (November 19, 2006). ""only if the word 'no-brainer' appears in it somewhere": RIP Milton Friedman (Lessig Blog)". Lessig.org. Retrieved April 2, 2013. ^A New British Bill of Rights: The Case For, ISR Online Guide^Lanny Ebenstein (2007). Milton Friedman: A Biography. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 260. ^"Selection Committee Announced for the 2008 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty," Cato Institute, September 5, 2007. Accessed 4 January 2014.^Milton Friedman Prize page at Cato Institute website. Accessed 5 January 2014.^Summers, Larry (November 19, 2006). "The Great Liberator". The New York Times. ^Stephen Moore, What Would Milton Friedman Say?" Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2013 p. A13^Ingdahl, Waldemar (March 22, 2007). "Real Virtuality". The American. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^Friedman, Milton; Friedman, Rose (1990). Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. Harvest Books. p. 34. ISBN 0-15-633460-7. ^Friedman, Milton (October 6, 2006). "Dr. Milton Friedman". Opinion Journal. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^Letter from Arnold Harberger to Stig Ramel as reprinted in the Wall Street Journal 12/10/1976, and in Two Lucky People: Memoirs By Milton Friedman, Rose D. Friedman. Appendix A, pp. 598''599. Accessible at books.google.com^ abcMilton Friedman (August 31, 1984). Iceland Television Debate (Flash Video) (Television production). Reykjav­k: Icelandic State Television. Event occurs at 009:48:00. Retrieved June 27, 2010. ^ ab[http:// Two Lucky People: Memoirs By Milton Friedman, Rose D. Friedman. Appendix A, pp. 591''593. Letter from Friedman to Pinochet, April 21, 1975.]^Mask II, William Ray (May 2013). The Great Chilean Recovery: Assigning Responsibility For The Chilean Miracle(s) (Thesis). California State University, Fresno. ^"Chile and the "Chicago Boys"". The Hoover Institution. Stanford University. Retrieved 20 June 2014. ^O'Shaughnessy, Hugh (December 11, 2006). "General Augusto Pinochet". The Independent. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^Newsweek of June 14, 1976^"Free to Choose Vol. 5". Archived from the original on February 9, 2008. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^Frances Fox Piven vs. Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, debate, 1980, YouTube.^The Smith Center: Milton Friedman's lecture, "Economic Freedom, Human Freedom, Political Freedom", by Milton Friedman, delivered November 1, 1991.^Friedman 1999, pp. 600''601^"Interview with Jeffery Sachs on the "Miracle of Chile"". PBS. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^"Commanding Heights: Milton Friedman". PBS. Retrieved December 29, 2008. ^"Milton Friedman interview". PBS. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^Friedman, Milton; Gr­msson, 'lafur Ragnar. Milton Friedman on Icelandic State Television in 1984. ^"Mart Laar". Cato Institute. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^John F. Lyons (2013). America in the British Imagination: 1945 to the Present. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 102. ^Subroto Roy & John Clarke, eds., Margaret Thatcher's Revolution: How it Happened and What it Meant (Continuum 2005)^David F. Hendry; Neil R. Ericsson (October 1983). "Assertion without Empirical Basis: An Econometric Appraisal of 'Monetary Trends in ... the United Kingdom' by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz," in Monetary Trends in the United Kingdom, Bank of England Panel of Academic Consultants, Panel Paper No. 22, pp. 45''101.See also Federal Reserve International Finance Discussion Paper No. 270 (December 1985), which is a revised and shortened version of Hendry''Ericsson 1983.

^van Steven Moore, CMA (1984-08-31). "Milton Friedman - Iceland 2 of 8". YouTube. Retrieved 2014-04-22. ^J. Daniel Hammond (2005). Theory and Measurement: Causality Issues in Milton Friedman's Monetary Economics. Cambridge U.P. pp. 193''99. ^David F. Hendry; Neil R. Ericsson (July 1989). "An Econometric Analysis of UK Money Demand in Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom by Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz". International Finance Discussion Papers: 355. Federal Reserve. Retrieved 2 August 2013. ^Hendry, David F. (25 April 2013). "Friedman's t-ratios were overstated by nearly 100%". ft.com. Retrieved 1 May 2013. ^Escribano, Alvaro (2004). "Nonlinear error correction: The case of money demand in the United Kingdom (1878''2000)". Macroeconomic Dynamics8 (1): 76''116. doi:10.1017/S1365100503030013. Escribano's approach had already been recognized by Friedman, Schwartz, Hendry et al. (p. 14 of the pdf) as yielding significant improvements over previous money demand equations.^The New York Review of Books, Who Was Milton Friedman?, February 15, 2007^Noam Chomsky (1999). Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press. ^Orlando Letelier, "Economic Freedom's Awful Toll", The Nation, August 28, 1976.^The Drug War as a Socialist Enterprise, Milton Friedman, From: Friedman & Szasz on Liberty and Drugs, edited and with a Preface by Arnold S. Trebach and Kevin B. Zeese. Washington, D.C.: The Drug Policy Foundation, 1992.^YouTube clip: Milton Friedman '' Pinochet and Chile^Lanny Ebenstein, Milton Friedman, Commentary, May 2007, p. 286.^Asman, David (November 16, 2006). "'Your World' Interview With Economist Milton Friedman". Fox News. Retrieved August 2, 2011. ^Christie, Jim (November 16, 2006). "Free market economist Milton Friedman dead at 94". Reuters. Retrieved February 20, 2008. ^Doherty, Brian (July 1, 2009). "20,000 Nations Above the Sea; Is floating the last, best hope for liberty?". Reason Magazine. Retrieved October 24, 2009 References[edit]Bernanke, Ben (2004). Essays on the Great Depression. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-11820-5 Butler, Eamonn (2011). Milton Friedman. Harriman Economic Essentials. Ebenstein, Alan O. (2007). Milton Friedman: a biography. Friedman, Milton (1999). Two Lucky People: Memoirs. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-26415-7 Wood, John Cunningham, and Ronald N. Wood, ed. (1990), Milton Friedman: Critical Assessments, v. 3. Scroll to chapter-preview links. Routledge.Further reading[edit]External links[edit]Milton and Rose Friedman: An Uncommon Couple (Multiple Text, audio, video)Works by or about Milton Friedman in libraries (WorldCat catalog)The Milton Friedman papers at the Hoover Institution ArchivesSelected Bibliography for Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago LibraryProfile and Papers at Research Papers in Economics/RePEcMilton Friedman collected news and commentary at The New York TimesMilton Friedman at the Internet Movie DatabaseBecker Friedman Institute at the University of ChicagoThe Foundation for Educational ChoiceMilton Fridman at ScarlettInflation and Unemployment 1976 lecture at NobelPrize.orgNobel Prize acceptance speechMilton Friedman (1912''2006). The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Library of Economics and Liberty (2nd ed.) (Liberty Fund). 2008. Milton Friedman:Why Not a Volunteer Army?, New Individualist Review, Spring 1967The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits, Milton Friedman, The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970Interview with Milton Friedman, Dominic Streatfeild, May 25, 2000, source material for Cocaine: An Unauthorised BiographyMilton Friedman vs. The Fed Bailout by Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, July 17, 2009Four Deformations of the Apocalypse, David Stockman, The New York Times, July 31, 2010The Case for Free Trade by Milton and Rose FriedmanRoberts, Russ. "Milton Friedman Podcasts". EconTalk. Library of Economics and Liberty. Dr. Milton Friedman at Find a GraveVideosPersondataNameFriedman, MiltonAlternative namesShort descriptionAmerican economist, public intellectual, Nobel laureateDate of birth1912-07-31Place of birthBrooklyn, New York City, New York, United StatesDate of death2006-11-16Place of deathSan Francisco, California, United States

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When men and women do the same job, the wage gap is less than the widely report "77 cents on the dollar."Photo by Siri Stafford/Lifesize/Thinkstock

How many times have you heard that ''women are paid 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men''? Barack Obama said it during his last campaign. Women's groups say it every April 9, which is Equal Pay Day. In preparation for Labor Day, a group protesting outside Macy's this week repeated it, too, holding up signs and sending out press releases saying ''women make $.77 to every dollar men make on the job.'' I've heard the line enough times that I feel the need to set the record straight: It's not true.

Hanna Rosin is the founder of DoubleX and a writer for the Atlantic. She is also the author of The End of Men. Follow her on Twitter.

The official Bureau of Labor Department statistics show that the median earnings of full-time female workers is 77 percent of the median earnings of full-time male workers. But that is very different than ''77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.'' The latter gives the impression that a man and a woman standing next to each other doing the same job for the same number of hours get paid different salaries. That's not at all the case. ''Full time'' officially means 35 hours, but men work more hours than women. That's the first problem: We could be comparing men working 40 hours to women working 35.

How to get a more accurate measure? First, instead of comparing annual wages, start by comparing average weekly wages. This is considered a slightly more accurate measure because it eliminates variables like time off during the year or annual bonuses (and yes, men get higher bonuses, but let's shelve that for a moment in our quest for a pure wage gap number). By this measure, women earn 81 percent of what men earn, although it varies widely by race. African-American women, for example, earn 94 percent of what African-American men earn in a typical week. Then, when you restrict the comparison to men and women working 40 hours a week, the gap narrows to 87 percent.

But we're still not close to measuring women ''doing the same work as men.'' For that, we'd have to adjust for many other factors that go into determining salary. Economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn did that in a recent paper, ''The Gender Pay Gap.''.''They first accounted for education and experience. That didn't shift the gap very much, because women generally have at least as much and usually more education than men, and since the 1980s they have been gaining the experience. The fact that men are more likely to be in unions and have their salaries protected accounts for about 4 percent of the gap. The big differences are in occupation and industry. Women congregate in different professions than men do, and the largely male professions tend to be higher-paying. If you account for those differences, and then compare a woman and a man doing the same job, the pay gap narrows to 91 percent. So, you could accurately say in that Obama ad that, ''women get paid 91 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.''

The point here is not that there is no wage inequality. But by focusing our outrage into a tidy, misleading statistic we've missed the actual challenges. It would in fact be much simpler if the problem were rank sexism and all you had to do was enlighten the nation's bosses or throw the Equal Pay Act at them. But the 91 percent statistic suggests a much more complicated set of problems. Is it that women are choosing lower-paying professions or that our country values women's professions less? And why do women work fewer hours? Is this all discrimination or, as economist Claudia Goldin likes to say, also a result of ''rational choices'' women make about how they want to conduct their lives.

Goldin and Lawrence Katz have done about as close to an apples-to-apples comparison of men's and women's wages as exists. (They talk about it here in a Freakonomics discussion.) They tracked male and female MBAs graduating from the University of Chicago from 1990 to 2006. First they controlled for previous job experience, GPA, chosen profession, business-school course and job title. Right out of school, they found only a tiny differential in salary between men and women, which might be because of a little bit of lingering discrimination or because women are worse at negotiating starting salaries. But 10 to 15 years later, the gap widens to 40 percent, almost all of which is due to career interruptions and fewer hours. The gap is even wider for women business school graduates who marry very high earners. (Note: Never marry a rich man).

If this midcareer gap is due to discrimination, it's much deeper than ''male boss looks at female hire and decides she is worth less, and then pats her male colleague on the back and slips him a bonus.'' It's the deeper, more systemic discrimination of inadequate family-leave policies and childcare options, of women defaulting to being the caretakers. Or of women deciding that are suited to be nurses and teachers but not doctors. And in that more complicated discussion, you have to leave room at least for the option of choice'--that women just don't want to work the same way men do.

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Watch trailerIn this meticulously researched documentary, filmmaker Mark Hall traces the origins of sushi in Japan to its status today as a cuisine that has spawned a lucrative worldwide industry. This explosion in demand for sushi over the past 30 years has brought with it problems of its own, as fish stocks have steadily depleted, threatening the balance of the ocean's ecosystems.

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Monroe Trout, Jr. (born January 22, 1962) is a retired financialspeculator and hedge fund manager profiled in the book New Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager. Monroe Trout, Jr.'s expertise is in quantitative analysis, with pattern recognition backed by statistical analysis.[1] He subscribes to Ayn Rand'sObjectivism.[2] He has traded stocks, stock index futures, commodity futures, and options on all these, both for his own account and as an advisor for others.

Early years[edit]Monroe Trout, Jr. is the son of Monroe E. Trout, the former Chairman Emeritus of American Healthcare Systems.[3] In 1978 in his hometown of New Canaan, Connecticut at the age of 17, Trout got a summer job with a futures trader. Trout typed in newspaper data into his computer and got his start in markets trading.

He was captain of the Harvard basketball team and led his team to a third place finish in 1984's Ivy League.

He graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Economics. His senior honors thesis was on stock index futures titled ''Price movements in a Stock Index Futures Market''.

Monroe Trout began his career when he went to New York to work for Victor Niederhoffer's NCZ Commodities at New York's commodity pits. In his 20s during one stretch he turned a profit 69 out of 79 months and became something of a celebrity on the trading floor. He also worked as a floor trader on two more exchanges before starting his own firm, Trout Trading, in 1986. Later, he would move his family and the company to Bermuda.

In 1993 he helped fund Rand Financial Services named after Ayn Rand. He keeps a low profile. At age 40, he retired from active trading with a net worth reportedly in excess of USD 900 million.

He is featured in the book The New Market Wizards by Jack Schwager.

See also[edit]Elstrom, Peter J. W.|Crain's Chicago Business|May 24, 1993|Futures whiz Trout stays hot, despite trading snagReferences[edit]Magazines[edit]"CPO Trout buys FCM". Futures magazine. January 1993. Retrieved 2006-08-23.

Kharout, Jim (January 2003). "Monroe gives Rand's name to corporation" (PDF). Rand Financial Web. FOW magazine. Archived from the original on 2006-08-18. Retrieved 2006-08-26.

Further reading[edit]Schwager, Jack D. (1995). The New Market Wizards. 16 pages: Wiley; New Ed edition. ISBN 0-471-13236-5.

External links[edit]PersondataNameTrout, MonroeAlternative namesShort descriptionAmerican business investorDate of birth1962-01-22Place of birthDate of deathPlace of death

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Writer, Producer, Director | Terry Spencer Hesser in Chicago// Provide alternate content for browsers that do not support scripting // or for those that have scripting disabled. Alternate HTML content should be placed here. This content requires the Adobe Flash Player. Get Flash

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Love is a Verb | A documentary movieThe StoryLove Is A Verb is an examination of a social movement of Sufi inspired Sunni Muslims that began in Turkey in the l960s and now reaches across the globe. The group is called Hizmet, the Turkish word for service or The Gulen Movement after its inspiration, leader and beloved teacher Fethullah Gulen, a man that Time Magazine named as one of the most influential leaders in the world in 2013.

Through a co-operation with the people inspired by Gulen, we had an unprecedented access to the ideas and actions of the movement around the world. We met teachers who crawled through a tunnel to open a school in Sarajevo during the war and the students whose lives they changed. We met a Sufi conductor whose orchestra is composed of children whose parents were once at war. We got a glimpse of the interfaith work the movement provides in Turkey, including a visit to Rumi's exquisite shrine. We went to their schools in Turkey, in Somalia, in Iraq. We meet a Kurdish teacher in Iraq who credits everything she is to her former Turkish teachers who stayed during the bombings, and a Kurdish woman who had also gone to one of the Turkish schools in Iraq and is now working as an engineer to bring water to the dessert. Finally, in Somalia we follow two Turkish doctors putting their lives at risk in a place where other relief organizations have deemed too dangerous, a place where they sleep under armed guard.

Director's messageIn the decade after 9/11, I was vaguely aware that it was not a good time to be a Muslim in America; nor was it a good time to be an American in the Middle East. But for me '' like for most Americans ''this awareness morphed into specific and non-specific fears about Islam and the extreme interpretations of it. Then in 2010, I met a group of people from the Niagara Foundation who invited me on an interfaith trip to Turkey. I am not religious; but I am curious and jumped at the chance to see Turkey and to have an adventure with a culture that was foreign to me.

I also looked at the trip as an opportunity to discover new stories to film. I never dreamed that it would change my worldview. After the trip I decided that others' worldview had to be changed as well. After a lot of reading, several more trips and a lot of scouting and interviewing, we began our journey, which eventually had us filming in six countries. This film introduced us to the work of people whose motives I would have doubted had I not witnessed their selfless commitment and bravery with my own eyes. These members of the global Hizmet movement, a loosely-affiliated group of people inspired by the work of Fethullah Gulen are dedicated to addressing social cohesion through education, dialogue, and anti-poverty work. We met people who went into war zones to educate but also to mitigate the hatred and desire for revenge that lasts long after the last body is buried. And we met others who repeatedly went to some of the most dangerous places on earth to bring medical relief. I met a woman who answered one of my questions with, ''we have to love'' as a simple declarative statement and a philosophical imperative.

At first I wasn't sure what to make of these people and wondered why they would put so much on the line without complaint or question. I wondered whether it was a con that I couldn't see through because of our cultural differences. Much later I was granted an unprecedented interview with the man who inspired this movement. I was touched by Fethullah Gulen's genuineness (even to the point of a slight discomfort with me and our entire crew filming him) and surprised by his obvious shyness at being with a strange western woman. What you will see in our film is a tiny piece of what we saw and experienced. I may write a book about all of the things that didn't happen on camera, about the importance of dialogue both among and between groups. After three years of working together, the first person who took me to Turkey, Hakan Berberoglu has become my family. I am still in awe of his continual modesty and his calmness under very difficult circumstances. I am also in awe of the movement at large;

people whose customs and belief systems are so different from my own who have enriched my understanding of the world and proven that Love is a Verb.

Terry Spencer HesserWriter, Director & Producer

Love is a Verb

SCREENINGsOctober 12, Miami, FL

September 24, Atlanta, GA

August 29, Portland, OR

June 7, New York, NY

May 29, Toronto, ON

May 22, Los Angeles, CA

May 19, Washington, DC

May 15, Houston, TX

May 13, Chicago, IL

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:42

US Agency for International Development (USAID) wants members of the public to design new hazmat-suitsCurrent designs are too cumbersome for front line medical professionalsIssued crowdsourcing appeal with a $1 million prize for best design By James Nye for MailOnline

Published: 08:56 EST, 10 October 2014 | Updated: 18:40 EST, 10 October 2014

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The federal government has appealed to the public to help them invent new hazmat suits for doctors and soldiers fighting the Ebola epidemic in Africa and at home.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has sent out an appeal for internet crowdsourcing to design a radical new anti-contamination suit that will lower the risk of health workers becoming infected.

USAID wants applications submitted immediately and any successful design accepted will be awarded $1 million in funding. The USAID has set a deadline of two months on the whole process.

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Improvements: The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has sent out an appeal for internet crowdsourcing to design a radical new anti-contamination suit

The USAID has labeled their crowdsourcing scheme, 'Fighting Ebola: A Grand Challenge for Development' as it announced its requirements for their hazmat suits to deal better with tropical heat stress and the risk of contagion when de-suiting.

It did not offer any guidance on current hazmat standards, only requiring 'entirely novel' personal protection equipment.

In addition to suits for those working on the front line of patient protection, the agency issued a demand for suits to be used by airport staff, TSA staff and for those involved in burials.

Current ideas suggested to Sky News to overcome the heat stress of working in a hazmat suit are to equip them with cooling devices, stress detectors and thinner, stronger suits.

Precautions: Dr. Michael O­Connor , left, and Dr. Mark Nunnally, learn how to use personal protective gear during Ebola preparedness training at the University of Chicago

The suit that can save lives: British-made Ebola protection suits

The USAID is also looking for suits that provide face cooling shields and suits that are designed to be reusable.

Many of the personal protection suits are usable one-time only and when they are thrown away they increase the risk of accidental contamination.

This comes as the Illinois Attorney General's office said it is aware that members of the public are being sent email scams directly related to the Ebola crisis.

The emails promise to provide an Ebola 'surplus personal protection kit' costing $29 which will provide 'infection defense for emergency response teams,' says the bogus email.

'People being quarantined,' one subject line reads. 'Ebola outbreak pandemic update,' says another.

'We suspect these emails are the handiwork of scammers seeking to take advantage of people's understandable fear and anxiety surrounding this international public health risk,' Attorney General Lisa Madigan said in a statement.

Across the nation, American hospitals have increased Ebola training sessions as health workers are placed on high alert for potential cases of the deadly virus in the U.S.

At the University of Chicago Hospital on Monday, doctors practiced pulling on bulky white suits and helmets that make them look more like astronauts than doctors preparing to fight a deadly disease.

However training sessions on Ebola preparedness for U.S. medics and health workers heading to Africa can make the reality sink in - learning how to safely put on and take off the medical armor is crucial.

No suits: Volunteers in protective suit bury the body of a person who died from Ebola in Waterloo, some 30 kilometers southeast of Freetown, on October 7, 20114

'When you're in the real deal, remember to take your time,' biosafety expert John Bivona told doctors during a course this week in Chicago. Suits splashed with patients' vomit or blood must be removed carefully, he explained.

'As much as possible, grab from the inside' to avoid touching contaminated parts of the suits, he said. 'Be liberal with disinfectant.'

Across town, at Rush University Medical Center, doctors got a frightening test run this past weekend when a man coughing up blood said he had been in contact with someone from Nigeria, one of the countries in West Africa where Ebola spread.

ER staffers donned protective gear and immediately escorted him to a nearby isolation room, but tests showed he had bronchitis, not Ebola, said Dr. Dino Rumoro, Rush's emergency medicine chief.

Rumoro said he's worked through similar scary disease threats - AIDS, SARS, swine flu and smallpox after 9/11 - that were in some ways more worrisome because they can spread invisibly through the air. Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with blood, vomit and other body fluids, or contact with needles, syringes or other objects contaminated by the virus.

'At least with Ebola we have a fighting chance,' Rumoro said, 'because I know that it is coming from body fluid and I know if I wear my (protective) suit I'm safe and I know if I don't stick myself with a needle or cut myself with a scalpel I'm safe.'

'There's always going to be a little bit of fear in your head,' Rumoro said. 'But that's OK. That's what keeps us safe.'

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 04:25

Ivory Coast president Alassane Ouattara said on Friday his country will lift the controversial suspension of flights to countries stricken by the Ebola virus to show solidarity with the nations affected by the lethal outbreak.

He said the initial decision to suspend flights was prompted by uncertainty about the threat, which he called a terrible problem for the people of west Africa.

''When Ebola first broke out, people got panicked,'' he said. ''Obviously we rushed to make certain decisions. Now that everything is under control '' there is no case of Ebola in Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) '' I have decided that next week we will lift the suspension of flights and the maritime suspension.''

In addition, he said Ivory Coast has opened a ''humanitarian corridor'' so that people who want to enter Ivory Coast can be checked. The country has also contributed $1m to the international anti-Ebola effort.

Ouattara, who addressed the United Nations general assembly on Friday, said initial concerns were prompted by Ivory Coast's shared borders with two countries '' Guinea and Liberia '' hit by Ebola.

''I think we are the only country that has two Ebola countries to its borders and we have to really work on its prevention and we are very grateful to President Obama '' the centres for disease dontrol has sent two experts to work on this control,'' he said. ''We are trying to work on specific measures to contain and to prevent.''

In the first few days of the crisis, Ouattara said his first response was to send health and military personnel to the borders because of reports that infected people had entered Ivory Coast.

He then called his security council into a series of crisis meetings, but added health officials to the gatherings.

''We discussed specific measures, one by one, for several hours, then we sent a communique on television to explain to our people: yes, there is a problem, don't be scared, we're handling it, we have taken measures. You can count on the government not to hide a single case of Ebola. If there is a case of Ebola, we'll say that there is a case.''

He said he is following World Health Organization guidelines to prevent the spread of the disease. As a recommended precaution, he no longer shakes hands with people in Ivory Coast and also frequently washes his hands in public so that residents will see that practical steps can help reduce the threat.

International health officials had said flight suspensions and the closure of sea ports and borders were not needed.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 04:23

GuineaConakry, Coyah, Forecariah, Gueckedou, Kouroussa, Macenta, Siguiri, Pita, Nzerekore, Dubreka, Yomou, Kerouane, Kindia, Dalaba, Lola, BeylaNo longer active: Boffa, Dabola, Dinguiraya, Kissidougou, Telimele, BokeLiberiaGrand Kru, Maryland, Lofa, Montserrado, Margibi, Bomi, Bong, Grand Cape Mount, Nimba, Grand Bassa, RiverCess, River Gee, Sinoe, GbarpoluSierra LeoneKailahun, Kenema, Kono, Kambia, Bombali, Tonkolili, Port Loko, Pujehun, Bo, Moyamba, Bonthe, Western area

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Fri, 10 Oct 2014 12:05

Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly, center, commander of U.S. Southern Command, speaks with Adm. Sigifrido Pared Perez, Dominican Republic minister of defense, in Barahona, Dominican Republic on June 9, 2014. SOUTHCOM Photo

WASHINGTON, D.C. '-- The head of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) warned an Ebola outbreak in Central America or the Caribbean could trigger a mass migration to the U.S. of people fleeing the disease and implied established Central American illegal trafficking networks could introduce the infected into the U.S., during remarks at a Tuesday panel on security issues in the Western Hemisphere at the National Defense University.

''If it comes to the Western Hemisphere, the countries that we're talking about have almost no ability to deal with it '-- particularly in Haiti and Central America,'' SOUTHCOM Commander, Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, said in response to a question of his near term concerns in the region.''It will make the 68,000 unaccompanied minors look like a small problem.''

An Ebola outbreak could encourage the poor and increasingly desperate populations in Central American countries '-- like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador '-- to leave in droves.

''I think you've seen this so many times in the past, when in doubt, take off,'' he said.

Though an ocean away from Ebola hotspots in Africa, a growing numbers of West Africans are using the illicit trafficking routes through Central America to enter the U.S. illegally and could introduce the disease in the U.S.

Kelly stressed through out the panel session at NDU how effective the criminal transportation networks were at moving people and material into the U.S.

''We see a lot of West Africans moving in that network,'' he said.

Kelly passed on a story from a border checkpoint in Costa Rica '-- told to him by an American embassy official '-- in which five or six men from Liberia were waiting to cross into Nicaragua.

The group had flown into Trinidad and then traveled to Costa Rica hoping to travel up the Central American isthmus and into the U.S.

Given the length of the journey, ''they could have been in New York City well within the incubation period for Ebola,'' Kelly said.

The realities of a potential outbreak caused Kelly to ask his staff to start thinking about the affects to the SOUTHCOM area of operations (AO) and pay attention to the response of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).

The U.S. has sent 4,000 troops to West Africa to assist countries in dealing with the Ebola outbreaks in the region.

''The five services of the U.S. military will get it done and be a large solution to this problem,'' Kelly said.

In the meantime, SOUTHCOM is regular contact with AFRICOM in the event of the worst-case outcome.

''We're watching what AFRICOM is doing and their plan will be our plan,'' Kelly said.''The nightmare scenario, I think, is right around the corner.''

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Sat, 11 Oct 2014 10:30

As West Africa's Ebola outbreak continues to rage, some experts are coming to the conclusion that it may take large amounts of vaccines and maybe even drugs '-- all still experimental and in short supply '-- to bring the outbreak under control.Embedded in that notion is the reality that the catastrophic epidemic may remain unchecked for months, given that these products haven't yet been proven to be safe or effective in people, and won't be available in significant amounts any time soon. Experimental Ebola drugs in particular will remain in scarce supply for a considerable time.

"It is conceivable that this epidemic will not turn around even if we pour resources into it. It may just keep going and going and it might require a vaccine," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told The Canadian Press in an interview.

"As the epidemic gets more and more formidable and in some cases out of control it is quite conceivable, if not likely, that we may need to deploy the vaccine to the entire country to be able to shut the epidemic down. That is clearly a possibility."

Earlier in the outbreak many experts insisted experimental vaccines could not be tested and produced in large enough amounts in time to have an impact on the outcome. They stressed '-- publicly, some still do '-- that the "tried and true" measures used to contain Ebola outbreaks in the past would eventually control this one.Those measures are aimed at breaking the chains of transmission. The sick are housed in isolation units, where the only people they have contact with are garbed head-to-toe in protective apparel. Those who don't survive are buried in thick body bags, without the cultural rituals that often spread the disease.

Contacts of the sick are monitored for 21 days and are whisked into isolation if they start to get ill. People with Ebola are believed to be contagious only when they have symptoms, which is when you need to ensure they don't come into contact with others.

But this epidemic is so large it has long since outstripped the capacity of responders to care for all the sick, let alone trace their contacts. People are dying at home, infecting their families in the process. Some are dying abandoned on streets, or outside the gates of over-full treatment centers.

On Sunday, Sierra Leone reported 121 deaths. That is more deaths in a single day than recorded in most Ebola outbreaks from start to finish. The World Health Organization says to date about 7,500 people are known to have been infected with the virus, and more than 3,400 have died.

The head of the Wellcome Trust says it's time to stop telling the public the traditional way of containing Ebola can quell this epidemic.

Dr. Jeremy Farrar, who runs the global charitable foundation, says that message is now counterproductive, getting in the way of spurring the pharmaceutical industry to put on the type of full-court press that the situation demands.

"Although we do know what to do in a smaller outbreak at the very start, the truth is ... when that now extends to thousands of individuals in multiple countries across borders and your health-care system is not functional, it is impossible to control it if that is your only intervention. That's my view," says Farrar. The British-based Wellcome Trust has offered to fund clinical trials of a number of the experimental drugs and vaccines.

"I think anybody who says that there's a single answer to this is wrong in the sense that 'more of the same' will sort the problem out.... I think we've gone beyond that now."

Two experimental Ebola vaccines have been shown to protect primates; several others are further back in the pipeline. But human clinical trials have only just begun on one '-- designed by scientists in Fauci's institute and being brought to market by pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline or GSK.

It is hoped that clinical trials will start soon on a second, created at Canada National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. That vaccine is licensed to a small U.S.-based biotech company, NewLink Genetics, which does not have the experience or the deep pockets that GSK has. The U.S. government, through its Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is helping NewLink to structure and run the needed clinical trials as well as find partners to help it ramp up production of supplies.

"We have found them to be co-operative in what we want to do and we're working very collegially together," says BARDA Director Dr. Robin Robinson. "They have a very big challenge ahead of them and we are going to assist them to do that."

These initial small trials are needed to show that the vaccines are safe to use in people and to see how much vaccine is required for what is thought to be a protective dose. But larger studies will be needed, experts who recently met at the World Health Organization to plan this work decided.

That meeting determined the vaccines will need to be tested in traditional studies known as randomized controlled trials, where volunteers are randomly assigned to get the Ebola vaccine or another injection '-- likely something like a hepatitis B shot. Ideally neither the researchers nor the volunteers know who got what.

The groups would then be followed for a specified amount of time to see if Ebola infections were less frequent among those given a vaccine.

A number of experts are not comfortable with the idea of withholding the vaccine from some trial participants, saying other trial designs could answer the question in a less ethically challenging approach. One suggestion, says German researcher Stephan Becker, would be to vaccinate inhabitants in a village in an infected country, and compare infection rates there to those in similar villages where vaccine has not yet been made available.

"For me this sounds a bit ... not practical," Becker, who is at the University of Marburg, in Germany, says of a traditional randomized controlled trial. Becker is negotiating with NewLink to conduct a small clinical trial of the Canadian vaccine in Germany.

Becker is not the only scientist to question the agreed-to approach. But a source who asked not to be named says the U.S. government '-- which has footed the bill for much of the research behind the vaccines and drugs, and which will likely take a lead role in paying for production and dissemination of Ebola vaccines '-- wants to know the vaccines work before it spends hundreds of millions of dollars on them.

Fauci points to a clinical trial of an HIV vaccine that was stopped a couple of years ago as an example of why it's critical to know whether the vaccine is actually effective before it is broadly used.

The HIV vaccine looked good in animal studies and seemed safe in the small initial human trials in healthy volunteers. But when it was given in the field, people who got the vaccine actually contracted HIV at a higher rate than people in the placebo arm of the trial.

"So those are the kinds of things that you have to take into consideration, particularly if there's even a possibility that you're going to widely deploy a vaccine," Fauci says.

Farrar prefers the trial design Becker suggested, but says the important thing is not to let differences about which approach is better delay the work.

"We mustn't be in a situation where we're having the same conversation six months from now as the epidemic is still raging and we're still only discussing how we might move things through into Phase 1 and Phase 2 testing," Farrar insists.

He also says work must be done concurrently to answer the questions on how vaccine would be rolled out when it becomes available. Who gets it first? How will delivery be organized? How will it be delivered to remote parts of the affected countries?

"Can you throw it out of a helicopter? Do you need a cold chain?" Farrar asks, a term that means a product must be kept refrigerated or frozen or else it becomes unusable. "We can't be scratching our heads when we got a vaccine."

Farrar also insists work must be done to test and make the experimental Ebola drugs. Having a treatment to offer people who are sick will inspire more to turn themselves in for care when they become infected, he says.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 14:32

EBOLA IS A GLOBAL ISSUE. THE DISEASE HAS DEVASTATED COUNTRIES IN WEST AFRICA AND REACHED THE U.S. IT CAN BE STOPPED, IF WE TAKE ACTION NOW.CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT OUR EFFORTS HAVE DONE SO FAR TO #TACKLEEBOLA

Learn

Ebola is on the move in West Africa - spreading at an unprecedented rate. Unless contained, hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives are at risk.

The tragedy of Ebola is that we know how to tackle the disease. With the right resources, information and on-the-ground support, this disease can be stopped.

See CDC's Ebola hub to learn more about the disease and the West African outbreak.

Donate

The Ebola outbreak requires dedicated and creative solutions to prevent its further spread. Without the help of our global community, the risk of Ebola spreading across Africa and beyond increases dramatically. The developed world needs to step up now with resources and solutions to stop Ebola.

The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation has committed $3.6 million in matching funds to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF that will air lift 50,000 protection kits into Liberia to help prevent the spread of the virus.

The CDC Foundation is providing critical assistance and supplies through donations to the Foundation's Global Disaster Response Fund. To date, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation has committed $9 million to this effort.Participate

More people are needed on the ground to stop this Ebola outbreak. Skilled health workers, doctors, nurses, drivers as well as people who can track the spread of the disease are in short supply.

Steps are being taken to provide protection and support for those willing to help. Crucial protective gear as well as medical and evacuation services for volunteers are being put in place immediately.

Sign up today if you are qualified and willing to join the front lines to #TackleEbola. USAID is leading the efforts to recruit and deploy more help in West Africa.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:42

Ebola virus has infected thousands of people in West Africa. The alert has been sounded by the governments of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and the world is scrambling to respond to curtail further suffering and bring this epidemic under control. As President Obama said yesterday at the United Nations:

"Ebola is a horrific disease. It's wiping out entire families. It has turned simple acts of love and comfort and kindness -- like holding a sick friend's hand, or embracing a dying child -- into potentially fatal acts. If ever there were a public health emergency deserving an urgent, strong and coordinated international response, this is it."

Every day, in hot, humid, and extremely difficult environments, health care workers in Ebola-affected countries are performing critical tasks that save lives and prevent the spread of the virus. Personal protective equipment (PPE) offers critical protection, but also is the greatest source of discomfort and stress for the workers. While PPEs protect health care workers, they cannot be worn for more than 40 minutes in hot climates, severely limiting the time health care workers can care for their patients.

In response to this challenge and the unprecedented Ebola outbreak, USAID is partnering with the White House Office of Science and Technology, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, other U.S. agencies and the Government of Sweden to launch Fighting Ebola: A Grand Challenge for Development to help health care workers on the front lines provide better care and stop the spread of Ebola.

Engage the global community to identify ingenious ideas that deliver practical and cost-effective innovations in a matter of months, not years;Forge public private partnerships necessary to test and scale these innovations and;Provide critical funding to get some of the most promising ideas into the field quickly.Sign-up here for the latest information and check back for new information as it becomes available.

Last updated: October 09, 2014

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:39

As the fight against the Islamic State unfolds, the take of Erik Prince, the founder of the former private security firm Blackwater, is straightforward: If the United States is unwilling to send in ground troops, ''let the private sector finish the job.''

Prince addressed the subject this week in a little-noticed blog post on the site of his newest security and logistics firm, Frontier Services Group. Prince left Blackwater, with its checkered history in Iraq, including the killing by contractors of 17 civilians in a 2007 shooting, in 2010. The trial of four Blackwater guards involved in the shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square, has been underway for months.

Prince is currently courting private business in Africa for his new company. He also is preparing to drum up readers for the paperback version of his bestselling book, ''Civilian Warriors: The Inside story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror,'' out later this month.

The former Navy SEAL declined interview requests for this piece through a spokesperson with his book publisher, the Penguin Group. In his blog post, published Monday, Prince said President Obama's strategy to counter the Islamic State is ''half-hearted at best'' and will not be able to dig the militants out of any urban centers where they seek shelter among civilians.

Prince said military clearing operations fall to foot soldiers, and the Iraqi military is ''demonstrably inept after billions spent on training and equipping.'' He points out that when the Islamic State attacked Iraqi units earlier this year, they folded and the militants were able to seize tanks, Howitzers, armored vehicles and ammunition, among other supplies and equipment.

''The Kurds, once a lean and strong fighting force that routinely rebuffed Saddam's forces, now find themselves outgunned, under-equipped, and overwhelmed,'' Prince wrote. ''But they do fight, and they fight bravely. The Kurds' biggest problem is the U.S. State Department blocking them from selling their oil and from buying serious weaponry to protect their stronghold and act as a stabilizing force in the region.''

Prince, long a proponent of using private military contractors to backstop U.S. policy abroad, added that the private sector has ''long provided nations around the world with innovative solutions to national defense problems,'' and he seems to look back fondly on the work Blackwater did.

''If the old Blackwater team were still together, I have high confidence that a multi-brigade-size unit of veteran American contractors or a multi-national force could be rapidly assembled and deployed to be that necessary ground combat team,'' Prince wrote. ''The professionals would be hired for their combat skills in armor, artillery, small unit tactics, special operations, logistics, and whatever else may be needed. A competent professional force of volunteers would serve as the pointy end of the spear and would serve to strengthen friendly but skittish indigenous forces.''

It's not the first time Prince has said that Blackwater '-- later re-branded as Xe Services, and more recently as Academi '-- would have changed the equation in the fight against the Islamic State. At a political event last month, he said it was ''a shame'' the Obama administration had ''crushed'' his old business because it could have solved the issue of whether to put American troops on the ground in Iraq this year, according to the Daily Beast.

Contractors could have ''gone in there and done it, and be done, and not have a long, protracted political mess that I predict will ensue,'' Prince added.

Prince's comments are likely red meat for those who think the Obama administration should do more to fight the Islamic State. His contention that Iraqi military units fell apart when tested by the militants is true. It's also true that the State Department government has declined to sanction the sale of oil from the semi-autonomous Kurds or sell them weapons, preferring instead to deal with Iraq's government in Baghdad.

Dan Lamothe covers national security for The Washington Post and anchors its military blog, Checkpoint.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 15:10

Two weeks ago, we revealedone part of the "Secret Deal" between the US and Saudi Arabia: namely what the US 'brought to the table' as part of its grand alliance strategy in the middle east, which proudly revealed Saudi Arabia to be "aligned" with the US against ISIS, when in reality John Kerry was merely doing Saudi Arabia's will when the WSJ reported that "the process gave the Saudis leverage to extract a fresh U.S. commitment to beef up training for rebels fighting Mr. Assad, whose demise the Saudis still see as a top priority."

What was not clear is what was the other part: what did the Saudis bring to the table, or said otherwise, how exactly it was that Saudi Arabia would compensate the US for bombing the Assad infrastructure until the hated Syrian leader was toppled, creating a power vacuum in his wake that would allow Syria, Qatar, Jordan and/or Turkey to divide the spoils of war as they saw fit.

A glimpse of the answer was provided earlier in the article "The Oil Weapon: A New Way To Wage War", because at the end of the day it is always about oil, and leverage.

The full answer comes courtesy of Anadolu Agency, which explains not only the big picture involving Saudi Arabia and its biggest asset, oil, but also the latest fracturing of OPEC at the behest of Saudi Arabia...

... which however is merely using "the oil weapon" to target the old slash new Cold War foe #1: Vladimir Putin.

To wit:

Saudi Arabia to pressure Russia, Iran with price of oil

Saudi Arabia will force the price of oil down, in an effort to put political pressure on Iran and Russia, according to the President of Saudi Arabia Oil Policies and Strategic Expectations Center.

Saudi Arabia plans to sell oil cheap for political reasons, one analyst says.

To pressure Iran to limit its nuclear program, and to change Russia's position on Syria, Riyadh will sell oil below the average spot price at $50 to $60 per barrel in the Asian markets and North America, says Rashid Abanmy, President of the Riyadh-based Saudi Arabia Oil Policies and Strategic Expectations Center. The marked decrease in the price of oil in the last three months, to $92 from $115 per barrel, was caused by Saudi Arabia, according to Abanmy.

With oil demand declining, the ostensible reason for the price drop is to attract new clients, Abanmy said, but the real reason is political. Saudi Arabia wants to get Iran to limit its nuclear energy expansion, and to make Russia change its position of support for the Assad Regime in Syria. Both countries depend heavily on petroleum exports for revenue, and a lower oil price means less money coming in, Abanmy pointed out. The Gulf states will be less affected by the price drop, he added.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which is the technical arbiter of the price of oil for Saudi Arabia and the 11 other countries that make up the group, won't be able to affect Saudi Arabia's decision, Abanmy maintained.

The organization's decisions are only recommendations and are not binding for the member oil producing countries, he explained.

Today's Brent closing price: $90. Russia's oil price budget for the period 2015-2017?$100. Which means much more "forced Brent liquidation" is in the cards in the coming weeks as America's suddenly once again very strategic ally, Saudi Arabia, does everything in its power to break Putin.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:14

U.S. and UK to test big bank collapse in joint model runTop News

U.S. and UK to test big bank collapse in joint model run

Fri, Oct 10 18:00 PM EDT

By Randall Palmer and Douwe Miedema

WASHINGTON, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Regulators from the United States and the United Kingdom will get together in a war room next week to see if they can cope with any possible fall-out when the next big bank topples over, the two countries said on Friday.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, on Monday will run a joint exercise simulating how they would prop up a large bank with operations in both countries that has landed in trouble.

Also taking part are Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, and the heads of a large number of other regulators, in a meeting hosted by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

"We are going to make sure that we can handle an institution that previously would have been regarded as too big to fail. We're confident that we now have choices that did not exist in the past," Osborne said at the International Monetary Fund's annual meeting.

Six years after the financial crisis, politicians and regulators around the globe are keen to prove they have created rules that will allow them to let a large bank go under without spending billions in taxpayer dollars.

They have forced banks to ramp up equity and debt capital buffers to protect taxpayers against losses, and have told them to write plans that lay out how they can go through ordinary bankruptcy. The plans are so-called living wills.

Yet salvaging a bank with operations in several countries - which is the norm for most of the world's largest banks such as Deutsche Bank, Citigroup Inc and JPMorgan - has proven to be a particularly thorny issue.

Because the failure of a big bank is such a rare event, regulators may not be used to talking to each other. There have also been suspicions that supervisors would first look to save the domestic operations of a bank, and would worry less about units abroad.

The exercise comes as regulators are about to bring to fruition further initiatives to make banking safer.

The first would force banks to have more long-term bonds that investors know can lose their value during a crisis, on top of their equity capital, to double their so-called Total Loss-Absorbing Capacity (TLAC).

A second measure, expected to be announced this weekend, will force through a change in derivative contracts, which in their current form protect investors, and complicate the winding down of a bank across borders. (Editing by Matthew Lewis)

U.S. and UK to test big bank collapse in joint model runTop News

U.S. and UK to test big bank collapse in joint model run

Fri, Oct 10 18:00 PM EDT

By Randall Palmer and Douwe Miedema

WASHINGTON, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Regulators from the United States and the United Kingdom will get together in a war room next week to see if they can cope with any possible fall-out when the next big bank topples over, the two countries said on Friday.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, on Monday will run a joint exercise simulating how they would prop up a large bank with operations in both countries that has landed in trouble.

Also taking part are Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, and the heads of a large number of other regulators, in a meeting hosted by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

"We are going to make sure that we can handle an institution that previously would have been regarded as too big to fail. We're confident that we now have choices that did not exist in the past," Osborne said at the International Monetary Fund's annual meeting.

Six years after the financial crisis, politicians and regulators around the globe are keen to prove they have created rules that will allow them to let a large bank go under without spending billions in taxpayer dollars.

They have forced banks to ramp up equity and debt capital buffers to protect taxpayers against losses, and have told them to write plans that lay out how they can go through ordinary bankruptcy. The plans are so-called living wills.

Yet salvaging a bank with operations in several countries - which is the norm for most of the world's largest banks such as Deutsche Bank, Citigroup Inc and JPMorgan - has proven to be a particularly thorny issue.

Because the failure of a big bank is such a rare event, regulators may not be used to talking to each other. There have also been suspicions that supervisors would first look to save the domestic operations of a bank, and would worry less about units abroad.

The exercise comes as regulators are about to bring to fruition further initiatives to make banking safer.

The first would force banks to have more long-term bonds that investors know can lose their value during a crisis, on top of their equity capital, to double their so-called Total Loss-Absorbing Capacity (TLAC).

A second measure, expected to be announced this weekend, will force through a change in derivative contracts, which in their current form protect investors, and complicate the winding down of a bank across borders. (Editing by Matthew Lewis)

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Archived Version

Sat, 11 Oct 2014 11:30

Volgende week beslist de Europese Centrale Bank (ECB) tijdens het maandelijkse overleg in Frankfurt of er een start moet worden gemaakt met het toevoegen van de yuan, ofwel renminbi, aan het internationale muntsysteem.

Dit zou een enorme stap zijn in het international maken van de Chinese renminbi, zo meldt persbureau Bloomberg.

Ondanks dat China de tweede grootste economie van de wereld is, komt de renminbi niet voor op de lijst van de internationale valuta deviezen van het Internationale Monetaire Fonds (IMF). De euro, yen, pond en de dollar hebben momenteel een plek in deze lijst. De dollar heeft hierin een aandeel van 61 procent.

Wanneer de ECB besluit tot toevoeging van de renminbi aan het internationale muntsysteem dan zal dit geleidelijk aan gebeuren en niet eerder in werking treden dan volgend jaar, aldus een anonieme bron aan persbureau Bloomberg.

Het Financieele Dagblad (C) 2014. Alle rechten voorbehouden.

ITM,

Executive Summary:

The term "Magic Circle" is a decidedly ritualistic term that was not used by accident in the USA Today piece by OMFIF's David Marsh. There are 4 SDR currencies for a reason. I submit that there cannot and therefore will not be a fifth, ever. If the Yuan (Renminbi) is added then one must be removed in accordance with Sacred Numbers which Fifi LaGarde and elites have shown to favor. If you choose to read the following tome, I believe the unanswered questions are most notably: What energy does this Magic Circle capture, what energy does this Magic Circle repel, or both? Read on for more detail.

Body Text:

While listening to Thursday's show about the XDR aka SDR and the superfluous mentions of “Magic Circle” in the USA Today Op-Ed, er native advertising by OMFIF's David Marsh, my first thought was DING! Elite/Globalist ritual (or at least a message to other elites)

(I wrote the following of this body from memory before consulting the book of knowledge)

Magic Circles are used in traditional rituals by Pagans/Wiccans etc. as a protective or containing boundary in which the caster can either be protected from something outside the circle (often a being/spirit they have summoned or other spells cast against them) or in order to contain and concentrate energy they have raised during a ritual. There are many techniques to drawing a Magic Circle depending on the individual or group and belief or reason. Typical features of a Magic Circle are: the caster stands in the center and draws a 9’ circular boundary three times using salt, chalk, corn, or ashes usually while reciting enchantments. In order for most Magic Circles to be complete and solidly bound one must finish by marking the cardinal directions normally by lighting candles that represent the four elements Air (yellow) Fire (red), Water (blue), Earth (green). Interestingly, its not unusual when summoning a spirit for the caster to draw a pyramid (triangle) around the Magic Circle in order to trap the being inside the pyramid but outside the circle.

Now, here is the problem as I see it: there are four existing currencies and magic circles have four markings (not five) so China cannot be added without someone else being dropped otherwise you would disrupt a sacred number. As Fifi knows, the elite favor sacred numbers. Ideally, the four currencies would represent the 4 elements *OR* the 4 directions: North, South, East and West.

Its fairly obvious that America (Dollar) would be the West and Japan (Yen) would be the East. Perhaps UK (Pound) would be the North but admitidly this theory breaks down a little when you get to the South, I don’t think the Euro would qualify. It would take more research into the color of the monies or some other aspect of tying the currencies to elements that could make more sense than directions.

It could be safe to predict the Yuan (Renminbi) replacing the Yen in the SDR basket given Japan’s currency, generational, social, economic and fiscal woes.

As you may recall, I am Native American and this is a basic component of medicine wo/man rituals and ceremonies especially including the four sacred directions. In this context we normally arent summoning spirits but are usually using it to keep out unwanted energy from sacred rituals.

Thank you for your courage!

Pre-Dame Anwanur (Of Redskins infamy)

Extremely blessed wife of Sir DH Slammer (he made me add this)

--------------------------------------------

There are many versions of a Magic Circle for many people/uses but you will still get the idea of what this term means - consult the book of knowledge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_circle) quotes below:

A magic circle is circle or sphere of space marked out by practitioners of many branches of ritual magic, which they generally believe will contain energy and form a sacred space, or will provide them a form of magical protection, or both. It may be marked physically, drawn in salt or chalk, for example, or merely visualised. Its spiritual significance is similar to that of mandala and yantra[citation needed] in some Eastern religions.

Traditionally, circles were believed by ritual magicians to form a protective barrier between themselves and what they summoned.[1] In modern times, practitioners generally cast magic circles to contain and concentrate the energy they believe to raise during a ritual.

Even not in a sorcery context, the meaning is very similar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_circle_%28disambiguation%29

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Archived Version

Sat, 11 Oct 2014 10:54

DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer|Posted 14 hours ago

NEW YORK '-- The Nielsen company on Friday admitted to errors dating back to March in its measurement of television viewing, statistics that serve as the foundation for billions of dollars in advertising spending for the entire broadcast industry.

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Sat, 11 Oct 2014 10:56

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Last week Nielsen Co. made a stunning disclosure, announcing that a computer glitch triggered by long web addresses used by social networks was tripping up the system and causing the company to underestimate the time people spend on the web by an average of 22%.

The admission, first reported by Ad Age, confirmed some of what the online publishing industry had long suspected: that they were being sold short in a key tool used by agencies to plan media buys.

Related StoriesAnd while Nielsen said the glitches impact data going back three months, clients say they've been talking to Nielsen about apparent discrepancies in the data for nearly a year, though the company at the time couldn't isolate the cause.As executives at Nielsen investigated that problem, they found others. The company now faces two stiff challenges: fixing the immediate problems with a system that hasn't kept up with the web and rebuilding its image as a provider of trustworthy data as marketers and media are asking for even more complicated metrics that cross TV, mobile devices and the web.

"What it does is it erodes confidence in one of the primary tools for planning," said Sherrill Mane, senior VP of products for the Interactive Advertising Bureau. "Those who are making plans and allocating dollars were using a fundamentally reduced number of users of audience to do their plans. That does ultimately translate to lost money for publishers and websites."

Initially, Nielsen thought the problem was isolated to long URLs -- 2,000 characters or more -- that are becoming increasingly common on social networks where web addresses are used during sessions to pass data back and forth between applications and users. If a Nielsen panelist encountered such a long URL by visiting a social network, the entire internet session was thrown out in some cases, leading to a broad underestimation of time spent on websites.

Additionally, Nielsen found that its meters were not counting users of Google's Chrome browser because of the long URLs it generates for secure purchases on the web.

But the even bigger problem is with the meters themselves. Nielsen depends on a panel of more than 200,000 people who voluntarily install a small bit of software, called a "PC meter," on their computers, which sends activity back to Nielsen. But those meters can crash without the knowledge of the user and stop recording data until the user restarts his computer, an increasingly infrequent occurrence.

"We believe social networks are a significant contributor to this, but not the only contributor," said Steve Hasker, Nielsen president of media products. "The silver lining for us is our team has been working around the clock and weekends to identify these problems."

Nielsen has been steadfast that it believes the problems began three months ago. But some dispute that. Lyle Schwartz, managing partner for research at WPP's Group M, said the company questioned Nielsen's internet-usage numbers in the first quarter when it released its "Three Screen Report," which reflected lower-than-expected internet and TV viewing numbers -- Nielsen said time spent on the internet fell to 25 hours and 26 minutes a month from 26 hours and 32 minutes the prior year.

"We saw that internet usage was going down, so we questioned it," Mr. Schwartz said. "If the data is telling you something you don't expect, it's something to pay attention to. We were told it was accurate."

Another person said some publishers came to Nielsen last December to question the numbers and were told the company was investigating discrepancies.

Others said they don't believe the problems start and end with the "time spent" metric. TVGuide.com saw a big drop in unique users across the entertainment category in September, which it brought to Nielsen's attention in October. "We've had an ongoing dialogue with Nielsen for over a year-and-a-half about the quality of these metrics," said General Manager Christy Tanner. "We believe strongly that our unique users are under-reported by Nielsen."

Nielsen told clients it will update them every two weeks on its progress as it roots out problems and implements fixes. Nielsen Online has hired a new team and is committed to spending "tens of millions of dollars" over the next 12 months to overhaul and modernize the system, Mr. Hasker said. "None of our competitors will do that."

Critics of Nielsen say it should be more transparent in the way it collects and analyzes data in the first place and seek the approval of an independent organization such as the Media Research Council (MRC) to audit their data.

Neither Nielsen nor its main online competitor, comScore, are "accredited" by the MRC. Mr. Hasker said Nieslen is working with the MRC to work through the problems and ultimately receive their imprimatur.

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Sat, 11 Oct 2014 11:00

Nielsen is reissuing total-day ratings from the beginning of the current TV season after it admitted today that it has misallocated some viewership results '-- possibly to the benefit of ABC, although it would not confirm that. ''It's a small error within statistical tolerance,'' says Patricia McDonough, Nielsen SVP Planning Policy and Analysis. As much as 98% of programs won't be affected by more than .05 of a ratings point. It's not clear whether it might result in make-goods. Those are mostly based on the so-called C3 numbers '-- the amount of live and delayed viewing over three days. The first C3 numbers for the new season go out on Monday, and Nielsen says that they will not reflect the software error.

The problem was discovered October 6, and the software was updated last night, Nielsen Global President Steve Hasker says. The Media Rating Council will review what happened and issue an analysis.

The possibility of a problem surfaced at the beginning of the fall TV season as the number of viewers increased. It was particularly noticeable at ABC where '-- as my colleague Nellie Andreeva reported last week '-- the network's fast nationals in adults 18-49 and total viewers were adjusted up every night for the first nine days. On eight of the nine nights, the entire ABC lineup went up in the finals. That meant 20 programs saw a lift without a single downward adjustment in 18-49. Over the same period, the other major broadcast networks saw 15 adjustments combined '-- nine up a tenth and six down a tenth. Nielsen declined to say whether ABC might have benefited from its glitch, saying that the network was entitled to review the numbers before they're released on Monday.

Hasker says that, although the errors were small, Nielsen wanted to address it from a belief in ''absolute transparency on ratings.''

The problem surfaced as Nielsen faces intensifying competition from Rentrak, following a major, multifaceted deal yesterday with ad giant WPP. In a call to discuss the ratings changes, Hasker blasted Rentrak for suggesting that its audience data are more accurate and complete. ''Our friends at Rentrak never let the facts get into the way of a press release,'' he says. The company has ''never been transparent about [its] methodology'' which is ''not based on census data.'' He added that Rentrak can only measure results from homes that its partners reach, which comes to about 40% of all U.S. households.

The arrangement with WPP is ''a traditional set top box data deal with hyperbole thrown into the mix'....It's not currency data and doesn't act as such.''

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Sat, 11 Oct 2014 11:03

UPDATE, 11:00 AM: Nielsen just weighed in on today's news. The measurement company says it ''is focused on measuring video however consumers access it, and we are well positioned to continue providing market-trusted, independent measurement to the industry. Our accredited, census-based methodology remains the gold standard for TV audience measurement. We continue to collaborate with our clients to ensure that the solutions we deliver reflect the realities of the market.''

PREVIOUS, 9:50 AM: Look out, Nielsen: Shares in Rentrak are up 11.3% mid-day '-- and Nielsen's down 5.1% '-- after Rentrak unveiled a multifaceted agreement with global ad giant WPP that could provide a major boost to its effort to dominate the ratings business. Rentrak will pay $98M in stock for its top competitor in TV data, the U.S. business of WPP's measurement firm Kantar Media. WPP's GroupM, the country's largest ad buyer, says it will use Rentrak's national and local TV info to help clients. And WPP will buy $56M of Rentrak stock, lifting its ownership stake to 16.7% with the option to buy as much as 20% in the open market.

This is ''a transformational transaction which cements Rentrak's as the industry's census-level currency for TV measurement and positions it well to displace Nielsen over the next few years as the primary currency for TV ratings,'' Brean Capital's Todd Mitchell says. Wunderlich Securities' Matthew Harrigan also likes the deal: ''As multi-platform viewing grows, big data is more requisite for targeting ads and assessing viewership. This data is available on a real time basis with aggregation for privacy and scaling issues. Rentrak is now focused on better integration with ad agency systems to support more use of its tools.''

GroupM Global Chairman Irwin Gotlieb used the occasion to take a shot at Nielsen's on audience samples. ''Television measurement needs to move toward census-based methodology,'' he says. ''Our agencies are doing such refined targeting and segmentation, and that work can only be supported by census data. It is our hope that we can act as catalysts in moving the industry toward greater data reliability and accountability.''

The ad buyer vows to use Rentrak data for sales across national and local markets '-- including for TV's all-important auto sales '-- as well as for on-demand and digital platforms. Today's announcement specifically targets Nielsen's weak spots, ''more than 200 networks that are not currently measured by the legacy sample currency, as well as in local markets where today's diary measurement has been less than stable.''

Still, it will be difficult to unseat Nielsen. GroupM probably considers Rentrak data ''not as currency'' for ad deals but as ''incremental data around behavior and other spaces,'' RBC Capital Markets' David Bank says. He acknowledges that Nielsen's ratings ''may not be perfect; its sample and demo in an increasingly fragmented Video market where marketers want to buy more targeted audiences and Media operators want to fulfill that is sometimes called into question. But its data set is the Industry standard and [Nielsen] is moving to address its sample (e.g. adding broadband only homes) and offer unified solutions across traditional digital screens.''

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 12:57

The movement for the independence of Catalunya has been occupying the headlines in the Spanish news for much of the last few years, with calls for a referendum growing in strength and frequency as Catalan politicians pressurize the national government in the hope of obtaining concessions, but the latest statement by one of the parties involved marks a new twist in the demands being made.

The ERC (Republican Left of Catalunya) party has issued a policy document in which the point of view stated is that the independence movement should include not only the Spanish region of Catalunya but also the Comunitat Valenciana, the Balearics, part of Arag"n, various southern French ''d(C)partements'' and Andorra. This collection of territories would then form a ''Catalan nation'', according to the statement.

The reasoning of the ERC is that over the centuries the ''Catalan nation'' has been progressively dismembered, and that control over Catalan areas has been divided among other political powers. It is the view of the party that all of these areas ought to be reunited by secession from the central governments of Spain and France while maintaining membership of the European Union. In this way, the policy document concludes, the effects of ''over 300 years of oppression'' by the Spanish and French States can be reversed.

It remains to be seen whether CiU, the main party fighting for an independence referendum and the one which currently holds power in the regional parliament, will incorporate the ERC view into its policy in future.In the 2011 general election the ERC received over a quarter of a million votes and was the fifth most popular party in Catalunya, while in the regional elections of the following year the vote rose to almost 500,000, second only behind CiU.

Image: Spanish and Catalan flags. Copyrighted.

All Text and Images are Subject to Copyright

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 12:59

Together forever, FC Barcelona and the State of Catalonia are inseparable.

On Friday the Spanish giants released a statement on their website, in which they declared their full support for the State of Catalonia to become independent from Spain.

[RELATED: Goodbye Barca?]

Barca has signed the Catalan National Pact for Self-Determination despite the president of La Liga, Javier Tebas, stating earlier this week that an independent Catalonia may result in both Barcelona and Espanyol being kicked out La Liga, the Spanish top-flight which Barca have been champions of 22 times.

The Spanish government has so far refused the right for a referendum regarding the Catalan people and their independence but an unofficial vote will take place in the region on Nov. 9, which has enraged politicians across Spain.

Below is the full statement of support from Barca, as their club president Josep Maria Bartomeu has nailed the clubs colors to the mast.

FC Barcelona have signed the Catalan National Pact for Self -Determination. The Club formalized their adhesion in a formal letter from President Josep Maria Bartomeu to the Pact Co-ordinator Joan Rigol. The Pact brings together over 3,500 organisations and associations from a wide spectre range of social and political positions which endorse the Catalan people's right to self-determination.

FC Barcelona has already signalled its position in favour of self-determination for Catalonia in a declaration made in the President's Report at the 2013 Members Representatives Meeting '' the maximum authority of the Club. In that statement, then President Sandro Rosell explained: ''we will always be there for our country and for the will of its people. We defend the right to self-determination because that forms a part of the fundamental rights which all people and nations must have''.

President Josep Maria Bartomeu has frequently referred to this statement of principles when questioned about the Club's position over recent months.

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Sat, 11 Oct 2014 11:25

Douglas Carswell of U.K. I.P. (left) stands with Nigel Farage (right); October 10, 2014.Credit Photograph Peter Macdiarmid / GettySome disturbing political news from across the pond: in two by-elections on Thursday, the xenophobic U.K. Independence Party won its first seat in the House of Commons and almost won a second. The victory came in a formerly Conservative-held seat in Clacton, east of London, where the party's representative thrashed the Tory candidate, delivering a humiliating rebuke to Prime Minister David Cameron. The near-miss came in Heywood and Middleton, a Labour stronghold in Greater Manchester, where the UKIP candidate was just six hundred votes short of winning.

These blows to the two major parties come just months before a general election, which has to be held by May of next year. On Friday morning, Cameron warned that a strong UKIP showing, especially in Tory seats, could throw the election to Labour by splitting the Conservative vote: ''What last night demonstrates is that if you see a big UKIP vote you will end up with Ed Miliband as Prime Minister, Ed Balls as Chancellor, and Labour in power.''

The scenario that Cameron described is perfectly plausible. But the larger story goes well beyond the Westminster horse race and, indeed, beyond the shores of the United Kingdom. The rise of UKIP demonstrates, once again, that the politics of protest have shifted. From the French Revolution to the Great Depression and beyond, hard times tended to benefit progressive and left-wing parties, which critiqued the extant economic and political systems and offered blueprints for reforming or replacing them. These days, the primary beneficiaries of economic slumps are often right-wing groups, such as the Tea Party, the French National Front, and UKIP

Wrapping themselves in the flag and excoriating what they view as a corrupt (C)lite, these protest parties attract the support of alienated voters from across the political spectrum. By channelling economic distress and cultural alienation into resentment of foreigners, welfare beneficiaries, and government officials, they come to drive the political agenda. Meanwhile, avowedly left-wing parties, where they still exist, hardly get a look-in. And moderate progressive parties, far from being presented with an opportunity to enact an egalitarian agenda, are forced to back up and defend basic institutions of social democracy, such as progressive taxation and a universal social-safety net.

In the United States, the Obama Administration, to its credit, has offered this defense. By getting the Affordable Care Act enacted, it even managed to fill a big gap in the safety net. In Britain, by contrast, the Conservative''Liberal coalition, working under the banner of austerity, is steadily chipping away at the welfare state, cutting the level of benefits, tightening qualification requirements, and forcing students to pay more. But even that agenda isn't tough enough for UKIP, which, in addition to bashing immigrants and Eurocrats, makes a fetish of targeting ''scroungers'' who subsist at the taxpayers' expense.

Of course, I am generalizing'--there are exceptions that go both ways. Acute economic distress led to the New Deal and to the creation of the welfare state, but it also aided the rise of Fascism. Back then, though, the right didn't have it all its own way, not even in Weimar Germany. (In the 1930 general election, the Nazis got eighteen per cent of the vote, setting them on the road to power, but the Communist Party, with thirteen per cent of the vote, also saw a surge in support.) Today, things are different. Greece and Spain are about the only places where the radical left, in the form of the SYRIZA and Podemos parties, has benefitted from the great financial crisis and its aftermath. (Jonathan Blitzer wrote about Podemos on Tuesday.) But, even in those places, there is no immediate prospect of a genuinely left-wing government taking power.

Here at home, the Tea Party has lately suffered some setbacks, and, of course, President Obama successfully secured relection in 2012. Two years on, though, the backlash against his decidedly non-radical policies continues'--policies that have produced a modest but strengthening economic recovery. In many parts of the country, Obama is so unpopular that Democrats facing midterm elections don't want him anywhere near them. To be sure, some progressive politicians, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, have built up dedicated followings. But where is the national groundswell of support for a leftward tilt? (Some on the left would say that it exists but is submerged in an ocean of corporate money.)

In Europe, German ordoliberalism, which is another word for hair-shirt economics, rules supreme, even as much of the continent is trapped in a seemingly endless slump and Germany itself, Europe's mightiest economy, flirts with recession. In Holland, Geert Wilders's Party for Freedom has consolidated its position as a Dutch version of UKIP In France, perish the thought, it is no longer beyond the bounds of possibility that Marine Le Pen could become President.*

And in Blighty we are treated to the site of UKIP's leader, Nigel Farage, a former commodities trader turned rabble-rouser, celebrating his latest triumph by boozing it up in a Clacton pub until five in the morning, then emerging to say that he'd like to be the Minister for Europe in the next Parliament. Although you never can be sure with Farage, that was presumably his idea of a joke: UKIP is committed to pulling the U.K. out of the E.U.

To be sure, we're just talking about two by-elections. Come the general election, protest parties tend to fall back'--UKIP may conform to that pattern. For now, though, Farage is setting the political agenda, and some of the other parties, particularly the Conservatives, are pandering to him. Cameron has already promised a referendum on Britain's continued membership in the E.U. Last week, at the annual Conservative-party conference, he announced that, even before the referendum takes place, his government will scrap the Human Rights Act of 1998, which enshrined the principles of the European Court of Human Rights into British law. But that announcement wasn't enough to check the progress of UKIP

And where is the equivalent of Farage on the left? Nowhere to be found.

*Correction: An earlier version of this post referred to Jean-Marie Le Pen as a contender in France's upcoming Presidential election; the likely candidate is his daughter, Marine.

Hey,

I just wanted to make sure you saw this email? There's good news! Thanks in part to the response we helped generate, the FCC has extended the deadline to receive comments about Comcast's attempted internet takeover until October 29th.

50,000 people have taken action already. The FCC will be surprised by this kind of response to a merger question, but the deck is stacked against us so we need to go all out. Can we count on you to help us get to 100,000 comments by the end of this week?

Click here to submit a comment to the FCC opposing the Comcast merger that would dismantle Internet freedom.

Read the email below for more background, and please forward this to your friends and family. It affects all of us!

Sincerely,

-Tiffiniy from FFTF

P.S. You're receiving this email because you've taken action on our petitions in the past. If you want to unsubscribe, it's easy, click the link at the bottom of this email.

Dear Fight for the Future member,

Urgent: there are just a few days left to stop Comcast from taking over Time Warner Cable and signing a death sentence for net neutrality. Click here to take action now.

This one really requires no explanation. The most hated company in the US is trying to take over the second most hated company in the US, in a move that would raise our cable and Internet bills, stifle online free speech, and make them one of the most powerful lobbies in history. [1]

This merger is bad for EVERYONE, and there is tons of opposition, even from within the FCC. We have a real chance at stopping this but we have to act quickly. [2]

The deadline is next week! Click here to stop Comcast in its tracks.

Comcast is already the largest and most powerful opponent of net neutrality, online privacy, and Internet freedom. They’ve been caught several times abusing their “gatekeeper” power as an Internet provider to further their own interests. [3] If the FCC lets Comcast forcibly absorb Time Warner Cable -- the second largest Internet provider in the U.S. -- they will control access to information in nearly 6 of 10 people’s homes (more if you're only counting truly high speed Internet). [4]

Millions of you have sent comments to the FCC in support of net neutrality. We’re asking for your help again because if this merger goes through, Comcast gets even more powerful -- in the marketplace, online, and in Washington, DC. If we don’t stop this takeover right now, we'll be fighting an uphill battle on net neutrality and online free speech for years to come.

Will you sign? Click here to submit a comment opposing the Comcast merger.

After you sign, please forward this email to everyone you know and share the petition on social media.

Here’s the link one last time: http://www.battleforthenet.com/comcast?org=fff

Thanks for all that you do,

-Tiffiniy Cheng

Fight for the Future

SOURCES:

Brad Reed. "Massive survey finds Comcast and TWC are the two most hated companies in America – period". BGR. http://bgr.com/2014/05/20/comcast-twc-customer-satisfaction -survey-study/

Brendan Sasso. “FCC Chief: Cable Companies Are Wrong About Internet Competition”. National Journal. http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/fcc- chief-comcast-is-wrong-about-internet-competition-20140904

Cecilia Kang. “Comcast, Time Warner Cable merger faces a grilling in Washington this week”. Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/04/08/comcast-time-warner-cable-merger-faces-a-grilling-in-washington-this-week/

S. Derek Turner and Matt Wood. “Petition to deny free press”. Free Press. http://www.freepress.net/sites/default/f iles/resources/Free%20Press_14-57_Petition%20to%20Deny_Final.pdf

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Fri, 10 Oct 2014 12:30

Hal Lewis, Professor Emeritus UCSB

As reported by theGateway Pundit: Top US scientist Hal Lewis resigned this week from his post at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He admitted global warming climate change was nothing but a scam in his resignation letter.From theTelegraph (because for some reason the Liberal Media here in the U.S don't like this stuff getting out).

The following is a letter to the American Physical Society released to the public by Professor Emeritus of physics Hal Lewis of the University of California at Santa Barbara

Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal LewisFrom: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa BarbaraTo: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence - it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'ªtre of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it...

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people's motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don't think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:17

He will also suggest that home owners should get used to temporary power cuts '-- cutting the electricity to appliances such as fridges for two hours at a time, for example '-- to conserve energy.

Mr Paterson will deliver the lecture at the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank set up by Lord Lawson of Blaby, a climate-change sceptic and former chancellor in Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet.

In the speech, entitled ''Keeping the lights on'', he will say that Britain is the only country to have agreed to the legally binding target of cutting carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

Campaigners fear that this will bring a big increase in the number of wind farms.

They say that to hit the target Britain must build 2,500 wind turbines every year for 36 years.

Mr Paterson will say that the scale of the investment required to meet the 2050 target ''is so great that it could not be achieved''. He will warn that Britain will end up worse off than if it adopted less ambitious but achievable targets. Mr Paterson voted for the 2008 Climate Change Act in opposition and loyally supported it when he was in power.

However, since he left office he has considered the effect of the legislation and has decided that Britain has to change course.

He will argue this week that ministers should exercise a clause in the Act that allows them to suspend the law without another vote of MPs.

In his speech, on Wednesday night, Mr Paterson will state that, without changes in its current policy, large-scale power cuts will plunge homes across the country into darkness.

''Blind adhesion to the 2050 targets will not reduce emissions and will fail to keep the lights on,'' he will say. ''The current energy policy is a slave to flawed climate action.

''It will cost £1,100'‰billion, fail to meet the very emissions targets it is designed to meet, and will not provide the UK's energy requirements.

''In the short and medium term, costs to consumers will rise dramatically, but there can only be one ultimate consequence of this policy: the lights will go out at some time in the future.

''Not because of a temporary shortfall, but because of structural failures, from which we will find it extremely difficult and expensive to recover.''

He will say that the current ''decarbonisation route'' will end with the worst of all possible worlds.

The Government will have to build gas and coal power stations ''in a screaming hurry''.

Britain's energy needs are better met by investing in extracting shale gas through fracking and capturing the heat from nuclear reactors, Mr Paterson will argue.

He proposes a mix of energy generation based on smaller ''modular'' nuclear reactors and ''rational'' demand management. This would see dozens of small nuclear power stations, using reactors that are already fitted into submarines, being built around the country.

Home owners would also have to get used to timed power cuts using special switches that would cut electricity used by appliances.

''Let us hope we have an opportunity to put it into practice,'' he will say. ''We must be prepared to stand up to the bullies in the environmental movement and their subsidy-hungry allies.

''What I am proposing is that instead of investing huge sums in wind power, we should encourage investment in four possible common sense policies: shale gas, combined heat and power, small modular nuclear reactors and demand management.

''That would reduce emissions rapidly, without risking power cuts and would be affordable. What's stopping this programme? Simply, the 2050 target is.''

Mr Paterson has spent the past few months visiting rural Tory seats '-- he visited six in the week after he was sacked by David Cameron in July.

He said he was appalled at the damage to the countryside from new pylons to take electricity from remote onshore wind farms.

This week's speech will be Mr Paterson's first intervention since he lost his job in the Cabinet reshuffle in the summer. He is to make another speech on Europe before Christmas as he seeks a more active role on the Right.

Mr Paterson has already set up a think tank called UK2020 to consider new policies on personal taxation, immigration and the economy.

However, his intervention was dismissed last night by Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrat Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

Mr Davey said: ''Ripping up the Climate Change Act would be one of the most stupid economic decisions imaginable.

''The overwhelming majority of scientists agree that climate change exists while most leading British businesses and City investment funds agree with the Coalition that taking out an 'insurance policy' now will protect the UK against astronomical future costs caused by a changing climate.

''The majority of European countries are ready to implement proposals that would see [them] adopt targets similar to our Climate Change Act in a deal the Prime Minister should seal later this month.

''With the USA, China and India also now taking the climate change threat seriously, the global marketplace for green technology is increasingly strong.''

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Source: Valleywag

Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:54

Thousands of Snapchat users may have had their photos compromised, and a collection of nude snaps'--including, allegedly, photos of underage users'--have been leaked to 4chan and elsewhere. The hack, which Snapchat acknowledged today, is being called "the Snappening."

Snapchat wouldn't say how many users were affected, but the company was quick to deny any responsibility for the leak. Here's Snapchat's statement to VentureBeat:

We can confirm thatSnapchat's servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks.Snapchatters were victimized by their use of third-party appsto send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our Terms of Use precisely because they compromise our users' security. We vigilantly monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party apps and have succeeded in getting many of these removed.

The entire premise of Snapchat is that snaps are automatically deleted after viewing, but there are dozens of ways to save copies of the photos before they self-destruct. In this case, hackers apparently found a weakness in a third-party web version of Snapchat web called Snapsaved (not to be confused with the popular Snapsave Android app) and used it to collect 13 gigs of private photos. There are supposedly 200,000 snaps in all, although it's not yet clear how many of them are nudes.

Thesite originally hosting the files is now offline, according toBusiness Insider, but 4chan users have downloaded copies and are working on reuploading them and making them searchable by Snapchat username.

According to a 4chan thread originally pointed out by a blogger named Kenny Withers, the full collection of images hasn't been released yet, but could be up as soon as tonight. Withers also uploaded some of the "PG-13" snaps that have already been circulating on 4chan, which appear to have come mostly from Snapchat users in Europe.

It hasn't been confirmed that the leak contains child pornography, but Snapchat says half of its users are young teens.

[H/T VentureBeat, Photo: 4chan via Kenny Withers]

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:48

It was bad enough that companies like Facebook and Google relentlessly mine your information and sell it to advertisers. But now third-party startups are getting into the mix. Thanks tounprecedented access to photos uploaded to apps like Instagram, these third-parties are scanning and storing people'sphotos on behalf of major advertisers.

The Wall Street Journal delves into this practice of into public picture analysis, including a company called Ditto Labs, which specializes in scraping photographs from Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr for brand information and customer feedback. All the information they glean from selfies and candid shots allows companies to do extensive market research.

Advertisers such as Kraft Foods Group Inc. pay Ditto Labs to find their products' logos in photos on Tumblr and Instagram. The Cambridge, Mass., company's software can detect patterns in consumer behavior, such as which kinds of beverages people like to drink with macaroni and cheese, and whether or not they are smiling in those images. Ditto Labs places users into categories, such as "sports fans" and "foodies" based on the context of their images.

Kraft might use those insights to cross-promote certain products in stores or ads, or to better target customers online. David Rose, who founded Ditto Labs in 2012, said one day his image-recognition software will enable consumers to "shop" their friends' selfies, he said. Kraft didn't respond to a request for comment.

Advertisers can already directly target photo-sharers. According to Ditto's founder, they already have a service which enables advertisers to "target specific users based on their photos posted on Twitter." But Ditto has found that corporations are resistant to the new technology, fearing customers will think it's "creepy."

Right now, Ditto has a realtime"firehose"of all photographs published on social media, allowing curious people to filter for topics like "coffee," "candy," and "beer." You can see how creepy it is for yourself.

Update 3:45pm: Vans and The North Face both emailed statements saying they do not use Ditto, despite the startup prominently featuring both brand on their homepage:

I can assure you that Vans does not utilize Ditto, yet the image in the article undoubtedly implies that we do. Any time a consumer's photo is used within Vans' social media platforms, they have tagged Vans and we have asked for permission to post it after an internal review of current photos uploaded to any platform.

Tocontactthe author of this post, please emailkevin@valleywag.com.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:06

An innovative Tourette's Syndrome sufferer is embracing new technology in his drive to make life better for people living with the condition.

Paul Stevenson from Scremerston has devised a QR code holding information about the condition and how it manifests, and added it to the back of his Tourette's Action identity card.

Now he is discussing the idea with the Tourette's Action charity with a view to rolling it out for others living with the condition.

''I started thinking about this one day after I made a gesture at a police man,'' said Paul, who developed Tourette's suddenly at the age of 46 following the death of a good friend.

''When I go out my tics attract attention. The policeman came over and challenged me - he was very polite and I was able to explain myself, but if I was in an agitated situation I might have reacted in a different way.

''There was a guy in Northern Ireland who got arrested for his tics. The CPS built up a case against him. When it got to court they threw it out, but the process went on for six months of his life. It's awful to think of the stress and anxiety he had to live with, plus how much money the whole thing cost.

''I know the police have only got a small window to decide if you are a threat or not but that could have been easily rectified at the station if they scanned his ID card and saw that his actions were part of his condition.''

''John Davidson from Galashiels and I were thinking what if that happened to us or some one we know?''

Paul came up with the QR code idea and has added a code containing his personal details to his own ID card.

''We spoke to some officers over at Gala and they thought it was a good idea,'' he said.

''I have got confidence to go out when I have got that card. It's only a prototype but the feedback has been unbelievable.''

The novel idea was featured on BBC One's Inside Out programme on Monday, and was well received. ''I got a message from a woman in Australia afterwards saying where can I get one of those cards, so there's obviously a need for it,'' Paul said.

''I don't know where it's going to go or if Tourettes Action will take it up, but I'm having a meeting with the directors to discuss it further.

''It might be that it's an optional thing that you can have added to your card. Whether it's a QR code, a bar code, microchip - it's not a badge of shame you have to wear on your lapel or anything.

''It can help you feel confident because if you find yourself in a difficult situation, people can quickly access information about the condition that's personal to you.''

For more information about the condition and the support that is available go to www.tourettes-action.org.uk

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 12:55

Beer is more acceptable than whisky to Finnish authorities.Image: YLESouthern Finland's Regional Administrative Agency (Avi) has reportedly put in place some creative restrictions on a beer and whisky fair due to take place in Helsinki in October. Helsingin Sanomat reports that the event's license is contingent on the fair's website not showing up in search engine results for the word "whisky" ("viski" in Finnish).

As a consequence, organisers have now asked private bloggers to remove the word from blog postings about the event.

Their reasoning is that advertising of spirits is banned in Finland, and that a blog describing the whiskies on offer at the Beer and Whisky expo, if it showed up in search engine results for "viski", would constitute advertising.

Organiser Mikki Nyman told HS that he had sought guidance from Valvira, the National Authority for Health and Welfare, and was told that people could write about the products on offer at the fair so long as they didn't give prices for the whiskies or receive payment for the writings.

The bloggers did comply with Nyman's request, but raised questions about Avi's actions'--as private individuals without any official connection to the event, they could in theory force the withdrawal of the license, if they did not edit their blog postings and Avi followed through on its licensing conditions.

The Helsingin Sanomat report caused a big backlash on social media, with ''viski'' and ''Viskigate'' trending on Twitter and even a Tumblr offering little more than pictures, video and the word "viski" repeated hundreds of times.

11.10.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:56

SECRETARY KERRY: Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us for a minute. I'm very happy to welcome the Prime Minister of Haiti Laurent Lamothe here to Washington. And in doing so I welcome a good friend, a good partner in the major efforts to meet the challenges of Haiti, which are significant because of the devastating earthquake and some of the needs to push for political reform. The government has worked hard and we have worked hard and the international community has worked hard to make a difference to the lives of the people of Haiti.

I have many Haitians who live in Massachusetts that I was proud to represent as a United States senator for many years, and so I would always hear very personal stories of the challenges in Haiti. And we have a deep interest in the United States in helping to continue down this road of both democracy and economic growth and development.

There is work to be done, and particularly, as we know, there is the challenge of completing the task of having local and legislative elections as soon as possible, being able to set the date and hold those elections to complete the task of Haiti's transition. Unfortunately, that is being blocked now politically. I spoke with President Martelly just the other day about this, and we intend to try to work very closely to move forward. This resistance '' the unwillingness to allow the people to be able to have this vote '' really challenges the overall growth and development progress of the country. You need to have a fully functioning government. The president has been working very hard, the prime minister working very, very hard, to pull people together to make this happen.

So we'll talk about that today and we have very, very high hopes that we can make progress with respect to that, because that will facilitate our ability to continue the progress and complete the task of helping the people of Haiti to have the day-to-day lives they deserve and want, and which we want for them.

So Mr. Prime Minister, welcome. Thank you.

PRIME MINISTER LAMOTHE: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.

I want to thank Secretary Kerry for having us today. It's a great pleasure and honor to be here. It's my second visit. I used to be foreign minister here '' of Haiti, so I'm very, very happy to be able to discuss Haiti's progress. We came a long way after a devastating earthquake that took away 250,000 lives, 500,000 people were wounded. The country had $14 billion in damages. And 50 percent of the population of Port-au-Prince was homeless. That's the situation we found.

Today, 98 percent of that population has been relocated. The country is progressing very much, and that's thanks very much to the U.S. support of Haiti's growth, Haiti's progress. We have a thriving industrial park in the northern part of Haiti.

Haiti has tremendous challenges ahead of it. We have the elections that we have to organize, and like the Secretary said, we're working very hard to organize those elections as soon as possible. We have the energy security that we wanted to address, and the rule of law and security in general.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Secretary Kerry for the time, and also all the leadership that you've shown in the Ebola, I would say, mobilization of the world. And Haiti stands by your side in order to assist in any little way that we can in this effort that affects all of us.

Thank you.

SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you, sir.

QUESTION: Mr. Prime '' Mr. Prime Minister --

SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

QUESTION: Mr. Prime Minister, so can you confirm that the elections won't take place as scheduled on October 26th and that you will have to postpone them?

PRIME MINISTER LAMOTHE: All '' everything is ready for the election to take place. We have the financing that's in place. The electoral council is in place. We have the security plan that's in place. We're missing one thing, which is the electoral law, and the electoral law has to be voted by the senate. And at this moment, there is six senators who've been sitting on the law for the past 200 days, seven months. So we are working feverishly in a dialogue with different sectors to try to get them to vote that law in order for us to have elections as soon as possible. But if it was up to us, we would have it tomorrow.

SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you. Thank you all very much.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:37

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:21

NSA leaker reunited with dancer Linsday Mills, with whom he lived in HawaiiThe two are together again in Moscow, where Snowden is claiming asylumVladimir Putin has granted the wanted man permission to stay for 3 yearsBritish government today revealed leaks have made their job much harderGCHQ takes TRIPLE the time to crack messages thanks to Snowden tip-offBy Kieran Corcoran for MailOnline and Reuters

Published: 22:51 EST, 10 October 2014 | Updated: 16:01 EST, 11 October 2014

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Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who leaked classified details of U.S. government's surveillance programs, has been reunited in Russia with his long-time girlfriend.

Lindsay Mills, a pole dancer who lived with Snowden, 31, before he fled the United States, moved to Moscow, Russia, to join him in July this year.

Mills had initially stayed behind in Hawaii, where the two had lived together, in the wake of the political firestorm unleashed by the Snowden leaks last summer, a new documentary showed.

The film shows the two cooking together in an apartment in Moscow, where he was given political asylum by Vladimir Putin's regime. Snowden now has a three-year residency permit.

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Leaker: Snowden, left, who has claimed political asylum in Vladimir Putin's Russia, has been reunited with his pole-dancing girlfriend Lindsay Mills, right

Leaker: Snowden, who handed over huge amounts of classified information from the National Security Agency, stars in a new documentary which reveals he is living with his girlfriend under Putin's protection in Russia

Together again: The two, pictured on a Hawaiian beach before Snowden fled the U.S., have now reunited in Russia

Snowden is wanted in the United States under the Espionage Act.

Mills had remained silent and her whereabouts were largely unknown after Snowden's release of tens of thousands of classified U.S. intelligence documents in 2013.

Citizenfour, made by U.S. film maker Laura Poitras, premiered on Friday in New York, revealing Mills's location in the process. The film also suggests that there could be a second NSA leaker waiting in the wings, who had access to far more information that Snowden.

It came as a top spy revealed how Snowden's leaked documents have made the job of monitoring terrorists far more difficult.

Sir Iain Lobban, the outgoing head of the British government's NSA equivalent, GCHQ, revealed that since the revelations it now takes three times as long to complete routine monitoring tasks.

An unnamed employee made the revelation as part of the interview and profile of the GCHQ service in the Daily Telegraph.

Moscow living: Snowden was pictured on the Moscow river, flowing through the Russian capital where he sought asylum from U.S. authorities

More of this: The pair are pictured frolicking together before he fled the United States

Secrecy: Snowden hid his identity when speaking to journalists, using the name Citizenfour - now the film's title

Hollywood treatment: The Snowden film will show in theaters later this month

CitizenFour: Official trailer for Edward Snowden movie

Dancer: Mills, pictured left and right in an online video, is filmed cooking with Snowden in the documentary

The new film is a fly-on-the wall account of Snowden's tense days in a Hong Kong hotel and his encounters with journalists from the Washington Post and the Guardian as they prepared to print protected information on NSA activities.

It puts a Hollywood glamour on the former contractor, who is shown wearing contact lenses rather than his traditional glasses, and wearing mousse in his hair.

It also shows scenes of his relationship with Mills immediately after the links. She is shown telling him about agents showing up at their house after he didn't go to work - and also asking why his rent checks have stopped.

At one point he tells the camera 'she has no idea' - but claims he used the cover of going to Hong Kong on vacation to protect her.

Citizenfour takes its title from the email alias that Snowden used when he first approached Poitras in early 2013 through a series of encrypted emails - with a view to leaking details of the top-secret programs to the media.

Marketed as a 'real-life thriller,' it is the first of several films in the works about Snowden, who is wanted by the United States on charges brought under the Espionage Act.

Speaking in the film, Snowden says: 'I already know how this will end for me, and I accept the risk.

Floored: Another photograph uploaded by Mills seems to show the two laying down on a carpet

Parents: Snowden's mother Karen, left, and father Lonnie, right, pose with director Laura Poitras, center, after the screening of the film

Poitras, speaking after the screening, said: 'This was a film we had to make as privately and secretly as we could.'

'We very much wanted to communicate in this film that [it] was about people who take risks and come forward at huge personal sacrifice.'

Director: Citizenfour, the Snowden documentary, was made by Laura Poitras

Poitras, an American, now lives in Berlin, Germany. She has been stopped and questioned when entering the U.S. numerous times in the past 10 years.

Snowden's revelations sparked a global debate on the limits of privacy versus the needs of national security.

His critics view him as a traitor who refuses to face trial in the U.S. for his actions, while supports see him as a hero who spoke up for civil liberties.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who along with Poitras was Snowden's first points of contact with the media, said he hoped that Citizenfour would allow the public to form their own opinion about the man and his motives.

He said: 'So much has been said about Ed Snowden, a lot of it bad but a lot of it really good.

'I felt like this was really the first time that people got to see who he really is so that they could make up their own mind.

'I always felt... that the most powerful part of the story was not going to be the documents and the revelations but the power of the story and the acts of this very, kind of ordinary young man, who decided very consciously to sacrifice his whole life for a political principle.'

Poitras said she had shown the documentary to Snowden on a trip to Russia about three weeks ago, when the brief scenes with his girlfriend were filmed.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 12:54

The Ebola outbreak continues to spiral out of control. Near the epicenter of the epidemic in West Africa, more than 3,400 people have died and more than 7,000 people have been infected with the virus. Officials are scrambling to contain the outbreak at its source and keep it from spreading.

The World Health Organization is sending doctors to countries where the virus is most prevalent '-- Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Fusion's Jorge Ramos spoke to one of the doctors, Dr. Aileen Marty, who recently returned home to Miami after spending 31 days in Nigeria. She says she was surprised what happened when she arrived at Miami International Airport.

''I get to the kiosk'...mark the fact that I've been in Nigeria and nobody cares, nobody stopped me,'' Marty said.

''Not a single test?'' Ramos asked her, surprised.

''Nothing,'' Marty answered.

The White House recently announced it would implement additional measures for screening passengers coming into the U.S. from Ebola-stricken countries. New screenings will start at five major airports across the country, including New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta.

Travelers coming from West Africa will be taken to special screening areas to be examined for symptoms and questioned about any possible exposure they might have had to Ebola.

The decision came after Thomas Eric Duncan became the first Ebola patient on American soil to be diagnosed and die as a result of the disease. Duncan, a Liberian national, was diagnosed with the deadly virus on Sept. 30 in Dallas, days after he returned to the United States from Liberia. After a weeks-long struggle with the disease, he died on Oct. 8.

Dr. Marty says she was not surprised to hear about the first case of Ebola in the United States.

''If we don't change our entry method and this outbreak continues to get completely out of control'...it's likely to be seen in other countries,'' Marty warned.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 05:38

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by WSJ Live5:12 mins

President Barack Obama will undertake two actions aimed at revealing more information about possible pay differences between men and women at federal contractors. Erin Prangley of the American Association of University Women, and Sabrina Schaeffer of the Independent Women's Forum discuss on Lunch Break.

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Sun, 12 Oct 2014 04:33

TRI-STATE NEWS HEADLINESFrom our newsroom to your inbox weekday mornings at 9AM.

Sign UpNEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) '' Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella apologized Thursday night and said he was wrong for saying that women don't need to ask for a raise and should just trust the system to pay them well.

Nadella was blasted on Twitter and in blog posts for his comments, which were made earlier Thursday at an event for women in computing. Tech companies hire many more men than women. And beyond the tech industry, women are typically paid less than men.

He had been asked to give his advice to women who are uncomfortable requesting a raise. His response: ''It's not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along.'' Not asking for raise, he added, is ''good karma'' that would help a boss realize that the employee could be trusted and should have more responsibility.

But his comments caused an uproar online, and Microsoft posted a memo from him on its website. In it, Nadella said he answered the question ''completely wrong'' and that he thinks ''men and women should get equal pay for equal work. And when it comes to career advice on getting a raise when you think it's deserved, Maria's advice was the right advice. If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask.''

New Yorkers also chimed in Friday.

''I'm pretty sure he wouldn't ever have suggested that to any of his male executives,'' Alice Shulman told CBS 2's Dick Brennan.

''Women need to ask for what's rightfully theirs,'' Nikkie Daniels added.

His interviewer at the event, Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College and a Microsoft director, had told him she disagreed, which drew cheers from the audience. She suggested women do their homework on salary information and first practice asking with people they trust.

Still, his comments at the event, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, underscored why many see technology companies as workplaces that are difficult to navigate or even unfriendly for women and minorities. Tech companies, particularly the engineering ranks, are overwhelmingly male, white and Asian.

''I think it was a surprisingly unvarnished moment,'' The New York Times tech columnist Molly Wood said on CBS This Morning. ''You have to imagine that if someone within Microsoft was already concerned about treatment of women there they might be feeling a little more concerned now.''

Criticized for their lack of diversity, major companies say they are trying to address the problem with programs such as employee training sessions and by participating in initiatives meant to introduce girls to coding.

Twenty-nine percent of Microsoft's employees are women, according to figures the Redmond, Washington-based company released earlier this month. Its technical and engineering staff and its management are just 17 percent female.

That's roughly comparable to diversity data released by other big tech companies this year.

''Without a doubt I wholeheartedly support programs at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap,'' Nadella wrote in his memo to employees.

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(TM and (C) Copyright 2014 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2014 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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Fri, 10 Oct 2014 12:03

Oct. 10, 2014, 5:38 AM2,031The Nobel Committee was visibly shocked at the news conference announcing the winner of the Peace Prize when an attendee questioned the selection of Malala Yousafzai, saying she had "aspirations but hasn't actually done anything."

Here's committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland looking a bit taken aback by the statement:

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday morning to Kailash Satyarthi, from India, and Yousafzai, from Pakistan, "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education."

Here's the person who questioned the award. It was very bizarre.

Nobel prize

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Fri, 10 Oct 2014 11:45

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Fri, 10 Oct 2014 00:25

The Foreign Policy Initiative seeks to promote an active U.S. foreign policy committed to robust support for democratic allies, human rights, a strong American military equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century, and strengthening America's global economic competitiveness.Read More

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Thu, 09 Oct 2014 23:44

Opening Remarks by U.S. and EU Chief Negotiators forT-TIP Round Seven Press Conference

Washington, D.C.October 3, 2014

As Delivered

Opening Remarks by Dan Mullaney, United States T-TIP Chief Negotiator

''Thank you very much, Trevor, and thank you all for joining us here this morning. We've had a positive and constructive seventh round of negotiations for the TTIP this week, and I do want to thank Ignacio and his team for joining us this week here in Washington for this productive week.

''Lead negotiators in most of the groups met and took on the important but arduous task of analyzing the increasing number of proposals that are now on the table. As I said at the end of the last round of July '' in July, we're at the phase of the negotiation in which our teams have progressed from discussing general approaches in the agreement to the spade work of reviewing the many proposals and text language that each side has put on the table.

''In an agreement of this importance and magnitude, these proposals are in many cases long and complex and require many hours of detailed and difficult discussion and analysis. This is not the kind of work that's particularly exciting, but it is the kind of work that is absolutely necessary to build a firm foundation for the ambitious and comprehensive agreement that we have undertaken, while continuing to take into account the interests of the public. Accomplishing these goals takes time and effort.

''Our end goal is to unlock opportunities for jobs supporting trade and investment by eliminating tariffs between us and by removing non-tariff obstacles to trade and investment while maintaining our high shared '' our shared values and our high standards, and this is what we have been doing this week.

''What we are working toward in the services area, for instance, is a trade agreement that creates more opportunities for U.S. and EU companies to provide and expand services across the Atlantic and around the world, services that not only support high-tech jobs where U.S. and EU companies excel, but that can also improve the lives of our citizens. And to do that, our negotiators have first to examine, discuss, and understand in detail the literally hundreds of pages of proposed commitments in the services area that each side has proposed. During the last round, our negotiators were able to discuss approximately 15 percent of the proposed EU services offer. After this week, negotiators are now more than halfway.

''We want this agreement to be ambitious and comprehensive, particularly in the area of the modern digital economy, an area comparatively new to trade. This week we also discussed proposed agreement language in the area of regulations and standards, both for industrial products and for agricultural products. Our end goal is to avoid unnecessary costs or burden that can arise due to differences in regulations and standards on either side of the Atlantic, and we are doing this is in a way that maintains our high levels of protection for consumers, for health and safety, for the environment, and for labor rights.

''Our lead negotiators have discussed proposed text language in areas of what we call regulatory coherence -- that is, transparency, input, accountability -- as well as in the area of technical regulations and food safety regulations. If regulators on one side of the Atlantic can agree to rely on or accept inspections performed by the other side for medical devices, for instance, or for pharmaceuticals, regulators benefit because their resources will stretch further, companies benefit because they don't have to undergo several duplicative tests for their products, and consumers benefit through the opportunity to have lower prices, increased availability of products, and more efficient regulatory oversight.

''Our negotiators examined numerous proposals from both sides on how this might be accomplished in these negotiations across the board in all regulatory areas and in specific sectors. Our negotiators also worked on ways to facilitate the ability of small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, to export and invest abroad, and to participate in global supply chains. This work has not just taken place at the negotiating table. We have engaged directly with small and medium-sized businesses on both sides of the Atlantic to hear directly how the TTIP can help solve the problems that they face doing business across the Atlantic and to unlock new job-creating trade opportunities.

''And because SMEs can't always make it to Washington or to Brussels, our negotiators have been going to them. We've met with small business centers in Great Vine, Texas; bioscience and engineering SMEs in Kansas City; and auto part, chemicals, customs and logistics, and videogame software development SMEs in Katowice, Poland, Leipzig, Germany, and Wolkersdorf, Austria, many of whom partner with and buy from U.S. suppliers, many of whom are small and medium-sized enterprises. And just this past Tuesday, right after their negotiating session ended, our negotiators left for an SME assembly hosted by the European Commission in Naples, Italy.

''With small business, as in the case of all areas, we are identifying the specific and practical tools that will help them take advantage of the market access opportunities under TTIP, whether by reducing red tape and delays at the border or addressing charges and taxes that can burden exporting, or make it easier for businesses of all sides to comply with local product regulations, our negotiators are working hard to ensure that whatever we do in TTIP creates advantages for our small and medium-sized employers, and directly addresses the concerns that they have raised with us.

''Ultimately, of course, as this painstaking work of building a foundation for an agreement is completed, we will need to make a high-level push to achieve the comprehensive and ambitious results that we are now working to support. That will require a shared commitment at the highest levels on both sides of the Atlantic to move forward quickly. We look forward to reinvigorating this effort after the new commission in the EU takes office.

''I mentioned at the outset that our negotiators have been able this week to exchange views with a wide range of U.S. and EU public. In fact, we heard from and exchanged views with over 300 stakeholder representatives over the course of several hours on Wednesday when all of our negotiators took a break from the negotiations to sit with and exchange views with stakeholders. These stakeholder sessions have, in fact, guided our negotiators. For instance, we heard the concern that our negotiations should not require privatization of public services such as water utilities, education, national healthcare, and that they not limit the ability of governments to regulate those services as they see fit; for example, to protect consumers, the environment, and health and safety. So we welcome the opportunity to confirm that the United States does not include such provisions in its trade agreements and will not do so in this negotiation.

''We also heard from several presenters on Wednesday the concern about harmonization and mutual recognition in sectors where the regulatory systems are very different, for instance in the area of chemicals. This is a good example of the need for the detailed discussions and analysis that our negotiators and regulators have been having this week. There are many ways that negotiators and regulators can do '' many things that our negotiators and regulators can do other than harmonization or mutual recognition to reduce costs to consumers and business and help regulators on both sides do their jobs better.

''So let me be clear. Our negotiators and regulators are not discussing how to harmonize or mutually recognize our chemical regulatory regimes. Period. They are discussing how regulators on both sides can avoid unnecessary duplication of effort and cost by sharing the work of assessing priority chemicals. This allows the U.S. and EU negotiators to do their jobs more efficiently, freeing up their resources for places where the need is greater. This translates into benefits for consumers, benefits for regulators, and benefits for companies. We are engaging in these conversations with stakeholders because we are committed to an agreement that not only advances our economic interest, but also reflects our values and has the support of our public, and this requires that we be open and attentive to the views of that public.

''Thank you very much for your attention, and I'll be happy to answer any questions after I turn the floor over to Ignacio.''

Opening Remarks by Ignacio Garcia-Bercero, European Union T-TIP Chief Negotiator

''Well, first of all, I would like to thank very much Dan and all the members of his team for having organized this round in Washington as it has been an excellent organization. And I think that we have had during this week very productive discussions. As Dan has already said, we have been moving smoothly towards the textual phase of the negotiations in which in most areas there are already texts on the table. In a number of areas, there are already consolidated texts that bring together the proposals of the United States and of the European Union.

''During this round, a lot of the focus has been on the regulatory pillar of the future agreement. This includes horizontal disciplines on issues such as technical regulations, the standards, conformity assessment, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, and the issue of regulatory coherence, which he said, very broad topic, as well as concrete work on sectors which we have been identifying in previous rounds, such as pharmaceuticals, cars, chemicals, or engineering. As regards to the (inaudible) disciplines, we are now fully engaged in discussions based on textual proposals.

''An important challenge is going to be to establish a strong framework for cooperation that allows European and U.S. regulators to tackle new regulatory challenges based on high levels of protection. On sectors, the technical work is making a steady progress with a view to identify concrete outcomes in each of the sectors that save unnecessary red tape while fully respecting the mandates of our regulators. This work is indeed very much guided by the regulators themselves. We have again very actively participated in all the sectorial discussions.

''As you know, we consider the regulatory pillar of TTIP as the one which has the potential to deliver the most benefits, but it is also the most challenging because of its technicality and because it is also the one which requires more innovative thinking. Despite this, I believe that we are making good progress.

''Let me recall three key considerations for our negotiations on the regulatory pillar of TTIP. Firstly, there is an unequivocal and firm commitment nothing will be done which could lower or endanger the protection of the environment, health, safety, consumers, data privacy, or indeed any other public policy goal pursued by the European Union or the United States in the regulation. And as we confirm by Commissioner-designate Malmstrom in the European parliament hearing this Monday, decision making on regulations will remain under the existing democratic controls.

''Secondly, enhanced regulatory cooperation is essential if the European Union and United States wish to play a leading role in promoting the development of international regulations and standards based on a high level of protection. Therefore, the regulatory agenda is not just purely bilateral but has also an important strategic dimension.

''Thirdly, TTIP should deliver concrete results in terms of enhanced regulatory compatibility. In addition to the work on regulatory aspects, we also discussed some elements of the rules pillar of the agreement. We focused this week primarily on energy and raw materials, customs and trade facilitation, intellectual property, and SMEs, an area where I think both United States and the European Union share a very strong commitment to ensure that this agreement delivers a maximum of benefits for the small and mediate enterprises.

''And we also discussed services. As you know, on services both the United States and the European Union have put before the summer their respective market access offer. As you can probably imagine, services offers are highly complex and very technical. Our negotiators devoted largely all of the week to explaining to each other in great detail all the elements of those offers. This is a key step in every negotiation as we would not be able to make further progress until each side has understood the scope of what the other has put on the table.

''I wish in this collection to stress that our approach to services negotiations excludes any commitment on public services, and the governments remain at any time free to decide that certain services should be provided by the public sector. And I've seen very much work on that. Also, Dan has given strong assurance on the issue of public services, and we understand that this is often an issue of concern and that we have had quite a few opportunities to discuss this issue with the stakeholders, particularly trade unions.

''I must therefore also highlight the importance of the stakeholder event which we held this Wednesday. I very much welcome the opportunity that is given to negotiators to spend one full day engaging and exchanging views with representatives of civil society. We have organized these dedicated sessions in every round, and this time again we had very good participation. Our engagement with the stakeholders sends a clear message to negotiators on both sides of the Atlantic. We all work on behalf and for our citizens. We need therefore to listen to their ideas and respond to their concerns.

''But we also have the duty to explain the facts and the approach that we are taking. Our dialogue must therefore be open to all, continuous, and in two directions throughout the negotiating process. This is the only way to ensure that the final agreement responds to the high ambitions of our leaders and also reflects the expectations of our citizens. I can assure you that Commissioner-designate Malmstrom is fully committed to engage in dialogue with civil society, and she made this point very clearly in her hearing before the European Parliament this Monday.

''Finally, I understand that you will also have questions on how the broader political context is impacting in the dynamics of the TTIP negotiations. On the European side, as you know, President-elect Juncker highlighted TTIP as one of the ten priorities for the next commission. TTIP will therefore continue to have the strong political support of the new commission. Under the new commission, we will continue working towards achieving an ambitious agreement. We will not compromise on the protection of the environment, health, safety, consumers, data privacy, or any other public policy goal. We will do nothing that puts into question the right of governments to regulate. We continue therefore to be fully committed to these negotiations. And it is in this spirit that we have engaged this week in Washington so that we can make as much progress as possible to achieve this comprehensive and innovative trade agreement.

''Thank you very much, and of course we will now very much welcome your questions.''