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tribune Chávez & monarch of Spain indict each other of default ►media coverage◄


Image by quapan
Six subtitled captures: Cumbre Iberoamericana XVII: Santiago de Chile: Nov.10, 2007
1-2 The Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez replies to the Spanish President Zapatero : "Podra ser español, el presidente Aznar, pero es un fascista, y eso es una falta de respeto." ("Maybe he is spanish, the president Aznar, but he is a fascist, and that’s a default(er) of respect.")
3 Spanish subtitle: "Dígale a el que respete la dignidad de nuestro pueblo." – Chávez had just interrupted the lecture which Zapatero was giving him by the subtitled english words: "Tell him {Aznar} that he shall respect the dignity of our people." – Having heard this tribulation the monarch abruptly bows forward to put his arm out shaking his fist showing his index-finger pointing a(gains)t Chávez while exclaiming the brusque admonition: “¡Tú!” – ("And you ! " … as well are in default on respecting the dignity of the spanish people …—> confer: Caesar’s last words: "Et tu, Brute!" (William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar) / "καὶ σὺ τέκνον"}
4 In excess of ten seconds later the monarch is flaring up again phrasing his famed exclamation: “¡¡por qué no te callas!!”. (Dubbed by the spanish TV with: "Why don’t you shut up ?" Conjectured by me: To that five-word-sentence was given an incorrect punctuation by our European Media Outlets: It is not meant interrogative, – not even rhetorically. Therefore it must not have any question marks. It sounds like a last admonition. Indeed it is an exclamatory imperative: "Shut up eventually !!")
5 With an irate face the monarch turns to arise. English subtitle: "It was at that point when King Juan Carlos rose from his seat and left the meeting."
6 English subtitle: "Even after the incident the criticism against the spanish government continued."
I have captured and collated each of the six images with their multicoloured, bilingual subtitles from a footage provided by TVCi "Televisió de Catalunya".
▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▐► V O C A B U L A R Y ◄▌ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼
|_ … ὁρῶν ὅτι_|_τραχὺς μόναρχος οὐδ’ ὑπεύθυνος κρατεῖ_|
|_… viendo que_|_áspero monarca como si a ningún responsable tiene poder_|
{Prometeo encadenado de Esquilo, 325|6}.
For publically declaring the monarch to be a tyrant {|_τὸν τοῦ τυράννου τοῦ νέου διάκονον_| (942)} Prometheus gets imprisoned in the Hades for 30.000 years.
During the Great times of Greek Tragedy (temporarily halted in -432.) and French Revolution (temporarily halted in +1815.) some words that possess nowadays different meanings, were apparently applied absolutely synonymously. For instance: monarch and tyrant had just a stylistic difference, – but the connotations released by the twin-words were equally horrendous at those times. More specimens of this history-induced linguistic phenomenon:
│monarch.≡.tyrant│god.≡.demon│word.≡.myth│imitation.≡.counterfeit│
│μόναρχος.≡.τύραννος│θεός.≡.δαίμων│λόγος.≡.μῦθος│μίμησις.≡.ὑπόκρισις│
monarch a sovereign head of state, especially a king, queen or emperor ORIGIN late Middle English; from Greek μόναρχος ’sole ruler’, gr:μόναρχος=dictator:lt,confer: Plutarchus in Camillus v18.
monarchism: support for the principle of having monarchs. ORIGIN: mid 19th cent.: from french monarchisme
tribune: noun (also tribune of the people) an official in ancient Rome chosen by the plebeians to protect their interests. also military tribune: a Roman legionary colonel. figurative: a popular leader; a champion of the people. DERIVATES: tribunate, tribuneship. ORIGIN: Latin tribûnus, literally ‘head of tribe’. In ancient Rome there were 4 city-tribes (‘urbanae tribûs’), and 26 rural tribes (‘rusticae tribûs’). These numbers (4, 26: 4×26 = 8×13 = 104) remind of mexican arithmology: Tenochtitlan was divided into four districts. The number 13 divided the age groups (13,26,52,104).
default: failure to fulfil an obligation, especially to repay a loan or appear in a law court.
borborygmus: noun: a rumbling or gurgling noise by the movement of fluid and gas in the intestines. DERIVATES: borborygmic ORIGIN: Early 18th cent. modern Latin, from Greek borborygmós: intestinal rumbling (Hippocrates Prognostikón II); belching (Suidas Lexicographus).
frame-up informal, a conspiracy to falsely incriminate someone
——————————– M E D I A – C O V E R A G E ————————————————–
Chávez gives olé to Mr.King and gets «brusquement» lectured & heckled on Ibero-American Summit XVII.
►Nov 9,10,11, …◄
"… el Rey será Rey, pero no me puede hacer callar"
Chavez acusa Espanya de "genocidio" a Llatinomèrica
"El Rey es tan jefe de Estado como yo, con la diferencia de que yo soy electo. He sido electo tres veces, con el 63%; son tan jefes de Estado el índio Evo Morales como el rey Juan Carlos de Borbón", ha deixat clar Chávez. El president veneçolà ha deixat clar que "la verdad la diré delante de reyes, de imperialistas, de Bush. Allá los que se molesten".
"creo que se debe revisar la participación del rey" Alejandro Navarro (PS)
SANTIAGO, noviembre 13.- Navarro desestimó que haya sido Hugo Chávez el que incomodó a la Presidenta Bachelet, como moderadora de la sesión plenaria de mandatarios en Espacio Riesco, donde una acalorada discusión con el jefe del gobierno español, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, terminó sacando de quicio al rey, quien le espetó al presidente venezolano un airado “¡por qué no te callas!”.
Al respecto, el senador PS estimó que “el exabrupto lo ha cometido el rey de España, es él el que ha increpado a un jefe de Estado y lo ha hecho callar. Quien conducía la reunión era la Presidenta Bachelet y lo que hace el rey Juan Carlos es pasar por encima de la Presidenta”.
"… es un verdadero fascista" EFE. 09.11.2007 – 19:33h
El mandatario venezolano citó a Aznar al denunciar el ALCA, el aérea de Libre Comercio impulsada por Estados Unidos. Le tildó de "fascista, es un verdadero fascista".
Chávez, tras calificar de "proyecto imperialista" esta iniciativa, señaló que fue en una "cumbre de esas, la primera" a la que asistió, hace casi 10 años, en que se presentaron las tesis en reuniones iberoamericanas de entonces que llamó de "canto general al neoliberalismo".
Público.es: "Aznar es un fascista a toda carta" Atlas 2007-11-10
El presidente venezolano, Hugo Chávez, calificó tres veces de "fascista" al ex presidente del Gobierno español, José María Aznar, en el discurso que pronunció en la Cumbre Iberoamericana en Santiago de Chile. Chávez dijo: "El entonces presidente de España, que es un fascista a toda carta," era quien "venía a vendernos aquí aquellas tesis".El presidente venezolano, Hugo Chávez, calificó tres veces de "fascista" al ex presidente del Gobierno español, José María Aznar, en el discurso que pronunció en la Cumbre Iberoamericana en Santiago de Chile. Chávez dijo: "El entonces presidente de España, que es un fascista a toda carta," era quien "venía a vendernos aquí aquellas tesis". (menos)

SRIPPS-News has a translation (2002): "A snake is more human than a fascist or a racist; a tiger is more human than a fascist or a racist."
el país – 10/11/2007 Desvelando algunas conversaciones que tuvo con él en la visita de Aznar a Venezuela en 2002, Chávez ha rematado su discurso diciendo que "una serpiente es más humana que un fascista o un racista; un tigre es más humano que un fascista o un racista".

ESCAMBRAY Digital, Periódico de la provincia de Sancti Spíritus.
Reflexiones del Comandante en Jefe
El silencio de Aznar
Le pido al señor Aznar que diga si es o no cierto que aconsejó al presidente Clinton el 13 de abril de 1999 bombardear la radio y la televisión serbias. 29 de septiembre del 2007
La respuesta de Milosevic
Hubo en realidad dos guerras, una de las cuales no ha concluido, y dos fatídicos encuentros de Aznar, uno con Clinton y otro con Bush. Dos recorridos idénticos del primero vía Ciudad México-Washington y vía Ciudad México-Texas con el mismo objetivo e igual falta de principios éticos, en los que Aznar se autoasigna el papel de coordinador bélico de los mutables presidentes de Estados Unidos. 2 de octubre del 2007

REUTERS-Madrid: Spanish king visits troops in Afghanistan Dec 31, 2007.
Spain’s King Juan Carlos paid a surprise New Year’s Eve visit to Spanish troops based in Afghanistan on Monday. The monarch, who will turn 70 on Saturday, posed with soldiers in his military uniform and was set to stay for lunch at the base in Herat in western Afghanistan, which he visited along with Defence Minister Jose Antonio Alonso, a spokeswoman for the royal household said.
The king, …. , spoke by radio from the base to troops who were elsewhere in the country: "I only want to wish you all the best for the New Year and I’m sorry I can’t greet you," said Juan Carlos, who was due to return to Spain after his meal.
The king, …. , also paid a similar visit to Spanish troops in Bosnia around the date of his 60th birthday. Spain has around 700 troops based in Afghanistan, where at least 23 have been killed.

BBC: Chavez says: Spain’s king is arrogant, impotent and imprudent
" disrespected me, and he was laid bare before the world in his arrogance and also his impotence," Mr Chavez told a news conference on Tuesday … 14 Nov 2007
BBC: Chavez refuses to be silenced By Martin Murphy BBC Americas analyst
For a president whose role model is the Latin American independence hero Simon Bolivar it was particularly ignominious that a Spanish king treated him like a schoolboy.
Not only has Mr Chavez now told the king to shut up in return, he
suggested that perhaps he knew about the 2002 coup that briefly toppled him – the same accusation he threw at Mr Aznar.
In 2006, more than 50% of the foreign investment in Venezuela came from Spanish firms.

Summit on Track to Protect Migrants’ Social Rights
The Multilateral Convention on Social Security, to be signed at the 17th Ibero-American Summit in Chile, is an important step toward improving the quality of life of poor people in this community of nations, according to its governments.
Chávez was singing a "ranchera" song as he arrived, with lyrics saying that, unlike a gold coin, he would not be liked by everyone.

Chávez “leveled devastating criticisms at Europe” Fidel Castro broke two weeks of silence to applaud his close friend Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for having “leveled devastating criticisms at Europe” during a summit of leaders from Latin America, Spain and Portugal. In a brief essay published yesterday on the front pages of state newspapers, he also praised speeches by the leftist presidents of Nicaragua of Bolivia during the Ibero-American summit. Castro blasted conservative leaders at the meeting, singling out El Salvador’s President Tony Saca, a U.S. ally.

"If President Hugo Chavez says Aznar is a fascist, I’m with him all the way!" by Oscar Heck, Nov 13, 2007
Chavez had called Aznar a fascist, which Chavez says is true.
I don’t know much about Aznar … but I know that he did openly support the USA in its criminal invasion of Iraq … and later, the Spanish people suffered attacks on their transport system which left lots of people dead and injured … and, then Aznar had to basically step down from power.
However, having listened to Chavez speak many times, if he says that Aznar is a fascist, I’m with him all the way!
Now Chavez is saying, paraphrased, "Wait a minute. What I said about Aznar is true … and they tell me to shut up? Why? What … are we now going to stop talking against Hitler, because the German people might want us to shut up?" Chavez continues, reiterating that he has great respect for Zapatero and that he hopes this incident will not cause some kind of diplomatic or political dilemma.
Paraphrased: "There was a debate between Heads of State … and the King stepped in to tell me to shut up … but I did not hear him. We have to remind the King that we are free to speak, we are free, we are no longer under domination by Spain. Him telling me to shut up was certainly a show of frustration and desperation … because we are free."
I just looked up Aznar and found the following: "Aznar’s government posthumously granted a medal of Civil Merit to Meliton Manzanas, the head of the secret police in San Sebastian and the first high-profile member of the Franco-ist government killed by ETA in 1968. He was widely considered a torturer, and Amnesty International condemned the awarding … After the 2004 elections it was revealed that Aznar and his government secretly channeled public funds to a US legal firm to lobby for the bestowment of the Congressional Gold Medal on Aznar … Aznar also announced the sale early in 1997 of the nation’s remaining minority stake (golden shares) in the Telefonica telecommunications company and the petroleum group Repsol. These golden shares in Telefonica and Repsol YPF, as well as in Endesa, Argentaria and Tabacalera, all presided over by people close to Aznar, have since been declared illegal by the European Union. This marked the beginning of a period of privatizations after the previous PSOE government had nationalized parts of the economy."
Chavez says that, even in college and university debates, when people are debating, someone doesn’t just butt in to tell someone else to shut up … but that is what the King did.

"Zapatero is wrong trying to denigrate Chavez for speaking the truth" Commentary by Oscar Heck, Nov 13, 2007
If Aznar did back the coup against Chavez … or if he did openly back any attempt at ousting Chavez from power, Chavez should also be allowed to speak his mind against someone who so openly promoted his ousting … without the opinion of the Spanish King … and especially without the King telling Chavez to "shut up." What business is it of the King to tell someone to shut up because another (Chavez) says something that he (the King) doesn’t like to hear? Like the truth! Who is this King anyway? What gives him the right to be superior to others? Is it because he is a King? A descendant of the same kingdom that invaded Latin America, killed, plundered, raped and enslaved millions of innocent people? Does that make him superior and more important that Chavez … more important than the hundreds of millions of Latin Americans who have suffered mass abuses and exploitation at the hands of the Kings and Queens of Spain … genocide? Sorry … the King is wrong. Zapatero is wrong in trying to denigrate Chavez for speaking the truth. Chavez should not shut up because these Spaniards want him to … Chavez speaks the truth … something the Spaniards do not want the world to know. Genocide. Do we want to know the truth … or lies and disinformation? Chavez speaks the truth. Aznar did support all efforts to oust Chavez from power. The Spaniards did in fact invade Latin America (like the USA is invading Iraq) and they did in fact plunder and rape and kill and enslave millions of innocent people. These are facts that can no longer be hidden behind false history books, diplomacy or royalty. The time has come to set things straight … and only few world leaders, like Chavez, have the courage to speak up. I wonder if the King of Spain smells like cotton candy or fine wine when he sits at the toilet to do number two?

►Nov 15◄
The Monarchy’s clash with Socialism by Pablo Ouziel
This scene from the Ibero-American Summit has now travelled the globe through every mainstream news media channel, however it has been used once again as an opportunity to attack Hugo Chavez for his rudeness and out of line commentary, when in fact not only is it a fairly accurate statement, but it also should be used as an opportunity by political analysts worldwide to bring out the extent to which fascist factions are still very much alive in Spain’s political reality.
Already earlier this year, Chavez called Aznar "a fascist who supported the coup (of April 2002) and who is of the same kind as Adolf Hitler, a disgusting and despicable person who you feel sorry for, a true servant of George W. Bush". This statement was made shortly after Aznar made a call "on the United States, Europe and the Latin American democracies, to close ranks and defeat Hugo Chavez’s 21st century socialism."
In order for the whole incident to be put into perspective, it is also important to understand, first, Aznar’s background as a supporter of fascism and second, the fact that the King only has his crown thanks to the father of fascism in Spain, Francisco Franco.

The winner in this controversy is NOT the King of Spain! Commentarist Kenneth T. Tellis writes:
If criticism of former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar by Hugo Chavez Frias, President of Venezuela, evoked such anger from Spanish king Juan Carlos at the Ibero-American Summit on November 9, 2007, what would have happened if the criticism had been of some other Spaniard?
One can only imagine what would have happened if someone had condemned Spain’s Inquisitor General Tomas de Torquemada, Hernan Cortez, King Ferdinand or Queen Isabella of Spain?
If the King was so foolish to let the world in on his weaknesses, then we must treat him like a court jester. If King Juan Carlos apologizes, then he may make up for his indiscretion at the XVII Ibero-American Summit in Santiago, Chile.
On the other hand if the King did this to ingratiate him to US president George W. Bush, by attempting to publicly humiliate President Hugo Chavez Frias of Venezuela, then no attempt of coaxing him will make a bit of difference now.
We must fully understand the power behind these attempts to humiliate President Hugo Chavez Frias, is not in Spain but in North America.
The King of Spain has made himself a patsy in carrying out this assignment, to make himself popular with the US and its allies, but given the North American press something to gloat about, which is not worth a damn.
Yes! It may be something that the US press wanted to make a big story out of, but it has now fizzled and there is egg spattered all over their own faces.
The winner in this controversy is NOT the King of Spain … or the US-controlled world press.

Hugo Chavez lets off steam by Jose de la Isla, author of "The Rise of Hispanic Political Power," Writer of a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service.
In 2003, Chavez had deemed Aznar imperious for saying Chavez ought to not duplicate Cuba’s experience in Venezuela.
Then in May 2005, Aznar, who was out of office and visiting Brazil, criticized Venezuela’s relationship with Cuba. Chavez compared Aznar to Hitler and called him a fascist and an "imbecile."
Two years ago, because of the Venezuelan’s close association with Castro, Aznar called Chavez a threat to democracy in Latin America. He also attributed Chavez’s brashness to domestic failures softened by -a-barrel oil revenues padding Venezuela’s coffers.
In October 2006, Aznar again called Chavez-brand populism and radicalism a threat to Latin America. In April of this year, Chavez remarked that it’s better to have nothing to do with people like Aznar, telling a group of students that Aznar had supported the attempted coup against him in 2002 and supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Throughout the 1990s and to the present, Spanish corporations have been the leading European investors in Latin America. So much so their commercial interests are sometimes referred to as the re-conquest.
While he was at it, Chavez included Mexico’s Vicente Fox and Peru’s Alejandro Toledo as "lackeys and puppy dogs of the empire."
While Chavez was making his final remarks at the closing ceremony at the National Stadium in Santiago, Lage handed him his cell phone. Castro was calling.
Castro, Chavez told the audience, was remembering the Chilean combat volunteers who died fighting Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. Chavez called on the crowd to send out a cheer to Castro. "Fidel, Fidel! What is it he has the imperialists can’t handle."
Maybe it was their last hoorah.
But the multitudes — the nerve endings of economic statistics and commercial strategies, the consumers and workers talked about at forums — they are the ones just now finding a voice and who won’t shut up.

Can Venezuela’s elite and the CIA contain their fury over Chavez, asks ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Castro saw the Spanish king’s intervention as an instant when the ‘hearts of all Latin America quivered’.
Chavez is trying to level the playing field in Venezuela, long dominated by a small, corrupt elite. So long as the Central Bank enjoyed independence, Venezuela’s sovereignty was leased out to the international money markets.
Now ex-Minister of Defence Raul Baduel has launched a violent attack on the referendum, on Chavez and the Congress. Back in 2002, Baduel, an army general, refused the invitation to launch a Pinochet-type bloodbath. But he is a right-winger and at a press conference on November 5 he appeared to favour a military coup.
The Venezuelan elites and the US government see the next few weeks as the last opportunity they may have to reverse the tide. We may see a ’strategy of tension’ script unwind, as it has done in the past with coups in which the CIA has had a role: bombs in public places, assassinations, dramatic marches. On the other hand, Chavez is popular, canny and a survivor. The stakes are very high.

Chavez seeks apology from Spanish king Copyright EL PAÍS, SL. 2007
"The king blew his top and the least he should do is to offer an apology and tell the world the truth," Chavez said Wednesday in an interview with a radio station in the southwestern city of Barquisimeto.
Exasperated by Chavez’s attacks on a former Spanish premier during Saturday’s final session of the meeting, King Juan Carlos at one point told Chavez to "shut up," though the latter said he did not hear the king shout.
The Venezuelan president accused the international press for "motivated" reporting on the incident and denounced "the existence of a campaign on the world level … to make it appear that I was the aggressor, when I didn’t say anything to him (the king)."
Chávez to take "hard look" at ties with Spain
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced Wednesday that he plans to "take a hard look at" relations with Spain and will also watch more closely the activities of Spanish businesses in his country.
"They’re going to be called to account and I’m going to watch them to find out what they’re doing here," Chávez warned.

Spain hopes spat with Venezuela will blow over Reuters Thursday Nov 15 2007, By Jason Webb.
"I think we have already made our point with great force, thanks to the head of state, which is what irritated the president of Venezuela," Moratinos said.
"Unless something else happens which forces us to revise our position, our attitude at the moment is to keep diplomatic channels open," he said.
The incident comes as Chavez campaigns for a referendum on Dec. 2, which he hopes will expand his powers and end presidential term limits.
Under Zapatero, a socialist, ties between Madrid and Caracas have been friendly. In 2006, Washington forced Madrid to call off a multi-million sale of military aircraft to Venezuela after banning a Spanish aerospace firm from using U.S. components.

US Ambassador hails Spain attitude before Chávez
US Ambassador to Spain Eduardo Aguirre Thursday hailed Spanish King Juan Carlos I’s and the head of the Spanish government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s attitude during a verbal clash with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in the Ibero-American Summit in Chile, DPA reported.
The diplomat -whose country is a usual target of Chávez’s criticisms- said "Spain has covered itself with glory in this issue," given its firm reply to the Venezuelan ruler’s attacks.
"Spain has a de luxe king and a president who, in this case, was speaking up for Spanish institutions, including José María Aznar, who is also magnificent former president and had the courtesy of thanking Rodríguez Zapatero for his comments," said Aguirre following a meeting the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Miguel Ángel Moratinos held Thursday with some 60 diplomats in Madrid.

Negotiating over Betancourt
Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian-French citizen and former Colombian presidential candidate held hostage by the Colombian rebel group FARC for more than five years, will dominate a meeting between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday.
The irrepressible Chavez, who wants play a major international role at a moment when his country is facing tensions due to constitutional reform, meets with Sarkozy as part of a "rapid but productive" tour, including the OPEC heads of state summit in Saudi Arabia at the weekend, Iran and Portugal.
On November 8, it was reported that Chavez had held the first of what may be a series of meetings with representatives of the FARC, after offering to mediate in order to gain the release of hostages. The FARC delegation involved in the talks may also meet a representative of Sarkozy. Chavez has said that, before arriving in Paris next week, he hopes to have evidence that Betancourt is alive — something that has been promised by FARC ‘foreign minister’ Rodrigo Granda.

►Nov 16◄
Reuters | Friday, 16 November 2007
‘Hurricane Hugo’ Chavez won’t shut up on tour Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will not keep quiet on a tour this week of the Middle East and Europe despite being deep into a diplomatic dispute with Spain after his diatribes against the ex-colonial power. "Nobody can expect us not to say who we are, not to say what we feel and not to say what we want," Chavez said. Chavez’s hero is Simon Bolivar, the Venezuelan who ejected Spain from South America in the 19th century. A socialist who calls Cuban leader Fidel Castro his mentor, Chavez sees himself as a modern-day liberator ridding the region and beyond of "imperialism" and capitalism. Political analysts say his bark is worse than his bite.
"Mixing bilateral political issues with the local operations of private companies. . . establishes a very negative precedent," Alberto Ramos of Goldman Sachs said. "This contributes to deteriorate even further the already-challenging business environment," he added.

►Nov 19◄
‘Shut up’ ringtone a hit in Spain Associate Press
About half a million people have downloaded a cellphone ringtone featuring the phrase "Por que no te callas?" or "Why don’t you shut up?" leading Madrid daily El Pais reported on its Web site Monday.
T-shirts and mugs featuring the words are also becoming a profitable business, and videos of the confrontation have been a hit on YouTube.
Chavez’s opponents in Venezuela are no less obsessed. Pirated copies of the quote have been popping up in the South American country. In Venezuela, T-shirts with the slogan in Spanish have the "NO" in uppercase — a call for voting against constitutional reforms that would significantly expand Chavez’s power. The Venezuelan leader says the changes would empower neighborhood-based assemblies and advance the country’s transition to socialism.
"The king said what Venezuelans have wanted to say to Chavez’s face for a long time," said Jenny Romero, 21, a student sporting one of the T-shirts in Caracas. "I’m wearing this T-shirt to protest everything bad that has happened in the country."

Kenya: There And About – Chavez’s Insults Know No Bounds The Nation (Nairobi), Chege Mbitiru Nairobi, Posted to the web 19 November 2007
Mr Chavez’s insults of leaders are legendary. Some examples: In Mr Chavez’s language, Mr Bush mutates – the Devil, terrorist, unholy, drunk, Hitler, ignoramus, coward, liar, immoral, Mr Danger, a donkey – ironically a very useful animal – et cetera.
Really, other words to describe Mr Bush and his policies accurately, convincingly and persuasively, exist. Similarly, Mexican President Vicente Fox deserves a more apt description than a US "puppy." Calling US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a "little girl," even contemptuously, is silly; so is labelling the Organisation of American States Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza "a true idiot."
Mr Chavez reserves best attributes to himself and friends. He has compared himself with Christ, referring to the latter’s speech in the Book of Luke. If he stops talking, he has said, "All stones in South America would cry." He considers himself a latter day Simon Bolivar, a liberator of South Americans and beyond. He bestowed the honour to his friend, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, presumably for Africa. Luckily, Mr Mugabe’s language benefits from occasional linguistic laundry.
The Venezuelan has some good ideas. He validly stands up to the United States and wealthy nations. At the summit, he hated its theme. He also suggested South American nations stop investing heavily in US Treasury bonds and put that cash in a proposed Bank of the South.
Mid-week, he said he planned to ask members of the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries, OPEC, to sell oil at reduced prices to poverty-stricken countries, which would help.

►Nov 20◄
Latin America Does Not Shut Up Madrid, Nov 20 (Prensa Latina)
About 2,500 intellectuals from Latin America and Europe added their support to the campaign Latin America Does Not Shut Up, in defense of the sovereignty of the region, a support that grows at a constant rhythm.
Among new adhesion of intellectuals are the Brazilian poet, Thiago de Mello, the writer and journalist, Stella Calloni, the singer, Piero and lawyer, Beinusz Szmukler from Argentina as well as the Paraguayan Martin Almada and Spanish academic Carlos Fernandez Liria.
Released on November 15, the text criticizes the position of King Juan Carlos of Spain against Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez during the recent Ibero American Summit in Santiago de Chile.
What happened there, the text points out, is proof that times have changed in Latin America. The Indians, the oppressed and forgotten have definitively entered the political scenario of Ibero America and neither monarchs or neo liberals cloaked as left wingers will shut them up.
The organizers of the campaign noted how the Summit intended to claim that poverty, exclusion and marginalization of the majority in Latin America are not the responsibility of the old colonial metropolises, nor of the continuity of that domination through European and US transnationals.
Personalities such as the Brazilians Fernando Morais and Emir Sadir, the Chilean Manuel Cabieses, the Venezuelan Andres Bizarra, Colombians Hernando Calvo Ospina and Fernando Rendon, the Ecuadorian Pablo Guayasamin and Puerto Rican Danny Rivera came out in support of the document.
The document critiques representatives of petty interests of bankers and stock holders and not the honor of the Spaniards.
It deplores that the leader of a party called "socialist and worker" and a non-elected monarch shared "in the defense of the war criminal, Jose Maria Aznar."

►Nov 22◄
FACTBOX:Venezuela Chavez’s loose lips spark diplomatic spats
* In 2005, Venezuela and Mexico withdrew their ambassadors after Chavez called Mexico’s then president, Vicente Fox, a "lap dog of the empire," in reference to the conservative president’s close ties to the Bush administration. The two countries only sent ambassadors back to each other’s capitals earlier this year.
* Colombia’s government on Wednesday ended Chavez’s role as a mediator with leftist rebels aimed at freeing hostages after Colombian President Alvaro Uribe complained the Venezuelan overstepped his mandate. Colombia said Chavez had talked by telephone with a military chief about the hostages despite an agreement with Uribe not to do so. The Uribe government also said Chavez had publicly disclosed information he had learned in private conversations.
Comment by niko1605, Nov 22, 2007 2:56 PM
Colombia’s president Uribe accusations against Chavez are probably under George Bush’s request to undercut Chavez’s political influence in Latin America. Uribe is Bush’s close ally, and Colombia gets about 10 billion a year from the U.S., so Uribe is in a bind to oblige.
Chavez’s calling the former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, a "fascist" was justified. He used the Spanish navy to stop and inspect a foreign ship in the Arabian Sea on behalf of the U.S., and the Spanish ambassador in Venezuela was with the military officers who overthrew Chavez. And the commander of the Armored Division who refused to join the coup, send helicopters with commandos to free Chavez and restore him to power, told CBS "60 minutes" that he was offered a huge bribe to join the plotters – but he refused. There should be no doubt that the bribe was U.S. money, and the Spanish ambassador and the Spanish banks in Venezuela were probably the disbursing agents.
The current Spanish prime minister’s, Louis Zapatero, argument that Jose Maria Aznar was an elected leader and deserved "respect" [not a "fascist" slur], was hypocritical. Mr. Chavez was elected by 63% of Venezuelans, and he deserved "respect" to serve his people. Hitler and Mussolini were proud fascists, and all they did was overthrowing governments and establishing puppet regimes.
As for King Juan Carlos, he was a hapless aristocratic youth until the Spanish fascist dictator, Francisco Franco, decided at his death-bed to make him a King of Spain and thus assure that Spain stays with a right wing government – no chance for Socialism, and no more "international brigades" supporting socialist causes around the globe.
There is no precedent in history in which any king told another head of state publicly to "shut up." It was certainly a bonanza for the comedians, and it will probably hurt more Juan Carlos than Chavez… – Nikos Retsos

►Nov 23◄
France urges Colombia to reconsider on Chávez Hilversum, Friday 23 Nov 2007 11:34 UTC
Paris – France has urged Colombia to reconsider its decision to end Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez’s efforts to negotiate with the FARC rebel movement. French president Nicolas Sarkozy said he believes President Chávez is the best man to secure the release of hostages being held by FARC. They include French-Colombian politician Ingrid Bétancourt, who was kidnapped over five years ago.
Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe withdrew his support for the Venezuelan president after he contacted a Colombian general in spite of agreements not to. President Chávez also revealed details about the progress of negotiations with the FARC, which focused on the exchange of rebel prisoners for FARC hostages.
The family of Ingrid Bétancourt is upset by the news. They say President Chávez had made a lot of progress. The Venezuelan president says he accepts Colombia’s decision and has called on FARC to show that the hostages are still alive.

Keith Olberman’s Jaundiced Rant, Trashing Chavez By CLIFTON ROSS
———————-> Clifton Ross represented the U.S. in Venezuela’s World Poetry Festival in 2005. From 2005-2006 he reported from Mérida, Venezuela. His movie, "Venezuela: Revolution from the Inside Out" is now available from www.freedomvoices.org and www.progressivefilms.org. He is the co-editor of Voice of Fire: Communiques and Interviews of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (1994, New Earth Publications) and his book, Fables for an Open Field (1994, Trombone Press, New Earth Publications), has just been released in Spanish by La Casa Tomada of Venezuela. His forthcoming book of poems in translation, Traducir el Silencio, will be published later this year by Venezuela´s Ministry of Culture editorial, Perro y Rana. Ross teaches English at Berkeley City College, Berkeley, California. He can be reached at clifross1_at_yahoo.com

Whose Waterloo is it? The Washington Times, Nov 23, 2007, By Barry Casselman
The biggest political story recently in the Spanish-speaking world has been a recent confrontation in Chile between the king of Spain and President Hugo Chavez, a democratically-elected Venezuelan demagogue who will soon try to circumvent his country’s constitution to become dictator for life.
Mr. Chavez also has become the mouthpiece of a small axis of Latin American leaders, including President Fidel Castro of Cuba and President Evo Morales of Bolivia, who advocate Marxist socialism and virulent anti-Americanism.
..
Fidel Castro issued a dictum … , praising Mr. Chavez, criticizing Mr. Zapatero and declaring the incident a "Waterloo ideology" moment of triumph for the far left.
Juan Carlos defended Spanish democracy when his Spanish right-wing staged a coup in Madrid in 1981, trying to restore a falangist dictatorship in the style of the late dictator Francisco Franco and since that time has remained a steadfast champion of his nation’s new democracy. Has helped Spain restore itself not only in Europe but also among its former colonies in South and Central America.
There is no dispute that Spain and Juan Carlos’ Bourbon and Hapsburgo forbears were brutal colonial overlords in the New World up to more than 100 years ago. This is another irony of this incident. As Spain has prospered during the past 30 years and become an important part of the European Union, it has also reached out to its former colonies with vital investment and other economic assistance.
.. Usually Mr. Castro turns our history upside-down: What the terp calls "Waterloo" is the famous battlefield in which Mumbo-Jumbo I. spent 20 years bringing war and death over the incontinents. Mr. Chavez is a pretty dictator who has faced and lived through much worse …
The Juan Carlos-Chavez Spat Royal Incident Signals Arrival of Latin America’s ‘Underdog’ Class. By Marcela Sanchez, Special to washingtonpost.com, November 23, 2007
Chile´s Bachelet Says Bothered by Chavez Meddling November 23, 2007 16:00h
In an interview with local television late on Thursday, Bachelet said she was bothered by Chavez’s statements at the summit in Santiago, when he backed Bolivia’s demands for sea access through Chilean territory.
Bolivia lost its maritime ties in a sea war with Chile more than a century ago, and the issue has dominated and stressed relations between the two countries ever since.
"I indicated to him that the Bolivia issue was a bilateral one and, as such, his comments were not appropriate and I asked him not to make further statements along those lines, and he didn’t," Bachelet told Channel 13 television.

Is money more important than any of Mr. Sanz’ principles? Carlos M. Pietri
Although, VHeadline.com readers are probably not familiar with Spanish singers, I’ll share with you two situations created by Spanish singers, who have involved themselves in the domestic political affairs of my country and its repercussions on some "Venezuelans." …. .

Chavez on track to win referendum Reuters
Love him or loathe him — on Dec. 2 Hugo Chavez is expected to win a national referendum that could launch a full-fledged socialist state.
Venezuelans will vote on a raft of constitutional changes. If passed, the workday will be slashed to six hours. The country will be reorganized into "communal cities". And President Chavez could be re-elected for the rest of his life.

►Nov 26◄
Chavez to Freeze Relations With Colombia AP, Sandra Sierra
President Hugo Chavez said Sunday he is putting relations with Colombia "in the freezer" after its president ended the Venezuelan leader’s role mediating with leftist rebels in the neighboring country.
Chavez said economic relations will be hurt, blaming actions by Colombia’s U.S.-allied President Alvaro Uribe that he said were "a spit in the face."
"I declare before the world that I’m putting relations with Colombia in the freezer because I’ve completely lost confidence with everyone in the Colombian government," Chavez said during a televised speech.
Addressing Cabinet ministers and military officials, Chavez said: "Everyone should be alert in relation to Colombia — economic relations — the businesses Colombians have here and the businesses we have there. Commercial relations, all of that is going to be harmed. It’s lamentable."
Chavez was responding to Uribe’s decision to cancel his mediation with Colombian rebels, preliminary talks aimed at a prisoner swap that would free rebel-held hostages, including three Americans. Uribe’s spokesman said Chavez had defied the Colombian president by directly contacting his army chief to discuss the issue.
The Venezuelan leader said a statement issued by Uribe’s government giving its reasons for ending his mediation was "filled with lies."
"I really, truly believe that the Colombian government doesn’t want peace," Chavez said.
Chavez said he was particularly irked that Uribe had his officials issue statements instead of contacting the Venezuelan leader directly.
"Why don’t do you show your face?" Chavez said. "President Uribe is lying … in a shameless, horrible, ugly way. I think Colombia deserves another president, it deserves a better president."
Chavez in August joined Colombian lawmakers in a new push to free hostages held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as FARC. Prisoners include three U.S. military contractors and Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian seized in 2002 while campaigning for Colombia’s presidency.
….
Chavez said the situation with Colombia is similar.
"It’s like the case of Spain: Until the king of Spain apologizes, I’m freezing relations with Spain," he said.
Chavez and Uribe are polar opposites politically.
Since taking office in 2002, the conservative Uribe has fought to crush Colombia’s peasant-based rebel army with billion in U.S. military aid.
The socialist Chavez has meanwhile railed against U.S. involvement in the region and called for Uribe to negotiate peace with Colombian guerrillas.

Chavez orchestrating communism’s comeback Steve Chapman
Chávez calls on the people and armed forces to be alert Caracas
The changes to 69 of the Constitution’s 350 articles that voters will consider propose the granting of constitutional authority to community power and establish new political/administrative concepts to reinforce popular participation.
The president warned that there are attempts to manipulate surveys in order to create confusion among the Venezuelan people. He said that there are also plans, in the face of a “Yes” victory, to claim fraud and to take to the streets and generate violence and destabilization in the country, and that is why the people, armed forces and organized communities must be on the alert and very attentive.
Chávez accused bishops of participating in a plan to try to scare the population with statements like that of Cardinal Jorge Urosa, who said that with socialist-leaning reforms, religious freedoms would be eliminated. – Translated by Granma International

►Nov 28◄
Venezuela’s Chavez Remains Magnet for Controversy By Michael Bowman, Washington
Mr. Chavez went on to accuse his Colombian counterpart of being a pawn of U.S. imperialism.
"You, with your insults and lack of valid arguments, are hurting the dignity of the Venezuelans you represent," Mr. Uribe said. He said Colombia needs a mediator with terrorists, "not one who legitimizes terrorism.".
Mr. Uribe accused Mr. Chavez of manufacturing diplomatic rows for his own purposes, of labeling other leaders as agents of imperialism while pursuing his own expansionist policies through heavy-handed use of oil revenue.
Such highly-personalized attacks between heads of state are rare on the world stage, except where Mr. Chavez is concerned.
Analyst Michael Shifter says there is no doubt that Mr. Chavez’ influence in the region has grown.
"Most other governments in Latin America indulge Chavez because he has resources and he is prepared to spend them," he said.
Venezuelans flee Chavez Reuters
In a Cuban-style exodus, thousands of wealthy and middle class …
Venezuelan leader’s power play has echoes of Castro USA today

►Dec 12◄
Chavez Calls For a Battle of Ideas to Combat U.S. Interference in Latin America Kiraz Janicke
"They bombard us without clemency, the minds of children, young people, men and women to try to convert us into human beings without a past, disconnected from reality, and into people without a future."
However, he argued, "We have the right to a future, to have a homeland, to create the great homeland. I believe that the next 500 years will depend on what happens in these years, as the panorama of the Conquest changed our map, imposed on us a curse, as what happened 200 years ago marked the course of the last two centuries, now we are again in a definitive epoch."

►Dec 13◄
Chavez denies meeting Spain’s Prince Felipe (earthtimes.org)
‘I, in the first place, didn’t meet the Prince of Asturias,’ he said Tuesday, adding that he only waved to him at an official dinner at the San Martin Palace Sunday evening.
Chavez further said that Venezuela’s differences with Spain would deteriorate further if the monarch does not apologize for telling him to shut up during the final session of the Ibero-American Summit, held in November in Santiago.
‘I repeat, if the king of Spain does not apologize, we are not ready to turn the page. He has to apologize, in some way. I’m not going to ask the king to get down on his knees, no. We are human beings and I respect Juan Carlos,’ Chavez told reporters in Buenos Aires Tuesday.
‘We have nothing against Spain, we really don’t, we have good feelings with Spain,’ Chavez said.
Chavez had travelled to Buenos Aires to attend Monday’s inauguration of Cristina Fernandez as Argentina’s president and Sunday’s founding ceremony of the Bank of the South, conceived as an alternative to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
An official Spanish source said earlier this week that Crown Prince Felipe and Chavez had greeted each other cordially at the gala dinner hosted by the Argentine government for dignitaries attending Fernandez’s inauguration and it was Chavez who approached the prince.

Spain advocates discrete response to Chávez’s criticism eluniversal
The Spanish Secretary of State for Ibero-America Trinidad Jiménez said to television network Telemadrid on Thursday that the Spanish government’s stance in this connection has been in compliance with "the canons of diplomacy," adding that at every time she has conveyed the messages she was supposed to convey, either messages "of respect" or messages that "this is not admissible."
"Some people want us to do this in a public manner, and the Spanish government believes the steps that are taken in a discrete manner and within the framework of diplomacy are much more efficient," she underscored, as quoted by Efe.

►Dec 14◄
Pancarta en el centro de Caracas
EL UNICO REY ES DIOS
EL UNICO LIDER ES CHAVEZ
VENEZUELA JAMAS SE CALLARA
Apareció poco después … (tomada el 12/12/07 … por una típica estudiante)

►Dec 22◄
Betancourt’s children appeal for Colombian leader’s help in securing mother’s release Associated Press
During a vigil Saturday outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Betancourt’s son Lorenzo asked Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to consider offering the release of imprisoned leftist guerrillas in exchange for his mother’s freedom.
Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, president of the Conference of Bishops in France, attended the vigil and urged church officials in Colombia to add their weight to the campaign, which has become an affair of state in France.

►Dec 27◄
Déclaration de M. David Martinon, Porte parole de l’Elysée sur la situation en Colombie FRANCE diplomatie
Le Président de la République réaffirme son espoir que la libération de ces trois otages sera suivie rapidement d’autres libérations. Dans la continuité de ce premier geste positif, il réitère son appel au chef des FARC, Manuel Marulanda, pour que soit désormais libérée Ingrid Betancourt et tout autre otage dont l’état de santé justifierait ce geste humanitaire immédiat.
Au-delà, le Président de la République estime que ces libérations créeront un contexte favorable pour agir sans délai en vue d’une solution humanitaire d’ensemble à la question des otages. Il demande ainsi à chacun de redoubler d’efforts, avec pour préoccupation première le sort des otages et pour objectif leur libération, en ne négligeant aucun concours utile.

►Dec 28◄
Colombia hostage rescue mission underway amid uncertainty AFP (~22:00 CET)
"I hope there will be good weather tomorrow, that we can fill in some small details that are missing and I hope that tomorrow we can complete the operation," he said.
He said FARC commander Ivan Marquez had reported US-made military surveillance planes flying over the area. "I hope this does not interfere," he said.
"If there were any problem finding the spot, for some military or weather reason, we would be ready to conduct ground operations, but for that we would need permission" from Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, he said.
The handover could take place place anywhere within a 310,000-square-kilometer (120,000-square-mile) wilderness in central and eastern Colombia, where there are few roads but numerous landing strips used by drug traffickers. ..
The operation had earlier been put on hold after the Red Cross ruled out an after-dark handover due to security concerns.
Oliver Stone in Colombia hostage mission
IPSNEWS: Hostages Release Goes Far Beyond Personal Ordeal Ana Carrigan
Yet on Thursday night, the Colombian government, apparently without prior warning to the Venezuelan government, posted a communiqué on the website of the Colombian president’s office unilaterally setting a deadline for the complex rescue operation.
The statement said that Colombia’s permission for Venezuelan aircraft to operate within Colombian airspace was set to expire at 1900 local time on Sunday.
But on Friday, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe reportedly received a call from his counterpart in France, Nicolas Sarkozy. Apparently, the deadline had been lifted by Friday afternoon. ..
On Thursday, Brazilian delegate Marco Aurelio García, … on his arrival in Caracas. "We have firm hopes," he said, "that this will be the first step in a long process, aimed first at resolving the hostage crisis and secondly at finding a peaceful solution to the conflict that has gripped Colombia for more than 40 years."

►Jan 10◄
Chávez: Colombian Rebels Free Two Hostages Washington Post
The women are Clara Rojas, who was kidnapped in 2002 along with the French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, and Consuelo González de Perdomo, a former Colombian member of congress taken hostage in 2001.
Two Venezuelan helicopters carrying Venezuelan Interior Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín flew into a southern swath of jungle this morning after Chávez’s government received the exact coordinates from rebel commanders … The aircraft then flew back east toward Venezuela, where they were expected by mid-afternoon, Chávez said in a radio message broadcast across Latin America.
… at first denied that they had turned the boy over to a poor farmer, DNA tests last week showed that the boy is likely Rojas’s son. On Wednesday, Colombian authorities said that a second DNA analysis by the University of Compostela in Spain confirmed that the boy, who had been living in foster care in Bogota, was indeed Emmanuel.
►Jan 11◄
Freed hostages in Venezuela Two hostages freed by Colombian rebels have landed in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, where dozens of their friends and family carrying flowers clapped and embraced them.

▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼
►Nov 4, 2005◄
BBC: Basque convicted for king insult
Arnaldo Otegi has been sentenced to a year in prison for saying the King of Spain was "in charge of torturers". The spokesman for the banned Basque nationalist party Batasuna, was charged with slandering King Juan Carlos during a 2003 news conference: … the King was "chief of the Spanish army, that’s to say, the person responsible for the torturers, who favour torture and impose his monarchic regime on our people through torture and violence".
►Oct 2, 2007◄
BBC: Spain’s king defends monarchy’s role
… the parliamentary monarchy was a pillar of Spain’s constitution that had given the nation its longest period of democratic stability since 1975.
The debate started after two Catalan separatists publicly burnt pictures of the king in September. It has now extended beyond the north-eastern region of Spain and on to the pages of national papers.
►April 2009◄
José Antonio Barroso En un acto de conmemoración del 77 aniversario de la Segunda República celebrado el pasado 14 de abril en la localidad gaditana de Los Barrios, Barroso, de Izquierda Unida, calificó a Juan Carlos I de "hijo de un crápula", "deleznable" y "de condición corrupta", entre otros términos, y aseguró que España no es aún un país democrático ya que el Rey no es imputable y se mostró dispuesto a dar nombres y apellidos para demostrar esa "naturaleza corrupta". El alcalde de Puerto Real en la Audiencia por injurias al Rey
JAQUE AL REY: EL PRINCIPIO DEL FIN – El Proyecto Matriz

Artist Captures Recession Times…


Image by MyEyeSees
Tim Robinson, a free-lance illustrator, produced this drawing (copyright NYTimes) to accompany an article on January 10, 2009, in the NYTimes, Off The Charts, In the Wrong Direction.

His art has conceptual twists. I’ve blogged more on this artist. He captures stories visually and gives them a delightful and whimsical flair that stands out among the art and illustrations being used for the financial crisis. I first noticed his creative and colorful art when it appeared on the front of a Sunday Business Section with a huge illustration on April and it was the backdrop for my favorite Beringer wine in a Flickr photo Good Wine, Bad Economy.

I select this artist as one of the best capturing the difficult economy with bright graphics. Telling the story visually of our financial crisis isn’t easy. You don’t have the excitement, say, of CNN’s Anderson Cooper on the ground with Hurricane Katrina, or in the sea swimming with sharks.

Most journalists and artists are not educated in business and so for an artist to be able to capture this as an ongoing special talent is something to pay attention to.

He worked under Milton Glaser (who did the I Heart NY logo) and his clients are heavyweights.

Paying attention to how the media is covering the Financial Crisis is party of my ongoing study, which started in September. It starts with Part I: Sept. U.S. Financial Crisis and is ongoing.

This artist is worth paying attention to. His work is outstanding, as this illustration shows. Market charts have no personal component. They are dry graphs that are not humanized. Making the charts and graphs and statistical data have a life and a story isn’t easy. The utter confounding nature of this crisis, which some now call a depression (Great Depression 2.0 is what NYTimes columnnist Paul Krugman termed it only recently), will make fodder for study for years in the business curriculum of college courses. No one has nailed it; the story is unfolding.

DECONSTRUCTING THIS ILLUSTRATION:
This particular art shows the confusion of people to this crashing market, the surprise of it, the lack of understanding, the chaos and the way it has shattered our concepts. One older guy, dressed in an academic’s khaki pants and blue oxford uniform, glasses on nose, is reaching for broken pieces on the ground, stopped mid-way as if he were not sure where to even start to pick up the pieces. Another guy, in jeans, young and hip in dress, seems perplexed, already holding a bright yellow piece of the broken chart, tilted in a hopeful positive direction, as if willing the market to turn upwards. Another, in red (jail-like ) stripes, is running away holding a piece of the action, as if stealing something he shouldn’t have. The chart has broken at the bottom, but there is not an end in site. Where does the chart go from here? Is our sense of charting even relevant anymore? Has our sense of measurement been superseded by global technology? How do we interpret where we are?

This illustration almost perfectly captures the entire story of our crisis, at the moment.

The artist’s personal website is the first link at the top and his contact information is there. Tim Robinson is a hot artist to mark and watch for these wild and scary times. The NYTimes is savvy to hire him to illustrate the stories they are writing to capture the facts and make them understandable. The NYTimes has used some of the best illustrators and they are spot on in hiring Robinson to help tell their stories which are big but can be very boring.

Most people can’t understand the intricacies, nuances and economic details of the financial crisis. Our world is becoming more visual. As the NYTimes grabs more of an international market and has specialized in business news and Wall Street for a long time, how they tell this story to the world is significant.

Article Review Test- Facing and Passing the Article Review Process Easi

Article review test is an important step that any new writer has to take in order to write for an article directory. During the process of evaluation, the directory reviews the first article submitted by the writer. Basically it is a test that looks carefully into all the writing aspects that are critical in assessing the writing skills of the writer. It is important to submit high quality content which is impressive and free from grammar or spelling errors. This greatly increases the chances of passing the article review process easily. It is important to put in the best efforts because the article review test is carried out strictly as per directory guidelines.

Understanding Guidelines

Popular article directories like EZine, Buzzle and Go Article have their own standards. Prior to submission of the sample towards article review test the writer should carefully take note of all the requirements and restrictions of the directories. Working accordingly helps greatly in passing the article review process easily.

Preparing Test Article

Having properly understood the requirements of the directory, it is important to select a proper topic for the article review test, if not provided by the directory. It is important the research thoroughly on the topic and collect the important data. This data will help in formation of the content of the article. Starting off, with attractive title and a good introduction gives a good impression of the article. This good beginning should be followed by a well segmented article body that presents a streamlined, precise and engaging content to the reader. Finally finishing of with a meaningful conclusion is sure to help the writer in passing the article review process easily.

Adding SEO Features

As most of the directories are internet based and rely on the search engines, it is important to add SEO features in the article. This is because the directory might check the SEO value of the article. So it is important to add well researched keywords that have relevance to the content and the topic. An attractive title with a keyword in it should be followed by rich and unique content that has sufficient keywords in it to make the article, search engine friendly. Hence a captivating title, unique content and right use of correct keywords in the sample article submitted towards the article review test will immensely help writer in passing the article review process easily.

Facing Rejection and Re-submission

In spite of presenting a good article there is possibility of rejection of the article. The writer may not pass the article review test, due to strict scrutiny that the first article undergoes. This should not demoralize the writer and should use this as an opportunity to sharpen the writing skills further, by learning from the shortcomings pointed out by the directory. After having done the requisite corrections the article should be re-submitted. On acceptance the writer can start to write and post articles on daily basis.

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Find More Marketing Article Reviews Articles

What is “Guerilla Marketing”? Guerilla marketing is a way to promote your website without having a large budget. It consist of anything and everything to get the word out about your website, product, or service. When beginning your guerilla marketing campaign it’s important to list all the methods and tactics you intend to implement. So, I’m doing it for you. This article will cover mostly off page optimization and I am assuming you already have a website ready to promote.

1. Let’s focus on getting your website indexed by the major search engines. One of my favorite places to get a huge list of website directories is at Directory Critic. Just choose their General list and sort it by PR. Higher the PR the better. You only need to do the free submissions and you do not need to participate in the reciprocal link most of these sites offer. Start submitting by the highest PR first. I recommend doing about 100 directory submissions if not more. You should also submit your website directly through bing, Yahoo, and Google. Although it’s not mandatory to get indexed it will not hurt. It can be a good idea to verify your site with each search engine using their meta tag verification method.

2. Now we will dive right into some video marketing. Head on over to iStockphoto and sign up if have not already. Here you can get royalty free photos, videos, illustrations, audio, logos, and much more. For video marketing your are going to search through iStockphotos videos and find a relevant video. It’s going to be pain with no text, don’t worry. Just find one that is relevant to your market, website, product or service. After you find a video go ahead and purchase it, you really only need the lower quality version. This should cost you about twenty dollars. Now you need to download windows movie maker if you do not already have it. It’s extremely easy to use. Just add some relevant text or even audio if you like talking about your website, product, or service. The video does not have to be perfect. It just needs to get your point across. The more important part is going to be your meta data. The meta data tells the search engines and the video sites what the video is about. This is also vital in getting this video to the top of the search engines. For clarification meta data is the text you will be submitting with the video, not the text in the video. The title should have the main keywords you want to target and show up in the search engines for. Your description should be somewhat compelling like a mission statement or sales pitch. Last but not least is your tags. Most video sites accept between 10 and 12 tags. The tags should be your main keywords and other important keywords. After are satisfied with your video and taken the time to write some good meta data you are ready to start submitting to all of the video sites. I do mean all of the video sites. Do yourself a favor and do some Google searches to find a large list video sites. You would be surprised that sometimes it’s not the big ones like YouTube that rank well.

3. Article marketing is a very good way to promote your site. If you are not a writer this is no problem. Just outsource it. You can find good cheap writers on places like elance. Be sure they supply a free sample for you and that it is not too choppy. The going rate for outsourcing articles at this time is between 5 and 10 dollars per 700 word article. Be sure to write up a solid agreement between you and the writer or outsource company. this agreement should state that you own all rights to the articles and it is not to ever be distributed by them without your permission. After you have chosen a writer or company you will want to collaborate with them on some topics for a list of articles to be written. The articles should be relevant to your website, product or service. Purchase as little or as many articles as your budget can handle. After you receive the articles be sure to proof read them for quality and run them through copyscape to be sure they are original. Now be sure to add in one link within the article with good keywords as the anchor text. Then prepare your a short author credit with a link back to your site for the resource box the article directories use. Now you are ready to submit. You do not need to get too carried away with submitting. I prefer to do the top ten to twenty article directories. You will gauge the top ten to twenty by their current PR. After you have your list be sure you have the time to submit them all at once. The reason for this is that all article directories run your articles through copyscape or any other plagiarism detector before approving it. If you don’t do it all at once your article will start to get indexed on other directories and it will look like there are many duplicates out there. This can sometimes turn off the person in charge of approving the articles, making it less likely that your article will get approved.

4. Social networking and social media sites are important to utilize due to their high page rank and search engine visibility. Utilizing the full potential that social media/networking sites have to offer can be a very time consuming and a tedious task. This article is not about gaining traffic through social networking but how to clog the front pages of Google with your content, products, and services to gain reputation and authority.

First, start doing your homework by doing a Google search to find a nice sized list of all the major social media/networking sites. It’s up to you how many you want to do, but I usually just do the top twenty.

When picking the social site you want to utilize aim for the one with the highest page rank. After you have picked the top twenty or so social media/networking sites you want to use, you are going to want to start digging through your hard drives. Find as much content, pictures, videos, ad copies, taglines, slogans, articles, and whatever else is related to the website you are going to promote. You are going to want all of this information ready to go.

Alright, now we start on our long list. I will try to generalize as much as possible as I really do not want to explain every social media/networking site one by one.

Note: You may want to use a throw away e-mail for this job as you will get plenty of spam and junk mail.

A. When registering you have a couple options when supplying information. It really depends on what your off page SEO goals are. If people are looking for your website then you will want to use your website domain name as your name. If you are like most of us struggling to make some money online then you are going to want to use your dream keywords as your name. Let’s say you are in the body building products market and you are promoting your whey protein. You would want to make your first name whey and your last name protein. You will also want to be sure that whey protein is your display name. Be sure to take your profile off of private so it can be indexed by search engines.

B. Most social media/networking sites have the option to customize your URL. Be sure to do this as this option can give you a little bump in search engine rankings. Be sure to stuff your main keywords into your URL as well. Try to have them matching your display name as closely as possible. For example your display name is whey protein try to get a URL with the words whey protein. Often times the good URLs are taken. Here are some other options to try to get those keywords into the URL. We will use MySpace as our example.

MySpace.com/wheyprotein
MySpace.com/whey-protein
MySpace.com/whey_protein

That is just a small example of what you can do to get your keywords in the URL. I know places like Twitter will even take an underscore just about anywhere.

C. Upload photos and videos. You should have some pictures related to your website, and you should have some videos you have created and used for video marketing. If not you need to start learning some simple video editing skills. It’s easier than you think. Moving forward, you need to upload these videos and photos to your social media/networking account to the proper places. But before you start uploading you need to plan out the tags, descriptions, and titles for these uploads, also known as meta data. Almost all social sites allow for title, descriptions, and tags. These tell the search engines what the photo or video is about. This is a perfect spot to put your dream keywords. Be sure to put your most important keywords in all three of these spots. Tags are a great place for stuffing 5 to 10 important keywords as well. Be sure to write a good description. You can utilize some content you have laying around for this.

D. Many social sites have blogs. This is a perfect spot to write some original content or even paste an article you may have collecting dust on your hard drive. Some of these blogs allow for html code, so be sure to utilize it with a link or two pointing back to your site. Be sure the article or blog entry has some important keywords, and be sure to put keywords in you anchor text of your links.

E. A lot of social sites out there are trying to copy twitter with the short update messages. You might as well utilize it by writing a couple short updates with important keywords. Try doing about 5 to 8 tweet like updates. Be sure to put a couple of links in one or two of the updates pointing back to your site. Be sure not to spam on these.

F. Some of the social sites out there have widgets you can put in your side bars. Many of these widgets consist of text widgets, code widgets, video widgets, and whatever else they come up with. Be sure to really utilize some of these widgets. The code widget is a great one to start with because you can write some keyword rich

peace & ecommerce, a global system view


Image by Wonderlane
China is a likely winner of the information age supply chain through ecommerce
Peace and Ecommerce, A Global Systems View

By Linda Lane, MSIM, 2008
Policy, Law, and Ethics in Information Management, University of Washington

The Research Diary
Education justifies everything.
Attending a required Masters class “Policy, Law, and Ethics in Information Management” it was only ethical to admit that I worked three months drafting and publishing policy documents for Microsoft, which was now our current class assignment, to research Web based privacy policies and other related documents such as terms of use, conditions of use, code of conduct and learn more about them, with a diary of examples in the wild, and related materials. The educational idea is that we would then be able to contribute meaningfully to creating policy statements, and understand their underlying implications to end users and companies. But I had already done this work professionally, so it would be of questionable value for me to do the coursework on the same topic as if I had never done it before.

The instructor of the class, Glenn Von Tersch is that valuable-to-me teacher because he is a rare working professional in the field in which he instructs, he’s an intellectual property lawyer working in California, teaching in person in Seattle, and in my lingo, a local boy made good. Von Tersch assigned me to present information on freedom of speech, a topic I fell in love with, and wanted to research more. But for my final research I needed something else.

One of my favorite things to discuss in job interviews, or with anyone in earshot, is that I believe that the networked spread of ecommerce over the Web, filtering into even the poorest nations will aid in understanding through communication; that ecommerce leads to peace. In effect I believed that ecommerce contributes in a direct way to peace because it provides the fuel to grow and maintain the Internet. Also it seemed obvious that people and countries that are invested in and perform transactions with each other are less likely to go war against their own interests. Von Tersch said, “These topics you are interested in have more research value than freedom of speech, because 1st amendment rights have been heavily legislated, written about, and researched.” He mentioned something called “The McDonald’s Effect”, how having a McDonald’s outlet or franchise appears to contribute to peace between countries. So peace and ecommerce became my topic.

What I did not expect to discover is in human society war is considered the norm and peace the exception. I did not expect to learn about how ugly the 3rd world poverty creating monster of WTO became according to one economist, even though I live in Seattle where the initial protests were. I was surprised to know how Reganomics theory hangs on, like an old B-grade movie on late night TV, because someone somewhere in the supply chain makes money. I did not expect to find that privacy and intellectual rights are so tightly interwoven, or how they relate to conflict, security, potential world dominance and growth.

I had no way to guess that I would enjoy the study of economics – statistical, yes, nicely so, but dull no; as a global topic it is juicy-rotten, full of international spies , botched security , with rogue pirate computer chips , and unintended consequences.

Who can accurately predict how patterns of global economics relate to peace, privacy, property rights, policies and their outcome in the one breath away from today, the next 20-40 years? Who would think that China – the nation, McDonalds – the corporation, and Chicago crack dealers and their foot soldiers share so much in common when you view their information through these fascinating multi-dimensional facets?

One must be educated to search effectively for information. My knowing about the nature of search is not just intellectual knowledge; this is conditionalized through my own experience of failure to produce relevant search results within massive library databases.

My education began with a simple query on the Web “peace + ecommerce” which returned from Google “Theses on the Balkan War,” by Mike Haynes, from the International Socialism Journal, “Capitalism is inherently a competitively expansionist and therefore conflict ridden system” , effectively laying the blame for war on the US and Western capitalist nations and on any one claiming to be fighting a war with good intentions. I read it, thinking I would not see this relate to my project – also surprising very similar material was presented in the global economic books I read later .

As mentioned the pursuit of ‘education justifies anything’, like looking at any results, so I also clicked on an article entitled “Dinosaur Extinction linked to change in Dinosaur Culture” I read it, and it made sense that something like author Daniel Quinn’s theory of “The Law of Limited Competition” is an operant factor in global markets today, with war being genocide, and countries struggling to win economically laying waste to the very place they live. A notable example is Beijing, the air pollution capital of the world struggling to host the Olympic Games this year. I stored that URL for future reference. The theory and the reality imply that in the race to catch up and compete in global economics, the Chinese are killing themselves off before they arrive at their desired goal.

Then I queried in several of the University of Washington interconnected and extensive library databases on the same thing “peace + ecommerce” and found in all of them, zero returns, “0 Results”. My teacher was surprised and advised me to extrapolate and offer conjecture on what was likely, if few sources were available. I notified a friend studying economics who emailed related articles. Very frustrated I tried related queries and turned up articles on the economies of war . How perverse, I thought. I contacted a librarian through the online tool and chatted with her, explaining my quest. She suggested I query on “economics and public policy”. “How is public policy related to peace and ecommerce?” I asked. “Try Conflict Resolution” she replied.

Thus the reason I couldn’t find ‘peace’ is because the term used, in educated facet writers’ metadata which is designed to expose information to search, is ‘conflict resolution’ or ‘conflict prevention’. Oddly the social implication is that war is the norm. Maybe peace doesn’t exist anywhere. A reason I used ‘ecommerce’ instead of ‘global economics’ is due to consulting in that field for technology firms. Searching again returned few meaningful results — the user interface was strange, very slow, and clunky. I longed for Google .

Then I remembered the “McDonald’s Effect” our teacher mentioned, and quickly I located a reference on the Web, but it was deeply nested in a staggering number of oddly worded articles. I stopped without uncovering where the concept originated. The next night I searched again, and found the author Thomas Friedman and his related books. I briefly scanned all the related Wikipedia articles. I realized quickly that to become educated enough on my two topics, I had to some understanding of economics. This is because even to scrape by enough to search among the many interrelated topics one needs to know the central facet . Very esoteric topics require specialized language and deep knowledge of the subject.

More searches turned up substantial evidence that China lags behind other nations in ecommerce.

For years I worked in ecommerce designing interfaces (for Microsoft 2003 and Amazon 2007-2008), and working with supply chain software (as a director of an ecommerce company). But because I didn’t realize that one could understand it better, and that it is not as dull as computer science and its requisite cash register receipts , I never tried.

The "McDonald’s Effect" is named after "The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention" created by the author Thomas Friedman’s slightly in cheek comments and his book, “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” (the update now titled "The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization").

Those books lead me to order Amazon ecommerce overnight book delivery, and I read, ‘The World Is Flat?: A Critical Analysis of New York Times Bestseller by Thomas Friedman’, ‘Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything’ , ‘Making Globalization Work’ which reports that there is hope in the world for peace. The Nobel Prize winning author helps the reader extrapolate based on significant knowledge of statistics and global economic analysis through his personal, professional, and academic connections.

Common Name Academic Name Book Title
McDonalds Effect Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention,
aka democratic peace theory Lexus and the Olive Tree

Dell Theory The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention The World is Flat, A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

peace conflict prevention
ecommerce global economics

"In his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman proposed The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, observing that no two countries with a McDonald’s franchise had ever gone to war with one another, a version of the democratic peace theory."

"The Dell Theory stipulates: No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain."
———————————————————————
Readings
The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Friedman
Larry Page, Google Co-Founder quoted by Thomas Friedman, p. 179, entire paragraph. “The more global Google’s user base becomes, the more powerful a flattener it becomes…”

From Friedman’s conversation with Google’s director of operations in China, Kai-Fu Lee, p. 181 entire paragraph ”In time individuals will have the power to find anything in the world at any time on all kinds of devices – and that will be enormously empowering.”

The Quiet Crisis, entire pages 368, 369, chapter on research in China, beating out American innovation in research. “The Chinese government gave Microsoft the right to grant post-docs.” “They work through their holidays because their dream is to get to Microsoft.”
“What are those?” She said the researchers get them from Microsoft every time they invent something that gets patented. How do you say Ferrari in Chinese.”

p. 370 “… whether we are going to implement or China is going to beat us to our own plan.” Council on Creativeness, regarding the Innovate America report, comment to Friedman by Deborah Wince-Smith.

Introduction p. X, Thomas Friedman, “Of course the world is not flat. But it isn’t round anymore either. I have been using the simple notion of flatness to describe how more people can plug, play, compete, connect, and collaborate with more equal power than ever before – which is what is happening in the world. … the essencial impact of all the technological changes coming together in the world today. … My use of the word flat doesn’t mean equal (as in ‘equal incomes’) and never did. It means equalizing.”

The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas Friedman

Forward to the Anchor Edition, Thomas Friedman, “… my Golden Arches Theory – that no two countries that both have McDonald’s have ever fought a war again each other since the each got their McDonald’s.”

p. 7 “When I say that globalization has replaced the Cold War as the defining international system, what exactly do I mean?”

p. 8 “The cold war system was symbolized by a single word, the wall … “You can’t handle the truth,” Says Nickleson. “Son we live in a world that has walls…”

p. 8 “This Globalization system is also characterized by a single word: the Web. … we have gone from a system built around divisions and walls to a system built around integration and webs.”

p. 19 “What is information arbitrage? Arbitrage is a market terms. Technically speaking, it refers to the simultaneous buying and selling of the same securities, commodities or foreign exchange in different markets to predict from unequal prices and unequal information. The successful arbitrageur is a trader that knows…”

Chapter 3, p. 29. The Lexus and the Olive Tree
Photo: Jerusalem, December 29, 1998: Simon Biton places his cellular phone up to the Western Wall so a relative in France can say a prayer at the holy site. (Photo: Menahem Kahana, Agence France-Presse) [caused my spontaneous tears]

p. 47 “advertising jingle “Let us put a bank in your home” … office … newspaper … bookstore … brokerage firm … factory … investment firm … school in our homes.”

The World Is Flat?: A Critical Analysis of New York Times Bestseller by Thomas Friedman by Ronald Aronica and Mtetwa Ramdoo

Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Chapter 5 “Why do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?” p. 89 “So how did the gang work? An awful lot like most American businesses, actually, though perhaps none more so than McDonald’s. In fact, if you were to hold a McDonald’s organizational chart and a Black Disciples org chart side by side, you could hardly tell the difference.”

p. 46 “There is a tale, “The ring of Gygnes,” … could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed?”

p. 58 “Attendance at Klan meetings began to fall … of all the ideas Kennedy thought up to fight bigotry, this campaign was clearly the cleverest. … He turned the Klan’s secrecy against itself by making its private information public: he converted heretofore precious knowledge into ammunition for mockery.”

Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz
My favorite – the entire book was used to write this paper.

Web Resources
Please view attached Appendix www.crito.uci.edu/pubs/2004/ChinaGECIII.pdf regarding the reasons one study concludes that hold China back in ecommerce.

[1] Waiting until the time is right, one is good at something, or has collected all the facts, without making any attempts isn’t effective. I had to begin someplace even if it is incomplete so I started with the World Wide Web. “If something is worth doing well, at all, it is also worth doing poorly.” I am not sure where that quote came from but I read it in an article where someone presented their reasoning.

[2] You never know where something will come from in free rights actions or what it will mean later. For example the person at the center of the Alaskan “Bong hits For Jesus” case, Frederick Morse, now teaches English to Chinese students in China. As an adult it appears he has his head on straight in his wish to help others communicate, more so that those he fought in court.

From the CNN news article, published June 26, 2007, “In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said, "This case began with a silly nonsensical banner, (and) ends with the court inventing out of whole cloth a special First Amendment rule permitting the censorship of any student speech that mentions drugs, so long as someone could perceive that speech to contain a latent pro-drug message." He was backed by Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/06/25/free.speech/index.html/ downloaded March 13, 2008

[3] Pentagon attack last June stole an "amazing amount" of data” Joel Hruska Published: March 06, 2008 – 07:13PM CT arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080306-pentagon-attack-la… from “blueton tips us to a brief story about recent revelations from the Pentagon which indicate that the attack on their computer network in June 2007 was more serious than they originally claimed. A DoD official recently remarked that the hackers were able to obtain an "amazing amount" of data.

We previously discussed rumors that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army was behind the attack. “CNN has an article about Chinese hackers who claim to have successfully stolen information from the Pentagon.” Quoting Ars Technica: "The intrusion was first detected during an IT restructuring that was underway at the time. By the time it was detected, malicious code had been in the system for at least two months, and was propagating via a known Windows exploit. The bug spread itself by e-mailing malicious payloads from one system on the network to another." Via email from Jeremy Hansen on slashdot.org/

[4] “Chinese backdoors "hidden in router firmware" Matthew Sparkes, News [Security], Tuesday 4th March 2008 3:17PM, Tuesday 4th March 2008 www.pcpro.co.uk/news/173883/chinese-backdoors-hidden-in-r… The UK’s communication networks could be at risk from Chinese backdoors hidden in firmware, according to a security company.

SecureTest believes spyware could be easily built into Asian-manufactured devices such as switches and routers, providing a simple backdoor for companies or governments in the Far East to listen in on communications.

"Organisations should change their security policies and procedures immediately," says Ken Munro, managing director of SecureTest. "This is a very real loophole that needs closing. The government needs to act fast."

"Would they buy a missile from China, then deploy it untested into a Western missile silo and expect it to function when directed at the Far East? That’s essentially what they’re doing by installing network infrastructure produced in the Far East, such as switches and routers, untested into government and corporate networks."

Late last year MI5 sent a letter to 300 UK companies warning of the threat from Chinese hackers attempting to steal sensitive data. Reports at the time suggested that both Rolls Royce and Royal Dutch Shell had been subjected to "sustained spying assaults".

The issue has been debated by government for some time. In 2001, the then foreign secretary Robin Cook, warned that international computer espionage could pose a bigger threat to the UK than terrorism.

[5] Chip Piracy Might End With Public Key Cryptography. A Web Exclusive from Windows IT Pro Mark Joseph Edwards, Security News, InstantDoc #98491, Windows IT Pro “A group of researchers from two universities have proposed a way to prevent chip piracy. The technique uses public key cryptography to lock down circuitry.

In a whitepaper published this month, Jarrod A. Roy and Igor L. Markov (of the University of Michigan) and Farinaz Koushanfar (of Rice University) outline the problem and details of how their proposed technology will help solve it.

Chip designers sometimes outsource manufacturing and that opens the door to piracy, should someone copy the design plans. The copied plans are then used to created ‘clone’ chips for a wide range of devices, including computers, MP3 players, and more.

"Pirated chips are sometimes being sold for pennies, but they are exactly the same as normal chips," said Igor Markov, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. "They were designed in the United States and usually manufactured overseas, where intellectual property law is more lax. Someone copies the blueprints or manufactures the chips without authorization."

The groups propose the use of public key cryptography, which would be embedded into circuitry designs. Each chip would produce its own random identification number, which would be generated during an activation phase. Chips would not function until activated, and activation would take place in a manner somewhat similar to that seen with many applications in use today. Via email from Jeremy Hansen.Original source – EPIC: Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits Jarrod A. Roy, Farinaz Koushanfar‡ and Igor L. Markov, The University of Michigan, Department of EECS, 2260 Hayward Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2121, Rice University, ECE and CS Departments, 6100 South Main, Houston, TX 77005 www.eecs.umich.edu/~imarkov/pubs/conf/date08-epic.pdf March 06, 2008

[6] Chapter 5 “Why do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?” p. 89 “So how did the gang work? An awful lot like most American businesses, actually, though perhaps none more so than McDonald’s. In fact, if you were to hold a McDonald’s organizational chart and a Black Disciples org chart side by side, you could hardly tell the difference.”

[7] Mike Haynes, Theses on the Balkan War, “Capitalism is inherently a competitively expansionist and therefore conflict ridden system” Issue 83 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM JOURNAL Published Summer 1999 Copyright © International Socialism, pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj83/haynes.htm/ accessed March 3, 2008.

[8] Readings p.7 “When I say that globalization has replaced the Cold War as the defining international system, what exactly do I mean?” p. 8 “The cold war system was symbolized by a single word, the wall … “You can’t handle the truth,” Says Nicholson. “Son we live in a world that has walls…”p. 8 “This Globalization system is also characterized by a single word: the Web. … we have gone from a system built around divisions and walls to a system built around integration and webs.”

“What is information arbitrage? Arbitrage is a market term. Technically speaking, it refers to the simultaneous buying and selling of the same securities, commodities or foreign exchange in different markets to predict from unequal prices and unequal information. The successful arbitrageur is a trader that knows…”

[9] Shared by miles on Feb 13, 2006 3:39 pm that I located through a mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1&realattid=f_fdn935gd&a…
[10] “As it gears up to host the 2008 Olympic Games Beijing has been awarded an unwelcome new accolade: the air pollution capital of the world.Satellite data has revealed that the city is one of the worst environmental victims of China’s spectacular economic growth, which has brought with it air pollution levels that are blamed for more than 400,000 premature deaths a year” www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/oct/31/china.pollution

[11] “What we call ‘war’ is not all bad,” according to Virginia Johnson a former governmental planning consultant, who reminded me, “Without conflict there is no life. You don’t want ‘perfect peace’ there is no movement. The human standard is actually what we broadly call ‘war’; because without conflict, change, motion, growth we would learn nothing, we would have nothing, we would be dead.” Personal conversation, March 14, 2008, Seattle, Washington

[12] Readings Larry Page, Google Co-Founder quoted by Thomas Friedman, p. 179, entire paragraph. “The more global Google’s user base becomes, the more powerful a flattener it becomes…”

[13] Ranganathan, faceted classification, Five Laws of Library Science, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._R._Ranganathan, www.boxesandarrows.com/view/ranganathan_for_ias Personality, Matter, Energy, Space, and Time. (PMEST)
Personality—what the object is primarily “about.” This is considered the “main facet.”
Matter—the material of the object
Energy—the processes or activities that take place in relation to the object
Space—where the object happens or exists
Time—when the object occurs

[14] www.crito.uci.edu/pubs/2004/ChinaGECIII.pdf

[15] I learned about supply chain management mainly from the supply chain wizard Marc Lamonica, Regional Chief Financial Officer at Sutter Connect, www.sutterconnect.org/, and our mutual friend Web entrepreneur and ecommerce product engineer Adam Kalsey, and Sacramento State University teacher Stuart Williams, of Blitzkeigsoftware.net, blitzkriegsoftware.net/StuartWilliams/default.asp

[16] Introduction to Computer software classes in the 1970s consisted of FORTRAN cash register receipt programming, which is by implication is what ecommerce actually does.

[17] Freakonomics is a must read book of comedy and connections.

[18] Golden Arches, definition on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Arches, accessed March 13, 2008

[19] Readings “The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century” by Thomas Friedman, p. 421

[20] Readings p. 19 “What is information arbitrage? Arbitrage is a market term. Technically speaking, it refers to the simultaneous buying and selling of the same securities, commodities or foreign exchange in different markets to predict from unequal prices and unequal information. The successful arbitrageur is a trader that knows…”

[21] “Conservation groups say acid rain falls on a third of China’s territory and 70% of rivers and lakes are so full of toxins they can no longer be used for drinking water.” Satellite data reveals Beijing as air pollution capital of world, Jonathan Watts in Beijing The Guardian, Monday October 31 2005, www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/oct/31/china.pollution

[22] “…After watching Jobs unveil the iPhone, Alan Kay, a personal computer pioneer who has worked with him, put it this way who has worked with him, put it this way: "Steve understands desire." … Fortune CNN Magazine March 5, 2008, money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/news/companies/elkind_jobs.fortu…
accessed March 5, 2008

[23] Mac Margolis, “How Brazil Reversed the Curse, Latin America used to suffer the deepest gap between rich and poor. Now it is the only region narrowing the divide. Upwardly Mobile: Middle-class Brazilians” www.newsweek.com/id/67850 NEWSWEEK Nov 12, 2007 Issue

[24] Mike Haynes, Theses on the Balkan War, “Capitalism is inherently a competitively expansionist and therefore conflict ridden system” Issue 83 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM JOURNAL Published Summer 1999 Copyright © International Socialism, pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj83/haynes.htm/ accessed March 3, 2008. “The optimism that the end of the Cold War might lead to a new world order has been shown to be false. The hope that it would release a peace dividend that would enable a new generosity in international relations has been belied by experience, as some of us sadly predicted it would.3 Though the arms burden has declined, there has been no outpouring of aid to Eastern Europe, no new ‘Marshall Plan’. The result has been that the burden of change has fallen on the broad masses of the population, wrecking lives across the old Soviet bloc in general and in one of its poorest components in south eastern Europe in particular. According to the World Bank, the number of people living in poverty (defined as having less than a day) in the former Soviet bloc has risen from 14 million in 1990 to 147 million in 1998.4 Worse still, the advanced countries have continued to reduce further the miserly sums they devote to aid to the even poorer areas of the world. The OECD countries are rhetorically committed to an aid target of 0.7 percent of their output. In 1990 they gave 0.35 percent, and by 1997 the figure had fallen to 0.22 percent, with the United States under this heading giving 0.09 percent of its output, a figure in startling contrast to the expenditure devoted to destruction.”5

[25] Readings p. 46 “There is a tale, “The ring of Gygnes,” … could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed?”

[26] Readings p. 58 “Attendance at Klan meetings began to fall … of all the ideas Kennedy thought up to fight bigotry, this campaign was clearly the cleverest. … He turned the Klan’s secrecy against itself by making its private information public: he converted heretofore precious knowledge into ammunition for mockery.”

Some of the research in this paper on piracy, was provided by Jeremy Hansen of Seattle, Washington, USA. Mr. Hansen’s email regarding economics served to inform me on this topic. Teacher: Glenn Von Tersch.

[99/365] Open Hack London – Day 2


Image by Ben Dodson
So I decided to leave the Open Hack London event early yesterday but I was determined that I’d at least do a bit of hacking around today as I had the time and quite a few ideas. The few ideas I’d had so far were:

* Making a mobile version of my Tube Updates site using Yahoo! Blueprint
* A microformat hcard generator which would take an existing address and then use Yahoo! GeoPlanet to parse it, break it into it’s parts, and then generate nice semantic markup
* Some kind of location-aware linkup with www.last.fm to provide location details with each song scrobble

However, I ended up playing Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts for quite a large part of the day and so eventually decided that I’d work on the above ideas at some other point and instead focus on something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time; parse my Xbox Live achievements so I can display them on my website.

Now you would think — incorrectly — that it would be fairly easy to get that data and display it but unfortunately there is no public API for Xbox Live and the internal API (which has been opened up to a degree by Duncan Mackenzie) doesn’t give you detailed information about achievements – it just says how many in a certain game you’ve completed and your total gamerpoints. I would therefore need to parse the live.xbox.com profile pages in order to get the information I seeked. Annoyingly, you need to be logged into Windows Live to see that information. This is particularly frustrating as there is no need for that restriction as once you are logged in you can see anybodies achievement information (unless they’ve blocked you) so I don’t understand why it requires a login. In any case, I’ve done quite a lot of work with cURL (e.g. logging into facebook to scrape the PackRat game pages for the PackRat Market Tracker – http://packrattools.com/tracker/) so I thought it would be a case of just doing this again with slightly different markup.

I was wrong.

Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, won’t let you login to Windows Live without JavaScript which thus instantly kills all hope of logging in via a PHP script. I tried a few hacks around it but it would seem that some compressed, obfuscated JavaScript is actually altering the POST variables as it gets sent through to Windows Live meaning that JavaScript is actually necessary for the login. I assume this is to stop people screenscraping their various services (e.g. hotmail accounts) but it is a pain. In any case, I have found a way around it which I shall be blogging about tomorrow

This is a photo of me just before I discover that the 1 hour bit of hacking I thought I was going to do turns into 8 hours of fruitlessness!

Update 12th May 2009: I’ve just published my blog article about the problems experienced above and the workaround to fix it – Getting Xbox Live Achievements with PHP: Part 1 – The Problems

Day 99 of 365

The key to any successful business is understanding your customers. BizLaunch Expert Andrew Patricio explains the keys of market research.
Video Rating: 5 / 5

Niche Market Research for the Thirty Day Challenge – My favorite 4 places to get ideas for niche online marketing.

The Best Way to Add Video to Your Marketing (and the Biggest Mistake You Should Avoid): A Q&A with ‘Get Seen’ Author Steve Garfield


Image by stevegarfield
www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/marketing/article/the-b…

Catching up on e-mail…


Image by Ed Yourdon
This woman was sitting at an outdoor table of a small restaurant/coffee-shop on the west side of Columbus Avenue at 73rd Street. It’s the first time that I’ve seen anyone in this particular area (which is near a gym that I usually visit 2-3 times a week) with a laptop, and I was delighted to see that she had a Mac…. and not just any old Mac, but a MacBook Pro. (But not a MacBook Air )

Note: this photo was published in a November 24, 2008 blog posting entitled "Mobile Tech Secrets for Getting Things Done On the Go." It was also published in a Dec 14, 2008 blog entitled "5 Fantastic Blogs To Improve Your Life." It was also published in a Jul 13, 2009 "Pimp Your Mac" blog titled "Pimp my Mail." And it was published in a Jul 24, 2009 blog titled "Step Away From the Computer." For some reason, it was also published as an illustration in an undated (Nov 2009) Mahalo blog titled "Macbook Air Battery" at www-dot-mahalo-dot-com-slash-macbook-air-battery. And it was published in a Nov 20, 2009 blog titled "Breng de klanten service naar de klant." It was also published in a Nov 23, 2009 blog titled "Customer Retention: How to Retain Existing Health Club Clients and Attract New Ones." And it was published in a Dec 4, 2009 blog titled "Every Mum Wrestles With Returning To Work."

More recently, it was published in a Jan 3, 2010 blog titled "Sunday Confessional: I Can’t Stop Facebook Stalking My Ex." And it was published in a Jan 22, 2010 blog titled "Best Places with Free Wi-Fi in Metro Detroit." It was also published in a Feb 11, 2010 blog titled "How Healthcare Organizations Can Benefit From Video Campaigns." And it was published in a Feb 14, 2010 blog titled "The Most Useful Bloggers on the Web." It was also published in a Feb 16, 2010 blog titled "Unresolved Obstacles to the Credibility of Online Degrees," as well as a Feb 25, 2010 blog titled Running your "Fitness Business: Online Software vs Desktop Software." It was also published in an undated (Mar 2010) blog titled "8 Ways to Discover New Music." And it was published, sometime in Apr 2010, as an illustration in the "About Me" page of Sarita Li Johnson’s blog. It was also published in an Apr 9, 2010 blog titled "Technology Vs. Human Eye: You Decide the Winner." And it was published in an Apr 17, 2010 blog titled "12 Hands-on tips to protect yourself online."

It was also published in an Apr 19, 2010 blog titled EMOBILEにUQ Flat、どれがいい？高速モバイルデータ通信サービスを比較 — which I’ve been told means "Ed Yourdon is really an amazing photographer," but I’m not sure I believe it. And it was published in an Apr 22, 2010 blog titled "Gift ideas for working mums," as well as an Apr 22, 2010 blog titled "La intimidad en Internet: el pánico de los padres de la Generación M" (the English-language version of which is Internet privacy: Generation M parents panic." It was also published in an Apr 27, 2010 blog about Facebook’s new privacy settings, titled "Facebook, cómo darse de baja," at www-dot-tuexperto-dot-com/2010/04/27/facebook-como-darse-de-baja/ . And on May 12, 2010 it showed up in a Web ad for the movie, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

It was also published in an undated (May 2010) HeartsForU blog , with the same title as the caption that I used on this Flickr page. And it was published in a Jun 7, 2010 blog titled "5 Questions to Ask Before Starting a Small Business Blog," as well as a Jun 8, 2010 blog titled "Zmiana IP na 10 sposobów." It was also published in a Jun 21, 2010 blog titled Is "Blogging for Your Small Business Dead?" And it was published in a Jul 1, 2010 blog titled "2 Things All Content Creators Can Do."

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This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan — between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

I don’t like to intrude on people’s privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they’re still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what’s right in front of me.

I’ve also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting — literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I’ve learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture … after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it’s pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.

For the most part, I’ve deliberately avoided photographing bums, drunks, drunks, and crazy people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don’t want to be photographed, and I don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage of them. I’m still looking for opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. We’ll see how it goes …

The only other thing I’ve noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, *far* more people who are *not* so interesting. They’re probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I’ve photographed … but there was just nothing memorable about them.

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More Article Marketing Ebook Press Releases

Question by Bob B: Marketing news events articles?
Hi Im looking for some reliable and good quality website containing marketing articles on news or events. Will pick best answer

Best answer:

Answer by Barbara O
Hi

“about.com” is an excellent source of information via articles submitted by over 750 experts. I’m not sure whether you want to use the articles or just reference them so…

Another good source for how-to articles is www.ehow.com.

www.ezinearticles.com accepts and provides online articles.

Those are just a few that come to mind first.

www.publicityinsider.com has great information on writing, submitting and publishing PR-related articles and press releases.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!