Prelude to the end: US president Ronald Reagan Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev after meeting in Reykjavik in October 1986.
IF YOU were born in the early 1940s and were even dimly conscious of the emerging postwar world, you were aware of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. This was the pervasive global nuclear standoff that loomed over the second half of the twentieth century. Even if, like me, you were born and lived in remote Melbourne, Australia, you could not escape the shadow of uncertainty, of existential doubt and fear, that hung over life in the age of rising prosperity and shifting political and cultural values that followed the second world war. The cold war affected lives and behaviour, influenced attitudes, and formed prejudices and neuroses that persisted from the cradle to the grave. For many people it still defines their place and time in the slice of world history through which we lived.
As early as March 1946, barely a year after Germany's defeat, Winston Churchill famously proclaimed that an iron curtain had descended across Europe "from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic." The victorious American and British war leaders had become increasingly concerned as their former ally, the Soviet Union, ruthlessly consolidated its eastern empire. But there was little the West could do: Russian troops were on the ground in Eastern Europe and they had, after all, broken the German army. So the Western capitalist powers, generally tolerant and liberal-democratic, chose to prosper in peace, creating mass consumer economies that could deliver both guns and butter. Eventually they spawned and ultimately absorbed the dissident, sometimes anarchic, youth counterculture movements that were to sweep the world and challenge their own values and policies from the 1960s. The Soviets, meanwhile, under brutally authoritarian communist rulers, focused on entrenching one-party power, seeking to acquire more powerful arms than those possessed by the West, and crushing domestic resistance to their rule wherever it appeared in their empire.
So the cold war was a Manichaean forty-five-year struggle between liberal capitalism and authoritarian communism. During that time a nuclear sword of Damocles hung over the planet, even as the United States and the Soviet Union developed techniques for managing what became a stable balance of terror based on the notion of deterrence through mutual assured destruction (or MAD, to give it its chilling acronym). Despite periods of thaw and detente, and periodic arms limitation agreements, both blocs retained thousands of ballistic missiles, many armed with multiple independently targeted nuclear warheads, on permanent hair-trigger alert.
Yet, as it played out from 1945 to 1991, the cold war fell short of outright warfare. It was a tense and at times terrifying conflict in which the nuclear stockpiles were sufficient to destroy both sides as functioning modern societies. While it didn't trigger a nuclear exchange, it was punctuated by frequent crises in which the use of nuclear weapons was contemplated by both sides. There were Berlin crises starting with the communist blockade of 1948 and including the construction of the Berlin wall in 1961, the Korean war (1950–53), the Soviet invasions of Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968), the Cuban missile crisis (1962), the Vietnam war (1959–75), and other proxy wars in which the United States and the Soviet Union supported and armed rivals in Afghanistan, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. It ended with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990.
THIS IS a personal memoir of the cold war in Melbourne and, more specifically, in the northwestern suburbs of Brunswick, Coburg and Pascoe Vale. It is also a memoir of how the cold war influenced my experiences as a child and my career in newspapers at home and abroad for more than fifty years. As a foreign correspondent in Europe and Washington, I covered some of the great world-changing events that eventually precipitated the end of the cold war, including the five summit meetings between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush between 1985 and 1990.
During my Australian childhood and youth, cold war tensions interacted with old sectarian social and political divisions between non-Catholics and Catholics in Australia, and particularly within the Labor Party. In 1955, Labor was split asunder by irreconcilable differences about domestic and international cold war issues, and at the heart of these differences was the role and influence of communism locally and globally. Both groups possessed some of the truth, but, blinkered by religious hatred in some cases and political fear in others, they retreated into hostile tribal camps that could not stay united inside the Labor Party.
In 1955 and 1963, Australia's conservative government, as part of its contribution to the Western cold war effort, permitted atmospheric testing of British nuclear devices at Maralinga and the Montebello Islands with devastating long-term environmental consequences. By the 1970s Australia was hosting top-secret American nuclear early-warning systems at Pine Gap and Nurrungar, as well as a US navy communications relay station at North West Cape in Western Australia. These bases were called "joint facilities" and operated with full Australian knowledge and concurrence (as Pine Gap and North West Cape still do). But the presence of the bases intensified fears that Australia had made itself a potential nuclear target and fuelled the anti-American sentiment of disarmament advocates and the broader left.
Looking back on it all, much of the passion and anxiety of those years seems exaggerated, but it was deadly serious at the time – even in the dull tree-lined streets of Pascoe Vale South. But the smaller provincial cold war manifestations of my Brunswick childhood and youth loomed large at the time. So did the trade union and political conflicts that I witnessed as a young reporter covering industrial and political Labor affairs in the early 1960s. And in 1996, when it was all over and I was back at home, I sat down to talk with two of Australia's preeminent cold war warriors, the Catholic political activist Bob Santamaria and the former Communist Party secretary, Bernie Taft. They were aged eighty-one and seventy-eight respectively, with all passion spent but with intellects undimmed. During a long conversation the two men seemed pleasantly surprised by how similar they really were, and seemed genuinely to respect and like each other. Both have since died, but their encounter in Santamaria's North Melbourne office seemed to me a fitting and intensely personal conclusion to the vast impersonal and international contest, some of which I was privileged to witness and to write about.
IT STARTED early, at North-West Brunswick primary school. My father worked at the time on the tramways, the extensive state-owned public transport network that still covers much of inner Melbourne. His union was led by a well-known communist, Clarrie O'Shea, and when I was six or seven O'Shea called a strike over pay rates that stopped the trams for some six weeks. "Your old man's a commo" was shouted at me daily in the school playground by playmates echoing the anger of parents whose lives were being disrupted by the strike. When I asked my father if he was indeed a commo, he said he voted Labor but because he thought that communist union leaders fought hardest for their members he supported them unreservedly in union matters. It was a common viewpoint among working men at the time.
Our Catholic neighbours, and they were many, believed that the godless Soviet communists were trying to destroy our democratic freedoms and that one of their strategies was to "hold the country to ransom" by winning control of the trade unions and weakening the economy. These were the tense early years of the cold war and attitudes in Brunswick were inevitably influenced by it. Berlin was the flashpoint and the Americans were running the Berlin airlift to ensure that the city, a non-communist oasis in the communist half of divided Germany, received supplies of coal and fuel after the Soviets closed ground access to the city. There was no airlift at North-West Brunswick State School, but we had to run the gauntlet of some tough Catholic kids when we were returning home. There were fights, name-calling, stone-throwing. "Catholic dogs stink like frogs," we shouted. "Protty dogs go to hell," they retorted. There were similar and frequent encounters between Catholic and non-Catholic kids in the street where I lived. Shamefully, some parents on both sides encouraged these hatreds, labelling each other "commo stooges" or Catholic fascists. Our little cold war at times seemed warmer than the big one – at least until the Korean war broke out in 1950.
North Korea's invasion of South Korea in June 1950 caused deep gloom in our corner of Melbourne. Was this the start of the third world war? Would the Americans use the atom bomb? The Soviet Union was backing North Korea; the United States was backing South Korea. Although it was conducted under the flag of the United Nations, the defence of the south was a true proxy war. When China poured in eighteen divisions the gloom in Brunswick deepened: now the Yellow reds were making common cause with the Russian reds! It was the sum of all our fears of hostile outside invaders poised to pour over our country. So Australia, with little dissent, joined the UN action at America's request, sending a RAAF squadron and an army battalion. When the armistice was signed three years later, Australian military casualties totalled 1500, with 340 killed. Even in Brunswick that was seen as a serious taste of the big cold war and a possible prelude to the next world war. "I just thank God that you and your brother are too young to be sent away," my mother once said, echoing the eternal mother's cry from the heart. They were frightened people.
Yet there were occasional outbreaks of rationality. Suddenly, in 1951, the words "Vote No" appeared on walls and railway overpasses and bridges all over Melbourne. They were painted at night by protesters opposed to the decision by the Menzies government to conduct a referendum to outlaw the Communist Party. By a solid majority, Australians did indeed Vote No in September 1951 on the grounds that the proposed ban would limit freedom of speech and association. It was a clear rejection of the government's relentless efforts to exploit cold war uncertainties for political advantage.
But we got another dose of the big cold war with the high drama of the so-called Petrov affair in 1954. Vladimir Petrov, a Soviet KGB operative working under diplomatic cover, sought political asylum in Australia, fearing that he would be executed if he returned to Moscow. Offering Australian authorities evidence of Soviet espionage in Australia, he defected in April 1954. Soviet authorities sent two burly couriers to Australia to retrieve Petrov's wife Evdokia, a cypher clerk at the embassy. She was photographed, minus a shoe and deeply distressed, being hustled to an aircraft at Sydney. In Darwin she was escorted from the plane to safety by Australian security officers. Photographs of this drama dominated the newspapers and shocked the nation: Red brutes had been caught and photographed in the act of dragging a hysterical woman onto an aircraft to return her to Moscow! The black-and-white pictures are still among the most dramatic Australian news photographs of the 1950s.
The Petrovs were granted asylum, and prime minister Robert Menzies played the issue for all it was worth, announcing a royal commission to investigate Soviet espionage in Australia. Things got even better for Menzies when the Labor opposition leader H.V. Evatt appeared before the royal commission as attorney for two of his staff members named in documents provided by Petrov, and when the commission withdrew Evatt's leave to appear following his controversial cross-examination of a security service witness. Of course Labor was in league with the commos and even the party leader was ready to defend Red spies! Menzies went on to win the impending federal election and diplomatic relations between Australia and the Soviet Union were broken for five years. In Brunswick, my father said it was all a political conspiracy cooked up by Menzies to help him win the election; the Catholic neighbours saw only the evil hand of the Reds and praised Menzies's actions.
By this time mistrust and suspicion were palpable in daily life. Australia's domestic security service, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, or ASIO, was by now photographing people entering or leaving leftist, particularly Communist Party, meetings. They were following people suspected of "disloyalty," trying to infiltrate their meetings, and keeping files on individuals. The "special branches" of the state police forces kept their separate files. Together, they were the loyal and extremely active arms of conservative federal and state governments who wanted tabs kept on their critics and material amassed that could be used against them. The cold war had spawned the age of "reds under the bed" paranoia in which spies and spy-catchers pursued each other in a frantic and futile dance of deceit.
But the Petrov affair was only the prelude to the great political explosion of 1955, when the Labor Party split irreparably along sectarian and ideological lines. There was, at the time, deep unrest in the Labor Party over the zealous, secretive anti-communist campaign of Santamaria's Catholic Social Studies Movement as it sought to break communist influence in trade unions. But the Split was precipitated finally by Dr Evatt who, in an explosive statement, referred to the damaging activities of a small group "largely directed from outside the Labor Party." Evatt said Santamaria's weekly newspaper, News Weekly, appeared "to act as their organ." Within months the party was torn apart. The predominantly Catholic and anti-communist Democratic Labor Party, or DLP, emerged as an effective electoral force and split the Labor vote, especially in Victoria and Queensland, helping to keep Labor out of office until Whitlam's victory in 1972.
These were bitter years in Brunswick and Coburg, where the Labor split was keenly felt. Protestants and moderate and militant Labor supporters loathed the DLP and all its fervently anti-communist works, and they loathed its intellectual leaders, Santamaria and the Catholic archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix, who supported and inspired Santamaria (himself a Brunswick boy). During this time Menzies's governing conservative coalition of the Liberal and Country (later National) parties promoted the view that Labor was soft on, and probably in cahoots with, the Soviet communists, while they themselves were loyal supporters of the ANZUS alliance, led by the United States, and would keep Australia safe in Uncle Sam's enveloping arms from the horrors of expansionist Marxism.
Personal encounters sharpened the impact of the cold war for me, although I was mainly aware of only one of them at the time. In 1954, as a high school junior, I met and formed a life-long (and still strong) friendship with Juris Hrynko, a White Russian boy who had arrived in Australia as a "displaced person" with his parents and grandparents after the second world war. Juris's father Anatol had been an agricultural scientist before the war but his qualifications were not recognised in Australia and he worked as a storeman in the state railways, where a well-known communist, J.J. Brown, was the local union leader. Anatol was fiercely anti-communist, a pillar of Melbourne's Russian Orthodox church, a talented water-colourist, and a kindly and cultured man. He liked to talk to me about Soviet iniquities in Eastern Europe and insisted that Brown was, as he said in heavily accented English, "a red snake." Obviously he did not share my father's views and, because I liked and respected them both, I found myself wondering how to reconcile their views.
So even a Brunswick schoolboy faced personal dilemmas that sprang from cold war politics. Those dilemmas were sharpened in 1957 when the Soviet Union put its first Sputnik satellite into orbit. As we gazed upwards to see the tiny thing traverse the night sky we were told by the overheated media that the Sputnik showed how dangerously the Russians had forged ahead in the space race and how vulnerable we were to a Red attack. Even in Brunswick we didn't relax until 1969, when America's Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon.
The Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, separated by twelve years, had a direct impact on Melbourne because numbers of Hungarians and Czechs sought and were granted asylum in Australia. But it was the later Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam war that had the most profound impact on the collective psyche and political unity of citizens of my generation, and there was no hiding place in the suburbs of Melbourne.
In 1961 the Age appointed me as a shipping, and later industrial, reporter. Both jobs brought me into close contact with trade union leaders still scarred by the Labor split. They were a mix of communists, Labor Party militants and moderates, and DLP "industrial group" supporters known pejoratively as Groupers. The toughest group was probably the mixture of communists, Labor militants and groupers in the stevedore's union, the Waterside Workers' Federation, but the general industrial union officials headquartered at the Trades Hall and the Australian Council of Trade Unions also represented the full spectrum of non-conservative political attitudes. Their primary focus, of course, was the wages and working conditions of their members, but many were also heavily engaged in wider international affairs and were prepared to call "political strikes" on international issues. These trade union officials were intense and deeply committed men, and I was particularly impressed by the emotional engagement and dedication of the communists, however much their militancy discomforted some Labor Party officials and disrupted industrial plants. One in particular deserves mention: George Seelaf of the meat workers union, who almost single-handedly set about establishing a major trade union clinic and hospital in the industrial western suburbs of Melbourne.
"COMMUNIST influence" remained a high-profile issue. The Trades Hall provided rooms for something called the Victorian Labor College, at which trade union officials could attend lectures on mechanistic Marxism and purchase books and leaflets published in Moscow on Marx's thought and theories. Soviet propaganda films were shown free in the evening to anyone who cared to attend; generally they showed happy peasants toiling in collective fields to bring in the bountiful crops, or heroic Soviet soldiers in heavy overcoats charging towards terrified German invaders. You could easily see this activity as a communist effort to establish a Leninist revolutionary vanguard elite in Australia. The most promising trade union officials were taken on trips to party schools in Moscow and Beijing and inevitably returned full of praise for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The Labor Party declared that the names of Labor Party members could not appear with communist candidates on "unity tickets" for union elections. Finding and exposing unity tickets was a favourite sport of the media and anti-Labor interests. Some unions expressed support for the construction of the notorious Berlin wall by the communist authorities, and some actively anti-American unions vigorously opposed Australian participation in the Vietnam war and supported the Soviet Union and Cuba through the Cuban missile crisis. Even for a young reporter covering trade union affairs, there was no avoiding the political and foreign policy implications of the cold war.
The brief but desperate 1962 Cuban missile confrontation between president John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev was arguably as close as the cold war superpowers came to a nuclear exchange. As allies of the United States, Australians found themselves wondering anxiously and impotently whether they would be targeted. When, after a tense stand-off, Khrushchev finally agreed to remove Soviet missiles shipped clandestinely to Cuba in return for the US withdrawal of missiles from Turkey, the sighs of relief in Australia were as heartfelt as they were elsewhere in the world. Even the Brunswick churches held thanksgiving services for a world reprieved. In fact, the year 1983 would be, as we shall see, even more dangerous.
The Vietnam war was a true proxy war between Soviet-supported North Vietnam and the US-supported South. At huge costs to the nation's political unity, the conservative Australian government committed forces to the conflict. It argued that Australia's participation was the premium that had to be paid to preserve the US alliance and to stop "the downward thrust of communism." It introduced selective conscription of twenty-year-old boys to ensure a supply of troops and it threw conscientious objectors into jail. To Labor and its supporters, Vietnam was a dirty, unwinnable war that was really a nationalist insurrection aiming to reunite the country after centuries of colonial repression. Selective conscription was seen by Labor as profoundly immoral; the so-called conscription birthday ballot created social divisions and strains (reflected in the Save Our Sons movement, the burning of draft cards, and the mass Vietnam Moratorium marches through city streets) that had not been seen since the failed conscription initiatives of the first world war.
When the war ended in 1975, more than 58,000 Americans and 521 Australians had died in Vietnam, and the US-led Western powers had suffered a debilitating defeat. In Brunswick and elsewhere, the dead were mourned by their families, but the nation treated the returning troops with little glory. The new Whitlam Labor government simply didn't want to know or remember. And the political agenda became determinedly domestic even as Whitlam brought Australia's troops home from Vietnam, released the conscientious objectors, and headed the then burgeoning international push to recognise the People's Republic of China.
POSTED to London in 1977 as European correspondent for the Age I was confronted afresh by the reality of the cold war in ways far removed from the anxieties of Brunswick and the conflicts of the Trades Hall. The security debate was about the British independent nuclear deterrent and the "special relationship" with Washington. There was speculation about a neutron bomb, which was said to be particularly desirable because it destroyed people without destroying buildings. The rising British politician was Margaret Thatcher, a hardline anti-communist called "the iron lady" by the Soviets. As British prime minister she was to play an influential role in the closing years of the cold war, when she met the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and pronounced him "a man I can do business with." Visits to NATO headquarters in Belgium were obligatory, and the dominant topic of conversation was how NATO forces would stop and defeat a Soviet battle tank thrust across the North German plain.
It was immediately clear that Brunswick and the Trades Hall, while views were sometimes fevered, didn't really appreciate the sense of danger that troubled the Western Europeans, especially the Germans. A trip to East Berlin and Weimar in the German Democratic Republic revealed how poor, shabby and isolated life could be for people in the police state on the other side of the wall. A visit to a Soviet officers' mess outside Weimar revealed that the best time to end the cold war would be after nine o'clock on any Saturday night: by then, the Soviet colonels and their wives were drunk on very bad brown vodka. Even the ordinary old pubs in Brunswick were classier than that officers' mess.
And then in 1979, only a year before the Moscow Olympic games were due to take place, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Western powers responded with a partial boycott of the games, and what was meant to be a sporting event become a cold war political story. The Americans stayed away, drug-enhanced East German and Russian athletes dominated, and the patchy Australian team put on a fitful performance. The Soviets plainly didn't enjoy the presence of the reporters from the West. At the daily Olympic Games press conferences a certain Mr Popov, speaking in English, told visiting reporters they would be expelled from the country if hostile reports kept appearing in the Western press. The games went on, but the cold war cast its chilly shadow as Russian soldiers were killed in increasing numbers by the US-armed and supported Mujahideen in Afghanistan. By the time they withdrew in 1989, some 15,000 Soviet troops had been killed. It was the Soviet Union's Vietnam experience.
By 1984 I was in Washington, where President Ronald Reagan, in his second term of office, was restoring American self-confidence after the Vietnam debacle by challenging Soviet military power with a major conventional and nuclear arms build-up and declaring that it was "morning in America." Reagan had made his "evil empire" and "Star Wars" speeches in 1983, foreshadowing a "strategic defence initiative" that would use an impervious, space-based defensive shield to destroy any missiles targeted on the United States. A Soviet fighter jet had shot down Korean airliner KAL007 in September 1983, and in November 1983 the NATO military command exercise, Able Archer, so terrified the ageing Soviet leadership that it ordered a full-scale nuclear alert. In the judgement of many experts, 1983 was the most dangerous year of the cold war.
In June of the following year, prime minister Bob Hawke acknowledged the country's cold war fears in an important statement to parliament. Hawke's assessment of East–West relations was grim. He spoke of the devastation of nuclear war and made an unprecedented acknowledgement that hosting the Pine Gap, Nurrungar and North West Cape joint facilities involved "some degree of added risk of nuclear attack." But he outlined for the first time the bases' role in giving the United States early warning of a nuclear attack, insisted that they contributed to global stability, and rejected calls for unilateral disarmament and their closure. It was an argument that was never accepted by thousands of Australians who, over the years, demonstrated outside the bases and took to the streets in Palm Sunday parades.
BY 1985 the procession of decrepit Soviet leaders – Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko – had all died and the vigorous Mikhail Gorbachev, freshly installed in the Kremlin, was aware that the cold war contest was becoming economically, technologically and politically unsustainable for the Soviet Union. The size, cost and lethality of US and Soviet arsenals was out of control. Arms reduction talks were taking place as the two sides argued about intermediate-range missile deployments to Western Europe; in the United States there was deep concern that Gorbachev was "the Russian Kennedy" and constituted a threat to American global superiority; in Eastern Europe long-suppressed populations were increasingly defiant of their puppet rulers backed by Soviet military power.
And so, in Geneva in November 1985, Reagan and Gorbachev started the series of summit meetings that became the prelude to the end of the cold war. They were to meet in Reykjavík, Washington DC, Moscow and finally, in December 1988, on Governor's Island in New York. Any astute observer could see the post–cold war world coming into being despite uncertainties and setbacks.
Visiting Berlin in 1987, Reagan made his famous "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall" speech. Standing with Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate it was possible to sense that the world created in 1945 was starting to collapse under the pressure of history and popular feeling on both sides of the wall. In the end Gorbachev didn't have to tear down the wall: the German people took matters into their own hands and, watched by the world, breached it with sledgehammers and joy in November 1989 and set in motion the events that led to Germany's reunification. In Washington, my neighbour was Mario Dederichs, correspondent for the German magazine Stern. He and his family rushed to Berlin to witness the destruction of the wall and his daughter returned with a fragment as a gift for me. It is still among my most valued souvenirs, a memento of the cold war that had shadowed my life since the taunts at North West Brunswick state school more than forty years earlier.
It was another seven years before I had the wit to invite Bernie Taft and Bob Santamaria to meet for the first time. A full account of the meeting was published in the Australian Financial Review magazine on 29 November 1996. The two old cold war warriors – Taft, the German-Jewish communist, and Santamaria, the Italian Catholic anti-communist – found that their economic and social views had converged significantly since the collapse of the Soviet system and the rise of fundamentalist free-market economic orthodoxy. They shared a deep sense of the injustices created by prevailing maldistributions of wealth and power, and Taft acknowledged his pleasure at Santamaria's declared sympathy for parts of the Marxist view.
Geoffrey Barker is defence columnist with the Australian Financial Review.
Time to zip? Former prime minister Kevin Rudd.


The debate on whether or not to provide text-resize widgets was a hot topic on a number of blogs towards the end of 2007. At one end of the spectrum, some felt they should be forever banished from the internet and that we, as web experts, should concentrate on educating users how to use their technology.
At the other end of the spectrum, it was argued that there are enough situations to justify such a widget and that educating users is too high a mountain to climb.
Let's look at the plausibility of educating the user. In essence it sounds like the most practical, and ethical choice. Imagine everyone on the planet knowing how to resize text using their browser. Bliss! There are, however, some considerable pitfalls that stop this from being 100 per cent viable.
Firstly, there are a lot of people that require education; an international advertising campaign would be required to even make a dent. Not only do people lack the knowledge of how to resize text, the majority don't know that it's even possible, so they don't look for 'how to' information.
There are some users that won't or can't be taught. These users include those with learning difficulties or cognitive disabilities, as well as infrequent users and those intimidated by technology.
The browser war we're witnessing at the moment is gaining momentum. As a result, new browser versions are being released with the inevitable rearrangement of browser options. This may require a lot of help videos and online documentation – who's to say in years to come we won't be asking users for the versions of their browser!
The fact of the matter is that text-resize widgets are here, and appear to be getting more popular. There are also more people trying to educate their users through the use of videos and online documentation than ever before. But it's not just about text size: the issue runs deeper. Layout options and colour switchers should be included in the debate because they're as important as text size from an accessibility point of view, yet cannot be easily changed from the browser side.
Some people prefer a high contrast colour scheme for reading. Some use the Mac's accessibility options, and some use browser-based widgets to apply a dark scheme to a website. I've also spoken to some super-techies who customise their text editors in this way, presumably to match that of their beloved terminal windows. Many older, partially sighted users and those with dyslexia also find text easier to read when it's not presented on a pure white background (see www.lighthouse.org/accessibility/legible).
When it comes to layout options, switching to a 'relaxed' layout with plenty of space for the expansion of fonts is particularly useful for users with vision problems. Nomensa conducted research into the effects of applying zoom layouts off the back of a challenge set by Joe Clark at the 2005 @media conference.
Our research found multi-column layouts quicker to navigate, whereas zoom layouts were found to be easier to read. A two-column hybrid version was proposed as it offers the best of both worlds. When implemented as a style-switcher, it also allows the site to keep its visual identity.
First, the users. People have to take some responsibility in knowing how to use their technology. Users do, however, need guidance, so how much responsibility they should take is a grey area. The usability of a browser's interface is crucial in making sure a person can find the options they need, such as 'text size' and 'print page'.
The browsers, meanwhile, can only take so much responsibility when it comes to changing the layout options and colour schemes on a site. They can't be expected to cope with the amount of styling methods in use.
It could be argued that browsers are a hindrance rather than a help to the situation. Some browser vendors due to their size are in a powerful position to dictate how users interact with their browsers. Perhaps browser vendors should make their text resizing functionality more apparent to all users by default, therefore taking their online social responsibility more seriously.
Our responsibility as site developers is to understand the bigger picture, provide the facts and advise our clients as best we can. We should build websites that conform to web standards as well as the latest version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) v1.0, while preferably striving to exceed these recommendations where possible. This could allow greater progress on the web, which in turn could lead to more accessible and usable online experiences. This ultimately will allow more people to do more things online; this is innovation!
It's reasonable to assume that no matter what browser technologies exist today or will exist in the future, there will always be scenarios in which the site can best deal with visual enhancements. These include alternative colour schemes and layouts. Text size is handled well by default browser functionality, even if the user is unaware of it. If you're considering implementing a text-resizing widget, it would be prudent to change your mind, and provide a useful and effective style-switcher instead.
The draft of WCAG v2.0 includes a level AA requirement stating that 'text (but not images of text) can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality'. I've audited enough websites to know that many will fail this new success criterion – will your existing websites make the grade?
To keep the amount of design work to a minimum we only need to design the two-column layout with the negative colour scheme.
When it comes to coding, the dark colour scheme will work with the default layout and vice-versa; the light column scheme will work with the two-column layout.
With the design aspect sorted we can go about coding the HTML and CSS. It's always easier to start coding from scratch. Although possible, retrofitting a style-switcher to an existing site can be more difficult and take a lot more time. Remember to keep your code organised, think about how you'll switch things as you go and remember to keep the general colour and layout styles separate.
The files for this style-switcher example can be found on the CD. There are two folders, named templates and live. The templates folder contains the development HTML and CSS. The live folder contains the optimised CSS and PHP code required to run the example.
Within the templates folder there's an HTML file called style-switcher.html and a number of style sheets. The main style sheet, main.css, contains all the common styles as well as the default layout styles. There are also all the layout variant CSS files that together provide the styles for the layout options. For example, light.css includes all the additional styles for the light colour scheme.
With a little care and attention it's possible to structure your code in an effective way in order to provide all the styling needed to build a useful style-switcher. You can provide four layout and colour variations with minimal code and effort. Why not give it a go yourself? Your users will love you for it! The live style-switcher example can be found at style-switcher.nomensa.com.


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CALENDAR OF EVENTS Nanyang Technological University
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24 Oct 2020, Sat - 10 Jan 2021, Sun
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In the Vitrine
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Loose Leaves.
Process, materials, sounds from Listen to my words
1 Nov 2020, Sun - 3 Jan 2021, Sun
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Online Screening: Surname Viet Given Name Nam, Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1989
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By disclosing rarely-seen preparatory drawings, sketches, and embroidery tests from the artist's archive, Loose Leaves offers an intimate foray into the process of making Listen to my words (2018). An immersive installation by Dana Awartani, Listen to my words combines hand-embroidered silk panels and recordings of Arabic poems recited by modern-day Saudi women to confront issues of silencing, invisibility, and gendered divisions of space deeply entrenched in the cultural fabric of the Middle East.
Drawn from the significant but scarcely documented tradition of female poets in the Arab world from the pre-Islamic era to the 12th century, the poems selected by the artist express feelings
of love, yearning, and pride. They relay modes of awareness, stances of resistance, and acts of empowerment often centred on the female body.
The distinct visual language articulated by the geometric patterns—bearers of sacred values in Islamic culture—references the ornamental motifs found on jali (or mashrabiya), lattice screens used in traditional Islamic architecture to control the circulation of air and light as well as to shield women from the male gaze.
Presented alongside the original audio recording, Loose Leaves layers a selection of preparatory studies in the enclosed space of The Vitrine to provide a glimpse of the subtle negotiations that inform Awartani's creative journey across different techniques and materials.
The rich visual language of Dana Awartani's (b. 1987, Saudi Arabia) paintings, sculptures, and textile installations incorporate traditional Islamic art forms into contemporary aesthetics. Engaging with the relationship between geometry and nature, she harnesses the timeless and enduring relevance of forms in order to deconstruct contemporary issues such as gender, faith, loss, and cultural destruction. Past solo exhibitions include The Silence Between Us, Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2018) and Detroit Affinities: Dana Awartani, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, United States (2017). She has participated in numerous group shows and biennales such as Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016, Kochi, India and the 1st Yinchuan Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Art, Yinchuan, China (both 2016), among others.
Dana Awartani was selected as Artist-in-Residence in the 7th cycle of NTU CCA Singapore's Residencies Programme. Her residency could not take place due to the ongoing global pandemic.
Loose Leaves. Process, materials, sounds from Listen to my words was realised with the support of Athr Gallery, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
A digital version of Listen to My Words was co-produced by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) for st_age, an online platform for new commissions initiated by TBA21 as a response to the Covid-19 crisis.
Image: Dana Awartani, Study for Listen to my words, 2018, gouache on handmade paper. Courtesy the artist.
st_age x NTU CCA
Listen to my words, 2020
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← rabble.ca: Conservative MP's attempt to obstruct Norman Finkelstein lecture
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salon.com: Exploiting the anti-Semitism smear now backfiring
Posted on December 14, 2011 by Seriously Free Speech Committee| Comments Off on salon.com: Exploiting the anti-Semitism smear now backfiring
Salon.com, December 14, 2011, Glenn Greenwald
A significant and potentially consequential controversy erupted last week whenPolitico's Ben Smith — seemingly out of nowhere — wrote about what he described as deviations from "the bipartisan consensus on Israel" from several writers and bloggers at two of Washington's most well-connected Democratic political organizations: Center for American Progress and Media Matters. Naming Matt Duss, Eli Clifton, Eric Alterman and Ali Ghraib at CAP, along with former AIPAC employee MJ Rosenberg at Media Matters, Smith wrote that they regularly offer "a heretical and often critical stance on Israel heretofore confined to the political margins" and added: "warm words for Israel can be hard to find on [CAP's] blogs." The article included a quote from a former AIPAC official accusing the two groups of publishing "anti-Israel" and "borderline anti-Semitic stuff."
I have long been surprised — and impressed — by the high-quality, independent roster of commentators which an establishment entity like CAP employs to write about Middle East issues on its ThinkProgress blog. Even though most of it is under the guise of defending Obama on Israel from neocon attacks, those writers (and others at CAP, such as Zaid Jilani), are willing to question U.S. support for Israel and the actions of the Israeli government, as well as to use their critical faculties, to a far greater extent than is normally permitted in establishment D.C. discourse (that's why I was so disappointed in that recentunsigned, officious, war-mongering, White-House-talking-points propagandaput on the CAP blog under the name of the organization: it was atypical of their national security writing). But there is nothing fringe, anti-Israel, or remotely anti-Semitic about anything these commentators write. This Politico article simply features the standard, tired smears from those who ironically do more than anyone to trivialize "anti-Semitism" by cynically exploiting the accusation as a club to suppress dissent over Israel. Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that it took this long for these exploiters of anti-Semitism accusations to launch this attack at CAP and Media Matters writers.
As it turns out — and this was rather predictable — Smith's article did not appear out of nowhere. It was engineered by one of Washington's most odious smear merchants, former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block. He has made a career out of working in the shadows, surreptitiously encouraging reporters to depict Israel critics as anti-Semites. For instance, during the controversy over the alleged anti-Semitism of Obama appointee Chas Freeman (accused of the crime of questioning U.S. support for Israel), Block publicly stated that AIPAC had no position on Freeman, but The Washington Post's Walter Pincus revealed that Block "provided critical material about Freeman [to journalists], albeit always on background, meaning his comments could not be attributed to him." That's what Block does: he scurries around in the dark feeding dossiers to reporters about people who are insufficiently supportive of Israel so that they will be publicly accused of anti-Semitism (at the time of the Freeman controversy, Politico's Smith similarly noted that "Jewish and pro-Israel organizations largely decided not to make the fight against Freeman a public crusade, though they were the first, and fiercest, Freeman opponents and made their views known privately").
Predictably, Block is now the leading force behind the McCarthyite campaign to have CAP writers labeled as fringe Israel-haters and even anti-Semites for the same crime Freeman committed. After publication of the Politico article, Smith acknowledged he was fed a file by Block listing the offending passages from the CAP writers. Block, in turn, was quoted in the Politico article as accusing CAP of publishing "borderline anti-Semitic stuff," specifically from the Jewish writer, Eric Alterman. And then late last week, my Salon colleague Justin Elliott broke the story of how Block, on a private email list filled with neocon writers and journalists, was "shopping a 3,000-word trove of opposition research against bloggers critical of Israel" and urging those journalists to "echo" and "amplify" the attack on those writers as anti-Semitic. Using classic guilt by association tactics — CAP's posts have been "applauded by revolting allies like the pro-HAMAS and anti-Zionist/One State Solution advocate Ali Abunumiah," he announced — Block issued his marching orders: "These are the words of anti-Semites, not Democratic political players."
Except a funny thing happened on the well-traveled road of Block's smear campaign. The predictable roster of neoconservative, hatemongering extremists on that email list — led by The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin, whorecruited the Simon Wiesenthal Center to the cause — dutifully spewed out articles echoing Block's attacks against these writers. But Block also created aneven larger backlash against himself, from the Democratic Party players whom his accusations were intended to rile up and who are normally supportive — or at least perfectly tolerant — of these types of smear campaigns.
Block's business partner — the long-time Israel fanatic, Joe Lieberman fan and go-to lobbyist for despots around the world, Lanny Davis — publicly and forcefully repudiated Block's outburst. Even more surprising, The Washington Post's Greg Sargent reported that — as a result of the Salon story — "two top think tanks in Washington [the "centrist" Progressive Policy Institute (contacthere) and the Truman National Security Project (contact here)] are mulling whether to sever ties with" Block as a result of his smear campaign. Specifically, "PPI head Will Marshall [the "New Democrat" Iraq War supporter] privately told Block that the think tank would sever ties with Block if he didn't retract the charges," while "at Truman, top officials privately debated via email whether to cut ties with Block after the Salon story broke."
Now, let's be clear about one thing: the only reason this has become such a problem for Block is because he made the over-reaching mistake of targeting an organization that is extremely well-connected in D.C.: CAP is the closest think tank ally to the Obama White House and filled with major Democratic players and Clinton veterans, such as its long-time chief, John Podesta. Does anyone think Lanny Davis or Will Marshall would have piped up in opposition had this been the typical neocon/AIPAC-type smear campaign: directed at those with far less institutional weight than CAP (note the last line of Davis' statement: "I respect John Podesta and the Center greatly")? "Anti-semitism" is still a radioactive accusation in our political discourse (though it's getting less so thanks to this sort of politically opportunistic game-playing with it); ordinarily, the same type of baseless smears can destroy the reputations and careers of people who don't have the institutional protection of a group like CAP.
That said, it could be very significant if Block ends up losing his affiliation with one or both of those think tanks. It's been a very long time in Washington — if it has ever happened — when someone suffered any consequences for launching a baseless McCarthyite campaign of "anti-Semitism" to punish critics of Israel. As Sargent astutely put it: "the question of whether the think tanks will remain affiliated with Block will be seen as a referendum on the larger issue of whether demeaning Israel critics as anti-Semitic will be considered acceptable discourse among foreign policy experts." Block has backed off some of his most incendiary accusations, but has apologized for nothing and continues to insist that the views he targeted should not be tolerated in any mainstream institution (including questioning whether Iran has a nuclear weapons program (what the last NIE did) or "policy or political rhetoric that is hostile to Israel": those views, insists Block, are strictly off-limits).
This episode reveals yet again just how pernicious is this manipulative use of "anti-Semitism" to intimidate people out of questioning U.S. policy toward Israel. Block targeted CAP because he knows full well that its two most important organizational resources — its White-House/Party access and its donor base — can be harmed even from the innuendo that it is committing heresy on Israel. Unsurprisingly, while the targeted writers have not been expressly admonished, CAP has engaged in blatant, public efforts to distance itself from their own writers' commentary and to assure everyone that they are not heretics when it comes to Israel.
Smith's original article reported that "CAP officials have told angry allies that the bloggers don't speak for the organization." One senior CAP official told Smith: "what one blogger or analyst may write isn't necessarily indicative of what our policy recommendations are for the administration or Congress when I'm doing meetings with our friends in government."
Two other senior CAP officials, in the wake of the Politico article, ran to the ThinkProgress blog to write an incredibly defensive apologia assuring everyone that they do not deviate on Israel, clicking their heels and affirming several oaths as though they're reading from some mandated D.C. script: "Iran's nuclear program is a strong point of concern for us, the U.S., and its allies"; CAP's goal is "ensuring Israel's long term security by securing its neighborhood"; "the multilateral sanctions framework engineered by the Obama administration is an important tool in pressuring Iran"; "It is a widely accepted fact that Iran has a nuclear program"; "while we take nothing off the table, we do not believe there is any evidence that a military strike would achieve those goals, a view shared by America's top military officials." Yet another CAP official, in response to the criticisms from the Wiesenthal Center,ran to affirm that we "take the threat of Iran's nuclear program seriously," that "the Iranian issue is a strong point of concern for us," and that "we support the Obama administration's position of 'no options off the table'" (while not supporting a military strike).
Given all this, is there any question — no matter what the outcome is — that this will have an effect on how CAP commentators write about Israel? Here you have their institutional employer under widespread attack for being anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic because of what they've written. You have a Washington Post columnist fueling those accusations repeatedly. You have your own organization's officials publicly, expressly and repeatedly distancing themselves from what you've said by making clear that it's not the organization's views, all while specifying what the acceptable boundaries are for your commentary on these matters (namely: nothing to the left of the Obama administration's official position). You now know that your writings on this topic are being monitored by the Josh Blocks of the world.
I have respect for the specific CAP and Media Matters writers targeted by this smear campaign. They have real integrity, and I doubt that any of them will consciously curb what they write. But I also have little doubt that this episode will be in their heads every time they go to write about Israel. They'll be wondering if they are crossing an organizational line, if they are going to prompt renewed smears against them and their bosses, if they should just refrain on the ground that the cost is not worth it. And that, of course, is precisely the goal of these smear campaigns: to make the cost of criticizing Israel and/or questioning blind U.S. support for Israel so high — personally and professionally — that most people are unwilling to do it.
And still — even now that the Israel debate has been opened up more than ever before (as those above quotes from Tom Friedman reflect — these smear tactics still work. Part of the problem is that most liberal writers, bloggers and pundits — especially the non-Jewish ones — are petrified of getting anywhere near the word "Israel," and that's been true for quite some time. One CAP writer noted to me the conspicuous silence among liberal bloggers and writers over this coordinated smear campaign against two of the most important progressive D.C. groups, and that's par for the course. By contrast, the entire Right jumps on every one of these smear campaigns and magnifies and amplifies it as loudly as possibly; note how the right-wing Breitbart site immediately lavished praise on Smith for "Exposing Media Matters, CAP as Anti-Israel Democrat Orgs." The smears of "anti-Israel" and especially "anti-Semitism" still pack a potent punch — especially (though by no means only) for non-Jewish political commentators — and most progressives will therefore avoid it at all costs. Indeed, the Politico article included this passage:
Podesta, who recently stepped down from his longtime position as CAP's president, "always wanted to stay out of Israel stuff from the beginning, because it's a no-win issue for them," a liberal Israel policy thinker and CAP ally said. "They're obviously a progressive place, but if you want to attract a mainstream Clinton, New Democrat milieu, you can't really do real progressive Israel stuff."
Those who are targeted with these smears for heresy on Israel know that — no matter how baseless the smears are — few will step forward to defend them. They'll be left alone, hung out to dry, in the face of a very aggressive neocon assault. When Walt and Mearsheimer were under vicious attack for The Israel Lobby, even many tenured academicians who had privately expressed support for their work ran away and refused to defend them. One CAP blogger, Zaid Jilani, has now apologized for and deleted tweets where he used the term "Israel-firster" even though (a) everyone knows there are American political activists — both evangelical Christians and Jewish — whose political worldview is dominated by allegiance to Israel and (b) even long-time stalwart Israel supporters like Tom Friedman now describe how U.S. officials are "hostage" to the "powerful pro-Israel lobby" that can force them to place Israel's interests over their own country's.
Every few months, one of these controversies erupts: some writer or official stands publicly accused of being insufficiently supportive of Israel; all kinds of innuendo about motives is smeared over the person; and demands are made that they be repudiated, fired or denied a position. No matter the outcome of the specific controversy, the effect is to re-bolster orthodoxies on Israel, fortify the restrictions on debate, and to send a warning to future would-be heretics about the cost of such behavior. It would be sweet justice indeed (as well as beneficial) if in this case the smear artist, rather than his targets, is the one who suffers consequences. But one should not doubt that the intended effect has been nonetheless achieved.
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/14/exploiting_the_anti_semitic_smear_now_backfiring/
This entry was posted in Media and tagged International, printonline. Bookmark the permalink.


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Broyhill Music Center
Home of the Hayes School of Music
The 90,000+ square foot building, located in the fine arts complex on Rivers street, was constructed with acoustics influencing all aspects of the design from choice of materials to the shapes of interior walls.
The architects took advantage of the hilly terrain, designing the facility to "climb" the hill in steps so that most of the building is on ground level, cutting down on the amount of sound proofing needed between floors.
The foundation and frame are concrete rather than less sound absorbent steel. Interior walls are doubled and packed with kiln-fired sand. Walls rest on neoprene (soft vinyl) cushions, reducing unwanted vibrations through the concrete walls.
The outside of each interior wall is treated with sound-resistant materials. The double gypsum board ceilings are heavily insulated and have been hung with acoustically designed rubber isolators to keep sound from being transmitted between floors where rooms are constructed above other rooms. This feature also controls the sounds within a room.
The Broyhill Music Center includes two performance halls, a state of the art recording studio, an opera studio, a computer lab, a piano lab, a 5,000 square foot music library, an instrumental rehearsal hall, a choral rehearsal hall, small ensemble rehearsal rooms, more than 30 offices and over 50 practice rooms with pianos.
Floors in all of the teaching studios are doubled and the top finished floor is jacked up with rubber sound isolators between the two layers.
In the performance spaces - the 125 seat recital hall and the 440 seat Rosen Concert Hall - special treatment adds to the acoustical perfection.
Rosen Concert Hall
With a seating capacity of 440, the Rosen Concert Hall is the principal performing area of the Hayes School of Music. Designed specifically for concerts and recitals the stage area has a capacity for large ensembles, yet is well suited for the solo performer. The acoustical "clouds" over the stage area also contain stage lighting. Facilities for recording are controlled from stage-sight booth. Upholstered individual seats are arranged in a continental manner. The hall is resonant, and, with the touch of a switch, the reverberation time may be adjusted from 1.9 to 2.9 seconds. The computer-designed angles of each surface distribute sound evenly for every listener.
Questions or further information concerning the Broyhill Music Center can be sent to the School of Music's building manager, Mr. Brent Bingham at binghamba@appstate.edu.
View the Robert F Gilley Recording Studio website.
Broyhill Music Center Room Usage
R25 Webviewer is administered by Institutional Research. You can view the Music building room usage and other locations at the University. The room usage is produced from the semester class schedule from the registrar's computer system, so it is accurate from their records. You can also input your requirements to locate a classroom to accomodate your needs for an event.
Hayes School of Music room reservations should be made by contacting the Hayes School of Music's building manager, Mr. Brent Bingham at 828-265-8695 or by email at binghamba@appstate.edu.
Electronic Music Lab
Originally designed as the Composition program's Electronic Music Lab, this space houses 10 brand new Intel iMacs with 24" monitors which each have their own Digidesign MBox 2 audio and MIDI convertor. The stations are primarily utilized by the Music Industry Studies and Composition majors for pre-production, postproduction, arranging and compositional efforts. All students within the Hayes School of Music have access to the facility to work on ear training, notation assignments for theory courses, drill design for marching bands as well as general class work. The Facility opens at 8am Monday through Friday and closes no earlier than 9pm every evening. All stations are connected to the Internet as well as a networked printer where prepaid print cards may be used. The software housed on each of the computers includes, but is not limited to: ProTools 9, Logic Studio Pro, Microsoft Office, Finale, Sibelius, Garageband, iLife, Reason, Adobe CS4, and Drill Design.
The Lab has two isolation booths, which house the last two of the ten stations, allowing more isolation when recording or editing productions. Each of the isolation booths are equipped with several tie line inputs and outputs that connect to the larger Lab, allowing for instruments to be tracked in the larger space while still sending the signal into the booth, should the need arise. Any individuals wishing to work on a project here must bring their own flash, USB or firewire hard drive to store their work, as the computers are cleaned nightly of extraneous documents outside of the Student Storage drive on each station. All individuals are responsible for backing up their own work.
Community Music School
Mariam Cannon Hayes
Music Theory Pedagogy Online


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The political economy of national competitiveness: "one country, two systems"" and Hong Kong's diminished international business reputation.
Thompson, E., 2004, In: Review of International Political Economy. 11, 1, p. 62-97 36 p.
The Political Economy of Neo-modernisation: Rethinking the Dynamics of Technology, Development and Inequality
Baek, S. J., Aug 2018, Palgrave Macmillan. 343 p.
The Political Economy of Privatization
Clarke, T. & Pitelis, C., 1993, London, U. K.: Routledge. 500 p.
The political economy of secessionism: identity, inequality and the state
Brown, G. K., 1 Sep 2010, Bath, U. K.: Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath, (Bath Papers in International Development and Wellbeing; no. 9).
The political economy of Slovak and Czech health policy: 1989-2000
Lawson, C. & Nemec, J., 2003, In: International Political Science Review. 24, 2, p. 219-235 17 p.
The political economy of Soviet Bloc economic aid to Africa
Lawson, C., Sep 1987, University of Bath.
The political economy of strategic trade policy and the Brazil-Canada Export subsidies saga
McGuire, S. & Goldstein, A., 2004, In: The World Economy. 27, 4, p. 541-566 26 p.
The political economy of sugar-sweetened beverage taxation in Latin America: lessons from Mexico, Chile and Colombia
Carriedo Lutzenkirchen, A., 5 Jan 2021, Globalization and Health.
The political economy of the environmental criminal justice system: A production function approach
Almer, C. & Goeschl, T., Sep 2011, In: Public Choice. 148, 3-4
The Political Economy of the Welfare State (Greek Translation)
Gough, I., 2008, Athens: Savalas.
The political economy of financial inclusion: Working with governments on market development
Johnson, S. & Williams, R., 1 Jun 2013, Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath, (Bath Papers in International Development and Well-Being; no. 23).
The political forecast for 2017? Economic precarity and social division
Pearce, N., 7 Jan 2017, Wired.
The Political Impact of the Department of Defense on Hollywood Cinema
Alford, M., 18 May 2016, In: Quarterly Review of Film and Video. 33, 4, p. 332-347
The political importance of labelling: Terrorism and Turkey's discourse on the PKK
Barrinha, A., Aug 2011, In: Critical Studies on Terrorism. 4, 2, p. 163-180 18 p.
The political logic of populist hype: the case of right wing populism's 'meteoric rise' and its relation to the status quo
Mondon, A. & Glynos, J., Mar 2015, Political Studies Association Conference. University of Sheffield
Mondon, A. & Glynos, J., Dec 2016, Thessaloniki: Populismus, (POPULISMUS Working Papers; vol. 4).
The political logic of populist hype: The case of right-wing populism's 'meteoric rise' and its relation to the status quo
Glynos, J. & Mondon, A., 31 May 2019, Populism and Passions: Democratic Legitimacy after Austerity. Cossarini, P. & Vallespín, F. (eds.). Routledge, (Routledge Advances in Democratic Theory).


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Memories are Short – Speak up Now!
We are all in a rush in our business lives but when it comes to feedback it is crucial to speak up immediately. Why? Because we forget and even if we remember to mention it later (usually at an official point such as an appraisal) it will, at best fall flat, or at worst create resentment.
Say for example, you notice a team member speak to a fellow member of staff using an abrupt and disrespectful tone of voice. If you bring up the incident at some later point they will struggle to remember the exact context of the remark and may:
a) refuse to accept your version of what happened and deny everything
b) accept what you say but, being unable to explain or defend themselves, remain feeling resentful
Much, much easier to just take them aside immediately and, without fuss or drama, simply state 'I can't help noticing the way in which you spoke to your colleague just then. The tone of voice you used was like this (mimic the voice if you can). Whatever the reason, I expect all of us to speak to each other respectfully at all times'.
Undoubtedly they will come back with some form of defence which is the natural thing to do. You may learn of some very good reason why they were pushed into speaking with a sharp tone! However, it is a simple thing of reconfirming 'I understand why you felt a degree of frustration, however, I need to emphasis that it important that we all speak to each other respectfully at all times, whatever the provocation.' And then go on to specify how they could have respectfully voiced their viewpoint and what action they could have taken in that circumstance.
The example I have used above is about negative feedback but exactly the same rules apply for positive feedback. You see a great piece of work, will you really remember the exact details of what they did so brilliantly six months later at an official appraisal? No, didn't think so. Speak up now.
Additional note: Important to realise that when it comes around to that annual or biannual formal performance appraisal, our memory generally only goes back about 2 months. So keeping a record will help you to be fairer and truthful at these official recordable points. Just have one of your regularly monthly tasks to write short notes on the performance, good and not so good, of each of your reports. This will help you better manage some game playing staff who only switch on the 'star performance' just before appraisals!


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Could it be the world is getting better?
December 29th, 2015 | Author: Jan
By Jonathan Power
We have much to be glum about as we come to the end of 2015 – the latest is the killings of cafe sojourners and music fans in Paris.
But we are brainwashed with bad news. "If it bleeds it leads". One plane crash is worth more airtime than news that we are winning the fight against early death.
The World Health Organization has some telling facts. Over the last two decades infant deaths have fallen by a half. Measle deaths by three-quarters and both tuberculosis and maternal deaths by a half. AIDs-related illnesses have been cut by over a quarter. In 1960 one in five children died before the age of 5. Today it is one in 20, and falling.
Developing countries have caught up far more quickly in health than in wealth. For instance, Vietnam has the same health as the US had in 1980 but at present the same income per head as the US had in 1920.
Despite the Great Recession of the last seven years poverty has plummeted. Although most of that drop has happened in China and India it has also happened in most Third World countries.
Population growth is slowing. The amount of children in the world today is the most there is likely to be. As Hans Rosling of Sweden's Karolinska Institute told the BBC , "We have entered the age of the 'Peak Child'".
Education is spreading rapidly for girls. In Muslim Bangladesh there are as many girls in school as boys. In conservative Saudi Arabia there are more young women in university than men- and their exam results are better.
Coming up in 2016 will be more war in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan. Of that we can be sure.
There will probably be another year of "Cold Peace" between Russia and the West unless both sides can engineer a way out of the quite unnecessary Ukrainian imbroglio and find a way to work together to pull the rug from under the Islamic State (ISIS).
The European Union might be thrown into disarray again if the British vote to leave it. The pace of action against malaria, other tropical diseases and global warming will be out of step with what is necessary.
But, on balance, 2016 could be a good year.
We are outracing the Four Horsemen, extending the length of human life faster than pestilence, war, famine and death can take them.
Anti-immigrant political rhetoric and voting may be on an upswing yet most European people have responded to the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees with a degree of unexpected equanimity.
It has long been intellectually fashionable to debunk the value of foreign aid. Yet the evidence is overwhelming that in most poor countries the great advances in medical care would not have been made without it.
Take the program to fight AIDS in Africa initiated by President George W. Bush, head of a party that has long derided aid. It paid for the successful treatment of over 5 million people. These days more and more of America's richest men are donating large sums of money out of an altruistic commitment to help the poor get on their feet- and they are finding success.
Over the decades since the end of the Cold War war has become less frequent and less deadly.
It is true that in the last few years, mainly because of Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan, the number of fatalities has shown an increase after years of decrease, but the world over the downward trend has continued. Today war is limited to only one relatively small corner of the world.
MIT professor, Steven Pinker, in his 2011 book "The Better Angels Of Our Nature", brought to light a treasure trove of data proving that the world has become much more peaceful. Over the last 50 years deaths in war have fallen from an annual 300 per 100,000 people to less than 1 per 100,000.
One reason for this has been the fast spread of democracy and the well-proven fact that democracies don't go to war with each other. At the end of World War 2 there were less than ten democracies. Now it is commonplace.
According to Freedom House, which measures the ups and downs of democracy and human rights, 45% of the world's people are "free" and 30% "partly free". That leaves only 25% which are unredeemed dictatorships. Most of that number is in China.
Take China out of the equation then only a quite small number of people live under totally dictatorial regimes
The Paris bombings, IS atrocities and setbacks in Afghanistan, bad news, are important but not as important as this good news.
In 2016 we need a return to perspective. Our destiny is not down.
Jonathan Power
jonatpower@aol.com
Posted in Future perspectives, Jonathan Power


CHARLESTON, WV - Gov. Jim Justice announced today that global technology company Infor will open its first West Virginia office in Charleston and create 100 new technology jobs.
Infor develops business cloud software, specialized by specific industries. The company's products are used in sectors that range from aerospace to manufacturing to professional services.
The Charleston operation will run cloud applications for local, state and federal government agencies and the contractors who support them. Infor will hire 100 technical employees for specialized positions in software engineering, cloud operations and consulting and support services. The Charleston operation will grow as it adds more customers.
Infor will partner with Marshall University in Huntington and West Virginia State University in Institute to develop a technical talent pipeline. The company's Educational Alliance Program helps connect students and professionals with more software, training and career opportunities.


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CymaBay Therapeutics - Get News & Ratings Daily
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Stifel Nicolaus Begins Coverage on CymaBay Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CBAY)
Stifel Nicolaus assumed coverage on shares of CymaBay Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CBAY) in a research report released on Monday morning, BenzingaRatingsTable reports. The firm issued a buy rating and a $14.00 target price on the biopharmaceutical company's stock.
Several other research firms have also recently issued reports on CBAY. Zacks Investment Research raised CymaBay Therapeutics from a sell rating to a hold rating in a research note on Friday, March 1st. BidaskClub cut CymaBay Therapeutics from a strong-buy rating to a buy rating in a research note on Thursday, April 11th. ValuEngine cut CymaBay Therapeutics from a strong-buy rating to a buy rating in a research note on Thursday, April 11th. Cantor Fitzgerald set a $20.00 target price on CymaBay Therapeutics and gave the company a buy rating in a research note on Sunday, April 14th. Finally, Piper Jaffray Companies set a $30.00 target price on CymaBay Therapeutics and gave the company a buy rating in a research note on Friday, March 1st. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have assigned a hold rating and eleven have given a buy rating to the stock. The stock presently has a consensus rating of Buy and an average price target of $14.00.
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Shares of CBAY stock opened at $6.68 on Monday. The company has a quick ratio of 18.66, a current ratio of 18.66 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.01. CymaBay Therapeutics has a fifty-two week low of $4.82 and a fifty-two week high of $14.94. The company has a 50 day moving average of $10.56. The company has a market capitalization of $458.88 million, a P/E ratio of -5.30 and a beta of 1.73.
CymaBay Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CBAY) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, May 8th. The biopharmaceutical company reported ($0.37) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the Thomson Reuters' consensus estimate of ($0.34) by ($0.03). On average, equities analysts forecast that CymaBay Therapeutics will post -1.48 EPS for the current year.
Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Meeder Asset Management Inc. increased its stake in shares of CymaBay Therapeutics by 307.3% during the first quarter. Meeder Asset Management Inc. now owns 2,839 shares of the biopharmaceutical company's stock valued at $38,000 after buying an additional 2,142 shares during the period. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. grew its stake in CymaBay Therapeutics by 23.1% in the fourth quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 13,120 shares of the biopharmaceutical company's stock worth $104,000 after purchasing an additional 2,460 shares during the period. Bank of America Corp DE grew its stake in CymaBay Therapeutics by 1.5% in the fourth quarter. Bank of America Corp DE now owns 164,192 shares of the biopharmaceutical company's stock worth $1,291,000 after purchasing an additional 2,478 shares during the period. Citigroup Inc. grew its stake in CymaBay Therapeutics by 17.7% in the fourth quarter. Citigroup Inc. now owns 19,966 shares of the biopharmaceutical company's stock worth $157,000 after purchasing an additional 3,000 shares during the period. Finally, Raymond James & Associates grew its stake in CymaBay Therapeutics by 7.7% in the fourth quarter. Raymond James & Associates now owns 82,205 shares of the biopharmaceutical company's stock worth $647,000 after purchasing an additional 5,899 shares during the period. 99.53% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.
About CymaBay Therapeutics
CymaBay Therapeutics, Inc, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, focuses on developing and providing therapies to treat liver and other chronic diseases. Its lead product candidate is seladelpar, a selective agonist of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor delta, which has completed Phase II clinical study for the treatment of primary biliary cholangitis, as well as patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.
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Encyclopedia > U.S. presidential election, 1920
Presidential Candidate
Running Mate
(Electoral Votes)
Warren G. Harding (W) 404 16,152,200 Republican Calvin Coolidge (404)
James M. Cox 127 9,147,353 Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt (127)
Other elections: 1908, 1912, 1916, 1920, 1924, 1928, 1932
Source: U.S. Office of the Federal Register (http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/scores#1920)
(Larger version)
By 1920, World War I was over. The wartime boom had collapsed. Diplomats and politicians were arguing over peace treaties and the question of America's entry into the League of Nations. Overseas there were wars and revolutions; at home there were strikes, riots and a growing fear of radicals and terrorists. Disillusionment was in the air.
The giants who had dominated the political scene for a generation were gone -- Theodore Roosevelt died in 1919 and Woodrow Wilson was a broken invalid living in seclusion. Even so, the presidential election of 1920 continued the debate between the nationalistic activism of Roosevelt's presidency and the global idealism of Wilson's administration.
On June 8, 1920, the Republicans nominated Warren G. Harding, an Ohio newspaper editor and United States Senator, to run for president with Calvin Coolidge, governor of Massachusetts, as his running mate. Harding campaigned as advocating, in his own phrase, "A Return to Normalcy" after the trying times of the World War. The Democrats nominated another newspaper editor from Ohio, Governor James M. Cox, as their presidential candidate, and thirty-seven-year-old Franklin Delano Roosevelt for vice president.
On election night -- November 2, 1920 - for the first time commercial radio broadcast coverage of election returns. Announcers at KDKA[?], Pittsburgh, read telegraph ticker results over the air as they came in. This single station (with few competitors on the airwaves) could be heard over most of the Eastern United States by the small percentage of the population that had radio recievers.
This was the first election in which women were allowed to vote, following the passage of the 19th amendment to the Constitution.
Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs received 913,664 popular votes, despite the fact that he was in prison at the time (for advocating non-compliance with the draft in World War I).
P. P. Christensen[?] of the Farmer-Labor Party took 265,229 votes, while Prohibition party[?] candidate Aaron S. Watkins[?] came in 5th with 189,339 votes, the poorest showing for the Prohibition party since 1884-- as the Eighteenth Amendment starting Prohibition had passed the previous year, this single issue party seemed less relevant.
President Warren G. Harding died in office on August 2, 1923. He was succeeded by Calvin Coolidge.
Source: Library of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/nfhtml/nfexpe)
See also: President of the United States, U.S. presidential election, 1920
North Haven, New York
... km² (2.7 mi²). 7.0 km² (2.7 mi²) of it is land and none of the area is covered with water. Demographics As of the census of 2000, there are 743 ...


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Office fears
Fears are growing over the fate of a South Tyneside office complex once workers move north of the river later this month.
Concerns have been raised about the knock-on economic effects once the Reyrolle building, near Hebburn Metro station, closes.
About 500 tax workers will be moved from the Hebburn complex to a new site at Benton Park View in North Tyneside in the next fortnight, with only a skeleton staff remaining.
There are concerns the closure will hit the local economy in Hebburn and moves are being made to find alternative uses for the office structure.
South Tyneside Council leaders are anxious to retain the building for a future workforce rather than see it demolished.


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'Time For Pak To Accept Reality,' Says India After Its Kashmir Move
Saturday, August 10, 2019 by Indian Defence News
India said Pakistan must not interfere in its internal affairs
New Delhi: Pakistan should accept reality and stop meddling in India's internal affairs, the Foreign Ministry said today as Islamabad continued its push back against New Delhi's decision to scrap Jammu and Kashmir's special status and divide the state into two union territories.
Addressing a press briefing, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar claimed that India's decision on Jammu and Kashmir has made Pakistan "nervous". "They feel that development activities and overall welfare of the people of Jammu and Kashmir will nullify their justification for cross-border terrorism. They will not be able to incite separatist activities. They will not be able to support terrorism. They will not be able to mislead people," news agency ANI quoted him as saying.
He also condemned Pakistan's move to downgrade diplomatic and trade ties, which included expelling the Indian envoy and halting cross-border railway services. "It is important to understand that the action taken by Pakistan is unilateral, meaning that they did not consult the other side before taking a decision. Whether it was the Samjhauta Express, trade relations or asking us to withdraw the high commissioner, it has been done without consulting us," Raveesh Kumar said.
The spokesperson said India has urged Pakistan to reconsider these decisions, which were "obviously taken to present a very alarming picture of bilateral relations that something big was going to happen". This was not the case, he clarified.
Raveesh Kumar said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already highlighted the ways in which the decision to scrap Jammu and Kashmir's special status will remove social and gender inequity, encourage democracy at the grassroots level and improve the livelihood of people in both Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. But Pakistan should stop interfering in India's internal affairs in any case, he reiterated, given that its actions "relate to the Constitution, which is a sovereign matter".
Earlier today, the Pakistan government said it will suspend the Thar Express - its last remaining train link with India - a day after it halted the Samjhauta Express connecting national capital Delhi with the Pakistani city of Lahore. It has also promised to lodge a protest with the United Nations Security Council in this regard.
India held that such a response from Pakistan was completely unwarranted. "The recent developments pertaining to Article 370 are entirely an internal affair of India. The Constitution of India was, is and will always be a sovereign matter. Seeking to interfere in that jurisdiction by invoking an alarmist vision of the region will never succeed," it said, asking Pakistan to ensure that "normal channels for diplomatic communication are preserved".
Labels: Army, Article, Border, Hizb, India, ISI, JeM, JuD, LeT, Pakistan, Terrorism


Tom and George talk about the news of energy and climate change. Melting permafrost is creating "drunken forests." Coal's troubles are growing. The UK is going ahead with the Hinkley C nuclear plant, despite opposition. The US is going ahead with the Clean Power Plan, despite opposition. Teslas are being used as taxis. And there is more.