hroughout his presidential campaign, Donald Trump voiced beliefs about national security that many Americans have shared since, at least, the early days of the Obama administration. The inability to speak honestly and coherently about the enemy and its ideology, Trump argued, has repeatedly led to failure: terror attacks at home that were not stopped; wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria that were not won.
Millions of Americans agree with Trump's assessment, believing the Obama White House had, for reasons of political correctness, mischaracterized the terrorist threat, treating Islam as a secondary feature instead of the defining one. Any such assessment, however, necessarily implies this corollary: an accurate representation of the enemy based on its ideology would indicate a far larger threat to U.S. interests, encompassing more of the Islamic world than previously admitted by either of the past two presidential administrations.
On national security, Trump has a mandate from the American people to expand the focus of the Obama years—which fixates on the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and its affiliates, all of whom seek to forcibly impose an Islamic state—to a more comprehensive understanding of the enemy and the threat it poses. "We can beat them," Trump's nominee for National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (Ret.), told Fox News in September, "but we have to decide that this is an enemy first." This more expansive understanding, then, centers on an ideology that promotes implementing an Islamic political order as the sole legitimate method of religious and political expression.
As articulated by prominent Islamist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the primary preoccupation of Islamist movements is "Islamic Awakening," a revivalist strategy activating Muslims throughout the world to impose totalitarian Islamic law—first within a given territory, a Caliphate, then across the world. The imposition of Islamic law means restricting free speech and persecuting minority and non-Muslim communities. These goals being antithetical to liberal democracy, the success of Islamist political movements are inherently destructive of America's vital interests.
Among those who have supported a wider national security threat focus, opinions differ as to whether practitioners of this ideology—call it political Islam or Islamism—represent an aberration of Islam generally; a strain among many strains of Islamic thought; or whether it is, as Islamists themselves claim, the only faithful representation of Islam's historical and legal practices. But few dispute the entity most responsible for advancing the notion of political Islam is the global, secretive organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus, the new administration's counterterrorism efforts are likely to focus on it. Trump campaign advisor Walid Phares recently indicated to an Arab-language newspaper that the incoming administration will designate this Islamist group a foreign terrorist organization, the goal of a year-long legislative effort led by Senator Ted Cruz. While the House version of the bill, authored by Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, easily passed the House Judiciary Committee, Republican congressional leadership has stymied its passage. Reports from staffers indicate that establishment Republicans have expressed concerns about how such a designation would impact U.S. policy, both at home and abroad.
One difficulty in making the case for the Muslim Brotherhood's designation has been a fundamental lack of knowledge about its role in waging terrorism. Since 1928, when it was founded by Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian, the Brotherhood has kept terrorist violence—or the threat of such violence—within its doctrinal toolkit, maintaining close ties to other sympathetic terror groups. As the 9/11 Commission reported, the Brotherhood's comfortable association with violent jihadist terror stretches from establishing clandestine "Special Apparatus" terror cells in the 1930s—which are still active—to the deep influence of Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb upon al-Qaeda.
The Brotherhood also constitutes the ideological wellspring for nearly every current jihadist organization. As al-Qaradawi notes in Islamic Education and Hassan al-Banna, it was the Muslim Brotherhood that invigorated and promoted a view of Jihad that had lain dormant" "The movement of Ikhwanul Muslimoon (The Muslim Brothers) breathed new life into jihad: giving it a place of honor and prominence in writings; stressing its importance in lectures, meetings, and songs; and asserting its sovereignty over individual and collective life." Where al-Banna provided inspiration and organization, Sayyid Qutb provided the roadmap. His 1964 book Milestones operationalized a plan for the reestablishment of totalitarian Islamic law through a skillful mixture of indoctrination and physical violence, all pegged to long-established concepts in Islamic law.
Any move in Washington against the Muslim Brotherhood faces, even more than a lack of knowledge, intense ideological resistance. For decades, a bipartisan American foreign policy consensus has endorsed engagement with and promotion of Islamists in an attempt to use them as a counterweight, to either other Islamic terror groups or larger geopolitical adversaries.
Seeking to engage Muslim Brotherhood officials or franchises has a long historical pedigree within our foreign policy establishment. As Ian Johnson documented in his outstanding history, A Mosque in Munich, America first turned to Islamists in the early days of the Cold War in order to nurture alternatives to the Soviets. During that time, however, many in the U.S. foreign policy establishment seemed to recognize that, ultimately, the long-term objectives of the Islamists were both anti-democratic and harmful to American national interests. An internal analysis from the period noted that leading Muslim Brotherhood figure Said Ramadan—then a guest in the Eisenhower White House who was backed by the CIA—was "a fascist" and obsessed with seizing power.
Unfortunately, such a blunt assessment of the U.S. government's Islamist interlocutors seems as quaint today as a 1950s TV commercial. By 2009 skepticism of Islamists' long-term goals had been thoroughly abandoned, as President Obama formally announced the full-throated promotion of political Islam as the legitimate expression of democratic will throughout the Middle East.
Nevertheless, a bipartisan consensus on this issue turned this theory into a touchstone concept of Obama administration policy. Promoting Islamist groups has, over time, come to define the American national interest.
The failures of American foreign policy in the Middle East that Trump articulated on the campaign trail follow from these assumptions about political Islam. The Obama administration's promotion of Islamism has not only failed to deliver its intended results, but encouraged terrorism, both international and domestic, while destabilizing Egypt, Libya, Syria and other regions vital to America. Long-time Sunni allies panicked as they saw the spread of the Islamists—whom they had once funded to operate against the West—now threatening, with implicit U.S. support, their own rule. Saudi Arabia banned Muslim Brotherhood materials from schools, and the United Arab Emirates designated numerous Brotherhood fronts, including ones operating in the United States, as terrorist entities.
Where the wave of political Islam met success, it was short-lived. Rather than promoting good governance and ending corruption, the Brotherhood's rise to power in Egypt led to a rapid expansion of jihad in the Sinai, with the Brotherhood leaders' tacit support. The triumphant Islamists spent more time establishing Islamic law and targeting Coptic Christians than providing desperately needed hard currency, natural gas, and food to the afflicted Egyptian people. The Brotherhood and other Islamists rose to prominence in Libya with the assistance of al-Qaeda-linked fighters, but could not maintain power democratically, rejecting the Libyan election result that favored their political opponents. The resulting civil war has made that country fertile grounds for both al-Qaeda and Islamic State fighters. In Syria, despite Western backing, Brotherhood-linked militias continue to insist upon close ties and cooperation with al-Qaeda's local affiliates. And while the Islamic State has publicly criticized the Muslim Brotherhood for its relationship with the West, Israeli and Egyptian intelligence officials say the Islamic State in fact receives support from Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood for its attacks in the Sinai.
Here in the United States, law enforcement has been overwhelmed by hundreds of terror cases. While the focus of the media and the Obama administration has been on the Islamic State and its ability to influence potential supporters via the internet, few have noted the repeated appearance of Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Centers and organizations in attacks in Garland, Texas, San Bernardino, and Chattanooga, as well as in connection to several would-be Islamic State fighters who were caught before they could act.
It appears the new administration understands this error, and will correct it. At the Heritage Foundation last May, Secretary of Defense nominee General James Mattis asked the blunt but essential question: "Is political Islam in America's best interests?" He went on to demonstrate that the Muslim Brotherhood and Iranian theocracy (respectively, political Islam's primary Sunni and Shia embodiments) were inimical to our well-being. President-elect Trump's nomination of Mattis suggests he holds the same view.
From their service under President Obama both Generals Mattis and Flynn understand the mistaken premise of the outgoing administration's engagement with political Islam: the unfalsifiable wish that, through participating in the democratic process, Islamists will be transformed from a source of anti-American terrorism into a bulwark against their more militant brethren. Despite the dangerous results of this hypothesis, the Obama administration viewed it as a way to simultaneously promote democracy and redirect militants' energies from terrorist to politics. Consequently, even domestic Islamists stopped being the targets of counterterror investigations, and were treated instead as partners in "Countering Violent Extremism" programs.
Is the Muslim Brotherhood "Too Big to Fail"?
the U.S. Treasury department designated numerous Muslim Brotherhood organizations for terror finance, including the Yusuf al-Qaradawi-led Hamas funding network known as the Union of the Good; Yemeni Brotherhood leader and bin Laden mentor Abdul Majeed Al Zindani; wealthy Saudi businessman and suspected terror financier Yasin al-Qadi, who was linked to al-Qaeda and Hamas finance networks; and Youssef Nada, known as the Muslim Brotherhood's "foreign minister" and his al-Taqwa bank, listed for facilitating cash transfers to al-Qaeda.
Not only did each of these cases, and many others like them, involve Muslim Brothers, but the interlocking web of conspirators and co-conspirators makes clear that that the Muslim Brothers are not a cog in the Islamist terror machine—they are the engineers who designed and run it.
Law enforcement soon found that some of these cases were political hot potatoes. Many of the subjects were wealthy, politically connected, well-regarded religious figures, or perceived as prominent within the Muslim American community. At fundraising events held at many of the most prominent Islamic Centers around the country, for example, the Holy Land Foundation successfully solicited millions in donations for the violent jihad being waged by the designated terrorist group Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood's ideological offshoot in the West Bank and Gaza. This happened with the knowing cooperation of some of the most prominent and influential Muslims in the country. By late 2008, the Bush Justice Department would prove at trial that many of these organizations and individuals constituted a conspiracy to fund Hamas. Prosecutors would label 306 of these as "unindicted co-conspirators" in the terror-funding scheme, listing organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); as well as individuals like onetime HLF employee Kifah Mustapha and prodigious Hamas fundraiser Mohamed al-Hanooti.
In the wake of the Holy Land Foundation case, those who take the Islamist ideological threat seriously believed that secondary prosecutions targeting Muslim Brotherhood leaders and co-conspirators intimately involved in the Hamas funding scheme would be a crippling blow to domestic Islamist terror networks. But there were no secondary prosecutions. There's some debate whether those prosecutions were squashed for political reasons by the incoming Obama administration, or by career Department of Justice officials. Regardless, the absence of follow-on cases against unindicted co-conspirators left in place a vast infrastructure that provided millions in hard currency—as well the equivalent of millions of dollars in media and public policy assistance—to terrorist groups. Even now, much of the evidence acquired by the government against the Muslim Brotherhood and its network in the United States—a large portion of which was entered into evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial—remains classified. Despite multiple requests in the name of legislative oversight, the Obama Justice Department has taken pains to prevent anyone, including Congress, examining it.
Perhaps the government considered the Muslim Brotherhood network in the U.S. "too big to fail." For example, a federal judge noted that the government supplied "ample evidence" to link a Muslim Brotherhood organization like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) to the terror group Hamas. Yet ISNA is affiliated with something on the order of one out of every four American mosques. How would prosecution of such an entity appear to the broader American community? How would the rest of the Muslim American community respond to an indictment? If the Muslim Brotherhood network in America and its allies were able to raise a political maelstrom over the conviction of Sami Al Arian, a South Florida professor tied to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, how much louder would a hyper-partisan media and an aggressive, social media-fueled activist infrastructure shriek if, for example, the organizing force behind a quarter of American mosques were indicted?
It's no wonder that capitalizing on the government's "too big to fail" assessment has proven to be an effective strategy of Islamist leaders in the United States, as pressure groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood routinely conflate their own front organizations and political goals with the totality of American Muslims. Regrettably, an increasingly uncurious media accepts this falsehood—and membership records for Muslim Brotherhood groups make clear it is a falsehood.
The new Trump administration must be prepared to rebut the inevitable complaints from self-styled Islamist "civil rights" leaders and their enablers in the media. It's important to remember that this would be the case whether or not the next president orders the State Department to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization. The Trump campaign and national security team has withstood the overwrought allegations that his proposals target all Muslims.
Designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization should give law enforcement and intelligence officials the tools they need to begin a serious, long-term investigation of the Islamist group's network in this country. The new administration must undertake a genuine effort to map this clandestine system, and key organizational leaders should be made the target of legitimate investigation, and prosecuted as legally appropriate.
It will be difficult to immediately reverse a culture within the U.S. government that has favored engaging the Muslim Brotherhood over investigating it. Since at least the Clinton administration, the White House Rolodex has included officials from domestic Islamist groups whose names routinely appeared in the court documents of terror finance cases. Even more, the Obama administration has quietly removed many organizations and individuals designated as global terrorists from the list, undoing much of the work by counterterrorism agents who were responsible for our post-9/11 response.
Because of the Brotherhood's political influence, which frustrated Bush-era prosecutions and halted them altogether under Obama, rolling back the Islamist group will require a joint counterterrorism/counterintelligence initiative. U.S. policy should treat all contacts with known and suspected Muslim Brotherhood members the way government personnel examine and report contacts with potential foreign intelligence services. Contact or association with the Brotherhood should be immediately disqualifying during ordinary background investigations for security clearances.
Additionally, a designation should provide added leverage for counterterrorism officials. Instead of approaching Brotherhood members and organizations as respected community leaders for outreach purposes either at home or abroad, the primary goal should be to acquire the intelligence needed to disrupt terror finance or prevent indoctrination. If necessary, officials can use the possibility of prosecution under the Muslim Brotherhood designation to secure cooperation, which would be similar to the way informants are treated when approaching other conspirators, such as crime organizations.
Unlike the prosecution of the Mafia however, a Trump administration will need to accompany counterterrorism efforts with a strong public relations campaign. Informed, articulate spokesmen will need to explain how relevant prosecutions were conducted, why they were necessary, and—perhaps most importantly—how they targeted the Muslim Brotherhood for its criminal behavior, not its religious convictions. Officials will need to be prepared to push back with facts against accusations of inappropriate discrimination. This, in turn, may require a more open approach to terror prosecutions, making relevant documents available to journalists quicker, while doing so in a manner that protects sources and methods.
Additionally, such a campaign to target the Muslim Brotherhood will require gathering more and better intelligence on the group's ideology than the Obama Administration permitted. Since the U.S. government's threat-focused counterterror training has been aggressively purged during the past eight years, accurate subject matter instruction will be the first step before earnest policy reorientation begins. Due to the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood and its fellow Islamic extremists, training for counterterrorism and counterintelligence officials will necessarily address sensitive issues of Islamic doctrine and legal theory. Political correctness mustn't be allowed to deny access to training based on demonstrable facts.
As has always been the case since its founding—and is currently the case in Egypt today—the Muslim Brotherhood has responded to crackdowns by proclaiming that Islam itself is under attack. The group has galvanized its membership to conduct numerous violent assaults, usually under the identity of a "splinter" faction. We can expect that, should it be designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization, at least some element of the Brotherhood will respond by seeking to increase terrorist violence against the United States. This will be difficult for a U.S. law enforcement infrastructure already strained by the Islamic State, but is a storm that can and must be weathered. Designating the Muslim Brotherhood remains necessary. The potential for violence must be weighed against law enforcement's ability to take swifter action and develop a deeper, more accurate view of Islamic extremism operating in the United States and around the globe.
President-elect Trump successfully campaigned on the repudiation of the national security views of the Obama administration. With the failure of the "democratic Islamist" project, the time has come to return to the alternative: (a) the promotion of Islamists accelerates, rather than stifles, Islamic terrorism; and (b) the Muslim Brotherhood remains at the center of Islamic ideological extremism throughout the world. Any policy not prepared to abandon America's promotion of political Islam broadly, and the Muslim Brotherhood specifically, merely perpetuates old failures.


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Asus ROG Phone 6 has just been announced as the latest gaming smartphone from the company for the global markets. All details are given here.
Asus' ROG Phone 6 is here after much delay but it brings enough upgrades to justify the wait. The ROG Phone 6 uses the fastest chipset any Android phone can use, and it also offers some of the most insane specs that gamers can think of.
The ROG Phone 6 series comes in two flavors – ROG Phone 6 and ROG 6 Pro. Availability in India is yet to be announced but prices for India are out. The Asus ROG Phone 6 moves up the price ladder this time with a price tag of Rs. 71,999 for the single variant with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
The ROG Phone 6 Pro, on the other hand, will come with a price tag of Rs. 89,999 for a single variant with 18GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
The ROG Phone 6 comes in Phantom Black and Storm White colours, while the ROG 6 Pro comes in Solar White color variants.
The phone remains largely unchanged from its predecessors, but 2022 brings just changes in line with the smartphone market.
ROG Phone 6 unveiled
The Asus ROG Phone 6 and Phone 6 Pro are pretty much the same except for the design and RAM/storage configuration. The phone has a 6.7-inch FHD+ AMOLED display with a refresh rate of 165Hz and touch sampling rate of 720Hz.
It also supports HDR10+ colors and has a maximum brightness of up to 1200nits. The display also has Gorilla Glass Victus protection. There is also a small polished display on the back of the phone which is customizable.
In addition to this, the phone gets the latest and fastest Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset paired with 12GB RAM on the standard model and 18GB RAM on the Pro variant. The cooling system is also said to be better than before.
Asus also upgrades the cameras on the phone with a 50MP Sony IMX766 sensor for the main camera, a 13MP ultra-wide camera and a 5MP macro camera. The phone also has 12 megapixel front camera.
The ROG Phone 6 also retains its powerful stereo speaker setup and marks the first time the phone has received an IPX4 rating. The Pro variant gets a small OLED display at the back to show instructions or graphics,
while the Standard variant only gets a backlit ROG logo. All of this is backed by a 6000mAh battery and it's still backed by last year's 65W fast wired charging, though you only get a 30W charger in the box.

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Ricardo Roura
Egevang Carsten
The Call of the Poles By President Chirac
When I discovered the existence of the International Call of the Poles, in which my friend, the former Prime Minister Michel Rocard, has taken an active part, I was convinced that here was a serious undertaking...
Robert Hawke, a polar hero, has passed away
The french NGO le Cercle Polaire mourns the loss of the Australian former Prime minister Robert Hawke who died at the age of 89 years old. In a last hommage paid by Australian press media, the daily digital newspaper 7NEWS.com.au celebrated him as a "great Australian" and...
Arctic Sea-ice
Winter 2017 - winter 2018
By Marie-Noëlle Houssais, oceanographer, FRANCE
Le Cercle Polaire au pôle Sud géographique


Email security gateways (ESGs) are an efficient tool for protecting the network of organizations of all sizes from email-borne threats. ESGs are an efficient means for preventing the delivery of email that violates an organization's policies. These network tools are particularly important today when email from bring your own devices, which are not under enterprise control, are using the corporate network.
All ESGs can quarantine or block email that contains detected malware, phishing attacks, spam and other malicious content. This prevents many attacks from reaching the intended recipients, which in turn reduces the compromises of hosts, user credentials and sensitive data.
This Buyer's Essentials explains what email security gateways are, how various types work, and key features to consider when deciding whether to acquire an ESG. This Buyer's Essentials is a guide to enterprise IT professionals, InfoSec pros and other enterprise personnel who need to review the offerings of email security gateway vendors and determine which ESG their organization needs.


Listen to Kid Cudi's New Song with Travis Scott, "Baptized in Fire"
Cudi also gives his upcoming album, 'Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin'' a new release date.
Kanye West has deigned to appear on a few songs, too.
Meet K. Forest, the Brampton Singer Behind Travis Scott's "Guidance"
We talk to the rising Toronto R&B star about his "spiritual" sound and how he refuses to stray from a destiny of being true to himself.
Put aside your kneejerk reaction and do some math: Are we really expecting artists to love music that came out when they were in diapers?
The new Surf Club cut hints at a payoff that never comes.
This beat will kill you.
Here's what the Noisey editors were listening to while waiting on line for iPhones (JK we have lives).
The road to Yeezus is paved with... heat vision?


We are The Initiative Production Company, an independent film company which focuses on training budding filmmakers and pairing them with industry professionals.
Besides producing award winning short films and feature films, our focus is primarily on training. We run film and acting training courses and are constantly accepting new interns throughout the year to come on board and be a part of what we're doing, while encouraging them in their own craft and creative initiatives.
Our team is comprised of people from all over the world because we value input from every voice, not just from one culture or one gender, but from all peoples and all nations.
Our team is full of diversity, complexity and everything they bring to the table is an expression of their passion for this competitive field.
We value people and their journeys and want to bring the best out of them. This shows through in our training, as well as in the stories we choose to tell, because let's face it, life is hard.
However, life is also beautiful.
It's that tension we as a company promote and present in our art. We don't want to shy away from what's hard, while also not falling into cynicism and ignoring the beauty that is all around us.
There is beauty in the everyday and the mundane, as well as in the fantastical and wonderful. We hope to capture this beauty in The Out of the Woods Project and any future projects we put our name on.
We want to create art that builds a brighter tomorrow for both the film industry and our audience.


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Q: configure netbeans to recognize pkg-config cflags in code completion is there a way to configure netbeans ide to actually support pkg-config properly? in 'additional options' in C compiler I added pkg-config --cflags --libs jack sndfile samplerate gtk+-2.0 but i still need to add the directories manually to the include path of the project for the code completion to detect them.
is there a way for netbeans to notice pkg-config commands and to use them to know what to include ?

A: In the project properties you can set "Additional Options" for both the compiler and the linker (I think you've found this by your question).
However, you must use back quotes around the pkg-config line i.e.
`pkg-config --cflags gtk+-2.0` (for the compiler additional options)
`pkg-config --libs gtk+-2.0` (for the linker)
You might also need to ensure that you are using gnu make as not all variants understand back quotes.

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Tomorrow's Hymns
On Writing Hymns
Re-Tuning Hymns
Expository Songs
Daniel's Books
Daniel's Songs
Daniel's Articles
Home » Blog Entries » An Interview with Joe Brown
An Interview with Joe Brown
by Daniel J. Mount | Aug 28, 2008 | Interviews
I recently had the opportunity to interview Joe Brown, bass singer for the Diplomats Quartet.
DJM: How did you get interested in Southern Gospel?
Joseph: I started as a kid listening to the old quartets and the Gospel Singing Jubilee. Growing up in my church was like going to a Southern Gospel concert with preaching. I knew the parts, and sang a little in the choir, but I never realized how much I loved it until I got into it.
When I was about 17, my brother was playing bass guitar and my sister-in-law was singing with a group called the Gospel Travelers out of Rockmart, Georgia. I went over to visit one day and found out that they were looking for a bass singer. The manager asked if I could sing bass; I said, "Man, I can sing anything."
DJM: What other groups did you sing with before the Diplomats?
Joseph: There were only three. After starting with the Gospel Travelers, I stayed out of it for a long time. But later I sang with the Blue Sky Quartet out of Carrollton, Georgia. I actually turned down an offer to move to Arkansas and sing with the Arkansas Boys, with Jerry Trammell, Mark Trammell, and Vaughn Thacker. They were starting a trio and wanted to make it a quartet, but I didn't want to move to Arkansas. Sometimes I just wonder what would have happened if I'd said yes.
Then Pam Atcheson, a lady I sang with, from the Gospel Travelers, started a group called "Enlisted", also out of Rockmart, Georgia. Pam & my best friend Rick Best, my beautiful wife and Mama's prayers, actually got me back into Southern Gospel Music. I stayed with Enlisted for almost two years. Then Jimmy Pearson of the Diplomats called, and I felt like the Lord was leading me that way. I've been singing with them two years this month; Aug 11 was my two-year anniversary.
DJM: What can we expect from an average Diplomats concert? What percentage of new songs to classics?
Joseph: Energetic. A Diplomats concert will always be energetic.
We throw the songs out there really hard, but we also have a ministry side when we get close to the end of the program, which is sometimes the best part for us. Jimmy Pearson writes a lot of the songs we sing.
We'll also do the old classics that everyone wants to hear. I think we have a good mix of original and classic songs in concert. We have a Happy Goodman kind of a sound, so we can go back and grab some of those older songs and do them well. Diplomat style!
DJM: What makes the Diplomats unique?
Joseph: I think what makes us different is that we have so much versatility in the group. Jimmy has spent 47 years in gospel music and can read a crowd as good as anybody I've ever seen. He knows what they want to hear. It's a different program every time we sing. He sang with Calvin Runion and the Dips in the 70s—that's where he got the Dips name. (He also sang with the Americans & Lancers.)
Rita's strong voice fills any concert hall with her rich, anointed singing. One promoter told us "If Mama ain't on the bus, y'all can just stay home." Versatility is one of our strong points. Besides being mostly a mixed group, we also do some male quartet music; Corey Pearson moves up to tenor, Jimmy to lead, and our pianist sings baritone. We do "Lonesome Road" as a male quartet and a few other standards.
Corey arranges all the music we perform and record. Corey is a musical genius (I call him a NUT) and plays on a lot of major recording for other groups. He plays just about anything he picks up and plays it well. Jimmy having all the experience anyone could ask for and Corey being somewhat new school musically, we have the best of both worlds. I just sit back and think of how blessed I am to be doing this.
DJM: Who are your greatest influences as a bass? Who do you most want to sing like?
Joseph: There are so many that I've just kind of blended them all into trying to be a little unique myself. My influences were J.D. Sumner the low man, George Younce—the bass singer for all time, Tim Riley the best tone guy, and great London Parris. I was also influenced by Paul Downing because of his singing with a mixed group, and the register he had. He brought a good mixture of higher mixed-group bass singing with a lot of deep way down there bass singing.
I never wanted to be labeled for one style, because I've sung with all male and mixed groups. Paul Downing could have done either one. Paul was my biggest singing influences. George was "the man," no doubt. Then J.D.'s charisma on stage, Tim's tones, I put all those guys together, with what I do and created "Ole Joe Brown."
DJM: Were you singing bass from your teens on, or did your voice shift down later?
Joseph: Actually, my voice changed when I was 13 or 14. Not to the register it is now—age changes a lot of things. I had a fairly good tone, and studied a lot how to keep the tones when I was a kid. Since I've gotten a little older, it's so much easier to sing the low notes, to hit the bottom then come up.
DJM: Are there any vocal exercises you've done to expand your range—anything you'd recommend to any readers who may be bass singers?
Joseph: The first thing a bass singer needs to understand is that he needs to be a good singer first—he needs to have a pleasant singing voice. A good bass singer is a lead singer who sings at a lower register. Pat Barker of the Dixie Echoes is a prime example of what I'm talking about. Vocally, technically, he's right there. He used to sing for the Diplomats before becoming a Minister of Music for several years. He sang in a higher register then—he can sing all four parts. Now he's getting his range back down. On "Not in a Million Years" (one of his feature songs on the Dixie Echoes' new release, So Many Reasons), he's hitting a low G at the very end. On "How Big is God," there's also a good low note at the very end.
I use a lot of techniques. One of the old masters was Lee Roy Abernathy; he taught a lot of techniques about using certain head tones in your voice. One of the things I did was just listen to good bass singers, copy the good tones, copy how they sang. That's the best advice—listen to someone good, and find and copy those tones.
DJM: If you weren't a bass singer, what part would you want to sing, and who would you want to sing it like?
Joseph: Well, as they say, every bass singer would want to be a tenor. I would probably honestly be a tenor singer. And probably one of my favorite tenor singers is Steve Ladd. Lead would have to be Michael English or Corey Pearson…
DJM: If you could do one thing to improve Southern Gospel, what would it be?
Joseph: If I had the opportunity, I'd share it with more of the secular world, as far as TV, magazines, and other secular media. Southern Gospel has always got like a second-rate position in that secular world. CCM is kinda going in, but it's not the same. Southern Gospel is in a ballpark all by itself. I would probably try to get it more into secular media than what it is now.
DJM: In your opinion, what makes Southern Gospel music Southern Gospel?At what point does a group cross the line between being Southern Gospel and contemporary?
Joseph: I think there's so much ministry connected with Southern Gospel that anyone in any kind of relationship, life, or situation can relate to it. It's more of a ministry-based music, and I think people are really hungry for ministry right now. We've got enough of everything else, but I've seen churches that are hungry for ministry. That's what makes Southern Gospel different, the ministry part of the music.
DJM: Any other thoughts or comments?
Joseph: I love talking about Southern Gospel. I've loved it all my life, but until you enter it in the way I am now, getting to see a lot of the other groups, it's not the same. I love the fellowship, I love talking about it. Can you tell?
DJM: Yes! I'm really enjoying this. Speaking of talking to you, if the readers would like to talk to you at NQC, what is the Diplomats' booth number?
Joseph: #932 and #934.
DJM: Will you be in any showcases?
Joseph: Sat. East Hall—Exhibit Hall A-B, 12:00 am. [DJM: Noon.]
DJM: Any closing thoughts or comments—and any new projects?
Joseph: I cut my first record in 1972 with the Gospel Travelers. It was in a rock studio in Atlanta on a 2-track reel-to-reel. Any time anyone made a mistake we had to start over. And nobody's perfect, so we were there for a year…not really, it just felt like it..
Auto-tuning right now has cut out all of that, but it can be over-used. Groups like the Dixie Echoes and Blackwood Brothers that are using little or no tuning, they're producing some of the most pure quartet singing out there today.
We are working on a new project, not titled yet. Friends like Nick Trammell, Joe Haberdank, Rebecca Peck, Daniel Mount and several others have been sending us songs to listen to. Jimmy (Pearson) has many original songs as well. We'll hopefully have it out by our New Year's Eve event. We also do an annual Christmas tour with the Mark Trammell Trio. (Check our web site for dates). The first part of the concert is a traditional Southern Gospel concert, the second is Christmas music. Les Beasley is going with us this year. He is such a nice guy, and has a world of knowledge concerning southern gospel music and the business that goes with it. He's one of the best quartet managers ever in Southern Gospel. My boss Jim Pearson is the best. I really mean that Jimmy.
My Last Thought for the Day……Most bass singers can hit a low note from time to time, but that's not what I want to be be known for. Just hitting the low notes. I want to be known for being a good singer—like George Younce or Tim Riley; a singer first, and a bass singer second.
DJM: Thank you!
Joseph: Thank you Daniel for giving me opportunity to do this with you. God Bless!
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News-Analysis
Here's how the increasing traction of chatbots and AI is affecting the modern world
People are worrying about their job security as sectors such as law, medicine, finance are all slowly adopting AI and chatbots to do their bidding.
tech2 News StaffJun 19, 2017 10:53:15 IST
In an era where technology has completely revolutionised the way things around us work, one cannot fail to notice that there has been a tremendous amount of innovation in how the internet is interacting with us.
A new type communication has recently become very popular among businesses and websites and it's called chatbots. This new tech has gotten people to worry about their job security as sectors such as law, medicine, finance are all slowly adopting AI and chatbots to do their bidding. The fields of telemarketing and retail are the most likely to get dismantled as the reliance on chatbots increases day by day. To understand why this is happening one must first understand what a chatbot is and what it does.
A chatbot is a specially designed computer program whose main function is to converse with humans using a mixture of auditory, visual and text methods. A chatbot is programmed in such a way that it emulates a nearly exact human response to a query given to it. Chatbots have system which allows a two-way communication and personalized interaction between the consumer and a brand, providing easy access and immediacy that can't be achieved via email or website.
The word chatterbot was first used by Michael Mauldin in 1994. Quite a few chatbots use a complex and sophisticated natural language processing system while others may use a simpler systems to scan for keywords and accordingly find a response.
Present day messaging services like Facebook have successfully implemented the use of chatbots in its instant messaging app Facebook messenger and today, researchers from Facebook's FAIR lab have demonstrated a new way of training chatbots to negotiate on behalf of users. In many cases the users are not aware that they were, in fact, talking to a chatbot. Virtual assistants like Siri in Apple devices and Cortana in Windows devices are fast gaining traction for their ease of use and accuracy.
In technical terms, there are two types of chatbots — those that function as virtual assistants and those which are found in instant messaging services like Facebook messenger, Wechat, Slack etc. Virtual assistants are a deeper form of AI which are programmed to learn and interact more efficiently, like Siri or Cortana. The total chatbot and virtual assistant industry in the next decade or so is predicted to be worth around a billion dollars.
This means that while the technology to develop and improve the chatbots system increases, reliance on humans to do the same amount of work decreases. Researchers predict that chatbots are effectively trying to improve on human cognitive responses and use it to make theirs even better. It is but obvious that companies may try and replace jobs with AI-powered bots which can accomplish the same amount of work in a faster and more precise manner while still remaining cost-effective. This is partly because of the fact that instant messaging has taken over as the primary mode of communication.
A study by Forrester has shown that one out of four jobs are going to be impacted by AI in the upcoming years. People searching for a quick answer with a hint of prior knowledge can get instant responses from chatbots rather than waiting for a human response. Some banks have upgraded their chat systems to bypass any human interaction for customers to get information.
However, the technology is still in its nascent stages and from what tech experts predict there is still a lot to come before chatbots can converse and completely replace a human for at least providing customer support. Some reports though, have stated that nearly 33 percent of people actually prefer to use chatbots for making decisions that involve purchasing a product. Business Insider claims that in the UK people are ready to shell out an average of $410 to avail the recommendations of a chatbot. But if the chatbots are not able to deliver the required expectations around three-quarters of users claimed that they did not want to use the chatbot again.
Mostly, chatbots operate at nearly 85 percent efficiency claims VentureBeat, and that means that sometimes, the automated responses given to customer may not be satisfactory, which can harm the reputation of the company. Therefore it is necessary to implement human contact at various levels in a chatbot conversation to maintain a sense of customer satisfaction. Opinions on chatbots and AI will remain divided but the fact that they will play an immense role in the years to come remains crystal clear.
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Figures released Thursday showed the number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits dropped to a 49-1/2-year low last week, pointing to sustained labour market strength that could temper expectations of a sharp slowdown in economic growth.
The U.S. Labor Department said initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 8,000 to a seasonally-adjusted 196,000 for the week ended April 6, the lowest level since early October 1969. Claims have now declined for four straight weeks. Data for the prior week was revised to show 2,000 more applications received than previously reported.
Economists had expected claims would rise to 211,000 in the latest week.
The four-week moving average of initial claims, considered a better measure of labour market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 7,000 to 207,000 last week, the lowest level since early December 1969.
The economy appears to have lost momentum in the first quarter as the stimulus from a $1.5-trillion tax cut package fades and a trade war between China and the United States and softening global demand hurt exports.