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manuelgarciajr
energy, nature, society
Favorite Writings
Through My Lens, Clearly
Posted on August 11, 2019 by manuelgarciajr
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For me, the 1950s ended in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the 1960s began in 1959 with the Cuban Revolution. I remember the elation in my family, in New York City's Upper West Side (136th Street, and Broadway), when the Batista Regime in Cuba collapsed in January 1959; and I remember our dumbstruck terror in October 1962, listening to President John Kennedy speaking on our black-and-white TV, wondering if my grandparents would be radioactively incinerated in Havana before we were similarly dematerialized in New York City, or vice versa.
That is how my political consciousness was born; its coming-of-age and definitive molding was done later by the Vietnam War, and the many insistent demands by my government that I sacrifice myself to it. I escaped by dumb luck, for which I am eternally grateful. With the particular curvature and polish of my own idiosyncratic lens for political consciousness, I have come to resolve images of our collective reality that I sometimes feel a need to project, as here today.
People can't be changed, they either evolve on their own, or they persist as they are to the death. The best you can do, for the rare few, is tell them the truth if they ask.
We live in a world rich in its diversity of intolerance of independent thought and self-directed living. Expressions of personal independence and creativity are threats to the slavish conformity of the mass of fearful repressed people hiding in their submissiveness to traditional ideologies that give them status in social hierarchies that limit the full human potential of the individual. This maintains, without merit, the elevation of patriarchs and power-hungry mediocrities who clip the wings of the human spirit and direct the enforcement of their systems of mental and physical imprisonment of the masses serving them.
Bigotry is popular because it makes stupid people feel intelligent, and weak people feel strong. President (sic!) Donald Trump's popularity rests on people's desire to be bigoted and respected for it. Bigotry will exist as long as there are ignorant people who are fearful. Such bigoted people love fascism because under it they can stay bigoted and be proud of it. Fascist bigots, like Trump, don't want to hear the truth because they don't want to be made to feel ashamed. That is why publicly recognized fascist power-seekers always try to silence their critics: first by ignoring them, then by ridiculing them, then by judicial attacks against them, or by veiled calls to their followers to sprout proxies who will make illegal attacks on their critics, and ultimately if they gain dictatorial power they have their critics killed.
Evangelical Christianity is a cult of fear, and for its men also a cult of patriarchy. Politically, it is irrational Republicanism; socially, it is white supremacy and the subjugation of women. Why do such Republican women remain Republican? Because their bigotry, which is fear, is so embedded that it overpowers their self-respect, which is courage. Evangelical Christianity sees Islam as its reflection and its rival, which is why it hates Islam. In practice, their religion is a hate crime. Heraclitus was so perceptive to write, in about 500 BC, that "bigotry is the disease of the religious."
The problem of race bigotry in America is like the problem of climate change. It is of our making, and we know how to fix it, but we never will. People are too invested in their ignorance for that to ever happen, and afraid if they let it go they will be weak in a changed world.
Arresting climate change would require the universal application of human intelligence, indiscriminate compassion, worldwide solidarity instead of personal selfishness, and thoughtful discipline instead of thoughtless waste. We are doomed. Climate Change is only a problem for the young, bequeathed to them by the old, who won't notice it anyway because they're comfortably done, and will be gone soon (geologically speaking).
I probably should not bother writing about the Climate Change Crisis anymore. Everyone everywhere now knows that it is real, and most have felt its first unpleasant effects. So, some Green Energy actions will now happen in response, probably too few, too weak and too late, but at least a start now that the Global Mind has opened to the truth.
Also, I really don't need to write any more Jeremiads against Republican Party partisans (there are plenty of others to do that nicely), because it is now obvious to everyone everywhere — even the U.S. corporate media (though it puckers their sphincters to mouth it) — that the Republican Party is just a fascist conspiracy to eliminate democracy in the United States of America, and replace it with an authoritarian corporatized xenophobic bigoted Fundamentalist Christian White Supremacy theocratic oligarchy, to drive us all expeditiously to extinction under their self-satisfied obsessively avaricious command. Thieves lie, and liars steal. For them, it is better for humanity to die out badly than for the stupid, bigoted and greedy to be bypassed. Capitalism is fossil-fueled greed with a total lack of imagination, and a bodacious military. Capitalism is the ideology of parasites.
Who built the United States of America into the richest country in world history?: enslaved and exterminated Native Americans, enslaved Africans, dispossessed Mexicans, and exploited European and Asian immigrant laborers. Who produces American wealth today?: the wage-slave descendants of all of these, who only gain a pittance from their harvested labors. What salve are these squeezed working people given for the bruising sacrifices they make of their humanity into the endlessly grinding engines of obsessive greed?: a patriotism deficient in human solidarity but voracious for taxes. But, don't think of it as taxes, think of it as tithing to the War Religion.
So in my lens's focus today I find the following: For the world: Capitalism must die for the World to live. For my country: Tribalism is America's fatal flaw. Resentment, envy and a fanatical sense of entitlement are its corrosive agents. A generational overturning led by socialist youth is its only hope. For myself and every other person: It's not what happens to you that determines whether you are a success or failure at life, but how you deal with it. As Thucydides quoted Pericles: "Honor is the only thing that does not grow old."
And now, back to the bread and circuses.
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Posted in American society, bigotry, capitalism, Christianity, climate change, Cuba, democracy, Heraclitus, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, personal reflection, philosophy, photography, political philosophy, racism, rant, reflection, religion, revolution, social change, social criticism, socialism, the human condition, Vietnam War	| Tagged American, black & white, capitalism, climate change, Cuba, democracy, Donald Trump, fossil fuels, global warming, human extinction, personal reflection, photography, Republicans, socialism, war
"Fifty-Year" Look Back At Lived History, 1963-2013
Posted on September 10, 2018 by manuelgarciajr
This essay is a summary of U.S. history, which I lived through from 1963 to 2013 (primarily during the 1960s and 1970s). This essay is simply a combination of two of my items published by Swans (now gone) in 2013. I wrote them for the benefit of younger people. In writing these essays, I did make an effort (research) to verify my statements of fact. I am posting this compendium here because 2018 is the half-century mark after 1968, which I consider the most consequential year in U.S. history since 1945.
Fifty-Year Look Back 1963-2013, Part I: 1963-1968
http://www.swans.com/library/art19/mgarci75.html
Fifty-Year Look Back 1963-2013, Part II: 1968-2013
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(Part I, 1963-1968)
(November 18, 2013) November 22, 2013, is the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of US president John Fitzgerald Kennedy. We can expect many commentaries on, remembrances of, and uses and misuses made of this anniversary during this month of November. My contribution to that chatter is this look back at the last fifty years in American history, from my personal perspective. I make no claims of scholarship, inclusiveness, balance, or attitudinal and interpretive "correctness," only that the following characterizes how I remember what I've chosen to focus on with respect to the "big picture" of American history that I have lived through.
The America of November 1963 was a country that had seen the collapse of European colonialism in Asia and Africa during the post World War II period of 1945-1960. America's own imperialistic Monroe Doctrine presumptuousness was sorely tried by the Cuban Revolution of 1959, which openly declared itself communist in 1961. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 had brought the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Russia) dangerously close to nuclear war, but was fortunately defused, and subsequent diplomacy led to a treaty limiting nuclear weapons testing.
There had been about 100 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests, primarily by the U.S. and the USSR, during the period 1951-1956 (there had been about 9 between 1945 and 1950). The annual number of nuclear tests jumped to over 40 in 1957, and over 100 in 1958. There was a voluntary halt to testing during 1959-1960 (except for a few tests by France) in response to public fears about the radioactive fallout contamination of the milk supply. The peace symbol, which is now an icon of our culture, was designed by Gerald Holtom in 1958, and first popularized as a badge by Eric Austen, both nuclear disarmament advocates in Britain. In 1961 — John Kennedy's first year as US president — the USSR launched a major series of over 30 nuclear tests, and the U.S. mounted about half that number. This weapons race accelerated wildly to a frenzied peak in 1962, with 140 tests performed (over 90 for the U.S. and nearly 40 for the USSR). Except for 1958 and 1962, there have never been more than about 90 nuclear tests in any year (and from 1971 usually under 60), and only very few since 1992, the last year of US testing (post 1992 testing has been by France, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea). The numbers I quote for nuclear tests in a given year are read off a chart and rounded. (1)
The environmental movement was born on September 27, 1962, with the publication of Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, on the ecological devastation caused by pesticide pollution.
The negotiations initiated in October 1962 to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis blossomed into the crafting of, signing (August 5, 1963), US ratification (September 24, 1963), and implementation (October 10, 1963) of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water.
The Civil Rights (anti-apartheid or anti-segregation) movement for black Americans had been very vigorous in the southern U.S. from the beginning of John Kennedy's presidency in 1961. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous "I have a dream speech" from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963.
From 1961, John Kennedy had sent US military advisors to aid the anti-communist Ngô Ðình Diêm regime of South Vietnam in its fight against a communist insurgency (the will of the peasantry) allied with communist North Vietnam. By late 1962, there were 12,000 US soldiers in South Vietnam. Disappointed with Diem as an anti-communist unifier for North and South Vietnam, Kennedy approved a CIA program to aid Diem's generals in a coup to produce new leadership, which occurred on November 2, 1963, with the deposed Diem summarily executed.
Lee Harvey Oswald, a disaffected American seeking glorious recognition as a leftist hero, acted as a freelancing James Bond (the world's favorite fictional Tory) to impress the Dirección General de Inteligencia de Cuba (DGI, the Cuban intelligence service) by assassinating President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. The DGI had been locked in a battle with the CIA to keep Fidel Castro from being assassinated, a project pushed hard by the Kennedy brothers, John and Robert. Lyndon Baines Johnson, John Kennedy's successor, stopped the CIA's Fidel assassination program shortly after taking office. The Soviet Russian intelligence service (KGB) had found Oswald too unstable to rely on as an agent, and happily let him return to America from his self-imposed exile in Russia (October 1959 to June 1962). The DGI had the difficulty of being a much less powerful organization situated far closer to its small nation's overwhelmingly superior enemy. Thus, the DGI unlike the KGB might be willing to exploit the improvisations of a volunteer useful idiot. Oswald spent the last week of September 1963 in Mexico City, visiting the Cuban and Russian consulates seeking a visa to travel to Cuba, and as a consequence met DGI agents. The DGI was too professional to compromise itself by inducting a delusional American outcast into its ranks, but the DGI seems to have been either gutsy enough or desperate enough to allow Oswald to imagine he would be welcomed in Cuba should he accomplish something of significant value for the Cuban Revolution. Oswald returned to Dallas on October 14, 1963. (2)
During 1964-1968
The Beatles conquer America by capturing the hearts of its teenage girls. We boys had no choice but to follow.
Lyndon Baines Johnson wins a landslide electoral victory over conservative Republican Barry Goldwater (Au-H2O), who had said in his nomination acceptance speech, "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." The Johnson campaign exploited Goldwater's strident public image with the most explosive political advertisement ever devised, the famous Daisy commercial. (3)
The Johnson administration bequeathed America the national tragedy experienced as the Vietnam War (between 1964 to 1968, after which the Republican administration continued it till 1975), but also the towering civil rights triumphs codified by three laws:
– Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin by federal and state governments as well as some public places.
– Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits states and local governments from imposing any "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure … to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."
– Civil Rights Act of 1968, also known as the Fair Housing Act, prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, creed, and national origin.
Unsafe At Any Speed, Ralph Nader's book about deficiencies of automotive design as regards passenger safety, launches the consumer product safety movement.
President Lyndon Johnson sends American troops into South Vietnam; by July there are 75,000. On July 28, Johnson announces he is increasing the troop level to 125,000 and doubling the monthly draft calls (from 17,000 to 35,000). A gradual and sustained aerial bombardment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), Operation Rolling Thunder, had begun on March 2, 1965, and would continue until November 2, 1968.
Positive Crankcase Ventilation (PCV) valves, which are simple pollution control devices, are mandated for internal combustion engines. This was the first regulation for automobile exhaust pollution control. Since Silent Spring in 1962, numerous concerns had combined into a broad environmental movement: the flooding of Glen Canyon on the Colorado River in 1963 behind the new Glen Canyon Dam, the logging of old growth redwood trees, air pollution — smog — caused by auto and truck exhaust gases, river and coastal pollution from industrial and farm wastes, and the danger of ecological damage by oil spills from offshore drilling platforms, which infamously occurred at Santa Barbara, California, in 1969.
The Six Day War, between Israel and the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria, takes place in early June. Israel is victorious, and the present Palestinian crisis of Israeli occupation begins.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara is captured and executed on October 9, 1967, by the Bolivian military aided by the CIA. One of many blows by a perpetually petulant US establishment vainly seeking a satisfying vengeance for the Kennedy hit.
The Tet Offensive, launched by the Communist Party of Vietnam on January 30, stuns the Johnson administration as well as the US public. It was now clear that the American war for South Vietnam was futile, but nevertheless it would continue till 1975.
On March 31, Lyndon Baines Johnson announces that he will not seek reelection; it is a presidential election year. Robert F. Kennedy (John Kennedy's younger brother and attorney general) was a senator at that time, and had announced his own bid for the presidency on March 16.
Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated on April 4, in Memphis, Tennessee. Major rioting breaks out in many cities. Because of the extensive damage and fires caused during these urban riots, and the deployment of National Guard troops to restore order, the television images of these scenes on US soil had an eerily disquieting resemblance to images of Stalingrad in 1943, Berlin in 1945, and Hue and other Vietnamese cities besieged during the previous three months during the Tet Offensive. Many Americans became very frightened, and a diversity of Americans had their various prejudices deepened.
Robert Kennedy is assassinated after a campaign speech in Los Angeles on June 6 by a resentful Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship, Sirhan Sirhan, who is still serving a life sentence for that crime. Robert Kennedy had captured the imagination of liberals, especially young ones, who were ignorant of his earlier political career (as a McCarthy-type commie chaser, and the zealous prosecutor of the Fidel assassination project) and crushed by his loss. Robert Kennedy had been deeply affected by John Kennedy's death and the politics behind it, and as a result he had undoubtedly become much more sympathetic to the aspirations and suffering of marginalized populations, like the Mexican-American farm workers that Cesar Chavez was organizing in California's Central Valley. However, the degree to which Robert Kennedy had become more "revolutionary," or "socialist," or just moral after 1963, and how such a presumed deepening of compassion and conviction might express itself politically, are matters of pure speculation mooted by his death. Hubert Humphrey, the vice president and eventual 1968 Democratic nominee for President, was the quintessential mainstream liberal politician of the 1960s.
Richard Milhous Nixon, a Republican from California, wins the 1968 presidential election with a campaign promoting "law and order" and appealing to anti-civil rights southern white resentment (Dixiecrats become Republicans). Nixon's winning concept was called "the southern strategy." It would become the formula applied by all subsequent Republican presidential contenders to this day, very effectively by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, who vastly increased the formula's content of rhetoric and cant on fiscal soundness and the evils of taxation, but unsuccessfully by Willard Mitt Romney in 2012 because of the changed demographic composition of the American electorate since 1968 and 1988.
Notes to Part I
1. Nuclear Weapons Testing,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_testing
2. Manuel García, Jr.,
"Castro And The Kennedy Image After The Checkmate"
Swans, 23 April 2012,
Some Words About JFK,
see the section "Castro And The Kennedy Image After The Checkmate"
https://manuelgarciajr.com/2017/11/20/some-words-about-jfk/
3. Daisy Commercial (1964),
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Id_r6pNsus
(Part II, 1968-2013)
(December 2, 2013) This two-part series is a look back at the last fifty years in American history, from my personal perspective. The thread of my historical narrative begins in Part I (1963-1968). (1)
Enjoy the show.
The Vietnam War and the US Presidential Election in 1968
On January 30, the Communist Party of Vietnam launched its stunning though costly and ultimately stymied Tet Offensive across all of South Vietnam. For the Vietnamese Communist Party, the Tet Offensive was a propaganda victory and foreign relations coup; for the Johnson administration and the American public it was a crippling blow to self-confidence about the conduct of the war. The number of American troops in Vietnam peaked at 543,482 in late April.
The year was the most expensive in the Vietnam War with America spending US$ 77.4 billion (US$ 519 billion in 2013) on the war. The year also became the deadliest of the Vietnam War for America and its allies with 27,915 South Vietnamese (ARVN) soldiers killed and the Americans suffering 16,592 killed compared to around two hundred thousand of the communist forces killed. The deadliest week of the Vietnam War for the USA was during the Tet Offensive, specifically February 11-17, 1968, during which 543 Americans were killed in action and 2,547 were wounded. (2)
On March 31, Lyndon Johnson announced in a nationally televised address that he would not seek reelection as US president in the November election. That same month, to encourage the North Vietnamese to begin negotiations, he halted the aerial bombing of the northern portion of North Vietnam, which includes those regions surrounding the capitol city Hanoi but not those areas bordering the 10 kilometer-wide 1954 treaty line — the DMZ or demilitarized zone — marking the separation into North and South Vietnam. The parties agreed to conduct the negotiations in Paris, and met for the first time on May 10. However, the North Vietnamese were adamant in demanding the Americans halt all aerial bombing in the North before discussing anything else, which Johnson finally acceded to on October 31, after which serious negotiations began. (3)
On November 5th, Richard Milhous Nixon, a Republican from California, won the 1968 presidential election with a campaign promoting "law and order" and appealing to anti-civil rights southern white resentment (Dixiecrats become Republicans). Nixon's winning concept was called "the southern strategy." It would become the formula applied by all subsequent Republican presidential contenders to this day, very effectively by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, who vastly increased the formula's content of rhetoric on fiscal soundness and cant on the evils of taxation, but unsuccessfully by Willard Mitt Romney in 2012 because the demographic composition of the American electorate had changed significantly since 1968, and 1988.
The Arc Of American Liberalism
The years 1964 through 1980 spanned the arc of American liberalism, arising out of the optimism of the Kennedy administration and plunging into the sour witless eruption of neo-liberalism: Thatcherism (1979) and Reaganism (1981)
The legislative triumphs of civil rights occurred during the same years as the vast expansion of the Vietnam War, 1964 to 1968. The accumulating costs of that war combined with the growing costs of social welfare programs to cause fiscal problems and a mild recession in late 1969 through 1970, and a monetary crisis in 1971 (the Nixon Shock, the end of the Bretton Woods system of international financial exchange, and the beginning of the present situation of freely floating currencies).
The Oil Crisis of 1973 (the Arab Oil Embargo in retaliation for the US support of Israel during its October 1973 war with Egypt and Syria) introduced Americans to the energy crisis: shortages of gasoline and fuel oil, with a quadrupling of prices. The recession triggered by the 1973 oil crisis lasted until 1975. By that time, American economic productivity (or profitability) had fallen from its peak levels during the previous thirty years of the post World War II boom (Les Trente Glorieuses), in part because advanced automation could now replace more human labor, and in part because of increased foreign competition, since the post WWII recovery of Europe and Japan had advanced rapidly though the 1950s and matured in the 1960s.
The reductionist quest for profitability led to the "outsourcing" and "offshoring" practices of seeking minimum cost foreign labor (with minimum investment in foreign health, safety, environment, and taxation) to produce products for sale and consumption in the United States. The inflation of the 1970s coupled with slow economic growth ("stagflation") spurred the intensification of well-financed campaigns by corporate interests to acquire political influence, which could be used to lower corporate taxes, eliminate or loosen government regulations on business practices, and break unions. This neo-liberal ideology of corporatism above all considerations of social democracy became the American paradigm with the arrival of the Reagan administration (1981-1988), and continues to the present despite its destruction — catastrophically in 2008 — of the American economy for over 90% of the population.
The long, horrible, drawn-out bleeding of the Vietnam War was totally unnecessary. The 1973 Oil Crisis was never addressed as it should have been, by the development of sustainable, non-nuclear energy and power sources not based on fossil fuels (or combustion). I think of how much better off Americans and the world would be today if these two problems had been solved compassionately and intelligently. The successors of the Vietnam War have been briefer, more streamlined, and far too numerous. The newest American wars are now carried out as computer games of automated assassination, equipped with real remotely-controlled unmanned bomber aircraft and missiles, and programmed directly from the White House. The energy crisis that erupted in 1973 has now metastasized into the anthropogenic global warming problem. To my mind, the way to move the United States beyond its present glut of drone wars and military adventurism and wastefulness, as well as most effectively address the energy and global warming dilemma, is to be found by abandoning neo-liberalism and embracing its exact opposite, social democracy.
Vietnamization For "Peace With Honor," Mega-Death For "Credibility"
For Americans, the Vietnam War had a slow buildup. It began during the Harry S. Truman administration with the behind-the-scenes provisioning with military equipment for, and the financing of, the French colonial forces in Indochina in 1945-1952. The Dwight D. Eisenhower administration (1953-1960) continued this support after the French defeat in 1954, with the propping up of anti-communist regimes in the southern half of Vietnam, and supporting anti-communist factions in Laos.
The forces of communist North Vietnam completed the north-south Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1959, along the eastern margins of the countries west of Vietnam: Laos in the north, and Cambodia in the south. This route for the clandestine re-supply of communist forces in South Vietnam would be the key to the eventual communist victory in 1975. The trail was camouflaged to evade aerial surveillance and bombardment. American aerial bombardment along the Ho Chi Minh Trail between 1964 and 1973 was so intense that Laos has the sad distinction of being the most bombed country on a per capita basis.
During the Richard M. Nixon administration (1969-1974), the American bombardment of North Vietnamese military activities in eastern Cambodia was secretly expanded to include an invasion with ground forces (in 1970). The officially neutral Cambodian government, led by Prince Sihanouk, had publicly protested the violations of its territory in the east, but quietly accepted both: the North Vietnamese infiltration, in order to maintain the possibility of good relations with the Vietnamese communists who Sihanouk saw as the inevitable victors; and Sihanouk accepted some of the American bombardment of the North Vietnamese in Cambodia's east so as to placate the Americans, discourage the Vietnamese communists from openly invading and occupying Cambodia, and to keep the small Cambodian communist factions from gaining popular support. Unfortunately, the American bombardment was so massive, unrelenting, and deadly, that many survivors among the rural population in both Laos and Cambodia became radicalized and joined the communist forces in their countries, who all swept to victory in 1975.
Richard Nixon knew the Vietnam War was a lost cause, and his plan to gain "peace with honor" and extricate the United States from the meat grinder of war-making was to build up the military forces of the anti-communist regime in South Vietnam while simultaneously withdrawing American personnel. This was called "Vietnamization." From a certain distance, Nixon's plan had a reasonable cast to it. The idea was to prosecute the war by substituting well-trained and amply equipped South Vietnamese troops for American troops, and in so doing show the world that the United States "kept its promises" to allies, and it would thus retain its "credibility."
You have to hear Henry Kissinger's leaden intonation of "American credibility" to understand why an additional 21,257 deaths of Americans in Vietnam, and over a million Vietnamese deaths, and hundreds of thousands of combined Laotian and Cambodian deaths had to be sustained between 1969 and 1975. The arc of American mortality because of the Vietnam War, grouped by presidential administration, was a follows: 9 Eisenhower (1956-1960), 191 Kennedy (1961-1963), 36,756 Johnson (1964-1968), 21,195 Nixon (1969-1974), 62 Ford (1975-1976), and 7 during 1987-2006. (4)
The Vietnamization process to retain "American credibility," that is to say the international reputation of the American foreign policy-making elite, was based on thinking in which individual American lives were mere ciphers to be churned in the calculations of force projection to gain diplomatic advantage for elite geo-strategic gamesmen, while the individual lives of Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians were not even considered up to the level of ciphers. A ceasefire, truce, declaration of defeat, withdrawal of American forces, and less violent consolidation of communist power in Indochina could have been accomplished much sooner, with the stated goal of stopping bloodshed and limiting casualties by accepting the inevitable. That course of action would have lost the United States one form of "credibility" but it would have gained it another I think far more valuable.
The Nixon-Kissinger Vietnamization policy was an egotistical face-saving crime of genocidal proportions. Thinking back to it leaves me wondering if human history is farcical tragedy or a tragic farce.
Some Incidents In The History Of My Times
The following incidents made impressions on me, for one reason or another.
20 July 1969. Neil Armstrong lands on the Moon, and a gesture is fulfilled. The other side of the coin was the CIA-sponsored killing of Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Bolivia on 9 October 1967. The American Gods must be propitiated. (5)
1 December 1969. The first Draft Lottery, and the beginning of the end for antiwar protests in the U.S. For my little story about that see (6).
22 April 1970. The first Earth Day, the environmental movement at its height, the most radiantly hopeful day I ever had dreaming about the future. It was pure bliss, and I was also in love.
7 November 1972. Richard M. Nixon wins a landslide presidential electoral victory against antiwar Democrat George Stanley McGovern. I liked McGovern.
11 September 1973. Chile's Marxist president, Salvador Allende, dies and his government falls in a very violent coup led by a fascist Chilean general, Augusto Pinochet, aided by the CIA as directed with disgusting enthusiasm by Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor to Richard Nixon, and then Secretary of State (from 22 September 1973).
17 June 1972 – 9 August 1974. The Watergate scandal unfolds, Nixon resigns, and his former vice president, Gerald Ford, advances to the presidency and pardons Nixon, immunizing him from all Watergate-related prosecution, making Ford unelectable in 1976.
20 November 1975. Francisco Franco, the pseudo-fascist monarchist-authoritarian Spanish dictator, dies, and Spain carefully emerges out of its enforced medieval slumber of 36 years.
1977-1980. The Jimmy Carter administration is the twilight of American political liberalism (the unifying concept being the social welfare state), which effectively ends in 1978 as Carter's initiatives became more militarized.
18 April 1977. Jimmy Carter addresses the nation on energy. This could have been the start of the sustainable and solar energy revolution in America, but it wasn't. Think of how much better served and secure we would be today if it had.
28 March 1979. Three Mile Island nuclear accident, a partial meltdown of a commercial nuclear reactor at a power station in Pennsylvania. The worst such accident in the U.S.
15 July 1979. President Jimmy Carter addresses the nation on its "crisis of confidence" during its 1979 energy crisis (oil and gasoline shortages and high prices, consequences of the Iranian Revolution). This address would become known as the "malaise speech," though Carter never mentioned "malaise."
August 1979. Paul Volcker is appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve by President Jimmy Carter, and his monetary policies cure the persistent inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s.
1979. Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, initiates the covert transfer of billions of dollars in arms to the Afghan mujahideen militants opposed to the Soviet military forces that had invaded in support of the allied central government, which itself faced insurrection. Osama Bin Laden, from Arabia, led one such mujahideen group in the ensuing Afghan War prosecuted by the Soviets. That war proved to be a quagmire for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and drained sufficient resources and caused enough human suffering and resentment among Russians that it initiated the political instability that eventually led to the collapse of communism in the USSR.
4 November 1980. Ronald Reagan is elected president, and the neo-liberal shredding of the 1945 postwar social contract begins. My heart sank that day, and of Americans I thought: "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." (An anonymous ancient proverb wrongly attributed to Euripides. This variant is spoken by Prometheus, in The Masque of Pandora (1875) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.)
1980-1988. The Shah of Iran is deposed by the Shiite theocratic Iranian Revolution of 1979, and American embassy personnel are held as hostages for 444 days, being released shortly after Reagan's inauguration. Iraq under the control of its dictator, Saddam Hussein, attacks Iran in 1980, initiating an eight year Iran-Iraq War during which the United States government aides Iraq by providing satellite reconnaissance information about Iran to the Iraqis, and eases the transfer of materials and technology that Iraq uses to fabricate and then deploy chemical weapons against Iranian troops, and later dissident Iraqi populations. It is estimated one million lives were lost in the Iran-Iraq War.
1981-1989, The Reagan Administration launched proxy wars against the peasantry in Central America (Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras). The underlying conflicts between an impoverished peasantry and a wealthy land-owning elite that sponsored the national military and police establishments had erupted into armed struggle (again) after 1959, becoming ferocious by the late 1970s. Using the excuse of fighting communism putatively infiltrated into Central America by Cuba, the Reagan administration supplied and funded local anti-communist and reactionary militias as proxy military forces, to destroy popular social democracy by despicable terrorism. These proxy militias, or "contras" ("against" the revolutions), were usually police and army personnel acting out of uniform in Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras, or in Nicaragua they were former police and army personnel of the Somoza regime, which had been deposed by the Sandinista Revolution of 1979. The savage cruelty inflicted on the ethnic Mayan peasantry by the contra forces reached their crests of genocidal magnitude under Reagan Administration sponsorship. These Central American Wars all trailed off in the 1990s.
20 August 1985 – 4 March 1987. Iran-Contra Scandal. (7)
26 April 1986. A nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power station in the Ukraine explodes, spewing radioactivity far and wide, and the fuel core melts down. The Chernobyl disaster was the worst nuclear power plant accident until the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of March 11, 2011. Also during 1986, Ronald Reagan has the solar hot water system removed, which had been installed on the roof of the White House during the Carter Administration. The spirit of Earth Day 1970 had been executed.
17 October 1987. "Black Monday" stock market crash. The Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced a drop of 22%. Alan Greenspan had just been appointed as chairman of the Federal Reserve by Ronald Reagan, replacing Paul Volcker. This crash occurred during the midst of the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980s.
23 June 1988. In testimony before the US Senate, NASA scientist James Hansen stated that anthropogenic global warming had begun.
22 November 1988. Twenty five years since the assassination of John Kennedy, and twenty five years before today [2013].
9 November 1989. The Berlin Wall falls, communism in Eastern Europe crumbles. I was elated and exhausted. I believed nuclear disarmament was now immanent, as well as a revamping of the US war economy (Defense Department funding) into a robust "peace" and "green" economy. Clearly, I was naively delusional.
2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991. The Gulf War (Persian Gulf War, First Iraq War) is successfully prosecuted by a NATO combined force under US direction, acting to reverse the annexation of Kuwait by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. America's ally to punish Iran during 1980-1988 had since fallen out of favor. The chemical and biological weapons, and some nuclear technology held by the Saddam Hussein regime were now seen as intolerable threats to American interests.
26 December 1991. The USSR formally ceased to exist. The twelve republics that had comprised the USSR were declared independent.
Into The 21st Century
William Jefferson Clinton Administration (1991-2000)
Bill Clinton is a 1960s center-right Republican dressed up as a 1960s liberal Democrat. He went along with deregulating the banks (repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933) and financial industry (signing the Commodity Futures Trading Act of 2000, allowing easy trading in derivatives), which together set up the casino environment that would lead to the publicly-damaging financial collapse of 2008.
George Walker Bush Administration (2001-2008)
G. W. Bush spent profligately on tax cuts for the rich, and the Iraq War (20 March 2003 – 15 December 2011), using the 11 September 2001 attacks as an excuse. The loose money policy of Alan Greenspan, chairman at the Federal Reserve, fed a housing bubble that peaked in 2006, deflating into an expanding financial crisis in late 2007, and a catastrophic banking collapse in October 2008.
Barack Hussein Obama Administration (2009-2016)
Barack Obama is a corporatist Democrat in the Clinton mold, and shepherds the financial industry's interests by managing the economy with a bias for public austerity maintained to preserve speculator (a.k.a. investor) accumulations (gains), and the continuing regime of insufficient regulations and taxes on trading. Keynesianism to lift the economy out of its chronic joblessness is denied. The current official unemployment rate (based on definitional sophistry) is about 7%, the real unemployment rate is about 23%. (8)
Obama is a master of symbolism, and much of a wishful-thinking public allows that symbolism to distract them from reality.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, today's [2013] leading Democratic Party contender for president
Hillary Clinton is the presumed frontrunner in the race to become the Democratic Party's nominee for president in the 2016 election. She has already captivated the attention of those Americans for whom the symbolism of "the first female US president" overwhelms all rational considerations. So, perhaps the underwriting of her presidential campaign will pay off for corporate America, in giving the first female president the historic privilege of privatizing Social Security, and staking multi-millionaire Wall Street gamblers with an abundance of other people's money they can play with risk-free. The symbol-awed will never notice.
Notes to Part II
1. Fifty Year Look Back 1963-2013,
(Part I: 1963-1969)
[above here]
2. 1968 in the Vietnam War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_in_the_Vietnam_War
3. Paris Peace Accords
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accords
4. Statistical Information about Fatal Casualties of the Vietnam War
http://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics.html
6. The Promise Of Remembered Soundtracks
7. Iran-Contra Affair
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
"Official" US Unemployment Rate
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
"Real" US Unemployment Rate
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
Posted in American history, history, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, nuclear weapons, politics, Reagan Administration, Vietnam War	| Tagged 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, America, American, Cuba, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, history, Lyndon Johnson, military intervention, Republicans, Richard Nixon, war
Climate Change Is Inevitable With Trump Or Hillary
Posted on December 18, 2016 by manuelgarciajr
US population distribution by states (2013)
Election 2016 by counties (D. Trump = red; H. Clinton = blue)
As of April 1, 2010, the date of the 2010 United States Census, the nine most populous U.S. states contain slightly more than half of the total population. The 25 least populous states contain less than one-sixth of the total population. California, the most populous state, contains more people than the 21 least populous states combined. (from Wikipedia)
Most U.S. People Live "Near" the Big Water
The 9 most populous states (each with > 10M people): CA, TX, FL, NY, IL, PA, OH, GA, NC, have seashore (Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf) or lakeshore on the Great Lakes.
The next 4 most populous states (MI, NJ, VA, WA, ranked 10-13) have seashore or lakeshore on the Great Lakes, and populations between 7M and 10M (each).
Ranked 14th is AZ, the first landlocked state (population between 6M and 7M).
Of the 16 states ranked 15-30, 7 have seashore (Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf) and 3 have lakeshore (Great Lakes), the remaining 6 are landlocked. All have populations between 3M and 7M.
The last 20 states have populations between 0.5M and 3M. There are 7 states with seashore (Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf), none with lakeshore (Great Lakes), and so 13 are landlocked.
Of the 37 states below rank 13:
all 20 landlocked states are included,
14 have seashore (Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf)
3 have lakeshore (Great Lakes).
Whether Trump or Hillary is US president, Climate Change will continue unabated
In the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton won the population centers and the wealth zones; Donald Trump won the countryside (see maps). The peasants and proletarians revolted against the self-satisfied and arrogant cosmopolitans, and backed an avenging berserker they hoped (hope again!) would save them economically, and thus preserve their insular and primitive cultures. This revolt is a reaction to the supreme failure of the Democratic Party to care about the impoverished and ill-educated lives in the despairing countryside. Bernie Sanders would have swept this election. The American people lost the general election to the billionaires and the corporations on 25 July 2016, at the DP convention in Philadelphia. The Trump presidency is the direct result of Hillary Clinton's ambition and the Democratic Party's complicity with it.
Under a Trump presidency, billionaires and corporate bosses will openly and in full public view run the country to their personal advantage, paid for by the continuing impoverishment of the citizens and degradation of the natural environment. Many hope that by political legerdemain Hillary Clinton can be installed as the president instead, on January 20, 2017. Then, they would be relieved to know that the billionaires and corporate bosses running the country to their personal advantage, paid for by the continuing impoverishment of the citizens and degradation of the natural environment, would do so discretely out of public view.
In my view, we will never stop (let alone reverse) climate change, because the addiction to fossil fuels is universal and incurable. Basically, all the personal excuses worldwide boil down to something within the range of: "I've got to have it to survive," and "I've got to have it to profit." Climate change is the exhaust product of capitalism (whether of "free market" or "command economy" style), and no one is willing "to miss out" on getting more power NOW to "survive" and "profit."
Socialistic frugality to economize and thus forestall climate change could only happen under a "dictatorship," with a top-down enforced regimen of shared economics, as under Fidel Castro in Cuba. This is impossible globally, as well as in almost every country.
I have no doubt that essentially the same policies and trends would have occurred under a Hillary Clinton presidency as under a Trump presidency. There would be big differences of style between the two, but little differences of timing. The desperate peasants who voted for Trump simply hoped to get some economic lift by getting skilled-labor jobs in Trump's promised America-first unleashed smokestack economy (factories and mines on the prairies and in the hills, but also Wall Street pulling the strings). There was no such hope for the peasantry in Hillary's likely economy of outsourced smokestack industries, H-1B domestic tech industries (IT and Bio-tech) and an unleashed financial industry (high-tech along the coasts, and investment banking everywhere). It's kind of like picking between "Ford" and "Chevrolet" economies with billionaires in the drivers' seats either way. The gas, oil and coal will be hammered, pumped and dug up, and burned to inflate fortunes.
The one advantage of a Trump presidency and economy is that it will hit most of us with an instantaneous jab of pain and burning sensation, like the sting of a bee puncturing public consciousness, and cause an immediate mass reaction seeking to swat the offender.
In contrast, a Hillary Clinton presidency and economy would hit us like the stealthy sting of a tick, which regurgitates a highly infectious anticoagulant during its bite so it can linger draining your blood until you eventually become aware of a persistent pain and a possible enduring disease.
It was never in the public interest to support Hillary Clinton to "avoid" Donald Trump, whether before or after the November 8 election. Post-election efforts going into fantasies promoting Hillary (importuning Electoral College electors to switch their votes in favor of Hillary, while sopping up conspiracy theories aiming hatred at the Russians, and blame away from the real culprits) would be better spent on planning resistance to Trump's policy initiatives. I suspect that within two years (mid-term elections) that disillusionment with Trump will have already become visible among the ranks of Trump's populist supporters. Then the members of the Sanders Revolution will have the opportunity to begin combining forces with disillusioned Trump supporters, and ideally also reformed and reeducated Hillary supporters (though these are likely to be the most obdurate, i.e., brainwashed), and a second populist wave might beneficially inundate the electoral spectacle by 2020.
However the politics of the next four to eight years unfolds, two conclusions seem clear:
You cannot have capitalism without gross inequity and climate change.
You cannot have socialism with ignorant, greedy and self-centered people.
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Posted in climate change, electoral politics, plutocracy, politics	| Tagged Bernie Sanders, climate change, Cuba, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, plutocracy, US election 2016
We Envy To The Delight Of The Masters
Posted on December 9, 2016 by manuelgarciajr
Yvette Carnell (the political commentator on Facebook, a Black woman) is right: it is a battle for the crumbs between America's (the U.S.'s) minority populations. And it is the natural clannishness and tribal-centric focus of these many races and ethnicities, in their economic competitiveness, that is their greatest contribution to the continuing domination of the dominant culture and the dominant "race" in our White capitalist society.
Freedom versus Equality
The Cuban Revolution brought to power a centralized authority — Fidel Castro — who the Americans called a dictator, who could impose a vision of racial, sexual, and eventually sexual-orientation non-discrimination on the entire Cuban society. This Cuban Revolutionary vision extended to the liberation of African Blacks from colonialism and apartheid, and this Fidelista vision transformed the Cuban people, moving them beyond the Spanish colonial and Catholic racial and sexual hierarchies and prejudices that existed in Cuba up to the mid 1960s. Cuba was transformed from the top down into a society of great equality because of a great dictating power. (1)
In contrast, the United States is a society of great inequality because of a great degree of freedom from top-down restraints on individuals — especially on those with means — so they can pursue their many schemes of personal enrichment by the legally-accepted exploitation of weaker and poorer people. So, for the winners in America's capitalist competition for self-aggrandizement America is "free" and Cuba is a "dictatorship."
While to the Cubans who have been liberated from poverty, oppression and corruption, and have then been uplifted with state-provided physical security, healthcare and education, the obviously racially prejudiced and exploitative American capitalist elite are rabid imperialists and even fascists, whose "liberty" is exclusively the liberty of slaveowners to globally expand their temp-gig and prison labor plantation economy. The equalized Cuban socialists see American democracy as the democracy of property owners whose voting power is equated with the magnitude of their wealth, whose ultimate power rests on the micro-fragmentation of American society (by racism, sexism, anti-socialism, anti-unionism), and where the degree of one's personal enslavement is equated with the depth of poverty that one can "freely" achieve.
Envy Enslaves Us
Black Americans resent White Americans for not loving them, and they resent all immigrants and their American-born descendants for getting in the way of that yearned-for love. The divide and conquer program of dominating colonizers continues in the United States, with the many minorities set into vicious labor competition with each other for the economic crumbs falling off the feasting table of the White capitalist elite. So, Black Americans deeply resent the Spanish-speaking people in "their" country, the one they believe they have priority rights for minority benefits and preferences, because their ancestors paid early and heavily during slavery for those yet-to-be received "reparations."
It is true that every immigrant and immigrant group that lands in America aims to improve their economic condition, and they take advantage of whatever opportunities the system allows them. This is a threat for American Blacks because they see themselves as still struggling to own the opportunities available at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. They resent the fact that all immigrant groups do better than they do in the battle for the crumbs in American capitalism. They also resent being conned by elite White neoliberals like Hillary Clinton, and their own self-aggrandizing Black mis-leadership class, to believe "we are all in this together" with other minority groups with whom they experience bitter labor and economic competition.
Capitalism Is Racist
There is overt discrimination by everybody. Every minority individual and group, given the opportunity to make employment decisions, will hire their own. So, it is easy to find Latinos ("Hispanics" to the Gringos, and the Blacks Stockholm-Syndromed to them) excluding monolingual Blacks from job calls (e.g., Miami), and Blacks being excluded in favor of Latinos by temporary job agencies because of White employer preferences (e.g., Chicago). Here in Oakland, California, it is also unfortunately easy to learn about instances of personal attacks on Latinos (and Chinese) by Blacks (I have seen such, and heard from people involved). Social media exudes vituperativeness in this regard (e.g., comments by some Black Oaklanders about Mayor Libby Schaaf, a White woman). Also, I have seen Chinese patronage-by-hiring enclaves within a large corporate structure, a very closed form of Affirmative Action. Basically, every race and ethnicity one can imagine prefers their own kind when doling out advantages.
Humans Prefer Division
Every American, of whatever type, is a racist without exception. Individuals who object to this characterization only do so to defend their egos. We humans are all just a species of primate (and there is only one "race" of humans, who happen to have some variety of physiological features and pigmentation). Like our primate cousins the chimpanzees, we fragment into troops that maintain fierce rivalries with other troops (we myopically see other human "races" as other species) for territory, resources, food: wealth. This basic human characteristic (flaw) has been used by imperialists, colonizers and race-dominating slaveowners for millennia to keep the "natives," the plebes and the slaves at odds with each other, to ensure the rule of the dominant minority over the squabbling, oppressed and exploited majority.
The chronic toxicity of American racism and race-consciousness is such that today a perfectly acceptable vision for many Americans would be the idea that President-Elect Donald Trump could uplift Black Americans — the descendants of slaves, not the more successfully competing modern black immigrants from Africa — by offering a down payment on reparations in the form of making them (exclusively) the well-paid construction workforce in his mega-project of building a 3,201 kilometer (1,989 mile) wall along the Mexican border, to exclude potential labor competition to the English-only American underclass.
Prejudice Is The Self-Worth Of The Defeated
People imbibe their defining racist attitudes (ignorance) with their mother's milk, it is passed down through families and by their "traditional culture." Most people do not make the effort to gain the intellectual sophistication and the moral character needed to grow out of this prejudicial ignorance, and to evaluate other individuals on the basis of their personal merits and flaws, instead of as symbols of abstract concepts called "race." Most people form their personas — their images of themselves and their foundational ideas — early in life (usually by 14 years of age) and are loath to alter them because doing so is sensed as a loss of confidence, a diminution of self. So, they are stuck for life with the misconceptions of their youth, however acquired.
But, each new generation always absorbs some new attitudes that are in general circulation in the local and world societies of their formative years, and in that way the consensus attitudes of larger populations (both ethnic-tribal populations and regional-national populations) glacially evolve. What I conclude from the efflorescence of popular racist ignorance in this present Brexit-Trump period is that the pace of attitudinal evolution about "race in America" is indeed exceedingly slow. One would have thought that a century and a half after the end of the Civil War that racism would be absent in the United States; but no. So, the half-life for the decay of American racism may be in millennia instead of centuries. It is conceivable that climate change will wipe out humanity with Americans still being stupidly racist, sexist and capitalist.
(1) Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016)
https://manuelgarciajr.com/2016/11/27/fidel-alejandro-castro-ruz-13-august-1926-25-november-2016/
Posted in Cuba, equality-freedom mapping, Fidel Castro, race in America, racism, social criticism, socialism	| Tagged colonialism, contending minorities, Cuba, divide and conquer, Donald Trump, equality-freedom mapping, Hillary Clinton, labor competition, race in America, racism, social change, xenophobic, Yvette Carnell
Cuba, el ombligo del mundo
Posted on February 22, 2016 by manuelgarciajr
Any words I could write about the videos here would be superfluous if you experience some of the videos for yourself. If you don't experience any of the videos (which hopefully will endure on the Internet), then my words about them would be pointless for you. What you would see here is music and musicians fulfilling their highest calling.
Soy Todo (Ay Dios Ampárame)
(Mario "Mayito" Rivera, Miami Arena 1999, 10:21)
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xblkte_los-van-van-soy-todo-ay-dios-ampara_music
Temba, tumba y timba
(Mario "Mayito" Rivera, Miami 1999, 10:00)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88slEnn2MnU
Después de todo (2004)
(Yeni Valdés, 8:49)
https://youtu.be/ksogNAUWB7o
Anda, ven y quiéreme (2004)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY9oa_1rZsw
Me mantengo (2011)
(5:49, a very nice commercial for dance lessons)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg6C1xfziCQ
Los Van Van – Miami Arena (1999)
(2:12:52, the concert)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEH7WRNWCSk
PAZ SIN FRONTERAS, 20 Septiembre 2009
Paz Sin Fronteras – Final (Chan Chan) – Los Van Van, y todos los cantantes.
Peace Without Borders – Finale (Chan Chan) – Los Van Van, and all the singers.
(10:59, end of concert on 20 September 2009)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8Ss04WAlKo
Paz Sin Fronteras 2009 – (Almost full concert)
(2:23:49; this video mainly shows the non-Cuban singers and bands)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX2UdsHRx8g
Live concert in Havana before an audience of 1,150,000 people.
Singers/acts shown in this video:
Olga Tañón (0-35), Puerto Rico merengue
X Alfonso (35-41) funk-rhythm chorus (Cuba)
Dani Rivera (41-44:50) Latino blues
Juan Fernando Velasco (44:50-49:20) (Ecuador)
Amaury Pérez (49:20-55:00) Bolero-son
Víctor Manuel (from Spain, not shown)
Miguel Bosé (55:00-1:00:00) (Spain)
Jovanotti (1:00:00-1:12:02) Funk Italiano; Cuba = "Ombligo del mundo" ("Navel of the world")
Cucu Diamante y Yerba Buena (Cuba, not shown)
Orishas (1:12:02-1:20:40) Cuban rap
Juanes (1:20:40-1:44:00) Cumbia-rock, trova/ballad, cumbia (Colombia)
Juanes y Miguel Bosé (1:44:00-1:58:25) "Tiempo de cambiar," "Time to change" (el odio por amór)
Silvio Rodríguez (Cuba, not shown)
Luis Eduardo Aute (not shown)
Carlos Varela (not shown)
Los Van Van (Juan Formell, Mario "Mayito" Rivera, y todos) (1:58:25-2:06:00)
Finale (Los Van Van, and everybody, "Chan Chan"; 2:06:00-2:23:49)
Olga Tañón and Miguel Bosé in tears (2:19:40-2:20:25)
Cucu Diamante & Yerba Buena – Paz Sin Fronteras
(9:31, Cuban act from Paz Sin Fronteras concert, not shown 2 hour video above)
https://youtu.be/vLQ1UvdxrJ0
Silvio Rodríguez – Paz Sin Fronteras – Septiembre 21 2009
(9:01; Cuban act from Paz Sin Fronteras concert, not shown in 2 hour video above)
https://youtu.be/9Lj2Hcw5PB0
Los Van Van – Paz Sin Fronteras – Cuba 09-20-09
(10:45; Los Van Van performances not shown in 2 hour video above)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbhdNPxRcEY
(9:56; Los Van Van, continuation of above, and then into the finale)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz68ulHYeiU
El día en que la música tomó la Plaza de la Revolución
Cuba 20/sep/2009
http://www.noticias24.com/actualidad/noticia/88724/juanes-olga-tanon-miguel-bose-y-orishas-hacen-historia-hoy-en-la-habana/
OLGA TAÑÓN
Olga Tañón -En su 1era. Presentación en T.V. (16 años de edad)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2EwHbT8Oqc
Olga Tañon – Vivo La Vida (2015)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWTfpdD4nRM
L'Estate Addosso – Video Ufficiale – Lorenzo Jovanotti Cherubini
(3:52; 2015)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHcAusNO3L4
Jovanotti – Paz Sin Fronteras – Yo pienso positivo – #1
(4:08; has good intro by Jovanotti, but cuts off coda, in English, of song)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKp8E06xTaU
(5:02; cuts off Jovanotti's intro, but has conclusion of song)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbG77j4VZ9Y
Posted in Cuba, music	| Tagged Cuba, music
From Son Cubano to Cowboy Rumba
Posted on February 1, 2016 by manuelgarciajr
I just love the sound of the musical instrument the tres in traditional Cuban music, the son de Oriente.
Pancho Amat: Cuba's Tresero Mayor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4MTpS87hqM
Tresero: Pepito Domingo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZRrkAWJuTQ
Hear how elegantly the tres is played in the following performances (El Carretero, Bachata Rosa, Lágrimas Negras) by the trio Son del Patio (all wonderful musicians). ¡Arriba guajiro!
Tresero: Ernesto Luis Gil
https://youtu.be/5QEqgZvVxTw
For the guitaristas among you who may be intrigued by the tres, here is a tutorial:
How to play Lágrimas Negras on the Tres Cubano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl5nBdmxvuI
Lágrimas Negras has come a long way since Miguel Matamoros wrote it in 1925. Here is a live version (from 2015) at the Bodeguita del Medio (where I ate a lunch — moros y cristianos — in 1959/1960), in La Habana, Cuba. If you like flute playing, and a mixed group of instrumentalists and singers, you will enjoy this.
Lágrimas Negras – La Bodeguita del Medio en La Habana, Cuba – Grupo Manantial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMheUNC9_eY
This group is fronted by three sensational young women performers (instrumental and vocal), and backed by a bunch of old guys (who know what they're doing) on guitars and bongos.
The following selection has a wonderful flute solo. Don't you think the young flute students you know would be captivated by it?
Chan Chan – Grupo Manantial – Bodeguita del Medio – La Habana, Cuba
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rXdfNd6I6Y
Grupo Manantial has six instrumentalists and six singers — with only six people. If you like writing songs for bands, you might find it interesting to think about how these songs were arranged.
Bailando con Grupo Manantial (short version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD7_6mkBlMI
Bailando con Grupo Manantial (longer version — on a different day)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WKlqzzsgvU
I very highly recommend the book, Cuba and its Music, by Ned Sublette (Chicago Review Press, 2004). You can read numerous reviews of this book at the Amazon site (link below).
http://www.amazon.com/Cuba-Its-Music-First-Drums/dp/1556526326
Cuba and its Music is a great book. It shows how the music of Africa came to be the basis of popular music worldwide: brought west by the slave trade; preserved, mixed and transformed (by absorbing Western influences, and evolving over time) despite oppression; and how it radiated from Cuba throughout the hemisphere. This book is filled with insights and connections, here are two:
The sarabande dance form that appears as movements in suites by composers like Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel was an influence in Europe of what was originally an African rhythmic form associated with the god/deity/archetype Zarabanda.
Handel – Sarabande (1703-1706)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSAd3NpDi6Q
Miguelito Valdés – Zarabanda (1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwKNanAM4V4
The seeds of New Orleans music came from Havana (in the mid-late 18th century). The American rhythm and blues (R&B) song "Louis Louis," by Chuck Berry, is basically a cha-cha-cha.
The True Lyrics to Louie Louie (by The Kingsmen)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx-8_GI4d2c
/ cha-cha-cha – cha-cha / cha-cha-cha – cha-cha / cha-cha-cha – cha-cha /
Ned Sublette is quite an amazing person. "Ned Sublette (born 1951 in Lubbock, Texas) is an American composer, musician, record producer, musicologist, and author. Sublette studied Spanish Classical Guitar with Hector Garcia at the University of New Mexico and with Emilio Pujol in Spain. He studied composition with Kenneth Gaburo at the University of California, San Diego. He grew up in Portales, New Mexico, moved to New York City in 1976, and has worked with John Cage, LaMonte Young, Glenn Branca, and Peter Gordon." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Sublette)
The following is a performance by Ned Sublette of a song he wrote, and which has been covered by Willie Nelson, among others.
Ned Sublette – Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhyWmqjiEtw
Next is Ned Sublette's brilliant "Cowboy Rumba" merengue-conga version of a country-and-western classic.
Ned Sublette – Ghost Riders in the Sky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwfOdB8Dbgk
For comparison, here is the original version sung by Burl Ives (I still have Burl Ives 45's from the 1950s — in yellow vinyl!).
Burl Ives – The original recording of Ghost Riders In The Sky (1949)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2klh2cTa_Q
In this next number, Ned Sublette is backed by NG La Banda ("Cowboy Rumba" about booze). I understand this song. (Forget the video, just close your eyes and feel the music.)
Feelin' No Pain ~ Ned Sublette
Next, some avant garde music by Ned Sublette with the Persuasions — "yes, those Persuasions (!)":
Ned Sublette – There is no light at the end of the tunnel (silver and red)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cUz0bH2fc4
Finally, just Ned and his guitar:
Between Piety and Desire – Ned Sublette
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Q7JjcsF_A
I could never have imagined that I would learn so much about the land of my father, and the times of my parents and grandparents, from a lanky Texan (who became a Cowboy Rumba Nuyorquino).
Our popular rhythm-based music of today is the continuation of the survival of that part of Africa which has experienced an over 500 year diaspora; Cuba is music (as nowhere else on Earth); and music is miraculous, a sweet cradle for the soul.
"En esta cuna nací, y en esta cuna me voy a morír."
Música Cubana en Santiago de Cuba (Documental: Cuba es Música)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeHHn26dW30
Posted on April 23, 2012 by manuelgarciajr
At 12:30 PM Central Standard Time on the 22nd of November 1963, three shots rang out in rapid succession over President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's motorcade gliding along Elm Street through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. The first bullet pierced the right side of the back of John Kennedy's neck with a downward slant, emerging at his throat and then boring diagonally downward through the right side of the torso of John Connally, the Governor of Texas, who was seated in front of Kennedy. The second bullet struck Kennedy in the back of the skull, exploding the right side of his head. The third shot followed closely on the second, shattering against the curb of Elm Street and sending chips of lead and concrete flying so that one scratched the right cheek of James Tague, a spectator, sufficiently to draw flecks of blood. The president's limousine began accelerating immediately after the first shot, and it raced full speed to Parkland Hospital, arriving at about 12:38 PM. Despite the frantic efforts of the trauma room doctors and surgeons to save John Kennedy's life, within twenty minutes that life had gone, and John Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:00 PM. Lyndon Johnson, now constitutionally the president, delayed a public announcement of the death until 1:33 PM, so he could first leave the hospital and order an immediate defensive operation to protect government leaders including himself should the Kennedy assassination be part of a larger conspiracy that was still unfolding. At 3:01 PM CST, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote a memo to his assistant directors in which he stated: "I called the attorney general [Robert Kennedy] at his home and told him I thought we had the man who killed the President down in Dallas, at the present time." That man was Lee Harvey Oswald. Why did he do it?
Posted in Cuba	| Tagged CIA anti-Castro plots, Cuba, John Kennedy assassination, killing of Che Guevara, US embargo of Cuba
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Dr. Christine Prue spent 75 days on the ground in Puerto Rico earlier this year, leading a team that interviewed hundreds of pregnant women to gain insights into their perspectives about Zika. Christine, associate director for behavioral science for the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), discovered that while many Puerto Rican women are challenged by their difficult circumstances, they remain resilient, strong and optimistic.
Christine recalls a focus group held at a hospital with no air conditioning on the remote Puerto Rican island of Vieques. Women there have to travel to the mainland to give birth because the local hospital has limited resources—a hardship that often disrupts their lives and causes additional stress.
Building on findings from the focus groups, in June 2016 the CDC Foundation launched a Zika education and awareness campaign called "This is How We Stop Zika." The campaign aimed to empower pregnant women to protect themselves from Zika and was a collaborative effort by CDC and the Puerto Rico Department of Health. The campaign also focused on empowering partners, families, neighbors, and communities to join together to take action to stop the virus from spreading.
Dr. Betsy Mitchell, who served as a principal investigator for the program, is the associate director for communication science for CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. The fast-moving campaign is unlike anything she has ever worked on at CDC, including responses to H1N1 influenza and hurricanes, she said.
CDC experts on the ground are learning that it is hard to counteract a threat that lacks the painful, visible symptoms of other mosquito-borne viruses, such as dengue or chikungunya.
Some clinicians in Puerto Rico are helping to shine a light on the Zika epidemic.
In mid-June, Betsy, along with a group of actors, a production crew and team members, worked in the sweltering heat and pop-up rainstorms to complete a public service announcement for the campaign.
In addition to a multimedia blitz—including media interviews, public service announcements, ads and billboards—the campaign engaged celebrities across the territory and encouraged community involvement through Zika Action Days—which include health fairs and educational workshops—and social media, which continue today.
CDC estimates that up to one in four Puerto Rico residents, including pregnant women, could be infected with Zika by the end of 2016. "The CDC Foundation stepped in at a critical moment in the outbreak," added Betsy.
Funding partners included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Walgreen Co., and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Thanks to recent government funding, the campaign continues, following the generous private-sector and philanthropic support that was crucial to its initial phase. Data shows that these messages are encouraging people to take steps to prevent Zika. Additionally, a Community Engagement Resource Toolkit was developed to encourage community members to host events, spark discussion and take action to prevent Zika.
Unite with the CDC Foundation to stop Zika.


Alonso's full name is Xabier Alonso Olano where Alonso is his paternal and Olano, his maternal. He is a soccer player of nationality Spanish. He has been playing soccer from club Bayer Munich as a central midfielder.
Xabi Alonso was born in a small town of Tolosa, Gipuzkoa, Basque Country. He spent his childhood in Barcelona for six years. He started his career in the same place playing at Playa de la Concha.
He has represented in several Euros and World Cups. He is also known as fifth most capped player after he got his 144th cap. He has scored 57 goals in several games which is a reputable act.
Alonso is married with Nagore Aramburu. They are blessed with three children consecutively Jontxu, Ane and Emma. He is involved in the game so much and no divorce is heard about him.
He is said to criticize the then prime minister Gordon Brown's (Spain) economic policy, in 2009. He has played from several football clubs. He was also found to support another teams when he was playing for the opponent team.
A Russian professional football player. He generally plays as midfielder. He is one of the player of Russian national football team, who currently plays for Russian club PFC CSKA Moscow.
He is a Russian professional football player. He is currently playing for CSKA Moscow as a defender and also play for Russia national football team .He usually play as full back or center back bur sometime deployed as wingback and midfielder.


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mv4 » Country - Folk » Jewel Jubilee Singers - What Are They Doing In Heaven / When I Lay My Burden Down
Jewel Jubilee Singers - What Are They Doing In Heaven / When I Lay My Burden Down album flac
Jewel Jubilee Singers Gospel 1949
Performer: Jewel Jubilee Singers
Title: What Are They Doing In Heaven / When I Lay My Burden Down
Size FLAC ver: 1814 mb
Style: Gospel
Other formats: WMA AHX RA AU ASF VOX FLAC
Genre: Country - Folk
Rating: 4.9 of 5
A What Are They Doing In Heaven
B When I Lay My Burden Down
Matrix / Runout (A-side label):
Matrix / Runout (A-side etched): 5642-S
Matrix / Runout (B-side label):
Matrix / Runout (B-side etched): 5643-S
McDowell playing a short electric version of "When I Lay My Burden Down".
Скачать mp3 бесплатно Swanee Quintet Singing What Are They Doing In Heaven.
Glory, Glory" (also known as "When I Lay My Burden Down", "Since I Laid My Burden Down", "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah" and other titles) is an American spiritual song, which has been recorded by many artists in a variety of genres, including folk, country, blues, rock, and gospel. It is typically very melodically similar to another popular gospel song, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken".
Top Songs The Staple Singers. If You're Ready (Come Go With Me). Be What You Are. I'm a Lover. Get the Tempo of more than 6 Million songs.
Roy Acuff & His Smoky Mountain Boys – The Precious Jewel. Connie & Babe & The Black Mountain Boys – When I Lay My Burden Down. Roy Acuff & His Smoky Mountain Boys – The Wreck On The Highway.
Album Teen Spirit (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack). I look up to the little bird That glides across the sky He sings the clearest melody It makes me want to cry It makes me want to sit right down and cry, cry, cry, yeah. I walk along the city streets So dark with rage and fear And I, I wish that I could be that bird And fly away from here I wish I had the wings to fly away from here, yeah. For I am just a troubled soul Who's weighted (Weighted) Weighted to the ground (Weighted to the ground, yeah, weighted to the ground) Give me the strength to carry on 'Til I can lay my burden down (Lay the burden down, yeah, lay the burden down) Give me the strength to lay this burden down, down, down, yeah Give me. the strength to lay it down (Lay down, lay it down). But my, my I, feel so low My, my, where do I go? My, my, what do I know?
It's so sad you don't know how I got this love, I (for)got to mention, it's so sad you can't tell, that I'm starving in your hands for a little attention. I can light myself on fire, but I'm sure I'd probably burn to the ground.
When I Lay My Burden Down. I Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down. Traditional, Robert Wilkins. Furry Lewis, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Robert Wilkins.
Ariana Grande just dropped the third single from her upcoming fourth studio album Sweetner called 'God Is A Woman' alongside a video and it is quite literally ~spectacular~. In the video, Ariana takes a nice dip in a bath full of bath bombs, she sits on top of the world and fingers a category five hurricane, takes no sh t from men, serves looks, serves vocals and most importantly, ends the video as God herself giving life to Eve. Iconic. Even the memes are out of control. Those who attempt to poison and destroy my sisters. And you will know my name is the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon yo. Watch the full video below: Latest Ariana Grande News.
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Bedugul, a resort area in the central mountains of Bali, is famous for its volcano views, botanical gardens, and cooler temperatures. The change in climate and the volcanic soil mean that different fruits and vegetables grow here. A favorite activity is going to one of the pick-your-own strawberry fields that have sprung up for tourists and locals. Pass by those in Bedugul proper and head for Buyan, where several real strawberry farms operate along the main road leading to Pura Ulun Danu Batur. You'll find fields of delicious, juicy berries that haven't been picked over by the tour bus crowds.


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Celebrity hen nights you'll wish you were invited to
By Glamour
Instagram / @juleshough
Fashion shows, gourmet cooking lessons, even toilet paper - what the A-list get up to on their hen night
Julianne Hough's bachelorette party was one for the books. The star-studded weekend in Mexico counted with the presence of Hough's BFF Nina Dobrev, Cindy Crawford and 12 other invitees. The girls took to Instagram to not only make us very jealous we weren't invited, but share snaps of the amazing bash.
WhitneyPort/Instagram
Whitney Port
THIS is how you celebrate your final days of freedom - by sunning it up in Mexico with all of your BFFs. The former Hills and City star, Whitney Port, jetted to Mexico and stayed at the luxurious Cape Hotel on the beach in Cabo San Lucas. Jealous? Us? Never!
Frankie Sandford/Instagram
Frankie Sandford
The Saturdays singer Frankie Sandford was spotted enjoying her second hen do in early July. The 25-year-old, accompanied by her bandmates, hit the Henley Regatta in Oxfordshire - and judging by this picture, Frankie got well and truly in the swing of things, hen style.
Kate Moss was never going to have your usual run-of-the mill hen do. The model instead decided to ship her friends across to the Isle of Wight Festival for a gypsy-themed weekend. Kate arrived with 30 friends in a pink Hummer, while a helicopter apparently flew in 300 bottles of booze.
Celebrity Weddings – the tacky and the tasteful!
Lily Allen celebrated one of her last night's of being single with an exclusive hen do at the Savoy Hotel. The girls were treated to a gourmet cooking lessons with chef supreme Gordon Ramsay and Lily later tweeted: "...he was brilliant. Had no idea, I am a very, very luccky girl. [sic]"
Bigpicturesphoto.com
Coleen Rooney
Coleen Rooney headed for the sun for her hen do, taking close pals away for a spot of sunbathing and fun in Miami in April 2008, before marrying Wayne in June. The WAG and her girlfriends also hit the city's clubs – and attracted plenty of male attention.
Christina Aguilera took her hens to luxury Mexican resort, Cabo San Lucas in September 2005. The singer and her pals spent their time lounging by the pool and enjoying some girly time in the hotel spa.
The likes of Kate Thornton, Tamzin Ouithwaite, Heidi Range and, of course, Fearne Cotton all helped Holly Willoughby say goodbye to her single days as they popped a tiara on her head and took her along to the St Martin's Lane Hotel in London.
Jodie Kidd
Jodie Kidd took in some culture on her hen do (yes, you did read that right), taking sister Jemma and a gang of girlfriends for a weekend break in Marrakech.
Britney Spears and her beau Kevin Federline almost had a joint stag & hen. The singer partied with her girlfriends in the Fairmont Hotel in Santa Monica, while K-Fed partied across the street. Predictably the two groups of friends (and bride and groom of course) hooked up at the end of the night.
Rex Features
You couldn't keep Fergie and her then-fiancé Josh Duhamel apart before their wedding – not even on what's was supposed to be their last night of being single. The pair decided to have a joint stag and hen party, and invited 75 friends to the Dakota Lounge in Santa Monica. Guests were treated to Kobe beef sliders, tuna tartar and shrimp skewers before dancing to '80s hits.
OK, so this wasn't actually Myleene Klass' party but the presenter certainly got in the spirit of things at her sister's hen do, donning a pair of bunny ears for some high jinks at the Rex Cinema and Bar in 2006.
Katie Price had a typically "her" hen do when she married Alex Reid in 2010. The glamour model enjoyed performing male strippers and cocktails at the Mayfair hotel before being presenting with a Barbie Girl wedding cake, the dress of which looking suspiciously like the pink gown she wore to wed Peter Andre. Bad taste, no?
Best pal Rihanna organised an epic hen night for Katy Perry in Las Vegas. The singer hired Cirque du Soleil, one of the city's top acts, in keeping with the international theme of Katy's nuptials, which later took place in India. The singer obviously enjoyed her day, tweeting the following morning: "Signing up for a liver transplant now..."
PA Photos
There were no strippers or drinking binges for the future Duchess of Cambridge. Instead sister and maid of honour Pippa Middleton organised a low-key private party in the home of a friend. "She has already had her hen night, but it was certainly low-key," said a friend. "Not all of Kate's friends were there and she will be catching up with other friends over the coming weeks."
Zoe Ball & Sara Cox
Ladettes Zoe Ball and Sara Cox opted to share their hen do. The radio DJs took over a suite in London's Portobello Hotel and indulged in some serious pampering and, we're guessing, a bit of drinking.
To ensure her privacy, Emily Blunt hired out LA hotspot Trousdale Lounge for her hen do. A-list pal Amy Adams came along and the party kept going till the early hours, with Emily and her pals hitting the dancefloor – and the cocktails.
Nicole Kidman went back to her homeland of Australia before tying the knot with hubby Keith Urban in August 2006.
Nicole Richie celebrated with Sam Ronson and Christina Aguilera, but no Paris Hilton, at the luxurious Cabo San Lucas resort in Mexico (where Christina also had her hen do). The Simple Life star was given the obligatory Bride-To-Be sash and a necklace made of tiny penises at dinner. She could be seen getting over her hangover the morning after with a bit of topless sunbathing.
Cheryl Cole (or Tweedy as she was then) had a fashionable send-off at Umbaba nightclub in London. Guests, including her Girls Aloud bandmates and her mum Joan, knocked back glasses of Laurent Perrier pink champagne and ran up a bar bill of £742. The star cut things pretty fine, only giving herself 24 hours to recover in time for her big day.
Eva Longoria's Desperate Housewives co-star Felicity Huffman offered up her Hollywood mansion for the actress' hen do. Single guests took part in a game where they had to create a wedding dress out of toilet roll, with Eva judging the best. Teri Hatcher was named the winner.
Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise opted for a joint hen and stag party (no surprises there) but we weren't expecting them to bring along their entire family. Baby Suri and Tom's adopted children, Connor and Isabella were among the guests, as were Brooke Shields, Jim Carrey and Jennifer Lopez. The group enjoyed a lively three-course meal in a Rome restaurant, the day before their wedding at nearby Odescalchi Castle in Lake Bracciano.
Liz Hurley
Surely one of the most bizarre hen dos (if not the most extravagant), Liz Hurley asked designer Donatella Versace to stage a private fashion show for her bachelorette party. But guests weren't just sitting watching, during the evening, they were able to choose outfits from the collection to wear to Liz's nuptials to Indian businessman Arun Nayar. "Elizabeth wants Donatella to provide some dresses so her friends can choose stunning outfits for her big day. She wants it to be an intimate gathering, with lots of champagne and nibbles," a source said. It all came at a price though. "She has budgeted for about £3,000 a head and is expecting to foot a large part of the bill," the insider added.
Khloe Kardashian was given a saucy surprise on her hen night. "The cabana was filled with penises," she said. "Kourtney decorated it, but Kim would have nothing to do with the penis part." The socialite added: "Seeing mom sipping out of a penis straw was the best part."
Avril Lavigne might have needed a rethink of her friends after her hen do. The singer was kitted out in sexy underwear, including black knickers with "The Mrs" embroidered in pink, and a veil with devil horns. Jessica Alba and Nicky Hilton were among the partygoers who dined about LA restaurant Koi before moving onto nightclub, Lobby.
Ulrika Jonsson was dressed up like an angel before her hen party at Sketch in London. The presenter was preparing to marry her Mr Right, Lance Gerrard-Wright in 2003.
TopicsEntertainment


Whether you love traditional framed art or LED Christmas canvas art, you can deck your walls with fun, inspiring Christmas art from Kirkland's! Our selection of Christmas wall art is a delightful way to spread holiday cheer throughout your home! Celebrate with Santa Claus or a classic nativity scene for an extra dash of Christmas in any room.


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Model and Celebrity Client Gallery
Linda Stokes
Linda Stokes, creator of LSO Design, has emerged as the hottest designer to wardrobe Hollywood's most celebrated superstars. Linda Stokes Originals are just as uniquely identifiable as the celebrities who wear them. Speaking of celebrities, it's easier to name who she hasn't worked with.
Her clientele ranges from Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Lopez to Cher, Janet Jackson to Faith Hill, Britney Spears to Sade, Macy Gray to Shakira, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs to Ozzy Osbourne, not to mention N'SYNC, Jessica Simpson, TLC and Patti LaBelle. From every genre, Linda Stokes designs are also seen from Supermodels to Super Athletes. Tyra Banks, Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and Carol Alt of the fashion world, Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Steve Harvey, and Cedric the Entertainer , Sinbad, whose faces are common place on both film and television, Master P, Lil Bow Wow, Lil Kim and Sisqo of the music industry, Magic Johnson, Gary Payton, Gary Sheffield and Alexei Yashin from sports. And this is just her short list.
Linda Stokes being the contemporary Maverick that she is – has launched LSO Sport Ltd., her signature jean line in 2003. Her sport collection was created to give the public the opportunity to experience the sexy, hot, custom styles that the stars are usually only privy to.
Linda launched her TuTu Cute by Linda Stokes line of Couture Childrens TuTus for the girl who wants to look like a fairy princess in 2005.
In 2009 Linda launched her "Dress of the Week Club" line of Couture Gowns and pant suits covered with Swarovski Crystalized Elements for the entertainment industrys usage.
Linda has assisted im making garments for many celebritiy lines of clothing like, Sean John, JLO, Macy Gray, Will I AM, MoNique,Missy Elliot, Gwen Stefani, Master P., l'Agency.
Linda's award winning designs are on display at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in NY and at the Hard Rock Café' at Universal Studios in California. Her latest work can be seen in her showroom & studio in Woodland Hills, California.
On a personal note, Linda is married to multi-Grammy award winning record producer, Michael Stokes; together they have four children and six grandchildren.
The mission of LSO is to provide quality, customized clothing to meet your lifestyle changes. Clothing that will be an extension of your personality from the soccer field to the boardroom to the ballroom.
Linda believes your dreams can be brought to life by sheer determination and fortitude. Her goal is to see that everyone will have at least one LSO design in their closet.
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Herbert Grönemeyer is one of Germany's most popular musicians.
Born April 12, 1956, Grönemeyer first became known as an actor, starring in Wolfgang Petersen's "Das Boot," but he decided to focus on his musical career. He became extremely popular with his fourth album, "4630 Bochum" (1984). "Mensch" (Human), released in 2002, is the best-selling record in Germany.
To kick off the Euro 2016 championships, PopXport presents Germany's biggest football hits. We also join rock band Silbermond on their tour and chat to Bavarian rapper Ali As about his Pakistani background.
Football and music have long gone hand in hand. This year many German artists are hoping their song will become one of the Euro 2016 anthems. We check out the biggest German football songs to see what makes a hit.
It just wouldn't be the Euro soccer championship without the right song. This year Herbert Grönemeyer has teamed up with producer Felix Jaehn to create Germany's song for the UEFA championship.
Musician Herbert Grönemeyer has created some of Germany's best-selling albums ever - and knows how to write songs that directly touch people's hearts. Here are a few highlights of his career that took off in the 1980s.
Born on April 12, 1956, Herbert Grönemeyer has created some of the country's best-selling albums. Here are a few highlights of his career that took off in the 1980s.
Til Schweiger and Herbert Grönemeyer were among the celebrities praising the power of language at this fund-raiser for refugees. Literature echoes Germany's refugee crisis from the 1930s with the current situation.
Readings are dull? Think again! Cologne has pulled out all the stops for the lit.Cologne festival, with comedians and actors joining bestselling authors to spice up readings. And much more beyond.
Huge crowds gathered in Dresden for a free concert promoting tolerance and 'diversity.' The event sought to provide a counternarrative to the anti-Islamization PEGIDA group.
Germany's foreign minister has dismissed any chance of dialogue with anti-Islamization group PEGIDA. Steinmeier also accused the organization of making Germany look bad internationally.
Singer Herbert Grönemeyer knows all about life's ups and downs, but his musical career spanning three decades has gone in only one direction: forward.
Bochum is a city that has become a prototype for the transformation of the Ruhr region from smokestack industries to high tech. Now the blue-collar city has come to represent the downside of globalization in Germany.
No other German singer rocks the national pop charts quite like Herbert Grönemeyer. His new album and upcoming tour have generated huge excitement in German-speaking countries and little interest anywhere else.
An alliance of German NGOs represented by singer and activist Herbert Grönemeyer has called on the government to devote more resources to fighting poverty and to live up to its aid promises ahead of the next G8 summit.


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Maria Marinela Mazilu (* 12. April 1991 in Râmnicu Vâlcea) ist eine rumänische Skeletonpilotin.

Maria Mazilu lebt in Râmnicu Vâlcea und betreibt Skeleton seit 2006. Ein Jahr später rückte sie in den Nationalkader ihres Landes auf. Ihr internationales Debüt gab sie im November 2007 im Rahmen eines Europacup-Rennens in Igls, in dem sie 22. wurde. Auch in der folgenden Zeit startete sie regelmäßig in dieser Rennserie. Im Dezember in Cesana Torinese und im Januar 2008 in St. Moritz erreichte sie mit 12. Plätzen zunächst ihre besten Resultate, bis sie in Igls an den Junioren-Weltmeisterschaften und damit erstmals an einem Skeleton-Großereignis teilnahm und 19. wurde. In der folgenden Saison konnte Mazilu ihre Leistungen erheblich steigern. Sie fuhr weiterhin im Europacup und belegte bei drei Rennen in Igls zwei dritte und einen vierten Platz. Zudem wurde sie Sechste bei den Junioren-Weltmeisterschaften in Königssee.

Ab Januar 2009 trat die Rumänin zumeist im Intercontinentalcup an. Ihr erstes Rennen bestritt sie in Cesana, wo sie 22. wurde. In Winterberg konnte sie im November 2009 ebenso wie in Igls im Dezember mit achten Plätzen ihre bis dahin besten Ergebnisse in der Rennserie feiern. Als 42. der Weltrangliste war sie die letzte Athletin, die sich für die Olympischen Winterspiele 2010 von Vancouver qualifizieren konnte, wobei sie von der Nichtteilnahme Joska Le Contés profitierte. Am Ende belegte Mazilu von 20 Teilnehmerinnen den 19. Platz, wobei sie als schwächste Athletin von der Disqualifikation der Japanerin Nozomi Komuro profitierte. In allen vier Läufen erreichte sie mit Platz 19 die schwächste Laufzeit und hatte nicht nur mehr als 14 Sekunden Rückstand auf die Siegerin Amy Williams, sondern auch sieben Sekunden Rückstand auf die vor ihr auf dem 18. Platz liegende Jelena Judina.

Im Winter 2010/11 startete Mazilu bei je drei Rennen im Europa- und Intercontinentalcup und erreichte als beste Platzierung Rang acht beim Europacup in Winterberg. Sie nahm zudem erstmals an der Weltmeisterschaft teil, belegte dort allerdings unter 26 Starterinnen den letzten Platz. In der Saison 2011/12 debütierte sie im Weltcup und erreichte im ersten Rennen in Igls mit Rang 17 ihr bestes Saisonergebnis. Ende 2012 gewann sie Bronze bei der Junioren-Weltmeisterschaft in Igls, was sie in der Saison darauf in Winterberg wiederholen konnte. Im Januar 2014 gewann sie außerdem zum ersten Mal ein Rennen im Europacup. Zum Saisonabschluss nahm sie an den Olympischen Spielen 2014 in Sotschi teil. Dort belegte sie mit dem 20. Platz erneut den letzten Rang, wobei sie sich hinsichtlich der Laufzeiten näher an die restliche Weltspitze heranschieben konnte als bei ihrem Debüt vier Jahre zuvor und insgesamt weniger als sechs Sekunden hinter Siegerin Elizabeth Yarnold lag.

2014/15 bestritt sie die erste Saisonhälfte im Intercontinentalcup, wo sie als bestes Resultat Neunte in Lillehammer wurde, und anschließend fünf Rennen im Weltcup, wo sie als Elfte und Zehnte bei den beiden Rennen in Igls die bisher besten Ergebnisse ihrer Karriere erreichte. Bei der Weltmeisterschaft wurde sie wie bereits zwei Jahre zuvor 20. im Einzel und belegte außerdem mit dem rumänischen Team Rang 9 im Mannschaftswettbewerb.

2018 nahm Mazilu an ihren dritten Olympischen Spielen teil. In Pyeongchang erreichte sie den 18. Platz.

Weblinks

 Maria Mazilu beim COSR (rumänisch)

Skeletonfahrer (Rumänien)
Olympiateilnehmer (Rumänien)
Teilnehmer der Olympischen Winterspiele 2010
Teilnehmer der Olympischen Winterspiele 2014
Teilnehmer der Olympischen Winterspiele 2018
Geboren 1991
Rumäne
Frau

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I am sure you will enjoy using it! I grind grain several times each week – an amazing addition to my baking equipment!!
@sweatyknitter It is so beautiful and practical! Do you have any recommendations for books or digital resources about sourdough baking with home ground grains?


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Thanks to former car owner Chuck Shafer for providing photos of one of the most successful Ford aero warriors, the #17 Talladega driven by David Pearson.
There are presently 32 thumbnail images on this page. Click on the thumbnail to view the full size version. All photos were taken in February, 1999.


Get your Earlybird Tickets for Dance Valley festival 2013 now!
Organizer UDC started a special ticketsale for the loyal fans of Dance Valley, a legendary festival in the Netherlands. This month a limited number of 2500 Earlybird Tickets for this festival are for sale and cost €35,- (ex fee, maximum of 4 per person). The 19th edition will be held on August 3, 2013. Tickets are selling fast, hurry and get yours today!
The regular/VIP ticket sale will start in februari 2013!


Totally Blondie are the most authentic Blondie Tribute around!
Blondie were one of the most iconic bands of the 70's and 80's with Debbie Harry's posters adorning most teenagers' walls. With Totally Blondie's lookalike and soundalike singer, you can expect all the classic hits like Hanging On The Telephone, Sunday Girl, One Way or Another, Atomic, etc, along with some of the finest album tracks.