2012
Neanderthal tribes living in what is now the Netherlands in the late Pleistocene, about 250,000 years ago, were able to turn red iron oxide, hematite, into ochre pigment, which they could use for painting on prepared animal skins, Dutch and Spanish archaeologists reported in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
24 January 2012
RIA-Novosti
Laura Dekker is the world’s youngest solo circumnavigator, who sailed alone around the globe. Laura embarked on her solo voyage from the Caribbean island of St Maarten on 20 January 2011, and returned unscathed a year and a day later. In the second image above, we see Laura’s yacht Guppy in St Maarten at the end of her voyage.
Teen captain Laura Dekker sailed 27,000 nautical miles on her 11.5-metre (38-foot) sailboat Guppy. On 21 January 2012, her boat docked in the Netherlands Antilles in the Caribbean.
A small fleet of vessels and Coast Guard vessels met the young adventurer at the harbour at St Maarten; she finally reunited with her parents later at a formal party in a local yacht club.
16-year-old Laura Dekker meets her mother, father, and sister upon arrival in St Martin after her solo trip around the world.
Laura Dekker was born 20 September 1995 in New Zealand, when her parents were making a round-the globe-journey of their own, and spent the first four years of her life at sea.
Laura’s an experienced yachtswoman. She first sailed on the open sea when she was six, and she nurtured the dream of sailing solo around the globe since the age of ten.
Laura announced her plan to embark on a solo round-the world voyage when she was 14. However, the Dutch Council for Child Care spoke out against the risky adventure, issuing an injunction prohibiting her from making vital decisions and putting her under state and psychiatric care. In December 2009, Laura violated the court’s decision and ran off to St Maarten, where the authorities apprehended her and brought her back home. In the image above, we see the Guppy at the end of Laura’s adventure.
In July 2010, a Dutch court finally permitted Laura to make her solo round-the-globe journey. After completing preparations, the Guppy sailed from the Antilles on 20 January 2011.
Laura Dekker celebrated her sixteenth birthday at sea. Until recently, Australian Jessica Watson, 17, was considered the world’s youngest circumnavigator, having made a 210-day non-stop solo voyage around the world. Nevertheless, Laura’s record won’t make it into the Guinness Book of World Records, since officials refused to register records achieved by young navigators after Dekker’s 2009 fallout with social care services {if that isn’t “goodthinking” in the Orwellian sense, I don’t know what it is: editor}.
22/24 January 2012
Voice of Russia World Service
The focus of the 2012 Republican presidential primary shifted from South Carolina to Florida, following what proved to be a very bad week for Mitt Romney. Whereas just a week ago the nomination of the former Massachusetts governor was all but certain, a last minute rise by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has thrown the race into the tossup category, with Gingrich winning South Carolina and former US Senator Rick Santorum now being declared winner of Iowa.
Following the New Hampshire primary on 10 January, Romney had a double-digit lead in South Carolina. However, with a series of attacks on his business record, poor debate performances, the annulment of his victory in the Iowa caucuses, and a surge in Gingrich’s popularity, Romney’s edge eroded. Not to mention there are now three primary winners with Santorum taking Iowa, Romney in New Hampshire, and Gingrich in South Carolina. According to Dick Morris, political analyst and former Bill Clinton advisor, the race is now anyone’s game… well, anyone but Ron Paul’s. He said, “It is entirely possible that you have a functional three-way tie here. Because you have one guy who’s in last place moving up and two guys above him are moving down”.
The Romney campaign has been working to shake off accusations that he’s out of touch and that he destroyed jobs as the head of Bain Capital, his private equity firm. This has led to calls for him to release his tax records, about which he was asked in Thursday’s debate, and for which he gave an unpopular response. During the debate, he declared, “Every time we release things drip-by-drip, the Democrats go out with another array of attacks”.
Gingrich, however, hasn’t been without scrutiny, some of it concerning his record as Speaker of the House and the rest of it about his private life. However, people perceive him as having handled the negative press much better, such as in his response to questions about recent allegations that he asked his second wife for an open marriage. He told CNN’s John King, the debate moderator, “I think the destructive, vicious, and negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract people to run for office, and I’m appalled that you would open a debate with a question like that”.
Many credit Gingrich’s debate performance with making the difference in South Carolina, with many voters saying that delectability is the most important quality they are looking for, and they think that Newt Gingrich is the candidate who can best beat Obama. They also seem undeterred by his past personal proclivities. Supporter Jan Broadhurst said that it was in the past and she has moved on, applauding him for taking on the “liberal media”, saying, “It doesn’t matter. Part of being a Christian is forgiveness, he’s asked for forgiveness, he should be given the benefit”.
After weeks and even months of expecting Mitt Romney to come out on top, many are concerned about Gingrich’s recent rise, particularly Republican politicians such as South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, Virginia Governor Bob McDonell, and former New Hampshire governor and US Senator John Sununu, all of whom campaigned for Romney in South Carolina. Sununu told VOR that Gingrich is simply unqualified to be president, saying, “Newt Gingrich was thrown out as speaker of the house by his own leadership. There’s no stronger condemnation of his lack of performance as speaker than the fact that his own people got rid of him”. Sununu added that the accusations about Romney’s business history and about releasing his tax returns were unfair, saying, “Put it in context. Are you going to be surprised that he turns out to be rich?” However, despite the South Carolina results, Sununu was insistent in his support, noting that Romney’s campaign is set up for the long run. For his part, Mitt Romney, feeling the heat, is fighting back, taking on new frontrunner Gingrich for what he calls illegal lobbying after he left the speaker’s office. At a campaign stop in Tampa, Florida, he said, “If you’re working for a company, and, then, you’re speaking with Congressmen in a way that would help that company, that’s lobbying”.
Although his win in South Carolina certainly buoyed up Gingrich, Dick Morris told VOR that everything would change in Florida. Although Gingrich leads by several points now, it’s a large state, there’s no certainty, with more than a week to go before Florida’s primary. Morris said, “Florida’s the first time that money becomes important. Until now, [they] were running in tiny states and Florida is very, very expensive”. Whilst many in the Republican Party have expressed fear that the protracted battle is helping President Barack Obama in his bid for re-election, Morris expressed the opposite view. In a conversation with Rick Santorum and VOR, he claimed that the attention on the GOP race is actually good for the Republican Party, saying, “The US campaign trail’s been a wild ride, as Newt Gingrich, who weeks ago wasn’t even supposed to be in contention, won South Carolina. Now, America’s looking ahead to the Florida primary, a 50-delegate contest, in one of the most expensive campaign states in the country”.
24 January 2012
Voice of Russia World Service
Lieutenant General Mikhail Kalashnikov (1919- ), legendary Soviet Russian arms designer… still goin’ strong at 92!
On Tuesday, legendary Russian gun designer Mikhail Kalashnikov agreed to become an aide to Dmitri Rogozin, the newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the country’s defense industry, our RIA-Novosti correspondent reported. Kalashnikov, 92, accepted the offer, which Rogozin made during a visit to the Izhmash plant in the Volga city of Izhevsk, which produces Kalashnikov AK assault rifles. Rogozin said, “I have a personal request for you… to become my advisor”. Rogozin, who was the Russian envoy to NATO before his appointment as Deputy Prime Minister late last year, added, “I’ll have only one advisor in Russia, and that’ll be Kalashnikov”. In September 2011, Army General Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the General Staff, said that the Defense Ministry had stopped procuring AK-74 rifles because there was an oversupply of the weapons, indicating that new models of small arms and light weapons would replace it. The AK-74 is the most widely used and well-known assault rifle in the world. Some 50 armies around the world, as well as countless guerrilla movements, use it.
24 January 2012
RIA-Novosti
Editor’s Foreword:
This piece uses Anglosphere political terminology… that is, he doesn’t use “liberal” for “conservative”, or “conservative” for “nationalist”. That’s rare in a Russian writer, and it bespeaks Mr Makarkin’s familiarity with the American scene. His conclusion is interesting. However, I doubt that the GOP’s going to turn away from its lemming-like march to the cliff (you can’t respect any group that adulates Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin). Most foreign observers see President Obama winning handily in November… you can’t rip yourself apart in internecine conflict and then regroup for the general election.
BMD
A week before the Republican primary in South Carolina, Mitt Romney was everyone’s favourite to win the upcoming primary. However, in a matter of days, the situation flip-flopped. Newt Gingrich was the clear—cut winner of the election…
I must say that in the period between the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, Romney had no luck at all. A more accurate count of the votes in Iowa showed that he lost that contest, being 34 votes behind former US Senator Rick Santorum. Thus, the victorious march of the favourite stopped in its tracks… Romney suffered a severe psychological blow, at the most inopportune moment. Fact is, Romney’s momentum led to a strong vigorous mobilisation of the most conservative Republican voters, who want another Reagan in the White House, not someone who made concessions to liberals during his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts; they want a regular Christian, not a Mormon.
The conservative wing of the party winnowed its list, consolidating its forces. After her failure in Iowa, Tea Party-favourite US Representative Michele Bachmann backed out of the race, and, after New Hampshire, another loser, Texas Governor Rick Perry, dropped out, throwing his support to Gingrich. It seems that the exit from the race of John Huntsman, the former US Ambassador to China, balanced out these moves, as he urged his supporters to vote for Romney. However, in South Carolina, Perry was popular enough (he had the backing of 6 percent of the Republican voters), whilst the more-liberal Huntsman didn’t really bring Romney all too many additional voters in that state.
Thus, conservative voters coalesced around two candidates… Santorum and Gingrich. No one really takes libertarian Ron Paul very seriously, he’s only interested in advancing his ideas in a public forum; he’ll stay in the primaries until the bitter end. In the last week before the primaries in South Carolina Santorum made a bid for the religious faction, as 150 leaders of influential American Evangelical Christian organisations tapped him as their choice for the Republican nomination for president. However, this “anti-Mormon” initiative didn’t fill up Santorum’s war chest. Big-money backers, in contrast to Iowa voters, don’t believe that Santorum, an uncompromising opponent of abortion and gay marriage, has a chance of success even in the Republican race, not to mention the November election, where the Republican nominee will face Barack Obama.
Unlike Santorum, before the primaries in South Carolina, Gingrich received strong financial support. US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a close friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the owner of the newspaper Yom Yisrael, donated 5 million dollars (154.8 million Roubles. 3.85 million Euros. 3.2 million UK Pounds) to the Super-PAC Winning Our Future, which backs Gingrich’s campaign. Adelson agreed with Gingrich’s statement that Palestinians were an “imaginary people”, saying to those who disagreed with him that they had to “brush up on their history”, to see where the name of Palestine came from, and to find out who has the right to call themselves Palestinians. Conservative Israeli politicians want to help Gingrich to “punish” Obama, whose relations with Israel soured recently. President Obama approached Arab régimes, being cool towards the Netanyahu government, which is too far to the right for the Democrat Obama.
In South Carolina, Gingrich received 40 percent of the vote (Romney had 28 percent, Santorum got 17 percent, and Paul brought the rear with 13 percent). In his campaign, he relies on an image of a “man from the heartland”, which he contrasts with an American élite that he considers too liberal and too self-absorbed. This is in spite of the fact that he spent two decades in the US Congress, and was the Speaker of the US House of Representatives for four years (1995-98). However, Gingrich’s political career didn’t exactly follow the career path typical for a professional American politician. He isn’t a lawyer or an economist, but a historian; he has a PhD, and he taught at a small-time college in Georgia. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress twice, but finally won election in 1978, when he was 35-years-old. Two years later, Ronald Reagan became the US President, and Gingrich became one of his advisors, but didn’t hold any formal executive office, so, now, his opponents reproach shim for a lack of managerial experience.
In 1994, Gingrich led a very successful electoral campaign; the Republicans won a majority in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1952. Gingrich put forward a conservative alternative to the “modernist” proposals of the Clinton administration, but his activities as Speaker were disappointing, as he was found guilty of using tax-free funds for political purposes, he had to pay a large fine. In addition, Gingrich faced accusations of adultery, which was especially frustrating for a conservative Republican politician. As a result, Gingrich left Congress, and he left politics, to which he returned only last year when he announced his intention to be a Republican presidential candidate (before that, he was engaged in consulting and teaching). Over time, the accusations against him lost relevance (after his divorce, Gingrich married his girlfriend), but before the primaries in South Carolina, he was reminded of it. Gingrich’s ex-wife televised revelations about their family life, but they didn’t perceptively affect the results of the voting.
Gingrich won in South Carolina, riding on a strong emotional tide of conservatives who don’t trust Romney and who’re looking for a new Reagan. Nevertheless, a rational approach suggests that Gingrich is too conservative for “swing voters” who decide the outcome of national elections. These voters voted for Reagan in 1980, but that was in an extreme crisis, not only economic but moral as well. Today, Obama’s popularity is down, but it hasn’t yet collapsed, there hasn’t been a “New Reagan” yet. In addition, no one has been elected US president after leaving political office due to scandals, which will come back more than once during the election campaign. Finally, even during the primaries, a negative factor for Gingrich may well be his religion. He was born in a Lutheran family, for a significant part of his life he was a Baptist (including during his political career), but his current wife persuaded Gingrich to convert to Catholicism. Not surprisingly, evangelical preachers prefer Santorum to him. In US history, there was only one Catholic elected president, a Democrat from the East Coast, John F Kennedy (however, no Mormon has ever been elected President).
Now, Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum and will compete in the Florida primary on 31 January, one of the most important states in the American South. Then, it may be clear which tendency will prevail… will it be “the vote of rationality” (for the not-much-loved, but more promising Romney), or, will it be “the vote of the heart” (for one of his conservative opponents). In the meantime, the continued sharp controversy amongst the Republican Party weakens it, which, therefore, benefits Barack Obama, the single candidate of the Democrats.
23 January 2012
Voice of Russia World Service
Theme: Rubric. Blog at WordPress.com.
24 January 2012. Bombs or Babies? Why the Rightwing Anti-Abortionists Will NEVER Embrace a True Pro-Life Programme
Tags: abortion, anti abortionists, anti-abortion, Christian, Christianity, Church, coercive power, Eastern Orthodox Church, English Channel, George Carlin, GIUK Gap, Kirill I of Moscow, Mitt Romney, Moscow Patriarchate, OCA, Omar Bradley, Opposition to the legalization of abortion, Orthodox, Orthodox Church in America, Orthodoxy, Paffhausen, Patriarch Kirill I, political agitation, political commentary, Pro-life, Religion and Spirituality, Republican, right-wing, Russia, Russian Orthodox Church, United States, USA
The Prayer of an Expectant Mother
Dmitri Petrov
2005
______________________________
Yesterday, thousands of rightwingers waved placards in Washington in a surreal piece of political theatre. Yes, I’ve participated in a Pro-Life March… they are exhilarating affairs, full of the herd-intoxication of a Nürnberg Parteitag. After it’s all over… it accomplishes NOTHING of substance, save for much money being thrown a thousand rat-holes.
We have a choice… we can spend our limited funds on political agitation (it doesn’t come cheaply, kids), or, we can spend our money to help unwed mothers choose not to abort. The former is a chimera… it relies on coercion, on the police power of the state. Interestingly enough, the rightwingers claim to be against big government, but whenever there’s something that they don’t like, they advocate that the state use its coercive power as the means of first instance… go figure! That is, they’re anti-abortion, and only in the most limited and acrid sense of the term. Their only concern is to punish those involved in this tragic conundrum… they don’t give a bloody hang for creating conditions whereby women would CHOOSE not to abort.
One of the most perceptive people on this issue was George Carlin… yes, George Carlin. Yes… I know that he was an atheist… unlike many, I take my truth wherever I find it, and whomever says it. It doesn’t matter. True is true, and that’s that. His observations on anti-abortionists, although acrid, are spot-on and chilling:
Let’s not be coy. A pro-life programme is EXPENSIVE. It costs money. Do we have it? Certainly, we do! However, it’s being misspent, and too much is in the hands of the most affluent Five Percent (the Affluent Effluent). We would need to change both national and personal priorities.
Firstly, America would have to end all its pointless and hellishly expensive foreign wars… yes, Virginia, we have no money to help mothers and kids ‘cause we’re blowin’ up mothers and kids in Afghanistan, Iraq, and wherever else the CFR has a mind to intervene in next week. Talk about arse-backwards standards… this is it, in spades. We should withdraw to a defence line in the North Atlantic based on the GIUK Gap and the English Channel, and a line in the Pacific running from the Aleutians to Guam to Australia. This isn’t isolationist in the least. It would keep all enemies from our shores. It would also be far less expensive than the present pointless land wars in Eurasia (do remember what Omar Bradley said about those). Secondly, we’d have to change our taxation system. The super-rich, such as Mitt Romney, pay less in proportion than many of us do. That’s insane. A pro-life system would require money for medical care, support for mothers, good pre-schools, and family allowances. These aren’t cheap… but if you want a healthy society in future, that’s what you must do.
What must we do? As Vladimir Legoida, the head of the MP Information Department, said, “The Church doesn’t propose that we resort to repression… rather, it defends a woman’s maximum freedom of choice. A choice can be only be truly free if one has a full awareness of all the consequences, risks, and threats. … However, the main proposals put forward by the Church aim to create a society where the number of abortions would be minimal, although the ideal would be no abortions at all. Our main emphasis isn’t on the banning of abortion”. If anti-abortion isn’t our goal, then, what, pray tell, is it? Last year, His Holiness made a detailed pro-life programme for the Church and Russian state to consider. It’s too long to run here. If you wish to read it (and you should), click here. Read it… good! It’s clear that Church, state, society, and individuals have to work together. We’re not “self-reliant”… we’re not “independent”, we’re not “rugged individualists”… that’s pure moonshine peddled by the self-interested. We don‘t live in small villages and towns any more… that means that some form of bureaucracy is necessary. In any case, our Church does NOT teach “individualism”; it does NOT see salvation as a “personal” thing. Symphonia is not merely the cooperation of Church and state… it’s the cooperation of individuals in society, it’s families interacting with the state, and it’s all of us working together for a common and beneficial end (Orthodoxy is NOT an apologia for Think and Grow Rich or “the invisible hand of the market“)
Beware all those who attack state social welfare schemes… what they want, in most cases, is a predatory corporate system that maximises profits at the expense of people’s health and well-being (government bureaucracy can be hellish, but it’s never as inefficient and expensive as “private” plans)… the USA spends twice as much as the EU does on health care, and it doesn’t cover everybody. Corporate buccaneers steal one out of every two healthcare dollars. That’s why they forbid people care… so that they can live high off the hog and piss on you! We have a choice… we can follow His Holiness and embrace Social Justice, Social Equity, and Social Cooperation, or, we can follow Paffhausen and shake protest signs, speak at far-right think-tanks, go to every neocon soirée inside the Beltway, and kiss up to the First Profit of the Mormons.
It’s up to us…
Tuesday 24 January 2012
Albany NY