Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation
EXCERPT:
In 1914, having been fired from NCR Corporation and with a prison sentence threatening his future, Thomas J. Watson approached Flint, as a leading financier, for assistance in finding a similar job. Despite his apparently perilous situation he was still very clear as to the type of job he wanted. He had already turned down a number of offers. He wanted control of the business for himself, and be able to earn a share of the profits. Flint offered him CTR. Flint was, as described earlier, a great promoter of trusts and was presumably less worried about Watson's impending jail sentence. The other members of the CTR board were less sanguine, asking who was to run the company while he was in prison. As a result, they only gave him the title of general manager.
Maverick His Machine Thomas Watson amazon
EXCERPT:
Hard to work for and unable to distinguish between the company and himself, he also behaved like a dictatorial CEO when wreaked havoc with his family. Watson′s mania for overreaching peaked when he accepted a decoration from Hitler in 1937 under the deluded impression that Hitler would follow Watson′s campaign for world peace through world trade; according to Maney, that episode illustrates how out–of–control Watson′s ego had grown. Yet, as Maney makes clear in this timely tale of the man who made information into an industry and discovered the power of corporate culture, "Watson wasn′t just the best business story at the end of the 1930s; he had become a great American success story that captured the popular imagination." Agent, Sandy Dijkstra. (May).
Forecast: Maney′s book should hold great appeal not only for avid business readers but also for devotees of the vicissitudes of financial dynasties. That appeal will be supported by a 75,000–copy first printing and a $100,000 ad/promo budget. (Publishers Weekly, March 17, 2003)
IBM and the Holocaust
EXCERPT:
IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany-- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.
Only after Jews were identified -- a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately -- could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.
But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.
IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by one, anticipating the Reich's needs. They did not merely sell the machines and walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.
IBM and the Holocaust takes you through the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral agreements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries -- all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction.
Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit.
Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews -- how did Hitler get the names?
Tax favors IBM Huffington Post
EXCERPT:
Vernon Hunter served two tours of duty in Vietnam, raised a solid family, and, according to family and coworkers, had he not been killed when a tax denier flew his plane into an IRS office building in Austin, Texas, the 68-year-old collections manager would have rushed to save others without regard for his own life.
Go to the Internet, however, and the person you will see hailed as a hero by his family and a patriot by his fellow tax deniers is Joseph A. Stack III, who never served, who set his home ablaze, and then used his personal airplane to murder as many IRS workers as he could because of his rage against taxes generally, and in particular, a 1986 tax favor for IBM.
Richard Garwin wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Garwin is IBM Fellow Emeritus at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. For many years he was an adjunct professor of physics at Columbia University and, from 1952, a scientist at the IBM Watson Laboratory at Columbia University,[2] retiring from IBM in 1993.[3] He has also been an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.
Garwin received the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest honor for the fields of science and engineering, award year 2002.[3][4]
Among other things, Garwin was the author of the actual design used in the first hydrogen bomb (code-named Mike) in 1952.[5] He was assigned the job by Edward Teller, with the instructions that he was to make it as conservative a design as possible in order to prove the concept was feasible (as such, the Mike device was not intended to be a usable weapon design, with tons of cryogenic equipment required for its use).[6]
Edward Teller wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Edward Teller (January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was an Austro-Hungarian-born American theoretical physicist, known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb," even though he did not care for the title.[1]
Teller emigrated to the United States in the 1930s, and was an early member of the Manhattan Project charged with developing the first atomic bombs. During this time he made a serious push to develop the first fusion-based weapons as well, but these were deferred until after World War II. After his controversial testimony in the security clearance hearing of his former Los Alamos colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer, Teller was ostracized by much of the scientific community. He continued to find support from the U.S. government and military research establishment, particularly for his advocacy for nuclear energy development, a strong nuclear arsenal, and a vigorous nuclear testing program. He was a co-founder of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and was both its director and associate director for many years.
Oppenheimers and Rothschilds allies Rense
EXCERPT:
The Rothschilds and Rockefellers are only two of thirteen controlling families of the Illuminati. (52) Two Jewish families that appear to be prominent are the Oppenheims and the Oppenheimers. A. Oppenheim was situated in Cologne. The Oppenheimers were early members of the Bavarian Illuminati. The Bund der Gerechten (League of the Just) was an illuminati front run mainly by Jews who were Satanists. This Bund financed in part by the Rothschilds paid the Satanist and Mason Karl Marx to write the Communist Manefesto. The Jew Gumpel Oppenheim was in the inner circle of the Bund. His relative Heinrich Oppenheim masterminded the communist revolution of 1848 in Germany. The Communist Party's official histories even accept the Bund as the predecessor of Communism.
The Oppenheimers apparently are close to the Rothschilds. J. Robert Oppenheimer of the CFR was exposed as a communist. Harry Oppenheimer, an international banker, is chairman of the Jewish De Beers world-wide diamond monopoly, and chairman of the Anglo-American Corp. Oppenheimers can be found in important financial positions in the U.S. They help run around 10 large foundations, including the Oppenheimer Haas Trust of NY for the care of needy Jewish children.
Louis V. Gerstner Jr. wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. KBE (born March 1, 1942 in Mineola, New York) was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of IBM from April, 1993 until 2002 when he retired as CEO in March and chairman in December. He is largely credited with turning around IBM's fortunes.
He was formerly CEO of RJR Nabisco, and also held senior positions at American Express and McKinsey & Company. He is a graduate of Chaminade High School, Dartmouth College and holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
In January, 2003, he assumed the position of chairman of The Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm located in Washington, DC. He retired from that position in October 2008 and remains a senior advisor to The Carlyle Group.
RJR Nabisco wikipedia
EXCERPT:
RJR Nabisco, Inc., was an American conglomerate formed in 1985 by the merger of Nabisco Brands and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. RJR Nabisco was purchased in 1988 by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. in the largest leveraged buyout at the time. In 1999, due to concerns about tobacco lawsuit liabilities, the tobacco business was spun off into a separate company, and RJR Nabisco was renamed Nabisco Holdings Corporation. Nabisco is currently owned by Kraft Foods.
Children of the World (My Book)
EXCERPT:
Chapter 3
Steve Ryder and Jill Hawthorne met in college. He was in his last year of college and Jill was a junior. Steve’s major was animal husbandry and Jill’s was horticulture. They met at a local fast food restaurant while attending Cal Poly at San Luis Obispo, CA.
KKR said invest MengniuMA'ANSHAN, December 04, SinoCast -- The US private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) is reported to team up with other investors to inject USD 250 million into Mengniu Modern Animal Husbandry (Group) Co.
Since September 2008, China's dairy industry has been impacted due to the melamine-stained milk scandal. Thus, it is important for dairy product manufacturers to build their owned farms. Mengniu Dairy is also said to spare no efforts in constructing its modern farm.
Mengniu Modern Animal Husbandry
EXCERPT:
Mengniu stepping up the ante
By Diao Ying
Published: Jan 16 2009 9:09
1 of 1
Mengniu-branded dairy products at a supermarket in Changchun, Jilin province.
The country's top milk producer is slowly recovering from the devastation of the melamine scandal last year that has thrown the entire dairy industry into disarray.
It has been a rough process, forcing, at one time, the flamboyant chairman of Mengniu Dairy, Niu Gensheng, to go hat in hand asking for financial handouts from his powerful friends and corporate peers. Part of that money was spent on mounting a huge publicity campaign to regain consumers' confidence in the company's products.
Mengniu's stock price has stayed at around HK$9 per share since December after plunging to around HK$6 at the end of October 2008 after the scandal broke. In better days, the company was a darling on the Hong Kong stock exchange favored by powerful US investment banks as well as the punters in teahouses. At the peak in 2007, its stock was priced at over HK$35.8 apiece.
Rajat Gupta Scandal
EXCERPT:
By Duff McDonald, contributorOctober 1, 2010: 5:09 AM ET
FORTUNE -- This is not the way the Rajat Gupta story is supposed to end. It's supposed to go out on a high note, like the previous chapters. He is an Indian nationalist's son who made it to Harvard Business School. He's the only non-Westerner to have served as managing director of storied management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., adviser to CEOs the world over. The ultimate behind-the-scenes business operator, Gupta over the years has whispered in the ear of everyone from Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs to Bill George of Medtronic to A.G. Lafley of Procter & Gamble. More recently he's become a global philanthropist who rubs shoulders with Bono, Bill Clinton, and Bill Gates, tackling problems like malaria in Africa and AIDS in India.
Drexel named in loan scandal
EXCERPT:
University receives over $100,000 per year from "preferred lenders."
Noah Cohen
Issue date: 4/6/07 Section: News
PrintEmailArticle ToolsPage 1 of 3 next > The University has been named by the New York Attorney General's office as receiving "kickbacks" from the student loan industry as part of a probe into the practice of schools recommending lenders to students.
According the Attorney General's investigation, the University received $100,000 per year from the lender Educational Financial Partners. In exchange, the University recommended EFP as the "sole preferred lender" for students seeking financial aid.
"The Attorney General's office will be filing suit over deceptive business practices in the company's student loan business. The suit is the first filed in a nationwide investigation into the college loan industry," according to a press release from the New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo.
THE SATANIC BLOODLINES
Introduction
1.1. The Astor Bloodline
2.2. The Bundy Bloodline
3.3. The Collins Bloodline
4.4. The DuPont Bloodline
5.5. The Freeman Bloodline
6.6. The Kennedy Bloodline
7.7. The Li Bloodline
8.8. The Onassis Bloodline
9.9. The Reynolds bloodline
110. The Rockefeller Bloodline
11. The Rothschild Bloodline
12. The Russell Bloodline
13. The Van Duyn Bloodline
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Barbra Streisand - The Way We Were (1975)
The Way We Were youtube
Memories............ are so beautiful and YET.
Back in the day during the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas fiasco I had my own dilemma.
I was working as a contractor at IBM at the time. hmmmmmm and you aren't gonna believe my experience or maybe you will.
Anyways, I had been working there for about 18 months and the incident happened and it was a big deal on the news. Was he a womanizer or was she a shrew?
I had worked at IBM for a year and after a year back in the day, I had to be off from IBM a year. I worked in department B54 for Dan Malone, Dan Cheng, Gary Dunbar and Bob Sykes. It was ok but later I would learn to love another group that I worked for and this particular incidence is part of the reason I was moved.
Kay Murdock was an IBM technician I was friends with and she worked in Malone's group. She liked Dan but there was another technician in her group that was a real male chauvinist pig and he was nortorious for his hatred of women and always telling sexist jokes. Kay defended him a lot of the times but some times she couldn't handle his obnoxiousness (sorry for the spelling). This jerk's name is or was Jim Donaldson and he was truly an SOB.
.......... All righty then, to make a short story long here's what happened. As you know my name is Dedra and after a big argument in the hallway with Jim, I went back to my desk and there was an email from him. OMG!
Dear deBra the note started........ OMG, this after 18 months of working in the same department with 'him' who had never before called me Debra. hmmmmmmm, what the hell.
I printed the note off and walked angerly to Dan's office and placed the note on his desk as he was in a department meeting.
I waited and waited for him to mention it. I knew it was going to be uncomfortable and so I decided to reprint the note and walk to his office again. He was there this time and I gave it to him and sat down and started talking.
Dan's reply was that Jim wasn't smart enough to figure something like that out. I knew this to be a bold faced lie as Kay and I had talked and she shared with me his hateful ways. (She did share with me that if I made something of it, she wouldn't back me up.) Sooooooooooooooooooooooo
I walked out of the room pissed off and I called my contract company and the CEO of the company made an appointment to come to San Jose and she and another officer took me to lunch.
I was told they would back me up but they both knew I would lose. hmmmmmmmm
BTW, they both had worked as IBMers before going over and working at the contract company. They knew the lawyers behind IBM and they warned me that although they would back me up their loyalty was with IBM in no uncertain terms as IBM had gotten them good jobs and their pay was great. (REVOLVING DOOR, eh?)
The two women asked me what I wanted to do? They had told me that if it went to trial over sexual discrimination I would miss a lot of work and I would probably be in court for up to 4-6 weeks.
I wasn't prepared to do this and ask merely to be moved to another department and that really did work out better for me as the group I ended up supporting was a satelite (Once again spelling) group and they fought often with the product division I had just left and many of their cases were similar to mine.)
Actually, the new group was the group that reported directly to Louis Gerstner Jr. and so, the politics were different. I was in the headquarters group. There were lots of high powered women and they were very supportive of my situation.
.............anyways, that's my story and I'm sticking to it regarding the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas fiasco.
DJ Malone
EXCERPT:
Bio
Dan Malone received his undergraduate education at Cal Poly SLO receiving an Electronic Engineering degree in 1968. He later received an MBA ('73) and an MSEE ('93) from Santa Clara University and did further graduate work. He was an adjunct faculty member at Santa Clara University from 1993 to 1999 and taught classes in the Graduate School of Engineering. Dan retired from IBM in 2002 after 35 years where he worked in the development laboratory after holding assignments in circuit and system design, management and program management for the disk drive division. He also worked for Hitachi Global Storage Technologies from 2003 to 2005. During work at IBM, Dan held foreign assignments in England (2 years), Germany (2 years) and Japan (1 year) and various assignments in other parts of Asia. He holds 13 US patents. Dan is also an amateur radio operator (HAM – K6HPB). Dan has a wife and three sons that graduated from Cal Poly and seven grandchildren. Dan has been teaching classes at Cal Poly in the EE/CPE and Math departments since 2006.
Mike Workman who was Dan Malone's boss at the time this happened and Nancy Holleran was also in same area
EXCERPT:
Location
HQ in San Jose, CA (and development office in Longmont CO), European HQ in Ireland, offices in France, Germany, Switzerland and UK
Founded in
July 2001
Financial funding
$400 million by Tako Ventures LLC, a private equity firm of Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison that owns 85% of Pillar, the remaining being owned by employees
Main executives
Mike Workman, chairman and CEO
Nancy Holleran, president and COO (former VP of IBM's WW customer engineering group and VP of technology development and product engineering at Conner Peripherals)
Notice the date......... I worked at IBM then........
IBM and Monsanto
EXCERPT:
January 5, 1998
Monsanto Hires IBM For IT Operations
Companies also plan ERP consulting venture
By Joy D. Russell
onsanto Co. last week agreed to outsource some of its IT operation to IBM Global Services for 10 years. At the same time, IBM and Monsanto created a joint venture to provide consulting services to companies implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
Separately, Monsanto, a maker of agricultural products, pharmaceuticals, and food ingredients, formed an alliance with IBM's IT research arm to develop technologies to map the genetic structure of plant groups and human diseases.
The companies didn't give the value of the outsourcing agreement, although IBM said it was one of its biggest outsourcing deals in 1997. Under the accord, IBM will handle data-center management, help-desk operations, and support for 8,000 desktop systems, in cluding LAN and WAN management. IBM is hiring nearly all of the 152 IT employees in Monsanto's St. Louis headquarters, leaving Monsanto with about 300 IT employees at other sites.
The ERP consulting venture will seek as customers other companies in process-oriented industries, such as pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Monsanto believes that much of the development work it has done on its own implementation of SAP's ERP systems can be reused by customers of the venture, without giving away too much proprietary information.
"Out of all the companies we looked at to partner with for a solutions center, IBM best understood how to keep our intellectual capital and work with our reusable system design," says Bob Barrett, former leader of Monsanto's SAP project, on which work began in 1994. Barrett is moving from Monsanto to become director of the ERP joint venture.
Daniel Colby, general manager of products and telecommunications for IBM Global Services, says Monsanto's expertise will strengthen IBM's prese nce in the competitive SAP services market, which includes providers such as Andersen Consulting, Ernst & Young, EDS, and Price Waterhouse.
"When you look at alliances," Colby says, "this is a good example of what two companies can get from each other and what they both can pour into R&D."
The Way We Were youtube
Memories............ are so beautiful and YET.
Back in the day during the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas fiasco I had my own dilemma.
I was working as a contractor at IBM at the time. hmmmmmm and you aren't gonna believe my experience or maybe you will.
Anyways, I had been working there for about 18 months and the incident happened and it was a big deal on the news. Was he a womanizer or was she a shrew?
I had worked at IBM for a year and after a year back in the day, I had to be off from IBM a year. I worked in department B54 for Dan Malone, Dan Cheng, Gary Dunbar and Bob Sykes. It was ok but later I would learn to love another group that I worked for and this particular incidence is part of the reason I was moved.
Kay Murdock was an IBM technician I was friends with and she worked in Malone's group. She liked Dan but there was another technician in her group that was a real male chauvinist pig and he was nortorious for his hatred of women and always telling sexist jokes. Kay defended him a lot of the times but some times she couldn't handle his obnoxiousness (sorry for the spelling). This jerk's name is or was Jim Donaldson and he was truly an SOB.
.......... All righty then, to make a short story long here's what happened. As you know my name is Dedra and after a big argument in the hallway with Jim, I went back to my desk and there was an email from him. OMG!
Dear deBra the note started........ OMG, this after 18 months of working in the same department with 'him' who had never before called me Debra. hmmmmmmm, what the hell.
I printed the note off and walked angerly to Dan's office and placed the note on his desk as he was in a department meeting.
I waited and waited for him to mention it. I knew it was going to be uncomfortable and so I decided to reprint the note and walk to his office again. He was there this time and I gave it to him and sat down and started talking.
Dan's reply was that Jim wasn't smart enough to figure something like that out. I knew this to be a bold faced lie as Kay and I had talked and she shared with me his hateful ways. (She did share with me that if I made something of it, she wouldn't back me up.) Sooooooooooooooooooooooo
I walked out of the room pissed off and I called my contract company and the CEO of the company made an appointment to come to San Jose and she and another officer took me to lunch.
I was told they would back me up but they both knew I would lose. hmmmmmmmm
BTW, they both had worked as IBMers before going over and working at the contract company. They knew the lawyers behind IBM and they warned me that although they would back me up their loyalty was with IBM in no uncertain terms as IBM had gotten them good jobs and their pay was great. (REVOLVING DOOR, eh?)
The two women asked me what I wanted to do? They had told me that if it went to trial over sexual discrimination I would miss a lot of work and I would probably be in court for up to 4-6 weeks.
I wasn't prepared to do this and ask merely to be moved to another department and that really did work out better for me as the group I ended up supporting was a satelite (Once again spelling) group and they fought often with the product division I had just left and many of their cases were similar to mine.)
Actually, the new group was the group that reported directly to Louis Gerstner Jr. and so, the politics were different. I was in the headquarters group. There were lots of high powered women and they were very supportive of my situation.
.............anyways, that's my story and I'm sticking to it regarding the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas fiasco.
DJ Malone
EXCERPT:
Bio
Dan Malone received his undergraduate education at Cal Poly SLO receiving an Electronic Engineering degree in 1968. He later received an MBA ('73) and an MSEE ('93) from Santa Clara University and did further graduate work. He was an adjunct faculty member at Santa Clara University from 1993 to 1999 and taught classes in the Graduate School of Engineering. Dan retired from IBM in 2002 after 35 years where he worked in the development laboratory after holding assignments in circuit and system design, management and program management for the disk drive division. He also worked for Hitachi Global Storage Technologies from 2003 to 2005. During work at IBM, Dan held foreign assignments in England (2 years), Germany (2 years) and Japan (1 year) and various assignments in other parts of Asia. He holds 13 US patents. Dan is also an amateur radio operator (HAM – K6HPB). Dan has a wife and three sons that graduated from Cal Poly and seven grandchildren. Dan has been teaching classes at Cal Poly in the EE/CPE and Math departments since 2006.
Mike Workman who was Dan Malone's boss at the time this happened and Nancy Holleran was also in same area
EXCERPT:
Location
HQ in San Jose, CA (and development office in Longmont CO), European HQ in Ireland, offices in France, Germany, Switzerland and UK
Founded in
July 2001
Financial funding
$400 million by Tako Ventures LLC, a private equity firm of Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison that owns 85% of Pillar, the remaining being owned by employees
Main executives
Mike Workman, chairman and CEO
Nancy Holleran, president and COO (former VP of IBM's WW customer engineering group and VP of technology development and product engineering at Conner Peripherals)
Notice the date......... I worked at IBM then........
IBM and Monsanto
EXCERPT:
January 5, 1998
Monsanto Hires IBM For IT Operations
Companies also plan ERP consulting venture
By Joy D. Russell
onsanto Co. last week agreed to outsource some of its IT operation to IBM Global Services for 10 years. At the same time, IBM and Monsanto created a joint venture to provide consulting services to companies implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
Separately, Monsanto, a maker of agricultural products, pharmaceuticals, and food ingredients, formed an alliance with IBM's IT research arm to develop technologies to map the genetic structure of plant groups and human diseases.
The companies didn't give the value of the outsourcing agreement, although IBM said it was one of its biggest outsourcing deals in 1997. Under the accord, IBM will handle data-center management, help-desk operations, and support for 8,000 desktop systems, in cluding LAN and WAN management. IBM is hiring nearly all of the 152 IT employees in Monsanto's St. Louis headquarters, leaving Monsanto with about 300 IT employees at other sites.
The ERP consulting venture will seek as customers other companies in process-oriented industries, such as pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Monsanto believes that much of the development work it has done on its own implementation of SAP's ERP systems can be reused by customers of the venture, without giving away too much proprietary information.
"Out of all the companies we looked at to partner with for a solutions center, IBM best understood how to keep our intellectual capital and work with our reusable system design," says Bob Barrett, former leader of Monsanto's SAP project, on which work began in 1994. Barrett is moving from Monsanto to become director of the ERP joint venture.
Daniel Colby, general manager of products and telecommunications for IBM Global Services, says Monsanto's expertise will strengthen IBM's prese nce in the competitive SAP services market, which includes providers such as Andersen Consulting, Ernst & Young, EDS, and Price Waterhouse.
"When you look at alliances," Colby says, "this is a good example of what two companies can get from each other and what they both can pour into R&D."
Friday, October 22, 2010
Kid Carolina Reynolds
EXCERPT:
"Addicting! This book is an enjoyable and informative romp through the lives and landscapes of the heirs of the Gilded Age. It sheds new light on the economic and cultural circumstances that led to the dominance of corporate power today, and the human lives and tragic costs behind it." (Dr. Amy Trauger, assistant professor of geography, University of Georgia 2009)
RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company
EXCERPT:
Recent history
In 1998, the company was part of the Master Settlement Agreement.
In 1999, R. J. Reynolds was spun out of RJR Nabisco. The same year, the company sold all its non-US operations to Japan Tobacco, which made those operations into its international arm, JT International. Consequently, any Camels, Winstons or Salems sold outside the US are now actually Japanese cigarettes.
In 2002, the company was fined $15m for handing out free cigarettes at events attended by children, and was fined $20m for breaking a 1998 agreement between tobacco companies and 46 states, which restricts targeting youth in its tobacco advertisements.[8]
In October 2002, the European Community accused R. J. Reynolds of selling black market cigarettes to drug traffickers and mobsters from Italy, Russia, Colombia and the Balkans.
On July 30, 2004, R. J. Reynolds merged with the U.S. operations of British American Tobacco (operating under the name of Brown & Williamson). A new parent holding company, Reynolds American Inc., was established as part of the transaction.
In May 2006 former R. J. Reynolds vice-president of sales Stan Smith pleaded guilty to charges of defrauding the Canadian government of $1,200,000,000 (CDN) through a cigarette smuggling operation. Smith confessed to overseeing the 1990s operation while employed by RJR. Canadian-brand cigarettes were smuggled out of and back into Canada, or smuggled from Puerto Rico, and sold on the black market to avoid taxes. The judge referred to it as biggest fraud case in Canadian history.[9]
Exclusive manufacturing dissent at education managment corporation
EXCERPT:
Exclusive: Manufacturing Dissent at the Education Management Corporation
Author(s):Stephen Burd Published: August 31, 2010
Issues: For-Profit Colleges
Education Management Corporation (EDMC) has hired DCI Group, a controversial Republican advocacy and public relations firm that is expert in the art of manufacturing grass-roots lobbying campaigns for corporations (otherwise known as “astroturfing”), to contact the company’s employees individually to help them craft letters to the U.S. Department of Education opposing the administration’s new proposed “gainful employment” regulations.
“This week, employees throughout EDMC and our schools will be receiving phone calls during business hours from our partners, the DCI Group, to assist you in crafting personalized letters to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan detailing for him your own views on Gainful Employment,” Todd Nelson, EDMC’s chief executive officer, wrote last Tuesday to the company’s approximately 20,000 employees in an e-mail, which was obtained by Higher Ed Watch.
DCI Group sourcewatch
EXCERPTS:
1) DCI Stealth Campaign Targeting Republicans Undermined Mortgage Reform Legislation
The Associated Press reported October 20, 2008 that "Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse. In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI's chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain's campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September. ... The Republican senators targeted by DCI began hearing from prominent constituents and financial contributors, all urging the defeat of Hagel's bill because it might harm the housing boom. The effort generated newspaper articles and radio and TV appearances by participants who spoke out against the measure. Inside Freddie Mac headquarters in 2005, the few dozen people who knew what DCI was doing referred to the initiative as "the stealth lobbying campaign," according to three people familiar with the drive. They spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying they fear retaliation if their names were disclosed." [3]
2) Tech Central Station is a good example of a few of those conflicts of interest, some of which are better disclosed than others. The website openly credits sponsors such as AT&T, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, General Motors, Intel, McDonalds, NASDAQ, National Semiconductor, QUALCOMM and PhRMA, but until recently it was reluctant to acknowledge the identity of its real publisher—the DCI Group.
TCS did not publicly disclose its relationship to DCI until it was uncovered by Washington Monthly editor Nicholas Confessore, who wrote about it in December 2003. “After I requested comment, the Web site was changed,” Confessore wrote. “Where it formerly stated that ‘Tech Central Station is published by Tech Central Station, L.L.C.,’ it now reads ‘Tech Central Station is published by DCI Group, L.L.C.’”
DCI for profit college lobby
EXCERPT:
Indeed, Nelson stresses in his email that no EDMC employee is required to participate in DCI's letter-generating campaign. But as New America's Steve Burd reports, employees who don't participate fear they could face some kind of blowback. "This is scaring a lot of people because they know that, no matter what the company says, it will keep track of those who refuse to cooperate," a former EDMC recruiter told New America. "That's just the way the company operates."
EXCERPT:
"Addicting! This book is an enjoyable and informative romp through the lives and landscapes of the heirs of the Gilded Age. It sheds new light on the economic and cultural circumstances that led to the dominance of corporate power today, and the human lives and tragic costs behind it." (Dr. Amy Trauger, assistant professor of geography, University of Georgia 2009)
RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company
EXCERPT:
Recent history
In 1998, the company was part of the Master Settlement Agreement.
In 1999, R. J. Reynolds was spun out of RJR Nabisco. The same year, the company sold all its non-US operations to Japan Tobacco, which made those operations into its international arm, JT International. Consequently, any Camels, Winstons or Salems sold outside the US are now actually Japanese cigarettes.
In 2002, the company was fined $15m for handing out free cigarettes at events attended by children, and was fined $20m for breaking a 1998 agreement between tobacco companies and 46 states, which restricts targeting youth in its tobacco advertisements.[8]
In October 2002, the European Community accused R. J. Reynolds of selling black market cigarettes to drug traffickers and mobsters from Italy, Russia, Colombia and the Balkans.
On July 30, 2004, R. J. Reynolds merged with the U.S. operations of British American Tobacco (operating under the name of Brown & Williamson). A new parent holding company, Reynolds American Inc., was established as part of the transaction.
In May 2006 former R. J. Reynolds vice-president of sales Stan Smith pleaded guilty to charges of defrauding the Canadian government of $1,200,000,000 (CDN) through a cigarette smuggling operation. Smith confessed to overseeing the 1990s operation while employed by RJR. Canadian-brand cigarettes were smuggled out of and back into Canada, or smuggled from Puerto Rico, and sold on the black market to avoid taxes. The judge referred to it as biggest fraud case in Canadian history.[9]
Exclusive manufacturing dissent at education managment corporation
EXCERPT:
Exclusive: Manufacturing Dissent at the Education Management Corporation
Author(s):Stephen Burd Published: August 31, 2010
Issues: For-Profit Colleges
Education Management Corporation (EDMC) has hired DCI Group, a controversial Republican advocacy and public relations firm that is expert in the art of manufacturing grass-roots lobbying campaigns for corporations (otherwise known as “astroturfing”), to contact the company’s employees individually to help them craft letters to the U.S. Department of Education opposing the administration’s new proposed “gainful employment” regulations.
“This week, employees throughout EDMC and our schools will be receiving phone calls during business hours from our partners, the DCI Group, to assist you in crafting personalized letters to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan detailing for him your own views on Gainful Employment,” Todd Nelson, EDMC’s chief executive officer, wrote last Tuesday to the company’s approximately 20,000 employees in an e-mail, which was obtained by Higher Ed Watch.
DCI Group sourcewatch
EXCERPTS:
1) DCI Stealth Campaign Targeting Republicans Undermined Mortgage Reform Legislation
The Associated Press reported October 20, 2008 that "Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse. In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI's chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain's campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September. ... The Republican senators targeted by DCI began hearing from prominent constituents and financial contributors, all urging the defeat of Hagel's bill because it might harm the housing boom. The effort generated newspaper articles and radio and TV appearances by participants who spoke out against the measure. Inside Freddie Mac headquarters in 2005, the few dozen people who knew what DCI was doing referred to the initiative as "the stealth lobbying campaign," according to three people familiar with the drive. They spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying they fear retaliation if their names were disclosed." [3]
2) Tech Central Station is a good example of a few of those conflicts of interest, some of which are better disclosed than others. The website openly credits sponsors such as AT&T, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, General Motors, Intel, McDonalds, NASDAQ, National Semiconductor, QUALCOMM and PhRMA, but until recently it was reluctant to acknowledge the identity of its real publisher—the DCI Group.
TCS did not publicly disclose its relationship to DCI until it was uncovered by Washington Monthly editor Nicholas Confessore, who wrote about it in December 2003. “After I requested comment, the Web site was changed,” Confessore wrote. “Where it formerly stated that ‘Tech Central Station is published by Tech Central Station, L.L.C.,’ it now reads ‘Tech Central Station is published by DCI Group, L.L.C.’”
DCI for profit college lobby
EXCERPT:
Indeed, Nelson stresses in his email that no EDMC employee is required to participate in DCI's letter-generating campaign. But as New America's Steve Burd reports, employees who don't participate fear they could face some kind of blowback. "This is scaring a lot of people because they know that, no matter what the company says, it will keep track of those who refuse to cooperate," a former EDMC recruiter told New America. "That's just the way the company operates."
Monday, October 18, 2010
Cat Stevens' comments about Salman Rushdie wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Cat Stevens' comments about Salman Rushdie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
This article may contain material not appropriate for an encyclopedia. Please discuss this issue on the talk page.
Following Ayatollah Khomeini's February 14, 1989 death threat fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, convert to Islam and recording artist Yusuf Islam, previously known as Cat Stevens, made statements widely interpreted as endorsing the fatwa. This generated a furor among a number of celebrities, and free speech activists who spoke out about his comments on radio stations, and newspaper editorials in the West. In response, Yusuf Islam denied [1] that his statements were in support of the fatwa, and claimed he was merely giving his interpretation of Islamic law.[2] Critics claim several independent reports, including statements on video, belie his denials.[3] As of late 2008 videos on the issue are no longer available on the internet. [4]
[edit] Statements
On February 21, 1989, Yusuf Islam addressed students at Kingston University in London about his conversion to Islam and was asked about the controversy in the Muslim world and the fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie's execution. He replied, "He must be killed. The Qur'an makes it clear - if someone defames the prophet, then he must die." [5]
Newspapers quickly denounced what was seen as Yusuf Islam's support for the assassination of Rushdie and the next day Yusuf released a statement saying that he was not personally encouraging anybody to be a vigilante,[1] and that he was only stating that blasphemy is a capital offense according to the Qur'an.
However on March 8, 1989, while speaking in London's Regents Park Mosque, Yusuf Islam was asked by a Christian Science Monitor reporter how he would "cope with the idea of killing a writer for writing a book." He is reported to have replied:
In Islam there is a line between let's say freedom and the line which is then transgressed into immorality and irresponsibility and I think as far as this writer is concerned, unfortunately, he has been irresponsible with his freedom of speech. Salman Rushdie or indeed any writer who abuses the prophet, or indeed any prophet, under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death. It's got to be seen as a deterrent, so that other people should not commit the same mistake again.
Macbeth and Shakespeare
EXCERPT:
An examination of Macbeth and Shakespeare’s sources leads us to formulate several conclusions concerning the motives behind the dramatists alterations. It can be argued that the changes serve three main purposes: the dramatic purpose of producing a more exciting story than is found in the sources; the thematic purpose of creating a more complex characterization of Macbeth; and the political purpose of catering to the beliefs of the reigning monarch, King James the First. And, in the grander scheme, Shakespeare’s alterations function to convey the sentiment echoed in many of his works – that there is a divine right of kings, and that to usurp the throne is a nefarious crime against all of humanity.
Smith satanic verses
EXCERPTs:
1) The Satanic Verses were infamously burnt at a protest in Bradford. This protest formed part of the growing international demonstrations against the novel's publication, which culminated in a fatwa (a religious ruling or decree) being issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran, against Salman Rushdie on 14th February 1989 (see 'Ayatollah Khomeini', BBC, in Further Reading).
2) It's rather a long passage so for copyright reasons we are unable to include it here. It starts with a quotation from Shakespeare's Sonnets, 'Thy black is fairest in my judgement's place...', and it ends ' "By William Shakespeare: ODE TO LETITIA AND ALL MY KINKY-HAIRED BIG-ASS BITCHEZ." '. It can be found in White Teeth, pp. 270-272.]
Shakespeare: ODE TO LETITIA.......
EXCERPT:
Shakespeare: ODE TO LETITIA
AND ALL MY KINKY-HAIRED BIG-ASS BIT CHEZ
The Satanic Verses wikipedia
EXCERPT:
In the United Kingdom, the book received positive reviews. It was a 1988 Booker Prize Finalist (losing to Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda) and won the 1988 Whitbread Award for novel of the year.[2]
In the Muslim community, however, the novel caused great controversy for what many Muslims believed were blasphemous references. The book was banned in India, was burned in demonstrations in the United Kingdom, and was the subject of a violent riot in Pakistan. In February 1989, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling on all good Muslims to kill or help kill Rushdie and his publishers.[3] Following the fatwa, Rushdie was put under police protection by the British government. As of early 2010 Rushdie has not been physically harmed, but two of his translators were stabbed (one fatally), one of his publishers was shot, and many others have been killed during violent protests against the book.[4] Individual purchasers of the book have not been harmed.
Shakespearean Rushdie pdf
EXCERPT:ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 31.2 (December 2009): 9–22
ISSN 0210-6124
Shakespeare in Rushdie/Shakespearean Rushdie Geetha Ganapathy-Doré University of Paris 13 geetha.dore@univ-paris13.fr Postcolonial readers situate Shakespeare at the starting point and Salman Rushdie at the other end of the spectrum of multicultural authors who have laid claims to universality. While the fact that Rushdie’s epoch-making novel Midnight’s Children adapted for the theatre by Tim Supple, was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2003 would have come as a surprise to many, the Bard himself, his birthplace, allusions to and quotations from his work, parodic rewriting of his plots and brilliant recasting of his characters have always punctuated Rushdie’s fiction and non-fiction. The linguistic inventiveness of Shakespeare and Rushdie and the Ovidian intertext in both bring them even closer. This paper argues that the presence .................................................
Shakespeare and the Sufi Sect
EXCERPT:
The respected academic Dr Martin Lings will put forward this thesis in his lecture on 23 November. 'Shakespeare would have delighted in Sufism,' said Lings, who is 96 and an adherent of Sufism. 'We can see he obviously knew a lot about some kind of equivalent sect or order.'
Lings argues that the guiding principles of Sufi thought are evident in Shakespeare's writing. The plays, he believes, depict a struggle between the dawning modernist world and the traditional, mystical value system. And, like the Sufis, the playwright is firmly on the side of tradition and spiritualism.
'It was the end of the Middle Ages and the birth of atheism,' he says. 'It was the beginning of the ideas of enlightenment and the beginning really of the modern era. Shakespeare is the last outpost of tradition.'
Sufi Muslim Survivors - you're not alone
Sufi Muslim Survivors - you're not aloneSufism is often described as the mystical branch of Islam. It is portrayed by some Muslims and the press as a peaceful, mystical alternative to extremism as well as traditionally conservative cultural interpretations of Islam. Perhaps this is true in some respect. But not in the West.
Sufism has appealed to Western Muslims for a the better part of two decades. Many of them are the children of immigrants, mainly from South Asia, but others are converts to Islam. Although there are Sufis from working class backgrounds, in the West, they tend to be very middle class and upper class people. Sufism also had a major influence on people who converted to Islam in the 60s.
In the wake of the disintegration of the fundamentalist Salafi movement, a movement known as 'Traditional Islam' has come in to take its place. Traditional Islam places importance on adhering to classical interpretations of Islamic law with the added dimension of following the shaykhs, or wise men, of the Sufi brotherhoods, known as tariqahs or tariqat. Seekers, known as dervishes or murids, take pledges of loyalty to their shaykhs, called a bayah. Different shaykhs use bayah differently. Some use it to exact extreme discipline and control on their murids, in the name of purifying them, while others are quite casual and do not interfere in the lives of their dervishes.
Traditional Islam gained a following in North America and the UK with the emergence of a man named Hamza Yusuf (Mark Hanson) from the United States. He is the founder of the Zaytuna Institute in California and a world known speaker and teacher of Islam. Although a bad experience from his youth causes him to place some distance between himself and the tariqat, it is Yusuf's Sufi-friendly teaching, his American evangelical style of teaching, and his middle class approachability that opened up a new generation to Sufism. Yusuf played a key role in introducing and promoting some of today's 'best known' Sufi teachers in North America and the UK. Among the men that he or his early students and followers introduced to the scene were Muhammad al-Yaqoubi of Syria (Shadhilli), Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Shadhilli), an American in Jordan, and Habib Ali al Jifri of Yemen (Ba-Alawi). Other Sufis who became popular in the wake of the rise of Traditional Islam are the many branches of Naqshbandism, mainly the Cypriot branch, the Jerrahis of Turkey, the Chishtis, the Mevlevis, and Sidi Jamal al Rifa'i of Jerusalem (Shadhilli), whose group has been written about on these forums before. An existing tariqah that had some limited appeal to Western Muslims was the Murabitun.
The past ten years have seen the rise and growth of the TM movement, as well as the growth of Sufism. The past two or three years, we are now seeing people leaving these brotherhoods, the movement and even Islam in droves. The problems we found are the same that you find in most any cult: pressure to give all or some of our earnings, inheritance, and other monies to the shaykhs; dodgy business and land schemes; outrageous claims of spiritual powers; sexual exploitation; and the forced isolation of followers in some groups. (As is usually the case, it is the women who are subject to most abuses.)
Diva behavior is common among Muslim leaders, but it seems as though the shaykhs take it to a new level. Demanding money and gifts is de rigeur, but some have taken it to new heights, demanding first class plane tickets everywhere they travel, and even that homes be purchased for them. The grumbling about ‘rock stars’ and ‘milk shaykhs’ has been going on for years.
Our tariqat had the added dimension of the authority of Islam. Our shaykhs are or claim to be authorities in Islamic law, and so their pronouncements carried the weight of heaven and hell, literally.
We know that some of the ex-murids have spent a long time online googling cults, sufis, tariqa, the names of shaykhs, and so on looking for stories from fellow survivors. You're not alone. We are here. We are the ones who walked away, we are the parents and families of those who are still in deep. Islamic law is telling us to be silent out of respect for the scholarly class. There is no place on the internet except for a few blogs where the issue of Islamic cults is being addressed. The blog scandals about the Sufis are just the beginning of people who say they're not going to be silent anymore. You're not crazy, you're not a bad Muslim. It is okay to leave. If something seems wrong to you that a shaykh is doing, it probably is.
Sufism wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Sufism or taṣawwuf (Arabic: تصوّف) is, according to its adherents, the inner, mystical dimension of Islam.[1][2][3] A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a ṣūfī (صُوفِيّ). Another name for a Sufi is Dervish.
Classical Sufi scholars have defined Sufism as "a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God."[4] Alternatively, in the words of the Darqawi Sufi teacher Ahmad ibn Ajiba, "a science through which one can know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one’s inner self from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits."[5]
EXCERPT:
Cat Stevens' comments about Salman Rushdie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
This article may contain material not appropriate for an encyclopedia. Please discuss this issue on the talk page.
Following Ayatollah Khomeini's February 14, 1989 death threat fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, convert to Islam and recording artist Yusuf Islam, previously known as Cat Stevens, made statements widely interpreted as endorsing the fatwa. This generated a furor among a number of celebrities, and free speech activists who spoke out about his comments on radio stations, and newspaper editorials in the West. In response, Yusuf Islam denied [1] that his statements were in support of the fatwa, and claimed he was merely giving his interpretation of Islamic law.[2] Critics claim several independent reports, including statements on video, belie his denials.[3] As of late 2008 videos on the issue are no longer available on the internet. [4]
[edit] Statements
On February 21, 1989, Yusuf Islam addressed students at Kingston University in London about his conversion to Islam and was asked about the controversy in the Muslim world and the fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie's execution. He replied, "He must be killed. The Qur'an makes it clear - if someone defames the prophet, then he must die." [5]
Newspapers quickly denounced what was seen as Yusuf Islam's support for the assassination of Rushdie and the next day Yusuf released a statement saying that he was not personally encouraging anybody to be a vigilante,[1] and that he was only stating that blasphemy is a capital offense according to the Qur'an.
However on March 8, 1989, while speaking in London's Regents Park Mosque, Yusuf Islam was asked by a Christian Science Monitor reporter how he would "cope with the idea of killing a writer for writing a book." He is reported to have replied:
In Islam there is a line between let's say freedom and the line which is then transgressed into immorality and irresponsibility and I think as far as this writer is concerned, unfortunately, he has been irresponsible with his freedom of speech. Salman Rushdie or indeed any writer who abuses the prophet, or indeed any prophet, under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death. It's got to be seen as a deterrent, so that other people should not commit the same mistake again.
Macbeth and Shakespeare
EXCERPT:
An examination of Macbeth and Shakespeare’s sources leads us to formulate several conclusions concerning the motives behind the dramatists alterations. It can be argued that the changes serve three main purposes: the dramatic purpose of producing a more exciting story than is found in the sources; the thematic purpose of creating a more complex characterization of Macbeth; and the political purpose of catering to the beliefs of the reigning monarch, King James the First. And, in the grander scheme, Shakespeare’s alterations function to convey the sentiment echoed in many of his works – that there is a divine right of kings, and that to usurp the throne is a nefarious crime against all of humanity.
Smith satanic verses
EXCERPTs:
1) The Satanic Verses were infamously burnt at a protest in Bradford. This protest formed part of the growing international demonstrations against the novel's publication, which culminated in a fatwa (a religious ruling or decree) being issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran, against Salman Rushdie on 14th February 1989 (see 'Ayatollah Khomeini', BBC, in Further Reading).
2) It's rather a long passage so for copyright reasons we are unable to include it here. It starts with a quotation from Shakespeare's Sonnets, 'Thy black is fairest in my judgement's place...', and it ends ' "By William Shakespeare: ODE TO LETITIA AND ALL MY KINKY-HAIRED BIG-ASS BITCHEZ." '. It can be found in White Teeth, pp. 270-272.]
Shakespeare: ODE TO LETITIA.......
EXCERPT:
Shakespeare: ODE TO LETITIA
AND ALL MY KINKY-HAIRED BIG-ASS BIT CHEZ
The Satanic Verses wikipedia
EXCERPT:
In the United Kingdom, the book received positive reviews. It was a 1988 Booker Prize Finalist (losing to Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda) and won the 1988 Whitbread Award for novel of the year.[2]
In the Muslim community, however, the novel caused great controversy for what many Muslims believed were blasphemous references. The book was banned in India, was burned in demonstrations in the United Kingdom, and was the subject of a violent riot in Pakistan. In February 1989, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling on all good Muslims to kill or help kill Rushdie and his publishers.[3] Following the fatwa, Rushdie was put under police protection by the British government. As of early 2010 Rushdie has not been physically harmed, but two of his translators were stabbed (one fatally), one of his publishers was shot, and many others have been killed during violent protests against the book.[4] Individual purchasers of the book have not been harmed.
Shakespearean Rushdie pdf
EXCERPT:ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 31.2 (December 2009): 9–22
ISSN 0210-6124
Shakespeare in Rushdie/Shakespearean Rushdie Geetha Ganapathy-Doré University of Paris 13 geetha.dore@univ-paris13.fr Postcolonial readers situate Shakespeare at the starting point and Salman Rushdie at the other end of the spectrum of multicultural authors who have laid claims to universality. While the fact that Rushdie’s epoch-making novel Midnight’s Children adapted for the theatre by Tim Supple, was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2003 would have come as a surprise to many, the Bard himself, his birthplace, allusions to and quotations from his work, parodic rewriting of his plots and brilliant recasting of his characters have always punctuated Rushdie’s fiction and non-fiction. The linguistic inventiveness of Shakespeare and Rushdie and the Ovidian intertext in both bring them even closer. This paper argues that the presence .................................................
Shakespeare and the Sufi Sect
EXCERPT:
The respected academic Dr Martin Lings will put forward this thesis in his lecture on 23 November. 'Shakespeare would have delighted in Sufism,' said Lings, who is 96 and an adherent of Sufism. 'We can see he obviously knew a lot about some kind of equivalent sect or order.'
Lings argues that the guiding principles of Sufi thought are evident in Shakespeare's writing. The plays, he believes, depict a struggle between the dawning modernist world and the traditional, mystical value system. And, like the Sufis, the playwright is firmly on the side of tradition and spiritualism.
'It was the end of the Middle Ages and the birth of atheism,' he says. 'It was the beginning of the ideas of enlightenment and the beginning really of the modern era. Shakespeare is the last outpost of tradition.'
Sufi Muslim Survivors - you're not alone
Sufi Muslim Survivors - you're not aloneSufism is often described as the mystical branch of Islam. It is portrayed by some Muslims and the press as a peaceful, mystical alternative to extremism as well as traditionally conservative cultural interpretations of Islam. Perhaps this is true in some respect. But not in the West.
Sufism has appealed to Western Muslims for a the better part of two decades. Many of them are the children of immigrants, mainly from South Asia, but others are converts to Islam. Although there are Sufis from working class backgrounds, in the West, they tend to be very middle class and upper class people. Sufism also had a major influence on people who converted to Islam in the 60s.
In the wake of the disintegration of the fundamentalist Salafi movement, a movement known as 'Traditional Islam' has come in to take its place. Traditional Islam places importance on adhering to classical interpretations of Islamic law with the added dimension of following the shaykhs, or wise men, of the Sufi brotherhoods, known as tariqahs or tariqat. Seekers, known as dervishes or murids, take pledges of loyalty to their shaykhs, called a bayah. Different shaykhs use bayah differently. Some use it to exact extreme discipline and control on their murids, in the name of purifying them, while others are quite casual and do not interfere in the lives of their dervishes.
Traditional Islam gained a following in North America and the UK with the emergence of a man named Hamza Yusuf (Mark Hanson) from the United States. He is the founder of the Zaytuna Institute in California and a world known speaker and teacher of Islam. Although a bad experience from his youth causes him to place some distance between himself and the tariqat, it is Yusuf's Sufi-friendly teaching, his American evangelical style of teaching, and his middle class approachability that opened up a new generation to Sufism. Yusuf played a key role in introducing and promoting some of today's 'best known' Sufi teachers in North America and the UK. Among the men that he or his early students and followers introduced to the scene were Muhammad al-Yaqoubi of Syria (Shadhilli), Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Shadhilli), an American in Jordan, and Habib Ali al Jifri of Yemen (Ba-Alawi). Other Sufis who became popular in the wake of the rise of Traditional Islam are the many branches of Naqshbandism, mainly the Cypriot branch, the Jerrahis of Turkey, the Chishtis, the Mevlevis, and Sidi Jamal al Rifa'i of Jerusalem (Shadhilli), whose group has been written about on these forums before. An existing tariqah that had some limited appeal to Western Muslims was the Murabitun.
The past ten years have seen the rise and growth of the TM movement, as well as the growth of Sufism. The past two or three years, we are now seeing people leaving these brotherhoods, the movement and even Islam in droves. The problems we found are the same that you find in most any cult: pressure to give all or some of our earnings, inheritance, and other monies to the shaykhs; dodgy business and land schemes; outrageous claims of spiritual powers; sexual exploitation; and the forced isolation of followers in some groups. (As is usually the case, it is the women who are subject to most abuses.)
Diva behavior is common among Muslim leaders, but it seems as though the shaykhs take it to a new level. Demanding money and gifts is de rigeur, but some have taken it to new heights, demanding first class plane tickets everywhere they travel, and even that homes be purchased for them. The grumbling about ‘rock stars’ and ‘milk shaykhs’ has been going on for years.
Our tariqat had the added dimension of the authority of Islam. Our shaykhs are or claim to be authorities in Islamic law, and so their pronouncements carried the weight of heaven and hell, literally.
We know that some of the ex-murids have spent a long time online googling cults, sufis, tariqa, the names of shaykhs, and so on looking for stories from fellow survivors. You're not alone. We are here. We are the ones who walked away, we are the parents and families of those who are still in deep. Islamic law is telling us to be silent out of respect for the scholarly class. There is no place on the internet except for a few blogs where the issue of Islamic cults is being addressed. The blog scandals about the Sufis are just the beginning of people who say they're not going to be silent anymore. You're not crazy, you're not a bad Muslim. It is okay to leave. If something seems wrong to you that a shaykh is doing, it probably is.
Sufism wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Sufism or taṣawwuf (Arabic: تصوّف) is, according to its adherents, the inner, mystical dimension of Islam.[1][2][3] A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a ṣūfī (صُوفِيّ). Another name for a Sufi is Dervish.
Classical Sufi scholars have defined Sufism as "a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God."[4] Alternatively, in the words of the Darqawi Sufi teacher Ahmad ibn Ajiba, "a science through which one can know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one’s inner self from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits."[5]
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Mexican Drug war
EXCERPT:
Mexico: Alleged chat between lawmaker, capo leaked
AP – Forensic police officers work at the crime scene where a body of a woman was found inside a car in Ciudad …
By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO, Associated Press Writer E. Eduardo Castillo, Associated Press Writer – 36 mins ago
MEXICO CITY – A radio station broadcast what it described as a telephone conversation in which a federal lawmaker and one of Mexico's biggest drug lords express support for each other.
W Radio said the alleged conversation took place last year between lawmaker Cesar Godoy Toscano and La Familia cartel leader Servando Gomez, known as "La Tuta." In it, Godoy and Gomez express support for each other and discuss bribing a reporter.
Godoy represents the western state of Michoacan, La Familia's stronghold. He already faces federal charges for allegedly protecting the cartel but has immunity from arrest because he is a congressman.
He was one of 36 people in Michoacan — including politicians, mayors, prosecutors, police and judges — accused last year of ties to La Familia, known for beheading rivals and bold attacks on soldiers and police.
EXCERPT:
Mexico: Alleged chat between lawmaker, capo leaked
AP – Forensic police officers work at the crime scene where a body of a woman was found inside a car in Ciudad …
By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO, Associated Press Writer E. Eduardo Castillo, Associated Press Writer – 36 mins ago
MEXICO CITY – A radio station broadcast what it described as a telephone conversation in which a federal lawmaker and one of Mexico's biggest drug lords express support for each other.
W Radio said the alleged conversation took place last year between lawmaker Cesar Godoy Toscano and La Familia cartel leader Servando Gomez, known as "La Tuta." In it, Godoy and Gomez express support for each other and discuss bribing a reporter.
Godoy represents the western state of Michoacan, La Familia's stronghold. He already faces federal charges for allegedly protecting the cartel but has immunity from arrest because he is a congressman.
He was one of 36 people in Michoacan — including politicians, mayors, prosecutors, police and judges — accused last year of ties to La Familia, known for beheading rivals and bold attacks on soldiers and police.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Fallujah Fallout worse than Hiroshima video
Christopher Busby wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Christopher Busby (born 1945) is a British scientist and activist known for his work on the health effects of ionising radiation. In addition to his academic appointments he is the director of Green Audit, an environmental consultancy agency,[1] and scientific advisor to the Low Level Radiation Campaign which he set up in 1995.[2] Busby was also the National Speaker on Science and Technology for the Green Party of England and Wales,[verification needed][3] and the Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risks, based in Brussels.
Fallujah is worse than Hiroshima
EXCERPT:
Layla Anwar
July 2, 2010
The information is too important not to jot down...this is a rushed post.
I just finished watching a re-run of Ahmad Mansour's Al-Jazeera Arabic - interview with Prof.Chris Busby. Prof Busby is a Scientist and Director of Green Audit, and scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risks. To find out more on Prof Chris Busby and his work -- Google -- Chris Busby Uranium.
Prof Busby has published many articles on radiation, uranium and contamination in countries such as Lebanon, Kosovo, Gaza and of course Iraq.
His latest findings - which were the subject of the program aired on Al-Jazeera are what I will focus on here.
As some of you know, Falluja is a forbidden city. It was subjected to intense bombardments in 2004, with DU bombs and White phosphorus, and since it has become a no go zone - meaning that both the Iraqi puppet authorities and the U.S invading/occupying forces do not allow anyone to conduct any real study in Falluja. Falluja is basically under siege.
Christopher Busby wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Christopher Busby (born 1945) is a British scientist and activist known for his work on the health effects of ionising radiation. In addition to his academic appointments he is the director of Green Audit, an environmental consultancy agency,[1] and scientific advisor to the Low Level Radiation Campaign which he set up in 1995.[2] Busby was also the National Speaker on Science and Technology for the Green Party of England and Wales,[verification needed][3] and the Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risks, based in Brussels.
Fallujah is worse than Hiroshima
EXCERPT:
Layla Anwar
July 2, 2010
The information is too important not to jot down...this is a rushed post.
I just finished watching a re-run of Ahmad Mansour's Al-Jazeera Arabic - interview with Prof.Chris Busby. Prof Busby is a Scientist and Director of Green Audit, and scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risks. To find out more on Prof Chris Busby and his work -- Google -- Chris Busby Uranium.
Prof Busby has published many articles on radiation, uranium and contamination in countries such as Lebanon, Kosovo, Gaza and of course Iraq.
His latest findings - which were the subject of the program aired on Al-Jazeera are what I will focus on here.
As some of you know, Falluja is a forbidden city. It was subjected to intense bombardments in 2004, with DU bombs and White phosphorus, and since it has become a no go zone - meaning that both the Iraqi puppet authorities and the U.S invading/occupying forces do not allow anyone to conduct any real study in Falluja. Falluja is basically under siege.
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