August 31, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The company now known as Premier Election Solutions —formerly Diebold, long criticized by election integrity activists for unverifiable, unreliable touchscreen machines (achieving maximum notoriety when its chief executive said he would “do anything” in his power to win Ohio for Bush in 2004)—, has acknowledged that its machines have been “losing votes”, malfunctioning, and providing erroneous counts for more than a decade, affecting elections in 34 states.
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August 31, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Three years to the day after the catastrophe that was Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, Hurricane Gustav appeared to be heading for the US coast of the Gulf of Mexico, approaching category 4 status. The city of New Orleans is, as a result, actively bracing for a direct hit and possible storm surge. Mandatory evacuations officially began at 8am Saturday, with the city providing assistance to those leaving their homes.
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August 30, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
It was September 6th, 2005, just days after the Hurricane struck the Gulf Coast and flooding overtook New Orleans. At the time, I was on a job in Joplin, Missouri and had grown restless from watching helplessly as the images of the hurricane’s aftermath repeated themselves on my motel television. I went online and found a link to an organization called Katrina Caravan Rescue. I called the number and left a message. Their purpose was to find volunteers who could provide transportation to evacuees currently in Houston who secured future shelter but had no way of getting there.
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August 29, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Last night, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) told the Democratic National Convention that “at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.” John McCain has chosen a vice-presidential running mate from as far away from Washington as you can get: first-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin, a strong backer of new drilling and a young female conservative with a reputation for reform. The pick appears in many ways designed to inoculate the McCain campaign against a number of the advantages the Obama-Biden ticket has accumulated.
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August 29, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Over the 4 days of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, media analysts have repeatedly asked where the real ‘red meat’ was? Who would throw the red meat to the delegates hungry for an affirmation of the party’s cause and will to fight? Who will blitz John McCain with attacks and insults. There was, apparently, a resistance to believing that Barack Obama’s message might be real, that he could defend his ideas and take the fight to his opponent without demeaning or smearing him. The speech Obama delivered last night demonstrated with astonishing clarity that the red meat he’s throwing to his audience is not insults or attacks, but a vision of possibility and a call to action in common values.
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August 29, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
China is choking under a thick covering of contaminants produced from burning carbon-based fuels for industrial production, power-generation, and transport. Environmental degradation is so rampant that much of the northwest of the country is being lost to rapidly expanding deserts. And desertification threatens the already shaky balance between China’s available arable land and its skyrocketing demand for cheap food. Policy makers and market theorists in China and abroad should be thinking about whether that desert can produce something to help China escape the mounting environmental and public health cataclysm.
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August 29, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
We meet at one of those defining moments – a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more. Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can’t afford to drive, credit card bills you can’t afford to pay, and tuition that’s beyond your reach.
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August 28, 2008 :: staff :: 4 Comments
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
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August 28, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
As is usually the case in a presidential election year, we are hearing non-stop talk about cutting taxes. The Republican candidate, as usual, relentlessly accuses his Democratic opponent of conspiring to “raise taxes” and “punish” American businesses for success. And as usual, we are being deprived of an opportunity to really examine the facts of the matter. The truth is, both Obama and McCain are proposing their own tax-cut plans, but we might be better served by thinking about tax-credits, and what they should be aimed at achieving.
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August 28, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Last night, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton interrupted the roll-call vote, asking her New York delegation to support her call for nomination by acclamation; the delegates supported the motion, and Sen. Barack Obama, far ahead in the delegate count, was officially nominated to be the candidate of his party for the presidency. Clinton had spoken the night before, giving her full support to Obama’s candidacy, saying the future of our children and of the nation “hang in the balance”, at risk should McCain win the November election.
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August 27, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
On the opening night of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, police arrested a man during a traffic stop. Tharin Gartrell was detained on weapons and drugs charges, then linked to a possible plot to assassinate Sen. Obama in Denver. After Gartrell was linked to a local hotel where more arrests ensued, and one suspect said his associates had discussed killing Barack Obama. The group are alleged to be white supremacists, but police say they believe there is now no credible threat from this group to Sen. Obama during his appearance on Thursday.
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August 26, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) tonight called on her supporters to give the full support to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), who defeated her in the Democratic primary process. Clinton’s rousing speech sparked numerous ovations, and moved many in the audience of Democratic party devotees to tears, including her husband, former president Bill Clinton. The catch phrase that may be most widely quoted by the press was her “No way, no how, no McCain” quip.
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August 26, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
The Democratic National Convention kicked off last night in Denver, Colorado, with the expected lavishing of praise on candidate Barack Obama. But delegates were roused emotionally, as was VP candidate Joe Biden, when a moving tribute to Democratic “lion of the Senate” Teddy Kennedy was followed by Pres. Kennedy’s daughter Caroline introducing the Massachusetts senator himself, who fought through cancer treatment to address the convention and call for Obama’s election. Michelle Obama, the candidate’s wife, gave her first national address, talking of family, and the candidate’s love for the nation and devotion to public service.
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August 26, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
What is that abridgment and selection we observe in all spiritual activity, but itself the creative impulse? for it is the inlet of that higher illumination which teaches to convey a larger sense by simpler symbols. What is a man but nature’s finer success in self-explication? What is a man but a finer and compacter landscape than the horizon figures, — nature’s eclecticism? and what is his speech, his love of painting, love of nature, but a still finer success? all the weary miles and tons of space and bulk left out, and the spirit or moral of it contracted into a musical word, or the most cunning stroke of the pencil?
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August 25, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
As the US economy goes through one major shock after another —in jobs, stocks, housing, banking, general inflation, food prices and energy—, with economists saying this is the worst economic trauma since the Great Depression and the “dustbowl” of the 1930s, we are still hearing debate about whether we are in recession and whether or not consumer confidence is dropping off for material or psychological reasons. It just might be that the perspective of the average consumer is determined by actual spending ability.
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August 25, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
After years of protesting that withdrawal of troops was surrender, that it was opposed by Iraqis, and that a timetable was a “tool for terrorists”, the US government is now formulating an agreement scheduling withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, with the last forces out by 2011. The advance is largely based on political motivations of Iraqi officials, facing reelection, who have called for withdrawal sooner rather than later, many alleging the mere presence of foreign forces increases the risk of violence.
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August 24, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has chosen Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) to be his running mate. Biden brings a wealth of experience from nearly 36 years in the US senate, including work on military and foreign policy, as well as Constitutional issues and the Senate judiciary committee. The two appeared for the first time as running mates in front of the old Illinois Statehouse, in Springfield, where Abraham Lincoln launched his candidacy, as did Obama fully 18 months ago.
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August 24, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) recently joked at an event in Colorado that he was there “to take your water”, a tongue-in-cheek reference to his pronouncements on the need to “renegotiate” the terms of the Colorado River Compact, which determines how much water each of the 7 states in the Colorado Basin can draw from the river. The joke has become fodder for McCain’s opponents, at the national and local level. Colorado’s governor told the press, in a call reportedly organized by the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), that the reference raised serious concerns about the favorability of McCain’s water policies to his state.
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August 23, 2008 :: The Editors :: Comments Off
The campaign of Sen. Barack Obama has announced the senator from Illinois has chosen his running mate, but Obama says he will not disclose the choice before informing his supporters via text message. The media are scrambling to weed out what information is available, eliminating names from the widely acknowledged “short list”, as confirmation comes [...]
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August 21, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
NATO has held an emergency meeting and has issued a statement saying “normal relations” with Russia cannot be resumed until it removes its forces from Georgian territory. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov has accused the alliance of “bias”, even as reports continue to emerge of Russian forces occupying Georgia’s vital Black Sea port of Poti, an apparent move to control its hydrocarbon trade.
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August 19, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
Pres. Pervez Musharraf, the former general who seized power in a military coup, and whose rivals have now won back control of Parliament, was facing impeachment for allegedly violating the constitution in the course of his efforts to control the political environment through use of the military. Facing what looked like near certain impeachment, Pres. Musharraf has announced his resignation in a nationally televised address, turning over the reins of power, and hoping to escape conviction.
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August 17, 2008 :: AlexS :: One Comment
THE LAST YAK, PANGOLIN’S TEATIME, PLEASANCE DOME
****
Pangolin’s Teatime are a young Edinburgh-based puppet theatre company, who in 2007 picked up a clutch of awards at the National Student Drama Festival for their previous work Haozkla. This year they return to the Fringe with a new original production, and have created a thoughtful, mature fairy tale about power, reality and the magic of belief. With lovingly handcrafted masks and puppets, some rod, some glove, and a flair for storytelling, this is a beautifully thought-through work that should appeal to adult and child alike.
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August 17, 2008 :: AlexS :: Comments Off
TALKING HEADS PLUS, GEMS OF MAZAL, THE MEADOWS
***
Alan Bennett is much admired and much performed, but his characters are currently being given voice in a more unusual setting than he is probably used to. Stop by the Sainsbury’s Local on the Meadows this Fringe at around 6pm, and you’re likely to be greeted by a group of twentysomethings milling about, a skateboard doing the rounds, chirpily singing songs, before one of them begins narrating an excerpt of what sounds like Roald Dahl in a heightened voice. As he starts his speech, the company sets off down Middle Meadow Walk into the greenery, trailing an audience behind them. This is Talking Heads Plus, combining Bennett’s much-loved pieces with works by other authors, and claiming to bring the monologue form to life as you’ve never seen before.
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August 16, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
CNN has shown images of Russian tanks advancing to their closest perimeter around the Georgian captial, Tbilisi, since the invasion began, even as US Secretary of State Rice is in the capital, urging a Russian pullout, and persuading the Georgian president to sign a potential peace accord. Rhetoric from the US administration has reached the level of ordering Russia to withdraw or face long-term consequences in its relationship with the US and its standing on the international stage.
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August 14, 2008 :: AlexS :: Comments Off
SCARAMOUCHE JONES, GUY MASTERSON TTI, ASSEMBLY SUPPER ROOM
*****
Justin Butcher is a man of many talents. Not content with penning a sumptuous script, full of wonder, lyricism, evocative imagery and beautifully crafted turns of phrase, as a performer he also keeps the audience wrapped in his spell for an hour and a half, never slackening or flagging. It’s an extraordinary achievement, and Scaramouche Jones is as delightful, funny, moving and thoughtful a Fringe show as could be hoped for.
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August 14, 2008 :: AlexS :: Comments Off
TITUS ANDRONICUS, ACTION TO THE WORD, C VENUE
***
Fringe productions of Shakespeare are usually best approached with caution. Everyone wants to have a go and show their mettle, and the temptation to add their own mark to the works by offering a “reinterpretation” often begs for disaster – Hamlet in space, perhaps, or The Tempest re-enacted as a Marxist parable of the evils of modern society. Occasionally it’s a spectacular success, as with the Midsummer-Night’s-Dream-in-a-roller-disco of The Donkey Show, a recent Edinburgh Fringe smash hit that went on to a run in London’s West End and from there to New York. The list of equally spectacular failures stretches on into the middle distance. Cambridge University-born company Action to the Word’s version of Titus Andronicus falls squarely between these two stools, passing the test with, if not a distinction, then enough merit to be shared round the sizeable cast, without ever really breaking any new ground.
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August 14, 2008 :: lucyribchester :: Comments Off
‘Clown is failure,’ says Chris Mitchem, co-founder of Barcelona-based theatre company Clownfish. ‘What makes a good clown is the ability to accept failure.’ I hope he’s right. My attempt to attend the first day of Clown Theory, a five-day course run by US-born clown Jango Edwards, is a bit of a disaster. The workshop, Jango says, will make you ‘remember everything you forgot’, and is based on re-learning the innocence we are all born with. Jango, whose past audiences include the Rolling Stones and Salvador Dalí, is convinced anyone can become a clown. He’s had all sorts from taxi drivers to journalists take the course, and even persuaded an Italian policewoman to give it a go while she was giving him a speeding fine. She now directs a show with him called 00Clown, ‘where she plays a cop.’
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August 13, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
Georgian pres. Mikheil Saakashvili has said he fears Russia’s military action against his nation is the start of a “chain of events”, rooted in “never-ending appetite” of those he views as Russia’s militarists, that could compromise security across the Sough Caucasus, eastern Europe and the Middle East. He also accuses Russia of having no intention of honoring the tentative ceasefire that was announced yesterday. Russia today has told the United States it must choose between supporting Georgia or being able to cooperate with Russian in other international affairs.
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August 13, 2008 :: l.johr :: Comments Off
Geothermal energy is increasingly being touted by scientists and researchers as one of the most efficient and environmentally friendly sources of power available. Currently, geothermal sources supply enough energy, 2,800 megawatts, to run 2.8 million American homes.
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August 13, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
Separatist rebels on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao are engaged in intensifying clashes with government forces, and reports suggest as many as 130,000 civilians have fled their homes to escape the violence. Now, observers have expressed concern of a mounting humanitarian disaster, with refugees in danger and supplies running short or unable to reach some remote areas. The violence has intensified after a Supreme Court ruling blocked the implementation of an expanded ethnic Muslim territory.
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August 12, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Reports of Russia’s escalation of the invasion of Georgian territory suggest more than 10,000 ground troops are now in South Ossetia, and ballistic missile attacks (at least 15 fired so far) have included targets across the entire Georgian state. Georgian pres. Mikhail Saakashvili has been forced to seek cover, as security forces feared he was in danger of being hit by a Russian airstrike.
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August 11, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
News reports suggest that 7 bomb suspects and at least one security guard were killed after a bombing attack on police and government facilities in China’s far western Xinjiang province. Xinjiang is one of the regions that many believe may attempt to separate from China, if there is any opportunity, political or military to do so. There are active separatist movements there, a large Muslim population that wants independence from Communist China, and they see the example of former Soviet republics of central Asia as evidence that independence is possible.
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August 10, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The World Bank estimates that 750,000 people are killed each year by China’s impenetrable pollution problem; and 400 million people are expected to migrate to China’s already super-saturated metropoli by the year 2025. China is now burning one-third of the world’s coal for electric-power generation, and has opted to move its national transport infrastructure toward the automobile, a potentially catastrophic choice that could have a decidedly negative impact on health and economic wellbeing across the world.
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August 9, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The BBC is reporting a Russian air strike inside Georgia, against the town of Gori, near the South Ossetia border, resulted in 60 civilian casualties in two apartnment blocks. Russia also reports two fighter jets were shot down by Georgian defense forces (Georgia claims to have downed at least 10 jets). The New York Times reports that “Russian officials said that 1,500 civilians had been killed in South Ossetia and that 12 Russian troops had died”. The Georgian parliament has voted to back a “presidential decree declaring a state of war”, which will remain in effect for 15 days.
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August 8, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
US ally and former Soviet republic, Georgia, has announced it plans to withdraw its 2,000 military personnel from Iraq to return them to Georgia in order to defend against what appears to be a Russian ground invasion of Georgian territory. The Russian’s military operations in “breakaway province South Ossetia”, along Georgia’s border with the Russian [...]
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August 7, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The government of US pres. George W. Bush has staked its legacy in the “war on terror” on a series of military tribunals, in which it intends to bring to judgment a number of accused terrorist suspects held at the US naval facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. After a series of setbacks, including rulings against proposed prosecution procedures on Constitutional grounds, and the granting of access for detainees to federal appeals courts, the first “military commissions” judgment was handed down yesterday, showing some of the cracks in the process.
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August 5, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
New York is a place where everything is just a little off kilter, pushed and angled by unwavering momentum, but there is flow and the hope of flow working in the depths of personal metaphysical craft, there is the dewy first light of possibility and the wisdom of the tempest-tossed, if —as Kipling says it— “you can meet triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same”.
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August 4, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 7 Comments
Everyone is alone in the world, separate from all else, at all times, and never truly capable of saying with certainty that things could be otherwise. This is both a fundamental existential problem and a flawed way of looking at human relationships. It is true: each individual is separated from the world by his or her perceptions, but: there is a reason why human beings cooperate, why we integrate ourselves into larger social fabrics, why we maintain relationships from birth to death, or for as long as possible.
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August 4, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The new book, The Dark Side, by Jane Mayer, goes to the roots of the Bush administration’s bold modifications to long-standing security policy, including an apparent devotion to the use of extreme interrogation methods, classed by both law and judicial precedent as torture, to extract information from detainees, despite such actions negating the possibility of any established form of prosecution based on such evidence.
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