Capital punishment is wrong. Even the most corrupt of Illinois governors figured that out. If no other reason persuades you, the risk that you execute an innocent person alone, makes it wrong.
That someone could document this in art, is sobering.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
http://subtlebraininjury.com
http://thelegaltimes.net
http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com
http://vestibulardisorder.com
http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
g@gordonjohnson.com
800-992-9447
©Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr. 2008
Date: 12/30/2008 7:19 PM
On death row, Nigerian draws the hanged
By KATY POWNALL
Associated Press Writer
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — The doomed man’s eyes stare blankly ahead as he shuffles down a dark corridor, spreading a hush through the death-row cells. The hangman pushes a black hood over the convict’s head and tightens a noose around his neck. The trapdoor opens beneath his feet with a clang that reverberates around the stone walls. A gurgle, one last rattle of chains, then silence.
Through the iron bars of his cell near the gallows of this Nigerian prison, Arthur Judah Angel watched the hangman do his morbid work for almost a decade, witnessing the hangings of more than 450 of his fellow convicts. He committed their names to memory and many of their images to paper.
Now, 51 drawings that survived Angel’s incarceration are attracting the attention of human rights activists and art lovers alike, allowing the artist to turn his years of horror into activism against the death penalty.
“I had to document our ugly world,” said Angel, 46, who spent a total of 16 years in prison for a murder he says he didn’t commit before being freed in 2000. “It was drawing that kept me going in there. It gave me a purpose.”
Angel was beaten and thrown behind bars in January 1984 when he went to visit a friend who had been taken into custody at a neighborhood police station. He was 21 then and planned to begin university that year.
Five days later he was charged with murdering a policeman. Police asked for a bribe to free him, but his mother was too poor to pay, he says. So Angel was held for two years until his case went to court. After a six-day trial in which police were both the complainants and the only witnesses, he was sentenced to hang.
On death row, he lived in a seven-foot-square (2.1-meter-square) cell with up to 13 other condemned criminals. A bucket in the corner was the toilet. At night the cellmates had to lie down side-by-side to sleep. If one wanted to turn in the night, he would have to stand and then squeeze himself back in.
The cell was one of 18 which housed over 200 condemned men in Enugu prison — one of Nigeria’s largest.
A detailed pencil drawing by Angel on rough pink cardboard shows the semi-naked prisoners hunched in awkward positions. Scrawled across the grimy walls are the names of previous occupants and the dates of their execution. Angel named the drawing “Sleeping in Limbo.”
“That existence is one between life and death. You don’t belong to either world,” Angel explains.
Condemned criminals were not allowed to keep pens or paper so Angel’s first prison drawing was done on a cell wall with charcoal smuggled from the kitchen. It was a cartoon cowboy designed to cheer up his cellmates, but it also caught the eye of the wardens.
“They started coming to me and asking me to do drawings for them,” he recalled. “I would draw cards or portraits for them and in return they would allow me a pencil and a spare piece of paper.”
By night, Angel turned his artistic focus from the images he was commissioned to do, to the macabre sights around him.
The cell’s concrete roof had a small hole in the center that provided a circle of light when the moon shone. Angel would jostle for position beneath the hole and squat with a sheet of paper on his knees to do his secret drawings.
Some of his pictures are scrawled on book pages, others on faded cardboard. Many are rough at the edges, slightly torn or damaged by moisture. Most of these dark artworks did not survive.
The 51 that endured were smuggled out by his parents when they visited. These now provide a unique insight into daily life on death row: from the shuffling, chained and hooded figures driven by the guards’ clubs toward the gallows, to the stooped heads and empty expressions of the other inmates, a captive audience at the execution.
“You don’t know if next time it will be your time to go,” Angel says. “From Monday to Friday you expect executions in the morning. When the gallows are prepared, we all got nervous. You hear the chains clanking, and the trap door banging. You see the hangman walk past the cells. Most inmates don’t have the strength to eat before midday.”
Angel was prepared for execution once — fed his last meal with his legs chained — but at the end of the day his name was removed from the list.
“I once saw 58 executed in one day,” he says. “But I wasn’t meant to die in there.”
In October, Amnesty International asked the Nigerian government to declare a moratorium on executions, saying the country’s criminal justice system was “riddled with corruption, negligence and a nearly criminal lack of resources.”
The London-based rights group said over half of the 736 inmates facing death were convicted on the basis of written confessions that many said were extracted under torture.
In addition, at least 80 death row inmates were sentenced with no right to appeal, Amnesty said, and others faced decades of delays on appeals because of missing case files or a lack of lawyers to represent them. The group used Angel’s images to illustrate its reports and organized exhibitions of his work to further its campaign against the death penalty.
In what amounts to an acknowledgment of flaws in its criminal justice system, the government has appointed two commissions of inquiry, both of which also recommended a moratorium on death sentences.
No such action has been taken, but on Nov. 14, President Umaru Yar’Adua pardoned a man who had been on death row for 22 years and ordered the justice minister and attorney-general to review prison inmates’ records and bring other “deserving cases” to his attention. It was not clear what prompted the pardon or what constituted “deserving cases.”
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation, with 140 million people according to government census figures. Despite being Africa’s biggest oil producer, poverty, violent crime and corruption are widespread.
Angel’s luck changed when a representative of the British Council, the British government-funded cultural organization, got one of his drawings. He visited Angel on death row and organized two exhibitions of his work in Enugu town in 1993 and 1994.
The exhibitions were well attended and widely covered by the media, and soon petition drives were organized to demand Angel’s release. In 1995, a prominent human rights lawyer took his case and after a series of appeals he was released in February 2000.
Angel now works as an artist and a human rights activist, painting in a small studio in a rundown suburb of Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city. He has married and has three small children.
He sells the portraits and landscapes he now paints, but his real passion remains the works depicting what he saw in prison. Rights groups from around the world have used his 51 death row works to lobby for the abolition of the death sentence, and Angel says he could never sell the
m.
“These works represent the 16 years that were taken from my life,” and even if Nigeria abolishes the death penalty, the pictures “will remind the government that we mustn’t go back to such a time,” he says. “These are works that price tags cannot be attached to.”
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
Dictator Stalin voted third-greatest Russian
Editor’s Note:
I am intrigued by the below AP story for several reasons. My first concern is the likelihood that more than half of Americans have no idea who Josef Stalin was. In a day and age when much focus is given to genocide, such is a tragic piece of ignorance. See http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/11/20/sbm.overview/index.html#cnnSTCText
But as the below story points out, Stalin was a difficult figure to completely demonize. The ultimate Demon of our times, Adolf Hitler, was defeated largely by the Russian people, under the leadership of Stalin. Had a weaker man been in charge of the Soviet Union at such time, the Russians might have collapsed or made a tortured peace which could have doomed England and our Western theories of democracy. Yet even World War II is a contrast between good and evil as Stalin’s pact with Hitler in 1939 gave Hitler the confidence to invade Poland, starting the War and leading to the virtual destruction of European Jewry.
The “requiem” for American education is the need for greater understanding of Europe and especially the current relevancy of World War II in our current world political climate. I wish high schools would teach a class just in World War II. In the absence of such a class, I highly recommend the massive history of World War II in Herman Wouk’s Winds of War and War and Remembrance. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords;=Herman+Wouk&x;=0&y;=0 Both books have been made into terrific mini-series, available in DVD, also at Amazon.
For myself, I confess I have never heard of the Russians who finished in first and second place in this poll.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
http://subtlebraininjury.com
http://thelegaltimes.net
http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com
http://vestibulardisorder.com
http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
g@gordonjohnson.com
800-992-9447
©Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr. 2008
Date: 12/28/2008 5:38 PM
By DAVID NOWAK
Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW (AP) — Television viewers have voted Soviet dictator Josef Stalin — who sent millions to their deaths in the Great Purge of the 1930s — Russia’s third-greatest historical figure.
Rights activists have blasted Stalin’s inclusion in the 90-day, nationwide project by the state-run Rossiya channel. They say authorities are trying to gloss over Stalin’s atrocities and glorify his tyranny.
The project, called “The Name of Russia,” culminated with the announcement Sunday night that Russian medieval leader Alexander Nevsky had been voted the greatest Russian, with more than 524,000 Internet and SMS votes. Stalin garnered more than 519,000 votes, and even led in early voting.
Nevsky defeated various European invaders during his 13th-century reign and was subsequently canonized.
In second place was Pyotr Stolypin, a prime minister early in the 20th century under Czar Nicholas II. Stolypin was recognized for land reform but gained notoriety for his brutal quashing of leftist revolutionaries. He saw to it that thousands were hanged for attempting to overthrow the imperial rulers. Stolypin received more than 523,000 votes,
The 12-person shortlist for Sunday’s final vote featured various historical heavyweights from writers Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Soviet father Lenin and Ivan the Terrible.
Similar votes have been run by television channels in a number of other countries.
The rules excluded any living person, including Russia’s popular ruling tandem of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
In presenting Stalin, the project’s Web site, www.nameofrussia.ru, refers to the terror he imposed, and acknowledges that millions died of starvation and in the large network of hard labor camps he created to punish so-called “enemies of the people” and scare the population into obedience.
It goes on to say, however, that: “For all the defects of the Stalin modernization, it should be recognized that all the tasks set before the country were completed.”
Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki human rights watchdog, has called Stalin’s inclusion a “requiem for humanitarian education.”
Medvedev and Putin, who was previously president, have faced constant criticism for gradually reintroducing authoritarian policies that many associate with the repressive society of the former Soviet Union.
In the latest such move, a bill that Putin’s cabinet submitted earlier this month calls for a redefinition of state treason. If the law is passed by the subservient chambers of parliament, any act or inaction that is considered to have harmed the state can be classified as treason — punishable by 20 years in prison.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
I am intrigued by the below AP story for several reasons. My first concern is the likelihood that more than half of Americans have no idea who Josef Stalin was. In a day and age when much focus is given to genocide, such is a tragic piece of ignorance. See http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/11/20/sbm.overview/index.html#cnnSTCText
But as the below story points out, Stalin was a difficult figure to completely demonize. The ultimate Demon of our times, Adolf Hitler, was defeated largely by the Russian people, under the leadership of Stalin. Had a weaker man been in charge of the Soviet Union at such time, the Russians might have collapsed or made a tortured peace which could have doomed England and our Western theories of democracy. Yet even World War II is a contrast between good and evil as Stalin’s pact with Hitler in 1939 gave Hitler the confidence to invade Poland, starting the War and leading to the virtual destruction of European Jewry.
The “requiem” for American education is the need for greater understanding of Europe and especially the current relevancy of World War II in our current world political climate. I wish high schools would teach a class just in World War II. In the absence of such a class, I highly recommend the massive history of World War II in Herman Wouk’s Winds of War and War and Remembrance. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords;=Herman+Wouk&x;=0&y;=0 Both books have been made into terrific mini-series, available in DVD, also at Amazon.
For myself, I confess I have never heard of the Russians who finished in first and second place in this poll.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
http://subtlebraininjury.com
http://thelegaltimes.net
http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com
http://vestibulardisorder.com
http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
g@gordonjohnson.com
800-992-9447
©Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr. 2008
Date: 12/28/2008 5:38 PM
By DAVID NOWAK
Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW (AP) — Television viewers have voted Soviet dictator Josef Stalin — who sent millions to their deaths in the Great Purge of the 1930s — Russia’s third-greatest historical figure.
Rights activists have blasted Stalin’s inclusion in the 90-day, nationwide project by the state-run Rossiya channel. They say authorities are trying to gloss over Stalin’s atrocities and glorify his tyranny.
The project, called “The Name of Russia,” culminated with the announcement Sunday night that Russian medieval leader Alexander Nevsky had been voted the greatest Russian, with more than 524,000 Internet and SMS votes. Stalin garnered more than 519,000 votes, and even led in early voting.
Nevsky defeated various European invaders during his 13th-century reign and was subsequently canonized.
In second place was Pyotr Stolypin, a prime minister early in the 20th century under Czar Nicholas II. Stolypin was recognized for land reform but gained notoriety for his brutal quashing of leftist revolutionaries. He saw to it that thousands were hanged for attempting to overthrow the imperial rulers. Stolypin received more than 523,000 votes,
The 12-person shortlist for Sunday’s final vote featured various historical heavyweights from writers Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Soviet father Lenin and Ivan the Terrible.
Similar votes have been run by television channels in a number of other countries.
The rules excluded any living person, including Russia’s popular ruling tandem of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
In presenting Stalin, the project’s Web site, www.nameofrussia.ru, refers to the terror he imposed, and acknowledges that millions died of starvation and in the large network of hard labor camps he created to punish so-called “enemies of the people” and scare the population into obedience.
It goes on to say, however, that: “For all the defects of the Stalin modernization, it should be recognized that all the tasks set before the country were completed.”
Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki human rights watchdog, has called Stalin’s inclusion a “requiem for humanitarian education.”
Medvedev and Putin, who was previously president, have faced constant criticism for gradually reintroducing authoritarian policies that many associate with the repressive society of the former Soviet Union.
In the latest such move, a bill that Putin’s cabinet submitted earlier this month calls for a redefinition of state treason. If the law is passed by the subservient chambers of parliament, any act or inaction that is considered to have harmed the state can be classified as treason — punishable by 20 years in prison.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter dies at 78
Date: 12/25/2008 2:16 PM
By PAISLEY DODDS
Associated Press Writer
LONDON (AP) — British Nobel laureate Harold Pinter — who produced some of his generation’s most influential dramas and later became a staunch critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq — has died, his widow said Thursday. He was 78.
Pinter died Wednesday after a long battle with cancer, according to his second wife Antonia Fraser.
In recent years he had seized the platform offered by his 2005 Nobel Literature prize to denounce President George W. Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the war in Iraq.
But he was best known for exposing the complexities of the emotional battlefield.
His writing featured cool, menacing pauses in dialogue that reflected his characters’ deep emotional struggles and spawned a new adjective found in several dictionaries: “Pinter-esque.”
“Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles,” the Nobel Academy said. “With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution.”
His characters’ internal fears and longings, their guilt and difficult sexual drives were set against the neat lives they constructed in order to try to survive. Usually enclosed in one room, the acts usually illustrated the characters’ lives as a sort of grim game with actions that often contradicted words. Gradually, the layers were peeled back.
“How can you write a happy play?” he once said. “Drama is about conflict and degrees of perturbation, disarray. I’ve never been able to write a happy play, but I’ve been able to enjoy a happy life.”
Pinter wrote 32 plays; one novel, “The Dwarfs,” in 1990; and put his hand to 22 screenplays.
The working-class milieu of his first dramas reflected his early life as the son of a Jewish tailor from London’s East End.
Born Oct. 30, 1930, in the London neighborhood of Hackney, he was forced along with other children during World War II to evacuate to rural Cornwall in 1939. He was 14 before he returned. By then, he was entranced with Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway.
By 1950, Pinter had begun to publish poetry and appeared on stage as an actor. Pinter began to write for the stage, and published “The Room” in 1957.
A year later, his first major play, “The Birthday Party” was produced in the West End.
In it, intruders enter the retreat of Stanley, a young man who is hiding from childhood guilt. He becomes violent, telling them, “You stink of sin, you contaminate womankind.”
The play closed after just one week to disastrous reviews, but Pinter continued to write and was most prolific between 1957 and 1965.
“With his earliest work, he stood alone in British theater up against the bewilderment and incomprehension of critics, the audience and writers, too,” British playwright Tom Stoppard said when the Nobel Prize was announced.
“I find critics on the whole a pretty unnecessary bunch of people,” Pinter once said.
In “The Caretaker,” (1959) a manipulative old man threatens the relationship of two brothers, while “The Homecoming” (1964) explores the hidden rage and confused sexuality of an all-male household by inserting a woman.
In “Silence” and “Landscape,” (1967 and 1968) Pinter moved from exploring the underbelly of human life to showing the simultaneous levels of fantasy and reality that occupy the individual.
“The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don’t hear,” Pinter once said. “It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness.”
“Betrayal” (1978) was reportedly based on the disintegration of his marriage to actress Vivien Merchant, who appeared in many of his first plays.
Their marriage ended in 1980 after Pinter’s long affair with BBC presenter Joan Bakewell. He then married Fraser. Merchant died shortly afterward of alcoholism-related disease.
During the late 1980s, his work became more overtly political; he said he had a responsibility to pursue his role as “a citizen of the world in which I live, (and) insist upon taking responsibility.”
In the 1980s, Pinter’s only stage plays were one-acts: “A Kind of Alaska” (1982), “One for the Road” (1984) and the 20-minute “Mountain Language” (1988).
Off-stage he was also highly political: Pinter turned down former Prime Minister John Major’s offer of a knighthood and strongly attacked Blair when NATO bombed Serbia. He later referred to Blair a “deluded idiot” for supporting Bush’s war in Iraq.
He said he deeply regretted having voting for Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and Tony Blair in 1997.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Pinter a “great playwright and lucid, agitated and uncompromising humanist.”
He called the Nobel “a belated consecration of his immense work, but also an homage to a man’s courage and commitment against all forms of barbarism.”
The prize gave Pinter a global platform, from which he frequently and bitterly decried the Iraq war.
“The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law,” Pinter said in his Nobel lecture, which he recorded rather than traveling to the Swedish capital of Stockholm.
“How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?” he asked, in a hoarse voice.
Though he had been looking forward to giving the Nobel lecture — calling it “the longest speech I will ever have made” — he canceled his attendance at the award ceremony, and then announced he would skip the lecture as well on his doctor’s advice.
In March 2005, Pinter announced his retirement as a playwright to concentrate on politics. But he created a radio play, “Voices,” that was broadcast on BBC radio to mark his 75th birthday.
“I have written 29 plays, and I think that’s really enough,” Pinter said. “I think the world has had enough of my plays.”
Pinter’s influence was felt in the United States in the plays of Sam Shepard and David Mamet.
Friend and biographer Michael Billington said Pinter “was a political figure, a polemicist and carried on fierce battles against American foreign policy and often British foreign policy, but in private he was the most incredibly loyal of friends and generous of human beings.”
“He was a great man as well actually as a great playwright,” Billington said.
Pinter is survived by his son, Daniel, from his marriage to Merchant.
___
Associated Press writers Jill Lawless and Robert Barr in London and Michael Kuchwara in New York contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
By PAISLEY DODDS
Associated Press Writer
LONDON (AP) — British Nobel laureate Harold Pinter — who produced some of his generation’s most influential dramas and later became a staunch critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq — has died, his widow said Thursday. He was 78.
Pinter died Wednesday after a long battle with cancer, according to his second wife Antonia Fraser.
In recent years he had seized the platform offered by his 2005 Nobel Literature prize to denounce President George W. Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the war in Iraq.
But he was best known for exposing the complexities of the emotional battlefield.
His writing featured cool, menacing pauses in dialogue that reflected his characters’ deep emotional struggles and spawned a new adjective found in several dictionaries: “Pinter-esque.”
“Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles,” the Nobel Academy said. “With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution.”
His characters’ internal fears and longings, their guilt and difficult sexual drives were set against the neat lives they constructed in order to try to survive. Usually enclosed in one room, the acts usually illustrated the characters’ lives as a sort of grim game with actions that often contradicted words. Gradually, the layers were peeled back.
“How can you write a happy play?” he once said. “Drama is about conflict and degrees of perturbation, disarray. I’ve never been able to write a happy play, but I’ve been able to enjoy a happy life.”
Pinter wrote 32 plays; one novel, “The Dwarfs,” in 1990; and put his hand to 22 screenplays.
The working-class milieu of his first dramas reflected his early life as the son of a Jewish tailor from London’s East End.
Born Oct. 30, 1930, in the London neighborhood of Hackney, he was forced along with other children during World War II to evacuate to rural Cornwall in 1939. He was 14 before he returned. By then, he was entranced with Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway.
By 1950, Pinter had begun to publish poetry and appeared on stage as an actor. Pinter began to write for the stage, and published “The Room” in 1957.
A year later, his first major play, “The Birthday Party” was produced in the West End.
In it, intruders enter the retreat of Stanley, a young man who is hiding from childhood guilt. He becomes violent, telling them, “You stink of sin, you contaminate womankind.”
The play closed after just one week to disastrous reviews, but Pinter continued to write and was most prolific between 1957 and 1965.
“With his earliest work, he stood alone in British theater up against the bewilderment and incomprehension of critics, the audience and writers, too,” British playwright Tom Stoppard said when the Nobel Prize was announced.
“I find critics on the whole a pretty unnecessary bunch of people,” Pinter once said.
In “The Caretaker,” (1959) a manipulative old man threatens the relationship of two brothers, while “The Homecoming” (1964) explores the hidden rage and confused sexuality of an all-male household by inserting a woman.
In “Silence” and “Landscape,” (1967 and 1968) Pinter moved from exploring the underbelly of human life to showing the simultaneous levels of fantasy and reality that occupy the individual.
“The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don’t hear,” Pinter once said. “It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness.”
“Betrayal” (1978) was reportedly based on the disintegration of his marriage to actress Vivien Merchant, who appeared in many of his first plays.
Their marriage ended in 1980 after Pinter’s long affair with BBC presenter Joan Bakewell. He then married Fraser. Merchant died shortly afterward of alcoholism-related disease.
During the late 1980s, his work became more overtly political; he said he had a responsibility to pursue his role as “a citizen of the world in which I live, (and) insist upon taking responsibility.”
In the 1980s, Pinter’s only stage plays were one-acts: “A Kind of Alaska” (1982), “One for the Road” (1984) and the 20-minute “Mountain Language” (1988).
Off-stage he was also highly political: Pinter turned down former Prime Minister John Major’s offer of a knighthood and strongly attacked Blair when NATO bombed Serbia. He later referred to Blair a “deluded idiot” for supporting Bush’s war in Iraq.
He said he deeply regretted having voting for Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and Tony Blair in 1997.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Pinter a “great playwright and lucid, agitated and uncompromising humanist.”
He called the Nobel “a belated consecration of his immense work, but also an homage to a man’s courage and commitment against all forms of barbarism.”
The prize gave Pinter a global platform, from which he frequently and bitterly decried the Iraq war.
“The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law,” Pinter said in his Nobel lecture, which he recorded rather than traveling to the Swedish capital of Stockholm.
“How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?” he asked, in a hoarse voice.
Though he had been looking forward to giving the Nobel lecture — calling it “the longest speech I will ever have made” — he canceled his attendance at the award ceremony, and then announced he would skip the lecture as well on his doctor’s advice.
In March 2005, Pinter announced his retirement as a playwright to concentrate on politics. But he created a radio play, “Voices,” that was broadcast on BBC radio to mark his 75th birthday.
“I have written 29 plays, and I think that’s really enough,” Pinter said. “I think the world has had enough of my plays.”
Pinter’s influence was felt in the United States in the plays of Sam Shepard and David Mamet.
Friend and biographer Michael Billington said Pinter “was a political figure, a polemicist and carried on fierce battles against American foreign policy and often British foreign policy, but in private he was the most incredibly loyal of friends and generous of human beings.”
“He was a great man as well actually as a great playwright,” Billington said.
Pinter is survived by his son, Daniel, from his marriage to Merchant.
___
Associated Press writers Jill Lawless and Robert Barr in London and Michael Kuchwara in New York contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
Something Wrong here? Planned Parenthood suspends Ind. staffer in video
Date: 12/16/2008 10:46 PM
BC-Planned Parenthood-Video/400
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Planned Parenthood has suspended a counselor after an anti-abortion group released its second video in two weeks showing what it says is a clinic staffer ignoring Indiana law to report sexual abuse of minors.
Planned Parenthood said in a statement Tuesday that its first priority was to patients, but it was committed to following all state laws. It said it was investigating the matter and had not yet established whether the second video by Live Action had accurate content.
Planned Parenthood said the aide seen in the first Live Action video behaved unacceptably and was fired. It also said that staff members had been retrained on reporting abuse.
The college student who secretly shot both videos while posing as a 13-year-old clinic patient said they were edited mainly for time, such as removing her stay in the waiting room.
“Nothing was edited in a way that would alter the obvious context of the sexual abuse cover-up,” said Lila Rose, a 20-year-old UCLA junior and Live Action member.
Rose shot both videos on June 24 at clinics in Indianapolis and Bloomington. She said Live Action has visited clinics in other states, but wouldn’t say which ones.
Rose said the videos were released separately to increase news coverage.
“Each time we release a single clinic in a state we want it to get the national attention and scrutiny each cover-up deserves,” Rose told The Associated Press.
The video released Tuesday shows a counselor at an Indianapolis clinic and Rose, posing as a 13-year-old who says the man who impregnated her was 31.
“I don’t care how old he is,” said the counselor, who identifies herself in the video only as Janet. Planned Parenthood has previously declined to identify employees accused of wrongdoing.
Indiana law requires anyone learning of sexual acts between an adult and a child under 14 to report them to police or child welfare authorities.
Both videos also appear to show Planned Parenthood staff advising the patient that other states allow minors to get abortions without parental consent, which Indiana requires.
Planned Parenthood operates 35 health clinics in Indiana, including three that offer abortions.
___
On the Net:
Live Action: www.liveactionfilms.org
Planned Parenthood of Indiana: www.ppin.org
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Special Comment:
Admittedly, if this had been an actual case of a 13 year old, not a 20 year old posing as a 13 year old, it would be a bit more of a moral dilemma. But to me, the below Indiana law smacks of Sarah Palin fascism run amuck. Planned Parenthood is one of the few remaining voices of sanity in our world. Its open door policy has helped more teenagers than all other American institutions combined. To bring in the virginity police to such a place, can only spell potential doom.
This is a law that seems to dictate civil disobedience. And if we are going to be all about law and order, why is it that the poser isn’t prosecuted for the fraud she perpetrated in receiving the free medical services of this truly worthy organization? It is a shame that the law wasn’t followed in this one instance. Then it would have been the poser, making false statements to the police, to perpetrate this sham.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
BC-Planned Parenthood-Video/400
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Planned Parenthood has suspended a counselor after an anti-abortion group released its second video in two weeks showing what it says is a clinic staffer ignoring Indiana law to report sexual abuse of minors.
Planned Parenthood said in a statement Tuesday that its first priority was to patients, but it was committed to following all state laws. It said it was investigating the matter and had not yet established whether the second video by Live Action had accurate content.
Planned Parenthood said the aide seen in the first Live Action video behaved unacceptably and was fired. It also said that staff members had been retrained on reporting abuse.
The college student who secretly shot both videos while posing as a 13-year-old clinic patient said they were edited mainly for time, such as removing her stay in the waiting room.
“Nothing was edited in a way that would alter the obvious context of the sexual abuse cover-up,” said Lila Rose, a 20-year-old UCLA junior and Live Action member.
Rose shot both videos on June 24 at clinics in Indianapolis and Bloomington. She said Live Action has visited clinics in other states, but wouldn’t say which ones.
Rose said the videos were released separately to increase news coverage.
“Each time we release a single clinic in a state we want it to get the national attention and scrutiny each cover-up deserves,” Rose told The Associated Press.
The video released Tuesday shows a counselor at an Indianapolis clinic and Rose, posing as a 13-year-old who says the man who impregnated her was 31.
“I don’t care how old he is,” said the counselor, who identifies herself in the video only as Janet. Planned Parenthood has previously declined to identify employees accused of wrongdoing.
Indiana law requires anyone learning of sexual acts between an adult and a child under 14 to report them to police or child welfare authorities.
Both videos also appear to show Planned Parenthood staff advising the patient that other states allow minors to get abortions without parental consent, which Indiana requires.
Planned Parenthood operates 35 health clinics in Indiana, including three that offer abortions.
___
On the Net:
Live Action: www.liveactionfilms.org
Planned Parenthood of Indiana: www.ppin.org
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Special Comment:
Admittedly, if this had been an actual case of a 13 year old, not a 20 year old posing as a 13 year old, it would be a bit more of a moral dilemma. But to me, the below Indiana law smacks of Sarah Palin fascism run amuck. Planned Parenthood is one of the few remaining voices of sanity in our world. Its open door policy has helped more teenagers than all other American institutions combined. To bring in the virginity police to such a place, can only spell potential doom.
This is a law that seems to dictate civil disobedience. And if we are going to be all about law and order, why is it that the poser isn’t prosecuted for the fraud she perpetrated in receiving the free medical services of this truly worthy organization? It is a shame that the law wasn’t followed in this one instance. Then it would have been the poser, making false statements to the police, to perpetrate this sham.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
White House: No immediate deal on auto loans
Date: 12/14/2008 9:08 PM
BC-Meltdown-Autos,5th Ld-Writethru/814
Eds: UPDATEs with Bush quotes. AP Video. Moving on general news and financial services.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House tossed out no lifeline for the teetering auto industry Sunday, although President George W. Bush reiterated that he was considering using money from the $700 billion financial bailout fund to provide loans to the carmakers.
“An abrupt bankruptcy for autos could be devastating for the economy,” Bush told reporters Monday aboard Air Force One during an unannounced trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. “We’re now in the process of working with the stakeholders on a way forward. We’re not quite ready to announce that yet.”
Bush wouldn’t give a precise timetable but said, “This will not be a long process because of the economic fragility of the autos.”
White House officials said they did not expect to make an announcement Monday. The administration is considering ways to provide emergency aid to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, which have said they could run out of cash within weeks without federal aid.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who blocked legislation that would have provided $14 billion in loans to the automakers, said he had spoken with the White House early Sunday. “I don’t think they yet know what they’re going to do,” he said. Ron Gettelfinger, the president of the United Auto Workers, said the union had not held discussions with the White House.
The aid is expected to benefit General Motors and Chrysler and discussions involve the amount of funding and any potential conditions. Ford Motor Co. has said it has enough cash to survive 2009 but asked Congress for a line of credit in case the financial markets deteriorate further.
“I’m optimistic they’re going to do something significant. I don’t think the White House wants bankruptcy at one of the Big Three automakers as part their legacy,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.
Last week, Congress failed to approve a plan that would have provided short-term financing to the industry and create a “car czar” who would ensure that the money would transform the Detroit automakers into competitive companies.
The administration, following the legislative defeat, said it was considering several options, including using money from the $700 billion financial bailout fund to provide loans to the carmakers.
Corker and other Republicans sought a compromise that would have insisted the carmakers restructure their debt and bring wages and benefits in line with those paid by Toyota, Honda and Nissan in the United States. The legislation died when Republicans demanded upfront pay and benefit concessions from the United Auto Workers that union leaders rejected.
Corker urged the White House to seek similar concessions from the auto companies and their unions in return for the money. “Of course, the benefit they have — they don’t have to negotiate. They can say this money is available but it’s only available under these conditions,” he said in a broadcast interview.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., c ountered that Republican leaders in the Senate did not want an agreement and said the loans were needed to buy time for the companies to restructure.
“Manufacturing is on the edge in this country. This is not the time for a political agenda,” Stabenow said.
The UAW’s Gettelfinger said the failure of the legislation showed that Congress should stay “away from the bargaining table.”
The administration has several options. It could tap the $700 billion financial rescue bailout fund to provide loans to the carmakers or use part of that fund as a kind of collateral for emergency loans the automakers could get from the Federal Reserve.
The administration also could do nothing, leaving open the possibility that one or more of the automakers could go bankrupt.
The White House is keeping President-elect Barack Obama and his advisers informed of the discussions. If administration officials choose not to provide the money now, the Obama team could wait for the new Congress, which will have stronger Democratic majorities.
Providing aid to the companies could represent a change for the White House, which has previously insisted that the Wall Street rescue plan should be used solely to help financial institutions.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich., said other countries were providing aid to their automakers and the loans were essential to help make the U.S. less dependent on foreign oil.
If the companies don’t get help, “we’ll be replacing our reliance on foreign oil with a reliance on foreign batteries because it’s going to be the battery that’s driving the electric vehicle in the future,” Granholm said.
Corker was on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” as was Brown, and “Fox News Sunday,” where he appeared with Stabenow. Gettelfinger was on “Late Edition” on CNN. Granholm was on “Meet the Press” on NBC.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
—–
On Friday, to paraphrase Michelle Obama, for the first time in my adult life, I thought George Bush was a patriotic. Why? The White House’s suggestion to save the American automobile industry. It appears my bipartisanship was premature. See the below AP story. Let us cross our fingers that the likes of Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn (quoted below) haven’t convinced George Bush he should side with the Japanese auto industry instead of Detroit. I know as a Texas patriot, Bush would certainly remember the Alamo. But what about remembering Pearl Harbor, Auschwitz and the Great Depression?
My son and I just saw the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. The thought I shared with my son after watching this movie with the plot that humans must be exterminated to save the planet, was that perhaps AIG and its credit default swaps would ultimately save the Earth from mankind.
If General Motors fails, it could more effectively than any other theory postured by Al Gore, put an end to global warming. The short term reason is that our American cars would over a fairly short period of time, stop running. See Thursday’s blog. That could have a midterm significant impact on energy conservation in that those American cars are less efficient than foreign cars. But the long term impact is far greater than that. A GM bankruptcy is followed shortly by spiraling unemployment and tightening credit. When you abandon your American car because no one knows how to fix it, you won’t be able to replace it since your job will be at risk and no bank will lend you the money. Thus, a huge drop in the number of cars and oil consumption.
That could be construed as a good thing if you didn’t figure in that the World Economy is fueled by American consumption. Money is just a fictional barter medium (it is only paper after all) that has no intrinsic value. Yet, the world has abandoned its agrarian roots for urban based manufacturing and consumption, all in pursuit of this fictional barter token. Demand for Western Products has created an immense migration to Asian and other third world cities, where no one will have jobs should rampant unemployment follow a drop of American demand for such products. There are fourteen cities in China alone with populations over 3.6 million people. (Can you even spell more than two Chinese cities?)
Human’s need shelter, we need heat and we need fuel. The rest is all a delusion. If you remove the fuel from the world economy that is American’s belief that they need cars, computers, videos games and TV’s – the economies of Asia will collapse. Should American’s stop buying, hundreds of millions of people will be in desperate straights in Asia.
While things will take a while to get as bad here, how much food are you capable of growing on your little plot of soil on your condo balcony? Could you keep yourself warm by foraging for wood? The people of Stalingrad did not do so well in such a venture.
I’ve had a vision that we could create Green jobs to replace our excess demand for cars. In my vision we could replace some of our production capacity for cars with the production of windmills, solar panels and an improved energy grid. Yet, if the American economy (and tax structure with it) collapses in the next few months, there will be no way to fund a transition to Green. Taxes require jobs and profits. George Bush was right to save the banking industry, but not because it has any inherent value, but because it allows people to buy the houses and the cars, the things that the UAW and other American workers make. As the financial system implodes and the jobs dependent entirely on the illusion of wealth disappear, we must have jobs where tangible things are made, in the United States.
Lose the American automobile industry and you have put our species on the precipice. If the survival of billions of human beings on this planet is a priority, then be a patriot, George Bush and make me proud of you this once.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
BC-Meltdown-Autos,5th Ld-Writethru/814
Eds: UPDATEs with Bush quotes. AP Video. Moving on general news and financial services.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House tossed out no lifeline for the teetering auto industry Sunday, although President George W. Bush reiterated that he was considering using money from the $700 billion financial bailout fund to provide loans to the carmakers.
“An abrupt bankruptcy for autos could be devastating for the economy,” Bush told reporters Monday aboard Air Force One during an unannounced trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. “We’re now in the process of working with the stakeholders on a way forward. We’re not quite ready to announce that yet.”
Bush wouldn’t give a precise timetable but said, “This will not be a long process because of the economic fragility of the autos.”
White House officials said they did not expect to make an announcement Monday. The administration is considering ways to provide emergency aid to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, which have said they could run out of cash within weeks without federal aid.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who blocked legislation that would have provided $14 billion in loans to the automakers, said he had spoken with the White House early Sunday. “I don’t think they yet know what they’re going to do,” he said. Ron Gettelfinger, the president of the United Auto Workers, said the union had not held discussions with the White House.
The aid is expected to benefit General Motors and Chrysler and discussions involve the amount of funding and any potential conditions. Ford Motor Co. has said it has enough cash to survive 2009 but asked Congress for a line of credit in case the financial markets deteriorate further.
“I’m optimistic they’re going to do something significant. I don’t think the White House wants bankruptcy at one of the Big Three automakers as part their legacy,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.
Last week, Congress failed to approve a plan that would have provided short-term financing to the industry and create a “car czar” who would ensure that the money would transform the Detroit automakers into competitive companies.
The administration, following the legislative defeat, said it was considering several options, including using money from the $700 billion financial bailout fund to provide loans to the carmakers.
Corker and other Republicans sought a compromise that would have insisted the carmakers restructure their debt and bring wages and benefits in line with those paid by Toyota, Honda and Nissan in the United States. The legislation died when Republicans demanded upfront pay and benefit concessions from the United Auto Workers that union leaders rejected.
Corker urged the White House to seek similar concessions from the auto companies and their unions in return for the money. “Of course, the benefit they have — they don’t have to negotiate. They can say this money is available but it’s only available under these conditions,” he said in a broadcast interview.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., c ountered that Republican leaders in the Senate did not want an agreement and said the loans were needed to buy time for the companies to restructure.
“Manufacturing is on the edge in this country. This is not the time for a political agenda,” Stabenow said.
The UAW’s Gettelfinger said the failure of the legislation showed that Congress should stay “away from the bargaining table.”
The administration has several options. It could tap the $700 billion financial rescue bailout fund to provide loans to the carmakers or use part of that fund as a kind of collateral for emergency loans the automakers could get from the Federal Reserve.
The administration also could do nothing, leaving open the possibility that one or more of the automakers could go bankrupt.
The White House is keeping President-elect Barack Obama and his advisers informed of the discussions. If administration officials choose not to provide the money now, the Obama team could wait for the new Congress, which will have stronger Democratic majorities.
Providing aid to the companies could represent a change for the White House, which has previously insisted that the Wall Street rescue plan should be used solely to help financial institutions.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich., said other countries were providing aid to their automakers and the loans were essential to help make the U.S. less dependent on foreign oil.
If the companies don’t get help, “we’ll be replacing our reliance on foreign oil with a reliance on foreign batteries because it’s going to be the battery that’s driving the electric vehicle in the future,” Granholm said.
Corker was on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” as was Brown, and “Fox News Sunday,” where he appeared with Stabenow. Gettelfinger was on “Late Edition” on CNN. Granholm was on “Meet the Press” on NBC.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
—–
On Friday, to paraphrase Michelle Obama, for the first time in my adult life, I thought George Bush was a patriotic. Why? The White House’s suggestion to save the American automobile industry. It appears my bipartisanship was premature. See the below AP story. Let us cross our fingers that the likes of Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn (quoted below) haven’t convinced George Bush he should side with the Japanese auto industry instead of Detroit. I know as a Texas patriot, Bush would certainly remember the Alamo. But what about remembering Pearl Harbor, Auschwitz and the Great Depression?
My son and I just saw the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. The thought I shared with my son after watching this movie with the plot that humans must be exterminated to save the planet, was that perhaps AIG and its credit default swaps would ultimately save the Earth from mankind.
If General Motors fails, it could more effectively than any other theory postured by Al Gore, put an end to global warming. The short term reason is that our American cars would over a fairly short period of time, stop running. See Thursday’s blog. That could have a midterm significant impact on energy conservation in that those American cars are less efficient than foreign cars. But the long term impact is far greater than that. A GM bankruptcy is followed shortly by spiraling unemployment and tightening credit. When you abandon your American car because no one knows how to fix it, you won’t be able to replace it since your job will be at risk and no bank will lend you the money. Thus, a huge drop in the number of cars and oil consumption.
That could be construed as a good thing if you didn’t figure in that the World Economy is fueled by American consumption. Money is just a fictional barter medium (it is only paper after all) that has no intrinsic value. Yet, the world has abandoned its agrarian roots for urban based manufacturing and consumption, all in pursuit of this fictional barter token. Demand for Western Products has created an immense migration to Asian and other third world cities, where no one will have jobs should rampant unemployment follow a drop of American demand for such products. There are fourteen cities in China alone with populations over 3.6 million people. (Can you even spell more than two Chinese cities?)
Human’s need shelter, we need heat and we need fuel. The rest is all a delusion. If you remove the fuel from the world economy that is American’s belief that they need cars, computers, videos games and TV’s – the economies of Asia will collapse. Should American’s stop buying, hundreds of millions of people will be in desperate straights in Asia.
While things will take a while to get as bad here, how much food are you capable of growing on your little plot of soil on your condo balcony? Could you keep yourself warm by foraging for wood? The people of Stalingrad did not do so well in such a venture.
I’ve had a vision that we could create Green jobs to replace our excess demand for cars. In my vision we could replace some of our production capacity for cars with the production of windmills, solar panels and an improved energy grid. Yet, if the American economy (and tax structure with it) collapses in the next few months, there will be no way to fund a transition to Green. Taxes require jobs and profits. George Bush was right to save the banking industry, but not because it has any inherent value, but because it allows people to buy the houses and the cars, the things that the UAW and other American workers make. As the financial system implodes and the jobs dependent entirely on the illusion of wealth disappear, we must have jobs where tangible things are made, in the United States.
Lose the American automobile industry and you have put our species on the precipice. If the survival of billions of human beings on this planet is a priority, then be a patriot, George Bush and make me proud of you this once.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
Minnesota Senate Seat May be Decided this Week
The below AP story lays out some of the ballot challenge issues that may end up favoring Democrat Al Franken over Republican Norm Coleman in the disputed Minnesota election race. After this weeks attempt by the GOP to finally drive a stake into the heart of Unions, see the stories on this blog about the failed bailout for the American auto industry, it is hard to imagine a Midwest state electing a GOP senator. Let us hope that enough Demorcratic votes are found to keep such anti-Americanism from representing the upper Midwest.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
http://subtlebraininjury.com
http://thelegaltimes.net
http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com
http://vestibulardisorder.com
http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
g@gordonjohnson.com
800-992-9447
©Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr. 2008
Date: 12/14/2008 11:00 PM
Few real mysteries found in Minn. Senate ballots
By BRIAN BAKST
Associated Press Writer
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Jesus, Bob Dylan and Mickey Mouse will play a part in determining Minnesota’s next senator. So will voters who scrawled the same name for every local race. And so will people who marked their choice not just with a darkened oval but with an X, too — maybe for emphasis, or maybe for a do-over.
Those ballots by people who took creative liberties, as well as thousands of others being challenged, are critical in the tight battle between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, Al Franken. A state board begins meeting Tuesday to decide their fate.
But an Associated Press analysis of the more than 5,000 challenged ballots found that most of the votes have clear intent and no deficiencies for which they would be disqualified under Minnesota law. The AP’s cataloguing includes many challenges that were later withdrawn by the campaigns and the roughly 3,500 that remained up in the air as of Saturday.
Of the 2.9 million votes already recounted, Coleman leads Franken by fewer than 200. But the AP’s analysis of the 3,500 challenges found that nearly 300 wouldn’t benefit either man because the voter clearly favored a third-party candidate or skipped the race.
The AP also found that of the 3,500 challenged ballots that easily could be assigned, Franken netted 200 more votes than Coleman. But Coleman has withdrawn significantly fewer ballot challenges than Franken — that is, the pool of challenges that can now be awarded to Franken is larger, and both campaigns announced Sunday that they would withdraw more challenges by Tuesday.
Of the remaining challenges, the AP found that only about 1,640 couldn’t reliably be awarded to either candidate. More than 400 possible Franken votes were being held up on grounds that those voters identified their ballots through write-ins, initials, phone numbers or some other distinctive marking. At least 300 possible Coleman votes were in limbo for the same reasons.
Franken could also get a boost because a few more of his potential supporters than Coleman’s were among the nearly 600 ballots that had two filled-in ovals as well as crossed-out votes, an X above or below their darkened oval, or different-size partial marks in more than one oval.
The state’s laws on voter intent offer latitude when a person fails to cleanly mark an oval or connect an arrow on the two types of optical scan ballots used by the state.
Voters who use an X outside the oval can still have that vote counted if it’s close to a candidate’s spot. They can use checks for some offices and fill out ovals for others. And voters who change their minds can try to erase a mark in favor of another choice as long as the remaining vote is apparent.
Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who heads the state Canvassing Board with four judges, has set a goal of completing the challenged ballot reviews by Friday. The AP analysis suggested that the process could move fast once the board shows its mind on the challenge types that occurred most frequently.
Ohio State University election law expert Edward Foley, who is closely tracking Minnesota’s recount, said the board’s early rulings could set patterns for the rest of the review.
Foley said the campaigns won’t want to lose the goodwill of board members by forcing them to rule on the same question repeatedly.
Several members made clear in a hearing Friday they wouldn’t have patience for weak challenges.
“The danger for both candidates is that meritorious challenges are going to get swamped in a sea of frivolous challenges,” Ramsey County Judge Edward Cleary warned. “You know when they’re frivolous; we know when they’re frivolous. Don’t make us tell you that.”
Foley didn’t expect challenges based on oddball write-ins for cartoon characters, musicians and athletes to fare well.
“I think that will be looked on with disfavor,” he said of the voters who wrote in Mickey Mouse or his pals Donald Duck and Goofy on ballots where there was a clear Senate vote. Tiger Woods, Bob Dylan and The Beatles got a few votes for local offices, and Jesus was several voters’ pick for president. Others scribbled or put smiley faces near their choices.
Though ballots can’t be rejected if they are slightly soiled or defaced, voters can put their ballot at risk with a distinguishing characteristic that is seen as an attempt to identify it. But determining what constitutes an identifying mark is tricky.
Ritchie, a Democrat, said a ruling in the state’s 1962 gubernatorial race recount found that the mark had to have been made with the voter’s intent to identify the ballot.
___
Associated Press writers Jeff Baenen, Elizabeth Dunbar, Doug Glass, Martiga Lohn and Steve Karnowski contributed to this report.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
Attorney Gordon Johnson
http://subtlebraininjury.com
http://thelegaltimes.net
http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com
http://vestibulardisorder.com
http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
g@gordonjohnson.com
800-992-9447
©Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr. 2008
Date: 12/14/2008 11:00 PM
Few real mysteries found in Minn. Senate ballots
By BRIAN BAKST
Associated Press Writer
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Jesus, Bob Dylan and Mickey Mouse will play a part in determining Minnesota’s next senator. So will voters who scrawled the same name for every local race. And so will people who marked their choice not just with a darkened oval but with an X, too — maybe for emphasis, or maybe for a do-over.
Those ballots by people who took creative liberties, as well as thousands of others being challenged, are critical in the tight battle between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, Al Franken. A state board begins meeting Tuesday to decide their fate.
But an Associated Press analysis of the more than 5,000 challenged ballots found that most of the votes have clear intent and no deficiencies for which they would be disqualified under Minnesota law. The AP’s cataloguing includes many challenges that were later withdrawn by the campaigns and the roughly 3,500 that remained up in the air as of Saturday.
Of the 2.9 million votes already recounted, Coleman leads Franken by fewer than 200. But the AP’s analysis of the 3,500 challenges found that nearly 300 wouldn’t benefit either man because the voter clearly favored a third-party candidate or skipped the race.
The AP also found that of the 3,500 challenged ballots that easily could be assigned, Franken netted 200 more votes than Coleman. But Coleman has withdrawn significantly fewer ballot challenges than Franken — that is, the pool of challenges that can now be awarded to Franken is larger, and both campaigns announced Sunday that they would withdraw more challenges by Tuesday.
Of the remaining challenges, the AP found that only about 1,640 couldn’t reliably be awarded to either candidate. More than 400 possible Franken votes were being held up on grounds that those voters identified their ballots through write-ins, initials, phone numbers or some other distinctive marking. At least 300 possible Coleman votes were in limbo for the same reasons.
Franken could also get a boost because a few more of his potential supporters than Coleman’s were among the nearly 600 ballots that had two filled-in ovals as well as crossed-out votes, an X above or below their darkened oval, or different-size partial marks in more than one oval.
The state’s laws on voter intent offer latitude when a person fails to cleanly mark an oval or connect an arrow on the two types of optical scan ballots used by the state.
Voters who use an X outside the oval can still have that vote counted if it’s close to a candidate’s spot. They can use checks for some offices and fill out ovals for others. And voters who change their minds can try to erase a mark in favor of another choice as long as the remaining vote is apparent.
Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who heads the state Canvassing Board with four judges, has set a goal of completing the challenged ballot reviews by Friday. The AP analysis suggested that the process could move fast once the board shows its mind on the challenge types that occurred most frequently.
Ohio State University election law expert Edward Foley, who is closely tracking Minnesota’s recount, said the board’s early rulings could set patterns for the rest of the review.
Foley said the campaigns won’t want to lose the goodwill of board members by forcing them to rule on the same question repeatedly.
Several members made clear in a hearing Friday they wouldn’t have patience for weak challenges.
“The danger for both candidates is that meritorious challenges are going to get swamped in a sea of frivolous challenges,” Ramsey County Judge Edward Cleary warned. “You know when they’re frivolous; we know when they’re frivolous. Don’t make us tell you that.”
Foley didn’t expect challenges based on oddball write-ins for cartoon characters, musicians and athletes to fare well.
“I think that will be looked on with disfavor,” he said of the voters who wrote in Mickey Mouse or his pals Donald Duck and Goofy on ballots where there was a clear Senate vote. Tiger Woods, Bob Dylan and The Beatles got a few votes for local offices, and Jesus was several voters’ pick for president. Others scribbled or put smiley faces near their choices.
Though ballots can’t be rejected if they are slightly soiled or defaced, voters can put their ballot at risk with a distinguishing characteristic that is seen as an attempt to identify it. But determining what constitutes an identifying mark is tricky.
Ritchie, a Democrat, said a ruling in the state’s 1962 gubernatorial race recount found that the mark had to have been made with the voter’s intent to identify the ballot.
___
Associated Press writers Jeff Baenen, Elizabeth Dunbar, Doug Glass, Martiga Lohn and Steve Karnowski contributed to this report.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
Where Will we Get Our American Cars Fixed?
200 million automobiles in the United States. If we assume that half of those vehicles are manufactured by the Big Three, that means 100 million American made cars on the road. If those cars are worth on the average, $10,000, that means the total value of American cars is somewhere around $10 trillion dollars.
If the Big Three fail, who is going to service American cars? Not Toyota, not Mercedes Benz. Will Sears understand the codes that show up on your cars computer when something needs to be fixed? Not likely. In my opinion, GM, Ford and Chrysler vehicles will automatically depreciate at least 20% should there be no U.S. auto dealer service available. Without dealer service, that would be a $2 trillion loss in value to American taxpayers, in terms of the automobile fleet. (Now my arithmetic might be flawed, but that no one else is even asking this question is the true flaw.)
With all of the posturing amongst the Republicans, no one has asked this hard question: If the Big Three go away, where are you going to get your car serviced? The loss of Detroit is not just the loss of jobs, it is a huge damage to the American economy. Eventually, half of our cars won’t run. Of course if you are voting to bring jobs to Kentucky, maybe that just means we will just have to buy more Japanese cars to replace those U.S. cars that we can’t fix.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
If the Big Three fail, who is going to service American cars? Not Toyota, not Mercedes Benz. Will Sears understand the codes that show up on your cars computer when something needs to be fixed? Not likely. In my opinion, GM, Ford and Chrysler vehicles will automatically depreciate at least 20% should there be no U.S. auto dealer service available. Without dealer service, that would be a $2 trillion loss in value to American taxpayers, in terms of the automobile fleet. (Now my arithmetic might be flawed, but that no one else is even asking this question is the true flaw.)
With all of the posturing amongst the Republicans, no one has asked this hard question: If the Big Three go away, where are you going to get your car serviced? The loss of Detroit is not just the loss of jobs, it is a huge damage to the American economy. Eventually, half of our cars won’t run. Of course if you are voting to bring jobs to Kentucky, maybe that just means we will just have to buy more Japanese cars to replace those U.S. cars that we can’t fix.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
GM trying to survive for a shot at Plan O _ Obama
Date: 12/11/2008 11:41 PM
By TOM KRISHER
AP Auto Writer
DETROIT (AP) — General Motors is saving every cent it can, from shutting down escalators at night to limiting workers’ choice of pens, in case it needs to fight to survive beyond year’s end and until a friendlier Washington takes over.
Yet even a truckload of penny-pinching might not be enough.
GM has already cut its U.S. work force by almost 80,000 people this decade, reducing it to 96,000, and it has idled five factories and laid off 11,000 domestic workers this year alone.
The cost-cutting has accelerated as cash has dwindled. Factory supervisors who are seldom at their desks have had their landline phones and voice mail yanked. Elevators and escalators are shut down at night at GM’s headquarters towers in Detroit.
The slimmed-down choice of pens in office supply cabinets: one each of black, red and blue.
“It seems trivial, but when you have 100,000 employees or however many using supplies, they don’t need to be that prolific. It adds up,” said spokeswoman Renee Rashid-Merem.
All the while, the once-mighty icon of American industry and its smaller competitor Chrysler LLC edge closer to bankruptcy.
Experts say their best shot is for President-elect Barack Obama to persuade the outgoing White House to free up emergency loans from the $700 billion federal bailout, or to have the Federal Reserve make a loan.
The $14 billion auto-industry bailout bill died in the Senate late Thursday after the United Auto Workers refused to accept Republican demands for swift wage cuts to bring UAW workers’ pay in line with Japanese carmakers.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he hoped President George W. Bush would tap the Wall Street bailout fund for emergency aid to the automakers.
Barring that, GM and Chrysler must continue to cut even the smallest expenditures and hold off payments to parts suppliers as they hoard cash and try to stay alive until Obama takes office Jan. 20 and could take his own action.
GM has hinted it might not make it through the end of the year before running out of cash. But GM board member Kent Kresa said earlier this week that the company might make it into the first quarter, depending on auto sales.
“Certainly it has been stated that we need the money quite soon,” Kresa told The Associated Press. “I can’t specifically state before the end of the year, but certainly in the first quarter and early in the first quarter.”
GM wants a total of $18 billion in government loans, including $4 billion before this year runs out. And Chrysler, which is looking for $7 billion in loans, may be even closer to the edge.
Its CEO, Robert Nardelli, said its cash would drop to $2.5 billion, its minimum to survive, at the end of the year. It has cut 32,000 workers since private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP took over control in August of last year, including 25 percent of its salaried work force last month.
The other of the Detroit Three, Ford, is not yet seeking government loans but wants a $9 billion line of credit that it might need to tap if the depressed U.S. auto market doesn’t recover. It says it can last through 2009 because it borrowed billions two years ago, when credit was freely available.
The possibility remains that a deal can still be worked out in the Senate. Republican opponents, mainly from Southern states, probably don’t want to bring the industry down, said David M. Hart, associate professor of public policy at George Mason University in Virginia.
“It’s certainly not beyond the scope of possibility that they’ll get this thing through,” Hart said. “I think it’s hard for Republicans to have this on them. There’s a lot of pressure. They might work out a deal.”
Hundreds of thousands of jobs hang in the balance. The Detroit Three employ 239,000 workers in the U.S. Counting other businesses that depend on the automakers, economists estimate that 2.5 million jobs would be lost if all three companies went out of business.
Susan Helper, a professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland who has studied the auto industry, said GM and Chrysler’s suppliers are the key to keeping the automakers out of bankruptcy protection if they are forced to stretch and try to make it past Obama’s inauguration.
Suppliers, also cash-strapped, may start demanding payment in advance before shipping parts. If enough suppliers get nervous and start demanding cash, the companies could run short.
“Then you have this game of musical chairs where everyone wants to make sure they’re not the one left without a chair,” she said. “That very process can bring the whole structure down. Right now the suppliers have been incredibly disciplined and not saying, ‘Hey, pay us first,’” she said.
Already, a small number of GM suppliers have sought cash on delivery, but the company is working through the situation, CEO Rick Wagoner said last week.
“I would say there are a couple situations that we are managing, but on balance I’d say it’s really held in there quite well,” he told the AP.
When Chrysler tried to stretch its money until it could get a government-guaranteed loan in 1980, it ran short of cash two weeks before the loan came through, said Steve Miller, an assistant treasurer at the time who now is executive chairman of Troy-based Delphi Corp., GM’s former parts wing.
“Any one supplier could have pulled the rug out from under us and prevented us from building cars,” Miller said in an interview.
But suppliers, he said, knew their futures were dependent on Chrysler’s financial health.
“We hung in there and the suppliers stayed with us,” Miller recalled.
If, for whatever reason, the companies go into Chapter 11 protection, credit is so tight that they might not be able to get bankruptcy financing, Helper said. A bankruptcy judge, she said, could hold off creditors and possible liquidation until the companies arranged financing, most likely from the government.
“It seems pretty clear that the only potential provider of the (bankruptcy) financing is the government,” she said. “You’d have some period of figuring out the terms under which that … financing is going to be offered.”
___
AP Auto Writer Kimberly S. Johnson contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
By TOM KRISHER
AP Auto Writer
DETROIT (AP) — General Motors is saving every cent it can, from shutting down escalators at night to limiting workers’ choice of pens, in case it needs to fight to survive beyond year’s end and until a friendlier Washington takes over.
Yet even a truckload of penny-pinching might not be enough.
GM has already cut its U.S. work force by almost 80,000 people this decade, reducing it to 96,000, and it has idled five factories and laid off 11,000 domestic workers this year alone.
The cost-cutting has accelerated as cash has dwindled. Factory supervisors who are seldom at their desks have had their landline phones and voice mail yanked. Elevators and escalators are shut down at night at GM’s headquarters towers in Detroit.
The slimmed-down choice of pens in office supply cabinets: one each of black, red and blue.
“It seems trivial, but when you have 100,000 employees or however many using supplies, they don’t need to be that prolific. It adds up,” said spokeswoman Renee Rashid-Merem.
All the while, the once-mighty icon of American industry and its smaller competitor Chrysler LLC edge closer to bankruptcy.
Experts say their best shot is for President-elect Barack Obama to persuade the outgoing White House to free up emergency loans from the $700 billion federal bailout, or to have the Federal Reserve make a loan.
The $14 billion auto-industry bailout bill died in the Senate late Thursday after the United Auto Workers refused to accept Republican demands for swift wage cuts to bring UAW workers’ pay in line with Japanese carmakers.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he hoped President George W. Bush would tap the Wall Street bailout fund for emergency aid to the automakers.
Barring that, GM and Chrysler must continue to cut even the smallest expenditures and hold off payments to parts suppliers as they hoard cash and try to stay alive until Obama takes office Jan. 20 and could take his own action.
GM has hinted it might not make it through the end of the year before running out of cash. But GM board member Kent Kresa said earlier this week that the company might make it into the first quarter, depending on auto sales.
“Certainly it has been stated that we need the money quite soon,” Kresa told The Associated Press. “I can’t specifically state before the end of the year, but certainly in the first quarter and early in the first quarter.”
GM wants a total of $18 billion in government loans, including $4 billion before this year runs out. And Chrysler, which is looking for $7 billion in loans, may be even closer to the edge.
Its CEO, Robert Nardelli, said its cash would drop to $2.5 billion, its minimum to survive, at the end of the year. It has cut 32,000 workers since private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP took over control in August of last year, including 25 percent of its salaried work force last month.
The other of the Detroit Three, Ford, is not yet seeking government loans but wants a $9 billion line of credit that it might need to tap if the depressed U.S. auto market doesn’t recover. It says it can last through 2009 because it borrowed billions two years ago, when credit was freely available.
The possibility remains that a deal can still be worked out in the Senate. Republican opponents, mainly from Southern states, probably don’t want to bring the industry down, said David M. Hart, associate professor of public policy at George Mason University in Virginia.
“It’s certainly not beyond the scope of possibility that they’ll get this thing through,” Hart said. “I think it’s hard for Republicans to have this on them. There’s a lot of pressure. They might work out a deal.”
Hundreds of thousands of jobs hang in the balance. The Detroit Three employ 239,000 workers in the U.S. Counting other businesses that depend on the automakers, economists estimate that 2.5 million jobs would be lost if all three companies went out of business.
Susan Helper, a professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland who has studied the auto industry, said GM and Chrysler’s suppliers are the key to keeping the automakers out of bankruptcy protection if they are forced to stretch and try to make it past Obama’s inauguration.
Suppliers, also cash-strapped, may start demanding payment in advance before shipping parts. If enough suppliers get nervous and start demanding cash, the companies could run short.
“Then you have this game of musical chairs where everyone wants to make sure they’re not the one left without a chair,” she said. “That very process can bring the whole structure down. Right now the suppliers have been incredibly disciplined and not saying, ‘Hey, pay us first,’” she said.
Already, a small number of GM suppliers have sought cash on delivery, but the company is working through the situation, CEO Rick Wagoner said last week.
“I would say there are a couple situations that we are managing, but on balance I’d say it’s really held in there quite well,” he told the AP.
When Chrysler tried to stretch its money until it could get a government-guaranteed loan in 1980, it ran short of cash two weeks before the loan came through, said Steve Miller, an assistant treasurer at the time who now is executive chairman of Troy-based Delphi Corp., GM’s former parts wing.
“Any one supplier could have pulled the rug out from under us and prevented us from building cars,” Miller said in an interview.
But suppliers, he said, knew their futures were dependent on Chrysler’s financial health.
“We hung in there and the suppliers stayed with us,” Miller recalled.
If, for whatever reason, the companies go into Chapter 11 protection, credit is so tight that they might not be able to get bankruptcy financing, Helper said. A bankruptcy judge, she said, could hold off creditors and possible liquidation until the companies arranged financing, most likely from the government.
“It seems pretty clear that the only potential provider of the (bankruptcy) financing is the government,” she said. “You’d have some period of figuring out the terms under which that … financing is going to be offered.”
___
AP Auto Writer Kimberly S. Johnson contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
http://subtlebraininjury.com :: http://brainanatomyguide.com :: http://car-accident-rain.com :: http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com :: http://vestibulardisorder.com :: http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney