R.I.P. John Barry (1933 - 2011)

Film composer and conductor John Barry has passed away at the age of 77. Beginning with 1960's "Beat Girl" and ending with 2001's "Enigma", Barry has scored nearly 100 motion pictures. He won Oscars for his work on "Born Free" (1967), "The Lion In Winter" (1968), "Out of Africa" (1985) and for "Dances With Wolves" (1990). However, he is probably best known as the composer for a dozen James Bond films, including "Dr. No" (although the credit for the actual James Bond Theme has been debated), "From Russia With Love" (1963) and "A View To A Kill" (1985). His last official film score was for the Michael Apted directed film "Enigma" (2001). Below is a small sample of John Barry's legacy.

John Barry's catolgue of music is available @ iTunes.

desaparecidos in Chile & Argentina

[from Jacobo Timerman's Chile: Death in the South, tr. Robert Cox, Vintage, 1987]

The psychologists [at a conference of psychologists in Buenos Aires on "The Culture of Fear in Totalitarian Regimes"] established the following general characteristics of a state of constant fear:

Sensation of vulnerability: In the face of life-threatening situations there is a sense of personal weakness. The individual feels "identified" and "persecuted" and loses all possibility of privacy and intimacy in his personal life. He becomes susceptible to arbitrary behavior beyond his control.

State of alert: The senses are exacerbated and the individual cannot rest in the face of imminent danger and the life-threatening situation this poses. This can be expressed in various symptomatic ways.

Individual impotence: The individual recognizes that his own resources and strength are inadequate to deal with adversity. The individual in this situation feels he has no control over his own life and that decisions about his future are not in his hands. This impotence, and the allied feelings of vulnerability and helplessness, give rise to a sense of abandonment in the face of violence.

Alteration of the sense of reality: As one of the objectives of inducing fear is to deprive an individual of his ability to act, the ordinary sense of reality is deliberately disrupted and rendered useless. It comes to seem practically impossible to verify what is objective fact as against subjective experience, and the boundary between what is real and possible on the one hand and what is fantasy and imagination on the other tends to dissolve. Reality becomes confusing and threatening, with no clear borders, and so loses its guiding role in subjective processes.

Robert Fisk in Cairo

Robert Fisk: Egypt: Death throes of a dictatorship

The Egyptian tanks, the delirious protesters sitting atop them, the flags, the 40,000 protesters weeping and crying and cheering in Freedom Square and praying around them, the Muslim Brotherhood official sitting amid the tank passengers. Should this be compared to the liberation of Bucharest? Climbing on to an American-made battle tank myself, I could only remember those wonderful films of the liberation of Paris. A few hundred metres away, Hosni Mubarak's black-uniformed security police were still firing at demonstrators near the interior ministry. It was a wild, historical victory celebration, Mubarak's own tanks freeing his capital from his own dictatorship.

In the pantomime world of Mubarak himself – and of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Washington – the man who still claims to be president of Egypt swore in the most preposterous choice of vice-president in an attempt to soften the fury of the protesters – Omar Suleiman, Egypt's chief negotiator with Israel and his senior intelligence officer, a 75-year-old with years of visits to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and four heart attacks to his credit. How this elderly apparatchik might be expected to deal with the anger and joy of liberation of 80 million Egyptians is beyond imagination. When I told the demonstrators on the tank around me the news of Suleiman's appointment, they burst into laughter.

more

"high-speed Internet" Slim said

[from AFP, 31 January 2011]

Mexico tycoon Slim to invest $8.3 bln in 19 nations

MEXICO CITY — Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim unveiled plans Monday to invest $8.3 billion dollars this year in 19 countries, most of them in Latin America.

"We're going to invest in all the countries where we are, that's 19 countries," said Slim, considered the world's richest man. "It will be an investment of $8.3 billion," he told a news conference in Mexico City.

Most of the investment, some 3.66 billion dollars, would be in Mexico, including more than 40 percent in the telecoms industry, as well as road building, mines, water treatment and a "digital university," Slim said.

He said he aimed to reinforce high speed Internet in Mexico "so that two of every three people have access to the network."

A further 2.5 billion would be invested in telecoms in Brazil, which "is a bigger market, a bigger territory," while other countries included Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina.

"In Brazil, we're behind, which means we need to accelerate investments to compete with the (former) state monopolies, we have to make our own network to be able to compete with them," said Slim, who owns Embratel in Brazil.

Slim said he believed Latin America, as well as Asia, was in a "favorable situation internationally."

"Whoever doesn't invest will get left behind," Slim said.

He also dismissed the negative impact of Mexico's continuing drug violence on business.

"Things happen all around the world. Look at the international sections of newspapers, there's violence and those things. It's more worrying to see developed countries with serious fiscal difficulties, enormous unemployment, and they're employing measures which are merely palliative," Slim said.

Slim, 71, last year knocked Bill Gates from the top of the Forbes list of the world's billionaires with an estimated fortune of 53.5 billion dollars.

He built up the telephone monopoly Telmex after acquiring it from the government in 1990. His empire is ever-present in Mexico, including department stores, construction companies and the Inbursa financial group.

Slim has invested more than 60 billion dollars in Latin America in the past 10 years.

Meanwhile, InterContinental Hotels Group was planning to invest $500 million in Mexico over the next three years in 47 hotel projects, President Felipe Calderon's office said Monday.

apartment hotels

We love staying in apartment hotels in Argentina. They are spacious, convenient, inexpensive, & comfortable.

Last October we stayed for two nights at Apart El Huancar in Jujuy. Two floors, sitting room, kitchen, half bath, bedroom, full bath, & breakfast brought to the room. Light fixtures & mirror frames were made of the wood from cardón, which is the tall cactus. Outside we bought a kilo of fresh strawberries from a man on the street & ate them until we were rosy.

In February we'll be staying for two nights at Apart Nubes de Salta:

Tom Robbins

"Success can eliminate as many options as failure."

—  Tom Robbins

American Novelist

1936 -

When you are an unknown writer or artist, you are free to explore new genres or avenues of thinking without anyone criticizing you.  When you are successful, you can become boxed in by the expectations of others and your options to explore new genres becomes limited.  One of my favorite mystery writers, Walter Mosley, has tried on occasion to write novels outside of the genre of mysteries and these novels have never been as successful as his Easy Rawlins novels.  I once talked with Denver Pyle, a Hollywood character actor for most of his career.  He said that his role as Uncle Jessie on the Dukes of Hazard negatively impacted his ability to be cast in any other roles.  He was typecast as Uncle Jessie.  Sometimes we as creative leaders become trapped by our own success and are unable to reinvent ourselves.  Ricky Nelson speaks of this trap in his song, The Garden Party.

MUA: Action in Fremantle

The offer to postpone protected action if Patrick confirmed its commitment to place an offer on the table was put to the company over seven days ago (Thursday 20th January).

Despite the genuine offer to put in place a circuit breaker to operational disruption Patrick refused to engage, which has left the MUA with no option other than to go ahead with planned protected action.

MUA Assistant National Secretary Ian Bray said despite seven months of negotiating and the members culling their claims, Patrick have still not put an offer on the table.

"After much discussion and frustration, our members at Fremantle, Albany applied for a ballot hearing to take protected industrial action," he said.

"In all cases the ballot hearings were successful and members voted in support of taking protected action with 98% support.

"This round of negotiations has been about addressing the issues that are important to our members.

"These include fixing safety on the waterfront, fixing job security, fixing casualisation which is currently running at 60% nationally in Patrick B&G, fixing start times, and fixing the management's bullying, harassment and intimidation that is rife in our workplaces."

Mr Bray noted that the majority of claims the union was seeking to address have no costs associated with them.

"Patrick B&G currently have a Work Choices agreement and we are determined to see off the Howard era agreements that encouraged employers to treat workers with little or no dignity and respect," he said.

"Four ports that have had ballots for protected action conducted have all taken industrial action over the last four weeks and will continue to do so until the company get serious about putting an offer on the table.

"Our claims also seek to address the abysmal safety record on the waterfront and we are justified in taking this stance as three deaths in the last year show."

Davos: Unions warn of unrest

A leading trade unionist attending the World Economic Forum in Davos has warned that the current wave of social unrest roiling north Africa may spread to Europe unless governments get to grips with rising joblessness.

Philip Jennings: UNI global union

Speaking on the sidelines of the annual elite gathering at the weekend UNI global union secretary-general Philip Jennings observed that the frustration born of chronic unemployment was one of the main drivers behind the uprising that unseated former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Mr Jennings said that with unemployment rates averaging around 10 per cent in European Union member states governments should reconsider their "socially unacceptable" austerity policies and form a new social contract with workers.

"The financial and business elite have acted like a huge suction pump and taken a great deal of wealth being produced. The middle class is shrinking into a rump, while a plutocracy at the top are cut off in their own countries," he noted.

“The G20 priority must be jobs. We need inclusive growth and fairness to push up the share of wages as a share of income,” Jennings said. “Sarkozy needs to find his jobs mojo for the G20 process.”

He said that there should be a new bargain and unions should have the ability to push up the share of wages through collective bargaining.

"Every worker should have an adequate social protection floor,” he said. “This is affordable. We need active labour market policies."

Jennings was surprised to hear a private equity spokesperson singing the praises of the worker representation on supervisory boards in Germany, which he said helped companies make better decisions.

He said that it was unacceptable that in the last 20 years in the US, 56 percent of all income gains went to the top 1 percent of wealthy Americans, and more than a third went to the top one-tenth of one percent.

"The Western economic model that we’ve seen of this reliance on the market has failed. We need a new inclusive model of economic development," Jennings said. “It is unsustainable."

SONG OF THE WEEK - "Thunder On The Mountain" by Wanda Jackson

photo by GQ Magazine



"Thunder On The Mountain"
by Wanda Jackson


"...Feel like my soul is beginning to expand
Look into my heart and you will sort of understand
You brought me here, now you're trying to run me away
The writing on the wall, come read it, come see what it say..."


Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Wanda Jackson, is brought back to the spotlight thanks in part to Jack White. White produced and performs on Jackson's new album The Party Ain't Over (2011). One of the many stellar tracks on the album is a cover of Bob Dylan's "Thunder On The Mountain" (taken from his 2006 album, Modern Times). White asked Dylan himself to choose a song from his own catalog of music for Jackson to cover and Dylan couldn't have picked a better suited song. Jackson and White bring such an unique energy to "Thunder...", that you'd swear the song was written specifically just for them. Jackson is a true gem and at 73 she sounds like she's just getting started. Nothing but a rockabilly good time.

www.wandajackson.com

Available @ your local record store & iTunes.

Carl Rogers

"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change."

— Carl Rogers

American Author / Psychologist

1902 - 1987

Have you ever had a desire to change who you are?  Have you ever dreamed of waking up and being somebody different?  That is one of the fun things about being a novelist or an actor.  Novelists and short story writers can become the characters inside the stories they tell.  I once wrote a short story, Bath Day, in which I inserted my real self as a minor, minor character seen through the eyes of the main character.  Actors take on the character of others.  They play heroes and villains.  They experience death, love, sorrow and laughter in the skin of imaginary characters.

Most of us have struggled with our self-identity.  We may not like our physical looks or the bill-paying work that we do.  We may think that we are poor husbands, wives or parents.  And yet, if we learn to accept who we are and what we have done, then we can begin to change into who we want to be.

Have you ever tried to change your habits?  Stop smoking?  Lose weight?  Start exercising?  Learn another language?  Leave the toilet seat down?  Some people say it takes 21 days to form a new habit.  Personal change is never easy.  We need to learn to be more forgiving of ourselves and those with whom we share our lives.  None of us are perfect.  And if change is difficult for us, don't you think it is just as difficult for those you love.  Learn to be gentle with yourself and those you love.

ACTU: Flood levy is fair

27 January, 2011 | ACTU Media Release

A progressive one-off levy exempting flood victims and the majority of workers to help cover the $5.6 billion cost of this summer's devastating floods and maintain existing Government policy priorities is only fair says ACTU President Ged Kearney.

The levy of 0.5 per cent will be applied from July 1 on taxable income between $50,001 and $100,000, and 1 per cent on incomes above $100,000.

The majority of workers (approximately 60%), including a large proportion of part time workers and those on low incomes will not have to pay the levy at all, said Ms Kearney.

“Up to 60% of workers will pay no levy at all. Those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 a year will pay a 0.5% levy on their marginal income, or up to $250.

“Less than 10% of workers will pay the higher rate of 1% on income above $100,000 a year.

“Considering the massive rebuilding effort that is now required it is only fair that those with the capacity to contribute are asked to pay a one-off levy. A progressive levy that exempts low income workers is one of the options the ACTU has been urging the Government consider.

NSW power inquiry disgrace

The NSW power inquiry's decision to seek arrest warrants for the energy directors who resigned over the government's controversial privatisation plan in December is a disgrace, according to former Eraring director Tony Maher.

Mr Maher has applauded the common sense of NSW Upper House President Amanda Fazio, who declined the committee's request, but said she never should have been put in that position in the first place.

"This parliamentary committee has completely lost the plot," he said.

"The directors who stood down in December over Eric Roozendaal's power privatisation plan did so out of principle and responsibility. For the committee to treat them like suspects on the run is unconscionable.

"The directors would be more than willing to answer questions before a proper inquiry -but this isn't one.

"Because the Premier prorogued Parliament before the committee convened, there is no guarantee that witnesses appearing before it are entitled to parliamentary privilege. That means the NSW Government could potentially sue any board members for their answers. That's why we declined the initial invitation and the committee knows it.

"If we appeared at the inquiry we'd be the only witnesses in the history of the NSW Parliament to appear without legal indemnity. We are eager to cast light on what happened in December, but the proper protections need to be in place."

Mr Maher, who is also the National President of the CFMEU, said it was difficult to see what could be behind the committee's bizarre request.

"The only possible motivation I can see is political grandstanding - a chance for some headlines and drama at the cost of basic decency." he said.

Luckily, Amanda Fazio knocked this stupid request on the head quickly, but if she hadn't, the directors and their families could have spent days anticipating a knock on the door from police.

"Good and responsible people simply don't do this to other good and responsible people. The committee members who decided on this course of action need to take a good hard look at themselves and think about what they were actually trying to achieve."

Arab Freedom Anthem

Stephan Said- ARAB FREEDOM ANTHEM

Stephan Said "Aheb Eisht Al Hurriyeh," (I Love the Life of Freedom) just released to be used freely by all those who are working to build the international movement for a more just society. This is our moment! Share the video and mp3, We want to live in freedom! Words by Egyptian poet-laureate Ahmed Shawki, first put to music in the 1930's by great Egyptian composer Mohamed Abdel Wahab. This is produced by Grammy Winning producer Hal Willner. Video directed by Matt Kohn

Stephan Said is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual musician, global activist, and spokesperson. His sound fuses pop, rock, hip-hop, and world folk musics with a border-breaking message of unity. Said first rose to global renown as the 'troubadour of the Altermondialist (next world) movement when his antiwar song "The Bell," became "the first major song against the war in Iraq," pioneering the use of mp3's and music videos for social change for the internet generation. Stephan is American, his father is Iraqi and his mother Austrian.

Big Mac Index

from The Economist, 28 January 2011]

Lies, flame-grilled lies and statistics

What do burger prices tell us about the reliability of official inflation figures?

INFLATION is creeping up around the globe. But in many countries, ordinary folk as well as investment analysts suspect that governments are fiddling the figures for political reasons, and that the true inflation rate is much higher than officially reported. Argentina’s inflation rate is the hardest to swallow. According to the government, consumer prices rose by 10.9% in the year to December, but private-sector economists estimate the true increase to be at least twice as much. In China, too, many claim that the government’s figures hugely understate increases in the cost of living.

Economists disagree on the best way to measure consumer-price inflation. How often should the relative weights be changed? How should one take account of quality improvements? One reason why the Chinese may think their cost of living is rising so quickly is that consumers are moving upmarket—for example, from the local dumpling stand to a restaurant. That increases households’ spending, but is not inflation.

If you find the theory of price indices hard to digest, why not rely on simple burgernomics? The Economist’s Big Mac index was devised as a lighthearted gauge to whether currencies are under- or overvalued, but Jonathan Anderson, an economist at UBS, suggests that it can also be used to cross-check official inflation rates. Consisting of food, materials, wages and rent, the McDonald’s Big Mac offers a handy consumer-price basket, whose composition has hardly changed over time.

We have compared prices late last year with those ten years earlier in a selection of countries. For example, the price of a Big Mac in China rose by an annual average of 3.7%, against the reported inflation rate of 2.3%. Is this evidence that the government is underreporting inflation? Not necessarily; the discrepancy is roughly the same as in America (see chart). One might expect burger inflation to exceed overall inflation because food prices have risen faster than other prices. Yet in Russia and Indonesia, Big Mac prices rose by a lot less than the official price index, possibly suggesting that the governments’ figures overstate inflation.

However, burgernomics does support claims that Argentina’s government is cooking the books. The gap between its average annual rate of burger inflation (19%) and its official rate (10%) is far bigger than in any other country. Its government deserves a good grilling.

Alice Neel

"I thought you had to give up a lot for art, and you did.  It required complete concentration.  It also required that whatever money you had had to be put into art materials."

— Alice Neel

American Artist

1900 - 1984

The Spanish Family (1943)

What have you had to give up in order to be able to paint, or write or play music?  Our muses can be demanding — asking us to give up relationships, friendships and even family.  And sometimes our muses will drain our spirit and leave us battered and lifeless.  Art requires the artist to be faithful and loyal.   Art demands that we work hard, often with little or no respect, money or fame.  We labor on day and night hoping that one day someone will discover us.  Sometimes we hurt those we love.  We sacrifice our family on the altar of creativity.  And for what?  The hope that maybe one day someone will notice.  It takes a lot of courage to be an artist.  To be willing to sacrifice so much.  For some of us, we sacrifice our sanity or even our lives.  

And yet, I think there is another way.  We can find balance in our lives.  We don't have to sacrifice everything.  We can maintain our sanity without falling off the cliff.  Don't let the creative impulse destroy you.  Be strong.  Find a way to balance the wild and crazy spirit with the routines of daily living.  Maybe you can knit, take up yoga, play golf or simply take a walk.  Embrace the whole you, not just the creative side.  Anything taken to the extreme is destructive.

Naipaul's mid-1970s view of Argentina

[brief opinions from V. S. Naipaul's The Return of Eva Perón, André Deutsch Limited, 1980]

Argentina political life is like the life of an ant community or an African forest tribe: full of events, full of crises and deaths, but life is only cyclical, and the year always ends as it begins.

cabecita negra, the "blackhead," the man from the interior

For [Eva Perón] the Argentine aristocracy was always mediocre. . . . she shattered the myth of Argentina as an aristocratic colonial land. And no other myth, no other idea of the land, has been found to take its place.

the bitter Perón years, when [Borges] was "promoted" out of the library to the inspectorship of poultry and rabbits in the public markets, and resigned.

[Perón] was the army man who had moved out of the code of his caste and shaken up the old colonial agriculture society of Argentina . . . given a brutal face to the brutish land of estancias and polo and brothels and very cheap servants.

Argentina is a land of plunder.

a country where rhetoric hasn't ever been open and intellectual resources are scant . . . the country has yet no idea of itself . . . no real history

[Perón] brought out and made strident the immigrant proletarian reality . . . He showed the country its unacknowledged half-Indian face

Land in Argentina . . . is still only a commodity.

You can live in Argentina, many Argentines say, only if you can leave.

History in Argentina . . . is a process of forgetting.

For more than thirty years Argentina has been in a state of insurrection. . . . The parallel is with Haiti, after the slave rebellion of Toussaint

the Recoleta Cemetery, the upper-class necropolis of Buenos Aires. The stone and marble avenues of the mimic town are full of the great names of Argentina, or names which if the country had been better built, would have been great, but can be seen now only as part of a pretentious, failed past.

inflation

[from V. S. Naipaul's The Return of Eva Perón, André Deutsch Limited, 1980]

The peso has gone to hell: from 5 to the dollar in 1947, to 16 in 1949, 250 in 1966, 400 in 1970, 420 in June [1971], 960 in April [1972], 1100 in May. Inflation, which has been running at a steady 25 percent since the Perón days, has now jumped to 60 percent. The banks are offering 24 percent interest.

. . . it is a nightmare. It is almost impossible to put together capital; and even then, if you are thinking of buying a flat, a delay of a week can cost you two or three hundred U.S. dollars (many business people prefer to deal in dollars). Salaries, prices, the exchange rate: everyone talks money, everyone who can afford it buys dollars on the black market. And soon even the visitor is touched by the hysteria. In two months a hotel room rises from 7000 pesos to 9000, a tin of tobacco from 630 to 820. Money has to be changed in small amounts; the market has to be watched. The peso drops one day to 1250 to the dollar. Is this a freak, or the beginning of a new decline? To hesitate that day was to lose: the peso bounced back to 1100. "You begin to feel," says Norman Thomas di Giovanni, the translator of Borges, who has come to the end of his three-year stint in Buenos Aires, "that you are spending the best years of your life at the moneychanger's. I go there some afternoons the way other people go shopping. Just to see what's being offered."

The blanket wage rises that the government decrees from time to time – 15 percent in May, and another 15 percent promised soon – cannot keep pace with prices. "We've got to the stage," the ambassador's wife says, "when we can calculate the time between the increase in wages and the increase in prices." People take a second job and sometimes a third. Everyone is obsessed with the need to make more money and at the same time to spend quickly. People gamble. Even in the conservative Andean town of Mendoza the casino is full; the patrons are mainly workpeople, whose average wage is the equivalent of fifty dollars. The queues that form all over Buenos Aires on a Thursday are of people waiting to hand in their football-pool coupons. The announcement of the pool results is a weekly national event.

Falklands vs Malvinas

[from David Rock's Argentina 1516-1987: from Spanish Colonization to Alfonsín, University of California, 1987]

in both Argentina and Britain the pursuit of principle was a masquerade for a war whose chief purpose was short-term political gain. The Thatcher government welcomed the outburst of jingoism and xenophobia, a doctrinaire nationalism that evoked Britain's defunct imperial grandeur and inspired a patriotism reminiscent of 1956, when Britons had rallied against Egypt during the Suez crisis. The military triumph in the Falklands helped carry Thatcher's unpopular government to a resounding electoral victory – the very prize the Galtieri junta had gambled on in Argentina.

But Galtieri's gamble cost him everything. On 15 June he made his final address to the Argentine people. He blamed the defeat on foreign treachery, citing the "overwhelming superiority of a power supported by the military technology of the United States, a nation that has most surprisingly become the enemy of Argentina and its people." But as Galtieri spoke, popular disillusionment erupted in a wave of violent clashes with the police in the Plaza del Mayo outside the Casa Rosada. Most Argentines now recognized that the junta had used the invasion to manipulate patriotic sentiment in order to recharge the fading Process of National Reorganization.

However inadvertently, Britain had toppled Galtieri's regime and exploded the myth of the junta's monolithic invincibility. Only the air force, which had conducted desperate suicide missions against the British naval force, emerged from the episode with any credit. Anaya and his navy had played almost no part in the conflict, except for the fleet air arm that joined the air force in strikes against British ships. After the sinking of the Belgrano, the navy had remained in port and at anchor, safe from British submarines.

For the military the worst casualty of the war was the reputation of the Argentine army. Argentina's initial invasion force comprised some well-trained, highly professional units. Yet when the British fleet began its preparations, most Argentine army regulars were ordered to remain at their posts on the mainland, a majority in the garrisons facing Chile. Instead, the junta filled the islands with a force of ill-trained teenage conscripts, many from the poor northern provinces and some drafted into uniform only days before. The ill-equipped raw conscripts proved no match for the highly trained British forces, and the Argentina army was unable to master critical reinforcement, resupply, and logistical difficulties. Ex-combatants later complained of widespread abuse and corruption in the rationing and distribution of provisions, and of officers meting out brutal corporate punishment against conscript soldiers. On the fall of Port Stanley, starving Argentine troops had rioted and looted. In contrast to their heroic posturing, the army generals surrendered with scarcely a fight.

All these political and military miscalculations were soon recognized and acknowledged throughout Argentina. As the shell-shocked, demoralized forces returned home, most civilians came to the same conclusion as the junta's leading opponents: the invasion had been "an adventure beyond description. We put at risk the only international dispute we were actually winning." By August, the report by a special commission of the armed forces, chaired by General Benjamin Rattenbach, leaked out. The commission severely criticized Galtieri's foreign minister, Nicanor Costa Méndez, for having so profoundly misread the likely reactions to the invasion in Britain and the United States. The report impugned the entire conduct of the war by its commanders, including Galtieri and Menéndez. In particular, the commission attacked the inadequate preparations for the invasion, the junta's failure to adopt emergency economic measures until well into May, and military's fabricated accounts of nonexistent Argentina victories. . . .

Latin American support for Argentina was almost unanimous. The Sandinistas in Nicaragua offered troops, Venezuela supplies of oil, and Peru replacement warplanes. Only the Pinochet regime in Chile took the contrary line, allowing the British to base commando units in its southern territories. Of course, fear of Chilean opportunism had persuaded the Argentine army to leave most of the its best forces guarding the Andean frontiers – another major strategic blunder in the Falkland Islands venture.

Henry Ford

"Failure is the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."

— Henry Ford

American Businessman

1863 - 1947

Creativity is not a talent that is limited to artists and writers.  There many business leaders who have the gift of creativity.  Henry Ford was a creative genius who revolutionized the world of business and the American culture.  Ford built his first car inside a rented building.  When the car was finished, he realized that the door was not big enough for the car to go through so he destroyed an entire wall.  He did not let the wall stand in the way of test driving his first car.  Do you learn from your mistakes?  In every failure is an opportunity to grow and change.  When something knocks you off your feet, pick yourself up and begin again. 

pix of Penny's house

scheduled to be completed in March, 2011

Uruguay: "little, cosy country"

[from Merco Press, 27 January 2011]

Let’s stop Fooling Around and Spending so Much on Arms Says Uruguayan President Mujica

The President of Uruguay Jose Mujica, on Wednesday concluded a two-day visit to Peru aimed at deepening trade and political relations. His next official port of call is Venezuela.

Mujica's visit to Peru was the first by a Uruguayan head of state in 25 years. In a government statement, Peruvian president Alan Garcia said it was “worth waiting” to receive a representative from such an “example of democracy, education and peace.”

Mujica met with Garcia to sign bilateral accords on ports, migration, health and education.

Mujica was awarded the Grand Collar of the Order El Sol del Peru, the highest distinction awarded by the Peruvian State, in a ceremony at the Salon Dorado at government house.

Trade between Peru and Uruguay is currently worth about $94 million, with Peru exporting $21 million worth of fish and wool. Peruvian imports, worth about $73 million, include rice, maize and meat.

The Lima Chamber of Commerce, where Mujica spoke, noted that Uruguay is a major software exporter in Latin America and said the countries could work together on boosting trade of goods and services.

During his speech Mujica thanked García for inviting him and talked about the relations between the two countries.

“Uruguayans are friendly people, in Uruguay you have the freedom to say what you want and live freely. We also have defects like everybody else, but we live in peace,” Mujica said.

On his part Garcia said, ”I propose that Pepe (Jose Mujica) lift the flag on behalf of democratic Uruguay, to become a partner on lifting the banner of peace and disarmament among our South American countries,” “Our countries need resources to help the people who are in poverty,” he added.

“I am going to take your remarks into careful consideration,” said Mujica. “Let’s stop fooling around and spending so much money on arms when we have to spend a lot of money on other things and we owe so much to poor people who have been forgotten and ignored,” he added.

Mujica, as always, was dressed informally, showed how humble he is. “I don’t deserve all this fuss, the pigeons in the square are scared,” he joked, referring to the main square in Lima where “parts of our scars, glory, frustrations and pain of the fatherland are yet to be fulfilled,”

The Uruguayan leader said that his country and Peru should improve their relationship and invited Peruvians to move to his “little, cosy country, which is almost empty and has very fertile land.” He said it is time for Peru to send business people and people “to live” and not just “third world seamen, exploited by Asian ships; and maids, even though they are honourable and docile.”

During his visit, Mujica said one of his aims was to push for the entry of Peru and Venezuela into the Mercosur trading block which includes Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

William A. Ward

"A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life."

— William A. Ward

American Author / Speaker

1921 - 1994

Are you able to laugh at yourself and the circumstances you find yourself in?  Life has a tendency to throw you off balance and unless you are able to laugh, you will surely cry.  Laughter gives us balance and a way to cope with the challenges we face.  Some of the best humor is what I call spontaneous humor.  This is humor that is not planned.  This is humor that rises spontaneously out of the situation and it can't be conveyed to others.  This is humor that you have to have been there to grasp it. 



Are you able to find the humor in difficult situations?  I challenge you to keep a humor journal where you record funny things that happen to you.  And on those days when you feeling down, pick up your journal and relive those laughs.

MY MIXED TAPE - FEBRUARY 1989

Here's another '80's mix tape from my personal collection. Early 1989 saw Paula Abdul breakout with her 3rd single "Straight Up", Debbie Gibson hit #1 with her ballad "Lost In Your Eyes", Erasure called out for "A Little Respect"(#14), The Escape Club followed up their #1 hit "Wild, Wild West" with the #28 charting "Shake For The Sheik", New Edition hit #1 on the R&B chart with "Can You Stand The Rain", Canadian pop singer Candi hits with her second single "Under Your Spell". Duran Duran hit #22 with "All She Wants Is", and rapper Tone Loc makes his debut with "Wild Thing"(#2). I guess I was still heavy into pop music back in 1989. What were you listening too 22 years ago?

FEBRUARY 1989

Side A 

#1. "Straight Up" by Paula Abdul

#2. "She Wants To Dance With Me" by Rick Astley

#3. "We Close Our Eyes" by David Gibson

#4. "Shake For The Sheik" by The Escape Club

#5. "A Little Respect" by Erasure

#6. "Left To My Own Devices" by Pet Shop Boys

#7. "All She Wants Is" by Duran Duran

#8. "Wild Thing" by Tone Loc

#9. "Don't Tell Me Lies" by Breathe

#10. "Under Your Spell" by Candi

#11. "It's No Secret" by Kylie Minogue

Side B

#1. "Lost In Your Eyes" by Debbie Gibson

#2. "Surrender To Me" by Ann Wilson & Robin Zander

#3. "My Heart Can't Tell You No" by Rod Stewart

#4. "Can You Stand The Rain" by New Edition

#5. "The Living Years" by Mike & The Mechanics

#6. "You're Not Alone" by Chicago

#7. "Roni" by Bobby Brown

#8. "You Got It  (The Right Stuff) by New Kids on the Block

#9. "The Love In Your Eyes" by Eddie Money

#10. "Angel of Harlem" by U2

#11. "Still In Love" by Corey Hart

#12. "Across The Miles" by Survivor

Most songs available @ iTunes.

¡Che Boludo!

[from James Bracken's ¡Che Boludo!, Continente, 2007, thank you to David Galland]

From the prologue:

Sample page from dictionary:

If you would like the PDF for this book, email me.

Katharine Graham

"To love what you do and feel that it matters — how could anything be more fun?"

— Katharine Graham

American Publisher

1917 - 2001

Do you love to paint?  Do you love to write?  Do you love to act?  Do you love to draw?  What is your passion?  If you do not enjoy writing or singing or painting, then maybe it is time to get out of the creative business and find something you love to do.   The creative world is difficult and if you don't have fun being creative, you will feel like you have been hit by truck. 

What we as creative leaders do is very important.  We touch people's lives and help them feel better about themselves.  We solve problems and show the world a better way.  We bring beauty and ideas into the world.  We help people escape their mundane worlds for a short time.  We inspire people to be better than they are.  We give hope where there is none.  We help people visit new worlds and experience new places.

buying a vineyard in Mendoza

[from Bloomberg, 25 January 2011, thank you to Steve Abramowitz]

Argentina Lures Bankers Dreaming of Owning Their Own Vineyard

For his 50th birthday two years ago, Phil Asmundson, vice chairman of technology at Deloitte LLP, flew to Argentina for a vacation and ended up buying a vineyard.

As a long-time wine collector, making his own was a secret dream. During harvest in March or April, he'll fly down from New York to pick malbec grapes and play cellar rat.

Asmundson bought 3 acres of land in the Uco Valley for just under $200,000 from Vines of Mendoza, a five-year-old company in Argentina that sells parcels of prime vineyard acreage, plants them to owners' specifications, then manages caretaking and winemaking. Owners can participate as much or as little as they wish. The 87 so far come from 7 states and 9 countries.

"There aren't many passions that are made easy to do," says Asmundson. "This was turnkey."

The other deciding factors? He loves the country's signature malbec grape, and was persuaded that the wines could be "really great quality" because Vines of Mendoza has the help of well-known winemaker Santiago Achaval.

When the deal was final, he and his wife celebrated with bottles of Salentein Primus malbec ($45) from Argentina and Heitz Trailside cabernet ($80) from Napa.

Vines of Mendoza sent him a case of unmarked wines to taste, and used his notes to help focus the style of wine he wanted to make.

Luxury Resort

On a freezing December day, I caught up on the latest developments with co-founder Michael Evans, 45, bronzed from days in vineyard sun, at Manhattan's Topaz Thai restaurant. Over a spicy salad lunch, he clicked through drawings on his laptop of the company's new luxury resort, opening in 2012, where vineyard owners like Asmundson can stay while playing vintner, and tourists can be part of the wine lifestyle.

Lots of glass, local stone, a tiny wine blending lab, courses on Argentine wines—it looked like ambitious high-end Napa with South American cowhide flair and a breathtaking snowcapped Andes backdrop. What started in 2005 as a way for Evans, now 45, to afford his personal vineyard-owning dream has expanded into a range of ventures.

"I alternated between working in wireless technology and politics, but was also passionate about wine," he said.

Exhausted by the John Kerry presidential campaign, he was vacationing in Argentina when he was introduced to Pablo Gimenez Riili by a bookseller in Buenos Aires. The two became business partners and in 2006, after looking at 76 pieces of land, they settled on 1,000 acres accessible only by horseback in the Uco Valley south of the city of Mendoza, near top wineries Bodegas Salentein and Clos de la Siete.

Financial Crash

They ran up credit card debt and tapped friends, family, and angels for $5 million in costs and $500,000 in legal fees, and started offering 3 to 18-acre parcels in 2007. More than 50 of the total 100 sold quickly, but all stalled in 2008.

"You don't know how hard it is to sell a $200,000 vineyard when the financial world is crashing," Evans said. In 2010, though, they unloaded another 25. Planting 1.3 million vines, building a winery, and more has cost another $15 million.

There are hundreds of wineries in the Mendoza region, but on my first trip in 2001, there was no wine bar in Mendoza city where you could taste the best. So Vines of Mendoza opened The Tasting Room in March 2007, then a retail shop and wine bar in the city's Park Hyatt hotel in 2008. They started a wine club, with a warehouse in Napa and recently added a downloadable insider's guide to the region on the Vines of Mendoza website.

Mid-Life Crisis

Judging from the emails I receive, the owning-a-vineyard fantasy is especially popular among wine lovers in midlife crisis mode looking for a life-change. There are now dozens of projects catering to them.

In Oregon wine country near McMinnville is just-launched Hyland Vineyard Estates, a 154-acre project where winemaker Laurent Montalieu is offering homesites with already planted vines he'll manage for $700,000 to more than $1 million. Planned communities of home-plus-vineyard are also being sold in Portugal's Alentejo and France's Languedoc regions.

Evans sent me a barrel sample of Vines of Mendoza's first wine, a blend of owners' malbec grapes, that will be released in March. It was smooth and balanced with lots of dark fruit and earth flavors, though it certainly wasn't the best Argentine malbec I've had.

"It's not only people with 3,000 bottle cellars who buy, says Evans. "These are investment bankers, doctors looking for participatory vacations." And, of course the chance to make wine they'd like to put their name on.

Restaurateur Puck

They also include restaurateur Wolfgang Puck and a Napa vintner. London-based Nick Smith originally bought in for investment but says owning his 3 acres has turned him into passionate wine buff.

Just after Christmas I received a holiday e-mail from Evans, who was back home in Mendoza with his chocolate Labrador, throwing meat on the grill for friends at his regular Sunday asados. He sent a beautiful photo of sunrise over the company's vineyards in Mendoza. Outside my door was a foot of snow.

I remembered a comment from Asmundson, whose wine, from bought grapes, is now in barrel and will be bottled in 2012 in time to serve at Thanksgiving.

"When I think about my vineyard, I smile," he said. "I just wish I'd bought 5 acres."