Some Posit That Liberal Conspiracy Keeps It Out of Stores
By ALEX PASTERNACK Special to the Sun
While a best-selling book has brought questions about Senator Kerry’sVietnam record to the front burner, some New Yorkers are asking another question: Where is the book?
“Unfit for Command,” the centerpiece of the critique of the Democratic presidential candidate’s war experience that has played out in the press recently, rose to the top of best-seller lists this week, but shoppers say they have had a hard time finding it at New York bookstores, where it’s either sold out or given minimal promotion.
Some wonder if booksellers around this heavily Democrat city are choosing not to carry it at all,as supporters of Mr. Kerry have attempted to pull the book from shelves.
“When any political book by a celebrity author has appeared, Borders, particularly, provides prominent displays,” said Bob D’Agostino, a teacher in the Bronx who has been unable to find the book at his local bookstores.
Borders and a competitor chain, Barnes & Noble, along with a number of independent bookshops, have denied any political bias, blaming high demand and a limited first pressing of the book by its publisher, Regnery, for the book’s absence from store shelves.
The publisher “couldn’t keep up with public demand for the title. The demand was not anticipated by the publisher nor the retailers,” said a Barnes & Noble spokeswoman, Mary Ellen Keating.
At least one local bookstore, Book-Court in Cobble Hill, was reluctant to carry “Unfit for Command,” ordering the book only after some customers demanded it.
“I definitely don’t want to sell it,” one of the store’s owners, Henry Zook, said. “From an objective, business point of view, we should have one or two copies just because some inquiring minds might be interested in it, or, for instance, if somebody wants to examine it for flaws.”
Chris Finan, a spokesman for the American Booksellers Association for Free Expression, an anti-censorship group, said it was uncommon for booksellers to choose not to carry books for political reasons, adding that it was unlikely that many were refusing to carry “Unfit for Command.”
“There are probably some booksellers who aren’t selling it on principle, and they have that right by the First Amendment,” he said. “From time to time, booksellers make decisions on what they’re going to sell, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.”
Since Regnery pushed up the book’s release date, to mid-August from September 1, political talk shows and Web logs have been buzzing with fervent debate about the claims made by authors John O’Neil and Jerome Corsi, who challenge the validity of Mr. Kerry’s war medals. But discussions by TV and armchair pundits have also veered to the difficulty of finding the book, with some crying liberal conspiracy.
On Friday, for instance, conservative radio talk show host Kevin McCullough reported on his Web site that Borders was “undergoing a ‘recall’ of the book and stopping sales.”
But at Borders and most other city booksellers, managers say that business trumps politics and that they would eagerly sell the book if only they could get their hands on it.
Peggy Zieran, the manager at a Borders store on Long Island, said many would-be customers suspected the store of suppressing the book.
“We are a retailer, we don’t censor,” she said. “If we had that book we’d be making a lot of money.”
While most bookstores await new shipments from the publisher, which will have printed half a million copies of the book by next week, visits to a number of local Barnes & Noble stores found the book in ample supply and selling well.
Nonetheless, a handful of store managers say they are still receiving complaints that the book has not been given the same prominent display as bestselling books by liberal authors like filmmaker Michael Moore and columnist Maureen Dowd.
“A few weeks ago we heard people complaining about our displays of left-wing books, and now people are upset that we’re not promoting this book enough,” said an employee at the Barnes & Noble on West 66th Street.
Only three of the store’s two-dozen copies of the book were on display on the first floor, next to a large stack of copies of President Clinton’s biography, “My Life.”
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Monday, August 23, 2004
New Collegians Prepare for Convention Clogging
By ALEX PASTERNACK
On top of the usual uncertainties that surround the first week of college — roommates, classes, and how to find the dining hall — the thousands of freshmen arriving in New York at the end of August are facing an additional unknown: sharing their new hometown with a 300,000-person political convention.
“I’m actually really frustrated about it. It’s really hard going away to college anyway; it’s going to be so busy, and this just makes things more difficult,” said Gillian Berrow, an 18-year-old from Concord, Calif., and incoming freshman at NYU. Like most new college students around the city, Ms. Berrow’s orientation program happens to fall on the same week as the Republican National Convention.
“Everybody I’ve talked to is pretty stressed out about it,” she said.
When her parents tried to book a room at the nearby Gramercy Park hotel, where they stayed on their first visit to the college, she said they found only “astronomical” rates. “We couldn’t afford that, and it was really hard to find another hotel room.”
Parents “are finding it very, very difficult” to find accommodations, said Carol Merles, a Long Island travel agent who typically helps NYU parents book hotels. Unless they opt to stay in Westchester or New Jersey, she said, “they’re paying a lot of money for a dump in the city.”
Ms. Berrow’s family eventually found cheap beds at the school’s student-run hotel, but concerns still remained, fueled in part by chatter on online bulletin boards for new students. “I’ve heard cabs are going to charge people more because there are so many people coming in,” Ms. Berrow said.
In recent weeks, administrators at colleges such as NYU and Columbia have begun planning for convention-week headaches by inviting students to move in a day earlier than usual,sending letters home warning about delays, and setting up telephone hotlines for worried parents — all the while reiterating the famous post-9/11 New York mantra: “business as usual.”
But such provisions are doing little to shift students’ and parents’ feelings about the potential convention chaos, feelings that range from concern to excitement to ambivalence.
Among the many parents not looking forward to the move-in is Kim Fogarty of Bay Shore, who will be helping her son Ryan move in to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts on the Saturday before the convention. The ongoing threat of terrorism is not a major concern, she said, but the inevitable traffic congestion, parking regulations, and security stops are.
“Moving somebody into college, you know what our truck will look like,”Ms.Fogarty said.“If they try to inspect us,I’m going to make them pack us back up.”
Instead of taking the Holland Tunnel, she and her husband will drive through Brooklyn to get to NYU.“Very honestly it’s a nightmare. I wish I could do it another weekend, but what are you gonna do?”
Kathleen Kan, an incoming freshman at Columbia who will be driving in with her parents from Connecticut, said she was mostly unconcerned about interruptions due to the convention, especially since her school is located 100 blocks from the convention.
“Actually, I am excited the more I think about it.At least I’ll be there and I can actually go,” she said, expressing an interest in joining anti-GOP demonstrations. Protest organizers from other schools had invited her and other incoming freshmen by e-mail to join anti-GOP demonstrations, she said.
Students hoping to take part in the convention will also be juggling a busy schedule of unpacking and orienteering. “During orientation we have them fully booked, 9 to 5,” said Jason Caroll, an orientation organizer at NYU. “We won’t be encouraging [protesting] or telling them about protests, so it’s up to the students to find out about them.”
As usual, some orientation programs will be geared toward making out-of-town students feel comfortable in the city, especially during the convention. “We want to make sure they’re advised, informed, and given the proper information, that they are aware of the neighborhoods,” said NYU spokesperson Richard Pierce of the students who will be exploring the city during the week of the Convention.
Nonetheless, the convention and its protests promise to provide ample distraction from schools’ orientation programs.The protests,including the largest one, are planned for the Sunday before the convention, when many schools begin their orientations.
But “in a place like Columbia you kind of feel like you should be involved in the protest,” Atossa Abrahamian, a new Columbia freshman, wrote in an e-mail.
Despite students’ desires to acclimate to college life in the big city, Michael Gould-Wartofsky, a student organizer for the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, an activist group, said he expected many students to rally.“From what I’ve been hearing, a lot of freshmen would rather miss a few days of orientation to take part in protests,” he said
He said he also knew of freshmen and other early-arrival students who would be offering valuable dorm room floor space to out-of-town protestors looking for a place to unroll their sleeping bags.
While most schools aren’t near the convention site at Madison Square Garden, Yeshiva University’s Beren women’s campus and CUNY’s Graduate Center are both located two blocks to the east of the Garden. Spokesmen said that despite high security precautions, both buildings will remain open.
Peter Ferrara, a spokesman for Yeshiva, said that moving in would be a challenge for the 1,000 women moving into the dorms that week.“Orientation and registration is already fairly challenging for students and parents; this ramps it up,” he said. The school’s orientation program of baseball games and city tours will go ahead, with an expectation for delays. “It will be a bit more challenging,” he said.
A spokesman from the NYC Host Committee said: “The city has a plan to ensure that businesses, residents, commuters, students, and visitors can go about their lives during the convention.”
Emma Poltrack, an incoming NYU freshman, said she didn’t think the convention would affect her week significantly, but was still nervous about the possibility of terrorism.
“It’s silly to change your actions because of some unfounded idea of a threat, but on the other hand, if anything were to happen, it makes sense that it would happen that week/weekend,” Ms. Poltrack wrote in an e-mail.
Meanwhile,Michael Arena,a CUNY spokesman,said that the CUNY system has planned no changes to its routine, and that the most common concern he’s heard from the largely commuter student body was over subway delays.
“Believe me, we’re used to it,” he said.“Those kinds of things people live with day in and day out in this city.”
On top of the usual uncertainties that surround the first week of college — roommates, classes, and how to find the dining hall — the thousands of freshmen arriving in New York at the end of August are facing an additional unknown: sharing their new hometown with a 300,000-person political convention.
“I’m actually really frustrated about it. It’s really hard going away to college anyway; it’s going to be so busy, and this just makes things more difficult,” said Gillian Berrow, an 18-year-old from Concord, Calif., and incoming freshman at NYU. Like most new college students around the city, Ms. Berrow’s orientation program happens to fall on the same week as the Republican National Convention.
“Everybody I’ve talked to is pretty stressed out about it,” she said.
When her parents tried to book a room at the nearby Gramercy Park hotel, where they stayed on their first visit to the college, she said they found only “astronomical” rates. “We couldn’t afford that, and it was really hard to find another hotel room.”
Parents “are finding it very, very difficult” to find accommodations, said Carol Merles, a Long Island travel agent who typically helps NYU parents book hotels. Unless they opt to stay in Westchester or New Jersey, she said, “they’re paying a lot of money for a dump in the city.”
Ms. Berrow’s family eventually found cheap beds at the school’s student-run hotel, but concerns still remained, fueled in part by chatter on online bulletin boards for new students. “I’ve heard cabs are going to charge people more because there are so many people coming in,” Ms. Berrow said.
In recent weeks, administrators at colleges such as NYU and Columbia have begun planning for convention-week headaches by inviting students to move in a day earlier than usual,sending letters home warning about delays, and setting up telephone hotlines for worried parents — all the while reiterating the famous post-9/11 New York mantra: “business as usual.”
But such provisions are doing little to shift students’ and parents’ feelings about the potential convention chaos, feelings that range from concern to excitement to ambivalence.
Among the many parents not looking forward to the move-in is Kim Fogarty of Bay Shore, who will be helping her son Ryan move in to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts on the Saturday before the convention. The ongoing threat of terrorism is not a major concern, she said, but the inevitable traffic congestion, parking regulations, and security stops are.
“Moving somebody into college, you know what our truck will look like,”Ms.Fogarty said.“If they try to inspect us,I’m going to make them pack us back up.”
Instead of taking the Holland Tunnel, she and her husband will drive through Brooklyn to get to NYU.“Very honestly it’s a nightmare. I wish I could do it another weekend, but what are you gonna do?”
Kathleen Kan, an incoming freshman at Columbia who will be driving in with her parents from Connecticut, said she was mostly unconcerned about interruptions due to the convention, especially since her school is located 100 blocks from the convention.
“Actually, I am excited the more I think about it.At least I’ll be there and I can actually go,” she said, expressing an interest in joining anti-GOP demonstrations. Protest organizers from other schools had invited her and other incoming freshmen by e-mail to join anti-GOP demonstrations, she said.
Students hoping to take part in the convention will also be juggling a busy schedule of unpacking and orienteering. “During orientation we have them fully booked, 9 to 5,” said Jason Caroll, an orientation organizer at NYU. “We won’t be encouraging [protesting] or telling them about protests, so it’s up to the students to find out about them.”
As usual, some orientation programs will be geared toward making out-of-town students feel comfortable in the city, especially during the convention. “We want to make sure they’re advised, informed, and given the proper information, that they are aware of the neighborhoods,” said NYU spokesperson Richard Pierce of the students who will be exploring the city during the week of the Convention.
Nonetheless, the convention and its protests promise to provide ample distraction from schools’ orientation programs.The protests,including the largest one, are planned for the Sunday before the convention, when many schools begin their orientations.
But “in a place like Columbia you kind of feel like you should be involved in the protest,” Atossa Abrahamian, a new Columbia freshman, wrote in an e-mail.
Despite students’ desires to acclimate to college life in the big city, Michael Gould-Wartofsky, a student organizer for the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, an activist group, said he expected many students to rally.“From what I’ve been hearing, a lot of freshmen would rather miss a few days of orientation to take part in protests,” he said
He said he also knew of freshmen and other early-arrival students who would be offering valuable dorm room floor space to out-of-town protestors looking for a place to unroll their sleeping bags.
While most schools aren’t near the convention site at Madison Square Garden, Yeshiva University’s Beren women’s campus and CUNY’s Graduate Center are both located two blocks to the east of the Garden. Spokesmen said that despite high security precautions, both buildings will remain open.
Peter Ferrara, a spokesman for Yeshiva, said that moving in would be a challenge for the 1,000 women moving into the dorms that week.“Orientation and registration is already fairly challenging for students and parents; this ramps it up,” he said. The school’s orientation program of baseball games and city tours will go ahead, with an expectation for delays. “It will be a bit more challenging,” he said.
A spokesman from the NYC Host Committee said: “The city has a plan to ensure that businesses, residents, commuters, students, and visitors can go about their lives during the convention.”
Emma Poltrack, an incoming NYU freshman, said she didn’t think the convention would affect her week significantly, but was still nervous about the possibility of terrorism.
“It’s silly to change your actions because of some unfounded idea of a threat, but on the other hand, if anything were to happen, it makes sense that it would happen that week/weekend,” Ms. Poltrack wrote in an e-mail.
Meanwhile,Michael Arena,a CUNY spokesman,said that the CUNY system has planned no changes to its routine, and that the most common concern he’s heard from the largely commuter student body was over subway delays.
“Believe me, we’re used to it,” he said.“Those kinds of things people live with day in and day out in this city.”
Thursday, August 19, 2004
In Brief: DEALERS SELLING CIGARETTES WITHOUT TAX LICENSES, HEVESI AUDIT REPORTS
As many as 875 New York City retailers have been selling cigarettes without licenses, according to an audit report released yesterday by State Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s office, which pushes for improved coordination of tobacco licensing by state and city agencies.
Cigarette vendors and wholesalers in New York City must obtain licenses from the state and city. The Comptroller’s audit, conducted between January 2001 and October 2003, found little coordination between the two city agencies and the state agency over the licensing of cigarette sellers, even though more than half of the state’s retailers and wholesalers are located in the city.
The state’s finance department and the Department of Consumer Affairs “do not compare their records to ensure that retailers applying for a NYC license have the required [state license] and that the information for all retailers is correctly entered in each database,” the report concludes.
Comparing state and city records, auditors discovered 3,583 retailers with a state license but no city license. After investigating a random sampling of 85 of these resellers, they estimated that between 8 and 20 percent of retailers were selling cigarettes without a city license. Auditors also discovered that as many as 148 of the 764 retailers with a revoked or suspended NYC license were selling cigarettes.
A spokesperson for the state tax department, Tom Bergin, said the problems are significant. “It’s a very important issue, and we’re concerned about it,” he said. “We have to make sure we capture the revenue we’re losing,
Cigarette vendors and wholesalers in New York City must obtain licenses from the state and city. The Comptroller’s audit, conducted between January 2001 and October 2003, found little coordination between the two city agencies and the state agency over the licensing of cigarette sellers, even though more than half of the state’s retailers and wholesalers are located in the city.
The state’s finance department and the Department of Consumer Affairs “do not compare their records to ensure that retailers applying for a NYC license have the required [state license] and that the information for all retailers is correctly entered in each database,” the report concludes.
Comparing state and city records, auditors discovered 3,583 retailers with a state license but no city license. After investigating a random sampling of 85 of these resellers, they estimated that between 8 and 20 percent of retailers were selling cigarettes without a city license. Auditors also discovered that as many as 148 of the 764 retailers with a revoked or suspended NYC license were selling cigarettes.
A spokesperson for the state tax department, Tom Bergin, said the problems are significant. “It’s a very important issue, and we’re concerned about it,” he said. “We have to make sure we capture the revenue we’re losing,
Thursday, August 12, 2004
To Flee or Not To Flee Is N.Y. Question
By ALEX PASTERNACK Special to the Sun
Conventional city wisdom dictates there is no better time to flee the city than the last week in August — especially when that happens to be the week of the Republican National Convention.
On top of terror concerns, add some of New Yorkers’ biggest nuisances to this year’s end-of-summer boil — Republicans (roughly 30,000), journalists (15,000), protesters (500,000), and street closings (more than 30 blocks), and the notion of staying in the city seems ridiculous.
But then there’s the other branch of New York wisdom that says life goes on. For every resident leaving the city because of the convention, scores of others are shrugging their shoulders and staying put, either to work or because they see no reason to go.
“I think many people will view it as another work week,”said Neil Kleiman, the director of the Center for an Urban Future, a local think tank, who plans to stay in town.“There’s more of a sense in New York that people want to put their head down, do their work, and wait until this blows over.”
Unlike the mayor of Boston, who encouraged people around his commuter city to leave during the Democratic convention, Mayor Bloomberg has urged residents to stick around, highlighting ways to avoid inconvenience, and singing his now-famous mantra: Go about your daily business.
Ed Koch, the former Democrat mayor and supporter of President Bush, even tells New Yorkers in a TV spot to help the delegates “find shopping, a schmeer, a schwarma, a shoe shine, a shuttle, a show,” a tall order for a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans 5 to 1.
But while New Yorkers may not roll out the red carpet for conventioneers, they’re not skipping town on them, either.
Carlynn Houghton, 27, a Democrat who works as an assistant at an Upper East Side girls school, recently backed off the idea of going to Canada during the convention. “If you just up and go then you’re giving up and you’re saying,‘You can have this.’ No political party can have the place you live, certainly if its not my political party.”
It turns out that even among the scores of New Yorkers scrambling to rent out their apartments during the convention, worry is not much of a motivating factor, either.
“I’m just trying to sneak in a side pocket and make some extra cash,” said Michael Weiner, an actor who advertised his Murray Hill apartment on the online bulletin board Craigslist as suited to “both conventioneers and protesters.”
Those here for the convention will be giving city tourism a healthy shot in the arm during its slowest week of the year, at the end of what Cristyne L. Nicholas, the president of visitor bureau NYC and Company, said was a “recordbreaking summer” for tourism.
As for tourism unconnected to the convention, Ms. Nicholas said she did not expect it to drop, and said it might even rise.“Even those hotels [not housing delegates] are seeing the same type of business as they have in the past.”
A spokesman for the U.S. Open, which starts on the same day as the convention, said attendance was expected to be higher than last year, with 40% of the attendees to come from out of town.
Aside from the tennis tournament, which will draw 30,000 spectators a day, the Mets and Yankees are both expecting high attendance for their home games throughout Convention Week.
“Also, Restaurant Week will be extended, sales are going on, and Tax Free Week is happening, too,” Ms. Nicholas added. “And there will be real live Republicans walking around, which should be kind of fun.”
Conventional city wisdom dictates there is no better time to flee the city than the last week in August — especially when that happens to be the week of the Republican National Convention.
On top of terror concerns, add some of New Yorkers’ biggest nuisances to this year’s end-of-summer boil — Republicans (roughly 30,000), journalists (15,000), protesters (500,000), and street closings (more than 30 blocks), and the notion of staying in the city seems ridiculous.
But then there’s the other branch of New York wisdom that says life goes on. For every resident leaving the city because of the convention, scores of others are shrugging their shoulders and staying put, either to work or because they see no reason to go.
“I think many people will view it as another work week,”said Neil Kleiman, the director of the Center for an Urban Future, a local think tank, who plans to stay in town.“There’s more of a sense in New York that people want to put their head down, do their work, and wait until this blows over.”
Unlike the mayor of Boston, who encouraged people around his commuter city to leave during the Democratic convention, Mayor Bloomberg has urged residents to stick around, highlighting ways to avoid inconvenience, and singing his now-famous mantra: Go about your daily business.
Ed Koch, the former Democrat mayor and supporter of President Bush, even tells New Yorkers in a TV spot to help the delegates “find shopping, a schmeer, a schwarma, a shoe shine, a shuttle, a show,” a tall order for a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans 5 to 1.
But while New Yorkers may not roll out the red carpet for conventioneers, they’re not skipping town on them, either.
Carlynn Houghton, 27, a Democrat who works as an assistant at an Upper East Side girls school, recently backed off the idea of going to Canada during the convention. “If you just up and go then you’re giving up and you’re saying,‘You can have this.’ No political party can have the place you live, certainly if its not my political party.”
It turns out that even among the scores of New Yorkers scrambling to rent out their apartments during the convention, worry is not much of a motivating factor, either.
“I’m just trying to sneak in a side pocket and make some extra cash,” said Michael Weiner, an actor who advertised his Murray Hill apartment on the online bulletin board Craigslist as suited to “both conventioneers and protesters.”
Those here for the convention will be giving city tourism a healthy shot in the arm during its slowest week of the year, at the end of what Cristyne L. Nicholas, the president of visitor bureau NYC and Company, said was a “recordbreaking summer” for tourism.
As for tourism unconnected to the convention, Ms. Nicholas said she did not expect it to drop, and said it might even rise.“Even those hotels [not housing delegates] are seeing the same type of business as they have in the past.”
A spokesman for the U.S. Open, which starts on the same day as the convention, said attendance was expected to be higher than last year, with 40% of the attendees to come from out of town.
Aside from the tennis tournament, which will draw 30,000 spectators a day, the Mets and Yankees are both expecting high attendance for their home games throughout Convention Week.
“Also, Restaurant Week will be extended, sales are going on, and Tax Free Week is happening, too,” Ms. Nicholas added. “And there will be real live Republicans walking around, which should be kind of fun.”
Monday, August 09, 2004
KEYES ENTERS ILLINOIS SENATE RACE AGAINST DEMOCRAT OBAMA
Conservative Will Need To Establish Residency
By ALEX PASTERNACK Special to the Sun
A two-time presidential candidate and black conservative commentator, Alan Keyes, entered the campaign fray in Illinois yesterday, ending a month of Republican anxiety over who would face rising star Barack Obama in an uphill battle for the state’s Republican Senate seat.
State GOP leaders last week asked Mr. Keyes, who has a handful of failed campaigns behind him, to run for office, and yesterday he formally accepted the nomination.Although Mr. Keyes is a Maryland resident with no Illinois ties, state law allows candidates to run for public office as long as they live in the state by Election Day.
Six months ago, Jack Ryan dropped out of the race following embarrassing sex allegations that emerged from his divorce papers.
The election will be the first Senate race to feature two blacks from major parties, and it means Illinois will produce the fifth black senator in American history.
At his acceptance speech yesterday, Mr. Keyes promised a fight but not necessarily a victory against favored Democratic state Senator Obama. He also discussed his decision to run after other high-profile state Republicans declined, including a former Chicago Bears football coach, Mike Ditka.
“I will spend a good deal of my time listening to the people of this state,” he told cheering supporters in a Chicago suburb. “I might not know the streets yet and the neighborhoods and all the things that go to make up the everyday life of the people.…but if in fact the people of Illinois still stand together on the American creed, still assert their right of self-government, still have the sense of responsible citizenship, then I believe I know their spirit and their conscience and their heart.”
Mr. Keyes, 54, who last week questioned the notion of running for office in a state he had never lived in, joins the ranks of two other famous “carpetbaggers:” Robert Kennedy and Senator Clinton, who Mr. Keyes once criticized for moving to New York to win her Senate seat.
To the local political establishment, the issue of Mr. Keyes’ parachuting in on the Illinois race,not to mention questions about debts and taxes owed, will be the least of the candidate’s worries. Some say Mr. Keyes’s staunch conservatism will prove hard to swallow in a state that has a long history of centrism and a strong fan base for Mr. Obama, who has achieved celebrity status since his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.
Widely considered to be the nation’s most prominent black conservative,Mr. Keyes opposes abortion and gay rights, has proposed replacing the income tax with a national sales tax, and calls affirmative action a “government patronage program.”
The interim director of the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University and a moderate Republican, Mike Lawrence, said Mr. Keyes’s political stance and his previous failures to capture the Senate seat in Maryland could mean more frustration and division for local Republican officials.
“I think his candidacy will generate enthusiasm among the most conservative elements of the Republican Party here, but I don’t think he’s going to do well in Illinois,” Mr. Lawrence said. “The moderates of both parties are the ones who’ve tended to be successful on a statewide basis.”
Mr. Keyes’s supporters are banking on the candidate’s strengths to burnish the party’s image: name recognition, a compelling speaking style, and a mastery of issues honed on the campaign trail, in the state department and at his alma mater, Harvard.
After learning of his opponent in the Senate race, Mr. Obama said: “Illinoisans want a Senate candidate who will attack the problems they and their families face rather than spending time attacking each other.”
The co-chairman of the Illinois Republican State Central Committee, Stephen McGlynn, said the eloquent Mr.Keyes would pose a challenge to Mr. Obama in debates, where the up-andcomer might be pushed to shed his friendly, centrist image for a harder, more liberal stance.
“We think voters will say, ‘We didn’t know this about Barack,we thought that he was a rock star, but he’s extreme,’” Mr. McGlynn said. “He’s going to have a tough time defending his record. He has to hope that this race doesn’t turn into a contest of ideas.We can win that.”
By ALEX PASTERNACK Special to the Sun
A two-time presidential candidate and black conservative commentator, Alan Keyes, entered the campaign fray in Illinois yesterday, ending a month of Republican anxiety over who would face rising star Barack Obama in an uphill battle for the state’s Republican Senate seat.
State GOP leaders last week asked Mr. Keyes, who has a handful of failed campaigns behind him, to run for office, and yesterday he formally accepted the nomination.Although Mr. Keyes is a Maryland resident with no Illinois ties, state law allows candidates to run for public office as long as they live in the state by Election Day.
Six months ago, Jack Ryan dropped out of the race following embarrassing sex allegations that emerged from his divorce papers.
The election will be the first Senate race to feature two blacks from major parties, and it means Illinois will produce the fifth black senator in American history.
At his acceptance speech yesterday, Mr. Keyes promised a fight but not necessarily a victory against favored Democratic state Senator Obama. He also discussed his decision to run after other high-profile state Republicans declined, including a former Chicago Bears football coach, Mike Ditka.
“I will spend a good deal of my time listening to the people of this state,” he told cheering supporters in a Chicago suburb. “I might not know the streets yet and the neighborhoods and all the things that go to make up the everyday life of the people.…but if in fact the people of Illinois still stand together on the American creed, still assert their right of self-government, still have the sense of responsible citizenship, then I believe I know their spirit and their conscience and their heart.”
Mr. Keyes, 54, who last week questioned the notion of running for office in a state he had never lived in, joins the ranks of two other famous “carpetbaggers:” Robert Kennedy and Senator Clinton, who Mr. Keyes once criticized for moving to New York to win her Senate seat.
To the local political establishment, the issue of Mr. Keyes’ parachuting in on the Illinois race,not to mention questions about debts and taxes owed, will be the least of the candidate’s worries. Some say Mr. Keyes’s staunch conservatism will prove hard to swallow in a state that has a long history of centrism and a strong fan base for Mr. Obama, who has achieved celebrity status since his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.
Widely considered to be the nation’s most prominent black conservative,Mr. Keyes opposes abortion and gay rights, has proposed replacing the income tax with a national sales tax, and calls affirmative action a “government patronage program.”
The interim director of the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University and a moderate Republican, Mike Lawrence, said Mr. Keyes’s political stance and his previous failures to capture the Senate seat in Maryland could mean more frustration and division for local Republican officials.
“I think his candidacy will generate enthusiasm among the most conservative elements of the Republican Party here, but I don’t think he’s going to do well in Illinois,” Mr. Lawrence said. “The moderates of both parties are the ones who’ve tended to be successful on a statewide basis.”
Mr. Keyes’s supporters are banking on the candidate’s strengths to burnish the party’s image: name recognition, a compelling speaking style, and a mastery of issues honed on the campaign trail, in the state department and at his alma mater, Harvard.
After learning of his opponent in the Senate race, Mr. Obama said: “Illinoisans want a Senate candidate who will attack the problems they and their families face rather than spending time attacking each other.”
The co-chairman of the Illinois Republican State Central Committee, Stephen McGlynn, said the eloquent Mr.Keyes would pose a challenge to Mr. Obama in debates, where the up-andcomer might be pushed to shed his friendly, centrist image for a harder, more liberal stance.
“We think voters will say, ‘We didn’t know this about Barack,we thought that he was a rock star, but he’s extreme,’” Mr. McGlynn said. “He’s going to have a tough time defending his record. He has to hope that this race doesn’t turn into a contest of ideas.We can win that.”
Sunday, August 08, 2004
xiu xiu, knitting factory, 8/7/04
HE takes many minutes to set up his instruments. To tune. To tinker with knobs that are only innocent-looking. Lately I've been thinking that musicians ought to do more setting up during their sets instead of beforehand, a way to add some aural spice to the set, some instrument groaning in the throes of birth and making the too long time between sets shorter.
This is not what he is doing. He is preparing himself for the song, the song which could end all songs. The song that soars and thumps and screams and runs and points fingers and kills itself in the most pathetic and dramatic electocution method: third rail, when the train is coming in. Fine, he is setting up, he is tuning. But he is taking a breath, and in so doing, in being completely silent, while his friend stands by blithely looking over the percussion she will bang, he allows the audience some respite, some time to digest, some time to get ready for whatever the hell will be thrown at it next, not knowing, a bit nervous, but eager like a nymphomaniacal sex torture victim but with drum machines and gamelans in place of whips and knives. And whips and knives.
This is not what he is doing. He is preparing himself for the song, the song which could end all songs. The song that soars and thumps and screams and runs and points fingers and kills itself in the most pathetic and dramatic electocution method: third rail, when the train is coming in. Fine, he is setting up, he is tuning. But he is taking a breath, and in so doing, in being completely silent, while his friend stands by blithely looking over the percussion she will bang, he allows the audience some respite, some time to digest, some time to get ready for whatever the hell will be thrown at it next, not knowing, a bit nervous, but eager like a nymphomaniacal sex torture victim but with drum machines and gamelans in place of whips and knives. And whips and knives.
Friday, August 06, 2004
Sole Example of Architect’s Work in America Is Destroyed
By ALEX PASTERNACK Special to the Sun
A death knell is clanging for an Upper East Side townhouse considered to be one of New York’s finest Modernist buildings, as its new owner finishes extensive changes to its façade despite protests from neighbors and preservation groups.
Since early June some of the building’s major elements, including its iconic stainless steel column, have disappeared amidst the stir of local irritation and underneath a shroud of black scaffolding. The revered two-story townhouse at 27 E. 79th St. is the only building in the United States designed by the acclaimed Viennese architect Hans Hollein.
Located across the street from Mayor Bloomberg’s townhouse, the building had been under informal protection since high-powered art dealer Richard Feigen, who once used it as his gallery, sold it to fashion designer Hanae Mori in 1973.
Following the bankruptcy of her store, Ms. Mori sold the building to Thomas Reynolds in 2002 without making a similar agreement, according to a representative for Ms. Mori who participated in the sale.
“I was absolutely astonished that this architectural landmark, which many have called the finest ’60s modernist building in New York by a great architect, could be altered like this,” said Mr. Feigen, who lobbied the owner and notified local groups after noticing construction in April.“Now it’s too late; they’ve ruined the façade.”
While architectural groups say they informally brought the building to the attention of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1999 — the earliest the building could have been designated as a landmark — the groups did not petition to protect it until June, said Landmarks officials, when renovation had already begun.
The formal petition came days after Mr. Feigen first noticed construction work on the building. He enlisted the help of a local preservation group, the Friends of the Upper East Side Historical District, and the architectural consortium Docomomo to help him certify the building as a landmark, and attempted to make an agreement with the new owner, to no avail.
Mr. Hollein told The New York Sun he was devastated at the alteration of one of his early works, what architect Robert AM Stern once called “one of the pioneering gestures…that would characterize architecture in the 1970s and 1980s.”
“I considered it a very important small building, important in the development at that time for architecture in the U.S. and New York,” Mr. Hollein said. “It was a new approach to the relation between art and architecture. I felt terrible when I heard about it.”
Mr. Hollein and Mr. Feigen said they were most concerned by the removal of the building’s signature double-barreled stainless steel column, which was fashioned using steel originally intended for the World Trade Center. Positioned in the middle of the façade and rising up two stories, the shiny column has lately given way to its structural pier, a tower of roughshod red-brick.
Because the building was not given landmark status and lies just outside the Upper East Side Historic District, any renovations are legal, said a spokesperson at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission,Diane Jackier.
Though the agency will occasionally expedite the lengthy landmark certification process for endangered buildings, a petition to protect the Feigen Gallery arrived months after a building permit had been issued in April.
“Sometimes things happen unexpectedly and in a faster time frame, and we react as quickly as we can,” Ms. Jackier said. “In this case, there was nothing we could do. The landmarks commission designation would not override a validly issued Department of Buildings permit.”
While Mr. Reynolds and his lawyers did not return repeated calls for comment about the purpose of the renovations, workers at the site said that the new building was being renovated for future gallery use. They said construction, mostly the replacement of the exterior slab with a tiled design, along with minor alterations to the chrometrimmed interior, is scheduled to be done next week.
Preservationists said the situation bespeaks a common threat to modern architecture in the city, where older buildings tend to monopolize the attention of the public and often fall outside the purview of an overburdened Landmarks Commission.
A co-chairwoman of the preservation group Docomomo, Nina Rappaport, said the responsibility to protect modern buildings in the city lies with groups like hers, and especially with the Landmarks Commission.
“We need to have the commission really pay attention to more recent buildings,” she said. “One idea is to do more surveys, to identify where these buildings are, at least to say in some way, if they review a building, ‘we’ve looked at this building, we don’t like it, and here’s why.’”
She added that the destruction of the Hollein building was “in a way faultless.” By the time they tried to negotiate the building’s protection with the owner, “it was just too late, and the owner wasn’t interested at all.”
A death knell is clanging for an Upper East Side townhouse considered to be one of New York’s finest Modernist buildings, as its new owner finishes extensive changes to its façade despite protests from neighbors and preservation groups.
Since early June some of the building’s major elements, including its iconic stainless steel column, have disappeared amidst the stir of local irritation and underneath a shroud of black scaffolding. The revered two-story townhouse at 27 E. 79th St. is the only building in the United States designed by the acclaimed Viennese architect Hans Hollein.
Located across the street from Mayor Bloomberg’s townhouse, the building had been under informal protection since high-powered art dealer Richard Feigen, who once used it as his gallery, sold it to fashion designer Hanae Mori in 1973.
Following the bankruptcy of her store, Ms. Mori sold the building to Thomas Reynolds in 2002 without making a similar agreement, according to a representative for Ms. Mori who participated in the sale.
“I was absolutely astonished that this architectural landmark, which many have called the finest ’60s modernist building in New York by a great architect, could be altered like this,” said Mr. Feigen, who lobbied the owner and notified local groups after noticing construction in April.“Now it’s too late; they’ve ruined the façade.”
While architectural groups say they informally brought the building to the attention of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1999 — the earliest the building could have been designated as a landmark — the groups did not petition to protect it until June, said Landmarks officials, when renovation had already begun.
The formal petition came days after Mr. Feigen first noticed construction work on the building. He enlisted the help of a local preservation group, the Friends of the Upper East Side Historical District, and the architectural consortium Docomomo to help him certify the building as a landmark, and attempted to make an agreement with the new owner, to no avail.
Mr. Hollein told The New York Sun he was devastated at the alteration of one of his early works, what architect Robert AM Stern once called “one of the pioneering gestures…that would characterize architecture in the 1970s and 1980s.”
“I considered it a very important small building, important in the development at that time for architecture in the U.S. and New York,” Mr. Hollein said. “It was a new approach to the relation between art and architecture. I felt terrible when I heard about it.”
Mr. Hollein and Mr. Feigen said they were most concerned by the removal of the building’s signature double-barreled stainless steel column, which was fashioned using steel originally intended for the World Trade Center. Positioned in the middle of the façade and rising up two stories, the shiny column has lately given way to its structural pier, a tower of roughshod red-brick.
Because the building was not given landmark status and lies just outside the Upper East Side Historic District, any renovations are legal, said a spokesperson at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission,Diane Jackier.
Though the agency will occasionally expedite the lengthy landmark certification process for endangered buildings, a petition to protect the Feigen Gallery arrived months after a building permit had been issued in April.
“Sometimes things happen unexpectedly and in a faster time frame, and we react as quickly as we can,” Ms. Jackier said. “In this case, there was nothing we could do. The landmarks commission designation would not override a validly issued Department of Buildings permit.”
While Mr. Reynolds and his lawyers did not return repeated calls for comment about the purpose of the renovations, workers at the site said that the new building was being renovated for future gallery use. They said construction, mostly the replacement of the exterior slab with a tiled design, along with minor alterations to the chrometrimmed interior, is scheduled to be done next week.
Preservationists said the situation bespeaks a common threat to modern architecture in the city, where older buildings tend to monopolize the attention of the public and often fall outside the purview of an overburdened Landmarks Commission.
A co-chairwoman of the preservation group Docomomo, Nina Rappaport, said the responsibility to protect modern buildings in the city lies with groups like hers, and especially with the Landmarks Commission.
“We need to have the commission really pay attention to more recent buildings,” she said. “One idea is to do more surveys, to identify where these buildings are, at least to say in some way, if they review a building, ‘we’ve looked at this building, we don’t like it, and here’s why.’”
She added that the destruction of the Hollein building was “in a way faultless.” By the time they tried to negotiate the building’s protection with the owner, “it was just too late, and the owner wasn’t interested at all.”
Google Turns Up Credit Card Numbers
By ALEX PASTERNACK Special to the Sun
Amid growing concerns about the proliferation of personal data on the Internet, a Web site reported yesterday that a simple search on the popular Google search engine can easily be used to find individuals’ credit card information.
Using a feature that allows queries for particular number ranges — a tool meant to find consumer goods at particular price levels, for instance — people can easily find pages that contain thousands of credit card numbers and expiration dates along with their holders’ names and addresses, CNET.com reported. The problem raises further alarm about the availability of personal data on the Internet.
While much of the information listed online may be outdated, calls by The New York Sun to a handful of the people listed verified the numbers were authentic; some said they had been the victim of credit card fraud in recent months.
The powerful tools and indexing technologies that have made Google popular among everyone from researchers to online shoppers have also made it a top choice among “google hackers” who have used the search engine to manipulate Web searches or gather personal information like Social Security numbers.
In this case,Web users that search for ranges of numbers beginning with particular four-digit prefixes will find Web sites that contain any number within that range. A search for “mastercard 5424000000000000..5424999999999999” yields hundreds of credit card numbers on dozens of Web pages, most in Russian and Arabic.
Jeffery Marchand, an antiques dealer from upstate New York whose credit card information was listed on a Russian website, said that while he appreciated Google’s usefulness, its search index should be censored in some extreme cases.
“I can’t understand why Google would allow that on the system,” he said. “Something that’s clearly illegal shouldn’t be allowed on there.”
Citing the quiet period surrounding their upcoming initial public offering, Google declined to comment, though a company official stressed that the problem lay with the Web sites offering the information,not the search engine itself.
Recently, the company has offered to remove sites that contain credit card and Social Security numbers, as long as users file complaints with help@google.com.
Ernest Lali, an Albany resident, said he was “stunned and irritated” to learn that his credit card information was easily found on a French-language message board.
“I had no idea whatsoever. This shouldn’t be happening,” he said. Because he rarely uses the Internet to make credit card purchases, he said it was especially surprising.
But according to Richard M. Smith, an Internet security consultant, the underground exchange of credit card numbers isn’t just the work of hackers who steal transaction information. He said that such fraud was increasingly committed by e-mail spammers selling fake products, or “phishers,” who use the Internet to gather information from consumers by posing as credit card administrators.
“Clearly Google’s the biggest privacy invader out there,” Mr. Smith said. “Once a piece of information gets out there, its available on the Internet. The trouble is once the stuff gets out, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.”
Consumer protection rules stipulate that credit card holders are typically not responsible for unauthorized charges, which make up 1% of all credit card uses, according to a spokesman for Mastercard, David Collett.
Preventing search engines like Google from listing such sites would be nearly impossible, Mr. Collett said.
“This is just the unintended consequence of their search technology. We can’t fault them, and we’d be happy to work with them if they want to,” he said, adding that Mastercard’s investigators were apprised of the Google trick. “We’re doing everything we can to find these sites ourselves and shut them down.”
Amid growing concerns about the proliferation of personal data on the Internet, a Web site reported yesterday that a simple search on the popular Google search engine can easily be used to find individuals’ credit card information.
Using a feature that allows queries for particular number ranges — a tool meant to find consumer goods at particular price levels, for instance — people can easily find pages that contain thousands of credit card numbers and expiration dates along with their holders’ names and addresses, CNET.com reported. The problem raises further alarm about the availability of personal data on the Internet.
While much of the information listed online may be outdated, calls by The New York Sun to a handful of the people listed verified the numbers were authentic; some said they had been the victim of credit card fraud in recent months.
The powerful tools and indexing technologies that have made Google popular among everyone from researchers to online shoppers have also made it a top choice among “google hackers” who have used the search engine to manipulate Web searches or gather personal information like Social Security numbers.
In this case,Web users that search for ranges of numbers beginning with particular four-digit prefixes will find Web sites that contain any number within that range. A search for “mastercard 5424000000000000..5424999999999999” yields hundreds of credit card numbers on dozens of Web pages, most in Russian and Arabic.
Jeffery Marchand, an antiques dealer from upstate New York whose credit card information was listed on a Russian website, said that while he appreciated Google’s usefulness, its search index should be censored in some extreme cases.
“I can’t understand why Google would allow that on the system,” he said. “Something that’s clearly illegal shouldn’t be allowed on there.”
Citing the quiet period surrounding their upcoming initial public offering, Google declined to comment, though a company official stressed that the problem lay with the Web sites offering the information,not the search engine itself.
Recently, the company has offered to remove sites that contain credit card and Social Security numbers, as long as users file complaints with help@google.com.
Ernest Lali, an Albany resident, said he was “stunned and irritated” to learn that his credit card information was easily found on a French-language message board.
“I had no idea whatsoever. This shouldn’t be happening,” he said. Because he rarely uses the Internet to make credit card purchases, he said it was especially surprising.
But according to Richard M. Smith, an Internet security consultant, the underground exchange of credit card numbers isn’t just the work of hackers who steal transaction information. He said that such fraud was increasingly committed by e-mail spammers selling fake products, or “phishers,” who use the Internet to gather information from consumers by posing as credit card administrators.
“Clearly Google’s the biggest privacy invader out there,” Mr. Smith said. “Once a piece of information gets out there, its available on the Internet. The trouble is once the stuff gets out, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.”
Consumer protection rules stipulate that credit card holders are typically not responsible for unauthorized charges, which make up 1% of all credit card uses, according to a spokesman for Mastercard, David Collett.
Preventing search engines like Google from listing such sites would be nearly impossible, Mr. Collett said.
“This is just the unintended consequence of their search technology. We can’t fault them, and we’d be happy to work with them if they want to,” he said, adding that Mastercard’s investigators were apprised of the Google trick. “We’re doing everything we can to find these sites ourselves and shut them down.”
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Pro-Bush Jewish Group Starts Blog
An non-partisan Jewish group calling for the re-election of President Bush because he is “best for Israel” took their message to the internet yesterday, opening a website with essays and a weblog documenting the presidential candidates’ “stark differences” over the current Palestinian crisis.
Jeff Steier, the New York non-profit executive who started the website, said he got the idea during conversations with friends who said that Israel was their biggest priority in electing a president. He says the site is meant to contrast President Bush’s defense of Israel with Sen. John Kerry’s “lack of leadership and poor judgment.”
“Senators Schumer and Clinton have been saying that Kerry is ‘also good’ for Israel,” Mr. Steier said, referring to New York’s Democratic senators. “We need someone in the White House who is better than “also good.’”
In recent months, Sen. Kerry has been backtracking from a slew of statements that have put him in hot water with pro-Israel groups. Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in December, he attacked Bush’s Israeli support for "jeopardizing the security of Israel [and] encouraging Palestinian extremists," and last year called Israel’s security fence a “barrier to peace.”
Former Mayor Ed Koch, a Democrat who famously supports Mr. Bush and who is mentioned on the site, said he was less concerned about Israel than about the issue of terrorism everywhere.
“I don’t think Israel itself is the issue; I happen to be very supportive of Israel. The issue for me is America standing up to international terrorists when other countries are running away,” he said.
Ira Foreman, the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, questioned the validity of the site’s support for Bush and doubted its relevance to Jewish voters, most of whom are interested in a range of political topics, not just Israel.
“The antipathy towards Bush in the Jewish community is palpable,” he said. “People say, ‘I’m fine with Kerry’s policies on Israel; and then I have all my other issues, and I can’t agree with bush on any of that.”
Jeff Steier, the New York non-profit executive who started the website, said he got the idea during conversations with friends who said that Israel was their biggest priority in electing a president. He says the site is meant to contrast President Bush’s defense of Israel with Sen. John Kerry’s “lack of leadership and poor judgment.”
“Senators Schumer and Clinton have been saying that Kerry is ‘also good’ for Israel,” Mr. Steier said, referring to New York’s Democratic senators. “We need someone in the White House who is better than “also good.’”
In recent months, Sen. Kerry has been backtracking from a slew of statements that have put him in hot water with pro-Israel groups. Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in December, he attacked Bush’s Israeli support for "jeopardizing the security of Israel [and] encouraging Palestinian extremists," and last year called Israel’s security fence a “barrier to peace.”
Former Mayor Ed Koch, a Democrat who famously supports Mr. Bush and who is mentioned on the site, said he was less concerned about Israel than about the issue of terrorism everywhere.
“I don’t think Israel itself is the issue; I happen to be very supportive of Israel. The issue for me is America standing up to international terrorists when other countries are running away,” he said.
Ira Foreman, the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, questioned the validity of the site’s support for Bush and doubted its relevance to Jewish voters, most of whom are interested in a range of political topics, not just Israel.
“The antipathy towards Bush in the Jewish community is palpable,” he said. “People say, ‘I’m fine with Kerry’s policies on Israel; and then I have all my other issues, and I can’t agree with bush on any of that.”
Monday, August 02, 2004
Computer Malfunction Grounds US Airways, American Flights for Several Hours
By ALEX PASTERNACK Special to the Sun
A computer malfunction forced the groundings of all American Airlines and US Airways flights in the country for three hours yesterday morning, delaying hundreds of passengers at New York’s three major airports through the evening.
The cause of the groundings “wasn’t a safety or security issue,” said a spokesperson for US Airways, Amy Kudwa. Instead, a malfunction in the flight operations database used by US Airways and American led the airlines to keep their planes on the ground.
A spokesperson for the company that maintains the computer system, Electronic Data Systems, said operators noticed a computer glitch, caused by human error,at around 7 a.m.To contain the malfunction, they shut down the entire system,which is used to manage the scheduling of flights and crews, monitor the weather, and coordinate catering.
An official at the Federal Aviation Administration said such malfunctions are rare, and that because such problems affect airlines’ internal systems, it is up to the airlines to decide to ground planes, not the FAA.
When notified of the problem, the airlines contacted the FAA, which helped ground planes at airports from coast to coast. Flights in the air at the time of the problem were “processed manually,” Ms. Kudwa said.
American, which grounded about 150 flights, had its planes back in the air after two hours, while US Airways, which kept 100 planes on the ground, resumed flights after three hours.
A Port Authority spokesperson,Tony Ciavolella, said that because of its heavy early-morning schedule, La-Guardia had the most delays in the New York area. No other air carriers were affected, he said.
An investigation into the cause of the error is underway at the airlines and EDS, according to the company’s spokesman, Sean Healy. “But safety was never an issue.”
A computer malfunction forced the groundings of all American Airlines and US Airways flights in the country for three hours yesterday morning, delaying hundreds of passengers at New York’s three major airports through the evening.
The cause of the groundings “wasn’t a safety or security issue,” said a spokesperson for US Airways, Amy Kudwa. Instead, a malfunction in the flight operations database used by US Airways and American led the airlines to keep their planes on the ground.
A spokesperson for the company that maintains the computer system, Electronic Data Systems, said operators noticed a computer glitch, caused by human error,at around 7 a.m.To contain the malfunction, they shut down the entire system,which is used to manage the scheduling of flights and crews, monitor the weather, and coordinate catering.
An official at the Federal Aviation Administration said such malfunctions are rare, and that because such problems affect airlines’ internal systems, it is up to the airlines to decide to ground planes, not the FAA.
When notified of the problem, the airlines contacted the FAA, which helped ground planes at airports from coast to coast. Flights in the air at the time of the problem were “processed manually,” Ms. Kudwa said.
American, which grounded about 150 flights, had its planes back in the air after two hours, while US Airways, which kept 100 planes on the ground, resumed flights after three hours.
A Port Authority spokesperson,Tony Ciavolella, said that because of its heavy early-morning schedule, La-Guardia had the most delays in the New York area. No other air carriers were affected, he said.
An investigation into the cause of the error is underway at the airlines and EDS, according to the company’s spokesman, Sean Healy. “But safety was never an issue.”
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Midler, Disney Team To Make East Harlem a Bit Greener
Actress Bette Midler and Disney’s CEO, Michael Eisner, got their hands dirty in a run-down East Harlem lot yesterday, helping local leaders and volunteers transform the vacant space into a garden and playground for their community.
The project, the culmination of work by the 8th District council member, Eric Reed; Ms. Midler’s nonprofit New York Restoration Project, and Disney’s outreach program, will revitalize the 18,000-square-foot parcel at 103rd Street and Park Avenue, which has sat dormant and dilapidated for more than a decade.
“I see whole neighborhoods change, I see whole blocks completely come alive from this kind of work,” Ms. Midler said, explaining her interest in the development. “People see there’s something beautiful outside their doors, people come out and meet each other, property values go up, it’s just common sense.”
Founded in 1994, her organization has rebuilt 15 gardens around the city and is restoring dozens more that have fallen into dilapidation since their heyday in the 1970s.
In 1999, Ms. Midler’s organization helped block the city’s attempt to auction 114 lots and community gardens, spending $4.2 million to acquire half that number, while helping another nonprofit, the Trust for Public Land, buy the rest.
For a decade, the East Harlem lot, which was not included in that sale, had languished in the hands of a failed local trust, attracting weeds, rusted car parts, drug dealers, and the occasional block party.
In recent years, an activist, Manny Rodriguez, had sought protection for the space, enlisting Mr. Reed and eventually Ms. Midler, who asked for Mr. Eisner’s assistance.
Standing beneath the mural he helped paint as a boy and that he will soon help restore, Mr. Rodriguez beamed. “This is probably the biggest moment of my life,” he said.“To actually see big names here like Reed’s and Disney assures me that there’s going to be an available presence behind my efforts to keep it as a playground, a garden for the kids.”
Mr. Eisner, who carried a shovel and wore a yellow Disney T-shirt and khakis, said he was always ready to help Ms. Midler, who used to be under contract with the studio. Disney, which gave financial support and contributed dozens of volunteers for the garden project, is “very involved” in outreach programs in the area, he said.
“It’s easy to give financial support, writing checks, but actually having your cast of people get involved, get committed in their own communities, that’s important,” said Mr. Eisner, who grew up seven blocks away.
Elaine Hall,who has lived in the area for 39 years, said she was relieved and delighted at the community’s effort.
“I have grandchildren and I used to tell them,‘Don’t go over there,stay away from there.’” The new garden, she said, “will bring the people out together.”
GARDEN GROWTH Disney’s CEO, Michael Eisner, and actress Bette Midler yesterday at the kick-off event for the restoration of a long-neglected community garden and neighborhood park on 103rd Street in East Harlem. ROB BENNETT
The project, the culmination of work by the 8th District council member, Eric Reed; Ms. Midler’s nonprofit New York Restoration Project, and Disney’s outreach program, will revitalize the 18,000-square-foot parcel at 103rd Street and Park Avenue, which has sat dormant and dilapidated for more than a decade.
“I see whole neighborhoods change, I see whole blocks completely come alive from this kind of work,” Ms. Midler said, explaining her interest in the development. “People see there’s something beautiful outside their doors, people come out and meet each other, property values go up, it’s just common sense.”
Founded in 1994, her organization has rebuilt 15 gardens around the city and is restoring dozens more that have fallen into dilapidation since their heyday in the 1970s.
In 1999, Ms. Midler’s organization helped block the city’s attempt to auction 114 lots and community gardens, spending $4.2 million to acquire half that number, while helping another nonprofit, the Trust for Public Land, buy the rest.
For a decade, the East Harlem lot, which was not included in that sale, had languished in the hands of a failed local trust, attracting weeds, rusted car parts, drug dealers, and the occasional block party.
In recent years, an activist, Manny Rodriguez, had sought protection for the space, enlisting Mr. Reed and eventually Ms. Midler, who asked for Mr. Eisner’s assistance.
Standing beneath the mural he helped paint as a boy and that he will soon help restore, Mr. Rodriguez beamed. “This is probably the biggest moment of my life,” he said.“To actually see big names here like Reed’s and Disney assures me that there’s going to be an available presence behind my efforts to keep it as a playground, a garden for the kids.”
Mr. Eisner, who carried a shovel and wore a yellow Disney T-shirt and khakis, said he was always ready to help Ms. Midler, who used to be under contract with the studio. Disney, which gave financial support and contributed dozens of volunteers for the garden project, is “very involved” in outreach programs in the area, he said.
“It’s easy to give financial support, writing checks, but actually having your cast of people get involved, get committed in their own communities, that’s important,” said Mr. Eisner, who grew up seven blocks away.
Elaine Hall,who has lived in the area for 39 years, said she was relieved and delighted at the community’s effort.
“I have grandchildren and I used to tell them,‘Don’t go over there,stay away from there.’” The new garden, she said, “will bring the people out together.”
GARDEN GROWTH Disney’s CEO, Michael Eisner, and actress Bette Midler yesterday at the kick-off event for the restoration of a long-neglected community garden and neighborhood park on 103rd Street in East Harlem. ROB BENNETT
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
‘Does Anyone Here Like Chocolate?’
Sweet Day for Young Plaza Ambassadors
Cooking class in the Plaza’s Le Trianon Suite yesterday had all the trappings of grandeur to be expected at the famous hotel.
Men in navy vests stood at the ready like U.S. Open ball boys, dutifully waiting to wipe down any errant foods. A swath of protective saran wrap covered the ornate carpet. When the worldclass chef arrived, his class was seated in gold-trimmed chairs, attentive and composed.
Then the ingredient of the day came up.
“Does anyone here like chocolate?”Chef Marc Felix demanded in a thick French accent.
Hands shot up, and some of the students even bounced out of their chairs.
Their parents, faces beaming too, were helpless to stop them.
They were there as part of the Young Plaza Ambassadors, a program of etiquette, ballroom dancing, and occasionally veterinary clinics for tri-statearea children and their parents.Yesterday’s scene was the first cooking one, and it was all about indulgence, a sort of anti-Chocoholics Anonymous session for young addicts.
“I love to cook it,” admitted Yoela Koplow, an 8-year-old from Manhattan, who was staring into a bowl of chocolate butter waiting on one of the 12 tables arranged in the center of the ballroom. “But I really, really love to taste it!”
Mr. Felix began with a short history lesson on the cacao, the brown, coconut-like plant from which chocolate comes, while he passed one around.
“Feel it, enjoy it, shake it, hear it, understand it,smell it — this is what we’re dealing with today, people, so we need to know it well,” he said, sounding like a Zen practitioner, albeit with a bit more sugar in his bloodstream.
Mr. Felix, who occasionally appears on a cooking show on Nickelodeon as “The Mad Chef,” knew his crowd wouldn’t settle for just words. Before long, he was circulating energetically around the room, directing his eager disciples to makeshift cacao nuts by dipping small balloons into white and dark chocolate.
There was a bit of cheating here and there — mothers helping beat the heavy cream — and sneaky finger-dipping into the bowls of chocolate soup.
“I really like this stuff too,” the chef whispered to one of his young apprentices, who was caught brown-handed. “Just make sure no one sees you.”
“The reason we’re successful with the kids is because we’re hands on,” said Mr. Felix, who tries to get the parents involved.
“I want them to go back home and entertain with the kids,” he said. “A lot of parents just want to cook and get it on the table.”
TOUGH JOB William Brahin, 8, of Cherry Hill, N.J., samples his ‘Chocolate Coconut With Banana Cloud’ recipe after a cooking lesson with Nickelodeon’s ‘Mad Chef,’ Marc Felix, at the Plaza Hotel yesterday. HIROKO MASUIKE
Cooking class in the Plaza’s Le Trianon Suite yesterday had all the trappings of grandeur to be expected at the famous hotel.
Men in navy vests stood at the ready like U.S. Open ball boys, dutifully waiting to wipe down any errant foods. A swath of protective saran wrap covered the ornate carpet. When the worldclass chef arrived, his class was seated in gold-trimmed chairs, attentive and composed.
Then the ingredient of the day came up.
“Does anyone here like chocolate?”Chef Marc Felix demanded in a thick French accent.
Hands shot up, and some of the students even bounced out of their chairs.
Their parents, faces beaming too, were helpless to stop them.
They were there as part of the Young Plaza Ambassadors, a program of etiquette, ballroom dancing, and occasionally veterinary clinics for tri-statearea children and their parents.Yesterday’s scene was the first cooking one, and it was all about indulgence, a sort of anti-Chocoholics Anonymous session for young addicts.
“I love to cook it,” admitted Yoela Koplow, an 8-year-old from Manhattan, who was staring into a bowl of chocolate butter waiting on one of the 12 tables arranged in the center of the ballroom. “But I really, really love to taste it!”
Mr. Felix began with a short history lesson on the cacao, the brown, coconut-like plant from which chocolate comes, while he passed one around.
“Feel it, enjoy it, shake it, hear it, understand it,smell it — this is what we’re dealing with today, people, so we need to know it well,” he said, sounding like a Zen practitioner, albeit with a bit more sugar in his bloodstream.
Mr. Felix, who occasionally appears on a cooking show on Nickelodeon as “The Mad Chef,” knew his crowd wouldn’t settle for just words. Before long, he was circulating energetically around the room, directing his eager disciples to makeshift cacao nuts by dipping small balloons into white and dark chocolate.
There was a bit of cheating here and there — mothers helping beat the heavy cream — and sneaky finger-dipping into the bowls of chocolate soup.
“I really like this stuff too,” the chef whispered to one of his young apprentices, who was caught brown-handed. “Just make sure no one sees you.”
“The reason we’re successful with the kids is because we’re hands on,” said Mr. Felix, who tries to get the parents involved.
“I want them to go back home and entertain with the kids,” he said. “A lot of parents just want to cook and get it on the table.”
TOUGH JOB William Brahin, 8, of Cherry Hill, N.J., samples his ‘Chocolate Coconut With Banana Cloud’ recipe after a cooking lesson with Nickelodeon’s ‘Mad Chef,’ Marc Felix, at the Plaza Hotel yesterday. HIROKO MASUIKE
Friday, July 23, 2004
Living Between the Exits
Movie Review: Garden State
from the Harvard Crimson
In the era of hype and summer blockbusters, it seems easy to feel impressed by a movie well before one stumbles into the freezing dimness of the theater. If the multiplex happens to be in one of countless depressing shopping malls or on the side of the oppressive expressway, the build-up is even bigger. And if the trailer is any good—these days they’re often very, very good—nothing can increase your enthusiasm, not even cheap popcorn.
from the Harvard Crimson
In the era of hype and summer blockbusters, it seems easy to feel impressed by a movie well before one stumbles into the freezing dimness of the theater. If the multiplex happens to be in one of countless depressing shopping malls or on the side of the oppressive expressway, the build-up is even bigger. And if the trailer is any good—these days they’re often very, very good—nothing can increase your enthusiasm, not even cheap popcorn.
Garden State is one of those movies for which the trailer—one of the most lyrical, intriguing and hypnotic short films I’ve ever seen—threatened to outdo the whole thing from the start. But the movie is also graced with another presence that recommends it, and perhaps also endangers it at the same time: the triple threat of New Jerseyite Zach Braff, who wrote, directs and stars.
New York’s veteran auteur Woody Allen can hardly get away with that trick very well, at least lately, and when you bear more resemblance to Woody Allen than Keanu Reeves, with about as much chutzpah as the latter, it’s a mammoth challenge. Not that Braff’s character, Andrew Largeman, requires anything resembling chutzpah: He plays a medicated, reluctant Jew, an aspiring actor returning home for his mother’s funeral. But if his style were any remoter, Braff could almost dissolve into the background of his strangely familiar, familiarly strange scenery. And, in one of his many pictorial feats, Braff as Largeman, wearing a shirt made from the same silk pattern lining the wall behind him, literally does.
The humdrum, confused life of mid-twentysomethings has a ready accomplice in the sprawling shopping malls and freeway-bound office parks of New Jersey, the stuff that nightmares and dreams are made of for the expanse of anonymous, white-housed suburbia that hums between the on-ramps. The staples of quiet, middle-class Garden State living are all here, sans the last PATH train back from the city. Like those who’ve never been, Largeman (we can imagine him telling his L.A. friends he grew up in New York) has no inclination to go back, only an obligation to go, and for no longer than he has to. As his early airplane nightmare and cache of prescription bottles suggests, this is not an easy return, but it’s made easier by that age-old re-encounter with childhood friends, who also happen to be working as grave diggers at his mother’s funeral. They waste no time in inviting him to a party that night.
The writer Braff’s surreal mix of dark and occasionally cheeky humor with generation-lost profundity is perfect for setting the scene, a mood that often feels more real than that of most still-coming-of-age films. And, while Braff the actor manages to justify and even enrich his numb character the more he weaves his way through a maze of “how old are we” house parties, fluorescent-lighting and tentative moments with a new girl, Sam (Natalie Portman ’03), there’s something awkward that still shouldn’t be. The sense that he is playing this exactly right—Braff, as his biography suggests (he was a waiter and, until now, a minor actor), is largely playing himself—can’t be overcome by the feeling that exactly right isn’t exactly convincing.
Good actors they are, and Portman’s astounding ability to cry aside, the main characters aren’t given much room to breathe, and the heat that grows between Sam and Large couldn’t be called chemistry by any stretch. What one wants most of all is for Large to bare his soul, to show how a kid coping with the “emotional problems” diagnosed and brought on by his psychiatrist father can evolve into someone who is simultaneously awkward and seemingly well-adjusted. Instead he offers sedate monosyllables and musings about house not being home anymore. The template for such characters was established in The Graduate’s Benjamin by the time Wes Anderson pulled it off with Rushmore’s Max, and maybe taken in a new direction by Donnie Darko. Surely there’s no troubled, learning-to-grow-up mold, but in the writing Braff’s protagonist isn’t fully mature.
Largeman’s underdevelopment might be chalked up to the medicated world in which Garden State is set as much to the aspirations of Braff the director. His eye for plaintive, sublime imagery is as impressive as his ear for awkward, funny situations, and smartly, the 27-year-old has used his big shot at Hollywood auteur-dom as an excuse not just to include great music (Iron and Wine, The Shins, Simon and Garfunkel), but to sew it tightly into the film. Indeed, his movie feels like a mix tape writ large, addressed to the thousands of kids like him who want to follow their heart, if they only knew where it was. Apparently, surprisingly, he left his in Trenton, or one of its infinite suburbs.
You gotta go there to know there, the anthropologist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston wrote, an imperative never truer than in the case of weird, distant New Jersey and its modern day film paean. Like the place itself, Garden State’s reputation precedes it, the impressive talent of Braff and his beautiful trailer circling coolly underneath the hot summer air. But of course that reputation shouldn’t be a substitute for actually seeing it—and at least it deserves to be seen.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
CLINTON'S LOVE OF CHINA, FOUND IN TRANSLATION
President Clinton’s sprawling memoir is chock-full of personal revelations and political musings, but perhaps none is more surprising than his effusive admiration for Communist Party leader Mao Zedong.
When readers in China opened newly-minted copies of “My Life” this week, they discovered that the American president once blamed for the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade also has a strong penchant for Chinese culture and is given to frequently quoting Chairman Mao.
“I very much appreciated the famous sentence of Mao Zedong, ‘You want to know the taste of the pear, then you have to eat it yourself,’ ” Mr. Clinton writes in the Chinese version. He also recalls that Monica Lewinsky was “very fat. I can never trust my own judgment” and says the affair with Ms. Lewinsky “did not affect” his marriage. Meanwhile, the criticisms of China that Clinton makes in the American version of the book, as well as an account of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, have been excised.
Mr. Clinton’s million-selling memoir isn’t just the victim of liberal translation. It’s one of the latest Western books to become the target of counterfeiters, who are known for taking excessive liberties and fabricating content to make texts more appealing. Mr. Clinton’s representatives said they are in talks to release a legitimate Chinese version of the book next year, as long as it is uncensored.
Other “new” passages include an episode in which a young Clinton begs his uncle to take him to “mysterious and unique” China. In another episode, Mr. Clinton tells his wife to “shut up.” Upon first meeting his wife Hillary, Mr. Clinton says, “She was as beautiful as a princess. I told her my name is Big Watermelon.”
Mr. Clinton’s Chinese fixation is evident from the first sentence of the Mandarin edition: “The town of Hope, where I was born, has very good feng shui.”
A spokesman for the publisher,Alfred Knopf, did not indicate if they would take legal action, but said they take “all necessary steps” to fight piracy.
Beijing has denied any involvement, despite its reputation for censorship and authoritarian control, particularly over Western press. In April, officials cut out references to Taiwan and North Korea, and mentions of “political freedom” from transcripts of a speech delivered by Vice President Cheney in Shanghai.
The first secretary at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Jianhua Li, said he didn’t think his government played a role in revising “My Life.”
“The government wouldn’t do that,” said Mr. Jianhua, the first secretary at the Chinese Embassy in Washington. “Probably the publishing houses want to make money, make the story more sensational and interesting to all the readers.”
Last year, the publisher of Hillary Clinton’s memoir “Living History” cancelled a distribution deal with a Chinese publisher after it cut out references to politically sensitive issues in the Chinese version, including material on Harry Wu, a Chinese-American human rights activist, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
A lawyer for the Clintons, Robert Bennett, distinguished between the unauthorized censorship of Senator Clinton’s book by a legitimate publisher and the unauthorized publication of President Clinton’s memoirs, which he called “unacceptable.”
“The president’s book will only be published in the People’s Republic of China if it is completely and accurately translated and we have an opportunity to review and approve the translation before the book is published,” he said.
Pirating of CDs and books,with occasional alterations, is a pervasive phenomenon in China, Mr. Jianhua acknowledged. “People want to make money, so they make up stories. It happens everywhere,” he said. The paperback, with Mr. Clinton’s name and photo on the cover, purports to be printed by Yilin Press, the publishing house that printed the censored version of Senator Clinton’s book. The dean of the school of journalism at Berkeley and an expert on Chinese culture, Orville Schell, said that the changes to the book seemed more like the work of a “quasi-official” publisher who had purchased a requisite book registration number, than just a pirate. “Maybe some pirate would have nice Mao sensitivities, but the fact they have edited and censored it and put it out so quickly makes me think it’s not a pirated version,” he said. “If it’s pirated, [the counterfeiters] would get shut down for having no copyright, so what’s the point of censoring it?” Publishers, even illegitimate ones, one expert noted, often self-censor in order to prevent crackdowns by the Communist Party, often making it hard to measure the extent of the government’s censorship role. “Most people in China like Bill Clinton, and he has been there several times,” Mr. Jianhua said.“When he was in power,everything went very well,the economy did very well.” All references to Mr. Clinton’s visits to China, as well as his musing that “China would be forced by the imperatives of modern society to become more open,” are missing from the new edition.
When readers in China opened newly-minted copies of “My Life” this week, they discovered that the American president once blamed for the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade also has a strong penchant for Chinese culture and is given to frequently quoting Chairman Mao.
“I very much appreciated the famous sentence of Mao Zedong, ‘You want to know the taste of the pear, then you have to eat it yourself,’ ” Mr. Clinton writes in the Chinese version. He also recalls that Monica Lewinsky was “very fat. I can never trust my own judgment” and says the affair with Ms. Lewinsky “did not affect” his marriage. Meanwhile, the criticisms of China that Clinton makes in the American version of the book, as well as an account of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, have been excised.
Mr. Clinton’s million-selling memoir isn’t just the victim of liberal translation. It’s one of the latest Western books to become the target of counterfeiters, who are known for taking excessive liberties and fabricating content to make texts more appealing. Mr. Clinton’s representatives said they are in talks to release a legitimate Chinese version of the book next year, as long as it is uncensored.
Other “new” passages include an episode in which a young Clinton begs his uncle to take him to “mysterious and unique” China. In another episode, Mr. Clinton tells his wife to “shut up.” Upon first meeting his wife Hillary, Mr. Clinton says, “She was as beautiful as a princess. I told her my name is Big Watermelon.”
Mr. Clinton’s Chinese fixation is evident from the first sentence of the Mandarin edition: “The town of Hope, where I was born, has very good feng shui.”
A spokesman for the publisher,Alfred Knopf, did not indicate if they would take legal action, but said they take “all necessary steps” to fight piracy.
Beijing has denied any involvement, despite its reputation for censorship and authoritarian control, particularly over Western press. In April, officials cut out references to Taiwan and North Korea, and mentions of “political freedom” from transcripts of a speech delivered by Vice President Cheney in Shanghai.
The first secretary at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Jianhua Li, said he didn’t think his government played a role in revising “My Life.”
“The government wouldn’t do that,” said Mr. Jianhua, the first secretary at the Chinese Embassy in Washington. “Probably the publishing houses want to make money, make the story more sensational and interesting to all the readers.”
Last year, the publisher of Hillary Clinton’s memoir “Living History” cancelled a distribution deal with a Chinese publisher after it cut out references to politically sensitive issues in the Chinese version, including material on Harry Wu, a Chinese-American human rights activist, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
A lawyer for the Clintons, Robert Bennett, distinguished between the unauthorized censorship of Senator Clinton’s book by a legitimate publisher and the unauthorized publication of President Clinton’s memoirs, which he called “unacceptable.”
“The president’s book will only be published in the People’s Republic of China if it is completely and accurately translated and we have an opportunity to review and approve the translation before the book is published,” he said.
Pirating of CDs and books,with occasional alterations, is a pervasive phenomenon in China, Mr. Jianhua acknowledged. “People want to make money, so they make up stories. It happens everywhere,” he said. The paperback, with Mr. Clinton’s name and photo on the cover, purports to be printed by Yilin Press, the publishing house that printed the censored version of Senator Clinton’s book. The dean of the school of journalism at Berkeley and an expert on Chinese culture, Orville Schell, said that the changes to the book seemed more like the work of a “quasi-official” publisher who had purchased a requisite book registration number, than just a pirate. “Maybe some pirate would have nice Mao sensitivities, but the fact they have edited and censored it and put it out so quickly makes me think it’s not a pirated version,” he said. “If it’s pirated, [the counterfeiters] would get shut down for having no copyright, so what’s the point of censoring it?” Publishers, even illegitimate ones, one expert noted, often self-censor in order to prevent crackdowns by the Communist Party, often making it hard to measure the extent of the government’s censorship role. “Most people in China like Bill Clinton, and he has been there several times,” Mr. Jianhua said.“When he was in power,everything went very well,the economy did very well.” All references to Mr. Clinton’s visits to China, as well as his musing that “China would be forced by the imperatives of modern society to become more open,” are missing from the new edition.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
RIGHTS REPORTS TIE KHARTOUM TO KILLINGS
Government Memos Show Death Directives
Arab militias that use systematic rape to intimidate African women in the war-torn Darfur region have been backed, protected, and recruited by the Sudanese government, documents and testimony collected by human rights groups showed yesterday.
Two days ahead of a U.N. Security Council vote on sanctions against militia leaders,confidential memos obtained by Human Rights Watch provided evidence of a governmental policy of protection, support, and recruitment of militiamen known as Janjaweed, despite continued denials by officials in Khartoum.
“I really don’t know anything about that as such,” the deputy chief of mission at the Sudanese Embassy, Abdel Kabeir, told The New York Sun. “Common sense would tell you that there is no connection, and I think it’s too naïve to take that direction.” He added that groups such as Amnesty “are always against the authority in any country, whether it be Russia or Sudan.”
Accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity,released in a separate Amnesty International report entitled “Rape as a Weapon of War,” include the widespread rape and torture of women, the keeping of sexual slaves, and the beating of women’s legs to prevent women from escaping sexual abuse.
While diplomats and humanitarian groups have long known of both rampant sexual violence and militia-government ties, such claims have not previously been widely or publicly documented, said the director of the New York office of the U.N.’s High Commission for Human Rights, Bacre Ndiye.
He added that resistance by the Sudanese government has prevented investigators from his office from entering the region. “What exactly is the degree of control [over the Janjaweed] is not always clear,” he said. “What is clear is that what they are doing could not have been done without the support of the government.”
Despite a public declaration on February 9 by President el-Bashir that the war was over and there would be an “end of all military operations in Darfur,” one “highly confidential” directive from the office of the Commissioner of Kutum Province in North Darfur and dated that month urges the support and conscription of the Janjaweed, who are responsible for pervasive torture and killing of non-Arabs in the region.
Addressed to those in charge of “mobilization” or “recruitment” in the provincial localities, the memo calls for an “increase in the process of mobilizing loyalist tribes, and providing them with sufficient armory to secure the areas.”
Another memo, dated February 13, advises its recipients to “allow the activities of the mujahedeen and the volunteers under the command of [Janjaweed comannder] Sheikh Musa Hilal to proceed in the areas of [North Darfur] and to secure their vital needs.”
“This was an unacceptable way of conducting war, especially when you know the civilians will be the first and often the only victims,” Mr. Ndiaye said.
While Mr. Kabeir acknowledged that more humanitarian work was necessary in Darfur, he said that rebel groups should be held responsible for the continuing violence in the area.
Despite pledges by the Sudanese government to protect displaced persons in the Darfur region, militia violence against civilians continued unabated there, the Human Rights Watch report said. A new round of peace talks between the government and rebel groups fell through on Saturday after officials rejected demands to disarm the Janjaweed and to investigate charges of genocide. So far, the U.S. Agency for International Development has warned that the death toll in the Darfur region could rise from 30,000 to 1 million.
After meeting with Secretary of State Powell two weeks ago, Mr. el-Bashir had pledged to send troops to Darfur to end militia violence and to remove all obstacles to delivery of relief supplies. Though the Sudanese yesterday invited a group of eight U.N. monitors to Darfur after months of visa wrangling, Mr. Ndiaye said there was still little indication that the government was encouraging humanitarian assistance.
The difficulty of obtaining visas has prevented many humanitarian groups from entering the region, including Amnesty, which conducted much of its research by phone and in displacedpersons camps in Chad.
Interviewees told of beatings, gang rapes, and sexual violence against pregnant women by the militiamen. One woman, identified only as A., was abducted from the town of Mukjar.
“When we tried to escape they shot more children. They raped women; I saw many cases of Janjaweed raping women and girls,” the 37-year-old said. “They are happy when they rape. They sing when they rape and they tell that we are just slaves and that they can do with us how they wish.”
Last week, senators presented a bipartisan resolution that would declare the killing of non-Arab civilians in Darfur genocide, keeping in mind the longdelayed humanitarian assistance during Rwanda’s genocide in 1994.
Arab militias that use systematic rape to intimidate African women in the war-torn Darfur region have been backed, protected, and recruited by the Sudanese government, documents and testimony collected by human rights groups showed yesterday.
Two days ahead of a U.N. Security Council vote on sanctions against militia leaders,confidential memos obtained by Human Rights Watch provided evidence of a governmental policy of protection, support, and recruitment of militiamen known as Janjaweed, despite continued denials by officials in Khartoum.
“I really don’t know anything about that as such,” the deputy chief of mission at the Sudanese Embassy, Abdel Kabeir, told The New York Sun. “Common sense would tell you that there is no connection, and I think it’s too naïve to take that direction.” He added that groups such as Amnesty “are always against the authority in any country, whether it be Russia or Sudan.”
Accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity,released in a separate Amnesty International report entitled “Rape as a Weapon of War,” include the widespread rape and torture of women, the keeping of sexual slaves, and the beating of women’s legs to prevent women from escaping sexual abuse.
While diplomats and humanitarian groups have long known of both rampant sexual violence and militia-government ties, such claims have not previously been widely or publicly documented, said the director of the New York office of the U.N.’s High Commission for Human Rights, Bacre Ndiye.
He added that resistance by the Sudanese government has prevented investigators from his office from entering the region. “What exactly is the degree of control [over the Janjaweed] is not always clear,” he said. “What is clear is that what they are doing could not have been done without the support of the government.”
Despite a public declaration on February 9 by President el-Bashir that the war was over and there would be an “end of all military operations in Darfur,” one “highly confidential” directive from the office of the Commissioner of Kutum Province in North Darfur and dated that month urges the support and conscription of the Janjaweed, who are responsible for pervasive torture and killing of non-Arabs in the region.
Addressed to those in charge of “mobilization” or “recruitment” in the provincial localities, the memo calls for an “increase in the process of mobilizing loyalist tribes, and providing them with sufficient armory to secure the areas.”
Another memo, dated February 13, advises its recipients to “allow the activities of the mujahedeen and the volunteers under the command of [Janjaweed comannder] Sheikh Musa Hilal to proceed in the areas of [North Darfur] and to secure their vital needs.”
“This was an unacceptable way of conducting war, especially when you know the civilians will be the first and often the only victims,” Mr. Ndiaye said.
While Mr. Kabeir acknowledged that more humanitarian work was necessary in Darfur, he said that rebel groups should be held responsible for the continuing violence in the area.
Despite pledges by the Sudanese government to protect displaced persons in the Darfur region, militia violence against civilians continued unabated there, the Human Rights Watch report said. A new round of peace talks between the government and rebel groups fell through on Saturday after officials rejected demands to disarm the Janjaweed and to investigate charges of genocide. So far, the U.S. Agency for International Development has warned that the death toll in the Darfur region could rise from 30,000 to 1 million.
After meeting with Secretary of State Powell two weeks ago, Mr. el-Bashir had pledged to send troops to Darfur to end militia violence and to remove all obstacles to delivery of relief supplies. Though the Sudanese yesterday invited a group of eight U.N. monitors to Darfur after months of visa wrangling, Mr. Ndiaye said there was still little indication that the government was encouraging humanitarian assistance.
The difficulty of obtaining visas has prevented many humanitarian groups from entering the region, including Amnesty, which conducted much of its research by phone and in displacedpersons camps in Chad.
Interviewees told of beatings, gang rapes, and sexual violence against pregnant women by the militiamen. One woman, identified only as A., was abducted from the town of Mukjar.
“When we tried to escape they shot more children. They raped women; I saw many cases of Janjaweed raping women and girls,” the 37-year-old said. “They are happy when they rape. They sing when they rape and they tell that we are just slaves and that they can do with us how they wish.”
Last week, senators presented a bipartisan resolution that would declare the killing of non-Arab civilians in Darfur genocide, keeping in mind the longdelayed humanitarian assistance during Rwanda’s genocide in 1994.
Monday, July 19, 2004
U.N. Peacekeepers In Africa Accused Of Sexual Abuse
PROBE: OFFICERS IN THE CONGO RAN CHILD PROSTITUTION RING
The United Nations is investigating dozens of allegations that members of its peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been sexually exploiting and abusing young girls, most of whom have spent years fleeing the rape and violence of local militias.
But the investigation, focusing on officers stationed in the city of Bunia,may result in only modest punishments, if any, for those involved, many of them troops from South Africa, Morocco, and Uruguay, a U.N. spokesperson said.
The investigation kicked into high gear after an urgent message, sent on June 8 to U.N.headquarters in New York from the U.N. mission to the Congo, or Monuc, office in Kinshasa, detailed 50 abuse cases carried out over the past year by troops in Bunia, a town in the northeast of the Congo.
A week later, other allegations were included in a second message, which also singled out peacekeepers from Pakistan and Nepal.
On June 14, after a month of preliminary investigation and claims that the issue revolved around what the U.N.called “a few incidents,” the U.N.’s Office of Internal and Oversight Services sent investigators to Bunia to examine the allegations, which have grown to 68, according to London’s Independent newspaper.
The allegations include the running of a child prostitution ring out of a U.N. airport in Bunia, the frequent trading of food for sex by Pakistani, Moroccan, and Uruguayan troops, and the rape of minors by Nepalese troops in a displaced-persons camp in March.
The recent probe comes one year after an alert was sent to Monuc headquarters in Kinshasa from a child-protection office near Bunia, where whispers about sexual abuse were spreading.
Other warnings sent to the U.N. at the start of this year — detailing reports from Bunia of child pornography, organized sex shows, and the rape of babies — prompted an investigation that was soon dropped due to a lack of evidence and lukewarm support from local commanders.
“We take this very seriously, and we’re investigating,” a spokesman for the United Nations in Kinshasa, Hamadoun Toure, told The New York Sun. “We act on the zero tolerance policy and as soon as we get something from this, we’ll take the necessary action.”
A spokesperson for the South African mission to the U.N., Bongi Qwabe, said her government had sent an official inquiry to the U.N. on Friday requesting details on any allegations against their troops.
“What we want to know is whether the incidents happened at all. Then we will decide where to go from there.”
When reports of sexual abuses by U.N. troops in West Africa emerged in 2002, Secretary-General Annan issued a statement of zero-tolerance for staff sexual misconduct. When the current investigation began in May, a U.N. spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said that Monuc was committed “to applying all available sanctions against any of its personnel found responsible.”
The United Nations is investigating dozens of allegations that members of its peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been sexually exploiting and abusing young girls, most of whom have spent years fleeing the rape and violence of local militias.
But the investigation, focusing on officers stationed in the city of Bunia,may result in only modest punishments, if any, for those involved, many of them troops from South Africa, Morocco, and Uruguay, a U.N. spokesperson said.
The investigation kicked into high gear after an urgent message, sent on June 8 to U.N.headquarters in New York from the U.N. mission to the Congo, or Monuc, office in Kinshasa, detailed 50 abuse cases carried out over the past year by troops in Bunia, a town in the northeast of the Congo.
A week later, other allegations were included in a second message, which also singled out peacekeepers from Pakistan and Nepal.
On June 14, after a month of preliminary investigation and claims that the issue revolved around what the U.N.called “a few incidents,” the U.N.’s Office of Internal and Oversight Services sent investigators to Bunia to examine the allegations, which have grown to 68, according to London’s Independent newspaper.
The allegations include the running of a child prostitution ring out of a U.N. airport in Bunia, the frequent trading of food for sex by Pakistani, Moroccan, and Uruguayan troops, and the rape of minors by Nepalese troops in a displaced-persons camp in March.
The recent probe comes one year after an alert was sent to Monuc headquarters in Kinshasa from a child-protection office near Bunia, where whispers about sexual abuse were spreading.
Other warnings sent to the U.N. at the start of this year — detailing reports from Bunia of child pornography, organized sex shows, and the rape of babies — prompted an investigation that was soon dropped due to a lack of evidence and lukewarm support from local commanders.
“We take this very seriously, and we’re investigating,” a spokesman for the United Nations in Kinshasa, Hamadoun Toure, told The New York Sun. “We act on the zero tolerance policy and as soon as we get something from this, we’ll take the necessary action.”
A spokesperson for the South African mission to the U.N., Bongi Qwabe, said her government had sent an official inquiry to the U.N. on Friday requesting details on any allegations against their troops.
“What we want to know is whether the incidents happened at all. Then we will decide where to go from there.”
When reports of sexual abuses by U.N. troops in West Africa emerged in 2002, Secretary-General Annan issued a statement of zero-tolerance for staff sexual misconduct. When the current investigation began in May, a U.N. spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said that Monuc was committed “to applying all available sanctions against any of its personnel found responsible.”
Saturday, June 26, 2004
Illegal stun guns sold openly on the internet for less than £20
By David Bamber and Alex Pasternack
(Filed: 27/06/2004)
Illegal stun guns, which are being used by muggers and robbers to incapacitate their victims for up to an hour, are being sold openly on the internet for less than £20.
Criminals use the guns, officially classified as firearms, because they do not cause permanent damage and so their use is hard to prove in court.
|
|  |
The Telegraph has discovered, however, that the guns are widely available on the internet. One site boasts: "We can deliver all the goods on our website anywhere in the world - it's our speciality.
"However, some of the items may be slightly or very illegal to import or own in your country or state. So please check with your authorities before ordering (if you are bothered, that is)."
The internet auction site eBay.co.uk is offering stun guns for sale from various countries for delivery in Britain. One advertisement displays an 80,000-volt stun gun with an opening bid of as little as £13.82. Another advert boasts that stun guns can kill dogs and says that they are available for less than £20.
Stun guns are illegal under the 2001 Police and Criminal Evidence Act but police believe that there are as many as 10,000 of them in Britain.
Last November, a gang in Daventry, Northants, used a stun gun to attack a lorry driver and steal his load of £250,000 worth of alcohol.
Increasing numbers of the guns are being intercepted in the post and recovered during police searches for drugs.
The guns can, in rare cases, be lethal. In 1996, a postman died in Bradford after being attacked with a stun gun.
One website explains how the guns work: "The stun gun does not rely on pain for results. The energy stored in the gun is transferred into the muscles.
"This instantly depletes the blood sugar by converting it to lactic acid. In short, he is unable to produce energy for his muscles, and his body is unable to function properly."
A report from the all-party parliamentary group on gun crime last year recommended a review of Customs procedures for clearing parcels brought into Britain through private companies.
A Customs and Excise spokesman said: "Well over 90 per cent of all weapons smuggled into this country come via mail order. We are aware stun guns are coming into Britain in increasing numbers.
"It is causing concern. They are dangerous and potentially deadly if a child, or person with a heart problem, was attacked with one."
While the possession of stun guns and CS sprays is punishable with a maximum jail sentence of 10 years and an unlimited fine, most cases are treated less seriously. Those caught attempting to bring the weapons into the country face having them confiscated but further action is rarely taken.
A spokesman for eBay, which is American-owned, said: "We do not sell, or condone the selling of, illegal weapons and we will investigate if people are getting around our rules."
A Home Office spokesman said: "Stun guns are already illegal in Britain and we are very concerned that they are so easily available over the internet."
Saturday, June 05, 2004
Summers
Artist: Nas
Date & Time: 8/15/2004 3:00 PM
Gates Open: 1:30 PM
Price: Suggested donation is $10
Genre: rap, hip hop
Nas, ten years after his groundbreaking platinum debut Illmatic, which helped spearhead the hip-hop renaissance of New York, stands alone at the pinnacle of hip-hop. Nas takes his place as one of hip-hops greatest street poets. Poet, prophet, and teacher - his skills mark him as a master, his longevity, a legend.
Date & Time: 8/15/2004 3:00 PM
Gates Open: 1:30 PM
Price: Suggested donation is $10
Genre: rap, hip hop
Nas, ten years after his groundbreaking platinum debut Illmatic, which helped spearhead the hip-hop renaissance of New York, stands alone at the pinnacle of hip-hop. Nas takes his place as one of hip-hops greatest street poets. Poet, prophet, and teacher - his skills mark him as a master, his longevity, a legend.
Sunday, February 29, 2004
The Walkmen, The Middle East Club
February 27, 2004
Their name scared the bejesus out of me from the start, denoting their singularity as men walking (merely walking, perhaps even with sunglasses on down a beat-up street), or walking incarnations of those ubiquitous portable cassette players (see "Doing Cultural Studies with the Walkman"), that double image prefaced by the over-rated overbearing article, the one responsible for blending together all sorts of horrible well-dressed bands with very good well-dressed ones. But what the hell am I talking about--the song "We've Been Had" played on my Discman behind the scenes as I walked past the drones walking to and from class, the reflection of me in store windows and taxi cabs. It works because it sounds not only like something I would love to sing--and I do! badly! even when other people are around!--but because I feel like I've known it for a long time, maybe since the days I chomped on ice cream in front of those flashy promo shows on MTV about upcoming movies produced by Viacom or AOL or whoever owns them. Often songs that stick in my head really ought not to, but this kind of sticking--to the inner depths of memory, Marcel-style--is a good thing.
When the lead singer played that song (it was their first song, he said), I thought the name wasn't so bad. Actually, it's quite appropriate. Let's hope they don't change it to The iPods.
February 27, 2004
Their name scared the bejesus out of me from the start, denoting their singularity as men walking (merely walking, perhaps even with sunglasses on down a beat-up street), or walking incarnations of those ubiquitous portable cassette players (see "Doing Cultural Studies with the Walkman"), that double image prefaced by the over-rated overbearing article, the one responsible for blending together all sorts of horrible well-dressed bands with very good well-dressed ones. But what the hell am I talking about--the song "We've Been Had" played on my Discman behind the scenes as I walked past the drones walking to and from class, the reflection of me in store windows and taxi cabs. It works because it sounds not only like something I would love to sing--and I do! badly! even when other people are around!--but because I feel like I've known it for a long time, maybe since the days I chomped on ice cream in front of those flashy promo shows on MTV about upcoming movies produced by Viacom or AOL or whoever owns them. Often songs that stick in my head really ought not to, but this kind of sticking--to the inner depths of memory, Marcel-style--is a good thing.
When the lead singer played that song (it was their first song, he said), I thought the name wasn't so bad. Actually, it's quite appropriate. Let's hope they don't change it to The iPods.
Friday, February 20, 2004
Eyedea Rebuilds Underground Hip-hop from the Beat Up
Published on Friday, February 20, 2004
Crimson Staff Writer
When Mike Larsen was five years old, cars or buildings weren’t just the playthings of his imagination—he wanted to know how to construct them and would often make modest attempts in his backyard. Later, while mining his mother’s record collection—a mix of Sly, Metallica and Sugar Hill Gang—he grew curious about how to build these too.
Crimson Staff Writer
 |
|
, (350 + 20));)
“Call it a disease, a curse. It’s a neurosis. It’s actually a problem,” he says of his insatiable ambition a few days after his Feb. 10 concert at the Roxy in Boston. At 22 years old, he’s still diseased. With three LPs and dozens of awards to his name (or rather to his apt stage alias, Eyedea) the Minnesotan lyricist has become a symbol for a burgeoning underground hip hop movement that places improvisation over production and references old school rap with a lively philosophical twist. The future, according to these hip hoppers, replaces gun waving and gold-encrusted excess with surrealist word games and existentialist crises.
Like other white-skinned, sharp-tongued rappers to achieve recent success (Slug of Atmosphere, El-P, Sage Francis), Eyedea is used to hearing the inevitable (but unwarranted) comparisons with Eminem, he of the multi-platinum vitriolic psycho babble. But categories are exactly what Eyedea wants to destroy, a goal that he continues to pursue on the just released E and A—a carnivalesque party record that playfully combines the dazzling record scratching (of his DJ, Abilities) with his own lyrical acrobatics. The sharp meditations, smooth sampling and trippy beats are signs of a polished emergent star aiming for mainstream visibility. But his allegiances to an avant-garde vision are also clear: “I don’t care if you just broke up with your boyfriend/ I ain’t trying to go where every other rapper’s been,” he raps, typically self-conscious and indifferent.
Still, on tour now with Slug—his better-known label mate and friend—Eyedea’s iconoclastic style may be his ticket to success, about which he is anything but indifferent. “I want everybody’s fans,” he admits. “I want every single person who listens to music to like me. I can’t do anything beyond making my record and playing as many shows as possible.”
At first glance, Eyedea looks like the nice guy he really is. His limber 5’10” frame bounces across the stage easily or hides under a hood behind a soft cloud of spit and a microphone that he handles more like an heirloom than a weapon. When he strides up to offer stickers to those standing next to the bar after his set, sans microphone and hoodie, his disarming smile and slight stature make it easy to mistake him for an eager groupie.
But on the underground rap circuit Eyedea is no pushover. The confidence he brings to talking up strangers at the bar is matched onstage by a gusto for witty improvisation that has flattened MCs on both coasts. Before he’d even graduated from high school, first-place trophies from countless freestyle tournaments were taking up bookshelf space next to James Joyce and A Brief History of Time. After winning the famous World Blaze Battle in 2000, broadcast on HBO and judged by rap extraordinaire KRS-One, Eyedea hung up his gloves because there wasn’t anyone left to fight. (Contrary to popular belief, he’s never battled Eminem, and would only do so “maybe if we’re both famous, for charity or something cool like that.”)
Besides, he moans, since leaving the fray, the art of freestyle dueling has gone downhill. On today’s rap battlefield—as seen on MTV and in the Eminem film 8 Mile—cruelty often trumps sheer ability. “Now, I feel like there’s no flow, there’s no rhythm there anymore,” he says. “Show me how to rap. Yeah, you can make fun of me, but what’s it really about?” While he subsequently gave up verbal fisticuffs in favor of the jovial, cerebral rhyming games he regularly performs on stage and in his home-town record store, freestyling remains Eyedea’s main love and what he calls “a cornerstone of hip hop.” “You don’t get the same ecstasy writing down something on a piece of paper as you do spitting something from your mouth. It’s like drawing a picture of a fight, or actually fighting.”
Yet it could be argued that Eyedea’s nascent popularity is due more to drawing than fighting. His slightly-nasal rhyming—highly textured and lyrical—often offers intricate portraits of a young brain at war with itself. While his collaboration with Abilities (Eyedea’s childhood friend and fellow “idealistic, arrogant bastard” Gregory Keltgen) on 2001’s First Born could have easily been a tiring exercise in introspection over break-beats, their ontological and musical exploration was a welcome q-tip in underground hip-hop’s ear. After two years of intermittent touring and solo projects—Abilities scratched on El-P’s futuristic Fantastic Damage while Eyedea recorded the beautiful, too verbose The Many Faces of Oliver Hart—they returned to the studio with a blank slate.
To make E and A, Eyedea and Abilities sought to break free of the hierarchical emcee-DJ paradigm by emphasizing teamwork inspired less by Timbaland and Missy than Miles and Coltrane. “We’ve definitely drawn an element of the whole free jazz kind of approach—improvisation, duets, back and forth soloing,” Eyedea says. He likes to refer to Abilities not merely as a turntablist but “lead guitar player.” On the new record, “there’s stuff that has never been done before between an emcee and DJ.”
Despite his persistent attention to disorder and chance—his stop at the Roxy last week featured more improv rhyming than album tracks—Eyedea has grown more concerned with controlling his chaos on record. In order to achieve the “epic” sound he and Abilities wanted on E and A (as opposed to the late-night pensiveness of past records), they emphasized crescendos and traded, so to speak, verbal length for sonic depth.
“We took the same approach to making every song as great as it can be,” he says. “There’s this trend of doing long records where half of it sucks, and we’re just not into that.” His new focus may appeal more to the wider audiences he wows while opening stages for Slug, whose own music has become more one dimensional and rock-oriented—and more popular. “The reality is [Slug’s] bringing in people who not only don’t know, but really don’t give a shit about rap. [They’ve] never seen a rap show and they’re like, ‘this shit is fucking awesome.’”
Ask Eyedea if his desire for mass appeal has effected his artistic ambitions, and his response is as complex, curious and conflicted as his best rhymes. “My main objective is being the best musician I possibly can,” he says. “[But] you can’t feel good about yourself if people don’t dig your music. Music is pointless if it’s in a cave, if there’s no emotional connection anymore.”
Indeed, while a concern over illusion and reality inside Plato’s cave permeates First Born, Eyedea’s assertive lyricism on E and A cares more about the music and the audience than epistemology. “This is a necessary change,” Eyedea raps at the start of his new head-spinning single “Now,” as if to preface the record that follows.
Still, it’s evident that Eyedea’s expansive vocabulary doesn’t include the phrase “sell out.” Even hip hop heads who haven’t heard his music know the apocryphal tale of how he once turned down a diamond-encrusted record deal from P. Diddy himself. If his music has become more accessible, he says, it’s not at the expense of his perpetual avant garde aspirations. “I always want to be on the cutting edge of something. If not on the cutting edge of a sub-culture or genre, because you can’t really choose that, I want to be on the cutting edge of my own psyche,” he says.
After tossing off some of his current rap favorites, Eyedea tellingly gives major props to a slew of reluctant mainstreamers, including Outkast (“the most important people in rap music”), Radiohead (“the best band still alive”) and the work of Beck and Sigur Ros. Like these artists, Eyedea wants to achieve success without personal compromise, a feat that may require not just building great songs but reconstructing the entire hip hop playing field.
“I hope that this record does really good,” he admits. “I want it to open people’s ears up and create a new standard for music—even if my shit’s the bottom of the barrel. I want my shit to be the bottom so that everything else can just get better.”
—Staff writer Alex L. Pasternack can be reached at apastern@fas.harvard.edu.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)