Good People Award

Occupy Movements

2012-01-29T18:05:00.000-08:00

I like the Occupy group because they are made up not of one complaint, but many.

Ordinary people complaining at how one-way the system has become, how it is so powerful and dominating the quality of people's lives- they are angry at the efficiency of the corporate hunters-the greedy bankers-the lack of justice- the controlled corporate media- the loss of politicians who really care.

Seal Team Six's rescue of kidnapped pair

2012-01-25T18:22:00.000-08:00

The same US Navy Seals that killed Osama bin Laden have parachuted into Somalia under cover of darkness and crept up to an outdoor camp where an American woman and Danish man were being held hostage.

Soon, nine kidnappers were dead and both hostages were freed.

US President Barack Obama authorised the mission by Seal Team Six two days earlier, and minutes after he gave his State of the Union address to Congress he was on the phone with the American's father to tell him his daughter was safe.

The Danish Refugee Council confirmed the two aid workers, American Jessica Buchanan and Dane Poul Hagen Thisted, were "on their way to be reunited with their families."

Buchanan, 32, and Thisted, 60, were working with a de-mining unit of the Danish Refugee Council when gunmen kidnapped the two in October.

The raiders came in quickly, catching the guards as they were sleeping after having chewed the narcotic leaf qat for much of the evening, a pirate who gave his name as Bile Hussein told The Associated Press by phone.

Hussein said he was not present at the site but had spoken with other pirates who were, and that they told him nine pirates had been killed in the raid and three were "taken away."

A US official confirmed media reports that the Seals parachuted into the area before moving on foot to the target.

The official said Seal Team Six carried out the mission, the same team that killed al Qaeda leader bin Laden in Pakistan last May. The raid happened near the Somali town of Adado.

New intelligence emerged last week that Buchanan's health was "deteriorating rapidly," so Obama directed his security team to develop a rescue plan, according to a senior administration official who was not authorised to speak publicly.

"As Commander-in-Chief, I could not be prouder of the troops who carried out this mission, and the dedicated professionals who supported their efforts," Obama said in a statement released by the White House.

"The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people, and will spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their captors to justice."

A Western official said the rescuers and the freed hostages flew by helicopter to a US military base called Camp Lemonnier in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not been released publicly.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta visited Camp Lemonnier just over a month ago.

A key US ally in this region, Djibouti has the only US base in sub-Saharan Africa. It hosts the military's Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa.

Buchanan lived in neighbouring Kenya before Somalia, and worked at a school in Nairobi called the Rosslyn Academy from 2007-09, said Rob Beyer, the dean of students. He described the American as easy to laugh and adventurous.

"There have been tears on and around the campus today," Beyer said. "She was well-loved by all her students."

The timing of the raid may have been made more urgent by Buchanan's medical condition. The Danish Refugee Council had been trying to work with Somali elders to win the hostages' freedom but had found little success.

"One of the hostages has a disease that was very serious and that had to be solved," Danish Foreign Minister Villy Soevndal told Denmark's TV2 channel.

Soevndal did not provide any more details. Soevndal congratulated the Americans for the raid.

The Danish Refugee Council said both freed hostages are unharmed "and at a safe location." The group said in a separate statement that the two "are on their way to be reunited with their families."

Ann Mary Olsen, head of the Danish Refugee Council's international department, informed Hagen Thisted' family of of the successful military operation and said "they were very happy and incredibly relieved that it is over."

The two aid workers appear to have been kidnapped by criminals - sometimes referred to as pirates - and not by Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked militant group al-Shabab.

As large ships at sea have increased their defences against pirate attacks, gangs have looked for other money making opportunities like land-based kidnappings.

The Danish Refugee Council had earlier enlisted traditional Somali elders and members of civil society to seek the release of the two hostages.

"We are really happy with the successful release of the innocents kidnapped by evildoers," said Mohamud Sahal, an elder in Galkayo town, by phone.

"They were guests who were treated brutally. That was against Islam and our culture ... These men (pirates) have spoiled our good customs and culture, so Somalis should fight back."

Buchanan and Hagen Thisted were seized in October from the portion of Galkayo town under the control of a government-allied clan militia. The aid agency has said that Somalis held demonstrations demanding the pair's quick release.

Their Somali colleague was detained by police on suspicion of being involved in their kidnapping.

The two hostages were working in northern Somalia for the Danish Demining Group, whose experts have been clearing mines and unexploded ordnance in conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East.

Several hostages are still being held in Somalia, including a British tourist, two Spanish doctors seized from neighbouring Kenya, and an American journalist kidnapped on Saturday.

Senior Australian of the Year 2012 is Laurie Baymarrwangga... Fantastic!!

2012-01-25T18:07:00.000-08:00

Northern Territory indigenous elder Laurie Baymarrwangga has been named the 2012 Senior Australian of the Year for protecting her culture and country.

The 95-year-old from the island of Murrungga, north-east of Arnhem Land, was recognised on Wednesday for her commitment to preserving her beloved Crocodile Islands and teaching younger generations about their heritage.

She spearheaded projects to pass on local ecological knowledge between generations.

In the 1960s she established a housing project on her homelands.

Baymarrwangga also started the Yan-nhangu dictionary project to preserve her native language, without any English, or funding.

Her cultural maintenance projects include the Crocodile Islands Rangers, a junior rangers group and an online Yan-nhangu dictionary for school children.

In 2010, after a struggle stretching back to 1945, she finally received back payments for rents owed to her.

The great, great, grandmother donated it all - $400,000 - to improve education and employment opportunities on the island and to establish a turtle sanctuary.

Baymarrwangga, who was the NT nominee for the award, was unable to come to Canberra to accept it.

"My name, the names of these places, the languages of these islands were .. given to us by the ancestors," she said in a video presentation.

"I have made a school .. a homeland for the children."

Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo

2012-01-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

"But she did finally make it through--just because she was willing to fight it out. Now, you know, you can do that--but it's tough. And some people really get killed." Very proud of you Marsha. It's people like you who matter more than than the 99% who remain silent as you go about you work. Yet, without you those 99% would not be going about with the freedom they get from those likes of you who look out and care for them.

http://www.marshacoleman-adebayo.com/

Marsha Coleman-Adebayo vividly recalls a meeting during her early days at the Environmental Protection Agency. It was 1992, and the MIT-trained African-development expert was one of two black employees in the mostly white, mostly male senior ranks. "Come on in, Marsha," her supervisor beckoned as she arrived at the conference room. "We'll make you an honorary white man so you can join us."

Another exasperating memory is that of returning from maternity leave to find that a far less experienced white man had become her boss. When she complained, she said her supervisor responded, "You're an intelligent woman; you knew how not to get pregnant. How can you make that decision and expect to compete with men?"

According to Coleman-Adebayo, such comments were routine. "The EPA was just beginning to open its doors to black professionals when I arrived, so they were really grappling with how to interact with African Americans," she told The Root, adding that her protests were met with accusations of being too sensitive. "But all of that paled in comparison to my problems once I filed a lawsuit."

That 1996 discrimination lawsuit would eventually expose an even grimmer story: an EPA cover-up of deplorable working conditions for South African miners poisoned by vanadium in a mine owned by a U.S. multinational. After she told her superiors about poisoned workers with gruesome ailments, including green tongues and bleeding from every orifice, they showed little concern, ordering her to stop talking about it immediately.

In Coleman-Adebayo's new book, No Fear: The Whistleblower's Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA, she details the pressure, name-calling and death threats that she says she received after refusing to keep quiet. Her testimony in her discrimination case eventually resulted in the passage of the No FEAR Act, which protects federal whistleblowers from victimization.

"I made a commitment to the South African miners and their families that I would tell their stories. I also wanted to do something to stop the abuse and retaliation against people like me who spoke up when we saw wrongdoing," she said of the No FEAR Act. "We passed the law at the same time as 9/11, so there was very little acknowledgment -- but this struggle can't continue to be a footnote of history."

Jack Valenti

2012-01-21T03:50:00.000-08:00

Jack Valenti speaks on the phone in his Washington office in 2004.

My son and I met Jack in 2004 at the opening of the national World War 11 memorial where we along with maybe 200 others stood in the rain as Jack and veterans spoke.

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

Published: April 27, 2007

Jack Valenti, who became a confidant of President Lyndon B. Johnson and then a Hollywood institution, leading the Motion Picture Association of America and devising a voluntary film-rating system that gave new meaning to letters like G, R and X, died yesterday at his home in Washington. He was 85.

Multimedia

Slide Show

Jack Valenti

The cause was complications of a recent stroke, his family said. He had been hospitalized in Baltimore in March.

For 38 years, Mr. Valenti was the public face of the movie and television production industry and one of its fiercest advocates. He lobbied Congress to protect filmmakers’ intellectual property from piracy and to ease trade barriers overseas. And he fended off lawmakers’ recurring campaigns to curb violence and sex on the screen, arguing for free expression. He devised the film-rating system precisely to avoid censorship by local review boards.

He also remained a starry-eyed fan, cherishing his friendships with Kirk Douglas, Sidney Poitier and Frank Sinatra, falling speechless before Sophia Loren and savoring his seconds in the spotlight as a regular presenter at the Academy Awards.

As a Houston political consultant, he was in the motorcade when President John F. Kennedy was shot on Nov. 22, 1963, and he watched as Johnson was sworn in besideJacqueline Kennedy aboard Air Force One.

Mr. Valenti soon became known, and for a time mocked, for his unfailing loyalty to Johnson, if not outright idolatry of him. “I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently because Lyndon Johnson is my president,” he once said in Boston, inviting guffaws nationwide.

Even after leaving a senior post at the White House in 1966, Mr. Valenti remained at Johnson’s service, secretly arranging the president’s surprise detour to the Vatican to meet with Pope Paul VI on the way back from Vietnam in December 1967.

His fidelity was lifelong. Mr. Valenti, a bantam 5-foot-7 who forever looked up to the towering Johnson, picked fights with critical Johnson biographers like Robert Caro and Robert Dallek.

Mr. Valenti’s forthcoming memoir, “This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood” (Crown), does as much to polish Johnson’s legacy as his own. He was to have begun a six-city tour on June 5 to promote the book.

In 1966 Mr. Valenti took his talents for personal politicking — and lionizing his bosses — to Hollywood, heeding the request of Lew Wasserman and Arthur Krim, then chairmen of MCA/Universal and United Artists respectively, that he take over the Motion Picture Association. “If Hollywood is Mount Olympus,” Mr. Valenti once said of his new liege, “Lew Wasserman is Zeus.” He became the organization’s third president.

At the time, Hollywood was still officially operating under the Hays Production Code, the industry’s draconian and increasingly outmoded self-censoring rules that flatly barred nudity, profanity, miscegenation and even childbirth scenes from being depicted on film.

Mr. Valenti was soon confronted with two films in 1966 that convinced him that the code had become obsolete. He dealt with one, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” by negotiating a compromise in which three out of four particular vulgarisms were cut.

Later that year, M.G.M. released Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blowup” even though that film, showing brief scenes of nudity, lacked Production Code approval. Sensing that other films would also begin flouting the code and in turn create a vacuum into which local politicians and censorship boards might rush, Mr. Valenti decided to act.

“I knew I had to move swiftly, and I did,” he later recalled. “I was determined to free the screen from anything like the Hays Code. But I also emphasized that freedom demanded responsibility.”

So by late 1968 he persuaded the national theater-owners association to buy into a system of voluntary ratings, based on an ascending scale of adult content, that would be enforced at the box office: G, M (later PG), R and X.

The system was not without flaws and detractors, and it required some tinkering. In 1984, after receiving complaints about frightening parts of PG-rated movies (“parental guidance suggested”) like “Gremlins,” the association added the PG-13 category (“parents strongly cautioned”). Though the other ratings were trademarked, the X was not, and pornographers quickly co-opted it. In 1990 the association replaced the X with NC-17 (no one 17 and under admitted), hoping it would be embraced, but distributors have mostly spurned it for commercial reasons, leaving many filmmakers to make wrenching cuts to adult-themed films in pursuit of an R rating.

Mr. Valenti always rebutted critics by citing an annual survey, paid for by the association, showing that parents of young children strongly believed that the ratings were useful.

In 1983, at the height of the Reagan administration’s deregulation efforts, Mr. Valenti led a fight to preserve federal rules intended to protect television producers and studios from the market power of the three major networks. The Federal Communications Commissionwas considering repealing the rules and allowing the networks to produce programs, thus giving them vertical control over production, distribution and exhibition.

In his memoir, he said he asked Mr. Wasserman, who had once been Ronald Reagan’s agent, and Charlton Heston to urge the president to oppose the repeal. The White House did just that, and the federal rules remained in place until 1995, by which time mergers between studios and networks had rendered them unnecessary.

In Mr. Valenti’s last decade at the association, it became consumed with fighting digital piracy. But one of his bolder strokes, in 2003, blew up in his face. He had learned that half the films being sent to industry people on DVD, known as screeners, for awards campaigns were turning up for sale illegally around the world. So he banned screeners altogether. A storm of protest ensued — loudest of all from the major studios’ own specialty divisions, which rely heavily on awards attention to publicize their films — and the policy was overturned by a federal judge, who said it ran afoul of antitrust laws.

Jack Joseph Valenti was born in Houston on Sept. 5, 1921, to the son and daughter of Italian immigrants from Sicily. He traced his passion for politics to the day his father, a clerk for the city government, took him to a political rally, where the 10-year-old Jack was invited to give his first speech, from a flatbed truck, for the Harris County sheriff. “I never recovered from it,” Mr. Valenti wrote.

As a youth he worked for a chain of second-run movie theaters in downtown Houston, roaming the city putting up posters in storefront windows in exchange for free passes. Hired as an office boy at the Humble Oil Company (an antecedent to ExxonMobil), he attended the University of Houston at night but still managed to be elected class president his sophomore year.

A voracious reader, he devoured everything by Macaulay, Churchill and Gibbon, and his speaking and writing style would mix his native twang with the rhetorical flourishes of his heroes in a brew of cliché, cornpone, compelling phrases and clunkers that one critic called “a kind of Texas baroque.”

In 1982 Mr. Valenti published a guide to oratory, “Speak Up With Confidence,” which was revised and reissued in 2002. He also wrote “The Bitter Taste of Glory,” a book of essays (World, 1971); “A Very Human President” (W. W. Norton, 1975), about Johnson; and a political novel, “Protect and Defend” (Doubleday, 1992), edited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

As an Army B-25 pilot in World War II — the Naval air corps had rejected him because of a heart murmur — he flew 51 missions over Italy, but never piloted a plane again after returning his flak-battered bomber to the United States. He went to Harvard Business School on the G.I. bill, then returned to Humble Oil’s advertising department, where he helped its Texas gas stations jump from fifth to first in sales through a “cleanest restrooms” campaign. He co-founded an advertising agency in 1952, with a rival oil company, Conoco, as its first client. He later added Representative Albert Thomas, a Johnson ally, as a client.

It was in 1956 that he met Senator Johnson at a gathering of young Houston Democrats. As a sideline, Mr. Valenti had begun writing a weekly column in The Houston Post, and he rhapsodized there about the senator’s “strength, unbending as a mountain crag, tough as a jungle fighter.” Their friendship grew, and when Johnson became Kennedy’s running mate, he had Mr. Valenti run the ticket’s campaign in Texas. Mr. Valenti helped stage Kennedy’s televised meeting on Sept. 12, 1960, with a group of Protestant Houston ministers, an event that was instrumental in helping him overcome anti-Catholic bias.

Mr. Valenti cemented his ties to Johnson in 1962 when he married Mary Margaret Wiley, a Johnson secretary. The couple accompanied Johnson to Rome for the funeral of Pope John XXIII, and Mr. Valenti was put in charge of the Houston leg of Kennedy’s 1963 swing through Texas. After a dinner there on Nov. 21, Johnson asked Mr. Valenti to fly on Air Force Two the next day. Moments after learning Kennedy was dead, Mr. Valenti was summoned to Air Force One, where he was hired on the spot as a special assistant.

In his memoir he recalled helping rustle up votes for Johnson’s monumental Great Society legislation; witnessing Johnson’s private browbeating of Gov. George Wallace of Alabama after the attacks on civil-rights marchers in Selma; and being accused (unfairly, he maintained) by Robert F. Kennedy of leaking to the news media stories about Kennedy’s chances of being made Johnson’s 1964 running mate.

But Mr. Valenti may have rendered his most vital White House service by being a source of companionship, public praise and private candor, Mr. Dallek said; before leaving the White House, he warned Johnson how much the war was hurting his credibility with voters. Mr. Valenti spent more time socially with the president than any other aide, often bringing along his wife and their toddler daughter, Courtenay Lynda, a Johnson favorite.

In addition to his wife of 45 years and his daughter, now an executive vice president for production at Warner Brothers Pictures, Mr. Valenti is survived by a son, John Lyndon, of Los Angeles, the chief executive of icreate.com, an informational service for the film industry; another daughter, Alexandra Alice, a photographer and video director in Austin, Tex.; and two grandchildren.

Mr. Valenti, who was four days shy of 83 when he stepped down from the motion picture association, continued to come to work, nattily dressed, long afterward. “Retirement to me is a synonym for decay,” he wrote in his memoir. “The idea of just knocking about, playing golf or whatever, is so unattractive to me that I would rather be nibbled to death by ducks. So long as I am doing what I choose to do and love to do, work is not work but total fun.”

Ben Khouri RIP

2012-01-20T21:15:00.000-08:00

So very very sad. I know what it is like to have a son so very sick in hospital. My sincere thoughts are with Ben's family and friends.

NZ Herald

When doctors told Ben Khouri he had six weeks to live, the 23-year-old sat down with his family and wrote a "bucket list" of activities he was determined to do before he died.

The son of former Waikato Chiefs team doctor Zig Khouri then defied the odds, surviving six months, during which time he met All Blacks, raced cars, had a celebrity chef cook for him, joined a pub quiz, flew in a helicopter and raised a puppy.

Ben died in late October after a 17-month battle with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.

"But he never felt sorry for himself," mum Helen Khouri told the Weekend Herald at the family's Pauanui beach house, where the couple and their two remaining children, Christina, 25, and Hannah, 21, sought solace during their first Christmas without Ben.

"He never complained, not once. He was so positive. He used to say his cup was half full."

A persistent cough at Ben's graduation from Otago University in May 2010 was the first sign something was amiss with the aspiring medical student's health.

A blood test confirmed leukaemia and Ben was whisked to Waikato Hospital to immediately begin chemotherapy.

After five months of intensive treatment, Ben had lost his hair, weighed only 54kg, developed pancreatitis and diabetes and needed surgery for abscesses in his veins.

Christina, a bone marrow match, flew home from France for the gruelling transplant in September 2010 at Auckland City Hospital.

Dr Khouri took leave from the Chiefs and as a GP at Hamilton East Medical Centre, Mrs Khouri from her job as an occupational therapist, and Hannah put her nursing studies on hold.

By that Christmas, Ben was in remission. He gained weight, his hair had grown back and life, for a while, was getting back to normal.

Dr Khouri went to South Africa with the Chiefs in April last year but three days after he arrived, Ben was delivered a devastating blow.

"They took a blood test and told him his leukaemia had come back."

Without further chemotherapy, they estimated Ben had between two and six weeks to live.

"Ben had had enough. He made the decision he didn't want it. He said to Helen, "I don't want to spend another day in hospital and I don't want to die in hospital'."

Dr Khouri and Christina returned home and the family united to spend the rest of Ben's life with him.

"We ended up with 191 days, six months. It was a tough six months for all of us. He was on high-dose steroids, he got very weak and eventually he couldn't walk, was in a wheelchair, but still no complaints. He was always smiling and happy."

From then on, Ben - "an intelligent kid" who studied anatomy - made it clear he did not want to be around sad people, and he wanted to do as many activities on his wish list as possible.

A movie buff, he loved the idea of a night out in Las Vegas The Hangover-style, but instead "suited up" for a night of gambling with friends at SkyCity Casino.

He went to Rainbow's End, sat in a corporate box at a Chiefs game, held a pub quiz at home, bought a new car, went to Cirque du Soleil, went bungy jumping in Rotorua and hot-air ballooning in Hamilton, organised a pizza night, had a family cook-off competition in the style of television show Come Dine with Me, and even managed a day at Hamilton Zoo on a mobility scooter.

Ben, and about 25 friends and family, each got a distinctive tattoo of his full name, Benjamin, written in Arabic a nod to his Middle Eastern ancestry.

Christina organised MasterChef NZ winner Nadia Lim to cook a meal for Ben, who was "a little star struck" when she turned up at the family's Hamilton home on the night of the MasterChef final.

During the Rugby World Cup, Ben met All Black captain Richie McCaw and some of the players, including Daniel Carter, when they visited Waikato Hospital, where he was having ongoing blood transfusions. He had his photo taken with them.

The family said they were grateful to so many for their kindness and generosity, including those who donated blood to Leukaemia and Blood Cancer New Zealand for Ben.

Next week, his loved ones will try to pick up their lives, but they say they will never stop missing Ben, and his loss has inspired them to live life to the full.

Blood cancers
* Blood cancers can strike anyone of any age, at any time, without warning.
* Six New Zealanders are diagnosed with a blood cancer every day, or 2200 people a year.
* Blood cancers combined (leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma) are the fifth most common cancer in New Zealand.
* Leukaemia is the most common childhood cancer.
* Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is the most common type of leukaemia in people under 20.
* You can help by donating blood, or taking part in Shave for a Cure week from March 26.
* For more information, visit leukaemia.org.nz

Economist Antonio Fatas

2012-01-20T18:53:00.000-08:00

I am the Portuguese Council Chaired Professor of European Studies and Professor of Economics at INSEAD, a business school with campuses in Singapore and Fontainebleau (France), a Senior Poicy Scholar at the Center for Business and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business (Georgetown University, USA) and a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (London, UK).
My research interests are in the area of Macroeconomics. My most recent research is in the area of fiscal policy and the connections between volatility and growth. I also have an interest in issues related to the European Monetary Union and more specifically the theory of optimum currency area. You can download the most recent version of those papers where you see a link (pdf format).
I teach the required course Macroeconomics in the Global Economy in the MBA programme and different modules on macroeconomic trends and exchange rates in Executive Education.
I publish a blog together with my colleague Ilian Mihov to share our thoughts on the global economy and current economic events. Blog: http://fatasmihov.blogspot.com
If you want to contact me, email is the easiest (antonio.fatas@insead.edu). If you want more details about my profile you can download a short bio or a full cv.

Work in Progress

"Fiscal Policy as a Stabilization Tool". Paper prepared for Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Annual Research Conference.
"The Economics of Achieving Fiscal Sustainability." Paper prepared for the Academic Consultants Meeting at the Board of Governors, Federal Reserve (April 2010).
"The Effects of Fiscal Policy on Consumption and Employment: Theory and Evidence". (joint with Ilian Mihov).
"Aggregate Demand Externalities, Intermediate Inputs and Multiple Equilibria".

Publications - Journal Articles and Book Chapters

"Policy Volatility, Institutions and Economic Growth". (joint with Ilian Mihov). Review of Economics and Statistics(forthcoming).
"Fiscal Policy and the Current Account." (joint with S.M. Ali Abbas, Jacques Bouhga-Hagbe, Paolo Mauro and Ricardo C. Velloso). IMF Economic Review, 59(4), 2011.
“Fiscal Policy at a Crossroads: The Need for Constrained Discretion”, (joint with Ilian Mihov), on Completing the Eurozone Rescue: What More Needs to be Done?”, edited by Richard Baldwin and Daniel Gros, VoxEU.org an CEPR, June 2010.
"Macroeconomic Policy: Does it Matter for Growth". (joint with Ilian Mihov). World Bank Commission on Growth and Development (48), April 2009.
"Another Challenge to China's Growth", (joint with Ilian Mihov). Harvard Business Review, March 2009.
"The Euro and Fiscal Policy", (joint with Ilian Mihov), January 2009. Also NBER Working Paper No 14722. Forthcoming in The First Ten Years of the Euro, edited by Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi (University of Chicago Press).
"EMU at Ten: Should Sweden, Denmark and the UK Join, Chapter 3, Fiscal Policy", (joint with Ilian Mihov). This is one of the chapters of the report put together by the SNS Economic Policy Group (SNS, Stockholm). January 2009.
"The Stabilizing Role of Government Size". (joint with Javier Andres and Rafael Domenech). Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, July 2008.
“Fiscal Policy, Volatility and Growth” (joint with Ilian Mihov), on Prudence or Abstinence: Fiscal Policy, Stabilization and Growth edited by Timothy Irwin, Guillermo Perry, Luis Servén and Rodrigo Suescún, World Bank, October 2007.
"Quantitative Goals for Monetary Policy". (joint with Ilian Mihov and Andrew K. Rose). Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, August 2007. The zipped Stata data set and a longer version are also available.
“Restricting Fiscal Policy Discretion: The case of U.S. States”, (joint with Ilian Mihov). Journal of Public Economics, 90 (1), 2006.
"The Case for Restricting Fiscal Policy Discretion". (joint with Ilian Mihov) Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 2003. You can also download the data (including the volatility measure) as well as the Stata programs in zipped format.
“On Restricting Fiscal Policy in EMU”, (joint with Ilian Mihov). Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 19(1), 2003.
"Fiscal Policy and EMU: Challenges of the Early Years". (joint with Ilian Mihov). EMU and Economic Policy in Europe, Eds. Marco Buti and Andre Sapir. Edwar Elgar Publishing, 2003.
"The Effects of Business Cycles on Growth" Economic Growth: Sources, Trends and Cycles, Eds. Norman Loayza and Raimundo Soto, Central Bank of Chile, 2002.
"Do Monetary Handcuffs Restrain Leviathan? Fiscal Policy in Extreme Exchange Rate Regimes". (joint withAndrew Rose). IMF Staff Papers, 48, November 2001. The data set is available in STATA, Excel or ASCII format.
"Fiscal Policy and Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation". (joint with Ilian Mihov). Moneda y Credito, 212, 2001.
"Government Size and Automatic Stabilizers: International and Intranational Evidence", (joint with Ilian Mihov).Journal of International Economics, October 2001.
"Intranational Migration: Business Cycles and Growth" Intranational Macroeconomics Eds. Eric van Wincoop and Greg Hess. Cambridge University Press, October 2000.
"Do Business Cycles Cast Long Shadows? Short-Run Persistence and Economic Growth". Journal of Economic Growth, June 2000.
"Endogenous Growth and Stochastic Trends". Journal of Monetary Economics, February 2000.
"Effects of EMU on the Spanish Business Cycle". In The Euro and the Spanish Economy. Fundacion Banco Bilbao Vizcaya , 1999.
"Does EMU Need a Fiscal Federation?" Economic Policy, April 1998.
"Multipliers: Imperfect Competition or Increasing Returns to Scale?," Economic Letters, December 1997.
"EMU: Countries or Regions? Lessons from the EMS Experience," European Economic Review, April 1997. Reprinted in The Economics of Regional Policy, Eds. Harvey Armstrong and Jim Taylor, The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics Series, Edward Elgar Publishing, November 1999.
"Irreversible Investment and Strategic Interaction," (joint with Andrew Metrick), Economica, February 1997.
"International Business Cycles and the Dynamics of the Current Account," (joint with Graham Elliott), European Economic Review, February 1996.
"Regional Labor Market Dynamics in Europe," (joint with Jorg Decressin), European Economic Review, December 1995. Reprinted in The Economics of Regional Policy (November 1999), Eds. Harvey Armstrong and Jim Taylor, and in The Political Economy of Monetary Union (forthcoming), Eds. Paul de Grauwe. Both of them are volumes of The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics Series, Edward Elgar Publishing.

Other Publications

Monitoring European Integration, 13 (joint with Andrew Hughes Hallett, Anne Siebert, Rolf Strauch and Juergen von Hagen), November 2003, CEPR, London.
Monitoring the European Central Bank 4, (joint with David Begg, Paul de Grauwe, Fabio Canova and Phil Lane), April 2002, CEPR,London.
Book Review: "Changes in Exchange Rates in Rapidly Developing Countries: Theories, Practice and Policy Issues" Eds. Takatoshi Ito and Anne O. Krueger. Journal of Economic Literature, September 1999.
Discussion of "Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Institutions" by Xavier Debrun. Moneda y Credito, 208, 1999.
Discussion of "Regional Non-adjustment and Fiscal Policy" by Maurice Obstfeld and Giovanni Peri. Economic-Policy, April 1998.

Jacqueline Mary du Pré

2012-01-14T07:26:00.000-08:00

Jacqueline Mary du Pré OBE (26 January 1945 – 19 October 1987) was a British cellist. She is particularly associated with Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor; her interpretation has been described as "definitive" and "legendary." Her career was cut short by multiple sclerosis, which forced her to stop performing at 28 and led to her premature death.

Jacqueline du Pré Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85 Adagio. Moderato
Edgard Elgar The Philadelphia Orchestra
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk1fgvLH2Uc&feature=related

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_du_Pr%C3%A9

Vasiliki Eliotis

2012-01-06T06:24:00.000-08:00

Vasiliki was my first serious girlfriend and like my wife was also Greek. We met on a train between Wellington and Masterton- lived together in Oriental bay then moved to Melbourne. We went our own ways in 1981- she really was a lovely person.

Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức

2012-01-05T22:56:00.000-08:00

Born 1897 – died 11 June 1963, was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection.

Đức was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam's Roman Catholic government. Photos of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm regime.

Malcolm Browne won a Pulitzer Prize for his renowned photograph of the monk's death. After his death, his body was re-cremated, but his heart remained intact. This was interpreted as a symbol of compassion and led Buddhists to revere him as a bodhisattva, heightening the impact of his death on the public psyche.

Đức's last words before his self-immolation were documented in a letter he had left:

Before closing my eyes and moving towards the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead to President Ngô Đình Diệm to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally. I call the venerables, reverends, members of the sangha and the lay Buddhists to organise in solidarity to make sacrifices to protect Buddhism.

David Halberstam wrote:

I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think ... As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Quang_Duc
Thich Quang Duc's car, Dec. 2011