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According to a press release from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Bob Turner, who was just elected to Congress a few months ago as Anthony Weiner's replacement, is already considering vacating the post and running instead for the Senate.
The release was based on comments a Turner's former campaign manager made on Capital Tonight that turner was considering a run against Senator Kirsten Gillibrand because Republican leadership was pressuring him to do so.
Yeah right!
While Turner's victory over Assemblyman David Weprin a few months ago was certainly an unexpected and impressive win, let's look at the facts. First, there was definitely an anti-Democrat, anti-ruling party sentiment at the time, coupled with the fact that Weiner, a Democrat, was forced to leave office under a cloud of scandal caused by the evil Twitter.
Second, Weprin, the Democratic candidate, ran by all accounts an incredibly uninspired campaign. Once he got the blessing of both the Kings and Queens County Democratic leadership, he all but figured he was going to be elected, and considered his job done.
Unfortunately for Weprin it wasn't, and in between the time he was made the party's favorite and Election Day, Turner was able to add to the support he already enjoyed among voters in Brooklyn by making valuable inroads into neighborhoods in Queens, like parts of South Queens, which had not long ago elected Turner supporter and Republican Eric Ulrich to the City Council, and parts of Glendale and Middle Village, neighborhoods also known to vote for more conservative candidates.
Third, Turner had just run against Weiner approximately one year prior, which meant that he already had name recognition in the district. In fact, we would have to say that Turner campaigned more vigorously in his loss to Weiner than he did in his victory against Weprin. (Although, we would also have to say that Turner's campaign team the second time around was a little more professional.)
But challenging Senator Kirsten Gillibrand? That's an entirely different set of challenges.
Turner doesn't have state-wide recognition, and he also doesn't have a very long record of serving in public office. Voters will first have to get to know Turner, and then he'll have to explain why he is so eager to leave his current post after just months on the job.
Although, now that we think about it, there's a very, very good chance that when New York City loses a congressional seat soon thanks to redistricting based on population figures from the 2010 Census, it will be Turner's district that will be eliminated.
Nevermind, it's probably wise for Turner to explore his options.


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Almanac: The "Father of Streamlining"
And now a page from our "Sunday Morning" Almanac: November 5, 1893, 124 years ago today – Day One for the man called "The Father of Streamlining."
For that was the day Raymond Loewy was born in Paris.
An award-winning model airplane designer while still a boy, Loewy moved to the United States after World War I, and went to work.
He transformed the railroad locomotive and the Greyhound bus. He designed modern sewing machines and popcorn machines … and filled his home with his own creations.
Book excerpt: Art Garfunkel's "What Is It All but Luminous"
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In this excerpt from his new memoir, "What Is It All But Luminous: Notes From an Underground Man" (Knopf), singer Art Garfunkel writes of his early fascination with radio, rock 'n' roll, and a fellow classmate named Paul Simon .
Watch Rita Braver's interview with Art Garfunkel on CBS '"Sunday Morning" November 5!
On Saturday mornings, in 1953, in Keds sneakers, white on white, I took my basketball to P.S. 164. We played half-court ball, three on three. Or else I listened to Martin Block's Make-Believe Ballroom on the radio. I loved to chart the top thirty songs. It was the numbers that got me. I kept meticulous lists – when a new singer like Tony Bennett came onto the charts with "Rags to Riches." I watched the record jump from, say, # 23 to # 14 in a week. The mathematics of the jumps went to my sense of fun. I was commercially aware through the Hit Parade, as well as involved in the music. Johnny Ray's "Cry," the Crewcuts' "Sha-boom," Roy Hamilton ballads, "Unchained Melody" reached me. Soon the Everly Brothers would take me for The Big Ride.
As I entered Parsons Junior High where the tough kids are, Paul Simon became my one and only friend. We saw each other's uniqueness. We smoked our first cigarettes. We have retreated from all other kids. And we laughed. I opened my school desk one day in 1954 and saw a note from Ira Green to a friend: "Listen to the radio tonight, I have a dedication to you." I was aware that Alan Freed had taken this subversive music from Cleveland to New York City. He read dedications from teenage lovers before playing "Earth Angel," "Sincerely." When he played Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally," he left the studio mic open enough to hear him pounding a stack of telephone books to the backbeat. This was no Martin Block.
Maybe I was in the land of payola, of "back alley enterprise" and pill-head disc jockeying, but what I was was that Alan Freed loved us kids to dance, romance, and fall in love, and the music would send us. It sent me for life. It was rhythm and blues. It was black. It was from New Orleans, Chicago, Philadelphia. It was dirty music (read sexual). One night Alan Freed called it "rock 'n' roll." Hip was born for me. Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis. Bobby Freeman asked, "Do you want dance, squeeze and hug me all through the night?" and you knew she did.
I was captured. So was Paul. We followed WINS radio. Paul bought a guitar. We used my father's wire recorder, then Paul's Webcor tape machine. Holding rehearsals in our basements, we were little perfectionists. We put sound on sound (stacking two layers of our singing). With the courage to listen and cringe about how not right it was yet, we are going to record.
We were guitar-based little rockers. Paul had the guitar. We wrote streamlined harmonies whose intervals were thirds, as I learned it from the Andrews Sisters to Don and Phil and floated it over Paul's chugging hammering-on-guitar technique. It was bluesy, it was rockabilly, it was rock 'n' roll. We took "woo-bop-a-loo-chi-ba" from Gene Vincent's "Be-bop-a-lula." We stole Buddy Holly's country flavor ("Oh Boy"), the Everlys' harmony ("Wake Up Little Susie"). Paul took Elvis's everything ("Mystery Train"). As Paul drove the rhythm, I brought us into a vocal blend. We were the closest of chums, making out with our girls across the basement floor. We showed each other our versions of masturbation (mine used a hand). "The Girl for Me" was the first song we wrote – innocent, a pathetic "Earth Angel." In junior high we added Stu Kutcher and Angel and Ida Pellagrini.
All the while, I did a lot of homework, the shy kid's retreat. My geometry page was a model of perfection. Anything worth doing is worth doing extraordinarily well – why not best in the world?
Excerpted from "What Is It All but Luminous" by Art Garfunkel. Copyright © 2017 by Art Garfunkel. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Industrial designer Raymond Loewy transformed locomotives, automobiles and household appliances into objects of unparalleled beauty. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
On the CBS show "Person to Person" in 1956, Loewy described his design philosophy: "I felt it was my duty to try to do whatever I could to introduce a little bea

subset: commoncrawl


text: Berner OY, Vantaa, Finland - Constructor Group Storage Machines Reference Berner Oy needed to concentrate their storage functions, to a new central warehouse in Vantaa. By investing in six Paternoster Vertical Carousels and one double Tornado picking errors decreased and batch picking allowed for quick and efficient picking. At each Vertical Carousel pair, items for 15 customer batches (batch picking) are picked at the same time. As there are three pairs of machines, it means that 3-6 pickers pick items for 45 customers at once. 4000 to 5000 lines are picked daily from the Paternoster and around 100 from the Tornado. Employees are also picking between 7000 to 8000 order lines per day from the pallet racking, which means that approximately 500 pallets are moved in and out of the warehouse. Solution: There are approximately 40.000 active items needing to be handled in the logistics center. Bigger items and pallets are stored in pallet racks while smaller items are in storage machines. Items in storage machines are placed in boxes with a maximum size of 100 litres. Capacities: Tornado:Double Tornado height: 10,3 metersTray width: 4000 mmTray depth: 820 mmTray qty per Tornado DT: 59 + 53Load capacity per tray: 300kg / 500kg Paternoster: 6 Paternosters, height: 10,3 metersCarrier width: 4100 mmCarrier depth: 520 mmCarrier qty per Paternoster: 46 + 30 sublevelsLoad capacity per carrier: 400kg Pallet racking:Height 9,1 mPallet places 27500 pcsFloor + 6 levelsEUR-pallet 800*1200 mm, max. 750 kgSection load max. 12000 kg See more Storage Machine References


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ST. PAUL, Minn. (Blugolds.com) – The UW-Eau Claire football team had a tough time today at second-ranked and 2012 NCAA Division III runner-up University of St. Thomas (Minn.), falling 52-7 to the Tommies at O'Shaughnessy Stadium.
St. Thomas scored touchdowns on its first two drives of the game and took a 15-0 lead by the end of the first quarter. After the Tommies got up by 15, the Blugolds got back into the game with Joel Sweeney (Sr.-Tomah, Wis.) scoring on a one-yard touchdown on the first play of the second quarter.
But from there it was all St. Thomas, which scored three more touchdowns before halftime to take a 32-7 lead into the locker room. The Blugolds attempted a 45-yard field goal at the end of the half but the kick fell short.
St. Thomas scored another touchdown in the third quarter and added two more in the fourth quarter to score the most points they have reached in a home opener since 1917. Ten different Tommies scored points today, including seven touchdowns from seven different players.
Sweeney led the Blugolds with 52 rushing yards on eight carries, all which came in the first half. In his first collegiate start, quarterback Mark Munger (Jr.-Eau Claire, Wis./Memorial) passed for 118 yards, going 11-for-18, while Drew Davis (Fr.-Eau Claire, Wis./Memorial) led the receivers with 45 yards on two catches. The Tommie defense had an interception, a forced fumble and recovery, and six sacks.
The Blugold defense was led by Sean Graham (Sr.-Hales Corners, Wis./Whitnall), who compiled 10 tackles (eight solo, two assists). John Endres (Fr.-Eau Claire, Wis./Memorial) had a blocked kick while Matthew Knapp (Fr.-Eau Claire, Wis./Memorial) blocked a punt.
Eau Claire is now 0-1 to start the year while St. Thomas is 1-0, pushing its regular-season win streak to 35 games and its home win streak to 18. This was the first meeting between the two teams in St. Paul while the only other meeting was the 2012 season opener, held at Carson Park in Eau Claire. St. Thomas won that game 27-24, scoring the game-winning touchdown with less than three minutes to play.
The 52 points today were the most given up by the Blugolds since a 65-44 loss to UW-River Falls on Oct. 14, 2000 and tied for the sixth most points allowed in school history. Seven points were also the fewest the Blugolds have scored since a 45-0 loss to UW-Whitewater on Oct. 16, 2010 while the margin of defeat (45 points) tied for the eighth largest in school history.
Next Saturday, the Blugolds will be at Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minn. Kickoff is set for 1 p.m.
Photos below by Chico La Barbera - http://chico.zenfolio.com/p17691248


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Materials & Coatings
Braner/Loopco CTL Line Preparing Material for Laser Cutting
Dalco Metals, Inc., Walworth, WI, has installed a new stretch-leveler cut-to-length line capable of handling panel flat and memory-free 80,000-psi yield-strength sheet products. Dalco Metals provides numerous steel grades in slit coil, blanks and cut-to-length sheets.
The line, from Braner/Loopco, Schiller Park, IL, is targeted at customers that laser-cut parts and components. It features a computer-controlled hydraulic roller-leveler equipped with exchangeable thin-gauge and heavy-gauge leveling cassettes, to eliminate strip cross-bow prior to the stretch-leveling process.
Braner/Loopco also has earned an order from material processor Dova, SA, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The firm has ordered its second slitting line from Braner/Loopco, to process surface-critical coated coil. The line will be able to process 1525- by 6.3- mm material (as thin as 0.38 mm) and features a single-loop turret head and slit-coil packaging line. Also included is nonmarking roll tensioning and a shape-correction cluster leveler. Packaging capacity: 5-ton slit coils.Braner/Loopco: 846/671-6210; www.braner.com
See also: Braner USA, Inc.
Related Enterprise Zones: Coil Handling, Fabrication
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Oval Diamond Eternity Rings
Oval Cut Eternity Rings from Diamond Heaven.
Eternity rings are the ultimate symbol of everlasting love, and the perfect way to honour an anniversary or special occasion. Diamond Heaven offer a collection of diamond and gemstone eternity rings that can be customised to suit your preferences. Whether you want a full channel eternity ring with stones going all the way round, to a half prong eternity ring, our skilled jewellers will craft your dream ring. Spread the cost of your eternity ring when you apply for finance with Diamond Heaven and for more information on choosing your perfect Eternity Ring, visit our advice and support page .
1. Choose Your Style


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People like to hate on The Simpsons these days, but I still find Fox's iconic cartoon show enjoyable, if not always super timely. See: this clip of Homer discovering iPad games, from the episode that aired last night.
If you missed last night's, Hulu has new Simpsons eps on a regular basis. It should be up next week or so (unless you're a subscriber).


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Ag MBA For Executives ( Ag EMBA)
Apply for Ag MBA for Executives - Ag EMBA Application
Ag MBA for Executives ( Ag EMBA) General Information
The Craig School of Business is currently recruiting candidates for the next Ag MBA for Executive (Ag EMBA) cohort. This program is designed for growers, processors, bankers, supplier/buyers, marketers, non-profits, logistics/transportation companies, and others connected to agriculture. Many in this cohort will have technical and scientific skills specific to their industry, yet desire the tools to translate their knowledge into sound business decisions. Graduates will have an enhanced ability to add value to their current business models and meet the challenges of competition on an increasingly global scale. Additionally, the program is general enough to prepare students for a range of careers outside of their traditional field. Ultimately, students will receive an MBA that will be a portable foundation for future career growth in any line of work.
Click here for a video interview detailing the program.
Summary of the program:
- Ag Executives will be able to earn their MBA in less than 17 months (including breaks).
- The Ag EMBA program at Craig School of Business allows candidates to attend on-campus classes on Saturdays for eight weekends out of a 10-week block (8:00-5:00 PM).
- Candidates are required to attend two and one half weeks of intensive classes (Wednesday to Friday 6 PM to 10 PM and Saturday 8 AM to noon) at the start of the program in order to acquire the foundation materials for the degree.
- One of the many highlights of this Ag EMBA will be a 10-day international trip (included in the tuition fee) to complement the international agribusiness course in the program.
- The Ag EMBA is the same degree as the Craig School of Business traditional MBA program. The degree is AACSB-accredited. AACSB is the professional association for college and university management education and the premier accrediting agency for bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree programs in business administration and accounting (www.aacsb.edu). This is the highest rated AACSB accredited executive program between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
- Since the Ag EMBA is designed to suit candidates with a minimum of ten years of work experience with at least three years in a managerial or professional capacity, the GMAT (graduate entrance exam to business schools) requirement will be waived for executive applicants. A GPA of 2.5 or higher is required to be admitted, but participants must maintain a GPA of 3.0 or higher to graduate.
For more information, download our brochure or contact Professor Rene Chu-Jacoby, Assistant Director, Craig School of Business, at (559) 278-2107 or email@example.com.


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Having trouble...? firstname.lastname@example.com
A Quick Overview... Feel free to glance through all of the recipes; just scroll down. Bookmark us and come back every day. New recipes will be posted daily.If you would like to submit a blog post with photo, just follow this link.
First Time Here? Take a minute to view the "how-to's" and a list of the special features to get the most out of the eRecipeCards.com experience.


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Diabetes is a higher level of glucose in the blood than is normal. Glucose travels through the body in the blood. A hormone called insulin then helps glucose move from the blood to the cells. Once glucose is in the cells it can be used for energy. A problem making or using insulin means glucose cannot move into cells. Insulin also helps glucose to move into the liver for storage if there is too much to use. Without enough insulin, glucose will build up in the blood.
In type 1 diabetes, the body does not make insulin. This will lead to the build up of glucose in the blood, also called hyperglycemia. At the same time, cells are not getting glucose they need to function well. Over a long period of time high blood glucose levels can also damage vital organs. The blood vessels, heart, kidneys, eyes, and nerves are most commonly affected organs.
Type 1 diabetes is often found during childhood and young adulthood.
Our immune system keeps us well by fighting off and destroying viruses and bacteria. Unfortunately, sometimes the immune system attacks healthy tissue. Most type 1 diabetes develop because the immune system attacks and destroys the cells that make insulin. These cells are in the pancreas.
It is not yet clear why the immune system attacks these cells. It is believed that some people have genes that make them prone to getting diabetes. For these people, certain triggers in the environment may make the immune system attack the pancreas. The triggers are not known but may be certain viruses, foods, or chemicals.
Type 1 diabetes may also develop as a complication of other medical conditions. It may develop in:
- People with chronic type 2 diabetes who lose the ability to make insulin.
- Some with chronic pancreatitis or pancreatic surgery. They may lose the cells that make insulin.
Risk Factors
Type 1 diabetes is more common in males. It can start at any age but most commonly children and adolescents. Other factors that may increase your chance of type 1 diabetes include:
- Family history of type 1 diabetes
- Certain ethnic groups, such as Northern European, Mediterranean, African American, or Hispanic
- Increased age of mother during pregnancy
- Risk increases with increase in birth weight
- Obesity during childhood
- Other autoimmune disorders, including:
- Cystic fibrosis
Type 1 diabetes may cause:
- Increased urination
- Extreme thirst
- Hunger
- Weight loss
- Fatigue, weakness
- Blurry vision
- Irritability
- Headaches
Without insulin, the body will need to find new forms of energy. This will cause an imbalance in the body called ketoacidosis . It is a severe state that can lead to coma or death. Ketoacidosis may cause:
- Dry skin and mouth
- Dehydration
- Rapid pulse
- Low blood pressure
- Fruity breath odor
- Vomiting and nausea
- Abdominal pain
- Drowsiness
- Abnormally deep and fast breathing
- Coma
You will be asked about your symptoms and medical history. A physical exam will be done.
Type 1 diabetes is diagnosed based on the results of blood tests and other criteria. These include:
- Symptoms common with diabetes and a random blood test showing a blood sugar level greater than or equal to 200 mg/dL* (11.1 mmol/L)
- Fasting blood test showing blood glucose levels greater than or equal to 126 mg/dL (7.0 mmol/L) on two different days—test is done after you have not eaten for eight or more hours
- Glucose tolerance test results with blood glucose greater than or equal to 200 mg/dL (11.1 mmol/L)—test is done after you eat glucose
- HbA1c level of 6.5% or higher—measure of blood sugar over the past 2-4 months
*mg/dL = milligrams per deciliter of blood, mmol/L = millimole per liter of blood
You may also need blood tests to confirm diabetes is type 1 and not type 2. These may include:
- Insulin level or C-peptide tests—to see how much insulin is being made by the pancreas
- Tests that look for antibodies that are working against your pancreas
You may also need other blood tests, including.
- Cholesterol levels
- Tests for autoimmune diseases, such as celiac disease and thyroid disease
- Liver tests in adults
Diabetes treatment goal is to maintain blood sugar at levels as close to normal as possible. Regular medical care is important for preventing or delaying complications.
While diabetes makes blood glucose levels too high, treatment can make blood glucose levels go too low. This is called hypoglycemia. It can cause confusion, shakiness, anxiety, heart palpitations and more. If the levels fall too low it can cause seizures and loss of consciousness.
Medication and diet will be adjusted to prevent hyperglycemia and keep the risk of hypoglycemia low.
Insulin injections replace the insulin that is missing. The amount given is based on individual need and a blood glucose test that is taken before and after meals and at bedtime. Insulin shots will be needed 2 or more times daily. There is one short-acting inhaled insulin which may be available for select persons.
An insulin pump can automatically deliver small amounts of insulin through the day.
Insulin may be available in inhaled forms.
Amylin is made in the pancreas along with insulin. In people with type 1 diabetes, this hormone, like insulin, is missing. The missing amylin may be responsible for the blood glucose rise after a meal in people with diabetes. The drug pramlintide may be used in adults when insulin therapy is not enough to control blood sugar.
Glucagon can be injected to quickly increase blood glucose level. People with type 1 diabetes should always have an emergency supply available in case of hypoglycemia.
A medical alert ID can let others know of the condition if communication is impacted.
Other Medications
If not controlled by diet and exercise, medications may be needed to control blood pressure and cholesterol .
Vaccinations will be needed. Some may be needed earlier in children with diabetes.
Meet often with a registered dietitian. Generally speaking, it is best to:
- Follow a well-balanced meal plan with a variety of food groups.
- Eat at regular times each day. Include a bedtime snack. Do not skip meals
- Avoid highly refined carbohydrates. This includes sugar or high fructose products like soda.
Exercise is encouraged as long as blood glucose levels are under control. The doctor will advise activity levels and changes that may need to be made.
The insulin dose or diet may need to be adjusted if glucose levels are low after exercise.
Blood Sugar Testing
Regular blood glucose checks throughout the day will help manage diabetes. Testing is often done with a blood glucose monitor. Continuous monitoring systems that are worn all day are also available.
Keep a record of the results to show the doctor. The treatment plan may change based on test results. The HbA1c blood test is also used by the doctor to assess overall glucose control.
Pancreatic Islet Cell Transplant
This is a procedure that is still being investigated. It involves transplanting islet cells from a donor to a person with type 1 diabetes. After the transplant, these new cells are able to produce insulin. In some cases, people who receive these transplants may no longer need insulin injections.
Closed-Loop Artificial Pancreas
This device is still being studied and developed. It is a continuous glucose monitoring system (CGMS). This system can automatically checks glucose levels through the day. Insulin is then delivered as needed through the day and night. The monitoring system will help keep blood sugar levels within the normal range without daily testing or injections.
Pancreatic Transplant
A pancreatic transplant may be advised if:
- Severe kidney disease requires a kidney transplant
- Acute diabetic complications or emergencies can not be prevented by insulin
- Severe problems occur due to injecting large amounts of insulin
- Severe and frequent complications related to diabetes occur, such as severe recurrent hypoglycemia
Depression can undermine recovery and increase the risk of other complications. Feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and loss of interest in activities that last for at least 2 weeks should prompt a call to the doctor. Depression is treatable. Counseling can help better manage depression and diabetes.
Over a long period of time, high blood glucose levels can damage vital organs. The risk of complications increases with increasingly poor control
Common complications
Diabetes can also increase the risk of heart disease.
Decreasing Risk of Complications
Maintaining goal blood glucose and HbA1c levels according to the doctors recommendations is the first step to lowering the risk of these complications. Other steps:
- Practice good footcare. Be on the lookout for any sores or irritated areas. Keep the feet dry and clean.
- Get yearly eye exams.
- Don't smoke. If you do, look for programs or products that can help you quit.
- Keep track of moods and be alert for persistent depressive symptoms.
- Plan medical visits as recommended.
There are no current guidelines to prevent type 1 diabetes.
Some research is looking at the effectiveness of suppressing the immune system. This may be helpful in people who are at high risk of developing type 1 diabetes.
Revision Information
- Reviewer: EBSCO Medical Review Board Michael Woods, MD, FAAP
- Review Date: 09/2018 -
- Update Date: 08/25/2017 -


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The creation earlier this year of a joint office of the Veterans Health Administration and the Defense Department's Office of Information and Technology has borne its first fruit – a mobile application designed to assist people undergoing prolonged exposure therapy, reports FierceMobile Government.
The app, PE Coach, is being used by both departments to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. It gives PTSD sufferers a central site to track their therapy sessions, record them, complete therapy assignments and take notes on sessions. The app also offers breathing exercises for better managing anxiety. But unlike many healthcare apps, PE Coach is not a self-help tool, the DOD said in a statement cited by FierceMobile.
PE Coach is available for download on iOS and Android devices.
VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker made the announcement last week during a press call. He added that the office is working on an entire portfolio of apps. The office will ensure that app development has the proper security and privacy oversight.
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Soccer Goals
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FORZA goals are a soccer lovers best friend, and our weatherproof PVC soccer goals are the best way to introduce children to the beautiful game. The high value goals assemble in minutes, with an essential locking system which makes the strong soccer goal posts even sturdier. Including our bestselling 6 x 4 locking goal, these soccer goals for kids are perfect for recreating classic MLS moments.
Made from incredibly strong steel, the Steel42 soccer goal post and net is a premium backyard goal which is both weather-resistant and highly durable. Rounding off the collection with professional aluminum soccer goals, our Alu60, Alu110 Freestanding, Alu110 Socketed and Alu110 Stadium Box Soccer Goal ranges are suited to the upper echelons of the game. With all these great goals on offer, all that's left is to select from our range of FORZA soccer balls and kick off in style.
At FORZA, our talents aren't limited to providing top of the range soccer goals. We also stock goalkeeper gloves for shot-stoppers of all standards as well as a variety of training equipment which will improve all facets of your game. Set your clubs standards with our matchday equipment and lock your sights on securing silverware with FORZA's premium soccer equipment.


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Instruments of Change is a surfing documentary that takes the legendary crew of Mark Occhilupo, Tom Curren and Gary Elkerton on a voyage through Indonesia's pristine coastline in search for perfection!
Mark Occhilupo, Tom Curren, Gary ElkertonWatch Trailer
|Instruments of Change is a surfing documentary that takes the legendary crew of Mark Occhilupo, Tom Curren and Gary Elkerton on a voyage through Indonesia's pristine coastline in search for perfection! Also along for the ride are the next generation of surfing's superstars Pat Curren, Kalani Ball and Keanu Asing. Together these surfers explore unchartered waters, and find awesome uncrowded waves.
|Shortboarding, Boat Trip
|Mark Occhilupo, Tom Curren, Gary Elkerton, Pat Curren, Kalani Ball, Keanu Asing
|Simon Saffigna
|Simon Saffigna
|not rated
|Running Time
|33 minutes
|Audio Language
|English | Stereo
|Download Resolution
|HD | 1280x720 (1.01 GB) SD | 848x480 (450.04 MB)
|Streaming Resolution
|HD | 1920x1080
|Additional Features
|Chapter Markers
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Last November, President Bush delivered a speech at the National Endowment for Democracy, in Washington, spelling out the loftiest of his rationales for the war in Iraq—a determination to remake the political world from North Africa to the Arabian peninsula. It was a radical conservative's most radical address. The end of the twentieth century, Bush said, had marked "the swiftest advance of freedom in the twenty-five-hundred-year story of democracy," an advance that began with Portugal, Spain, and Greece more than thirty years ago, spread to South Korea and Taiwan, and then, finally, to South Africa and the entire Soviet imperium. By the President's accounting, there were forty democracies in the world in the early nineteen-seventies and a hundred and twenty by 2000. Never mind the reassertion of authoritarian regimes in Central Asia and elsewhere. For Bush, one region in particular remained stubbornly unfree. "Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty?" he asked. The United States, he declared, had "adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East" that would depend on American "persistence and energy and idealism" but also on the Arab countries—not least, the most populous, powerful, and influential country in the region. "The great and proud nation of Egypt has shown the way toward peace in the Middle East," Bush said, "and now should show the way toward democracy in the Middle East."
The logic of that rhetorical instruction was not lost on the Egyptians: just as Anwar Sadat, a quarter-century earlier, had flown to Jerusalem to make peace with Israel, Hosni Mubarak, an unchallenged four-term President, a modern pharaoh, should take the equally bold step of creating a constitutional democracy, even at the risk of surrendering power. Egypt is historically central, a civilization of more than seven thousand years' standing, and, unlike the sectarian societies of Syria and Iraq or the arriviste dynastic oil depots of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, it is a true nation-state, the center of nearly all currents, intellectual and ideological, in the Arab world. In Bush's own mind, at least, he was encouraging a revolution from above, an Arabian perestroika. And the revolution, he made plain, ought to begin in Cairo.
There has, of course, been no such revolution in Cairo, and no sign of one. Part of the collateral damage of the Bush Administration's prosecution of the war in Iraq is the erosion of American prestige and influence all over the world. Rather than take the democratizing cue from Bush, Mubarak's regime has offered itself as an example to the United States: Spare us the pretense of an open society, its leaders imply. Your greatest fear, like ours, is terrorism, and the only way to defeat such an enemy is by crushing it. Not long after September 11th, Atef Ebeid, the Egyptian Prime Minister, seemed to give sympathetic counsel to an ally still stunned by its encounter with the capacities of jihad. "The U.S. and U.K., including human-rights groups, have, in the past, been calling on us to give these terrorists their 'human rights,' " he said. "You can give them all the human rights they deserve until they kill you. After these horrible crimes committed in New York and Virginia, maybe Western countries should begin to think of Egypt's own fight against terror as their new model."
Ebeid was referring to a long history. Modern Islamic radicalism was born in the twenties in the villages of the upper Nile and the streets and mosques of Cairo. In communiqués over the years, Osama bin Laden has often referred to that period as one of calamity and humiliation—an allusion, clear to anyone in the Islamic world, to the collapse of Islam's imperial seat, the Ottoman caliphate, based in Constantinople. In the nineteen-twenties, Kemal Atatürk, a secular revolutionary, banned the caliphate and established the Republic of Turkey. Islamic Constantinople became cosmopolitan Istanbul. At the same time, much of the Arab world was being parcelled out by the strongest powers in Europe, and nationalism came to displace the idea of a greater unified Islam.
In reaction, in 1928 Hassan al-Banna, a religiously educated teacher living near the Suez Canal, established the Muslim Brotherhood. Banna believed in Islam as a complete system, which provides divine instruction on everything from daily rituals, law, and politics to matters of the spirit, and to which all other forms of thought and social organization—secularism, nationalism, socialism, liberalism—are alien. In his essay "Between Yesterday and Today," Banna wrote that the colonialist Europeans had expropriated the resources of the Islamic lands and corrupted them with "their murderous germs":
**{: .break one} ** They imported their half-naked women into these regions, together with their liquors, their theaters, their dance halls, their amusements, their stories, their newspapers, their novels, their whims, their silly games, and their vices. . . . The day must come when the castles of this materialistic civilization will be laid low upon the heads of their inhabitants. **
The Brotherhood's slogan was, and remains, "God is our objective; the Koran is our constitution; the prophet is our leader; struggle is our way; and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations." The Brotherhood, like many groups that bear its imprint decades later—Hamas, Hezbollah—established charitable organizations, clinics, schools, and underground paramilitary groups to further the cause of an Islamic polity. Initially, the spectacularly corrupt Egyptian king, Farouk, used the Brotherhood as a stabilizing force against a stronger opposition, the Communists and the secular nationalists. And, as the Brotherhood grew in membership, it was able to act with a degree of freedom. But when terrorist challenges to the monarchy began, the government came to see the Brotherhood as a real threat. At the end of 1948, a member of the Brotherhood assassinated Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi Nuqrashi; in 1949, the secret police retaliated, shooting Hassan al-Banna dead as he was getting into a taxi in Cairo.
"A great shock occurred in the Brotherhood after Hassan was killed," Banna's surviving brother, Gamal, told me not long ago, when we met at his apartment on the outskirts of the capital. The strongest ideological voice among the factional leaders in the Brotherhood was also the most extreme—Sayyid Qutb. Gamal said that "Qutb was a man of complexes" who had been radicalized by an extended journey to the United States in the late nineteen-forties. In books of theology and political theory—the most famous of which are "In the Shadows of the Koran" and "Signposts on the Road"—Qutb popularized an interpretation of the Koran that, to this day, is used as a justification for political violence in the name of establishing an Islamic state. According to the Koran, mankind, before the advent of Islam, lived in jahilyya, a state of ignorance and paganism. During Qutb's travels through America, he saw people living in a decadent swamp of commercial obsession and sexual permissiveness—a modern incarnation of jahilyya.
In 1952, Gamal Abdel Nasser toppled the monarchy and came to power with promises of socialism and pan-Arab nationalism. Nasser was a hero throughout the Arab world for opposing the West, but Qutb charged that he was just as barbaric as the leaders of the West, and declared him kafir, an infidel. In short, Qutb excommunicated the head of state from the Community of the Faithful and placed him beyond the protection of Islamic law.
At first, Nasser tried to co-opt the Muslim Brotherhood, but in 1954 the government claimed that the group had tried to assassinate him, and it carried out a series of arrests and executions. For the next twenty years, the Brotherhood went underground. Many of its members were forced into exile, and established the group in Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon. Qutb's brother, Muhammad, edited and published Qutb's works in Saudi Arabia, and they were soon available in much of the Arab world. In 1965, Qutb was arrested in Cairo, and a year later he was tried and hanged. Yet his influence persisted. Along with Mawlana Mawdudi, the principal leader of Islamic radicalism in Pakistan, and Ayatollah Khomeini, in Iran, Qutb remains one of the founding ideologists of Islamic radicalism.
Nasser died in 1970, of a heart attack, and when Sadat came to power he began to release Islamists from jail as a way of building his political base. Under Nasser, the Egyptians had suffered a humiliating military loss to Israel in 1967, and by 1972 members of the Brotherhood at Cairo University and elsewhere were among the loudest voices calling for another confrontation. The Lebanese-born scholar Fouad Ajami says, in his 1981 book "The Arab Predicament," that after the shock and despair of the 1967 war Egypt required "solace and consolation" and felt a "nostalgia for purity" that only Islam could provide. But by allowing the Islamists back into the political picture Sadat was making an enormous concession. As Gilles Kepel writes, in his recent historical account "Jihad," "Sadat gave up the Egyptian state's monopoly on ideology, as well as the strategy of containing religion on which his predecessor had relied."
Sadat had hoped to distinguish himself from Nasser by appearing to be a man of prayer and relative liberalism. He allowed the Brotherhood to publish its own magazine, Al Dawa (The Call to Islam); he tolerated the rise of the Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Association), an even more fundamentalist group, which urged the "pure Islamic life" and began to have an impact at the universities in Cairo. He also restored a measure of Egypt's self-image when the Army crossed the Suez Canal in the 1973 war with Israel. Yet when Sadat made his overture to Menachem Begin and signed a peace pact at Camp David, in 1979, the Islamists turned on him. They could not accept the idea of a Middle Eastern political order, an accommodation that would concede Israel a permanent place on what they insisted were Islamic lands.
In Cairo, and in Upper Egyptian towns such as Asyut and Minia, the radical heirs of Sayyid Qutb began organizing cells and issuing calls to overthrow Sadat's regime. One of the radical sects, under the leadership of a young electrical engineer, Abd al-Salam Faraj, declared Sadat "an apostate of Islam fed at the tables of imperialism and Zionism," and in 1981 Sadat was murdered while attending a military parade. Faraj wrote a pamphlet, "The Hidden Imperative," consistent with Qutb's guidelines of justifiable political murder. At the trial, one of the assassins declared, "I am guilty of killing the unbeliever, and I am proud of it."
Sadat was succeeded by Hosni Mubarak, the commander of the Air Force, who was a far more cautious figure and had no ideological ambitions. For twenty-three years, power and its maintenance has been Mubarak's obsession. Ever since the assassination of Sadat, he has maintained a state of emergency to justify a war against religious radicals. Over the years, tens of thousands of Islamists and other political opponents have passed through the jails, usually without trial or charge. According to both Egyptian human-rights groups and international organizations like Human Rights Watch, torture is "widespread and systematic": beatings, electric shock, isolation. And Mubarak has always proved himself ready to employ maximum force to quell protest or unrest.
In time, Mubarak wore down the Islamist movement in Egypt, a fact that was all but admitted when, in 1997, the two main radical groups declared that they were ending all violent operations. There was an incident later that year, when terrorists killed seventy people in Luxor, but since then there has been nothing.
A squat, middle-aged lawyer named Montasser al-Zayat has been a public face of radical Islam in Cairo for many years. He is the principal attorney for Gama'a al-Islamiya and promotes a notion of law very different from that of the relatively secular Egyptian constitution. A sign outside his office door reads, in Arabic, "Only God Rules." He has been jailed four times and counts among his prison friends Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian Jihad leader who is Osama bin Laden's chief ideologist and lieutenant.
"Definitely, the Islamic groups in Egypt are suffering a period of weakness," he told me. "They've been beaten down by prison, attacks, torture, interrogations. Most of the leaders were killed. There are large numbers still in prison. Those who have been released are in search of a future, trying to find a way to combat what the regime has done to them. But the Islamic state of affairs in general is still strong. The people feel endangered, and they are moving toward Islamic groups, more so since the American attacks" in Afghanistan and Iraq. "This sense of a threat to our national security, to our identity, is having a profound effect on people."
In radical circles, the Muslim Brotherhood is considered to be passive, generationally divided, and far too accommodating to the regime. Its demonstrations are invariably orderly, its platform for an Islamic state purposefully vague. But Zayat said he thought that the Brotherhood was the one "dissident" organization in Egypt that had a chance to displace the current regime. "Although I'm not a member of the Muslim Brothers, I believe they are the political future of Egypt," Zayat said. "In the event of true reform and elections, they are trained and competent and ready to take the reins of power."
In all corners of official Cairo—at government offices, at the newspapers—that was the word: the radical groups were in eclipse (or hiding or exile), and the Muslim Brotherhood was, in an authoritarian state, the shadow opposition. Its members hold sixteen of the four hundred and forty-five seats in the parliament, and are prominent in the professional associations. In 2002, when one of the Brotherhood's leaders died, two hundred thousand people turned out for the funeral. A recent article in Egypt Today wondered whether the Brotherhood might someday take power and resemble the moderate Islamic parties that now rule Bosnia-Herzegovina and Turkey.
But when you enter the offices of the Muslim Brotherhood, after taking off your shoes at the door, it is hard to reconcile its reputation for competence and even power with the listless scene before you: a shabby warren of rooms in which a few dozen men stand around chatting, drinking tea, and shuffling papers. I made two visits, and both times everyone was unfailingly polite. An elderly assistant gave me glasses of cool lemon squash and translated the posters on the wall. One showed a portrait of Sheikh Yassin, the Hamas leader who was killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. The old man squinted at the caption and told me, "It says, 'Sheikh Yassin: Congratulations on Your Martyrdom!' "
When I met with Mohamed Mahdi Akef, the new Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, I could only wonder what Hosni Mubarak had to fear. Akef belongs to a generation in its seventies and eighties that, almost to a man, spent years in prison during the Nasser regime. He is broad-bellied and has close-cropped white hair and a white beard. He gestured with his hand around the offices as if to acknowledge their modesty: "What can I say? We live and work to assist our religion, and despite these limited resources we do what we can to press the greatness of Islam and to reform life in all of its aspects."
I said that it probably didn't help that the Brotherhood is officially banned and the emergency laws are still in effect.
Akef smiled. "We no longer think of ourselves as banned," he said. "We just don't compete with the government."
Not surprisingly, almost no one in Cairo today has anything good to say about the American invasion of Iraq—people are convinced that the U.S.'s purpose was to seize the oil fields, protect Israel, and gain a permanent foothold in the Middle East—and so I began with what I thought would be a less lecture-provoking question. I asked Akef how he had reacted to the attacks on September 11, 2001.
"The incidents of September 11th were criminal, and only a professional criminal would have done such a thing," he said. "That is why, until now, there's been no clear evidence of who did this. Talk of Mohammad Atta and Al Qaeda is all lies, an illusion. Al Qaeda is an American illusion. Is there any power on earth that can stand up to the United States of America and its power? Whenever America claims there is another power to challenge it, it is an illusion used to serve other purposes. For example, the United States wanted to invade Afghanistan in order to ship its oil by pipeline across that country. The U.S. wanted to plant its bases there and ship the oil. So they claim there is a Taliban there with Al Qaeda functioning there, too. But how much power does the Taliban really have?"
In the nineteen-sixties, Sayyid Qutb said that the Jews were behind "materialism, animal sensuality, the destruction of the family, and the dissolution of society." As for the West, he said, "Should we not issue a sentence of death? Is this not the verdict most appropriate to the nature of the crime?" The intervening decades have not much changed this aspect of ideology within the Brotherhood, at least among the reigning elders. Akef saw Sadat's treaty with the Israelis as a grievous heresy and, again, turned conspiratorial when it came to the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. "In the West, they wanted to get rid of the Jews, and so the Europeans and the United States implanted the Zionists in the Holy Land to get rid of them and their evils," he said. "At the same time, they implanted this evil in the Middle East so the Muslims could busy themselves with it. The Europeans and Americans knew that Israel would never survive. Israel cannot stand before one and a half billion Muslims. This is temporary. Israel has no future! And I am not the only one saying this. There are scholars saying this."
The Muslim Brotherhood leadership, even the younger generation, is realistic about the Brotherhood's current inability to compete for power. Its public position is that through its community organizations it will slowly change the values of Egyptian society, and build a legal party; Islam will flourish and public opinion will eventually put pressure on the regime, either during Mubarak's reign or after. For now, senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood are kept out of sight, banned from speaking at universities and appearing on state-run television.
"Mubarak fears that if he widens the margins of democracy things will happen," Essam al-Eryam, one of the Brotherhood's most prominent middle-aged leaders, told me at the Brotherhood's headquarters. "There will be democracy here, sooner or later. It requires patience, and we are more patient because we are, as an organization, seventy-six years old. You have already seen some countries—Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran—describe themselves as Islamic regimes. There's a diversity of models, even among the Sunni and the Shia. Egypt can present a model that is more just and tolerant."
The Mubarak government's policy is simple: finesse—periods of tolerance followed by crackdown. Ali Heilal Dessouki, a Cabinet minister, met me at his office one afternoon and reeled off the decades-long history of Islamist violence directed at various government leaders. "Whether it is the Muslim Brotherhood or Islamic Jihad, the goal in the end is the same: the establishment of a Muslim state," he said. "When the mujahideen returned from Afghanistan in 1989, 1990, the level of military professionalism among the Islamists had increased. Somewhere in 1990, 1991, the strategy of reconciliation showed itself to be a failure. For us to say 'Come share with us' was considered a sign of weakness. So the government got tough."
Actually, nearly all the Islamists who committed terrorist acts in the early nineteen-nineties were members of groups more radical than the Brotherhood, but the government does not spin it quite that way. Fouad Allam, who was Egypt's chief of intelligence under Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak, until 1988, when he retired, compared the Brotherhood to the Italian Red Brigades and the German Baader-Meinhof gang. "They are the most dangerous organization in the Arab world," he said. "In reality, they created terrorism in the region. Despite this, they claim they are not a terrorist organization. When you ask them about the assassination of the Prime Minister under Farouk in 1948, killing people in movie theatres, the assassination of other government officials, the robbery of the Bank of Egypt, putting explosives in police stations, blowing up certain Jewish shops—there have been six hundred crimes since 1928—when you ask them, they say these are isolated, individual acts. They declare themselves innocent of any wrongdoing. What I respect about Jihad and Gama'a al-Islamiya is that they operate in the open. The Muslim Brothers are liars, even today.
"It's been a long time since they last committed a terrorist act," he continued, "but every now and then a clandestine cell is discovered. I can't say whether they have renounced terrorism or they are dormant, like a volcano. But why are they still forming clandestine cells?"
In mid-May, the government carried out the most extensive crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in a decade, making more than fifty arrests, closing down twenty companies aligned with the group, and shutting off its Web site. According to Al-Ahram, a newspaper that tends to reflect the government line, intelligence officials had come to believe that the Brotherhood was escalating recruitment and sending the recruits to Iraq, Chechnya, and Palestine to get the training they would need to overthrow the Egyptian government. The Brotherhood denied all the charges.
Not long after the arrests, prison officials called Brotherhood leaders to say that one of theirs, a forty-year-old engineer named Akram Zuheiri, who suffered from diabetes, had died while being transferred between detention facilities. Would they kindly come and pick up the body? The Brotherhood and human-rights organizations blamed "clear and grave negligence" for Zuheiri's death and said that other prisoners swept up in the recent dragnet were being interrogated and tortured. According to Al-Ahram, a "common interpretation" of the arrests is that they are a signal from Mubarak to the public that the Muslim Brotherhood "will never be part" of government reform in Egypt. The only point of agreement between the government and the Brotherhood is that American policy in the Middle East is radicalizing more and more young Egyptians.
The Mubarak regime has a natural interest in exaggerating, for foreign consumption, the strength and the potential menace of the Muslim Brotherhood. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a sociologist who studied the Islamist movement and then was jailed by Mubarak for three years, told me, "Mubarak has a low I.Q., but, politically, he is a survivalist. He has used the Islamists as a fear-arouser for the West. He wards off the pressures for a more open system by pointing to their presence. He uses them as a deterrent: 'Do you want me to open the door to another Iran or Algeria or Afghanistan?' This frightens the Egyptian middle class and the United States. It is a very skillful bluff, and the Muslim Brothers recognize the bluff."
Egypt under Mubarak is a system of safety valves and controls, an autocracy that in some respects simulates civil society. Political opponents cannot compete for real power, or make frontal attacks on the President in the press, but they can talk in apartments and cafés, they can run for seats in parliament and join the professional unions and the like. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, conduct religious study groups, and run charitable programs for the poor, but they no longer embarrass the government, as they did in 1992 when they were much quicker and more effective than the state bureaucracy in aiding the victims of an earthquake. In other words, they are given strict limits; should they exceed those limits, their last remaining freedom is to join thousands of others in prison.
And yet, if a political dissident or group wants to express opposition to or hatred of Israel, the Jews, or the Bush Administration, there are hardly any boundaries at all. This is part of what makes the Egyptian media seem "lively." In 2002, state television broadcast a forty-one-episode series based on the anti-Semitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." The Muslim Brotherhood had a rare opportunity to get a representative on television recently when it protested the broadcast of the Harrison Ford movie "Air Force One." And the newspaper columnist Rifat Sayyid Ahmad felt no hesitation in calling Dick Cheney "a super-racist Jew" or in comparing Guantánamo to Auschwitz.
One of the leading moderate Islamists in Egypt is the newspaper columnist Fahmy Howeidy. In his office one afternoon, Howeidy told me that he held out no hope of Mubarak's instituting real democratic reforms and that, at this point, U.S. pressure would be counter-productive. "The only thing that will bring it about will be the people's will, their readiness to pay a price for it," he said. "Democracy will not be a gift from Mubarak or Colin Powell."
Howeidy and many others I spoke to said that it was difficult to gauge what sort of Islamism could emerge in a democratic Egypt. "It's hard to say how powerful the Muslim Brothers are," Howeidy said. "We have no polls, no transparency. They have power in the society, but to what extent I don't know."
In an atomized political culture like Egypt's, the one issue that has energized, and enraged, the political opposition today is American foreign policy under George W. Bush. I had dozens of meetings in Cairo—with government officials, religious leaders, opposition figures, intellectuals, students, working people—and nearly every session began with a speech on the perfidy of the Bush Administration. The novelist and editor Gamal al-Ghitani greeted me at the offices of his journal, Akhbar Aladab, the most prominent literary magazine in the Middle East, and showed me the portraits on the wall of his "American icons"—Hemingway, Melville, and Louis Armstrong—and yet within minutes he was telling me that what he feared most in the world was the United States. The faces of American officers in Iraq reminded him of Nazi officers, he said. "I fear that my culture is targeted by a superpower that is acting stupidly." He was, if anything, mild in his rhetoric. Later, I visited Sonallah Ibrahim, a Marxist novelist who is known for scathing political fictions, like "The Smell of It," which he published after a term in Nasser's prisons. Before knocking on his apartment door, I noticed a decal above the bell showing the American and Israeli flags joined by a swastika. He, too, was enraged about Palestine and Iraq, but not only that: everything about the United States repelled him. Ibrahim taught Arabic literature at Berkeley in 1998, an experience that evidently did not suit him. "I despised the total individualism, the control of multinationals, the manipulation of the media over the ordinary person, the values of life, just living to eat, drink, fuck, have a car, and that's all," he said. "There are no moral values, no broad-minded attitudes toward life in general or a sense of what is happening in the world, no sense of the role America is playing in trying to control the resources of the world." Perhaps what irked him most, he said, was "the genuine stupidity of the normal American citizen. He is ignorant. He doesn't know what his own country is doing in the world. The U.S. is following the same policy of racism as the Nazis. Do I really have to explain something to you that is so well known everywhere?"
Anti-Americanism, routine or virulent, is not new in Egypt. Only its intensity is new—an intensity that is marked not only among opposition figures and literary intellectuals but also among people close to Mubarak.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was the Secretary-General of the United Nations in the nineteen-nineties and now runs a government human-rights agency in Cairo, told me, "In 1992, I had the illusion that the United Nations would manage the post-Cold War world. I was mistaken. The U.S. felt it should manage the post-Cold War world, based on free markets and democracy, with the idea that one democracy will not fight another. But this ideology failed. The new Administration moved from a policy of persuasion to a policy of coercion and preventative war. After the Napoleonic Wars, you had the Congress of Vienna. After the First World War, there was the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. And after the Second World War there was San Francisco and the rise of the U.N. After 1991, Bush's father promised a new world order. We missed an occasion to have a new system."
Abdel Moneim Said, who is the head of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a think tank that works closely with the regime, was among many who told me that the American failure so far to establish security in Iraq has decisively undermined the idea of a democratization movement in Egypt and elsewhere in the region. "The United States is in a position that looks like Lebanon in the nineteen-eighties—occupation, resistance, as well as a competition among groups," he said. "You want Egypt to democratize, to change, but Egypt has drawn the opposite lesson. Instead of creating a liberal model, we see chaos, and the Saudis and the Syrians see the same thing. Now you have arrived at a much more modest sense of a liberal state than you started with."
"There is a cultural war to change the Middle East, to create a new Saudi Arabia, a new Egypt, a new history," Diaa Rashwan, an Islamic-movements expert at the Al-Ahram Center, said. "It's really not very intelligent. In two years, you cannot even build a village. How are you going to rebuild the world?"
Three times a week, the novelist Naguib Mahfouz holds court in a café or bar—sessions that are meant to emulate the noisy camaraderie of bourgeois liberal Cairo a half-century ago. Mahfouz, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, is known for his intimate stories of Egyptian life—"The Cairo Trilogy" is his most celebrated work—and his national prestige is absolute, like Victor Hugo's in nineteenth-century Paris. He is ninety-two and nearly deaf. In his prime, he was a prolific writer, but now he has pared down his work to fragmentary stories and prose poems. I was invited to meet him one night at the wood-panelled bar of Shepheard's Hotel. When I arrived, a young hanger-on was sitting next to Mahfouz and shouting into his left ear, reading the text of an adulatory article about him. Mahfouz stared off into the distance, smiling slightly. He wore a dark-blue serge suit of an old-fashioned cut. Others traded the now ancient gossip that another novelist, Yusuf Idris, thought that he had deserved the Nobel. Mahfouz waved this away with a slight, elegant flop of his hand. When he spoke, it was usually to repeat a remark or to make a small joke.
In 1994, an Islamist radical stabbed Mahfouz in the neck and he nearly died. At the time, religious leaders, like Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who is now in an American prison for inciting the first bombing of the World Trade Center, were on the attack against liberal intellectuals like Mahfouz. Other intellectuals of Mahfouz's generation were physically assaulted or harangued into fear and silence. The Mubarak regime deplored the violence against Mahfouz, but what little remained of a liberal Cairo had long before been eclipsed.
"Liberal politics has had a bad name in Egypt," Mohamed Salmawy, a newspaper columnist and playwright, told me. "It's not discredited, it still exists, but it suffers from being tarnished by the revolution of 1952, when it was equated with corruption under the monarchy's liberal system. Then came Sadat, who did away with Nasser's theories and went to a multiparty system and the economic open door. People began to feel that liberalism was a Trojan horse for the West to creep into Egypt and dominate it and endanger its identity. Identity is very important here. We don't have people like Samuel Beckett, who was born in Ireland, moved to Paris, and is a citizen of the world. We went a hundred and eighty degrees, turning away from the Soviet Union and jumping into bed with Israel and the United States and liberalism."
These days, intellectuals are more likely to agree with a radical like Sonallah Ibrahim than with Naguib Mahfouz. The business élite, not the universities, has become the bastion of pro-Western opinion. Internationalism has cut both ways in Egypt: those who went to work in Saudi Arabia during the oil boom often came back more conservative, more religious; those who went for the same reasons to the emirates or Europe returned more secular, more politically liberal. Those liberals for the most part keep themselves, and their opinions, concealed, and stick to the business of making money.
Hisham Kassem, the head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights and the publisher of the English-language magazine The Cairo Times, is an exception. His jaundiced view of Egyptian politics, and of the Middle East in general, would not be out of place at a conservative American think tank. "In the Middle East, you travel in a time machine," he told me one evening in his office. "In Libya, you have a complete madman in charge. In Iraq, you had Saddam and now bloodshed. In Yemen, the whole country is doped up on khat and everyone owns a Kalashnikov, as in 'The Lotus Eaters.' In Saudi Arabia, you leave Friday prayers and then you're forced to watch an execution—some woman being stoned for adultery or a head chopped off. In Syria, they used their military to slaughter their own people. Jordan is banal. Not one of the Gulf States is a signatory to the Covenant of Human Rights. There is nothing like it anywhere else. Twenty-two Arab League states, all authoritarian. For decades, the Middle East has been kept in a political deep freeze. People flee from here: the crime, the fundamentalism, the brutality. There is no growth rate, no acceptable governmental or economic management. Nothing short of a military intervention could have exerted any political pressure on the region. It's the only solution, the only lesser among many evils."
When I asked Kassem his opinion of the American invasion of Iraq and the chaos that followed, he said, "When you look at the intervention itself, you look at the people who will die as a result. Well, a great many more would have died from sanctions and from Saddam than from any intervention. All those arguments about how you can't bring democracy in on the wings of a B-52 are garbage. The only thing that can bring about a change here is American foreign policy. Egyptian brutality will not change and neither will the apathy of the people. Change in the Middle East will be slow, but we needed the air cover. There was no way we could have done this on our own. We were going nowhere."
Hosni Mubarak is the longest-serving Egyptian leader since Muhammad Ali, in the early nineteenth century. But Mubarak is seventy-six, and his health is imperfect. In mid-June, he sought medical treatment in Germany—Al-Ahram described it as "possible back surgery and/or physical therapy." Last year, during an address to the parliament, Mubarak stopped speaking and muttered, "The air-conditioning is too strong in here." Then he said, "What is happening?" His aides rushed to his side and escorted him from the podium. State television, which had been broadcasting the speech live, went blank. Inside the chamber, a member of parliament asked that last rites be read from the Koran; an imam prayed for the President's health. It was nearly an hour before Mubarak returned, made his apologies, and said he hadn't had enough sleep. There is also the persistent threat of a violent end. In 1995, assassins from Gama'a al-Islamiya fired on Mubarak's motorcade while he was visiting Addis Ababa.
According to Article 82 of the Egyptian constitution, when the President cannot fulfill his duties he is to be replaced by a Vice-President. Mubarak, however, has always refused to appoint one. To a degree, he recalls the sort of dictator who begins his speeches, "If I die . . ." For the past few years, there have been rumors that members of Mubarak's team were grooming his forty-one-year-old son, Gamal, as a successor—a plan that seemed to take its cue from the father-to-son succession in Syria. Gamal, who is called Jimmy by his friends, has worked as a banker in London, and, as a key figure in the ruling National Democratic Party, he is surrounded by pro-Western technocrats. Unlike his father, Sadat, and Nasser, he does not come from the military. Some members of the Egyptian élite believe that Gamal might be able to preserve political stability and yet reform a stagnant economy marked by forty-five-per-cent illiteracy and a per-capita income ranked a hundred-and-eighteenth in the world. Last New Year's, however, the elder Mubarak dismissed the rumors as "nonsense." Earlier, he had said, "We are not a monarchy. We are the Republic of Egypt, so refrain from comparing us to other countries in the region"—a clear reference to the Syrians.
Although the rumors persist, several sources close to the President told me that Mubarak would almost certainly seek a fifth term next year—unopposed, as usual. If he were unable to continue, however, the list of pretenders to the Presidency begins with a series of severe, colorless military and security chiefs—including Omar Suleiman, the head of intelligence—who hardly promise democratic reform. What's more, those in power are not in the mood to take direction. "We do not need any pressure from anyone to adopt democratic principles," Mubarak has said.
Not long before leaving the city, I went to the American University of Cairo and met with a young graduate named Hazem Kandil, who was looking forward to pursuing a doctorate at New York University. Hazem was training, it seemed, for membership in the Egyptian political élite. At the A.U.C. campus, the courtyard is divided into an area full of kids in jeans and T-shirts and a smaller area where Islamic dress—particularly head scarves for the young women—is in vogue. "Beirut" and "Tehran," some call it.
As we sat in "Beirut" and looked over at "Tehran," Hazem said, "We've tried the socialist agenda, we've tried the non-agendas of Sadat and Mubarak, which were mixed, and both failed miserably. We've exhausted the socialist and capitalist leanings. But people see that we have not exhausted the Islamic possibility. This worries me. It's very plausible that we'll take the Islamic road. A lot of what the U.S. is doing implies to people that this is your real motivation. Also, when the United States pushes for democracy without really supporting liberalism in the Islamic world in an adequate way, support for the Islamists grows. In this part of the world, too, conspiracy-thinking is part of the mood of thinking. Liberalism is being linked with American aggression.
"The Islamist influence will grow and will dominate, even without an Islamic President," he went on. "When people start suffering under that, maybe they'll listen to a more liberal agenda, but not before. What's scary is that if we don't deal with these people they'll re-launch themselves. I see people at A.U.C. tilted toward the jihadist cause more and more. They're watching satellite television, they're watching Saudi-financed channels, they're listening to the cassette tapes of fundamentalists that are sold on every street corner, they're reading Islam Online and lots of other Web sites like that. The Islamic discourse is concentrating on the West. Under Sadat and Nasser, the Islamists were oriented toward moral issues in Egypt. Now the word is: 'We are fighting for our lives.' "
One morning, at a café called Cilantro, near the university, I met with a recent graduate who was now writing articles—fairly incendiary articles—for an Islamic Web site. Because he wanted no trouble from the police or, more likely, immigration officials if he ever decided to travel to the West, he asked that I not use his real name. "We'll stick with Tariq," he said. Tariq has very short hair, stylish rectangular glasses, and an emerging beard. At first, I was sure that he was American, so fluid was his English and so slight his accent. He laughed when I mentioned it: "I guess you could say that my accent is the result of cultural imperialism. I got it from Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and satellite television."
Tariq does not come from a fundamentalist family, but he said that he had become more and more observant and politically radicalized. "A lot of things did it," he said: the Russian bombing of Chechnya, American support for Israel, and the "despicable" leaders of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The news of September 11th, Tariq said, gave him a "sense of joy," a sense of the possible. "Two years later, I've met people in the Egyptian bourgeoisie who are happy every time they hear that the Islamists have hit a soft target in the West. With Palestine and Iraq, the militant perspective is making more and more sense."
Tariq said that when he graduated he had thought about going to law school in the United States. But he quickly realized that he didn't want anything to do with that life style. He began to study the Koran and attend a mosque led by a radical young sheikh in one of the poorer neighborhoods. "When I grew a beard, my family worried. Initially, they were really tense. But over the past two years they are gaining a newfound sympathy for me."
Young men and women—politicized, intelligent, fluent in English and European languages—get their information, it seems, from every source imaginable except the Egyptian papers, which, as Tariq put it, "are propagandistic crap." Instead, Tariq reads the leading British and American papers on the Internet, checks into political chat rooms, and watches satellite television. Even in lower-income neighborhoods in Cairo, the rooftops sprout satellite dishes. Like anyone in Egypt with an education and an interest in politics, Tariq may despise American foreign policy, and see the American press as slavish to the Administration, but he believes completely the harsh reports on Egypt provided by U.S.-based human-rights organizations. "Egypt has an atrocious human-rights record," he said. "And yet your President called my President a builder of open societies."
As an Islamist, he said, he saw only one solution: "An ideal Egypt would have an Islamic government. The framework for that is very broad—it can lean more toward capitalism or socialism, even toward an Islamic monarchy, or even a council of guardians, as in Iran. There are many varieties. But the public image is always the Taliban. I didn't approve of some of their practices; they had some serious problems. Preventing women from studying medicine and preventing women from seeing male doctors, well, that is a recipe for killing women. But they were isolated and coming to power after twenty years of civil war. Secularism has no future here. Secularism is a product of the West."
Tariq smiled disdainfully at a mention of Bush's speech at the National Endowment. "The nightmare for the West is that they advocate democracy and then they find that these countries elect Islamic governments," he said. "Islamists have gained a lot of legitimacy through their social work, even in their jobs as engineers or doctors. They have a certain status."
Tariq and I arranged to meet at the Al Rawas mosque, which is in the neighborhood called, for good reason, the Butchery. In the car heading to the mosque, I saw dozens of carcasses—sheep, lambs, and chickens—hanging in the cool evening air. When I arrived, Tariq was finishing prayers, along with thirty or forty other men. He introduced me to Sheikh Ragab, who is in his thirties and blind, and we all headed downstairs to a small office.
"The Egyptian government, like all other Arab governments, is a puppet regime, an agent of foreign powers, particularly the United States, which controls the world now," the Sheikh said. "But if democracy were implemented and there were freedom of expression, Islam would rule and rule all aspects of life, including for non-Muslims. Some non-Muslims, especially in the West and the States, believe that if Islam rules it will massacre all non-Muslims. The Jews lived under Islamic rule in Medina in the time of the Prophet, and it was the best life they ever had. The same with the Christians. Whereas under Roman rule they were treated brutally." The Sheikh also said that he and everyone he knew was firmly convinced that "the Jews" were behind September 11th, the invasion of Iraq, globalization, and just about everything that he might label "pernicious" in the course of our conversation. "Jews are like that," he said.
Since Tariq had said that he was pleased by September 11th and "admired" Al Qaeda, I asked him if he could see himself engaging in such acts. After all, he'd said that the Muslim Brotherhood was "far too moderate" for him, and he hadn't said a contrary word about the use of violence. "We are all capable of acts like this," he admitted. "It depends on how far you are pushed. I'm a firm believer in the concept of belligerent reprisal."
By now, we have become accustomed to calm young men assessing the wisdom of crashing planes into office towers or setting off bombs in a crowded train station. What was more disconcerting was Tariq's confidence, his serene sense that the United States had faltered, that it had lost its influence in Cairo as well as in Baghdad, and that the future was his. "A clash of civilizations," he said, "is a war that the West cannot win." ♦


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Released in 1991, the original Point Break starring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves was a testosterone-fuelled, homoerotic classic of the era about an emotionally scarred FBI agent, who goes undercover to bring down a gang of bank-robbing surfer dudes.
Buff male characters shot lingering glances at each other dressed in tight-fitting wet suits, performed daredevil feats of one-upmanship and famously described Reeves' pretty boy thrill-seeker as young, dumb and full of one particular bodily fluid.
Director Kathryn Bigelow, who won an Academy Award for The Hurt Locker almost 20 years later, embraced the preposterousness of the set-up and charted an undeniably entertaining path through the water-drenched madness.
Ericson Core's muscle-flexing remake seeks the same extreme sports nirvana, but falls desperately short.
The philosophical mumbo jumbo of the original film has been elevated to ludicrous new heights by screenwriter Kurt Wimmer, while action sequences rely too heavily on digital trickery to dazzle.
Crucially, the central relationship between the reckless cop and the sensei-like leader of the robbers lacks tantalizing moral ambiguities or shifts in the balance of power.
Sad to say, the 2016 incarnation should be retitled Pointless Break.
The film opens with Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey) and best friend Jeff (Max Thieriot) filming a motorcycle ride along a hilltop for their online fan base.
A leap across a chasm onto a needle of rock culminates in tragedy and Johnny retires from the scene.
Seven years later, he reemerges as a rookie FBI agent, desperate to prove his worth to Instructor Hall (Delroy Lindo).
Johnny gets his chance when he realises that a four-strong team of extreme sports fanatics are committing crimes in order to complete the fabled eight ordeals of Ono Ozaki, an environmentalist and athlete, who believed in harnessing the planet's natural forces to find the path to enlightenment.
Hall despatches Johnny to France in the company of British agent Pappas (Ray Winstone) to identify suspects among the big wave surfers.
By chance, Johnny rides a monstrous tube of water with gang leader Bodhi (Edgar Ramirez) and is welcomed into the fold by accomplices Roach (Clemens Schick), Chowder (Tobias Santelmann) and Grommet (Matias Varela).
They invite Johnny to shrug off past mistakes and seek pure adrenaline rushes around the world.
"We can only have responsibility for our own path," counsels Bodhi. "Let others have theirs."
Point Break is a shadow of its former self, lacking all of the swaggering charm that allowed us to overlook the gaping plot holes and leaps in logic.
Ramirez smoulders alone, Bracey is a bland hero and his romantic subplot an Australian daredevil (Teresa Palmer) is a fruitless diversion.
Director Core enlists some of the best athletes and stuntmen to enliven his action set pieces.
Alas, even their impressive feats of strength and nerve-racking endurance can't save the film from a spectacular wipeout.


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The Next American Revolution?
This is the twenty-sixth of a series of blogs based on excerpts adapted from the 2nd edition of Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth. I wrote Agenda to spur a national conversation on economic policy issues and options that are otherwise largely ignored. This blog series is intended to contribute to that conversation. —DK
The parallels between the independence movement that liberated thirteen colonies on the east coast of what is now the United States and the emerging independence from Wall Street movement are both revealing and instructive.
Taking on the king:
As I wrote in Agenda for a New Economy:
As the economies of Britain's thirteen colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America began to grow in their production of real wealth, their prosperity attracted the attention of the British Crown, which sought to increase its take through new taxes and the grant of a tea monopoly to the East India Company, in which the king held a financial interest.
Taking on Wall Street:
More than a century and a half later, in the years following World War II, the policies of the Roosevelt New Deal created a prosperous middle class and flourishing Main Street businesses growing the real wealth of their local communities. Main Street's prosperity attracted the attention of Wall Street, which used its political and economic power to assume the role of colonial overlord and increase its take by charging interest rates and fees; asserting monopoly control of intellectual property rights, markets, and resources; and accelerating its creation of phantom wealth financial assets to expand its claims against the real wealth produced by others.
Taking on the king:
As the threat to their liberty and prosperity became evident, the colonists mobilized in resistance to the British Crown. Some colonists formed local resistance groups, with names such as Sons of Liberty, Regulators, Associators, and Liberty Boys, to engage in acts of non-cooperation such as refusing to purchase and use the tax stamps that the Crown demanded be applied to all colonial commercial and legal papers, newspapers, pamphlets, and almanacs.
The New England merchant class—given to slave trading and piracy—had no reservations about evading import taxes by adding smuggling to their business portfolios. When the Crown decided to assert its authority over the Massachusetts Supreme Court by paying its judges directly from the royal treasury, the people responded by refusing to serve as jurors under the judges.
Other colonists formed Committees of Correspondence, groups of citizens engaged in sharing ideas and information through regularized exchanges of letters carried by ship and horseback. These committees linked elements of diverse citizen movements in common cause across the colonial borders that had long kept them divided.
Taking on Wall Street:
As the Wall Street threat to their liberty and prosperity became clear, the people began mobilizing in resistance. They formed organizations with names like Art and Revolution, Direct Action Network, the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the International Forum on Globalization, National Farm Workers Association, Public Citizen, Rainforest Action Network, the Ruckus Society, and United for a Fair Economy. They created Internet forums to share ideas and information and to unite movements in common cause, reached out even across the national borders that had long kept them divided. In alliance with similar groups in other nations, they mobilized millions in global demonstrations that regularly disrupted the international meetings in which the rich and powerful gathered to circumvent democracy, rewrite the rules of commerce to remove restrictions on the consolidation of corporate power, and negotiate their division of the spoils.
Taking on the king:
The colonists also undertook initiatives aimed at getting control of economic life through local production. They boycotted British goods and subjected merchants who failed to honor the boycott to public humiliation. Artisans and laborers refused to participate in building military fortifications for the British. Women played a particularly crucial role by organizing Daughters of Liberty committees to produce substitutes for imported products.
Why We Revolt
When and how do ordinary people discover their own power?
Taking on Wall Street:
Local Main Street businesses, workers, and consumers undertook initiatives aimed at getting control of economic life through local production and the patronage of local business. They organized farmers' markets, food co-ops, "local first" campaigns, local investment funds and credit unions, and consumer boycotts of big-box stores and the products of corporations that harm the environment and pay substandard wages. They campaigned for state banks. Local businesses formed national alliances like the American Independent Business Alliance, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, and Transition Towns. Local chambers of commerce disaffiliated from the corporate-dominated national Chamber of Commerce and joined these new alliances. New organizations like Americans for Financial Reform, the New Economy Network, the New Economy Working Group, and a New Way Forward formed to mobilize popular support for new rules to break up the big banks and hold financial institutions accountable to the public interest.
Because economic democracy and political democracy necessarily go hand in hand, the New Economy movement is an essential leading edge of this next phase in the larger human struggle to liberate ourselves from cultural and institutional chains of Empire. Wall Street is a formidable foe, but so was Britain. At the time of the rebellion, it was the most powerful empire on Earth. Fortunately, the advantage in any such struggle ultimately lies with a motivated and organized citizenry.
[Next: When the People Lead]
Small businesses have decided they're done picking up the slack when Wall Street dodges taxes.
In the UK, the Great Recession inspired ordinary people to take on corporate tax evaders—with enormous success. Can the same model work in the U.S.?
It's time we the people declare our independence from the money-favoring Wall Street economy.
- Agenda for a New Economy available from the YES! Magazine web store.


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17th annual Woodstock film festival
announces participant media's david linde
as recipient of the 2016 trailblazer award
For additional information contact: firstname.lastname@example.com
Photo download
(Woodstock, NY) June 22, 2016:
The Woodstock Film Festival announced today that leading media executive David Linde will be feted as the 2016 Trailblazer. Linde was chosen for his visionary and tireless commitment to nurturing and furthering the highest quality of film and filmmakers, such as Ang Lee, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Roman Polanski, Zhang Yimou, Alfonso and Jonás Cuarón.
The Woodstock Film Festival's Trailblazer Award is given to a leader in the film and media arts industry who has carved innovative paths in the business, establishing independent vision, affecting social change, and creating strong and widespread appreciation of quality, substantive filmmaking. The Trailblazer Award will be presented to David Linde on Saturday, October 15, at the Woodstock Film Festival's Maverick Awards Ceremony at Backstage Studio Productions in Kingston, NY.
Linde is CEO of Participant Media, a global company dedicated to media that inspires social change and recently won the Best Picture Oscar® for Spotlight. The company's upcoming slate includes Peter Berg's Deepwater Horizon (Lionsgate); J.A. Bayona's A Monster Calls (Focus Features); Pablo Larrain's Neruda; Derek Cianfrance's The Light Between Oceans (DreamWorks Pictures/Disney); Denial, starring Academy Award®- winner Rachel Weisz (Bleecker Street); Middle School, based on James Patterson's best-seller series (CBS Films); and Alex Gibney's Zero Days (Magnolia Pictures). In addition to narrative films and documentaries, Participant has launched more than a dozen original series for its television network Pivot, as well as creating content daily for the digital hub TakePart, which serves millions of socially conscious consumers monthly.
"It's a privilege to present our honorary Trailblazer Award to David Linde," said Meira Blaustein, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Woodstock Film Festival, "His leadership and championship of the best of cinema, as demonstrated consistently throughout his remarkable career, is truly unparalleled, making him the epitome of a Trailblazer."
"I am tremendously humbled by this honor from Meira and her team at the Woodstock Film Festival," said Linde, "Participant Media has always been at the forefront of breaking boundaries with a story well told has the power to make an impact, and in accepting this award, it confirms that we're doing something right."
The Trailblazer Award has previously been bestowed upon such film industry principals as Ted Sarandos (Chief Content Officer, Netflix), James Schamus (former President of Focus Features), Bob Berney (Head of Marketing & Distribution, Amazon Studios), Jonathan Sehring (President, Sundance Selects and IFC Films), John Sloss (Founder, Cinetic Media), and Robin Bronk (CEO, The Creative Coalition).
Linde's background spans production, global distribution and building multiple companies from the ground up. Linde most recently led Lava Bear Films, a production and financing company he founded with the support of Reliance Entertainment. Prior to Lava Bear, Linde served as chairman of Universal Pictures, where he successfully championed a broad outlook regarding international productions, animation and family entertainment and distribution. Linde also served on the NBCUniversal board of directors and as the chair of NBCUniversal's Diversity Council.
Prior to his Universal appointment, Linde ran the acclaimed specialty film studio Focus Features and its genre division, Rogue Pictures, both of which were formed from Universal's acquisition of the independent production company Good Machine, of which he was a founding partner. During his tenure at Focus, Linde and co-president James Schamus oversaw a diverse slate that was honored with a historic 53 Oscar® nominations and 11 Academy Awards® for such films as Brokeback Mountain, The Constant Gardner, and The Pianist.
"The Trailblazer Award is a well-deserved honor for David Linde, as he has truly been a pioneer of financing for director-centered moviemaking," stated two time Academy Award winning director Ang Lee, "For many years at Good Machine, Focus Features, as well as Universal, from The Ice Storm to Taking Woodstock, David always had my back. He was a wonderful collaborator, full of good advice and wisdom about independent filmmaking. As this kind of director-centered business model becomes increasingly difficult to find, it makes me miss him more than ever. On this occasion, I'd like to extend my warmest congratulations, and lasting thanks, to David Linde".
"David is a visionary, but a visionary who has never shied away from the hard work of building, rethinking and rebuilding the towers from which those visions can be had," stated James Schamus, Woodstock Film Festival's honorary Trailblazer Award recipient in 2008 and Linde's former partner at Focus Features and Good Machine, "He is among the handful of architects who built out the ecosystem of what we now take for granted as the international independent film business, and in the process he championed and nurtured an amazing host of great filmmakers from around the world - artists whose work remains at the center of his infectious passion for the business. No one knows better than David that original art requires original and fearless business leadership - leadership I was lucky enough to experience firsthand for much of my own career."
"David is that rare individual in the film industry whose taste and sensibilities are the best combination of quality and commerciality, whether he is overseeing a startup or a studio," said Jonathan Sehring, IFC Films' president and WFF's honorary Trailblazer Award recipient in 2006. "I can think of no one more deserving of the Trailblazer award than David - he is someone who has my highest admiration and respect."
Other Honorary Award Recipients to be announced. Juried awards will also be given to filmmakers in various competition categories. Tickets for the Maverick Awards Gala & Ceremony can be purchased here.
For ticket information, and for the latest program updates, please visit our website.
Hailed as "A true American Maverick Among Fests" and named among the top 50 film festivals world wide, the Woodstock Film Festival premieres exceptional films, hosts the most talented emerging and established professionals in the movie industry; presents A-list concerts, panels and parties, and creates stimulating, innovative programming year-round.
The Woodstock Film Festival is a non-profit, 501c3 with a mission to present an annual program and year-round schedule of film, music and art-related activities that promote artists, culture, inspired learning and diversity.
The Woodstock Film Festival returns October 13-16, 2016 for its 17th edition with an extraordinary line-up of fiercely independent films, panels, concerts and special events in Woodstock, Rhinebeck, Kingston, Rosendale and Saugerties.


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Heriz Carpet
Reference Number: 17325
Size: 12 ft 5 in x 9 ft 7 in
Origin: Northwest Persia
Woven: First Qtr 20th Century
Heriz is a town in northwest Persia (Iran) that has been producing carpets since the 19th century. It is located on Mt. Sabalan, a major source of copper, whose summit is 15,784 feet. The grade of wool used in these carpets is amongst the best, a result of both the high altitude as well as the presence of trace copper in the drinking supply of the local sheep. Carpets from this weaving center are known for having bold geometric interpretations of floral motifs in their patterns. This is attributable to the proximity of the Caucasus, a neighboring mountainous region between the Black and Caspian seas primarily populated by nomads, directly to the north. Heriz carpets are influenced by both the design and coloration of their counterparts from this region. However it needs to be mentioned that Caucasian rugs are seldom found in room sizes, making the Heriz carpets more practical for western rooms and applications. Many examples feature large central geometric medallions flanked by corner spandrels executed in primary colorations. Allover patterns are not as common. Older examples tend to have more dramatic designs utilizing large areas of sparse ornamentation.
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text:
hide(redirected from hiding behind)
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Financial, Encyclopedia.
hideverb abdere, abscond, abscondere, be clandessine, become indiscernible, become unapparent, bury, cache, camouflage, celare, cloak, closet, cloud, conceal, conceal from knowledge, conceal from sight, cover, cover up, curtain, deceive, disguise, dissemble, eclipse, enshroud, envelop, fail to reveal, harbor, hush up, keep out of sight, keep out of view, keep secret, keep to oneself, keep under cover, mask, obscure, protect, put out of sight, render invisible, screen, seclude, secrete, shade, shadow, shelter, shield, shroud, smuggle, store, stow away, suppress, veil, withhold, wrap
Associated concepts: hide assets, hide behind the law, hide fraud, terrorist cells
See also: abscond, blind, camouflage, cloak, conceal, cover, disguise, elude, ensconce, enshroud, envelop, flee, guard, harbor, hedge, hoard, lurk, obfuscate, obnubilate, obscure, reserve, screen, seclude, shroud, withhold
HIDE, measures. In England, a hide of land, according to some ancient manuscripts, contained one hundred and twenty acres. Co. Litt. 5; Plowd. 167; Touchst. 93.