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La Longue Marche (Mao Tse-Toung)
Pierre Dupuis was a French artist of realistic comics, best-known for drawing historical and biographical comics, especially about World War II. He was born Pierre-Léon Dupuis in Dieppe, France, and made his first comic story in 1950. This first story, 'Aigle Noir', was published in Gong, a magazine by Éditions Elan. He then worked as the assistant of Paul Gillon on his production for Éditions Vaillant, including the series 'Fils de Chine'. Dupuis contributed his second solo story to the Vaillant pocket book 34, before he made his first appearance in the magazine Vaillant with several short stories in 1951.
Still in 1950, he also began an association with Les Éditions Mondiales, for which he drew 'Au Pays des Ouèles' and several short stories for the publisher's 'Collection Fantôme'. His subsequent collaboration with the publisher Chapelle (later SFPI and MLC) lasted until 1970. He drew several series for Chapelle, such as 'Les Pirates de l'Infini', 'Anton Marcus', 'Alan Bruce' and 'Titan' in Zorro L'Invincible, 'Bison Noir' in Spécial Zorro and 'Cap 7', 'Erik le Viking' and 'Olac le Gladiateur' in publications of the same name.
By 1953 Dupuis also worked through agencies like World's Press and Edifrance, drawing several installments in the series 'Les Belles Histoires de l'Oncle Paul' in Spirou and 'L'Histoire Vivante' in Bonnes Soirèes, succeeding Albert Uderzo on 'Marco Polo' in La Libre Belgique and contributing to 'Les Grands Noms de l'Histoire de France' in Pistolin. His collaborations multiplied during this period, and artwork by Dupuis could also be found in France-Dimanche, Caméra 34, Ici-Paris, Allez-France, Le Journal du Dimanche, La Vie Ouvrière, La Semaine de Suzette and Fillette.
In 1960, he returned to Les Editions Mondiales, and published work in Hurrah! ( 'Robin des Bois', 'Jack Driant'), Télé Jeunes ('Télémaniac de Marcillac'), L'Intrépide, Intimité and Nous Deux. In 1964, he succeeded Raymond Poïvet on 'Mam'zelle Minouche', a series he continued with scripts by Roger Lécureux in L'Humanité until 1976.
Nijinsky (Histoires Vivantes, Bonnes Soirées 1669, 1954)
In 1970, Pierre Dupuis was present in Marius-le Hérisson, with most notably the saucy character 'Pantzie'. He also drew 'Herminette' in 20 Ans and a story starring 'Albéric Barbier' in cooperation with Jean Sanitas in Spirou. Pierre Dupuis began an ambitious collaboration with Hachette in 1974, and provided the artwork for eleven books in the World War II collection 'L'Histoire de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale' until 1985. "In 1979 and 1980, he drew 'Super Jaimie' (based on the TV show 'The Bionic Woman') in Téléjunior. He also made the science fiction comic 'Kronos' with Henri Filippini in Albator and a book in the 'Goldorak' series by Rouge et Or. In 1980 and 1981, he also drew the volumes in the series 'La Vie' (scripts Jean-Gérard Imbar) for the collection 'L'Encylopédie en Bandes Dessinées' of the publishing house of Philippe Auzou.
He went to work as an artist of historical comics for Dargaud, drawing six comic biographies in the collection 'Les Grands Capitaines' in cooperation with several scriptwriters between 1981 and 1984. For these biographies, he mixed historical photographs with his drawings. Between 1990 and 1994 he also made four books about the Olympics in cooperation with Claude Moliterni and Thierry Roland ('L'Aventure Olympique'). In 1987, Dupuis made 'Les Fils du Dragon' with Jean Ollivier in Vécu.
Pierre Dupuis has also made several educational comics in commission, such as the political comic 'L'Autre solution pour la France' for UDF (1978), two books about the town of Charente in 1987 ('Histoire de la Charente' with Guillot in 1987, and 'Charente' with Mauguil) and 'La résistance bactérienne' for Laboratoires Roche (1987). Dupuis has also been active in the erotic genre, making 'Jartyrella' with Moloch for Editions Garancière in 1986, pocket books in the series 'Confessions érotiques Bd' by Média 1000 from 1995, and 'Picabo' for Bédé Adult in 1996.


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Prior to 1990, the unemployment rate for men was lower than for women. However, when the unemployment rate increased sharply in 1990-91, the male unemployment rate increased to a level above the female unemployment rate. Since mid-2003, the male unemployment rate has generally been lower than the female unemployment rate.
In conjunction with the decline in the unemployment rate, the number of unemployed people has fallen from the levels recorded in the early-1990s. The trend for unemployed people seeking full-time work has generally reflected the economic cycle. In contrast, over the last two decades, the trend for people seeking part-time work has gradually increased, rising from 97,900 people (or 16% of unemployed people) in June 1987 to 142,500 people (or 30% of unemployed people) in June 2007 (graph 8.39).
Educational qualifications can have a significant bearing on labour market prospects. Table 8.41 shows the relationship between the level of highest non-school qualifications and the duration of unemployment. At July 2006, the proportion of unemployed people who were long-term unemployed was lower among those with a bachelor degree or above (14%) compared with those who hold a Certificate I/II (25%) or without a non-school qualification (21%).
Unemployed people encounter a variety of difficulties in finding work. Women were more likely than men to report insufficient work experience as their main difficulty (12% compared with 9%), as well as difficulties related to concerns outside the workplace, such as 'Unsuitable hours' (8% compared with 3%) and 'Difficulties with child care, other family responsibilities' (4% compared with 1%). Men were more likely than women to report their main difficulty as 'Too far to travel/transport problems' (12% compared with 6%), 'Own ill health or disability' (11% compared with 8%) and 'Considered too old by employers' (10% compared with 8%) (graph 8.42).

subset: commoncrawl


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From that moment, like the maniyan fly, an unknown fear began to envelop my mind. An irrational doubt began to grip me, a feeling that this journey was not leading me to the Gulf life that I had been dreaming about and craving for. The Gulf I had learned about from so many people was not like this. A whiff of danger. Nothing clear. –Goat Days (Aadujeevitam)
Goat Days-- English Cover
Aadujeevitam. Malayalam Cover
The age of oil has produced unprecedented scales of human confinement and brutality. At the same time, people are traveling faster, and in larger groups than ever before: migration to the Gulf following the oil boom of the 1970s is a case in point. There are currently some fifteen million migrant workers in the Gulf, hailing mostly from Asian, African, and Arab countries. The number of South Asian migrant laborers rose substantially in the 1990s, filling in for the displacements of Arab workers caused by the 1991 Gulf War. There are two and a half million migrant workers from Kerala alone, who annually send home sums amounting to fifteen percent of total remittances to India. Migrant workers spend years away from their families, work for extremely low wages, subsist in poor living conditions, and have their passports held by employers in places with virtually no enforceable labor laws. Their experiences have yet to be voiced within literature in as gripping an account as Benyamin's novel Goat Days, forthcoming in English. Based on a true story, the novel has become a bestseller in the original Malayalam (Aadujivitam), winning the Kerala Sahitya Academy award. Benyamin, Benny Daniel's pen name, is a Kerala Christian who has lived in Bahrain since 1992.
I. Travel and Literature
There is a tremendous dearth of literature which un-cover the cultures born out of oil encounters. And, although migration to the Gulf constitutes the exemplary South Asian diaspora of our times, no other novel—none available in English, that is—has cast the migrant Gulf worker as its principal character. Benyamin does so by weaving rich descriptions of the protagonist's surroundings with a robust interior monologue.
The narrator is Najeeb, a modest sand-miner from Kerala who travels to Riyadh via Bombay in the 1990s with the dream of earning his fortunes, only to become enslaved for over three years in the desert interior of Saudi Arabia on a goat farm (masara) at the mercy of a cruel boss (arbab). It is a novel of multiple crossings: from South India to the Gulf, from Riyadh to rural Saudi Arabia, and from dreams of economic betterment to impoverished disillusionment. But at the heart of Goat Days is the journey Najeeb makes from slavery to freedom, including a perilous desert trek. The novel is about the many dangers Najeeb faces in his struggle for emancipation.
What struck me as immediately compelling about Goat Days was the economy of its prose. Benyamin is direct and succinct:
Slightly off the sentry box, a wild lemon tree curved into the street. We squatted in its shade, hoping a guard would look up from his work and notice us. We remained like that for a long time. Meanwhile, one or two Arabs briskly went into the police station and at least three or four sauntered out. It was as if we were invisible to them.
Najeeb's narrative is driven not only by his travels, but also by long bouts of waiting. This is why Goat Days makes for suspenseful reading: the reader follows Najeeb into a world where he is entirely dependent upon his 'hosts', as they transport him from one form of confinement to another. The passage quoted atop this essay recounts Najeeb's journey with his new boss from the airport: he is aboard a truck headed further into the desert, and has no idea where they are going. By keeping the reader riveted, Benyamin makes legible a migratory arc that is invisible to audiences of Indian fiction. It is to the translator's credit, Joseph Koyippaly, that the suspenseful quality of the original is intact.
It makes me happy whenever I find (English) translations of literature from South Asia because despite the rich and diverse literary cultures of this region, it is Indian English novels which have disproportionately won wide acclaim. Indian literature in English surged in the 1990s. One sub-set of this literature focused on South Asian migration to places where English is the predominant language. Much of it revolved around how (mostly) Indian immigrants re-fashioned their selves in the United Kingdom or the United States, where they were torn between their old world and the new. Since novelists such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Anita Desai, Amit Chaudhuri, and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, wrote in English, they acquired an international audience within Europe and the United States, and read as quintessentially Indian. Yet, the predominant travel done by South Asians during the same decade, occurred within the geographical coordinates across the Global South, between India and the Gulf. This latter class of migrants is not typically "at home" in English, nor do they have the liberty and leisure to write literature. As Daisy Rockwell explained in "Flyover Country," there is a hierarchy of languages within South Asia's multi-lingual landscape; those who study in English schools tend to be from the privileged classes. Malayalam's status as a regional language in India limits its literature from reaching readers in the English-speaking world, which is why Benyamin's Goat Days is particularly welcome.
Indian English fiction has had to contend with how to represent "un-translatable" turns of phrase in Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, etc., into English. Since the audience of Aadujeevitam is not presumed to be English-speaking, there is no attempt at representing what Malayalam speakers presumably sound like to English readers. This may be complicated by the fact that the English accents of speakers of Malayalam and other South Indian languages are frequently mocked by North Indian elites. This mockery is tied to a history of language politics in the South, where people resisted the hegemony of Hindi as the national language as Indian states were linguistically re-organized shortly after Independence.
But more importantly, Goat Days breaks new ground because it is a novel about a South Asian diaspora that is neither about "the West" nor about elites. Hence, it is not principally concerned with themes of identity and belonging, such as those novels which focus on the Indian immigrant's journey to the "West" (Europe, United States). The migrant worker may live for years at a time away from home, and even learn Arabic, but assimilation through citizenship is not a possibility for him within the host countries of the Gulf, as it might be, say, in the US or the UK. Thus, the experience of "belonging, yet not belonging" is a moot point in places such as Dubai, where the majority of the population is foreign, and which functions more or less as a brand name, as a world of consumers without democracy and laborers without just recompense.
What is also refreshing about Goat Days is its matter-of-fact, yet supple discussion of Islam, in terms of how Benyamin writes of Najeeb's religiosity. It is not from the outside looking in, so there are no descriptions of how people congregate for prayer, how they pray, and the phrases of the actual prayers themselves. Najeeb's religiosity, prayers, and beliefs are not exotic, nor do they correspond to any political program. His Muslim-ness is just as incidental and accidental as his arbab's. By defying the many meanings of the Arabic word, arbab, which here means boss and savior, but also denotes the plural of god (rabb), Najeeb repeatedly turns to his ultimate savior, in the very deserts which first heeded His name:
I didn't know if Allah heard me or not. But the belief that Allah was looking after me instilled in me a new confidence. Non-believers, those of you fortunate to live merrily in the pleasant greenery Allah has bestowed on you, you might feel prayers are ridiculous rituals. For me, prayers were my bolt-hole. It was because of faith alone that I could be strong in spirit even when I was weak in my body. Otherwise, I would have withered and burnt like grass in that blazing wind. (153)
Goat Days, then, is truly a literary narrative "from below"— about classes and peoples who are subjugated and subjected. So, the reader gets a feel for the dreams built upon limited life possibilities, followed by disillusionment. Najeeb's travel to Saudi Arabia is wrought by the horrific circles in which he spins and spends: procuring a visa through an agent in Bombay, and being sponsored to facilitate his travel is costly and he sells everything just to make the trip to Riyadh. He describes his excitement for the journey, the dreams of "gold watch, TV, car," leaving his wife with promises of many presents upon his return, and then the betrayal of those dreams: "When I recall those moments, I feel nauseated as though from the stench of a fourth-rate film scene" (39).
II. Labor and Violence
It is apt that the story opens in a prison—a place where Najeeb "voluntarily" registers himself, for there is nowhere else to go if a worker has left his sponsor, and wishes to head home. Within the kafala system, a foreigner is barred from working in the GCC countries without local sponsorship (kafil). Once that employment relationship is severed, foreign workers become illegal residents, and must immediately leave the country. Since the kafala system ties workers' permission of living and working in their host country to the permission of their sponsor, it forbids them to seek alternative employment. Those who strike or complain about poor working conditions and abuse risk losing their jobs, criminalization, and deportation. Najeeb describes Sumesi jail as a place where "the prisoners, lying down in whatever space they could manage, resembled dead bodies laid out after a natural disaster" (13), and elsewhere refers to his particular block as "a railway station where people arrived and departed" (25).
Illegal residents are left there until their names and numbers are called out—numbers which are tattooed onto the workers' forearms: "I had been to a madrassa as a child so I knew enough to identify it as 13858." Most terrifying for Najeeb and his fellow inmates is what is known as the weekly "Parade Day" in the prison:
The day for the Arabs to identify the absconding workers…all of us were made to stand in a line...Arabs would walk in front of us looking at each of us carefully, like eyewitnesses trying to identify the accused…The first reaction of the Arab who recognized his worker was to land a slap that could pop an eardrum. Some even unbuckled their belts to whip the prisoners till their anger subsided. (21)
The violence meted out against migrant workers in Saudi Arabia may be mistakenly interpreted by some readers of this novel as a throwback to an ancient, "backwards" seventh century world, epitomizing the flawed notion of Arab atavism, or some purported "Arab culture" that tends towards violence. But the world in which Najeeb is trapped is thoroughly modern, and forged out of the interactions between Europeans/Americans and Arabs. Institutions such as the prisons built for absconding workers, and officiating regimes of passport and visa controls, owe their origins to a modern state building project: in Saudi Arabia's case, this project was founded almost exclusively upon an oil extraction economy and the ruling elites who came to monopolize it.
Little is known about the history of twentieth century slavery and indentured labor in the region prior to the 1970s oil boom. But the mass influx of millions of Indian migrant laborers to the oil kingdoms in recent times is reminiscent of a similar flow of labor across the same Indian Ocean, prior to, and on the cusp of, the discovery of oil. Indentured laborers from India were central to the successful functioning of the British Empire, and over a million of them were transported to colonies around the globe between the 1830s to the 1920s—initially taking the place of freed slaves on plantations of the West Indies.[1] Indian diaspora populations from the West Indies and South Africa to Mauritius and Fiji, are living testament to British Indian 'coolie' recruitment; this global recruitment of Indian laborers, systematized and managed jointly by imperial, Indian, and colonial governments, was unprecedented.[2] Indians were also used by the British as military labor and soldiers in the Mesopotamia campaign (1914) in World War I, at the end of which oil became a key motivation for establishing an Arab state (Iraq) in the conquered territory.[3] Competition between Ottoman and British interests in the Arab territories of the Gulf was followed by the arrival of US oil companies in the 1930s, which were pivotal in continuing to re-shape factionalized Arab tribal groups. American company officials privileged the reactionary and autocratic Saud family in particular, as the British had done before them.[4]
As Saudi Arabia rapidly modernized into a client nation-state, via its expanding oil-for-security relationship with the United States, an international petroleum caste system was also established. In Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Provinces of the 1940s, Jim Crow laws were imported by American company officials, unequally segregating Arabs from Whites, but this phenomenon also involved contracting Indian laborers for domestic help and construction—thus dividing labor by race, an old imperial strategy.[5] In fact, the term "caste" was invoked by oil company officials, something that the Americans had picked up from the British, who had long been in the region.[6] In this new petroleum caste system, hierarchies were determined by race and nationality privileging some (Anglo-American expatriates, Saudi elites) at the expense of others (poor Saudis, bedouins, migrant workers). One wonders, in fact, to what extent the rise of the Saudi welfare state and turn to foreign labor was in response to the crack-down on Saudi workers and unions. In 1949, several Pakistani workers returned home from Saudi Arabia, exposing in local newspapers, their mistreatment by the Americans:
On reaching Saudi Arabia, the young Pakistanis find out that the American officers drunk with racial arrogance…all too primed to subject young Muslims to an unscrupulous `lynch-the-nigger` treatment. And when the `niggers` muster enough courage to protest against the treatment meted out to them, they are first handed over to the Police and then dispatched to Pakistan without any regard for the terms of contract.[7]
Slavery, to which American officials in Saudi Arabia had turned a blind eye, was officially abolished in 1962 by King Faisal, but contract slavery continued. The absence of formal "slavery," in fact, calls into question what is essentially the same phenomenon in the contemporary world, through contracts that assume some sort of consent which is meaningless. The structures of confinement, transport, and labor from India to the Gulf can be seen, then, as part of the global imperial history of the twentieth century. As for the millions of migrant workers who traveled to the Gulf in search of employment opportunities, they have found themselves trapped between state and the sponsor.
In local parlance, the Arabic word for sponsor/boss is arbab, which here means "savior," and when newly-married Najeeb leaves home and first arrives in Saudi Arabia, he waits eagerly at the airport for the man who will take responsibility for him. Unlike the wealthy and urbane Arabs who greet all the other migrants, Najeeb's arbab is poor. Ready to take up any task given to him, Najeeb nonetheless recoils in horror when he realizes where his arbab's odor, "like the mixed smell of bone powder and dung," is coming from: a goat-farm where he is forced to work and live, prohibited from ever washing or bathing himself. The foul smells—from the stench of the goats to that of the clothes he is given to wear—lace the whole narrative:
In the beginning, everything in the masara had a nauseating stench. The smell emanating from goats' urine, the stench of droppings, the reek of grass and hay that got wet with urine…Even the goats' milk had a stench. Whenever I dipped khubus into the milk to eat, the smell would drill into my nostrils. How many times I vomited in the first days. But slowly, it retreated from me. Or I forgot about it. Later, although I tried many times, I could never experience it. It became so much a part of me I could not believe that such a stench had ever existed. (128)
III. Confinement and Slavery
For most privileged professional people, the experience of being forcibly confined for long periods of time is unthinkable. So it is very difficult to imagine what it must feel like to be trapped in the desert, prohibited from bathing, washing after defecating, or drinking water more than thrice a day. Or what it is to live in perpetual fear of a captor who can mete out lashes, further confinement, and even death, at will. How is it to be abducted, incarcerated, and enslaved within the most powerful oil kingdom on earth? For Najeeb, time stops. Upon making his Faustian pact, there are the notes of heightened, then attenuated panic, of watchful paranoia; anxiety and boredom and fear blend together into an enveloping haze of dirt and disease. The voices of migrant workers to the Gulf have appeared within human rights reports; their images gloss the covers of various books and magazines, exposing the distribution of wealth within oil kingdoms. But a literary narrative from below does not simply expose. It makes knowledge of brutality intimate.
Reading Goat Days is akin to becoming a confidant of the protagonist. Najeeb addresses the reader in a matter-of-fact style, drawing her in to listen: "My thoughts were not of my home country, home, Sainu, Ummah, my unborn son/daughter…All such thoughts had become alien to me as they were to the dead who had reached the other world. So soon—you might wonder. My answer is yes" (94-95). Benyamin's novel powerfully brings home the experience of a self that is treated as not quite human. Najeeb resists the dehumanizing conditions of his confinement by forging new intimacies across the vast expanse of isolation, and by virtue of his resolve to live and return home—a resolve bolstered through faith and brought to fruition by a set of fortunate circumstances. Isolated from his mother-tongue, there are only two kinds of communication left: the language of the arbab's violence, and the language of human intimacy. Writing about slave narratives in the United States, the novelist Toni Morrison says:
In trying to make the slave experience intimate, I hoped the sense of things being both under control and out of control would be persuasive throughout; that the order and quietude of everyday life would be violently disrupted by the chaos of the needy dead; that the herculean effort to forget would be threatened by memory desperate to stay alive. To render enslavement as a personal experience, language must first get out of the way.
And this is precisely what Benyamin conveys so wonderfully. In a glossary of Arabic terms Najeeb offers the reader, he adds that:
If an Arabic expert among you asks whether the pronunciation and meaning of the words that I have tabled here are correct, I can only say I do not know. I've heard them like that, and have learned them like that…I could understand what the arbab meant by those words; and the arbab could understand me. One does not need to be a linguistic expert in order to communicate. (97)
Najeeb suffers and survives the beatings, the imprisonment, the stark meals of bread and water, and the fear. Though he desperately wants to escape, he neither knows where they are, nor the direction of the closest town—at least a night's drive from the farm. His arbab has a gun and a pair of binoculars. And though the reader may very well know from the beginning that Najeeb lives to recount the torment of his slavery, she is riveted. How does Najeeb eventually escape from a world that is not interested in him in any way but as a body that does work?
Najeeb's only constant companions during his confinement are the goats themselves. Forced to sleep amongst them, Najeeb says, "I had become a goat." As Najeeb's dehumanizing time on the farm passes, he learns to identify each and every one of the goats, humanizing them in turn.
Apart from Pochakkari Ramani, I gave a name to each goat in the masara that I recognized to help me scold them and to make cuddling easier. People from my locality like Arabu Rabuthar, Maryamaimuna, Indipokkar, Niandu Raghavan, Parippu Vijayan, Chakki, Ammini, Kausu, Raufat, Pinki, Ammu, Razia and Thahira, and public figures like Jagathy, Mohanlal, and even EMS himself were a part of my masara. Each of them was dear to me in one way or another. Have you ever looked carefully at a goat's face? It is quite similar to a human's. I named the goats not only by looking at their faces but also relating their names to some character traits, their gait, the sounds they made, by incidents that reminded me of them. Just as how one gets a nickname back home...So there were many strange and personal reasons for each name I gave the goats. The logic of the names might be lost on others but they made perfect sense to me. (162-163)
For Najeeb, the goats become the physical extensions of his internal longings for home. An entire Malayali world comes alive as he narrates the colorful stories behind the names of family members, past loves, town-dwellers. In this way, he is able to temporarily subdue his nostalgia, "an acute craving" that "takes the form of a crazy urge to rush home, like a wild boar rushing wildly through sugarcane fields when it's been shot" (146). Story-telling itself is the means of Najeeb's survival, for he has been thrown violently into the midst of multiple isolations. He is isolated from language, isolated from geography, and isolated from people, other than his arbab. He is even isolated from water. And so, Najeeb makes the strange and unfamiliar surroundings of his isolation recognizable in order to hold on to his humanity and his sanity.
Descriptions of his helplessness, the arbab's violence, the degeneration of his body, are punctuated by passages recounting small moments of joy, such as the rains, and the hope of escape. While Najeeb describes his world as a surreal one, trapped on an "alien planet with the goats and the arbab," what is also evident in Benyamin's telling is the mundane quality of Najeeb's imprisonment. Confinement is a trap for catching time. It gives birth to never-ending schedules:
I understood what my menu for the days to come would be.
Early morning drink: fresh, breast-warm raw milk (only if one felt like it)
Breakfast: khubus, plain water
Lunch: khubus, plain water
Evening drink: fresh, breast-warm raw milk (only if one felt like it)
Dinner: khubus, plain water
And plain lukewarm water from the iron tank to drink in between meals (only when very necessary).
Goat Days is a contemporary slave narrative: telling his story and having it heard, is also part of Najeeb's act of liberation. Liberation from waiting. For Najeeb is always waiting: he must wait for officials to acknowledge his presence; he must wait for his arbab to look away before he drinks water; he must wait for an opportunity to escape; he must wait in the prison for his number to be called; he must wait in the desert; he must wait before he can tell his story after he survives his escape. In Goat Days, Benyamin compels the reader to listen in, on the intimacies and solidarities born from the exchange of stories between men who share the perils of confined labor. From Hameed, his companion in Sumesi jail, to the man who helps Najeeb to freedom, a Somali named Ibrahim Khadri—wanted by the government, presumably for helping workers escape from their sponsors—Benyamin evocatively describes the oil kingdom from the perspective of those who come from afar to labor in its cities and deserts.
[1] See Thomas Metcalf, Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920, University of California Press, 2008.
[2] Ibid.
[3] See Charles Townshend, Desert Hell: The British Invasion of Mesopotamia, Harvard University Press, 2011.
[4] The despotic rule that Ibn Saud was building in the Arabian penninsula relied heavily on British financial support and weapons to defeat rival powers.
[5] Robert Vitalis, America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier, Verso, 2009.
[6] Ibid
[7] Ibid. p. 103


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Political campaigns have figured out what direct marketers have long known: There's good money in your email address and contact information.
During the past four years, more than 90 campaigns, parties and political action committees have sold their donors' personal contact information to outside groups as a way to raise millions of dollars, according to a Roll Call study.
Though privacy advocates criticize the practice, campaign records show that campaigns have paid about $50 million since 2007 to rent donor lists, though this includes purchases from some private firms as well as campaigns.
Some of the campaigns that have charged the most money for access to their donors' information are the biggest names from the 2008 presidential election, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and President Barack Obama.
"These lists are the biggest assets of any campaign," said Caleb Burns, a partner at Wiley Rein in the firm's election law and government ethics section. "If you think about campaigns, they are largely ephemeral."
Clinton's campaign disclosed receipts topping $4 million from the rental of her list to more than 60 campaigns, organizations and list brokers since 2008. Some of the campaigns paying the most for this contact information included $66,000 from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), $47,000 from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and almost $24,000 from Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Her campaign also rented this information to causes connected to the former Senator, including the William J. Clinton Foundation with almost $350,000 and her former leadership fund, HillPAC, which has paid $822,000 for the list throughout the years. Under campaign finance rules, the campaign's donor list is an asset that she cannot simply give away to groups or campaigns — they have to pay to rent it.
The infusion of funds from rental fees was badly needed by Clinton's presidential campaign because it had $5.9 million in debt at the end of the 2008 election cycle. The campaign has since lowered this debt to $274,000 through the end of September.
McCain's presidential campaign also raised significant funds by renting its list to campaigns for lawmakers such as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and GOP Senate candidates Carly Fiorina in California and Joseph DioGuardi in New York.
Technically, the former Republican presidential nominee leads all campaigns with more than $4.6 million in rental fees listed in FEC reports since 2008. But the lion's share of this money — about $4.5 million — came from his various campaigns renting lists to McCain's affiliated organizations, including his political compliance fund, his joint fundraising committee and his leadership PAC. Similar transactions show Obama's presidential campaign received more than $1.3 million from the Democratic National Committee in April to rent contact information.
Several Republican candidates rented lists from Mitt Romney's presidential campaign since 2008, totaling more than $150,000, according to Federal Election Commission records. Some of these Republican campaigns that reported renting Romney's list include former Rep. Tom Feeney (Fla.), Rep. Mary Bono Mack (Calif.) and her husband, Rep. Connie Mack IV (R-Fla.), as well as Romney's leadership PAC, Free and Strong America PAC.
Some of the Congressional campaigns that are receiving the most money from selling their lists include those of Sen. John Kerry (D–Mass.), with more than $273,000, and Sen. Al Franken (D–Minn.), with $91,000.
Kerry's staff clarified that the campaign limits the rental of its donor list "to like-minded organizations such as the DNC and DSCC" and points out that it provided only postal addresses, not emails.
"This is the best way of helping progressive organizations, and Democratic candidates — we rent the lists as opposed to giving the information because under the law, it would be considered an in-kind contribution and thus would be capped," Jodi Seth, Kerry's communications director, wrote in an email. "It also helps cover the overhead of maintaining our lists."
Kerry and Franken used an outside vendor — called a list broker — as a middleman to rent the contact information to other campaigns. The sale and management of these lists has brought in millions of dollars for organizations such as Pinnacle List Co., Preferred Communications and Legacy Lists Marketing.
These companies advertise on their websites available databases of donor information from a wide range of campaigns, including 7,300 contributors to Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), 31,800 "active donors" to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 307,700 contacts from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
A popular list broker for Republicans is Capitol Hill Lists in Georgia, which has paid $111,000 to Sen. David Vitter (La.), $83,000 to Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and $45,000 to Sen. James Risch (Idaho) since 2009 for list information.
While renting these lists might be lucrative, privacy advocates say campaigns should inform potential contributors that they may sell their contact information to others.
"This wholesale trade in donor information violates people's privacy," said Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Coney said the public should be aware that list brokers are selling contact information to sources that range from political campaigns to magazines.
"We shouldn't have to give up our privacy just to exercise our right to political expression," said J. Bradley Jansen, director of the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights.
Jansen is against the distribution and rental of donor contact information. But instead of laying blame with the candidates, he said the problem can be traced to campaign finance disclosure regulations and court decisions ruling that Americans do not have an expectation of privacy from third parties.
Jansen's contact information was likely sold recently after making $2,100 in donations to Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) in 2007. FEC records show Paul later rented his donor list to his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R), for $4,600 during his successful 2010 race in Kentucky.
But Jansen did not object to his name and others being rented by Paul's son, saying, "They are in the same family by blood and ideology."
Rep. Paul's staff explained that he has a policy of not renting his donor list but made an exception in this case with his son.
"Dr. Paul is deeply committed to protecting the privacy of his donors, and has a strict policy against renting his lists," spokesman Jesse Benton said in an email. "Dr. Paul has some of the largest and most valuable lists in the political universe, and receives regular offers to sell or rent them for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He has only rented his list to his son, Senator Paul."
While purchasing lists of campaign donors is common, some lawmakers are choosing to stay out of the fray of this lucrative process.
"I know a fair number of candidates who don't rent out their lists," Burns said, "because they don't want their donors tapped into and otherwise cannibalized by other political campaigns."


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|Contact Us
I have a question about the rule of what to do when two saakin letters meet.
Assalaamu alaykum
I have a question about the rule of what to do when two saakin letters meet. I understand that when joining verse 1 and 2 of suratul Ale Imran the meem acquires a fathah. But I cannot find it explained in the rules for two saakin letters meeting. Is this the exception. If so where else is this applied and why?
May Allah multiply your good deeds and increase the team with more blessed knowledge.
Jazak Allahu Khayran
Assalaamu alaykum
Wa alaikum assalaam wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh
This is a special case and does not follow any rule of the rules for the normal occurrence of two saakin letters meeting. The reason is that this is not the plural meem (), instead this is a separate letter of the separate letters which occur at the beginning of some surahs. In this case the obtains a fathah when joining it with the beginning of the next aayah.
The medd laazim harfi then, when joining the two aayaat, can be lengthened either 6 counts, based on it being a permanent sukoon which acquired a vowel, or it can be lengthened two vowel counts since a temporary vowel has been put on the last .
Please also see:
Wa iyyaakum
Wa assalaam alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaath
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Hi Everyone! First off, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to look through our website and read some of our reviews. We have really enjoyed putting out content that you guys enjoy.
On this brand new episode of the Dim The Lights Podcast, Olga and I talk about this riveting sci-fi film with our own renowned linguist, Dr. Phil Lipschitz.
Listen to the podcast to hear our full thoughts on the original Star Wars!
Star Wars: Rogue One Review Happy New Year! It's finally 2017 and we get to put behind the god-awful year of 2016. Sure, 2016 was pretty terrible in general, but it did have some highlights. One of the best movies of 2016 is Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Rogue One is the prequel to […]


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|And nothing of value was lost
It is with heavy heart (and heavier balls) that I announce that I am stepping down as a moderator of this site. This decision came after a lot of
I guess it'll be effective whenever ET gets around to it. I'm really in no rush to have my cool mod abilities removed, but I don't plan to do anything with them, really, so ask a mod who's sticking around for all your
I've had a great time here, trying to keep you guys out of trouble despite your best efforts to GET into trouble. I'll still be around playing from time to time (definitely for Ep3) but along with the removal of mod status, my day-to-day activity's gonna drop drastically.
So long, guys, it's been fun.
Log in to see images!
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 10:24AM
|View MC Banhammer's Profile | #
Shocking news!
Honorary mod peen appreciated.
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 10:31AM
|View Aldo_Anything's Profile | #
And the site loses a lot today.
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 10:32AM
|View Fran's Profile | #
Goodnight sweet hammer.
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 10:35AM
|View mterek's Profile | #
See you at the crossroads, MC B.
You were one of the good ones.
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 10:35AM
|View PhineasPoe's Profile | #
I'll post because you said the magic words (the magic words being "post" and "peen" in the same sentence)
Also because holy crap… this is pretty big news.
Going from experience of people stepping down from internet stuff, I'd guess you've got something else that's more important than internet drama demanding your time and attention. If I'm right then good luck with whatever that is.man-man edited this message on 09/30/2009 10:40AM
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 10:38AM
|View man-man's Profile | #
Banhammer, I want to point out that your leaving makes Tubs the senior mod. I hope you enjoy watching the drunkocracy you've helped bring to power.
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 10:40AM
|View PhineasPoe's Profile | #
Aww Banhammer why you were my favourite moderator Log in to see images!
Anyway good luck with whatever's happening in your life Log in to see images!
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 10:42AM
|View quangntenemy's Profile | #
Jesus that just leaves Tubs and others I can't talk about in detail without getting banned. But it was just you and Tubs. Maybe Nicco but I never really see him do anything.
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 10:47AM
|View Cheins Sanchez's Profile | #
What a shame,
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 10:48AM
|View Chronic-Boy's Profile | #
Sorry to see you go, old friend. Our sincere thanks for the many years (in Internet time) of exemplary service.
This place won't be the same without you!
Log in to see images!
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 10:54AM
|View Jalapeno Bootyho...'s Profile | #
I am genuinely shocked and surprised to hear this notification about MC Banhammer stepping down from the glorious post of Moderator of Forumwarz, the internet parody webgame. On this auspicious occasion, I would like to announce to my fellowmen that today we are losing a noble, honest, well-qualitied moderator, and it is an occasion for us to mourn our inevitable loss. We must pray to God that all good must happen to our respected MC Banhammer. It is with much grief and a heavy heart that I bid farewell to him.
tl;dr: Bai bai Banstick, never see ya again *waves*SuperSonic edited this message on 10/01/2009 12:53AM
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 10:57AM
|View SuperSonic's Profile | #
Godspeed. You will be missed.
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 10:57AM
|View Vageena Davis's Profile | #
Good luck Banhammer,peace out.
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 11:01AM
This comes shortly after Robert Morganthau announced he is not seeking re-election. Can we depend on nothing anymore?
Great thanks for all your work, hope we don't have to see you in the "people I miss" thread anytime soon.
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 11:09AM
|View Catt although's Profile | #
mterek Posted:
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 11:19AM
|View Somebody's Profile | #
Well **** – this kind of news isn't how I wanted to start my day. Log in to see images!
Don't be a stranger, 'kay?
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 11:20AM
|View spacekadt's Profile | #
I sent my nice note by Email, but still I am sad to see our longest moderator retire Log in to see images!
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 11:22AM
|View Evil Trout's Profile | #
MCB, you are the only mod I have untarnished respect for. Bon voyage.
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 11:24AM
|View Fie's Profile | #
EMBEDDED SHOCK changed to link and Fie banned but DON'T ANYONE ELSE do it 'cause you're not gonna get banned by me. Fie's the last.
Fie was banned for this post by Evil TroutFie edited this message on 09/30/2009 11:26AM
|Posted On: 09/30/2009 11:26AM
|View Fie's Profile | #


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The questionable things of Ginga.... May 7, 2018 10:18:06 GMT -7 Kuro likes this
- Don't get worked up about Ginga discussions - There is no reason to get legitimately furious over Yoshihiro or any of his work. If something in a story about manly blue dogs makes you actually rant with hate and anger, leave the discussion and chill out. Discuss things you dislike as much as you want, but we don't need discussions to become a place for people to foam at the mouth about something they don't like in a story or series.


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Internet Unearths Late-'80s Footage of Martin and Charlie Sheen Beating Michael Jordan in Basketball, Again Justifies Its ExistenceBerl Rotfeld Productions
The Internet is beautiful, in the sense that certain fads, memes, and obscure pieces of media have multiple life cycles, with each rise to relevancy enjoyed by new generations of online sleuths. Rarely are things that have been dug up true Internet "firsts."
I had to remind myself of that today, as a clip made its way to my inbox that, for a split second, I was sure had never previously been on the Internet.
But of course it had.
Five years ago, on April 13, 2008, NESW Sports posted an article titled "Michael Jordan vs Charlie and Martin Sheen, Video." The post described a show, War of the Stars, and at the end of the description were two video clips.
A day later, this news was picked up by Will Leitch at Deadspin, who added a few more tidbits of information, most importantly a year (1988), and again, the video.
And the following day, a thread was started by "Bassy" on the message board community that will never die, slumz.boxden.com. The initial post:
"I have this really old & rare VHS of Michael Jordan taking on both the Sheens in a series of basketball events.
I uploaded an edited version yesterday to youtube and got 10,000 + hits and numerous comments in a 10 hour span so I decided to upload the entire TV show in 2 parts since people seemed to like it."
I guess Bassy's where it all began. Also, one additional note:
"Edit to add: This was also Jordans TV debut."
Sifting through what's left of the 2008 Internet, that's pretty much all that remains on this late-'80s Jordan vs. Sheens basketball story. The videos that Bassy uploaded from his VHS tape have been taken down, and there's a mix of vague and conflicting information about the airing history of War of the Stars as well as what the show even was in the first place.
According to the Amazon review of the VHS tape that Bassy described:
The 1986 nationally syndicated television series "War of the Stars" hosted by Dick Van Patten brought together famous Hollywood actors & superstar athletes for a series of sporting contests that proved to be entertaining and often surprising. All we found mentioned were 15 shows including:
Milton Berle vs Willie Mosconi in billiards, Chad Everett and Sonny Bono vs Anne White in tennis, Actor Christopher Atkins vs Indy Car driver Danny Sullivan in auto racing, John Davidson and Pancho Segura vs brothers Nels and Vince Van Patten in tennis, Abby Dalton and Elke Sommer vs brothers Nels and Vince Van Patten in tennis, Actor Paul Sorvino vs Lou Butera in billiards, Comedian Norm Crosby vs Lee Trevino in golf, Actress Jennifer O'Neill vs jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. in horse racing, Tim Conway vs jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. in horse racing, Comedian Dick Shawn vs J.C. Snead in golf, William Devane and Jameson Parker lead a celebrity polo team against the USC Trojans, Actress Valerie Perrine vs Willie Shoemaker in horse racing, Gabe Kaplan vs PBA Hall-of-Famer Dick Weber in bowling, Comedian Jack Carter vs PGA tour player Rex Caldwell in golf, and "Michael Jordan vs The Sheens."
Except for Michael Jordan vs. The Sheens (and maybe Gabe Kaplan vs. Dick Weber in bowling), these all sound like horrible ideas. Also, nationally televised? This could not have gone well. More, from our Amazon oracle:
This [Michael Jordan vs. The Sheens] is the only episode we've ever seen released on videotape, and not many of these were made at all. In fact it is perhaps THE holy grail of videotape collecting; most rare video dealers aren't even aware of its existence and will never even see a copy for sale let alone touch one! The tape also has vast appeal to sports & Michael Jordan Collectors. The film was copyrighted in 1987 and was possibly made after the 1986/1987 season when Jordan was still approaching superstar status; Jordan still has hair! It was released two years before "Come Fly With Me" & is Jordan's Film Debut! After a dunking exhibition they do three events Foul Shooting, H-O-R-S-E, & 2 on 1 to 10. Jordan throws the fellahs some handicaps including shooting his free throws with his eyes shut. Sports Legends Video, 1987; 22 min
There's also this, an image of the VHS tape's box:
Some hilarious things to note: One, it's a 22-minute VHS tape. Two, it may have been the only episode of this show ever made. Three, the time reference for when it was made is based on when Jordan had hair. Four, I'm being led to believe Michael Jordan played 2-on-1 with Emilio's dad and brother. And five, "Martin" and "Charlie" are in quotation marks.
This is perfect. So perfect, in fact, that there's just no way the footage could stay hidden forever. And, because the "Internet Cycle of Good" is a very real thing, it's the only explanation for why, after five years, an almost-15-minute clip from the tape was uploaded to YouTube two weeks ago.
It was time.
Let's go on a journey. Together.
0:02 Jordan's first words, after he finishes reading the newspaper:
"Hey, Sheens."
0:13 Just look at the late-'80s Sheens he speaks of.
0:22 This has the makings of something that becomes our finest 15-minute clip.
0:33 Look at these two:
It's surreal that this event took place more two decades before they decided to join forces again, this time in the name of underwear:
They HAD to have talked about War of the Stars on the set, right? Right?
0:36 I need an inhaler:
I guess it's only right that our host/judge/referee is Eight Is Enough's Dick Van Patten. It's only right.
0:42 It's important to note, regardless if this was made in 1986, 1987, or 1988, that Van Patten just referred to Michael Jordan as "one of the greatest basketball players who's ever lived," which is bold. Not saying he was out of line, but it was still pretty early in Jordan's career. He wasn't wrong, though.
Van Patten: "He drives, just like us ordinary mortals."
1:20 Michael just did an array of dunks, in front of what looks to be an elementary school pep rally.
Very confused as to what gymnasium this is, as well as the demographics of the bleacher dwellers.
This is incredible. Don't, for a moment, begin to think this is normal. This is insane.
1:37 And just when it couldn't get any better:
Early prediction: Jordan loses. Bold, I know.
1:46 Before the contest, a little analysis of the first competition, from the War of the Stars "expert handicapper":
What say you, Stanley:
"I watched the Sheens earlier, and they can shoot. Jordan can shoot better, of course. But take the running and jumping out of his game, and he's merely mortal. With his eyes shut, he's second-string high school varsity."
SHOTS, by way of Stan Hochman, expert handicapper.
2:01 This is amazing. Also, the music in the background sounds like the NFL Films music on acid. Not complaining.
2:03 Contest two: H-O-R-S-E.
My guess is that Jordan wins this easily. Even if they outlaw dunking, like Larry did, there's no way Jordan can be beat in H-O-R-S-E. We've all seen what he can do.
2:17 Your thoughts, Stan:
"Let's face it. Behind-the-back, double-pumping, triple-twisting, reverse layups are not what they're doing in Hollywood these days."
Good to know we agree on everything, you sassy man.
2:29 Final contest: two-on-one.
I've seen very talented people over-spot players with lesser skills, and it usually backfires. Seems insane, but I think the Sheens can get five points before Jordan gets 10.
2:33 What do you think, Stanley?
"The handicaps make this a tough one for Michael. Two against one. One shot at the basket. But I have to focus on one sobering, overriding consideration: Michael Jordan is about 10,000 times better than the Sheens."
We can't agree on everything, Stan. It just wouldn't be right.
3:22 Before they start playing, take in everything:
Martin and Charlie's matching tank tops. Jordan's gold chain. The fact that Michael looks like their summer camp counselor. It's all very wonderful.
3:32 I really can't get enough of these two.
3:39 Thoughts from Jordan:
"It's no acting today. It's all real."
I believe him. Because you know Michael and Charlie were doing a skins game on the side.
4:36 Watching a young, gold chain–wearing Jordan sink free throws with his eyes closed in a taxpayer-funded gymnasium is a beautiful sight. And through his first 10, he made six. With his eyes closed.
5:09 A note from Van Patten:
"The young girls here really love Charlie."
That's all.
5:28 Throughout this show, I've been confused by this not being a hit when it came out. This section of the contest, however, is a little dry. With the exception of Jordan loudly clapping every time Charlie misses a free throw, because he's got $50K and two Acura Integras on the line, it's just a quiet room watching Charlie Sheen shoot free throws.
Things have been worse, but also so much better.
5:40 Charlie Sheen is very good at free throws. He went 8-for-10.
6:03 Before Michael shoots his next 10, Van Patten comes with the hard questions:
Van Patten: "I noticed that you're using the name Sheen as opposed to your real name, Estevez. Estevez? Is that the way I pronounce it?"
Charlie: "The accent on the second syllable."
Van Patten: "Right. How come you're using your family name? Any special reason?"
Charlie: "Well, I felt with the way my father had established it thus far, I should carry it on when he's finished with the business. Or the business is finished with him. So, yeah, to keep the name going."
Van Patten: "I'm glad you did that, because the name means a lot. He's a great actor."
That couldn't have been more awkward.
6:31 Also awkward, because Martin hasn't shot yet:
Jordan went 11-for-20. That feels wrong.
6:49 These Sheen boys can shoot, with Martin starting off 2-for-2. He seems to be pretty pleased with himself.
7:30 Weird.
Michael's so mad right now. I mean, he's smiling, but know that he's furious. And down $125K.
I expect H-O-R-S-E to be nothing short of a bloodbath.
8:05 First H-O-R-S-E shot:
This is incredible. The Sheens are like Dell and Steph Curry.
8:35 After that shocker, Jordan seemed to remember that he was Michael Jordan, and, while not allowed to dunk, went into his arsenal of acrobatic layups.
9:00 Jordan wins H-O-R-S-E easily, and instantly there's a newfound pep in his step. Now Charlie's the one who looks a little worried, because of the $75K and three Ford Tauruses he has on this contest. Martin, on the other hand, just looks thrilled to be spending a day with his son and Michael Jordan, all while working up a sweat.
9:13 Michael just took off his sweatpants. Because it's time to win and make that paper. When he did, however, some of the ladies screamed.
CLASSIC "ladies are screaming because I just took off my pants" eye roll from Michael Jordan.
9:54 It's time for two-on-one. The game is important, but not as much as this:
It doesn't matter who wins or loses anymore. Because that happened. This is the ultimate GIF(t).
11:15 The score is 7-2 in favor of the Sheens. Jordan's probably not going to win, as I predicted, but again, that's not important. Martin and Charlie playing defense on Jordan? Yes, that's what's important.
11:35 A sequence that just happened: Martin Sheen stole the ball from Michael Jordan, passed it to his son, who then passed it back. Martin shot a layup and then got that layup blocked by Michael Jordan. Afterward, they shook hands.
12:15 Jordan just missed an open layup. I think this never got aired because Jordan attempted to destroy all footage of him getting worked by the Sheens. Yes, that's definitely why it happened. There's no need to argue that.
13:40 The end:
14:06 Look at these winners:
14:20 A final conversation:
Van Patten: "These guys are too good to give that big a handicap to, aren't they?"
Jordan: "I'll know next time."
Van Patten: "OK then, we'll have a return match sometime then."
Fun fact: That "next time" probably happened as soon as the cameras turned off. Jordan took everyone in that gym hostage for the next seven hours and forced them to stay and watch as Jordan played Martin and Charlie, two-on-one, game to 600.
No one had fun. But Michael Jordan won. And that's all that matters. To Michael Jordan.
Filed Under: Charlie Sheen, Michael Jordan, Rembert Browne, Things On the Internet
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The Smurfs 2 (2013) Poster
The Smurfs 2 Plot
In this sequel to The Smurfs, the evil wizard Gargamel creates a couple of mischievous Smurf-like creatures called the Naughties that he hopes will let him harness the all-powerful, magical Smurf-essence. But when he discovers that only a real Smurf can give him what he wants - and only a secret spell that Smurfette knows can turn the Naughties into real Smurfs - Gargamel kidnaps Smurfette and brings her to Paris, where he has been winning the adoration of millions as the world's greatest sorcerer. It's up to Papa, Clumsy, Grouchy, and Vanity to return to our world, reunite with their human friends Patrick and Grace Winslow, and rescue her! Will Smurfette, who has always felt different from the other Smurfs, find a new connection with the Naughties Vexy and Hackus - or will the Smurfs convince her that their love for her is True Blue?
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The Smurfs 2 image sourced from Internet Movie Poster Awards


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The Nokia N97, one of the hottest phones coming out this summer, is set to touch down worldwide this month. After months of waiting and speculation, Nokia is finally ready to start shipping its flagship model, dubbed as a "multimedia computer".
The N97 will ease your pockets of $699 before subsidies (simfree) but Nokia did not confirm an official launch date for the U.S.. However, in the U.K. the phone will be available on June 19 at the company's flagship stores, so it is safe to assume that the New York and Chicago Nokia stores will carry the phone around the same time.
On June 26 the Nokia N97 is expected to hit the wireless carriers (at least in the U.K.), but in the U.S. it has not been confirmed which operators will offer the phone. Meanwhile, you can pre-order an N97 as of today from Nokia's website, in either black or white.
Nokia's latest flagship device features a 5-megapixel camera, 32GB of on-board storage (expandable with up to 16GB via microSD), GPS, and a full QWERTY keyboard. The N97 is set to battle-it-out this summer with the Palm Pre (coming on June 6) and Apple's new iPhone (to be announced June 8). To see a head-to-head feature comparison of this summer's hottest phones, check out the latest Smartphone Smackdown.
In preparation for the launch of the N97, an official Facebook app is out now, which is also compatible with the company's 5800 touchscreen phone. By now, Nokia touchscreen devices users had to use the less-capable Facebook mobile web interface to sort their social networking dealings.
The Nokia Facebook app (now downloadable from the Ovi Store) looks very similar to its iPhone counterpart, but lacks the chat feature. On the good side, the app takes advantage of the phone's accelerometer and can be used in landscape mode as well. However, early reports say that the app can get quite slow and unresponsive at times.


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Jameis Winston threw a 2-yard touchdown pass to Kelvin Benjamin with 13 seconds left and No. 1 Florida State beat No. 2 Auburn 34-31 to win the last BCS national championship game on Monday night.
Winston struggled much of the night but was near perfect when the Seminoles (14-0) needed it most, going 6 for 7 for 77 yards on the game-winning 80-yard drive. A pass interference penalty on Auburn's Chris Davis gave Florida State a first-and-goal at the 2 and on the next play Winston hit his big receiver for the touchdown.
"I said this from Day 1 in spring ball. These kids are special," coach Jimbo Fisher said. "This group never faltered. They wanted to be elite. They wanted to go to the top and there's so much character in this group."
Tre Mason had given Auburn (12-2) a 31-27 lead with a 37-yard touchdown run with 1:19 left after Kermit Whitfield had put Florida State in the lead for the first time since the first quarter with a 100-yard kickoff return to make it 27-24 with 4:31 left.
Mason ran for 195 yards.
Winston was 20 for 35 for 237 yards and two fourth-quarter touchdown passes.
Nick Marshall ran for a touchdown and threw scoring passes to Mason and Melvin Ray in the first half, and Auburn led 21-13 after three quarters.
All-America kicker Roberto Aguayo's second field goal of the night accounted for the only third-quarter points for either team as both defenses took charge after a frenetic first half.
The powerful Seminoles trailed by 18 points in the second quarter and 21-10 at halftime, but picked up momentum in the third quarter with solid defensive play and improvements by Winston, who was fighting a case of big-game jitters.
The Heisman Trophy-winning freshman went 6 for 15 for 62 yards in the first half on his 20th birthday, with a key fumble setting up Marshall's 4-yard TD run 5:01 before halftime. Winston also led a 66-yard scoring drive late in the first half and consistently moved Florida State in the third quarter — but with only three points to show for it.
After trailing for the first time in any game since Sept. 28, Florida State needed a big finish to become the first team to rally from a halftime deficit to win the BCS title game.
Marshall, Winston's relatively unheralded counterpart, looked sharp in the Auburn backfield. Auburn was the nation's top rushing team, but coach Gus Malzahn showed the SEC champs can fling it as well while racking up 232 yards of offense in the first half.
Mason caught a 12-yard TD screen pass in the first quarter, and Ray ran alone down the middle with a 50-yard touchdown catch in the second quarter.
Devonta Freeman had a 3-yard scoring run with 1:28 left in the half for Florida State, which faced its largest deficit and first halftime deficit of the season.
Auburn's 85-yard drive early in the second quarter ended with a TD catch for Ray, the former minor league baseball player from Tallahassee who had just four receptions in the regular season. Florida State's Jalen Ramsey failed to pick up Ray all alone down the middle. Ray juked a defender near the goal line and scored as the Tigers' fans rocked the Rose Bowl stands with cheers.
Auburn's Angelo Blackson then swatted the ball out of Winston's hand on a run moments after the Tigers missed a field goal, and Marshall finished the drive by turning the corner on Florida State's defense for a score.
A successful fake punt finally sparked the Seminoles moments later. Winston made a 21-yard run complete with a vicious stiff-arm to Auburn's Kris Frost, and Freeman scored on the next play, trimming Auburn's halftime lead to 21-10.
Auburn was making its second BCS championship game appearance after beating Oregon for the title four years ago behind Heisman winner Cam Newton. The Tigers went 3-9 last season, but Malzahn quickly returned them to the national spotlight.
The Seminoles had run over every opponent in their path to a third national title, but Fisher's team was tested in Pasadena.


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Researchers from North Carolina State University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found an easy way to modify the molecular structure of a polymer commonly used in solar cells. Their modification can increase solar cell efficiency by more than 30 percent.
Polymer-based solar cells have two domains, consisting of an electron acceptor and an electron donor material. Excitons are the energy particles created by solar cells when light is absorbed. In order to be harnessed effectively as an energy source, excitons must be able to travel quickly to the interface of the donor and acceptor domains and retain as much of the light's energy as possible.
One way to increase solar cell efficiency is to adjust the difference between the highest occupied molecular orbit (HOMO) of the acceptor and lowest unoccupied molecular orbit (LUMO) levels of the polymer so that the exciton can be harvested with minimal loss. One of the most common ways to accomplish this is by adding a fluorine atom to the polymer's molecular backbone, a difficult, multi-step process that can increase the solar cell's performance, but has considerable material fabrication costs.
A team of chemists led by Jianhui Hou from the Chinese Academy of Sciences created a polymer known as PBT-OP from two commercially available monomers and one easily synthesized monomer. Wei Ma, a post-doctoral physics researcher from NC State and corresponding author on a paper describing the research, conducted the X-ray analysis of the polymer's structure and the donor:acceptor morphology.
PBT-OP was not only easier to make than other commonly used polymers, but a simple manipulation of its chemical structure gave it a lower HOMO level than had been seen in other polymers with the same molecular backbone. PBT-OP showed an open circuit voltage (the voltage available from a solar cell) value of 0.78 volts, a 36 percent increase over the ~ 0.6 volt average from similar polymers.
According to NC State physicist and co-author Harald Ade, the team's approach has several advantages. "The possible drawback in changing the molecular structure of these materials is that you may enhance one aspect of the solar cell but inadvertently create unintended consequences in devices that defeat the initial intent," he says. "In this case, we have found a chemically easy way to change the electronic structure and enhance device efficiency by capturing a lager fraction of the light's energy, without changing the material's ability to absorb, create and transport energy."


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Thursday, June 14, 2012
Rob's New Interview With Total Film
Postado por RPL Editor às 11:08 AM
Marcadores: cosmopolis london promo, interviews, movie: cosmopolis, videos
1 comment:
- Keye Cullen said...
This sucked HARD that this interview was on auto-play. I have your RSS feed for you blog on my Ning page and it drove me and everyone else crazy. I had to take your blog off which completely ticks me off. Ugh! Will put it back on when this damn interview is no longer blaring on my page.
- June 14, 2012 at 11:22 PM
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After their overwhelming fast sold Demo 7" the second Crusade and for sure not the last. This 4 piece Band played still across Europe from Sweden,Italy,Germany,Belgium and left no prisoners back. Ultra Powerful tunes hitting hard spanish Lyrics with a lot attitude and power,these guys know their Craftwork! Incl. members of The Upset,Ultimo Asalto, did we mentioned SECRET ARMY?,Bulldozer,One Life one Sentence,Malarians.... A bunch of well known faces down from Barcelona (Catalunya). 5 tracks!
Catalonia is on fire! Not just because of the hot weather (well, maybe...), but also because of the sick new releases that emerge out of the region lately. Bands like The Upset, Reconquesta, The Penny Cocks and especially CRIM are taking over by storm. To this list we can now add La Inquisición. The Secret Army-veterans already surprised with their self-titled, demo 7" of last year, but with the release of their brand new EP for Common People Records and Contra Records, "Verdadera Fe", they deliver their first, fatal blow! The demo was good, but with "Verdadera Fe" the band took a few, yet giant, steps forward resulting in one hell of an EP! Brought with a killer production, La Inquisición's 'real' debut 7" is everything you would expect by these Catalonian vets. Showcasing their rich experience (gained through Ultimo Asalto, Bulldozer BCN, Secret Army etc...), La Inquisición bursts out one cracking tune after another with stacked choruses and a mean, yet very melodic sound, strongly reminding me of the aforementioned CRIM. Packed with a punch, La Inquisición delivers a total of five anthems in their native tongue a contrary to Secret Army, who's releases were completely in English. Though I barely understand a word of it, it's still a big plus to me as the five tracks, "Verdadera Fe", "Abril", "Iniciados", "Muerte A La Nostalgia" and "Guerra Total", are sung with tremendous power and passion, completing this punk-rock-and-Oi! powerhouse to the boot! If you are a fan of The Gundown, CRIM and of course Secret Army, or excellent, powerful punk in general, La Inquisición's "Verdadera Fe" is an absolute must-have! So do what is right, and pick this one up on either black (400 copies) or limited red (200 copies) vinyl now!