text:
Today's True Hero: Johnny Heff
TIM SEZ: Hi. I realize it's been ages since I've posted in this blog - something I intend to repair in the coming days. This repost is from my old MySpace blog from 2008. Ike fizzled before he got to Austin, obviously. In the time since I posted this, my friend's death score was settled, with Bin Laden's capture and execution. (And no, I don't buy any conspiracy theories on this subject. Nor do I buy conspiracy theories, period. Please save it all for your next Alex Jones fan club meeting, thank you.) Troops have been thinned in Iraq and Afghanistan, but.... And there's a chance we may find ourselves in another conflict soon. On a personal level, I reflect that this day began a ten year spiral of personal tragedy and self-destruction I've only come out of in the last few years - miracles do happen. Today, I also reflect that America became a mean-spirited, selfish nation in the wake of this day, and we have never recovered from it nor corrected it - it just gets worse. We never fucking learn....
Something I rarely talk about
Current mood: contemplative
Category: Life
It looks pretty certain the day after my birthday, I'm riding out a hurricane. Odd, for the Austin area. Where I grew up, it was more common: I'd been through three by the time I was a teenager, the last one having been Allen back in 1980 (I think it was). Not a big deal, really. By the time Ike hits here, he's gonna be a lotta wind and rain, really.
But, come on, Ike: Could your timing be any worse?
It's kinda par for the course, right now. Something about this decade and my birthday has meant disaster for me. There was the girlfriend who decided to break up with me the week of my birthday, just because that would sting the most, I'm sure. Then, there was the birthday on which Johnny Cash had the misfortune of dying. That really sucked.
But I think the coldest was the group of middle eastern gentlemen who thought it would be really cool to fly a couple of airplanes into the World Trade Center the day before my birthday in 2001.
I slept through it. I was homeless at the time and staying with a friend on 7th and Ave. B, probably three or four miles from the Twin Towers. She was out of town, and I was house-sitting, soon to move in with my friend Sami Yaffa and his girl Karmen. I was working at the time as a professional dog walker, and I got up at 11 AM. It was supposed to be just another day: I was thinking about coffee, looking over the schedule, wondering who the first dog of the day would be, etc., etc. I turned on Howard Stern's show, as was my wont back then (until he said something completely insulting about John Lee Hooker on the day Hook died, and I swore I'd never listen to the tasteless bastard again). And judging by the hysteria I was hearing, it was the end of the world.
I called my boss to find out what was going on. That was when I found out the towers had been hit.
From there, people were calling in left and right, canceling walks; most of our customer base worked in the financial district, so they were now gonna be home. I was getting all kinds of bits and pieces from there: The doorman at the building on Irving Place where a few of my dogs lived reported looking up and seeing the first jet flying so close to the ground, he could see its' markings. My friend Mark who lived two blocks away called me up and told me he was on the phone, talking to his mother, looking out his panoramic view of the southern end of Manhattan...and saw that same jet fly right past his building, shaking him and the whole building. Mark got a front row seat at watching it crash straight into Tower Number One.
These calls were going on for three hours. I couldn't sit down to eat. Finally, about 2 PM, I was able to leave the apartment and walk down to Ave. A, in search of breakfast. Every joint in the neighborhood was crammed to the rafters, it seemed. There were hand-written signs in the windows, advising that the Red Cross needed blood, go to this hospital or that one, go to Bellvue, go someplace, we need blood. The air smelled awful, like burning tires or hair, but worse. It would be that way for months. And can you imagine what it does to a mind, knowing that what you're breathing might be friends of yours'?
I finally squeezed into Sidewalk Cafe, ran into friends I knew from the local rock circuit. The waitresses and bartenders looked like they were gonna have coronaries. My waitress confided in me that they were severely understaffed, especially with the crush they were experiencing, and people due to work that day who lived out in Brooklyn or wherever were calling in because the subways were now shut down and they couldn't make it in. She looked like she was about to cry. Seconds later, some jerk at the table next to me started cursing her out about how long it was taking for him to get his eggs. I slammed my fist on his table and shocked him: "DUDE, DO YOU GET IT? CAN YOU LOOK AROUND YOU? DO YOU SEE HOW OVERWORKED THESE PEOPLE ARE RIGHT NOW? CAN YOU TURN AROUND AND SEE THE COLUMN OF SMOKE WHERE THE WORLD TRADE CENTER USED TO BE? CAN YOU FOR ONCE IN YOUR GAWDFERSAKEN EXISTENCE STOP THINKING ABOUT YOURSELF AND TRY TO PUT YOURSELF IN THE SHOES OF THE PEOPLE WORKING HERE AND THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU?"
"What are you getting mad at me for?" he whined. "It's not my fault they don't have enough people working. I'm hungry." I just stared at him.
I decided to wander a bit after eating and having coffee. People were then walking up from around the disaster site, walking because the subways were shut down, and no cabs can be found. They were covered in soot, looking like some ancient Jack Kirby panel out of a '60s Marvel comic. I ran into Jesse Malin, on his way to buy a protein bar and a newspaper. We started talking about The Strokes' debut album, which had just been released a few days before. (Or maybe that was only in the UK? Well, copies were obviously getting around on import.) And I remember at the time thinking, "Why are we talking about The Strokes in the middle of this?!"
My cellphone rang. It was my mother. She'd been trying to reach me for hours. The satellite dishes for the cellphone companies were based at the Twin Towers. Finally, a provisional satellite path was opened, and she could know I was alive. The family were scared shitless: They had no idea of the geography of Manhattan, and for all they knew, I could be dead.
I went back to the apartment and finally turned on the news. For hours, my eyes were raped with endless repeats of the footage of those planes crashing into those towers. It was relentless. I finally had to turn it off and order pay-per-view porn. After all, what's amoral here: Being bombarded with footage of the WTC being penetrated hard and fast by terrorist-commandeered planes? Or being bombarded with footage of Jenna Jameson getting penetrated hard and fast from various angles?
The days and weeks after were like nothing I'd ever experienced. I remember having to wear a filter mask as I did the dogwalks for a long time, and suffering massive headaches from the air quality. For awhile, you would be forced to present ID at two different checkpoints to MPs if you lived in the East Village, just to get to and from your apartment. Armed personnel carriers would be going up and down Houston St. The middle eastern guys who ran the deli downstairs looked at me with pleading, fearful eyes that told me they were already getting harassed for the color of their skins and their accents. Probably by the same louts I heard that Friday up and down Avenue B, drunkenly chanting, "U! S! A! U! S! A!" I feared those clowns more than I did potential terrorists.
I can remember my mother and I talking, and she kept telling me, "We all understand. We all are with you. We're all going through this together." And I had to tell her that no, there was no way she could understand unless she was here. She got to watch this from the safety of her living room. This wasn't TV for me or anyone else in NYC. This was our lives. And it wasn't fun, and I hoped that she (and everyone else who didn't live here) never had to find out what I was going through.
The worst was finding out how one of my dearest friends was affected by this: Johnny Heffernan was one of my local brothers in rock. His band The Bullys was one of Napalm Stars' brother bands. Johnny was frequently there when I needed him, whether I needed to borrow an amp, or whether I was having to fend off an obnoxious and violent stage invader. I considered him one of my best friends. He was to have left on my birthday to go on tour with The Toilet Boys, doing their lighting.
Johnny was also a NYC fire fighter.
He was not supposed to be on duty on Sept. 11, 2001. It was supposed to be his day off. He was working instead, trying to get in overtime before he left on the road, to support his wife and young stepdaughter. His company was among the first to respond when Tower Number One was hit. From what I remember, most (if not all) of his company was buried when the tower collapsed. Johnny's bandmates, family, friends, we all held hope that he was still alive. They pulled Johnny's crushed body out one month later.
We all know who killed my friend, as well as the many others who died that day. America invaded Afghanistan shortly after, gunning for Osama Bin Laden. Over time, our leaders began telling us Iraq had some connection with the WTC attacks, that they had weapons of mass destruction, that Saddaam Hussein had something to do with this. This, of course, turned out not to be the case. We are still at war in Iraq. Osama Bin Laden, the man who commanded the men who killed my friend and all those others, remains free.
Happy birthday.


text:
Peace. It's a bone-filling, soul-soothing, breath-within-me-that-wasn't-mine sort of a feeling. Peace. It's real. Let me tell you how I know:
It was back in April. Months ago, I know, but I suppose I'm just now getting around to making sense of it. It was a particularly difficult week. It was a time of grief. A time of searching. It was one of those times you recognize - even in the midst of it - as a turning point. Either you'd be okay or you wouldn't. Either you would beat it or it would beat you. Perhaps you've been there? I was. This was one of those times.
I'd hung laundry on the clothesline. An entire load. I'd shuffled about, pinning and praying.
Lord, I need... I need...
When I couldn't even finish my prayer, I tearfully shrugged at the sky.
I can't... God, I don't even know....
Sobs ripped through me but wouldn't come out. I wasn't making a bit of sense. Frustrated - hopelessly exasperated by my inability to string together words for the most basic of prayers - I flung a clothespin to the ground and cried out.
I froze. I froze and stared. I stared because there, just beyond my feet, sat a white dove. A perfect white dove. A dove at my clothesline.
My breath left me, but the moment it did, something else was there. It was warm ... like chicken broth going down. Only this started within. It was... full... as though I had breath without inhaling... as though I had somehow breathed underwater. It was electric... like a fuse blowing and sparking, yet at the same time it was calming... like watching a sunset while wrapped in a quilt. It was amazing and it washed inside and over me like a wave.
I cried. The dove listened.
And it stayed. Even when I went in to get my camera, it stayed. It stayed as I cried and prayed and questioned. It stayed as I took its picture and got close. And as the sun began to set, it flew to the fence and perched there as I said goodbye.
The next morning, I hurried out. It was still there. So, too, was that feeling. I ran and got my neighbor. "Do you see that?" I cried.
"Yes," she said, slowly. "What's a dove doing here?"
It was gone by lunch. The warm, electric, breath-that's-not-my-own feeling stayed.
Neighbors, upon hearing that Freeman House was visited by a white dove, reasoned that it must have been part of the wedding the previous afternoon at the Methodist church. It had obviously gotten lost and had to land somewhere on its journey out of town.
I don't know. To this day the entire experience is more than I make complete sense of. All I can say for certain is that day, this child of God needed Him. Needed to see and talk to her Creator. And there, when she least expected it and most required it, was a dove. A dove, and the most inexplicable, awe-inspiring aura I've ever felt. Peace. Peace....
It was peace - given and left. It is there, and it's ours for the taking. Peace. Real peace. Just as He promised. Just exactly as He promised.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Monday Moment: Peace- Given and Left
13 comments:
Oh Brin..shivers ran through me as I read your devotional..isn't that something! At that desperate time when you needed Him...He met you there,that is so awesome. God is so very good!
Thanks for sharing that Brin..I wait in anticipation for your daily posts, you are truly a blessing to me!
- Mon Jul 16, 11:00:00 AM CDT
- Carolyne said...
So often God comes to us in the everyday.....through nature, or one of His creations to Bless us with His Presence. You are one of the most blessed because you have eyes to see Him and the quietness to hear what He says.....
Thank you for helping all of us who read these Monday treasures to see Him around us today.
- Mon Jul 16, 12:04:00 PM CDT
- Susan said...
What an awesome, mighty God we serve!!!!
- Mon Jul 16, 01:46:00 PM CDT
- Kathleen Grace said...
Praise God! What a wonderful witness to the power and especially the love, of our Heavenly Father!
- Mon Jul 16, 01:52:00 PM CDT
- Unknown said...
Brin, what a powerful post today, I loved it! I too believe God comes to us in ways we may never understand or see, but he's always there! You are a true blessing indeed!! You need a answer on your poll for all of the above, I do feel like I know you but your blog is my favorite and I read it for everything!
- Mon Jul 16, 02:54:00 PM CDT
- BellaColle said...
Oh I believe He sent you His peace! Most definatly! I am so glad to see someone else has experianced the "Peace" He promises us! others always point out it is just this or that... His promises are true and that is enough for me! Thank you again!
- Mon Jul 16, 08:18:00 PM CDT
Hi Brin,
I have been told, and believe it to be true, that these types of moments or visits are God's "calling cards" to us. I've experienced them too and they are wonderful.
- Mon Jul 16, 10:03:00 PM CDT
Hello Brin!
Your entry today touched me so that I feel compelled to write. I have been reading your blog since I stumbled upon it by chance on Monday, April 30.
It's been in my bookmarks ever since and I look forward to reading it daily. After reading the Dove entry I now know it wasn't chance that brought us together, the Lord knew I needed you for inspiration. Thank you for being there for me today. Yours in Christ, Cynthia
- Mon Jul 16, 10:30:00 PM CDT
Because I know you, I know that you are constantly focused on all things pure, lovely, virtuous, true....and God promises his peace because of this (Philippians 4).
Thank you for sharing this lovely experience.
- Tue Jul 17, 08:06:00 AM CDT
- Lallee said...
Jesus loves you this I know. What more can be said when God shows he is there in such a magnificent way? Thank you for sharing this and the pictures.
- Tue Jul 17, 02:37:00 PM CDT
- a woman who is said...
Beautiful post, lovely pictures!
A frame around the silence
A kind of silence in which God speaks to the heart
It made time stand still
Michael Card
- Thu Jul 19, 03:10:00 AM CDT
You are a treasure, Brin... God's treasure and mine! He cares about you so much. He sent a dove, the symbol of his Holy Spirit, the comforter, at a time when you needed comfort. Wow.. that's how much He loves YOU!!!
- Thu Mar 03, 09:40:00 AM CST
- Jenny's Heart said...
I have felt that same seeling, like warm honey flowing through you and all tingly at the same time, I fell to my knees the breath wooshed from my lungs and as I gasped I cried and praised God! It happened to me as I was praying for someone else and God healed me. Being filled by the Holy Spirit, touched by God and Blessed by Jesus..takes your breath away~ I forget about that day sometimes, thank you for reminding me.
- Tue Mar 08, 02:45:00 AM CST

subset: commoncrawl


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Thank you very much, John. John Wilson is a forceful and thoughtful advocate for HBCUs—and he already has begun to reinvigorate the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
It is an honor and a pleasure to be here, to see so many of the presidents and chancellors of HBCUs who have toiled so long and so effectively to guide their campuses through today's challenges and opportunities. You are all my heroes. But I especially want to acknowledge Mildred Higgins, the financial aid officer who came out of retirement to help students return to Xavier University of Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. She is still on the job, despite having turned 90 on Friday. Her life is a testimony to a deep-seated commitment to expanding access for low-income minority students—a mission that is at the heart of the extraordinary story of HBCUs.
I want to both celebrate that extraordinary story tonight and talk about the vital role that HBCUs will play in the years ahead.
I was first introduced to HBCUs back in 1998. As John mentioned, I pretty much grew up in a church basement on the South Side of Chicago, working in my mother's after-school tutoring program. But I landed my first real job working in schools 18 years ago, in 1991, when my friend and mentor John Rogers Jr. hired me and my sister, Sarah, at the Ariel Foundation to oversee the foundation's I Have A Dream program. We adopted the entire sixth grade class at Shakespeare Elementary School, located across the street from my mother's after-school program. And the foundation had committed to seeing students through college, promising scholarships as an incentive.
When those students were seniors, in 1998, we packed them in a van and drove a group of students and their parents down to Talladega College in Alabama. It was the first time I had been to a historically black college—and let me tell you, I was wowed.
It wasn't a wealthy college but Talladega had a rigorous science, business, and liberal arts program, and it was a student-friendly institution. Like many colleges, it struggled to keep low-income students from dropping out. But 80 percent of its graduates—then and now—went on to pursue graduate degrees, one of the highest rates in the country.
The library had the famous Amistad Murals, which the African American artist Hale Woodruff had painted there in 1939 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the legendary slave revolt aboard the Amistad. And I remember the president of Talladega at the time, Marguerite Archie-Hudson, who met with us. She was a Talladega alumnus and knew firsthand how HBCUs had transformed the lives of their students for the better. Dr. Lucille Ish there is a living legend, and I appreciated her thoughtfulness and support of us so much.
That was my first personal glimpse at HBCUs. But in the years since, I've come to understand that Talladega was no exception. In fact, for decades, HBCUs have made enduring, even staggering contributions to American life. And this is a story of educational triumph over adversity that is too little known or appreciated outside the African American community.
As you know, most of America's great civil rights leaders were educated at HBCUs. I'm not just referring to Dr. King, but to Jesse Jackson, Rosa Parks, W.E.B. DuBois, Maynard Jackson, Marian Wright Edelman, Booker T. Washington, Congressman John Lewis, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, Andy Young, and Doug Wilder. And let's not forget Lincoln University graduate Thurgood Marshall—who was forced to attend law school at Howard because the University of Maryland law school just down the road from here did not admit blacks at the time. When Thurgood Marshall got his law degree from Howard, he turned around and sued the University of Maryland. Thankfully, the young lawyer and future Supreme Court Justice won—and forced the entire university to desegregate.
But that's just the half of it. So many great African American artists, authors, and intellectuals came out of HBCUs. Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes. Jazz greats Branford Marsalis and Cannonball Adderley are HBCU graduates. So was the singer Leontyne Price. Student athletes like Wilma Rudolph and Althea Gibson—who competed at Wimbledon for the first time in 1951, while still a student at Florida A&M.
Pioneers in their profession—Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee, and Sixty Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley—are HBCU graduates. Legendary inventors, like George Washington Carver, are too. One of my modern-day intellectual heroes, Professor William Julius Wilson, attended Wilberforce University on a church scholarship. And our newly nominated Surgeon General, Dr. Regina Benjamin, went both to Xavier University of Louisiana and Morehouse School of Medicine.
Now I've just recited to you the Hall of Fame roll call of HBCUs—and it is an amazing honor roll. But what is most impressive about the HBCU record is not just your famous alumnus but rather that HBCUs, working with meager resources, almost single-handedly created an African-American professional class despite decades of Jim Crow discrimination.
As recently as a half-century ago, three-fourths of all African-American undergraduates enrolled in HBCUs. Today, with the integration of higher education, that number is at about 20 percent. Yet HBCUs have produced roughly half of all African American professionals and public school teachers.
Forty percent or more of all African Americans who receive degrees today in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, and environmental sciences graduate from HBCUs. Upwards of 70 percent of doctors and dentists earn undergraduate degrees at historically black colleges and universities. Mildred Higgins' institution, Xavier University of Louisiana, still sends more African-American students to medical school than any college in the nation, including Harvard. That is why I've said—and why I repeat here tonight—that HBCUs cannot simply survive. They have to thrive.
Now it is no secret to anyone in this room that most HBCUs are facing steep challenges, especially as state budgets shrink in the midst of a recession. Endowments are undercapitalized, faculty salaries are low, financial aid is inadequate, and facilities are deteriorating. Far too few students arrive on campus ready for college coursework—and far too many students drop out without ever earning a degree. The former president of Stillman College, Cordell Wynn, summarized the issues facing HBCUs well when he said that "No other institution of higher learning has had to do so much, for so many, with so little."
Yet I want to suggest to you tonight that HBCUs face many of the same challenges and opportunities today as other institutions of higher education—only more so. And I believe that HBCUs have many valuable lessons to teach higher education about how it can move forward to face the new challenges of educating college students in a global economy.
I can tell you that many of the concerns I hear expressed today by HBCU college presidents and administrators are the same concerns I hear expressed by college presidents at public research universities, private liberal arts institutions, community colleges, and technical schools.
I often hear that managing the multiple missions of higher education today is akin to being caught in the infamous "iron triangle." Every college president and every governing board wants to simultaneously improve quality, increase access—and yet constrain costs. To college executives, these three sides of the iron triangle—quality, access, and cost—often seem like mutually conflicting choices. Elevating quality raises costs. Increasing access can dilute quality. And reducing costs impairs both quality and access.
In the standard formulation, the only way out of the iron triangle is to secure unlimited resources, either in the form of bigger endowments or state and federal support. Now the tension between these three goals is real—and I don't question for a minute that boosting resources for higher education is essential. As I'll talk about in a moment, I fully anticipate that HBCUs will in fact receive unprecedented federal support next year from the Recovery Act and the Fiscal 2010 appropriation bill now moving through Congress.
At the same time, I do not think that more resources alone are the answer to the challenges facing higher education or HBCUs. The reality is that states play a critical role in funding higher education, and statehouses are facing severe budget crises. For the foreseeable future, higher education leaders can no longer expect to rely on the traditional strategy of sustained economic growth and increased government revenues to pave the way for expanded enrollment.
A more promising long-term solution for breaking out of the iron triangle is to have college presidents and administrators make better and more imaginative use of efficiency, productivity improvements, and accountability. With enhanced productivity and accountability, many postsecondary institutions, including HBCUs, can boost quality, access, and constrain costs—all at the same time.
It is time—as President Obama has said—to work toward a new "culture of accountability" in our nation's schools. And it is especially vital that universities and colleges do a better job of measuring, tracking, and supporting students to elevate graduation rates, which have not budged, unfortunately, in decades.
It is simply a tragedy today that barely half of high school graduates in the bottom income quartile attend college. But it is even more troubling that only one in four low-income college students manage to graduate within six years. If we are serious as a country about ending cycles of poverty and giving every child the chance to fulfill their potential, that has to change. Moving forward, I think that higher education has much to learn from how HBCUs have met similar economic and academic challenges in the past.
President Obama, as you know, has set ambitious goals for higher education. He wants America to again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. And he wants every American to have at least one year of college or technical training.
The president and I believe higher education must play a leading role in driving our economic recovery and building a workforce that can remain competitive in the information age. Our college students today no longer compete with students from nearby universities or community colleges—they are competing with their peers in China, India, and Denmark.
The implications of the President's goals are unmistakable. An unprecedented number of Americans will not only have to enroll in but complete college. And this means that student populations with high dropout rates, especially minority students, will have to dramatically increase their college graduation rates. HBCUs will—and absolutely have to—play an essential role in meeting this challenge. This is not just about access—this is about attainment.
I have said repeatedly that education is the civil rights issue of our generation. And I can think of no one who can testify to that truth more powerfully than the founders of HBCUs and their successors here today. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote that after the tribulations of the Civil War, the freedman rushed "not to the grog-shop but to the schoolroom—they cried for the spelling book as bread, and pleaded for teachers as a necessity of life."
There is a reason why Booker T. Washington walked 500 miles to the Hampton Institute to receive an education. There is a reason why W.E.B. DuBois said that "of all the civil rights . . . the right to learn is undoubtedly the most fundamental." There is a reason, as President Obama said earlier this summer, that "the story of the civil rights movement was written in our schools."
That reason is known to everyone in this room. Education is the great equalizer in America. It doesn't matter what your race, income, or zip code is—every child is entitled to a quality education. This fight is about so much more than education—it is a fight for social justice. And in a global economy where more and more jobs require a college degree, education is more important than ever to keeping African American students competitive and giving them a shot at the American Dream.
To achieve the President's agenda and begin closing the achievement gap, we have to make higher education more affordable, accessible, and successful. The need is urgent, the opportunity unique—and our department will do everything in its power to boost access and success in higher education.
The department's budget, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act enacted earlier this year, provide the largest commitment to higher education funding since the GI Bill sent World War II-veterans to college and built the American middle class.
But HBCUs in particular need more funding to be successful. The President has proposed unprecedented increases in student aid for HBCU students, as well as additional resources to build HBCUs and other institutions serving under-represented groups. The House of Representatives also has proposed further funding for these institutions, and I am working with Congress to ensure that HBCUs receive the funding they need to succeed.
Apart from money targeted specifically to HBCUs, most of the new higher ed funding and expanded assistance to help students complete college will especially benefit low-income and minority students, including at HBCUs.
To free up money for more Pell Grants, we are shifting guaranteed student loans to direct lending—and we will be providing assistance to HBCU's to navigate that transition. For the first time, we want to index the size of Pell awards to the Consumer Price Index, plus an additional percentage point. The cash value of Pell Grant awards for low-income students will increase by more than 10 percent, and we are boosting the number of students receiving Pell Grants from 6 million to 7 million students.
Under the president's budget, we project that HBCU students and their institutions will receive an additional $80 million in Pell Grants—and 13,000 more students will be awarded grants, bringing the number of Pell recipients at HBCUs to almost 200,000 students next year.
To reduce students' need for expensive private student loans, we are also proposing to provide colleges with more flexible loan funds through a dramatic increase in the Perkins loan program, which is budgeted to go next year from $1 billion to $6 billion. Through this expansion, and by making the loans easier for you to administer, we can reach as many as 2.7 million new students and an additional 2,700 postsecondary institutions. Bill Taggart, who got his bachelor's at Howard and now heads our department's federal student aid division, is focused like a laser on making the transition to direct lending work to the benefit of HBCUs and their students.
As you know, we're also simplifying the hopelessly complex FASFA form to encourage more low-income students to apply for financial aid. The form itself has been a barrier to access—and that is going to change. And expanded loan forgiveness means that any student loan balance that remains after 10 years of working full-time at a public service job, including a teaching position, may be cancelled.
Finally, the President has proposed a new $2.5 billion College Access and Completion Fund to provide competitive grants to states to increase college success and completion, especially among low-income students. Under the President's proposal and Congressman Miller's bill, we will prioritize applications that serve under-resourced institutions like HBCUs.
Now it is no secret that one of the biggest problems confronting HBCUs is the high school-to-college pipeline. Many if not most freshmen are nowhere near college-ready when they arrive on campus. And when incoming students have to spend their first year in remedial classes, it drives up HBCU dropout rates and burns up those students' Pell Grants.
Our entire K-12 reform agenda is largely devoted to fixing the college pipeline. We are pushing four core reforms to build a seamless cradle-to-career pipeline. Specifically, we are providing incentives to states and districts to:
- First, adopt college and career-ready standards and assessments. I am thrilled that 47 states have signed on this year to create college and career-ready standards in math and English Language Arts.
- Second, we want states to recruit, reward, and retain effective teachers and principals—and place them in high-poverty schools, especially in high-needs subject areas. To close the achievement gap, we must first close the opportunity gap.
- Third, we want to build better data systems to measure student success and use that data to inform classroom instruction and drive a cycle of continuous improvement.
- And lastly, over time, we want states and districts to start the long-neglected task of turning around the nation's 5,000 lowest-performing schools. That includes some 2,000 high schools that produce about half of the dropouts in the country—and 75 percent of our dropouts among African-American students. That is unacceptable—we need dramatic change and we need it now. Our children only have one chance to get an education. We cannot wait because they cannot wait.
I would like to see HBCUs take a greater role in improving the pipeline to college by forming creative partnerships with districts. Just down the road from here, Howard University became the first university in the District to establish a charter school. And Howard University's Middle School of Mathematics and Science is doing a great job of boosting student achievement. In February, I visited Howard's school with your honoree tonight, Tom Joyner. He has established an innovative scholarship program for teachers at the school who are completing their licensure requirements through an alternative certification program at Howard. His long-time commitment to HBCUs is remarkable, and I thank you for recognizing him.
The need for better collaboration with HCBUs goes well beyond charter schools. The department's new $650 million Invest in Innovation Fund, which we call i3, provides new opportunities for universities to partner with districts to build innovative programs to improve college readiness.
That is exactly what we did in Chicago—and we had our greatest success with African-American students. In 2003, when I was CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, we created a new Department of Postsecondary Education to boost college readiness, access, and success. We built relationships with every university in the area and the city college system. Principals and counselors guided students through the financial aid process and filling out the dreaded FASFA form. And college coaches set up college tours, college fairs, and visits from college representatives.
The Chicago Public Schools system collaborated with seven local universities to win the largest GEAR UP grant in the country, which now serves over 10,000 students in 21 high schools. Two annual college fairs with HBCUs proved hugely successful, with students granted automatic admission and scholarships all in one night. Last year, those college fairs produced $26 million in scholarships
Chicago had just four minority students who won scholarships in 2004 in the Gates Millennium program sponsored by the United Negro College Fund. Last year, Chicago had more Gates scholarship winners than any city in the country—and most of our scholarship winners attended neighborhood schools.
Those partnerships changed outcomes. From 2004 to 2008, college enrollment rates rose for every ethnic group in the Chicago Public Schools. But enrollment rates rose fastest among African-American students. College enrollment rates for African-American students in Chicago increased 11 percent from 2004 to 2008. During the same time period, enrollment rates for black students fell nationwide by six percent. Together, we must reverse that disturbing national trend.
Now, I sometimes hear that my plans for improving the pipeline to college are too ambitious. Although we are providing $3.5 billion dollars over the next several years to fund the turnaround of chronically underperforming schools, skeptics say that no big school system can transform more than a handful of failing schools. And it is supposed to be just as difficult to meaningfully improve the quality of the teaching force.
After seven years as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, I know that any large system is hard to reform. But I reject the fashionable pessimism that the status quo cannot change. And one of the reasons that I remain so optimistic about the capacity for transformational change is the record of HBCUs. Outside of the HBCU community, not many people know that HBCUs were created largely because there was a desperate need to train teachers and build schools for black students after the Civil War, when Jim Crow took hold in the South and Reconstruction ended.
In his famous essay, "The Talented Tenth," W.E.B. DuBois wrote that it has "been in the furnishing of teachers that the Negro college has found its peculiar function. Few persons realize how vast a work, how mighty a revolution has thus been accomplished. To furnish five millions and more people with teachers of their own race and blood, in one generation, was not only a very difficult undertaking, but a very important one."
At the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, Washington was determined not just to train as many teachers as possible but to build them schoolhouses in which to teach the sons and daughters of former slaves. Working with donated labor and money from impoverished sharecroppers, and with the backing of Northern philanthropists like Julius Rosenwald, the Washington-Rosenwald school construction program built nearly 3,500 schools in 14 Southern states by 1927. Those schools employed over 10,000 teachers, who taught nearly half-a-million children. Clearly, the challenges we face now in turning around the nation's worst five percent of schools pale besides those that Washington and DuBois faced.
Today, schools of education at HBCUs face a new challenge—to turn out this next generation of African American teachers to serve in high-poverty urban and rural schools. We know that black teachers are more likely than their white peers to want to work in high-poverty, high-needs schools and are more likely to stay there than their white counterparts. Every day, African-American teachers are doing absolutely invaluable work in helping to close the insidious achievement gap.
Yet we also know that children of color have too few teachers of color. Nationwide, only about 8 percent of teachers are African-American, even though in our largest school districts, more than half the students are typically African American and Latino. And it does not speak well for the future that less than two percent of our nation's teachers are African American males.
I was delighted that a quarter of Spelman's female graduates applied last year to Teach for America, which was the largest single employer of Spelman seniors. And it was encouraging to learn that more than eight percent of Morehouse men applied to TFA last year. The truth, though, is that we still have a long, long way to go to get more black male teachers in the classroom. Of the nearly 27,000 bachelor degrees that HBCUs awarded to African-American students in 2007, males earned just a third of those degrees. That has to change.
We also must improve teacher preparation programs. In 2000, the national teacher-certification pass rate was 93 percent. But at HBCUs the comparable figure was about 80 percent.
In the late 1980s, HBCU schools of education faced similar challenges with the imposition of the National Teachers Examination as a licensure prerequisite—and many HBCUs launched test preparation programs and revised curricula to successfully meet that challenge. I know that HBCU schools of education can rise to the occasion again—and must, along with other schools of education, do a better job of establishing a database to track their graduates over time.
Now I don't want to sound naïve. I realize that managing for better outcomes with modest—and sometimes diminishing— resources is no small feat. But again, I don't subscribe to the notion that different outcomes can just be explained away by differences in resources.
Let me give you an example. Earlier this year, the American Enterprise Institute released a study which concluded that only 53 percent of students entering four-year colleges graduate within six years. Just as disturbing was the fact that graduation rates from institution to institution varied dramatically, even at colleges with similar admission standards, attracting similar students.
At Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina, 51 percent of students graduate within six years. But other similar HBCUs graduated fewer than 20 percent of their students in six years. That is an unacceptable outcome for students. And just like other institutions of higher education, HBCUs cannot explain away big differences in graduation rates simply by reference to the usual suspects. The management practices of our colleges have to be part of the explanation—and part of the solution.
I want to conclude by suggesting that HBCUs, despite their modest resources, may be better positioned than some institutions of higher ed to develop a stronger culture of accountability in the years ahead. During their 130-year history, HBCUs have often accomplished what seemed impossible, educating generations of ill-prepared students on shoestring budgets.
And so I'd like to turn the question of accountability on its head for a minute, and ask, how did HBCUs produce such a remarkable record—and what lessons can other institutions of higher ed and HBCUs themselves learn from that record?
One of the challenges that HBCUs have faced since their inception—and still face today—is that their students too often receive an inadequate education in high school and arrive on campus with poor skills. More than half of HBCU students are the first members of their families to attend college. They have little family tradition of being away from home, budgeting for studying time, and immersing themselves in researching and writing college-level papers. And they have few financial resources to fall back on if a crisis hits at home.
But the founders of HBCUs and their successors had an animating insight that helped tens of thousands of students begin to catch up and eliminate their academic gaps. HBCU advocates recognized that non-cognitive skills like perseverance, self-control, grit, punctuality, treating others with respect, the ability to defer gratification, and being well-spoken played a huge role in determining whether students persisted in college and would one day flourish on the job.
Long before researchers documented that non-cognitive skills were often as important in determining success as book smarts, HBCUs devoted special attention to forming the character and habits of mind that helped students succeed. As an 18-year old at Morehouse College, Martin Luther King Jr. put it this way in the Maroon Tiger, the campus newspaper: "Intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate."
During their first half-century, HBCUs were far more prescriptive about student conduct and character than other institutions of higher education—so much so that scholars have described the early African-American leaders of HBCUs as "Black Victorians" and "Ebony Puritans." W.E.B DuBois, who attended Harvard after his years at Fisk, later said that "At Fisk, we had character dinned into our ears. At Harvard we never mentioned it."
As decades passed, HBCUs inevitably became less prescriptive about student decorum. Yet even today when a freshman arrives at Morehouse College he gets "The Speech." It's the same speech that Martin Luther King heard, that Maynard Jackson listened to, that Spike Lee absorbed. And the speech is about what it means to be a Morehouse Man.
The president of Morehouse tells those excited and nervous freshmen about how they are to comport themselves on and off campus. He tells them of the expectation that they will excel and display ethical leadership—and go on to give something back to society. Just last April, at a college town hall meeting, Dr. Robert Franklin, Morehouse's current president, told students that "Morehouse men must be so sensitive to the presence of disorder, mediocrity and injustice that they cannot sleep well at night until they tip the scale toward justice."
Now I can confirm that what W.E.B. DuBois wrote 60 years ago about Fisk and Harvard is still true. There still is no speech at Harvard about what it means to be a Harvard man, there still is no admonition to be impatient with mediocrity and social injustice.
Of course, in the modern era, HBCU students have much more freedom than their predecessors. But as Michael Lomax of the United Negro College Fund has pointed out, a new generation of gap-closing secondary schools in urban areas has in fact adopted wholesale the HBCU model of emphasizing both cognitive and non-cognitive skills.
High-performing schools like the University Park Campus School in Worcester, Massachusetts, the KIPP school network, Urban Prep in Chicago, and the Achievement First schools all carefully prescribe student conduct. They celebrate both good schoolwork and good character. At Amistad Academy in New Haven, a school motto that could be torn straight from the HBCU playbook is "We sweat the small stuff."
And these gap-closing schools learned one last lesson from HBCU's about boosting minority achievement. They learned that a teacher can be a prescriptive and strong mentor as long as students know that he or she cares deeply about the student's development and provides the one-on-one attention that all our students' need. As a child, I learned in my mother's afterschool program that a good tutoring program is a good thing. But a good tutoring program with a caring adult is a great thing. It can literally change the course of a child's life.
Now we all know that colleges and universities are not going to go back to the days where college administrators enforced parietal rules and visiting privileges in dorms. But the basic insight that non-cognitive skills matter is still true—and it's just as relevant at research universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges as at HBCUs.
Consider the $1 billion Gates Millennium Scholars Program, administered by the United Negro College Fund. It is the largest private minority scholarship program in the country—and it has been a huge success. Some 5,000 Gates Scholars currently attend over 900 schools, and Gates Scholar recipients have a graduation rate of almost 80 percent—which is higher than the graduation rate of high-income students in the U.S. But the Gates scholarships aren't just four-year, last-dollar scholarships. The program also offers leadership training, mentoring, and assistance from counselors who help students navigate the problems of going to college.
Other HBCUs also are creating a culture of accountability by reinforcing habits for success. At Spelman College, professors still do something that would seem hopelessly Old School on many campuses today: They keep track of student attendance. And professors will refer a young woman to the dean, vice president, or even the president if she starts skipping class.
Philander Smith College in Arkansas developed its own approach to boost retention and completion. In 2007, college president Walter Kimbrough launched a campus-wide Black Male Initiative to reduce dropout rates after he discovered that just 11 percent of black male students were graduating in six years. For relatively little money, Philander Smith provided mentoring, lectures, and special events for black men. The college even held a "Swagger Like Us" fashion contest, and a session on how to tie a tie for those students who may not have learned to do so growing up. In just two years, the six-year graduation rate for black males reported by the college has more than doubled, to 24 percent. There is still a long way to go. But that's the kind of progress and momentum that we have to replicate.
Yet other HBCUs are creating a culture of accountability by building stronger and more effective developmental education classes. Now ultimately, I want to see colleges and universities get out of the catch-up business altogether. But for now, all levels of higher ed have to do a much better job of accelerating and targeting developmental instruction.
At present, remedial instruction too often is the Bermuda Triangle of higher education. Students sail into class but they never seem to come out— and no one knows what happened to them along the way, or what classroom interventions were effective and which were ineffective.
At Elizabeth State University in North Carolina they have demystified developmental courses and set up a system to carefully track students to boost retention. Instead of having inexperienced adjuncts teach introductory and developmental courses, Elizabeth State has some of its top professors teach the classes. Students are required to attend sessions on how to correctly apply for federal financial aid. And when a student drops out, the university calls the student to find why they quit—and encourages them to re-enroll.
One last story: At the start of my talk, I mentioned Xavier University of Louisiana's outstanding record in enrolling graduates in medical school. But that is not the whole story. In the early 1970s, ten students or fewer from Xavier were enrolling each year in medical school –and the students who did enroll were sadly unprepared. A group of Xavier's science faculty members decided to do something about it. In 1977, they got federal and foundation support to create intensive summer science programs to boost the skills of high school seniors in New Orleans. They redesigned Xavier's entry-level science courses—and developed special workbooks with plain English definitions of scientific terms for incoming students with inadequate math or science preparation.
When the professors noticed that struggling students were not being monitored closely, they required students to meet weekly with academic advisors and report their grades. And today, each summer a letter is sent to every student's home, containing a chart that compares the student's grades to those of recent Xavier graduates who were accepted at grad schools. By 1999, Xavier University of Louisiana was sending nearly 100 seniors a year to medical school.
Now these are just a handful of illustrations of how HBCUs are already fostering a culture of accountability that can help pave the way for other postsecondary institutions too. And for all the hard-won triumphs of college presidents to boost enrollment, it is worth remembering that it is cheaper to keep her—or him. Postsecondary institutions typically expend $2,000 to $3,000 to recruit a new full-time student but spend much less to retain a student.
I recognize that improving accountability and retention may not be seen as the glamorous work associated with being a college leader or the Secretary of Education. Few students come home from class one day to say "Ma, when I grow up, do you think I could be an administrator?"
I am not going to kid you. When I was CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, I did not always welcome phone calls from the nice man at the U.S. Department of Education. That's because our department has historically been a compliance machine, not an engine of innovation.
I am determined to change that historical relationship. I want the department to provide incentives to imaginative reformers at HBCUs and other universities and colleges to undertake far-reaching programs to improve outcomes for our students. And increasing graduation rates is critical to elevating achievement and readying students to compete in the information age.
When resources are limited, it's a challenge to institute ambitious reforms and expand the institutional research needed to measure and track outcomes. But the record of HBCUs and of higher education writ large gives many reasons for optimism. Think of how higher ed has responded to the challenges of Jim Crow, the Depression, World War II, the oil crisis, and 9/11.
I believe that higher education and HBCUs can adapt successfully once again. With your help, you courage, and your commitment, we can transform higher education. No one has done more to help close the achievement gap than HBCUs—and no one will do more in the years ahead to make our long-sought dream of equal educational opportunity a reality. Thank you for all that you have done—and for your continued commitment to the cause of equality.


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When Hollywood wants a futuristic, paranoid thriller where nothing is what it seems, the studios reach for the work of one man. This week, Philip K. Dick continues his reign as Hollywood's idea spigot, with a remake of Total Recall. More PKD films are in the works, and there's no shortage of material out there.
But tastes change. What if Hollywood decides to pick on some other science fiction author, living or dead, to become its go-to movie source? Here are 15 authors who could be Hollywood's next Philip K. Dick.
Top image: Cover of The Whole Man by John Brunner.
A few things come to mind when you think about Philip K. Dick's reign as Hollywood idea-generator, which only began after his death. First of all, although Dick wrote plenty of stuff set in space and on other planets, the majority of his film adaptations have taken place on Earth, mostly in a recognizable near future. And for the most part, most films based on Dick's work have fallen loosely into the "thriller" category. More loosely in some cases than others, for sure. Oh, and Philip K. Dick was very prolific — despite one long period during which he didn't produce much at all.
So to be the heir to the PKD crown, an author would have to have created works that take place mostly on a near-future Earth, and have elements that could be adapted to the thriller genre, without taking too many liberties. And be hella prolific, either in short stories or in novels. Not too difficult, right? Here are our picks.
Theodore Sturgeon
Sturgeon only wrote half a dozen original novels, but his collected short stories occupy 13 volumes — and many of them are weird enough for Philip K. Dick. And many of his best works take place in "our" world, only with one element of strangeness, like psychic powers added — and there's plenty of paranoia to be had in books like The Dreaming Jewels and More Than Human. As Samuel Delany wrote, Sturgeon was the master of near-future science fiction.
Rudy Rucker
But suppose you want something a bit... weirder? Rudy Rucker is another author whose works frequently take place in a world that's just a few steps removed from our own — but freaky as hell. In particular, you could imagine Software becoming an utterly demented Dickian excursion into a world of strange drug trips, robot duplicates of real people, a robot uprising on the Moon, and a sinister ice cream truck. But also, Rucker has written a number of great short stories, and a few of his stand-alone novels also could spawn great movies, especially Mathematicians in Love.
Haruki Murakami
And then there's another awesomely weird author. We actually nominated Murakami as the next PKD a couple years ago: "If you're looking for a Dickian storyteller who's got the pedigree to spawn some thought-provokingly weird movies, you don't have to look much further than Murakami, whose novels often include mysterious conspiracies, fantastical plot devices and alternate universes."
James Tiptree, Jr.
Alice Sheldon, a former CIA analyst, wrote a slew of great stories which examine the boundaries of humanity and frequently show a paranoid or dystopian vision of the future. "The Screwfly Solution," in which an epidemic of violence against women turns out to be part of a sinister conspiracy, is tailor-made for a Dickian thriller. And then there's "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," where a "deformed," suicidal girl controls the brainless body of a perfectly beautiful star, on behalf of corporate interests. And there are several other great candidates among her work.
Charles Stross
We've demanded a movie of Stross' Glasshouse for years now. But there are plenty of other Stross books that might come closer to the "Hollywood action adventure movie" model — for one thing, there's his acclaimed Laundry Files series, about a secret agent dealing with Lovecraftian threats. And then there are his Halting State novels, set in a near future that explores the changing world of cyber-culture and pervasive surveillance.
Neal Stephenson
He's helped to perfect cyberpunk with novels like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. And most recently, his novel Reamde was acclaimed as a nearly perfect thriller. You could also make a hell of an action-adventure movie out of Interface, his collaboration with his uncle, J. Frederick George.
Maureen F. McHugh
Just her most recent story collection After The Apocalypse could provide plenty of dark, twisted looks at the near future. But you could also make a hell of a movie out of China Mountain Zhang or her other novels. McHugh has also been a pioneer of alternate-reality games, and you could easily see her creating a dystopian near future movie script similar to her Year Zero ARG.
John Brunner
Brunner became famous as the master of near-future dystopias with novels like Stand on Zanzibar, as well as the proto-cyberpunk novel Shockwave Rider. The Forteana Blog makes a strong case for Brunner being the "British Philip K. Dick," and points out some lesser-known works which sound intensely Dickian, including The Gaudy Shadows, No Other Gods But Me and Father of Lies.
William Gibson
Gibson is probably the most obvious choice — and indeed, if Vincenzo Natali manages to pull off a faithful, decent adaptation of Neuromancer, this could open the floodgates. Gibson's books and stories capture something essential about our lives in a networked, media-saturated 21st Century world — and we need more good Gibson films to put Johnny Mnemonic behind us.
Nancy Kress
Kress is another author whose work tends to focus on the near future, and how certain changes in technology affect everything around us. Her stories deal with topics ranging from rampaging artificial intelligence holding people hostage in their own homes to genetic discrimination. And her work frequently contains enough strangeness and dread to keep Hollywood happy for years.
Jonathan Lethem
Lethem has dedicated a lot of his career to celebrating Dick's work — so his inclusion here is a must. His early works, like the stories collected in The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye, have a pronounced Dick influence, too — but many of his later works also offer possibilities for some pretty awesome noir action too, especially Gun With Occasional Music.
Robert Silverberg
Silverberg's classic novels have been getting reissued in nice editions in the past few years, giving everybody a chance to appreciate the power of novels like Dying Inside, about a telepath who's slowly losing his power. And the much trippier Son of Man. Like a lot of classic SF authors, Silverberg has been incredibly prolific, writing tons of short stories over the years, and many of them are quite twisted indeed.
Warren Ellis
Ellis' amazing comics career has spanned many genres — but you could easily imagine many of his works, including Planetary, Global Frequency, Fell and, yes, Transmetropolitan, becoming stylish, intense films along the lines of Blade Runner. Although what we really want is a Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. movie, even if that wouldn't be very Philip K. Dick-esque at all.
Octavia Butler
Butler's work frequently deals with posthuman or transhuman outsiders interacting with humanity — but she also writes a lot about near future dystopias and near-future disasters. And a key theme in her work — people with strange powers, and how they take responsibility for ordinary people (including the ways in which power can be misused) could lend itself to a very Dickian interpretation in the hands of the right film-maker. The best bet would probably be the Parable novels, though. Image: Wayne Barlowe's cover for Wild Seed.
Cory Doctorow
And last but not least, there's Doctorow, whose work spans post-scarcity strangeness and near-future "war on terror" horror stories. Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town could be the new Scanner Darkly, sort of.
Thanks to everybody who responded in the comments on this now-defunct poll from 2008, for suggesting some ideas.


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An Italian consumers association is set to mount a class-action lawsuit to obtain compensation for customers who buy PCs with preinstalled Microsoft software but who prefer not to use the Windows OS, the association's president announced Tuesday.
The lawsuit seeking the return of the cost of the unwanted Microsoft software from the manufacturers of computer hardware will be registered with a court in Florence later this week, said Vincenzo Donvito, president of ADUC (Association for the Rights of Users and Consumers).
Around 2,000 people, most of them Linux users, have already expressed interest in participating in the lawsuit, Donvito said in a telephone interview. The initiative takes advantage of a new law permitting class-action lawsuits, which went into effect on Jan. 1.
"We have been waging this battle for some years and have already won a pilot case in Florence," Donvito said. "That victory modified the situation and many producers now allow a refund, but with a difficult and complicated system. Customers have to send their computers to the manufacturers' headquarters to get the software removed and then they only receive compensation of 30 to 40 euros for a product that costs between 150 and 250 euros."
The system ended up costing consumers money and people would only do it on a point of principle, Donvito said. Private individuals who bought computers containing Microsoft software, rejected the license and left the software unused can participate in the ADUC lawsuit, which is being filed in Florence because the association has its headquarters there.
"Participation in the lawsuit is free, though people are welcome to make a voluntary contribution to the legal costs," Donvito said.
Judges in Florence will have to decide whether to accept the lawsuit, and the process could take several months, as the administrative machinery for processing the new lawsuit requests is not yet in place, Donvito said.
It will not be possible to get back more money than the actual cost of the Microsoft software, the ADUC president said. "Italian law provides for the recovery of money that has been illicitly subtracted but there is no provision for punitive damages," he said.


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Online travel giant Expedia announced this morning that it will acquire a majority stake in Trivago, the Dusseldorf, Germany-based hotel search and price comparison site.
In a regulatory filing, Expedia said it will pay a total of about €477 million Euro, which is approximately $632 million in US dollars, in exchange for a 61.6 percent share of Trivago. €434 million of the deal is in cash, and €43 million is in Expedia stock. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2013, pending regulatory approval.
Expedia, which is traded on the NASDAQ stock market, has a valuation of approximately $8 billion.
It's a very good turnout for Trivago, which was founded seven years ago and has grown into an extremely popular — and profitable — hotel room search site for the European market and beyond. Trivago operates in 30 countries and expects to exceed €100 million in net revenue for 2012, according to a press release issued regarding the Expedia deal.
Today's deal also seems to show a nice boost in valuation for the company since its last funding round. In the spring of 2011, Trivago sold a 25 percent stake to late-stage venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners for a reported €40 million — that's an overall valuation of €160 million Euro. Today's stake sale valued the entire company at nearly €800 million.


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The latest release of Gallery (2.3) now has Akismet support built in. Thanks to Chris for letting us know.
Kevin at BIGACE CMS has developed a commenting extension which uses Akismet.
And lastly but by no means least the latest version of vBulletin blog also has Akismet support by default.


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Copyright © 1997 by The Resilience Alliance*
Colding, J., and C. Folke. 1997. The relations among threatened species, their protection, and taboos. Conservation Ecology [online]1(1): 6. Available from the Internet. URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol1/iss1/art6/
A version of this article in which text, figures, tables, and appendices are separate files may be found by following this link.
Research The Relations Among Threatened Species, Their Protection, and Taboos Johan Colding1, Carl Folke2
1,2Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; and Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University;
KEY WORDS: endemic species; keystone species; nature conservation; taboos; threatened species; traditional societies.
In contrast, Berkes et al. (1995) describe social restraints, such as taboos, that lead to indigenous biological conservation. These restraints include providing total protection to some biological communities, habitat patches, and certain selected species, as well as protection of other species during critical stages of their life history.
Taboos related to the natural environment initially may not have been intended for nature conservation. For example, species may be avoided because of their behavioral patterns and morphological characteristics (Zann 1983), or in the belief that they are toxic (Begossi 1992, Begossi and de Souza Braga 1992). Human perception of, and relation to, species may govern which ones to avoid. Species may be avoided simply because they occur in creation myths, because they represent religious symbols, or because they are pet animals. For example, several species associated with different gods and godesses in the Hindu scripture are sacred among Hindus. Thus, world view and cosmology may explain why species are culturally avoided.
In many cases, nonintentional nature conservation may be the outcome of such an avoidance, which may be highly adaptive in ecological terms. Good examples are taboos associated with particular habitat patches, known as sacred groves. Sacred groves are smaller or larger ecosystems, set aside for religious purposes (Gadgil and Vartak 1974). These habitat patches, once widespread throughout India, Africa, and Europe (Frazer 1922), may be the only primary forests remaining locally (Gadgil and Vartak 1974, Dorm-Adzoby et al. 1991, Wilson 1993). The same type of sacred habitats can be found in South America, for example, among the Kunas of Panama (Chapin 1991), the Cocnucos and Yanaconas of Colombia (Redford and Maclean Stearman 1993), and the Tukanos of the Brazilian-Colombian border (Chernella 1987). Under current rates of deforestation and species loss, sacred groves are becoming ecologically important. They may buffer against the depletion of genetically adapted local variants and overall biodiversity in a region. They can serve as important recruitment areas to surrounding ecosystems. Hence, culturally defined taboos may play an increasingly important role for biodiversity conservation on a local and regional level.
Taboos resemble mechanisms for the protection of species and habitats in contemporary society, but they have other social rules and sanctions, rooted in the traditional belief systems. Ecologically oriented anthropologists have revealed the complex ecological adaptations behind taboos (Rappaport 1967, 1968, Harris 1979, Balée 1985). For example, Harris (1971) suggested that the taboo on the Indian cattle is ecologically adaptive, in that it increases rather than decreases the capacity of the present Indian system of food production to support human life, through the production of milk, dung, and bullocks.
Taboos have also been a social mechanism in the management of natural resources, as documented in several studies. Among traditional societies in Oceania, it was customary to impose taboos on the use of subsistence crops to prevent their being harvested at inappropriate times (Chapman 1985, Child and Child 1993). Taboos were also imposed on certain marine locations in order to avoid overexploitation of aquatic resources (Johannes 1978, Chapman 1985). These taboos were not always permanent in time and space, but could be removed when food resources were plentiful. Such taboos that directly manage nature are reportedly found among traditional groups from various parts of the world (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971, 1976, Kwapena 1984, Sarkar 1984, Begossi 1992, Sankhala 1993). They may have been the outcome of a trial-and-error process of resource management strategy resembling the contemporary practice of adaptive management (see Holling 1978, Walters 1986). For example, Berkes (1997) argues that periods of mismanagement of North American caribou among the Cree in the 1900s resulted, in part, from a neglect of traditional hunting rules. After a change in Cree hunting behavior, the caribou population returned to previous levels. In the same manner, taboos may be employed as a social mechanism for the enforcement of ecologically adaptive behavior, even though different cultural contexts are attached to them.
In this paper, we focus on what role taboos may have for the protection of threatened species. Thus, we are concerned with taboos that are directly set on particular species for various reasons. Most anthropologists refer to taboos on species as "food taboos" or "food avoidances," stressing the anthropocentric function of species as food. A division is often made between general;and specific;food taboos, where the former is observed by all members in a human group, and the latter by particular segments in the population at particular times (Rea 1981).
It is tempting to regard specific food taboos as mechanisms in a resource management strategy, since they regulate the exploitation of species to a greater or lesser extent (McDonald 1977). Certain food sources may be forbidden to women during childbirth, children under a particular age, or parents of newborns. Thus, strains on a target resource may be greatly reduced. There is probably no single theory explaining why people employ specific food taboos. Possible ecological relations behind specific food taboos are often neglected by anthropologists, but should not be ruled out. In a study among South American tropical groups, McDonald (1977) found a positive correlation between environmental conditions and the number of specific food taboos imposed on game animals by different human groups. The increase in such taboos among some groups could be explained by the increased need for conservation in less productive natural environments.
General food taboos, on the other hand, comprise a total prohibition of species as food at all times. Here, we call such taboos specific-species taboos, stressing that species may be avoided not only as foods, but also for a variety of other plausible reasons. Such taboos totally protect animals and plants, both in time and space, by prohibiting their killing and detrimental use by all members of a human community. At least in theory, this total prohibition may be of direct value in protecting threatened, and perhaps ecologically critical, species. In this study, we will analyze such a relationship using information from several different case studies. As far as we know, no previous study has provided a synthesis of the relations between threatened species, their protection, and taboos.
We limited our selection of sources to those between 1978 and 1994. Because current scientific documentation of specific-species taboos is scarce, our samples could not be selected randomly. We had to select studies in which such data existed. Therefore, it is awkward to draw any general conclusions from results conveyed here. In this synthesis, we have only focused on particular threatened species. Although we found information on taboos that prohibit the use of whole phyla and families, we could not use it unless particular species were referred to in the sources.
Populations of particular species documented as being avoided by specific-species taboos were grouped in biological classes to determine what types of species are most widely abstained from. Species avoided by taboos were compared with species listed as threatened, according to the World Conservation Union. Sources used for this comparison were the 1994 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals (Groombridge 1993) and the Encyclopedia of Endangered Species (Emanoil 1994). The species were registered using their IUCN index status. The following threatened-species categories have been employed (see Groombridge 1993):
Extinct (Ex) . Species not definitely located in the wild during the past 50 years.
Endangered (E) . Taxa in danger of extinction and whose survival is unlikely if the causal factors continue operating. Included are taxa whose numbers have been reduced to a critical level or whose habitats have been so drastically reduced that they are deemed to be in immediate danger of extinction. Also included are taxa that may be extinct but have definitely been seen in the wild in the past 50 years.
Vulnerable (V) . Taxa believed likely to become "Endangered" in the near future if the causal factors continue operating. Included are taxa of which most or all populations are decreasing because of overexploitation, extensive habitat destruction, or other environmental disturbance; taxa with seriously depleted populations whose ultimate security has not yet been assured; and taxa with populations that are still abundant, but are under threat from severe, adverse factors throughout their range.
Rare (R) . Taxa with small world populations that are not at present "Endangered" or "Vulnerable," but are at risk. These taxa are usually localized within restricted geographical areas or habitats, or are thinly scattered over a more extensive range.
Indeterminate (I) . Taxa known to be "Endangered," "Vulnerable," or "Rare," but for which there is not enough information to assign the appropriate category.
Insufficiently known (K) . Taxa that are suspected, but not definitely known, to belong to any of the above categories, because of lack of information.
Threatened (T) . Threatened is a general term to denote species that are "Endangered," "Vulnerable," "Rare," "Indeterminate," or "Insufficiently Known." It should not be confused with the use of the same term by the U.S. Office of Endangered Species.
Commercially threatened (CT) . Taxa not currently threatened with extinction, but most or all of whose populations are threatened as a sustainable commercial resource, or will become so, unless their exploitation is regulated.
We estimated the proportion of threatened species avoided out of the total number of avoided species, and did additional research to determine whether specific-species taboos are set on endemic and keystone species.
a Blank cells indicate that no popular name in English is specified.
b Sources of information: 1, Chapman (1985); 2, Gadgil (1987); 3, Ramakrishnan and Patnaik (1992); 4, Rea (1981); 5, Ntiamoa-Baidu (1991); 6, Begossi (1992); 7, Begossi and de Souza Braga (1992); 8, Alvard (1993); 9, Kwapena (1984); 10, Balée (1985); 11, Ross (1978); 12, Fargey (1992); 13, Osemeobo (1994); 14, Sankhala (1993);
15, DeScola (1986).
c IUCN status: E, endangered; I, indeterminate; V, vulnerable; K, insufficiently known; R, rare; -, no threat.
a Blank cells indicate that no popular name in English is specified.
b Sources of information: 1, Chapman (1985); 2, Gadgil (1987); 3, Ramakrishnan and Patnaik (1992); 4, Rea (1981); 5, Ntiamoa-Baidu (1991); 6, Begossi (1992); 7, Begossi and de Souza Braga (1992); 8, Alvard (1993); 9, Kwapena (1984); 10, Balée (1985); 11, Ross (1978); 12, Fargey (1992); 13, Osemeobo (1994); 14, Sankhala (1993); 15, DeScola (1986).
c IUCN status: E, endangered; I, indeterminate; V, vulnerable; K, insufficiently known; R, rare; -, no threat.
Furthermore, of the total number of avoided species in this study, five are considered keystone by ecologists (nos. 1, 45, 48, 49, and 62). Paine (1966, 1969) first used the term "keystone" for species that play a major role in the structure, dynamics, and stability of an ecosystem. He demonstrated how removal of a keystone predator (starfish) changed the species composition and lowered species richness. Although the concept's relevance is debated (e.g., Mills et al. 1993), such species or groups of species seem to play an important role in ecosystem processes and functions (Naeem et al. 1994, Tilman and Downing 1994, Holling et al. 1995). Of course, they need not be "rare," "endangered," or "threatened," but contribute to functional diversity and maintain habitats for species that are threatened (Folke et al. 1996).
In our samples, the estimated ratio of threatened species avoided to the total number of species avoided within each class reveals that reptiles constitute the class with the highest ratio (62%), followed by mammals (44%). In these two classes, ~ 48% of the total number of species are threatened. Among birds, only one species is listed as "threatened" (no. 35, Table 1 ). The threatened species in this study are confined to tropical and subtropical regions, mainly in Central and South America, Africa, and India (see Table 1 ). They represent ~ 1.6% of the threatened reptiles worldwide and ~ 2.6% of the world's threatened mammals.
Threatened, endemic, and keystone species This analysis indicates that many specific-species taboos have the ability to protect threatened species. All of the endemic species protected by specific-species taboos, and all except one keystone species in this study, are listed as threatened by IUCN (Table 1). Although it may be impossible to quantify to what extent taboos protect species, it must be recognized that many traditional human groups offer temporal and spatial refugia to threatened and ecologically viable species in different ways. Such species may hide, forage, and reproduce in the vicinity of the local groups that abstain from their utilization.
From this study it appears that avoidance of species occurs in two ways, either through (1) the belief system of culturally isolated human populations (local avoidance), or (2) the sharing of belief systems throughout larger cultural regions (regional avoidance). The taboo on the green sea turtle, Chelonia mydas, (no. 20, Table 1) constitutes an example of local avoidance, because the specific-species taboo is locally restricted to the people of Buzios Island in Brazil. The taboo on the oxus cobra, Naja oxiana (no. 21), is an example of avoidance in particular sites over a large region, in this case, India. The cobra is protected in or near small forest patches dedicated to serpent deities, located in the vicinity of temple sites.
Threatened species occupying a narrow geographical range or only one or a few specialized habitats benefit from taboos imposed by local groups. Threatened species occurring in small populations throughout a wide range may also benefit from local specific-species taboos. Such taboos may protect habitats that serves as important refugia and recruitment sites.
A precondition for successful protection of threatened species and their habitats is that local human groups have access and control over their local resource areas, with rights to exclude outsiders (Hanna et al. 1996). Many indigenous groups, despite having small populations, may indeed control very large resource areas. The Achuars of Ecuador and Peru, with a population density of only 0.17 persons/km 2 , have access to an area greater than Corsica, 9000 km 2 (DeScola 1986). Threatened species such as the spectacled bear Tremarctos ornatus (no. 58), the giant anteater Myrmecophaga tridactyla (no. 66), and the giant armadillo Priodontes maximus (no. 67 of Table 1 ) receive protection by taboos imposed by the Achuars within this area. Thus, a specific-species taboo may have greater than the immediately recognized local effect if species are protected throughout vast habitats.
Among the 21 threatened species, four are endemic, i.e., confined to a very small range or to one particular region, not occurring naturally elsewhere (Primack 1993). For example, the mud turtle Kinosternon (no. 19 in Table 1 ) is totally avoided by three Sonoran desert tribes (see Rea 1981). These tribes have access to one of the thinly scattered localities where this species thrives. Other endemic populations of threatened species avoided include the southern pocket gopher Thomomys umbrinus emotus (no. 45), endemic to New Mexico, United States; the San Quintin kangaroo rat Dipodomys gravipes(no. 48), only found in Mexico; and the houserock chiseltoothed kangaroo rat Dipodomys microps leucotis (no. 49), which is restricted to Arizona, United States (Groombridge 1993). We believe that the specific-species taboos set on these species are highly effective for their protection.
Taboos protect not only threatened and endemic species, but also keystone species. A closer look at Table 1 shows that at least five of the 70 avoided species are recognized by ecologists as keystone. For example, the peepal tree Ficus religiosa (no. 1) is classified as a "keystone mutualist" for the maintenance of tropical biological diversity (Gilbert 1980, Terborgh 1986). This species is widely protected all over India (Gadgil 1987). Among vertebrates, the southern pocket gopher Thomomys umbrinus emotus (no. 45) is classified as an "earth-mover" keystone by Huntly and Inouye (1988). "Earth-movers" are important in that they move large quantities of earth and they burrow, scrape, or otherwise create bare areas free of plants (Bond 1993). Also, the two species of Dipodomys included in this study (nos. 48 and 49), are regarded as effective "keystone predators" in the North American deserts. They affect composition of the plant community, thereby indirectly affecting ant and bird densities (Bond 1993). These rodent species prey on large-seeded plants that would otherwise competitively reduce the abundance of small-seeded plants (Brown et al. 1986, Brown and Heske 1990, Thompson et al. 1991). The threatened puma Felis concolor (no. 62) is considered a keystone predator. Being a carnivore, it preys upon vertebrates that feed on tree species with large seeds. Thus, pumas may control forest composition by favoring large-seeded tree species on behalf of small-seeded species (Terborgh 1988).
Taboos, indigenous groups, and species conservation As many as 62% of the avoided reptiles and 44% of the mammals in our analysis are threatened, showing the important role that traditional peoples may play in their protection. Taboos may be an important factor for some vertebrates not yet extinct. In fact, no one knows how many of the world's species owe their survival to human groups that have avoided using them.
Although several specific-species taboos may be a consequence of the symbolical or mythological qualities that certain groups ascribe to animals (Rea 1981, Kent 1989, Child and Child 1993), conservation motives behind such taboos should not be ruled out. For example, Reichel-Dolmatoff (1976), studying the Tukanos of the Colombian northwestern Amazon, states that the shaman in this group may interfere directly with hunting, fishing, gathering, and most other harvesting activities, and may personally control the number of animals to be killed. He might even completely prohibit the killing of certain animals in a restricted area whenever he thinks that a certain species is too low in abundance. Thus, the shaman becomes a powerful agent in the control and management of resources. Among other ethnic groups, the medicine man, the elders, or other prominent figures may hold the same position with a similar responsibility (Ntiamoa-Baidu 1991, Wilson 1993). Such conservation ethics may be more subtle and less clearly stated than Western notions of conservation (Primack 1993, Berkes et al. 1995). However, this does not at all imply that traditional societies live in harmony with nature. Members of such societies are no more superior or inferior as people than other groups of humans (Bodley 1994). Even though many such groups impose constraints on their use of species, natural resources, and ecosystems, we do not imply that they are "noble savages."
What is at core here is that species conservation exists in traditional societies as a means of human survival. Even though such practices may have been diluted or even lost in many traditional societies (Alvard 1993, 1994), or might not be expressed in conservation terms, species protection by taboos seems to have existed over millennia (Gadgil et al. 1993). Especially in parts of Oceania, there are practices that seem to have been deliberate and part of a nature management strategy (Johannes 1981). The Tikopian taboo in Polynesia on harvesting coconuts at inappropriate times is one example. There is a belief that if the taboo is violated, the chief can get animals in whom a god is incarnate (like the special bat and the eel) to prevent further loss (Child and Child 1993). Such traditional conservation practices may not be incidental (Gadgil and Berkes 1991), but may have come about as a result of coevolution between humans and their natural resources over long time horizons. Coevolution, described as the reciprocal evolutionary interactions of ecologically intimate organisms (Ehrlich and Raven 1964), is here interpreted as the process in which human groups have learned to adapt to their natural environment without seriously deteriorating it. They thus increase the chances for their own survival and, indirectly, that of other species. In this sense, coevolution refers to self-organization through mutual entrainment. It is a trial-and-error process, with the continued acceptance of practices that appear to secure the resource base, coupled with the elimination of those practices that appear to destroy it (Gadgil and Berkes 1991). Such a dynamic process is likely to lead to the development of a whole range of practices, some beneficial for species conservation (Folke et al.1997).
Some specific-species taboos may have been developed in the past in order to sustain natural resources when local human groups faced resource scarcity and crises of different kinds and durations (Gadgil and Berkes 1991). Thus, taboos may have evolved to increase the buffering capacity, or resilience, of local ecosystems (Holling et al. 1997). The theory that taboos may have resulted from overexploitation of a resource can be termed the "crisis-and-learning" hypothesis.
Why a specific-species taboo continues to exist in a culture is difficult to determine. It may be that the species is still low in numbers, or that the species is recognized, through traditional ecological knowledge, as keystone in the ecosystem. There may be institutional and cultural inertia to changing conditions. Taboos can also have the opposite, anticonservation effect by increasing the harvesting pressure away from abundant species and toward less abundant ones (Johannes 1994).
An alternative hypothesis is that species are protected through specific-species taboos because they play a role in religious and cultural belief systems (Douglas 1966, Rea 1981, Roe 1982, Ingold 1994). In reality, it may be almost impossible to separate the belief system from practices and traditional ecological knowledge systems. Knowledge, practices, and beliefs tend to intermingle among traditional peoples (Gadgil et al. 1993, Folke et al. 1997). No single theory can explain specific-species taboos; species may be avoided for many reasons, depending on regional conditions and the world view of different peoples. Nevertheless, many specific-species taboos existing in the real world seem to help protect species that are threatened, endemic, and keystone.
Many indigenous groups have adapted to their natural environment in ways that conserve both their ecosystems and themselves as an integrated social-ecological system. Some studies clearly indicate that locally based human subsistence practices may enhance species richness (Gómez-Pompa and Kaus 1992, Pimentel et al. 1992, Sankhala 1993). Species, resources, and global biodiversity very well may be negatively affected by the decay of adaptive traditional resource practices and linked social mechanisms, such as taboos (Atran 1993, Becker and Ostrom 1995). This illuminates the importance of a deeper understanding of the resource conservation practices and social mechanisms of traditional societies (Folke et al. 1996). In this paper, we have analyzed the role of taboos set on species as representing one such social mechanism.
We have shown that some taboos totally protect threatened and ecologically important species, thus serving conservation ends. Although this analysis may be criticized for not representing randomly selected samples, its major contribution lies in conveying qualitative information, i.e., that adaptive social mechanisms and local institutions for species protection already exist. Parallels may be drawn between such integrated social-ecological systems and nature reserves. However, in contrast to many modern nature reserves, the local community is not excluded from the reserve, but is an integrated part of it, such that conservation is of self-interest.
We urge scientists with detailed knowledge of specific indigenous groups to make explicit the potential linkages between social mechanisms, like taboos, and practices of species conservation. We urge conservationists to support traditional peoples that conserve species and ecosystems, to adjust the handling of grants to their culture, and to conserve and make use of traditional ecological knowledge before it is lost.
Responses to this article are invited. If accepted for publication, your response will be hyperlinked to the article. To submit a comment, follow this link. To read comments already accepted, follow this link.
We are grateful to Fikret Berkes, Robert Costanza, and Jeffrey A. McNeely for valuable input on the manuscript. This work was funded through grants from the Swedish Council for Planning & Coordination of Research (FRN) and the Swedish Council for Foresty and Agricultural Research (SJFR). Carl Folke's work was also supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts through the Pew Scholars Program in Conservation and the Environment.
Address of Correspondent:
Johan Colding
Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
P.O. Box 50005, S-10405
Stockholm, Sweden
Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University
S-106 91, Stockholm, Sweden
phone: 46-8-6739539
fax: 46-8-152464
*The copyright to this article passed from the Ecological Society of America to the Resilience Alliance on 1 January 2000.
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North Korea's new leader Kim Jong-un is amazing! He is their dear and respected leader! It seems King Kim III just saved 60 flood victims from death. The N. Korean News Agency reminds us of MSNBC's balanced coverage of President Barack Obama in the report filed below.
"Isolated incommunicado, they did not find a way out, in panic at rising water. At that time a helicopter appeared," it said. "After receiving an urgent report, the dear respected Kim Jong-un issued an emergency sortie order to a unit of the Air Force of the Korean People's Army."
More importantly, when he isn't saving flood victims or marrying comrade Ri Sol Ju; the lady who gave us that thrilling rendition of "Footsteps Of Soldiers" in the YouTube atop the post, Kim Jong-un may be trying to modernize North Korea. He has been far more visible than his father was and has at least hinted that he wants a more modern and at least somewhat more capitalistic future for North Korea. In a piece optimistically entitled Glasnost in North Korea?, John Delury reports on some of Kim's recent hints at possible reform.
From the sudden dismissal of his top military leader, on grounds of "illness," to a pop music show featuring American icons Mickey Mouse and Rocky Balboa, to a novel guest- worker program allowing North Koreans to earn hard currency in China, Kim Jong-un is taking a firm grip on power even as he loosens strictures and tells officials to try new things.
He recently toured a derelict Pyongyang Amusement Park* and chewed out several local officials during a highly publicized "guidance visit." Delury describes the fireworks below:
Fixing the park, Kim said, "should be made an occasion of removing outdated ideological point of view from the heads of officials and ending their old work-style." Kim then tapped the cabinet premier and a senior military figure to personally supervise the renovations. The park is now a demonstration project for Kim's demand that officials be "creative and enterprising."
Of course China still holds N. Korea on a leash. But, King Kim openly admitted one of his rocket tests failed and even claimed to be concerned that too many people in his isolated nation go hungry. He excoriates some bureaus of his government for selling his nation's resources off to the Chinese in return for kickbacks. He went so far as mentioning the need to cut back on military spending to redirect assets to "The People's Economy."
These are baby steps, but they are legitimate. This willingness to actually tell the unpleasant truths about how things are in N. Korea may well explain his recent troubles with hardliner members of The North Korean Army. The recent firing of General Ri Yong-ho may have been over an issue similar to Julius Ceasar's crossing of The Rubicon River.**
North Korea's Army chief Ri Yong-ho may have been ousted for defying orders and moving troops near Pyongyang during a military exercise, South Korean intelligence sources told a major South Korean news agency. The troop move drew the ire of Ri's main rivals Jang Song-taek, the uncle and guardian of leader Kim Jong-un, and Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae, Chosun.com reported.
Whether this is an actual attempt to climb down remains to be seen. North Korea still supplies the Yakuza with narcotics and makes some of the most undetectable counterfeit dollars and Euros in circulation. North Korea could certainly open its markets while still threatening the South Koreans and remaining "The Soprano State" in the near term.
Yet opening to the world could also incapacitate much of the threat posed by North Korea. They could depend upon others enough to not want to see the rest of the world burn. Their people could demand more of what the rest of the world has to offer. The Kim Monarchy, like The Russian Politburo under Gorbachev, could discover that opening only partially to the rest of the world cannot be done in a controlled manner. Then Kim Jung-un could go down in history as a praiseworthy man for authoring his own demise.
*- We now have an oxymoron to rival liberal tolerance, mandatory fun and Democratic Party.
** – Unlike Pompey and the Optimates, King Kim apparently doesn't play that.