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Championship Today: Patriots will let their play do the talking
FOXBOROUGH — The trash talk has begun … from the Baltimore side anyway.
In this episode of Championship Today, the Globe's Shalise Manza Young has the latest from Gillette Stadium where the Patriots gathered on Monday to set their sights on the Ravens and Sunday's AFC Championship game.
On Sunday, Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo posted a series of messages to his Twitter account critical of the Patriots use of the hurry-up offense. Earlier today, Ayanbadejo apologized for his Twitter criticism.
In the locker room on Monday, several New England players responded to questions about the trash-talking incident, and as is the Patriot Way, the players did not take the bait, instead preferring to let their play on the field Sunday speak for them.


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Sweet & Savory Delights Gift Basket
Product Description
Take a break with this gift basket filled with delicious gourmet goodies and snacks! A great gift basket for any occasion. Filled with premium Ghirardelli and Lindt chocolate, an assortment of gourmet snacks and cookies, and much more!Dim: 16″L x 12″W x 10″H
Includes: Tavolare Savory Snack Mix Zesty White Cheddar Popcorn Deep River Original Salt Kettle Cooked Potato Chips Onion & Garlic Pretzel Nuggets Kettle Kitchen Peppermint Popcorn Crunch Brown & Haley Almond Roca Rendez Vous Sour Cherry Drop Candy Tin Lindt Extra Dark Chocolate Truffle Ghirardelli Milk Chocolate Caramel Premium Square Angelina's Sweet Butter Cookies Brent & Sam's White Chocolate Macadamia Cookies Neighbors Breakfast Blend Flavored Coffee …in an Oval Dark Stained Basket with Wooden Handles.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Commercial Cleaners
Commercial Cleaners use heavy duty cleaning equipment to provide serious cleaning to commercial buildings and areas. They may clean construction areas, industrial workshops, schools, offices and hospitals. They are required to perform manual work with large machines and cleaning supplies.
Quick summary
- Starting salary: $36,400 P/A Senior salary: $48,000 P/A Average salary: $42,000 P/A Wages will vary according to your level of skill, experience and employer Employment level: 167,400 as of November 2012 (Projected employment levels in 2017 of 178,200)
Average weekly hours: Average weekly hours worked for a full time Commercial Cleaner is 38.6 hours
Employment by region:
The top three regions for employment as a Commercial Cleaner include:
Courses you may be interested in
Employment trends
Employment for Commercial Cleaners has risen by a rate of 23.2% over the past 5 years and is expected to grow moderately through 2017.
Employment growth
Total employment growth over the past 5 years for male and female, employed part-time and full-time is 24,900
Gender (including full time and part time)
The percentage of males and females working full time and part time are:
- Male Full Time: 21.9%
- Male Part Time: 18.8%
- Female Full Time: 16.9%
- Female Part Time: 42.3%
Other relevant information
- Clean hard to reach places in the building such as ceilings, walls, pipes and fixtures to remove dust and build-up, and removing residues from machines, furnaces, boilers, tanks and other equipment located in the building
- Manage time effectively to clean all areas needed in an allotted amount of time
- Provide deep cleaning and sanitise common areas in public or private areas including public restrooms
- Remove stains and spills using acids and cleaners to wash away areas
- Stock and refill necessary items in common spaces such as tissue, soap, toilet paper and remove waste and recycled materials
- Vacuum, mop, scrub, wax and polish floors, carpet and ground areas using industrial vacuum cleaners and other cleaning equipment
- Wash outside of buildings using a variety of cleaning supplies and techniques such as sand-blasting
- Cleaning Skills
- Organisational Skills
- Problem Solving Abilities
- Strong Attention to Detail
- Time Management
Working conditions
Commercial Cleaners typically work early mornings, evenings and after regular work hours in order to clean the entire building without many people using the space. They typically work Mondays to Fridays, but may work on weekends to provide additional heavy cleaning that is hard to get to during the regular week. They should be able to spend long periods of time on their feet and be able to handle large machinery and unpleasant circumstances while cleaning.
Professional associations / Industry information
Related jobs and job titles
- Aircraft Cabin Cleaner
- Carpet Cleaner
- Hospital Cleaner
- Industrial Cleaner
- Industrial Plant Cleaner
- Office Cleaner
- Pressure and Chemical Cleaner
- Room Attendant
- School Cleaner
- Window Cleaner


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Stacy made a semi-custom version of this for me, using Organic Huangshan Mao Feng as a base. Thanks Stacy! Given the number of notes complaining of astringency and finicky flavor, I humbly suggest a reblend using this as the base. No astringency or subtle flavor here. Just smooth cream. Irish on the front end with a hint of cheesecake at the back. Absolutely wonderful. Perfect travel mug tea on a cold day.
I won't assign a rating because I don't have the exact tea, but I would give this a 92.


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Hundreds of protesters opposed to a far-reaching trade pact with China invaded Taiwan's Cabinet offices Sunday, marking a sharp escalation in a student-led movement against the island's rapidly developing ties with the communist mainland.
An Associated Press photographer outside the offices estimated the crowd at about 800. Taiwanese television stations showed scenes of protesters pushing and shoving with police in the area. (AP)


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Jeff Horwich: The other shoes have finally dropped in the LIBOR investigation. Seven other shoes, in fact. Attorneys general in New York and Connecticut have subpoenaed seven of the world's biggest banks, including Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase here in the U.S. In broad strokes, the allegations are similar to the ones Barclays settled last month: that the banks abused their power when self-reporting the LIBOR interest rate -- the rate banks use when lending to each other.
James Cox is an expert on securities law at Duke University Law School. Good to talk with you.
James Cox: Great to be here.
Horwich: Does this have the makings of a conspiracy here? In other words, is there a sense that these banks -- all seven of them -- have been working together?
Cox: Well, certainly, every indication is that that's happening. And from the very moment that the story broke with Barclays, it would be very clear to those close to the market that Barclays was low-balling its rates, and then everybody else could say, "Well, maybe this is what we ought to be doing." So I would say this has all the markings of a tacit conspiracy.
Horwich: These are state attorneys generals here who have issued subpoenas -- which means they're looking to get justice, probably some compensation, for wronged constituents of some kind. If these banks were manipulating LIBOR, remind us, who would have been hurt by this?
Cox: LIBOR is a little bit like water, in the sense that it is, in the financial markets, the universal solvent; it's used everywhere. We find municipalities facing securities lending rates that have a heavy LIBOR component to them. Decisions about when to go into markets are guided by what's happening in LIBOR. It's not possible a year from now -- or maybe even five years from now -- to fully assess the effect of the conduct of fixing the LIBOR rate. This is mammoth.
Horwich: Is this the end of things, do you think?
Cox: You know, I think it's a shot in the arm for the legal profession who will be involved with these lawsuits for decades to come; creating huge demand. And it's going to be a constant financial albatross for the rest of the banks.
Horwich: Duke University law professor James Cox. Thank you.
Cox: OK.


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It's election night, and the crowd is exuberant inside the auditorium at Civic Space Park on Arizona State University's downtown Phoenix campus.
The celebration on August 20 is about the re-election of Councilman Michael Nowakowski and the victory of Greg Stanton, a mayoral candidate who ended the night with the most votes, securing a spot in a November showdown with runner-up Wes Gullett.
Though he has been working the crowd, Mayor Phil Gordon seems glum.
New Times feature story
Gordon's all-business security detail keeps a watchful eye on him as he pauses briefly to shake a hand, pat a shoulder, and exchange a few words.
A reporter spots him and, with notebook in hand, weaves through the crowd to elicit the mayor's thoughts about the election results and the two men who are competing to replace him.
Gordon isn't happy to see the member of the press. He has three months left in office, and his future plans are uncertain. It's also getting circulated that his romantic relationship with political fundraiser Elissa Mullany is over.
Like ASU's downtown Phoenix campus, which he helped make a reality and where this event is taking place, Gordon's love affair with Mullany will define his two terms as mayor of America's sixth-largest city.
Mullany publicly raised eyebrows when she ascended from Gordon's political fundraiser to his well-paid girlfriend. As the romantic relationship developed, she landed consulting gigs with executives — including high-profile developers, an international transportation firm, and foreign dignitaries — who benefited from their ties to Gordon.
Gordon barely looks up at the reporter, continuing to move through the crowd, only more quickly now. He doesn't respond to her request for comment about the election, only slightly shaking his head. He grabs a few more hands and, eyes cast down, scurries through the auditorium's double doors.
In the hallway, he runs into Greg Stanton. The two shake hands as the trailing reporter pulls out a camera in an attempt to capture the moment: one man winding down his city political career and another winding his up. Gordon spots the camera and guides Stanton farther down the corridor to avoid getting photographed.
They chat for just a few seconds before Gordon leaves the building, climbs into a dark vehicle driven by one of the Phoenix police officers charged with his safety, and disappears into the night.
Gordon didn't always duck the media.
During his first term and in the early days of his second, he gladly allowed reporters to roam his space on the 11th floor of City Hall. He was happy to share his daily calendar with anybody in the press who requested it.
Friendly Mayor Phil became secretive Mayor Gordon in 2009, when uncomfortable questions were first raised about whether Gordon was mixing city business with his personal life. Specifically: Did the mayor use the influence of his office to get his girlfriend and her company a financial and professional edge? Did he make it possible for her to get paid by powerful companies doing business with the city?
One of the companies that employed Elissa Mullany while she was Gordon's girlfriend was Veolia Transportation, which has a five-year, more-than-$380 million contract with the city to operate its bus fleet.
Mayor Phil Gordon first professed support for Veolia Transportation to win the city's huge bus contract at a June 2009 City Council meeting. The mayor's endorsement came even before competing business proposals were on the table and during a time when his relationship with Elissa Mullany was the stuff of City Hall rumors.
Causing concern, after the mayor said he wanted the contract to go to Veolia, was that the company had hired Mullany, his then-alleged love interest, as a consultant in 2007 and still was cutting her checks as it competed for the city's business.
Though Gordon insisted that she was just a good friend, Mullany spent a lot of time at the Mayor's Office as the contract was getting decided. Sometimes wearing revealing attire, she would flirt with the mayor in front of office staff.
The truth wouldn't stay hidden for long.
Gordon tried desperately to shield himself from questions about his relationship with Mullany, about what role she played in city business he conducted. He worked hard to keep documents secret that would expose what was going on.
But information about how their personal and professional relationships were commingled leaked in 2009 from sources with ties to Gordon.
It became public that Mullany was indeed Gordon's girlfriend and had gotten paid to represent, as a consultant, companies doing business with the city — that, during his travels allegedly on behalf of the city, Gordon solicited jobs for her and tried to help her establish connections for new business ventures.
The smitten Gordon's behavior was a far cry from the image he had cultivated for himself as a folksy neighborhood-watch politician and tireless cheerleader for Phoenix.
An attorney, he'd started out representing developers who wanted to tear down historic buildings in favor of retail projects. But he reinvented himself as an advocate for historic preservation, and the philosophical change gave his political career traction.
Under his leadership, downtown Phoenix experienced major redevelopment, from the expansion of the Phoenix Convention Center to establishment of ASU's downtown campus. He has backed such projects as the downtown Sheraton Hotel and CityScape, a mixed-use development that helped breathe life into downtown.
Gordon will be exalted, particularly in the Latino community, for eventually standing up to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and decrying the self-proclaimed America's toughest sheriff's criminal roundups targeting Hispanic minorities. He will be praised for speaking out loudly against Senate Bill 1070, a law under federal court challenge that allows any cop to act as an immigration officer in Arizona.
But he also will be remembered for compromising his ethics to help a sexy woman he described to confidants as his true love.
When Mayor Phil Gordon announced officially on December 8, 2009, that he was romantically involved with Elissa Mullany, he started refraining from votes tied to Veolia Transportation and the city bus contract — but only in public.
Behind the scenes, Gordon gave advice to the company on how to play hardball with the city.
Cash-strapped Phoenix agreed in 2010 to pay $27.5 million over five years to Veolia, which had Mullany on its payroll.
Although he claimed he was not involved with decisions about Veolia and its contract, the mayor stepped into the fray from late March to early April 2010, when the company wasn't getting its way during contract negotiations with the city. Gordon advised Veolia executives to tell city transit officials that it would walk away from its city bus contract, a Veolia insider tells New Times.
Representatives for Gordon's office and Veolia both confirmed that a Veolia representative and Gordon discussed the Veolia contract, despite Gordon's conflict because of his relationship with Mullany. During one of their meetings, the mayor advised Billy Shields, his good friend and lobbyist for Veolia, to tell his client to walk away from its Phoenix contract because city officials wouldn't agree to the company's demands for more money, the source says.
When Veolia followed through and reneged on the contract it was awarded, Phoenix officials flew to Chicago, where they agreed to pay Veolia nearly $30 million worth of concessions.
Critics complain that Mayor Gordon put his girlfriend's and the company's interests ahead of the city's
On Veolia's payroll since 2007, Mullany was paid by the transportation company the entire time she and Gordon dated.
Mullany, who served as a consultant for Veolia, helped the firm land its latest Phoenix contract, which company officials call "one of the biggest of its kind in the United States."
Company officials also confirm that Mullany was directly involved in the Phoenix contract, though they characterize her role as "brief."
A Veolia spokeswoman says, "Part of Ms. Mullany's ongoing duties, among many, included helping with the oral-presentation preparation. She did assist our staff in oral-presentation training for the [proposal's] evaluation/interview panels. She had a brief role in a three-day preparatory meeting."
Mullany was on a team coaching Veolia executives in November 2009 on how to answer questions posed by a city panel evaluating the two finalists for the bus contract — First Transit and Veolia.
The Veolia insider says Mullany advised company executives at that time on how to craft answers based on what the city wanted to hear.
Despite Mullany's role with the Phoenix contract and her romantic involvement with Gordon, the mayor still pulled strings behind the scenes, the source says.
Once Gordon declared a conflict of interest, according to the city's ethics policy, he no longer could participate in related city business in "any manner." But that didn't stop him from apparently actively participating during closed-door executive sessions in 2010 involving Veolia.
Although the City Attorney's Office and Gordon refuse to release even a simple list of the elected officials present during these meetings on April 27 and May 11, several council members confirmed Gordon's participation.
The city and Veolia were at odds over an expiring contract and a recently awarded contract, along with company executives' demands that Phoenix transit officials pay Veolia employees' pensions (which had become under-funded because of economic downturns) and pay for unused sick leave.
Veolia negotiators weren't getting the city to budge, so they turned to Billy Shields, the Phoenix firefighters' union boss turned lobbyist.
Erica Swerdlow, spokeswoman for Veolia Transportation, denies that Gordon spoke directly to Veolia executives but concedes that the mayor suggested to the company how contract negotiations should be handled.
"He did indicate to our lobbyist, Billy Shields, that he had removed himself from any involvement in negotiations over the old contract but suggested that, in order to get the matter resolved with the city — which was in everyone's interest — we needed to get it elevated to the city-manager level," Swerdlow says.
Apparently, Veolia's threatening to walk away from a city bus contract — leaving Phoenix with only two months of guaranteed bus service and the immediate need to find another transportation company — was an effective way of getting the city manager's attention.
After Gordon made his suggestion, the company told the city it was pulling out.
David Leibowitz, Gordon's hired spokesman, also confirmed the mayor's involvement but said Gordon did nothing wrong, much less illegal. He described Gordon's role as "minimal."
The mayor refused to speak directly to New Times on any matter related to this story, at one point insisting that all questions be submitted in writing to Leibowitz.
"What the mayor did do in reference to Veolia is affirm their belief that, in order to resolve the matter, they should elevate the negotiation conversation up the city's chain of command to the city manager. The mayor's thinking was, getting this resolved was in everyone's best interest and that the time had come to 'go upstairs,' so to speak," Leibowitz tells New Times in a statement.
Veolia fired off its written notice rejecting the five-year, $388 million contract Phoenix had awarded the company, and City Manager David Cavazos promptly flew to Chicago with several employees to strike a deal with the company.
To settle the old contract, Cavazos made $27.5 million worth of concessions to Veolia for the pension and sick-leave payments and agreed not to recoup $681,000 that the Phoenix Public Transit Department already had mistakenly paid for Veolia employees' sick days between 2000 and 2009. Despite the fact that sick-leave payments were Veolia's — not the city's — responsibility, nobody in the city's transit department noticed that the firm had been billing Phoenix for the cost for almost nine years.
Still, the company wanted more — so city officials also rewrote part of the new contract.
Not only did Phoenix eliminate a $50,000-a-day fine if workers went on strike and postpone all fines (for such problems as late buses, employees out of uniform, or customer complaints) for four months, it also slipped a clause into the updated contract that essentially allows Veolia to wiggle out of future fines if it concludes they are unfair.
Despite these obvious changes, Phoenix officials denied that the latest bus contract was altered in any way during a federal inquiry into how the contract was awarded.
A New Times story about Gordon's involvement with the contract while his girlfriend was actively working to help the company land the deal prompted a probe by the Federal Transit Administration, which provides Phoenix the bulk of its transportation budget.
The investigation is ongoing, as are the generous breaks that Veolia is getting.
So far, Phoenix has waived more than $2 million in poor-performance fines for Veolia, even though the fines were supposed to encourage better service and accountability to the public.
When Veolia first bid on the bus contract, it objected to all fines the city planned to assess. City transit officials told Veolia that unless it withdrew the objections, the company could not bid on the contract. Company officials withdrew them and were awarded the new contract in January 2010.
Perhaps emboldened by having friends in high places, Veolia once again brought up the fines after it had locked in the new contract.
Corporate executives complained that the fines weren't fair because they didn't have enough time to prepare for the new contract. Phoenix officials simply folded, even though their own legal advisers believed that Veolia's claim had no merit since it had delayed signing the contract. City officials were left without many options, given there could be a lapse in bus service if the company walked away.
"It was a way to get this [new] contract signed," Assistant City Manager Ed Zuercher says about the overall settlement.
The depth of Gordon's involvement in Veolia negotiations is unknown because the City Attorney's Office has shielded the mayor from any public accountability, siding with him in favor of keeping certain documents under wraps.
But New Times discovered that the mayor's helping Veolia muscle money out of Phoenix was only one example of his aiding a company paying his girlfriend.
When Mullany was hired by Phoenix mega-developer Steve Ellman, Gordon's calendars and other public records — including e-mail exchanges between his staff members — reveal that Ellman enjoyed unfettered access to the mayor. Ellman had dinners, set up by Mullany, with wealthy foreign dignitaries from the Middle East and even traveled with Gordon to meet deep-pocketed businessmen who could be potential investors in his development projects.
Gordon knew, at the very least, that it didn't look right that his girlfriend was getting jobs with companies doing business with the city. This is probably why he and Leibowitz's predecessor, public-relations agent Jason Rose, tried to cover up that Mullany was Ellman's consultant, earning as much as $20,000 a month. In an e-mail to Gordon's senior assistant, Rose instructed mayoral staff to say — if directly asked — that they didn't know whether Mullany was on Ellman's payroll.
Rose wrote in a March 2010 e-mail that if anyone poses questions about Mullany and Ellman, the following protocol should be followed:
"Suggest [that] the mayor can't, couldn't, and wouldn't vote on something that she was involved in. Don't know who she represents or represented for event planning and community relations . . . if asked, unaware of any work Elissa has done for Ellman or anyone else in the city of Phoenix."
Gordon, Rose, and others knew Mullany was working for Ellman. Despite Rose's posturing, internal e-mails between Gordon and Rose reveal that Mullany worked for Ellman for at least six months promoting investment opportunities for his development firm. Then came her job with Veolia to, among other things, help the company win the Phoenix bus contract.
City officials refused repeated requests to produce a copy of Gordon's conflict-of-interest list, which Gordon once said he would put Mullany on to make sure he didn't vote on anything related to her business interests.
All other members of the Phoenix City Council released their lists, but City Attorney Gary Verburg told New Times that Gordon's list was subject to attorney-client privilege.
When Phil Gordon stepped onto the political stage in Phoenix, he hardly looked the part of big-city mayor. Rudy Giuliani, he wasn't
Until near the end of his second term, his staff continually was after him about his rumpled clothes and mussed hair. No matter how many times he practiced a speech, he inevitably would inject awkward mid-sentence pauses and stumble over words. Those around him still joke about his tendency to fidget, about how he just can't sit still through a rubber-chicken luncheon.
But it was all part of his folksy charm. He didn't come across, in his early days as mayor, as a professional politician, and people liked that. It fit in with his agenda then, too — fighting slumlords, promoting front-porch benches as a way for residents to keep a watchful eye on their neighborhoods.
The over-caffeinated politico always was on the go, rarely turning down an invitation to an event. He would pop up all over town, if only for a few minutes at a time. He sometimes worked weekends, showing up at City Hall in jogging pants and a sweatshirt, without his security detail.
Gordon was a popular mayor. He first was elected in September 2003, with 72 percent of the vote. He was re-elected in September 2007, with 77 percent. In 2008, he was named Best Mayor in North America by London-based World Mayors Project. He serves as chairman of the U.S. Conference of Mayors' Task Force on Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
But there has been a transformation in the man who first charmed Phoenix voters and even the press. Once he met Elissa Mullany, 20 years younger than him, he started showing up in tailored clothes with a slick haircut.
Gordon's vision for Phoenix broadened during his years in the Mayor's Office. He became convinced that he could revive the city's economy by luring Middle Eastern businessmen to open companies, invest in local ventures, or relocate headquarters here.
But, other than a document or two that Gordon signed with foreign officials to agree to look for ways to work together, his efforts hardly have flourished.
Gordon was riding high after a successful bond-issue campaign in 2006, which earmarked the lion's share of the nearly $1 billion for ASU's downtown campus. After the campus opened, a deal was struck with the University of Arizona to also have a presence downtown.
The area started to bustle with construction — the city-backed Sheraton Hotel was going up, the Phoenix Convention Center was to be expanded, and deals were in the works for CityScape, a downtown development project touted to bring restaurants, bars, and gathering places to the heart of the city.
Gordon would look out his City Hall window and see giant cranes off in the distance — proof that his efforts were paying off.
City Hall insiders tell New Times that Gordon's ego started getting the best of him around that time, that he stopped listening even to his closest advisers.
At home, his marriage to Christa Severns was struggling in 2007. By February 2008, they were separated.
Gordon was developing stronger feelings toward Mullany, who was still married to her second husband, James Mullany, a partner at the real estate investment firm Old World Communities/Berkana Townhomes. She had just ended an affair with a Phoenix cop who was a member of the mayor's security detail.
Gordon knew all that, but he clearly was infatuated.
In March 2009, Gordon and his wife of 15 years confirmed that they were splitting up. They soon filed for divorce in Maricopa County Superior Court. Gordon claims he and Severns had been separated for a year and that Mullany had nothing to do with their divorce, which became final in January 2010.
It was the second divorce for Gordon, who has three adult children from his first marriage.
Friends of Gordon's say he grew more focused on the politics of his job.
They say he also focused on Mullany. He named her as a board member of the short-lived Global Trade Initiative in August 2008. The now-defunct program was billed as a way to spark economic development in Phoenix by reaching out to the leaders of other countries.
It did none of that, but the money raised through membership fees and political contributions from local businesses funded a trip by Mullany and three other Trade Initiative members to Dubai and a trip by Gordon to Israel (Mullany also was there, reportedly on her own dime). Mullany also was paid $12,000 in Trade Initiative money to organize a fundraising breakfast.
Mullany, a political fundraiser, seemed out of place on a committee that included ASU President Michael Crow, who served as its chairman; Bob Johnson, former president of Dubai Aerospace Enterprise; and Jan Lesher, then-Governor Janet Napolitano's chief of staff.
Although many had their suspicions at the time, Gordon continued to deny any romantic relationship with Mullany.
It all started to unravel after a reporter filed a public-records request for logs maintained by Gordon's security detail. These records documented where the security officers picked up and dropped off the mayor, whom he met with, how he spent his time, and anybody else they shuttled around.
Within minutes of the e-mailing of the request to the Phoenix Police Department, Gordon called the reporter to probe for more information about the nature of the inquiry. He seemed unsettled, and he made it clear that the records wouldn't be released.
Attorneys for the city later came up with a legal excuse for why the logs should be exempt from the Arizona Public Records Law. And a Maricopa County Superior Court judge eventually agreed, after Judicial Watch, a conservative think tank out of Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit to get access to the records.
Gordon, who was separated but still married then, knew news stories were about to break in New Times about his love affair with Mullany and how much money the city had paid her — more than $340,000 between 2005 and 2010, most of it after the two became romantically involved.
Gordon paid MullanyWunder, a company Elissa started with Cate Wunder, out of mayoral campaign funds and from donations for downtown improvement to organize events and manage various political accounts, some of which had been inactive for years.
He needed to do damage control — and quickly.
Gordon called flack Jason Rose, who touts his ability to manage public-relations disasters. Before any news story regarding the mayor and Mullany appeared, Rose put out a press release in December 2009 announcing Gordon's relationship with Elissa and assuring the public that it would be vetted by City Attorney Verburg and former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas A. Zlaket.
Gordon hadn't violated any elections or conflict-of-interest laws by paying his chief fundraiser hundreds of thousands of dollars in private money, Rose later claimed, holding up the legal reviews that he and Gordon had commissioned from the pair as proof.
Zlaket, a Tucson attorney who had never met Gordon, said the mayor hadn't broken the state's conflict-of-interest law since neither he nor an immediate family member personally benefited from payouts to Mullany. Girlfriends are not covered in the statute.
But even handpicked legal expert Zlaket cautioned the mayor in a December 26, 2009, letter that "perception is sometimes as important as reality [and] certain actions or payments here may prompt legitimate questions."
The former chief justice's warning fell on deaf ears as Gordon has continued to look for ways to benefit Mullany.
When the Phoenix Global Trade Initiative folded in 2009, Gordon set out on his own to do what it was supposed to do — and Mullany made money off his efforts.
Earlier this year, Gordon helped Mullany land an $8,000 contract to organize meetings with Bahraini business leaders in Phoenix, after giving her name to the consulting firm hired by the foreign capitalists.
That is, he helped his girlfriend instead of turning over contacts from his global travels to the Phoenix Community and Economic Development Department, the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, or the Arizona Commerce Authority.
The result was that she set up a few meetings, including one at ASU between local business leaders and Bahraini government officials. Gordon eventually signed a ceremonial agreement with Bahrain for future partnerships, but nothing has come of it.
Just this month, Gordon put an item on the City Council agenda to appoint Mullany to the powerful Phoenix Aviation Advisory Board, which decides on lucrative contracts at Sky Harbor International and smaller airports.
There was collective head-shaking at City Hall, and Gordon realized the item wouldn't win council approval. He pulled it at the last minute.
Despite all the hoopla over Gordon's efforts on behalf of her, Mullany told the Arizona Republic in February that she saw "no ethical conflict" in any of the actions.
"People might think that I'm abusing my role with him," she was quoted as saying about the mayor. "I might get his attention more than someone else, but I'm not asking him to do something that isn't good for the city and isn't benefiting anyone else."
A month later, in an interview with the Republic's Karina Bland, Mullany took an obvious jab at Gordon's ex-wife, hinting that Gordon lacked support at home.
Mullany said it was Gordon's "energy, his vision, and his drive to get all these big-picture things done" that attracted her to him.
She candidly told Bland, "It's not like I thought he had a great ass."
Mullany continued, "We were already friends. He was ready for someone in his personal life who could support him. We had a mutual passion for the same sort of projects."
One of her passions, at least, seemed to be any project that involved travel.
As for Gordon, he hated to leave town during his first years in office. So much so that he even grumbled about going on a family vacation.
But this all changed with Mullany by his side. Suddenly, he was jetting to the Middle East, Mexico, China, Canada, and across the United States.
Without Gordon, Mullany never could've afforded to travel on private jets to foreign lands seeking business opportunities.
Mullany and her then-husband endured their share of financial troubles. In June 2009, Capitol One won a $12,180 judgment against James Mullany when he failed to pay on his credit card. The state also filed a tax lien against the Mullanys for $2,092 in October 2009. In September 2010, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ordered the couple to pay $21,136 to a creditor. Another tax-lien notice was filed by the IRS in June 2011 against the Mullanys for nearly $47,000 in back taxes.
Her lifestyle at Gordon's side belied her financial portfolio.
"I get to see things I would normally never get to see and meet people I normally wouldn't get to meet. There are experiences I would never have experienced," she told the Republic's Bland, adding that on a trip to Mexico with Gordon, she and her kids got to pet a rare white tiger at a private zoo.
A private zoo, private jets, and worldwide globetrotting — but who was picking up the tab?
In some cases, foreign governments paid for such travel. In others, city records show, Gordon covered the costs with money from various campaign funds he had set up over the years.
But exactly how often he and Mullany jetted around the world and the nation, the purpose of the trips, and who picked up the tabs remain shrouded by Gordon.
Phoenix residents got a glimpse of how the travel might be more than a personal perk for Mullany in an October 2010 e-mail from Gordon to the assistant of a university president in Singapore.
"Will you let the president know that I will be in China at least from January 3 2011 to the 9th," Gordon wrote on October 8 to Tian Tian, assistant to the president of the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. "I am able to come earlier or stay longer if the president wants to meet in China or for me [to come to] Singapore. My significant other who has a small company focused on global connections will be with me."
Mullany hardly was running a "global connections" business before she hooked up with Gordon. Their relationship began when she did fundraising for local projects with which he was closely aligned — Metro light rail, ASU's downtown campus, expansion of the Phoenix Convention Center.
Neighbors say they liked Mullany when she moved into Central Phoenix's historic Medlock Place neighborhood in 2004. But they thought it was odd when Gordon became a frequent visitor to her home. She moved out of the Medlock house in 2007 and moved back in in 2008.
Neighbors report seeing security officers pull up to Mullany's home from time to time. They say the mayor's city car would be there 15 minutes or more until she came out of the house, dressed up, and climbed inside alone.
Other times, the car pulled up, and Gordon got out and went inside Mullany's home.
Leibowitz, Gordon's paid defender, says Mullany never worked for or represented the city and that the "mayor's travels — and those who travel with him — are not paid for with taxpayer money."
Dave Levinthal, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Responsive Politics, says that while he's not knowledgeable about the specifics of Gordon's relationship with Mullany, the facts as described by New Times raise concerns.
"In general, anytime you have a situation where a person in elected office is paying their close friend, family member, or a person they're romantically involved with, it raises serious questions," he said when news first broke about Gordon's payments to Mullany.
"The people who have donated to his campaign should take a pretty acute interest in anything like this," Levinthal added. "Political campaigns are run to win office. They shouldn't be a slush fund for your buddies."
Leibowitz also says Gordon isn't required to answer questions or reveal details about the trips, because they were paid for with private money.
These aren't the only questions that Gordon and his camp have refused to answer.
He's flown on private jets with his girlfriend (and at least once with her children and mother) to Mexico City, to a Super Bowl in Florida, and to destinations in the Middle East and around the world.
He won't disclose whom the planes belonged to, but sources say he has flown on jets with ties to Phoenix developer Steve Ellman and wealthy businessmen from Mexico City.
The mayor won't disclose who paid for the tickets that he and Mullany used to attend at least two Super Bowls or who paid for tickets to sit in posh seats at Chase Field during opening day for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Arizona law bans public officials from accepting tickets to sports or entertainment events.
Gordon's refusal to answer questions only furthers speculation about his motives, which he claims have always been about boosting Phoenix's economy.
Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke announced his resignation recently, and there has been speculation that Phil Gordon will make a bid for the seat.
But politicos point out that Gordon is unlikely to get the nod because he didn't support Barack Obama for president. Gordon, whom many people originally supported because they considered him a progressive, endorsed Arizona Senator John McCain.
While Gordon's name also has been floated for various congressional seats, it would be difficult for him to win in a Democratic district because of his onetime endorsements of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former County Attorney Andrew Thomas, both right-wing Republicans known for bashing immigrants.
In December 2007, Gordon was harangued by police-union leaders, including former Phoenix Law Enforcement Association president Mark Spencer, to reverse a city practice that prevents cops from inquiring about the immigration status of individuals or contacting immigration-enforcement officers.
Gordon finally caved in and said he couldn't support the policy anymore.
Just a few months later, in April 2008, Gordon redeemed himself a little in progressive Democratic circles when he did a public about-face and blasted Arpaio during a César Chávez luncheon.
He told the audience that Arpaio's "made-for-TV stunts" were accomplishing nothing but locking up brown people for having broken taillights.
That same month, Gordon wrote to then-U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the FBI to investigate Arpaio for what he called a pattern of "discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests."
Possibly realizing that mayor of Phoenix would be the highest political office he ever would hold, Gordon attempted twice to extend his term.
The first came in January 2009, when his camp formed a political committee to support changing the Phoenix charter to consolidate city elections. That is, all council members — including the mayor — would be elected at the same time.
In August 2009, Gordon paid $17,000 for a poll to gauge whether voters would support ending term limits for their mayor. Voters said no.
With just a few months left before he leaves office on January 3, Gordon has landed himself the first luxury townhouse at the Chateau on Central office-residential complex, signing a two-year lease with an option to buy the unit for more than $1.5 million.
Gordon's mayoral salary is a little more than $80,000 a year, prompting questions about how he can afford such upscale digs.
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Gordon recently told the Associated Press that the townhouse will be a great place to reside since the space can double as an office, as he possibly makes a career out of putting deals together to foster economic development in Phoenix.
As for Gordon's legacy . . .
On AZTV's Pat McMahon Show, just before the August 20 primary, the host asked the then-six mayoral candidates: "You have predecessors — Phil Gordon, Paul Johnson, Skip Rimzsa, and Terry Goddard — and of those four, [whom] do you most admire?"
Nobody picked Gordon.


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One of the enduring images in the Mountain West last season was New Mexico coach Steve Alford at the press conference after beating San Diego State in the championship game of the conference tournament in Las Vegas. Wearing a net cut down moments earlier inside the Thomas & Mack Center.
Forward Drew Gordon, sitting to his left, asked if it itched.
"It's a good itch," Alford said.
Gordon had his own spoils with him, the tournament's Most Outstanding Player trophy that he plopped on the table in front of him, leaning around it to see reporters asking questions. He had been edged for regular-season MVP by San Diego State's Jamaal Franklin, and he had dropped large hints all week that he didn't necessarily agree.
"Well, won one out of two, so it's not bad," Gordon said. "I've been saying this whole time we need to end up on top, be able to look back and kind of laugh at some of the honors that weren't awarded to our team."
View the Video Sports Page - SDSU vs. New Mexico Preview 1-25-13
Don't think words and pictures of the scene didn't make their way down Interstate-15 to Montezuma Mesa.
They meet again for the first time since, today at soldout Viejas Arena (1 p.m., NBC Sports Network), and more than the conference title is on the line. If UNLV has become SDSU's No. 1 rival, the 15th-ranked Lobos (17-2) are rapidly becoming 1A.
The fan enmity certainly isn't on par with the Rebels. No one is posting a video of a masked gunman in the Nevada desert shooting an assault rifle at a television showing the final seconds of a SDSU win over UNLV and exploding it. (That actually happened last year.)
But among players and coaches, there are few teams the Aztecs like to beat more than New Mexico. And vice versa.
"We know what's at stake," SDSU coach Steve Fisher said, "and so do they."
It is rivalry rooted less in proximity or history than in quantity of nets cut down, whether or not the head coach wears them to the press conference. Among current Mountain West members, SDSU (seven) and New Mexico (five) have won the most regular-season or conference tournament titles in men's basketball. They have won or shared the last six straight.
This year: New Mexico is 4-0 and alone atop the conference standings; the Aztecs (15-4, 3-2) are in second and probably need to win to keep pace.
Last year: They tied for the regular-season title at 10-4, then met in the final of the conference tournament.
The year before: SDSU won both.
The year before that: New Mexico won the regular season, SDSU won the tournament. (Notice the absence of UNLV from this discussion.)
They also have had success on each other's home floor, which, when you rarely lose at home, will get your attention. New Mexico has won two of the last five at Viejas Arena, including 77-67 last year. SDSU has won three of the last five at The Pit in Albuquerque, including two straight.
Or look at it this way: New Mexico is 2-5 at The Pit against SDSU since 2005, and 104-12 against everyone else.
"It ups the ante," SDSU junior Jamaal Franklin said. "We didn't protect our house, and they didn't protect their house. But at the end of the day, they had the upper hand because they won in the Mountain West tournament.
"I can't wait to play them again."
It gets personal for Franklin, who is expected to cover Lobos junior Tony Snell. They were roommates at Westwind Prep in Phoenix and remain close friends. Both wear No. 21. Both spent the summer working out together.
"My brother from another mother," Franklin said.
The rivalry also has spilled over into the recruiting wars. Gordon, whose father Eddy played at SDSU with Tony Gwynn and Michael Cage in the 1980s, picked New Mexico over the Aztecs after transferring from UCLA. So did Snell, who played with Kawhi Leonard in high school but didn't follow him to SDSU.
Five-star prep prospect Winston Shepard took his first recruiting visit to New Mexico and seemed to be leaning that way. He announced his oral commitment last February, the morning after the Lobos led by as many as 15 and handed SDSU its only conference defeat at Viejas Arena.
He chose the Aztecs.
SDSU vs. No. 15 New Mexico
Site/time: Viejas Arena/1 p.m. Saturday.
TV/radio: NBC Sports Network/600-AM, 101.5-FM.
Records: SDSU is 15-4, 3-2; New Mexico is 17-2, 4-0.
Series: New Mexico leads 40-32. The Aztecs have won four of the last six, although the Lobos won the last two: 77-67 at Viejas Arena and 68-59 in the conference tournament final in Las Vegas.
Aztecs outlook: Coach Steve Fisher said point guard Xavier Thames and his bad back are showing signs of improvement and "I would anticipate that he would play." He did not say whether Thames would start or come off the bench, as he did in Wednesday's 78-57 win at Nevada that ended a two-game losing streak. James Rahon started in his place, and JJ O'Brien ran the point. Jamaal Franklin was asked if this is a must-win to stay in the conference title race. His response: "I'd say every game is a must-win for us. I don't walk into any game saying, 'If we lose this, we still should be cool.'" It may be a must-win, however, if the Aztecs (No. 25 in the coaches poll) hope for a quick return to the Associated Press Top 25 after a one-week hiatus. They are 6-3 in their last nine home games against AP Top 25 opponents.
Lobos outlook: Their 4-0 conference start includes home wins against UNLV and Colorado State, but they have played just once on the road, a 79-74 overtime decision at Boise State. They have the conference's highest RPI at No. 6 (SDSU is 34). Kendall Williams (14.1 ppg) and Tony Snell (12.6 ppg) are threats from the perimeter. But much of their success comes from going big-big up front with 7-0 Alex Kirk and 6-9 Aussie Cameron Bairstow instead of a single post and four perimeter players, as most Mountain West teams prefer. Kirk (11.8 ppg, 7.6 rpg) sat out last season due to back surgery and has emerged as an inside-outside threat. A key to the UNLV win was Kirk regularly getting deep position in the block (he finished with 23 points), meaning this might be a game for SDSU transfer James Johnson and his bulk.


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Kukla's Korner Hockey
Should All OT No-Goal Decisions Be Reviewed?
by Paul on 01/18/12 at 08:58 PM ET
Comments (6)
Of course, all goals are reviewed, but what about those that are ruled no goal by the on-ice officials?
Should the situation room make the final call?
from Dan Rusanowsky of The Chomp at the Sharks website,
Following a thrilling 2-1 shootout victory over the Calgary Flames on January 17th, the prevailing attitude overcoming the HP Pavilion crowd was one of relief. Yes, the Sharks should have won the game at 3:55 of overtime when a Justin Braun goal was incorrectly disallowed, but all's well that ends well, right?
What if I told you that the difference between an overtime win and a shootout win is more than one less goal for Braun, one less assist for Joe Thornton and Tommy Wingels, and one less goal against for Miikka Kiprusoff? What if the difference between an overtime win and a shootout win could amount to millions of dollars for a franchise's bottom line?
I'm sure that I have your attention now, but let's review the entire situation before we get to the unintended consequences of the ruling. Under Rule 69.1, contact by an opposing player is what would constitute a referee's decision to disallow the goal, and it is very specifically noted that such a decision is not reviewable by video replay, either on site or in the NHL War Room in Toronto.
The ruling was that in driving the net, Wingels made contact with Kiprusoff, but an overhead camera showed that the contact was with Calgary's Olli Jokinen on the play. Jokinen was not directed by Wingels into Kiprusoff, although that may have been what the officials decided. In my own humble opinion, the wrong decision was unfortunately made, and there was no way to reverse it by video review.
continued and watch the play in question below…
Filed in: NHL Teams, Calgary Flames, San Jose Sharks, | KK Hockey | Permalink
Yes, let's make a big deal of this now. One time the Sharks get screwed and rules should change. Let's ignore the 2 dozen or so goals the Wings have been screwed out of in the past couple years because Holmstrom was within 5 feet of the crease.
Posted by Valek from Chicago on 01/18/12 at 09:22 PM ET
Typical whining by a whining Red Wings fan. It isn't always about you, you whiner!
Posted by wingsfansarewhiners from Ann Arbor on 01/18/12 at 11:05 PM ET
Typical whining by a whining Red Wings fan. It isn't always about you, you whiner!
Posted by wingsfansarewhiners from Ann Arbor on 01/18/12 at 09:05 PM ET
Posted by SYF from Twerkin' with Anastasia Ashley on 01/19/12 at 12:14 AM ET
Posted by SYF from Dr. Ima Tearadikov's "Office" on 01/18/12 at 10:14 PM ET
Exactly…Valek's point still stands.
Posted by mrfluffy from A wide spot on I-90 in Montana on 01/19/12 at 01:24 AM ET
And now that I watch the video…oh look…another Shark snowing a goaltender.
Posted by mrfluffy from A wide spot on I-90 in Montana on 01/19/12 at 01:26 AM ET
after reading the article the answer is definitely no. If anything the tiebreaker should be changed. Goals like this, whether in OT or regulation should be treated the same way. A goal in regulation could mean no OT, so it would be just as important as a goal in OT. You really can't say an OT goal is more important and should be reviewed. Example, a goal is scored like the one above in the first 5 mins of play. They dont review it cause its not OT. The game goes on with no goals scored and goes into OT and the other team that didnt have a goal disallowed now scores a goal and wins the game in OT. Turns out that first period goal meant something…
Posted by pstumba on 01/19/12 at 12:50 PM ET
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January 9, 2001-- The breaking news in Europe of troops from Italy, Belgium, Spain and Portugal who served in the Balkans dying of leukemia has reawakened interest in the dangers posed by depleted-uranium weapons.
In April 1999, the International Action Center published the second edition of a book of essays and lectures on depleted uranium. Its title is Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium. The first edition had been published in 1997.
The Peoples Video Network, in collaboration with the IAC, produced a 50-minute-long video with the same title, Metal of Dishonor, that was favorably reviewed at film festivals in Italy.
Both the book and the video can be ordered online at: http://www.leftbooks.com/online-store/scstore/c-Depleted_Uranium.html
In addition to exposing the deadly duplicity of the Department of Defense, the book documents the genocide of Native Americans and Iraqis by military radiation, the connection between depleted uranium and Gulf War Syndrome, the underestimated dangers from low-level radiation, the legal ramifications of DU Production and Use, and the growing movement against DU. (Table of Contents)
The Pentagon used DU weapons in Iraq in 1991, in Bosnia in 1995 and in Yugoslavia-especially in Kosovo-in 1999 in large enough amounts to have a significant impact on the environment. Besides endangering occupation troops it of course is a major environmental threat to the population of those regions.
Of the 697,000 US troops who served in the Gulf, some 130,000 have reported medical problems ranging from respiratory, liver and kidney dysfunction, memory loss, headaches, fever, low blood pressure, and birth defects among their newborn children.
During the Gulf War, munitions and armor made with Depleted Uranium were used for the first time in combat history. Over 940,000 30- millimeter uranium tipped bullets and "more than 14,000 large caliber DU rounds were consumed during Operation Desert Storm/Desert Shield." (U.S. AEPI Report 1994) These largely untested weapons were used indiscriminately throughout the siege of Iraq with no concern for the health and environmental consequences of their use. Between 300 and 800 tons of DU bullets are now scattered on the ground in Iraq and Kuwait.
The Pentagon now admits to having fired over 18,000 DU shells in Bosnia and over 31,000 such shells in Kosovo.
Up to 70% of the depleted uranium within these weapons aerosolizes on impact and as radioactive dust it is easily ingested. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people, both victims of war and combat soldiers, have suffered the effects of exposure to these highly toxic, radioactive weapons.
DU is a waste product of the process that produces enriched uranium for use in atomic weapons and nuclear power plants. Much like natural uranium, it is both toxic and radioactive. Over a billion pounds of DU exists in the United States and must be safely stored or disposed of by the Department of Energy. With its half-life of 4.5 billion years, DU's radioactivity effectively lasts forever.
DU is so abundant the government gives it away to arms manufacturers. Because it is extremely dense--1.7 times as dense as lead--when turned into a metal DU can be used to make a shell that easily penetrates steel. In addition it is pyrophoric--that is, when it strikes steel, heat from the friction causes it to burn.
When DU burns, it spews tiny particles of poisonous and radioactive uranium oxide in aerosol form, which can then travel for miles in the wind. Humans can ingest or inhale the small particles. Even one particle, when lodged in a vital organ--which is most likely to happen from inhalation-- can cause illnesses from headaches to cancer.
The Pentagon tested DU shells at various sites around the U.S. and used it in combat for the first time against Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. It was very effective in destroying Iraqi tanks, as well as their occupants and anyone in the area. At least 600,000 pounds of DU and uranium dust was left around Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia by U.S. and British forces during that war.
Although the U.S. government and military continue to minimize the environmental and health dangers from depleted- uranium weapons, even they have to admit these dangers exist.
DU is also considered at least a contributing cause to the 130,000 reported cases of "Gulf War Syndrome." The chronic symptoms of this ailment range from sharp increases in cancers to memory loss, chronic pain, fatigue and birth defects in veterans' children.
Dr. Mona Kammas is a professor of pathology at Baghdad University and director of a study of the environmental impact of U.S. aggression against Iraq. At the Gijon symposium, she reported on a paper that showed an almost five-fold increase in cancers, a more than three-fold increase in spontaneous abortions, and a nearly three-fold increase in congenital anomalies in a study group of those exposed to combat.
The paper also reported on environmental damage due to the Pentagon's destruction of the water-supply and sanitation systems and the destruction of oil refineries and factories that used toxic chemicals in the production process.
Iraqi researchers believe that the different relative frequency of various types of cancer now as compared with before 1990 in the Basra region was a significant indication of a major change, and that this pattern continuing long after the war indicated that DU's impact was long- lasting.
Besides the contents listed below, the second edition of Metal of Dishonor has chapters reporting on a study from Iraq and from Bosnia, and a new chapter by Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a physicist and medical doctor who examined U.S. troops hit by DU "friendly fire."
Both the book and the video can be ordered online at: http://www.leftbooks.com/online-store/scstore/c-Depleted_Uranium.html
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More Than Half of Israeli Workers Say They Suffer Abuse on the Job
Survey shows 55.4% of Israel's working population were harassed at work - far more than in other Western countries.
One of every two workers suffers bullying or abuse in the workplace, and it costs the economy in terms of lost productivity.
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Sun and TI reject SOI for 0.13-micron UltraSparc
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DALLAS In a decision that will intensify the debate on the merits of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, Sun Microsystems Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. have elected not to use SOI for Sun's next-generation microprocessor, which will be manufactured by TI.
TI had indicated last year that it was considering adding an SOI module to its 0.13-micron technology road map for Sun's UltraSparc processors, but now that won't happen. "We don't have any plans to use SOI," said Dennis Buss, vice president of silicon technology development at TI.
TI has manufactured Sun's microprocessors for 13 years, and has brought up its latest process technologies for initial use by Sun, then spread out the technologies later to make its own digital signal processors.
"We've done some early work on the Spice models so that Sun engineers could evaluate the technology, and together we've come to the conclusion that the advantages of SOI get smaller and smaller as you shrink [geometries]," Buss said.
Other chip makers, including IBM Corp.'s Microelectronics Division and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., have argued that SOI's advantages improve as a device's operating voltage drops, due in part to reduced current leakage at the device junctions.
But TI's technologists came to a different conclusion, Buss said. "For the same off leakage, you lose some of the gain in performance by going to SOI," he said. "We looked at it, and the Spice models showed modest improvements in performance. At the end of the day, when you add in the additional R&D costs, and the additional costs of designing with SOI, we decided we are better off sticking with bulk and pushing that as fast as we can."
Hype detector
David Yen, recently named vice president and general manager of Sun's processor products group in Palo Alto, Calif., said Sun looked at more than TI's SOI technology.
"After looking at several companies we decided there is no justification in going to SOI," Yen said. "What other companies are saying about SOI is definitely market hype. IBM's statements that the industry needs to go to SOI are just designed to get publicity in favor of SOI. You have to look at what they can do, not what they say."
IBM has been vocal in its support for SOI. Three years ago, the company said it would apply SOI technology throughout its processor line. Indeed, IBM will use SOI to manufacture its upcoming 0.13-micron Power 4 processor, a mammoth chip that will be used in IBM's servers. The Power 4 will compete with Intel Corp.'s Itanium and Sun's UltraSparc processors at the highest end of the computer market.
IBM's decision to use SOI in its server processors has sparked a ferocious debate, with IBM as SOI advocate and Intel as its major opponent. AMD threw its weight behind SOI in July, when president Hector Ruiz said AMD planned to use SOI technology across all of its microprocessors, ranging from the mobile to the server segments.
AMD has co-developed its logic technology with Motorola, and also licensed SOI design-related intellectual property to ease the transition to SOI-based designs. AMD will make its processors at its own fabs in Texas and Germany.
Motorola is also developing an SOI module on its 0.13-micron technology platform and is developing a G4 PowerPC design in SOI technology.
Intel has remained unswayed by the arguments put forth by AMD, IBM and Motorola. Intel technologists have published technical papers arguing that the merits of SOI technology decline as scaling progresses to 100 nm, 70 nm and beyond. And the processor behemoth has not budged from its position, despite rumors and speculation that Intel also would implement SOI technology, beginning with its mobile processor line.
Intel's Mark Bohr, director of process architecture and integration; associate Kaizad Mistry and others have said that as CMOS scaling continues, the reduced leakage possible with SOI diminishes. Buss said TI's researchers came to similar conclusions. "Generally, as you go down in voltage, the body coupling effect becomes more important, and a number of other factors come into play."
Moreover, TI, like Intel, is moving to 300-mm wafers. TI has already started prototype 300-mm wafer production at its DMOS 6 fab (the D stands for Dallas), beginning with 0.18-micron design rules. SOI wafers are available now at 200 mm, though the cost per wafer is roughly four to six times higher than a bulk silicon wafer, said Tak Ogawa, silicon analyst at Dataquest Japan. That cost may decline to a factor of three times more as SOI volumes increase, he said.
"In the near future the ratio could be less than three times. The proper target for an SOI wafer at the 200-mm size would be $430. At that level, processor vendors could expand SOI into the market."


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This barely feels like a complete movie, let alone an actual Die Hard movie.
Here's a fun piece of trivia: A Good Day to Die Hard is the first Die Hard movie to have been conceived from the start as a Die Hard movie. The first two films were based on unrelated books, the third was a reworking of a script called Simon Says, and the fourth was based (I assume loosely) on a Wired Magazine article. That's a pretty interesting fact on its own, but it becomes way more weirdly intriguing once you actually see A Good Day to Die Hard. The fact that a writer, Skip Woods, sat down to write a story specifically for John McClane and came up with this is completely batshit insane. If anything, this barely feels like a complete movie, let alone an actual Die Hard movie.
John McClane is in Russia. Why? I was led to believe that he was going to help his son out of a jam, but throughout the rest of the film he constantly makes wisecracks about the fact that he is on vacation. Anyway, he literally runs into his son who is in the middle of some major spy shit. The two form a reluctant partnership and try to stop some bad guys from getting some nukes. I know this is the age of resurrecting '80s action stars and calling back to '80s action movies, but seriously? Evil Russians and fears of nuclear war? This premise sucks, but the premise doesn't necessarily matter. The premise of Die Hard is very simple and by the numbers. What elevates it is the brilliant script, inspired casting, and exceptional direction. So maybe this ridiculously boring premise can be elevated by the writer of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the director of Max Payne?
Nope. This movie is garbage.
The real key to A Good Day to Die Hard is the relationship between John McClane and his son, Jack. It's contentious at best. McClane has been an absentee dad and apparently never been very loving. When they first meet up, Jack holds a gun to his father's head and seems serious about it. From there, they have to work together and repair their relationship. I get where they were coming from with this. The first Die Hard is all about McClane's struggling marriage and how he is brought back to his estranged wife, Holly, through adversity. So why not do that with his son? Well, if you're going to do that, you need to write it better. The events of Die Hard allow Holly to see John as a strong, caring husband, and force John to realize what he has been doing wrong with their relationship. In this film, John and his son kind of bond over killing, and sort of decide to hug and make up, but without any actual arc or reason.
The other purpose Jack serves in this story is to fill the sidekick role. McClane has had a long history of sidekicks, the high point being Samuel L. Jackson, and the low point being Justin Long. Jack is played by Jai Courtney, who was Werner Herzog's henchman in Jack Reacher. The guy has no charisma, and I would compare him unfavorably to Sam Worthington. I hated Justin Long's character in Live Free or Die Hard, but he's a likable guy and I felt he did his best. Here, we have the opposite, a decent character played by an incredibly bland actor.
One of the most important elements of a Die Hard movie is the location. This is a specialty of director John McTiernan, who made the two best entries in the series. He has a way of establishing the geography of a place and giving it an intense, claustrophobic atmosphere, be it as small as a building or a submarine, or as large as a jungle or New York City. John Moore does not have that skill. I have no idea why this movie takes place in Russia, and nothing about the location adds to the movie.
I want to give the filmmakers a little credit, because they clearly try to fix some things with this movie. Personally, I hate all the techy hacker crap that was the focus of Live Free or Die Hard, and, as stated earlier, this is clearly a return to a more old fashioned story. The fourth entry got pretty carried away with its use of CGI and ridiculous, over-the-top set pieces, and there is a conscious effort here to keep the action more grounded, until the end when they do pretty much the exact same stunt that pissed everyone off in the last one. And of course, fans were outraged that Live Free or Die Hard went out with a PG-13 rating, and this one is back to R. Of course, as with Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, fans may realize that the rating isn't the most important thing after all.
I want to briefly comment on franchise management, because I think this series is a prime example of how not to do it. I like sequels. I like franchises. I like when characters are strong enough to come back and revisit in new adventures. There were a good 12 years where Die Hard was a trilogy, and it was a pretty solid trilogy. Obviously, the first film is an absolute classic. I watch it multiple times every year, and it steadily creeps up my list of favorite movies. At this point it may be number one. Die Hard 2 is certainly not great, but I have some affection for it and Die Hard with a Vengeance is pretty damn fantastic aside from the last few minutes.
Then they made Live Free or Die Hard, which was a significant step down. Now there's this film, and the ratio is slipping. The series has gone from a solid two out of three, to about 50/50, to now being two good movies in a pretty shaky series. They've damaged their brand. This is the worst Die Hard movie, including the knock-offs like Under Siege and Air Force One. I'm sad to say it, but this is the first time I didn't even enjoy Bruce Willis as John McClane. It's a joyless, ugly affair, and this is a very bad day to be a Die Hard fan. | Sean Lass


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|Horst Janson
|Captain Kronos
|John Cater
|Prof. Hieronymos Grost
|Caroline Munro
|John Carson
|Dr. Marcus
|Shane Briant
|Paul Durward
|Lois Daine
|Sara Durward
|Wanda Ventham
|Lady Durward
|Ian Hendry
Debonair supernatural expert Captain Kronos and his hunchbacked assistant, Grost, meet their match when they encounter a village where vampires have been stealing the vitality of young women, leaving them elderly and decrepit. Armed with his sword and formidable deductive reasoning, Kronos begins to solve the macabre mystery, with evidence pointing to the aristocratic Lady Durward and her family as prime suspects.


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The Dutchman's stunning late volley condemns the Reds to a first home league defeat of the season as the race for a top four finish takes another dramatic turn
The result means Kenny Dalglish's men still have only one Premier League victory to their name in 2012, and are now ten points behind the Gunners with a game in hand as the season enters its final stages.
Arsenal, meanwhile, has now extended its unbeaten run in the league to five matches and will be delighted to emerge with a victory from one of its hardest remaining fixtures.
With so much at stake, both managers kept faith with the majority of the players who helped their teams enjoy morale-boosting victories last weekend.
Flushed with recent success, both sides began in confident mood, stroking the ball around with speed and assurance. Chances were at a premium in the early moments, but it was the Arsenal defense which looked the more vulnerable in the face of Liverpool pressure, with Suarez in particular causing problems.
The Uruguayan forced Wojciech Szczesny into an awkward headed clearance outside his area before Jordan Henderson wasted a promising two-on-one situation.
Moments later, the hosts spurned a golden opportunity to break the deadlock. Referee Mark Halsey rightly awarded a penalty when Suarez was felled in the box by Szczesny, but the Pole redeemed himself superbly by saving both Kuyt's initial penalty and scuffed rebound.
The score remained goalless but the Arsenal defense were still getting caught out repeatedly high up the pitch, and this escape simply postponed the inevitable. Henderson soon found himself in acres of space on the right flank, and his dangerous cross was inadvertently turned into his own net by Laurent Koscielny as he tried to clear.
Having seized the initiative, Liverpool poured forward in a bid to increase its superiority. A neat move from the left to the right flank again found Henderson all on his own and, after his low shot was parried by Szczesny, Suarez crashed the rebound against the post.
But just as a Reds second looked imminent, Arsenal equalized with its first clear chance of the game. Bacary Sagna curled a superb cross in from deep and Van Persie showed good strength to hold off Carragher before powering a header beyond Reina.
Stung by this setback, the hosts attacked with fresh vigor. Suarez's brilliant jinking run and shot forced another top save from Szczesny, before Kuyt glanced a pinpoint Charlie Adam cross against the woodwork. Despite the hosts' best efforts, however, Arsenal managed to escape to the interval on level terms.
The visitors sought to gain a foothold after the break, but they suffered a blow almost immediately when Mikel Arteta had to be stretchered off after a nasty looking accidental collision with Henderson. Abou Diaby replaced the Spaniard to make only his third appearance of the season.
Arsenal now enjoyed a greater share of possession in the midfield, but it was Liverpool who still posed the greater attacking threat, and Szczesny had to be brave to parry away Spearing's knock-down with Kelly bearing down upon him.
Neither side looked particularly convincing when dealing with deliveries from wide areas, and moments after Kelly had missed a guilt-edged chance to put Liverpool back in front when he failed to make any clean contact with Kuyt's precise center, Reina denied Theo Walcott's deflected strike with his trailing legs.
Tiring legs saw gaps begin to appear, but neither side appeared to have the composure to take full advantage. Stewart Downing's poor cross denied Suarez a simple tap-in, and moments later the former Middlesbrough man lashed wide from long range.
But just as the game appeared to be petering out into a draw, another piece of brilliance from Van Persie won it. Having once again escaped the attentions of Carragher, the Dutchman met Alex Song's brilliant chipped pass with a sumptuous volley which flew past Reina.
Liverpool poured forward but never looked like equalizing, and now face a huge challenge to secure Champions League football next season.
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my favv band
Flash Draw Created Jul 21, 2010 338 x 470px Unless noted Copyright 2010 Life of Art.
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Life of Art Jul 22, 2010
haha thanksss lmaoo i took a LONG break haha
furubaluver101 Jul 21, 2010
Cool band! You haven't drawn on here for a LONGGGG time! Welcome back! :)
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Written on: 30/10/2012
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Their customer service is fantastic, when I was testing out the reseller hosting a blog I published used up the free bandwidth within minutes so I emailed them and asked to upgrade. They upgraded my account immediately, before I'd paid, so that my website was up while I was invoiced and made payment.
I recommend them to anyone that asks, and now I've found them I won't use anyone else.


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Wikis > Dictionary of Islam > Fai
Booty obtained from infidels. According to Muhammad ibn Tahir, fai' is booty taken from a country which submits to Islam without resistence, as distinguished from ghanimah, or plunder. The Khalifah 'Umar said it was the special privilege of the Prophet to take booty as well as plunder, a privilege not permitted to any other prophet.
'Ani ibn Malik says the Prophet used to divide the booty on the same day he took it, and would give two shares to a man with a wife, and only one share to a man without one. (Mishkat, book xvii c xii.)
Based on Hughes, Dictionary of Islam


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McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare
Landon R. Y. Storrs
The second Red Scare refers to the fear of communism that permeated American politics, culture, and society from the late 1940s through the 1950s, during the opening phases of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. This episode of political repression lasted longer and was more pervasive than the Red Scare that followed the Bolshevik Revolution and World War I. Popularly known as "McCarthyism" after Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), who made himself famous in 1950 by claiming that large numbers of Communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department, the second Red Scare predated and outlasted McCarthy, and its machinery far exceeded the reach of a single maverick politician. Nonetheless, "McCarthyism" became the label for the tactic of undermining political opponents by making unsubstantiated attacks on their loyalty to the United States.
The initial infrastructure for waging war on domestic communism was built during the first Red Scare, with the creation of an antiradicalism division within the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the emergence of a network of private "patriotic" organizations. With capitalism's crisis during the Great Depression, the Communist Party grew in numbers and influence, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program expanded the federal government's role in providing economic security. The anticommunist network expanded as well, most notably with the 1938 formation of the Special House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities, which in 1945 became the permanent House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Other key congressional investigation committees were the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and McCarthy's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Members of these committees and their staff cooperated with the FBI to identify and pursue alleged subversives. The federal employee loyalty program, formalized in 1947 by President Harry Truman in response to right-wing allegations that his administration harbored Communist spies, soon was imitated by local and state governments as well as private employers. As the Soviets' development of nuclear capability, a series of espionage cases, and the Korean War enhanced the credibility of anticommunists, the Red Scare metastasized from the arena of government employment into labor unions, higher education, the professions, the media, and party politics at all levels. The second Red Scare did not involve pogroms or gulags, but the fear of unemployment was a powerful tool for stifling criticism of the status quo, whether in economic policy or social relations. Ostensibly seeking to protect democracy by eliminating communism from American life, anticommunist crusaders ironically undermined democracy by suppressing the expression of dissent. Debates over the second Red Scare remain lively because they resonate with ongoing struggles to reconcile Americans' desires for security and liberty.
The Nixon Administration and American Foreign Policy
Luke A. Nichter
Assessments of President Richard Nixon's foreign policy continue to evolve as scholars tap new possibilities for research. Due to the long wait before national security records are declassified by the National Archives and made available to researchers and the public, only in recent decades has the excavation of the Nixon administration's engagement with the world started to become well documented. As more records are released by the National Archives (including potentially 700 hours of Nixon's secret White House tapes that remain closed), scholarly understanding of the Nixon presidency is likely to continue changing. Thus far, historians have pointed to four major legacies of Nixon's foreign policy: tendencies to use American muscle abroad on a more realistic scale, to reorient the focus of American foreign policy to the Pacific, to reduce the chance that the Cold War could turn hot, and, inadvertently, to contribute to the later rise of Ronald Reagan and the Republican right wing—many of whom had been part of Nixon's "silent majority." While earlier works focused primarily on subjects like Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union, the historiography today is much more diverse – now there is at least one work covering most major aspects of Nixon's foreign policy.
Origins of the Vietnam War
Jessica M. Chapman
The origins of the Vietnam War can be traced to France's colonization of Indochina in the late 1880s. The Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, emerged as the dominant anti-colonial movement by the end of World War II, though Viet Minh leaders encountered difficulties as they tried to consolidate their power on the eve of the First Indochina War against France. While that war was, initially, a war of decolonization, it became a central battleground of the Cold War by 1950. The lines of future conflict were drawn that year when the Peoples Republic of China and the Soviet Union recognized and provided aid to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi, followed almost immediately by Washington's recognition of the State of Vietnam in Saigon. From that point on, American involvement in Vietnam was most often explained in terms of the Domino Theory, articulated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on the eve of the Geneva Conference of 1954. The Franco-Viet Minh ceasefire reached at Geneva divided Vietnam in two at the 17th parallel, with countrywide reunification elections slated for the summer of 1956. However, the United States and its client, Ngo Dinh Diem, refused to participate in talks preparatory to those elections, preferring instead to build South Vietnam as a non-communist bastion. While the Vietnamese communist party, known as the Vietnam Worker's Party in Hanoi, initially hoped to reunify the country by peaceful means, it reached the conclusion by 1959 that violent revolution would be necessary to bring down the "American imperialists and their lackeys." In 1960, the party formed the National Liberation Front for Vietnam and, following Diem's assassination in 1963, passed a resolution to wage all-out war in the south in an effort to claim victory before the United States committed combat troops. After President John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, he responded to deteriorating conditions in South Vietnam by militarizing the American commitment, though he stopped short of introducing dedicated ground troops. After Diem and Kennedy were assassinated in quick succession in November 1963, Lyndon Baines Johnson took office determined to avoid defeat in Vietnam, but hoping to prevent the issue from interfering with his domestic political agenda. As the situation in South Vietnam became more dire, LBJ found himself unable to maintain the middle-of-the-road approach that Kennedy had pursued. Forced to choose between escalation and withdrawal, he chose the former in March 1965 by launching a sustained campaign of aerial bombardment, coupled with the introduction of the first officially designated U.S. combat forces to Vietnam.
The Peace Movement since 1945
Leilah Danielson
Peace activism in the United States between 1945 and the 2010s focused mostly on opposition to U.S. foreign policy, efforts to strengthen and foster international cooperation, and support for nuclear nonproliferation and arms control. The onset of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union marginalized a reviving postwar American peace movement emerging from concerns about atomic and nuclear power and worldwide nationalist politics that everywhere seemed to foster conflict, not peace. Still, peace activism continued to evolve in dynamic ways and to influence domestic politics and international relations.
Most significantly, peace activists pioneered the use of Gandhian nonviolence in the United States and provided critical assistance to the African American civil rights movement, led the postwar antinuclear campaign, played a major role in the movement against the war in Vietnam, helped to move the liberal establishment (briefly) toward a more dovish foreign policy in the early 1970s, and helped to shape the political culture of American radicalism. Despite these achievements, the peace movement never regained the political legitimacy and prestige it held in the years before World War II, and it struggled with internal divisions about ideology, priorities, and tactics.
Peace activist histories in the 20th century tended to emphasize organizational or biographical approaches that sometimes carried hagiographic overtones. More recently, historians have applied the methods of cultural history, examining the role of religion, gender, and race in structuring peace activism. The transnational and global turn in the historical discipline has also begun to make inroads in peace scholarship. These are promising new directions because they situate peace activism within larger historical and cultural developments and relate peace history to broader historiographical debates and trends.
Progressives and Progressivism in an Era of Reform
Maureen A. Flanagan
The decades from the 1890s into the 1920s produced reform movements in the United States that resulted in significant changes to the country's social, political, cultural, and economic institutions. The impulse for reform emanated from a pervasive sense that the country's democratic promise was failing. Political corruption seemed endemic at all levels of government. An unregulated capitalist industrial economy exploited workers and threatened to create a serious class divide, especially as the legal system protected the rights of business over labor. Mass urbanization was shifting the country from a rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrial one characterized by poverty, disease, crime, and cultural clash. Rapid technological advancements brought new, and often frightening, changes into daily life that left many people feeling that they had little control over their lives. Movements for socialism, woman suffrage, and rights for African Americans, immigrants, and workers belied the rhetoric of the United States as a just and equal democratic society for all its members.
Responding to the challenges presented by these problems, and fearful that without substantial change the country might experience class upheaval, groups of Americans proposed undertaking significant reforms. Underlying all proposed reforms was a desire to bring more justice and equality into a society that seemed increasingly to lack these ideals. Yet there was no agreement among these groups about the exact threat that confronted the nation, the means to resolve problems, or how to implement reforms. Despite this lack of agreement, all so-called Progressive reformers were modernizers. They sought to make the country's democratic promise a reality by confronting its flaws and seeking solutions. All Progressivisms were seeking a via media, a middle way between relying on older ideas of 19th-century liberal capitalism and the more radical proposals to reform society through either social democracy or socialism. Despite differences among Progressives, the types of Progressivisms put forth, and the successes and failures of Progressivism, this reform era raised into national discourse debates over the nature and meaning of democracy, how and for whom a democratic society should work, and what it meant to be a forward-looking society. It also led to the implementation of an activist state.
Propaganda in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations
Laura A. Belmonte
From the revolutionary era to the post-9/11 years, public and private actors have attempted to shape U.S. foreign relations by persuading mass audiences to embrace particular policies, people, and ways of life. Although the U.S. government conducted wartime propaganda activities prior to the 20th century, it had no official propaganda agency until the Committee on Public Information (CPI) was formed in 1917. For the next two years, CPI aimed to generate popular support for the United States and its allies in World War I. In 1938, as part of its Good Neighbor Policy, the Franklin Roosevelt administration launched official informational and cultural exchanges with Latin America. Following American entry into World War II, the U.S. government created a new propaganda agency, the Office of War Information (OWI). Like CPI, OWI was disbanded once hostilities ended. But in the fall of 1945, to combat the threats of anti-Americanism and communism, President Harry S. Truman broke with precedent and ordered the continuation of U.S. propaganda activities in peacetime. After several reorganizations within the Department of State, all U.S. cultural and information activities came under the purview of the newly created U.S. Information Agency (USIA) in 1953. Following the dissolution of USIA in 1999, the State Department reassumed authority over America's international information and cultural programs through its Office of International Information Programs.
Public Authorities
Gail Radford
Public authorities are agencies created by governments to engage directly in the economy for public purposes. They differ from standard agencies in that they operate outside the administrative framework of democratically accountable government. Since they generate their own operating income by charging users for goods and services and borrow for capital expenses based on projections of future revenues, they can avoid the input from voters and the regulations that control public agencies funded by tax revenues.
Institutions built on the public authority model exist at all levels of government and in every state. A few of these enterprises, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, are well known. Thousands more toil in relative obscurity, operating toll roads and bridges, airports, transit systems, cargo ports, entertainment venues, sewer and water systems, and even parking garages. Despite their ubiquity, these agencies are not well understood. Many release little information about their internal operations. It is not even possible to say conclusively how many exist, since experts disagree about how to define them, and states do not systematically track them.
One thing we do know about public authorities is that, over the course of the 20th century, these institutions have become a major component of American governance. Immediately following the Second World War, they played a minor role in public finance. But by the early 21st century, borrowing by authorities constituted well over half of all public borrowing at the sub-federal level. This change means that increasingly the leaders of these entities, rather than elected officials, make key decisions about where and how to build public infrastructure and steer economic development in the United States
Public Sector Unionism
Joseph E. Hower
Government employees are an essential part of the early-21st-century labor movement in the United States. Teachers, firefighters, and police officers are among the most heavily unionized occupations in America, but public-sector union members also include street cleaners and nurses, janitors and librarians, zookeepers and engineers. Despite cultural stereotypes that continue to associate unions with steel or auto workers, public employees are five times more likely to be members of unions than workers in private industry. Today, nearly half of all union members work for federal, state, or local governments.
It was not always so. Despite a long, rich history of workplace and ballot box activism, government workers were marginal to the broader labor movement until the second half of the 20th century. Excluded from the legal breakthroughs that reshaped American industry in the 1930s, government workers lacked the basic organizing and bargaining rights extended to their private-sector counterparts. A complicated, and sometimes convoluted, combination of discourse and doctrine held that government employees were, as union leader Jerry Wurf later put it, a "servant to a master" rather than "a worker with a boss." Inspired by the material success of workers in mass industry and moved by the moral clarity of the Black Freedom struggle, government workers demanded an end to their second-class status through one of the most consequential, and least recognized, social movements of late 20th century. Yet their success at improving the pay, benefits, and conditions of government work also increased the cost of government services, imposing new obligations at a time of dramatic change in the global economy. In the resulting crunch, unionized public workers came under political pressure, particularly from fiscal conservatives who charged that their bargaining rights and political power were incompatible with a new age of austerity and limits.
Radicalism in America after 1945
Vaneesa Cook
Radicalism in the United States since 1945 has been varied, complex, and often fragmented, making it difficult to analyze as a coherent movement. Communist and pro-Soviet organizations remained active after World War II, but a proliferation of noncommunist groups in the 1940s and 1950s, formed by those disillusioned by Marxist theory or the Soviet Union, began to chart a new course for the American Left. Eschewing much of the previous focus on labor, the proletariat, and Marxist doctrine, American postwar radical organizations realigned around humanist values, moral action, democracy, and even religion, with tenuous connections to Marxism, if any. The parameters of postwar radical moral theory were not always clearly defined, and questions of strategy and vision caused frequent divisions among activists. Nonetheless, claims of individual dignity and freedom continued to frame left radicalism into the late 20th century, emphasizing identity politics, community-building initiatives, and cultural expression in the streets of U.S. cities and the halls of academia. The presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders in 2016 helped revitalize leftist rhetoric on the national stage with its calls for racial and economic equality on moral terms.
Russian-U.S. Foreign Relations, 1917–1991
Margaret Peacock
In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville argued in Democracy in America that there were "two great nations in the world." They had started from different historical points but seemed to be heading in the same direction. As expanding empires, they faced the challenges of defeating nature and constructing a civilization for the modern era. Although they adhered to different governmental systems, "each of them," de Tocqueville declared, "seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe."
De Tocqueville's words were prophetic. In the 19th century, Russian and American intellectuals and diplomats struggled to understand the roles that their countries should play in the new era of globalization and industrialization. Despite their differing understandings of how development should happen, both sides believed in their nation's vital role in guiding the rest of the world. American adherents of liberal developmentalism often argued that a free flow of enterprise, trade, investment, information, and culture was the key to future growth. They held that the primary obligation of American foreign policy was to defend that freedom by pursuing an "open door" policy and free access to markets. They believed that the American model would work for everyone and that the United States had an obligation to share its system with the old and underdeveloped nations around it.
A similar sense of mission developed in Russia. Russian diplomats had for centuries struggled to establish defensive buffers around the periphery of their empire. They had linked economic development to national security, and they had argued that their geographic expansion represented a "unification" of peoples as opposed to a conquering of them. In the 19th century, after the Napoleonic Wars and the failed Decembrist Revolution, tsarist policymakers fought to defend autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationalism from domestic and international critics. As in the United States, Imperial and later Soviet leaders envisioned themselves as the emissaries of the Enlightenment to the backward East and as protectors of tradition and order for the chaotic and revolutionary West.
These visions of order clashed in the 20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States became superpowers. Conflicts began early, with the American intervention in the 1918–1921 Russian civil war. Tensions that had previously been based on differing geographic and strategic interests then assumed an ideological valence, as the fight between East and West became a struggle between the political economies of communism and capitalism. Foreign relations between the two countries experienced boom and bust cycles that took the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust and yet maintained a strategic balance that precluded the outbreak of global war for fifty years. This article will examine how that relationship evolved and how it shaped the modern world.
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text: Wayne Allyn Root [ Thursday's Morning Zone: By Dave Chaffin December 5, 2013 Today's Program Schedule: 7:07AM MST: Host Dave Chaffin will be talking with Jack Cashill, a regular contributor to WND, is an Emmy award-winning independent writer and producer with a Ph... Read More ... Read More Category: Features Tags: Jack Cashill, The Morning Zone KGAB Radio, WAYNE Allyn Root Send to a friend! Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Pin it! Reddit This! Share on Tumblr!