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Print version ISSN 1990-7451
T'inkazos vol.4 no.se 2008
The symbolic strategy of the movimiento al socialismo1
La estrategia simbólica del movimiento al socialismo
Jorge Komadina Rimassa2
Translated by Jorge Komadina Rimassa
Translation from T'inkazos, La Paz, v. 11 n. n.23-24, Mar 2008.
Is the MAS a grouping of social movements, a populist phenomenon or a new indigenous-campesino left-wing movement? How should we categorise the form of collective action developed by the coca-growers movement? Is it a political party or a trade union network? What are the ideological and symbolic points of reference that accompany and guide this praxis? The answers to these questions point to a political movement with a completely new form of collective action.
¿El MAS es una articulación de movimientos sociales, un fenómeno populista o una nueva izquierda indígena y campesina?, ¿cómo caracterizar la forma de acción colectiva generada por el movimiento cocalero?, ¿se trata de un partido o de una red sindical?, ¿cuáles son los referentes ideológicos y simbólicos que acompañan y orientan esta praxis? Las respuestas giran en torno a un movimiento político con una forma inédita de acción colectiva.
In the afternoon of 22 January 2006, Evo Morales Ayma was sworn in before Congress as President of the Republic of Bolivia. This ceremony drew a symbolic dividing line between two eras: one, the age of neoliberalism (1985-2000), was vanishing over the horizon, while the other, whose contours are still not defined, was just emerging as the contingent result of the political struggles that had taken place over a period of several years marked by conflicts and elections, sacrifices and acts of petty small-mindedness, heroic feats and foolish decisions.
In the 1999 municipal elections, a new political actor, the Movement Toward Socialism (Movimiento Al Socialismo - MAS), managed to win 39 provincial councillors seats in the Department of Cochabamba and captured 3.2 per cent of the valid votes cast in the country as a whole. This event constituted a turning point in collective action by the coca-growers unions in the Chapare region: this social movement, whose struggles had hitherto focused on protests and demands, transformed itself into a political movement equipped with a strategy for taking and holding power and a strong cultural identity. The MASs practices and representations changed the rules of politics in the region and the country, and turned its leader into Bolivias Head of State.
The MASs brilliant trajectory poses a series of questions for the social sciences in Bolivia. Is it a grouping of social movements, a populist phenomenon or a new indigenous-campesino left-wing movement? How should we categorise the form of collective action developed by the coca-growers movement? Is it a political party or a trade union network? What are the ideological and symbolic points of reference that accompany and guide this praxis? Our response to these questions is to study the MAS as a completely new form of collective action that can be summed up in the concept of the political movement.
Although the idea of the political movement is not new, it has not been paid the same amount of attention as social movement theory. In our judgement, the MAS has characteristics that are without precedent in Bolivian history, and it is therefore unsatisfactory to define it as a federation of social movements (even though it is closely linked to them) or as a political party (even though it meets the official requirements to participate in elections). What is new about the MAS, its differentia specifica, is that it is a political movement that acts in the borderlands between civil society and the political system of representative democracy.
The MAS codifies the mobilisations and representations of various different social organisations and projects them onto institutionalised politics through participation in elections, although it aspires to change the rules of the political game. The passage from protest and demand-based struggles to the political movement does not come about spontaneously. It occurs when the movements leadership designs a strategy for taking power in other words, when it acts in accordance with a strategic calculation that implies codifying and coordinating social protest in specifically political terms. While corporate and sectoral social movements fight against political exclusion and for access to resources and benefits, political movements question the political systems norms and procedures and propose to reform them. In other words, they tear up the rules of the game; they upset the applecart.
The MAS is not a party-political structure or a closed ideological community in the style of the old left-wing parties obsessed with preserving the purity of their ideological castles. The instrument is first and foremost a system of signs, and the purpose of our work is to study the symbolic structures that constitute collective action, going beyond the hypothetical rationality of ideologies and political practices. The emergence of the MAS poses some important problems for understanding political struggles. The political dimension is undoubtedly relevant to the structuring of collective action. Although this statement may seem obvious, it is in fact problematic because several different theoretical, psychological or culturalist approaches have specifically questioned the excessive weight given to the political explanation. Nevertheless (and this point is important), the emergence and development of a political movement the MAS, in this case certainly takes place in a context with possibilities and constraints, but, as Alberto Melucci (2000: 31) has pointed out, this does not explain the meanings inherent in collective action, as these are constructed by the actors involved. In other words, inserting the movement in a space that has constraints but also opportunities should not lead us to analyse it as a malfunction or anomaly in the political system; in fact, the systems rules can be transformed thanks to the collective action.
Likewise, in order to understand the specificity of the MAS as a form of collective action, we need to get beyond the idea typical of liberal-institutionalist thinking that politics has precise, legally consecrated institutional limits, beyond which lies a praxis that negates it, i.e. anti-politics. This prompts us to doubt the accuracy of certain concepts that have been reified by the social sciences, particularly the dichotomies between public and private, social world and political sphere, State and civil society. On the contrary, and leading on from the ideas of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière (1998), we need to recognise that politics takes place precisely on the fringes of the institutional system, where a dissent or conflict with the established power is generated. This should not be seen merely as a coming together of forces against a government, but fundamentally as a foundational act that forges political subjects whose vocation is to universalise the conflict. It is on the fringes of politics, says Rancière, where the movement that renews politics begins again unceasingly.
The political borderlands and the construction of the enemy
The consolidation of the system of representative democracy coincided with a new hegemonic project taken forward by economic and political elites of the neoliberal tendency. The new political arrangements strategic device was the institutionalisation of the party system, which was assigned one essential role: to mediate between the State and civil society. The epitome of this system was composed of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario - MNR), Nationalist Democratic Action (Acción Democrática Nacionalista - ADN) and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria - MIR), and other smaller political parties such as Condepa and Unidad Cívica Solidaridad converged opportunistically around it. The traditional parties took turns to hold power in fluid circulation, through coalition governments and pacts between the governing party and the opposition. This was the key feature of the neoliberal political model, also known as pact-based democracy.3 It was an arrangement that ensured that the country could be governed in the short term but it unleashed centrifugal effects in the long term: it introduced an instrumental political rationality and lacked the flexibility needed to develop deliberation processes for demands to be negotiated with civil society; it also legitimated political transaction procedures based on a new clientelist and patronage-based model. This structured a party corporativism which, in contrast to the authoritarian and centralist state corporativism of the nationalist period, distributed power among different parties, each of which controlled clientelist networks through which group interests were represented and mediated. At the same time, each of the partners in the pact-based democracy set up networks of power inside their organisations, which distorted reform processes. The crisis of the political parties called into question their leadership, mediation and representation roles, but also their expressive role that leads social groups to identify with political leaders and projects (the capacity to embody groups in the political arena produces mechanisms of symbolic identification between individuals). The collective action performed by these traditional parties is rooted in an ephimeral form of support that is limited to the act of voting and depends on the personality of the leaders and their specific responses to public policy issues. Their stated demands and interests therefore turned out to be negotiable, and parties with striking ideological differences such as ADN and MIR would thus abandon their principles and their ideological identity in exchange for jobs in government ministries. It is precisely this identity crisis that led to the rise and consolidation of the MAS, an organisation that sought to fill the vacuum created by the political meaninglessness of the neoliberal years. The disappearance of lucid, clearly recognisable boundaries between political parties facilitates the emergence of political movements that propose to draw new dividing lines and transform the existing balance of power.
As well as the traditional role of mediating between the social and political spheres, political organisations (parties or movements) perform a role of embodiment or identification, through which social groups are placed on the political stage, represented or made visible (Donegani and Sadoun, 1994). Thus, in the past, the so-called class-based party was a response to the working class demand for direct political representation in parliament. This implicitly questioned the idea of the politician as intermediary or ventriloquist, and renewed the quest for organic ties between the governors and the governed.
The emergence of a political movement cannot take place without the presence of a constitutive Other, the enemy or adversary, the negative referent that enables the boundary between the outside and the inside to be delineated. The construction of identity boundaries, the differentiation of an Us in opposition to Them, constitutes the basis of political practices. This idea is particularly important to the argument presented here for two reasons. First, because it allows us to understand that the construction of political identities is a relational rather than a self-referential process; second, because identification processes always make reference to symbolic systems of opposites (indian, white; man, woman; left, right). Therefore, the existence of any identity is not conditional on the stability and coherence of a set of cultural facts or ideologies. Instead, it implies the affirmation of difference, the identification of an Other that constitutes the outside of a group. Moreover, in certain circumstances, when difference is exacerbated to the point where the existence of a group is called into question, this opposition can be activated so that it becomes a friend/enemy relationship; in other words, it turns into antagonism (Mouffe, 1999: 15-16).
From its very beginnings, the MAS expressed a series of antagonisms and contradictions in Bolivian society and signified them in a way that was different to the neoliberal symbolic structures, so that these were gradually replaced by a radically new emerging vision. The secret of antagonism lies precisely in inventing new languages to replace the words used and over-used by the dominant order to organise and signify both everyday experiences and political struggles (Melucci 2002).
These ideas lead us to a better understanding of how important the unceasing production of the demarcation between friends and enemies is in the construction of the political identity of the MAS. The obsessive, paroxystic identification of the enemy and the constant appeal to confrontation have played a decisive role in the emergence of the political movement, because they have re-drawn the boundaries of the political field in Bolivia. This process of construction or making visible is part of the very origin of the political movement. To construct its own identity and defend itself from the attacks coming from all sides in the form of false accusations or real threats, the MAS denounces acts of sedition and evil intentions. In his election campaign and post-election speeches, Evo Morales declares that there is a conspiracy against the instrument. Sometimes this is blamed on the right-wing parties, sometimes on foreign agents; the enemies are equally likely to be the DEA, the large landowners in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia, the US embassy, the police or the traditional parties, and even conspirators inside the movement itself. However, it is interesting to note that, in contrast to other parties of a more indianist tendency, MAS speeches do not often use the word qaras (whites, mestizos), perhaps because the MAS has reached an agreement with many different sectors of the population and also with qaras abroad, particularly in Europe, where Evo displays his indigenous identity with very successful results. There is not such a marked ethnic characterisation of the opponent as, for example, in the Movimiento Indígena Pachakuti (MIP), Felipe Quispes party. The unmasking of the enemy is, of course, essential to achieve group unity. This real or imagined enemy is everywhere, although in the early days of the MAS the coca growers really were surrounded by adversaries who sought to eradicate coca leaf crops completely.
A key feature of politics is, of course, the struggle to establish a legitimate classification system that keeps social groups separate. Division and conflict are not social pathologies or deficiencies in the political edifice; instead, they play an essential role in politics. Mouffes statement regarding the impossibility of having a positive without there being a trace of negativity (1999: 159) reiterates the strategic argument of contemporary theories on identity, which see it as the construction of meaning on the basis of social relationships. Following on from this, identity is defined as an ongoing process of creating meaning to interpret similarity and difference.
The external enemy
From this analytical standpoint, we can distinguish three symbolic maps or territories on which boundaries of identity and politics have been drawn. The first boundary separates the external, foreign enemy specifically, US imperialism from the Bolivian nation and people. Thus, the MAS programme states: First, Bolivia fell into the clutches of the English. Later, it passed to the Yankees and was subjected to the rule of transnational companies from Europe, North America and East Asia, together with their servants the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation (MAS, 2004: 4). This symbolic division, the foundation of all nationalisms, has been deeply rooted in the Bolivian political imagination since the Chaco War and fed into the ideology of the 1952 Revolution, the military nationalism of Ovando and Torres (1969-1971) and the discourse of the old Bolivian left (Antezana, 1983). The opposition between the nation and the anti-nation (the term used by Carlos Montenegro, the ideologue of revolutionary nationalism), between the fatherland and the anti-fatherland, has significant appeal because it enables the Us to be expanded to include a whole range of social groups. These are not limited to the plebs, the most impoverished population group, but include the middle classes and even patriotic sectors of the business community. Only the oligarchy remains outside the protective cordon of this territory, in order to allow for antagonism or the populist rupture (Laclau, 2005).
This opposition is clearly visible in two social demands that are presented via the MAS: the defence of coca leaf and the nationalisation of oil and gas resources. On important occasions, which are ritualised in order to communicate the messages more effectively, Evo Morales wears a huge garland of coca leaves round his neck. There is always coca on the table when the MAS leadership sits down to talk. On several occasions, the movement has staged mass coca-chewing sessions in public as a protest symbol, and every march organised by the MAS has been accompanied by the delicate leaf. Coca is omnipresent: it is the founding myth of the MAS.
In the early days, at the end of the 1980s, the coca growers were fighting against eradication policies that were based on the systematic use of violence. The coca grower was stigmatized as a drug trafficker and coca leaf was banned worldwide by the United States. The coca growers resistance therefore sought to remove that stigma. The symbolic struggle became the essence of the coca-growers movement: the coca leaf was not a curse but a legacy from the ancestors who, in turn, had received it from the gods; it was therefore a sacred leaf. But millions of small farmers and indigenous people in different regions of the country also depended on coca for their livelihoods. The destruction of the crop, instigated by foreign powers, was not only unjust and irrational from the economic point of view; it was also an unpardonable affront both to Andean and Amazonian culture and to the countrys sovereignty. Coca leaf began to acquire meanings it had formerly lacked.
As well as its direct message, its reference to something real, and to borrow a concept from the field of linguistics its meaning, every object of discourse can take on connotations and enter the realm of signification, as Roland Barthes (1957) observed. Everything has the potential to belong to the domain of the sign, and therefore become myth. So it is with the myth of coca: the sacred leaf, whose origins are almost unidentifiable, takes on qualities that enshrine it as a symbol of the reconquest of national sovereignty, a weapon in the anti-imperialist struggle, the representative symbol of a civilisation. The meanings already attributed to the coca leaf were not erased, but other connotations were added over time so that it ended up uniting multiple contradictions. It ceased to be a mere social demand and became a symbol, by definition ambivalent and powerful.
This symbolic displacement involved politicising coca through the construction of a chain of equivalences (Laclau, 2005) that allows the defence of coca to be easily associated with the defence of Andean culture, sovereignty and national dignity, which are felt to be threatened by US imperialism. Coca is like a symbolic constellation because it includes sets of meanings that come together in a certain space and around the same nucleus. In each set there are correlations, lines of convergence, points of connection and similarities that reveal the same stereotypes, tropes and images, which can be read as the symbolic structures of coca leaf. The symbol undergoes a transformation and a kind of metonymy occurs: part of its meaning is extracted and given value, and thus stands for the whole.
The external enemy was also made visible through the presence of the transnational oil companies that started to operate in Bolivia, encouraged by the economic policy that Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada introduced and all the neoliberal governments in succession took forward. These companies were perceived as part of the foreign power that was appropriating the countrys natural resources with the complicity of the elites. The oil companies were not just associated with US imperialism, however. They were also seen as representing a more diffuse but equally powerful enemy: globalisation.
If those are the meanings of difference, what are the contours of the Us? The people and the State. The State is perceived as the guarantor of sovereignty, the economic agent that produces and distributes wealth, but also as the institution that symbolically embodies the nation. Thus, the MAS rejects all forms of imperialist penetration or subjugation (e.g. the FTAA) that seek to exert domination over the will of the Bolivian people, the national State or the wealth and destiny of the Republic (MAS 2004: 20). In fact, the entire political, economic and cultural programme of the MAS pivots around the idea of a strong State: We will recover ownership of the strategic state enterprises (YPFB, ENDE, ENTEL, LAB, ENFE, Comibol, etc.) to ensure a balanced use of resources that does not damage our environment. The profits they generate will no longer go abroad. 100 per cent of these profits will be used to implement social policies that benefit this countrys majorities (ibid).
Nevertheless, the key symbolic structure is the people, the simple, hard-working people, the dispossessed and marginalised. The movements main election slogan was Somos pueblo, somos MAS, which carries the dual meaning of we are the people, we are the MAS and we are the people, we are the majority. On this level, the MAS discourse differs from the traditional (working) class-based appeal of the old left because the people of the MAS is a symbolic structure rather than the real set of impoverished or oppressed social groups. The people is a successful combination of demands and representations emanating from various different sectors of society, not just the coca growers. These groups only come together because between them and the adversary there lies what Laclau (2005) called a principle of antagonism, a power difference. This antagonism operates as a result of the combination of the different fractures that exist in Bolivian society, which merge together in a higher-order contradiction.
Thus far, it might be said that the MAS is a phenomenon that can be described as a populist nationalism; Stefanoni (2003) was not wrong to define the MAS as a plebeian nationalism. Things seem to be more complicated than that, however, because the movement also employs other dimensions of identity. Before analysing them, we need to return to the idea of identity boundaries. In sociological terms, it can be said that identity is a social relationship rather than a component of culture. In the production of meaning, interaction itself is what constitutes identity, which can be thought of as a symbolic boundary that separates the members from the non-members of a social group. Identity boundaries are also shifting and porous; they can be crossed and constantly redefined depending on the way in which we perceive the Other. The boundary is neither clear nor static; it can involve many different planes which may divide or overlap.
Ethnic and cultural boundaries
The second boundary drawn by the MAS has an ethnic-cultural referent and separates the arena dominated by internal colonialism from the indigenous and first peoples. Here we find a displacement of the meanings typical of revolutionary nationalism, which were produced around the equivalences of people=nation/oligarchy=antination. The MAS has introduced an ethnic view of political and cultural processes that draws on the katarista discourse and the discourses of the indigenous peoples of the lowlands. Internal colonialism has failed to build a modern nation-state, so that the task in hand is no longer to renew the indigenous foundations of the imagined nation, but rather to build a multinational and pluricultural State (MAS, 2004: 5-6). Thus, the national State is deeply racist and must be founded anew on the basis of indigenous autonomies.
The MAS posits an opposition between the mechanistic paradigm of western culture, which destroys nature, and the Andean-Amazonian paradigm that maintains a symbiotic relationship with the environment, in total equilibrium with nature. In other words, a dividing line is drawn against the Newtonian paradigm which believes that the world is an inanimate machine governed by enduring mathematical laws. It goes on to state that we are adversaries of the age of enlightenment as theorised by the English philosophers and economists John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, and of the economic ideas of Adam Smith, all of them ideologues of todays industrial society, the so-called modern society (ibid: 7). Modernity is linked to the market economy, which relentlessly seeks to achieve the objectives of the world view of western culture. In short, we are not just dealing with a political cleavage but an antagonism between civilisations, to coin a term (ibid: 1-2). This is why the MAS proposed the urgent need to take forward the political, structural, administrative and institutional transformation of the National State, recognising the autonomy of the indigenous nations so that they can guarantee public freedoms, human rights, citizens prerogatives and national sovereignty (ibid: 18). Another symbolic classification that carries a great deal of weight is the one that separates liberal democracy from the Andean form of community organisation, which has been able to preserve collective values and solidarity against the individualism and egotism of capitalist modernity.
This ethnic boundary is not in fact occlusive, however; it is constantly reformulated depending on who the MAS is talking to. According to statements made by people who belong to the movement or belonged to it in the past, the MAS discourse, particularly in the speeches of Evo Morales, has undergone a metamorphosis. To start with, it did not include the ethnic-cultural antagonism and instead set forth a campesinista vision that reflected the identity of the small farmers in the valleys of Cochabamba, constructed on the basis of a revolutionary trade unionism that emphasised their rights as smallholders and citizens, as well as negotiated interaction with local power structures (Gordillo, n.d.). In fact, this rhetoric reflected the identification of the coca growers in the tropics as settlers or coca farmers and not as indigenous people, a category that was instead claimed by the Yuracaré or the Yuqui, thanks to the influence of the indigenous movement in the lowlands. In a second phase, the MAS rhetoric absorbed the influence of katarista indianism, drawn principally from the discourse used by Felipe Quispe to challenge the State during the conflict in the year 2000.
Gradually, as people aligned with the indianist tendency joined the MAS, the discourse swung towards that paradigm. Nevertheless, from 1999 until Evo Morales took office as president, the MAS clearly differentiated itself from the more radical indianist proposals associated with the MIPs Aymara Nation thesis, because its strategic objective was to expand the range of groups it appealed to. While the MAS was drawing flexible political boundaries, the MIP was hardening its views. Evo settled the dispute in the electoral arena and won over the supporters of both Felipe Quispe and Alejo Véliz (who had unsuccessfully put forward the thesis of the Quechua Nation).
The ethnic identity of the settlers in the Chapare was basically Quechua and Aymara, and the campesinista discourse shifted and linked up with the ethnic dimension, so that the campesino identity based on coca leaf started to be combined with an ethnic-cultural identity. This melting pot of origins was eventually expressed in the category of smallholder coca farmer combined with an indigenous identity. In the process, the reference to a common ancestor allowed them to come closer to other groups.
Furthermore, Evo Morales took office as President in Tiwanaku. The ceremony was attended by indigenous leaders from all over the American continent Morales spoke of Abya Yala bringing gifts that symbolically conferred power on the new authority. Heads of state, ambassadors and personalities came from all over the world, joining young Europeans and North Americans from the New Age spiritual movement in search of light and strength from the sacred stones of the old world. The amautas officiated at the carefully planned rite. Evo wore a poncho and a ceremonial chulu (cap). He spoke with one finger raised before the crowd listening to him, standing in the middle of the Gate of the Sun, which the pre-Hispanic peoples had adored as the god that gave them power and the light that enabled life. It was the reconstruction or invention of the investiture of a new Inca or perhaps a Jacha Mallku (great Andean leader) in the first decade of the 21st century.
The MAS as embodiment of anti-neoliberalism
The third boundary differentiates neoliberalism and its operators the established or traditional political parties from the social movements, particularly the MAS. This is the axial point, the main dichotomical classification that frequently appears in the foreground, because it enabled the MAS to express the demands of different social groups affected by the economic policy and political exclusion put in place by neoliberalism. According to the statement made by a leader, during election campaigns the MAS emphasised a discourse that was anti-neoliberal and anti- political parties in order to win the support of the impoverished middle classes and all the other groups hit by neoliberalism, and managed to embody this anti-neoliberal subject.
The historic number of votes obtained by the MAS in 2005 cannot be explained without the framework of political opportunity shaped by a complex and profound crisis in the state and, in particular, the collapse of the political party system. But it is also impossible to understand those results without explaining the political strategy that allowed the instrument to embody the desire for change in many sectors of society, not just the campesino movement, who were tired of the corrupt, patronage-based political system and an economic policy that was untransparent, inefficient and demagogic. The MAS managed to polarise the country between the people and the elites and assumed the leadership of both, especially in the west of the country where the upper class was suspicious of the power of the business elite in Santa Cruz. The moderate scattering of votes characteristic of previous elections became polarised voting in two large blocks: the left and the right, which together captured 80 per cent of the vote. The MAS had finally seduced the middle classes. One of its correct decisions from that point of view was the choice of Álvaro García Linera as its candidate for vice-president. An intellectual, university lecturer and political analyst with a respected track record, he symbolised the unity of the Bolivian left and represented the middle classes. For those sectors of society, García Linera was the symbol of intellectual and moral renewal.
In short, what characterises the MAS in symbolic terms is not the supposed dialectical synthesis of Marxism, indianism and nationalism, but the way in which these elements are specifically combined depending on the context and the political adversary. Therefore, what appears to be ideological and programmatic vagueness or inconsistency should not be seen as a sort of ideological underdevelopment. In fact, it constitutes the very key to the explanation because it reflects that this constellation is typical of a radically heterogeneous social terrain (Laclau, 2005: 128), that only the MAS was able to interpret. It is probably for this reason that such semantic diversity coexists in the symbols used or instrumentalised by the movement; it is this that facilitates the widespread adherence of numerous social groups who recognise themselves in one or another of these signs.
The movement managed to assemble symbolic structures that were fed by the three identity boundaries. These were radically different to neoliberalisms system of values and representations, and they allowed the MAS to challenge the State and the political system as well as appealing to civil society, thus transforming societys entire field of meanings. In addition, the call to unity is something like the symbolic capital of the MAS: the solidarity, complementarity and reciprocity spoken of by both the grassroots members of the movement and its leadership.
When Evo talks of conspiracy, he always refers to different enemies even though the discourse remains the same. The enemy swings in the wind of the moment, but the discourse resists the draught; it is impermeable because there needs to be an enemy it is what keeps group identity standing. This symbolic structure can reach the heights of myth. French political scientist Raoul Girardet (1999: 11) suggests considering the discourse on the enemy conspiracy as a mythical tale whose function is to shape a coherent and complete belief system with no other legitimacy than its mere affirmation and no other logic than its free development. In other words, the myth is thought of as a call to join the movement, an incitement to action, an exceptionally powerful energy stimulant. The myth of the enemy is always associated with other constellations such as the myth of the saviour, the myth of the golden age and the myth of unity. There is not much difference between the great myths of traditional societies and those of modern society; in both cases, there is the same fluidity and also the same vagueness in their respective contours (ibid).
This variety of symbols that cohabit in the movements ideology can be explained by Lévi-Strausss notion of bricolage (1989 [1962]), which involves working with the materials that are at hand, without a defined plan, through means and procedures initially designed for a different purpose. It is possible to establish a relationship between this course of action and mythical thought, because the latter draws on a repertoire of instruments whose composition is irregular and to some extent limited; nevertheless, when no other resources are available, the only option is to use what already exists and re-accommodate it in a sort of intellectual bricolage (ibid: 57).
This idea of bricolage is a feature of human rationality as opposed to scientific rationality. Surely for that reason, Levi-Strauss notes that it is a way of thinking that generates myth. Thus we can understand that in the construction of the MAS ideology there is a series of elements that are not linked to each other a priori, but which form a constellation that carries meaning. The movement has collected a variety of elements and fused them together in an amalgam of new meanings which throws out messages in all directions and appeals to many who recognise themselves in them.
The dramatic genius
Sacrifice, heroism and even recklessness are passions that unleash or accompany collective action. Craig Calhoun (1999) says that these emotions, characteristic of social movements and by definition the opposite of rational thinking, cannot be explained by theories of rational action based on particular interests and rational calculation. Likewise, to ensure that the motivations and volitions of the people involved are not lost sight of in structuralist explanatory models, the expressive dimension must be included in the analysis of collective action. Calhouns argument coincides here with the views of the new social movements theorists such as Jean Cohen (1985), the above-mentioned Alberto Melucci (2000) and Alain Touraine (1973), for whom the construction and legitimation of a social identity is more important in the analysis of social movements than strategic calculation, whether for taking power or to achieve certain political reform objectives. Be that as it may, the important idea is that collective action cannot be understood without recourse to an analysis of the struggle over meaning, the battle to ensure that a social identity is recognised by society. This is why political movements are so intensely expressive and obsessed by organisation, discourse and dramatics. Melucci goes further and refers to them as a system of signs that speaks of what is happening and reveals the molecular changes taking place in society; thus, they act as prophets of the present, assigning a new shape and a new face to power (2002, 2-3 and 60).
The emergence of the MAS, which is inseparable from the collective action of the coca growers movement in the tropics of Cochabamba from which it arose, cannot be contemplated without considering that expressive, signifying dimension. The coca growers marches in 1994 and 1995, their resistance to the plans to eradicate coca crops, the coca war, the expulsion of Evo Morales from Parliament in 2002, the deaths, the acts of heroism and the narrative that the players weave from them all are indispensable for the analysis of the political movement. As we already emphasised, this does not imply that collective action dispenses with strategic reasoning. Our aim is to stress that the construction of a political identity is complex, perhaps because it does not exist prior to the struggle but is forged in the course of successive mobilisations, defeats and victories. As Calhoun correctly says, it is a happening, not the reflection of the structural position of a social group. The weaknesses and fissures in the so-called structuralist models, once dominant in the sociology of collective action, led to the emergence of alternative approaches that have explored the emotional dimensions of mobilisation processes.
If collective action is basically a system of meaning that is expressed through symbols and emblems of identity, we might add that identity is something that must necessarily be externalised narrated in order to exist. With regard to the subject at hand, a complex structure comes to light. Natalia Camacho studied the two great coca growers marches (1994 and 1995) to assess the experience of negotiation and conflict with the government in a situation in which each side was exerting pressure on the other. According to the working hypothesis in her research, the coca growers march can be seen as a pressure tactic aimed at creating public spaces for negotiation, not just with the government but also with public opinion (1999: 7). In other words, pressure is exerted in order to negotiate from a more advantageous position. This instrumental vision forms part of a long political tradition of mobilisation typical of trade unionism and the Bolivian left. Nevertheless, the march also represents a social groups desperate recourse to revelation, through which different social groups seek to make themselves visible to a country that has turned its back on them (ibid). Here there would be an expressive function by means of which the latent, statistical group becomes a real group that sees itself as taking action en masse. This argument is valuable because it indicates that the mere act of mobilisation by an excluded group points a priori to innumerable political problems: exclusion, subordination, etc. It refers us to the way in which the relationship between the State and social groups is organised and immediately raises the issue of these groups autonomy.
From the standpoint of political anthropology, the idea of sacrifice invites us to think that the analytical model of the ritual, as applied to traditional societies, can also be used for contemporary societies, particularly in the domain of politics. In accordance with its classical meaning, ritual can be understood as a symbolic, habitual and socially modulated behaviour whose purpose is to differentiate and revitalise symbols. Specifically, the political ritual has four characteristics: first, it enables identity to be represented through the association between people and symbols, founding myths, and the boundaries between friend and enemy; second, leaders use it to assert their authority over the group and give legitimacy to their role of representing or speaking for people; third, it encourages solidarity and unity between sympathisers; fourth, it makes it possible to construct political reality because certain events or personalities enable reality to be interpreted and other visions to be challenged as inimical (Kertzer, 1996).
The best example is the self-sacrifice that takes place during marches. When demands are not addressed through conventional channels, the mechanisms for exerting pressure shift to another level with the aim of gaining the publics sympathy due to the sacrifice it involves. The march implies a major mobilisation of human and material resources (Camacho, 1999: 14) and is more important than the road blockade or the hunger strike. Bodies are exposed, firstly to the elements and the adversities of inclement weather, and secondly to the television cameras and, by extension, to the public eye. Tormented bodies, bleeding feet, people lying on the ground in a faint, hungry and tired children all are on display. The march is an appeal to intimate, deep-seated emotions. It is a mechanism for blaming the Other, but also invariably leads to a network of solidarity forming around the marchers, which holds the promise of future alliances (Contreras 1994).
Another dramatic resource is the symbolic takeover of cities. Pablo Dávalos says that the takeover of a city, particularly the main square, is a political event that is inscribed within the tradition of indigenous uprisings; it has symbolic connotations and forms part of the symbolic imaginaries of indigenous peoples (2001). This author has studied the Inti Raymi festival in Cotacachi (Ecuador), one feature of which is the ritual takeover of the central square, in remembrance of a similar act perpetrated by the Spaniards more than five centuries ago. The occupation of the square implies a symbolic appropriation of the power to institute new referents and meanings. In the indigenous world, the march to the capital, to the city, mobilising the community to take over the city, to take ownership of that faraway centre, (ibid) may involve the symbolic universe of the festival and the ritual ceremony. It is the revolt against the means of domination, which are not just economic but also ritual, ideological, symbolic. The takeover, the march to the capital city, the mass rally all the acts carried out by the MAS en masse have a dual meaning. Firstly, they demonstrate its capacity to mobilise people, the force of numbers, the strength of the masses, and secondly they allow individuals to see themselves through the eyes of their equals as part of that collective body, and therefore as different from the rest.
The unique experience of the Movement Toward Socialism has called into question the established system of classifying political practices and institutions under the principle that these are separate from the social world. Our finding that the political movement involves both spheres and is constantly mobilising a dual code political and social should not lead us to categorise it as a prime example of anti-politics. On the contrary, the evidence requires us to reflect on a new form of collective action and implicitly challenges the consistency of political theories based on clearly differentiating between these two domains.
The political movement is first and foremost a system of signs that codifies political reality and destabilises the collective certainties and beliefs instated by the adversary in order to establish a new system of meaning. One important symbolic device is the marking out of political boundaries. From this point of view, the MAS has produced and created a series of different oppositions and political classifications: imperialism/nation, internal colonialism /indigenous and first peoples, etc. The key point of the argument we have been developing throughout this article is this: the plurality of demands raised by the MAS, whose origins go back to the interests of various different social groups, became unified thanks to the presence of the Other, the negative referent that enabled an antagonism to be created between two political fields: neoliberalism/anti-neoliberalism. Throughout this article, we have stressed that identities are not immutable realities, because their content is re-signified depending on the interlocutor and the context: they are relational and strategic.
Collective action cannot exist without the production of meaning. But what is the function of the symbol from the perspective of the political movement? It is to bring about a political practice autonomous of the system of meanings put in place by the State: to provide strong ideas and supply persuasive images through which the political struggle can be grasped on the basis of new codes; in short, to construct events by using alternative cognitive patterns. To sum up, the MAS has constructed (and reconstructed) a symbolic apparatus for the purpose of combating neoliberalisms belief system, unifying its supporters and encouraging action.
By transposing various different elements that converge in its own, original ideology, the MAS has put together a bricolage of symbols that have turned into others that are denser in meaning, transcendent. This willingness to appropriate figures so different to each other Túpac Katari, Che Guevara, Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, among others has led to the adherence of sympathisers whose life histories are very diverse and dissimilar. These symbols have been externalised through a dramatisation, a staging that has made their appeal very effective. This, as we have explained, may be anchored in the imaginaries of indigenous peoples and in their ritual devices such as sacrifice, the myth of the golden age, etc. Evo Morales did not invent these structures. They already existed in the imaginaries and mental images of the Bolivian people, particularly the different indigenous and campesino groups. But he did update and transform them in a process that brought about a new configuration of symbols and meanings. In short, the MAS embodied the spirit of the age.
Antezana, Luis H. 1983 Sistema y proceso ideológico en Bolivia (1935-1980). In: Zavaleta, René (comp.). Bolivia Hoy. Mexico: Siglo XXI.
Barthes, Roland 1957 Mythologies. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Calhoun, Craig 1999 El problema de la identidad en la acción colectiva. In: Auyero, Javier (comp.). Caja de herramientas. El lugar de la cultura en la sociología de Norteamérica. Quilmas: Universidad Nacional de Quilmas.
Camacho, Natalia 1999 La marcha como táctica de concertación política. In: Laserna, Roberto; Camacho, Natalia and Córdova, Eduardo. Empujando la concertación. Marchas campesinas, opinión pública y coca. La Paz: CERES, PIEB.
Cohen, Jean 1985 Strategy or Identity: New Theoretical Paradigms and Contemporary Social Movements. In: Social Research 52. New York: The New School for Social Research.
Contreras Baspineiro, Alex 1994 La marcha histórica. Cochabamba: CEDIB.
Dávalos, Pablo 2001 Fiesta y poder: El ritual de la Toma en el movimiento indígena. In: Boletín ICCI Rimay, Year 3, Nº 23. Quito: Instituto Científico de Culturas Indígenas.
Donegani, Jean Marie and Sadoun, Marc 1994 La Démocratie imparfaite. Essai sur le parti politique. Paris: Gallimard.
Girardet, Raoul 1999 Mitos y mitologías políticas. Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión.
Gordillo, José 1998 Campesinos revolucionarios en Bolivia. Identidad, territorio y sexualidad en el Valle Alto de Cochabamba, 1952-1964. La Paz: Promec/Plural, U. Cordillera/UMSS, Plural/Ceres.
n.d. La raíz histórica de los movimientos indígenas y campesinos actuales en Bolivia. Cochabamba: unpublished manuscript.
Kertzer, David 1996 Politics and Symbols: The Italian Communist Party and the Fall of Communism. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Laclau, Ernesto 2004 La razón populista. Mexico DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Levi-Strauss, Claude 1989 La pensée sauvage. In: Des symboles et leurs doubles. Paris: Plon.
Movimiento Al Socialismo 2004 Estatuto Orgánico y Principios Ideológicos y Políticos. La Paz: Imprenta Gravifal.
Melucci, Alberto 2002 Acción colectiva, vida cotidiana y democracia. Mexico: El Colegio de México.
Mouffe, Chantal 1999 El Retorno de lo Político. Comunidad, ciudadanía, pluralismo, democracia radical. Barcelona-Buenos Aires: Paidos.
Rancière, Jacques 1998 Aux bords du politique. Paris: Gallimard.
Stefanoni, Pablo and Do Alto, Hervé 2006 Evo Morales. De la coca al Palacio: Una oportunidad para la izquierda indígena. La Paz: Malatesta.
Stefanoni, Pablo 2003 MAS IPSP: La emergencia del nacionalismo plebeyo. In: OSAL 65, Year 4, Nº 12, September-December. Buenos Aires: FLACSO.
Tarrow, Sidney 1997 El poder en movimiento. Los movimientos sociales, la acción colectiva y la política. Madrid: Alianza Universidad.
Tilly, Charles 1986 From Mobilization to Revolution. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Touraine, Alain 1973 Production de la societé. Paris: Seuil.
1 This article appears in a book on the emergence and political development of the Movimiento Al Socialismo, written by Jorge Komadina and Céline Geffroy. It was published in 2007 by the Strategic Research Programme in Bolivia (Programa de Investigación Estratégica de Bolivia - PIEB) and the Centro de Estudios Superiores Universitarios (CESU-UMSS).
2 Sociologist. Lecturer and researcher at the Universidad Mayor de San Simón and the Instituto Superior de Filosofía y Humanidades in Cochabamba. Author of several books, including La trampa del rentismo (with Roberto Laserna and José Gordillo), published by Milenio in 2006.
3 Pact for democracy (1985), Patriotic agreement (1989), Mega-coalition (1997) and Pact for Bolivia (2002).


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|Prototype Netbook CC-SA Cathy Malmrose
Right now I'm snuggled up with my laptop, purposefully blocking the fan to create warmth. My laptop is a netbook prototype that I've beat up in many durability tests. This little slab of machinery is core, vital, crucial, central to my life. (Photo is me trying to sleep on airport floor during a too-long layover. Feel free to steal my travel bag with passport & money but my laptop is protected in my arms during sleep. Not rational, I know.)
I am a bit nervous to announce that I will be doing a Tablet Challenge, giving up my laptop for a month and using a tablet exclusively. In the morning I will tuck my laptop away in a safe spot and if I need something off it that's not already in the cloud, I'll have my sponsor, er, my husband get it for me.
It's the first time in a long time that I haven't been able to swap the hard drive to make the switch to a new machine.
|CC - Share Alike, by André Karwath aka Aka
Why am I doing it?
1. Because I can't list something on our website zareason.com or zareason.co.nz that I haven't used extensively myself (or had a family member use, such as my teenager using the Chimera). I need to see it in action. I need to rely on it in order to accurately judge it's value to people who ask about it.
2. Because I need to help bridge the gap between the ultra geeky R&D people and the people I meet who can't find the On button. No offense to people who can't find the On button. There's no shame in having spent your life focusing on areas other than technology. It would be a boring world if we were all geeks. To clarify: Ultra-geeks understand the value of a rooted, open bootloader tablet. My job is to communicate why that's important to people who don't know what an open bootloader is.
|ZaTab on Fridge, CC-Share Alike Hadley Rich
4. If I know the tablet on a personal level, I can better advise schools how to implement their use in classrooms or libraries how to use it as easy-install catalog machines on the end of bookshelves throughout libraries.
And without personally using it, I surely won't be able to figure out what Hadley Rich of NiceGear was doing when he mounted his ZaTab on his refrigerator. Just seeing that picture made me want to go cook something yummy.
During this challenge, I will be doing videos about the tablet: the good, the bad, and the inbetween. When we have exhausted topics about functionality, we can start doing side-by-side testing with tablets and other devices.
The goal -- what type of machine helps me lead a full, rich life? What reduces my workload and increases enjoyment?
Isn't that what technology is all about?
|ZaTab prepped for The Tablet Challenge, Creative Commons Share Alike, Cathy Malmrose

subset: commoncrawl


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Patchwork Tote Bag - grey, straw & stripe
Unique, reversible, practical patchwork tote; can be worn over the shoulder or carried in your hand. Each bag is handcrafted from traditional Welsh flannel (wool) and only three of a kind are made; one side is patchwork and the other side is plain; sturdy natural tanned bridle leather handles; fully lined in workwear denim; interior pocket for phone or keys; solid oxidised brass hardware that's used for making sails.
The distinctive TWG patchworks are a modern take on tradition. Welsh flannel has a long and interesting history. It dates back to the time when farmers in rural Wales were spinners and weavers too. They used the wool from their flock of sheep to produce cloth that was made into clothing, blankets, shawls and patchwork quilts for the family and local community. Later it was used for workwear in Wales, hence the stripes and checks for shirts. It was, and still is, the material used in the traditional Welsh National Costume.
DIMENSIONS: W – 35cm graduating to 40cm at base of bag / H - 37cm / D – 10cm / Strap length – 61cm
CARE: see Care Guide.
DELIVERY & RETURNS - click here. Items in stock will be dispatched within 48 hours. At times, due to the handmade nature of TWG products, orders may take a little longer. If this is the case you will be notified when we receive your order. Alternatively if you're in the Hay on Wye area then you might like to pop in and collect your order.


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Senior guard Eugeneia McPherson became the 20th player in St. John's women's basketball history to score 1,000 career points, as the Red Storm put four players in double figures on its way to a 69-48 road victory over Seton Hall on Saturday.
St. John's improves to 16-5 and 9-1 in conference play, while the Pirates drop to 13-7 and 4-5 in the league.
McPherson finished with seven points, four rebounds and four assists, scoring her 999th and 1,000th career points on a pair of free throws with 1:53 remaining in the second half.
St. John's won the battle in three key facets of the game – on the glass, around the 3-point arc and from the bench – finishing Saturday's contest with a 42-30 rebounding edge, held Seton Hall to 0-of-12 shooting from behind the 3-point arc and saw its bench outscore the Pirates' 31-0.
"I thought we did a great job in the second half of really executing offensively, which I thought was the difference today, but also of keeping a very good rebounding team off the glass," said head coach Joe Tartamella.
Seton Hall entered Saturday's game shooting its 3-pointers at a 30.8 percent clip but was held without a long-distance make by the Red Storm, including 0-for-8 in the first half.
St. John's sophomore Danaejah Grant scored a team-high 14 points to go with six rebounds and three assists, while freshman Jade Walker added a career-high 13 points on 5-of-7 shooting.
Senior Briana Brown and sophomore Aliyyah Handford chipped in with 12 points each.
Ka-Deidre Simmons scored a game-high 16 points for Seton Hall and Alexis Brown finished with a double-double of 11 points and 11 rebounds.
The Red Storm concluded a two-game road swing on Wednesday, February 5, with a 7 p.m. game at Butler.


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83 members8 Likes
Paul Thomas has not received any gifts yet
Hey Paul, haven't seen Bart but when we play again I Will be sure to give him a game!
Hey Paul, have a great trip. See you when you get back.
How u doing? ready to play?
getting old is no fun!
Hey Paul,
Play Tuesday?
Hey Paul,How you doing? Ready to play?
Sorry, hope you get better soon!
Hey Paul, We still good to play tuesday am?
Can you play Tuesday am?
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text: Serene statues & sculpture bring an artful, elegant dimension to your tables, shelves and spaces in between. From compact figurines to towering poses, these sculpted favorites are conversation pieces waiting to happen. Rub a Buddha belly for good luck. Finely wrought armillary spheres, decorative balls and marbles help round out your traditional or contemporary decor. Far East Asian splendor starts with any our oriental inspired pieces. Some are just for show, others for handling, but all of these statues & sculptures are sure to command attention.


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Transporter Room 3, Episode 30
Subscribe:We know, we know -- the excitement is unbearable so we'll get right to it. This past month, while we were galloping around the cosmos of our day jobs, Star Trek: The Next Generation celebrated its 25th anniversary. To honor that, this week's episode looks back at a few of the series' more dubious happy endings, and goes to town on how those episodes would have ended in "real" life. Yep. That's how we roll.
You think Starfleet would let a recently Borg-ified Picard back into the center seat like nothing happened? Don't they have labor union rules or some such?! And are we supposed to believe that alien ambassadors, who have never experienced pleasure or aggression before, are gonna be satisfied solely by Troi's chocolate and wraslin' with Worf?! (Wraslin' With Worf, new band name -- calling it!)
After we re-write a few episodes, we hold one more funeral for another Red Shirt of the Week. This time, the biggest small talker in all the Alpha Quadrant gets his 21-phaser salute.
Also, sit back and buckle up for some brainsploding-good reader mailbag! Oh yeah, this S just got R.
Don't forget to subscribe to our RSS feed (click the icon) to get all the latest episodes of our podcast automatically. And you know the drill: Like us on Facebook, give us some star rating hugs on iTunes, e-mail us at Transporter Room 3 at Gmail dot com and follow us on the Twitter. And most importantly, strap on the headphones 'cause it's time for some ear food -- Transporter Room 3 style!
Scott Collura: twitter.com/ScottIGN
Phil Pirrello: twitter.com/Phil_Pirrello
Check out Episode 30 of Transporter Room 3 right here:


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Kurt Nimmo
August 31, 2012
During his Jackson Hole speech on Thursday, Fed boss Ben Bernanke said the privately owned bankster cartel "will provide additional policy accommodation as needed" and may engage in more so-called quantitative easing.
Ron Paul: Short of cutting government spending and taxes, all the QEs in the world will not remedy the economy.
"As the crisis crested, and with the federal funds rate at its effective lower bound, the FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] turned to non-traditional policy approaches to support the recovery," Bernanke said.
"The costs of non-traditional policies, when considered carefully, appear manageable, implying that we should not rule out the further use of such policies if economic conditions warrant."
The Fed has thus far squandered more than $2 trillion in quantitative easing and despite this the economy has slipped further into depression.
"Quantitative easing is a resort to the money printing press," explains Michael S. Rozeff. "It means seizure and coercion of goods and services from the inhabitants of a country. But it also means either a government that is spending beyond its means, or one whose economy is not strong enough to generate financing by the usual means, or both."
Operation Twist – the wholesale purchase of long-term bonds swapped for short-term bonds in order to force down interest rates – frittered away an additional $267 billion. Following the Fed's announcement, markets went into a frenzied tailspin and seasoned observers wondered when the ultimate crash would commence.
During the Jackson Hole speech, Bernanke hinted that the Fed is not finished blowing trillions of dollars in funny money to save an economy seriously taking on water due largely to the Fed's boom and bust policies. He said "nontraditional policies" like quantitative easing "when considered carefully, appear manageable, implying that we should not rule out the further use of such policies if economic conditions warrant."
In short, it seems likely the Fed will begin a third round of buying Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities.
Bernanke also said unemployment will continue unless "the economy begins to grow more quickly than it has recently" and it will remain vexing for some time.
"If zero interest rates and quantitative easing could really solve unemployment, there would be no reason not to maintain such policies in perpetuity. Such policies, however, lead to the formation of asset bubbles," Rep. Ron Paul warned during the last QE boondoggle. "The next bubble is already forming, although which sector will be hit hardest remains to be seen."
Economists and investors, however, believe we have seen the last of monetary easing, at least for now.
"Only 44 percent of fund managers in the Reuters global asset allocation poll published Thursday now think the Fed will announce a third round of quantitative easing, down from 70 percent in the same poll last month," the Economic Times reported on August 30.
"Similarly, a poll of economists last Friday gave a 45 percent chance of a new round of quantitative easing resulting from the Fed's Sept. 12-13 policy meeting, a sharp cut from 60 percent in another poll earlier in the month."
Take advantage of one of nature's most hardworking nutrients with Vasobeet now at 60% off!


text: Sijun Forums :: View topic - Considerations for Print work Log in to check your private messages Sijun Forums Forum Index >> Archive : Sep99 - Dec00 View previous topic :: View next topic Author Topic : "Considerations for Print work" ariochjunior memberMember #Joined: 01 Nov 1999Posts: 16 Posted: Tue Nov 02, 1999 6:09 pm Dhabih, when your planning on printing your artwork what is your general guidlines? If you know that your going to do a magazine cover do you use a canvas size of 8.5 x 11? What is the max dpi that you will use? If you wanted to go for something bigger like poster size 22x26 would you work with something resonable in size and just scale up the work to the print size that was desired (I know this will degrade some of the quality)? Ideally one would just work in the size you wanted to print and a good dpi. But your working towards a large print size the file becomes to much of a strain on the computers resources. I was just wondering what sort guidelines you use.......... Back to top wakestarrGuestMember # Posted: Wed Nov 03, 1999 1:20 pm Yeah, good question! I'm curious about this too.. -wakestarr Back to top DhabihAdministratorMember #Joined: 13 Sep 1999Posts: 532Location: Kirkland, WA, U.S.A. Posted: Wed Nov 03, 1999 11:12 pm Yeah i set my canvas size at 8x11 but at a low dpi so that the whole image (or most of it) fits on one screen at full size. Once i finish the drawing I then scale it up to 300 dpi and go through it again and make sure the pixelee parts are taken out and redetail key areas like the face. I did a poster image once and that was unbelieably big, i hated it. drawing 22x30 or whatever at 300 dpi on the computer aint fun. -dhab Back to top SPike.CoMmemberMember #Joined: 22 Oct 1999Posts: 194Location: Helsingborg, Sweden Posted: Thu Nov 04, 1999 2:14 am I've made an A3-poster, but it's still at the phase where it needs to get printed.. And I gotta say, working BIG at LARGE resolutions: you gotta have a Silicon Graphics machine or something to get the computer to go smooth. Back to top Figjunior memberMember #Joined: 30 Oct 1999Posts: 18Location: Houston, TX, USA Posted: Thu Nov 04, 1999 10:43 pm Just kinda a random thing, but I've been told that at big poster-type sizes the resolution can drop considerably and lookd decent, like to 150dpi or so... Chris http://figdigital.com Back to top Display posts from previous: All Posts1 Day7 Days2 Weeks1 Month3 Months6 Months1 Year Oldest FirstNewest First Sijun Forums Forum Index -> Archive : Sep99 - Dec00 All times are GMT - 8 Hours Page 1 of 1 Jump to: Select a forum Digital Art----------------Digital Art DiscussionWork in ProgressGallery/Finished Work Miscellaneous----------------Random MusingsArchive : Sep99 - Dec00 You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum Powered by phpBB © 2005 phpBB Group


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Home Page Press U.S. Senior Open, U.S. Women's Open and Okie Chess Festival conclude
|U.S. Senior Open, U.S. Women's Open and Okie Chess Festival conclude
|By Joan DuBois
|September 30, 2009
Official Press Release
September 30, 2009
Contact: Tom Braunlich
[email protected]
(Tulsa, Oklahoma) September 5th-7th, 2009 at the Trade Winds Central in Tulsa, Oklahoma was a quite a chess extravaganza! This year four events drew over 120 players for the Okie Chess Festival, U.S. Senior Open, and U.S. Women's Open, including 3 GMs, 4 IMs, and numerous strong players. Here are the detailed results:
2009 U.S. SENIOR OPEN - A U.S. Chess Federation National Championship
GM Larry Christiansen topped the 54-player field with 5.5/6 and thereby won $1200, the U.S. Senior title, and a slot in next year's U.S. Championship.
GM Larry Kaufman was sole 2nd with 5/6, for $700. As the top player over 60 he also wins the USCF slot in the World Senior Championship coming up soon in Italy.
Age Category Awards for the Senior:
50-54 - Yefim Treger (53)
55-59 - Joe Bradford (58)
60-64 - Michael Schemm (62)
65-69 - Denis Strenzwilk (68)
70-74 - Dr. Jorge Montero (72)
75+ - Walter Shipman, (80)
A log-jam for 3rd with 4.5 pts included IM Joe Bradford, NM Yefim Treger, IM Walter Shipman, and Washington's Mike Schemm, who won top player under 2100. They won $275 each. Other class prizes: 2nd Under 2100 was won by Chuck Unruh with 4 pts. Under 1900 was 1st $200 Tom Green with 4, followed with 3.5 points by Jim Berry and Sal Martinez ($50 each). Under 1700: 1st - $200 (Dr. Jorge Montero), 2nd – Les Kline ($100). Under 1500 prizes were split by Robert L. Jones and the blind player Allen Miner ($150 each).
U.S. WOMEN'S OPEN - A U.S. Chess Federation National Championship
The 1st U.S. Women's Open featured a strong field of 20 players, 10 rated expert or above. Saheli Nath, and Indian player attending University of Texas at Dallas, won with 5/6, and $800. NM Iryna Zenyuk (2280) was clear second with 4.5, $500, and as the top American wins a slot in the 2010 U.S. Women's Championship. 3rd place ($300) was split between Chouchan Airapetian, Jennifer Acon, and Medina Parilla, each with 4 pts. Saheli Nath won the $100 Best Game Award offered by Harry Payne for her win over Zenyuk in Round 5.
5th Annual OKIE OPEN
This year's traditional open was won by IM Michael Brooks, whose 6/7 score bested a strong field and earned $500. There was a big tie for 2nd at 5/7 among Tim Steiner, Sergey Galant, Bran Whitcomb, Chris Niggel, Nathaniel Fast, Raymond Griffin, and Terry Wright. They split $600 for 2nd/3rd for $85 each. Class Prizes: Under 1800 - $450 split three ways between David McCann, Jeff Colbert, and T. Cheng. Under 1600 – ($450) was also split three ways by Bruce Wells, Jack Bussert, and Daryl Fouard. Under 1300 – 1st was won by Hans Chen ($300) with 3.5 points. 2nd with 3 pts was August Murdock, $200, and with 2.5 points tied for the $100 3rd place ($100) were R. Sarmento, R. Gudiseva, and I. Hossain.
This year's 8-player master round robin was the strongest ever, with an average rating over 2300, and featured several very talented young players, including 13-year-old Darwin Yang, and 15-year-old Conrad Holt. Holt finished in 3-way tie for first with IM Bryan Smith and IM Ray Kaufman. Crosstable
Our annual "Fischer-Random Speed Chess Pizza Bash" was won by IM Ray Kaufman with 6.5/8 over a very tough field of 20 players, mostly masters and experts. WIM Bayaraa Zorigt and FM Conrad Holt tied for 2nd place with 6/8.
The tournament was sponsored by IA Frank K. Berry, who was also chief director, assisted by Rob Jones, Steve Wharry, and Tom Braunlich. Look for detailed reports on Chess Life Online, and in Chess Life magazine. Official Cross Table: http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?200909071201.
The United States Chess Federation (USCF), founded in 1939, serves as the governing body for chess in the United States and is now headquartered in Crossville, Tennessee. USCF is devoted to extending the role of chess in American society. It promotes the study and knowledge of the game of chess, for its own sake as an art and enjoyment, and as a means for the improvement of society. The USCF is a not-for-profit membership organization with over 80,000 members. For additional information on the USCF see: www.uschess.org.


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Photographer's Note
The Rossio Railway Station (Portuguese: Estaηγo de Caminhos de Ferro do Rossio) is a train station in Lisbon, Portugal, located in the Rossio square. The station was formerly known as Estaηγo Central (Central Station) and that designation still appears in its faηade.The Station was commissioned by the Portuguese Royal Railway Company and was designed between 1886 and 1887 by Portuguese architect Josι Luνs Monteiro. It was built in one the most important squares of Lisbon, the Rossio, and connected the city to the region of Sintra.Trains gain access to the station, which is in the central urban area of Lisbon, through a tunnel which is more than 2600m long. This tunnel was excavated under the city and is considered one of the most important works of engineering of Portugal dating from the 19th century. It was completed in 1890, and soon after Lisbon's Circle Line with a connection to the North Line also opened. The station became Lisbon's main passenger terminus until 1957, from that date only a few long distance trains terminated at Rossio, mainly Oeste Line services, until the early 1990s.The station was closed to rail services from 22 October 2004 until 12 February 2008 due to tunnel renewal work.The beautiful Neo-Manueline faηade dominates the northwest side of the square and is a Romantic recreation of the exuberant Manueline style, typical of early 16th century Portugal. Its most interesting features are the two intertwined horseshoe portals at the entrance, the clock in a small turret and the abundant sculptural decoration. Inside, the platforms are connected by ramps to the faηade level and are covered by a cast-iron structure executed by a Belgium firm. The station is an important example of Romantic (faηade) and Cast-iron (platform cover) architecture in Portugal.Beside the station there is a Beaux-Arts style building, the Hotel Avenida, opened in 1892 and also designed by Josι Luνs Monteiro.
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Photo Information
- Copyright: miguel vinagre (mvinagre) (853)
- Genre: Τοποθεσίες
- Medium: Έγχρωμο
- Date Taken: 2012-05-08
- Categories: Μετακίνηση, Αρχιτεκτονική
- Camera: Nikon D200
- Έκθεση: f/8, 1/160 δευτερόλεπτα
- More Photo Info: view
- Έκδοση φωτογραφίας: Πρωτότυπη έκδοση
- Θέμα(τα): picturesque Portugal, Lisboa - Lisbon - Lisbonne - Lissabon [view contributor(s)]
- Date Submitted: 2012-05-09 14:32


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This article examines the 1920s expansion of the ACLU agenda to incorporate nonpolitical speech. At the beginning of that decade, it was ACLU policy to contest only those obscenity regulations that were "relied upon to punish persons for their political views." By 1931, however, the ACLU was the undisputed leader of the anti-censorship campaign, an aggressive advocate not only of unfettered scientific discussion but also of artistic freedom and birth control. With that shift, a new model of civil liberties began to take shape—one that celebrated individual expressive freedom over substantive political reform.Image credit (and press release on the Morris Ernst Papers at the University of Texas-Austin)
The catalyst for change was a postal censorship dispute involving a sex education pamphlet, "The Sex Side of Life: an Explanation for Young People," written by the former suffragist and outspoken birth control activist Mary Ware Dennett. Postal authorities declared the pamphlet obscene despite effusive praise by medical practitioners, religious groups, and government agencies for its frank and objective style. When Dennett continued to circulate it by mail in defiance of the postal ban, she was prosecuted for obscenity, and she responded by challenging the postal censorship laws. ACLU board members agreed to sponsor Dennett's case because it instructed the youth on an issue of social importance, thereby advancing the public interest in a direct and familiar Progressive way. Unexpectedly, however, the litigation unleashed a far more sweeping anti-censorship initiative. Dennett's heavily publicized conviction, overturned by the Second Circuit on appeal, generated popular hostility toward the censorship laws and convinced ACLU attorneys that speech should be protected regardless of its social worth.
Image credit: Dennett


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It's March and I'm restless as a bear in it's den about now. I've been in my den, my studio, for way too long, attending to details and deadlines, but this past week I decided that it was time for me to leave the Madness of the studio behind and head outside for some fresh paintable air. I'm having a good time in the studio, albeit a restless one, painting a lot of paintings from the Cape Cod region right now for an exhibit that I will be a part of with my friend and compatriot, Frank Gardner of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Frank's work can be found on his blog and website by looking him up on the menu of Artists on the right of this blog page. We will be showing at Addison Art Gallery in Orleans, MA ( There is a link to the gallery on the right side of this blog page ), the opening will be on June 30, 2011. More to come about that in future posts. It should be a fun show, I for one am painting a bunch of nocturnes using that area as the subject. And again, I'll make a blog post once I have the bulk of the work painted.
Back to my resltess self... We had a good amount of snow late in February and it's still nicely blanketing the landscape, though quickly disappearing now. I decided that since I hadn't been out painting it much, not at all, I should do that while it's here. I was in Colorado last month and painted a couple of paintings... they're following these first paragraphs... but that's been it for my plein air work since about October! That's not good, I thrive on getting out and painting from life... I need that as much as I need anything in my art world.
With that in mind, this past Thursday I headed out to dust off the plein air gear and see what might happen if I put the brush to the linen. I painted 3 on Thursday and 2 on Friday, they follow the Colorado paintings below. I'm painting these to lube up the painting elbow, they're smaller sized pieces, all 6"x8" on oil primed linen boards. All I can say is Man did that feel GOOD! It felt so good that I'm going to keep this up for the next few weeks, until I have to depart for Scottsdale, AZ and the Scottsdale Artists' School to teach a workshop the first week of April. I'm making a side stop on the way down in Sedona, AZ to paint with some friends and to visit my gallery there, Wind Rush Gallery, and drop off some new paintings for them. From there I'll head on to Scottsdale to teach for a week, after which I'm heading to Red Rocks, Nevada (Las Vegas) for Plein Air Magazines 'Plein Air Convention' in mid April. That should make for some interesting blogging... I have no real idea what to expect other than something like 700+ other painters will be there and there will be demos, classes, etc.. I'll fill you in on that one later too.
That's what's happening here. Let me know what you think or any comments that you might have, they are always appreciated... Thank you.
I had a chance to visit and meet some wonderful new friends in Colorado last month, it's a long list of great people who are also artists. As this title suggests... this was the first time that I painted the area, the second time is below.
Jake Gaedtke, a wonderful painter and gifted teacher, was generous enough to line me up with a very nice apartment for the week on the property where he lives. Jake can cook, big time, so we had a good couple of meals and time to talk 'art' quite a bit, but we needed more. I can't thank Jake enough for opening up his home to me and for allowing me to come and go as the schedules dictated. I can't wait to get back and visit both of these very special people and all of the others too.
3/5 and 3/6, 2012
I wrote this on Facebook yesterday after an amazingly nice day out in the field...
Beautiful, long day painting in the field today. Four observations done. I love being a visual chronicler of the change that happens through a day. The change that all of those people flying by on the road, and tossing sand and mud on the easel and me, miss. Painting all day outside slows the march of time and lets you savor the entire picture in slow motion, rather than wonder where it went. We painters are a lucky bunch.
All of these paintings were painted within about 3 or 4 miles of each other, or less. And they are all for sale for $295.00 unframed, including shipping and insurance. More details are above.
3/10/12 and 3/11/12
With warming days our snow is all but gone now. On Saturday and Sunday I went out to try to find the remnants of a less than typical Minnesota winter. The winds were up but so were the temps, in the high 50's to mid 60's.
3/16/12 and 3/17/12
I spent a few days in the studio last week, hence the break in postings. On Friday I couldn't resist it any longer, temps hitting the high 70's, even an 80 degree day! Friday was beautiful, calm and with skies that had some activity to them, making it more interesting to me than a flat blue sky day. On Saturday I was up early and down to the river to start the day, then the day slowly became more windy and cloudy so I made it a short day.
I loved this first part of Friday morning, humid, atmospheric and full of color. This piece is what I could see, just the shapes of the trees spotted around the field. I worked hard at not allowing myself to paint more than my impression of the subject, what I could see while squinting down on it.
Man was the sky and landscape rich and full of color by about 11:00 am! All of the heat and moisture in the ground resulted in some moisture rich air. When ever the air is that saturated, the color is amplified when looking at it with the sun at your back. Looking the opposite direction, into the light, the moisture has almost the opposite effect and lightens all of the shapes, creating nearly washed out color. This is why I love painting from life... you can't dream this up, even if you know and understand the principles, every single situation is different every single time.
Later in the afternoon the high overcast caused the already merging color, closely analogous, to become even harder to separate and distinguish. The title refers to that, the color being so flat and tough to find difference in. That's not a big deal, you paint what you see, but it is an exercise in being subtle.
Staying in the same spot as Dang Flat, I painted the sky to my right. A nice big could formation creating some drama was plenty to paint. All of this is a study of what is going on out there. While I'm not trying to 'copy' all of the specifics of what I am standing in front of, I am almost always trying to capture the color relationships as accurately as I see them. I do that because this is what is building my own visual library for future use. I don't want to make things like that up, I can change the land shapes, remove or add objects or their placement in the landscape. For my purposes, trying to replicate the color relationships is paramount, is my reason for wanting to be outside painting from life.
By now you are probably noticing that this was a good painting day for me. I was hoping to be able to box up 6 for the day, but with some driving time using up the #6 painting time. But 5 is a good day. This last one is a spot just about 1/2 a mile from my house, at the edge of town. Every time I drive past this on my way out of town, I look up this road and think "I should paint this sometime.". Well I finally did, it only took about 6 years. I had to work fast, this was about an hours' worth of painting time, light shifting fast, shadows expanding, leaving, coming back a different shape and color... Whew! But I managed and then went and had an ice cold beer and some dinner across the river. A satisfying day for sure.
Up and out early enough on Saturday morning to paint the sun coming up over the Wisconsin side of the river. It's mostly a color exercise, there's not much land mass to include. But what a beautiful morning it was!
It was looking to be a promising day so I took the drive north to Crex Meadow in Grantsburg, WI. Just as I arrived, the clouds moved in and the light left... such is landscape painting. I had already set up and was excited by what was in front of me before it all changed. With what I remembered and the occasional splash of sunlight, I managed to get this one painted. I've painted this spot in the spring, summer and early fall, all while the greens predominate, so it was fun to paint it at the end of winter when the tones of dormancy were still dominant. Lot's of birds all weekend, cranes, swans, geese and ducks. Also a lot of shorebirds arriving now.
By now the wind of the day was getting to be tiring. Being pelted by dirt, sand, and the dried grass chaff that was all airborne and getting in my eyes was making me think about calling it a painting day. From Crex Meadow I drove back south down to William O'Brien State Park in Marine on St Croix, MN. That's too much driving, but when looking to find a spot to make the best of the time you have outside, sometimes too much driving is the result. We've all been there. It became dark and neutral by the time I set up to paint. So I played with that contrast between the spotty bright light of the spaces inbetween the clouds and the tree masses along the river.


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HARTFORD, Conn. -- U.S. Navy investigators have dismissed allegations that pervasive cheating tainted training exams administered to enlisted sailors and officers in the submarine force, according to documents obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
The inspector general for the Atlantic submarine force opened an investigation following a complaint that originated in Groton, Conn., the home port of an attack submarine that was hit by a cheating scandal in 2010.
In a letter sent to U.S. Fleet Forces Command in December, the commander for the Atlantic submarine force said the claims were unsubstantiated. It said previous episodes mentioned in the complaint were investigated and dealt with individually.
The letter, which the AP obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, recommended the case be "closed as unsubstantiated with no further action."
The investigation began with a complaint from a crew member aboard the USS Memphis, a submarine that lost about 10 percent of its crew to disciplinary measures after a cheating ring was discovered in November 2010. The crew member also complained that the punishments were unduly harsh and influenced by abuse of authority, claims that were also investigated and dismissed by the Navy.
The Navy has insisted that the episode reflected a rare lapse in integrity. But some former officers told the AP that it was an extreme example of shortcuts that sailors on other submarines have taken to pass increasingly difficult nuclear training exams that have little bearing on skills sailors need.
The unidentified man who filed the complaint said the punishments were unfair because so many others got away with cheating.
"He equated it to `doing 60 in a 55 and instead of a speeding ticket we lost our license for life,' " the Navy report said.
In the case of the Memphis, sailors were emailed the answers before qualification exams, took tests outside the presence of proctors and openly asked officers for answer keys. The case was among the lapses mentioned by the commander of the Navy's submarine force, Vice Adm. John Richardson, in a blog posting last month stressing the importance of character.
"Invisibility and character have a long relationship, and it hasn't always been a healthy one. Being out of sight can uniquely challenge one's character," he wrote.
The Navy's most senior leaders have been tracking the cheating allegations.
In a September 2010 email, Adm. Kirkland Donald, director of Naval Reactors, alerted the chief of naval operations to cheating allegations included in a book by former submarine officer Christopher Brownfield. Donald said there had been several noteworthy "busts" among nuclear operators, and the Navy followed up in each case with "strong accountability measures." But he said integrity remained a focus.
"I wish I could tell you that we solved the problem, but we still have occasional events that indicate that we haven't," Donald wrote in the email, which was obtained by the AP. "I assure you that this matter has my full attention and energy."
Donald's office said he was not immediately available to comment Thursday.
Brownfield described cheating aboard the USS Hartford submarine in his book. He said he has never been contacted by naval investigators about the cheating allegations, and he questioned the Navy's commitment to investigate.
"They say they're taking it seriously, but they don't contact the person who's making the allegations," said Brownfield, who is now studying alternative energy at Columbia University.
He said investigators might also have overlooked some examples because the cheating often was not overt, more often involving subtle hints and dropped clues.
"There was a lot of room for gray area on it," he said. "People might not have considered it cheating."


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- Description
The Nova floor standing headboard fits perfectly with a selection of stylish divan and adjustable beds. Made with sturdy chipboard, the headboard is strong and has a thick layer of hard wearing foam which makes it comfortable to lean against if you want to sit up in bed. Made in the UK with a wide selection of fabrics and colours to choose from you will be sure to find the colour that suits you.
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- Height - 54 Inch
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Product Number 232 Manufacturer Joseph Furniture Lead Time Free Delivery Within 2-6 Working Days Delivery Information We'll call you 24-48 hrs prior to book in your delivery date Headboard Height 137cm
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INSIDE: With deepest sympathy, my thoughts are with you.
Youth would be ideal if it came a little later in life!
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Due to higher than normal order volumes, please expect a shipping delay of 10+ business days. We appreciate your understanding.
Disco in argento 1 oz 2014 Standing Freedom
The Standing Freedom silver round accentuates the message of Freedom begun with Freedom Girl and continued with the Sic Semper Tyrannis design. In this round Freedom is featured standing, much like she was in the Sic Semper Tyrannis round with flowing hair, a spear and the Trivium shield. Engraved at the top of the design is the simple word "Freedom'. A simple enough word, small and unassuming but with a meaning that defies the tyranny of the oppressor.
This round is carries a powerful message and a beautiful design. It is sure to be a collector must have.
In multiples of 20 these rounds will be shipped in a tube.
|Silver Shield
|Leggermente usato
|Lady Freedom with flowing hair in a standing position with a trivium shield and the word "Freedom" above her
|The revised Silver Shield logo with the trivium in the centre encircled by the words "Silver Shield 1 Troy ounce 2014 .999 Pure AG" surrounded by 47 bullets
|Heidi Wastweet


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Oracle Retail Consulting and the Implementation Process, with Maria Porretta
- by user801960
Maria Porretta, Engagement Director, discusses Oracle Retail Consulting and its involvement in the implementation process and how it supports customers to maximize their ROI in Oracle Retail solutions. Maria explains the wide range of factors customers need to consider when preparing to implement Oracle Retail, from the solutions being utilized to the current IT infrastructures and available resources of the end user. Oracle Retail Consulting ensures a smooth and efficient process by working with customers from design right through to final implementation, and continues to work with customers to ensure they get value from their software investments and further extend investment in Oracle Retail solutions. Further information is available on our website regarding Oracle Retail Consulting.


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COLUMBUS -- The legislative session ended with plenty of hot-button issues that will carry over into the new year.
From union-opposed right-to-work initiatives to whether teachers should be allowed to carry guns in schools, Gov. John Kasich didn't offer too many specifics in response to questions about his stances on such issues.
Right To Work
Kasich still isn't biting on questions related to efforts to ban mandatory union membership and dues payments, via right-to-work petitions being circulated around the state with an eye toward the next general election.
"I'll just say it one more time," he said. "We have a very aggressive agenda that's moving Ohio in the right direction -- higher ed reform, K-12 reform, our school funding, our whole job training initiatives, the ability to take care of infrastructure. That is my focus, period."
Pressed on whether he would support an effort by proponents to place the issue on the November 2013 ballot, Kasich would only respond, "When you have a focus, you have to focus on your agenda. That's what I'm focused on. Think of me as a horse trying to run to the finish line with binders on. I'm not looking at any horse next to me. If I just do this, Ohio is going to be in much better shape, and focus is an awful lot about what this job is about."
Ballot Issues
The governor and legislative leaders were asked whether super majorities in the Ohio Senate and House would pave the way for legislative ballot initiatives, placing contentious issues before voters without being blocked by Democratic lawmakers.
Longtime Ohio Public Radio Statehouse reporter Bill Cohen put the question this way: "The Democrats say that now that Republicans have a three-fifths majority in both chambers, you could, if you wanted, put ballot issues on the ballot, and the Democrats couldn't stop you. Is there anything you would like legislators to put on the ballot next year with that three-fifths super majority?"
Kasich paused for a moment before saying, "Next question."
Guns in Schools
The governor's year-end press conference came a day after Attorney General Mike DeWine said he was open to allowing local school boards to decide to arm trained principals, teachers or school staff to provide an immediate means of responding to shooting incidents.
And it came a day before Kasich signed into law a bill that, among other provisions, will allow guns stored in cars in the Ohio Statehouse parking garage.
"The experts are going to look at this, and they're going to come back and make recommendations on a whole host of things," Kasich said, indicating that his administration was considering school safety issues. "Let ideas get out on the table, and we'll figure out once they're out there what makes the most sense, working with our partners and many interested parties."
Marc Kovac is the Dix Capital Bureau Chief. Email him at email@example.com or on Twitter at OhioCapitalBlog.


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Updated: 26-Nov-2008
In Episodes 29 and 31 of the podcast, we discuss specific applications you can use to backup the data on your computer. We mentioned Clonezilla Live as one of those applications, but this is not your average Linux backup utility. It is a Live CD (you boot from the CD to use it) that can make backups of your entire hard drive, including your Linux AND Windows partitions. This means that whether you have a single operating system on your hard drive, or if you dual-boot your computer, you can make a complete backup of all your partitions in a single step. In addition, you can compress the final backup image so that if you are backing up a 250 GB hard drive that is 50% full (it has 125 GB of free space) the backup will not take a full 250 GB of space on the backup drive.
Here is the step-by-step on making a backup of a 40 GB hard drive onto an external USB drive. Unlike some other backup programs, Clonezilla does not ask you whether you are making a backup or restoring from one until almost the end of the menu selections. As a result, although these instructions are for making a backup to an image file, they are almost identical for the restoration process. Note that since the menus of selections are presented in text screens, you will be using the tab key and the arrow keys to move between selections, the spacebar to mark options, and the Enter key to accept your choices and move to the next screen.
The remaining step is to sit back and wait for your backup to be completed.
HowtoForge has created an excellent, illustrated article on how to back up and restore hard drives using CloneZilla Live. Click here to see the tutorial.
Theme music for the Going Linux podcast is generously provided by Mark Blasco. https://www.podcastthemes.com
Going Linux Podcast by Larry Bushey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


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In theory, regulators need to have a complete toolkit for taking away the punch bowl so the party doesn't get out of hand.
In practice, as demonstrated in the late 1990s by the US Fed, regulators are not going to use this authority.
Readers might recall in the late 1990s, the equity markets were experiencing a bubble. A bubble whose magnitude could have been greatly diminished by the Fed.
The Fed had and still has the right to change stock margin requirements under Regulation T. Had the Fed raised stock margin requirements, as Mr. Tucker points out, it would have cooled down the market.
However, the Fed did not raise stock market requirements. It did not for several reasons including 1) it is hard to recognize a bubble and hence the event that would trigger the need for raising margin requirements and 2) the believe that it could clean up the mess after the equity bubble popped.
Supervisors should have powers to demand more collateral on financial transactions in order to cool down overheated markets, Bank of England Deputy Governor Paul Tucker said on Friday.
He and other regulators from across the world are looking at how to rein in the multi-trillion dollar "shadow-banking" sector which handles credit and leverage outside traditional banking....The best way to rein in the "shadow-banking" system is by making it transparent.
This is easily accomplished by requiring ultra transparency.
"The authorities should be able to step in and set minimum haircut or margin levels for the collateralised financing markets, or segments of them," Tucker told a European Commission conference on regulating shadow banks....
The European Commission will propose EU-wide shadow bank regulation next year after a global regulatory body, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), completes work on policy recommendations for world leaders by November when G20 leaders meet.
The FSB, of which Tucker is a member, said in an interim report on securities lending and repos on Friday there was a lack of transparency, potential risks from firesales of collateral assets, and insufficient rigour in collateral valuation and management practices.Adopting ultra transparency addresses all of these issues.
For example, the potential for a fire sale of collateral is greatly reduced when the holder of the collateral can independently assess the risk of the borrower. Based on this independent assessment, the holder of the collateral will require bigger haircuts well before regulators would think to step in.