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(CNN) — Do 41,363 days sound like much time? You very likely won’t live that long, but James Sisnett did.

That’s long enough to have seen the first silent movie, when it came out, provided a movie theater even existed back then on the island of Barbados, where Sisnett spent his life.

He was three years old the first time Orville Wright took the first ever flight in an airplane and barely a teenager when World War I broke out.

When he died Thursday, Sisnett was the oldest man in the Western Hemisphere, whose age had been validated, according to the Gerontology Research Group. He was likely the second oldest man on the planet.

GRG is a private organization that verifies the ages of centenarians, people over 100 years of age, and supercentenarians, people over 110.

Living as long as Sisnett did is quite a feat, but since women outlive men on the whole, there are a few women still alive between Canada and Argentina, who are even older than he was, according to GRG.

Five of them live in the United States.

The verified oldest living person in the world is Jiroemon Kimura of Japan. He turned 116 in April, GRG said.

The oldest person who ever lived was Louise Calment of France, a woman who topped 122 years, the Guinness Book of World Records reports.

On the island of Barbados, which is less than 30 miles long, Sisnett was a celebrity, family member Gerard Sisnett told CNN.

He was considered a living reference for historic events there, where he was known under the nickname “Grandad.” As a symbol of honor, he was given the keys to the capital of Bridgetown when he turned 100. That was well over a decade ago.

The government may make the national stadium available for his funeral, Gerard Sisnett said.

James Sisnett was born in the last year of the 19th century, on February 22, 1900, and was 113 years and 90 days old, when he passed away in his sleep, Gerard Sisnett said. That’s 41,363 days, including 28 extra days for leap years.

Originally a blacksmith by trade, Grandad retired in 1970.

He was about 70 years of age then. That’s nearly three years more than the average lifespan in the United States.

Seventy years add up to 25,550 days, not including extra days from leap years.

Seize one, while you can.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/25/world/americas/barbados-supercentenarian/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/hqcBsq3Cgdw/second-oldest-man-known-dies-at-113

(CNN) — You’ve just that heard a tornado is headed directly toward you. You don’t have a safe room, and you’re not near a shelter. Do you hunker down and hope for the best or do you flee?

Emergency officials have long held that you should just stay put if you’re inside anything other than a mobile home — and head for the lowest floor and the inner-most room.

Yet even with improvements to severe weather prediction, no one can say with certainty what a tornado will do.

In Moore, Oklahoma, a woman and her brother took shelter inside their restaurant’s walk-in freezer and survived. Another woman and her baby did the same thing at a convenience store — and died.

Terimy Miller initially put her three sons into a closet but changed her mind when she turned on the TV and heard a reporter talking about her neighborhood.

“He said, ‘Get out now if you have no shelter. If you have shelter, get in it. But if you don’t, get out … it’s not safe. Go! It’s too huge!’”

So Miller put the boys — 6, 7 and 11 — into her car and drove off, her radio on.

“They said, ‘It’s getting right close to 19th and 4th,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Boys, it’s right behind us! You can see it, you can see it!’ “

 Map: Moore, Oklahoma

Map: Moore, Oklahoma

Are tornadoes getting stronger?

Inside a personal tornado shelter

Child born just before tornado

She steered out of its path, escaping unharmed. When she returned, her home — closet and all — was destroyed.

Another woman who hid inside her closet survived unharmed after the closet door landed on top of her and protected her.

Outrunning the storm?

While the most common advice is to shelter in place, some experts say it may sometimes be smart to do what Miller did — get into a car and drive — especially if you have enough warning.

“You rarely ever have less than 15 minutes, and usually considerably more,” said Ed Bates, an architect who designs buildings that incorporate storm shelters.

“With the good lead time, I’d tell people to get in their automobile and go 90 degrees from that perceived path,” said Bates. “It’s manageable and easy to do — even in a city environment.”

Given open roads and a reliable vehicle, the race should not be close. Funnel clouds can travel as fast as 70 mph, but their average forward speed is only 30 mph, according to FEMA.

The tornado that ripped through Moore on Monday was one of the strongest on record, with winds topping 200 mph. Twenty-four people were killed, 10 of them children. Hundreds more were injured.

The twister damaged or destroyed about 12,000 homes, and state insurance adjusters expect the claims to exceed $2 billion.

Aerial views of what’s left of the Oklahoma City suburb testify to the danger courted by those who sheltered in place.

Residents of Moore had 36 minutes from the time the National Weather Service issued its warning until the time the twister entered the city.

But even that lead time would not necessarily have persuaded Ernst Kiesling to try to race out of harm’s way.

“It’s a tough question,” said Kiesling, a civil engineering professor at Texas Tech University who has spent his life studying tornadoes and developing above-ground storm shelters to protect against them.

“My advice would be to seek the safest place available. That is: lie in a ditch or … (get) behind a heavy object if you had a tractor or even a tree.”

He cited the 1979 Wichita Falls, Texas, tornado as a cautionary lesson. That twister killed 54 people and, Kiesling noted, “many people were killed in automobiles because they tried to outrun it.”

Still, Kiesling allowed, there may be times when fleeing an impending tornado might be a good option.

“If you have good information on the storm, if you have plenty of warning, if you have an automobile, it may make sense, but I personally don’t feel that’s the advice that we want to give the public.”

A better answer, he said, would be to plan. “I think there is today a storm shelter or solution for just about every situation, so I would urge people to consider procuring a storm shelter for their home.”

The options for shelters are many: above-ground, below-ground, mounted in the garage, on the patio, on a poured slab or even in a space carved out beneath the slab.

Why most Oklahoma homes don’t have basements

Shelters at schools

Ed Bates said he includes provisions for storm shelters in the buildings he designs, but sometimes it’s a tough sell.

Mom speeds away from a tornado

Tornado claims could top $2 billion

Hospital team’s heroism during tornado

Carol Kawaykla holds a picture of her mother she found in the rubble of her tornado-devastated home in Moore, Oklahoma, on Friday, May 24. View more photos of the aftermath in the region and another gallery of aerial shots of the damage.

The sun sets over debris from houses littering the ground in Moore, Oklahoma, on Thursday, May 23, three days after the town was damaged by a tornado.

Debris is scattered across a driveway on May 23. Severe thunderstorms barreled through this Oklahoma City suburb at dawn Thursday, complicating cleanup efforts.

Lightning strikes during a thunderstorm as people search for items that can be saved from their devastated home on May 23.

A devastated neighborhood is seen on May 23 in Moore.

A woman searches for belongings at a home on May 22 in Moore.

Michael Pritz swings a golf club while taking a break from helping his friend to salvage belongings on May 22.

Debris litters what remains of a classroom at Plaza Towers Elementary School on May 22. Seven children died at the school in Monday’s tornado.

A makeshift shelter stands next to a home destroyed by the tornado on May 22.

Casey Angle walks on the bunk bed she shared with her sister Sydney, who was among the students killed at Plaza Towers Elementary School during the tornado.

Tara McDonald shows some items salvaged from her home on May 22.

A swing set sits warped at Plaza Towers Elementary School on May 22.

Plaza Towers Elementary School students Monica Boyd and Lavontey Rodriguez sit at the parking lot of their tornado devastated school.

Travis French and his wife, Amy, of Capitol Hill Baptist Church hand out fresh fruit, water and hygiene packs to Thomas and Kelcy Trowbridge.

Teachers from Fairview Elementary School help clean up former school counselor Kay Taylor’s home in south Oklahoma City on May 22, two days after an extremely powerful tornado tore through Moore, Oklahoma.

Jake English, 12, cleans up retired school counselor Kay Taylor’s home on May 22 in south Oklahoma City, just west of Moore. The storm was part of a tornado outbreak that began in the Midwest and Plains on Sunday, May 19.

A man talks on his cell phone in front of a destroyed house on May 22.

A man looks through a pile of clothing at a roadside relief camp on May 22 in Moore.

Volunteers form a chain to retrieve clothing and other household items on May 22.

Jon Booth moves a piece of debris from his mother’s destroyed home across the street from Plaza Towers Elementary School on May 22.

Matt Johnson salvages items from his grandparents’ home on Tuesday, May 21.

An aerial view of the destruction on May 21.

The storm, which touched down near Newcastle, Oklahoma, spanned 1.3 miles. Some areas along the path were completely flattened.

Two men fold an American flag found in the debris of a house on May 21 in Moore.

A young girl stands among the rubble outside Briarwood Elementary School on May 21.

A doll covered in dirt is among the rubble scattered throughout a neighborhood in Moore on May 21.

Bonnie Lolofie, left, and Ashley Do carry belongings from their apartment, which has no power, on May 21.

Residents salvage belongings from their demolished homes in Moore on May 21.

Kelli Kannady weeps after finding a box of photographs of her late husband in the rubble near where her home once stood in Moore on May 21.

Tufts of pink insulation hang from the rafters of a store in Moore on May 21 that was destroyed in the storm.

Natalie Johnson searches through her mother’s destroyed car outside Briarwood Elementary School in Moore on May 21.

Rescuers dig out a house in Moore on May 21.

June Simson embraces her cat Sammi after she found him standing among the rubble of her destroyed home in Moore on May 21.

A man stands on the roof of a destroyed home in Moore on May 21.

A man helps move a resident’s belongings from a destroyed home on May 21 in Moore.

Air Force Airman First Class Justin Acord sifts through the rubble of his father-in-law’s home in Moore on May 21.

People recover belongings from the rubble of a home in Moore.

People sort through a leveled home in Moore on May 21.

Debris lies among headstones in the Moore Cemetery on May 21.

Workers clean up the Warren movie theater in Moore on May 21.

Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett surveys damage in Moore on May 21.

Piles of debris lie around the north side of Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore on May 21.

As dawn breaks, storm clouds roll in over a devastated neighborhood in Moore on May 21.

Members of the Oklahoma National Guard look for survivors in rubble in Moore on May 21.

A National Guardsman assists in the search for victims on May 21.

A rescue worker leads a horse from the wreckage of a day care center and barns on Monday, May 20, in Moore.

Men tie an American flag on debris in a neighborhood off Telephone Road in Moore on May 20.

Children wait for their parents to arrive at Briarwood Elementary School in south Oklahoma City on May 20.

Teachers carry children away from Briarwood Elementary School on May 20.

Teachers lead children away from Briarwood Elementary School on May 20. Read more about the photo.

A fire official drives through the rubble of Moore Medical Center on May 20.

Abby Madi, left, and Peterson Zatterlee comfort Zatterlee’s dog, Rippy, on Monday, May 20, in Moore.

A woman is treated for her injuries on May 20 at a triage area set up for the wounded.

Two girls stand in rubble in Moore.

Rescue workers help free one of more than a dozen people who were trapped at a medical center in Moore on May 20.

Oklahoma City firefighters check on Gene Tripp on May 20 as he sits in his rocking chair where his home once stood.

A nurse helps an older man who suffered a head injury on May 20 in Moore.

Cars marked with an orange X, meaning they have been checked for occupants, are piled up in front of the entrance to the damaged Moore Medical Center on May 20.

Jim Routon hugs his neighbor, 7-year-old Hezekiah, after the tornado strikes on May 20. An earlier version of this caption incorrectly stated that Routon was Hezekiah’s teacher. See an interview with the pair.

People look through the wreckage of their neighborhood after a tornado struck Moore, Oklahoma, on May 20.

Dana Ulepich searches inside a room left standing at the back of her destroyed house in Moore on May 20.

Residents look through the debris in Moore on May 20.

A man looks through the remains of a home after the massive tornado struck Moore on May 20.

A woman is transported on a stretcher after she was rescued from the damaged medical center in Moore on May 20.

A woman walks through debris in Moore on May 20.

A man is taken away from the IMAX Theater in Moore that was used as a triage center on May 20.

A girl wraps herself in a blanket near the Moore Hospital on May 20.

A nurse walks by the destruction at a Moore hospital on May 20.

Destroyed cars scatter the landscape in Moore, Oklahoma, where hundreds of homes and buildings were put to ruin on May 20.

A woman with an arm injury is helped on May 20 in Moore.

Extensive damage from the tornado destroyed cars and demolished structures in Moore on May 20.

Onlookers stop to view a portion of the destruction left behind on May 20 in Moore.

Overturned cars are among the rubble from the tornado that hit Moore on May 20.

A woman is comforted after the May 20 tornado in Moore.

A shredded tree stands amid debris in the aftermath of the storm in Moore on May 20.

A shopping center parking lot is covered with debris and damaged cars on May 20.

Law enforcement officers block a roadway in Moore where there was extensive damage from the tornado.

A massive tornado approaches Moore on May 20. The storm first touched down to the west of the city near Newcastle, Oklahoma. Visit CNN.com/impact for ways to help the victims.

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Photos: Deadly tornado hits Oklahoma

“It’s just disgraceful for me to see how many schools in Oklahoma continue to get built with all the priority on athletic facilities,” the architect said. “They don’t seize the opportunity to protect from a very imminent danger in this area.”

That was not the case at Northeastern State University in Tulsa, where his proposals were welcomed. “We were able to build honest-to-goodness tornado vaults, concrete vaults, as double-purpose classrooms,” he said.

Inside the shelter’s blast-resistant doors is ample space to accommodate the school’s thousands of students and staff members, he said. Its value was driven home soon after it was completed, when a tornado struck nearby, causing damage, he said.

“I went out there to the campus about three days later, and three of the lady professors just ran up and hugged me and said, ‘Mr. Bates, we just want to thank you,’” he said. “They said, ‘What a peace of mind!’ “

Teachers at schools without shelters can find themselves in untenable positions, he said. “A tornado gets announced, and then the teachers have no choice but to stay right there until every one of the parents of those children arrive,” he said. “That’s not the way it ought to be.”

The fact that seven students at Plaza Towers Elementary School were among the dead has given momentum to advocates for shelters in schools. Plaza Towers had neither a basement nor a shelter, and neither did Briarwood Elementary, which was also destroyed, although there were no fatalities there.

Remnant of children’s book reflects loss

The schools that were rebuilt in Moore after a tornado in 1999 do have storm shelters, he said. That one, too, was an EF5, the most powerful category of storm. Such tornadoes represent a tiny fraction — about one-tenth of a percent — of all tornadoes, according to FEMA.

Most of the schools in Oklahoma don’t have a shelter because of the cost, Moore Mayor Glenn Lewis told CNN. But he predicted that will change.

Protecting the school children

CNN Explains: Tornadoes

Getting a ‘Fraidy Hole’

Moore superintendent on storm shelters

“There should be a place that, if this ever happened again during school, that kids can get to a safe place,” said Mikki Dixon Davis, whose 8-year-old son, Kyle, died at Plaza Towers.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, said it was not clear Kyle would have survived even if he had had access to a shelter. “Some of the shelters that were utilized collapsed or were destroyed by the tornado,” he said.

“We’ll never replace her child or fill that void in her heart, and we ought to do what we can do to prevent this kind of result, but there’s only so much we can do. We put 200 shelters in in the last four, five years in Oklahoma in schools, so it’s not like the state hasn’t been making an effort.”

Leslie Chapman-Henderson rejected “chatter” suggesting that no above-ground shelters could have withstood Monday’s winds.

“We don’t know that; that hasn’t been determined,” said Chapman-Henderson, the president and CEO of the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes Inc.

“We’re concerned it’s going to set the cause of tornado safety back decades if we can’t get fact-based conversations rolling forward,” Chapman-Henderson said.

She expressed confidence that Oklahomans will learn from Monday’s events. “I hear a very diverse voice converging on one message: that this time, we have got to do this differently.”

As the debate continues over whether to invest in storm shelters, here are a few tips that experts say everyone should follow:

– Don’t ignore those warnings

There’s a saying in Oklahoma: If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes. The skies can change fast and that makes it hard for weather forecasters to predict the weather.

But whether you’re in Oklahoma or anywhere else, don’t dismiss tornado watches and warnings just because the forecaster got last week’s predictions wrong.

And don’t fall victim to thinking a tornado can’t happen in your neighborhood.

“Time and fading memories are the worst enemies,” said Chapman-Henderson. “People think it can’t happen twice, but in the case of Moore, Oklahoma, the tragedy here is this is the third strike — 1999 to 2003.”

Tornadoes can sometimes form so quickly that little, if any, warning is possible, according to FEMA.

– Grab a helmet

As Monday’s tornado approached, football players at Southmoore High School were getting ready for practice. The coach rounded up the players and ordered them to put on their helmets, he told Fox Sports Southwest

The tornado just missed the school.

It’s an important lesson: Protect your head. A 200 mph gust of wind can turn a stick into a lethal weapon, something even a $10 bicycle helmet might protect against.

– Work with what you’ve got

There’s a good chance that if a tornado approaches, you might not be near a storm shelter or a basement or your emergency kit, so it’s important to use what you have at the time of the impact to increase your survival chances.

Emergency room doctors at Moore Medical Center pulled mattresses and blankets off hospital gurneys and used them to cover themselves and their patients as the tornado approached.

Those simple items might have saved lives as the tornado wiped out the hospital’s second floor.

Workers and customers at a credit union got inside the bank vault, which proved to be the only thing standing after the tornado reduced the rest of the building to rubble.

Teachers and parents lay on top of kids at Briarwood Elementary, using their bodies to shield the children from debris as they rode out the storm.

The tornado wiped out the school and many sustained serious injuries, but everyone survived.

The Red Cross and the National Weather Service have more tips on their websites.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/25/us/tornado-safety/index.html?eref=edition

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The Sydney Opera House took center stage at the opening of the Vivid Sydney festival.

The festival is in its fifth year and 2013 is the first time the Sydney Harbour Bridge has been lit up as part of the show. There is an interactive programming station that allows the public to control the lights on the bridge.

The festival is anticipated to draw 550,000 people, organizers say.

The festival has three parts: Vivid Light, Vivid Music and Vivid Ideas. Here, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia gets a new life as part of Vivid Light.

Customs House is another iconic Sydney structure lit up for the festival.

As well as guys in their 60s wearing jumpsuits, the Kraftwerk show came with 3-D effects.

German techno pioneers Kraftwerk headline Vivid Music. They are one of around 25 music performances during the festival. It is music. Non-stop.

Darling Harbour was part of Vivid Light for the first time, transforming the area into a spectacle of dancing water fountains.

Projections onto the water fountains were masterminded by France’s legendary Aquatique Show International.

“Vivid Sydney is now the Southern Hemisphere’s largest festival of light, music and ideas,” NSW Deputy Premier Andrew Stoner said.

The 3-D-mapped light projections on the Opera House’s sails were produced by Australian creative outfit, The Spinifex Group.

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Sydney (CNN) — When winter hits, Sydney becomes something of a ghost town as its 4 million or so residents retreat indoors to acclimatize to the cold.

Yet for the past five years, they’ve been beckoned outside by Vivid Sydney, an 18-day festival of light, music and ideas that takes over after dark May 24 to June 10.

At the core of the carbon-neutral festival is Vivid Light. From 6 p.m. every evening, local and visiting artists use light installations and 3-D projectors to transform the 1,056,000 tiles of the Sydney Opera House, the Museum of Contemporary Art and other category-killing buildings into giant canvases of color and light.

Check out this incredible Sydney Opera House timelapse

Incredible Opera House timelapse

Headlining Vivid Live, the festival’s ticketed live music program, are German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk. Other acts included Joy Division and Vangelis from the UK and homegrown acts Cloud Control and Empire of the Sun. Bobby Womack called in sick.

Vivid Ideas, the festival’s third and final arm, comprises more than 100 lectures, workshops and debates. Led by global leaders in the fields of fashion, film, publishing, architecture and design, it underlines Sydney’s standing as a global epicenter for creative arts.

“Vivid now leads the world in sheer number and size of buildings projections — no other city lights up its famous landmarks and skyscrapers the way we do,” says creative adviser Ignatius Jones, who co-directed the 2000 Sydney Olympics’ opening ceremony.

“This year we’re going to have 60 light sculptures — nearly twice as many as last year. It’s going to be really, really big.”

A complete list of events and shows, plus ticketing details are accessible here: Vivid Sydney

In sync with the colder clime, Sydneysiders stray from the city’s beaches and harbor to find fun in the retail and entertainment precincts of the inner city and beyond. Here are three of the hippest.

Insider guide to Sydney

Surry Hills

During the Great Depression, Surry Hills was a Dickensian slum known for brothels and razor-wielding street gangs. But demand for city-fringe housing has seen the suburb embark on a journey of gentrification that transformed it into Sydney’s Soho district.

Starting at the junctures of Oxford Street, Sydney’s celebrated gay district, vintage clothing stores like Grandma Takes a Trip, Wheels Dollbaby and Strawberry Hills (+612 9380 8809) make Surry Hills Sydney’s capital of alternative fashion. For contemporary threads, check out Japanese-Danish boutique Mushu, Via Alley Shop and Gallery and Flight 001, a travel store shaped like the inside of a jumbo jet.

New York-style warehouse bars like Toko, The Winery and Shortgrain buzz with life on wintry weekends, while neon green spirits are served with aplomb at The Absinthe Salon.

The home of Australia’s most innovative theater company, Belvoir Street Theatre is where Hollywood heavyweights Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush cut their teeth. From May 28 to July 14, Belvoir presents “Angles in America,” a two-part Pulitzer Prize-winning play featuring Marcus Graham of David Lynch’s “Mulholland Dr.”

To get a sense of Surry Hills’s working-class past, order a beer on tap or at The Cricketers Arms, Hollywood Hotel or any of the suburb’s un-renovated pubs. Adherents of the if-it-isn’t-broken-don’t fix-it school of design, they are windows into Surry Hill’s indissoluble bohemian heart.

The Inner West

When it comes to noisy and unsightly motorways, Parramatta Road, Sydney’s major east-west artery, takes the cake. But a select number of its side streets and adjoining suburbs are vibrant hubs for food, fashion and art.

At the very start of Parramatta Road, the castle-like buildings of Sydney University were modeled on London’s Westminster Abbey. Walk though its neogothic sandstone quadrangle to King Street, Newtown, an eclectic meeting place for students, rockabillies and steampunks. Lined with old pubs, cinemas and multicultural eats like Rowda Ya Habibi (+612 9557 5368), Sydney’s best kebab joint, King Street is a people-watchers’ paradise and then some.

Across from Sydney University is Glebe Point Road, home to Gleebooks, Sydney’s most popular independent bookstore. On Saturday mornings, Glebe Markets provides a showcase for emerging artists with recycled fashion and bands on the side.

A mile west of here on Parramatta Road is Deus ex Machina’s House of Simple Pleasures. A hanger-size oasis of retro style, it combines a custom motorcycle showroom, the Deus boutique and a pseudo-industrial function space that hosts everything from weddings to rock concerts.

Continue another mile and a half and you’ll find Sydney’s Little Italy on Norton Street, Leichhardt. With around 50 restaurants and cafés, the strip stakes a claim as one of Sydney’s great ethic culinary hubs.

Discover your favorite Leichhardt eatery on a Buon Appetito walking tour. Run by Italian-Australian advocacy group Co.As.It, it visits Leichhardt’s best food outlets, teaches the history of Italians in the area and culminates in a cooking demonstration and Sicilian lunch.

Woollahra

An Aboriginal word meaning ‘camp’, Woollahra is one of the eastern Sydney’s most affluent suburbs. Its streets are lined with elm trees, grand Victorian terraces and a village-like retail hub home to some of Australia’s most prestigious art galleries.

The Gallery Walk starts near the corners of Oxford and Queen Street at The Art of Dr Seuss for limited-edition prints by the author of the “Cat in the Hat” series. Continue along Queen Street to Bewoulf Gallery for exotic and ethnographic ceramics. A detour through Hallis Lane leads to the Tim Olsen Gallery and Richard Martin Art on Jersey Road, where Sydney’s art cognoscenti attend regular exhibitions.

Tucked behind rows of square hedges around the corner on Ocean Street is Chiswick, a glasshouse-inspired eatery with shaded outdoor seating. TV chef Matt Moran sources herbs from Chiswick’s own vegetable patch, lamb from his own farm and small goods from Victor Churchill, a Woollahra butcher of distinction established in 1876.

Back on Queen Street, across the road from luxury perfumery Jo Malone, is Life.Style — the boutique-gallery hybrid of global cosmetics tsar Napoleon Perdis. Trading from the heritage-listed original Woollahra Post Office building, it stocks IONIA porcelain dinnerware from Greece, Lucite and Perspex accessories from France plus lithographs and garments from the US.

“Woollahra is a micro cosmos that epitomizes the idea of Sydney as a city of villages,” Perdis says. “It’s not just a tourist attraction, it’s the way we live.”

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Jim Whittaker, left, and Sherpa Nawang Gombu summited Mount Everest together in 1963. It cemented a bond for the two men. Click through our gallery to see Whittaker’s time on Everest, and how his son, Leif, has followed in his footsteps.

Whittaker summits Mount Everest on May 1, 1963, at 1 p.m.

Jim Whittaker after the climb.

Sherpas, known as high-altitude porters in 1963, carry packs on the 185-mile trek to reach Everest base camp.

Climbers work their way through the dangerous Khumbu Icefall, a shedding glacier just after Everest base camp.

The Khumbu Icefall is also where expedition member Jake Breitenbach lost his life when the ice became unstable and buried him (not pictured).

President John F. Kennedy awards Jim Whittaker the Hubbard Medal.

Whittaker, right, and his son, Leif, near Everest base camp in 2012.

Leif Whittaker captured this photo as Dave Hahn ascends the rocky Geneva Spur between Camp 3 and Camp 4 in 2010. The following images feature his stunning photographry during 2010 and 2012 on Everest.

Mount Everest base camp at night during the 2012 expedition.

Leif Whittaker stands on the summit of Mount Everest on May 26, 2012.

Camp 3, at 24,000 feet above sea level, on the Lhotse Face at sunset during the 2010 expedition.

Expedition member Dave Hahn peers out at the Himalaya from Pumori Camp I in 2012.

A Buddhist stupa on the trail to Mount Everest Base Camp in 2012.

Expedition member Melissa Arnot uses a ladder to cross in the Khumbu Icefall in 2012.

Camp 2, at 21,300 feet, in an Everest featured named the Western Cwm, in 2010.

Jim and Leif pause for a moment on the trail to Mount Everest Base Camp in 2012.

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(CNN) — When Jim Whittaker became the first American to stand on top of Mount Everest 50 years ago, he was anything but elated.

Reaching Earth’s highest point only 10 years after New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary became the first to summit, Whittaker said 50 mph winds were “blowing like hell,” compounding the already outrageous temperature of 35 below zero.

The jetstream blasted Whittaker and Sherpa Nawang Gombu as Whittaker pounded the pick of his American flag into the ice.

But when the two men looked down from their perch, 29,028 feet above sea level, they realized summiting was not their journey’s end. They still had far to go, and they’d just run out of bottled oxygen on top of the world.

Sherpas, climbers sign Everest treaty

Saudi woman makes Everest history

“Oh, boy, we’ve got to get down,” Whittaker thought. “Getting to the summit is half of the climb. You’re working so hard to get up, you don’t really think about anything else.”

Whittaker’s expedition members’ childhoods had been filled with a passion for climbing.

Richard Pownall was bitten by the mountaineering bug in 1943 when an English teacher sent students to the library to pick out a book. After reading about climbing, Pownall got a summer job working at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, but that stint couldn’t sate his curiosity and zeal for exploration.

Whittaker discovered his passion at 14, scaling the peaks of the Northwest U.S. and, later, while guiding people up Mount Rainier in college. After summiting Mount McKinley, the highest U.S. peak, the next natural step was “the big one,” he said.

When the Americans began scaling Everest, their journey was far different from that of today’s climbers. For one, they were the only team on the mountain at the time.

They also had to trek 185 miles through the sweltering Chitwa Jungle, their packs stuffed with cold-weather gear for when the elevation rose. That’s about the distance from Seattle, Washington, to Portland, Oregon, though the Nepalese trek involves pathways along 18,000-foot ridges, Whittaker pointed out.

Today, climbers fly 140 miles into Nepal and trek 40 miles into base camp.

80-year-old Japanese man becomes oldest to climb Mount Everest

Once at Everest, it wasn’t long before Whittaker’s expedition experienced disaster. Two days into the climb, three men were opening a route through the Khumbu Icefall — where descending glaciers break off into jagged, car- and house-sized chunks — when glacier pieces collapsed around them, burying them in ice, Pownall said.

He was able to climb out, but ended his summit attempt.

Jake Breitenbach, a 27-year-old guide from Jackson, Wyoming, didn’t survive. He was buried deep in the ice. His body wouldn’t be recovered until much later.

“You’re halfway around the world,” Whittaker said. “You immediately think of your family.”

They were all shaken, but Everest’s fierce conditions forbade them from dwelling on it. They had to keep moving. They could mourn later.

Though the view from the peak is spectacular, the Himalayas and Nepal unfolding beneath them, Whittaker said his team was more amazed by the scenery on their way back down. After months of living in thin air, they noticed the air became thicker and softer as the oxygen increased.

At one point, they found themselves clustered, looking down at a little blade of grass coming up through the scree.

“This green, emerald green — God, it was just incredible,” Whittaker said. “There is nothing growing up above, no color — it’s all snow, ice and rock. We were in tears. We had lost Jake up on the mountain but now we were coming back into life, this beautiful, lush, gorgeous planet that supports life. A little blade of grass just stunned the whole team.”

Almost 49 years after summiting Everest, Whittaker, then-83, found himself back at base camp in 2012. His son, Leif, 27, wanted to reach the so-called “Head of the Sky” for a second time. Leif Whittaker had done it without his father in 2010.

Whittaker and his son had trekked to a base camp in 2003, but they had no intention of summiting.

First Saudi woman summits Mount Everest

Whittaker said he never encouraged or discouraged his son from mountaineering, but his son discovered it for himself at age 15. After being asked so many times if he’d follow in his dad’s footsteps up the face of Everest, Leif found his answer on their 2003 trip.

“It was the natural power and majesty of that place that I felt some special connection to,” Leif said. “I think we all are affected by landscapes in a different way, and for me, a boy who had grown up with that idea of Mount Everest in his head, seeing Everest for the first time made me want to climb it.”

Whittaker hoped to walk into base camp with his son in 2012, but a day from their destination, he caught an intestinal bug. The seasoned mountaineer who had once conquered Everest was within him, telling him to keep going, but he decided it was too dicey.

Meanwhile, Leif Whittaker faced a different danger: overcrowding. Ten people died on Everest in 2012, raising questions about how many people should receive permits to scale the perilous peak.

Leif waited for more than an hour at 28,700 feet, just below the summit, as 100 people slowly descended the tricky Hillary Step. If it hadn’t been for calm winds May 26, the last window of good weather, he would have been forced back down.

“Each person climbs Everest for different reasons. The reason that I climb is because I love the mountain, I love what comes with it: the view from the top, the camaraderie of good teammates, the personal challenge of the experience, pushing past your own boundaries and growing because of that experience.”

Father and son experienced the magnitude of emotion that comes with being at Everest together, and Whittaker is proud his son reached the summit twice. While the achievement continues the family legacy, Whittaker wanted his children to appreciate the life around them.

“I came back from Everest without ego because you realize how insignificant you are, just a speck in the vast universe,” Whittaker said. “You dwell in the silence of the forest and the high mountains. They are the highest cathedrals in the world.”

Childhood dream leads climber up Everest — twice in one week

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/24/us/everest-1963-expedition-whittaker/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/stlxE_d71HQ/everest-anniversary

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Jes Baker, who blogs under the name “The Militant Baker,” changed Abercrombie and Fitch’s logo to “Attractive Fat” to challenge CEO Mike Jeffries’ comments about marketing to “cool, good-looking people.” The company doesn’t carry above a size 10 or large for women.

“I was inspired by the opportunity to show that I am secure in my skin and to flaunt this by using the controversial platform that you created,” Baker wrote. Here, she poses with model John C. Shay.

Baker said Jeffries’ comments “created an incredible opportunity for social change” about body image in the fashion industry.

Baker said she was nervous about the shoot, but only because she had never modeled with another person or in a sexual manner.

“The only thing you’ve done through your comments (about thin being beautiful and only offering XL and XXL in your stores for men) is reinforce the unoriginal concept that fat women are social failures, valueless, and undesirable,” Baker wrote to Jeffries.

“Never in our culture do we see sexy photo shoots that pair short, fat, unconventional models with not short, not fat, professional models,” Baker wrote.

Baker said the shoot isn’t about larger sizes at Abercrombie, “it’s about teaching the world that everybody is equal in value.”

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(CNN) — Jes Baker is cutting retailer Abercrombie Fitch down to size.

Baker, who blogs under the name “The Militant Baker” and wears a size 22, changed the brand’s AF logo to “Attractive Fat” in a mock, black-and-white Abercrombie ad to challenge the line’s branding efforts.

The photos come as a provocative response to contentious comments Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries made in a 2006 Salon article about the multibillion-dollar brand’s target audience.

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” Jeffries said. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

The divisive remarks resurfaced earlier this month after a series of protests went viral, from Greg Karber’s video of himself giving homeless people Abercrombie clothing to a Change.org petition for larger sizes by a teenage eating disorder survivor.

Video mocks Abercrombie and Fitch CEO

The plus-size community particularly took umbrage to the CEO’s business model because the retailer currently does not offer clothes above size 10 or large for women.

“I challenge the separation of attractive and fat, and I assert that they are compatible regardless of what you believe,” Baker, 26, wrote in a public letter addressed to the CEO.

Jeffries has since apologized in a statement: “While I believe this 7-year-old, resurrected quote has been taken out of context, I sincerely regret that my choice of words was interpreted in a manner that has caused offense.”

Baker spoke to CNN about Jeffries’ comments and her motivations to address them. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

CNN: You start your letter with a preface that Jeffries’ opinion “isn’t shocking; millions share the same sentiment.” The comments are from 2006 — what motivated you to act on them?

Jes Baker: It really wasn’t upset or outrage at all. I’ve been an art major for the majority of my academic life, and so I am always trying to find opportunities to do something artistic.

I just thought we don’t see the juxtaposition of typical and atypical bodies in advertising specifically. Since I am a woman and I am fat and that’s what I have to work with, I wanted to show that contrast by finding a male model.

Really, it just came because I wanted to not be angry about it. I wanted to not say, “This is an outrage, I’ve never heard of this before,” but say, “OK, well, look at this. Look at how awesome this is.”

And, I think when you’re talking about really serious subjects, and this is kind of serious, it’s important to be a little bit cheeky and pull in a little bit of humor so that it’s approachable — and it worked.

CNN: In your letter, you credit Jeffries with creating “an incredible opportunity for social change.” What did you mean by that?

Baker: In the body-positive world, which is still a subculture, fashion for fat people — what they call “fatshion” — is a really big political statement. So is the concept of, for example, a fat person walking around wearing cut-off shorts and not apologizing for their body being so observable.

Being positive and having confidence is a huge deal. Through a very, very large company that deals with fashion and also deals with unrealistic body images, it’s a perfect opportunity. You’re bringing in fashion, you’re bringing in body consciousness in general, you’re bringing in kids who shop at the mall — it’s all these wonderful things combined in one opportunity.

CNN: Have you always been comfortable in your own body?

Baker: No, no, no. I think of all of us, to some certain extent, feel the same things. I was crippled from shame my entire life. Only in this last year have I been so dedicated to this journey of learning how to survive bad days and find wanted days. If anyone tells you they have 100% good days, they’re probably lying.

I have 26 years to undo and rewire and I’m still working on it, but it’s definitely a very conscious decision. And writing has really helped, as well.

CNN: The response has obviously been huge.

Baker: It’s wonderful. I’m sure there are negatives, but for every negative, there are 20 positives.

The most powerful part is saying there is a reality that you can exist in where you’re OK, and it doesn’t make you gullible or delusional, it makes you strong.

For a lot of people, it’s just a light bulb. I know I had one where I said “What? I don’t have to live in self-loathing for the rest of my life?”

People are entertaining the idea that maybe there is a piece of self-worth for them out there somewhere. And once it starts, it grows.

CNN: Let’s talk about the actual photo shoot. Were you nervous?

Baker: I had never met the model until that day. I credit the majority of this to the photographer, Liora, because she really made it come to life.

He was the most genuine, down-to-earth person. It was so much fun.

In the beginning, I was nervous, but mostly because I had never modeled with other people. I have done solo fashion modeling, but never with another person and never in a sexual manner — so it was a really interesting experiment.

CNN: Have you heard from Jeffries or Abercrombie Fitch?

Baker: No, I didn’t write this letter technically for them. I like to not invest a lot of my time in people who are dedicated to misunderstanding me. What I wanted to do is reach women who look and feel like me. We never see this pairing; we never see a fat woman in a positive light. I want to empower the individual woman.

When Mike Jeffries is gone, there’s going to be another company. It’s not about the extra-large shirts at Abercrombie; it’s about teaching the world that everybody is equal in value.

Follow Sarah LeTrent on Twitter and CNN Living on Facebook

What do you think of Baker’s spoof ads and Jeffries’ comments? Share your opinion in the comments section below.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/23/living/abercrombie-attractive-and-fat/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/ScZUQZxOras/fat-ad-spoofs-abercrombie

Editor’s note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a director at the New America Foundation and the author of “Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden — From 9/11 to Abbottabad,” the basis for the HBO documentary “Manhunt” that will be shown on CNN at 9 p.m. today.

Washington (CNN) — In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a British soldier hacked to death with a meat cleaver on the streets of London and bombers blowing up spectators at the Boston Marathon.

On the surface, terrorism is alive and well.

So how should the United States react to these continuing threats?

For the first time on Thursday, President Obama laid out the full scope of his proposed counterterrorism strategy, and it boiled down to this: George W. Bush’s endless war on terror is over.

And that’s appropriate, since the enemy Bush went to war with after September 11 has largely been defeated.

Obama’s speech at the National Defense University in Washington was designed to lay the political groundwork to wind down America’s longest war, the war that began when al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center and a wing of the Pentagon 12 years ago.

Thursday’s speech was the first time Obama had delivered an overarching framework for how to conceptualize the conflict that has defined U.S. national security policy since 9/11.

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President Obama interrupted by heckler

CNN Explains: Drones

Other speeches by Obama have focused on aspects of that conflict, such as Guantanamo and the Afghan war. But no speech has made such an expansive examination of the war against al Qaeda and its allies in all its manifestations, from drone strikes to detention policies to a clear-eyed assessment of the scope of the threats posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates, as well as by those “homegrown” extremists who attacked the Boston Marathon in April.

Much of the coverage of the speech has centered on the measures the president outlined to impose greater constraints on CIA drone strikes and to try to hasten the eventual closing of Guantanamo.

But the most significant aspect of the speech was the president’s case that the “perpetual wartime footing” and “boundless war on terror” that has permeated so much of American life since 9/11 should come to an end.

Obama argued that the time has come to redefine the kind of conflict that the United States is engaged in: “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us.”

This is why the president focused part of his speech on a discussion of the seemingly arcane Authorization for the Use of Military Force that Congress passed days after 9/11 and that gave Bush the authority to go to war in Afghanistan against al Qaeda and its Taliban allies.

Few, if any, in Congress who voted for the authorization understood at the time that they were voting for a virtual blank check that has provided the legal basis for more than a decade of war. It is a war that has expanded in recent years to other countries in the Middle East and Africa, such as Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. has engaged in covert military operations against al Qaeda-affiliated groups.

Theoretically, when U.S. combat troops finally withdraw from Afghanistan in December 2014, the authorization should simply expire, and the nation will no longer be at war. After all, once combat operations are over in Afghanistan, why would you want to keep in place an authorization for a permanent war?

However, there are now some in Congress who would like to expand the scope of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force beyond its present parameters to include military operations against terrorist groups that were not involved in the 9/11 attacks, which could prolong America’s wars indefinitely and add additional terrorist groups to the United States’ list of enemies it is at war with.

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, ranking member of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for instance, last month called for an expansion of the scope of the authorization.

Obama made it quite clear in his Thursday speech that he would oppose such an expansion, saying he hopes instead to “ultimately repeal the AUMF’s mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further.”

In short, Obama intends to end a seemingly endless war.

That’s because, according to Obama, “the core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the path to defeat. Their remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us.”

On Thursday, Obama asserted (in my view, correctly) that what remains of the terrorist threat, while significant and persistent, is nothing on the scale of the al Qaeda organization that launched the 9/11 operation and instead consists of “less capable al Qaeda affiliates, threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad, homegrown extremists.”

These threats, the president further asserted, can be managed by carefully targeted drone strikes overseas and efforts to counter extremist ideology at home and do not require some kind of broader war.

Obama is also looking to his legacy and the presidents who will follow him and is trying to begin to create the public consensus and legal framework that will help to ensure that the United States isn’t “drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states.”

Obama clearly hopes to leave office in 2016 as the commander in chief who finally ended America’s longest war.

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Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/24/opinion/bergen-end-of-terror-war/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/RR1UCOVRNYE/is-bushs-war-on-terror-now-over

London (CNN) — Since the financial crisis hit in 2007 the gap between rich and the poor has grown, unemployment has soared to record levels and Europe’s young risk becoming a lost generation.

Ahead of the OECD Forum in Paris next week, CNN is hosting a tweet chat Monday May 27 between 12pm and 12:30pm BST to debate how the crisis has split the world and hear your views on who is at fault and how it can be fixed.

Using the hashtag #inequalityCNN, tell us how the crisis has impacted your life, and what generation X and Y — those hardest hit by unemployment — can do to change the global story.

Join the conversation with CNN’s special guests European Youth Forum president Peter Matjasic and secretary general Giuseppe Porcaro, entrepreneur Karl Petter Rygh and Intern Aware in UK’s Ben Lyons. They are attending the OECD Forum as youth representatives.

CNN will pull the best comments into a story to run ahead of the OECD Forum, on May 28 and 29, which will be discussing how the world can pull itself out of the financial mire and revealing its global economic outlook.

The forum follows the release of OECD figures this month showing income inequality increased as much in the first three years of the crisis as it had in the previous 12 years — if mitigating factors such as taxes and welfare were not taken into account.

Demonstrators shout slogans at Neptuno Square during a march made by thousands of people on Saturday, February 23 in Madrid.

Public workers, small political parties and nonprofit organizations protest against government austerity on February 23 in Madrid.

Spanish riot police stand in front of a fire at the end of a demonstration against government austerity measures in Madrid.

Demonstrators protest on February 23, in Madrid.

Spanish police in riot gear chase protesters.

Protesters face Spanish riot police at the end of the demonstration in Madrid.

Firemen extinguish a bin on fire during a riot after a march by thousands of people.

Spain’s financial crisis has resulted in an eviction epidemic in Madrid. Ecuadorian immigrant Rocio (second left) lost her jobs when the recession hit, and has only narrowly avoided being kicked out of her apartment.

People protest against the Spanish laws on house evictions outside the Spanish parliament on February 12 in Madrid, Spain.

People attend a demonstration called by the organization Platform for Mortgage Victims on February 16 in Madrid.

Court officials protest on February 20 in Madrid, during a strike called by judges, prosecutors and justice workers against the government’s spending cuts.

Judges, prosecutors and justice workers called the strike against the government’s spending cuts.

Platform for Mortgage Victims protests to push for a new law to end a wave of evictions of homeowners ruined by the economic crisis.

Demonstrators camp at a protest in Puerta del Sol Square after a demonstration against alleged corruption scandals implicating the PP (Popular Party) on February 3 in Madrid, Spain.

Protestors gather during a demonstration against alleged corruption scandals implicating the PP (Popular Party) on February 3 in Madrid, Spain.

Policemen arrest a Spanish Airline Iberia worker during a protest against job cuts at Barajas Airport on February 18 in Madrid, Spain.

Riot police pull at a worker protesting from Spanish Airline Iberia during a rally against job cuts at Barajas Airport.

A Spanish Airline Iberia staff member blows a whistle during a protest against job cuts at Barajas Airport.

Riot Police walk forward making a cordon during a protest of Spanish Airline Iberia staff.

Staff from Spanish Airline Iberia hold flags and gather in protest against job cuts.

Protesters hold placards as they take part in a demonstration against plans to cut medical spending and privatize hospital services in Madrid on February 17.

Protesters take part in a demonstration against plans to cut medical spending and privatize hospital services in Madrid of February 17.

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Madrid at the center of protests

The figures show that in countries where the financial crisis hit hard, such as Greece, Spain and Italy, poor households “either lost more income from the recession or benefited less from recovery.”

Eurozone crisis sparked protests throughout the continent. Pictured here, demonstrators fight with riot policemen during a protest against austerity on November 14, 2012 in Rome.

Students hold placards with titles of classic books during a protest on a day of mobilization against austerity measures by workers in southern Europe on November 14, 2012 in Rome.

A demonstrator sits next to a barricade of burning tires on November 13, 2012 in Barcelona, Spain.

Protesters sit down in front of a line of police.

Riot police officers face protesters during a demonstration outside the Portuguese Parliament in Lisbon on November 14, 2012 during a general strike.

Riot policemen arrest a protester in Valencia on November 14, 2012 during a general strike.

Riot policemen stand in line during a protest against austerity measures by workers in Europe on November 14, 2012 in Rome.

Greece has seen some of the most violent protests in years.

Communist-affiliated protesters gather in central Athens prior their protest march marking the 24-hour general strike on October 18, 2012.

Protesters attend a demonstration organized by Spain’s “indignant” protesters, a popular movement against a political system that they say deprives ordinary Spaniards of a voice in the crisis, near the parliament building in Madrid during a general strike.

Supporters of the Greek Communist Party waves party flags and chant slogans, during a rally calling for Greece’s exit from the Eurozone, on May 14, 2012.

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Europe’s unemployment crisis

Greece and Spain are also the countries in which youth unemployment has reached the eurozone’s highest levels, sitting at 62.5% and 55.9% respectively. Italy youth unemployment sits at 38.4%, according to Eurostat.

Luxury sales defy economic gloom

Meanwhile the number of billionaires increased by 210 to 1,426, according to the 2013 Forbes Billionaires List, with the aggregate net wealth increasing to $5.4 trillion from $4.6 trillion.

Is this fair? Tell us what you think, Monday May 27 at 12pm to 12:30pm BST.

Key Twitter handles for the chat are:

@curlyP

@porcarorama

@BenLyons1

@karlrygh

And from CNN, join Irene Chapple and Lauren Moorhouse:

@IreneCNN

@LaurenMoorhouse

Follow the CNNi Twitter list, here.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/24/business/tweet-chat-inequality-oecd/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/dvbEy6jnHiM/tell-cnn-has-crisis-robbed-the-poor

Editor’s note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a director at the New America Foundation and the author of “Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden — From 9/11 to Abbottabad,” the basis for the HBO documentary “Manhunt” that will be shown on CNN on May 24. Jennifer Rowland is a research associate at the New America Foundation.

(CNN) — On Thursday, President Barack Obama is scheduled to deliver a major speech in Washington about his administration’s counterterrorism policies, focusing on the rationale and legal framework for the controversial CIA drone program and his plans to wind down the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

So we thought it might be useful to examine some common myths about the drone program and the prison population at Guantanamo.

1. Drone strikes largely target the leaders of terrorist groups that threaten the United States.

In fact, of the thousands who have been killed in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, only 37 were leaders of al Qaeda or affiliated organizations, according to a tally by the New America Foundation. And even if we add to that list the leaders of the Taliban who have been killed in drone strikes, only 2% of the victims of the CIA strikes in Pakistan have been militant leaders.

The drone program, which began more than a decade ago as a tool to kill leaders of terrorist groups, has evolved today into a counterinsurgency air force whose principal victims in Pakistan are lower-level members of the Taliban.

Drones, by the numbers

2. Drone strikes target specific terrorists who pose some kind of imminent threat to the U.S.

Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser and now CIA Director John Brennan said in a speech last year that “in order to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States and to save American lives — the United States government conducts targeted strikes against specific al Qaeda terrorists.”

That’s only partly true, because the CIA has also has occasionally conducted “signature strikes” against groups of men who display a particular behavioral “signature” that indicates they may be militants. In these cases, the targeter does not know the identity of the persons in the drone cross hairs.

3. Drone strikes kill a lot of civilians.

That was certainly once the case. Under President George W. Bush, the proportion of those killed by drones in Pakistan who were identified in reliable news reports as civilians or “unknowns” — people who were not identified definitively as either civilians or militants — was around 40%, according to data assembled by the New America Foundation.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is home to the U.S. naval base that has held terror suspects since January 2002. Early in the war on terror, the Bush administration argued these detainees were “enemy combatants” who didn’t have the protections accorded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Click through for a look inside the controversial facility. Pictured: A detainee stands at an interior fence at Guantanamo Bay in October 2009.

A Navy sailor surveys the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in October 2009. Shortly after his first term began, President Barack Obama signed an executive order to close Guantanamo Bay within a year, but the move do so has stalled. Congress passed legislation preventing detainees from being transferred into the United States. However, the administration says Obama remains committed to closing the facility, also known as Gitmo.

U.S. military guards move a detainee inside the detention center in September 2010. At its peak, the detainee population reportedly exceeded 750 men at Guantanamo.

Muslim detainees kneel during early morning prayers in October 2009. Cells are marked with an arrow pointing in the direction of Mecca, regarded as Islam’s holy city.

A soldier stands near a placard on the fence line of the detention facility in January 2012.

A Quran sits among a display of items isssued to detainees in September 2010. The suspects are given a prayer mat and a copy of the Muslim holy book as well as a toothbrush, soap, shampoo and clothing.

A U.S. military guard walks out of the maximum security section of the detention center in September 2010.

A German shepherd police dog undergoes training exercises in October 2009 at Guantanamo Bay.

A camp librarian views artwork painted by detainees in September 2010.

A detainee rubs his face while attending a “life skills” class inside the Camp 6 high-security detention facility in April 2009.

A seat and shackle await a detainee in the DVD room of the maximum security Camp 5 detention center in March 2010.

U.S. Marines join in martial arts training at the U.S. naval base in September 2010.

Members of the military walk the hallway of Cell Block C in the Camp 5 detention facility in January 2012.

Guards move a detainee from his cell in Cell Block A of the Camp 6 detention facility in January 2012.

A detainee waits for lunch in September 2010. The cost of building Guantanamo’s high-security detention facilities was reportedly about $54 million.

Marines get an early-morning workout at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in October 2009.

A bus carries military guards from their night shift at the detention center in September 2010.

A military guard puts on gloves before moving a detainee within the detention center in September 2010.

Members of the U.S. Navy move down the hallway of Cell Block C in the Camp 5 detention facility in January 2012.

A U.S. military guard holds shackles before preparing to move a detainee in September 2010.

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Photos: Inside Guantanamo Bay

Gitmo prisoners being force-fed

CNN Explains: Drones

But the civilian and “unknown” casualty rate from drone strikes has fallen steadily over the life of the program. Under Obama that number has fallen to 16%. And in 2012 it was around 11%.

In 2012, 2% of the drones’ victims were characterized as civilians in news reports and 9% were described in a manner that made it ambiguous whether they were militants or civilians.

And in 2013, civilian casualties are at their lowest ever. That is partly the result of a sharply reduced number of drone strikes in Pakistan — 12 so far in 2013, compared with a record 122 in 2010 — and also more precise targeting. According to data collected by the New America Foundation, three to five “unknown” individuals have been killed so far in drone strikes in 2013. Two other organizations that track the CIA drone program in Pakistan, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Long War Journal, report zero to four civilian deaths and 11 civilian deaths respectively.

4. The United States has no reason to worry about the legal framework governing drone strikes because it is so dominant in drone technology.

Only three countries currently are confirmed to possess armed drones — Israel, the United Kingdom and the U.S. But some 80 countries have drones, according to a count by the New America Foundation, and a number of them may already be able to arm them.

In February, a Chinese state-run newspaper reported that the Chinese government had contemplated deploying an armed drone in a remote, mountainous area to kill a drug lord, but decided instead to capture him.

Iran unveiled what it claimed was its first armed drone in 2010.

During a speech last week at the New America Foundation, the U.N. special rapporteur for counterterrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, estimated that “within a matter of certainly a year or two, other states will be deploying the technology, and within five years or so we will see a number of states and possibly nonstate actors deploying similar types of combat technology.”

Emmerson also pointed out that the rapid proliferation of drone technology means whatever legal framework the United States puts together to justify its targeted killing campaign “has to be a framework that we can live with if it is being used by Iran when it is deploying drones against Iranian dissidents hiding inside the territory of Syria or Turkey or Iraq.” A sobering and instructive thought.

5. The Pakistani government gives a wink and a nod to the drone program, providing tacit approval for its continuation.

It is true that Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf quietly agreed to allow the CIA’s targeted killing campaign to begin in 2004. But the program has become deeply controversial and unpopular in Pakistan because of the perception that it kills many civilians and that it erodes Pakistan’s national sovereignty.

In April 2012, the Pakistani parliament voted unanimously to rescind any previous permission that had been granted by the government for the CIA to conduct the targeted killing program.

During Ben Emmerson’s visit to Pakistan in March to discuss the CIA drone program with top officials, the point made to him “consistently, right across government, at the highest level and throughout, was that there is no continuing consent to the use of drones on Pakistani territory.”

The next Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was elected on May 11 with a clear mandate, has urged an end to the drone strikes, telling reporters, “Drones indeed are challenging our sovereignty. Of course we have taken this matter up very seriously. I think this is a very serious issue, and our concern must be understood properly.”

6. Obama is soft on terrorists.

The CIA has conducted 355 drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal regions since the targeted killing program began there in 2004. The vast majority of these — 307 to be precise — were carried out under Obama.

Even if you take the most conservative estimate of the numbers of people the Obama administration has killed in drone strikes in Pakistan, 1,600, that is around twice the total number of prisoners that Bush sent to Guantanamo.

7. Many of the Guantanamo detainees who have been released return to the battlefield.

The U.S. government claims that 27% of those released from Guantanamo are suspected or confirmed to have taken up arms. For security reasons the government hasn’t released the names of these men since 2009, but a review of the public record suggests that number is quite inflated.

According to a review by the New America Foundation of news articles, Pentagon reports, and other relevant documents, of the 603 detainees who have been released from the prison, only 17 individuals (2.8%) are confirmed to have engaged in terrorist or insurgent activities against the United States or its citizens, while 21 individuals (3.5%) are suspected of engaging in such activities.

8. The detainees still held at Guantanamo are too dangerous to release.

Some undoubtedly are, such as the operational commander of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But contrary to the fulminations of officials such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina — who said last year that Guantanamo detainees are “crazy bastards that want to kill us all” — half of the men still held at the prison camp were cleared for release three years ago by a task force of Department of Justice and Pentagon officials.

To be exact, 86 of the 166 men still imprisoned at Guantanamo were either found to be guilty of nothing, or were low-level fighters who could be repatriated subject to some continued monitoring by their home country’s government.

9. There are no benefits for the U.S. to release additional prisoners from Guantanamo.

Obama correctly said of Guantanamo in April, “It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”

The cost per year to keep one prisoner at Guantanamo is estimated to be $800,000, more than 30 times the cost of keeping a prisoner in a jail in the United States. And the Pentagon is asking Congress to approve a $200 million renovation plan for the prison.

The prisoners at Guantanamo have also featured frequently in jihadist propaganda, making it a recruitment tool for would-be al Qaeda members.

There is also a way forward through Guantanamo to obtaining some kind of peace deal with the Taliban. As a “confidence-building measure” for peace negotiations, theTaliban have agreed to release the only U.S. prisoner of war, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, in exchange for a handful of senior Taliban figures being held at Guantanamo, who would then be held under some form of house arrest in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. This deal is a precondition for continuing serious peace talks with the Taliban.

The 27-year-old soldier has been in captivity since the Taliban seized him on June 30, 2009.

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Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/opinion/bergen-nine-myths-drones-gitmo/index.html?eref=edition

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(CNN) — “For the workers at Ford and their families absorbing this difficult news today, we will make sure that you are not left behind.”

So tweeted the Australian premier Julia Gillard, as Ford Australia, the local subsidiary of the U.S. giant, this week confirmed the worst kept secret in Australian manufacturing.

More than 1,000 workers will lose their jobs when Ford closes two production facilities in the state of Victoria by October 2016.

The decision came after Ford Australia declared a A$141 million [$135.4 million] tax loss for the year 2012/13. The company has lost around A$600 million [$575 million] over the last five years, making it unviable, it says, to continue producing cars in Australia.

The decision is a blow not only to those who will lose their jobs. It’s also bad news for the ruling Labor government, about to face an election it’s tipped to lose.

It also comes amid concerns that while Australia’s mining boom appears to have peaked, the country’s manufacturing base is in decline.

Ford Australia president and chief executive Bob Graziano said the company had failed to “make the numbers work” when it modeled a number of different scenarios in an attempt to maintain its Australian production base.

A small and fragmented Australian market and uncompetitive cost structures are to blame, according to Graziano.

“There’s been a significant change in terms of the total number of vehicles sold in the large car segment,” he told a media conference. He added “costs are double that of Europe and nearly four times Ford in Asia.”

The news, which will also impact the vehicle manufacturing supply chain across the country, comes despite attempts by the Australian government to prop up the industry.

In the past decade the Australian government has given the auto industry A$12 billion [$11.5 billion] in subsidies — with Ford itself the beneficiary of A$2.5 billion of those subsidies.

But the automaker’s decision to close manufacturing completely by 2016 is likely to add to the growing concerns that Australia is too reliant on its mining industry and resource exports to China in particular, whilst its manufacturing base has been in steady decline over more than four decades.

In the 1960s, manufacturing accounted for close to 30% of GDP. In 2012, it accounted 7.2%.

The Australian Industry Group, an employers organization, said manufacturers were doing it tough in a “high cost economy” while opposition leader Tony Abbott lamented a “black day for manufacturing in Australia.”

But respected commentator Bernard Keane said the news was long overdue and unrepresentative of the state of Australian manufacturing.

“These aren’t the numbers of a company suffering increased competition from a stronger currency, but a company that can’t convince consumers to buy its flagship product any more, a company that has lost touch with consumers, as so often happens with protected industries,” he wrote in news outlet Crikey.

“Nor is the closure representative of Australian manufacturing. For all the stories about high-profile manufacturers struggling, in the year to February the total manufacturing workforce fell by just 3,000, or a third of 1%, to 954,000 in trend terms — the lowest fall in years.”

But manufacturing, once Australia’s largest employer, has seen its share of total employment eclipsed by the health, retail and construction sectors. Contrary to popular belief, the mining industry upon which Australia remains reliant is not the countries biggest employer, according to analysis published on Crikey.

George Megalogenis, economic commentator and author of “The Australian Moment,” a book that tracks Australia’s economic development said “all first world economies have roughly similar stories to tell on manufacturing.

“Manufacturing was the single biggest employer through till the 90s in some countries. But its share of employment and of GDP is declining. And it’s quite a smooth line, which started in the 60s,” he told CNN.

“But now we are at that point where societies are starting to ask themselves whether they let the trend continue to the point where they actually lose the know-how to make things.”

He added: “China will see the same decline in 20 or 30 years time. They will replicate first world trends but with a lag.”

Though it employs fewer Australians, and despite the boom appearing to have peaked, Australia’s mining industry remains the headline act.

Profitable, it provides a significant percentage of company tax revenue to government, even if the tax on super profits imposed by the Gillard government has been a disappointment; the government’s projections of a A$2 billion windfall delivered only A$127 million because the tax is structured to allow the miners to offset the value of their mines against the tax.

Former finance minister Lindsay Tanner has warned in the past that Australia needs to reduce its reliance on mining and focus its efforts on other export industries.

“Minerals are always going to be critical for Australia. There’s no question about that,” he told ABC radio.

However, the diversification of Australian exports had stagnated in the 90s, with growth in tourism, education and specialized manufacturing moving into reverse, he said.

“So it’s not so much that there’s one country that we’re dependent on. It’s that we have I think to some extent too many eggs in that basket,” said Tanner.

For Megalogenis, Australia’s economic reliance on mining would be more acceptable if it had the future firmly in sight.

“When mining crowds everything out and the economy makes room for that, to service China, knowing that it’s a highly volatile global cycle, it becomes a question of what Australia does with the spoils,” he told CNN. “Because there will be a bust,” he added.

Megalogenis says historically, Australia has wisely invested the spoils. “We built Melbourne out of the gold boom,” he said. “But we haven’t really taken the cash from this mining boom and reinvested it in expanding the capacity of the rest of the economy.”

The Gillard government has anticipated a second mining boom, he says, and allocated spending in anticipation.

“But the second chance has been denied us by Europe and the global financial crisis. We had a second crisis and Europe is still in recession. “

Even so, though mining profits are down because of lower commodity prices, profit margins remain high.

According to the Minerals Council of Australia, last year the industry paid in excess of $20 billion in company tax and royalties combined — a four-fold increase on the $4 billion to $5 billion paid at the start of the boom.

What future exists for manufacturing in Australia when the countries finite resources are depleted is a question that no doubt will have to wait until after the September 14 poll.

Article source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/edition_business/~3/CxUoqmLKmaw/index.html

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George Takei and some Amazon products.

(Credit:

Takei: Diane Krauss)

Amusing Amazon reviews are an art form. They are delicate flowers of funny that need to be carefully nurtured in order to strike the right balance between absurdity, plausibility, and humor.

George Takei, known as Mr. Sulu on “Star Trek” and Mr. Internet anywhere social media resides, has the magic formula down.

Only slight sleuthing is needed to determine that the “George Takei” leaving reviews on Amazon is the real deal. He also cross-posts them to his official Facebook page. So far, he’s only racked up six reviews, but they’re good ones. He has tackled products as diverse as the “Best of David Hasselhoff” CD to the Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable.

Takei’s most recent review covers the Accoutrements Yodeling Pickle, a toy pickle that yodels. He gives it one star and advises customers to stick with a bong instead. “On my birthday (4/20), I found this cute little green item on my dresser. I assumed Brad had left it for me as a ‘special’ birthday gift. I tried for hours to figure out how to pry off the lid so I could load it properly, but no go. Then the thing started yodeling at me, and I thought, ‘Well, no more from that dispensary.’ Disappointed.”

The Denon cable fares better with three stars, but seems to display some serious side effects: “The minute I plugged this cable in, I knew something was amiss. The first evidence? The small wormhole that appeared in our living room, right next to our holstein cowhide recliner. Peering into it I could discern the snarling face of a Ferengi, likely somewhere out in the Gamma quadrant.”

Takei even contributed to one of the most famous Amazon review collections ever created: the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt:

This shirt has changed my life! Before, I couldn’t walk through the aisles at Wal-Mart, graze on the buffet at Sizzler, or even take in a round at my local miniature golf course, without people pointing and saying, “Hey, you’re that Zulu guy from Star Wars, aren’t you?” Even if I wore sunglasses, I’d still get mistaken for Yoko Ono.

But with The Mountain Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve Tee, the SHIRT now draws the eye. One young teen even shyly approached me, and instead of asking for a picture or an autograph, simply smiled conspiratorially and whispered, “Team Jacob, right? Me, too. He’s sooooooo dreamy.”

Yes he is, young lady. Yes. He. Is.

Now, how about reviewing Tuscan Whole Milk, George?

(Via Geekosystem)

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