Jon Secada has two Grammys and four years of judging "Latin American Idol " to his name.

After he graduated, development major Mark Rembert applied for the Peace Corps, thinking he could help developing countries strengthen their communities. But when his hometown's largest employer shut its doors, Rembert found that rural Ohio needed him most.

DoSomething, headed by Fast Company columnist Nancy Lublin, has recognized five young social entrepreneurs with $10,000 grants--and one with a prize of $100,000. Fast Company will profile one of these enterprising youth each day this week. Click here to read the other winners' stories.

Getting into the Peace Corps is no small matter. The application process is arduous, and has become more competitive. In the fall of 2008, the Peace Corps said yes to Ohio native and recent Haverford College graduate Mark Rembert. Then 23, the activist and economic-development major was looking forward to traveling to Ecuador, where he would pursue field work helping rural villages with asset-development. But news from his native Ohio sent him in a totally different direction. That November, Rembert read that DHL, the largest employer in his hometown of Wilmington, in rural Clinton County, was shutting down. An estimated 8,200 residents in Clinton County would soon lose their jobs.

Instead of flying to Ecuador, Rembert went home. "When your community has 18% unemployment, its hard to justify going to [Latin America] to help out," Rembert says. In Wilmington, he found Taylor Stuckert, another would-be Peace Corps recruit, and together, they started Energize Clinton County (ECC), a not-for-profit devoted to creating green jobs, investing in sustainable energy, and marketing local industries and businesses. His initiative earned him a $10,000 Do Something award, money that he says will be plowed back into the community.

With ECC, Rembert and Stuckert are doing the same thing they would have in the Peace Corps: They have helped a rural community take advantage of resources it already had. Though Clinton County had been buoyed for years by the massive DHL facility, Rembert saw that his region had many other strengths it had previously ignored, including a charming downtown, an abundance of farmland, and the benefit of Ohio's tax incentives for green businesses.

Forming a group of town leaders charged with understanding the red tape for green industries, ECC designated Wilmington a Green Enterprise Zone, the first of its kind in the nation. The move -part marketing strategy and part zoning ordinance-has helped Wilmington secure Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants from the federal government's Recovery and Reinvestment Act. These in turn have served to attract private capital from solar energy companies in his small town. Part of Rembert's job is simply to understand how Wilmington's utilities work, to make the job easier for investors, he says: "We spend a lot of time working with utilities, so that when [solar] companies come to town we can tell them where to go."

Recently, ECC's efforts landed Clinton County a Purchase Power Agreement with Gaia Energy USA to install solar panels on the county jail. Gaia will provide more than $300,000 in capital investment to install 65 kilowatts of panels. Once installed, the panels could help the county save more than $25,000 a year on energy costs. Meanwhile a project is being seriously explored to make poetic use of the abandoned DHL facility by installing solar farms on its roofs, while another will use farmland in the county for utility scale solar fields. If successful, the later would count as one of the largest solar power sources east of the Mississippi.

To spur green-job creation through construction, ECC has also focused on retrofitting buildings. The organization solicited help from a professor at nearby Dayton University to supply line-by-line energy audits on town buildings. The service is key to helping businesses and public works invest in retrofitting, which saves money and creates construction jobs. "Since you can't see energy and you can't see the money leaving your building, it's really difficult to convince people to invest [in retrofitting]," Rembert says. "When we're armed with data, it has a huge impact."

ECC has also designed an easy-to use and professional-looking online portal that promotes 170 locally owned businesses and sends out a weekly e-mail newsletter read by 1,000 people every week. Thanks to a renewed involvement, the downtown commerce area has been completely tranformed. "When we were growing up, downtown was dead. We went to the strip, to Walmart-that's where everyone was. Now everyone wants to be downtown," says Rembert.

He senses that young American designers, economists, and urban planners have shown a renewed interest in rural areas, where projects are easier to initiate and have a much larger impact than in dense and highly regulated city centers. His own ECC is a remarkable case study of development and planning skills, which he intended for use in third world countries, at work domestically. "We ended up realizing that a lot of the principles used in the Peace Corps-community asset based-development-were what was need in Wilmington."

His epiphany and his subsequent follow-through earned him not just the $10,000 prize but also a trophy given to him live on VH1 by none other than Megan Fox, who grew up in eastern Tennessee. "I think she's really passionate about rural America," Rembert says. Always on-message, he believes he was especially lucky to have been paired with the actress-for exposure's sake: "We have no doubt," he says, "that our video has been viewed many, many times."

More winners' stories: Micaela Connery: Knocking Down Barriers With the Power of Performance Jacqueline Murekatete: Genocide Survivor Embraces Her Ordeal to Educate Others Will Perez: Med Student Pioneers “Political Medicine” in Rural Haiti

I must admit that I'm not a big reader...never have been.  There are very few books that I have read for pleasure.  It's unfortunate but I move on.  I must admit, however, that I do read my fair share of international education literature...always have since I entered the field.  I find myself frequently reading international literature for pleasure.  It's unfortunate but I move on.

Lutjens S.L., (2006)." National security, the state, and the politics of U.S.-Cuba educational exchange." Latin American Perspectives, 33 (5), pp. 58-80. Abstract available at: http://lap.sagepub.com/content/33/5/58.abstract

Brazil: Privalia’s Success Story

PR Newswire — July 29, 2010

BARCELONA, Spain, July 29, 2010 /PRNewswire/ –

- The On-line Fashion Market in Brazil is Expected to Undergo a Sustained Annual Increase of 32.5% Between 2008 and 2012, According to Forrester – Privalia Predicts That Sales for 2010 will be 8 Times Greater Than Those Registered in 2009 – Brazil Will be the Biggest Growth Engine for Privalia and it is Expected to Generate the Largest Income at International Level

Brazil, with almost 193M inhabitants and a prospective growth rate of 6% for this year, would appear to be one of the most attractive countries in terms of investment of foreign capital.

The consolidation of the middle class as the majority group has strengthened the e-commerce sector and at present c.17.6M people are known to purchase a wide range of items over the Internet. The use of the Internet has risen rapidly in Brazil, and currently, with around 68M users, it has shot ahead of the U.K. and Spain, with 51M and 29M Internet users, respectively.

Situation in Europe and the USA

According to Forrester Research, on-line fashion sales in Western Europe are expected to grow at c.10% between 2008 and 2012 (CAGR 08-12), and at c.4% in the United States, the leader in world e-commerce development. However, whilst the e-commerce growth curve is beginning to consolidate and stabilise, the private sales Club sector has registered strong growth and shown a great capacity for development.

Brazil as a Hot Spot for investment

The strongest sector in this country is undoubtedly that of electronic commerce. According to e-Bit consultants, Internet purchases for the year 2009 increased by 30% vs. the previous year, with transactions surpassing 4,770M euros (10.6 thousand million Brazilian reales). Around 17.6M people stated they had made Internet purchases, which represents 26% of all Internet users in Brazil.

Forrester Research currently estimates the size of the on-line clothing sales market in Brazil at c.250M euros, and it expects it to reach c.500M euros in 2012. In percentage terms, this translates into an annual growth of 32.5% from 2008 to 2012, surpassing South European markets such as Spain (with an expected 24% p.a. growth for the same period).

Privalia in Brazil

In 2009 Privalia, (http://www.privalia.com/decide.html) run by the company’s co-founders Lucas Carne and Jose Manuel Villanueva, expanded its business to Latin America, starting with Brazil.

Lucas Carne explains: “The Latin American market, with Brazil as a starting point, is the most attractive for investors, due to its very large population, the progressive increase of its middle class and the high growth rate of Internet sales and e-commerce market. This, together with different economic cycles vs. Europe, has enabled the company to diversify and to be less exposed to the current economic European situation. At Privalia, we foresaw this opportunity and were proven right”

Furthermore, subjective factors such as leanings towards brand names and a passion of fashion also contributed towards Privalia ( http://www.privalia.com/decide.html) successfully recognising Brazil as one of the growth engines, expected to generate the largest income in 2013.

Figures

- Brazil multiplied its invoicing fourfold during the first 12 months, as compared to invoicing in Spain and Italy for the same period – Privalia Brazil multiplied its income by twelve in the first six months of 2010 compared to the results for the first six months of 2009 – At present it has over 1.5 million members – Its distribution centre has increased fivefold in just two years in order to cope with the above mentioned expansion – At present there are over 140 “privalios” working for the company, when just 18 months ago there were only 5 – During the first campaign for recruitment of members in Brazil, the company registered more than 270,000 members even before sales began, thanks to a strong on-line marketing strategy which reflected the viral nature of the market and the potential of the region

About Privalia

Privalia is a private club which organises periodical on-line sales of leading name products over the Internet, at exceptional prices exclusively for members. It was created in 2006 in Barcelona and at present has more than 4 million members worldwide, converting it in leader of operations and a reference point for this sector. Privalia has tripled its invoicing in 2009 and operates in Spain, Italy, Brazil and Mexico under a multi-regional company regime.

Press Contact:

Carolina Angel Carolina.angel@privalia.com +34-678987456

SOURCE Privalia

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MimeType/@FormalName Brazil: Privalia's Success Story BARCELONA, Spain, July 29, 2010

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Carolina.angel@privalia.com, +34-678987456″/>

 - The On-line Fashion Market in Brazil is Expected to Undergo a Sustained Annual Increase of 32.5% Between 2008 and 2012, According to Forrester - Privalia Predicts That Sales for 2010 will be 8 Times Greater Than Those Registered in 2009 - Brazil Will be the Biggest Growth Engine for Privalia and it is Expected to Generate the Largest Income at International Level 

 - Brazil multiplied its invoicing fourfold during the first 12 months, as compared to invoicing in Spain and Italy for the same period - Privalia Brazil multiplied its income by twelve in the first six months of 2010 compared to the results for the first six months of 2009 - At present it has over 1.5 million members - Its distribution centre has increased fivefold in just two years in order to cope with the above mentioned expansion - At present there are over 140 "privalios" working for the company, when just 18 months ago there were only 5 - During the first campaign for recruitment of members in Brazil, the company registered more than 270,000 members even before sales began, thanks to a strong on-line marketing strategy which reflected the viral nature of the market and the potential of the region 

 Press Contact:

Carolina Angel Carolina.angel@privalia.com +34-678987456 

The auction of Churchill's false teeth shows that relics are not just for the religious – faith in humanity is enough

What's the best way of establishing contact with the past? Reading all about it is just one answer, since the visuals matter, too. A walk in Picardy may explain the Somme battlefield's logistics of attrition, and Van Dyck's portraiture of the 1630s captures courtiers who would soon be killing each other. But it's objects that can be handled or inspected that often provide the most intuitive thrill. And when we start to look closely at artefacts owned by identifiable human beings we get close to a very ancient enthusiasm – the passion for relics.

A visit to a Catholic church in a Mediterranean or Latin American country can still disturb some British minds. Whole bodies of dead saints embalmed and preserved in glass coffins are light years removed from the sterile pieties of Songs of Praise. Fragments of bones – fingers, hips and thighs – are kept in reliquaries and may be exposed on a martyrdom's anniversary. And the hair of the blessed departed, which sits on top of many a Spanish saint's plaster-cast image, can recall the late Frankie Howerd's ill-judged wig.

The bits left behind are most worthy of respect when they once formed part of saints' bodies. But objects much used by saints can become second-division relics. Martin of Tours, the fourth-century Roman soldier, tore his cloak in half to relieve a naked beggar's distress, and the portion he kept became a treasured relic, which accompanied the kings of the Franks into battle. Islam, too, has its sacred cloak – Muhammad's is rumoured to be kept in Afghanistan's Kandahar mosque – and all religions that like relics use them to inspire believers into action.

Protestants and secularists alike can get cross about this phenomenon. Last year's procession through Britain of St Thérèse of Lisieux's body parts provoked much nose wrinkling. But this week's sale of Winston Churchill's spare dentures – which fetched £15,200 at auction today – is a reminder that relics come in many guises. Churchillianism is, after all, a secular religion in modern Britain – and the object of veneration, having been first Tory and then Liberal before returning to the Conservative party, encourages bi-partisan adulation. Churchill's lack of any orthodox religious belief means he's well qualified to be top god in a largely non-religious land, though it's doubtful if subsequent premiers' relics – locks of Blair's hair perhaps, or that keyboard-banging Brown digit – will arouse equivalent enthusiasm.

Relics exist to be enjoyed and used, whether they're part of the national heritage trail or an aspect of religious belief. Hostility to them is a sign of preciosity and elitism on the part of those who are threatened by vitality and find it vulgar. Oversensitive pagan intellectuals, for example, were really appalled by the early Christians' enthusiasm for bones and called their churches "charnel houses". And church leaders, too, were pretty wary, since this was a kind of religion that was of and for the people.

Relics were a huge phenomenon of popular devotion in Palestine and Syria before the seventh century arrival of Islamic conquerors. The religious refugees who fled afterwards to western Europe carried with them their own private collections of saints' bones, and there was a buoyant market response. Deciding which saint would be their friend and protector was one of the few ways the poor and illiterate could exercise their power to choose, and that remains true in today's Catholic Latin America.

Hanging on to relics is not supposed to be a backward-looking pursuit and the bones are meant to really come into their own at the Last Judgment. Bodies will then be resurrected, and that includes the saints who now exist as souls in heaven. Cremation's popularity may cut us off from that particular sense of the sacred, but the museum holograms that animate the faces of the recreated dead is a kind of resurrection in 3D. The same need that led to belief in wonder-inducing relics is still with us.

Forget Oliver Stone and politics for a minute, and just watch this clip.  Stone is interviewing former President of Argentina, Nestor Kirchner.  He relates a personal conversation with GW from Monterrey, Mexico in January of 2004.

Anyone needing any more proof regarding the ingrained power of the military-industrial complex is advised to contact the Bushes in Crawford, Texas.  And then call on fellow war-monger Deficit Obama, who has long since broken his promise for a quick pullout from Iraq.

More detail inside.

---

From Ryan Grim

President George W. Bush argued in 2004 that the best way to grow the U.S. economy was by waging war, according to former Argentine Prime Minister Néstor Kirchner.

Kirchner, in a meeting with Bush, suggested that the United States replicate the successful nation-building strategy it implemented at the end of World War II.

"And he stood up from his chair and got angry. He told me, 'A Marshall plan! No! That's a crazy idea from the Democrats. What needs to be done here, and the best way to revitalize the economy is -- the United States has grown based on wars,' he told me. That's what he told me," Kirchner recounted.

Bush added, said Kirchner, that "all the economic growth that the U.S. had had, had been based on the different wars it had waged."

Kirchner held a 50-minute meeting in Monterrey, Mexico with Bush in January, 2004.

"War? He said that?" Stone asked Kirchner, who was among a wave of progressive leaders elected in Latin America over the last decade.

"He said that, word for word," Kirchner assured Stone.

Stone followed up: "Is he suggesting that Latin America should go to war?"

No, said Kirchner. "Well, he was talking about the United States, never said South America. That the United States -- that it was a misunderstanding of the Democrats, that all the economic growth that the U.S. had had, had been based on the different wars it had waged."

The Kirchner interview is done through a translator and the subtitles on the screen don't exactly match what Kirchner was saying, but more closely reflect how his comments were being translated at the time. The Huffington Post had three separate native Spanish speakers translate Kirchner's remarks. His comments above are the result of those translations.

If Kirchner is accurately relaying the comments, that would make Bush the highest-ranking public official to state outright that war is and has been good for the American economy.

Bush with Kirchner in 2004.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association broke their own record for donations at their annual Installation Luncheon last night.

Release in full:

Hollywood Foreign Press Association Donates Over $1.5 Million at 2010 Installation Luncheon

Financial Grants Given to 41 Film Schools and Non-Profit Organizations

BEVERLY HILLS, CA--(Marketwire - July 28, 2010) - The Hollywood Foreign Press Association celebrated their annual Installation Luncheon today at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. The star-studded luncheon presented a record $1,541,000 in financial grants to 41 film schools and non-profit organizations. The event also celebrated the election of the HFPA's 2010-2011 officers.

Eva Longoria Parker joined returning HFPA President Philip Berk to announce grants. Acceptance remarks on behalf of the grants were made by Nicole Kidman (The Film Foundation), John Slattery (UCLA), Annette Bening (Sundance Institute), Aaron Sorkin (Higher Education Fellowships & Institutional Support Grants), Bryan Cranston (Professional Training & Mentoring Grants), Ryan Phillippe (FilmAid International), Jane Lynch and "Glee" Co-Creator Ian Brennan (Outfest), Carla Gugino (LA Conservancy, MOMA, UC Berkeley, LACMA and other Preserve The Culture & History Of Film Grants), Matthew Fox (American Cinematheque, Levantine Cultural Center, and Latin American Cinemateca), and Jim Parsons and Kaley Cuoco (Pre-Professional Training & Education Grants)

continued...

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

• Experience in all steps of research project management, including survey development, setting up and managing projects in-field, coordinating with vendors, analyzing data in insightful ways, and writing clear, concise, and insightful reports to a business audience
• Ability to communicate effectively and in a clear and concise manner with various audiences, including manager, vendors, and senior management
• Proficiency conducting data analysis of surveys in SPSS and Excel, and creating presentations in PowerPoint
• At least 1 year experience using SPSS or WinCross in analyzing consumer research (survey) results, including practical applications of various anlaysis from cross-tabluations to regression analysis

• Attention to detail in all aspects of work, and a positive, professional attitude.
• Able to effectively work in a team with strong communication and listening skills and ability to follow-through with duties and commitments
• Ability to be self-directed, with strong organization and project management skills, including ability to manage multiple projects  independently with minimal supervision
• Flexible, in order to adapt to a variety of changing business needs, changing schedules, and internal clients
• Ability to manage time, multiple priorities, and meet timelines
• Ability to partner with and work well with various levels of the organization including external suppliers and internal stakeholders 

new question

New page

Now that the Health Department has redesigned its website, it’s finally possible to find out which types of restaurants received C-worthy scores most often. We pulled up all 755 restaurants that received 28 or more demerits on their most recent inspection and were able to sort them by cuisine in order to determine that “American” restaurants are by far the worst offenders. Unfortunately, the category doesn’t mean anything (nor does another category, “Other”) because it includes things like Le Trapeze (a swinger’s club with a buffet), lots of bars and clubs that don’t serve food (Lit, etc.), and blatantly miscategorized spots like Delicias Manabitas (Ecuadorian), Paradou (French), Cabrito, and Mercato (Mexican), and so on. How someone describes places with names like Brasil 46 and En of Africa as “American” is beyond us, but apparently health inspectors (or their colleagues in the tech department) are every bit as sloppy as the folks they fine! So anyway, which non-“American” restaurants get hit the hardest by inspectors?

You guessed it: No fewer than 78 Chinese restaurants received C-worthy grades (and those are just the ones in the “Chinese” category, not the ones mistakenly lumped into others) and the number goes up to 113 when you consider Asian restaurants in general. Next are Latin American and Mexican restaurants, plus the restaurants that the Health Department bizarrely labels as “Spanish” (apparently meaning Hispanic). The rest of the breakdown is below.

Does all this indicate a bias toward Latin and Asian restaurants? Hard to say without knowing what percentage of the overall restaurants visited were in these categories, but according to a Gotham Gazette piece, immigrants are definitely worried they’re going to be hit hard by letter grading. City Councilmember Peter Koo of Flushing says, “There are a lot of insensitivities among the inspectors, especially if you don't speak English,” and the owner of El Pollito Mexicano, Ricky Nacipucha, tells the familiar tale (among immigrants and non-immigrants alike) that inspectors will “give violations for no reason.” He recently got four out of seven fines dismissed and a $3,800 fine reduced to $1,000, in part because he takes photos of inspectors.

American: 215
Asian/Japanese/Thai/Chinese: 113
Latin/Mexican/“Spanish”/Tex-Mex: 75
Pizza/Italian: 53
Café/Tea/Coffee: 32
Chicken: 20
Bakeries: 18
Caribbean: 18
American: 15
Hamburgers (mostly McDonald’s): 13
Seafood: 13
Deli: 12
Indian: 12
Doughnuts (mostly Dunkin’ Donuts): 10
Sandwiches (Subway, etc.): 10
Bagels/Pretzels: 6
French: 6
Jewish/Kosher: 6
Juice/Smoothies: 4
Soups: 3
Steak: 3
German: 2
Ice Cream: 2
Russian: 2
Turkish: 2
Hawaiian: 1
Irish: 1
Middle Eastern: 1
Polish: 1
Tapas: 1

Ethnic Restaurants Worry They Won't Make the Grade [Gotham Gazette]
Restaurant Inspection Information Results: Restaurants with violation points range in >=28 or Closed [NYC]

Read more posts by Daniel Maurer

Filed Under: health concerns, chinese, health department, latin american, letter grades, mexican

• In honor of his new fragrance Bang, Marc Jacobs is launching a Bang app on Facebook, which just sounds like an intense new way of poking someone. Random people who use the app will win prizes like free Bang (the fragrance) or one of a handful of trips to New York to attend one of Marc's shows. [Elle.com]

• That famous embellished Miu Miu dress appeared on a summer cover of Swedish Elle in addition to the three covers called out by the Guardian a couple of weeks ago, which were then later spotlighted on countless blogs. Swedish Elle put up a little blog post noting that the Guardian missed them! [Fashionista]

• Elle creative director Joe Zee is a brave, brave man. He road-tested the full fur suit from Chanel's fall show on the streets of New York in the heat, bless his soul. [Racked]

• John Varvatos wants to make homewares. "Young people today, in their 20s or early 30s, are not excited by what they see out there," he says. "They don’t want to go to West Elm or Crate & Barrel for their apartment." [WWD]

• Varvatos's tenth-anniversary campaign will include a montage of all the rock icons that have appeared in his past campaigns, like Lenny Kravitz, Slash, Iggy Pop, Franz Ferdinand, Alice Cooper, and ZZ Top. [WWD]

• Madonna has moved into her East Hampton mansion to prepare for the launch of Lourdes’s fashion line. [Page Six/NYP]

• Latin American Vogue editor Eva Hughes: "There is more interest in fashion, because of the Internet. Fashion blogs and websites have brought fashion to people who would never have been able to access it otherwise, which is a wonderful evolution." [Fashionista]

• J.Crew’s partnership with jewelry line Frieda & Nellie debuts tomorrow, and the rhinestoned lanyard bracelets will retail for $130 to $250. [StyleList]

• Men’s collection Uman will launch at Barneys this fall, marking its U.S. debut. The line is designed by former Brioni chief Umberto Angeloni. [WWD]

Filed Under: loose threads, bang, barneys, chanel, covers, designers, eva hughes, j.crew, joe zee, john varvatos, madonna, marc jacobs, miu miu, new york fashion week, swedish elle, uman

Leaders within the Catholic Church love their comparisons, particularly when it comes to the subject of homosexuality. They've compared homosexuality to climate change, compared gay marriage to war crimes, and said that loving gay couples are akin to terrorists. That's some way to be pastoral, right?

Perhaps taking a cue that comparing people to rather violent or ugly things is distasteful, a Cardinal in Chile is taking a new direction. Gay people aren't like terrorists, according to Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez. Instead, they're just disordered, like people who have lost an arm, a leg, or an eye.

"The Church distinguishes the homosexual tendency and homosexual practice. If a person has a homosexual tendency it is a defect, as if one lacked an eye, a hand, a foot," said Cardinal Estévez. Aww, shucks. Because it's not at all insulting to call gay people, or disabled people for that matter, defective.

The Cardinal was responding to the invasion of gay marriage in Latin America, with Argentina moving earlier this month to become the first country in the region to recognize marriage equality. A few folks are even wondering if some other Latin American countries, like Paraguay or Uruguay, may take up same-sex marriage in the coming months. I'm guessing that won't please the Cardinal none too much.

"[Gay marriage] is something in opposition to the law of God, and no human law can go against the law of God. If a human law goes against the law of God, that human law does not exist," the Cardinal concluded in a gobbledygook statement.

While that's the Cardinal's own opinion, it certainly doesn't gel with Catholics in the pews, who are increasingly and (in some cases) overwhelmingly supportive of marriage equality. Indeed, I find it hard to believe that most people, let alone most Catholics, would agree that being gay is like missing a foot or losing and eye.

But I bet you'll find quite a bit of people who think that the Church hierarchy is missing an organ -- particularly their brain, at least when it comes to engaging on issues related to homosexuality.

Photo credit: andycoan

I just recently had a lengthy discussion with female friend. We both arrived at the sad conclusion that romance in America is dead. My friend, from latin America, called me an oddity among American men. She said that she never meets or hears of American men who open doors, buy flowers or take other steps to woo a woman. I told her that these were American values, perhaps old-fashioned, but they

Source : A Free Man, Thinking Freely (subscribe)

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Spain's Telefonica has reported a 16% rise in its second quarter profits as growth in Latin America compensated for weaker markets in Spain. Click here for more.

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Global Crossing Launches Telepresence Solution

Delivers customers immersive, high-quality, virtual meetings with Teliris

PR Newswire — July 29, 2010

FLORHAM PARK, N.J., July 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Global Crossing (Nasdaq: GLBC), a leading global IP solutions provider, today announced it is launching an immersive telepresence solution and cutting edge collaboration tools for high-quality virtual meetings with Teliris (www.teliris.com), an innovative leader in immersive telepresence meetings.

Global Crossing Telepresence with Teliris allows customers around the world to experience one of the most life-like virtual meeting environments available today. Telepresence is an expansion of Global Crossing’s fully managed high-quality video collaboration service that brings geographically dispersed people and their ideas together more efficiently. Through these innovative collaboration tools, customers will experience enhanced decision-making, reduced travel costs, lower carbon footprints and increased productivity.

“Our telepresence offer represents a milestone in our collaboration portfolio,” said Dave Carey, Global Crossing’s chief marketing officer. “Customers around the world continue to demand a wide range of collaboration tools to conduct meetings without boundaries. This new capability transforms the video conference into a true-to-life interactive experience, leading to better global communications.”

Telepresence solutions are comprised of a set of highly integrated technologies and engineered environments that resemble a life-like experience never before realized through standard videoconferencing equipment. Broadcast quality picture and sound, and imperceptible latency, ensure the interaction is focused on the participants and not the technology, regardless of the number of sites.

According to Gartner, a leading information technology research and advisory company, the global market for telepresence systems endpoints is projected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 25.7 percent between 2008 and 2013.*

“We are thrilled to extend our market-leading immersive telepresence and collaboration experience to Global Crossing and its customers,” said Marc Trachtenberg, Teliris CEO and co-founder. “This partnership is the latest example of how Teliris is providing companies around the world with maximum flexibility through a broad continuum of affordable telepresence solutions that wrap around any business requirement.”

Global Crossing’s telepresence solution provides customers with maximum flexibility tailored to reflect a variety of business cultures and requirements. From single screen personal solutions to fully custom engineered meeting environments, it is easy to use, schedule and initiate, and is fully interoperable with other telepresence systems and traditional videoconferencing services.

“Global Crossing is introducing to the market a feature-rich managed telepresence solution based on Teliris’ innovative platform,” stated Brian Washburn, Research Director at Current Analysis. “This new service builds on Global Crossing’s global network and well-established portfolio of managed videoconferencing services, offering enterprise customers a single provider solution for their collaboration and wide-area network requirements.”

As an added benefit, customers using Global Crossing’s telepresence solution will be able to video stream telepresence meetings through ON24′s industry-leading Webcast Center platform that delivers high-quality video for more engaging and effective meetings. ON24 is a global leader in webcasting and virtual event solutions.

The solution is provided on Global Crossing’s fully meshed Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)-based global Virtual Private Network (VPN) and tier-one global public Internet network, ensuring a reliable and secure connection for this premiere video communication technology.

In a recent survey conducted by KS&R, an independent market research company, 85 percent of Global Crossing’s customers reported being “very satisfied” with the value they received from Global Crossing’s collaboration services. In addition, 79 percent were “very” likely to recommend those same services to others.

The volume of Global Crossing’s collaboration services grew by 13 percent in the first half of 2010 compared to the first half of 2009. Increased usage was driven in large part by the rising cost of energy, business travel restrictions and other global economic factors, the company said.

To help introduce its telepresence solution to customers and offer ways to better utilize collaboration tools, Global Crossing plans to host Collaborate Now, a virtual trade show, on September 1, 2010. To register for the event, click here.

* Source – Dataquest Insight: Videoconferencing Products and Services Market: Forecast Worldwide 2007-2013. Gartner, 28 September, 2009.

ABOUT GLOBAL CROSSING

Global Crossing (Nasdaq: GLBC) is a leading global IP and Ethernet solutions provider with the world’s first integrated global IP-based network. The company offers a full range of data, voice and collaboration services with an industry leading customer experience and delivers service to approximately 40 percent of the Fortune 500, as well as to 700 carriers, mobile operators and ISPs. It delivers converged IP services to more than 700 cities in more than 70 countries around the world.

Please visit www.globalcrossing.com for more information about Global Crossing.

ABOUT TELIRIS:

Teliris develops and implements the world’s most widely deployed fully managed telepresence collaboration solutions, realistically replicating the human dynamics of an in-person meeting experience. Through its 6G platform and unique intellectual property, Teliris has radically simplified the acquisition, deployment and operating costs of telepresence, breaking new ground in adoption and reach of the technology. Teliris has deployments in over 50countries with the largest installed base of Global 2000 companies, including Unilever, British American Tobacco, Lazard, Pearson plc, GlaxoSmithKline, Royal Bank of Scotland and Merck, among others. Headquartered in New York and London, the company is the leading innovator in agile telepresence with end-to-end integration, market-leading 99%+ availability guarantee and interoperability with Cisco TelePresence, Tandberg Total Telepresence and Polycom RealPresence.

Statements in this press release about expected future events and financial results are forward-looking and subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially, including risks referenced from time to time in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Global Crossing undertakes no duty to update information contained in this press release or in other public disclosures at any time.

CONTACT GLOBAL CROSSING: Press Contacts Tom Topalian + 1 973 937 0154 Thomas.Topalian@globalcrossing.com

Paula Vivo Latin America + 55 11 3957 2424 Paula.Vivo@globalcrossing.com

Jennifer Campbell Europe +44 (0) 125 673 2663 Jennifer.Campbell@globalcrossing.com

Analysts/Investors Contact Mark Gottlieb + 1 800 836 0342 glbc@globalcrossing.com

GEN/PR1

SOURCE Global Crossing

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Company Codes: NASDAQ-NMS:GLBC, NASDAQ-NMS:GLBC

On visiting San Francisco in 1968, Tom Wolfe stumbled across what he describes as a “curious footnote to the hippie movement.” Doctors at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic were treating diseases, Wolfe claims, that no living doctor had ever encountered before: “diseases that had disappeared so long ago they had never even picked up Latin names, diseases such as the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the scroff, the rot.”

The diseases returned, says Wolfe, because the hippies living in the communes wanted to sweep away “codes and restraints,” including those rules

that said you shouldn’t use other people’s toothbrushes or sleep on other people’s mattresses without changing the sheets or, as was more likely, without using sheets at all, or that you and five other people shouldn’t drink from the same bottle of Shasta or take tokes from the same cigarette.

By getting the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the scroff, and the rot, the hippies were “relearning” the laws of hygiene.

It is often said that for national security conservatives, it is always 1938. A corollary is that for us religiously-oriented conservatives, it’s always 1968. Our society is always having to be retaught the laws of moral hygiene.

Take, for example, a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that argues the “war on drugs” has also contributed to the HIV epidemic around the world. It references “the executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and other prominent scientific leaders,” and claims that

Criminalizing drug abuse drives addicts deeper underground and into the kinds of unsafe practices such as needle-sharing that spread infection. We have seen clearly that countries with the most draconian drug laws also have the highest rates of HIV infection among users.

Somehow the editors and the "prominent scientific leaders" they invoke managed to miss the fact, as Matthew Hanley recently noted in an article for On the Square, that there is no reliable evidence needle exchange programs reduce the incidence of HIV infection.

Why would anyone think it would? Giving clean needles to heroin addicts makes as much sense as giving clean toothbrushes to a Haight-Ashbury hippie: They'll still share it—both the needle and the toothbrush—with the bass player from Jefferson Airplane because they either don’t understand or don’t care about the hygienic consequences of their actions.

In response to this type of foolish disregard for the codes and restraints of nature and society, doctrinaire liberals and libertarians always proffer policy solutions that require . . . further disregard of traditional codes and restraints. How this leads to a better society is unclear. But they harbor no doubts that it would work if only The Man, and his arbitrary rules, weren’t holding everyone down.

Naturally, we religiously-oriented conservatives are skeptical. Unlike these Rousseauian utopians, we can’t even pretend to know how to build a healthy political and social structure. What we do know, however, is how to recognize a sick one.

Just as physicians define bodily health as the absence of sickness, conservatives view the absence of sickness as the best gauge of the health of the body politic. Our primary socio-political objective, therefore, is similar to that of medical doctors: preventing and eliminating moral sickness.

The media critic and educator Neil Postman used this same medical analogy in describing the proper role of teachers. In his essay “The Educationist as Painkiller,” Postman proposes that educators don’t try to make students intelligent (“because we don’t know how to do that”) but instead try to cure stupidity in some of the more obvious forms: “either-or thinking; overgeneralization; inability to distinguish between facts and inferences; and reification, a disturbingly prevalent tendency to confuse words with things.”

The physician knows about sickness and can offer specific advice about how to avoid it. Don’t smoke, don’t consume too much salt or saturated fat, take two aspirin, take penicillin every four hours and so forth. I am proposing that the study of education and practice of education adopt this paradigm precisely. The educationist should become an expert in stupidity and be able to prescribe specific procedures for avoiding it. . . . Stupidity is a form of behavior. It is not something we have; it is something we do.

Acquiring similar expertise should be the goal of all conservatives. Fortunately, the process for gaining such prowess is clear and well-established.

To become an apprentice of stupidity one merely has to pass through the stage of life known as adolescence. The lessons you’ll learn by observing the behavior of yourself and your peers provides the tacit knowledge of what stupidity feels, looks, sounds, and tastes like.

But to become a true expert in stupidity requires becoming a parent. The task of raising a child consists primarily of recognizing and preventing the myriad varieties of behavioral stupidity that children engage in—mental, moral, hygienic, spiritual. Whether it’s keeping a toddler from eating the contents of the cat’s litter box, preventing a teenager from fornicating with a lip-pierced lothario, or simply stopping the kid from sharing their Shasta with a hippie, parenting is a non-stop immersion course in counter-impudence.  

This is why the natural family, the preeminent conservative institution and the primary conveyor of Tradition (the mores and habits of stupidity prevention inherited from previous generations), must be continuously protected from the pollution of our libertine culture. It's our first and strongest line of defense against the excesses of unfettered individualism. If we don’t preserve the natural family, we’ll all learn firsthand, as Sergeant Stryker said, that “Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid.”

Joe Carter is web editor of First Things.

Resources

Matthew Hanley’s “Reducing Risk, Increasing AIDS” can be found here.
Tom Wolfe's "The Great Relearning" can be found at the website of The American Spectator.

Jack Dunn, a former Division II college football player, is as unlikely a Latin dance instructor as you'll find. In physique, he still has the outsized build of a defensive end -- the position he played -- and yet, to know Dunn is to understand his passion and commitment to everything salsa.

Dunn is among a small group of leaders in Beijing who have dedicated themselves to an ever-widening community of Latin dance enthusiasts (though we should mention Dunn is a self-proclaimed "mostly Irish" American). Later tonight, his biggest project comes to fruition: the first annual Summer Latin Festival, a four-day event that includes a pre-party at Club Le;  a performance, For the Love of Salsa (ticket reservation highly recommended); 10 workshops, including five taught by world-famous instructor Sekou McMiller from New York; and DJs, music and parties every night, including a Latin Pool Party and an All White Latin Party.

Read on to find out how you get a discounted fare to all the activities.

read more

HTC Strengthens Management Team in Preparation For Future Growth

PR Newswire — July 29, 2010

TAOYUAN, Taiwan, July 29 /PRNewswire/ — HTC Corporation, a global leader in mobile phone innovation and design, today announced a series of executive promotions and newly created management positions focused on building a stronger foundation for future growth.

“As the smartphone industry expands at this lightning pace, it is essential for HTC to grow its management capabilities from within while also adding outside expertise,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation. “Today’s announcement is not just a signal of our current growth and progress, but of our vision for bringing unique smartphones to people all over the world.”

Ron Louks, Chief Strategy Officer

As HTC’s newly created chief strategy officer, Ron Louks will be responsible for driving new strategic initiatives, technology incubation and will work closely with HTC’s engineering and operation departments. Prior to joining HTC, Louks was the chief technology officer at Sony Ericsson.

Kouji Kodera, Chief Product Officer

As HTC’s newly created chief product officer, Kouji Kodera will be responsible for HTC’s global product portfolio planning and management. As a seasoned veteran of the mobile industry, Kodera has a strong track record of building device portfolio strategies. Prior to joining HTC, he worked for Sony Ericsson as its head of products.

David Chen, Chief Engineering Officer

Previously vice president of product development, David Chen has been promoted to chief engineering officer, David Chen will continue to drive HTC’s product development and engineering. As one of HTC’s first employees in 1997, Chen has played a key role in HTC’s success. Under his leadership HTC has successfully created many of the world’s first and most innovative smartphones.

With this announcement, Horace Luke, HTC’s chief innovation officer and John Wang, HTC’s chief marketing officer will work closely with Kodera and Chen to strengthen HTC’s overall product offerings around the world.

Jason Mackenzie, President, HTC North America and Latin America

Previously vice president of HTC North America, Jason Mackenzie has been promoted to president of HTC North America and Latin America. As president, Mackenzie will continue to drive HTC’s strategy and market growth in North America and Latin America where he has contributed to HTC’s strong performance. As one of HTC’s founding North American members in 2005, Mackenzie has led HTC’s strong growth in North America.

Florian Seiche, President, HTC Europe, Middle East and Africa

Previously vice president of HTC Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Florian Seiche has been promoted to president of HTC EMEA. As the founder of HTC’s EMEA operations in 2005, Seiche has grown HTC’s business and brand to be one of the top smartphone makers in EMEA.

HTC also announced that Jason Juang, a senior executive vice president at HTC, has left the company to pursue other opportunities.

About HTC

HTC Corporation (HTC) is one of the fastest growing companies in the mobile phone industry. By putting people at the center of everything it does, HTC creates innovative smartphones that better serve the lives and needs of individuals. The company is listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange under ticker 2498. For more information about HTC, please visit www.htc.com.

All trademarks mentioned in this document are trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE HTC

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By: Achy Obejas

Dr. Carlos Moore is an ethnologist and political scientist, specializing in African, Latin American and Caribbean affairs. Frequently controversial in his views, he is the author of Fela: This Bitch of a Life and Pichon: Race and Revolution in Castro's Cuba: A Memoir, among others. Following exile from his native Cuba, Moore has lived and worked in many countries, including the United States, Senegal and, his current base, Brazil. He holds two doctorates from the University of Paris and is fluent in five languages.

The Root: Last year, you put together a declaration, called ''Acting on Our Conscience,'' which called Cuba on its racism. It was signed by more than 60 African-American intellectuals. Why did you feel the need to make this kind of statement? Why was it important to get African-American support for such a statement?

Carlos Moore: Actually, Dr David Covin, Dr. Iva Carruthers and I put the declaration together. I took the initiative and acted as the facilitator. However, it was a tripartite initiative. We agreed that, because of the mythology around Fidel Castro, socialist Cuba had gotten a pass on race for too long, contrary to most other places. We felt it was high time to call a 'cat' a cat and a 'rat' a rat, regarding this whole question of racism in Cuba. The blatantly unjust arrest and imprisonment of Dr. Darsi Ferrer, the human and civil rights activist, was the 'drop that filled the cup.' However, I am convinced that sooner or later such a declaration would have come. It was inevitable: Too many people have gone to Cuba and realized that the regime was lying to them concerning race.

TR: The Cuban Revolution has long been regarded as a bulwark against racism and as an ally of Africa. How did we get here, where African-American intellectuals need to call Cuba out about racism?

CM: The world has changed a lot since the collapse of Communism. Before the Soviet empire tumbled, Marxist regimes were considered to be off-limits for any criticism about their violation of civil rights, their trampling on human rights or their perpetration of racial discrimination. Such regimes enjoyed a sort of automatic immunity from criticism. 'First World' leftist sympathizers made it their job to shield those despotic regimes from critical scrutiny, claiming that to criticize them was to be an ''agent of the CIA.''

So for decades these ideological bulldogs intimidated most people. But a time comes when people stop fearing a bulldog; that happened when the Soviet empire tumbled. On the other hand, over the years African-Americans in general have gained greater knowledge about the world beyond U.S. borders, and the complexities of countries in so-called 'Latin' America. Thousands of African Americans have visited Cuba over the past 50 years. They have seen the reality and heard it, too, from the mouths of black Cubans. Many have even been discriminated there for being black and suffered humiliation. Sooner or later, the cumulative impact of all that would have produced a principled statement such as the one that was issued.

TR: But surely the Cuban Revolution has moved the issue of race forward, hasn't it? Is there any question that there have been achievements as far as race, representation, race relations and racial equality in Cuba since 1959?

CM: My perspective on race relations is perhaps quite different from that of most people in that I do not see race as being primarily a question of interpersonal relations. I see it as being, fundamentally, a question of relations of power over the distribution of resources along racial lines. And by race, I mean phenotype, not biology. Consequently, I do not analyze racial matters in terms of ''betterment,'' ''achievement,'' ''advancement'' or ''representation.'' I view maters of race in terms of the power to distribute or deny resources.

That is why I do not see socialist Cuba as ''less'' or ''more'' racist than pre-1959 Cuba. What has shifted is the consciousness that now exist among blacks of their overall inferior position in society, despite the Revolution. No doubt because of the socioeconomic transformations brought about by the socialist reforms, blacks as a whole enjoy greater educational access today. Yet, they remain crushingly at the bottom, whereas whites continue crushingly at the top. Such is the equation of power that--before and after the Revolution--prevails in Cuba.

TR: What does Cuba need to do now to address racism?

CM: Although racism does create its own sustaining ideologies (Nazism, apartheid, racial democracy, etc.), it is not an ideological phenomenon per se. I believe racism to be something much more dangerous and intractable than an ideology--for example, a historically derived, over-arching consciousness that is materially and psychologically beneficial to a particular racial segment of humankind. If racism weren't concretely beneficial to that segment, it certainly wouldn't persist in the world. Therefore, my take on race is that racism exists on at least three different and autonomous but interdependent dimensions that must be confronted simultaneously: the political, economic and judicial structures of power; the day-to-day etiquette of interpersonal relations; the social imaginary where Otherness is mythologized and re-signified through cultural attitudes and patterns, value systems and aesthetic norms.

All three dimensions act conjointly in exclusive detriment of the historically inferiorized, conquered racial segment. Hence, addressing racism implies a determination to attack it frontally in all three dimensions. That was never attempted in Cuba either before or after 1959.

TR: What, if anything, makes Cuba unique when it comes to matters of race?

CM: Absolutely nothing! In matters of race, Cuba is no different from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Brazil or any other of the so-called 'Latin' American countries. The whole premise based on what is termed 'mulatto culture' or 'mestizo race' relies on strictly racist assumptions. Everywhere in this hemisphere, you will find a tiny, white elite of wealth monopolizing power and resources and keeping the rest of society at bay. And despite the many social advantages brought about by the Revolution, Socialist Cuba is no exception. The idea of a 'Cuban exceptionalism' based on so-called race-mixing, is a self-indulgent racial myth in itself!

Achy Obejas is an author whose most recent book is Ruins, a novel about Cuba in the Special Period. She was born in Cuba and came to the United States by boat in 1963. Since then she has returned to Cuba innumerable times. She writes about Cuba for The Root and other U.S.-based publications.

Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

In case you haven't heard, the YMCA is shortening its name to "the Y." The real question is what will the Village People do with these time-honored lyrics?"That's when someone came up to me And said, Young man, take a walk up the street It's a place there called the YMCA They can start you back on your way" Then the wow finish: "It's fun to stay at the Y...M...C...A!"So what do you do?Just precede it with..."Formerly." Easy fix. It'll bring the house down. The disco icons, whose catchy hit "YMCA" is sung at weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, assorted parties, reunions, commented from the road where they are still performing year-round after 33 years. "We are deeply dismayed by today's announcement from the YMCA that they feel a name change and a rebranding are in order after 166 years. Some things remain iconic and while we admire the organization for the work they do, we still can't help but wonder Y." The Y was founded as a Bible study group in London in 1844, according to its website. So Y?People have been calling it the "Y" anyway for years. And even though they've welcomed non-Christians through the years, the name itself does stand for Young Men's Christian Association. "We're probably even more disappointed than the Village People," said Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for government and public policy at the American Family Association, who says:"The association is a Christian organization, and family association officials take issue with the change."To be expected.Name changes are part of a growing trend.As a recent New York Times article has pointed out.AARP, even before Twitter induced short names, dropped its full name in 1999, and is frustrated that reporters still indentify it as "formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons."ARCO used to be the the Atlantic Richfield Company.BP used to be British Petroleum and is contemplating a further name change to INMF for it's not my fault.(Sorry, a mild attempt at humor; I forgot it wasn't TGIF.)Returning to the letter Y, it is, after all, the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.If that weren't enough, it's also been known as the Samian letter, referring to the use of the Greek letter upsilon as an emblem of the path of virtue or vice.Who wouldn't want to be named after a single letter? I'm sure the Village People will soon realize this change will call even more attention to their megahit.And life will go on. This, I would submit, is more of a matter of correctness than political correctness. Y?  Y not.

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An episode reported in a news story set me thinking about the basic premises of the so-called "War on Terror" (here, "W.O.T." for short).

After some thought, I concluded that the whole idea of the W.O.T. is a mistake - a fundamentally flawed, misguided conception of what's going on.

The news vignette had a young Iraqi terrorist (or freedom fighter, depending on the ideological lens through which one views him), bragging about his heroic deeds in the resistance against the American occupation of his country. In a near-manic state of excitement, he told of his experiences as a free-lance hit-and-run fighter. "I survived for three days," he bragged, "on just bread and Pepsi."

I doubt the irony of his statement occurred to him, but it sure grabbed me.

I surmised that, after his heroic voluntary service at the barricades, he probably returned to his old neighborhood with great stories to tell his friends, went to work in his father's shop, and married his cousin. "Maybe," I thought, "the W.O.T. is really about him, and others like him, and not about the demonic terrorist plotters we're so preoccupied with."

We'll never understand the world political situation and America's part in it, I believe, until we dump out all the bins in our heads and come up with a new logic.

Here's why - as I see it - the W.O.T. concept is fatally flawed, and why it drives misguided foreign policies and military expeditions.

1. It's not a war. There's no opposing army - paid, sponsored, and controlled by any sovereign state. No war has been mutually declared, there was no beginning, and there will be no definite conclusion. It can't be "won," in the usual sense of the word. But American government leaders and news producers are fond of declaring war on abstract nouns - inflation, poverty, drugs, crime, and now terrorism. Chasing renegades house to house is not a war, however much we crave a concrete something or somebody to go to war with.

2. Iraq and Afghanistan are not wars. They're uninvited military occupations - failing ones, as it happens. They've generated skillful armed resistance, as all occupations do. Few Western political leaders seem to understand the powerful motivating effect that a Christian army, invading a Muslim territory, can have on the people who live there. The fighting, killing, and dying are direct consequences of the occupation.

3. Terrorism is not an ideology - it's a behavior, engaged in for specific reasons by specific groups who seek specific political goals. The willingness to murder innocent people is embedded in certain political ideologies, but it's not enough to qualify as a political ideology in itself. In other words, terrorism is one way of getting results, but it's not an agenda.

4. 9-11 was not about America. It was an audacious attempt by Osama bin Laden to establish himself as a revolutionary leader in the eyes of the disaffected Arab masses. He was striving to become the Simon Bolivar, the Fidel Castro, the Che Guevara of the Middle East. To gain that legendary status, he needed "street cred." If he could pull off a spectacular terrorist operation against the richest and most powerful nation of all - especially a non-Islamic "infidel" culture - then he could threaten the leaders of any Arab regime, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Syria. It worked: after the 9-11 attacks, he became a world figure overnight, and a hero to many Arabs who felt oppressed and exploited by their national governments.

5. In typical Americentric fashion, US political leaders and news producers conjured up a Hollywood-style adventure story, with America as the focus and target of a "world-wide terrorist movement." They were out to get us, because they hated us, they hated what we stood for, and they resented our affluent living styles. They were coming after us.

6. One 9-11 was all bin Laden needed. The operation succeeded spectacularly, probably beyond his wildest hopes. Just one hit would probably have served his purpose. The 9-11 attackers were well organized, but they also might have been incredibly lucky. Americans went into a paranoid phase and braced for the inevitable "next attack." Nearly a decade went by without one. For those who clung to the W.O.T. story, the only explanation was that the newly amalgamated Department of Homeland Security must be so effective that it prevented or thwarted every subsequent terrorist plot. Every threat incident, such as the infamous "shoe bomber," was taken as evidence of the spreading menace of "global terrorism."

7. All terrorism is local - all of it. Just as consumer markets are segmented, political "markets" are segmented. Terrorism is theater: every terrorist incident is staged to get and hold the attention of a particular target population, often a ruling political clique, and very often the people on the street whose behavior the rulers must consider. People in Arab countries have been murdering their neighbors, cousins, clan members, and other clans for a thousand years or more. Only a narcissistic American world view could conjure up the idea that the individual dramas playing out there are really all about us. They became all about us only when the presence of US occupying forces created a focus for their attention. When the occupying forces are inevitably withdrawn, they'll go back to killing one another.

8. From the days of the Roman Empire, all foreign military occupations have died - some sooner than others. History offers no credible example in which a conventional foreign military force has prevailed in an asymmetrical conflict with a highly motivated indigenous resistance. Britain in the American colonies; Spain in Mexico, Latin America, and Cuba; Britain in India; Britain in Afghanistan; France in Algeria, and later in Vietnam; America in Vietnam; Russia in Afghanistan - all eventually fizzled when the occupations became too costly. America's trillion dollar adventure into Iraq and Afghanistan will ultimately meet the same fate. After the troops come home, what has been accomplished?

9. Part of the Hollywood-style W.O.T. story that transfixes and entertains Americans is the notion that we're being infiltrated by terrorist "sleeper cells." These are presumably sponsored and controlled by some monolithic ideology that doesn't require much of an organizational structure. They're lurking in their cheap apartments, in middle-class neighborhoods all across American cities. Living on pizzas and Big Macs, they're waiting for the signal from afar, upon which they'll all rise and wreak havoc on the American way of life. It certainly seems that, almost a decade after the 9-11 attacks, we'd be seeing their handiwork. There are lots of easy targets in an open society such as America: public buildings, bridges, rail lines, shopping malls, churches, reservoirs, airports, sport stadiums - the list is nearly endless. One would hope the members of the cells have found regular jobs; otherwise, somebody has been paying a lot of money to keep them sitting idle.

10. Terrorists are not new to America. For two centuries or more, disaffected fanatics have been blowing things up, to call attention to their favorite causes and ideologies. From John Brown at Harper's Ferry to Timothy McVeigh at Oklahoma City, we've been living with terrorists. We'll probably see more of them as the population of alienated loners keeps growing. But one or more terrorists of Middle Eastern extraction do not necessarily equate to a global terrorist movement. Fanatical Islamists certainly do exist, and while they may share many values antagonistic to Western-Christian cultures, let's remember that there are some 70 major versions of Islam, many of which are violently opposed to one another. Arab societies and Islamic groups are notoriously fragmented and factionalized; they haven't even been able to gang up on Israel, a nation they unanimously despise.

The new logic for the new world, it seems to me, goes back to bread and Pepsi. Food and fun can do more - at less cost - to pacify a population than bullets and bombs. A massive investment to create economic opportunity, infect the at-risk cultures of the Middle East with modern commercial and consumerist aspirations, and promote educational opportunities that elevate the status of women to full social equality, could have a far greater return on investment than the ruinously expensive military occupations. A trillion dollars, as they say, can go a long way.

So, in the end, maybe the answer to the problem of terrorism really is Pepsi - and Cokes and Big Macs and Dunkin' Donuts and DKNY T-shirts and TV shows and movies and iPods and FaceBook. Rather than become like them, maybe we can help them become more like us.

Dr. Karl Albrecht is an executive management consultant, futurist, lecturer, and author of more than 20 books on business strategy, organizational performance, and professional achievement. He is also a leading authority on cognitive styles and the development of advanced thinking skills. His book Social Intelligence: the New Science of Success, and his Mindex Thinking Style Profile are widely used in business and education. Originally a physicist, and having served as a military intelligence officer and business executive, he now consults, lectures, and writes about whatever he thinks would be fun. Visit him at http://www.KarlAlbrecht.com.

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Frieda & Nellie whipped up these glam friendship bracelets exclusively for J.Crew. Photo courtesy of J. Crew

J.Crew Partners With Frieda & Nellie Jewelry originally appeared on StyleList on Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• The Associate Technical Support Representative applies all relevant SCEA Consumer Service (CS) Support Tier 1 and Tier 2 technical skills to quickly resolve mild to moderately complex customer issues
• Use judgment, reason, logic, and intuition within defined practices, procedures, and systems/tools (raw data, account and consumer information, etc.)
• This person will work as a member of the team to provide support for pre and post sales consumer activities for all Sony PlayStation products and services
• The primary consumer issues presented will require the Associate Technical Support Representative to investigate and provide resolution to an assortment of situations involving varying levels of billing, troubleshooting, and support inquires as well as minor security concerns (i.e. Password Resets, etc) and concerns sent in from the from the PlayStation Exchange Center. These situations will consist of mild to moderate scopes as related to SCEA from the consumer and may involve escalated and emotional situations
• Conduct all responsibilities as set by Tier 3 Technical Support Supervisor to provide world class support to both internal and external customers
• Apply SCEA Tier 3 technical support processes, practices, and protocols to fully investigate, diagnose and resolve consumer issues of various incidents via email, telephone call, letter, or chat to solve problems and create consumer satisfaction for SCEA and it's consumers
• Apply SCEA Tier 3 agent performance metrics for managing work load and productivity to email, calls and chats
• Effectively communicates to team and supervisor in a productive and constructive way in a stressful environment
• Effectively communicates findings, solutions, and resolutions to customers in a stressful environment
• Seeks out and shares approved product and technical support information with team members, supervisors, and support team members to ensure prompt and thorough resolution to SCEA consumer concerns
• Maintains a "closed-loop" communication style assuring all appropriate individuals are notified of problem resolution status and all consumers follow up is completed
• Responsible for sharing, updating, and documenting all acquired knowledge concerning problem resolution with appropriate Sony personnel and groups, per outlined processes and procedures
• Must be able to work flexible schedules including on-call, weekends, and holidays

• Demonstrates significant levels of reliability, confidential information handling, and accuracy in data reporting and recording
• Demonstrated good skills in resolving mild to moderately complex, escalated, difficult, or emotional consumer situations
• Must able to manage multiple issues and prioritize responsibilities
• Proven ability to utilize CS systems (e.g., Call Master, Lucid Siebel, SEL SIS mainframe, JIRA, PSN/SOCOM CST tools, MTC)
• Proven superior world-class customer service skills (empathy and listening) and detailed oriented to ensure accurate tracking of raw data findings and/or consume contact data entry summary
• Ability to set specific and timely goals and objectives while also adhering to budgetary needs

• At least 1 year of technical consumer support experience or equivalent
• At least 1 year of post high school education, training, or equivalent

• Online web design experience preferred