Sunday, September 30, 2012

Georgian grape pickers show government's challenge

Temuri Dolenjashvili, 53, harvests grapes from a family vineyard that provides the only income for his family of five, Sagareyo, Georgia, Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012. Georgia holds tightly contested parliamentary elections on Oct. 1. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Temuri Dolenjashvili, 53, harvests grapes from a family vineyard that provides the only income for his family of five, Sagareyo, Georgia, Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012. Georgia holds tightly contested parliamentary elections on Oct. 1. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

A Georgian shepherd herds his flock of sheep near of the village Sagareyo, Georgia, Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012. Georgia holds tightly contested parliamentary elections on Oct. 1. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

The Dolenjashvili family harvest grapes from their family vineyard that provides the only income for their family of five, Sagareyo, Georgia, Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012. Georgia holds tightly contested parliamentary elections on Oct. 1. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Temuri Dolenjashvili, 53, harvests grapes from a family vineyard that provides the only income for his family of five, Sagareyo, Georgia, Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012. Georgia holds tightly contested parliamentary elections on Oct. 1. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

(AP) ? The green grapes that Temuri Dolenjashvili and his wife snipped from the vines Sunday and emptied by the bucket into the back of their truck provide the only income for their extended family of five.

The harvest also gave a welcome day's work to an unemployed father and an elderly neighbor whose $75 monthly pension has to help feed her unemployed son, his wife and their sickly child.

Poverty and a lack of jobs are what worry Georgians most going into a tight parliamentary election on Monday that will decide the future of the pro-Western government of President Mikhail Saakashvili. For the grape pickers and others like them struggling to make ends meet on rich agricultural land and unable to sell their produce to Russia, the election offers some sense of hope.

Since coming to power nearly nine years ago, Saakashvili has transformed this former Soviet republic and put it on a path toward what Georgians hope will be eventual membership in the European Union and NATO.

The capital, Tbilisi, its streets once dark and dangerous, now shines. The stately historic facades along its main avenues have been restored to their former glory and the parks landscaped and lit.

Futuristic glass buildings have risen to house the Interior Ministry and Justice Ministry, their see-through walls intended to symbolize transparency. Among Saakashvili's greatest successes have been his creation of a modern police force and the eradication of everyday corruption.

His ambitious reforms and an inflow of Western investment have produced impressive economic growth and raised hopes among Georgians for a better life. Poverty and unemployment, however, have remained painfully high, especially in the countryside.

The official jobless rate is 16 percent, but this does not include those who sell vegetables they grow in their gardens by the side of the road or homemade wine in re-used plastic bottles.

Georgia has traditionally exported its vegetables, fruit, wine and mineral water to Russia, but this market has been closed since the two neighboring countries fought a brief war in 2008.

Just west of the Georgian capital, in the wine-producing region of Kakheti, the gleaming new buildings give way to small vineyards and fields of grazing sheep watched over by old men carrying wooden staffs. On rough gravel roads, horses pull carts piled high with stalks of dry corn.

Dolenjashvili and his wife had come from their home in the nearby town of Sagarejo to pick the last of the grapes in a vineyard that has been in his family for generations. This year they expected a total harvest of just under a ton, about half the amount of previous years because of two hail storms that had ripped up the vines.

They and the two others they had brought along to help with the harvest worked their way down the rows under a bright southern sun, cutting off bunches of grapes and dropping them into metal buckets.

All four said they planned to vote in Monday's election, but none would say whether they would support Saakashvili's party or an opposition coalition headed by billionaire businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili.

"I will vote for the one who will make our lives better and resolve the problem of no jobs," said the 53-year-old Dolenjashvili, whose nose and cheeks were a deep red from the sun.

One of his helpers was 54-year-old Givi Khirdaladze, who said that while he could make some money in the summer in the vineyards, he was unable to find any work in the winter. He lives with his wife and their 10-year-old daughter in state-owned barracks, unable to afford a home of their own.

Nadia Chiaberashvili, 70, wiped tears from her eyes as she described how she lives with her unemployed son and his family in a house with earthen floors and no heat or running water. She shook her head when asked how she planned to vote.

"She's afraid to say anything, afraid they will take away what little she has," Dolenjashvili's wife, Eka Sarukhanashvili, explained. In addition to her monthly pension of $75, Chiaberashvili's family receives about $62 in welfare benefits.

Many in Georgia have been hesitant to state which party they support, with polls showing a large percentage of voters declaring themselves undecided. Some express fears of repercussions, primarily from Saakashvili's United National Movement, which has come to dominate all branches of government.

Facing the first credible challenge to his rule, Saakashvili is under pressure from the United States and the European Union to prove his commitment to democracy by holding a free and fair election.

This election has added significance because it ushers in a new political system that will give greater powers to the parliament and prime minister. After Saakashvili's second and last term ends next year, the party that has a majority in parliament will have the right to name the prime minister, who will acquire many of the powers now held by the president.

Both the governing party and the opposition coalition Georgian Dream have reached out to rural voters by promising to pump money into agriculture, a sector long starved of investment. Ivanishvili, the opposition leader, who made his fortune in Russia, also has said he would work to restore relations with Moscow with the aim of opening up Russian markets to Georgian produce and wine.

For those who depend on their vineyards, these promises hold out hope.

After a morning of picking grapes under a hot sun, Sarukhanashvili set out lunch for the four of them in the shade of a tree. On an overturned crate, she placed cheese she had made from milk from their cow, pickled peppers from their garden, half of a chicken that they had raised, bread baked in a stone oven and a plastic bottle of their wine.

Once everyone was seated, she raised her glass and made a toast.

"I wish that after the election that everything will be better, that everyone will live better in a united Georgia," she said. "I wish that markets will open for our wine and that we will have such good harvests that I will be able to pay for my son's education."

___

Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili contributed reporting.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-09-30-Georgia-Election/id-3d233ecaefac4f7299823102b3ca30da

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Ex-NY Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger dies

NEW YORK (AP) ? Few moments in American journalism loom larger than the one that came in 1971, when New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger had to decide whether to defy a president, and risk a potential criminal charge, by publishing a classified Defense Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

His choice, to publish the Pentagon Papers and then fight the Nixon administration's subsequent attempt to muzzle the story, cemented Sulzberger's place as a First Amendment giant ? a role being celebrated after he died Saturday at age 86.

The former publisher, who led the Times to new levels of influence and profit while standing up for press freedom, died at his home in Southampton, N.Y., after a long illness, his family announced.

During his three-decade tenure, Sulzberger's newspaper won 31 Pulitzer prizes while he went about transforming the family business from perpetually shaky to the muscular media behemoth it was when he retired.

Weekday circulation climbed from 714,000 when Sulzberger became publisher in 1963 to 1.1 million when he stepped down as publisher in 1992. Over the same period, the annual revenues of the Times' corporate parent rose from $100 million to $1.7 billion.

Yet it was Sulzberger's positions on editorial independence that made him a hero of the profession, like when he rejected his own lawyers' warnings that even reading the Pentagon Papers, let alone publishing them, constituted a crime.

Sulzberger, who went by the nickname "Punch" and served with the Marine Corps, privately worried that he had doomed the newspaper but gave interviews saying the Times wouldn't allow the U.S. government to cover up its mistakes under the guise of national security.

"That is a wonderful way, if you've got egg on your face, to prevent anybody from knowing it: Stamp it SECRET and put it away," he said.

"Punch, the old Marine captain who never backed down from a fight, was an absolutely fierce defender of the freedom of the press," his son, and current Times publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., said in a statement.

Sulzberger was the only grandson of Adolph S. Ochs (pronounced ox), the son of Bavarian immigrants who took over the Times in 1896 and built it into the nation's most influential newspaper.

The family retains control to this day, holding a special class of shares that give them more powerful voting rights than other stockholders.

Power was thrust on Sulzberger at the age of 37 after the sudden death of his brother-in-law in 1963. He had been in the Times executive suite for eight years in a role he later described as "vice president in charge of nothing."

But Sulzberger directed the Times' evolution from an encyclopedic paper of record to a more reader-friendly product that reached into the suburbs and across the nation.

Under his watch, the Times started a national edition, bought its first color presses, and introduced ? to the chagrin of some hard-news purists ? popular and lucrative sections covering topics such as food and entertainment.

"You forget the unbelievable outrage that greeted those sections. But in retrospect it was the right decision both editorially and economically," said Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

In 1992, Sulzberger relinquished the publisher's job to his son but remained chairman of The New York Times Co. Sulzberger retired as chairman and chief executive of the company in 1997. His son then was named chairman. Sulzberger stayed on the Times Co. board of directors until 2002.

Reacting to news of Sulzberger's death Saturday, former Times executive editor Joseph Lelyveld said that his business success was matched by integrity in the newsroom.

"As an editor, you knew that if you went to the publisher and sought his support on an issue that you deemed to be of high importance, you could pretty much count on getting it. He knew how to back his people," Lelyveld said.

President Barack Obama said Sulzberger was "a firm believer in the importance of a free and independent press ? one that isn't afraid to seek the truth, hold those in power accountable, and tell the stories that need to be told."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he "changed the course of American history with his journalistic decisions."

Significant free-press and free-speech precedents were established during Sulzberger's years as publisher, most notably the Times vs. Sullivan case. It resulted in a landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling that shielded the press from libel lawsuits by public officials unless they could prove actual malice.

"Punch Sulzberger was a giant in the industry, a leader who fought to preserve the vital role of a free press in society and championed journalism executed at the highest level," said Associated Press President and CEO Gary Pruitt. "The Associated Press benefited from his wisdom, both during his years on the board of directors and his thoughtful engagement in the years that followed."

In 1971, the Times led the First Amendment fight to keep the government from suppressing the Pentagon Papers.

Sulzberger read more than 7,000 pages of the documents and presided over a dramatic internal debate before deciding to publish. Then, he resisted a demand by Attorney General John Mitchell that the paper halt the series after two installments.

A federal judge delayed publication of additional installments, but in a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually sided with the Times and The Washington Post, and allowed the series to continue.

"There were those that thought some kind of deal or reconciliation with the government should have been sought," said First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who represented the Times in the court case. "It was Punch Sulzberger who made the decision to resist the government's effort. In making that decision he set in motion a litigation which not only preserved but protected the First Amendment for generations."

In their book "The Trust," a history of the Ochs-Sulzberger family and its stewardship of the paper, Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones cited Sulzberger's "common sense and unerring instincts."

In an interview in 1990 with New York magazine, Sulzberger was typically candid about the paper's readership.

"We're not New York's hometown newspaper," he said. "We're read on Park Avenue, but we don't do well in Chinatown or the east Bronx. We have to approach journalism differently than, say, the Sarasota Herald Tribune, where you try to blanket the community."

Sulzberger was born in New York City on Feb. 5, 1926, the only son of Arthur Hays Sulzberger and his wife, Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, Adolph's only child. One of his three sisters was named Judy, and from early on he was known as "Punch," from the puppet characters Punch and Judy.

Sulzberger's grandfather led the paper until his death in 1935, when he was followed by Sulzberger's father, who remained at the helm until he retired in 1961.

Except for a year at The Milwaukee Journal, 1953-54, the younger Sulzberger spent his entire career at the family paper after graduating from Columbia College in 1951. He worked in European bureaus for a time and was back in New York by 1955, but found he had little to do.

At various times, Sulzberger was a director or chairman of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, American Newspaper Publishers Association and American Press Institute. He was a director of The Associated Press from 1975 to 1984.

Sulzberger married Barbara Grant in 1948, and the couple had two children, Arthur Jr. and Karen. After a divorce in 1956, Sulzberger married Carol Fox. The couple had a daughter, Cynthia, and Sulzberger adopted Fox's daughter from a previous marriage, Cathy.

Carol Sulzberger died in 1995. The following year, Sulzberger married Allison Cowles, the widow of William H. Cowles 3rd, who was the president and publisher of The Spokesman-Review and Spokane Chronicle of Spokane, Wash. She died in 2010.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-ny-times-publisher-arthur-ochs-sulzberger-dies-142532804--finance.html

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Why GOP Billionaires Aren't Winning

A funny thing's happening on the way to Nov. 6. The billionaires trying to buy the U.S. election with contributions of $1 million, $10 million or even $100 million aren't succeeding.

If trends continue and the Democrats have a good year (still a big if), the notion that in order to win candidates need the indirect backing provided by gobs of money from super-political action committees will be discredited.


Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2012/09/29/why_gop_billionaires_aren039t_winning_291527.html

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Saturday, September 29, 2012

Environmentalists In The Pocket Of Big Oil!!!

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This is from the too funny dept.? We hear all the time about how there?s some big oil conspiracy funding the skeptical movement.? It seems that as I was going out to pick up my big oil check, it got intercepted by a nutty environmentalist.? In this case it was Matt Damon.?

The movie may be interesting because it asserts a different conspiracy theory.

The movie presents American oil companies as greedy corporations that trash and pollute small-town America in attempts to extract oil and gas from shale formations. Yet, because fracking has been proven environmentally sound in the real world, the movie suggests oil companies might be planting ?doom-saying? environmentalists in order to undercut the legitimacy of environmental voices all-together.

Lol, that?s a new one!? No Matt, you people are so insane no one needs to plant lunatic enviros to make you people appear vapid.?

The movie ?is financed in part? by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), an OPEC member country.

Well, of course the UAE doesn?t want us using the hydraulic fracturing technique.? It ruins their party.?

Read more here.?

This entry was posted in Energy. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/environmentalists-in-the-pocket-of-big-oil/

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