Source: Google Images
In this blog, teachers, students and all those who have some kind of interest in the English language will find useful, interesting, curious and funny things to be used in their classes or for their personal enjoyment.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
30-09: HAPPY INTERNATIONAL TRANSLATION DAY!!!
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Source: Google Images
Source: Google Images
Saturday, September 29, 2012
LD-TED Talks-Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Transcript: How do you explain whenthings don't go as we assume?Or better, how do you explainwhen others are able to achieve thingsthat seem to defy all of the assumptions?For example:Why is Apple so innovative?Year after year, after year, after year,they're more innovative than all their competition.And yet, they're just a computer company.They're just like everyone else.They have the same access to the same talent,the same agencies, the same consultants, the same media.Then why is it that theyseem to have something different?Why is it that Martin Luther Kingled the Civil Rights Movement?He wasn't the only manwho suffered in a pre-civil rights America,and he certainly wasn't the only great orator of the day.Why him?And why is it that the Wright brotherswere able to figure out controlled, powered man flightwhen there were certainly other teams who werebetter qualified, better funded ...and they didn't achieve powered man flight,and the Wright brothers beat them to it.There's something else at play here. About three and a half years agoI made a discovery.And this discovery profoundly changedmy view on how I thought the world worked,and it even profoundly changed the way in whichI operate in it.As it turns out, there's a pattern.As it turns out, all the great and inspiring leadersand organizations in the world --whether it's Apple or Martin Luther King or the Wright brothers --they all think, act and communicatethe exact same way.And it's the complete oppositeto everyone else.All I did was codify it,and it's probably the world'ssimplest idea.I call it the golden circle. Why? How? What?This little idea explainswhy some organizations and some leadersare able to inspire where others aren't.Let me define the terms really quickly.Every single person, every single organization on the planetknows what they do,100 percent.Some know how they do it,whether you call it your differentiated value propositionor your proprietary process or your USP.But very, very few people or organizationsknow why they do what they do.And by "why" I don't mean "to make a profit."That's a result. It's always a result.By "why," I mean: What's your purpose?What's your cause? What's your belief?Why does your organization exist?Why do you get out of bed in the morning?And why should anyone care?Well, as a result, the way we think, the way we act,the way we communicate is from the outside in.It's obvious. We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing.But the inspired leadersand the inspired organizations --regardless of their size, regardless of their industry --all think, act and communicatefrom the inside out. Let me give you an example.I use Apple because they're easy to understand and everybody gets it.If Apple were like everyone else,a marketing message from them might sound like this:"We make great computers.They're beautifully designed, simple to useand user friendly.Want to buy one?" "Meh."And that's how most of us communicate.That's how most marketing is done, that's how most sales is doneand that's how most of us communicate interpersonally.We say what we do, we say how we're different or how we're betterand we expect some sort of a behavior,a purchase, a vote, something like that.Here's our new law firm:We have the best lawyers with the biggest clients,we always perform for our clients who do business with us.Here's our new car:It gets great gas mileage, it has leather seats, buy our car.But it's uninspiring. Here's how Apple actually communicates."Everything we do,we believe in challenging the status quo.We believe in thinking differently.The way we challenge the status quois by making our products beautifully designed,simple to use and user friendly.We just happen to make great computers.Want to buy one?"Totally different right? You're ready to buy a computer from me.All I did was reverse the order of the information.What it proves to us is that people don't buy what you do;people buy why you do it.People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. This explains whyevery single person in this roomis perfectly comfortable buying a computer from Apple.But we're also perfectly comfortablebuying an MP3 player from Apple, or a phone from Apple,or a DVR from Apple.But, as I said before, Apple's just a computer company.There's nothing that distinguishes themstructurally from any of their competitors.Their competitors are all equally qualified to make all of these products.In fact, they tried.A few years ago, Gateway came out with flat screen TVs.They're eminently qualified to make flat screen TVs.They've been making flat screen monitors for years.Nobody bought one.Dell came out with MP3 players and PDAs,and they make great quality products,and they can make perfectly well-designed products --and nobody bought one.In fact, talking about it now, we can't even imaginebuying an MP3 player from Dell.Why would you buy an MP3 player from a computer company?But we do it every day.People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.The goal is not to do businesswith everybody who needs what you have.The goal is to do business with peoplewho believe what you believe.Here's the best part: None of what I'm telling you is my opinion.It's all grounded in the tenets of biology.Not psychology, biology.If you look at a cross-section of the human brain, looking from the top down,what you see is the human brain is actually brokeninto three major componentsthat correlate perfectly with the golden circle.Our newest brain, our Homo sapien brain,our neocortex,corresponds with the "what" level.The neocortex is responsible for all of ourrational and analytical thoughtand language.The middle two sections make up our limbic brains,and our limbic brains are responsible for all of our feelings,like trust and loyalty.It's also responsible for all human behavior,all decision-making,and it has no capacity for language. In other words, when we communicate from the outside in,yes, people can understand vast amounts of complicated informationlike features and benefits and facts and figures.It just doesn't drive behavior.When we can communicate from the inside out,we're talking directly to the part of the brainthat controls behavior,and then we allow people to rationalize itwith the tangible things we say and do.This is where gut decisions come from.You know, sometimes you can give somebodyall the facts and figures,and they say, "I know what all the facts and details say,but it just doesn't feel right."Why would we use that verb, it doesn't "feel" right?Because the part of the brain that controls decision-makingdoesn't control language.And the best we can muster up is, "I don't know. It just doesn't feel right."Or sometimes you say you're leading with your heart,or you're leading with your soul.Well, I hate to break it to you, those aren't other body partscontrolling your behavior.It's all happening here in your limbic brain,the part of the brain that controls decision-making and not language. But if you don't know why you do what you do,and people respond to why you do what you do,then how will you ever get peopleto vote for you, or buy something from you,or, more importantly, be loyaland want to be a part of what it is that you do.Again, the goal is not just to sell to people who need what you have;the goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe.The goal is not just to hire peoplewho need a job;it's to hire people who believe what you believe.I always say that, you know,if you hire people just because they can do a job, they'll work for your money,but if you hire people who believe what you believe,they'll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.And nowhere else is there a better example of thisthan with the Wright brothers. Most people don't know about Samuel Pierpont Langley.And back in the early 20th century,the pursuit of powered man flight was like the dot com of the day.Everybody was trying it.And Samuel Pierpont Langley had, what we assume,to be the recipe for success.I mean, even now, you ask people,"Why did your product or why did your company fail?"and people always give you the same permutationof the same three things:under-capitalized, the wrong people, bad market conditions.It's always the same three things, so let's explore that.Samuel Pierpont Langleywas given 50,000 dollars by the War Departmentto figure out this flying machine.Money was no problem.He held a seat at Harvardand worked at the Smithsonian and was extremely well-connected;he knew all the big minds of the day.He hired the best mindsmoney could findand the market conditions were fantastic.The New York Times followed him around everywhere,and everyone was rooting for Langley.Then how come we've never heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley? A few hundred miles away in Dayton Ohio,Orville and Wilbur Wright,they had none of what we considerto be the recipe for success.They had no money;they paid for their dream with the proceeds from their bicycle shop;not a single person on the Wright brothers' teamhad a college education,not even Orville or Wilbur;and The New York Times followed them around nowhere.The difference was,Orville and Wilbur were driven by a cause,by a purpose, by a belief.They believed that if theycould figure out this flying machine,it'll change the course of the world.Samuel Pierpont Langley was different.He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be famous.He was in pursuit of the result.He was in pursuit of the riches.And lo and behold, look what happened.The people who believed in the Wright brothers' dreamworked with them with blood and sweat and tears.The others just worked for the paycheck.And they tell stories of how every time the Wright brothers went out,they would have to take five sets of parts,because that's how many times they would crashbefore they came in for supper. And, eventually, on December 17th, 1903,the Wright brothers took flight,and no one was there to even experience it.We found out about it a few days later.And further proof that Langleywas motivated by the wrong thing:The day the Wright brothers took flight, he quit.He could have said,"That's an amazing discovery, guys,and I will improve upon your technology," but he didn't.He wasn't first, he didn't get rich,he didn't get famous so he quit. People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.And if you talk about what you believe,you will attract those who believe what you believe.But why is it important to attract those who believe what you believe?Something called the law of diffusion of innovation,and if you don't know the law, you definitely know the terminology.The first two and a half percent of our populationare our innovators.The next 13 and a half percent of our populationare our early adopters.The next 34 percent are your early majority,your late majority and your laggards.The only reason these people buy touch tone phonesis because you can't buy rotary phones anymore. (Laughter) We all sit at various places at various times on this scale,but what the law of diffusion of innovation tells usis that if you want mass-market successor mass-market acceptance of an idea,you cannot have ituntil you achieve this tipping pointbetween 15 and 18 percent market penetration,and then the system tips.And I love asking businesses, "What's your conversion on new business?"And they love to tell you, "Oh, it's about 10 percent," proudly.Well, you can trip over 10 percent of the customers.We all have about 10 percent who just "get it."That's how we describe them, right?That's like that gut feeling, "Oh, they just get it."The problem is: How do you find the ones that get itbefore you're doing business with them versus the ones who don't get it?So it's this here, this little gapthat you have to close,as Jeffrey Moore calls it, "Crossing the Chasm" --because, you see, the early majoritywill not try somethinguntil someone elsehas tried it first.And these guys, the innovators and the early adopters,they're comfortable making those gut decisions.They're more comfortable making those intuitive decisionsthat are driven by what they believe about the worldand not just what product is available. These are the people who stood in line for six hoursto buy an iPhone when they first came out,when you could have just walked into the store the next weekand bought one off the shelf.These are the people who spent 40,000 dollarson flat screen TVs when they first came out,even though the technology was substandard.And, by the way, they didn't do itbecause the technology was so great;they did it for themselves.It's because they wanted to be first.People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do itand what you do simplyproves what you believe.In fact, people will do the thingsthat prove what they believe.The reason that person bought the iPhonein the first six hours,stood in line for six hours,was because of what they believed about the world,and how they wanted everybody to see them:They were first.People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. So let me give you a famous example,a famous failure and a famous successof the law of diffusion of innovation.First, the famous failure.It's a commercial example.As we said before, a second ago,the recipe for success is money and the right people and the right market conditions,right? You should have success then.Look at TiVo.From the time TiVo came out about eight or nine years agoto this current day,they are the single highest-quality product on the market,hands down, there is no dispute.They were extremely well-funded.Market conditions were fantastic.I mean, we use TiVo as verb.I TiVo stuff on my piece of junk Time Warner DVR all the time. But TiVo's a commercial failure.They've never made money.And when they went IPO,their stock was at about 30 or 40 dollarsand then plummeted, and it's never traded above 10.In fact, I don't think it's even traded above six,except for a couple of little spikes.Because you see, when TiVo launched their productthey told us all what they had.They said, "We have a product that pauses live TV,skips commercials, rewinds live TVand memorizes your viewing habitswithout you even asking."And the cynical majority said,"We don't believe you.We don't need it. We don't like it.You're scaring us."What if they had said,"If you're the kind of personwho likes to have total controlover every aspect of your life,boy, do we have a product for you.It pauses live TV, skips commercials,memorizes your viewing habits, etc., etc."People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it,and what you do simply serves asthe proof of what you believe. Now let me give you a successful exampleof the law of diffusion of innovation.In the summer of 1963,250,000 people showed upon the mall in Washingtonto hear Dr. King speak.They sent out no invitations,and there was no website to check the date.How do you do that?Well, Dr. King wasn't the only man in Americawho was a great orator.He wasn't the only man in America who sufferedin a pre-civil rights America.In fact, some of his ideas were bad.But he had a gift.He didn't go around telling people what needed to change in America.He went around and told people what he believed."I believe, I believe, I believe,"he told people.And people who believed what he believedtook his cause, and they made it their own,and they told people.And some of those people created structuresto get the word out to even more people.And lo and behold,250,000 people showed upon the right day at the right timeto hear him speak. How many of them showed up for him?Zero.They showed up for themselves.It's what they believed about Americathat got them to travel in a bus for eight hoursto stand in the sun in Washington in the middle of August.It's what they believed, and it wasn't about black versus white:25 percent of the audience was white.Dr. King believed thatthere are two types of laws in this world:those that are made by a higher authorityand those that are made by man.And not until all the laws that are made by manare consistent with the laws that are made by the higher authoritywill we live in a just world.It just so happened that the Civil Rights Movementwas the perfect thing to help himbring his cause to life.We followed, not for him, but for ourselves.And, by the way, he gave the "I have a dream" speech,not the "I have a plan" speech. (Laughter) Listen to politicians now, with their comprehensive 12-point plans.They're not inspiring anybody.Because there are leaders and there are those who lead.Leaders hold a position of poweror authority,but those who lead inspire us.Whether they're individuals or organizations,we follow those who lead,not because we have to,but because we want to.We follow those who lead, not for them,but for ourselves.And it's those who start with "why"that have the abilityto inspire those around themor find others who inspire them. Thank you very much. (Applause) Source: www.ted.com
Transcript: How do you explain whenthings don't go as we assume?Or better, how do you explainwhen others are able to achieve thingsthat seem to defy all of the assumptions?For example:Why is Apple so innovative?Year after year, after year, after year,they're more innovative than all their competition.And yet, they're just a computer company.They're just like everyone else.They have the same access to the same talent,the same agencies, the same consultants, the same media.Then why is it that theyseem to have something different?Why is it that Martin Luther Kingled the Civil Rights Movement?He wasn't the only manwho suffered in a pre-civil rights America,and he certainly wasn't the only great orator of the day.Why him?And why is it that the Wright brotherswere able to figure out controlled, powered man flightwhen there were certainly other teams who werebetter qualified, better funded ...and they didn't achieve powered man flight,and the Wright brothers beat them to it.There's something else at play here. About three and a half years agoI made a discovery.And this discovery profoundly changedmy view on how I thought the world worked,and it even profoundly changed the way in whichI operate in it.As it turns out, there's a pattern.As it turns out, all the great and inspiring leadersand organizations in the world --whether it's Apple or Martin Luther King or the Wright brothers --they all think, act and communicatethe exact same way.And it's the complete oppositeto everyone else.All I did was codify it,and it's probably the world'ssimplest idea.I call it the golden circle. Why? How? What?This little idea explainswhy some organizations and some leadersare able to inspire where others aren't.Let me define the terms really quickly.Every single person, every single organization on the planetknows what they do,100 percent.Some know how they do it,whether you call it your differentiated value propositionor your proprietary process or your USP.But very, very few people or organizationsknow why they do what they do.And by "why" I don't mean "to make a profit."That's a result. It's always a result.By "why," I mean: What's your purpose?What's your cause? What's your belief?Why does your organization exist?Why do you get out of bed in the morning?And why should anyone care?Well, as a result, the way we think, the way we act,the way we communicate is from the outside in.It's obvious. We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing.But the inspired leadersand the inspired organizations --regardless of their size, regardless of their industry --all think, act and communicatefrom the inside out. Let me give you an example.I use Apple because they're easy to understand and everybody gets it.If Apple were like everyone else,a marketing message from them might sound like this:"We make great computers.They're beautifully designed, simple to useand user friendly.Want to buy one?" "Meh."And that's how most of us communicate.That's how most marketing is done, that's how most sales is doneand that's how most of us communicate interpersonally.We say what we do, we say how we're different or how we're betterand we expect some sort of a behavior,a purchase, a vote, something like that.Here's our new law firm:We have the best lawyers with the biggest clients,we always perform for our clients who do business with us.Here's our new car:It gets great gas mileage, it has leather seats, buy our car.But it's uninspiring. Here's how Apple actually communicates."Everything we do,we believe in challenging the status quo.We believe in thinking differently.The way we challenge the status quois by making our products beautifully designed,simple to use and user friendly.We just happen to make great computers.Want to buy one?"Totally different right? You're ready to buy a computer from me.All I did was reverse the order of the information.What it proves to us is that people don't buy what you do;people buy why you do it.People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. This explains whyevery single person in this roomis perfectly comfortable buying a computer from Apple.But we're also perfectly comfortablebuying an MP3 player from Apple, or a phone from Apple,or a DVR from Apple.But, as I said before, Apple's just a computer company.There's nothing that distinguishes themstructurally from any of their competitors.Their competitors are all equally qualified to make all of these products.In fact, they tried.A few years ago, Gateway came out with flat screen TVs.They're eminently qualified to make flat screen TVs.They've been making flat screen monitors for years.Nobody bought one.Dell came out with MP3 players and PDAs,and they make great quality products,and they can make perfectly well-designed products --and nobody bought one.In fact, talking about it now, we can't even imaginebuying an MP3 player from Dell.Why would you buy an MP3 player from a computer company?But we do it every day.People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.The goal is not to do businesswith everybody who needs what you have.The goal is to do business with peoplewho believe what you believe.Here's the best part: None of what I'm telling you is my opinion.It's all grounded in the tenets of biology.Not psychology, biology.If you look at a cross-section of the human brain, looking from the top down,what you see is the human brain is actually brokeninto three major componentsthat correlate perfectly with the golden circle.Our newest brain, our Homo sapien brain,our neocortex,corresponds with the "what" level.The neocortex is responsible for all of ourrational and analytical thoughtand language.The middle two sections make up our limbic brains,and our limbic brains are responsible for all of our feelings,like trust and loyalty.It's also responsible for all human behavior,all decision-making,and it has no capacity for language. In other words, when we communicate from the outside in,yes, people can understand vast amounts of complicated informationlike features and benefits and facts and figures.It just doesn't drive behavior.When we can communicate from the inside out,we're talking directly to the part of the brainthat controls behavior,and then we allow people to rationalize itwith the tangible things we say and do.This is where gut decisions come from.You know, sometimes you can give somebodyall the facts and figures,and they say, "I know what all the facts and details say,but it just doesn't feel right."Why would we use that verb, it doesn't "feel" right?Because the part of the brain that controls decision-makingdoesn't control language.And the best we can muster up is, "I don't know. It just doesn't feel right."Or sometimes you say you're leading with your heart,or you're leading with your soul.Well, I hate to break it to you, those aren't other body partscontrolling your behavior.It's all happening here in your limbic brain,the part of the brain that controls decision-making and not language. But if you don't know why you do what you do,and people respond to why you do what you do,then how will you ever get peopleto vote for you, or buy something from you,or, more importantly, be loyaland want to be a part of what it is that you do.Again, the goal is not just to sell to people who need what you have;the goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe.The goal is not just to hire peoplewho need a job;it's to hire people who believe what you believe.I always say that, you know,if you hire people just because they can do a job, they'll work for your money,but if you hire people who believe what you believe,they'll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.And nowhere else is there a better example of thisthan with the Wright brothers. Most people don't know about Samuel Pierpont Langley.And back in the early 20th century,the pursuit of powered man flight was like the dot com of the day.Everybody was trying it.And Samuel Pierpont Langley had, what we assume,to be the recipe for success.I mean, even now, you ask people,"Why did your product or why did your company fail?"and people always give you the same permutationof the same three things:under-capitalized, the wrong people, bad market conditions.It's always the same three things, so let's explore that.Samuel Pierpont Langleywas given 50,000 dollars by the War Departmentto figure out this flying machine.Money was no problem.He held a seat at Harvardand worked at the Smithsonian and was extremely well-connected;he knew all the big minds of the day.He hired the best mindsmoney could findand the market conditions were fantastic.The New York Times followed him around everywhere,and everyone was rooting for Langley.Then how come we've never heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley? A few hundred miles away in Dayton Ohio,Orville and Wilbur Wright,they had none of what we considerto be the recipe for success.They had no money;they paid for their dream with the proceeds from their bicycle shop;not a single person on the Wright brothers' teamhad a college education,not even Orville or Wilbur;and The New York Times followed them around nowhere.The difference was,Orville and Wilbur were driven by a cause,by a purpose, by a belief.They believed that if theycould figure out this flying machine,it'll change the course of the world.Samuel Pierpont Langley was different.He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be famous.He was in pursuit of the result.He was in pursuit of the riches.And lo and behold, look what happened.The people who believed in the Wright brothers' dreamworked with them with blood and sweat and tears.The others just worked for the paycheck.And they tell stories of how every time the Wright brothers went out,they would have to take five sets of parts,because that's how many times they would crashbefore they came in for supper. And, eventually, on December 17th, 1903,the Wright brothers took flight,and no one was there to even experience it.We found out about it a few days later.And further proof that Langleywas motivated by the wrong thing:The day the Wright brothers took flight, he quit.He could have said,"That's an amazing discovery, guys,and I will improve upon your technology," but he didn't.He wasn't first, he didn't get rich,he didn't get famous so he quit. People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.And if you talk about what you believe,you will attract those who believe what you believe.But why is it important to attract those who believe what you believe?Something called the law of diffusion of innovation,and if you don't know the law, you definitely know the terminology.The first two and a half percent of our populationare our innovators.The next 13 and a half percent of our populationare our early adopters.The next 34 percent are your early majority,your late majority and your laggards.The only reason these people buy touch tone phonesis because you can't buy rotary phones anymore. (Laughter) We all sit at various places at various times on this scale,but what the law of diffusion of innovation tells usis that if you want mass-market successor mass-market acceptance of an idea,you cannot have ituntil you achieve this tipping pointbetween 15 and 18 percent market penetration,and then the system tips.And I love asking businesses, "What's your conversion on new business?"And they love to tell you, "Oh, it's about 10 percent," proudly.Well, you can trip over 10 percent of the customers.We all have about 10 percent who just "get it."That's how we describe them, right?That's like that gut feeling, "Oh, they just get it."The problem is: How do you find the ones that get itbefore you're doing business with them versus the ones who don't get it?So it's this here, this little gapthat you have to close,as Jeffrey Moore calls it, "Crossing the Chasm" --because, you see, the early majoritywill not try somethinguntil someone elsehas tried it first.And these guys, the innovators and the early adopters,they're comfortable making those gut decisions.They're more comfortable making those intuitive decisionsthat are driven by what they believe about the worldand not just what product is available. These are the people who stood in line for six hoursto buy an iPhone when they first came out,when you could have just walked into the store the next weekand bought one off the shelf.These are the people who spent 40,000 dollarson flat screen TVs when they first came out,even though the technology was substandard.And, by the way, they didn't do itbecause the technology was so great;they did it for themselves.It's because they wanted to be first.People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do itand what you do simplyproves what you believe.In fact, people will do the thingsthat prove what they believe.The reason that person bought the iPhonein the first six hours,stood in line for six hours,was because of what they believed about the world,and how they wanted everybody to see them:They were first.People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. So let me give you a famous example,a famous failure and a famous successof the law of diffusion of innovation.First, the famous failure.It's a commercial example.As we said before, a second ago,the recipe for success is money and the right people and the right market conditions,right? You should have success then.Look at TiVo.From the time TiVo came out about eight or nine years agoto this current day,they are the single highest-quality product on the market,hands down, there is no dispute.They were extremely well-funded.Market conditions were fantastic.I mean, we use TiVo as verb.I TiVo stuff on my piece of junk Time Warner DVR all the time. But TiVo's a commercial failure.They've never made money.And when they went IPO,their stock was at about 30 or 40 dollarsand then plummeted, and it's never traded above 10.In fact, I don't think it's even traded above six,except for a couple of little spikes.Because you see, when TiVo launched their productthey told us all what they had.They said, "We have a product that pauses live TV,skips commercials, rewinds live TVand memorizes your viewing habitswithout you even asking."And the cynical majority said,"We don't believe you.We don't need it. We don't like it.You're scaring us."What if they had said,"If you're the kind of personwho likes to have total controlover every aspect of your life,boy, do we have a product for you.It pauses live TV, skips commercials,memorizes your viewing habits, etc., etc."People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it,and what you do simply serves asthe proof of what you believe. Now let me give you a successful exampleof the law of diffusion of innovation.In the summer of 1963,250,000 people showed upon the mall in Washingtonto hear Dr. King speak.They sent out no invitations,and there was no website to check the date.How do you do that?Well, Dr. King wasn't the only man in Americawho was a great orator.He wasn't the only man in America who sufferedin a pre-civil rights America.In fact, some of his ideas were bad.But he had a gift.He didn't go around telling people what needed to change in America.He went around and told people what he believed."I believe, I believe, I believe,"he told people.And people who believed what he believedtook his cause, and they made it their own,and they told people.And some of those people created structuresto get the word out to even more people.And lo and behold,250,000 people showed upon the right day at the right timeto hear him speak. How many of them showed up for him?Zero.They showed up for themselves.It's what they believed about Americathat got them to travel in a bus for eight hoursto stand in the sun in Washington in the middle of August.It's what they believed, and it wasn't about black versus white:25 percent of the audience was white.Dr. King believed thatthere are two types of laws in this world:those that are made by a higher authorityand those that are made by man.And not until all the laws that are made by manare consistent with the laws that are made by the higher authoritywill we live in a just world.It just so happened that the Civil Rights Movementwas the perfect thing to help himbring his cause to life.We followed, not for him, but for ourselves.And, by the way, he gave the "I have a dream" speech,not the "I have a plan" speech. (Laughter) Listen to politicians now, with their comprehensive 12-point plans.They're not inspiring anybody.Because there are leaders and there are those who lead.Leaders hold a position of poweror authority,but those who lead inspire us.Whether they're individuals or organizations,we follow those who lead,not because we have to,but because we want to.We follow those who lead, not for them,but for ourselves.And it's those who start with "why"that have the abilityto inspire those around themor find others who inspire them. Thank you very much. (Applause) Source: www.ted.com
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Al Gore:Climate change-3 videos & scripts
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Video 1: Averting the climate crisis
Transcript: (unedited version) Thank you so much, Chris. And it's truly a great honorto have the opportunity to come to this stage twice. I'm extremely grateful.I have been blown away by this conference, and I want to thank all of you for the manynice comments about what I had to say the other night.And I say that sincerely, partly because -- (Mock sob) -- I need that! (Laughter)Put yourselves in my position!I flew on Air Force Two for eight years.Now I have to take off my shoes or boots to get on an airplane!(Laughter) (Applause) I'll tell you one quick story to illustrate what that's been like for me.It's a true story -- every bit of this is true.Soon after Tipper and I left the -- (Mock sob) -- White House -- (Laughter) --we were driving from our home in Nashville to a little farm we have50 miles east of Nashville --driving ourselves.I know it sounds like a little thing to you, but -- (Laughter) --I looked in the rearview mirror and all of a sudden it just hit me.There was no motorcade back there.You've heard of phantom limb pain? (Laughter)This was a rented Ford Taurus. It was dinnertime,and we started looking for a place to eat.We were on I-40. We got to Exit 238, Lebanon, Tennessee.We got off the exit, started looking for a -- we found a Shoney's restaurant.Low-cost family restaurant chain, for those of you who don't know it.We went in and sat down at the booth, and the waitress came over,made a big commotion over Tipper. (Laughter)She took our order, and then went to the couple in the booth next to us,and she lowered her voice so much I had to really strain to hear what she was saying.She said "Yes, that's former Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper."And the man said, "He's come down a long way, hasn't he?" (Laughter) There's been kind of a series of epiphanies.The very next day, continuing a totally true story,I got on a G-5 to fly to Africa to make a speech in Nigeria,in the city of Lagos, on the topic of energy.I began the speech by telling them the story of what had just happenedthe day before in Nashville.I told it pretty much the same way I've just shared it with you:Tipper and I were driving ourselves, Shoney's, low-cost family restaurant chain,what the man said -- they laughed.I gave my speech, then went back out to the airport to fly back home.I fell asleep on the plane, until during the middle of the night,we landed on the Azores Islands for refueling.I woke up, they opened the door, I went out to get some fresh air,and I looked and there was a man running across the runway.And he was waving a piece of paper, and he was yelling,"Call Washington! Call Washington!"And I thought to myself, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the Atlantic,what in the world could be wrong in Washington?Then I remembered it could be a bunch of things.(Laughter) But what it turned out to be was that my staff was extremely upset becauseone of the wire services in Nigeria had already written a story about my speech.And it had already been printed in cities all across the United States of America-- it was printed in Monterey, I checked. And the story began,"Former Vice President Al Gore announced in Nigeria yesterday,'My wife Tipper and I have opened a low-cost family restaurant, named Shoney's,and we are running it ourselves.'" (Laughter)Before I could get back to U.S. soil,David Letterman and Jay Leno had already started in on-- one of them had me in a big white chef's hat,Tipper was saying, "One more burger, with fries!"Three days later, I got a nice, long, handwritten letter from my friend and partnerand colleague Bill Clinton saying, "Congratulations on the new restaurant, Al!"(Laughter)We like to celebrate each other's successes in life. I was going to talk about information ecology.But I was thinking that since I plan to make a lifelong habit of coming back to TED,that maybe I could talk about that another time. (Applause) Chris Anderson: It's a deal! Al Gore: I want to focus on what many of you have said you would like me to elaborate on.What can you do about the climate crisis? I want to start with --I'm going to show some new images, and I'm going to recapitulate just four or five.Now, the slide show. I update the slide show every time I give it.I add new images because I learn more about it every time I give it.It's like beachcombing, you know? Every time the tide comes in and out,you find some more shells.Just in the last two days, we got the new temperature records in January.This is just for the United States of America. Historical average forJanuary is 31 degrees. Last month was 39.5 degrees. Now, I know that you wanted some more bad news about the environment-- I'm kidding -- but these are the recapitulation slides,and then I'm going to go into new material about what you can do.But I wanted to elaborate on a couple of these.First of all, this is where we're projected to go with the U.S. contribution to global warming,under business as usual. Efficiency in end-use electricity and end-use of all energyis the low-hanging fruit. Efficiency and conservation:it's not a cost; it's a profit. The sign is wrong.It's not negative; it's positive. These are investments that pay for themselves.But they are also very effective in deflecting our path. Cars and trucks -- I talked about that in the slideshow,but I want you to put it in perspective.It's an easy, visible target of concern, and it should be,but there is more global warming pollution that comes from buildingsthan from cars and trucks.Cars and trucks are very significant, and we have the lowest standards in the world,and so we should address that. But it's part of the puzzle.Other transportation efficiency is as important as cars and trucks!Renewables at the current levels of technological efficiencycan make this much difference, and with what Vinod, and John Doerr, and others,many of you here -- a lot of people directly involved in this-- this wedge is going to grow much more rapidly than the current projection shows it.Carbon Capture and Sequestration -- that's what CCS stands for-- is likely to become the killer appthat will enable us to continue to use fossil fuels in a way that is safe.Not quite there yet. OK. Now, what can you do? Reduce emissions in your home.Most of these expenditures are also profitable.Insulation, better design, buy green electricity where you can.I mentioned automobiles -- buy a hybrid. Use light rail.Figure out some of the other options that are much better. It's important. Be a green consumer. You have choices with everything you buy,between things that have a harsh effect or a much lessharsh effect on the global climate crisis.Consider this. Make a decision to live a carbon-neutral life.Those of you who are good at branding,I'd love to get your advice and help onhow to say this in a way that connects with the most people.It is easier than you think. It really is.A lot of us in here have made that decision and it is really pretty easy.It means: reduce your carbon dioxide emissions with the full range of choices that you make,and then purchase or acquire offsets for the remainder that you have notcompletely reduced. And what it means is elaborated at climatecrisis.net. There is a carbon calculator. Participant Productions convened,with my active involvement, the leading software writers in the worldon this arcane science of carbon calculation to construct aconsumer-friendly carbon calculator.You can very precisely calculate what your CO2 emissions are,and then you will be given options to reduce.And by the time the movie comes out in May, this will be updated to 2.0and we will have click-through purchases of offsets. Next, consider making your business carbon-neutral. Again, some of us have done that,and it's not as hard as you think. Integrate climate solutions into all of your innovations,whether you are from the technology, or entertainment,or design and architecture community.Invest sustainably. Majora mentioned this.Listen, if you have invested money with managers who youcompensate on the basis of their annual performance,don't ever again complain about quarterly report CEO management.Over time, people do what you pay them to do. And if they judge how muchthey're going to get paid on your capital that they've invested,based on the short-term returns, you're going to get short-term decisions.A lot more to be said about that. Become a catalyst of change. Teach others; learn about it; talk about it.The movie comes out -- the movie is a movie version of the slideshowI gave two nights ago, except it's a lot more entertaining. And it comes out in May.Many of you here have the opportunity to ensure that a lot of people see it.Consider sending somebody to Nashville. Pick well.And I am personally going to train people to give this slideshow, re-purposed,with some of the personal stories obviously replaced with a generic approach,and -- it's not just the slides, it's what they mean. And it's how they link together.And so I'm going to be conducting a course this summerfor a group of people that are nominated by different folks to come and then give it,en masse, in communities all across the country,and we're going to update the slideshow for all of them every single weekto keep it right on the cutting edge.Working with Larry Lessig, it will be, somewhere in that process,posted with tools and limited-use copyrights,so that young people can remix it and do it in their own way.(Applause) Where did anybody get the idea that you ought to stay arm's length from politics?It doesn't mean that if you are a Republican that I'm trying to convince you to be aDemocrat. We need Republicans as well. This used to be a bipartisan issue,and I know that in this group it really is. Become politically active.Make our democracy work the way it's supposed to work.Support the idea of capping carbon dioxide emissions, global warming pollution,and trading it. Here's why: as long as the United States is out of the world system,it's not a closed system.Once it becomes a closed system, with U.S. participation,then everybody who's on a board of directors-- how many people here serve on the board of directors of a corporation?Once it's a closed system, you will have legal liability if you do not urge your CEOto get the maximum income from reducing and trading the carbon emissionsthat can be avoided. The market will work to solve this problem if we can accomplish this.Help with the mass persuasion campaign that will start this spring.We have to change the minds of the American people. Because presently thepoliticians do not have permission to do what needs to be done. And in our modern country, the role of logic and reason no longer includesmediating between wealth and power the way it once did.It's now repetition of short, hot-button, 30-second, 28-second television ads.We have to buy a lot of those ads.Let's rebrand global warming, as many of you have suggested.I like "climate crisis" instead of "climate collapse,"but again, those of you who are good at branding, I need your help on this.Somebody said the test we're facing now, a scientist told me,is whether the combination of an opposable thumband a neocortex is a viable combination.That's really true. I said the other night, and I'll repeat now: this is not a political issue.Again, the Republicans here, this shouldn't be partisan.You have more influence than some of us who are Democrats do.This is an opportunity. Not just this, but connected to the ideas that are here,to bring more coherence to them.We are one.Thank you very much, I appreciate it.(Applause) Video 2: New Thinking on the climate crisis Transcript: (unedited version) I have given the slide show that I gave here two years ago about 2,000 times.I'm giving a short slide show this morningthat I'm giving for the very first time, so --well it's -- I don't want or need to raise the bar,I'm actually trying to lower the bar.Because I've cobbled this togetherto try to meet the challenge of this session. And I was reminded by Karen Armstrong's fantastic presentationthat religion really properly understoodis not about belief, but about behavior.Perhaps we should say the same thing about optimism.How dare we be optimistic?Optimism is sometimes characterized as a belief, an intellectual posture.As Mahatma Gandhi famously said,"You must become the change you wish to see in the world."And the outcome about whichwe wish to be optimistic is not going to be createdby the belief alone, except to the extent that the beliefbrings about new behavior. But the word "behavior"is also, I think, sometimes misunderstood in this context.I'm a big advocate of changingthe lightbulbs and buying hybrids,and Tipper and I put 33 solar panels on our house,and dug the geothermal wells, and did all of that other stuff.But, as important as it is to change the lightbulbs,it is more important to change the laws.And when we change our behavior in our daily lives,we sometimes leave out the citizenship partand the democracy part. In order to be optimistic about this,we have to become incredibly active as citizens in our democracy.In order to solve the climate crisis,we have to solve the democracy crisis.And we have one. I have been trying to tell this story for a long time.I was reminded of that recently, by a womanwho walked past the table I was sitting at,just staring at me as she walked past. She was in her 70s,looked like she had a kind face. I thought nothing of ituntil I saw from the corner of my eyeshe was walking from the opposite direction,also just staring at me. And so I said, "How do you do?"And she said, "You know, if you dyed your hair black,you would look just like Al Gore." (Laughter) Many years ago, when I was a young congressman,I spent an awful lot of time dealing with the challengeof nuclear arms control -- the nuclear arms race.And the military historians taught me,during that quest, that military conflicts are typicallyput into three categories: local battles,regional or theater wars, and the rare but all-importantglobal, world war -- strategic conflicts.And each level of conflict requires a different allocation of resources,a different approach,a different organizational model.Environmental challenges fall into the same three categories,and most of what we think aboutare local environmental problems: air pollution, water pollution,hazardous waste dumps. But there are alsoregional environmental problems, like acid rainfrom the Midwest to the Northeast, and from Western Europeto the Arctic, and from the Midwestout the Mississippi into the dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico.And there are lots of those. But the climate crisisis the rare but all-importantglobal, or strategic, conflict.Everything is affected. And we have to organize our responseappropriately. We need a worldwide, global mobilizationfor renewable energy, conservation, efficiencyand a global transition to a low-carbon economy.We have work to do. And we can mobilize resourcesand political will. But the political willhas to be mobilized, in order to mobilize the resources. Let me show you these slides here.I thought I would start with the logo. What's missing here,of course, is the North Polar ice cap.Greenland remains. Twenty-eight years ago, this is what thepolar ice cap -- the North Polar ice cap -- looked likeat the end of the summer, at the fall equinox.This last fall, I went to the Snow and Ice Data Centerin Boulder, Colorado, and talked to the researchershere in Monterey at the Naval Postgraduate Laboratory.This is what's happened in the last 28 years.To put it in perspective, 2005 was the previous record.Here's what happened last fallthat has really unnerved the researchers.The North Polar ice cap is the same size geographically --doesn't look quite the same size --but it is exactly the same size as the United States,minus an area roughly equal to the state of Arizona.The amount that disappeared in 2005was equivalent to everything east of the Mississippi.The extra amount that disappeared last fallwas equivalent to this much. It comes back in the winter,but not as permanent ice, as thin ice --vulnerable. The amount remaining could be completely gonein summer in as little as five years.That puts a lot of pressure on Greenland.Already, around the Arctic Circle --this is a famous village in Alaska. This is a townin Newfoundland. Antarctica. Latest studies from NASA.The amount of a moderate-to-severe snow meltingof an area equivalent to the size of California. "They were the best of times,they were the worst of times": the most famous opening sentencein English literature. I want to share brieflya tale of two planets. Earth and Venusare exactly the same size. Earth's diameteris about 400 kilometers larger, but essentially the same size.They have exactly the same amount of carbon.But the difference is, on Earth, most of the carbonhas been leeched over time out of the atmosphere,deposited in the ground as coal, oil,natural gas, etc. On Venus, most of itis in the atmosphere. The difference is that our temperatureis 59 degrees on average. On Venus,it's 855. This is relevant to our current strategyof taking as much carbon out of the ground as quickly as possible,and putting it into the atmosphere.It's not because Venus is slightly closer to the Sun.It's three times hotter than Mercury,which is right next to the Sun. Now, briefly,here's an image you've seen, as one of the only old images,but I show it because I want to briefly give you CSI: Climate. The global scientific community says:man-made global warming pollution, put into the atmosphere,thickening this, is trapping more of the outgoing infrared.You all know that. At the lastIPCC summary, the scientists wanted to say,"How certain are you?" They wanted to answer that "99 percent."The Chinese objected, and so the compromise was"more than 90 percent."Now, the skeptics say, "Oh, wait a minute,this could be variations in this energycoming in from the sun." If that were true,the stratosphere would be heated as well as thelower atmosphere, if it's more coming in.If it's more being trapped on the way out, then you wouldexpect it to be warmer here and cooler here. Here is the lower atmosphere.Here's the stratosphere: cooler.CSI: Climate. Now, here's the good news. Sixty-eight percent of Americans now believethat human activity is responsiblefor global warming. Sixty-nine percent believe that the Earth is heating upin a significant way. There has been progress,but here is the key: when given a listof challenges to confront, global warming is still listed at near the bottom.What is missing is a sense of urgency.If you agree with the factual analysis,but you don't feel the sense of urgency,where does that leave you?Well, the Alliance for Climate Protection, which I headin conjunction with Current TV -- who did this pro bono --did a worldwide contest to do commercials on how to communicate this.This is the winner. NBC -- I'll show all of the networks here -- the top journalistsfor NBC asked 956 questions in 2007of the presidential candidates: two of them were aboutthe climate crisis. ABC: 844 questions, two about the climate crisis.Fox: two. CNN: two. CBS: zero.From laughs to tears -- this is one of the oldertobacco commercials.So here's what we're doing.This is gasoline consumption in all of these countries. And us.But it's not just the developed nations.The developing countries are now following usand accelerating their pace. And actually,their cumulative emissions this year are the equivalentto where we were in 1965. And they're catching upvery dramatically. The total concentrations:by 2025, they will be essentially where we were in 1985.If the wealthy countries were completely missingfrom the picture, we would still have this crisis.But we have given to the developing countriesthe technologies and the ways of thinkingthat are creating the crisis. This is in Bolivia --over thirty years. This is peak fishing in a few seconds. The '60s.'70s. '80s. '90s. We have to stop this. And the good news is that we can.We have the technologies.We have to have a unified view of how to go about this:the struggle against poverty in the worldand the challenge of cutting wealthy country emissions,all has a single, very simple solution. People say, "What's the solution?" Here it is.Put a price on carbon. We need a CO2 tax, revenue neutral,to replace taxation on employment, which was invented by Bismarck --and some things have changedsince the 19th century.In the poor world, we have to integrate the responsesto poverty with the solutions to the climate crisis.Plans to fight poverty in Ugandaare mooted, if we do not solve the climate crisis. But responses can actually make a huge differencein the poor countries. This is a proposalthat has been talked about a lot in Europe.This was from Nature magazine. These are concentratingsolar, renewable energy plants, linked in a so-called "supergrid"to supply all of the electrical powerto Europe, largely from developing countries -- high-voltage DC currents.This is not pie in the sky; this can be done. We need to do it for our own economy.The latest figures show that the old modelis not working. There are a lot of great investmentsthat you can make. If you are investing in tar sandsor shale oil, then you have a portfoliothat is crammed with sub-prime carbon assets.And it is based on an old model.Junkies find veins in their toes when the onesin their arms and their legs collapse. Developing tar sandsand coal shale is the equivalent. Here are just a few of the investmentsthat I personally think make sense.I have a stake in these, so I'll have a disclaimer there.But geothermal, concentrating solar,advanced photovoltaics, efficiency and conservation. You've seen this slide before, but there's a change.The only two countries that didn't ratify-- and now there's only one. Australia had an election.And there was a campaign in Australiathat involved television and Internet and radio commercialsto lift the sense of urgency for the people there.And we trained 250 people to give the slide showin every town and village and city in Australia.Lot of other things contributed to it,but the new Prime Minister announced thathis very first priority would be to change Australia's positionon Kyoto, and he has. Now, they came to an awarenesspartly because of the horrible drought that they have had.This is Lake Lanier. My friend Heidi Cullensaid that if we gave droughts names the way we give hurricanes names,we'd call the one in the southeast now Katrina,and we would say it's headed toward Atlanta.We can't wait for the kind of droughtAustralia had to change our political culture.Here's more good news. The cities supporting Kyoto in the U.S.are up to 780 -- and I thought I saw one go by there,just to localize this -- which is good news. Now, to close, we heard a couple of days agoabout the value of making individual heroism so commonplacethat it becomes banal or routine.What we need is another hero generation. Those of us who are alivein the United States of Americatoday especially, but also the rest of the world,have to somehow understand that historyhas presented us with a choice -- just as Jill [Bolte] Taylor was figuring outhow to save her life while she was distractedby the amazing experience that she was going through.We now have a culture of distraction.But we have a planetary emergency.And we have to find a way to create,in the generation of those alive today, a sense of generational mission.I wish I could find the words to convey this.This was another hero generationthat brought democracy to the planet.Another that ended slavery. And that gave women the right to vote.We can do this. Don't tell me that we don't have the capacity to do it.If we had just one week's worth of what we spend on the Iraq War,we could be well on the way to solving this challenge.We have the capacity to do it. One final point: I'm optimistic, because I believewe have the capacity, at moments of great challenge,to set aside the causes of distraction and rise to the challengethat history is presenting to us.Sometimes I hear people respond to the disturbing facts of the climate crisisby saying, "Oh, this is so terrible.What a burden we have." I would like to ask youto reframe that. How many generationsin all of human history have had the opportunityto rise to a challenge that is worthy of our best efforts?A challenge that can pull from usmore than we knew we could do? I think we ought to approachthis challenge with a sense of profound joyand gratitude that we are the generationabout which, a thousand years from now,philharmonic orchestras and poets and singers will celebrateby saying, they were the ones that found it within themselvesto solve this crisis and lay the basisfor a bright and optimistic human future. Let's do that. Thank you very much. Chris Anderson: For so many people at TED, there is deep painthat basically a design issueon a voting form --one bad design issue meant that your voice wasn't being heardlike that in the last eight years in a positionwhere you could make these things come true.That hurts. Al Gore: You have no idea. (Laughter) CA: When you look at what the leading candidatesin your own party are doing now -- I mean, there's --are you excited by their plans on global warming? AG: The answer to the question is hard for mebecause, on the one hand, I think thatwe should feel really great about the factthat the Republican nominee -- certain nominee --John McCain, and both of the finalistsfor the Democratic nomination -- all three have a very differentand forward-leaning positionon the climate crisis. All three have offered leadership,and all three are very different from the approach takenby the current administration. And I thinkthat all three have also been responsible inputting forward plans and proposals. But the campaign dialogue that --as illustrated by the questions --that was put together by theLeague of Conservation Voters, by the way, the analysis of all the questions --and, by the way, the debates have all beensponsored by something that goes by the Orwellian label,"Clean Coal." Has anybody noticed that?Every single debate has been sponsored by "Clean Coal.""Now, even lower emissions!" The richness and fullness of the dialoguein our democracy has not laid the basisfor the kind of bold initiative that is really needed.So they're saying the right things and they may --whichever of them is elected -- may do the right thing,but let me tell you: when I came back from Kyotoin 1997, with a feeling of great happinessthat we'd gotten that breakthrough there,and then confronted the United States Senate,only one out of 100 senators was willing to voteto confirm, to ratify that treaty. Whatever the candidates sayhas to be laid alongside what the people say. This challenge is part of the fabricof our whole civilization.CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally.And now we mechanized that process. Changing that patternrequires a scope, a scale, a speed of changethat is beyond what we have done in the past.So that's why I began by saying,be optimistic in what you do, but be an active citizen.Demand -- change the light bulbs,but change the laws. Change the global treaties.We have to speak up. We have to solve this democracy -- this --We have sclerosis in our democracy. And we have to change that.Use the Internet. Go on the Internet.Connect with people. Become very active as citizens.Have a moratorium -- we shouldn'thave any new coal-fired generating plantsthat aren't able to capture and store CO2, which means we have toquickly build these renewable sources.Now, nobody is talking on that scale. But I do believethat between now and November, it is possible.This Alliance for Climate Protectionis going to launch a nationwide campaign --grassroots mobilization, television ads, Internet ads,radio, newspaper -- with partnerships with everybodyfrom the Girl Scouts to the hunters and fishermen. We need help. We need help. CA: In terms of your own personal role going forward,Al, is there something more than thatyou would like to be doing? AG: I have prayed that I would be able to find the answerto that question. What can I do?Buckminster Fuller once wrote, "If the futureof all human civilization depended on me, what would I do?How would I be?" It does depend on all of us,but again, not just with the light bulbs.We, most of us here, are Americans. We have a democracy.We can change things, but we have to actively change.What's needed really is a higher level of consciousness.And that's hard to --that's hard to create -- but it is coming.There's an old African proverb that some of you knowthat says, "If you want to go quickly, go alone;if you want to go far, go together." We have to go far, quickly.So we have to have a change in consciousness.A change in commitment. A new sense of urgency.A new appreciation for the privilegethat we have of undertaking this challenge. CA: Al Gore, thank you so much for coming to TED. AG: Thank you. Thank you very much. Video 3: Al Gore warns on latest climate trends Transcript: (unedited version) Last year I showed these two slides so thatdemonstrate that the arctic ice cap,which for most of the last three million yearshas been the size of the lower 48 states,has shrunk by 40 percent.But this understates the seriousness of this particular problembecause it doesn't show the thickness of the ice.The arctic ice cap is, in a sense,the beating heart of the global climate system.It expands in winter and contracts in summer.The next slide I show you will bea rapid fast-forward of what's happened over the last 25 years.The permanent ice is marked in red.As you see, it expands to the dark blue --that's the annual ice in winter,and it contracts in summer.The so-called permanent ice, five years old or older,you can see is almost like blood,spilling out of the body here.In 25 years it's gone from this, to this. This is a problem because the warmingheats up the frozen ground around the Arctic Ocean,where there is a massive amount of frozen carbonwhich, when it thaws, is turned into methane by microbes.Compared to the total amount of global warming pollution in the atmosphere,that amount could double if we cross this tipping point.Already in some shallow lakes in Alaska,methane is actively bubbling up out of the water.Professor Katey Walter from the University of Alaskawent out with another team to another shallow lake last winter.Video: Whoa! (Laughter)Al Gore: She's okay. The question is whether we will be. And one reason is, this enormous heat sinkheats up Greenland from the north.This is an annual melting river.But the volumes are much larger than ever.This is the Kangerlussuaq River in southwest Greenland.If you want to know how sea level risesfrom land-base ice meltingthis is where it reaches the sea.These flows are increasing very rapidly.At the other end of the planet, Antarcticathe largest mass of ice on the planet.Last month scientists reported the entire continentis now in negative ice balance.And west Antarctica cropped up on top some under-sea islands,is particularly rapid in its melting.That's equal to 20 feet of sea level, as is Greenland. In the Himalayas, the third largest mass of ice:at the top you see new lakes, which a few years ago were glaciers.40 percent of all the people in the worldget half of their drinking water from that melting flow.In the Andes, this glacier is thesource of drinking water for this city.The flows have increased.But when they go away, so does much of the drinking water.In California there has been a 40 percentdecline in the Sierra snowpack.This is hitting the reservoirs.And the predictions, as you've read, are serious. This drying around the world has lead toa dramatic increase in fires.And the disasters around the worldhave been increasing at an absolutely extraordinaryand unprecedented rate.Four times as many in the last 30 yearsas in the previous 75.This is a completely unsustainable pattern.If you look at in the context of historyyou can see what this is doing. In the last five yearswe've added 70 million tons of CO2every 24 hours --25 million tons every day to the oceans.Look carefully at the area of the eastern Pacific,from the Americas, extending westward,and on either side of the Indian subcontinent,where there is a radical depletion of oxygen in the oceans.The biggest single cause of global warming,along with deforestation, which is 20 percent of it, is the burning of fossil fuels.Oil is a problem, and coal is the most serious problem.The United States is one of the twolargest emitters, along with China.And the proposal has been to build a lot more coal plants. But we're beginning to see a sea change.Here are the ones that have been cancelled in the last few yearswith some green alternatives proposed.(Applause)However there is a political battlein our country.And the coal industries and the oil industriesspent a quarter of a billion dollars in the last calendar yearpromoting clean coal,which is an oxymoron.That image reminded me of something.(Laughter)Around Christmas, in my home in Tennessee,a billion gallons of coal sludge was spilled.You probably saw it on the news.This, all over the country, is the second largest waste stream in America.This happened around Christmas.One of the coal industry's ads around Christmas was this one. Video: ♪♫ Frosty the coal man is a jolly, happy soul.He's abundant here in America,and he helps our economy grow.Frosty the coal man is getting cleaner everyday.He's affordable and adorable, and workers keep their pay. Al Gore: This is the source of much of the coal in West Virginia.The largest mountaintop miner is the head of Massey Coal. Video: Don Blankenship: Let me be clear about it. Al Gore,Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, they don't know what they're talking about. Al Gore: So the Alliance for Climate Protectionhas launched two campaigns.This is one of them, part of one of them. Video: Actor: At COALergy we view climate change as a very seriousthreat to our business.That's why we've made it our primary goalto spend a large sum of moneyon an advertising effort to help bring out and complicatethe truth about coal.The fact is, coal isn't dirty.We think it's clean --smells good, too.So don't worry about climate change.Leave that up to us.(Laughter) Video: Actor: Clean coal -- you've heard a lot about it.So let's take a tour of this state-of-the-art clean coal facility.Amazing! The machinery is kind of loud.But that's the sound of clean coal technology.And while burning coal is one of the leading causes of global warming,the remarkable clean coal technology you see herechanges everything.Take a good long look: this is today's clean coal technology. Al Gore: Finally, the positive alternativemeshes with our economic challengeand our national security challenge. Video: Narrator: America is in crisis -- the economy,national security, the climate crisis.The thread that links them all:our addiction to carbon based fuels,like dirty coal and foreign oil.But now there is a bold new solution to get us out of this mess.Repower America with 100 percent clean electricitywithin 10 years.A plan to put America back to work,make us more secure, and help stop global warming.Finally, a solution that's big enough to solve our problems.Repower America. Find out more. Al Gore: This is the last one. Video: Narrator: It's about repowering America.One of the fastest ways to cut our dependenceon old dirty fuels that are killing our planet.Man: Future's over here. Wind, sun, a new energy grid.Man #2: New investments to create high-paying jobs.Narrator: Repower America. It's time to get real. Al Gore: There is an old African proverb that says,"If you want to go quickly, go alone.If you want to go far, go together."We need to go far, quickly.Thank you very much.(Applause) Source: www.ted.com
Video 1: Averting the climate crisis
Transcript: (unedited version) Thank you so much, Chris. And it's truly a great honorto have the opportunity to come to this stage twice. I'm extremely grateful.I have been blown away by this conference, and I want to thank all of you for the manynice comments about what I had to say the other night.And I say that sincerely, partly because -- (Mock sob) -- I need that! (Laughter)Put yourselves in my position!I flew on Air Force Two for eight years.Now I have to take off my shoes or boots to get on an airplane!(Laughter) (Applause) I'll tell you one quick story to illustrate what that's been like for me.It's a true story -- every bit of this is true.Soon after Tipper and I left the -- (Mock sob) -- White House -- (Laughter) --we were driving from our home in Nashville to a little farm we have50 miles east of Nashville --driving ourselves.I know it sounds like a little thing to you, but -- (Laughter) --I looked in the rearview mirror and all of a sudden it just hit me.There was no motorcade back there.You've heard of phantom limb pain? (Laughter)This was a rented Ford Taurus. It was dinnertime,and we started looking for a place to eat.We were on I-40. We got to Exit 238, Lebanon, Tennessee.We got off the exit, started looking for a -- we found a Shoney's restaurant.Low-cost family restaurant chain, for those of you who don't know it.We went in and sat down at the booth, and the waitress came over,made a big commotion over Tipper. (Laughter)She took our order, and then went to the couple in the booth next to us,and she lowered her voice so much I had to really strain to hear what she was saying.She said "Yes, that's former Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper."And the man said, "He's come down a long way, hasn't he?" (Laughter) There's been kind of a series of epiphanies.The very next day, continuing a totally true story,I got on a G-5 to fly to Africa to make a speech in Nigeria,in the city of Lagos, on the topic of energy.I began the speech by telling them the story of what had just happenedthe day before in Nashville.I told it pretty much the same way I've just shared it with you:Tipper and I were driving ourselves, Shoney's, low-cost family restaurant chain,what the man said -- they laughed.I gave my speech, then went back out to the airport to fly back home.I fell asleep on the plane, until during the middle of the night,we landed on the Azores Islands for refueling.I woke up, they opened the door, I went out to get some fresh air,and I looked and there was a man running across the runway.And he was waving a piece of paper, and he was yelling,"Call Washington! Call Washington!"And I thought to myself, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the Atlantic,what in the world could be wrong in Washington?Then I remembered it could be a bunch of things.(Laughter) But what it turned out to be was that my staff was extremely upset becauseone of the wire services in Nigeria had already written a story about my speech.And it had already been printed in cities all across the United States of America-- it was printed in Monterey, I checked. And the story began,"Former Vice President Al Gore announced in Nigeria yesterday,'My wife Tipper and I have opened a low-cost family restaurant, named Shoney's,and we are running it ourselves.'" (Laughter)Before I could get back to U.S. soil,David Letterman and Jay Leno had already started in on-- one of them had me in a big white chef's hat,Tipper was saying, "One more burger, with fries!"Three days later, I got a nice, long, handwritten letter from my friend and partnerand colleague Bill Clinton saying, "Congratulations on the new restaurant, Al!"(Laughter)We like to celebrate each other's successes in life. I was going to talk about information ecology.But I was thinking that since I plan to make a lifelong habit of coming back to TED,that maybe I could talk about that another time. (Applause) Chris Anderson: It's a deal! Al Gore: I want to focus on what many of you have said you would like me to elaborate on.What can you do about the climate crisis? I want to start with --I'm going to show some new images, and I'm going to recapitulate just four or five.Now, the slide show. I update the slide show every time I give it.I add new images because I learn more about it every time I give it.It's like beachcombing, you know? Every time the tide comes in and out,you find some more shells.Just in the last two days, we got the new temperature records in January.This is just for the United States of America. Historical average forJanuary is 31 degrees. Last month was 39.5 degrees. Now, I know that you wanted some more bad news about the environment-- I'm kidding -- but these are the recapitulation slides,and then I'm going to go into new material about what you can do.But I wanted to elaborate on a couple of these.First of all, this is where we're projected to go with the U.S. contribution to global warming,under business as usual. Efficiency in end-use electricity and end-use of all energyis the low-hanging fruit. Efficiency and conservation:it's not a cost; it's a profit. The sign is wrong.It's not negative; it's positive. These are investments that pay for themselves.But they are also very effective in deflecting our path. Cars and trucks -- I talked about that in the slideshow,but I want you to put it in perspective.It's an easy, visible target of concern, and it should be,but there is more global warming pollution that comes from buildingsthan from cars and trucks.Cars and trucks are very significant, and we have the lowest standards in the world,and so we should address that. But it's part of the puzzle.Other transportation efficiency is as important as cars and trucks!Renewables at the current levels of technological efficiencycan make this much difference, and with what Vinod, and John Doerr, and others,many of you here -- a lot of people directly involved in this-- this wedge is going to grow much more rapidly than the current projection shows it.Carbon Capture and Sequestration -- that's what CCS stands for-- is likely to become the killer appthat will enable us to continue to use fossil fuels in a way that is safe.Not quite there yet. OK. Now, what can you do? Reduce emissions in your home.Most of these expenditures are also profitable.Insulation, better design, buy green electricity where you can.I mentioned automobiles -- buy a hybrid. Use light rail.Figure out some of the other options that are much better. It's important. Be a green consumer. You have choices with everything you buy,between things that have a harsh effect or a much lessharsh effect on the global climate crisis.Consider this. Make a decision to live a carbon-neutral life.Those of you who are good at branding,I'd love to get your advice and help onhow to say this in a way that connects with the most people.It is easier than you think. It really is.A lot of us in here have made that decision and it is really pretty easy.It means: reduce your carbon dioxide emissions with the full range of choices that you make,and then purchase or acquire offsets for the remainder that you have notcompletely reduced. And what it means is elaborated at climatecrisis.net. There is a carbon calculator. Participant Productions convened,with my active involvement, the leading software writers in the worldon this arcane science of carbon calculation to construct aconsumer-friendly carbon calculator.You can very precisely calculate what your CO2 emissions are,and then you will be given options to reduce.And by the time the movie comes out in May, this will be updated to 2.0and we will have click-through purchases of offsets. Next, consider making your business carbon-neutral. Again, some of us have done that,and it's not as hard as you think. Integrate climate solutions into all of your innovations,whether you are from the technology, or entertainment,or design and architecture community.Invest sustainably. Majora mentioned this.Listen, if you have invested money with managers who youcompensate on the basis of their annual performance,don't ever again complain about quarterly report CEO management.Over time, people do what you pay them to do. And if they judge how muchthey're going to get paid on your capital that they've invested,based on the short-term returns, you're going to get short-term decisions.A lot more to be said about that. Become a catalyst of change. Teach others; learn about it; talk about it.The movie comes out -- the movie is a movie version of the slideshowI gave two nights ago, except it's a lot more entertaining. And it comes out in May.Many of you here have the opportunity to ensure that a lot of people see it.Consider sending somebody to Nashville. Pick well.And I am personally going to train people to give this slideshow, re-purposed,with some of the personal stories obviously replaced with a generic approach,and -- it's not just the slides, it's what they mean. And it's how they link together.And so I'm going to be conducting a course this summerfor a group of people that are nominated by different folks to come and then give it,en masse, in communities all across the country,and we're going to update the slideshow for all of them every single weekto keep it right on the cutting edge.Working with Larry Lessig, it will be, somewhere in that process,posted with tools and limited-use copyrights,so that young people can remix it and do it in their own way.(Applause) Where did anybody get the idea that you ought to stay arm's length from politics?It doesn't mean that if you are a Republican that I'm trying to convince you to be aDemocrat. We need Republicans as well. This used to be a bipartisan issue,and I know that in this group it really is. Become politically active.Make our democracy work the way it's supposed to work.Support the idea of capping carbon dioxide emissions, global warming pollution,and trading it. Here's why: as long as the United States is out of the world system,it's not a closed system.Once it becomes a closed system, with U.S. participation,then everybody who's on a board of directors-- how many people here serve on the board of directors of a corporation?Once it's a closed system, you will have legal liability if you do not urge your CEOto get the maximum income from reducing and trading the carbon emissionsthat can be avoided. The market will work to solve this problem if we can accomplish this.Help with the mass persuasion campaign that will start this spring.We have to change the minds of the American people. Because presently thepoliticians do not have permission to do what needs to be done. And in our modern country, the role of logic and reason no longer includesmediating between wealth and power the way it once did.It's now repetition of short, hot-button, 30-second, 28-second television ads.We have to buy a lot of those ads.Let's rebrand global warming, as many of you have suggested.I like "climate crisis" instead of "climate collapse,"but again, those of you who are good at branding, I need your help on this.Somebody said the test we're facing now, a scientist told me,is whether the combination of an opposable thumband a neocortex is a viable combination.That's really true. I said the other night, and I'll repeat now: this is not a political issue.Again, the Republicans here, this shouldn't be partisan.You have more influence than some of us who are Democrats do.This is an opportunity. Not just this, but connected to the ideas that are here,to bring more coherence to them.We are one.Thank you very much, I appreciate it.(Applause) Video 2: New Thinking on the climate crisis Transcript: (unedited version) I have given the slide show that I gave here two years ago about 2,000 times.I'm giving a short slide show this morningthat I'm giving for the very first time, so --well it's -- I don't want or need to raise the bar,I'm actually trying to lower the bar.Because I've cobbled this togetherto try to meet the challenge of this session. And I was reminded by Karen Armstrong's fantastic presentationthat religion really properly understoodis not about belief, but about behavior.Perhaps we should say the same thing about optimism.How dare we be optimistic?Optimism is sometimes characterized as a belief, an intellectual posture.As Mahatma Gandhi famously said,"You must become the change you wish to see in the world."And the outcome about whichwe wish to be optimistic is not going to be createdby the belief alone, except to the extent that the beliefbrings about new behavior. But the word "behavior"is also, I think, sometimes misunderstood in this context.I'm a big advocate of changingthe lightbulbs and buying hybrids,and Tipper and I put 33 solar panels on our house,and dug the geothermal wells, and did all of that other stuff.But, as important as it is to change the lightbulbs,it is more important to change the laws.And when we change our behavior in our daily lives,we sometimes leave out the citizenship partand the democracy part. In order to be optimistic about this,we have to become incredibly active as citizens in our democracy.In order to solve the climate crisis,we have to solve the democracy crisis.And we have one. I have been trying to tell this story for a long time.I was reminded of that recently, by a womanwho walked past the table I was sitting at,just staring at me as she walked past. She was in her 70s,looked like she had a kind face. I thought nothing of ituntil I saw from the corner of my eyeshe was walking from the opposite direction,also just staring at me. And so I said, "How do you do?"And she said, "You know, if you dyed your hair black,you would look just like Al Gore." (Laughter) Many years ago, when I was a young congressman,I spent an awful lot of time dealing with the challengeof nuclear arms control -- the nuclear arms race.And the military historians taught me,during that quest, that military conflicts are typicallyput into three categories: local battles,regional or theater wars, and the rare but all-importantglobal, world war -- strategic conflicts.And each level of conflict requires a different allocation of resources,a different approach,a different organizational model.Environmental challenges fall into the same three categories,and most of what we think aboutare local environmental problems: air pollution, water pollution,hazardous waste dumps. But there are alsoregional environmental problems, like acid rainfrom the Midwest to the Northeast, and from Western Europeto the Arctic, and from the Midwestout the Mississippi into the dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico.And there are lots of those. But the climate crisisis the rare but all-importantglobal, or strategic, conflict.Everything is affected. And we have to organize our responseappropriately. We need a worldwide, global mobilizationfor renewable energy, conservation, efficiencyand a global transition to a low-carbon economy.We have work to do. And we can mobilize resourcesand political will. But the political willhas to be mobilized, in order to mobilize the resources. Let me show you these slides here.I thought I would start with the logo. What's missing here,of course, is the North Polar ice cap.Greenland remains. Twenty-eight years ago, this is what thepolar ice cap -- the North Polar ice cap -- looked likeat the end of the summer, at the fall equinox.This last fall, I went to the Snow and Ice Data Centerin Boulder, Colorado, and talked to the researchershere in Monterey at the Naval Postgraduate Laboratory.This is what's happened in the last 28 years.To put it in perspective, 2005 was the previous record.Here's what happened last fallthat has really unnerved the researchers.The North Polar ice cap is the same size geographically --doesn't look quite the same size --but it is exactly the same size as the United States,minus an area roughly equal to the state of Arizona.The amount that disappeared in 2005was equivalent to everything east of the Mississippi.The extra amount that disappeared last fallwas equivalent to this much. It comes back in the winter,but not as permanent ice, as thin ice --vulnerable. The amount remaining could be completely gonein summer in as little as five years.That puts a lot of pressure on Greenland.Already, around the Arctic Circle --this is a famous village in Alaska. This is a townin Newfoundland. Antarctica. Latest studies from NASA.The amount of a moderate-to-severe snow meltingof an area equivalent to the size of California. "They were the best of times,they were the worst of times": the most famous opening sentencein English literature. I want to share brieflya tale of two planets. Earth and Venusare exactly the same size. Earth's diameteris about 400 kilometers larger, but essentially the same size.They have exactly the same amount of carbon.But the difference is, on Earth, most of the carbonhas been leeched over time out of the atmosphere,deposited in the ground as coal, oil,natural gas, etc. On Venus, most of itis in the atmosphere. The difference is that our temperatureis 59 degrees on average. On Venus,it's 855. This is relevant to our current strategyof taking as much carbon out of the ground as quickly as possible,and putting it into the atmosphere.It's not because Venus is slightly closer to the Sun.It's three times hotter than Mercury,which is right next to the Sun. Now, briefly,here's an image you've seen, as one of the only old images,but I show it because I want to briefly give you CSI: Climate. The global scientific community says:man-made global warming pollution, put into the atmosphere,thickening this, is trapping more of the outgoing infrared.You all know that. At the lastIPCC summary, the scientists wanted to say,"How certain are you?" They wanted to answer that "99 percent."The Chinese objected, and so the compromise was"more than 90 percent."Now, the skeptics say, "Oh, wait a minute,this could be variations in this energycoming in from the sun." If that were true,the stratosphere would be heated as well as thelower atmosphere, if it's more coming in.If it's more being trapped on the way out, then you wouldexpect it to be warmer here and cooler here. Here is the lower atmosphere.Here's the stratosphere: cooler.CSI: Climate. Now, here's the good news. Sixty-eight percent of Americans now believethat human activity is responsiblefor global warming. Sixty-nine percent believe that the Earth is heating upin a significant way. There has been progress,but here is the key: when given a listof challenges to confront, global warming is still listed at near the bottom.What is missing is a sense of urgency.If you agree with the factual analysis,but you don't feel the sense of urgency,where does that leave you?Well, the Alliance for Climate Protection, which I headin conjunction with Current TV -- who did this pro bono --did a worldwide contest to do commercials on how to communicate this.This is the winner. NBC -- I'll show all of the networks here -- the top journalistsfor NBC asked 956 questions in 2007of the presidential candidates: two of them were aboutthe climate crisis. ABC: 844 questions, two about the climate crisis.Fox: two. CNN: two. CBS: zero.From laughs to tears -- this is one of the oldertobacco commercials.So here's what we're doing.This is gasoline consumption in all of these countries. And us.But it's not just the developed nations.The developing countries are now following usand accelerating their pace. And actually,their cumulative emissions this year are the equivalentto where we were in 1965. And they're catching upvery dramatically. The total concentrations:by 2025, they will be essentially where we were in 1985.If the wealthy countries were completely missingfrom the picture, we would still have this crisis.But we have given to the developing countriesthe technologies and the ways of thinkingthat are creating the crisis. This is in Bolivia --over thirty years. This is peak fishing in a few seconds. The '60s.'70s. '80s. '90s. We have to stop this. And the good news is that we can.We have the technologies.We have to have a unified view of how to go about this:the struggle against poverty in the worldand the challenge of cutting wealthy country emissions,all has a single, very simple solution. People say, "What's the solution?" Here it is.Put a price on carbon. We need a CO2 tax, revenue neutral,to replace taxation on employment, which was invented by Bismarck --and some things have changedsince the 19th century.In the poor world, we have to integrate the responsesto poverty with the solutions to the climate crisis.Plans to fight poverty in Ugandaare mooted, if we do not solve the climate crisis. But responses can actually make a huge differencein the poor countries. This is a proposalthat has been talked about a lot in Europe.This was from Nature magazine. These are concentratingsolar, renewable energy plants, linked in a so-called "supergrid"to supply all of the electrical powerto Europe, largely from developing countries -- high-voltage DC currents.This is not pie in the sky; this can be done. We need to do it for our own economy.The latest figures show that the old modelis not working. There are a lot of great investmentsthat you can make. If you are investing in tar sandsor shale oil, then you have a portfoliothat is crammed with sub-prime carbon assets.And it is based on an old model.Junkies find veins in their toes when the onesin their arms and their legs collapse. Developing tar sandsand coal shale is the equivalent. Here are just a few of the investmentsthat I personally think make sense.I have a stake in these, so I'll have a disclaimer there.But geothermal, concentrating solar,advanced photovoltaics, efficiency and conservation. You've seen this slide before, but there's a change.The only two countries that didn't ratify-- and now there's only one. Australia had an election.And there was a campaign in Australiathat involved television and Internet and radio commercialsto lift the sense of urgency for the people there.And we trained 250 people to give the slide showin every town and village and city in Australia.Lot of other things contributed to it,but the new Prime Minister announced thathis very first priority would be to change Australia's positionon Kyoto, and he has. Now, they came to an awarenesspartly because of the horrible drought that they have had.This is Lake Lanier. My friend Heidi Cullensaid that if we gave droughts names the way we give hurricanes names,we'd call the one in the southeast now Katrina,and we would say it's headed toward Atlanta.We can't wait for the kind of droughtAustralia had to change our political culture.Here's more good news. The cities supporting Kyoto in the U.S.are up to 780 -- and I thought I saw one go by there,just to localize this -- which is good news. Now, to close, we heard a couple of days agoabout the value of making individual heroism so commonplacethat it becomes banal or routine.What we need is another hero generation. Those of us who are alivein the United States of Americatoday especially, but also the rest of the world,have to somehow understand that historyhas presented us with a choice -- just as Jill [Bolte] Taylor was figuring outhow to save her life while she was distractedby the amazing experience that she was going through.We now have a culture of distraction.But we have a planetary emergency.And we have to find a way to create,in the generation of those alive today, a sense of generational mission.I wish I could find the words to convey this.This was another hero generationthat brought democracy to the planet.Another that ended slavery. And that gave women the right to vote.We can do this. Don't tell me that we don't have the capacity to do it.If we had just one week's worth of what we spend on the Iraq War,we could be well on the way to solving this challenge.We have the capacity to do it. One final point: I'm optimistic, because I believewe have the capacity, at moments of great challenge,to set aside the causes of distraction and rise to the challengethat history is presenting to us.Sometimes I hear people respond to the disturbing facts of the climate crisisby saying, "Oh, this is so terrible.What a burden we have." I would like to ask youto reframe that. How many generationsin all of human history have had the opportunityto rise to a challenge that is worthy of our best efforts?A challenge that can pull from usmore than we knew we could do? I think we ought to approachthis challenge with a sense of profound joyand gratitude that we are the generationabout which, a thousand years from now,philharmonic orchestras and poets and singers will celebrateby saying, they were the ones that found it within themselvesto solve this crisis and lay the basisfor a bright and optimistic human future. Let's do that. Thank you very much. Chris Anderson: For so many people at TED, there is deep painthat basically a design issueon a voting form --one bad design issue meant that your voice wasn't being heardlike that in the last eight years in a positionwhere you could make these things come true.That hurts. Al Gore: You have no idea. (Laughter) CA: When you look at what the leading candidatesin your own party are doing now -- I mean, there's --are you excited by their plans on global warming? AG: The answer to the question is hard for mebecause, on the one hand, I think thatwe should feel really great about the factthat the Republican nominee -- certain nominee --John McCain, and both of the finalistsfor the Democratic nomination -- all three have a very differentand forward-leaning positionon the climate crisis. All three have offered leadership,and all three are very different from the approach takenby the current administration. And I thinkthat all three have also been responsible inputting forward plans and proposals. But the campaign dialogue that --as illustrated by the questions --that was put together by theLeague of Conservation Voters, by the way, the analysis of all the questions --and, by the way, the debates have all beensponsored by something that goes by the Orwellian label,"Clean Coal." Has anybody noticed that?Every single debate has been sponsored by "Clean Coal.""Now, even lower emissions!" The richness and fullness of the dialoguein our democracy has not laid the basisfor the kind of bold initiative that is really needed.So they're saying the right things and they may --whichever of them is elected -- may do the right thing,but let me tell you: when I came back from Kyotoin 1997, with a feeling of great happinessthat we'd gotten that breakthrough there,and then confronted the United States Senate,only one out of 100 senators was willing to voteto confirm, to ratify that treaty. Whatever the candidates sayhas to be laid alongside what the people say. This challenge is part of the fabricof our whole civilization.CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally.And now we mechanized that process. Changing that patternrequires a scope, a scale, a speed of changethat is beyond what we have done in the past.So that's why I began by saying,be optimistic in what you do, but be an active citizen.Demand -- change the light bulbs,but change the laws. Change the global treaties.We have to speak up. We have to solve this democracy -- this --We have sclerosis in our democracy. And we have to change that.Use the Internet. Go on the Internet.Connect with people. Become very active as citizens.Have a moratorium -- we shouldn'thave any new coal-fired generating plantsthat aren't able to capture and store CO2, which means we have toquickly build these renewable sources.Now, nobody is talking on that scale. But I do believethat between now and November, it is possible.This Alliance for Climate Protectionis going to launch a nationwide campaign --grassroots mobilization, television ads, Internet ads,radio, newspaper -- with partnerships with everybodyfrom the Girl Scouts to the hunters and fishermen. We need help. We need help. CA: In terms of your own personal role going forward,Al, is there something more than thatyou would like to be doing? AG: I have prayed that I would be able to find the answerto that question. What can I do?Buckminster Fuller once wrote, "If the futureof all human civilization depended on me, what would I do?How would I be?" It does depend on all of us,but again, not just with the light bulbs.We, most of us here, are Americans. We have a democracy.We can change things, but we have to actively change.What's needed really is a higher level of consciousness.And that's hard to --that's hard to create -- but it is coming.There's an old African proverb that some of you knowthat says, "If you want to go quickly, go alone;if you want to go far, go together." We have to go far, quickly.So we have to have a change in consciousness.A change in commitment. A new sense of urgency.A new appreciation for the privilegethat we have of undertaking this challenge. CA: Al Gore, thank you so much for coming to TED. AG: Thank you. Thank you very much. Video 3: Al Gore warns on latest climate trends Transcript: (unedited version) Last year I showed these two slides so thatdemonstrate that the arctic ice cap,which for most of the last three million yearshas been the size of the lower 48 states,has shrunk by 40 percent.But this understates the seriousness of this particular problembecause it doesn't show the thickness of the ice.The arctic ice cap is, in a sense,the beating heart of the global climate system.It expands in winter and contracts in summer.The next slide I show you will bea rapid fast-forward of what's happened over the last 25 years.The permanent ice is marked in red.As you see, it expands to the dark blue --that's the annual ice in winter,and it contracts in summer.The so-called permanent ice, five years old or older,you can see is almost like blood,spilling out of the body here.In 25 years it's gone from this, to this. This is a problem because the warmingheats up the frozen ground around the Arctic Ocean,where there is a massive amount of frozen carbonwhich, when it thaws, is turned into methane by microbes.Compared to the total amount of global warming pollution in the atmosphere,that amount could double if we cross this tipping point.Already in some shallow lakes in Alaska,methane is actively bubbling up out of the water.Professor Katey Walter from the University of Alaskawent out with another team to another shallow lake last winter.Video: Whoa! (Laughter)Al Gore: She's okay. The question is whether we will be. And one reason is, this enormous heat sinkheats up Greenland from the north.This is an annual melting river.But the volumes are much larger than ever.This is the Kangerlussuaq River in southwest Greenland.If you want to know how sea level risesfrom land-base ice meltingthis is where it reaches the sea.These flows are increasing very rapidly.At the other end of the planet, Antarcticathe largest mass of ice on the planet.Last month scientists reported the entire continentis now in negative ice balance.And west Antarctica cropped up on top some under-sea islands,is particularly rapid in its melting.That's equal to 20 feet of sea level, as is Greenland. In the Himalayas, the third largest mass of ice:at the top you see new lakes, which a few years ago were glaciers.40 percent of all the people in the worldget half of their drinking water from that melting flow.In the Andes, this glacier is thesource of drinking water for this city.The flows have increased.But when they go away, so does much of the drinking water.In California there has been a 40 percentdecline in the Sierra snowpack.This is hitting the reservoirs.And the predictions, as you've read, are serious. This drying around the world has lead toa dramatic increase in fires.And the disasters around the worldhave been increasing at an absolutely extraordinaryand unprecedented rate.Four times as many in the last 30 yearsas in the previous 75.This is a completely unsustainable pattern.If you look at in the context of historyyou can see what this is doing. In the last five yearswe've added 70 million tons of CO2every 24 hours --25 million tons every day to the oceans.Look carefully at the area of the eastern Pacific,from the Americas, extending westward,and on either side of the Indian subcontinent,where there is a radical depletion of oxygen in the oceans.The biggest single cause of global warming,along with deforestation, which is 20 percent of it, is the burning of fossil fuels.Oil is a problem, and coal is the most serious problem.The United States is one of the twolargest emitters, along with China.And the proposal has been to build a lot more coal plants. But we're beginning to see a sea change.Here are the ones that have been cancelled in the last few yearswith some green alternatives proposed.(Applause)However there is a political battlein our country.And the coal industries and the oil industriesspent a quarter of a billion dollars in the last calendar yearpromoting clean coal,which is an oxymoron.That image reminded me of something.(Laughter)Around Christmas, in my home in Tennessee,a billion gallons of coal sludge was spilled.You probably saw it on the news.This, all over the country, is the second largest waste stream in America.This happened around Christmas.One of the coal industry's ads around Christmas was this one. Video: ♪♫ Frosty the coal man is a jolly, happy soul.He's abundant here in America,and he helps our economy grow.Frosty the coal man is getting cleaner everyday.He's affordable and adorable, and workers keep their pay. Al Gore: This is the source of much of the coal in West Virginia.The largest mountaintop miner is the head of Massey Coal. Video: Don Blankenship: Let me be clear about it. Al Gore,Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, they don't know what they're talking about. Al Gore: So the Alliance for Climate Protectionhas launched two campaigns.This is one of them, part of one of them. Video: Actor: At COALergy we view climate change as a very seriousthreat to our business.That's why we've made it our primary goalto spend a large sum of moneyon an advertising effort to help bring out and complicatethe truth about coal.The fact is, coal isn't dirty.We think it's clean --smells good, too.So don't worry about climate change.Leave that up to us.(Laughter) Video: Actor: Clean coal -- you've heard a lot about it.So let's take a tour of this state-of-the-art clean coal facility.Amazing! The machinery is kind of loud.But that's the sound of clean coal technology.And while burning coal is one of the leading causes of global warming,the remarkable clean coal technology you see herechanges everything.Take a good long look: this is today's clean coal technology. Al Gore: Finally, the positive alternativemeshes with our economic challengeand our national security challenge. Video: Narrator: America is in crisis -- the economy,national security, the climate crisis.The thread that links them all:our addiction to carbon based fuels,like dirty coal and foreign oil.But now there is a bold new solution to get us out of this mess.Repower America with 100 percent clean electricitywithin 10 years.A plan to put America back to work,make us more secure, and help stop global warming.Finally, a solution that's big enough to solve our problems.Repower America. Find out more. Al Gore: This is the last one. Video: Narrator: It's about repowering America.One of the fastest ways to cut our dependenceon old dirty fuels that are killing our planet.Man: Future's over here. Wind, sun, a new energy grid.Man #2: New investments to create high-paying jobs.Narrator: Repower America. It's time to get real. Al Gore: There is an old African proverb that says,"If you want to go quickly, go alone.If you want to go far, go together."We need to go far, quickly.Thank you very much.(Applause) Source: www.ted.com
Monday, September 24, 2012
FASHDSGN-Milan Fashion Week
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Milan Fashion Week: day one
By Vanessa Friedman
MaxMara taps Italy’s ‘golden age’ for inspiration, and Alberta Ferretti takes a fantastical undersea journey
On the first evening of Milan Fashion Week, a funny thing happened on the way past the Duomo.
There, in the piazza, 1,000 students, 30 models, various fashion houses and numerous startled passers-by gathered under the aegis of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana to participate in a piece of performance art modelled after Michelangelo Pistoletto’s “Third Paradise” and dedicated to celebrating a new paper the CNMI had drawn up: “Manifesto for Sustainability of Italian Fashion”.
It’s about promoting the idea of – yes – sustainability in Italian fashion. Sustainability in the environmental/ production sense, but also in the business sense, suggesting that fashion is an industry that can sustain the Italian economy, and thus should itself be sustained.
Anyway, the models did their thing in different outfits from big Italian brands (Gucci, Zegna), and the students formed themselves into a brightly coloured representation of Mr Pistoletto’s new three-curve infinity symbol (the first curve is the first paradise – man in nature; the second, man in man-made artifice; and the third brings the two together), and its oddness made for a surprisingly apt metaphor for the start to the week.
Performance art, after all, is generally the sort of thing you expect to see in Paris or London, which tend to emphasise the creative over the commercial, as opposed to Milan, which mostly gets down to trend-setting-and-selling business. But lately business hasn’t quite been enough, so they’ve had to dress it up with extra dimensions; they’ve had to act out. But as the opening shows demonstrated, it isn’t always an easy alliance.
MaxMara, for example, is one of the most classic of all Italian names, famous for its way with a camel coat, and this time round it said the collection was “based on a number of very precise keywords, taken straight from the ‘golden age’ of the Made in Italy concept” – though what those words were was not entirely clear.
From the show notes they seemed to be “sport deluxe, colonial . . . and safari styles”, which appeared more Out of Africa than Made in Italy (the Olympics were represented too somehow), and from the show itself, the message was muddy.
To wit: safari silhouettes, reimagined in beige slouchy, short-sleeved, oversize suit jackets with epaulettes and pockets; body-conscious jumpsuits; trompe l’oeil combinations of blouson silk anoraks with stiff peplum bottoms; and eye-popping combinations of animal print ponyskin, madras gazar and neon florals. For evening, the same shapes came in black, with sheer backs and shoulders.
It was ultimately too tricksy for its own good. The brand would have been wiser to do what that other pillar of the Italian fashion establishment, Giorgio Armani, did in his Emporio Armani show: opt for “a way of . . . expressing yourself that is simple and natural”. Or, as the collection itself was called, “Neat”. In practice this meant a focus on shorts with tailored jackets, relaxed silk trousers, and tunics over miniskirts, all in earthen tones.
Aside from some weird side-wrapped tops that gaped unflatteringly under the arms, and a few droopy metallic knits (not to mention some large leather chokers best left backstage), the designer refrained from the more conceptual, and usually less successful, aesthetic experiments in which he occasionally indulges, and the clothes were better for it.
Meanwhile, Alberta Ferretti (along with Moschino, the high-fashion side of AEFFE, a publicly traded manufacturing powerhouse), where the eponymous designer built her name on lovely, red-carpet-ready pintucked gowns and oh-so-pretty daywear, went off in a fantastical direction, as symbolised by a video backdrop of rising bubbles and exploding sea anemone-like fronds.
This undersea foliage was represented, literally, on bodices bristling with beading and sequins, jewelled seaweed dangling from spaghetti straps, fringe trapped under an iridescent organza cover like a translucent jellyfish body, and lace in blues of many colours appliquéd on the sheerest tulle to create the illusion of a mermaid-like torso, sometimes descending into cigarette trousers, but oftentimes finished by an oily-slick of a lamé skirt, reminiscent of a fishy tail. A few dresses even came with their own bejewelled nets, the better to catch consumers, presumably.
Amid all the nymphiads there was an occasional restrained and elegant silk car coat with hidden closure, a white slip dress piped in black – but such practical garments were the exception rather than the rule.
As a result, delicate and filigree and rife with natural references as the rest of the collection was, it was difficult to see how, given the demands of contemporary life on women's’ wardrobes, it could be – well, sustained.
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Milan Fashion Week: day two
Miuccia Prada proves you don’t need to be new to have new ideas, Rossella Jardini returns to the 1960s and Etro blends ‘strong’ with the desire to be ‘decorative’
Italy has stagnation on the mind – and not just because of the economy. The fashion industry, long dominated by the same names and brands, has been grumbling for seasons about the lack of fresh blood, talent, ideas: the stuff that gets consumers excited about discoveries and sends them into stores to buy.
After all, the youngest designers to have broken through since the start of the millennium are design duo Aquilano Rimondi, who show on Saturday, and they are in their forties.
On day two of the Milanese collections, however, fashion began to take things into its own hands.
There was Vogue’s equivalent of quantitative easing, Who’s On Next and Vogue Talents. This is a “talent show” of numerous young designers from around the world, not left to fight their way through on their own, but discovered by Italian Vogue and presented to retailers and editors alike. The Vogue-anointed designers will be forcefully injected into the fashion world by sponsors such as Value Retail (which will stock the work of 10 participants) and Yoox.com (which will stock one).
And there was Prada, where Miuccia Prada proved once again that you don’t need to be new to have new ideas.
For spring/summer she said she was thinking about “women, and what is forbidden them, and the two sides of them – the poetic part and the toughness – and how they have to behave”.
This does not sound particularly radical (it even sounds a bit clichéd) but its expression was a
volte face from the geometric print pantsuit riot of last season, not least in its combination of extreme simplicity and intense stylisation. Plus, of course, its wedding of the apparently conceptual to the essentially commercial. The latter has long been Prada’s big idea; what’s new each season is how she makes the same
thing look – let’s use a new word – fresh.
Almost entirely in black and white with touches of red (and the very occasional shot of navy, forest green and palest pink or mint), the collection featured a highly accessible, slightly frumpy, silhouette – round-necked, straight skirt to the thigh or knee, three-quarter length sleeves – with a kind of square folded “canvas” at the torso on which was appliquéd a white outline of a flower, like a chalk drawing.
These later appeared on slick city shorts and car coats and neat jackets, came in chrysanthemum-floral digital prints and embroidered decoration, and finally bloomed tone-on-tone on satin tunics and miniskirts.
Although the pieces referenced many things Japanese, from origami to kimonos, Prada said it wasn’t calculated; she liked the symbolism of the flower and the structure of the folds.
She also liked – ahem – the idea of summer fur. To be specific, astrakhan and mink, which came in jackets and coats with intarsia Warhol-like flowers. “We [women] are not supposed to be decadent,” she said by way of explanation. “We’re not supposed to splurge.”
So she wanted to. You can read that as rebellious – she’s not going to submit to austerity measures – or a canny way to extend the life of this collection. It does, after all, get delivered to stores in the cold winds of February and March, when a consumer might, actually, want to buy a coat instead of a slip dress.
It was certainly a more multi-dimensional solution, aesthetically and economically, to the current situation than that offered by Moschino, where designer Rossella Jardini returned, yet again, to the 1960s. (When did this decade of risk and revolution become a style safety net?) She did this via graphic black and white minidresses and coats, and nifty little trouser suits, all also popping up sprinkled with hearts, disco mirrors, and – what a surprise – flower power.
The soundtrack said it all: “let’s just have a good time”, as though dressing happy could make it so. But does anyone really believe such a simplistic approach works any more? Doubtful. Not even in the superficial land of clothes.
At least at Etro, things were slightly more complex, graphically if not structurally. Hand-painted silks and cottons moved from garden florals through sequined stripes until a chrysalis became a butterfly, all of it layered on Japanese-inspired shapes.
If it was overly literal, it was also almost entirely ye-olde-paisley-and-hippie free, and at least trying to make sense of two different imperatives; the need to be “strong” and the desire to be “decorative”, in the words of designer Veronica Etro.
“The point is: keep on dreaming but keep your feet on the ground,” she said. As if there were any other choice.
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Milan Fashion Week: day three
Dolce & Gabbana opt for ‘sun, sea and love’; Emilio Pucci jettisons jet-set chic; Jil Sander goes back to basics; Marni does shape-teasing; Fendi is crips, clean and energetic; Versace fails to convince as a boho rebel
Does sex still sell in Mario Monti’s Italy? That question forms the subtext of the Milanese spring/summer collections. After all, sex – the celebration of – was long a hallmark of many Italian houses, even in years before Silvio Berlusconi made it a part of the daily conversation.
Brands that didn’t overtly address the issue were defined by their opposition to it; the option for consumers who wanted to Just Say No.
Now that No is the word of the moment, however, has the alternative been given the upper hand? Are we in a post-sex state, not just politically, but sartorially too? Over the weekend, the answer was looking a lot like Yes.
When even Dolce & Gabbana, the house that built an empire on body-baring Siciliana, trades corsets and lingerie for “sea, sun and love,” aka a nostalgia-filled funfest of below-the-knee silk dresses in primary coloured puppetry prints; rough linen smocks painted like flour sacks or gorgeously embroidered in coral; awning stripes and pom-poms; and even basket weave bustiers, something is going on.
When Emilio Pucci, a champion of the plunge-neck jet set, touts the benefits of “strength on the inside and serenity on the outside”, it’s no coincidence. Granted, in Pucci’s case this seemed more theory than practice, as bodies were veiled in layers of white-on-white embroidered chinoiserie chiffon, itself veiled in another layer of transparency, and trouser suits were so sheer the seams provided the only cover. But the intent was there. (More protected, if dangerously courting cliché, were sportswear-inspired satin jumpsuits and army kimonos embroidered with gold dragons and tigers.)
The most relevant shows were the ones that eschewed flesh and flash for an altogether more strategic approach.
Beginning with the return of Jil Sander to the house that bears her name after eight years (she left because of creative differences with then-owner, the Prada Group). “Re-set to zero,” read her show notes, but she created a continuum both with her own past at the house and the work of her predecessor, Raf Simons, and his fascination with old couture. Using her signature purist idiom – white shirts, navy coats, neat trousers – she added an easy, curvilinear structure that looked happenstance but was built into a garment, so a coat might bell out at the back as though formed by a gust of air; a black shirt over matching trousers end in a half-moon swoop at the back; and a superb pair of marine blue shirtdresses tucked to drape just so.
If the finale of white cotton pieces polka-dotted with holographic plastic discs felt forced, overall these were the kind of minimally lush clothes that draw women, but men find puzzling; the shapes tease the contours of the body such that what you see gives no clue as to what you might get.
Just as they often do Marni, where designer Consuelo Castiglione used cotton and jacquard in oversize shapes, so squared-off tunics and dresses stood away from the body, embracing it occasionally via folds, but most often obscuring it. Bright wallpaper florals spackled with sequins and picnic blanket checks were the only prints in a sea of bloc colours that proved too enveloping to intrigue.
Still, the clothes shared a certain aerodynamic feel with Fendi, where Karl Lagerfeld relaxed into his best collection in seasons. Though his ready-to-wear for the house can seem as tricksy as the dazzling furs, this time around a focus on sportiness (designers seem helpless against the Olympic effect) in the form of drawstring waists and simple T-shirt and short shapes, and architecture, especially the Bauhaus and the coloured graphics of the Memphis movement, streamlined his tendency to complicate.
Dresses came with thick contrasting stripes at the seams and edges; leather was treated as casually as a fleece, and exploding super nova prints were left alone to form the bright point on a simple organza minidress and an extraordinary shaved fur coat. The result was crisp and clean and energetic. It couldn’t be bothered with stopping to flirt; it was too busy moving forward.
Which made for a contrast with Versace’s unconvincing threesome of silk and lace and boho rebel chic. Dresses, suit jackets and shorts in the first, most often in crinkled black, came sliced with swaths of the second, as did jeans, occasionally slumming with studded belt and straps, segueing into tie-dye versions of the same, and cutaway goddess dresses dripping metallic fringe. Lacking structure the clothes lacked their usual giddy physical power, and felt . . . flaccid. Even a technocrat wouldn’t want that.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012.
Source: www.ft.com
Milan Fashion Week: day one
By Vanessa Friedman
MaxMara taps Italy’s ‘golden age’ for inspiration, and Alberta Ferretti takes a fantastical undersea journey
On the first evening of Milan Fashion Week, a funny thing happened on the way past the Duomo.
There, in the piazza, 1,000 students, 30 models, various fashion houses and numerous startled passers-by gathered under the aegis of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana to participate in a piece of performance art modelled after Michelangelo Pistoletto’s “Third Paradise” and dedicated to celebrating a new paper the CNMI had drawn up: “Manifesto for Sustainability of Italian Fashion”.
It’s about promoting the idea of – yes – sustainability in Italian fashion. Sustainability in the environmental/ production sense, but also in the business sense, suggesting that fashion is an industry that can sustain the Italian economy, and thus should itself be sustained.
Anyway, the models did their thing in different outfits from big Italian brands (Gucci, Zegna), and the students formed themselves into a brightly coloured representation of Mr Pistoletto’s new three-curve infinity symbol (the first curve is the first paradise – man in nature; the second, man in man-made artifice; and the third brings the two together), and its oddness made for a surprisingly apt metaphor for the start to the week.
Performance art, after all, is generally the sort of thing you expect to see in Paris or London, which tend to emphasise the creative over the commercial, as opposed to Milan, which mostly gets down to trend-setting-and-selling business. But lately business hasn’t quite been enough, so they’ve had to dress it up with extra dimensions; they’ve had to act out. But as the opening shows demonstrated, it isn’t always an easy alliance.
MaxMara, for example, is one of the most classic of all Italian names, famous for its way with a camel coat, and this time round it said the collection was “based on a number of very precise keywords, taken straight from the ‘golden age’ of the Made in Italy concept” – though what those words were was not entirely clear.
From the show notes they seemed to be “sport deluxe, colonial . . . and safari styles”, which appeared more Out of Africa than Made in Italy (the Olympics were represented too somehow), and from the show itself, the message was muddy.
To wit: safari silhouettes, reimagined in beige slouchy, short-sleeved, oversize suit jackets with epaulettes and pockets; body-conscious jumpsuits; trompe l’oeil combinations of blouson silk anoraks with stiff peplum bottoms; and eye-popping combinations of animal print ponyskin, madras gazar and neon florals. For evening, the same shapes came in black, with sheer backs and shoulders.
It was ultimately too tricksy for its own good. The brand would have been wiser to do what that other pillar of the Italian fashion establishment, Giorgio Armani, did in his Emporio Armani show: opt for “a way of . . . expressing yourself that is simple and natural”. Or, as the collection itself was called, “Neat”. In practice this meant a focus on shorts with tailored jackets, relaxed silk trousers, and tunics over miniskirts, all in earthen tones.
Aside from some weird side-wrapped tops that gaped unflatteringly under the arms, and a few droopy metallic knits (not to mention some large leather chokers best left backstage), the designer refrained from the more conceptual, and usually less successful, aesthetic experiments in which he occasionally indulges, and the clothes were better for it.
Meanwhile, Alberta Ferretti (along with Moschino, the high-fashion side of AEFFE, a publicly traded manufacturing powerhouse), where the eponymous designer built her name on lovely, red-carpet-ready pintucked gowns and oh-so-pretty daywear, went off in a fantastical direction, as symbolised by a video backdrop of rising bubbles and exploding sea anemone-like fronds.
This undersea foliage was represented, literally, on bodices bristling with beading and sequins, jewelled seaweed dangling from spaghetti straps, fringe trapped under an iridescent organza cover like a translucent jellyfish body, and lace in blues of many colours appliquéd on the sheerest tulle to create the illusion of a mermaid-like torso, sometimes descending into cigarette trousers, but oftentimes finished by an oily-slick of a lamé skirt, reminiscent of a fishy tail. A few dresses even came with their own bejewelled nets, the better to catch consumers, presumably.
Amid all the nymphiads there was an occasional restrained and elegant silk car coat with hidden closure, a white slip dress piped in black – but such practical garments were the exception rather than the rule.
As a result, delicate and filigree and rife with natural references as the rest of the collection was, it was difficult to see how, given the demands of contemporary life on women's’ wardrobes, it could be – well, sustained.
High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4e797718-03e4-11e2-9322-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz27OCM8OZh
Milan Fashion Week: day two
Miuccia Prada proves you don’t need to be new to have new ideas, Rossella Jardini returns to the 1960s and Etro blends ‘strong’ with the desire to be ‘decorative’
Italy has stagnation on the mind – and not just because of the economy. The fashion industry, long dominated by the same names and brands, has been grumbling for seasons about the lack of fresh blood, talent, ideas: the stuff that gets consumers excited about discoveries and sends them into stores to buy.
After all, the youngest designers to have broken through since the start of the millennium are design duo Aquilano Rimondi, who show on Saturday, and they are in their forties.
On day two of the Milanese collections, however, fashion began to take things into its own hands.
There was Vogue’s equivalent of quantitative easing, Who’s On Next and Vogue Talents. This is a “talent show” of numerous young designers from around the world, not left to fight their way through on their own, but discovered by Italian Vogue and presented to retailers and editors alike. The Vogue-anointed designers will be forcefully injected into the fashion world by sponsors such as Value Retail (which will stock the work of 10 participants) and Yoox.com (which will stock one).
And there was Prada, where Miuccia Prada proved once again that you don’t need to be new to have new ideas.
For spring/summer she said she was thinking about “women, and what is forbidden them, and the two sides of them – the poetic part and the toughness – and how they have to behave”.
This does not sound particularly radical (it even sounds a bit clichéd) but its expression was a
volte face from the geometric print pantsuit riot of last season, not least in its combination of extreme simplicity and intense stylisation. Plus, of course, its wedding of the apparently conceptual to the essentially commercial. The latter has long been Prada’s big idea; what’s new each season is how she makes the same
thing look – let’s use a new word – fresh.
Almost entirely in black and white with touches of red (and the very occasional shot of navy, forest green and palest pink or mint), the collection featured a highly accessible, slightly frumpy, silhouette – round-necked, straight skirt to the thigh or knee, three-quarter length sleeves – with a kind of square folded “canvas” at the torso on which was appliquéd a white outline of a flower, like a chalk drawing.
These later appeared on slick city shorts and car coats and neat jackets, came in chrysanthemum-floral digital prints and embroidered decoration, and finally bloomed tone-on-tone on satin tunics and miniskirts.
Although the pieces referenced many things Japanese, from origami to kimonos, Prada said it wasn’t calculated; she liked the symbolism of the flower and the structure of the folds.
She also liked – ahem – the idea of summer fur. To be specific, astrakhan and mink, which came in jackets and coats with intarsia Warhol-like flowers. “We [women] are not supposed to be decadent,” she said by way of explanation. “We’re not supposed to splurge.”
So she wanted to. You can read that as rebellious – she’s not going to submit to austerity measures – or a canny way to extend the life of this collection. It does, after all, get delivered to stores in the cold winds of February and March, when a consumer might, actually, want to buy a coat instead of a slip dress.
It was certainly a more multi-dimensional solution, aesthetically and economically, to the current situation than that offered by Moschino, where designer Rossella Jardini returned, yet again, to the 1960s. (When did this decade of risk and revolution become a style safety net?) She did this via graphic black and white minidresses and coats, and nifty little trouser suits, all also popping up sprinkled with hearts, disco mirrors, and – what a surprise – flower power.
The soundtrack said it all: “let’s just have a good time”, as though dressing happy could make it so. But does anyone really believe such a simplistic approach works any more? Doubtful. Not even in the superficial land of clothes.
At least at Etro, things were slightly more complex, graphically if not structurally. Hand-painted silks and cottons moved from garden florals through sequined stripes until a chrysalis became a butterfly, all of it layered on Japanese-inspired shapes.
If it was overly literal, it was also almost entirely ye-olde-paisley-and-hippie free, and at least trying to make sense of two different imperatives; the need to be “strong” and the desire to be “decorative”, in the words of designer Veronica Etro.
“The point is: keep on dreaming but keep your feet on the ground,” she said. As if there were any other choice.
High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/97dce9e6-05cc-11e2-bce8-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz27ODFncmU
Milan Fashion Week: day three
Dolce & Gabbana opt for ‘sun, sea and love’; Emilio Pucci jettisons jet-set chic; Jil Sander goes back to basics; Marni does shape-teasing; Fendi is crips, clean and energetic; Versace fails to convince as a boho rebel
Does sex still sell in Mario Monti’s Italy? That question forms the subtext of the Milanese spring/summer collections. After all, sex – the celebration of – was long a hallmark of many Italian houses, even in years before Silvio Berlusconi made it a part of the daily conversation.
Brands that didn’t overtly address the issue were defined by their opposition to it; the option for consumers who wanted to Just Say No.
Now that No is the word of the moment, however, has the alternative been given the upper hand? Are we in a post-sex state, not just politically, but sartorially too? Over the weekend, the answer was looking a lot like Yes.
When even Dolce & Gabbana, the house that built an empire on body-baring Siciliana, trades corsets and lingerie for “sea, sun and love,” aka a nostalgia-filled funfest of below-the-knee silk dresses in primary coloured puppetry prints; rough linen smocks painted like flour sacks or gorgeously embroidered in coral; awning stripes and pom-poms; and even basket weave bustiers, something is going on.
When Emilio Pucci, a champion of the plunge-neck jet set, touts the benefits of “strength on the inside and serenity on the outside”, it’s no coincidence. Granted, in Pucci’s case this seemed more theory than practice, as bodies were veiled in layers of white-on-white embroidered chinoiserie chiffon, itself veiled in another layer of transparency, and trouser suits were so sheer the seams provided the only cover. But the intent was there. (More protected, if dangerously courting cliché, were sportswear-inspired satin jumpsuits and army kimonos embroidered with gold dragons and tigers.)
The most relevant shows were the ones that eschewed flesh and flash for an altogether more strategic approach.
Beginning with the return of Jil Sander to the house that bears her name after eight years (she left because of creative differences with then-owner, the Prada Group). “Re-set to zero,” read her show notes, but she created a continuum both with her own past at the house and the work of her predecessor, Raf Simons, and his fascination with old couture. Using her signature purist idiom – white shirts, navy coats, neat trousers – she added an easy, curvilinear structure that looked happenstance but was built into a garment, so a coat might bell out at the back as though formed by a gust of air; a black shirt over matching trousers end in a half-moon swoop at the back; and a superb pair of marine blue shirtdresses tucked to drape just so.
If the finale of white cotton pieces polka-dotted with holographic plastic discs felt forced, overall these were the kind of minimally lush clothes that draw women, but men find puzzling; the shapes tease the contours of the body such that what you see gives no clue as to what you might get.
Just as they often do Marni, where designer Consuelo Castiglione used cotton and jacquard in oversize shapes, so squared-off tunics and dresses stood away from the body, embracing it occasionally via folds, but most often obscuring it. Bright wallpaper florals spackled with sequins and picnic blanket checks were the only prints in a sea of bloc colours that proved too enveloping to intrigue.
Still, the clothes shared a certain aerodynamic feel with Fendi, where Karl Lagerfeld relaxed into his best collection in seasons. Though his ready-to-wear for the house can seem as tricksy as the dazzling furs, this time around a focus on sportiness (designers seem helpless against the Olympic effect) in the form of drawstring waists and simple T-shirt and short shapes, and architecture, especially the Bauhaus and the coloured graphics of the Memphis movement, streamlined his tendency to complicate.
Dresses came with thick contrasting stripes at the seams and edges; leather was treated as casually as a fleece, and exploding super nova prints were left alone to form the bright point on a simple organza minidress and an extraordinary shaved fur coat. The result was crisp and clean and energetic. It couldn’t be bothered with stopping to flirt; it was too busy moving forward.
Which made for a contrast with Versace’s unconvincing threesome of silk and lace and boho rebel chic. Dresses, suit jackets and shorts in the first, most often in crinkled black, came sliced with swaths of the second, as did jeans, occasionally slumming with studded belt and straps, segueing into tie-dye versions of the same, and cutaway goddess dresses dripping metallic fringe. Lacking structure the clothes lacked their usual giddy physical power, and felt . . . flaccid. Even a technocrat wouldn’t want that.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012.
Source: www.ft.com
FIN-8 things Argentina must do to win over energy investors
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
8 things Argentina must do to win over energy investors
September 21, 2012 by Jude Webber
Oh to be a fly on the wall of the rounds of meetings between Miguel Galuccio, chief executive of nationalised Argentine energy group YPF with US and UK investors starting in Los Angeles on Friday.
There’s no doubt that Galuccio is an experienced oilman and knows his subject. But it’s safe to imagine that investors will subject him to a barrage of questions that probably boil down to this: how much leverage will he have with the government of Cristina Fernández to guarantee investors the incentives needed to bring foreign cash flowing into YPF?
Plenty has been said about why investors might be wary: YPF was expropriated from Spain’s Repsol without compensation; Argentina has a terrible reputation for being sued and for paying up; the government wants to see companies plough revenue back into investment rather than spirit it outside the country via dividends; the rules of the game can change rapidly; and so on.
It’s worth keeping an eye on the size of the prize here: Argentina has what are estimated to be the third biggest reserves of unconventional shale oil and gas on the planet – reserves which could turn it from a cash-strapped energy importer to an energy exporter. YPF has unveiled a $37.2bn plan to boost production and get the shale revolution rolling.
So what, in a nutshell, should Argenina do to get investors to open their wallets?
Bernard Weinstein, associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute at the Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business in Dallas, and Michael Economides, a professor at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering have some handy recommendations, paraphrased here:
1. Enact new legislation, like 50-year leases protected from seizure to attract and reassure investors.
2. Expressly forbid new nationalisations of foreign partners.
3. Reviving Argentina’s Oil and Refining Plus – incentives programmes scrapped because they cost $461m a year – would send the right signals and the cash could be more than recouped by shale development. There have been signs that this is a message that may be getting through.
4. Restructure taxes, including lowering the effective tax rate and reducing or removing export taxes. As Weinstein says: “Outside partners simply won’t drill in Argentina if they can do so elsewhere at a lower cost.”
5. Fix the fixed price for natural gas. Weinstein says: “Why would a company from the US drill for gas in Argentina when it can’t get market value and also pays high taxes? Argentina needs to return to an uncontrolled free market for natural gas.”
6. Learn from the US, where “real estate investment trusts (REITs) and master limited partnerships (MLPs) have created substantial cash inflows for real estate and energy ventures,” Weinstein says. He adds REITs now have more than $700bn in total market capitalisation and MLPs some $300bn. He notes:
Both vehicles are structured as tax-free, publicly-traded partnerships that require 90 percent of earnings to be distributed to the individual partners. In other words, the REIT or MLP itself does not pay taxes, but the income passed through to the partners is taxable. Argentina should consider allowing structures similar to REITs/MLPs as vehicles to attract foreign invest into their energy sector.
7. Negotiate a quick deal with YPF and bury the hatchet. As Economides says: “Venezuela’s Chávez knew his revolution depended on foreign capital and expertise. Chávez has honored most of his debts, although many still await international arbitration.”
8. Pay up other debts (arbitral awards by ICSID, the Paris Club and the like).
Economides reckons developing Argentina’s shale over the next 15-20 years will cost $250bn – “a figure impossible to envision” in today’s Argentina. He says:
Argentina is at a crossroads. While its fundamentals are adequate (for instance a favorable GDP/debt ratio and the existence of abundant unconventional natural resources) the nation is on an economic collision course. It will, no doubt, eventually develop its huge hydrocarbon potential. Whether President Fernández gets the credit is a different issue.
How much clout Galuccio has, and whether he will succeed in wooing investors given the constraints of doing business in Argentina, is the $37.2bn, if not the $250bn question.
Source: www.blogs.ft.com
8 things Argentina must do to win over energy investors
September 21, 2012 by Jude Webber
Oh to be a fly on the wall of the rounds of meetings between Miguel Galuccio, chief executive of nationalised Argentine energy group YPF with US and UK investors starting in Los Angeles on Friday.
There’s no doubt that Galuccio is an experienced oilman and knows his subject. But it’s safe to imagine that investors will subject him to a barrage of questions that probably boil down to this: how much leverage will he have with the government of Cristina Fernández to guarantee investors the incentives needed to bring foreign cash flowing into YPF?
Plenty has been said about why investors might be wary: YPF was expropriated from Spain’s Repsol without compensation; Argentina has a terrible reputation for being sued and for paying up; the government wants to see companies plough revenue back into investment rather than spirit it outside the country via dividends; the rules of the game can change rapidly; and so on.
It’s worth keeping an eye on the size of the prize here: Argentina has what are estimated to be the third biggest reserves of unconventional shale oil and gas on the planet – reserves which could turn it from a cash-strapped energy importer to an energy exporter. YPF has unveiled a $37.2bn plan to boost production and get the shale revolution rolling.
So what, in a nutshell, should Argenina do to get investors to open their wallets?
Bernard Weinstein, associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute at the Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business in Dallas, and Michael Economides, a professor at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering have some handy recommendations, paraphrased here:
1. Enact new legislation, like 50-year leases protected from seizure to attract and reassure investors.
2. Expressly forbid new nationalisations of foreign partners.
3. Reviving Argentina’s Oil and Refining Plus – incentives programmes scrapped because they cost $461m a year – would send the right signals and the cash could be more than recouped by shale development. There have been signs that this is a message that may be getting through.
4. Restructure taxes, including lowering the effective tax rate and reducing or removing export taxes. As Weinstein says: “Outside partners simply won’t drill in Argentina if they can do so elsewhere at a lower cost.”
5. Fix the fixed price for natural gas. Weinstein says: “Why would a company from the US drill for gas in Argentina when it can’t get market value and also pays high taxes? Argentina needs to return to an uncontrolled free market for natural gas.”
6. Learn from the US, where “real estate investment trusts (REITs) and master limited partnerships (MLPs) have created substantial cash inflows for real estate and energy ventures,” Weinstein says. He adds REITs now have more than $700bn in total market capitalisation and MLPs some $300bn. He notes:
Both vehicles are structured as tax-free, publicly-traded partnerships that require 90 percent of earnings to be distributed to the individual partners. In other words, the REIT or MLP itself does not pay taxes, but the income passed through to the partners is taxable. Argentina should consider allowing structures similar to REITs/MLPs as vehicles to attract foreign invest into their energy sector.
7. Negotiate a quick deal with YPF and bury the hatchet. As Economides says: “Venezuela’s Chávez knew his revolution depended on foreign capital and expertise. Chávez has honored most of his debts, although many still await international arbitration.”
8. Pay up other debts (arbitral awards by ICSID, the Paris Club and the like).
Economides reckons developing Argentina’s shale over the next 15-20 years will cost $250bn – “a figure impossible to envision” in today’s Argentina. He says:
Argentina is at a crossroads. While its fundamentals are adequate (for instance a favorable GDP/debt ratio and the existence of abundant unconventional natural resources) the nation is on an economic collision course. It will, no doubt, eventually develop its huge hydrocarbon potential. Whether President Fernández gets the credit is a different issue.
How much clout Galuccio has, and whether he will succeed in wooing investors given the constraints of doing business in Argentina, is the $37.2bn, if not the $250bn question.
Source: www.blogs.ft.com
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Tiger mothers in Singapore
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Tiger mothers in Singapore
Losing her stripes?
The prime minister goes into battle against pushy parents
Sep 22nd 2012
ONCE upon a time most of the tiny island-state of Singapore was a jungle. That is nearly all gone now, but the country is still heavily populated by tigers. These strict, unyielding felines, celebrated by Amy Chua in her book on the superiority of Chinese parenting, “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, load their cubs down with extra homework and tuition to make them excel at school. Western parents are usually horrified at the pressure the tiger mums exert on their children to get better grades or become concert violinists, preferably before puberty. But in Singapore this style of parenting, especially among the ethnic Chinese majority, is rarely questioned.
Imagine, then, the surprise when the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, launched an attack on tiger mothers in a speech in late August to mark Singapore’s national day. Most of his remarks celebrated Singapore’s success, as usual. But then he berated parents for coaching their three- or four-year-old children to give them that extra edge over the five-year-old competition. And he added: “Please let your children have their childhood…Instead of growing up balanced and happy, he grows up narrow and neurotic. No homework is not a bad thing. It’s good for young children to play, and to learn through play.”
Heresy. Ms Chua, for one, physically extracted her daughters from school breaks because play, like gym classes, was a waste of time. Mr Lee has sparked a storm of controversy online, in the press and on his Facebook page.
It is too early to tell which way the debate that Mr Lee provoked will go. For many parents, to follow the prime minister’s indulgent instincts would be to jeopardise the little prodigy’s future. But the anxiety behind the comments is that hard-studying Singaporeans lack creativity and an ability to think laterally. This is now seen as a competitive disadvantage in what are often called “knowledge economies”, where innovation and inventiveness are at a premium. Are the tiger mothers, Mr Lee seems to be wondering, now putting Singapore’s future prosperity at risk?
Source: www.economist.com
Tiger mothers in Singapore
Losing her stripes?
The prime minister goes into battle against pushy parents
Sep 22nd 2012
ONCE upon a time most of the tiny island-state of Singapore was a jungle. That is nearly all gone now, but the country is still heavily populated by tigers. These strict, unyielding felines, celebrated by Amy Chua in her book on the superiority of Chinese parenting, “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, load their cubs down with extra homework and tuition to make them excel at school. Western parents are usually horrified at the pressure the tiger mums exert on their children to get better grades or become concert violinists, preferably before puberty. But in Singapore this style of parenting, especially among the ethnic Chinese majority, is rarely questioned.
Imagine, then, the surprise when the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, launched an attack on tiger mothers in a speech in late August to mark Singapore’s national day. Most of his remarks celebrated Singapore’s success, as usual. But then he berated parents for coaching their three- or four-year-old children to give them that extra edge over the five-year-old competition. And he added: “Please let your children have their childhood…Instead of growing up balanced and happy, he grows up narrow and neurotic. No homework is not a bad thing. It’s good for young children to play, and to learn through play.”
Heresy. Ms Chua, for one, physically extracted her daughters from school breaks because play, like gym classes, was a waste of time. Mr Lee has sparked a storm of controversy online, in the press and on his Facebook page.
It is too early to tell which way the debate that Mr Lee provoked will go. For many parents, to follow the prime minister’s indulgent instincts would be to jeopardise the little prodigy’s future. But the anxiety behind the comments is that hard-studying Singaporeans lack creativity and an ability to think laterally. This is now seen as a competitive disadvantage in what are often called “knowledge economies”, where innovation and inventiveness are at a premium. Are the tiger mothers, Mr Lee seems to be wondering, now putting Singapore’s future prosperity at risk?
Source: www.economist.com
INTAFF/POL-Libya and its extremists
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Libya and its extremists
Passing the buck
The incoming authorities may be wary of tackling the extremists head on
Sep 22nd 2012 | BENGHAZI |
THE mood is jumpy in Tripoli, Libya’s capital, as it is in Benghazi, the second city, where the American ambassador and three of his colleagues were killed in the consulate on September 11th. The prime minister, Mustafa Abushagur, who was elected by Libya’s new proto-parliament the day after the murders, has yet to pick a government, so seems unable to order his security forces into action against the presumed perpetrators. Most Libyans sound strongly opposed to them. But it is uncertain whether they will rapidly be brought to justice. If not, Libya’s incoming government will have got off to a shaky start.
The acting interior minister and his deputy, members of the outgoing caretaker government that is still the country’s executive power, have been at embarrassing odds over who precisely was responsible for the attack on the consulate and who has been—or should be—arrested. In Benghazi the police, the interior ministry and the Supreme Security Council, a powerful agency set up under the outgoing transitional authorities, are all passing the buck, saying it is not their job to investigate.
The new parliament’s speaker, Muhammad Megarief, the acting head of state, has been most outspoken in condemning the attacks and in demanding a wholesale assault on Ansar al-Sharia, the jihadist group that eyewitnesses say was responsible for them.
The upshot, so far, is an edgy stand-off between assorted security forces on the one hand and the jihadists on the other. Ansar al-Sharia says it is braced for a fight. It has a base in Benghazi and controls the al-Jala hospital, where two of its wounded men are holed up. They have yet to be arrested or questioned by the army or security men, as the group has eight armed jeeps blocking the entrance to the hospital.
Mr Megarief says signals were intercepted between Ansar al-Sharia and al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, an umbrella for jihadist groups in north Africa. “They have an ambition perhaps to establish an Islamic state across the Maghreb,” he says, calling for every available unit to be deployed against Ansar al-Sharia, including a powerful group of former anti-Qaddafi rebels known as the national shield.
Yousef Mangoush, the army chief of staff, one of few commanders respected by both the national army and the national shield, holds a similarly robust view. General Hamid Belkhair, a long-serving career officer who commands the national army’s Benghazi garrison, says his units are ready to fight any militia, including Ansar al-Sharia, that refuses to lay down its arms and join the regular army or police. The jihadists’s opponents, including students and civil-rights campaigners, say they plan to march on September 21st to Ansar al-Sharia’s base and to order its fighters to give up their weapons.
Tackling the jihadists will be crucial for the new government’s authority. Mr Megarief wants the army and the shield to close down three Benghazi militias forthwith. Two should go quietly but Ansar al-Sharia is another matter. It is unclear whether indictments will be issued against its members and, if so, whether the police will then try to arrest them. Mr Megarief says it will be a “turning point” in Libya’s transition. If the jihadists are not faced down, Libya’s fragile democracy, he fears, could fail.
Source: www.economist.com
Libya and its extremists
Passing the buck
The incoming authorities may be wary of tackling the extremists head on
Sep 22nd 2012 | BENGHAZI |
THE mood is jumpy in Tripoli, Libya’s capital, as it is in Benghazi, the second city, where the American ambassador and three of his colleagues were killed in the consulate on September 11th. The prime minister, Mustafa Abushagur, who was elected by Libya’s new proto-parliament the day after the murders, has yet to pick a government, so seems unable to order his security forces into action against the presumed perpetrators. Most Libyans sound strongly opposed to them. But it is uncertain whether they will rapidly be brought to justice. If not, Libya’s incoming government will have got off to a shaky start.
The acting interior minister and his deputy, members of the outgoing caretaker government that is still the country’s executive power, have been at embarrassing odds over who precisely was responsible for the attack on the consulate and who has been—or should be—arrested. In Benghazi the police, the interior ministry and the Supreme Security Council, a powerful agency set up under the outgoing transitional authorities, are all passing the buck, saying it is not their job to investigate.
The new parliament’s speaker, Muhammad Megarief, the acting head of state, has been most outspoken in condemning the attacks and in demanding a wholesale assault on Ansar al-Sharia, the jihadist group that eyewitnesses say was responsible for them.
The upshot, so far, is an edgy stand-off between assorted security forces on the one hand and the jihadists on the other. Ansar al-Sharia says it is braced for a fight. It has a base in Benghazi and controls the al-Jala hospital, where two of its wounded men are holed up. They have yet to be arrested or questioned by the army or security men, as the group has eight armed jeeps blocking the entrance to the hospital.
Mr Megarief says signals were intercepted between Ansar al-Sharia and al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, an umbrella for jihadist groups in north Africa. “They have an ambition perhaps to establish an Islamic state across the Maghreb,” he says, calling for every available unit to be deployed against Ansar al-Sharia, including a powerful group of former anti-Qaddafi rebels known as the national shield.
Yousef Mangoush, the army chief of staff, one of few commanders respected by both the national army and the national shield, holds a similarly robust view. General Hamid Belkhair, a long-serving career officer who commands the national army’s Benghazi garrison, says his units are ready to fight any militia, including Ansar al-Sharia, that refuses to lay down its arms and join the regular army or police. The jihadists’s opponents, including students and civil-rights campaigners, say they plan to march on September 21st to Ansar al-Sharia’s base and to order its fighters to give up their weapons.
Tackling the jihadists will be crucial for the new government’s authority. Mr Megarief wants the army and the shield to close down three Benghazi militias forthwith. Two should go quietly but Ansar al-Sharia is another matter. It is unclear whether indictments will be issued against its members and, if so, whether the police will then try to arrest them. Mr Megarief says it will be a “turning point” in Libya’s transition. If the jihadists are not faced down, Libya’s fragile democracy, he fears, could fail.
Source: www.economist.com
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
INTAFF-Protests, real and fake
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Protests, real and fake
Of useful idiots and true believers
Sep 18th 2012,by T.P.| BEIJING
YEAR in, year out, the anniversary of the Mukden incident
always arrives on September 18th. Anniversaries are like that, and yet the memory of September 18th, 1931 is subject to change within China, flaring up and settling down in an unpredictable pattern. It is the true story of a false bombing, plotted by the Japanese against a Japanese-owned railway near the north-eastern city of Shenyang as a pretext for the invasion of much of China. In Western press accounts it is barely remembered at all, and so tends to be potted and repotted with a numbing regularity. This year, with anti-Japan sentiment already at a high for what seem like unrelated reasons , the timing looks almost malevolent. Can such things be planned?
Anyone with much of a memory who has been watching the past few days of raucous anti-Japan demonstrations in Beijing and other Chinese cities might be feeling more than a touch of déjà vu. During China’s last big outbreak of anti-Japan protests, in 2005, and during the violent anti-American and anti-NATO protests that broke out after the deadly bombing in 1999 of China’s embassy in Belgrade, the scene was not dissimilar. Angry crowds of Chinese demonstrators marching and shouting as row after row of riot police watched passively—protecting embassies and consulates from hostile breach, and sometimes bearing the brunt when bottles, fruit or slashes of paint were sent flying.
Then as now, the protesters’ slogans, whether chanted or waved on signs and banners, ranged from assertions of simple patriotism and the “bullying” and “shame” China has endured over the course of its modern history, to harsh and racist messages urging violence.
The protesters are not the only ones repeating themselves. There is a whiff of déjà vu too when one turns to the reaction of onlookers. Especially with regard to the question of whether the demonstrations are genuine, passionate outpourings by ordinary Chinese citizens, or stage-managed pieces of political theatre put on by puppet-masters from Party central.
One long-time foreign resident on the scene of this weekend’s demonstrations in Beijing was convinced “the whole thing was a fake” and that “every single person with their fist in the air” was a member of the Chinese army or police forces “assigned to compulsory duty to fake the protest.”
Some Chinese are similarly sceptical “about the real situation of the ‘patriotic’ anti-Japan demonstrations.” They offered up as proof the identification one man, who was photographed leading protesters in Xi’an with megaphone in his hand and anti-Japanese slogans on his shirt, as a senior local police official.
Your correspondent has learned that to ask demonstrators in these situations whether they have been put up to being there, or even helped along, is a risky thing to do. (The lesson comes from personal experience, though common sense might have sufficed.) It invites anger and indignation for suggesting that they have been manipulated—or insincere.
Given that the answer to this question of whether such demonstrations are stage-managed or spontaneous actually does matter a great deal, is it not worth noting that the two possibilities are not mutually exclusive? And that in some measure both are likely true?
Despite the presence of some officials in the mix, and what may be their significant role in guiding the proceedings, there should be no doubting that there are also plenty of ordinary people joining in, expressing real passion and anger.
Fierce anti-Japanese attitudes are widespread in China, across lines of region, class and age group. For anyone with even the slightest passing knowledge of 20th-century history, it is not hard to understand the roots of these feelings. Still it is disconcerting to see them cultivated and encouraged across all the platforms of China’s state-controlled media.
That they have been cultivated is beyond dispute. There may be surprising diversity of opinion in the new and quite wild world of the Chinese blogosphere, but the mainstream channels of discourse are still managed directly by the Party. And there—in the news, academic publishing, educational materials, television dramas and more—the anti-Japan drumbeat can ever be heard. Sometimes faster or louder, sometimes slower or softer, but never absent when the subject ranges towards Japan. The Chinese government takes very seriously the business of using media to “guide public opinion”.
To cite the role of those efforts in shaping views that are commonly held in China is not to deny that the views are themselves sincere. People are genuinely passionate about the disputed islands, as they are about the rest of the sorry modern history of Sino-Japanese relations. And Japan has done its share to keep the story in the news in recent weeks. China’s state-run media have chosen to emphasise it.
So now there are people who really do want to march, chant and throw plastic bottles at Japan’s embassy. And the authorities—either because they are afraid of angering people by denying them the opportunity or because they like the idea—are allowing it, up to a point. Since it would be riskier to let protesters march long distances across Beijing and pick up steam as they went, it makes a good deal of sense to provide the masses with buses. And since they are loth to pass up any opportunity to guide public opinion, they are probably also handing out flags and signs with approved messages.
In short, officials are allowing the demonstrators to do their thing, and at the same time doing their best to channel them. To credit the object of their manipulations as the real passion of real people is not to deny that there is some manipulating going on. Likewise to acknowledge that protesters may have been bused in, handed a sign to wave and a bottle of water (either to drink or to hurl over an embassy wall) is not to say that their passions are fake.
(Picture credit: AFP)
Source: www.economist.com
Protests, real and fake
Of useful idiots and true believers
Sep 18th 2012,by T.P.| BEIJING
YEAR in, year out, the anniversary of the Mukden incident
always arrives on September 18th. Anniversaries are like that, and yet the memory of September 18th, 1931 is subject to change within China, flaring up and settling down in an unpredictable pattern. It is the true story of a false bombing, plotted by the Japanese against a Japanese-owned railway near the north-eastern city of Shenyang as a pretext for the invasion of much of China. In Western press accounts it is barely remembered at all, and so tends to be potted and repotted with a numbing regularity. This year, with anti-Japan sentiment already at a high for what seem like unrelated reasons , the timing looks almost malevolent. Can such things be planned?
Anyone with much of a memory who has been watching the past few days of raucous anti-Japan demonstrations in Beijing and other Chinese cities might be feeling more than a touch of déjà vu. During China’s last big outbreak of anti-Japan protests, in 2005, and during the violent anti-American and anti-NATO protests that broke out after the deadly bombing in 1999 of China’s embassy in Belgrade, the scene was not dissimilar. Angry crowds of Chinese demonstrators marching and shouting as row after row of riot police watched passively—protecting embassies and consulates from hostile breach, and sometimes bearing the brunt when bottles, fruit or slashes of paint were sent flying.
Then as now, the protesters’ slogans, whether chanted or waved on signs and banners, ranged from assertions of simple patriotism and the “bullying” and “shame” China has endured over the course of its modern history, to harsh and racist messages urging violence.
The protesters are not the only ones repeating themselves. There is a whiff of déjà vu too when one turns to the reaction of onlookers. Especially with regard to the question of whether the demonstrations are genuine, passionate outpourings by ordinary Chinese citizens, or stage-managed pieces of political theatre put on by puppet-masters from Party central.
One long-time foreign resident on the scene of this weekend’s demonstrations in Beijing was convinced “the whole thing was a fake” and that “every single person with their fist in the air” was a member of the Chinese army or police forces “assigned to compulsory duty to fake the protest.”
Some Chinese are similarly sceptical “about the real situation of the ‘patriotic’ anti-Japan demonstrations.” They offered up as proof the identification one man, who was photographed leading protesters in Xi’an with megaphone in his hand and anti-Japanese slogans on his shirt, as a senior local police official.
Your correspondent has learned that to ask demonstrators in these situations whether they have been put up to being there, or even helped along, is a risky thing to do. (The lesson comes from personal experience, though common sense might have sufficed.) It invites anger and indignation for suggesting that they have been manipulated—or insincere.
Given that the answer to this question of whether such demonstrations are stage-managed or spontaneous actually does matter a great deal, is it not worth noting that the two possibilities are not mutually exclusive? And that in some measure both are likely true?
Despite the presence of some officials in the mix, and what may be their significant role in guiding the proceedings, there should be no doubting that there are also plenty of ordinary people joining in, expressing real passion and anger.
Fierce anti-Japanese attitudes are widespread in China, across lines of region, class and age group. For anyone with even the slightest passing knowledge of 20th-century history, it is not hard to understand the roots of these feelings. Still it is disconcerting to see them cultivated and encouraged across all the platforms of China’s state-controlled media.
That they have been cultivated is beyond dispute. There may be surprising diversity of opinion in the new and quite wild world of the Chinese blogosphere, but the mainstream channels of discourse are still managed directly by the Party. And there—in the news, academic publishing, educational materials, television dramas and more—the anti-Japan drumbeat can ever be heard. Sometimes faster or louder, sometimes slower or softer, but never absent when the subject ranges towards Japan. The Chinese government takes very seriously the business of using media to “guide public opinion”.
To cite the role of those efforts in shaping views that are commonly held in China is not to deny that the views are themselves sincere. People are genuinely passionate about the disputed islands, as they are about the rest of the sorry modern history of Sino-Japanese relations. And Japan has done its share to keep the story in the news in recent weeks. China’s state-run media have chosen to emphasise it.
So now there are people who really do want to march, chant and throw plastic bottles at Japan’s embassy. And the authorities—either because they are afraid of angering people by denying them the opportunity or because they like the idea—are allowing it, up to a point. Since it would be riskier to let protesters march long distances across Beijing and pick up steam as they went, it makes a good deal of sense to provide the masses with buses. And since they are loth to pass up any opportunity to guide public opinion, they are probably also handing out flags and signs with approved messages.
In short, officials are allowing the demonstrators to do their thing, and at the same time doing their best to channel them. To credit the object of their manipulations as the real passion of real people is not to deny that there is some manipulating going on. Likewise to acknowledge that protesters may have been bused in, handed a sign to wave and a bottle of water (either to drink or to hurl over an embassy wall) is not to say that their passions are fake.
(Picture credit: AFP)
Source: www.economist.com
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