Sarkozy Can Help the Euro—and Himself

For much of the past two years, Germany has endured a lot of criticism for its approach to the euro-zone crisis, not all of it fair. Some say it is guilty of ingratitude, failing to acknowledge how much of its own economic success is due to membership of the euro zone; many believe it has misused its political and economic power to impose ill-judged austerity policies on its European neighbors, worsening their economic crises; and it is accused of a lack of solidarity for refusing to allow policies that might end the crisis, such as greater European Central Bank intervention and the creation of common euro-zone bonds. The result is that Chancellor Angela Merkel can expect to receive much of the blame if, as some now expect, the common currency breaks up.

There is an element of truth to these criticisms. Germany has certainly often been slow to appreciate the consequences of its actions. It underestimated the speed and severity of the contagion that arose after it insisted on imposing losses on private-sector owners of government bonds as a condition of future bailouts; it failed to anticipate the devastating impact on confidence of Ms. Merkel's statement that Greece could leave the euro; and even now, Germany may be underestimating the seriousness of the current crisis—in particular how far the sovereign-debt crisis reflects a loss of confidence in the wider market rather than a lack of credibility in national fiscal policies.

Even so, Germany can't be faulted for its clear-sighted analysis of the euro's failings and what must be done to eliminate them. It has recognized that this is, above all, a governance crisis. Too many European governments had become the prisoners of vast, unproductive public sectors and over-mighty trade unions, buying electoral support with lavish entitlements that destroyed competitiveness and ran up unsustainable debts. At the same time, Germany recognized that the euro zone's institutional arrangements, including the Stability and Growth Pact that was supposed to guarantee fiscal discipline, had proved woefully inadequate. Finally, it recognized that only market forces, no matter how painful, could exert the necessary pressure on governments to reform.

Whatever the current market turmoil, Germany's approach has certainly yielded results: Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Spain and now Belgium have new governments committed to far-reaching fiscal and structural reform. Meanwhile, Germany's campaign to reform euro-zone governance is also bearing fruit. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, are both working on proposals to improve fiscal scrutiny and discipline. Ms. Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have also discussed fast-track reform ideas that could be implemented without an EU treaty change. A European Council summit on Dec. 9 will consider these proposals amid hopes they will pave the way for a "Grand Bargain," in which a clear commitment from euro-zone leaders to improve discipline and minimize moral hazard will pave the way for a major ECB intervention.

Indeed, the biggest obstacle to a resolution of the crisis may now be France rather than Germany. Unlike Germany, a federal state that has always been comfortable with ceding power to the European Commission, France is a highly centralized state whose own European vision has historically been based on political agreements between nation states. This division has long dogged the European project: France rejected former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's plans for deeper political and fiscal integration at the creation of the euro; it broke the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact, flouted single-market rules and consistently resisted the kind of structural reforms now being demanded of euro-zone member states; more recently, it held up the "six-pack" reforms designed to increase economic policy coordination, only backing down as the price of securing Germany's support for this year's July 21 summit deal.

But French resistance to greater fiscal and political union may be crumbling under the intensity of the crisis. President Sarkozy is due to give a speech Thursday in which he will set out his plans for improving economic integration, increasing fiscal harmonization, guaranteeing discipline, ensuring solidarity and improving euro-zone governance, according to someone familiar with the situation. Whether these proposals will be far-reaching enough to win over Germany remains to be seen. Germany is determined that the euro zone must be based on the rule of law, not political deals. But it may have to give ground, too: Mr. Sarkozy may find it politically impossible to sell any deal to French voters that involves a loss of sovereignty unless Germany is prepared to commit to policies that lead to increased solidarity.

Nonetheless, for the first time since the crisis began two years ago, the outline of a possible long-term solution to save the euro is emerging; after two years of incremental solutions that only undermined market confidence, there is a growing realization that only much deeper fiscal and political union can create the conditions in which the ECB can act and member states might ultimately pool their tax bases to create euro bonds. The ECB, for its part, seems ready to act: It is actively considering a range of options to intervene in what it now considers is a real threat to monetary stability, including yield targeting and funding other bailout vehicles, such as the International Monetary Fund and European Financial Stability Facility, according to someone familiar with its thinking.

Sure, enormous execution risks remain. Any deal will need to be accepted and then ratified by all 17 members of the euro zone—and all 27 members of the European Union if treaty changes are required. And the euro zone is engaged in a race against time: Banks are hemorrhaging funding and parts of Europe already face a severe credit crunch; doubts will persist about the sustainability of some countries' debts. Many countries will take years to restore their competitiveness; further debt relief and possibly fiscal transfers may be needed to keep the euro zone together.

Further dark days are inevitable. But if Mr. Sarkozy can show the political leadership and imagination that has so far been conspicuously lacking throughout this crisis and put forward workable euro-zone governance proposals, he may yet start to draw a line under the crisis—and boost his chances of re-election next year.

Source http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204449804577068380487319736.html

Will Christopher Nolan head into The Twilight Zone?

Christopher Nolan, currently filming his final installement of the Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, is on the short list to take the helm of The Twilight Zone. While The Dark Knight Rises is slated to hit theaters on July 20, 2012, Nolan could be brought in to revitalize a franchise that was last in theaters in 1983.

The interesting thing here is that Nolan tops a list that includes Michael Bay, Alfonso Cuaron, David Yates and Rupert Wyatt. While Nolan would normally be a lock, it will be interesting to see whether or not Warner Bros. follows The Twilight Zone tradition of hiring multiple directors to piece together their own stories. This took place back in 1983 as Steven Spielberg, George Miller, John Landis and Joe Dante each had a segment in the movie. It is not currently known if the modern day version of The Twilight Zone will be broken into segments or run as a standard feature length film. Something that may push Nolan to take this job would be the involvement of his Inception star, Leonardo Dicaprio, whose Appian Way production company is working on the film.

Nolan has been a breath of fresh air for the Batman franchise, reviving it after it had almost become a parody of itself. The Dark Knight Rises is currently filming in Los Angeles before heading back to New York later this fall.

The Dark Knight Rises stars Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Joseph-Gordon Levitt, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman.The film will be going up against The Avengers for Summer 2012 box office supremacy.

New York movie goers can find showtimes and tickets to their local theater here and watch the films at Showcase Cinema De Lux Ridge Hill.

Source http://www.examiner.com/movie-in-new-york/will-christopher-nolan-head-into-the-twilight-zone

Come for a flick, stay for the pho

If your mission were to source something quick and good to eat, before or after a movie at the AMC Theatre in Kanata, Ox Head would fit the bill very nicely. Directly across the plaza in the Centrum Mall, it’s a bright, tidy place, unpretentious, with dark wood floors, cream and orange walls, and red tablecloths.

I’m not sure the house spring rolls are any better for you than movie popcorn, but they are just as addictive. Much healthier are the fresh rice paper wraps, but these are less tasty for their lack of anything herbaceous in them. While the flavour burst of fresh mint or basil — or, ideally, both — make these wraps what they are, Ox Head’s version came without those aromatics.

Naturally, there is pho, meal-size noodle soups stocked with various cuts of beef. These come in three personal sizes, but the smallest ($7) will fill you up. For something racier, go for the outrageously flavourful bò kho. I like mi bò kho, otherwise known as HC6, with egg noodles. This is a fiery beef stew, the broth fragrant of anise, slightly sweet with layers of heat, piled high and prettily with carrots, daikon, onion, basil.

Dishes better suited for sharing are what we order next. Our server, who seems utterly bored with his job this mid- week night, (and is really the only disappointment in our otherwise fine time here) trundles three plates to our table. The first contains pickled carrots, strips of cucumber, fresh mint and basil, lettuce, chopped peanuts. The second is a plate of grilled shrimp and chicken on a bed of rice vermicelli; and the third holds softened rice paper to bundle up the contents of platters one and two. This is fun, healthy, tasty stuff and we ­bundle more than we should, dipped in a fish-sauce vinaigrette. Grilled shrimp and pork on crispy noodles with the usual-suspect vegetables are nicely done, the shrimp a good size, crunchy and sweet, the vegetables perfectly cooked, but the sum of the parts isn’t terribly interesting. Or perhaps everything pales after the bò kho.

Vegetarians will need to keep flipping the Ox Head menu, past the beef, pork, chicken and seafood dishes, past the page of Thai-style coconut curries (the red curry of chicken was fine, though nothing to cross town for), to the very back of the book, where they’ll find a page of dishes based on tofu, plus some vegetarian spring rolls.

To drink, there’s a bit of beer, a few choices of wine by the glass, and no shortage of shakes and ­bubble drinks, plus a delicious fresh lemonade. If you need a sweet ending, there’s tempura-battered ­banana, fried crisp and brown and crackling, the banana within soft, the grease sopped up with ice cream. Order this and you’ll doze through the film. Unless, of course, you’ve had a Vietnamese coffee. In which case you’ll be eyes wide open.

Look for Anne DesBrisay’s guide book, Capital Dining 2011, at bookstores across the region. E-mail her at anne@capitaldining.ca

Source http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Come+flick+stay/5133773/story.html

The old man and the city: Hemingway's love affair with Pamplona

It is not hard to find him. And I see him first where I had expected him to be. Outside the bullring. There he is in sculpture: head an orb of bronze, hair plastered to giant cranium, beard in bloom. His face wears a look that says he owns the place. In many ways, he does.

Ernest Miller Hemingway. Legendary carouser and drinker. Itinerant American and far-flung traveller. A lover and a fighter who chalked up four marriages in his 61 years. A misogynist and a boor, but one whose bullish approach to life is splashed across the pages of the books he penned. A Nobel-lauded writer who, in the likes of For Whom The Bell Tolls and A Farewell To Arms, was one of the undisputed icons of 20th-century literature.

Many parts of the world can claim an affiliation with the great man, his heavy footsteps solidified in the years he spent trawling their cities, and the novels he crafted as a result – Cuba (The Old Man And The Sea), the Florida Keys (To Have And Have Not), Paris (A Moveable Feast), the French Riviera (The Garden Of Eden), Kenya (True At First Light).

But Pamplona was his first obsession – a mutual romance. Even now, though sizeable of reputation, the capital of the Navarre region is a small city, hemmed into the north-east corner of Spain. In Hemingway's heyday, this was trebly the case – a little-acknowledged citadel barely grown beyond medieval youth, a secret package waiting to be unwrapped.

And unwrap it he did. In total, Hemingway journeyed to Pamplona on nine occasions, the most prolific burst between 1923 and 1927, when he visited every year. Each time he came for San Fermín, the city's famed fiesta of bullfighting and brutality, drink and song.

Of course, "famed" needs qualification here. Because, before Hemingway, Pamplona was not famous. Much of its current-day mystique stems from The Sun Also Rises, the masterpiece that the writer distilled from the ripe fruits of his Spanish summer of 1925. Indeed, you might even say that he forged the modern idea of Pamplona and San Fermín, his celebratory words transforming what had been a provincial party into a global event.

The Sun Also Rises was his first novel (published in 1926), and his finest. A portrait of a group of Bohemians caught in the frenzy of the festival, it fizzes with the abandon of the Roaring Twenties. Its genius is built on fact, inspired by what happened to Hemingway's own friends in the July heat. For the fictional Lady Brett Ashley, whose bed-hopping rips the group apart, you should read Lady Duff Twysden, a British divorcee socialite. For her ex-lover Robert Cohn, you can picture Harold Loeb, Hemingway's former boxing partner. And for the cold voice of the narrator Jake Barnes, you should hear Hemingway himself.

But if 1925 was the beginning of something beautiful, 1959 was the end of the affair. The author's final visit to Pamplona was not a happy one. Increasingly frail of body, mind and mood, he found a city he did not know. The spry Spain of the Twenties had been replaced by a state stifled by the fascist fist of General Franco for two decades, a country in which Hemingway's books were banned.

And San Fermí* had swelled hugely – so much so that Hemingway feared he had created a monster. Writing in The Dangerous Summer, published posthumously in 1985, he mused: "Pamplona was rough, as always, overcrowded... I've written Pamplona once, and for keeps. It is all there, as it always was, except forty thousand tourists have been added. There were not twenty tourists when I first went there... four decades ago." Two years later, on 2 July 1961 – 50 years ago today – he walked on to the porch of his home in Ketchum, Idaho, and put a shotgun in his mouth. It was the week of San Fermín.

While it would be a leap to say his last dalliance with Pamplona was a factor in his suicide, there is no doubt that it left Hemingway troubled. And, so, when I arrive in the city on a spring evening, yet another tourist attracted by his prose, I am aware of the folly of chasing something that Hemingway had deemed spoiled. But I am hopeful that it still exists, the Pamplona of 1925 – café chatter and friendly spirit – that dances in The Sun Also Rises.

It helps that I am not in town for San Fermín, the blood-soaked fiesta where the reckless run with angry cattle, and six bulls die in the ring on each of its eight days. For though it was the festival that called to Hemingway's machismo, the city is far better when calm.

So much is clear in the Plaza del Castillo. A grand rectangular space framed by the pale façades of three-storey buildings, it is the obvious spot to launch a hunt for Hemingway's Pamplona. Here it is, the centrepiece, not only of the city, but of The Sun Also Rises – the playground where the characters nurse their morning coffee and spill their evening wine.

As soon as I enter the square, I feel that I have tripped into a chapter of the book. "The square was hot," says Jake Barnes of his first impressions. "The flags hung on their staffs, and it was good to get out of the sun and under the shade of the arcade that runs around the square." And, though the day is merely warm, I do the same, diving into the semi-dark and tracing the edge of the plaza below the low overhang that still flanks it on four sides.

This brings me, instantly, to a landmark. "We had coffee at the Iruña," Barnes continues, "sitting in the comfortable wicker chairs, looking out from the cool of the arcade at the big square." Café Iruña does not seem to have changed in 86 years – a gilded ghost of the 19th century, vast polished mirrors affixed to its walls, Arabesque pillars rising to ornate ceiling, black-and-white tiled floor scuffed by decades of chair-legs scraping backwards.

It still exudes "local". It is a weekday morning, and, as I sip a café con leche (€1.90), I am surrounded by elderly matriarchs, huddled in pairs at rounded tables. And Hemingway is here, too, swarthy statue standing by the bar in a side room that, until Spain enforced a ban on 1 January, was the smoking area. This is the corpulent Fifties Hemingway (though a photo behind shows the svelte lothario of the Twenties), full of face – and the scowl upon it conveys what would surely have been his opinion on Spain's break-up with tobacco.

There are less subtle alterations to Hemingway's Pamplona blueprint. The bolthole where the group stays in The Sun Also Rises was the Hotel Quintana – or the Hotel Montoya, as it is named in the book. The property, in the south-east corner of the Plaza del Castillo, was run by Juanito Quintana. He was a friend of Hemingway, and the model for the novel's gruff hotelier, Montoya. Quintana, an open critic of Franco, vanished in the Forties, and the hotel was turned into apartments. The ground floor now hosts the Cervecería Tropicana, a rowdy watering hole that, on the evening I pop in, is far removed from the polite retreat of matadors that Hemingway eulogises. Next door, Bar Txoko, where Hemingway drank in 1959, is similarly boisterous. Though, at least it is still there. Elsewhere on the Plaza, Bar Torino – thinly "disguised" in the novel as Bar Milano – is mourned by a plaque on the wall.

Yet I can't lose the belief that the Pamplona of 1925 lingers. And, as I stroll the Plaza that evening, I catch another glimpse. Children are noisily kicking a ball under the arcade, and I'm transported to Barnes's depiction of a scene outside Café Iruña, of "a man, playing a reed-pipe... a crowd of children was following him, shouting and pulling at his clothes."

Then there is the Hemingway mother lode, the Gran Hotel La Perla. While Hotel Quintana is the mainstay of The Sun Also Rises, its colleague, in the north-east corner of the Plaza del Castillo, was the author's favourite. He stayed here on most of his visits, becoming so much a part of its fabric that the room he always booked has been preserved in his name.

The suite is usually occupied. But I am in luck. There is a vacancy – and I am led through the lobby of this elegant five-star, past an antique lift and a framed poster for the 1923 fiesta. At the top of the stairs is a time capsule. True, the number has been changed (from 217 to 201) as part of a renovation in 2007, and a new bathroom has been built on to the front. But the bedroom beyond the second door is almost unaltered from the last time Hemingway slumbered here, down to the original furniture: a two-seat sofa in faded pink; a white circular-dial telephone; a writing desk with fold-down lid; a pair of single beds.

Of these, the one by the window is most important. This room was a direct influence on Hemingway's work. When a hungover Jake Barnes is woken by the clatter of bulls on Calle de la Estafeta, it is – to all purposes – in this bed that he stirs. When I doze off that night, I do so aware that I am effectively sleeping within the pages of The Sun Also Rises.

Next morning, I step on to the very balcony where Barnes observes this animal cavalcade, and decide to experience the route myself. Even walking it on a quiet Tuesday, the 851-metre madness of attempting to run with the bulls on these narrow streets is apparent: up the steep gradient of Cuesta de Santo Domingo into the Plaza Consistorial, a quick left into Calle de Mercaderes, a right into the long enclosed corridor of Calle de la Estafeta.

At the end, the bullring lurks. As I approach, the entrance is open. A market is in swing, and I wander inside. The size of the arena (the third largest bullfighting stadium on the planet, after Mexico City and Madrid) is impressive – and you do not have to be a blood-sports apologist to appreciate the place it holds in Pamplona's heart. Nor to appreciate that its seats are where Barnes explains the rituals of battle to Brett Ashley; where the socialite falls for the matador Pedro Romero; where Hemingway himself watched the corrida.

Hemingway was probably fair in his bleak 1959 appraisal of the city. But the thought that he had created a monster was not. Perhaps The Sun Also Rises ushered Pamplona into some awkward teenage phase – because it has since blossomed into adult sophistication.

And it is here that the charming city Hemingway loved lives on: in the Museo de Navarra – a showcase for the region, where an 1804 Goya painting of the Marqués de San Adriá* does dark portents, the clouds gathering behind the nobleman hinting at Napoleon's threat to Spain; in the Parque de la Taconera, a leafy expanse where the art-deco Cafe Alt Wien does Twenties splendour as readily as Hemingway's fiction; in the Ciudadela, a 17th-century stronghold where striking pieces by Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida now nestle behind the fortifications; in the fresh produce on sale in the Mercado del Ensanche in the newer, south side of town; in Rodero, a Michelin-starred restaurant by the bullring where the cochinillo (roast suckling pig) is €26; in the bite-sized pintxos at Bar Gaucho, where the ajoarriero (a pastry parcel of cod and poached egg) should really cost more than €3; in the cluttered ambience of a city that still echoes the medieval era in its defensive walls.

It is to these that I go, seeking a last fragment of The Sun Also Rises. At one point, Barnes and Brett escape the group, ambling to these ramparts to share a moment of peace. And, on a quiet evening, I stalk them – past the Catedral de Santa Maria to the Paseo de Redín.

Here is a special view, the River Arga flowing below, the valley ebbing away, the San Cristóbal mountain rearing to the north. It is the Pamplona that Barnes espies from afar en route to the city, "rising out of the plain... the walls of the city, and the great brown cathedral, and the broken skyline". It is the Pamplona that Hemingway thought was ruined, but which, 50 years after his death, is still extant. You just have to search for it.

Travel essentials: Pamplona

Getting there

* There are no direct flights to Pamplona, but Iberia (0870 609 0500; iberia.com) flies from Heathrow via Madrid or Barcelona.

* Alternatively, the city can be reached from Bilbao, served from Stansted and Manchester by easyJet (0905 821 0905; easyjet.com) and from Heathrow by Vueling (0906 754 7541; vueling.com); or from Zaragoza, served from Stansted by Ryanair (0871 246 0000; ryanair.com).

Staying there

* Gran Hotel La Perla, Plaza del Castillo 1 (00 34 948 223 000; granhotellaperla.com). Doubles start at €260, room only.

* Hotel Alma Muga de Beloso, Beloso Bajo 11 (00 34 948 293 380; almapamplona.com). Doubles start at €149, room only.

Visiting there

* Ciudadela, Avenida del Ejercito (00 34 948 228 237; turismo.navarra.es). Monday to Saturday 7.30am-9.30pm; Sunday 9am-9.30pm; admission free.

* Mercado del Ensanche, Calle Amaya 15 (00 34 948 231 273). Monday to Friday 9am-2pm; Saturday 9am-2.30pm.

* Museo de Navarra, Cuesta de Santo Domingo 47 (00 34 848 426 492; cfnavarra.es/cultura/museo). Tuesday to Saturday 10am-2pm, 5-7pm; Sunday 11am-2pm; €2.

* Catedral de Santa Maria, Calle Curia (00 34 948 212 594; catedraldepamplona.com). Museum: Monday to Saturday 10am-7pm; €4.

Eating and drinking there

* Bar Gaucho, Calle de Espoz y Mina 7 (00 34 948 225 073; cafebargaucho.com) .

* Bar Txoko, Plaza del Castillo 20 (00 34 948 222 012).

* Cafe Alt Wien, Parque de la Taconera (00 34 650 486 569; cafevienes.com) .

* Café Iruña, Plaza del Castillo 44 (00 34 948 175 536; cafeiruna.com).

* Cervecería Tropicana, Plaza del Castillo 18 (00 34 948 222 659).

* Rodero, Calle Emilio Arrieta 3 (00 34 948 228 035; restauranterodero.com).

Source http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/the-old-man-and-the-city-hemingways-love-affair-with-pamplona-2305392.html

Dead mules and the Big Sleep

Ours may be remembered as the era of the Big Sleep. Barack Obama and the Democrats lie comatose at the switch as the federal government continues to swell up like a dead mule in the heat of late July. Air-traffic controllers doze off with airliners circling airports, frantically trying to get landing instructions.

Joe Biden sleeps through the boss’s forgettable speech about the economy, caught on camera with his chin against his chest, happily sawing hickory logs. A man sitting next to him in the photograph is obviously wrestling with a protocol problem: How loud does a veep get to snore before he gets a sharp elbow in the ribs?

Presidents, on the other hand, can’t take refuge in a nap in the attic, where our lovable and slightly dotty uncles live. So when Standard & Poor’s, a most highly regarded authority on Wall Street, downgrades its assessment of the U.S. credit outlook as “negative,” the White House has to do better than to dismiss the assessment as partisan politics.

“I don’t think we should make too much out of that,” says Austen Goolsbee, Mr. Obama’s top economist. “What Standard & Poor’s is doing is making a political judgment, and it is one that we don’t agree with.”

Presidents always have trouble with bad news, and they’ve never figured out what to do with veeps, sleeping or otherwise. John Adams called the vice presidency “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” When the Whigs approached Daniel Webster about running as Zachary Taylor’s running mate in 1848, he declined: “I do not intend to be buried until I am dead.” John Nance Garner, FDR’s first vice president, famously described the job as “not worth a pitcher of warm spit.” Harry S Truman, who had been kept in the dark about everything, including the atomic bomb and how evil Josef Stalin really was, said the only duties a veep has are to “go to weddings and funerals.” Indeed, the only arguments Joe Biden and the missus ever have is at the breakfast table, over who gets the first look at the obituary page.

Thomas Marshall, who was Woodrow Wilson’s vice president and is best known for his observation that “what this country needs is a really good 5-cent cigar,” was fond of recalling the story of two brothers he knew back home in Indiana. “One went away to sea; the other was elected vice president of the United States, and nothing was heard of either one of them again.” That’s not the president’s problem with good ol’ Joe. He is heard from early and often, like a conscientious voter in Chicago.

Good ol’ Joe represents Malaprop City, easily forgiven by the rest of us because so many of us hail from there, too. He famously greeted Chuck Graham, a state senator, at a rally in Missouri with a bluff and hearty: “Stand up, Chuck. Let ‘em see ya.” When Chuck didn’t stand up, the veep insisted again, only to discover that Chuck was sitting in a wheelchair. “Oh, God love ya,” the veep said. “What am I talking about?”

Who knew? Facts often confuse good ol’ Joe. In a campaign interview, he recalled that after the 1929 crash on Wall Street, President Roosevelt went on television to reassure the nation that everything was going to be OK. However, and it was a big however, Herbert Hoover was the president in 1929 and television was only a distant gleam in the eye of its inventors. The politicians were still trying to master radio in 1929 (and FDR famously did, half a decade later).

It doesn’t matter whether Mr. Obama and his sleepy wise men agree with S&P. Like it or not, the highly regarded S&P credit assessment is out there, and when Wall Street talks, a lot of money can walk. Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican majority leader in the House, calls the S&P assessment “a wake-up call” for those who want to raise the U.S. debt limit without “meaningful fiscal reforms that immediately reduce federal spending and stop our nation from digging itself further into debt.”

Once upon a time, a White House could console itself that such jeremiads were only aimed at economists and Washington policy wonks. Ordinary Americans were more interested in baseball, celebrity scandals and the latest politician shot down by the Gaffe Patrol. But the public is fully awake now, with neither appetite nor tolerance for drowsy addicts of the Big Sleep.

Source http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/19/pruden-dead-mules-and-the-big-sleep/

Govt to provide 19 rural villages with electricity

Though electricity has reached almost all villages in Goa, a few hamlets still remain in the dark zone. The Goa government now plans to provide lights to around 19 non-electrified hamlets in various rural parts under the rural village electrification scheme (RVE).

In a written reply to Mayem MLA Anant V Shet's starred question, chief minister Digamber Kamat who holds charge of non conventional energy sources said that under RVE, solar home lighting systems are being provided for households without conventional power supply. The scheme is operated by the Union ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE).

Though no applications have been received from any section, Goa energy development agency (GEDA) has undertaken a survey voluntarily and submitted a proposal to the MNRE, Kamat said.

GEDA has plans to undertake electrification of 19 non-electrified hamlets, which are not accessible to conventional means of electricity. There are approximately 95 households for which sanction has been received, and the work for the same is expected to commence shortly.

Meanwhile, GEDA received 41 applications from institutions during the last five years to set up solar street lighting systems. It disbursed an amount of ` 49,93,200 in subsidies to these institutions.

Most of the applicants comprise civic bodies, educational and defence establishments, wildlife sanctuaries, and a few housing cooperative societies, who had sought subsidies for providing street lighting in their campuses and gardens.

Source http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-04-04/goa/29379584_1_lighting-systems-hamlets-renewable-energy

The Boxer Rebellion - The Cold Still Album Review

Review of The Boxer Rebellion's album The Cold Still

Subscribers to the theory that the big, bad old music industry exists to hold us captive to their view of what's what are plentiful, and a look at the charts says that they've probably got a point. It's a lovely conspiracy theory, but now and then a few artists emerge to debunk it, proving that life outside the machine can still provide a living, creative fulfillment and - just occasionally - great music.

If ever an act could claim to epitomise this state of balance and perfection, The Boxer Rebellion would surely be it. Without a label since Alan McGee's Poptones went belly up a fortnight after the release of their debut album Exits in 2005, the London based four piece have sustained themselves both live and on record in a way almost unheard of prior to the download era, to the extent that The Cold Still's predecessor - 2009's Union - was held off the top slot in the iTunes alternative rock charts only by Kings of Leon.

Score one for the man against the suits then, but that's a sideshow; we can happily report that The Cold Still is not only a record of great depth and poise, but refreshingly it also refuses to compromise by using empty props or the stuff of passing fads. It's a stance that subtly underlines the belief that the The Boxer Rebellion are bona fide talents in their own right, an outfit who clearly understand that their product doesn't need flashy global marketing to convince us of its merits.

Perhaps the biggest clue as to the derivation of the band's sound - a kind of organic, bombast free rootsy stadium folk-rock (Sorry) - is in the nature of their lineup, with American vocalist Nathan Nicholson being joined by Australian guitarist Todd Howe and Englishmen Adam Harrison and Piers Hewitt. The result is a trans-Atlantic composite, borrowing equally from the musical wells of both continents. Nicholson's voice wavers between pristine falsetto and gravely, careworn bluesman throughout, the latter giving the solemnity of opener No Harm and the upliftingly epic light/darkness of Both Sides Are Even parallels in the very best moments imagined by The National.

Here undeniably are songwriters on a winning streak, demonstrated by listening to Exits signature effort Watermelon, and then by measuring the progress made since then. Back in 2011, Organ Song stomps pastorally like the best Cajun knees up you never went to, whilst despite its post-punk roots, Memo ricochets into understated guitar heroics and comes armed with a frown-lifting chorus from the fringes of pop.

This soundtrack for a post-modern ceilidh can be galvanising, but The Cold Still is at its best when waltzing slowly, pirouetting gently around the ethereal tones of Caught By The Light and it's cousin, the gradually building closer Doubt. Neither are austere, but they sum up The Boxer Rebellion's strengths succinctly; power, and control. The machine's loss is our gain.

Source http://www.contactmusic.com/new/home.nsf/albumreview/the-boxer-rebellion-the-cold-still