Categoría: internacional
Shirley Ellis – You Better Be Good, World
SHIRLEY ELLIS: she was funky yet classy, sophisticated but sassy. Unjustly pigeonholed as a novelty act by many rock historians, Shirley was a unique talent who could rock the joint with the best of ‘em, then spin on a dime and hold a packed house of hip nightclubbers in the palm of her hand, spellbound by her cool mastery of a jazzy ballad.
A clever songsmith of Caribbean ancestry, Shirley (if her reported birth date of 1941 is accurate) was only 13 when the Chords (of “Sh-Boom” fame) committed her composition “Pretty Wild” to wax. As a singer, the Bronx-based teen won Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem while also performing as a member of the Metronomes and getting spliced to group leader Alphonso Elliston.
Hubby managed the Heartbreakers whose 45 “One, Two, I Love You” was a further example of Shirley’s creative prowess. It was through a songwriting cousin of Alphonso’s that Shirley forged a partnership with Lincoln Chase. Spectacularly unsuccessful as a record star, Chase was one of the biggest writers of the 1950s, supplying stars like Chuck Willis, Big Maybelle and Ruth Brown with top of the range songs and scoring hits for the Drifters and LaVern Baker with “Such A Night” and “Jim Dandy”, respectively.
In 1959, Chase became not only Shirley’s songwriting partner but also her manager and, later, her producer. The symbiosis was immediate; he saw in her the raw stuff that stars are made of, while she sensed his innate ability to mould her into one. The pair worked ceaselessly together over the following years on perfecting every aspect of her talent. A tentative release for the small Shell logo in 1961 marked the recording bow of Shirley Elliston – nobody cared. False start.
It was not until the fall of 1963 that the years of preparation paid off with the diminutive thrush’s Congress label debut, the incredibly exciting “The Nitty Gritty”. Taking over where Trini Lopez had left off a few months earlier with the loose, live, feel-good smash “If I Had A Hammer”, Chase fashioned the hippest slice of au-go-go, street-smart madness of 1963 or any year since. Demo copies of this George Harrison favourite read “The Real Nitty Gritty” by Shirley Elliston but the title and the singer’s surname were edited for commercial release. Shirley Ellis, after years of grooming, became an overnight Top 10 hitmaking sensation. Although she didn’t quite explain the meaning of “The Nitty Gritty”, the listener instinctively sussed that it was the unadorned kernel of reality at the heart of anything and everything. The phrase grabbed the imagination of society’s mainstream and is enshrined in the common vocabulary to this day.
“(That’s) What The Nitty Gritty Is” was no more enlightening and, let’s face it, a tad opportunistic. This soundalike follow-up stalled in the lower reaches of the chart and, after the no-show of the vastly superior “Takin’ Care Of Business” and a “Nitty Gritty”-style revival of Chase’s “Such A Night”, it seemed that the Ellis bandwagon had ground to a halt. Forget it pal! As Christmas 1964 lurched ever nearer, Shirley bounced back onto the charts with a bullet. The convoluted craziness of “The Name Game” was impossible to withstand and would become the singer’s biggest hit. She proved a sensation on Murray the K’s Brooklyn Fox Holiday Show that winter, taking “Name Game” requests from the crowd. Let’s hope that Shirley-Shirley-Bo-Birley had the sense to ignore Buck!
The fun kept coming as her wildly percussive follow-up began an equally impressive chart run while breaking Shirley Ellis internationally. Her third Top 10 smash finally brought the star recognition in Britain and many other territories but “The Clapping Song” would prove impossible to top. A lowly placing for the rubber-band rhythm of “The Puzzle Song” was to be the lady’s last chart showing for Congress.
Shirley’s “I Never Will Forget” stiffed as did her ominous Christmas 1965 single “You Better Be Good, World” on which reindeer quaked under threat of atomic devastation. The overly-dopey, yet curiously cherishable, “Ever See A Diver Kiss His Wife While The Bubbles Bounce About Above The Water?” erm . . . bubbled under the Hot 100 for five seconds in early 1966.
Shirley was then signed by Columbia. She registered her chart swan song with the memorable “Soul Time”, the second of a trio of 45s for her new outlet. A June 1967 Columbia album, her third in all, was the last we heard from Shirley. Although she was reported to have then pacted with the Bell label, no records were forthcoming and she vanished into retirement.
Three fondly remembered smashes is more than many more feted artists achieve and, although Shirley Ellis is one of that dignified handful who resisted the oldies circuit, her oft-revived classics continue to delight listeners the world over. All together now . . . Three-six-nine, the goose drank wine, the monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line; the line broke, the monkey got choked and they all went to heaven in a little row-boat!
Putin invita a los hijos de los diplomáticos de EEUU en Rusia a fiesta navideña en el Kremlin
El presidente de Rusia, Vladímir Putin, afirmó que Moscú no responderá de forma simétrica a Washington, que en la víspera anunció la expulsión de 35 diplomáticos rusos.
“Nos reservamos el derecho a tomar contramedidas, pero no bajaremos al nivel de diplomacia primitiva, irresponsable, y estudiaremos los pasos siguientes para restablecer las relaciones ruso-estadounidenses en función de la política que aplique la administración del presidente Donald Trump”, señaló el mandatario ruso en una declaración difundida por el Kremlin.
Putin afirmó que “no vamos a crear problemas para diplomáticos estadounidenses”.
“No expulsaremos a nadie”, añadió.
¡Felicito al presidente electo Donald Trump y a todo el pueblo estadounidense! ¡Les deseo a todos bienestar y prosperidad!”, dice la declaración presidencial.
Al comentar la decisión de Washington de expulsar a 35 diplomáticos rusos, Putin destacó que Moscú, a su vez, no va a prohibir a las familias y niños de los diplomáticos estadounidenses en Rusia visitar lugares de ocio durante las fiestas navideñas. “Invito a todos los niños de los diplomáticos estadounidenses acreditados en Rusia a la fiesta infantil de Año Nuevo y Navidad en el Kremlin”, dice el comunicado.
El Departamento de Estado de EEUU anunció la expulsión de 35 diplomáticos rusos por su supuesta implicación en los ciberataques.
Más: https://mundo.sputniknews.com/rusia/201612301065948676-putin-ninos-diplomaticos-eeuu-fiesta/
Rusia responde a las sanciones de EE. UU.
Tras advertir que tomaría “represalias adecuadas” en respuesta a las sanciones que le impuso Estados Unidos, el Gobierno ruso cerró la Escuela Angloamericana de Moscú, a la que acuden los hijos de muchos diplomáticos.
Este jueves (29.12.2016), poco después de que la Casa Blanca impusiera duras sanciones sobre Rusia, acusando al Kremlin de injerir en las elecciones presidenciales estadounidenses para perjudicar a Hillary Clinton y favorecer a Donald Trump, el Gobierno de Vladimir Putin ordenó cerrar la Escuela Angloamericana de Moscú –a la que acuden los hijos de diplomáticos de habla inglesa– y clausurar el acceso que conduce a la casa de vacaciones de la embajada de Estados Unidos, ubicada en el parque de Serebryanyy Bor, cercano a la capital.
Así lo informó la cadena televisiva estadounidense CNN. Sugiriendo que Barack Obama estaba tratando de enturbiar las relaciones binacionales antes de finalizar su mandato, Moscú ya había advertido que tomaría “represalias adecuadas” en respuesta a sus medidas punitivas. En declaraciones a la prensa, el portavoz del Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, afirmó que el presidente Putin estaba llevando a la práctica el principio diplomático de la “reciprocidad”. El Departamento de Estado no comentó el asunto.
Peskov agregó que el presidente Putin no se daría prisa en reaccionar a la afrenta de Obama, pero adelantó que, cuando lo haga, le causará “notables molestias” a Washington. En el sitio web de la Escuela Angloamericana –en la que los hijos de los diplomáticos estadounidenses, británicos y canadienses tienen prioridad en los procesos de admisión– no se hace alusión alguna al cierre de sus puertas. La institución tiene su sede principal en el noroeste de Moscú, pero cuenta con otro campus en la ciudad de San Petersburgo.
Obama le dio 72 horas para salir de Estados Unidos a 35 diplomáticos rusos y a sus familias, y anunció el cierre de dos propiedades del Gobierno ruso en Nueva York y Maryland. Además, mencionó sanciones económicas inminentes, que pasan por congelar los bienes de dos de las principales agencias de inteligencia rusas: el Departamento Central de Inteligencia (militar, GRU por su acrónimo en ruso) y el Servicio Federal de Seguridad (seguridad nacional, FSB). Estas sanciones son las más duras adoptadas por Obama durante su gestión.
ERC ( EFE / AFP )
En: DW
FC Barcelona – Barça Legends: Romario / أهداف أساطير برشلونة: روماريو
John Kerry: “La solución de los dos Estados es la única vía posible para la paz entre Israel y Palestina”
El secretario de Estado de EEUU, John Kerry, ha reafirmado hoy que “la solución de los dos Estados es la única vía posible para la paz entre Israel y Palestina”. A lo que ha añadido que esta solución está “en peligro”, dijo Kerry, que abandonará sus funciones el próximo 20 de enero, en un importante discurso en el que ha expuesto la visión del presidente Barack Obama sobre Oriente Próximo.
Kerry ha comparecido hoy para explicar la decisión de su país tras abstenerse en la votación del pasado viernes en el Consejo de Seguridad de Naciones Unidas por la que se exigió a Israel el fin de los asentamientos. Catorce estados miembros votaron a favor.
El status quo en Oriente Próximo conduce a la “ocupación perpetua”, dijo el jefe de la diplomacia estadounidense.
“Esto que nosotros defendemos: el porvenir de Israel como Estado judío y democrático, que viva en paz y seguridad junto a sus vecinos”, agregó.
El secretario de Estado ha ofrecido hoy una “amplia visión” de cómo reactivar el proceso de paz israel-palestino.
Su intervención se produce después de que Jerusalén anulara la votación para seguir construyendo en Jerusalén Este a petición de Benjamin Netanyahu. La ONG Ir Amim denunciaba horas después la aprobación por parte de la comisión municipal de la construcción de un edificio de cuatro plantas en el barrio palestino de Silwan, en Jerusalén Este.
La reciente resolución de la ONU le pide a Israel cesar la colonización, una votación que llevó al Estado hebreo a “reducir” sus relaciones con algunos países.
Entrevistado por EL MUNDO en Jerusalén pocos minutos después de la alocución de Kerry, el ministro israelí de Educación, Naftali Bennett, replicó que “es un discurso con buenas intenciones pero desconectado de la realidad, según informa Sal Emergui. La misma política ha conducido a un Oriente Próximo en llamas, al genocidio en Siria, a un Irán que avanza hacia la bomba y ahora el abandono de la única democracia en la zona, Israel”. Según él, “Hay ahora un Estado palestino en Gaza que se ha convertido en un estado de terror. No podemos tolerar otro Estado palestino del terror. Por eso nosotros seguiremos avanzando para conseguir seguridad y paz”. Como líder del grupo más derechista en la coalición del Gobierno israelí que además pide la anexión israelí de partes importantes de Cisjordania y se opone a la creación de un Estado palestino, Bennett fue uno de los dirigentes a los que Kerry aludió, sin nombrar, para denunciar la política de asentamientos de Netanyahu.
La respuesta de Trump
Antes del discurso de Kerry, el presidente electo de EEUU pidió a Israel mantenerse fuerte hasta que él llegue a la Casa Blanca.
“Nosotros no podemos continuar dejando que Israel sea tratado con un total desprecio y con falta de de respeto”, escribió el millonario, que ha nombrado recientemente un embajador en Israel favorable al traslado del embajador de EEUU a Jerusalén.
We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but…….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016
Los israelíes “están habituados a tener un gran amigo de los EEUU, pero esto ya no es el caso. El principio del fin ha sido este horrible acuerdo con Irán (en referencia a la política nuclear) y ahora (la ONU), mantente fuerte Israel, el 20 de enero está muy cerca”, dijo Trump.
not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016
En: elmundo.es
The town where Mikhail Gorbachev grew up
Here’s how American journalists covered the rise of Hitler in the 1920s and 30s
How to report on a fascist?
How to cover the rise of a political leader who’s left a paper trail of anti-constitutionalism, racism and the encouragement of violence? Does the press take the position that its subject acts outside the norms of society? Or does it take the position that someone who wins a fair election is by definition “normal,” because his leadership reflects the will of the people?
These are the questions that confronted the U.S. press after the ascendance of fascist leaders in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.
A leader for life
Benito Mussolini secured Italy’s premiership by marching on Rome with 30,000 blackshirts in 1922. By 1925 he had declared himself leader for life. While this hardly reflected American values, Mussolini was a darling of the American press, appearing in at least 150 articles from 1925-1932, most neutral, bemused or positive in tone.
The Saturday Evening Post even serialized Il Duce’s autobiography in 1928. Acknowledging that the new “Fascisti movement” was a bit “rough in its methods,” papers ranging from the New York Tribune to the Cleveland Plain Dealer to the Chicago Tribune credited it with saving Italy from the far left and revitalizing its economy. From their perspective, the post-WWI surge of anti-capitalism in Europe was a vastly worse threat than Fascism.
Ironically, while the media acknowledged that Fascism was a new “experiment,” papers like The New York Times commonly credited it with returning turbulent Italy to what it called “normalcy.”
Yet some journalists like Hemingway and journals like the New Yorker rejected the normalization of anti-democratic Mussolini. John Gunther of Harper’s, meanwhile, wrote a razor-sharp account of Mussolini’s masterful manipulation of a U.S. press that couldn’t resist him.
The ‘German Mussolini’
Adolf Hitler. AP Photo
Mussolini’s success in Italy normalized Hitler’s success in the eyes of the American press who, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, routinely called him “the German Mussolini.” Given Mussolini’s positive press reception in that period, it was a good place from which to start. Hitler also had the advantage that his Nazi party enjoyed stunning leaps at the polls from the mid ‘20’s to early ‘30’s, going from a fringe party to winning a dominant share of parliamentary seats in free elections in 1932.
But the main way that the press defanged Hitler was by portraying him as something of a joke. He was a “nonsensical” screecher of “wild words” whose appearance, according to Newsweek, “suggests Charlie Chaplin.” His “countenance is a caricature.” He was as “voluble” as he was “insecure,” stated Cosmopolitan.
When Hitler’s party won influence in Parliament, and even after he was made chancellor of Germany in 1933 – about a year and a half before seizing dictatorial power – many American press outlets judged that he would either be outplayed by more traditional politicians or that he would have to become more moderate. Sure, he had a following, but his followers were “impressionable voters” duped by “radical doctrines and quack remedies,” claimed the Washington Post. Now that Hitler actually had to operate within a government the “sober” politicians would “submerge” this movement, according to The New York Times and Christian Science Monitor. A “keen sense of dramatic instinct” was not enough. When it came to time to govern, his lack of “gravity” and “profundity of thought” would be exposed.
In fact, The New York Times wrote after Hitler’s appointment to the chancellorship that success would only “let him expose to the German public his own futility.” Journalists wondered whether Hitler now regretted leaving the rally for the cabinet meeting, where he would have to assume some responsibility.
Adolf Hitler at the German Opera house. AP Photo
Yes, the American press tended to condemn Hitler’s well-documented anti-Semitism in the early 1930s. But there were plenty of exceptions. Some papers downplayed reports of violence against Germany’s Jewish citizens as propaganda like that which proliferated during the foregoing World War. Many, even those who categorically condemned the violence, repeatedly declared it to be at an end, showing a tendency to look for a return to normalcy.
Journalists were aware that they could only criticize the German regime so much and maintain their access. When a CBS broadcaster’s son was beaten up by brownshirts for not saluting the Führer, he didn’t report it. When the Chicago Daily News’ Edgar Mowrer wrote that Germany was becoming “an insane asylum” in 1933, the Germans pressured the State Department to rein in American reporters. Allen Dulles, who eventually became director of the CIA, told Mowrer he was “taking the German situation too seriously.” Mowrer’s publisher then transferred him out of Germany in fear of his life.
By the later 1930s, most U.S. journalists realized their mistake in underestimating Hitler or failing to imagine just how bad things could get. (Though there remained infamous exceptions, like Douglas Chandler, who wrote a loving paean to “Changing Berlin” for National Geographic in 1937.) Dorothy Thompson, who judged Hitler a man of “startling insignificance” in 1928, realized her mistake by mid-decade when she, like Mowrer, began raising the alarm.
“No people ever recognize their dictator in advance,” she reflected in 1935. “He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will.” Applying the lesson to the U.S., she wrote, “When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.”
John Broich, Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
In: businessinsider
30 Movies That Are Going To Blow Everyone Away In 2017
North Carolina is no longer classified as a democracy
North Carolina – USA map. In: http://www.nationsonline.org/maps/USA/North_Carolina_map.jpg
In 2005, in the midst of a career of traveling around the world to help set up elections in some of the most challenging places on earth – Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt, Lebanon, South Africa, Sudan and Yemen, among others – my Danish colleague, Jorgen Elklit, and I designed the first comprehensive method for evaluating the quality of elections around the world. Our system measured 50 moving parts of an election process and covered everything from the legal framework to the polling day and counting of ballots.
In 2012 Elklit and I worked with Pippa Norris of Harvard University, who used the system as the cornerstone of the Electoral Integrity Project. Since then the EIP has measured 213 elections in 153 countries and is widely agreed to be the most accurate method for evaluating how free and fair and democratic elections are across time and place.
When we evolved the project I could never imagine that as we enter 2017, my state, North Carolina, would perform so badly on this, and other, measures that we are no longer considered to be a fully functioning democracy.
In the just released EIP report, North Carolina’s overall electoral integrity score of 58/100 for the 2016 election places us alongside authoritarian states and pseudo-democracies like Cuba, Indonesia and Sierra Leone. If it were a nation state, North Carolina would rank right in the middle of the global league table – a deeply flawed, partly free democracy that is only slightly ahead of the failed democracies that constitute much of the developing world.
Indeed, North Carolina does so poorly on the measures of legal framework and voter registration, that on those indicators we rank alongside Iran and Venezuela. When it comes to the integrity of the voting district boundaries no country has ever received as low a score as the 7/100 North Carolina received. North Carolina is not only the worst state in the USA for unfair districting but the worst entity in the world ever analyzed by the Electoral Integrity Project.
That North Carolina can no longer call its elections democratic is shocking enough, but our democratic decline goes beyond what happens at election time. The most respected measures of democracy — Freedom House, POLITY and the Varieties of Democracy project — all assess the degree to which the exercise of power depends on the will of the people: That is, governance is not arbitrary, it follows established rules and is based on popular legitimacy.
The extent to which North Carolina now breaches these principles means our state government can no longer be classified as a full democracy.
First, legislative power does not depend on the votes of the people. One party wins just half the votes but 100 percent of the power. The GOP has a huge legislative majority giving it absolute veto-proof control with that tiny advantage in the popular vote. The other party wins just a handful of votes less and 0 percent of the legislative power. This is above and beyond the way in which state legislators are detached from democratic accountability as a result of the rigged district boundaries. They are beholden to their party bosses, not the voters. Seventy-six of the 170 (45 percent) incumbent state legislators were not even opposed by the other party in the general election.
Second, democracies do not limit their citizens’ rights on the basis of their born identities. However, this is exactly what the North Carolina legislature did through House Bill 2 (there are an estimated 38,000 transgender Tar Heels), targeted attempts to reduce African-American and Latino access to the vote and pernicious laws to constrain the ability of women to act as autonomous citizens.
Third, government in North Carolina has become arbitrary and detached from popular will. When, in response to losing the governorship, one party uses its legislative dominance to take away significant executive power, it is a direct attack upon the separation of powers that defines American democracy. When a wounded legislative leadership, and a lame-duck executive, force through draconian changes with no time for robust review and debate it leaves Carolina no better than the authoritarian regimes we look down upon.
What is to be done? How do we reverse the slide and become a democracy once again? Many of the issues that face us are national questions, but there are flaws in our government that can be corrected at the state level.
The first step to recovery is self-awareness. We need to put aside the complacent hyperbole and accept that in North Carolina we no longer live in a functioning democracy worth its name. We have become one of those struggling developing world states that needs to claw its way slowly toward democratic integrity.
Practically we need to address the institutional failures which have cost us our democratic ranking – districting, equal access to the vote and the abuse of legislative power. An independent commission is the sine-qua-non of democratic districting (no democracy in the world outside of the U.S. allows the elected politicians to draw the lines). Voter registration and poll access should make voting as easy as possible and never be skewed in favor of any one section of society. Last, elected officials need to respect the core principles of democracy – respect the will of the voters, all the voters and play the game with integrity.
Respect for democracy is not a partisan issue. In America true Republicans are as loyal to democratic principles as are Democrats.
Andrew Reynolds has consulted in over 25 nations on issues of democratic design since 1991. His most recent book is The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform (Oxford). He is a Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In: newsobserver.com