The music of Barney Barnwell and the Plum Hollow Band rolls out of the Blue Ridge Mountains like an overloaded pulpwood truck with no brakes. Succeeding against the odds, they have thrived due to guts, talent, experience and absolute faith. nbsp; nbsp; Barney Barnwell and the Plum Hollow Band bridge high energy bluegrass with rock and roll, extolling the virtues of their original Mountain Rock. nbsp; nbsp; Touring the collegiate circuit for the past five years, Barney Barnwell and Plum Hollow Band have amassed an enormous grass roots following. Their performances provide a unique foot-stomping, humorous, and culturally significant experience. nbsp; nbsp; The band also sponsors the annual Moonshiner's Reunion on Barney's fifty acre farm. Located at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, this festival celebrates Mountain Rock, mountain culture, and their commitment to quality entertainment. nbsp; nbsp; The goal of these musicians is to share their belief that Mountain Rock will be realized and appreciated for the unique and raucous sound born out of mountain heritage and individual pride.

In their coverage of World AIDS Day, several media outlets, including CNN, The Washington Post, The Indianapolis Star, and The Wall Street Journal, praised or uncritically reported praise of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). However, none of those outlets noted criticism of PEPFAR's requirement that starting in fiscal year 2006, 33 percent of funds set aside for prevention under the act that created PEPFAR be spent on abstinence-until-marriage education -- a provision the Bush administration reportedly lobbied Congress to add. According to many of the government officials responsible for managing PEPFAR abroad, as well as the Institute of Medicine (IOM), this requirement hindered PEPFAR's effectiveness in preventing the spread of AIDS. Congress removed the requirement when it reauthorized PEPFAR in 2008.

The following media outlets praised or uncritically reported praise of Bush's AIDS relief efforts:

• On the December 1 edition of CNN Newsroom, CNN correspondent Kathleen Koch stated that Bush's AIDS policy is "something that the president is quite proud of" and that "[t]he strides that the U.S. has helped make globally in the fight against HIV/AIDS" are "a really important part of his legacy."
• A December 2 Washington Post article reported that "Bush called his program to combat HIV/AIDS 'one of the most important initiatives of my administration' and praised it as a resounding success." The Post added: "The administration's HIV/AIDS initiative is a particular point of pride for Bush, who has received praise at home and abroad for his leadership on the issue."
• In a December 2 article, The Indianapolis Star uncritically reported that U.S. global AIDS coordinator Randall Tobias said that under Bush, the "U.S. has led the global fight against AIDS with the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief."
• A December 1 post on The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog reported that "[t]he White House is expected to roll out a series of retrospectives on President George W. Bush's achievements throughout the month of December" in order to "burnish" his "record." The post went on to report that "in remarks at the White House, Bush started with a recap of his substantial accomplishments on AIDS relief" and also uncritically reported Rev. Rick Warren's assertion that "[n]o man in history, no world leader has ever done more for global health than President George W. Bush, and I think we need to recognize that and I thank you for that."

None of these reports mentioned criticism of PEPFAR's abstinence-until-marriage requirement. According to a 2007 IOM report, "the abstinence-until-marriage budget allocation ... hampers ... PEPFAR's ability to meet the [prevention] target":

PEPFAR's approach to achieving the prevention target involves planning and implementing prevention programs and activities that are evidence-based, harmonized with country plans and priorities, and appropriate to each country's unique epidemiologic and cultural context. However, the abstinence-until-marriage budget allocation in the Leadership Act hampers these efforts and thus PEPFAR's ability to meet the target. Despite the efforts of the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator to administer the allocation judiciously, it has greatly limited the ability of Country Teams to develop and implement comprehensive prevention programs that are well integrated with each other and with counseling and testing, care, and treatment programs and that target those populations at greatest risk.

IOM further found that "the Committee has been unable to find evidence for the position that abstinence can stand alone or that 33 percent is the appropriate allocation for such activities even within integrated programs."

Moreover, in a 2006 report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted the assessments of the "focus country teams" made up of the "U.S. agency officials responsible for managing PEPFAR in the focus countries." According to the GAO, "about half of the focus country teams told us that meeting the [abstinence] spending requirement can undermine the integration of prevention programs":

Satisfying the Leadership Act's abstinence-until-marriage spending requirement presents challenges to most country teams. Several focus country teams indicated that they value the ABC model [Abstain, Be faithful, or use Condoms] as an HIV/AIDS prevention tool and noted the importance of AB [abstinence/faithfulness] messages, particularly for certain populations. However, about half of the focus country teams told us that meeting the spending requirement can undermine the integration of prevention programs by forcing them to isolate funding for AB activities. Further, 17 of the 20 PEPFAR teams required to meet the spending requirement unless they obtain exemptions from it reported that the spending requirement presents challenges to their ability to respond to local epidemiology and cultural and social norms.

Additionally, in a November 2006 report titled "Bush's AIDS Initiative: Too Little Choice, Too Much Ideology," the Center for Public Integrity stated that Bush's AIDS relief policy "has enabled his administration to funnel tens of millions of dollars to Christian faith-based organizations that support his ideology and form his political base." The report quoted Dr. Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, asserting that PEPFAR "is failing to stop the global spread of AIDS and failing to help lead the world to stop this deadly disease. ... We have a flawed framework with flawed policies that have kept us from being where we should be by now."

According to a May 2, 2003, New York Times article, the abstinence-spending provision, added to the United States Leadership Against Global HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003 as an amendment in the House, "was endorsed by the White House. Lawmakers said Vice President Dick Cheney called House members today to lobby for it."

A February 21 New York Times article reported that amid Democratic efforts to remove the abstinence spending requirement from PEPFAR, Bush "defended the requirement":

[F]or the first time on the trip, Mr. Bush faced tough questioning from an African reporter about his administration's requirement that one-third of the AIDS initiative's prevention funds be spent on programs promoting abstinence.

The independent Institute of Medicine has said the abstinence requirement is hindering prevention efforts. Democrats in Congress, debating reauthorization of the initiative, want it dropped.

Mr. Bush's questioner on Wednesday told the president that the requirement was not realistic, because "multiple sexual relationships or partner relationships is the reality" in African societies, "though it's not spoken of in public."

As he has in the past, Mr. Bush defended the requirement, but he then went a step further.

"I monitor the results," he said. "And if it looks like it's not working, then we'll change. But thus far I can report, at least to our citizens, that the program has been unbelievably effective. And we're going to stay at it."

Additionally, a February 18 article on the San Francisco Chronicle's website reported:

"It is a balanced program. It is an ABC program: abstinence, be faithful and condoms. It's a program that's been proven effective," he [Bush] said, speaking at a news conference with Tanzanian President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, an enthusiastic supporter of the effort.

"I understand there's voices on both ends of the political spectrum trying to alter the program," Bush said. "I would ask Congress to listen to leaders on the continent of Africa ... analyze what works, stop the squabbling and get the program reauthorized."

Congress subsequently passed the reauthorization bill, and Bush signed it on July 30. According to a 2008 GAO report, the bill "removes the abstinence-until-marriage spending requirement and calls for the Global AIDS Coordinator to ensure that abstinence and fidelity programs are evidence-based and country-based."

From the 11 a.m. ET hour of the December 1 edition of CNN Newsroom:

HARRIS: Today, World AIDS Day. Take a look at this. That means four people will be infected while I'm on your television screen. Today is the 20th World AIDS Day. Globally, 33 million people are believed to be infected with HIV. CNN's Kathleen Koch is at the White House, where a gigantic red ribbon decorates the North Portico. Kathleen, good morning to you. Quite a sight.

KOCH: Yes indeed, Tony. This very same ribbon actually graced the North Portico, if you'll remember, last year on World AIDS Day. And it's important to point out that this is a really -- something that the president is quite proud of, the strides that the U.S. has helped make globally in the fight against HIV/AIDS, a really important part of his legacy. And he and the first lady came out on the North Lawn about an hour and a half ago underneath this great, huge ribbon that's gracing the North Portico.

And the president talked about how his President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known in the shorthand version as PEPFAR most of the time -- how it finally has reached the goal that it set back in 2003, when it started, of increasing the number of people who are receiving anti-retroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS from 50,000 -- that was the number in 2003 -- to 2 million within just five years.

BUSH [video clip]: When PEPFAR began, only 50,000 people living with HIV in all of sub-Sahara Africa were receiving anti-retroviral treatment. Around the world, we've also supported care for more than 10 million people affected by HIV, including more than 4 million orphans and vulnerable children. More than 237,000 babies had been born HIV-free thanks to the support of the American people for programs to prevent mothers from passing the virus on to their children.

KOCH: Now, for the last hour or so, the president has been participating across town in a civil forum in global health here in Washington. And the president receiving a touching video tribute, not only from U.N. -- the head of the U.N., Ban Ki-moon, but from Bono, from Bill Gates. The president also reflected on how he got involved in fighting this global pandemic of AIDS, and he talked about, if he'd done nothing about it, how he would have, quote, "disgraced the office of the presidency." And he also discussed how he was surrounded by people who felt this was just such an important cause for the United States to take up, people including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Now, looking at the program, the president did just in July sign legislation that will authorize another $48 billion, Tony, to expand the program.

HARRIS: All right, Kathleen Koch. Wow, that's quite a figure right there.

KOCH: Quite a lot.

HARRIS: Yeah. At the White House for us, Kathleen, thank you.

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/75372?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Millions+of+Chinese+graduates+out+of+work+after+fivefold+rise+in+university+placesch=World+newsc3=The+Guardianc4=China+%28News%29%2CInternational+education+news%2CEducation%2CWorld+newsc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CStudents+Educationc6=Tania+Braniganc7=2008_12_04c8=1128381c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Chinac13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FChina" width="1" height="1" //divpSu Yinyin's family were thrilled when she won a place at university. As impoverished farmers, they knew it promised a comfortable middle-class life and a giant step up the social ladder for their daughter./ppBut now Su, 21, is wondering whether she can reach the next rung. As she looked around the heaving employment fair in Beijing, where 10,000 job-seekers vied for the attention of recruiters, she acknowledged that her parents' pride was increasingly tinged with anxiety. "When I became a student, it was both happy and worrying for my family," she said. "We are not rich. I took loans for university. I just hope I can get a stable job after graduation and repay them."/ppMore than 6 million Chinese students left university this year and up to a quarter are still struggling to find work. As the global slowdown bites, students such as Su know it can only get worse./pp"The grim economic situation poses an unprecedented challenge for college graduates to get a proper job," the ministry of education warned yesterday./ppBut the problems predate the crisis and mark both a success and failure on China's part. "The number of graduates increased too quickly - by 2006 there were already five times more than in 1999. The labour market can't take that big an increase in such a short time," said Professor Yang Dongping of the Beijing Institute of Technology, the author of a report on graduate employment./ppThe expansion of higher education reflects China's aspirations: the world's factory needs more skilled workers to move up the chain, away from cheap mass production. Yet there are not yet enough higher-end jobs. Four million graduates in recent years have yet to find their first job, according to officials. However, the true figure is probably higher as the current system relies on reporting by universities, who have a vested interest in showing that graduates can find work./ppGraduates are now competing with people made redundant. "I've had interviews, but they want people with experience," said Liu Jing, who has been job-hunting for six months. "There are more graduates, so there are more competitors for every post."/ppLike Su, she hails from a farming family; she had hoped to earn 2,000-3,000 yuan (pound;200-pound;300) a month to pay off her 20,000 yuan education bill. Now the 21-year-old will settle for 1,000 yuan./ppHigher expectations are clashing with the deteriorating economic reality./ppUntil 1981, the government assigned jobs, with those who dreamed of becoming engineers sometimes ending up as cooks or clerks. But while their parents took the work they were given, these students grew up in an age of personal choice. They expect fulfilling jobs and good remuneration; few want to leave the big cities or take up underpaid teaching work./ppGuo Qing, 22, should not have been at the fair at all: he found a design job after graduating this summer. But he admitted he packed it in not long afterwards. "I was very picky when looking for jobs before. I felt this or that didn't fit me. Later I realised it was my problem, psychologically," he said. "Our education was idealistic. But you realise the gulf between realism and idealism once you reach the real world. When you're job hunting you have to be practical."/ppYang thinks China needs to change, too. "Only 6% of the labour force has higher education, much lower than in most developed countries. There have to be structural problems," he said./ppSpending per student has slumped by almost two-thirds and most investment has gone into new buildings. Yang said that meant a drop in teaching quality and an explosion in liberal arts courses, while resource-hungry subjects such as engineering have lagged behind./ppThe government is reining back expansion and promising more help with job-hunting. But many of this year's graduates are hoping for more direct support. On Sunday, a record 775,000 applicants sat civil service exams - 130,000 more than last year - for only 13,500 jobs./pp"I didn't think of beating so many candidates," one graduate told the state media. "But I have to - because I've submitted my reacute;sumeacute; to about 60 firms and got only 10 replies, and no offers." /pp· Additional research by Chen Shi/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/china"China/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/internationaleducationnews"International education news/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/8T8vZCh3c7tqIl2s6KGZHfJL3n0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/8T8vZCh3c7tqIl2s6KGZHfJL3n0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

pI have written often about the issues of doubt and assurance. They are, I think, issues that are well worth spending time on. Many fine Christians spend much of their lives doubting their salvation while other nominal Christians live in reckless assurance of their right standing before God. Meanwhile, many people today teach that doubt itself is a virtue while assurance is a mark of arrogance. John Frame offers some valuable perspective on this in his book ema href="http://www.challies.com/archives/book-reviews/salvation-belon.php"Salvation Belongs To The Lord/a/em. Here is what he says about doubt as a virtue and assurance as spiritual arrogance./p p"[T]he Bible presents doubt largely in negative terms. It is a spiritual impediment, an obstacle to doing God's work (Matt. 14:31; 21:21; 28:17; Acts 10:20; 11:12; Rom. 14:23; 1 Tim. 2:8; James 1:6). In Matthew 14:31 and Romans 14:23 it is the opposite of faith and therefore a sin. Of course, this sin, like other sins, may remain with us through our earthly life. But we should not be complacent about it. Just as the ideal for the Christian life is a perfect holiness, the ideal for the Christian mind is absolute certainty about God's revelation./p p"We should not conclude, however, that doubt is always sinful. Matthew 14:31 and Romans 14:23 (and indeed the other texts I have listed) speak of doubt in the fact of clear special revelation. To doubt what God has clearly spoken to us is wrong. But in other situations, it is not wrong to doubt. In many cases, in fact, it is wrong for us to claim knowledge, much less certainty. Indeed, often the best course is to admit our ignorance (Deut. 29:29, Rom. 11:33-36). Paul is not wrong to express uncertainty about the number of people he baptized (1 Cor. 1:16). Indeed, James tells us, we are not always ignorant of the future to some extent and we should not pretend to know more about it than we do (James 4:13-16). Job's friends were wrong to think that they knew the reasons for his torment, and Job himself had to be humbled, as God reminded him of his ignorance (Job 38-42)./p p"But as to our salvation, God wants us to know that we know him (1 John 5:13)..."/p pI believe Frame is correct on several important accounts. The Bible presents doubt largely in negative terms. Doubt is not presented as a reason for pride and assurance is not presented as something that is shameful. And in fact, doubt is a hindrance to doing God's work and is the very opposite of faith. A person who is filled with doubt may well be a person of weak faith. The faith we are to pursue is one that has absolute certainty about God's revelation./p pAnd so we are to pursue assurance, for assurance of salvation and assurance of God's revelation is a mark of faith--true faith--not something that is opposed to it./pbr /strongSponsor:/strongbr /a href="http://www.rpmissions.com"img src="http://www.adgrab.org/www/images/RPMissions.jpg" //adiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/challies/XhEt?a=39lVO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/challies/XhEt?i=39lVO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/challies/XhEt?a=AZLLo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/challies/XhEt?i=AZLLo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/challies/XhEt?a=UzKko"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/challies/XhEt?i=UzKko" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/challies/XhEt/~4/473665239" height="1" width="1"/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/43031?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+The+road+to+ruinch=Businessc3=The+Guardianc4=Automotive+industry+%28Business%29%2CGeneral+Motors%2CFord%2CBusiness%2CUS+economy+%28Business%29%2CUS+news%2CWorld+newsc5=Motoring%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CUS+Economyc6=Ed+Pilkingtonc7=2008_12_03c8=1127737c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Automotive+industryc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FAutomotive+industry" width="1" height="1" //divpThe Ford plant in Highland Park, a city within the city of Detroit, is a monument to the American automobile. It opened in 1910, and three years later pioneered the world's first car assembly line. In 1925, it spewed out 9,000 Model Ts in a single day. The revolution that turned America into a car-owning democracy had arrived. Today, there is ample evidence of that revolution. The factory looks over a six-lane highway that is heavy with traffic from dawn to dusk. Next door is a drive-thru McDonald's, where customers come to order Big Macs before rolling 50 metres to a drive-thru chemists to pick up indigestion tablets./ppThe story of the plant is told in one of those green-and-gold heritage plaques erected by the main entrance. It says: "Mass production soon moved from here to all phases of American industry and set the pattern of abundance for 20th-century living." Pattern of abundance: the phrase reads like a sick joke, for the Ford factory it describes is a shell of what it once was. Its red brick and granite walls still stand proud, framed by decorative mosaics. But the windows are broken or boarded up, its ceilings have gaping holes, the floor is covered in broken lumps of fallen plaster. On the roof, the flagpole that for years flew the Stars and Stripes is rusty and bare./ppOther companies, other countries, might have turned Henry Ford's factory of dreams into a museum rather than let it decay into the pitiful wreck that it is today. But Ford, and its fellows in the Big Three - General Motors (GM) and Chrysler - have enough to do staying alive without worrying about preserving the past. GM, the giant of the three, has lost $73bn in the past three years; it is haemorrhaging $2bn a month. At that rate it will run out of cash by the middle of next year and collapse by that year's end, potentially bringing millions of workers down with it. Which is why the CEOs of the three giants took their begging bowls to Washington earlier this month, pleading for a "bridging loan" of $25bn./ppThey didn't get a warm reception. They were ridiculed by senators for having flown in three separate corporate jets, an act that must rank among the most impressive PR disasters of the decade. But what the senators and the largely hostile media coverage missed was that the miserable condition of the Detroit car industry is not merely a comment on the failed leadership of its corporate executives, though it is that. It is also a matter of personal survival for millions of Americans who depend, directly or indirectly, on the revolution Henry Ford began 100 years ago./ppNowhere is this more visible than in Detroit, the crucible of the Big Three. Half of GM's 100,000 workers live in the city, and they in turn support a spider's web of relatives, spin-off industries and services. Detroit is really nothing but a company town. Hamtramckis a city within the city that borders one of GM's main factories. When GM enjoyed good times, Hamtramck boomed. Now GM is in the doldrums, Hamtramck is too. We walk along a stretch of shops along one of its main streets. First in line is Anna's Beauty Salon: it's closed, but the sign on the door suggests Anna is managing to stay open four days a week. Next, Popular Fashion and Variety Store: shut down. Billiards and Burger Hall: abandoned. Antiques store, an oil painting portraying an autumn landscape still in its window: deserted. Law offices: vacant. Funeral home: open. Even in a recession, one aspect of life must go on - the ending of it./ppOn the other side of the road is the Family Donut shop, a local institution run by a Polish family for the past 28 years. It has a picture of Princess Diana on the wall, a gift from one of the regular clients, and another of the Three Stooges. The owner, Vojno, is unloading a bundle of cardboard boxes used to pack the donuts. A few years ago he would order up to 30 bundles a month; now it's 10. On Polish festive days, there would be a line of customers out the door and round the corner, and the stools at the counter would be loaded. Today, the line is more of a dribble and the counter is largely empty. Unless GM recovers, and money starts flowing again, he will have to close in a few months. "It's not just me. Everybody around here is going to shut down," he says. What will he do if he does have to close? "I'll stay home and sleep. I'm hungry for sleep," he says./ppOne of the few clients, dressed in a bomber jacket with Detroit written across the back, shouts over at him. "You only work one job, so why do you need to sleep?"/pp"Shut up, Eddie," Vojno replies./pp"I work three jobs to make my money," Eddie Fabiszak says, prompting the only other customer in the bakery to say, under his breath: "Lucky man."/ppThe other customer is Melis Lejlic, 27, a naturalised American originally from Bosnia. His father and mother, two uncles and a cousin all work in the car business. All now fear redundancy. Lejlic works in construction, but that is no better. Car workers are no longer spending on home improvements, so demand for his work has fallen by half. Of 10 builders he knows, seven are unemployed. "Everybody in a small town like this is looking to the car industry, and there's no hope there," he says. "Drive around, you'll see. Detroit is worse right now than Baghdad."/ppThe comparison sounds far-fetched, but in the streets around the GM plant you can see what he means. Several houses have no glazing in their rickety wooden walls. Front lawns have turned into littered pasture. Walls are lined with barbed wire. A mural of a Stars and Stripes has been graffitied. And though it is nothing like Baghdad, there is clearly a market in lawlessness. A poster advertising the services of a lawyer says: "Aggressive criminal defence. Drugs CCW [carrying a concealed weapon] Theft Murder All felonies misdemeanours." That is how Henry Ford's dream looks in November 2008./ppGM's headquarters in downtown Detroit dominate the city's skyline. The seven cylindrical glass towers of the Renaissance Centre were built in 1977 as a statement of the company's untouchable status as the then unquestioned king of the auto world. Inside the main tower, there is an exhibition of some of GM's most memorable models, dating back to the 1950s. It is almost shocking to see how beautiful and exhilarating those cars were. There is a 1953 Chevrolet Corvette Roadster, built largely by hand, its white, sensuous curves set off by red leather seats. Then there's a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air in black, the quintessential car of the American dream, big enough to carry a family to its suburban home but sufficiently powerful and sleek to avoid any sense of frumpiness. Pride of place goes to a 1959 Cadillac series 62 convertible, which is an outrageously attractive work of art. This was the baby of Harley Earl, GM's legendary designer. Inspired by the tail of a second world war fighter plane, he placed fins on the back of the car, with rear brake lights the shape of rockets and exhausts mimicking those of a jet. The 59 Cadillac summed up an entire generation - young, dangerous, fast, unstoppable./ppPeter DeLorenzo spent 22 years working in the car business as an advertising and marketing consultant and now runs an influential website called Autoextremist. He explains that when the explosion of creativity burst out in the 50s, Detroit had just emerged from the crucial role it had played as the manufacturing backbone of the war effort, churning out tanks and missiles at extraordinary rate, and confidence was riding high. "Coming out of the second world war, the automobile was the symbol of American might. GM was the symbol of American might, and most Americans were proud that GM was a successful corporation that turned out magnificent cars people wanted."/ppThe design-led strategy not only generated exquisite cars, it worked handsomely for GM. In 1955, four out of every five cars around the world were US-produced and half of those came from GM. The Big Three monopolised around 95% of the domestic market, and between them they transformed the US. They provided the stimulus for the biggest construction project in world history - the laying of the US interstate highways - and gave birth to the suburbs and to urban sprawl. Think Los Angeles. Think Phoenix rising out of the desert of Arizona./ppHow you get from the invincibility of those days to the verge of bankruptcy is a cautionary tale for the whole of America as its dominance wanes in an increasingly globalised economy. DeLorenzo, who has written a book called The United States of Toyota, dates the start of the rot to 1979 - just after GM had moved into its monolithic new headquarters in the Renaissance Centre. By then Japanese car companies were already snapping at the heels of the Big Three, but Detroit ignored the threat, steeped in complacency that the good times would last for ever. Leadership within the business also crucially changed hands, from the designers to what DeLorenzo calls the "bean counters". /ppBy the 1990s, the Big Three's reputation for innovation and beauty had withered, replaced by a reputation for faulty products. "People started to associate Detroit with cars coming off the assembly line and their doors falling off," says Micheline Maynard, a New York Times business reporter and author of The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip. She recounts how in 2002 GM's vice-chairman, Bob Lutz, declared that their vehicles were every bit as reliable as Honda's and Toyota's; that same afternoon GM recalled 1.5m minivans./ppFrom the sleek elegance of the 1959 Cadillac to the lumpen brutality of the Hummer: what was in the mind of the GM executive who conceived putting a machine modelled on armoured vehicles on to the civilian streets of US cities, at barely 13 miles per gallon? But then Lutz has argued that that hybrids like the Toyota Prius "make no economic sense" and once called global warming "a total crock of shit"./ppThe other key element in the demise of Detroit concerns the staple of the American auto industry - the car worker. Ron Nidiffer is drinking beer in the New Dodge Lounge in Hamtramck, temporarily off work as the GM plant has suspended production for want of sales. He has worked in car factories for 36 years, 10 of them on the assembly line. He is one of a dying breed of car workers who had their pay and conditions set back in the heyday. His union, the United Auto Workers, negotiated a series of deals in the 1970s and 80s that have become the albatross around the industry's neck. He makes $29 an hour - substantially more than American workers in Japanese plants that have been transplanted to the non-unionised south, from Alabama to Texas. /ppBut the trouble really starts when you include the so-called "legacy costs", the generous terms agreed for pensions and health care that allowed workers to retire as young as 48. GM now carries about 470,000 retirees and spouses on benefits - more than four times its productive workforce - adding a total of about $2,000 for every car it makes, a terrible burden in the face of fierce foreign competition./ppThe symbol of excess that the UAW's critics like to point to is the "jobs banks", by which workers are paid 95% of their salaries for doing nothing. The scheme was introduced as a way of ensuring minimum employment levels, but billowed uncontrollably until it included about 40,000 workers. Nidiffer concedes that looking back, the jobs bank was indefensible. "Yes, it was a bad idea. And I understand why some people are jealous of what we've had. We had good conditions, even to excess."/ppBut what annoys him is the assumption that the largesse and complacency that epitomised the attitude of both unions and management is still prevalent today. The job banks have been whittled down to 3,500 workers, and wages have been cut in half for all new employees. He is one of the last at the GM plant in Hamtramck to enjoy the old $29 an hour rate, the others having taken redundancy. A deal has also been struck to lift the burden of legacy costs from GM's shoulders by transferring health insurance into an independent fund administered by the union. After all that, to hear Congress turn away the plea for $25bn from the Big Three CEOs makes Nidiffer see red. "I'm extremely mad. We've made all these concessions, taken the hit, and yet we're still accused of being lazy and greedy."/ppIt has not made him any happier that while Congress rebuffed Detroit, it has bailed out the banks with apparent alacrity, including Citibank which was last week handed the exact amount requested by the Big Three. "We're looking for a pittance compared with what they've given the banks," Nidiffer says. His anger is echoed in the front-page headline in the Detroit Free Press: "$85 billion for AIG. $700 billion for financial firms. $25 billion for Citigroup. Why is the bar so high for $25 billion to Detroit?"/ppNidiffer's frustration is heightened by his belief that if Detroit can see it through another 18 months it will have turned the corner. His GM plant is poised to produce the Volt, a new plug-in electric hybrid that will run for 40 miles on one full battery before a tiny petrol motor recharges it. The cutting-edge model, which goes into production in 2010, has been spearheaded by Bob Lutz, the global warming sceptic - a sign of how dramatically the outlook has changed at GM./ppBut none of the new ideas being scrambled out by the Big Three will matter if they fail to make it to 2010. Will the Volt go down in history as a great idea that GM carried with it to its grave? "There used to be a saying, so goes GM, so goes the country," Nidiffer says. "That was in happy days. But the same is true now. If GM goes under, the ripple effect will be felt throughout America."/ppA car worker desperate to hold on to his job would say that, wouldn't he? But economists agree. Susan Helper, a professor at Case Western university, says if GM went into bankruptcy next year, it could set in train a knock-on effect that would hit not just the 240,000 employees of the Big Three, but also 730,000 suppliers and about 1 million people working in dealerships across the country. Harder to quantify, but potentially even more devastating, would be the loss of social capital - the knowledge that is imbedded in a generation. "The idea that you can just liquidate Detroit and start again is crazy. Knowledge is not held by any one person, but comes from how people in a company interact."/ppCrunch time is coming. The tragedy of the American car is approaching its climax. You can feel it, palpably, on the lot of Galeana's Dodge dealership, a short drive away from Nidiffer's watering hole. Balloons in red, white and blue festoon the long line of cars, but who are they fooling? A more accurate reflection of the mood are the signs propped up under a succession of bonnets that spell the word S-A-L-E. Inside, a query about how things are going is met with the reply: "Look at the board." The board in question has just one car handwritten on it - the extent of today's business. Two years ago, the daily average was 15 cars./ppChrysler, which owns the Dodge brand, used to offer huge discounts on the price of the cars disguised as leasing agreements. But in July it announced it was suspending all leasing, and business went through the floor. The Big Three can no longer afford to lower their prices, so instead the cars sit on the lot, looking cheerful beneath the balloons. There is one small cause for hope for Galeana's dealers. A local Chrysler plant has just announced 5,000 job losses, and each worker made redundant will be given a voucher to buy a new Dodge car. It's come to this: the only chink of light for the dealers are the redundancy packages of the workers who make the cars they sell./ppThis week, the CEOs of the Big Three have one last shot at saving Detroit. They are travelling back to Washington to plead their case again. And this time, they won't be going by private jet - Ford's Alan Mulally will drive a Ford hybrid, and GM chief executive Rick Wagoner and Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli will fly on commercial planes. Tomorrow and on Friday, they will present Congress committees with a new business plan that is expected to include a cap on top bosses' pay, concessions from the UAW and the death of the most loss-making brands. Less certain is the outcome. Will they get their $25bn and, if they do, will it be anywhere like enough? Or will this once great institution, this embodiment of American might and ingenuity - and with it the livelihood of millions - go the way of Henry Ford's factory of dreams./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/automotive"Automotive industry/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/generalmotors"General Motors/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/ford"Ford/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/useconomy"US economy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/LPbma0ZH57Qib3vjcofBZfL78zw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/LPbma0ZH57Qib3vjcofBZfL78zw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/38354?ns=guardianpageName=Art+and+design%3A+%27I+was+shocked+by+the+hatred%27ch=Art+and+designc3=The+Guardianc4=Mark+Leckey%2CCulture+section%2CTurner+prize%2CArt+%28visual+arts+only%29%2CArt+and+design%2CAwards+and+prizes+%28Culture%29c5=Art%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Charlotte+Higginsc7=2008_12_03c8=1127709c9=articlec10=GUc11=Art+and+designc12=Mark+Leckeyc13=c14=h2=GU%2FArt+and+design%2FMark+Leckey" width="1" height="1" //divpMark Leckey has been handed two kinds of hangover cure the morning after winning the Turner prize - a packet of ibuprofen and an orange tube of Berocca. But the hangover doesn't show: the artist is neat as a pin in dandyish pink jeans, delicately polka-dotted shirt and a bleached-gold mane straight out of the George Michael school of haircare. /ppWhen the Turner prize is not being decried as insanely controversial, it is written off as dull and well past its sell-by date. This year's show fell into the latter category. Leckey, like many a winner before him, has discovered the hard way that a cheque for pound;25,000 and an instantly improved career come at the price of a public mauling. The Independent yearned for something that wasn't "about wearing your theory-stuffed brain on your sleeve". The Telegraph wrote off the entire show as "technically competent, bland, and ultimately empty". /pp"What I was warned to expect, but still shocked me, was how much obloquy and hatred the prize generates," he says. "I love the Stuckist conspiracy theory, that Nicholas Serota is a kind of machiavellian Skeletor who manipulates the government and the people." He will have had good advice, too: at Monday night's ceremony he was hand-in-hand with a Tate curator who has overseen previous Turner prize exhibitions; one of this year's judges, Daniel Birnbaum, is a colleague at the Frankfurt art school where he teaches. ("I know it looks ropey," he says of this last fact. "But it won't have helped me. He would have had to make a more convincing case for me, if he argued for me - and I don't know that he did.") Even so, he has been caught off guard. "I certainly wasn't expecting my work to be called boring and over-intellectualised. People wrote about me who don't know me, don't know my work, made an opinion based on one piece of work. They just steamed in."/ppFor some artists, the payback for this "obloquy" is the experience of having 60,000 members of the public come to see their work at Tate Britain. Not for Leckey. He accepted the nomination partly "because I wanted to see what it was like outside the sometimes constricted art world. It's small and can be very self-congratulatory." But, he says, "I am not interested in my work being democratised." What he'd really like, now, is for some doors to open. In particular, he wants his own television series - a variety show, with his band, Jack Too Jack, as the house orchestra. It would have musical numbers, and a little play or sketch, and Leckey sitting in a leather armchair agrave; la Ronnie Corbett telling an anecdote - except the chat would be "about art and ways of seeing". John Berger meets the Two Ronnies, he says. Would the BBC be remotely interested? "Well, there'd be no swearing," he says. "This would be good, old-fashioned, light entertainment."/ppLeckey takes me through his room in the Turner exhibition. Here is a little model of his flat, also his studio, which often appears in his films, marking the liminal space between the "real" world and the world of images in which he operates, or loses himself. Over there is Felix the Cat, spinning endlessly on a screen; there is something almost pornographic in the camera's pitiless gaze. Over here is a film that, by sleight of hand, appears to show Jeff Koons' Bunny, a metal sculpture of an inflatable rabbit, taking pride of place in Leckey's apartment. But it's all smoke and mirrors - the piece was never there. /ppLeckey is an admirer of Koons. "I like the idea of something that's almost inhuman in its perfection, like Bunny. It's as if it just appeared in the world, as if Koons just imagined it and it appeared. I always get too involved in the work." He also likes the notion that Warhol made his art unselfconsciously, "that he produced this work and went, 'Ah, really?' I like the idea that you let culture use you as its instrument. What gets in the way is being too clever, or worrying about how something is going to function, or where it's going to be. When you start thinking of something as art, you're fucked: you're never going to advance."/ppLeckey, 44, is the son of working-class parents who met while they were both working at Littlewoods. He was a "woollyback", someone from outside metropolitan Liverpool. "Ellesmere was an overspill town. I grew up with a sense of feeling inadequate, with the idea that the real action was going on over the river." He became a casual. "It was a working-class style, a genuine subculture. It was lads who adopted middle-class leisurewear - golfwear, sportswear - that you could see in magazines worn by the jetset. Ultimately, another word for casual was football hooligan. It was a kind of drag, a disguise. A means of using style to transform yourself." /ppThis was the era of the new romantics, but "casuals were more stylish, and smarter". You could say that Leckey's early negotiations between image and substance, his early attempts at self-transformation, were a kind of preparation for life as an artist. But art was a long time in the future. At Whitby comprehensive, now Whitby high school, he dyed his hair. "Like a skunk. And I used to jump out of windows: my effort to escape. My record was two floors." He left at 16 with one O-level, in art. He can't remember what grade he got. /ppThen there was a period when "I was a scally. A bad lad." What kind of a scally? "I scallied around," he says, evasively. "A bit of this, a bit of that." He went on various YTS schemes. Then, at 19, "I suddenly got deeply fascinated in trying to find out when civilisation began. In Ur and Babylon. I started going to the library. I am an autodidact - that's why I use bigger words than I should. It's a classic sign." Leckey's obsession with the beginning and the end of things has stayed with him. "It's the terror of infinity. I'm not convinced about the solidity of anything. Everything seems ephemeral." Sometimes images "seem more authentic than what they represent": this is a theme of his filmed lecture, Cinema-in-the-Round, part of the Turner prize show./ppFinally, Leckey says, his stepfather sat him down in the kitchen, and said: "Everything in this room has been designed and made by someone. You could do that." He took A-levels and went to art college in Newcastle, which he hated. "It was the early 1990s, when critical theory had swept the nation. The place was full of hippies from down south who were reading Mervyn Peake and Tolkien, and suddenly they were made to read Barthes and Derrida. It was like a Maoist year zero. I became very suspicious of the merits of critical theory, which is why I have been shocked at being accused of being over-academic. I've never seen myself as theoretically minded."/ppWhen Leckey collected the Turner prize cheque from Nick Cave on Monday night, he declared himself "chuffed to bits", and said that he was sounding more and more scouse. Then, surveying the room, he declared rather elliptically: "This is all good." I wonder what he meant. The prize? The party? The art world? "I was trying to say, not very well, that the art world in London, in Britain - that this is my world. It's good you can get acknowledged by your peers and that there is a sense of community. OK, that sentimentalises it, because it can be a bitter world, it can get factionalised, and lots of us can be sitting there scowling about White Cube gallery. /pp"When you read about the Turner prize in the press, and about the art world in general, you get the wonky idea that it's all about Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Banksy. I get riled by Damien Hirst's skull and by Banksy. It just irks me. The work is trite. And then it comes to represent culture and art, it becomes totemic. And I don't understand that." /pp· The strongTurner prize exhibition/strong is at Tate Britain, London SW1, until January 18. Details: 020-7887 8888./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/mark-leckey"Mark Leckey/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/turnerprize"Turner prize/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/art"Art/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/awardsandprizes"Awards and prizes/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/4kmT88Dmgmj2mKMdIydVjFfQTsk/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/4kmT88Dmgmj2mKMdIydVjFfQTsk/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Dans la famille Tierney, on est policier de père en fils. Pour ce clan, le code sacré des flics qui consiste à protéger les siens est bien plus qu'un code d'honneur, c'est un code familial. Pourtant, ...

H*E*R br / @ br / Roulette br / 20 Greene St, btwn Canal and Broomebr / NYC br / 6, N,R,W to Canal Stbr / (212) 219-8242br / www.roulette.orgbr / br / Friday, Dec 5th, 8:30pmbr / $15 / free for membersbr / br / H*E*R isbr / Yvette Perez on vocals, keybdsbr / Peter Zummo on trombonebr / Danny Tunick on vibesbr / with special guest Darius Jones on alto saxbr / br / avant-garde pop music of dreamy songs about housework, nature, financial planning, corporate housing, plants, insects, pets, cleaning, identity, and family.br / br / H*E*R blends minimalism, jazz, and pop influences in delicate, mysterious, and sophisticated tunes about memory and the outer world that blur the line between improv and song; between prismatic recollection and blighted reality. The trio is led by the Carla Bley of avant-pop music vocalist/keyboardist Yvette Perez (also of Birdbrain) whose sensuously sparse soundscapes are reminiscent of Annette Peacock and Laurie Anderson. Legendary trombonist/composer Peter Zummo (Arthur Russell, "Blue" Gene Tyranny, Teo Macero) contributes some of his compositions and crafts masterful melodies and improvisations. Vibraphone and percussion player Danny Tunick (Elliot Sharp's Carbon Orchestra, Arnold Dreyblatt, Rebecca Moore) adds distinctive textures and floating rhythms. The group performs this evening with the brilliant alto-saxophonist Darius Jones (Mike Pride, Trevor Dunn, William Hooker) as special guest.img src="http://rhizome.org/syndicate/nothing.gif?f=announce" border="0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rhizome-announce/~4/473072716" height="1" width="1"/

For the past sixteen months it's been difficult for us to find an ATX computer enclosure that beats the SilverStone Temjin TJ10 in terms of its build quality, design, and functionality, but SilverStone may have finally set a new precedent for desktop enclosures with the introduction of the Fortress FT01. This ATX chassis consists of a uni-body frame with origins that can be traced back to the Temjin TJ07, but with better cooling performance, dual 180mm fans, and a number of new features. It's with great pride that today we review the SilverStone Fortress FT01. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/n5cC_rXHyreqqRfR9aG2ncbBUiY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/n5cC_rXHyreqqRfR9aG2ncbBUiY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Phoronix/~4/cXydS8hDtuE" height="1" width="1"/

Category: Games
Released: Nov 26, 2008
Price: $1.99

Description:
All monkeys all the time! iPacify Monkeys is two games in one. Experience a Jungle Adventure! Touch the screen to make monkey swing on a vine, climb a tree, do flips and more. Our cheeky little monkey does what you tell him to . . . and a few things you don�t! You�ll also go ape for Peek-a-Boo! Monkey is hiding from you � can you touch him before he disappears again? Also fun for, um, adults. Come back soon to check for more games from iPacify! Produced by Brooklyn Games: http://www.brooklyngames.com Made with pride in the USA! Product benefits - Downloadable over 3G network � you can buy directly from your iPhone! - Original soundtrack - Hysterical sounds�.that you can also mute

Website: http://www.ipacify.com
Support Website: http://www.ipacify.com

Note: The description above is the official one supplied by the application developer and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of this site or its staff.


Get it on iTunes: iPacify: Monkeys

Category: Games
Released: Nov 28, 2008
Price: $1.99

Description:
iJiggle - Christmas Edition, is a highly realistic jigsaw puzzle game which has everything you need to play great-looking puzzles during this Christmas seasons. The game provides a very comfortable puzzling environment and superb graphics. Intricately shaped pieces have slick outlines, and beveled edges, and cast real shadows. Whilst solving a puzzle you have some help at your disposal which make solving the puzzle easier. (For expert player, you can try the "hard" mode). But that is not all. If you complete a puzzle, you can exhibit your timing in our online scoreboard, and peruse your successes with due pride. The goal is to arrange and fill the empty board with the correct jigsaws from the tray. This is the biggest Jigsaw game on AppStore (4x12). This game comes with 5 different jigsaw boards. You can even share your high scores online by sending them to our site directly from you mobile (using WIFI/3G connections). 1. GAMEPLAY - singleplayer, �- over 5 different boards, �- touch screen �drag&drop�, �- accelerometer support, - multiple game mode (easy/normal/hard) support, - Automatic save game for each board. 2. HIGH QUALITY 2D ENGINE Amazing graphics and visual effects including: - shadows, �- dynamic lighting. 3. MULTICHANNEL AUDIO SYSTEM Multichannel audio system with high quality original soundtrack and sound effects. 4. ONLINE HIGHSCORE SYSTEM �You can compete against other people from all over the world. Let you submit your highscores to our website and compete them with other player. 6. TOUCH SCREEN GAME CONTROLS �Simply use you finger �drag&drop� the pieces across the screen. To reset, just shake your iPhone/iPod. � 7. CONFIGURABLE SETTINGS From the Device General Setting, user can set the following preferences : - Sound on/off, �- 3D sound on/off, - Game Mode Easy/Normal/Hard�- Edit/Edit username for scoreboard, �- Edit/Delete email for scoreboard.

Website: http://www.gamepea.com
Support Website: http://www.gamepea.com

Note: The description above is the official one supplied by the application developer and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of this site or its staff.


Get it on iTunes: iJiggle - Christmas Edition