Lest you think all of the laptops announced at Computex are Yoga-like convertibles, ASUS has at least one traditional notebook for you. The company has just announced the Zenbook NX500, a 15.6-inch laptop that manages to pack a 4K screen, Core i7…
GENEVA (AP) — Organizers of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar have denied fresh allegations of wrongdoing after a British newspaper report questioned the integrity of choosing the emirate as tournament host.
The Sunday Times said a “senior FIFA insider” had provided “hundreds of millions of emails, accounts and other documents” detailing payments totaling $5 million that Qatari official Mohamed bin Hammam allegedly gave football officials to build support for the bid. Bin Hammam was a member of FIFA’s executive committee for 16 years and key power broker until being expelled in 2012 for financial corruption during his time as Asian Football Confederation president.
The Qatar 2022 organizing committee’s statement on Sunday stressed that Bin Hammam, a Qatari, “played no official or unofficial role in the bid committee.”
However, most FIFA executive committee voters in December 2010 were bin Hammam’s longtime colleagues. Among them, Ricardo Teixeira of Brazil, Nicolas Leoz of Paraguay and FIFA vice president Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago have since resigned while under investigation for corruption.
“The Qatar 2022 Bid Committee always upheld the highest standard of ethics and integrity in its successful bid,” the Qatari statement said, adding “we vehemently deny all allegations of wrongdoing. We will take whatever steps are necessary to defend the integrity of Qatar’s bid and our lawyers are looking into this matter.”
The Sunday Times alleged that bin Hammam paid for cash gifts, hospitality and legal fees for some FIFA colleagues, including Warner, and dozens of African football leaders.
FIFA ethics prosecutor Michael Garcia has received the new evidence to help his investigation of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding contests, the newspaper reported.
Garcia was scheduled to meet with Qatari bid officials on Monday in Oman.
“We are cooperating fully with Mr. Garcia’s on-going investigation and remain totally confident that any objective enquiry will conclude we won the bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup fairly,” the Qatari statement said.
FIFA declined comment on Sunday about the reports, which revived calls for the 2022 World Cup vote to be re-run. Qatar defeated the United States in a final round after Australia, Japan and South Korea were eliminated.
Instead, football’s governing body suggested in a statement to “please kindly contact the office” of Garcia’s law firm in New York City.
The law firm, Kirkland and Ellis, did not respond immediately to requests for comment, or to confirm Garcia’s meetings with Qatar officials.
Garcia and his investigating team have been traveling across the world meeting officials who worked for the nine candidates ahead of the December 2010 votes. Russia won the 2018 hosting poll.
FIFA board member Jim Boyce, who joined in 2011 after Bin Hammam was initially suspended, said Sunday that he could support a re-vote if bribery could be proved.
“If Garcia’s report comes up and his recommendations are that wrongdoing happened for that vote for the 2022 World Cup, I certainly as a member of the executive committee would have absolutely no problem whatsoever if the recommendation was for a re-vote,” Boyce told the BBC’s Sportsweek radio program.
Garcia is scheduled to submit his report to FIFA ethics judge Joachim Eckert of Germany, who can recommend sanctions.
Football Federation Australia chief executive David Gallop told domestic media Monday that his federation was in a “watch-this-space” situation.
“We need to get more information about what’s been revealed in the last 48 hours,” Gallop told SEN radio. “But don’t be under any illusion that we haven’t been heavily involved in all of this for some time now.
“We’ve been involved in interviews, production of documents and also following carefully what’s been happening away from Australia — so we’ve got people that have been involved for some time now.”
Google is aiming for the sky.
According to a Wall Street Journal report on Sunday, the tech giant is planning to invest more than $1 billion on a fleet of satellites. The goal: To bring Internet access to every corner of the globe, no matter how remote.
The satellites are likely to be small and high-capacity, and will orbit the Earth at “lower altitudes than traditional satellites,” the Journal reported.
Google will reportedly start the project with a fleet of 180 satellites, with a possibility of future expansion.
Although an unnamed spokeswoman did not comment specifically on the satellite project, she told the newspaper that Google hopes to bring Internet access to the hundreds of millions of people around the world who aren’t currently online.
“Internet connectivity significantly improves people’s lives,” she said. “Yet two thirds of the world have no access at all.”
This isn’t the first time that Google’s sky-high dreams have made headlines. Last June, Google announced its investment in high-altitude balloons designed to provide Internet service to remote parts of the world; and in April, the company purchased Titan Aerospace, a maker of high-altitude, solar-powered drone satellites.
“Titan Aerospace and Google share a profound optimism about the potential for technology to improve the world,” Google said in a statement following the purchase. “It’s still early days, but atmospheric satellites could help bring internet access to millions of people, and help solve other problems, including disaster relief and environmental damage like deforestation.”
With its satellites, balloons and drones, Google seems to be well on its way to achieving its goal of bringing Internet access to the as-yet unserved and underserved regions of the globe. The company, however, isn’t alone in its efforts. Earlier this year, Facebook announced that it was launching a drone and satellite project of its own.
“We’ve been working on ways to beam Internet to people from the sky,” Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said in March. “Our goal…is to make affordable access to basic internet services available to every person in the world.”
Michael Heilemann made a visually annotated version of Star Wars—and a much-deeper text commentary—attaching footage from other films and series that he believes influenced George Lucas’ space opera. Some of them are well documented, some may surprise you, yet others feel too much like wishful thinking.
Many know that brains are inherently complex things; there are trillions of synapses converting chemical and electrical signals in a human mind. However, did you know that even those synapses are very complex? If not, it should be perfectly clear…
NASA has caught a vast solar eruption – huge outpourings of energy from the sun, exploding at 1.5 million miles per hour – on camera in unprecedented detail, taking advantage … Continue reading
The American was much maligned. It is a great movie. It suffers only from its marketing campaign.
It was promoted as an action thriller in which George Clooney plays George Clooney.
But it actually is an art house flick in which George Clooney embodies an archetype. It is the type of movie that used to be called a “procedural.” Clooney is the loner. The sophistication of the enterprise is verified by the ratings aggregators: much higher reviews from critics than audiences, a sign of the discrepancy between experts and everyone else.
The director, Anton Corbijn, has a new movie coming out. (It stars the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, the best actor of his generation — his excellence allowed him to span an incredible age range in characters, among other demonstrations of brilliance.) It is a good moment to comment on Corbijn’s narrative debut. (He also did a docudrama.)
The American presents a simple story. Clooney plays Jack, also known as Edward, dubbed “Mr. Butterfly” for the tattoo between his shoulder blades.
He has no past and no future; he lives for the moment. We know not whether he is a hero or a villain. He wants out.
We ascertain he is involved with underworld machinations. They are what they always are: a double cross.
In the first few moments, the American is shown with a lovely “friend” whom, after they encounter a killer, he must eliminate, presumably because she is a witness — to quite a bit. He dispatches her with the cool and calm that, as much as it is exalted in theory, must be abhorrent in practice.
Then he drives away.
The rest of the movie concerns his retreat to the Italian countryside. He meets a courtesan, whom he seems to fall for (his motivations remain opaque throughout); he discusses business with his handler (also a relationship obscure); and he agrees to take an assignment for a female killer who is even more sexually aroused than his lover (though he is such the professional he doesn’t betray awareness of the attraction).
The count of violence and sex, for a movie of two generations later, is on par with any 1970s paranoid thriller. In addition to the opening sequence, there are two false alarms, one chase, the testing of the gun (which could go terribly wrong), and a culminating shootout. There are multiple scenes of female nudity. It’s all staged with the utmost realism. There is reverence for as well as detachment from character and drama; there is no spectacle to speak.
If you are familiar with the original Day of the Jackal, an exemplar of cinematic classicism, The American makes it seem frenetic. The testing of the gun is superior to a similar scene in the remake, The Jackal, because it relies on exquisite anticipation rather than crude gore. This is a testament to the virtues of restraint.
The problem with the movie, to descend to calling it a problem, is that most of it depicts a life alone. Clooney is portrayed working out on his own, conversing with a priest who is curious about newcomers to town, and manufacturing a silencer for a high-powered firearm. (If you peruse the internet forums dedicated to weaponry, you will see a mix of admiration for the technical detail that is depicted with ridicule for the errors about muzzle velocity — as if movies were to be accepted for their verisimilitude. The gun itself is merely a modified version of what would be available to anyone in America for under a thousand dollars.)
The images are presented with the clarity of honesty. A viewer always knows who is where; the editing does not enhance the action with a veil of shadowy jumpiness. Clooney is business like. The movie is too.
There are contrasting examples of cinematic excellence. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a contemporaneous cerebral thriller marketed as such. It also was critically acclaimed. But with its who’s who ensemble cast, deliberate pacing, inside baseball machinations, and epic scope, and predecessor mini-series, Tinker did not surprise ticket-buyers. They entered the darkened cinema knowing they would be treated to an all but forgotten Cold War era of spies and counter-spies, shrouded in jargon and cigarette smoke. Trust no one; go to Budapest; meet your demise — without ever realizing it was all about the pointlessness of geopolitical balance.
Perhaps we prefer our nihilism with the veneer of ideology.
The American, thus, shows how important expectations are. It is a movie about the expectations an assassin can rightly have about his colleagues, the expectations a client should have about a prostitute and vice versa, the expectations those who confess might have about the clergy, and, ultimately, the expectations of an audience toward a work of art.
It has a moral. Expectations serve no purpose but to be disappointed.
A Conversation with Michael Franti
Mike Ragogna: What gave you the idea to merge music with yoga for your Soulshine tour?
Michael Franti: I started practicing yoga on tour about thirteen years ago as a way to really just take care of myself as I was going in and out of airports and tour busses and doing shows and promotion and staying up late and eating bad restaurant food, et cetera. As I was touring I would practice at a different studio in every city that I went to in the world and I started inviting teachers and fans to come and practice with me before our shows, so we’d do it backstage or in a parking lot or in a park nearby. Last year, we played out at Red Rocks and we invited people to come in the afternoon before the show and practice yoga. We expected about two hundred people would be there and I believe two thousand showed up. We were really overwhelmed by this, so we thought, “This summer, let’s just do this at every one of our shows.” At every show on the Soulshine Tour, myself and some of the other artists will be playing acoustically in the afternoon and there will be a mass yoga class and then it will turn into a proper crazy rock concert after that.
MR: You have Baron Baptiste and Seane Corn as a couple of your yoga teachers. Did you already know them prior to the tour?
MF: I’ve known Seane and Baron for a while, many years now. They’re really inspirational in terms of the way they take yoga off the mat and into the world. I thought they’d be the perfect fit for this because whether you’ve practiced yoga for decades or whether it’s your first time on the yoga mat or whether you just want to come and hear some acoustic music and hear somebody that’s really inspiring speak both Baron and Seane and all of the other teachers really fit that bill.
MR: Is the connection between music and spirituality something you came to intellectually or just something you’ve always felt during your creative process?
MF: I’ve always felt it. I grew up playing music in our church when I was a kid. Most of the time, I didn’t really feel a connection to my heart, my body, my mind and the message that the church was delivering. It always seemed like this dichotomy that was there, but yoga is really the study of the self. We put ourselves into challenging positions and we learn to breathe through it and not become immediately reactive to everything that takes place in our lives. It’s something that really helps me as a father, as an artist, as an advocate for social change in the world, and even as a businessperson. Being able to focus and see the goal that I have ahead of me and be able to not be always in a state of panic and stress is what yoga has taught me.
MR: So far, you’ve had hit singles and albums and overall, an amazing career. Do you feel that it was more about intuition and following your own path as opposed to being molded by music biz standards?
MF: Yeah, for sure. I’ve always been somebody who wrote about the things I felt strongly about and made music because I thought it was exciting and it made a difference in my life. I’ve never really written songs that were just like, “Let’s see, what can we do that’s a hit?” or “What’s going to copy everything that’s out there?” I’ve never done that. Putting this tour together has been sort of the same thing, it’s just been a love of mine and I thought, I’ve loved yoga for so long, I’ve always combined it for the last thirteen years on tour, let’s just do it in a way that hopefully can get it out to more people.
MR: Is your band integrating the yoga as well?
MF: Two of the other members of our band practice yoga regularly, and all the other bands that are on the tour with me have members of the band that practice yoga, too. We’re hoping that through this tour we’ll get the other guys off their butts and onto yoga mats.
MR: I’m imagining guests like Brett Dennen are practicing yoga.
MF: Yeah. Brett is somebody who I’ve seen go through an amazing transformation in his career. He’s still a very young artist, but I met him when he was a teenager and saw him perform, and then for a number of years I think he went through the same thing every artist goes through when you start touring, eating bad food all the time, you’re out on the road all the time, you’re not getting enough sleep, and I remember seeing him and thinking, “Man, Brett.” He’d put on some weight, he wasn’t looking so healthy. Then, the next year I saw him and he’d started working out, changing his nutrition, practicing yoga, he really took it to heart. Now he’s one of the healthiest musicians that I know. It seems like an obvious thing, but it really isn’t. For those of us who didn’t get into music to get rich and retire, but who got into it because we admired John Lee Hooker and we admire the Rolling Stones and the other artists that have gone on and on and perservered, The Grateful Dead and artists like that who evolve and keep growing and changing, in order to do that you’ve got to be alive. I’ve just gone through some really intense times in my own family, my son who’s fifteen was diagnosed with a very rare kidney disorder, he’s lost fifty percent of his kidney function at age fifteen. As a family we’ve all taken it upon ourselves to say, “How can we best support our son?” but also we’ve gained a deeper appreciation for how fragile life is. I think that one of the great things about yoga is how it helps us to really look carefully at all aspects of our lives, the way that we treat other people, the way we take care of ourselves, the way that we treat the world.
MR: It’s almost like the band is having a spiritual experience on stage for the fans. Do you feel like that’s what’s going on?
MF: The word “spiritual” for me and for a lot of people means “religious,” almost, and I’d hate to compare what we do to anything religious because it’s still at the end of the day a rock concert. What I think is that all music, whether it’s mine or anybody else’s, opens a window to the soul. There’s times when our body feels run-down and our mind feels taxed and we feel like we can’t go any further, and it’s our soul that kicks in and goes, “You know what? You can love a little more. You can go a little bit further in this relationship, you can try a little bit harder.” That’s what music does. It’s amazing when you do that with large groups of people. The only other experience I can think of that compares to that is either a sporting event, it’s the World Cup and we’re all cheering for one team, but in the World Cup there’s always a loser. One team’s happy and the other team goes away feeling sad. But in music, everybody comes together in a field–we all dance, we shout, we sing, we throw our hands up and we let go of whatever it is that we carried in. I love to see people walk out looking like they’re standing a little bit taller, they have a little smile on their face, a little more ease in their life. That’s what I love about it most.
MR: With Soulshine, it seems like you’re expanding the concept of a concert with Michael Franti & Spearhead and friends to it being more of a lifestyle thing–you know, like going to a Dead or Jimmy Buffett event.
MF: Yeah, I think so. Just in comparison to when I first started touring twenty five years ago, we’d stop at gas stations on the road and try to find something healthy to eat and there were Slurpees and Big Gulps and burgers. The best thing that we could ever find at a gas station was like Saltine crackers and a can of sardines or something. But now you go all across the country and in every city, you can find independent grocers that are bringing locally grown food. You find people all across the country who are becoming more conscious of what they put into their body, what they consume, and the companies they support doing that. I think that’s the lifestyle that we try to encourage.
MR: Michael, what advice do you have for new artists?
MF: The main thing is to follow your heart and write music that means something to you. The more meaningful it is to you, the deeper it’s going to touch whoever it is that it means something to them. When I was just coming up in punk rock the lead singer of D.O.A, his name was Joey Shithead, we would always stay at people houses and we would ask at the end of the night, “is there some place to stay?” and they would always make us spaghetti or something and cook for us and let us sleep on the floors with our sleeping bags, and Joey said, “No matter whose house you stay at, make sure you always wash the dishes and they’ll always have you back.” I’ve always thought about that in every aspect of my life, no matter if it was the person at the check-in counter at the airport or if it was somebody who was helping us get all our guitars into the hotel or if it was the first fan in line at the show or the last bartender to leave at the end of the night. Always make sure that they felt like you treated them as if you were coming into their home. Leave their home in good shape. That’s what keeps artists able to have a job year after year with their fans, the venues, the labels, radio stations, whoever it is. Treat people with respect.
MR: Do you think picture Soulshine having an even broader reach next time out?
MF: Yeah, we hope that it can grow and that people will have a great experience this year that will take us into years to come.
Transcribed By Galen Hawthorne
A Conversation with Night Ranger’s Kelly Keagy
Mike Ragogna: So is it true? Is Night Ranger truly back with a new studio album called High Road.
Kelly Keagy: What about that!
MR: It seems like you’re “Coming Home” with this one, Kelly.
KK: Hey, that sounds like a title! Let’s write that thing! [laughs]
MR: Yeah, and dude, there should be a premier video too.
KK: Not with that song, though. We did two videos a couple months ago for the single “High Road” and another one called “Knock Knock,” which is a harder track. But we were just guessing about the tracks so we just picked the first two songs. But we’re really excited about this record because I think we did some good work as far as the song. It took us a long time to do it because we started the record and then we went on tour. We’d come back every six weeks and go, “Oh yeah, we’ve got a record to finish!” We started out with about seven songs to begin with and then we’d come back to it and tweak it and just keep working on it throughout the summer and into the fall and finally we got to the point where we just wanted to give up—no, I’m just kidding. It was kind of a weird situation, doing a record and being on tour, but I’ve heard about it in the past happening on some classic albums.
MR: I’m imagining the tour also stimulated the creativity for the album.
KK: The thing is, too, it’s all-inclusive with this band. We’ve got to do it as good as possible, with all the energy that we have. The thing is, after thirty one years you try and figure out, “What are we going to write about?” We can’t still write about chasing women and driving fast cars. With this record it was good that we took a long time so we could go, “Yeah, this title isn’t great” or “This verse isn’t great,” or this guitar line or these changes in the song, let’s change it up and go back and redo the demos and figure out which arrangements work great and then do it for real.
MR: Exactly, the song becomes road tested.
KK: Yeah. The thing is, too, you just don’t know. When you’re in the middle of writing something you just don’t know. So the fact that you get a chance to go back and re-look at it a few times is a good thing. This band’s always been about the song, it’s always about having as good a song as possible, and if it’s not great then there’s got to be something musical that’s good about it. But usually it’s all about a good chorus and a good melody and something decent to say.
MR: Kelly, it’s now thirty-one years for the band. That’s an amazing thing, isn’t it? And Night Ranger seemed to have had hits right out of the box with “Sister Christian.” So it’s thirty-one years later, what do you think about all that?
KK: I think we’re so fortunate and lucky to have had a chance, because a lot of times bands don’t click with the public even though they might be amazing. There are so many bands that get a shot and it just doesn’t click. We’re so lucky to be able to have that happen with us, and like I said, the songs just seemed to click with the audience and make a connection. And that was all the touring we did and all the bands we were on with, KISS and ZZ Top and 38 Special and all those bands that broke our career. The three of us, Brad [Gillis], Jack [Blades] and myself had been together even longer than that. We were in another band together in 1977, ’78, ’79. We’d been together for a really long time. We know each other really well, we know what works musically and song-wise, we’ve just been very fortunate and lucky to have the three of us stay together and enjoy playing together as much as we do.
MR: Now I mentioned “Sister Christian,” but of course you’ve also collected hits in “When You Close Your Eyes,” “Rock In America,” “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me,” “Sing Me Away”… I think sometimes when you have such a monster hit, you get branded for that particular song. I think maybe Night Ranger took a hit because you had such a huge…well…”hit.”
KK: That’s what happens. It happens with a lot of bands, but we look at it as a blessing. It can be a curse as well, because people forget you’re a kickass rock band. I think that’s the driving force sometimes, when we play live we come out with that energy because we want to prove that we’re a kickass rock band as well as a hit act and can write hit songs. I think that’s the double-edged sword that you’re dealing with here.
MR: When you look at some of the people you’ve been hanging out with–Mötley Crüe and Ozzy Osbourne and all the guys you talked about before–how much are you influenced by these acts? Do you still find yourself being influenced by others’ music that you like?
KK: Absolutely! All the bands we played with were inspiration for us to continue, too, because all of those bands are still around, too. Early on we played with a version of Black Sabbath that had Ian Gillan in it and I just remember thinking, “Oh my God, Ian Gillan, man. Deep Purple.” Those were some of the early influences, Deep Purple with “Highway Star” and things like that. Those were kind of the inspiration for “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me” and uptempo, kickass rock songs like that. That was it.
MR: Kelly, take us on a little tour of High Road. In your opinion, what are some real classic Night Ranger moments on the album?
KK: I think what we did–and we did this on the last record Somewhere In California–we came in with a clean canvas with nothing on it. Usually what we do is we come in with songs, but this time it was just like musical bits. “Oh, I’ve got this riff,” “Oh, I’ve got this chord change for a chorus,” and that was it and we’d just start to build it from there and we would jam. We’d take a break and somebody would come back with some sort of groove or something. For the first two weeks or ten days, Brad and Jack and myself, that’s what we did. We just started to lay down things and keep the recorder going and record every bit and then we’d go back and listen to it. It was kind of interesting to start a record like that with no songs and then to end up with all these great songs and something to be proud of. It was really a unique experience.
MR: Was this approach different than how the other albums were made?
KK: Right, it’s totally different. Every album we’ve ever done except for the last two we’ve always had songs prewritten. This time the three of us collaborated on every single song and even the newer members, Eric Levy and Joel Hoekstra brought stuff. Joel came up with the riff for that song “I’m Coming Home,” and Eric Levy had the piano part to “Only For You Only.” We had a couple of things like that where they brought in some surprises.
MR: Do you think collaborations and what you’re doing these days rejuvenated the band? Is the band now a Night Ranger 2.0?
KK: [laughs] I think so, man. We were really surprised to, because we were out of our element at that point. We were like, “Where are the songs?” These are just musical bits. It allowed us to kind of jump outside of our comfort zone and realize this might be a new thing for us. The last record was really special to us, too, and then this one is even better as far as some of the musical moments in this album. It was really nice to realize, “Wow, this idea’s really working!”
MR: Perhaps when you started out, it was all about fast cars and women. But what do you feel are the main themes in your music now?
KK: You know, I just think that with a little more maturity, our perspectives just changed about life and relationships and stuff like that. We still like chasing women. We still like driving cars fast, that’s not going to change ever. What rock ‘n’ roll’s about is a good time, we’re still about that, we still love that, that’s what’s kept us going this whole time, we love life and where it’s taken us and we’re just going to stay on that. That’s really what life’s about anyway, trying to be happy. That’s what we’re trying to do, and we’re trying to bring the audience along with us.
MR: So you’re based in Nashville, Kelly. That’s quite a long way from San Francisco.
KK: [laughs] I moved out here about twelve years ago just because I wanted a change of scenery. I didn’t want to stay in LA or San Francisco. It wasn’t because I didn’t like it anymore, I just wanted a change. But I didn’t want to move to New York, which I love, I could live there in a second, I just wanted a change of scene. A lot of my buddies are out here, Mark Slaughter’s out here, some of my good old writing buddies, Bruce Gaitsch, some of these guys moved out from LA twenty five years ago and when I was ready for a change I just gave them a shout and said, “What’s going on out there?” and they said, “There’s a great community out here, good songwriters, a good creative community.”
MR: What advice do you have for new artists?
KK: I think that what’s kept us going, and I think it’s probably a rule is just to have a love of what you’re doing. You’ve got to have a love for the music that you’re playing and where you’re at that point in your career. I think that if you have a preconceived idea like, “I want to be a star,” then that’s good, you’ve got to have that a little bit, but it’s got to come from the heart, man. There’s got to be a good, solid base in wanting to be a good musician and a good artist, you know?
MR: Yeah though I think some TV shows like to glamorize a culture of celebrity rather than creativity, making it a bit confusing as to how to prioritize things.
KK: I just think that we all came up in those ranks of playing six nights a week in clubs for ten or twelve years and developed our style and played different styles of music. It’s a different world, but I think there are a lot of talented people out there, and I think that the media focuses on the pranks and the goofiness, which is entertaining, but that’s not going to hold my attention for too long.
MR: Where does Night Ranger stand in the metal world these days? Or do you think of Night Ranger as something a broader now?
KK: I don’t know, that’s really hard for me to say. We’re rolling along here, thirty-one years later. There’s still a lot of people that enjoy our music and that’s what we’re really about, that moment of trying to capture the audience and bring it in to us when we play live as well as with records. We want to see if we can keep our audience interested in what we do musically, lyrically, melodically. We’re really fortunate in that way that it’s still going on.
MR: What is the biggest surprise in the thirty-one years of Night Ranger?
KK: Our music still gets played on the radio, still gets put in movies and stuff like that. Rock Of Ages–the movie and the Broadway show–whoever thought we were going to be Broadway writers? What? Are you kidding me? That alone was a surprise. And the fact that we still go out on stage every night and totally play as hard as we can a hundred and ten percent, I just think that we still love it and there’s not going to be any time soon where we’re going to retire.
MR: Do you ever wander into a store or listen to the car radio and hear “Sister Christian” or any of your older hits, stop what you’re doing and listen?
KK: Oh, of course! A few weeks ago they had a version of “Sister Christian” on Grey’s Anatomy, this young lady Juliette Commagere did a totally new version of it, and the way she was singing it just struck me as, “Wow, this is kind of a new play on this song.” I’m totally blown away that the song has lasted this long and is still out there and still so able to be placed in movies and TV and people are hearing it in a different way. It’s pretty cool.
MR: Do you find yourself incorporating other people’s takes on your music at least into your live performances?
KK: Sure, all the time. We’ve had that song redone a few times over the last twenty years. A group back in the early nineties did a version of it and they added new lyrics into it and it was like, “Whoa, this is wild.”
MR: What does the future bring for Night Ranger?
KK: I hope that we just get a chance to keep making great records like this one and to turn the audience on to a new side of Night Ranger, maybe a little bit older but still as energetic as it’s ever been. I just hope that this record gets out there just so we can show everybody that Night Ranger’s a kick ass rock band.
Transcribed By Galen Hawthorne
There is an undeclared war going on in South Asia. It’s a more important war than the one against terrorism being fought so desperately in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It’s a more pressing issue than whether or not Pakistan and India will enter into a nuclear race, or whether Pakistan’s nuclear bombs can be kept secure. It is the major issue in the region, which, if left unresolved, will result in greater instability throughout the region. It will carry global repercussions as it echoes across the Middle East and Africa. It’s the war against women, where because of patriarchal customs and systems, one half of the region is at war with the other half: and in this conflict, there can and will be no winners.
In one week alone, there were two horrific crimes in South Asia that shocked the entire world. In Pakistan, a 25-year-old pregnant woman, Farzana Parveen, was walking to a Lahore courthouse with her husband in order to testify that she had married him of her own free will. Members of her own family, including an uncle, brothers and two cousins, who had turned against a marriage they had initially agreed to, lay in wait for the couple, then attacked them. Mohammad Iqbal stood watching helplessly as they beat her to death with bricks. The police and bystanders allegedly did nothing.
In India, two teenaged girls of low caste were abducted in a village in Uttar Pradesh. The next morning, their gang-raped bodies were found hanging from a mango tree. Their father said that when he went to the police to report them missing, the police asked what caste they were from, then allegedly refused to help in the search. Their small, thin bodies, one in a green tunic and pants and the other in pink, are a far cry from the strong frames of soldiers sent in to battle on a warfield. But these girls, Farzana Parveen, and millions of women like them, are the foot soldiers in a war where their own bodies are the battleground.
This war isn’t always fought so openly. It takes place in private homes, where millions of women are subjected to the worst kinds of domestic violence. In South Asia, it is common to physically discipline one’s wife or daughters, or even young women who work as maids in the house. Men and women alike will daily hit or strike women and girls not just as punishment, but as a way of taking out the frustrations of daily life on them. Pakistan has seen cases of young maids being beaten to death by their employers, of ordinary men abusing their wives across all socio-economic classes, and of daughters beaten or killed because they wouldn’t submit to an arranged marriage or because they enacted a marriage of their own choice. Women and girls are trafficked across the region and exported to prosperous nations to work as little better than drudges, where they are always in danger of physical violence with few laws in place or enforced to protect them.
This state of affairs has come about in Pakistan because it is a society brutalized by years of dictatorship, where physical punishment, hanging and torture were the norm, and, in a post-dictatorship society, further brutalized by deadly terrorist attacks that have killed 60,000 Pakistanis in bombings and shootings. The greater South Asian region has always been buffeted by poverty, illiteracy and conservatism, in which girls and women are the most vulnerable members of the population. It houses a deep-rooted system of patriarchy, where men are superior, and women are inferior, regardless of class, caste or religion. And it has had lawmakers and religious, tribal and community leaders create an intricate web of laws and societal structures that ensure women are legally, socially and financially dependent on men.
The power structure in South Asia, then, has for centuries operated with women as a kind of slave class, bound to men from birth, married early so that they will continue to work for their husband’s families and bear the children that will perpetuate the system. It is only in the last fifty years or so that women have realized they have other options, and the right to seek them out. Women all across the region, from Afghanistan to Bangladesh and from Bhutan to Sri Lanka are trying their best to undo this state of affairs in the ways that are offered to them: going to school, becoming educated, getting jobs and achieving financial independence. They have achieved modest success in these aims in some countries, but are falling back badly in others.
There is a popular wave of thinking that helping women to become entrepreneurs – and many programs have been put in place, funded by foreign organizations and run by both local and foreign NGOs – will help them gain economic status in society. And this is true: when a woman has economic status, or a girl is able to contribute to a household, her value immediately increases in the eyes of the family and community and society around her. This increase in a woman’s economic worth, the bringing of a woman out of the cloisters of home and into public life, is a stabilizing force that can bring balance and prosperity to the region.
But how to undo the extreme violence that accompanies and seems to increase with the growing independence of South Asia’s women? It’s almost as if the patriarchy sees the advances of women, senses a threat, and has mobilized force and violence against them in ways and numbers never seen before. In Pakistan, the forces of patriarchy have combined with the forces of extremism to enact a particular kind of war on women that sees, for example, girls’ schools bombed and threatened with closure in the Northern Areas and Balochistan.
A more vibrant media in Pakistan is reporting these violent attacks on women with more courage and openness than ever before — vitally important in bringing to light the current conditions in which women struggle for their rights. But the backlash against women’s empowerment threatens not just to keep women in their traditional place, but to undo years of progressive advances, laws and social evolution that has allowed South Asia’s women to make gains. And this is a development that will have an adverse effect on the efforts to stabilize South Asia and bring it into modernity.
So what can be done to unpick this huge heritage of patriarchy for South Asia’s women? First, the culture of impunity needs to be dismantled. This is the culture that both men and women are raised in, where they are taught from birth that a boy baby is more wanted than a girl baby. As adults, men and women believe that a woman is always the property of a man — be it father, uncle, brother or son — and as such, the man is free to dispose of her as he wishes. If he beats her, it’s his business; if he kills her because she violated his “honor,” he is seen by others to have done the “right thing.”
Strict laws that make it impossible for anyone to get away with domestic violence, rape, honor killings or any other form of violence against women must be enacted, enforced and endorsed by political and religious leaders. And any and all cultural, religious or tribal loopholes used to help a criminal escape justice have to be eliminated from the legal system. For it is only when legal accountability enters the picture that the culture impunity is defeated.
All the programs that are being enacted at the moment for the empowerment of women will be rendered useless unless organizations put some effort and money into men’s education programs as well. By empowering, educating and liberating women, but leaving men out of the picture, an imbalance will be created in society, with women progressing and men being left behind. Men will continue to strike out with force against women as this gap in mentality increases.
Programs must be created that educate men about their rights and responsibilities towards women and girls, as protectors and partners rather than lords and masters. We must bring about a change in values and attitudes: men in South Asia must unlearn their programming about the inferiority of women and be retaught that empowered women are no threat to them, but can instead be assets and valued members of society.
Such programs can rely on many sources for inspiration: religious, humanist, civil, political, psychological and so on. But whichever way we choose to do it, the point is clear: for truly empowered women to exist peacefully in South Asia, there must be truly empowered men, armed with the idea of equality and dignity, not the false power that patriarchy promises but delivers only when one half of the population suffers. There must be the overarching lesson that both genders can and must live in harmony and cooperation, rather than conflict and submission. In so doing, an entire society can step out of its diminished, victimized position into a whole new position of strength and peace, with a secure, happy future finally visible for all.
LONDON (AP) — A British children’s charity says at least 500 people have reported abuse by the late entertainer Jimmy Savile, with the youngest alleged victim just 2 years old.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said Monday that the most common age group for victims was 13 to 15. Peter Watt, the charity’s director of child protection, said Savile was a “prolific sex offender … (who) lost no opportunity to identify vulnerable victims and abuse them.”
The cigar-chomping, platinum-haired Savile was a British television fixture for several decades, but after his death at 84 in 2011, witnesses and victims came forward to accuse him of sexual abuse. Police have since described the television and radio presenter as a serial sexual predator who used his fame to target young and mostly female victims, from star-struck teens at television recordings to patients in hospital beds.
A police investigation concluded last year that Savile’s abuse spanned half a century and included at least 214 offenses, most against victims under 18.
The NSPCC researched Savile’s crimes as part of a BBC documentary to be aired Monday.
It found more alleged victims than previously thought at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital. Police say they have received 16 allegations of abuse inside the institution.
Savile visited frequently as part of his charity work and was given his own set of keys to the hospital. In 1988, he was hired as an adviser to help resolve staff-management tensions at Broadmoor.
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