Hasta La Gadget!

The Tamale Lady. That’s what everyone calls the weary young-old woman who pushes her shopping cart to the middle of the block and sets up on the sidewalk, selling breakfast for $1 and $2.

Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
The Tamale Lady at her Astoria Boulevard station.

She does have a name. It may or may not be Idalia Garcia. It’s not important. But her story is.

Idalia has been The Tamale Lady for three of the nine years she has called America her home. Her family was poorer than poor, and she had a pretty hard life in Guerrero, Mexico, which is why she left.

Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
Selling tamales helps her support her two children.

Like many, if not all immigrants, she was seduced by the elusive promise of prosperity.

She couldn’t find work in her native land, and she couldn’t find work here, which is why she ended up selling tamales on the street on Saturdays and Sundays.

She doesn’t have much schooling. She doesn’t know much English. She doesn’t have papers. And she doesn’t have a way out.

Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
Get breakfast on the go for $1 to $2.

It’s all well and good to talk about the future, but Idalia has to deal with the here and now. She has two children — a 9-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son.

She lives with them and their father in a two-bedroom apartment nearby. He has a full-time job in a cafeteria, but he doesn’t make enough money to pay all the bills.

Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
She’s on the sidewalk every Saturday and Sunday.

“It’s very expensive to live here,” she says through an interpreter. “Mexico was much cheaper.”

Idalia gets up at 3 a.m. to fix the food and arrives at her station on Astoria Boulevard between Crescent and 23rd Streets at 6 a.m. She packs up around 11 a.m.

Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
One of Idalia’s homemade tamales.

The couple hundred bucks she makes each weekend is not enough to buy her a better life.

Idalia, a blend-into-the-background woman with the cherubic cheeks of a child, puts on a brave face and a big smile, but there’s a sad longing in her eyes. She wants to do something with her life. She’s only 35.

“I’m sorry I left Mexico,” she says. “It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.”

Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
She has a steady stream of customers.

Quitting the sidewalk stand is not an option. When it’s freezing, she bundles up, and when the sun bores into the concrete like a laser, Idalia takes shelter under a sky-blue patio umbrella.

Still and stone-faced as a statue, she stoically waits for the customers.

A construction worker in hard hat and dust-covered boots stops to buy a couple of tamales. The Tamale Lady takes the $5 bill and fishes in her pocketbook to get him change.

Nancy A. Ruhling may be reached at Nruhling@gmail.com.
Copyright 2014 by Nancy A. Ruhling

The fire hydrant that we know today traces its origins back to fire plugs. Water mains that transported fresh water in a city or town used to be made of hollowed out logs buried beneath the streets. Whenever there was a fire and firefighters needed water, they dug up the cobblestone street and drilled a hole into the wooden pipe. After they extinguished the fire, the firefighters put a plug in the hole—called a “fire plug”—before reburying the water main. The plug could then be removed and the same hole used if another fire occurred in the area, saving the drilling time.

Read more…

EA’s all-you-can-eat games service has launched, and there’s a bonus if you’re a fan of American Football. The developer has announced that it’s only those who pay for EA Access that’ll be able to play Madden NFL 15 before its launch on August 26th….

In what may be one of the most shocking photos passed around on social media, a 7-year-old Australian boy is seen holding up a severed head in Syria.

“That’s my boy,” reads the caption reportedly posted by Khaled Sharrouf, a convicted terrorist who fled Australia to join the Islamic State militants waging war in Syria and Iraq.

Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the photo on Tuesday.

“This image, perhaps even an iconic photograph… really one of the most disturbing, stomach-turning, grotesque photographs ever displayed,” Kerry said after a security meeting in Sydney, in remarks quoted by The Associated Press.

“Of a 7-year-old child holding a severed head up with pride and with the support and encouragement of a parent, with brothers there,” Kerry said. “That child should be in school, that child should be out learning about a future, that child should be playing with other kids, not holding a severed head and out in the field of combat.”

WARNING: The following image, while censored, is brutal and graphic.

PM Abbott has denounced a photo of a child believed to be Australian holding a severed head in Syria #TenNews 5pm pic.twitter.com/URGQ2fUsbN

— TEN Eyewitness News (@channeltennews) August 11, 2014

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, also in Australia, commented on the photo on Monday.

“ISIL is a threat to the civilized world, certainly to the United States, to our interests, as it is to Europe, it is to Australia,” Hagel said, according to the Daily Telegraph. “I think reflected on the local newspaper I saw this morning, with the picture on the front page, it’s pretty graphic evidence of the real threat that ISIL represents.”

ISIL is another abbreviation used for the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott also condemned the image.

“There are more photographs in newspapers in Australia today of the kind of hideous atrocities that this group is capable of,” Abbott told ABC Radio, according to The Australian. “(The) Islamic State — as they’re now calling themselves — it’s not just a terrorist group, it’s a terrorist army and they’re seeking not just a terrorist enclave but effectively a terrorist state, a terrorist nation.”

Sharrouf was convicted in Australia on terror-related charges in connection with a 2005 plot and sentenced to five years in prison, the Washington Post reported. Once released, he was forbidden from leaving the country. However, last year, he used his brother’s passport to flee, Stuff.co.nz said.

And it appears he’s taken his family with him.

Another recent image Sharrouf sent out via social media shows him with three children believed to be his, all in fatigues and holding weapons.

Australian man Khaled Sharrouf and his sons in front of an Islamic State flag in Syria. pic.twitter.com/QSAI8T7rtx

— Syed Amir (@sdamir57) August 11, 2014

(h/t Mashable)

12. August 2014.
Topic: Will Russia bring down the global system?
By: Joergen Oerstroem Moeller

The crisis about the future of Ukraine is nowhere near a solution. It will get worse without any certainty that ultimately it will turn to the better – maybe with luck, but do not count on it. The major fallout may be a Russian assault on the international rule based system casting doubt over global governance.

President Putin is defending two core interests (foreign policy and domestic policies); it is thus unlikely that he will back down or soften his approach. The Western sanctions may harm somewhat – one or two percentage points of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – a small even negligible price to defend a core national interest.

Foreign policy wise Putin sees himself as the protector of all Russians irrespective of whether they live inside Russia or abroad. Being Russian is unique forged by history, culture, attachment to the soil, and identity. It is intolerable that Russians living in other countries are forced to conform to non-Russian attitudes. Having casts himself in that role, political suicide looms if he succumbs to sanctions and weak ones at that. History would depict him as a traitor. According to reports he classifies Tsar Nicolas II and Gorbachev as exactly that because they shied away from using power, giving in to pressure from the outside.

Russia has always been suspicious of its Western neighbours and for good reasons invaded over the last 200 years by France and Germany (twice). Russia’s geography lays it open to invasions having few natural defence lines. The solution invariably popping up before the eyes of every Tsar and communist leader is to establish a cordon of weak states. Alexander I did that after the Napoleonic Wars. Stalin did that before and after Wold War II. The end of the Cold War deprived Russia of this cordon exposing the country to potential invasion. It is no use telling Russian leaders being it Putin or somebody else that nobody plans to invade them. They do not believe reassurances recalling history. When Putin speaks about the fall of the Soviet Union as the biggest geopolitical catastrophe in the 20th century, he means that it turned Russia into an indefensible country.

Domestically Putin may know that his economic model is not viable in the long run. It rests on a high oil price and even if that continues – doubtful – it will not make Russia a modern state. It serves, however, his purpose being good for his supporters and so far delivering an acceptable living standard for the majority of Russian. The opposition comes from a relatively small group of people attracting attention in the West because they are vocal and apparently worship ‘Western’ values. Beware, however, they are Russians and not Westerners and consequently look to defend Russia’s interests, the core of which does not depend on who is in power. The blunt truth is that outside the small circle of dissidents, Putin and his political and economic model does not face much opposition. There may be people around him that dispute the wisdom of annexing Crimea and put Russia on confrontation with the West, but it is unlikely they are powerful enough to stage a revolt.

The defence of Russia’s core interests at the periphery is exactly what his predecessors ruling Russia for centuries have done and resonates with every Russian.

The shooting down of MH 17 has become a spanner in the works bringing the world to realise that without Russian active involvement Ukraine’s army would have crushed the rebellion long ago. Being exposed the policy answer will be to lie low for some time and wait for the storm to subside while still keeping the rebellion afloat. Full scale support can be resumed at a later stage when the world has grown tired of hearing about the horrible consequences of arming the rebels. This is also in conformity with Russian subversive actions fine-tuned in sophisticated use of espionage and ‘dirty’ tricks over centuries.

Massive sanctions might change Putin’s equation, but so far there is not the slightest evidence that this will happen. The sanctions activated are ‘respectable’ and will exact a price, but be more of a nuisance than do real harm. Russia and Putin will not back down – harbour no doubt about that. Western sanctions are like a Mensur rapier inflicting pain and making a scar, but leaving it at that. Russia will retaliate in the same manner. Selected Western companies will suddenly find life extremely difficult, but the majority will do business as usual. Neither Russia nor the West has the stomach for genuine sanctions.

But something else, more dangerous, will happen. Russia will backpedal from the international rule based system built since 1945 withdrawing into its own shell accusing the rest of the world, in particular the West, for demonizing it, making it a victim, and forcing it to discard traditional Russian values. The Kremlin is feeding this message to the Russian population and it is believed. The enlargement of NATO and the EU, the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, the UN approval of intervention in Libya, and events in Georgia plus Ukraine – the evidence piles up on the desk in the Kremlin. At the Russian Ministry of Defence’s third Moscow Conference on International Security, May 23, 2014, the main theme was a Russian perception of ‘colour revolutions’ engineered by the US and its allies to destabilize regimes in North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia. Such a power vacuum can and will, runs the argument, be used to curb Russian influence and ultimately fit into a strategy directed against Russia.

In Putin’s eyes the only reply is cutting links to the American global system, seek allies and partners in doing so and if necessary fend alone believing in Russia’s just course.

Omens of what is coming surfaced end of July. The International Court of Arbitration ruled that Yukos Oil Company should pay former leading shareholders USD50bn in damages. A few days later the Russian Finance Ministry stated that ‘The Hague’s arbitration court was not legally empowered to view the case of Yukos Oil Company v. Russia, and the court’s “one-sided” ruling disregards previous Strasbourg court decisions on the issue’. According to press reports G-7 countries are planning to block World Bank loans to Russia to the tune of USD 1.5bn. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has already decided to stop lending to Russia.

It is not difficult to guess how the Kremlin will react. ‘What is the virtue of adhering to these institutions when they apparently are used by the West to harm us?’ A first glimpse of what is in store came when rumours surfaced that Russia planned to ban Western airlines from using Siberian airspace. A step that, if implemented, will be harmful to economic globalization and thereby punish the American led global system.

The world can expect a major Russian offensive directed against the existing global system – the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and organisations like the arbitration court accusing them to deliberately act as a stooge for American and Western political and economic interest. Add to this a recalcitrant – at best – Russian policy in efforts to solve or defuse global crises like Syria, Gaza, Iran, and North Korea. Russia cannot shape events, but are powerful enough to act as a spoiler.

China, India, and Brazil will be courted to join. Hopefully they will not be taken in relying much more on a global system than Russia, but the challenge constitutes a major test for those who want to preserve global governance and a rule based global system.

This is the first attempt to castrate the global steering system as we know it. The problem for the West is that it is seen more and more as the West’s system and less and less as a global system.

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller
Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.
Adjunct Professor Singapore Management University & Copenhagen Business School.
Honorary Alumnus, University of Copenhagen.