Mysterious waters: from the Bermuda Triangle to the Devil's Sea
By George Webster for CNN
May 31, 2011 -- Updated 1120 GMT (1920 HKT)
Sea monsters have been blamed for unexplained maritime disappearances.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Everything from UFOs to sea monsters blamed for unexplained nautical mysteries
Bermuda Triangle became notorious after military planes disappeared off Florida coast
The "Devil's Sea," in the Pacific, is known as one of 12 "Vile Vortices" around the world
(CNN) -- Tales of missing maritime vessels and rumors of drifting, crewless ships have long colored the popular imagination when it comes to legends of the high seas.
Certain locations have become synonymous with unexplained disappearances and for intrepid sailors with a taste for the paranormal, these places can hold a spookily magnetic appeal.
So if you fancy a sailing holiday with a supernatural slant, you'll need to know where the fiction ends and the facts begin. To help you along your way we delve deep into some of the world's most mysterious waters.
Bermuda Triangle
The vast triangular area of ocean with imaginary points in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico -- popularly known as the "Bermuda Triangle" -- has long been associated with mysterious disappearances, paranormal activity and even fissures in the fabric of space itself.
Interest in the region began after a group of military planes carrying 14 men inexplicably vanished somewhere off the coast of southern Florida in December 1945.
Before losing radio contact, it's claimed the flight leader was heard saying: "We are entering white water, nothing seems right."
Almost immediately afterwards, a further 13 crew-members -- dispatched as a flying search party -- themselves vanished. Neither group's remains were ever discovered and the Bermuda Triangle legend was born.
Numerous further disappearances, including a large oil tanker, a pleasure yacht and a small passenger plane were attributed to the area's paranormal forces.
A raft of books, like "The Devil's Triangle," "Limbo of the Lost," and "The Riddle of the Bermuda Triangle" all contained supernatural explanations -- from UFOs to "wormholes" to technology left over from the mythical lost continent of Atlantis.
However, in later years, skeptics have argued that the number of ships and aircraft reported missing in the area is, statistically, no more significant than in any other part of the ocean.
Indeed, the area is today one of the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world, and most appear to get by without so much as dipping oar into another dimension.
Sargasso Sea
Next door to the Bermuda Triangle, and stretching far out into the Atlantic Ocean, is the eerily calm Sargasso Sea.
Despite sitting in the middle of the otherwise freezing Atlantic, the water in the Sargasso is warm and embroidered with sargassum -- the dense seaweed from which it gets its name.
The area has an intriguing reputation for robbing sail boats of their crew, leaving nothing but empty, wandering vessels.
Among its victims was the tall-mast ship "Rosalie," which sailed through the area in 1840, but was subsequently found drifting and derelict with her sails set and no crew on board.
Grisly 19th-century paintings show sailing vessels being devoured by monstrous weeds, and the area has featured in books by Jules Verne, among others.
But the mystery of the Sargasso is no longer much of a mystery. Surrounded by some of the strongest surface-water currents in the world, the "sea within a sea," as it is known, is effectively cordoned off from the rest of the Atlantic.
This isolation gives the region its uncharacteristic temperature and surprising tranquility -- causing wind-powered sail boats to come to an absolute standstill and creating all the ingredients for a nautical fairy tale.
The "Devil's Sea"
The "Devil's Sea," also known as the "Dragon's Triangle," is a region in the Pacific roughly located around the Japanese island of Miyake, about 100 kilometers south of Tokyo.
Ancient legends tell of dragons that lived off the coast of Japan, bequeathing the region its nickname.
According to author Charles Berlitz, Japan lost five military vessels -- as well 100 scientists studying the region -- in the space of just two years between 1952 and 1954.
Like the Bermuda Triangle, the region was included in a 1972 article by naturalist and paranormal expert Ivan Sanderson, titled "The 12 Devil's Graveyards Around the World."
The "Vile Vortices," as they are otherwise known, all occupy the same latitudes south and north of the equator and are said to be hotspots for peculiar physical anomalies and unexplained phenomena often attributed to electro-magnetic aberrations.
Sanderson hypothesized that hot and cold currents crossing these vortices might create electromagnetic disturbances affecting instruments and vessels, in turn causing ships' disappearances.
However, while much mystery around the area may remain, American author and pilot Larry Kusche has long-since debunked many of the claims made by Berlitz and others.
Michigan Triangle
Lake Michigan, in the United States, has been the site of countless sightings of strange objects and phantom planes.
RELATED TOPICS
Sea Disasters
Sailing
Bermuda Triangle
According to marine historian Dwight Bower in his book "Strange Adventures of the Great Lakes" the Michigan Triangle legend was born in 1937, when Captain George Donner unaccountably vanished from his freighter cabin during a routine coal delivery.
Having given strict instructions to be woken from his bed as the ship drew into port, Donner was nowhere to be found three hours later -- despite his cabin door being locked from the inside.
Thirteen years later, Northwest Airlines Flight 2501 -- carrying 55 passengers and three crew -- left New York City for Minneapolis, only to seemingly evaporate from thin air as it passed over the Michigan Triangle.
The wreckage has never been discovered, despite being the subject of an annual search by the Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates, and investigations still continue in trying to explain the incident.
So, for sailors in search of a real close encounter, it could well be that Lake Michigan is, in fact, the best place for a creepy cruise.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
notice monday
Blatter denies FIFA in crisis and will seek fourth term in charge
By the CNN Wire Staff
May 30, 2011 -- Updated 2058 GMT (0458 HKT)
A defiant Sepp Blatter said he would press ahead with his bid for a fourth term in charge of FIFA.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
FIFA president Sepp Blatter shrugs off allegations of corruption in his organization
"We are not in a crisis" the 75-year-old Swiss tells press conference
Blatter will be pressing ahead with his bid for a fourth term as president
FIFA Congress will vote Wednesday with Blatter sole candidate
(CNN) -- A defiant Sepp Blatter shrugged off allegations of corruption within FIFA Monday and said he would press ahead with his bid to be re-elected as president of football's world governing body for the fourth time.
Blatter will be the sole candidate in Wednesday's election in Zurich after Qatari Mohamed Bin Hammam, the only person standing against him, was suspended by the FIFA ethics committee Sunday, along with fellow leading official Jack Warner.
"We are not in a crisis, we are only in some difficulties and these can be solved inside our family," Blatter told a press conference Monday where he was continually pressed on both his own position and wider allegations of wrongdoing within FIFA.
"FIFA is strong enough to deal with our own problems," he asserted when asked if he had considered postponing Wednesday's vote by the 207-member FIFA Congress.
Was Blatter right to be defiant?
Blatter also ruled out a new vote on the venue for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
"There is no issue for the World Cup in 2022," the 75-year-old Swiss said.
"I believe that the decision taken for the World Cup in 2022 was done exactly in the same pattern and in the same way as the 2018 tournament."
Bin Hamman, who led the Qatar bid, said earlier Monday that he would appeal his suspension.
"I am punished before I am found guilty," Bin Hammam said in a statement, saying he would "not accept" the decision.
Blatter, who was cleared by the ethics committee, did admit that the whole affair had affected FIFA's reputation.
"What has happened in the last few days and weeks. It has done great damage to the image of FIFA," he said.
The press conference was conducted in an acrimonious atmosphere as frustrated journalists shouted out questions.
"We're not in a bazaar here, we are in an important congress," retorted Blatter at one point.
We're not in a bazaar here, we are in an important congress
--Sepp Blatter
It rounded off an extraordinary day of accusation and counter accusation, with CONCACAF chief Warner the focal point.
"At the end of the day, Blatter has to be stopped," Warner told gathered reporters, clearly angered by his expulsion from FIFA's executive committee.
Warner also released an email to reporters which implied that FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke believed there was corruption involved in Qatar's successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup.
"He thought he could buy FIFA as they bought the World Cup," Warner claims Valcke said of Bin Hammam in the email.
Qatar's football association Monday "categorically denied any wrongdoing" in connection with its bid, and said it was consulting lawyers and "urgently seeking clarification from FIFA" about the alleged Valcke comments.
Valcke, who is not accused of ethics violations and is not under any investigation, admitted sending the email, but said his comments had been taken out of context.
By the CNN Wire Staff
May 30, 2011 -- Updated 2058 GMT (0458 HKT)
A defiant Sepp Blatter said he would press ahead with his bid for a fourth term in charge of FIFA.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
FIFA president Sepp Blatter shrugs off allegations of corruption in his organization
"We are not in a crisis" the 75-year-old Swiss tells press conference
Blatter will be pressing ahead with his bid for a fourth term as president
FIFA Congress will vote Wednesday with Blatter sole candidate
(CNN) -- A defiant Sepp Blatter shrugged off allegations of corruption within FIFA Monday and said he would press ahead with his bid to be re-elected as president of football's world governing body for the fourth time.
Blatter will be the sole candidate in Wednesday's election in Zurich after Qatari Mohamed Bin Hammam, the only person standing against him, was suspended by the FIFA ethics committee Sunday, along with fellow leading official Jack Warner.
"We are not in a crisis, we are only in some difficulties and these can be solved inside our family," Blatter told a press conference Monday where he was continually pressed on both his own position and wider allegations of wrongdoing within FIFA.
"FIFA is strong enough to deal with our own problems," he asserted when asked if he had considered postponing Wednesday's vote by the 207-member FIFA Congress.
Was Blatter right to be defiant?
Blatter also ruled out a new vote on the venue for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
"There is no issue for the World Cup in 2022," the 75-year-old Swiss said.
"I believe that the decision taken for the World Cup in 2022 was done exactly in the same pattern and in the same way as the 2018 tournament."
Bin Hamman, who led the Qatar bid, said earlier Monday that he would appeal his suspension.
"I am punished before I am found guilty," Bin Hammam said in a statement, saying he would "not accept" the decision.
Blatter, who was cleared by the ethics committee, did admit that the whole affair had affected FIFA's reputation.
"What has happened in the last few days and weeks. It has done great damage to the image of FIFA," he said.
The press conference was conducted in an acrimonious atmosphere as frustrated journalists shouted out questions.
"We're not in a bazaar here, we are in an important congress," retorted Blatter at one point.
We're not in a bazaar here, we are in an important congress
--Sepp Blatter
It rounded off an extraordinary day of accusation and counter accusation, with CONCACAF chief Warner the focal point.
"At the end of the day, Blatter has to be stopped," Warner told gathered reporters, clearly angered by his expulsion from FIFA's executive committee.
Warner also released an email to reporters which implied that FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke believed there was corruption involved in Qatar's successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup.
"He thought he could buy FIFA as they bought the World Cup," Warner claims Valcke said of Bin Hammam in the email.
Qatar's football association Monday "categorically denied any wrongdoing" in connection with its bid, and said it was consulting lawyers and "urgently seeking clarification from FIFA" about the alleged Valcke comments.
Valcke, who is not accused of ethics violations and is not under any investigation, admitted sending the email, but said his comments had been taken out of context.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
notice thursday
10 fascinating Facebook facts -- and what they say about us
By Pete Cashmore, Special to CNN
May 26, 2011 -- Updated 2047 GMT (0447 HKT) | Filed under: Social Media
Mashable's Pete Cashmore says Facebook surveys provide intriguing insights into our online behaviors.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Mashable's Pete Cashmore offers 10 fun facts about Facebook, which 600 million use
No privacy controls for quarter of households with Facebook account, Consumer Reports say
Another survey finds 48% say they look at their ex's Facebook profile too often
RELATED TOPICS
Culture and Lifestyle
Facebook Inc.
Internet Privacy
Relationships
Editor's note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular tech-news blog. He writes occasional columns about social networking and tech for CNN.com.
(CNN) -- A study released this week revealed that 47% of Facebook users have swear words on their pages. A survey last week, meanwhile, showed that undergraduate men who talk about alcohol on Facebook tend to have more friends.
Whether it's our level of tolerance for swearing or the link between alcohol and bonding with friends, these Facebook studies provide intriguing insights into our online behaviors.
And yet I'd argue that Facebook surveys have a more fundamental role. With more than 600 million people actively using Facebook, these studies in fact provide a deeper understanding of our evolving cultural norms: our values, our morals and our changing relationships between one another.
Don't believe me? Here are some fascinating Facebook facts that just might serve as a peek into our 21st-century values.
1. 56% of Americans think it's irresponsible to friend your boss on Facebook
A survey released in February 2010 showed the majority of Americans don't find it socially acceptable to be Facebook friends with their boss. The study of 1,000 people by Liberty Mutual's Responsibility Project suggests that despite an increasing overlap between our work and home lives, we continue to value a separation between the two.
Meanwhile, 62% of those surveyed said it's wrong for a manager to befriend an employee on Facebook. And yet 76% of respondents said it was acceptable to befriend a peer on Facebook, suggesting what we truly value is that our work be judged on its merits rather than getting ahead based on personal relationships.
3. People in Facebook relationships are happier than single people
In February 2010, Facebook marked Valentine's Day by comparing the relationship status of its users to their happiness -- this was surmised based on the level of positive or negative sentiment in the user's Facebook updates.
The result: Those in relationships were found to be slightly happier than single people. Those who were married or engaged were also happier than single people on average.
However, Facebook users in an "open relationship" -- where the partners are not exclusive to one another -- were significantly less happy than single people. Monogamy, it seems, makes us happy.
4. 21% of people would break up via Facebook
A June 2010 survey of 1,000 Facebook users -- 70% of whom were male -- found that 25% had been "dumped" via Facebook (via their significant other updating his or her relationship status).
Twenty-one percent of those surveyed said they would end a relationship by changing their Facebook relationship statuses to "single." While worrisome, the survey does show the majority of people do not split up via Facebook.
For this uncomfortable task, it seems, we still turn to more personal forms of communication. This particular study also appears to suffer from a little male bias -- a July 2010 survey found that 9% of women have initiated a breakup via Facebook, versus 24% of men.
5. 85% of women are annoyed by their Facebook friends
For women on Facebook, friends can sometimes be irritating. In a March study conducted by Eversave, 85% admitted to having been annoyed by their Facebook friends. Of these annoyances, the most cited was "complaining all the time" (63%).
Other pet peeves included "sharing unsolicited political views" (42%) and "bragging about seemingly perfect lives" (32%).
While I've yet to see a similar survey focused on men, it's probably safe to assume these feelings are universal: Our friends are a source of joy and occasional irritation.
6. 25% of households with a Facebook account don't use privacy controls
A June 2010 survey from Consumer Reports stated that "in one of four households with a Facebook account, users weren't aware of or didn't choose to use the service's privacy controls."
While Consumer Reports chose to interpret this finding in a negative light, I'd propose a contrary view: Seventy-five percent of households did take the time to understand Facebook's privacy controls, suggesting that privacy remains important to our society.
The same study stated that "Twenty-six percent of Facebook users with children had potentially exposed them to predators by posting the children's photos and names."
Again, the positive view would be that 74% of Facebook users with children did not post their photos and names -- suggesting that we value privacy.
7. 48% of parents friend their kids on Facebook
On the question of whether it's OK to friend your kids on Facebook, parents are roughly split down the middle -- 48% have chosen to do so. Respondents in a May 2010 survey by Retrevo admitted that this could be "awkward at times."
Parents were also asked about the minimum age at which their children should be allowed to sign up for Facebook or MySpace. Twenty-six percent of parents replied "over 18," 36% said "16 to 18," 30% said "13 to 15" and 8% said "under 13."
Opinions may be changing rapidly, however. A Consumer Reports survey released this month says the majority of parents of kids 10 and under "seemed largely unconcerned by their children's use" of Facebook.
9. 48% of people say they look at their ex's Facebook profile too often
In a January study by YouTango, 48% of respondents said they look at their ex's Facebook or other social-networking profile too often. The statistic illustrates one danger of social-networking profiles -- ex-partners are more accessible than ever.
But the survey also points to a degree of self-awareness among the respondents. While new technologies provide new temptations, it seems that many of us are able to control these behaviors.
By Pete Cashmore, Special to CNN
May 26, 2011 -- Updated 2047 GMT (0447 HKT) | Filed under: Social Media
Mashable's Pete Cashmore says Facebook surveys provide intriguing insights into our online behaviors.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Mashable's Pete Cashmore offers 10 fun facts about Facebook, which 600 million use
No privacy controls for quarter of households with Facebook account, Consumer Reports say
Another survey finds 48% say they look at their ex's Facebook profile too often
RELATED TOPICS
Culture and Lifestyle
Facebook Inc.
Internet Privacy
Relationships
Editor's note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular tech-news blog. He writes occasional columns about social networking and tech for CNN.com.
(CNN) -- A study released this week revealed that 47% of Facebook users have swear words on their pages. A survey last week, meanwhile, showed that undergraduate men who talk about alcohol on Facebook tend to have more friends.
Whether it's our level of tolerance for swearing or the link between alcohol and bonding with friends, these Facebook studies provide intriguing insights into our online behaviors.
And yet I'd argue that Facebook surveys have a more fundamental role. With more than 600 million people actively using Facebook, these studies in fact provide a deeper understanding of our evolving cultural norms: our values, our morals and our changing relationships between one another.
Don't believe me? Here are some fascinating Facebook facts that just might serve as a peek into our 21st-century values.
1. 56% of Americans think it's irresponsible to friend your boss on Facebook
A survey released in February 2010 showed the majority of Americans don't find it socially acceptable to be Facebook friends with their boss. The study of 1,000 people by Liberty Mutual's Responsibility Project suggests that despite an increasing overlap between our work and home lives, we continue to value a separation between the two.
Meanwhile, 62% of those surveyed said it's wrong for a manager to befriend an employee on Facebook. And yet 76% of respondents said it was acceptable to befriend a peer on Facebook, suggesting what we truly value is that our work be judged on its merits rather than getting ahead based on personal relationships.
3. People in Facebook relationships are happier than single people
In February 2010, Facebook marked Valentine's Day by comparing the relationship status of its users to their happiness -- this was surmised based on the level of positive or negative sentiment in the user's Facebook updates.
The result: Those in relationships were found to be slightly happier than single people. Those who were married or engaged were also happier than single people on average.
However, Facebook users in an "open relationship" -- where the partners are not exclusive to one another -- were significantly less happy than single people. Monogamy, it seems, makes us happy.
4. 21% of people would break up via Facebook
A June 2010 survey of 1,000 Facebook users -- 70% of whom were male -- found that 25% had been "dumped" via Facebook (via their significant other updating his or her relationship status).
Twenty-one percent of those surveyed said they would end a relationship by changing their Facebook relationship statuses to "single." While worrisome, the survey does show the majority of people do not split up via Facebook.
For this uncomfortable task, it seems, we still turn to more personal forms of communication. This particular study also appears to suffer from a little male bias -- a July 2010 survey found that 9% of women have initiated a breakup via Facebook, versus 24% of men.
5. 85% of women are annoyed by their Facebook friends
For women on Facebook, friends can sometimes be irritating. In a March study conducted by Eversave, 85% admitted to having been annoyed by their Facebook friends. Of these annoyances, the most cited was "complaining all the time" (63%).
Other pet peeves included "sharing unsolicited political views" (42%) and "bragging about seemingly perfect lives" (32%).
While I've yet to see a similar survey focused on men, it's probably safe to assume these feelings are universal: Our friends are a source of joy and occasional irritation.
6. 25% of households with a Facebook account don't use privacy controls
A June 2010 survey from Consumer Reports stated that "in one of four households with a Facebook account, users weren't aware of or didn't choose to use the service's privacy controls."
While Consumer Reports chose to interpret this finding in a negative light, I'd propose a contrary view: Seventy-five percent of households did take the time to understand Facebook's privacy controls, suggesting that privacy remains important to our society.
The same study stated that "Twenty-six percent of Facebook users with children had potentially exposed them to predators by posting the children's photos and names."
Again, the positive view would be that 74% of Facebook users with children did not post their photos and names -- suggesting that we value privacy.
7. 48% of parents friend their kids on Facebook
On the question of whether it's OK to friend your kids on Facebook, parents are roughly split down the middle -- 48% have chosen to do so. Respondents in a May 2010 survey by Retrevo admitted that this could be "awkward at times."
Parents were also asked about the minimum age at which their children should be allowed to sign up for Facebook or MySpace. Twenty-six percent of parents replied "over 18," 36% said "16 to 18," 30% said "13 to 15" and 8% said "under 13."
Opinions may be changing rapidly, however. A Consumer Reports survey released this month says the majority of parents of kids 10 and under "seemed largely unconcerned by their children's use" of Facebook.
9. 48% of people say they look at their ex's Facebook profile too often
In a January study by YouTango, 48% of respondents said they look at their ex's Facebook or other social-networking profile too often. The statistic illustrates one danger of social-networking profiles -- ex-partners are more accessible than ever.
But the survey also points to a degree of self-awareness among the respondents. While new technologies provide new temptations, it seems that many of us are able to control these behaviors.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
notice wednesday
Real 'pirate of the Caribbean' was funded by London elite
By George Webster for CNN
May 25, 2011 -- Updated 1341 GMT (2141 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
New exhibition reveals how piracy helped fund London economy in 17th century
It reveals extent of political and corporate corruption in Britain during early days of the empire
Notorious pirate Captain Kidd was hired by leading government figures
London (CNN) -- Forget peg-legs, parrots and eye-patches -- the real pirates of the Caribbean were much more complicated.
According to an eye-opening new exhibition near the bank of London's river Thames, a number of Britain's most notorious buccaneers colluded with high-profile politicians and businessmen during the "golden age" of piracy in the 17th century.
"As Britain began to expand her empire, pirates could quite literally be found walking the streets of London," said Tom Wareham, curator of maritime and community history at the Museum of London Docklands. "It was in this city that shady deals with mysterious and powerful financial backers funded a great deal of piracy around the world."
The exhibition, titled "Pirates: The Captain Kidd Story," explores the surprising truth of how London's corrupt political class was entrenched in piracy, by examining the life of the controversial swashbuckler.
Captain Kidd, as infamous as his bloodthirsty contemporary Blackbeard, was hanged for piracy and the murder of a crew member at "Execution Dock" on the Thames in 1701.
His body was covered in tar and dangled for years in an iron cage above the river as a warning to wannabe corsairs.
But was he even guilty of any crime?
Vilified at the time as a cold-blooded killer and terror of the high-seas from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, the exhibition reveals that Kidd was in fact more of a puppet in the profit wars of London's wealthiest elite.
"He was actually a privateer, a mercenary licensed by the government to loot merchant ships flying the colors of England's enemies -- mainly France and Spain," explained Wareham.
They stood to gain a fortune from Kidd's expertise as a privateer. It was an arrangement that stank of corruption
--Angus Konstam, historian
RELATED TOPICS
Pirates
London
Cultural History
According to Wareham, the practice was effectively a form of legitimate piracy.
Kidd was hired by a group of five leading government figures -- two earls, two lords and the First Lord of the Admiralty -- in what was "a particularly shady undertaking," said historian Angus Konstam, author of several books on pirates, including "Piracy: The Complete History."
"They planned to ignore normal legislation governing privateering contracts, and made their own unique deal, whereby they stood to gain a fortune from Kidd's expertise as a privateer," Konstam said. "It was an arrangement that stank of corruption."
Probably unknown to Kidd, however, was that his backers were rivals of the powerful East India Company, the ruthless multinational corporation that exported exotic goods from the Indian sub-continent.
When Kidd's activities in the East Indies, as it was then known, threatened the East India Company's business interests, they secured his downfall, said Wareham.
"After he attacked an Armenian merchant ship, the East India Company pulled strings to have him arrested on the grounds that it was not a legitimate target for a privateer -- even though it was sailing under a French pass," he explained.
According to documents that form part of the exhibition, including his personal notes and letters, Kidd was subjected to a sham trial in which crucial reports proving his innocence mysteriously disappeared, and he was barred from giving evidence.
"If abuse of power, lying in court, withholding evidence, bribing trial witnesses and generally rigging a trial are evidence of corruption, then the East India Company -- together with the Admiralty -- were as corrupt as they come," concluded Konstam.
The exhibition includes Kidd's last letter, with a promise of hidden treasure, the original inventory of all his plunder, and a genuine pirate flag from the 17th century.
Wareham hopes that the display will resonate today because it "illustrates the historical roots of the kind of corporate exploitation we see today, as well as the double standards of politicians," he said.
The curator is also keen that the exhibition, running until late October, will help dispel some of the modern myths surrounding the pirates of this "golden age."
"They have a bit of a bad rep in my view," Wareham said. "Many of them were men who had been press-ganged into the navy during war-time, only then to find themselves jobless when it was over. They didn't have much else going for them and in many cases would have simply drifted into a life of piracy."
But that's not the only modern misconception. Pirates in Captain Kidd's time bore "almost no relation to our modern perception of pirates," said Konstam, noting that everything we generally associate with them was invented subsequently.
"You can't fault Robert Louis Stevenson for writing 'Treasure Island' -- it remains one of the most enthralling children's books of all time. However, he created treasure maps with 'X' marking the spot, buried pirate treasure, and the black spot," Konstam said.
But surely some pirates were at least prone to impromptu cries of "shiver me timbers?"
"No."
By George Webster for CNN
May 25, 2011 -- Updated 1341 GMT (2141 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
New exhibition reveals how piracy helped fund London economy in 17th century
It reveals extent of political and corporate corruption in Britain during early days of the empire
Notorious pirate Captain Kidd was hired by leading government figures
London (CNN) -- Forget peg-legs, parrots and eye-patches -- the real pirates of the Caribbean were much more complicated.
According to an eye-opening new exhibition near the bank of London's river Thames, a number of Britain's most notorious buccaneers colluded with high-profile politicians and businessmen during the "golden age" of piracy in the 17th century.
"As Britain began to expand her empire, pirates could quite literally be found walking the streets of London," said Tom Wareham, curator of maritime and community history at the Museum of London Docklands. "It was in this city that shady deals with mysterious and powerful financial backers funded a great deal of piracy around the world."
The exhibition, titled "Pirates: The Captain Kidd Story," explores the surprising truth of how London's corrupt political class was entrenched in piracy, by examining the life of the controversial swashbuckler.
Captain Kidd, as infamous as his bloodthirsty contemporary Blackbeard, was hanged for piracy and the murder of a crew member at "Execution Dock" on the Thames in 1701.
His body was covered in tar and dangled for years in an iron cage above the river as a warning to wannabe corsairs.
But was he even guilty of any crime?
Vilified at the time as a cold-blooded killer and terror of the high-seas from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, the exhibition reveals that Kidd was in fact more of a puppet in the profit wars of London's wealthiest elite.
"He was actually a privateer, a mercenary licensed by the government to loot merchant ships flying the colors of England's enemies -- mainly France and Spain," explained Wareham.
They stood to gain a fortune from Kidd's expertise as a privateer. It was an arrangement that stank of corruption
--Angus Konstam, historian
RELATED TOPICS
Pirates
London
Cultural History
According to Wareham, the practice was effectively a form of legitimate piracy.
Kidd was hired by a group of five leading government figures -- two earls, two lords and the First Lord of the Admiralty -- in what was "a particularly shady undertaking," said historian Angus Konstam, author of several books on pirates, including "Piracy: The Complete History."
"They planned to ignore normal legislation governing privateering contracts, and made their own unique deal, whereby they stood to gain a fortune from Kidd's expertise as a privateer," Konstam said. "It was an arrangement that stank of corruption."
Probably unknown to Kidd, however, was that his backers were rivals of the powerful East India Company, the ruthless multinational corporation that exported exotic goods from the Indian sub-continent.
When Kidd's activities in the East Indies, as it was then known, threatened the East India Company's business interests, they secured his downfall, said Wareham.
"After he attacked an Armenian merchant ship, the East India Company pulled strings to have him arrested on the grounds that it was not a legitimate target for a privateer -- even though it was sailing under a French pass," he explained.
According to documents that form part of the exhibition, including his personal notes and letters, Kidd was subjected to a sham trial in which crucial reports proving his innocence mysteriously disappeared, and he was barred from giving evidence.
"If abuse of power, lying in court, withholding evidence, bribing trial witnesses and generally rigging a trial are evidence of corruption, then the East India Company -- together with the Admiralty -- were as corrupt as they come," concluded Konstam.
The exhibition includes Kidd's last letter, with a promise of hidden treasure, the original inventory of all his plunder, and a genuine pirate flag from the 17th century.
Wareham hopes that the display will resonate today because it "illustrates the historical roots of the kind of corporate exploitation we see today, as well as the double standards of politicians," he said.
The curator is also keen that the exhibition, running until late October, will help dispel some of the modern myths surrounding the pirates of this "golden age."
"They have a bit of a bad rep in my view," Wareham said. "Many of them were men who had been press-ganged into the navy during war-time, only then to find themselves jobless when it was over. They didn't have much else going for them and in many cases would have simply drifted into a life of piracy."
But that's not the only modern misconception. Pirates in Captain Kidd's time bore "almost no relation to our modern perception of pirates," said Konstam, noting that everything we generally associate with them was invented subsequently.
"You can't fault Robert Louis Stevenson for writing 'Treasure Island' -- it remains one of the most enthralling children's books of all time. However, he created treasure maps with 'X' marking the spot, buried pirate treasure, and the black spot," Konstam said.
But surely some pirates were at least prone to impromptu cries of "shiver me timbers?"
"No."
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
The 10 greatest Bob Dylan songs
(Rolling Stone) -- The next issue of Rolling Stone -- on stands and in the digital archive on May 13th -- celebrates Bob Dylan's 70th birthday (happening on May 24th) by ranking his 70 greatest songs.
Bono, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Jim James and many other artists discuss their favorite Dylan tracks. "Every songwriter after him carries his baggage," Bono writes. "This lowly Irish bard would proudly carry his baggage. Any day."
"Every Grain of Sand"
"Shot of Love," 1981
"It's like one of the great Psalms of David," Bono says about "Every Grain of Sand," the spellbinding ballad from "Shot of Love" that concludes Dylan's overtly Christian songwriting phase. Equal parts Blakean mysticism and biblical resonance, the song abandons the self-righteousness that plagued Dylan's religious work to offer a desperate prayer for salvation.
Shadowing Dylan on vocals is gospel great (and Dylan flame) Clydie King: "I get chills when I hear her just breathe," Dylan said. "Every Grain of Sand" taps into a moving humility ("Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me," he sings). As Bono puts it, "Dylan stops wailing against the world, turns on himself and is brought to his knees."
Dylan later described "Every Grain of Sand" as "an inspired song that just came to me.... I felt like I was just putting words down that were coming from somewhere else."
"Visions of Johanna"
"Blonde On Blonde," 1966
"Visions of Johanna" is a tour de force, a breakthrough not only for the writer but for the very possibilities of songwriting. An extended, impressionistic account of a woozy New York City night, rich in pictorial detail and erotic longing, the five long verses zigzag between Dylan's acute dissection of one woman, the tangible and available Louise, and his longing for an absent ideal. Johanna may not even be real. But she is an addiction. "It's extraordinary," Bono once said. "He writes this whole song seemingly about this one girl, with these remarkable descriptions of her, but this isn't the girl who's on his mind! It's somebody else!"
Dylan's masterpiece of obsession -- written, ironically, shortly after his marriage in 1965 -- was a passion in itself. He debuted the song in concert in December 1965, to an audience that included ex-paramour Joan Baez and poet Allen Ginsberg, then played it every night on the 1966 world tour -- notably in the solo acoustic sets. A November '65 attempt to cut an electric "Johanna" with the Hawks (under the explicitly bitter title "Seems Like a Freeze Out") had run aground after 14 takes. The Hawks were still too much of a bar band; the song's confessional complexity required poise as well as muscle.
In contrast, Dylan nailed "Johanna" on the first take in Nashville. The local session pros, supplemented by Robbie Robertson's crying-treble guitar, brought the right unhurried empathy to Dylan's vocal mood swings -- from a whisper to a howl at the moon in the same verse -- and unforgettable lyric images.
"I still sing that song every once in a while," Dylan said in 1985. "It still stands up now as it did then. Maybe even more in some kind of weird way."
"Mr. Tambourine Man" By David Crosby
"Bringing It All Back Home," 1965
As far as I can tell, the Byrds' recording of "Mr. Tambourine Man" was the first time anyone put really good poetry on the radio The Beatles hadn't gotten to "Eleanor Rigby" or "A Day in the Life" - they were still writing "Ooh, baby." But Bob's lyrics were exquisite. "To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free" - that was the line that got me. At the time of "Mr. Tambourine Man," I think he was finding himself as a poet. He was learning to be beautiful.
The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time: Bob Dylan
I had seen Bob back at Gerde's Folk City in New York years earlier. Everyone was talking about him. I saw him play and thought, "(Expletive), I can sing better than that. Why are they making all that fuss about him?" Then I started really listening. And I almost quit, right there. Truthfully, I think the Byrds were Bob's best translators. Bob did not envision this song the way we did it. When he came to the studio where we were rehearsing and heard us do "Mr. Tambourine Man," he was stoked. I think hearing our version was part of what made Dylan shift over to being a rocker. He thought, "Wait a minute, that's my song," and he heard how it could be different.
"It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"
"Bringing It All Back Home," 1965
"I don't know how I got to write those songs," Dylan said in 2004, apropos of "It's Alright, Ma." "Try to sit down and write something like that. I did it once, and I can do other things now. But I can't do that."
Written in Woodstock in the summer of 1964, while his folk-scene compadres Joan Baez and Mimi and Richard Fariña were Dylan's houseguests, "It's Alright, Ma" is a transition from the politically minded lyrics that had briefly been Dylan's stock in trade to a broader vision of "life, and life only": Instead of pointing fingers at a particular flaw of culture, the song tears down the entire decrepit thing, declaring that all is vanity and hypocrisy and phony propaganda.
On a purely technical level, "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" is dazzling, with an incredibly complicated rhyme scheme and a melody that barrels along on two notes until the flourish at the end of each verse. The lyrics incorporate nods to Arthur Koestler (author of Darkness at Noon), the Book of Ecclesiastes and even Dylan's beloved Elvis Presley (the title is just a hair shy of Presley's line "That's all right, now, Mama"). It's always been a tricky song for Dylan to sing -- a snapshot of a particular moment in his artistic development, a jewel that he's lucky enough to own rather than a machine whose workings he understands from having built it. Talking about "It's Alright, Ma" in 1980, he described the difficulty of getting "in touch with the person you were when you wrote the songs ... but I can still sing it, and I'm glad I've written it."
"I Shall Be Released"
"Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2," 1971
With its simple, evocative tale of a prisoner yearning for freedom, this rock hymn was part of a conscious effort by Dylan to move away from the sprawling imagery of his mid-Sixties masterpieces. "In '68 [Dylan told] . . . me how he was writing shorter lines, with every line meaning something," Allen Ginsberg once said. "And from that time came some of the stuff ... like 'I Shall Be Released'.... There was to be no wasted language, no wasted breath."
Bob Dylan Hits the Big Themes, From Religion to the Atomic Age
The result was one of Dylan's best-loved songs, first cut during the 1967 Basement Tapes sessions with the Band. The rough church of the organ and guitar frame Dylan's urgent nasal prayer, until Richard Manuel's keening harmony illuminates the chorus, like sunlight pouring through a stained-glass window. Years later, in the mid-Eighties, David Crosby sang that chorus to himself -- "Any day now, any day now/I shall be released" -- in his Texas prison cell, as he served nine months on drug and weapon charges. "I wrote it on the wall," he recalls. "It took me hours. But I did it. And I remember taking heart from it."
"All Along the Watchtower"
"John Wesley Harding," 1967
You could say that jokes and theft are the twin poles of Dylan's art, and this 12-line masterpiece about a joker (who believes he's being robbed) and a thief (who thinks everything's a joke) penetrates straight to the core of his work. "Watchtower" is among Dylan's most haunting tunes: Built around an austere arrangement and Dylan's spooked croon, it starts out like a ballad that's going to go on for a long while. But as soon as the joker and the thief get their opening statements, the song ends with an ominous image -- two riders approaching -- leaving listeners to fill in the blanks.
Jimi Hendrix's definitive reading of "Watchtower" is one of the few Dylan covers that has permanently affected the way Dylan himself plays the song. Hendrix started recording his cover within weeks of John Wesley Harding's release, fleshing out the song into something stunningly intense. "He played [my songs] the way I would have done them "He played [my songs] the way I would have done them if I was him," Dylan later said of Hendrix.
"Just Like a Woman"
"Blonde On Blonde," 1966
Dylan's finest ballad is not a love song. "Just Like a Woman" is a complex portrait of adoration and disappointment, written as vengeance but sung as regret. Dylan never revealed a specific inspiration for the woman indicted. (Dylanologists often cite Andy Warhol's star-crossed protégée Edie Sedgwick.) But the song is more about his own turbulent lessons in romance -- the giving, taking and leaving. It is also Dylan's first great country-rock performance. Dylan was making thunder and headlines onstage that year with the Hawks, but he cut this song with Nashville session cats who heard and heightened his tangle of rapture and despair. "There's a lifetime of listening in these details," songwriter Jimmy Webb said. "I still marvel at what an absolutely stunning piece of writing it is."
"Tangled Up in Blue"
"Blood On the Tracks," 1975
"[This song] took me 10 years to live, and two years to write," Dylan often said before playing "Tangled Up in Blue" in concert. His marriage was crumbling in 1974 as he wrote what would become the opener on Blood on the Tracks and his most personal examination of hurt and nostalgia. Dylan's lyrical shifts in perspective, between confession and critique, and his acute references to the Sixties experience evoked a decade of both utopian and broken promise. His plaintive vocal and the fresh-air picking of the Minneapolis session players, organized by his brother, David Zimmerman, hearkened to an earlier pathos: the frank heartbreak and spiritual restoration in Appalachian balladry. Dylan has played this song many different ways live but rarely strays from the perfect crossroads of this recording, where emotional truths meet the everlasting comfort of the American folk song.
"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"
"The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," 1963
The greatest protest song by the greatest protest songwriter of his time: a seven-minute epic that warns against a coming apocalypse while cataloging horrific visions -- gun-toting children, a tree dripping blood -- with the wide-eyed fervor of John the Revelator. "Every line in it is actually the start of a whole song," Dylan said at that time. "But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn't have enough time alive to write all those songs, so I put all I could into this one."
The threat of nuclear war was in the air at the time, as other songs from the Freewheelin' sessions -- including "Talkin' World War III Blues" and the anti-fallout-shelter rant "Let Me Die in My Footsteps" -- make clear. But this rain was abstract rather than literal. "It's not the fallout rain," Dylan said. "I just mean some sort of end that's just gotta happen."
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" -- that "a-gonna" was the young Dylan's Woody Guthrie fixation popping out again -- began life as a poem, which Dylan likely banged out on a typewriter owned by his buddy (and fellow Greenwich Village dweller) Wavy Gravy. Dylan debuted the song at Carnegie Hall in September 1962, when he was part of a folk-heavy bill in which each act got 10 minutes: "Bob raised his hand and said, 'What am I supposed to do? One of my songs is 10 minutes long,' " said Pete Seeger, the concert's organizer.
"A Hard Rain" is the first public instance of Dylan grappling with the End of Days, a topic that would come to dominate his work. But the tumbling verses of "A Hard Rain" culminate not in catastrophe, but in Dylan describing his task as an artist: to sing out against darkness wherever he sees it -- to "tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it" until his lungs burst. "It's beyond genius," says the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir. "I think the heavens opened and something channeled through him."
"Like a Rolling Stone," By Bono
"Highway 61 Revisited," 1965
That sneer -- it's something to behold. Elvis had a sneer, of course. And the Rolling Stones had a sneer that, if you note the title of the song, Bob wasn't unaware of. But Bob Dylan's sneer on "Like a Rolling Stone" turns the wine to vinegar.
It's a black eye of a pop song. The verbal pugilism on display here cracks open songwriting for a generation and leaves the listener on the canvas. "Like a Rolling Stone" is the birth of an iconoclast that will give the rock era its greatest voice and vandal. This is Bob Dylan as the Jeremiah of the heart, torching romantic verse and "the girl" with a firestorm of unforgiving words. Having railed against the hypocrisies of the body politic, he now starts to pick on enemies that are a little more familiar: the scene, high society, the "pretty people" who think they've "got it made." He hasn't made it to his own hypocrisies -- that would come later. But the "us" and "them" are not so clearly defined as earlier albums. Here he bares his teeth at the hipsters, the vanity of that time, the idea that you had a better value system if you were wearing the right pair of boots.
For some, the Sixties was a revolution. But there were others who were erecting a guillotine in Greenwich Village not for their political enemies, but rather for the squares. Bob was already turning on that idea, even as he best embodied it, with the corkscrew hair Jimi Hendrix would later admit to imitating. The tumble of words, images, ire and spleen on "Rolling Stone" shape-shifts easily into music forms 10 or 20 years away, like punk, grunge or hip-hop. Looking at the character in the lyric, you ask the question "How quickly could she have plunged from high society to 'scrounging' for her 'next meal'?" Perhaps it is a glance into the future; perhaps it's just fiction, a screenplay distilled into one song.
It must have been hard to be or be around Dylan then; that unblinking eye was turning on everybody and everything. But for all the tirading, the real mischief is in its ear-biting humor. "If you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose" is the T-shirt. But the line that I like the best is "You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns/When they all did tricks for you/You never understood that it ain't no good/You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you."
The playing on this track -- by the likes of guitarist Mike Bloomfield and keyboardist Al Kooper -- is so alive and immediate that it's like you're getting to see the paint splash the canvas. As is often the case with Bob in the studio, the musicians don't fully know the song. It's like the first touch. They're getting to know it, and you can feel their joy of discovery as they're experiencing it.
When the desire to communicate is met with an equal and opposite urge not to compromise in order to communicate -- when those two things are in perfect balance -- is when everything happens with rock & roll. And that's what Dylan achieved in "Rolling Stone." I don't know or particularly care who this song is about -- though I've met a few people who have claimed it was about them (some who weren't even born in 1965). The real thrill for me was that "once upon a time" in the world, a song this radical was a hit on the radio. The world was changed by a cranky voice, a romantic spirit, somebody who cared enough about an unrequited love to write such a devastatingly caustic put-down.
I love to hear a song that changes everything. That's the reason I'm in a band: David Bowie's "Heroes," Arcade Fire's "Rebellion (Lies)," Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing," Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Public Enemy's "Fight the Power." But at the top of this dysfunctional family tree sits the king of spitting fire himself, the juggler of beauty and truth, our own Willy Shakespeare in a polka-dot shirt. It's why every songwriter after him carries his baggage and why this lowly Irish bard would proudly carry his luggage. Any day.
Opinion: I have no more to say than because of the decription of these 1o songs I've catalogue them as my favorite ones. It worths take two hours of your life and get inside the lyrics and melody of the songs.
Barcelona FC will travel to London on Tuesday evening ahead of Saturday's Champions League final because of fears Iceland's volcanic ash cloud could disrupt their travel plans later in the week.
Volcanic ash heads for Heathrow
"Due to the uncertainty caused by ash from the Grimsvotn volcano, the first team of Barcelona will travel to London on Tuesday at 10pm," read a statement on the club's web site, Tuesday.
Will volcano cause a repeat of travel chaos?
Players and coaching staff had initially planned to travel on Thursday, 48 hours ahead of their clash against Manchester United at Wembley Stadium, but plumes of ash are already beginning to disrupt flights in Scotland and the north of England.
Last year, Barcelona were forced to travel 1,000 kilometers by coach to play the first leg of their semi-final tie with Inter Milan -- a game they lost 3-1 -- when an ash cloud from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano caused widespread flight disruption across Europe in April 2010.
comment:
I think that they haven´t travel because anyway they will lose.
NATO chopper crashes in western Afghanistan
May 24, 2011 -- Updated 1621 GMT (0021 HKT)
A NATO helicopter flies above Kandahar, Afghanistan (file foto).
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- The cause of the crash is not known
- A NATO helicopter crash last month killed a crew member
RELATED TOPICS
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A NATO helicopter crashed in western Afghanistan Tuesday morning, officials said.
Crew members were not hurt, and the crash site has been secured, the International Security Assistance Force said.
The force did not offer details on the exact location of the crash site, and said the cause of the crash was not immediately known.
On April 23, a coalition helicopter crew member died and another was injured in a helicopter crash in eastern Afghanistan.
Coment: well there is not much to say cause it was a short story, but i do believe they should tell us how it happened.
notice tuesday
Don't count on a peace deal with Taliban
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
May 24, 2011 -- Updated 1732 GMT (0132 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Peter Bergen says hopes of a peace deal with Taliban are unlikely to be realized
He cites nine obstacles standing in the way of a negotiated settlement
He says Taliban's Mullah Omar has taken extreme stands, resists reasonable compromises
Bergen says engaging Taliban in peace talks makes sense even if chances of a deal are remote
Editor's Note: Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst, is the director of the national security studies program at the New America Foundation. His latest book is "The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and al-Qaeda." This article is based on testimony that Bergen gave Tuesday before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Washington (CNN) -- Recently, both The Washington Post and the German magazine Der Spiegel have reported on meetings between U.S. officials and representatives of the Taliban that have taken place in Germany to discuss some form of peace negotiations.
Talking to the Taliban makes sense, but there are major impediments standing in the way of a deal.
First, who exactly is there to negotiate with in the Taliban? It's been a decade since their fall from power, and the "moderate" Taliban who wanted to reconcile with the Afghan government have already done so. They are the same group of Taliban who are constantly trotted out in any discussion of a putative Taliban deal: Mullah Zaeef, their former ambassador to Pakistan; Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, their foreign minister; and Abdul Hakim Mujahid, who was the Taliban representative in the United States before 9/11. This group was generally opposed to Osama bin Laden well before he attacked the United States.
Bin Laden told intimates that his biggest enemies in the world were the United States and the Taliban Foreign Ministry, which was trying to put the kibosh on his anti-Western antics in Afghanistan. And today the "moderate" already-reconciled Taliban don't represent the Taliban on the battlefield, because they haven't been part of the movement for the past decade.
Negotiations with religious fanatics who have delusions of grandeur generally do not go well.
--Peter Bergen
Her story: A day's work in Afghanistan
The key Taliban figure is still their leader, Mullah Omar, aka "The Commander of the Faithful." The title indicates that Mullah Omar is not just the leader of the Taliban, but also of all Muslims. This suggests that Mullah Omar is not only a religious fanatic, but also a fanatic with significant delusions of grandeur. Negotiations with religious fanatics who have delusions of grandeur generally do not go well.
Almost every country in the world -- including the Taliban leader's quasi-patron, Pakistan -- pleaded with Mullah Omar in the spring of 2001 not to blow up the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan's greatest cultural patrimony. But he did so anyway. After 9/11, Mullah Omar was prepared to lose his entire regime on the point of principle that he would not give up bin Laden to the United States following the attacks on Manhattan and the Pentagon. And he did.
(Senior U.S. military officials tell me that it is their view that Mullah Omar is living at least some of the time in the southern Pakistani megacity of Karachi. President Obama has indicated he would be willing to launch another operation, along the lines of the one that killed bin Laden, if another major target such as Mullah Omar were located.)
Since his regime fell, Mullah Omar has also shown no appetite for negotiation or compromise. He is joined in this attitude by some senior members of his movement, such as Maulavi Abdul Kabir, a Taliban leader in eastern Afghanistan, who said in January, "Neither has there been any peace talk nor has any of the Islamic Emirate (the Taliban) shown any inclination towards it."
Second, the Taliban have had ten years to reject bin Laden and all his works, and they haven't done so. For this reason, Saudi Arabia, which has hosted "talks about talks" in Mecca between Afghan government officials and some Taliban representatives, has soured on the process.
Third, "the Taliban" are really many Talibans, and so a deal with one insurgent group doesn't mean the end of the insurgency writ large. It's not clear that even Mullah Omar can deliver all of the Taliban that he nominally controls in southern Afghanistan, because they are often fissured into purely local groups, many of whom are a long way from Taliban HQ across the border in Quetta, Pakistan. As Amb. Richard Holbrooke commented three months before he died, "There's no Ho Chi Minh. There's no Slobodan Milosevic. There's no Palestinian Authority." Instead, there are several leaders of the various wings of the insurgency, from the Quetta Shura in southern Afghanistan, to the Haqqani Network in the east, as well as smaller insurgent groups, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami in the northeast.
Fourth, the history of "peace" deals with the Taliban in Pakistan shows that the groups can't be trusted. Deals between the Pakistani government and the Taliban in Waziristan in 2005 and 2006 and in Swat in 2009 were merely preludes to the Taliban establishing their brutal "emirates," regrouping and then moving into adjoining areas to seize more territory.
Fifth, the arrest in Pakistan last year of Mullah Baradar, the Taliban No. 2 who had been negotiating directly with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, shows that the Pakistani military and government want to retain a veto over any significant negotiations going forward. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, as certainly Pakistan's legitimate interests in the post-American Afghanistan must be recognized, but it also demonstrates that negotiations with the Taliban will not be as straightforward as just having the Afghan government and the insurgents at the negotiating table.
Sixth, other key players in any negotiations with the Taliban are the former leaders of the largely Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance, who fought a bitter several-years war with the Taliban and who now occupy prominent positions in Afghanistan -- for instance, the minister of the interior, Bismullah Khan, and Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's main rival for the presidency in 2009, who is -- at least for now -- the most likely candidate to succeed Karzai in the 2014 presidential elections. These leaders are not going to allow all they fought for to be reversed by a deal with the Taliban that gives them significant concessions on territory or principle.
Seventh, the several meetings over the past three years between Afghan officials and Taliban representatives in Mecca and in the Maldives to discuss "reconciliation" have so far produced a big zero. A senior U.S. military officer dismissed these talks as "reconciliation tourism," while an Afghan official joked with me that in landlocked Afghanistan, "Everybody wanted to go to the Maldives for a meeting."
Eighth, the debacle involving Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour last year shows how much of a fog surrounds the whole reconciliation process. Mullah Mansour was portrayed as one of the most senior of the Taliban leaders, who was in direct negotiations with the Karzai government in the fall of 2010. Except it then turned out he wasn't Mullah Mansour at all, but a Quetta shopkeeper who had spun a good yarn about his Taliban credentials so he could pick up what a British government report characterizes as "significant sums."
Finally, and most importantly: What do the Taliban really want? It's relatively easy to discern what they don't want: international forces in Afghanistan. But other than their blanket demand for the rule of Sharia law, the Taliban have not articulated their vision for the future of Afghanistan. Do they envision a democratic state with elections? Do they see a role for women outside the home? What about education for girls? What about ethnic minorities?
While these obstacles show that reaching an accommodation with the Taliban is going to be quite difficult, that doesn't mean that it isn't worth trying. Even if peace talks are not successful they can have other helpful effects, such as splitting the facade of Taliban unity.
Even simple discussions about the future shape of negotiations can help sow dissension in the Taliban ranks, while if such discussions do move forward in even incremental steps, more intelligence can be garnered about what exactly is going on inside the shadowy Taliban movement. Also, getting the Taliban to enter into any negotiations means that they will no longer get to occupy the moral high ground of fighting a supposed holy war, but will instead be getting their hands dirty in more conventional political back-room deals.
Audrey Cronin of the National Defense University has systematically examined how and why terrorist/insurgent groups come to some kind of peace deal and has laid out some general principles about what that usually takes, which are worth considering in the context of Afghanistan.
First, there must be recognition on both sides that a military stalemate has been reached. (In the early 1980s the American academic William Zartman coined the term a "mutually hurting stalemate" to describe the moment when combatants will start considering a peace settlement.)
An important shift in the Obama administration's stance on Taliban negotiations was recently signaled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
--Peter Bergen
RELATED TOPICS
Afghanistan War
Hamid Karzai
Mullah Mohammed Omar
Osama bin Laden
The Taliban
That precondition may now exist to some degree, given that over the past six months or so the Taliban have taken heavy losses in their heartlands of Kandahar, while the U.S. public has increasingly turned against what is already America's longest war. In December, 60% of Americans said the war was "not worth fighting," according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll -- up from 41% in 2007.
An important shift in the Obama administration's stance on Taliban negotiations was recently signaled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. While giving the Richard Holbrooke memorial lecture at the Asia Society in New York on February 18, Clinton said that previous American conditions for talks with the Taliban -- that they lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda, and embrace the Afghan Constitution -- were no longer conditions that the Taliban had to meet before negotiations could begin, but were "necessary outcomes" of the final peace process.
Judging by the lack of media attention in the United States to this shift, this subtle but important distinction was probably also not well grasped by the Taliban, but it does represent a somewhat more flexible American position.
Similarly the Afghan government has now adopted "reconciliation" as its official policy, setting up a "High Peace Council" in the fall to help facilitate those negotiations, a body that is made up, in part, of a number of leaders from the former Northern Alliance, who are less likely to act as spoilers of a peace process if they feel they are a part of it.
Successful negotiations often require a capable and trusted third party sponsor. This condition seems also to be lacking right now: The Saudis are, at best, lukewarm about facilitating talks with the Taliban; the Pakistanis are not really trusted by any of the parties in the conflict, even by much of the Taliban; and while the United Nations may have some role to play in negotiations, Taliban attacks on U.N. personnel in Afghanistan last year don't suggest this avenue has much immediate promise. (Murmurings about a role for Turkey in facilitating a deal may have some potential, given that Turkey has an Islamist government and is also a key member of NATO.)
A peace deal also generally requires strong leadership on both the government and insurgent sides to force a settlement. Neither Hamid Karzai nor Mullah Omar fits this particular bill. Finally, Cronin explains that the overall political context must be favorable to negotiations for a deal to succeed. Here there is some real hope: While fewer then one in ten Afghans have a favorable view of the Taliban, a large majority is in favor of negotiating with them. Nationally, around three-quarters of Afghans favor talks, while in Kandahar the number goes up to a stratospheric 94%.
All that said, the bottom line on the Taliban reconciliation process is that nothing of any real note is currently happening. According to a Western official familiar with the record of discussions with the Taliban, the chances of a deal with the Taliban similar to the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkans war in the mid-1990s, or the Good Friday Agreement that ended the IRA campaign against the British government, are "negligible" for the foreseeable future. The official says that Mullah Omar needs his council of ulema (religious scholars) to sign off on a peace deal and there is "no sign of this right now."
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Peter Bergen.
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
May 24, 2011 -- Updated 1732 GMT (0132 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Peter Bergen says hopes of a peace deal with Taliban are unlikely to be realized
He cites nine obstacles standing in the way of a negotiated settlement
He says Taliban's Mullah Omar has taken extreme stands, resists reasonable compromises
Bergen says engaging Taliban in peace talks makes sense even if chances of a deal are remote
Editor's Note: Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst, is the director of the national security studies program at the New America Foundation. His latest book is "The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and al-Qaeda." This article is based on testimony that Bergen gave Tuesday before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Washington (CNN) -- Recently, both The Washington Post and the German magazine Der Spiegel have reported on meetings between U.S. officials and representatives of the Taliban that have taken place in Germany to discuss some form of peace negotiations.
Talking to the Taliban makes sense, but there are major impediments standing in the way of a deal.
First, who exactly is there to negotiate with in the Taliban? It's been a decade since their fall from power, and the "moderate" Taliban who wanted to reconcile with the Afghan government have already done so. They are the same group of Taliban who are constantly trotted out in any discussion of a putative Taliban deal: Mullah Zaeef, their former ambassador to Pakistan; Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, their foreign minister; and Abdul Hakim Mujahid, who was the Taliban representative in the United States before 9/11. This group was generally opposed to Osama bin Laden well before he attacked the United States.
Bin Laden told intimates that his biggest enemies in the world were the United States and the Taliban Foreign Ministry, which was trying to put the kibosh on his anti-Western antics in Afghanistan. And today the "moderate" already-reconciled Taliban don't represent the Taliban on the battlefield, because they haven't been part of the movement for the past decade.
Negotiations with religious fanatics who have delusions of grandeur generally do not go well.
--Peter Bergen
Her story: A day's work in Afghanistan
The key Taliban figure is still their leader, Mullah Omar, aka "The Commander of the Faithful." The title indicates that Mullah Omar is not just the leader of the Taliban, but also of all Muslims. This suggests that Mullah Omar is not only a religious fanatic, but also a fanatic with significant delusions of grandeur. Negotiations with religious fanatics who have delusions of grandeur generally do not go well.
Almost every country in the world -- including the Taliban leader's quasi-patron, Pakistan -- pleaded with Mullah Omar in the spring of 2001 not to blow up the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan's greatest cultural patrimony. But he did so anyway. After 9/11, Mullah Omar was prepared to lose his entire regime on the point of principle that he would not give up bin Laden to the United States following the attacks on Manhattan and the Pentagon. And he did.
(Senior U.S. military officials tell me that it is their view that Mullah Omar is living at least some of the time in the southern Pakistani megacity of Karachi. President Obama has indicated he would be willing to launch another operation, along the lines of the one that killed bin Laden, if another major target such as Mullah Omar were located.)
Since his regime fell, Mullah Omar has also shown no appetite for negotiation or compromise. He is joined in this attitude by some senior members of his movement, such as Maulavi Abdul Kabir, a Taliban leader in eastern Afghanistan, who said in January, "Neither has there been any peace talk nor has any of the Islamic Emirate (the Taliban) shown any inclination towards it."
Second, the Taliban have had ten years to reject bin Laden and all his works, and they haven't done so. For this reason, Saudi Arabia, which has hosted "talks about talks" in Mecca between Afghan government officials and some Taliban representatives, has soured on the process.
Third, "the Taliban" are really many Talibans, and so a deal with one insurgent group doesn't mean the end of the insurgency writ large. It's not clear that even Mullah Omar can deliver all of the Taliban that he nominally controls in southern Afghanistan, because they are often fissured into purely local groups, many of whom are a long way from Taliban HQ across the border in Quetta, Pakistan. As Amb. Richard Holbrooke commented three months before he died, "There's no Ho Chi Minh. There's no Slobodan Milosevic. There's no Palestinian Authority." Instead, there are several leaders of the various wings of the insurgency, from the Quetta Shura in southern Afghanistan, to the Haqqani Network in the east, as well as smaller insurgent groups, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami in the northeast.
Fourth, the history of "peace" deals with the Taliban in Pakistan shows that the groups can't be trusted. Deals between the Pakistani government and the Taliban in Waziristan in 2005 and 2006 and in Swat in 2009 were merely preludes to the Taliban establishing their brutal "emirates," regrouping and then moving into adjoining areas to seize more territory.
Fifth, the arrest in Pakistan last year of Mullah Baradar, the Taliban No. 2 who had been negotiating directly with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, shows that the Pakistani military and government want to retain a veto over any significant negotiations going forward. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, as certainly Pakistan's legitimate interests in the post-American Afghanistan must be recognized, but it also demonstrates that negotiations with the Taliban will not be as straightforward as just having the Afghan government and the insurgents at the negotiating table.
Sixth, other key players in any negotiations with the Taliban are the former leaders of the largely Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance, who fought a bitter several-years war with the Taliban and who now occupy prominent positions in Afghanistan -- for instance, the minister of the interior, Bismullah Khan, and Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's main rival for the presidency in 2009, who is -- at least for now -- the most likely candidate to succeed Karzai in the 2014 presidential elections. These leaders are not going to allow all they fought for to be reversed by a deal with the Taliban that gives them significant concessions on territory or principle.
Seventh, the several meetings over the past three years between Afghan officials and Taliban representatives in Mecca and in the Maldives to discuss "reconciliation" have so far produced a big zero. A senior U.S. military officer dismissed these talks as "reconciliation tourism," while an Afghan official joked with me that in landlocked Afghanistan, "Everybody wanted to go to the Maldives for a meeting."
Eighth, the debacle involving Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour last year shows how much of a fog surrounds the whole reconciliation process. Mullah Mansour was portrayed as one of the most senior of the Taliban leaders, who was in direct negotiations with the Karzai government in the fall of 2010. Except it then turned out he wasn't Mullah Mansour at all, but a Quetta shopkeeper who had spun a good yarn about his Taliban credentials so he could pick up what a British government report characterizes as "significant sums."
Finally, and most importantly: What do the Taliban really want? It's relatively easy to discern what they don't want: international forces in Afghanistan. But other than their blanket demand for the rule of Sharia law, the Taliban have not articulated their vision for the future of Afghanistan. Do they envision a democratic state with elections? Do they see a role for women outside the home? What about education for girls? What about ethnic minorities?
While these obstacles show that reaching an accommodation with the Taliban is going to be quite difficult, that doesn't mean that it isn't worth trying. Even if peace talks are not successful they can have other helpful effects, such as splitting the facade of Taliban unity.
Even simple discussions about the future shape of negotiations can help sow dissension in the Taliban ranks, while if such discussions do move forward in even incremental steps, more intelligence can be garnered about what exactly is going on inside the shadowy Taliban movement. Also, getting the Taliban to enter into any negotiations means that they will no longer get to occupy the moral high ground of fighting a supposed holy war, but will instead be getting their hands dirty in more conventional political back-room deals.
Audrey Cronin of the National Defense University has systematically examined how and why terrorist/insurgent groups come to some kind of peace deal and has laid out some general principles about what that usually takes, which are worth considering in the context of Afghanistan.
First, there must be recognition on both sides that a military stalemate has been reached. (In the early 1980s the American academic William Zartman coined the term a "mutually hurting stalemate" to describe the moment when combatants will start considering a peace settlement.)
An important shift in the Obama administration's stance on Taliban negotiations was recently signaled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
--Peter Bergen
RELATED TOPICS
Afghanistan War
Hamid Karzai
Mullah Mohammed Omar
Osama bin Laden
The Taliban
That precondition may now exist to some degree, given that over the past six months or so the Taliban have taken heavy losses in their heartlands of Kandahar, while the U.S. public has increasingly turned against what is already America's longest war. In December, 60% of Americans said the war was "not worth fighting," according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll -- up from 41% in 2007.
An important shift in the Obama administration's stance on Taliban negotiations was recently signaled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. While giving the Richard Holbrooke memorial lecture at the Asia Society in New York on February 18, Clinton said that previous American conditions for talks with the Taliban -- that they lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda, and embrace the Afghan Constitution -- were no longer conditions that the Taliban had to meet before negotiations could begin, but were "necessary outcomes" of the final peace process.
Judging by the lack of media attention in the United States to this shift, this subtle but important distinction was probably also not well grasped by the Taliban, but it does represent a somewhat more flexible American position.
Similarly the Afghan government has now adopted "reconciliation" as its official policy, setting up a "High Peace Council" in the fall to help facilitate those negotiations, a body that is made up, in part, of a number of leaders from the former Northern Alliance, who are less likely to act as spoilers of a peace process if they feel they are a part of it.
Successful negotiations often require a capable and trusted third party sponsor. This condition seems also to be lacking right now: The Saudis are, at best, lukewarm about facilitating talks with the Taliban; the Pakistanis are not really trusted by any of the parties in the conflict, even by much of the Taliban; and while the United Nations may have some role to play in negotiations, Taliban attacks on U.N. personnel in Afghanistan last year don't suggest this avenue has much immediate promise. (Murmurings about a role for Turkey in facilitating a deal may have some potential, given that Turkey has an Islamist government and is also a key member of NATO.)
A peace deal also generally requires strong leadership on both the government and insurgent sides to force a settlement. Neither Hamid Karzai nor Mullah Omar fits this particular bill. Finally, Cronin explains that the overall political context must be favorable to negotiations for a deal to succeed. Here there is some real hope: While fewer then one in ten Afghans have a favorable view of the Taliban, a large majority is in favor of negotiating with them. Nationally, around three-quarters of Afghans favor talks, while in Kandahar the number goes up to a stratospheric 94%.
All that said, the bottom line on the Taliban reconciliation process is that nothing of any real note is currently happening. According to a Western official familiar with the record of discussions with the Taliban, the chances of a deal with the Taliban similar to the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkans war in the mid-1990s, or the Good Friday Agreement that ended the IRA campaign against the British government, are "negligible" for the foreseeable future. The official says that Mullah Omar needs his council of ulema (religious scholars) to sign off on a peace deal and there is "no sign of this right now."
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Peter Bergen.
Monday, May 23, 2011
(CNN) -- Next time Grandma asks why you're going to the mall on Sunday morning instead of church, tell her you're going to Apple Chapel.
For Apple fans, the brand triggers a reaction in the brain that's not unlike that of religious devotees, according to a BBC documentary series that cites neurological research.
The neuroscientists ran a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test on an Apple fanatic and discovered that images of the technology company's gadgets lit up the same parts of the brain as images of a deity do for religious people, the report says.
The first episode of the documentary shows Apple employees "whipped up into some sort of crazy, evangelical frenzy" at the recent opening of an Apple store in London.
Observers and Apple critics have long accused fans of the tech company of taking their infatuation to an extreme.
People have gone to great lengths to prove their love of Apple with tattoos, bumper stickers and home shrines to outmoded Mac computers. Apple's cult-like following was highlighted in a 2009 documentary called "Macheads."
A blog, aptly titled Cult of Mac, wrote on Thursday about Oakland, California, resident Gary Allen's cross-country pilgrimage to Apple's first store in Virginia to celebrate the retail chain's 10th anniversary this week.
In speeches, Pope Benedict XVI has said technology consumption poses a threat to religion and the Roman Catholic church. The holy leader told a Palm Sunday crowd last month that technology cannot replace God.
However, apparently it may inspire god-like devotion.
comment: I think that the people that have a devotion to technology, in this case Apple, are very stupid because they worship a man-made product.
For Apple fans, the brand triggers a reaction in the brain that's not unlike that of religious devotees, according to a BBC documentary series that cites neurological research.
The neuroscientists ran a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test on an Apple fanatic and discovered that images of the technology company's gadgets lit up the same parts of the brain as images of a deity do for religious people, the report says.
The first episode of the documentary shows Apple employees "whipped up into some sort of crazy, evangelical frenzy" at the recent opening of an Apple store in London.
Observers and Apple critics have long accused fans of the tech company of taking their infatuation to an extreme.
People have gone to great lengths to prove their love of Apple with tattoos, bumper stickers and home shrines to outmoded Mac computers. Apple's cult-like following was highlighted in a 2009 documentary called "Macheads."
A blog, aptly titled Cult of Mac, wrote on Thursday about Oakland, California, resident Gary Allen's cross-country pilgrimage to Apple's first store in Virginia to celebrate the retail chain's 10th anniversary this week.
In speeches, Pope Benedict XVI has said technology consumption poses a threat to religion and the Roman Catholic church. The holy leader told a Palm Sunday crowd last month that technology cannot replace God.
However, apparently it may inspire god-like devotion.
comment: I think that the people that have a devotion to technology, in this case Apple, are very stupid because they worship a man-made product.
notice monday
116 killed by Missouri tornado, tying it for deadliest on record
By the CNN Wire Staff
May 24, 2011 -- Updated 0219 GMT (1019 HKT)
The aftermath of the tornado
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: 2 rescuers are hit by lightning and 17 people are found alive, a city official says
At least 14,000 people are without power in Joplin, an electric company reports
A federal weather official warns "we are ... entering the peak of tornado season"
More tornadoes are possible Tuesday in Joplin and other cities in the central U.S.
On CNN tonight at 9 ET, Piers Morgan has more on the recovery effort. At 10 ET on "AC360º," Anderson Cooper reports live from Joplin and has firsthand accounts of surviving the tornado.
Read more about this story from CNN affiliates KOTV, KSHB and KODE. Share your stories, photos and video with iReport.
Joplin, Missouri (CNN) -- The toll from the tornado that ripped through Joplin soared to 116 on Monday, a city official said, tying it for the single deadliest twister to ever hit American soil since the National Weather Service began keeping records 61 years ago.
City Manager Mark Rohr told reporters that people from more than 40 agencies are on the ground in the southwest Missouri city, with two first responders struck by lightning as they braved relentless rain and high winds searching for survivors. (Rohr did not give any immediate word on the rescuers' condition.)
By Monday night, they'd found 17 people alive -- a stark contrast to the fact that the number of fatalities is unmatched since a tornado struck Flint, Michigan, on June 8, 1953.
"We're going to cover every foot of this town," Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said from the National Guard Armory in Joplin. "We are ... optimistic that there are still lives to be saved. But (first responders) have seen a tremendous amount of pain already."
Stories from the storm: Fear, tears, prayers
The Sunday-evening tornado chewed through a densely populated area of the city, causing hundreds of injuries as it tore apart homes and businesses, ripped into a high school and caused severe damage to one of the two hospitals in the city. Based on preliminary estimates, the twister ranked as an EF-4 with winds between 190 and 198 mph, National Weather Service director Jack Hayes said.
"Everybody's going to know people who are dead," said CNN iReporter Zach Tusinger, who said his aunt and uncle died in the tornado. "You could have probably dropped a nuclear bomb on the town and I don't think it would have done near as much damage as it did."
Gallery: Deadly tornado devastates Joplin, Missouri
Store customers pray, scream in dark Tornado damage in Waverly, Missouri 'We are going to need a lot of help'
The nightmare may not be over for Joplin or other parts of the United States, with the weather service warning about more potential disaster on Tuesday.
The National Weather Service warned there was a 45% chance of another tornado outbreak -- with the peak time between 4 p.m. and midnight Tuesday -- over a wide swath, including parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Nebraska. The Storm Prediction Center placed several large cities in the most high-risk area, along with other cities including Kansas City, Missouri; Dallas; Topeka and Wichita, Kansas; and Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
National Weather Service issues warning
Joplin is among them. Already, parts of the city of 50,500 were unrecognizable, according to Steve Polley, a storm chaser from Kansas City, Missouri, who described the damage as "complete devastation." Aerial footage from CNN affiliate KOTV showed houses reduced to lumber and smashed cars sitting atop heaps of wood. Other areas appeared to be nearly scoured clean.
Damage to the city's infrastructure was severe. Numerous phone lines and cell phone towers were down, making it hard to communicate, state officials said. Empire District Electric Co. reported on its website that 14,000 customers were still without power Monday evening. Missouri American Water Co. asked customers to conserve water and boil what they do use.
More than 1,000 law enforcement officers from four states were in Joplin aiding with disaster response, including search and rescue, said Collin Stosberg, a spokesman for the Missouri State Highway Patrol. More than 250 National Guard members were on the scene -- including specialized search-and-rescue teams, military police and engineers -- with another 450 on standby, said Maj. Gen. Steven Danner.
iReporter records destruction at medical center
The federal government is also involved, with Nixon saying he'd talked with President Barack Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Monday to help coordinate this effort. The second-ranking official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Richard Serino, noted Monday that Obama had already issued a disaster declaration -- expediting the dispersal of federal resources to the area -- while vowing that "we are going to be here for the long haul."
In the short term, though, the focus is on finding survivors. But the work was slowed by a new round of severe weather -- including thunderstorms and hail two inches in diameter -- that rolled through the city Monday, as well as widespread problems with broken natural gas lines and other safety issues, authorities said.
The tornado touched down at 5:41 p.m. Sunday -- 24 minutes after a warning was issued -- said Thomas Schwein, central regional director for the National Weather Service. It grew to as wide as three-quarters of a mile at one point along its estimated four-mile track, according to Missouri's State Emergency Management Agency.
Hospital very nearly only building left standing in area
"It was hard to discern where you were at," resident Eddie Atwood said of going through downtown soon after the twister hit. "All you could see is devastation. It was more like walking through 'The Twilight Zone' than walking down Main Street."
St. John's Regional Medical Center sustained significant damage after being hit directly, according to a statement from Lynn Britton, president of Sisters of Mercy Health System, which operates the hospital.
One glass facade of the building was blown out, and authorities evacuated the medical center, said Ray Foreman, a meteorologist with CNN affiliate KODE in Joplin. Makeshift triage centers were set up in tents outside, witness Bethany Scutti said. Structural engineers were on their way to Joplin to assess the hospital building, where 1,700 people work.
Joplin, Missouri: Bonnie and Clyde hid out there
The hospital was treating 183 people when the storm struck, Britton said. It was unclear if any were injured in the storm. The patients were taken to hospitals as far away as Springfield, Missouri, and northwest Arkansas.
Residents 70 miles away from Joplin in Dade County, Missouri, found X-rays from St. John's in their driveways, said Foreman, indicating the size and power of the storm. Gurneys were blown several blocks away.
Officials evacuated long-term patients from the city's other medical center, Freeman Health System, to make room for emergency cases from the tornado, Nixon said.
That hospital treated 465 patients, including 11 who died, the hospital said in a statement. A Freeman Health System hospital in nearby Neosho, Missouri, treated 39 people, the hospital said.
iReporter describes aftermath of tornado Tornado devastates neighborhood Tornado rips Missouri town apart Storm chaser: 'Trees are de-barked'
RELATED TOPICS
Tornadoes
Joplin (Missouri)
Missouri National Guard
Medical staff at Via Cristi Hospital in Pittsburg, Kansas -- about 20 minutes from Joplin -- had treated 80 patients and admitted 35 people into the hospital, spokesman Michael Hayslip said. Most of the patients came "in extremely fast in groups" Sunday night, suffering everything from minor cuts to broken bones, he said.
A nursing home was believed destroyed, among other structures, the State Emergency Management Agency reported.
Want to help? Impact Your World
Walmart spokesman Lorenzo Lopez said the tornado "blew through" one of its stores, killing and injuring an unspecified number of people -- none of them Walmart employees. He added that the Arkansas-based company has pledged $1 million to help with relief efforts in Joplin.
The city's public school district canceled classes for the rest of the year after the tornado caused significant damage to several buildings.
Joplin High School, whose seniors had just finished graduation ceremonies at a nearby university when the storm struck, was ripped apart, Principal Kerry Sachetta said.
Word "tornado" once banned from forecasts
"It just looks like it's been bombed from the outside in," he said. "It's just terrible."
St. Mary's Catholic Church and its elementary school also were demolished, said Recy Moore, a spokeswoman for the Springfield Diocese, which includes Joplin. The pastor, the Rev. Justin Monahan, rode out the storm in a bathtub at the rectory.
"Parishioners had to dig him out, but he's OK," she said.
C.J. Campbell and his foster sister survived the storm, despite the home they were in collapsing around them. Campbell called the tornado an "evil monster vortex" that began as a low roar, then got louder until it sounded like "50 semi-tractor-trailer trucks fully laden going about 70 miles per hour about 10 feet outside the front door."
"The floor began to vibrate and then shake very violently and seemingly buckle, and we thought we were going to be sucked up the chimney," he said.
New graduates face devastation after tornado
The storm also overturned as many as a dozen tractor-trailers on Interstate 44 as it barreled through Joplin, a major trucking center. The interstate, shut down for nearly 12 hours, reopened Monday morning, according to Mike Watson with the Missouri State Highway Patrol. No motorists were severely hurt, he said.
Amber Gonzales was driving through southwest Missouri when she heard tornado warnings on the radio. She took refuge at a gas station before getting back on the road and seeing the aftermath of what she narrowly missed.
At a shopping center, she saw people pulling victims from rubble and rushing them to the hospital as overwhelmed emergency workers were unable to reach everyone in need.
"I saw an older woman taken on the back of a truck bed, speeding down the road," Gonzales said. "I can't get the lady out of my mind. ... I don't know if she made it."
Sunday's tornado was part of a line of severe weather that swept across the Midwest on Sunday, prompting tornado watches and warnings that stretched from Wisconsin to Texas. High winds and possible tornadoes struck Minneapolis and other parts of Minnesota, leaving at least one person dead and injuring nearly two dozen others, police said.
Elsewhere, reports of tornadoes came in from Forest Lake, north of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and near Harmony, more than 120 miles to the south. In Minneapolis, witnesses reported numerous downed trees and neighborhoods without power.
Minneapolis police spokeswoman Sara Dietrich said the storm left one fatality, with 22 people reported hurt.
LeDale Davis, who lives on the north side of Minneapolis, told CNN, "This is the first time we can remember a tornado touched down in this area. They aren't usually in the heart of the city."
Forecasters said the system that struck Minnesota was separate from another storm that struck eastern Kansas on Saturday, killing one person and damaging or destroying hundreds of homes there.
Hayes said that 2011 is already at least the ninth deadliest season on record. That includes the tornado that hit Hackleburg and Phil Campbell, Alabama, and killed 78 people, while the one that struck Tuscaloosa and Birmingham killed 61. Those two events rank sixth and seventh respectively for tornado-related deaths in the National Weather Service's official records. The records date to 1950, when the weather service came to a consensus on how to track tornadoes and count casualties.
Unofficial records cite the 1925 Tri-State tornado in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana as the deadliest single twister ever, with an estimated 695 fatalities, according to the weather service. But meteorologists note that it isn't known if those fatalities came from one or more tornadoes, as compared with the single twister that has been confirmed in Joplin.
While the strength and toll of this year's more than 1,000 twisters may suggest an alarming trend, weather service officials said they will need time and research to put it all into perspective. And one warned that the destruction likely isn't over.
"We have to be aware that we are now just entering the peak of tornado season," said Russell Schneider, head of the Storm Prediction Center. "You can never completely breathe easy."
Poor people...
By the CNN Wire Staff
May 24, 2011 -- Updated 0219 GMT (1019 HKT)
The aftermath of the tornado
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: 2 rescuers are hit by lightning and 17 people are found alive, a city official says
At least 14,000 people are without power in Joplin, an electric company reports
A federal weather official warns "we are ... entering the peak of tornado season"
More tornadoes are possible Tuesday in Joplin and other cities in the central U.S.
On CNN tonight at 9 ET, Piers Morgan has more on the recovery effort. At 10 ET on "AC360º," Anderson Cooper reports live from Joplin and has firsthand accounts of surviving the tornado.
Read more about this story from CNN affiliates KOTV, KSHB and KODE. Share your stories, photos and video with iReport.
Joplin, Missouri (CNN) -- The toll from the tornado that ripped through Joplin soared to 116 on Monday, a city official said, tying it for the single deadliest twister to ever hit American soil since the National Weather Service began keeping records 61 years ago.
City Manager Mark Rohr told reporters that people from more than 40 agencies are on the ground in the southwest Missouri city, with two first responders struck by lightning as they braved relentless rain and high winds searching for survivors. (Rohr did not give any immediate word on the rescuers' condition.)
By Monday night, they'd found 17 people alive -- a stark contrast to the fact that the number of fatalities is unmatched since a tornado struck Flint, Michigan, on June 8, 1953.
"We're going to cover every foot of this town," Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said from the National Guard Armory in Joplin. "We are ... optimistic that there are still lives to be saved. But (first responders) have seen a tremendous amount of pain already."
Stories from the storm: Fear, tears, prayers
The Sunday-evening tornado chewed through a densely populated area of the city, causing hundreds of injuries as it tore apart homes and businesses, ripped into a high school and caused severe damage to one of the two hospitals in the city. Based on preliminary estimates, the twister ranked as an EF-4 with winds between 190 and 198 mph, National Weather Service director Jack Hayes said.
"Everybody's going to know people who are dead," said CNN iReporter Zach Tusinger, who said his aunt and uncle died in the tornado. "You could have probably dropped a nuclear bomb on the town and I don't think it would have done near as much damage as it did."
Gallery: Deadly tornado devastates Joplin, Missouri
Store customers pray, scream in dark Tornado damage in Waverly, Missouri 'We are going to need a lot of help'
The nightmare may not be over for Joplin or other parts of the United States, with the weather service warning about more potential disaster on Tuesday.
The National Weather Service warned there was a 45% chance of another tornado outbreak -- with the peak time between 4 p.m. and midnight Tuesday -- over a wide swath, including parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Nebraska. The Storm Prediction Center placed several large cities in the most high-risk area, along with other cities including Kansas City, Missouri; Dallas; Topeka and Wichita, Kansas; and Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
National Weather Service issues warning
Joplin is among them. Already, parts of the city of 50,500 were unrecognizable, according to Steve Polley, a storm chaser from Kansas City, Missouri, who described the damage as "complete devastation." Aerial footage from CNN affiliate KOTV showed houses reduced to lumber and smashed cars sitting atop heaps of wood. Other areas appeared to be nearly scoured clean.
Damage to the city's infrastructure was severe. Numerous phone lines and cell phone towers were down, making it hard to communicate, state officials said. Empire District Electric Co. reported on its website that 14,000 customers were still without power Monday evening. Missouri American Water Co. asked customers to conserve water and boil what they do use.
More than 1,000 law enforcement officers from four states were in Joplin aiding with disaster response, including search and rescue, said Collin Stosberg, a spokesman for the Missouri State Highway Patrol. More than 250 National Guard members were on the scene -- including specialized search-and-rescue teams, military police and engineers -- with another 450 on standby, said Maj. Gen. Steven Danner.
iReporter records destruction at medical center
The federal government is also involved, with Nixon saying he'd talked with President Barack Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Monday to help coordinate this effort. The second-ranking official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Richard Serino, noted Monday that Obama had already issued a disaster declaration -- expediting the dispersal of federal resources to the area -- while vowing that "we are going to be here for the long haul."
In the short term, though, the focus is on finding survivors. But the work was slowed by a new round of severe weather -- including thunderstorms and hail two inches in diameter -- that rolled through the city Monday, as well as widespread problems with broken natural gas lines and other safety issues, authorities said.
The tornado touched down at 5:41 p.m. Sunday -- 24 minutes after a warning was issued -- said Thomas Schwein, central regional director for the National Weather Service. It grew to as wide as three-quarters of a mile at one point along its estimated four-mile track, according to Missouri's State Emergency Management Agency.
Hospital very nearly only building left standing in area
"It was hard to discern where you were at," resident Eddie Atwood said of going through downtown soon after the twister hit. "All you could see is devastation. It was more like walking through 'The Twilight Zone' than walking down Main Street."
St. John's Regional Medical Center sustained significant damage after being hit directly, according to a statement from Lynn Britton, president of Sisters of Mercy Health System, which operates the hospital.
One glass facade of the building was blown out, and authorities evacuated the medical center, said Ray Foreman, a meteorologist with CNN affiliate KODE in Joplin. Makeshift triage centers were set up in tents outside, witness Bethany Scutti said. Structural engineers were on their way to Joplin to assess the hospital building, where 1,700 people work.
Joplin, Missouri: Bonnie and Clyde hid out there
The hospital was treating 183 people when the storm struck, Britton said. It was unclear if any were injured in the storm. The patients were taken to hospitals as far away as Springfield, Missouri, and northwest Arkansas.
Residents 70 miles away from Joplin in Dade County, Missouri, found X-rays from St. John's in their driveways, said Foreman, indicating the size and power of the storm. Gurneys were blown several blocks away.
Officials evacuated long-term patients from the city's other medical center, Freeman Health System, to make room for emergency cases from the tornado, Nixon said.
That hospital treated 465 patients, including 11 who died, the hospital said in a statement. A Freeman Health System hospital in nearby Neosho, Missouri, treated 39 people, the hospital said.
iReporter describes aftermath of tornado Tornado devastates neighborhood Tornado rips Missouri town apart Storm chaser: 'Trees are de-barked'
RELATED TOPICS
Tornadoes
Joplin (Missouri)
Missouri National Guard
Medical staff at Via Cristi Hospital in Pittsburg, Kansas -- about 20 minutes from Joplin -- had treated 80 patients and admitted 35 people into the hospital, spokesman Michael Hayslip said. Most of the patients came "in extremely fast in groups" Sunday night, suffering everything from minor cuts to broken bones, he said.
A nursing home was believed destroyed, among other structures, the State Emergency Management Agency reported.
Want to help? Impact Your World
Walmart spokesman Lorenzo Lopez said the tornado "blew through" one of its stores, killing and injuring an unspecified number of people -- none of them Walmart employees. He added that the Arkansas-based company has pledged $1 million to help with relief efforts in Joplin.
The city's public school district canceled classes for the rest of the year after the tornado caused significant damage to several buildings.
Joplin High School, whose seniors had just finished graduation ceremonies at a nearby university when the storm struck, was ripped apart, Principal Kerry Sachetta said.
Word "tornado" once banned from forecasts
"It just looks like it's been bombed from the outside in," he said. "It's just terrible."
St. Mary's Catholic Church and its elementary school also were demolished, said Recy Moore, a spokeswoman for the Springfield Diocese, which includes Joplin. The pastor, the Rev. Justin Monahan, rode out the storm in a bathtub at the rectory.
"Parishioners had to dig him out, but he's OK," she said.
C.J. Campbell and his foster sister survived the storm, despite the home they were in collapsing around them. Campbell called the tornado an "evil monster vortex" that began as a low roar, then got louder until it sounded like "50 semi-tractor-trailer trucks fully laden going about 70 miles per hour about 10 feet outside the front door."
"The floor began to vibrate and then shake very violently and seemingly buckle, and we thought we were going to be sucked up the chimney," he said.
New graduates face devastation after tornado
The storm also overturned as many as a dozen tractor-trailers on Interstate 44 as it barreled through Joplin, a major trucking center. The interstate, shut down for nearly 12 hours, reopened Monday morning, according to Mike Watson with the Missouri State Highway Patrol. No motorists were severely hurt, he said.
Amber Gonzales was driving through southwest Missouri when she heard tornado warnings on the radio. She took refuge at a gas station before getting back on the road and seeing the aftermath of what she narrowly missed.
At a shopping center, she saw people pulling victims from rubble and rushing them to the hospital as overwhelmed emergency workers were unable to reach everyone in need.
"I saw an older woman taken on the back of a truck bed, speeding down the road," Gonzales said. "I can't get the lady out of my mind. ... I don't know if she made it."
Sunday's tornado was part of a line of severe weather that swept across the Midwest on Sunday, prompting tornado watches and warnings that stretched from Wisconsin to Texas. High winds and possible tornadoes struck Minneapolis and other parts of Minnesota, leaving at least one person dead and injuring nearly two dozen others, police said.
Elsewhere, reports of tornadoes came in from Forest Lake, north of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and near Harmony, more than 120 miles to the south. In Minneapolis, witnesses reported numerous downed trees and neighborhoods without power.
Minneapolis police spokeswoman Sara Dietrich said the storm left one fatality, with 22 people reported hurt.
LeDale Davis, who lives on the north side of Minneapolis, told CNN, "This is the first time we can remember a tornado touched down in this area. They aren't usually in the heart of the city."
Forecasters said the system that struck Minnesota was separate from another storm that struck eastern Kansas on Saturday, killing one person and damaging or destroying hundreds of homes there.
Hayes said that 2011 is already at least the ninth deadliest season on record. That includes the tornado that hit Hackleburg and Phil Campbell, Alabama, and killed 78 people, while the one that struck Tuscaloosa and Birmingham killed 61. Those two events rank sixth and seventh respectively for tornado-related deaths in the National Weather Service's official records. The records date to 1950, when the weather service came to a consensus on how to track tornadoes and count casualties.
Unofficial records cite the 1925 Tri-State tornado in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana as the deadliest single twister ever, with an estimated 695 fatalities, according to the weather service. But meteorologists note that it isn't known if those fatalities came from one or more tornadoes, as compared with the single twister that has been confirmed in Joplin.
While the strength and toll of this year's more than 1,000 twisters may suggest an alarming trend, weather service officials said they will need time and research to put it all into perspective. And one warned that the destruction likely isn't over.
"We have to be aware that we are now just entering the peak of tornado season," said Russell Schneider, head of the Storm Prediction Center. "You can never completely breathe easy."
Poor people...
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)