Welcome to Austerityville

?Some of them go on unemployment,? says Jukowski. ?Some of them, like the police, keep their jobs because they merge with the county. Most of them are out on the street. In a city of 59,000, the issue of city jobs going away isn?t the major break[ing point]. It doesn?t help. But we?re a town that used to have an automotive industry. We had more money coming in than we knew what to do with, so we didn?t really have to be real serious about city government. People began to view city government as a job creator; a jobs bank, if you will. We tended to look at development projects, city government, everything as an opportunity to put local people to work, instead of as an opportunity to create infrastructure, provide services.?

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=38212483d0cf391d43aefc271c475a71

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Retailer shares up after FDI move, but concerns emerge (Reuters)

MUMBAI (Reuters) ? Shares in Indian retailers jumped on Friday after the government opened up the $450 billion supermarket sector to global giants, but concerns emerged that caveats aimed at appeasing political opposition could hinder an expected flurry of investments.

The government on Thursday approved 51 percent foreign direct investment in the supermarket sector, paving the entry of firms such as Wal-Mart, Tesco and Carrefour into one of the world's largest untapped markets.

Indian retailers are expected to tie up deals with these companies and shares in Pantaloon Retail (India) jumped as much as 18.2 percent, Shopper's Stop rallied 15 percent and Trent, part of the salt-to-steel Tata Group conglomerate, rose 17.2 percent.

In comparison, the main stock index was down 0.29 percent at 11 a.m. (0530 GMT).

But the new policy, seen as one of the most important government economic reforms in years, may commit supermarkets to strict local sourcing requirements and minimum investment levels aimed at protecting jobs.

(Also read: Time catches up with India's traditional bazaars, click http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/11/24/idINIndia-60717420111124)

The requirements are due to fears of potential job losses among small traders that could heighten popular anger at the ruling Congress party ahead of key state polls next year that will set the stage for the 2014 general election.

Local media reported on Friday that individual states would have the power to veto foreign retailers - a caveat that could make it impossible for these companies to work in some of India's biggest states run by the opposition.

That could, for example, exclude investor-favourite states like Gujarat, which is run by Bharatiya Janata Party.

The government was expected to release policy details later on Friday.

"Government efforts to overcome the opposition through tough stipulations ... which hark back to the days of the licence raj - are also equally dangerous," The Times of India said in an editorial on Friday.

"FDI ventures would be successful only if retailers are allowed to introduce practices benchmarked to the best in the world. Restrictive clauses which tie their hands are best avoided."

This would not be the first time a big-ticket reform has sunk due to devilish details. In 2008, the government passed the U.S. civilian nuclear deal aimed at opening up India's nuclear power market to foreign players, hailed as the cornerstone of India's warming ties with the United States.

But investments have since languished due to stringent accident liability clauses that U.S. companies say make it too risky to invest.

Political opposition could also be a deal breaker. India's biggest listed company, Reliance Industries, was forced to backtrack on plans in 2007 to open Western-style supermarkets in Uttar Pradesh after huge protests from small traders and political parties.

Still, there was optimism that momentum was on the reform side.

Indian retail chains have been allowed to operate for years, but they have struggled to expand due to funding difficulties, a lack of expertise and poor roads and cold storage facilities.

(Reporting by Henry Foy; Writing by Alistair Scrutton; Editing by John Chalmers)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/india/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111125/india_nm/india607255

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Egypt military rulers reject calls to step down

In this Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011 photo, an Egyptian riot police officer aims his rifle at a man near Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt. Police and protesters demanding that Egypt's ruling military council step down are observing a truce after five days of deadly street battles in which dozens have died. (AP Photo/Tahsin Bakr)

In this Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011 photo, an Egyptian riot police officer aims his rifle at a man near Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt. Police and protesters demanding that Egypt's ruling military council step down are observing a truce after five days of deadly street battles in which dozens have died. (AP Photo/Tahsin Bakr)

Egyptian Army soldiers stand guard atop a concrete block barricade on the street between Tahrir Square and the interior ministry in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011. Police and protesters demanding that Egypt's ruling military council step down are observing a truce after five days of deadly street battles in which dozens have died. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

A boy looks at Egyptian Army soldiers standing guard atop a concrete block barricade on the street between Tahrir Square and the interior ministry in Cairo, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011. Police and protesters demanding that Egypt's ruling military council step down are observing a truce after five days of deadly street battles in which dozens have died. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Protesters sleep in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011. Police and protesters demanding that Egypt's ruling military council step down are observing a truce after five days of deadly street battles in which dozens have died. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

A woman protester attempts to dismantle a barbed wire barricade, newly erected by the Egyptian army, near Tahrir square in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011. International criticism of Egypt's military rulers is mounting after five days of clashes between police and protesters demanding the generals relinquish power immediately. (AP Photo/Tara Todras-Whitehill)

CAIRO (AP) ? Egypt's military rulers rejected protester demands for them to step down immediately and said Thursday they would start the first round of parliamentary elections on time next week despite serious unrest in Cairo and other cities.

The ruling military council insisted it is not the same as the old regime it replaced, but the generals appear to be on much the same path that doomed Hosni Mubarak nine months ago ? responding to the current crisis by delivering speeches seen as arrogant, mixing concessions with threats and using brutal force.

So far it's working no better than it did under the former leader.

Protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square, seething over the military's perceived failings over the past nine months, say they will not leave the iconic plaza until the generals step down in favor of a civilian presidential council, a show of resolve similar to that which forced Mubarak to give up power in February after nearly three decades.

"What we want to hear is when they are leaving," said Tahrir protester Khaled Mahmoud on hearing of an apology offered by the military for the deaths of nearly 40 protesters since Saturday. "The ouster of the marshal is only a matter of time," he added referring to Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who was Mubarak's defense minister for 20 years before he succeeded him in February.

"There will be no postponement in the election," said Maj. Gen. Mamdouh Shaheen, one of two members of the ruling military council who spoke at a televised news conference on Thursday. "The election will be held on time with all of its three stages on schedule."

The two generals said the throngs in Tahrir do not represent the whole of Egypt and warned of chaos if the council was to immediately step down, language similar to Mubarak's scare-mongering while trying to cling to power in the face of the 18-day uprising against his rule.

The two generals ? Shaheen and Maj. Gen. Mukhtar el-Malla ? also said that parliamentary elections would start on time Monday and that a new prime minister to replace Essam Sharaf would be picked before the vote.

News reports that were not yet officially confirmed, said Kamal el-Ganzouri, who served as prime minister under Mubarak in the 1990s, has been approached by the military as a possible candidate for prime minister. State television showed footage of el-Ganzouri meeting with Tantawi. If confirmed, el-Ganzouri would replace Essam Sharaf whose government resigned this week.

Tahrir Square, meanwhile, was quieter Thursday after five days of intense clashes. Police and protesters agreed to a truce negotiated by Muslim clerics at the scene. At the same time, soldiers built barricades from metal bars and barbed wire to separate the protesters and the police on streets-turned-battlefields leading from Tahrir to the nearby Interior Ministry.

Protesters formed a series of human chains on the those streets to prevent anyone from violating the truce or approaching flashpoint areas close to the police lines. The truce came into force around 6 a.m. and was holding by nightfall.

The two generals from the ruling council who spoke attempted a revision of recent history to fend off calls for the military to step down.

They said their legitimate claim to power came when troops were warmly welcomed by Egyptians at the time they took over the streets from the discredited police early in the anti-Mubarak uprising. The legitimacy of their rule was reinforced by the overwhelming endorsement Egyptians gave to constitutional amendments they proposed and put to a referendum in March, they said.

"Consequently, it will be a betrayal of the people's trust if the military council was to relinquish power now," Shaheen said. "History will not kindly remember that."

El-Mallah, addressing the same news conference, said the military respected the views of the Tahrir protesters, but they did not represent the whole of Egypt.

"We will not relinquish power because a slogan-chanting crowd said so. ... Being in power is not a blessing. It is a curse. It's a very heavy responsibility."

Activists blame the military council for the country's persistently tenuous security, its growing economic woes along with a host of other failings.

They say the council has been secretive, issuing cryptic decrees, cracking down on critics and seeking to discredit groups behind the anti-Mubarak uprising and turn the public against them. It has put at least 12,000 civilians on trial before military tribunals and is accused of torturing detainees.

The military's standing as the nation's most upright institution was dealt a heavy blow by clashes during a Coptic Christian protest on Oct. 9 in which 27 people died, most of them Christians. Video showed soldiers mowing down demonstrators with armored vehicles. The military tried to deny its troops opened fire or intentionally ran over protesters, blaming the violence on Christians and "hidden hands."

The military has been Egypt's most powerful institution since army officers seized power in a 1952 coup that toppled the monarchy. All four presidents since hailed from military background. Taking the reins from Mubarak on Feb. 11 gave the military the opportunity to directly rule Egypt for the first time since the early 1950s, something that critics often cite to explain their political inexperience.

With Mubarak under arrest and being tried on crimes punishable by death, Tantawi and his generals would be loath to step down under pressure and leave themselves vulnerable to legal proceedings by the next administration. Additionally, stepping down would inflict lasting damage to the military's standing, although that has already been hurt by the scathing criticism and ridicule they already have endured on the streets and in the independent press.

Perhaps as a precaution against such a prospect, the generals have been trying to win immunity for the armed forces against civilian oversight and to enshrine a role for themselves in the next constitution as guardians of the nation. The bid was seen as one of the final straws that sent people out onto the streets again, convinced the military was trying to grab and cling to power.

The military has countered the criticism with implicit threats, frequently using the patriotism card and insisting that they have no wish to stay in power beyond the election of a new president before the end of June 2012.

"O glorious people of Egypt, our only loyalty in the armed forces is to you and the soil of Egypt," Tantawi told the nation this week in a televised address. "Criticism directed at the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (the formal name of the military's ruling council) aims at weakening our will and mandate and seeks to undermine the great trust between the people and their armed forces," said Tantawi, whose address bore a striking resemblance to speeches given by Mubarak during the January-February uprising.

The two generals also praised the police for what they said was their restraint and said they have every right to defend themselves, but acknowledged they made mistakes while handling the protesters. They said nothing about witness reports that members of he military police also battled protesters alongside the hated police in the latest clashes.

They appeared to try to drive a wedge between the protesters, addressing those camping out in Tahrir square as "honorable" while criticizing others who battled the police for five days on nearby side streets.

The military, said the two generals, would only return to their barracks if Egyptians voted in favor of that move in a referendum or when an elected civilian administration was in place. The idea of holding a referendum on the military immediately stepping down was first floated by Tantawi on Tuesday.

The military's defiance in the face of popular opposition to its rule comes as more and more protesters in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt blame the army and the much hated police equally for the death of nearly 40 protesters since the clashes broke out on Saturday. At least 2,000 others have been wounded. The military is also accused of remaining loyal to Mubarak, having put him under arrest and on trial only when large protests pressured them to do so.

"The army is now operating like the police, a tool of suppression," said protester Mayada Khalaf. "With all these lies from the army, it is like they are sticking their tongues out at us."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-11-24-ML-Egypt/id-1117cd5cfe05457f8b344b5023112912

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VTech V.Reader Interactive E-Reading System

Reading comes to life with the VTech V. Reader Interactive E-Reading System ($59.99 list). This storyteller learning system brings books to life and makes reading vivid and fun for your child! Kids can touch and play as they learn core reading skills, touch the screen to read the story, and play interactive reading games.

With the V.Reader Interactive E-Reading System, children will discover the joy of reading while interacting with well-loved characters like Elmo and Disney Princesses. As the stories come alive with animations and sounds on the color touch screen, children take a journey into a world of imagination while developing the necessary building blocks to grow from a pre-reader to a confident and fluent reader. The V.Reader comes pre-loaded with the "What's That Noise" storybook and fun applications such as a Photo Viewer, Video Player, and art activities. Additional storybook cartridges (sold separately) offer new stories and adventures and feature a fully narrated and animated story, reading skill games, and a Story Dictionary. You can even download additional e-books, avatars, and themes while tracking your child's progress on VTech's Learning Lodge Navigator.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/GfYRIZd9rNk/0,2817,2396650,00.asp

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Presentify.me Turns Unused Groupons Into Gifts

Looking for a last-minute holiday gift? How about that Groupon you never used? Daily deal vouchers wouldn't actually make bad presents if there was a way to gift them that didn't involve an email printout tucked into a card. That's where Presentify.me, which turns deal vouchers into attractive gift certificates, can help.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/IgEeMeRbr60/

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Iran: West must prove its claims about Iran nukes (AP)

TEHRAN, Iran ? The West must prove its claims that Iran seeks to build nuclear weapons, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday, repeating his denial and insisting that it's not up to Tehran to disprove the allegations.

His remarks follow the latest report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog that cited evidence indicating that Iran is conducting secret experiments toward development of nuclear weapons.

"They (West) tells us, you should prove you don't have atomic bombs. How can something that doesn't exist be proved? It's nonexistent. How can we prove it?" he told thousands of people in Pakdasht, 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of the capital Tehran.

"The one who levels the accusations must prove (their) claims. You must prove that someone is guilty," he said.

Ahmadinejad said if Iran decides to build nuclear weapons, it will do so openly.

"When we say we don't possess and we don't want nuclear weapons, we mean it. But you should know that if one day the Iranian nation decides to build atomic bomb, it doesn't fear you. It will bravely stand up and say it wants to build atomic bombs," he said in his speech which was broadcast live on state TV.

Ahmadinejad said the United States, which itself has stored 5,000 nuclear weapons, charges that Iran is guilty without providing evidence, yet it wants Iran to prove its innocence.

The president also warned that Iran would treat any country that freezes its assets as a "thief."

He was reacting to reports that the U.S. and its allies might freeze assets belonging to Iran's central bank following a new set of sanctions imposed on Tehran by U.S., Canada and Britain. The new sanctions seek to apply greater pressure to get Tehran to halt its suspected nuclear weapons program.

The measures were built on previous sanctions to target Iran's oil and petrochemical industries and companies involved in nuclear procurement or enrichment activity.

"Let me tell you (West) that the slightest appropriation of the Iranian nation's currency reserves will be tantamount to theft. The Iranian nation will deal with the perpetrator as a thief," Ahmadinejad warned.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iran/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111123/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_nuclear

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David Cronenberg Discusses His Dangerous Method

Of all the North American directors to emerge in the 1970s, few have been as consistent -- and consistently fascinating -- as Canadian auteur David Cronenberg, the man whose imagination unleashed Videodrome, The Fly, Crash and A History of Violence (to name just a few). While his contemporaries may have courted bigger commercial and critical success, Cronenberg's thematic vision -- whether he's working in genre horror, literary adaptation, or his recent gangster cycle -- has remained singular and endlessly rewarding.

Cronenberg's new film, A Dangerous Method, represents something of an origin piece in his universe, returning to a pivotal moment in the birth of modern psychiatry that predicts the obsession with repressed sexuality, violence and the subconscious so prevalent in his work. Sexual psychosis du jour Michael Fassbender stars as the young Carl Jung, a doctor whose relationship with his noted mentor, Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), is complicated via an emotional tryst with a deranged patient -- and aspiring headshrinker -- Sabina Spielrein, performed with acrobatic terror by Keira Knightley. "I sought to make an elegant film that trades on emotional horror," says Cronenberg. Be afraid, period drama. Be very afraid. We met the director in Los Angeles recently, where he shared his thoughts on psychiatry, hysteria, the connections between his movies... and cigars.

---

I've been immersing myself in some of your films over the last few days, and here you are.

David Cronenberg: Well you seem to be stable still, so it probably hasn't done too much damage.

I grew up watching them, so the damage has been done.

[Laughs] Oh.

You were saying around the time of Spider that you weren't interested in a textbook study of Freud, and this certainly isn't one, either. What was the angle that enticed you on A Dangerous Method?

Well, friends of mine have pointed out that the first film I ever did was a seven minute short called Transfer, and it was about a psychiatrist and a patient. That was the very first film I wrote and made. So I've come to think of [A Dangerous Method] as this invention of a brand new relationship that never existed before; that is, the relationship between an analyst and a patient. We think of it now as being almost as primordial as a family relationship, but actually it's quite odd, you know: you go to someone that you've never met, a stranger, and you tell him your most intimate, embarrassing secrets and he has a sort of clinical distance on it and then you gradually begin to project on to him the emotional connections you have to other people. It's quite odd. And it's quite interesting. And it's become a kind of basic human relationship, but it never existed before -- and in some countries it still doesn't, but in the West, certainly. So I think that's part of the core of it; that is to say that Freud has influenced us in ways that are quite unusual and that we aren't completely aware of. I don't think we're remotely finished with Freud.

When I read [screenwriter Christopher Hampton's] play, it felt like the creation of modern relationships, of modernity. That these two men, these professional men, very highly respected and living in a very relatively repressed and controlled era -- which is also a fascination for me, that era in Central Europe just before the First World War -- would talk about the most intimate things. You see that in the movie. They talk about bodily fluids and orifices and organs and erotic dreams and sexuality in a way that men of that era, especially of that class, would never talk to each other about; it was just inappropriate and not done. Now, you know, we accept this, but at the time it was unheard of -- really quite earthshaking and revolutionary. And then, when Sabina appeared, she did the same thing as a woman, speaking to men, also about her eroticism and her masochism. Because they were their own first subjects, that was the thing that was also intriguing; that's why I have Sabina observing herself in the mirror while she's having this S&M sex, because she would have observed herself. They had no other subjects to begin with. When Freud wrote about the interpretation of dreams it was his dreams that he was using as the subject matter because that's all he had at the time. They were just starting off and inventing this thing, psychoanalysis. All of that was intriguing to me.

They were pioneers, out on the edge and experimenting on themselves -- like many of your other scientist protagonists; Seth Brundle being perhaps the most famous example.

Yeah. I mean, it's obvious that I'm interested in characters whose intellect leads them to places that are perhaps not socially acceptable, or to new places. I've come to think that, for example, psychoanalysis and art do similar things in some ways. I don't really think of art as therapy -- that's not what I mean. What I mean is that the psychoanalyst and the artist, we're presented an official version of reality that the culture kind of generates, but we say, "Okay, that's good for as far as it goes, but what's really going on under the hood?" And we dive underneath, we go underneath and we find the springs and levers; we find the hidden motivations, the dark things that people don't talk about or don't understand, and we look for that and try and bring it out. So I think that, in a way then, these scientists and doctors of mine are sort of circuits for artists or just, you know, for my projection -- of what I think I'm doing.

It's interesting that you bring up Transfer, because the relationship in the film -- like that in A Dangerous Method -- is a patient stalking their psychiatrist.

Basically the only relationship he's had, that means anything to him, is the relationship he has to his psychoanalyst, yeah.

Was there a sense of having come full circle in your career when people reminded you of it?

Well, as I say, until a close friend had pointed it out, I'd forgotten about that. I wasn't even thinking about it. And this is something that comes up a lot, but basically I don't really think about my other movies when I'm making movies; they're completely irrelevant to me -- to this movie. Whatever movie I'm making, the only thing that I bring with me from the other movies is my confidence in the craft, you know -- I know how to make movies; I've done those things -- but I don't think about them thematically, or how they connect thematically; that actually, creatively doesn't give me anything in order to make this movie, you understand what I mean?

Sure.

After the fact you can step back and say, "Wow, that's an interesting parallel." For example, I can say this. I can say Freud, okay: In one way, what Freud did was to insist on the reality of the human body. At a time when the body was covered up and cloaked and people wore stiff rigid collars and women wore corsets, he was talking about orifices and bodily fluids and the sexual abuse of children and incest and stuff, and so that connects him to me and my other movies -- because for me, I've said in the past, the first fact of human existence is the human body. But when I was making the movie, when I was attracted to it, that thought was not anywhere in my mind. So that's me sort of stepping back and being an analyst of my own work -- which comes out when people ask, really. It's not something that I automatically just do for fun. But it also is not something that I bring to the movie, you know; I don't really bring that to the movie, because really, creatively, what would that give me? It doesn't really give me anything. I get excited about this movie for itself, and the research involved into these characters. That's what motivates me and excites me.

It is curious how things do recur in your films. For example, when Sabina is playing with her food in A Dangerous Method, it reminded me so much of Judy Davis kneading the typewriter flesh in Naked Lunch.

Oh yes. But I absolutely never thought of it. I haven't really looked at Naked Lunch since I made it, so I don't even 100 per cent remember it, you know. I don't deny that those things are there, and I don't deny that they're interesting, but as I say, a lot of people think that I go into a movie with a checklist of things that must be there for me to make the movie, and they're all connected to my other movies. But I absolutely don't. It's all intuitive and instinctive.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1924014/news/1924014/

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