Snubbed Norwegians replace absent Obama at event with … cardboard cutout
Yessiree…the cutout made a personal appearance
a “Save the Children” benefit concert, where organizers replaced him with an Obama cardboard cutout. Obama also won’t be around for Friday’s Nobel Concert.
Here he is on stage right:
In other Oslo news, check out Michelle Obama’s Mirror’s Blog on Golden Geese Land in Oslo.
Maybe the NYT will include some Orquesta Kef CDs in their segregated shopping guide,
A change in immigration rules that is affecting performers (among them traveling tango instructors and performers):
Send Us Your Tired, Your Poor, But Only if They’re ‘Culturally Unique’
Immigration Caseworker AA0089 Has Some Thoughts About What Is Art
When Jordan Peimer booked an Argentine band that fuses Jewish Klezmer music with tango, he thought he had the perfect act to headline his “Fiesta Hanukkah” concert.“It is hard to imagine any band more fitting than Orquesta Kef,” says Mr. Peimer, the program’s director at the Skirball Cultural Center here. The event was designed to attract a Jewish audience and the city’s burgeoning Hispanic community.
That was before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services weighed in with some cultural commentary of its own. The band couldn’t travel to the U.S., the agency ruled, because it didn’t satisfy a “culturally unique” requirement for a performer visa called P-3.
“The evidence repeatedly suggests the group performs a hybrid or fusion style of music…[which] cannot be considered culturally unique to one particular country, nation, society, class, ethnicity, religion, tribe or other group of persons,” read the denial. It was signed by caseworker CSC4672/WS24533.
What the heck more unique do you need to get to meet some bureaucrat’s arbitrary criteria? Does it depend on the volume of trade with the country of origin, say China? Or do you need to have a particular skin tone and a politically fashionable religion in order to get a performing visa?
Mr. Peimer was incensed. “How more culturally specific can you get than Jewish music of Latin America?” he asked. After Mr. Peimer did some venting on his Facebook page, a reader quipped that this is the era of “ethnomusicalsecurity.”
Outrageous as this is, considering how many illegal aliens (yes, illegal aliens) are playing fake Peruvian music on the corners of major US cities, or pseudo-mariachi bands in Mexican restaurants across the South West, what makes it worse is that the entrepeneurs, empresarios, non-profits and performers have to dish out huge amounts of money to appeal the bureaucrats’ decisions:
All told, the visa endeavor cost the nonprofit organization more than $10,000, it says.
Just when you think US immigration policy couldn’t get more irrational, they have topped themselves.
#DarsiFerrer blogburst today, Human Rights Day.
Marc Masferrer has the story:
Blogburst/blogacción, 12/10/09 | Free Darsi Ferrer NOW!
Dr. Ferrer is a leader. Dr. Ferrer is a patriot. Dr. Ferrer is a hero.But this year, Dr. Ferrer needs our help. We must pick up his banner and demand human rights for Cuba.
NOW!
We must demand the end of tyranny.
NOW!
And we must demand the release from prison of Dr. Darsi Ferrer.
NOW!
Go to the above link and read the rest.
Dr Darsi Ferrer’s wife was arrested. More at The Real Cuba and Misceláneas de Cuba.
UPDATE
Snapped Shot is posting on how the AP captions don’t match the story: Caption Does Not Compute
… and available on line, too.
White NYT Readers, You May Skip To The Next Page!
This gift guide takes a holiday season celebrated by both Caucasians and people of color, and sets apart a page for gifts meant “by and for” a group of people defined only by the color of their skin.
Or, as Mary Katharine said,
in case you’d like to offend one of your friends or relatives by proclaiming via painfully stereotypical gift idea that the only thing you know about them is their skin color, and you assume that it defines them at the exclusion of all else.
For instance, the “Wise Latina” t-shirt:
Time to pour some snark on this crap:
Happy (Segreagated) Holidays
NYT offers thoughtful gift guide for the minority in your life
Things White People Like To Buy (For People Of Color)
Where Da White Gifts At?!?, via Ed Driscoll.
New York Times Teaches You How to Buy Separate (but equal) Gifts!
NYT Dreaming of a Colored Christmas
La Gringa, last night:
Proceso Digital, an online Honduran newspaper, reports that Mel Zelaya has requested a ’salvoconducto’ (safe conduct) and may be leaving for Mexico in the next hours. Radio Globo reported earlier in the day that they had information that Zelaya was making arrangements to leave the country.
…
Update 10:00: Enrique Flores Lanza, former Minister of the Presidency (who also has charges against him for withdrawing L.40 million in cash from the national bank two days before the proposed June 28 poll), has confirmed to Telesur that Zelaya has not asked for political asylum. The Mexican Chancellor confirmed that Zelaya does not have political asylum in Mexico. Political asylum would prevent Zelaya from political activities and apparently his intent was to do some last minute campaigning with foreign governments to try to return to office. As mentioned above, he’s now talking about negotiating a new agreement of some sort. Please! He’s violated every clause of every agreement so far.
This morning Noticias 24 reports that Mexico had requested safeconduct for Zelaya to travel to Mexico as a guest. The Honduran government denied the request, instead insisting that Zelaya would be allowed to leave if Mexico grants him assylum – which Zelaya has refused.
The NYT says, Fate of Ex-Honduran Leader Is in Doubt
In an interview with the Mexican TV network Televisa, Mr. Zelaya said that the de facto government had placed a “denigrating” condition on his departure from Honduras, offering him safe passage out of the embassy only if he would seek political asylum. He added that he has not asked for political asylum.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that
Mexico’s foreign ministry, in an e-mailed statement, said it was acting upon a request from Zelaya
Apparently, Zelaya wants to head to Cuba by way of Mexico,
Zelaya, speaking earlier on Venezuela’s Telesur television channel, said he wanted to visit several countries in his role as the Central American country’s elected leader. He would not confirm earlier comments to Telesur by his chief of staff, Enrique Flores Lanza, that he was seeking to travel with his family to Mexico and then Cuba to attend a summit of the Venezuelan-led Alba trade bloc.
But then, maybe not.
Either way,
Honduran authorities denied Mexico’s request because it did not meet the legal requirements for granting safe-conduct to political asylum seekers, Rene Zepeda, a spokesman for the acting government, said in comments broadcast on Telesur.
As of now, Manuel Zelaya exile move from Honduras ‘postponed’
As Drudge says, developing…
UPDATE, 4PM Eastern
Noticias 24: Mexican government states there is no possibility of granting Zelaya asylum, since Zelaya himself turned it down. The Mexican government had sent an airplane last night to Honduras, where the plane was denied permission to land and had to land in El Salvador instead.
For the time being, then, Zelaya remains in the tin-foil lined room at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa.
You can watch it live here (h/t The Corner).
Adding to the list of events Obama won’t be attending,
Plus the other events I mentioned yesterday.
Nobel peace prize: Norwegians incensed over Barack Obama’s snubs
According to a poll published by the daily tabloid VG, 44% of Norwegians believe it was rude of Obama to cancel his scheduled lunch with King Harald, with only 34% saying they believe it was acceptable.“Of all the things he is cancelling, I think the worst is cancelling the lunch with the king,” said Siv Jensen, the leader of the largest party in opposition, the populist Progress party. “This is a central part of our government system. He should respect the monarchy,” she told VG.
I like that: a progressive populist defending the monarch.
Anyhoo, like the fox with healthy self-esteem who said “Jumping after those grapes was a great workout even when I couldn’t reach any,”
The Norwegian Nobel committee, which awards the peace prize, dismissed the criticism. “We always knew that there were too many events in the programme. Obama has to govern the US and we were told early on that he could not commit to all of them,” said Geir Lundestad, secretary of the committee.
Rest assured the committee members know that Obama respects them in the morning.
Opening on Christmas Day, Robert Downey Jr stars as Sherlock Holmes. When I was in grade school and my friends were reading Nancy Drew, I was reading the Arthur Connan Doyle stories. In this version of Sherlock Holmes,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous super-sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, gets an update with this adaptation of Lionel Wigram’s comic book series by writer/director Guy Ritchie.
As you may remember, I loved Iron Man, and now can’t wait to see Sherlock Holmes (click on the link to the website for the full-screen HD trailer)
It’s a dreary Wednesday and to be truthful, I’m finding politics (American, Latin American, or any politics) exhausting. The Anchoress has an Advent pause for weary minds, but being much less spiritual than her, imagine my delight when I saw this from John Derbishire, whose book, We Are Doomed I just finished reading,
Why We Kiss?
Razib goes on to speculate that: “Perhaps then bad breath and poor oral hygiene are simply a fitness indicator, and kissing evolved as a method for humans to evaluate each other’s health as an ‘honest’ signal?”
Maybe that’s how it got started; but we kiss because it’s so good.
Here’s my favorite kissing scene on film, the final scene of Cinema Paradiso, a movie I loved when I first saw it years ago,
Warm kisses, all.
Smart diplomacy in action:
Will Obama Snub the King?
The question they should be asking is not will he, but how; according to the article, Obama
That’s right, Obama’s not showing up to lunch with the king, to inaugurate an exhibit, a concert, all events about himself. Must be modesty that prevents him?
That may have something to do with Obama’s uncharacteristic shunning of the press. Whereas other prize winners have viewed the standard Nobel Peace Prize CNN interview as an opportunity to address the world for a full hour, Obama seems unwilling to answer any questions at all. There will be no press conference, just a statement from the president.
It’s high time Barack Obama learnt some manners, says Con Coughlin.
In Today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern, and while we are focused on Tiger Woods’s marital travails,
Noticias 24/AFP report that students, workers, indigenous movements, and other leftist groups met in Caracas this week to create the Movimiento Continental Bolivariano (Continental Bolivarian Movement), which promotes “the union of the peoples of the Americas” against the “imperialist aggression” of the USA, for the purpose of “defending the Venezuelan revolution from the imperialist threats”, and “to reinforce the struggle against the Yankee military bases in Colombia.”
The meeting read a letter by FARC leader Alfonso Cano in which he pointed to “the horizon of the combative union of our peoples in defense of their dignity, independence, history, values, culture, territory, human resources, natural resources, and the inalienable right to forge their sovereign future”.
Counterterrorism Blog and Douglas Farrah have also posted on this meeting:
Little noticed by the outside world, Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez is hosting a gathering of global terrorist organizations in Caracas, featuring Colombia’s FARC, Spain’s ETA, the Communist Party of El Salvador, remnants of the Red Brigade and other armed groups seeking violent revolution in Latin America and beyond.The conference shows how closely tied Chávez is to the FARC and other terrorist groups, despite the overwhelming evidence of the FARC’s enormous involvement in drug trafficking, its thousands of kidnappings, endless attacks against the civilian population and its kidnapping of children and women to serve as sex slaves.
The second global convention of the Coordinadora Continental Bolivariana (Bolivarian Continental Coordinator-CCB), founded by the FARC in Venezuela in 2004 and newly renamed the Bolivarian Continental Movement, has as its primary stated purpose to militarily support the Venezuelan revolution and contribute to the struggle against Yankee bases in Colombia. Its platform also vows to overthrow the United States and its “moribund capitalist system.”
Colombia’s Armed Forces Commander had asked that the summit reject Cano’s letter and not become a FARC accomplice.
Strategy Page has more on the Colombia-Venezuela-FARC situation,
The Colombian 8th Infantry Division has been moved to the Venezuelan border. Not in response to more Venezuelan saber rattling, but because the growing number of FARC camps across the border in Venezuela, which has led to an increase in FARC activity on the Colombian side of the frontier. Apparently FARC plans to use its growing number of Venezuelan bases to support a new offensive. FARC will wage guerilla war, using the Venezuelan bases as a sanctuary (where rebels can be trained, recuperate and receive supplies.) The Venezuelan army will keep Colombian troops away from the FARC camps. Venezuela denies any evidence to the contrary, and continues to insist that it’s build up on the Colombian border is in preparation for the coming U.S.-Colombian invasion.
The meeting was held at Caraca’s Parque Central auditorium, and was blessed by father Luís Barrios, who spoke about “God’s Communist Party.”
The English-language media mostly ignored this event.
Hugo Chávez is in Argentina, bloviating about South American unification (video in Spanish)
