Search your song on YouTube:

Find the video you want the mp3 of:

Click in the middle of the url bar to select the url.  Then right click to copy the url.

Now go to:

http://www.video2mp3.net/

and paste the url into the url field

Paste by right clicking in the text field and left-clicking paste.  Then pick ‘High Quality’ and then Convert.

wait!

then…

Click here to get your mp3 (don’t click on any download buttons that may be ads)

Then right click the ‘Download MP3’ and pick ‘Save Target As…”

Save the file to your mp3 files (Usually “My Documents” –> “My Music”) and enjoy.

Community Effort to Rescue Lost Pet

Recently, I was out for a walk with my dog in my neighbourhood when I came upon an unusual scene. A group of young men were milling around a new house under construction nearby. One young man was halfway up a tree in front of the house, trying to get the attention of an unusual looking bird perched higher up.

Geezy, the pet that mobilized the community

It was a cold and damp evening and the scared bird refused to respond to commands. When I inquired about the situation, I learned that the bird was a two-and-a-half-year-old pet parrot, worth $4,000, that had flown out of his home nearby and had been missing for about four hours.

The family had been out searching for their pet bird and had found it a short while ago sitting up in this tree. Some of the men were construction workers on the site trying to help out, some were family members, and some, like ourselves, were just gawkers.

One young man was on a cell phone trying to get help from various sources, to no avail. It was his brother who had climbed the tree to try and reach the bird. He was unsuccessful and in fact had gotten himself stuck in the tree, unable to get down. He almost fell at least once while we were there.

Before long, a fire truck arrived to rescue the young man, followed by a couple of police cruisers. Officer Kevin Clarke took charge of the situation and organized everyone so that the firefighters could do their job. Then firefighters Brian White, Michael Boudewyn, and Steve Sheppard got out some ladders and coached the young man down.

A plea to rescue the bird was made next, and the firefighters attempted to do so using the fire truck’s aerial ladder, but couldn’t because of all the overhead wires. They were about to leave when they decided to make one more attempt at rescuing the poor bird. The firefighters got an extra long ladder and a pole with a hook (a pike pole) from their truck. The ladder was extended to its maximum length and leaned against a small fragile branch of the tree. Boudewyn and Sheppard held onto the ladder while White climbed to the top of the ladder and attempted to scoop the bird with the pole. The first two tries resulted in the bird just hopping away. Then, on the third try, the bird flew from its perch and went into the neighbouring yard. While White descended the ladder, constable Dawn Heighton grabbed a blanket from her cruiser, and along with the bird’s owners, ran into the yard. They soon emerged led by Heighton cradling the bird wrapped in the blanket. The bird was returned to its owners, followed by cheering all around from those of us who witnessed the rescue. A “good news” story if I ever heard one!

“And therefore the monkey looks like man, and is an example of a generation of men which were created and made but were only wooden figures.”

                                                                                                   — Popol Vuh 

If you started reading this hoping for chapter and verse quotations such as Genesis 10:20 “And the Lord made dinosaurs” followed by Genesis 20:30 “The Lord then made monkeys from which he made humans” you’re going to be disappointed.  Of course if such blatant quotes were available, there would be no need for this article.

The reader will need to jump through some theological hoops to find Darwin in the Bible.  However, the reader will be pleasantly surprised that those hoops are not as insurmountable as one might expect.

The first hoop come in accepting that the Quiche Maya are offshoots of the Israelites.  The Quiche Maya are of course from Central America and the Israelites were from the Middle East.  Modern historical dogma claims that there were no interactions between these two peoples.  For a detailed explanation of how this cultural exchange is plausible please see:

http://www.martincwiner.com/extensive-semitic-presence-documented-in-pre-columbian-america/

I’ll offer a short summary of the top 3 points as to why this theory is plausible:

1) One author of the Popul Vuh (The Mayan Sacred Writings) declares:

I, Don Fransisco Gomez, first Ahzib Quiche, write here on this paper of the coming of our fathers and grandfathers from the other side of the sea [ocean] whence the sun rises.” 
(Note: The sun rises in the east.)
http://books.google.ca/books?id=NQnJQR6LQuwC&lpg=PP1&ots=ALQTK0MinL&dq=popol%20vuh&pg=PA14#v=onepage&q&f=false

2) A signature biblical story… splitting the sea and crossing it dry shod appears in the Popul Vuh:

And it is not clear how they crossed over the sea. The crossed as if there were no sea. They crossed as if on some stones, stones piled up in the same. They give the stones a name, Rock Rows, Furrowed Sands was the name for the place where they crossed through the midst of the sea. Where the waters divided they crossed over.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=NQnJQR6LQuwC&lpg=PP1&ots=ALQTK0MinL&dq=popol%20vuh&pg=PA183#v=onepage&q=sea&f=false

3) There is an odd copy of the Ten Commandments in the New Mexico desert called the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone.  This is thought to be an artifact of ‘Calalus’, an Israelite colony in the New World circa 700CE.

http://www.martincwiner.com/extensive-semitic-presence-documented-in-pre-columbian-america/

If we can accept that the Maya are an offshoot of Israelites, we reap the rewards of finding references to Evolution in the creation myth of the Maya.  In essence, the Bible tells of the creation of man out of dust of the earth.  The Mayan version fills in the blanks between drafting room and final product.

The creation myth of the Maya closely parallels the Biblical one.  The interpositions of additional narrative is likely to be the preservation of details from the precursor myths to both the Bible and the Popol Vuh.  This is the second and final theological hoop one must jump through.

It is in one of these interpositions, the story of the creation of man, where we find Evolution in the Bible.

In the Mayan creation myth, the creators seek to create creations which can speak and adore their creators (self aware, and aware of creators).  First they fail with the animals:

But they could not make them speak like men; they only hissed and screamed and cackled; they were unable to make words, and each screamed in a different way.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=NQnJQR6LQuwC&lpg=PP1&ots=ALQTK0MinL&dq=popol%20vuh&pg=PA85#v=onepage&q&f=false

They go on to try again with the animals and fail.

The first attempt at man:

Then was the creation and the formation. Of earth, of mud, they made [man's] flesh. But they saw that it was not good. It melted away, it was soft, did not move, had no strength, it fell down, it was limp, it could not move its head, its face fell to one side, its sight was blurred, it could not look behind. At first it spoke, but had no mind. Quickly it soaked in the water and could not stand.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=NQnJQR6LQuwC&lpg=PP1&ots=ALQTK0MinL&dq=popol%20vuh&pg=PA86#v=onepage&q&f=false

Here we have another attempt at man:

And instantly the figures were made of wood. They looked like men, talked like men, and populated the surface of the earth.

They existed and multiplied; they had daughters, they had sons, these wooden figures; but they did not have souls, nor minds, they did not remember their Creator, their Maker; they walked on all fours, aimlessly.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=NQnJQR6LQuwC&lpg=PP1&ots=ALQTK0MinL&dq=popol%20vuh&pg=PA89#v=onepage&q&f=false

A great flood (similar to Noah’s) destroys the wooden creatures.  It is said that the monkeys (primates) descend from these beings.

So was the ruin of the men who had been created and formed, the men made to be destroyed and annihilated; the mouths and faces of all of them were mangled.

And it is said that their descendants are the monkeys which now live in the forests; these are all that remain of them because their flesh was made only of wood by the Creator and the Maker.

And therefore the monkey looks like man, and is an example of a generation of men which were created and made but were only wooden figures.

http://www.meta-religion.com/World_Religions/Ancient_religions/Central_america/popol_vuh.htm#ixzz14x3rU0IG

So here we have textual evidence of a creationist-evolutionary tale found in the sacred works of the Maya.  We have strong narrative correspondence between the Bible and the Popol Vuh suggesting that the interposed narratives are preserved from the antecedent myths of both works. 

It is a perhaps bitter irony that in order to find textual evidence of Evolution in Biblical narratives, we must accept cultural evolution and migration of the early Israelites to Central America. 

TVO’s The Agenda ran a show about SlutWalk.  This is a march/protest dedicated to reclaiming the word ‘slut’ and thus preventing it from being used as an excuse for rape. 

The comment stems from a misstep made by Toronto Police at a York University at a Campus Safety Information Session.  An officer suggested that women not dress like ‘sluts’ in order to reduce their chances of being the victim of rape.

I was interested to learn if there were any studies regarding the incidence of rape and the manner of attire or provocative behaviour of the victims.  Indeed there are. 

A Federal Commission on Crime of Violence Study found that only 4.4% of all reported
rapes involved provocative behavior on the part of the victim. In murder cases 22%
involved such behavior (as simple as a glance).

                                          — http://www.usu.edu/saavi/pdf/myths_facts.pdf

—-

This is the subject of the documentary “Gasland”:

In short, “Gasland” is a documentary about landowners all over New York State being offered sums of money to allow mining companies to perform fracking on their properties.  Health and environmental issues result: duh.  Again, this is one of those technologies that just can’t be good for anything.  Go ahead and watch the trailer to see flaming water taps and a whole host of sick people, dirty water and lying politicians and executives.

Vermont had the good sense to ban the practice.  I hope Vermont’s wisdom spreads to the rest of the US States because they’re migrating further and further north in New York State coming closer and closer to my dear home, Toronto, Ontario.

She walks on a regular basis, she competes in swimming tournaments, she enters skating competitions, and she travels province-wide to compete in her activities of choice.

Betty Sutherland is an active person. However, what sets Betty a part from your typical athlete is not her physical shape nor her mental capacity, but, in fact, her age. Betty is 76 years old.

Almost a decade ago, Betty began walking with Etobicoke 55+ Sports & Games as a way to stay active and to socialize with people the same age and who have similar interests. In no time at all, Betty was competing province-wide for skating, walking, and swimming. “I got to go to St. Catharine’s for the Ontario Senior Games and the next year I went to Brockville for skating,” she says.

It began as an extracurricular activity for Betty, after reading about the Explorer’s Walking Group in a booklet for Etobicoke Seniors. She recalls, “I decided to do it because I love to walk and going with a group is a good idea.” In her walking group, Betty began Prediction Walking: a group of seniors walk three kilometers and predict how long it will take to finish. Betty explains, “It doesn’t matter how fast or slow you walk; whoever comes closest to their prediction is the winner.” After only just a couple of years with the walking group Betty won this challenge and was given the opportunity to compete at the Ontario Senior Games in St. Catharine’s. “I didn’t win anything that year, but it was fun just going.”

Betty Sutherland enjoying her walk at Humber Bay East Park. Photo by Barry Shainbaum

In the following years, Betty expanded her interests and explored both skating and swimming in addition to her walking group. She took well to skating and, after triumphing against her Etobicoke competitors, Betty again made it to the Ontario Senior Games, this time in Brockville, where she won a silver medal for skating. As exciting as the competitions are at these events, what Betty really enjoys is the social aspect of the OSG. She describes, “[The Ontario Senior Games] is a fun thing to do. We go on a bus with other seniors, there are banquets and shows and all kinds of things to do.”

For her age, Betty is a very active person; in fact, athleticism became more prevalent in her life as she aged. “I was always a healthy active person, but only recently have I entered races,” she says, continuing, “I consider myself lucky. I am happy I can do it.” Betty doesn’t consider herself a competitive person and actually describes the races as more of a pursuit to see if she can do it. She has yet to let herself down.

When told she is impressive she simply replies, “I am not impressive. I am lucky.”  I would disagree and argue quite the contrary! For many who age, being able to swim, skate, and walk on a regular basis just isn’t an option; and often those who can simply don’t know how to get involved. Athleticism and competition are things that most of us thrive at in our youth, and often gets tossed to the wayside as we age. Even at the age of 28, I tend to forget the simple pleasures of taking a brisk walk or the rush of competing in a race. Needless to say, after speaking with 76-year-old Betty Sutherland and her adventures in walking and competing, I feel a sense of pride for her — and a need to get out and get active!

Congratulations to you, Betty Sutherland; you truly are an amazing human being.

Action Items:

I recently attended the second in a series of lectures given by Jordan Klapman on the Jewish contribution to Tin Pan Alley. I regret missing the first in the series and hope to make it for the 3rd. Some notable points from this lecture:

1) It is easy to detect clear Klezmer influences in the music of the period. For example, Klapman played a recording of the Eddie Cantor classic “Lena From Palestina” which has clear origins in the Klezmer standard “Noch a Bisl” (A Little More). Other examples are “And the Angels Sing” recorded by Benny Goodman which owes its origins to “Der Shtiler Bulgar” (A Quiet Bulgar).

2) Prior to 1920 and the advent of records and radio, songs were sold as sheet music. People would purchase the songs and learn to perform them themselves. With the advent of records, sheet music sales declined markedly, and with the advent of radio, even more so.

3) Radio originally refused to pay artists for airing their works. They claimed they were transmitting ‘ether’ (an antiquated term for radio waves). It took ASCAP 7 years of legal proceedings to force radio to pay royalties to ASCAP members. This has strong parallels to file sharing technologies which claim innocence by the defence “we’re transmitting bits.”

4) With the decimation of the sheet music market, music was reduced to a pulp industry. The emphasis was on quantity over quality in the hopes that one song would meet with fame. The advent of radio further exacerbated this problem in that now audiences could tire of music much more rapidly than before. Thus composers were forced to produce more in order to keep themselves in the public eye.

My latest pet project www.simple2chat.com seeks to make the world of chatting, conferencing and blogging simple and accessible.

I currently have 4 messenger clients on my desktop. I have different collections of friends on each. If I want to conference them all in, it’s nearly impossible. I want to be able to talk to them all instantaneously and easily. I don’t want to have them all install software and exchange usernames, adding each other to friends lists well into the night.

I just want to chat. www.simple2chat.com seeks to accomplish this. Upon visiting the site, a conversation is set up for you automatically. All you need do is pass this link around to your friends and you can chat instantly.

Comparing the alternatives for this type of service we have:

Messenger programs: Yahoo!/MSN/Google/Skype.
Pro’s: They offer rich services. They have web interfaces but you can only access people on their respective networks.
Con’s: Need to install programs, register, add users and you can only conference people who are registered.

Net Meeting Software:
Pro’s: Rich functionality including the ability to share screens.
Con’s: Can be costly and requires installation and registration

Adobe Connect Now:
Pro’s: very rich, no login for your guests, ability to share screen.
Con’s: Needs the flash player plugin which may not be installed on a public computer. Requires a login for the meeting initiator (why? don’t we all have enough logins?!). Only supports THREE (?!) meeting participants in the free version.

www.simple2chat.com
Pro’s: No login, no software to install, no plugins, simple. Users can share images and screenshots using provided instructions.
Con’s: No video. (By the way, have you seen 12 people try to video conference? If 1 can be choppy 12 are definitely choppy.) Yes, video is great, but it doesn’t leave a transcript of the meeting so someone ends up typing the important points anyways.

Admittedly, this is my own site, so I may be biased. Don’t take my word for it then. Visit www.itssoeasytochat.com and try it out for yourself.

Growing up I often heard people remark that the “poor get poorer as the rich get richer.”  I was led to believe that this was an unfortunate side effect of a free market economy.  This flaw aside, the free market economy was said to be a much better approach than anything else that had come along.  I spent my time focused on ways of making laissez faire capitalism more compassionate.  We exist in a welfare state and I, living in Canada, live in a society which offers socialized medicine.  Both of these measures are great first steps in assuring the compassion of capitalism however, I was always frustrated knowing that the only true compassion of capitalism would come in allowing everyone to earn wealth.

As I continued to study the problem, imagine my shock and dismay when I learned that we do not live in a free market system.  We live in a central bank monetary system (ie, the Federal Reserve) which has an invisible, moreover, malevolent hand in conducting the nation’s monetary policy.  This may sound like a conspiracy theory however if it was, it’s an awfully dull one given that the chairman of the Federal Reserve openly admits this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x56MpWZh88s
http://broadband.thecomedynetwork.ca/comedy/?vid=19058

Through the Federal Reserve’s mucking with the money supply and the resulting inflation, those with savings saw their savings erode silently falling into the hands of the nations richest few.  In order to escape inflation, you must own debt free assets which index to inflation.  Only the richest few of us can accomplish this and thus evade the silent erosion of our savings into the hands of bankers and the financial elite.  Here are a few graphs showing the effects:

source : http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/03/09/the-best-inequality-graph/

source : http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Central banking (The Fed) is an age old scheme of mob rule over the money supply.

“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.”
– Mayer Amschel Rothschild

It has origins dating back to the temple days when Jesus drove out the money changers.  (The word ‘bank’ comes from the Latin ‘bench’ from which the temple money changers made their predatory exchanges.)  The only way to restore justice and equity is to restore the issuing power over money back to the people.  For more info, please see:

http://inflationtax.blogspot.com/

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

With the recent passing of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn I was reminded of a lecture by psychology professor Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto.  This lecture expounded the virtue of taking personal responsibility in dealing with our fears.  Peterson used a children’s book “There No Such Things As A Dragon” and the moral lessons therein to reveal how we all can be crippled by a metaphoric fear dragons and released only by facing them.

Peterson first deals with the common fears we all deal with such as fear of dying and losing those we love.  Then Peterson comes to dealing with fears and adversity imposed upon us by social forces such as tyranny and bureaucracy.  This is where he begins to discuss Solzhenitsyn. 

Solzhenitsyn is a survivor of the former Soviet Gulag where according to Solzhenitsyn’s account, approximately 60 million people died between the years of 1919 and 1959.  Solzhenitsyn started out life on the Russian front.  He was captured by the Germans where he was thrown in a special POW camp because Stalin in his neuroticism refused to sign the Geneva convention.  Conditions were so bad in these camps that other POW’s — who were not much better off themselves – threw packages of food over the fences in pity of the Soviet inmates.

With the end of the war, Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia expecting a hero’s welcome.  Much to his surprise, he and his comrades were thrown into the Gulag out of fears that they may have been contaminated by their exposure to Western culture.  Conditions in the gulag were intolerable.  Many of Solzhenitsyn’s fellow inmates ate a type of clay just to have their stomachs feel fuller.  Solzhenitsyn then asked a remarkable question under the circumstances:

“What did I do to get here?”  This is a remarkeable question because many of us would immediately look to the external conditions that brought about Solzhenitsyn’s plight.  There was the war, the Soviet Empire and any other host of external conditions that could be used to explain his current situation.  Solzhenitsyn instead chose to revisit, over the following 10 years, all the things he had done wrong in his life.  In Peterson’s words “he revisited anything that gave his conscience a pang”.

Out of this introspection, he wrote the Gulag Archipelago – a 3 volume 1900 page book – which he committed to memory as there was no pen and paper available to him in the gulag.  This work circulated for years in the underground before it was eventually published in 1975.  The Gulag Archipelago went on to be the greatest literary attack on the Soviet Empire.  Solzhenitsyn, under completely unreasonable circumstances, chooses to take personal responsibility for his plight.  As a result of this soul searching, he wrote a literary attack which in many real ways bested the former Soviet Empire.  Some may immediately be tempted to say: “well the world doesn’t work like that!”  Peterson retorts: “Do we really know the world works?”  Peterson equates injustice large and small to dragons that we must all face on a personal and societal level. 

In a related work, Peterson quotes Solzhenitsyn saying: “one man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny”.  Peterson further commented: ”I don’t think he meant that as a metaphor–or hyperbole.”

Peterson’s lecture can be found at:
http://www.tvo.org/podcasts/bi/audio/BIJordanPeterson031806.mp3
(The section about Solzhenitsyn begins at time index 44:00)

The Kindness Campaign is a social action project organized by Global Awakening In Action and Good News Toronto. This collaborative project seeks to spread more kindness at home, at work, and in the world.

The concept behind the campaign is simple, but powerful:

Each month we feature a suggested act of kindness to help readers consider ways to bring a bit of kindness to an unsuspecting soul. Of course, our monthly suggestion is just that­ — a suggestion. We encourage you to let your spirit soar with possibilities and then put those inspiring ideas into action through your spontaneous good deeds.

You are also invited to leave behind the Kindness Card, provided below. The card explains the campaign and encourages the recipient of your kind act to “pay it forward” in the form of another act of kindness to a stranger.

Kindness Activists are also invited to submit the story of their act of kindness for inclusion in Good News Toronto. If selected and printed, we send you a Good News Toronto t-shirt as a reminder of your good deed and participation in this social action project.

This month’s submission:

This month’s story, submitted by Gael Ross, is about ordinary people urgently doing everything in their power to rescue a lost pet.

This month’s suggestion:

Build a birdfeeder or buy a birdbath for the birds in your neighbourhood.

Kindness Card - click on image and print from your web browser

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.” – Edmund Burke

In the past few months we’ve witnessed remarkeable events in the market. First we have the Fed bail out of Bear Stearns. What wasn’t widely covered or discussed was that this was effectively a result of a run on a bank.

Modern banking practices partial reserve banking. That is to say that the bank relies on the fact that not every customer requires their funds in cash at any one time. As a result the bank invests your funds during the intervals where you don’t need the cash in your hands. Banks in the US are required to maintain only 10% reserves. A banker can then invest 90% of the banks funds to turn a profit. This is called banker’s reach.

A run on the bank occurs when customers or investors lose confidence in your banking facility and demand their cash back. If enough customers demand their cash, the bank exhausts its reserve and enters a liquidity crisis. This is exactly the fate that befell Bear Stearns. It is interesting to note that Bear Stearns was a financial institution which survived the Great Depression of the 30′s. Had the Fed not acted as it did to bail out Bear Stearns, we may well have been in a greater depression at this very moment.

Please don’t infer from the previous sentence that I agree with the Fed. I think they served to cure the disease by killing the patient. They’ve borrowed excessively from the taxpayers and the US currency to temporarily asuage the bleeding, but haven’t sutured the severed arteries. The Fed’s own actions of forever creating bubbles and taking hindsight corrective half-measures is the very cause of our current problems, not in any way a solution.

There is no doubt that we live in ‘interesting times’ intended in the confucian sense. Just this week we’ve witnessed a second run on the bank in as many months.  This time we’re witnessing a run on the food bank.  Reports are coming in of rationing at Costco stores of rice, flour and cooking oil.  We’re not talking about Costco stores in third world countries.  We’re talking about the continental United States.

What has happened is that large commercial bakeries and other such chains have panicked at the rapidly increasing price of these staples and snapped up local supply.  Yes, eventually this will all work itself out, but the question is, why is this happening in the first place.  There are a few answers:

• The price of oil.  The price of oil affects the food supply in two ways. First it increases the shipping costs which are passed on to the consumer.  Next, it creates a surplus of money in the Middle East which then funnels its way back into the US economy as speculation.  Hedge funds use this money to invest in grain futures which artificially drives up their price.
• Biofuels.  Biofuels are a useless ‘environmentally friendly’ measure which were put in place by politicians to placate the populace.  Corn and other staples are diverted to be converted into biofuels taking food out of the food supply and putting it into our gas tanks.  There has been worldwide rioting especially in regions where food constitutes a large percentage of the general publics’ expenditure.
• Loss of farmland.  Farmland is being lost to urban sprawl and to environmental measures whereby farmers are being subsidized not to plant crops.  Sure environmentalism is great, but it turns out that humans are animals too, and our suffering should figure into environmental equations.
• Malthus.  Malthus famously argued that populations grow geometrically (2,4,8,16, …) while the food supply grows arithmetically (1,2,3,4,5,..) .  We live in a world of approximately 6 billion which is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050.  Further the billions of China and India are no longer content to eat simple rice and vegetables but also want cars, beef and the more excessive lifestyle of their North American Counterparts.  As a result, we can expect more shortages of gas and food until we learn to live within our means.

I started a regime of recording myself as I treat the condition with herbal remedies because nothing my mainstream doctors have given me seems to work.

Here I take a stab at E Lucevan le Stelle.  By ‘stab’ I likely mean a mortal blow to the beloved piece.  I hope my sinuses improve before I desecrate all music.

E Lucevan le Stelle (Tosca, Puccini) – Martin C. Winer

Ahmadinejad wearing his trademark white jacket and pointing to the Farsi phrase Ma Mitavanim (We Can) on a blackboard.

Canadian Link:  http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart/full-episodes/#clip185688

US Link: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=231561&title=reza-aslan

Reza Aslan was interviewed on the Daily Show on June 24, 2009 lauding the response of Barack Obama during the recent and ongoing revolution in Iran.  Aslan notes strong parallels to ’79 noting that this revolution is likewise a battle for the future of Iran.  Starting at time index 4:48, Aslan applauds Obama’s response:  “Thank you God for President Barack Obama” says Aslan.

“Obama played this perfectly.  During his campaign Iran never left his mouth.  This worked to the disadvantage of Ahmadinejad’s because he couldn’t use his ‘America is going to attack any minute now’ rhetoric.”

Aslan notes that Ahmadinejad’s campaign slogan was “Ma Mitavanim” which is Persian for “Yes we can”.

Responding to opposition calls to make stronger statements or take stronger actions in regards to Iran Aslan warns:

“The US has a long sordid history of meddling in Iranian affairs. … If you want to pu and end to this movement, this revolution tomorrow, let’s listen to Bill Bennett, let’s listen to John McCain.”

Aslan recommends that the US continue its current approach.  “The best thing that we can do is shut up.”  He goes on to say that “Obama has changed the equation in that region.  He is taking the long view on issues, looking ahead 10 years from now.”

Aslan is certain that Iran will emerge a different country from what it is now, but he is concerned as to what form of change will come.  “Iran is on a precipice between North Korea and China; with isolation and militarization on one hand and a preservation of the oligarchies while opening to commerce and contact on the other.”

When asked what US citizens can do to help the revolution, he suggests encouraging and pressuring the EU and UN to act who do have influence in the region.  As for the US, he contends “you have to have a relationship with someone in order to punish them more.  … We have no influence there.  … We can’t punish them any more.  What are we going to do sanction them more?”

—

Reza Aslan’s most recent book is “How to Win a Cosmic War”:
http://www.rezaaslan.com/cosmicwar.html

Q: I’m a personal trainer. My client “Henry” is not making progress and he can only afford to train with me once a week. He’s at the gym five days a week but only walks on the track. He has Sleep Apnea, must use a mask to sleep, and his eating habits are poor.  I’m so frustrated that he’s not making progress. And he’s making me look bad to my other clients and colleagues.

A:  Ahhh. The frustrations of a coach, don’t I know them well. In addition to making you look bad to others, the greater problem is that he’s making you feel unsuccessful. Change is the only constant we have and this chap doesn’t want to change. He’s stuck. Your challenge is to continue to provide a top-quality training program, direct him to a nutritionist, and be supportive. You also need to adjust your mindset and accept the fact that he truly might be unable to really progress. He is in control of his health and physical fitness goals — or lack of them. So be fair to yourself and keep your frustration checked. Having realistic expectations of what Henry will accomplish will free up your head and give you extra energy to devote to yourself and your other clients. The proverb, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink,” certainly applies.

Q: One of my staff had a baby who was in and out of hospital for several months. I had no idea until one of my spies (my executive assistant who keeps her ear to the ground) told me. I immediately offered him flexible work hours. He told me he was a private man and that’s why he hadn’t asked for help. He’s also not Canadian-born and in his culture men do not attend doctor appointments with their wives.

A: Not only did you automatically accommodate your employee’s need for flexible work hours without him requesting help but you are one culture-savvy boss. In multicultural Canada a smart boss makes the time to learn about the cultural backgrounds of his or her staff and parlays this to their works styles, habits, attitudes, and needs for community and autonomy. Bravo. Keep up the great work.

Q: I was dismissed for “personality issues.” They told me nothing verbally or in writing. What should I do?

A:  If you are looking to possible “Wrongful Dismissal,” you need to contact an employment lawyer to discuss how to best retrieve the data from your previous employer. This is the first step: to determine what, in your employer’s eyes, you did wrong.  “Personality Issues” could mean anything from you don’t get along with your boss and colleagues and you impede interdepartmental workflow to poor communication and inappropriate behaviours such as bullying, sarcasm, showing disrespect for your co-workers, interacting with anger, and inciting problems rather than solving them. The list is vast, so first narrow down why you got fired. Your lawyer will then guide you on next steps. Good luck.