merisarkar news service
New Delhi, November 27, 2009

Defence Minister AK Antony has said that China’s military nexus with Pakistan is a cause of concern for the country and we will have to be vigilant at all times. He was speaking at a function at prestigious defence institute IDSA in New Delhi on Friday.

He said, “India has to carry out continuous appraisal of Chinese military capabilities and shape its responses accordingly.”

The Defence Minister said India is hopeful that China would reciprocate to its initiatives aimed at mutual prosperity and understanding. Mr. Antony said India wants to develop a friendly and cordial relationship with its neighbours including China.

The Defence minister said Pakistan is not taking credible steps to put an end to terror groups operating from its soil. Pointing out that the terror infrastructure in Pakistan remains intact and is actually thriving,

Defence Minister AK Antony said India needs to closely monitor the developments in that country. He said Pakistan is yet to demonstrate any will to take speedy action against terrorists and international criminals.

Source: http://www.merisarkar.com

Antony Hagerty is nou niet iemand waarvan je zou verwachten dat hij zou meewerken aan een reclamecampagne . Toch heeft hij op verzoek van het Italiaanse koffiemerk Lavazza, de Puccini aria “Nessun Dorma” opgenomen met het Roma Sienfonette Orchestra. Grappig detail is dat Nessun Dorma betekent: Niemand zal slapen, een toepasselijk mantra voor een koffiefabrikant.
Op de website kan je het nummer gratis downloaden (eerst even regsiteren)

She got an A on this one.  For her Western Culture class. The question was whether he was overall  a hero or villain.

Augustus and Leadership

       From the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, fought to end the civil war that resulted from Julius Caesar’s death. In 31 BC Augustus defeated Marc Antony leaving him the sole ruler of Rome and it’s provinces. From this point forward Augustus sought to restore order and consolidate power. Under the circumstances of the times in which he lived Augustus did many great things as he created his position of Emperor and brought the provinces under his direct control. His achievements were many and it can be concluded that his mastery of Rome made him a hero to the Roman people.

          Upon Julius Caesar’s murder Rome fell into civil war. Three factions arose to take control. The first was a faction loyal to Brutus and Cassius- Julius Caesar’s murderers. A second was loyal Marc Antony, an associate of Julius Caesar. The third was loyal to Octavian, later to be known as Augustus, who was Julius Caesar’s nephew and adopted son. At first Marc Antony and Augustus joined forces and defeated the forces of Brutus and Cassius. Marc Antony and Augustus then fought each other, with Augustus being victorious and Marc Antony committing suicide. In 31 BC Augustus found himself facing the same problems that Julius Caesar had faced many years earlier.

          Augustus now needed to provide Rome a stable form of government. The Senate had always been the dominant political body in the Roman republic. So, Augustus chose to first work through the Senate while he re-established the bureaucracy needed to effectively administer the Empire. It was the Senate that re-named him from Octavian to Augustus. From this point on Augustus began the process of consolidating power by assuming the responsibilities of many previously separate offices. Some of these powers were given to him by the Senate, such as princeps (first citizen) others, such as pontifex maximus (supreme priest) he gave himself. While Augustus left the Senate as an important part of the political system in Rome itself, in the provinces Augustus took direct control. The slow methodical assumption of power led him to the role of Emperor.

          Augustus accomplished many good deeds and completed many good projects during his reign. In addition to maintaining peace in the Empire and some of its provinces such as Gaul and Spain he extended the frontiers of many of the provinces as well. “I restored peace to the Gallic and Spanish provinces and likewise to Germany, that is, to the entire region bounded by the Ocean form Gades to the mouth of the Elbe River. I caused peace to be restored in the Alps, from the region nearest to the Adriatic Sea as far as the Tuscan Sea, without undeservedly making war against people.”(pg 58 DWP) Augustus at times of need was generous enough to give his own money and other resources to the Empire to help maintain financial stability. “Four times I came to the assistance of the treasury with my own money, transferring to those in charge of the treasury 150,000,000 sesterces… I transferred out of my own patrimony 170,000,000 sesterces to the soldiers’ bonus fund… whenever the provincial taxes fell short, in the case sometimes of 100,000 persons and sometimes of many more I made up their tribute in grain and in money from my own grain stores and my own patrimony…”(pg 56-57 DWP). Augustus also built and repaired many important building and architectural projects. “I repaired the Capitol and the theater of Pompey with enormous expenditures on both works… I repaired the conduits of the aqueducts which were falling into ruin…I doubled the capacity of the aqueduct called Marcia  by admitting a new spring into its conduit…I reconstructed the Flaminian Way from the city as far as Ariminum, and also all the bridges…”(pg 57 DWP)  Augustus also sponsored many gladiatorial shows. These shows were important social gatherings and helped Romans establish their own identity. “ I gave gladiatorial show three times in my own name, and five times in the names of my sons or grandsons; at these shows 10,000 fought… Twice I presented…an exhibition of athletes invited from all parts of the world… Twenty-six times I provided for the people… hunting spectacles of African wild beasts in the circus of in the Forum or in the amphitheatres…” (pg 57 DWP) Perhaps most importantly Augustus maintained peace in Rome through his entire reign. “…while Augustus in the vigorous years of his life maintained his power that of his family and peace.”(pg 55 DWP)

          In our modern democratic world the word Emperor is very negative. However, many rulers, kings, emperors, czars accomplished great things during their rule that advanced their people and their civilization. Augustus was certainly an Emperor but he was one of those emperors who was worthy of some admiration. He created peace and prosperity without the brutality that was typical of the times in which he lived.

Z’ont pas l’air sympa ???

Nessun Dorma – Antony & the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra

I Am The President Of Your Fan Club (And Last Night I Followed You Home) – Cancel The Astronauts

In The Morning Before Work – Owen

She Comes To Me – Adam Arcuragi

I’ve Been Asleep For A Long, Long Time – Hey Rosetta!

Goods (All In Your Head) – Mates Of State

A Time To Be So Small – Interpol

Aisle 13 – Built To Spill

Image from ffffound.com

I wonder if Devendra Banhart is just too damn happy to make another record to match the brilliance of  2004’s ‘Rejoicing In The Hands …..’ , an album which IMHO still stands  as his masterpiece.

Banhart has always been the personification of a red rag for bullish hippy bashers.  Consequently, the backlash against his freaky brand of folk has been substantial. Added to this are the insidious snipes over his high-profile dalliance with Natalie Portman and ,now, comes his switch from the hallowed Indie ranks of XL Recordings to the major label Reprise Records of  Warners Music Group (boo! hiss!).

Verily, not the actions of a back to basics treehugger.

But, if you look at the names of those who big up the man, dubbing him as the villainous intruder of the New Weird America community becomes less convincing. How can you truly rank someone as a sell out and fraud who can cite among his admirers Beck, Ben Chasny, Antony (Hegarty), Sir Richard Bishop,  Jack Rose , Vashti Bunyan, Arthur Magazine etc etc.?

Sure, his dippy interviews and cross dressing and adverts for cheese put a strain on his credibility, but in spite of this I’ve always regarded him as a serious artist with a passion for making music that matters.

I confess, however, that I dearly wish he would make a record that is darker and more introspective. I truly believe he is capable of making a downbeat classic along the lines of  Nick Drake’s ‘Pink Moon’, Beck’s  ’Sea Change’ or Bonny Billy’s ‘I See A Darkness’ . Admittedly, this might seem a real long shot, but I’d lay odds that DB has some dark songs hidden away in the closet along with his old kaftans.  I had hopes that his breakup with Portman might have given the impetus for some emotive soul-searching but judging by the serene vibes of  his new album – What Will We Be – it seems that his mates have rallied to see him through any potential personal crisis. So, he’s still chirpy enough to continue with the Naturalismo grooves and reggae meets samba rhythms.

In fairness, the record does feel like a more personal, sorted out work than the disjointed and largely disappointing ‘Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon’. The co-production with Paul Butler of Isle of Wight’s ‘The Bees’ seems have been a grounding influence although it still has a few ‘what is this dude on’ moments, notably ‘Chin Chin & Muck Muck’ where he takes on the persona of an old woman on Angelika where the track abruptly morphs from a gentle ballad to a tacky slab of Spanish bubblegum.

But there are more than enough moments to allay fears that he has sold his soul to the big bad major. The two ‘Songs for B’ (‘First’+ ‘Last’) are very beautiful and neither the tribute to glam-rock icons Roxy Music nor the riffy psych-out of ‘Rats’ are as bad as they threaten to be on paper. The laid back style of the second half of the record is a bit too much on the chilled side for my liking but at the same time these are tunes that warm the heart and calm the nerves.

Pitchfork’s dismissal aside, most of the reviews I’ve read so far rate the album as his most accessible and sorted out record to date. I wouldn’t argue with this assessment although these are not compliments in my book.  Fucked up and impenetrable would please me more but, then again, I realise my tastes rarely coincide with those of the lumpen masses.

Probably the biggest insult you could level at the record is that , despite himself, Devendra has gone and produced an album the Warner executives will be pleased with. It may even be his long-awaited (and deserved) breakthrough album. And if that doesn’t cause him to crack up, nothing will!

Et  voilà ! Aujourd’hui, c’est le grand jour : je sors de la maternité. Un coucou à ma première copine Océane et hop ! direction Blanzat (avec une arrêt à Aubière), pour découvrir ma nouvelle maison. Ouhaaaa !

Beaucoup de visites pour mon premier week-end : les papys Jacky et Robert, les mamies Bernadette et Françoise, les tontons et tatas… Je suis une star !

R: Y no porque se haya engordado unos 150 kilos. No. Más bien porque Antony Hegarty ha hecho realidad por fin uno de sus sueños más húmedos… y, de paso, uno de los nuestros. Que sí, que el amigo de los Johnsons por fin se ha decidido a cantar ópera pura y dura, que es algo que todos sabíamos que le pegaba más que los pelucones y el maquillaje a granel. Los culpables, en esta ocasión, han debido ser los chicos del departamento de “haz realidad el sueño de un niño” de Lavazza, que han proporcionado todos los medios posibles para que Antony ponga voz a Nessun Dorma, conocidísima aria perteneciente a la ópera Turandot de Puccini. Todo orquestado por The Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra. ¿Alguien era capaz de pedir algo más? Total, que para poder escuchar la versión del hombre empeñado en parecerse a una señora mayor, lo único que tienes que hacer es entrar en la web de Lavazza, registrarte y decidir si quieres escucharla o descargarla (que, por cierto, en la versión de descarga viene con una portada extrañísima pero que tiene su punto). También puedes ver el video que ponemos a continuación, pero entonces tendrás que soportar tres minutos de la visión de una foto particularmente inquietante. Mi consejo al departamento de “está bien hacer realidad los sueños de los niños pero nosotros estamos aquí para ganar dinero” de Lavazza es el siguiente: aprended del ejemplo de Radiohead y dad la posiblidad a la gente de pagar lo que crea que vale la canción. Con lo recaudado, por favor, grabad el Turandot entero con la voz de Antony. Los niños del mundo entero (conmigo y los fabricantes de pelucas incluídos) os lo agradeceremos.

Antony Hegarty har teamet op med kaffefirmaet Lavazza og et symfoniorkester og har indspillet nummeret “Nessun Dorma”. Du kan lytte til nummeret her. Også selvom du ikke kan lide (deres) kaffe…

his visuals are as arresting as his music. all i can listen to lately.

antonyandthejohnsons.com

If this is your first time to visit the blog, I am a Christian.  I attend almost exclusively Church of Christ congregations.  We are a group that get our roots from a couple of guys who lived in the 1800s who had a hope to create a Bible Only movement that would unite all denominations once again.  Instead, it just created one more.  But, we have our roots in greater Protestantism.  A brief and vague history.

I will say that I am a supporter of the Protestant Reformation.  I agree with Martin Luther that many church practices in his time were not what Jesus would have seen his church do.  I agree.

One of the sad things that came out of the Reformation, and has trickled down to today, has been the push away of ALL things Catholic and extra-biblical traditions.  This would include, in my mind, the Saints.

I love the saints.  Now, I do not worship them as some would suggest Catholics do.  But I love their stories and I love their example.  But, I spent 18 years of my life in a small town with no Catholic church, as well as four years in a religious college associated with the church of Christ, and it wasn’t until I took a small class called Church History that I learned anything about the saints.  I feel that this is a shame.

The saints are excellent pillars of teaching on faith.  Many of them began profound movements that are still relevant today:

Saint Antony feeling that Christians were becoming too attached and comfortable in their new empire began the first monastic community in Egypt.  Christian Monastic Communities are still doing great things today in the United States and Abroad.

Saint Francis started a group of monks who similarly shook off worldly possessions in order to have nothing tying them down from ministering and preaching to anyone who had not heard the gospel.  This included crossing the straights of Gibraltar to go to Morocco and minister to Muslims.

Eventually Franciscans started calling the church out on some of the things it was doing.  To get back at them, the church tried to make them a little more worldly by forcing them to own land.

Saint Polycarp was an old man who had been a Christian for 86 years before being brought before a council and asked to save himself by denying Christ.  He said, “86 years I have been with my Lord. How can I blaspheme him now? Bring forth what thou will.”  Which is just a really cool way of saying, “Jesus has got my back.  What do you have?  Bring it on.”  He was burned alive.

These are just three.  The calendar is full of holidays for great men and women knows as saints in the Catholic and Eastern traditions.

The reason all this comes up is because of a book that I keep putting down and restarting called The Lure of The Saints by Jon M. Sweeny which is a good read about ignored saints in a Protestant world as well as how these characters can still speak to us today.  I encourage all to check it out.

Op dinsdag 13 Oktober 2009 zag ik Pixies in de HMH. Nu zou ik 300 woorden kunnen besteden aan wat in één zin gezegd kan worden, namelijk dat het precies was zoals ik verwacht had: strak gespeeld maar voorspelbaar. Gelukkig schrijf ik alleen maar voor mezelf en kan ik dus zo creatief zijn als ik wil bij het schrijven, maar misschien ook wel bij het beleven van een concert?

Een beleven dat al weken van tevoren begon, Doolittle-tour dus Doolittle luisteren, dromen en denken. Hey! Getroffen worden door het gemak waarmee Black datgene krijst wat zo moeilijk onder woorden te brengen is. Een verband zien met My Body is a Cage van Arcade Fire. Dat luisteren. Were chained. My mind holds the key. Beseffen dat Surfer Rosa toch ook wel mooi is en spijt voelen dat ze waarschijnlijk Cactus niet zullen spelen. Cactus draaien en nog een keer en nog een keer. Bedenken, dat je waarschijnlijk vol zou schieten als ze Cactus zouden spelen, net als bij Antony in Carré vanaf het moment dat hij zijn mond open deed, Antony luisteren. I whisper the secret in the ground. Were chained.

Dan het concert, dat ik als ik objectief zou kijken mogelijk saai gevonden zou hebben. Maar nee, voor mij was het er wel: pixiedust! Waar dat dan in zat? Misschien wel in het zeker weten dat er PATS tranen zouden zijn bij Hey! In het tegen beter weten in hartstochtelijk hopen op Cactus. Maar waarschijnlijk omdat ik heel even, een fractie van een seconde, glashelder voor de geest had hoe het zou moeten zijn, hoe ik het zou moeten verwoorden (LA-LA-LOVE-YOU).

Jeff Samuel, 47, Penpedairheol

… but there’s a serious side to it too.

“Jeff Makes No Bones About It”, yells the headline about a bone marrow donor in today’s South Wales Echo. As journalism students we’re being yelled at too – to come up with an inhuman number of puns. In a story about a minister abusing goats, our tutor paced up and down the room impatiently groaning, “Come on! He’s abusing his flock! It’s bloody obvious!”

But geting back to the article itself – well, I have an interest in this story. It’s about 47-year-old Jeff Samuel, who has been selected by the Welsh Bone Marrow Donor Registry to donate marrow, in what is quite a rare and intense process, to a 59-year-old leukaemia sufferer in the US. In the most common donation method, the doctors stick a very wide needle (under anaesthetic) into the base of your spine. You get some mid-level bruising and need about a week off work. The newspaper is praising him as a local hero – which to one person, he certainly will be.

I’m interested because a couple of years ago I joined a register myself. The Antony Nolan Bone Marrow Register, containing some 12 million people worldwide, helps match up people in need of a transplant and those healthy enough to give one. The chance of a good match is incredibly small, and so currently the chance of being picked is about 1%. Though my mum still thinks I’m mental.

So, one day I may get the call. The Antony Nolan Trust is a charity, so they wouldn’t stop informing me while they were taking my blood just how expensive it was just for me to join (around £70). And yet they also egged me on about how, being healthy and 20, I was the best value for money they could have found. They really did sing my praises. (For this reason, to conserve funds they don’t take applicants over 40, sorry – the age is 45 for the Welsh registry).

Now, I can give and am perfect for bone marrow, but not blood. Why is this? You see a lot more ads for the blood service than you ever will for bone marrow donation, and yet they have an irrational blanket ban on gay men that defies much logic (that article by Peter Tatchell is incredibly belligerent/explicit but does hit the point) and general common sense.

It defies logic, but what about a feeling of trust, too? When the Antony Nolan man took me aside and I asked if there was a problem, he paused, and said: “Well, make the decision yourself. If you lead a risky lifestyle, don’t sign up. But if you think it’s okay, then do it”. Interesting – and nothing like the form you have to fill out for blood donation, which doesn’t seem in my mind to match up with an organisation focused so much on giving blood no matter who you are, what your background, etc. (see below).

Maybe the blood service could actually take into their legislature a proper lesson from both the “let’s be a hero” way in which the Antony Nolan trust operates – and the “let’s be a hero” way in which the rest of the world, including the Echo, sees it; and stop banning massive groups of people who’ve had safe sex from helping out “their fellow man”, despite their own advertising practices?

And now, a break from our regularly scheduled programing for a story from my past. Enjoy.

It was a Saturday and my best friend Antony Marchiando and I, both currently in the sixth grade, were bored. We took our scooters and rode into what passes for a downtown in little Carpinteria. Once there, we soon discovered that the rear of the local Albertsons grocery store was a cool place to hang out. There was a small parking lot directly off the main road with a sloped alleyway leading off of it and running behind the store.

Antony and I took to waiting for cars to drive down the alley and then fleeing from them on our scooters. It was great fun, and the drivers seemed happy to play along for the most part. After we had been doing this for probably half an hour, a bread truck pulled up to the back of the store. We quickly went over to it, and asked for some bread. To our surprise, the driver actually gave us each two big loaves of bread.

Well, you may be wondering what two kids who weren’t starving to death wanted with loaves of bread, but we had a plan. We quickly ran back to the parking lot and started throwing out chunks of bread into the middle. Almost instantly, a large group of seagulls materialized and began greedily devouring the bread. As we continued, more seagulls appeared and soon we had gigantic hoard of them.

Then, I had an idea. “Lets lead them somewhere,” I proposed. “Like to the middle school,” I added, knowing that Antony had a strange affinity for the school which we would be attending next year. He agreed, and we began walking along the sidewalk towards the middle school, which was about a block away. We probably looked something like Hansel and Gretel, although the bread we threw down disappeared in under three seconds, courtesy of the seagull hoard.

As we progressed onto the sidewalk we ran into a hitch in our plan. The amount of seagulls which we had vying for our bread chunks far surpassed the capacity of the sidewalk as well as that of the bike land beside. Soon seagulls
began landing in the street en mass, blocking traffic. As cars stopped to avoid hitting the seagulls in the road, more would land on the now unmoving vehicles. Despite furious honking the cars were unable to get the seagulls to budge, fixated as they were on the prospect of a free meal.

Antony and I quickly saw that our plan was not going to work, and lead the seagulls back into the parking lot. However, we still ended up blocking traffic for a good two minutes at least, and I’m sure that many of the drivers involved were going to need car washes. We thought that with the seagulls now gone, everyone would just go on their merry way, and for the most part they did.

However, a pedestrian who had witnessed the events, walked over to us, and without preamble started chewing us out. He told us that he was an off duty fireman. Now last time I checked, even an on duty fireman doesn’t have any real authority in matters such as these, but he didn’t seem to know this, and proceeded to give us a stern, kinda yelly, talking to.

Eventually, though, he went away, and we proceeded to use up the rest of our bread. It was an amusing day.

poor positive negativity, i’ve been ignoring you a bit. since the start of my new job description and the work blog that comes with it, i have been working a lot more. also i’ve been trying to eek out the last bit of summer fun with outside activities, t:ba events, movies and general socializing.

i’m well into the ‘c’s of my a-z project, today i listened to eight different versions of “crazy in love”. most by antony & the johnsons, some by beyonce. they are both equally great and i could have listened to many more versions easily.

beyonce

antony & the johnsons.

Now in its 14th year, age cannot wither Shakespeare in the Park, nor custom stale her infinite variety. This year, the production tackles the sexy ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. Like Las Vegas, Shakespeare’s legacy is past the size of dreaming, making his plays the perfect foil to the radiant city. Citizens flood this free event in a wash of pricey wine and blocks of cheese, so while the play is most certainly the thing, engaging theatre takes place both on and off the stage. Arrive an hour early to secure your spot and enjoy a Green Show of madrigal singers, jugglers and other Renaissance Faire festivities.