There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time. - Malcom X

I guess the kid in me is coming out today. I saw this on CNN and I had to post it. Shout out to the Muppet Babies. Miss Piggy and Kermit and Gonzo. All of them gave me a great childhood. I used to watch the tv show, the movies, you name it I was watching it. I even had a little Kermit back in the day, he had a lumberjack vest on but I’m not sure what happened to him. I had him for years, the vest had been gone but now he’s gone too. Sad, just sad. Anyway shout out to the Smithsonian for celebrating the work of Jim Henson, Long Live the Muppets. Check below, I’ve included a clip of their great show!

Bert and Ernie are paying a special visit to the city that helped give birth to the “Sesame Street” gang.

Kermit the Frog will be part of an exhibit, “Jim Henson’s Fantastic World,” at the Smithsonian Institution.

But don’t expect to see the popular puppets strolling around Washington. Their fame and age (they’re sensitive to light) make too much exposure a security risk. Instead, they will be making their home, at least temporarily, in the underground International Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution as part of the exhibit “Jim Henson’s Fantastic World.”

Visitors to the show, which opens Saturday and continues through Oct. 5, will find the Muppets under special lighting, behind glass and closely guarded.

“We consider every single thing in here to be precious,” said project director Deborah Macanic. Technically speaking, they’re all antiques.

It’s a homecoming for Muppets such as Kermit, the piano-playing dog Rowlf and others that first achieved stardom on Washington-area television shows and commercials — long before the success of “The Muppet Show” and “Sesame Street.” Muppets creator Jim Henson grew up in nearby Hyattsville, Maryland, and attended the University of Maryland, where his creative approach began to take shape.

“We’re showing how he went from drawing to a cartoon to a puppet to a moving image,” Macanic said, explaining the exhibit’s themes of visual thinking, storytelling and character development.

Through more than 100 original drawings, cartoons and story boards and about 14 famous Muppets, the exhibit traces Henson’s career as a puppeteer and filmmaker until his death in 1990.

Henson got his television start in 1954, creating a TV show, “Sam and Friends,” for Washington’s NBC station while still in college. Kermit the Frog’s character began developing from this show and later became a superstar.

The exhibit features one of the earliest sketches of Kermit, and a 1970s version of the puppet sits front and center to greet visitors near the entrance of the International Gallery, which is part of the Smithsonian’s Ripley Center.

Kermit was originally conceived as a more abstract reptile character with less defined features. The original puppet was made in 1955 from an old turquoise coat with eyes made from a pingpong ball. Kermit continued to evolve from there to a frog in the 1960s.

“Then Kermit just kind of took over and became the news (reporter) guy with the hat and the trench coat and all that he was by the time he got to Sesame Street,” Macanic said.

The skinny, green frog became the most enduring Muppet character, in part because Jim Henson considered Kermit to be his alter-ego.

Henson’s personality shines through other characters as well, such as the furry, hippie Mahna Mahna who sings scat to a jazz song with two backup singers called the Snowths. The skit debuted in 1969 on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” with Henson performing the gruff voice of Mahna Mahna.

A few days before the exhibit’s opening, the three singers emerged from a wooden storage crate — all in need of a little primping. Josette Cole and Viki Possoff, Smithsonian exhibit registrars, carefully fluffed the pink Snowth puppets and twisted an arm to match a dance pose from a photograph.

“There’s a whole technique to it,” Cole said. “You use a dog brush, for one, and you don’t pull it through the hair because you’ll pull it off. You sort of have to pat it in place.”

Bert and Ernie were unpacked after the Snowths, apparently needing some extra rest after their last public appearance in June in Louisiana.

Museum workers are becoming experts in Muppet care as the exhibit makes a three-year tour. After the show in Washington, the Muppets will travel to Atlanta, Georgia; Orlando, Florida and five other cities through early 2011. The Smithsonian’s experts escort their Muppet treasures by tractor-trailer, tending to them at each stop.

The exhibit anchors a Muppet-themed summer of events at the Smithsonian and elsewhere in the Washington area. Through much of July and August, the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland, will host the film series “Muppets, Music and Magic: Jim Henson’s Legacy” as a tribute to Henson’s work. There will also be programs on puppetry and free Podcast tours.

The only thing missing from the Muppet festival may be the elegant Miss Piggy, who aggressively flirted with Kermit. Miss Piggy will show up in film only, but her puppet isn’t available. Apparently, the materials used to create Miss Piggy weren’t as sturdy for travel as Kermit’s, said Karen Falk, an archivist with The Jim Henson Co. who curated the exhibit.

“As you might expect,” said Falk, “she’s more sensitive.”

Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc-4KFxSD4Q

Very interesting read about Dictatorships in Africa and their relationship to the United States!

Wednesday, 09 July 2008
African Dictatorships and Double-Standards
Stephen Zunes

This article originally appeared in Foreign Policy In Focus

“U.S. credibility as a defender of human rights and free elections is seriously compromised.”

The Bush administration has justifiably criticized the Zimbabwean regime of liberator-turned-dictator Robert Mugabe. It has joined a unanimous UN Security Council resolution condemning the campaign of violence unleashed upon pro-democracy activists and calling for increased diplomatic sanctions in the face of yet another sham election. In addition, both the House and the Senate have passed strongly worded resolutions of solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe in support of their struggle for freedom and democracy.

However, neither the Republican administration nor the Democratic-controlled Congress is sincerely concerned about human rights and democratic elections as a matter of principle. Rather, they are more likely acting out of political expediency. Despite claims of support for the advancement of democracy, the United States continues to support other African dictatorships that are as bad as or even worse than that of Zimbabwe.

Indeed, the United States currently provides economic aid and security assistance to such repressive African regimes as Swaziland, Congo, Cameroun, Togo, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Gabon, Egypt, and Tunisia. None of these countries holds free elections, and all have severely suppressed their political opposition.

The Worst Abuser

Among the worst of these African tyrannies has been the regime of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. Obiang has been in power even longer than the 28-year reign of Mugabe and, according to a recent article in the British newspaper The Independent, makes the Zimbabwean dictator “seem stable and benign” by comparison. Obiang originally seized power in a 1979 coup by murdering his uncle, who had ruled the country since its independence from Spain in 1968. Under his rule, Equatorial Guinea nominally allowed the existence of opposition parties as a condition of receiving foreign aid in the early 1990s. But the four leading candidates withdrew from the last presidential election in December 2002 in protest of irregularities in the voting process and violence against their supporters. In that election, Obiang officially received more than 97% of the vote (down from 99.5% in the previous election.)

Though the U.S. State Department acknowledged that the election was “marred by extensive fraud and intimidation,” the Congress and the administration devoted none of the vehement condemnation that was so evident after the recent, similarly marred election process in Zimbabwe.

One major reason for the difference in response is oil. The development of vast oil reserves over the past decade has made Equatorial Guinea one of the wealthiest countries in Africa in terms of per capita gross domestic product. Virtually all of the oil revenues, however, goes to Obiang and his cronies. The dictator himself is worth an estimated $1 billion, making him the wealthiest leader in Africa; his real estate holdings include two mansions in Maryland just outside of Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the country’s population lives on only a few dollars a day, and nearly half of all children under five are malnourished. The country’s major towns and cities lack basic sanitation and potable water while conditions in the countryside are even worse.

“The development of vast oil reserves over the past decade has made Equatorial Guinea one of the wealthiest countries in Africa in terms of per capita gross domestic product.”

During his most recent visit to Washington in 2006, Obiang was warmly received by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who praised the dictator as “a good friend” of the United States. Not once during their joint appearance did she mention the words “human rights” or “democracy.” At the same press conference, Obiang praised his regime’s “extremely good relations with the United States” and his expectation that “this relationship will continue to grow in friendship and cooperation.” None of the assembled reporters raised any questions about the regime’s notorious human rights record or its lack of democracy, instead using the opportunity to ask Secretary Rice questions about the alleged threat from Iran.

In 2002, the dictator met with President George W. Bush in New York to discuss military and energy security issues. He followed up in 2004 with meetings with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham.

Cozy Relations

Equatorial Guinea receives U.S. government funding and training through the International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). In addition, the private U.S. firm Military Professional Resources Incorporated - founded by former senior Pentagon officials who cite the regime’s friendliness to U.S. strategic and economic interests - plays a key role in the country’s internal security apparatus. Furthermore, as a result of Obiang’s understandable lack of trust in his own people, soldiers from Morocco - one of America’s closest African allies - have served for decades in a number of important security functions, including the role of presidential guards.

Maintaining close ties with such a notorious ruler has led even conservative Republicans like Frank Ruddy, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to Equatorial Guinea in the mid-1980s, to denounce the Bush administration for being “big cheerleaders for the government - and it’s an awful government.”

“U.S. oil companies paid hundreds of millions of dollars destined to state treasuries directly into the dictator’s private bank accounts.”

Though the Chinese have also recently begun investing in the country’s oil sector, U.S. companies ExxonMobil, Amerada Hess, Chevron/Texaco, and Marathon Oil have played the most significant role. A report by the International Monetary Fund notes that U.S. oil companies receive “by far the most generous tax and profit-sharing provisions in the region.” Congressional hearings recently revealed how U.S. oil companies paid hundreds of millions of dollars destined to state treasuries directly into the dictator’s private bank accounts. A Senate report faulted U.S. oil companies for making “substantial payments to, or entering into business ventures with,” government officials and their family members.

The irony of the relative silence of Congress and the Bush administration regarding the human rights abuses and the undemocratic nature of Obiang’s regime is that, due to the critical role of U.S. economic investment and security assistance, the United States has far more leverage on the government of Equatorial Guinea than it does on the government of Zimbabwe. As a result, Americans can feel self-righteous in their condemnation of a regime in Zimbabwe with which the United States has little leverage while continuing to support an even more repressive regime over which the United States could successfully exert pressure if it chose to do so.

This does not mean the United States should have waited until it first ends its support of Obiang and other African dictatorships before joining the rest of the international community in condemning the repression in Zimbabwe. However, as long as the United States maintains such blatant double-standards, U.S. credibility as a defender of human rights and free elections is seriously compromised and thereby plays right into the hands of autocrats and demagogues like Robert Mugabe.

Stephen Zunes is a senior analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus and a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco.

100 years ago an elegant and beautiful sorority was founded on the campus of Howard University. 20 Illustrious Pearls who were extremely intelligent women of honor founded an organization that would transform the standard of what it is to be a woman of color in these United States. Starting this weekend and continuing through next week the ladies of Alpha Kappa Alpha will be celebrating their 100th anniversary. Congratulations to these young ladies and their beautiful organization.

Congrats to them as well for having their own Collectors item Barbie made in recognition of their organizations accomplishments. It is good to see young black women striving to reach new heights and incorporating a sound business mind while doing so. Click here for the link!