CNN: WHERE JOURNALISM RHYMES WITH NARCISSISM (AND OTHER MINDLESS DISTRACTIONS)

I refer to this commentary by Jake Tapper, billed as CNN’s “Chief Washington Correspondent” …

“I say this as an American -- not as a journalist, not as a representative of CNN -- but as an American: I was ashamed … [skip] … I find it hard to believe that collectively President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Attorney General Eric Holder -- who was actually in France that day for a conference on counterterrorism -- just had no time in their schedules on Sunday.”

Here is another manufactured controversy - sensationalized and repeated ad nauseam - that neither informs nor uplifts the public at a time when positive back-stories are needed most.  Who gives a damn what Jake Tapper thinks … as an American (he does not speak for me), as a journalist (petty sniping is not journalism), or as a representative of CNN (which fails to rise above the Faux News caricature).

The headline of President Obama as a no-show is the one that sticks in the mind.  Yet, imbedded within his commentary is Jake Tapper’s half-assed stab at appearing 'fair and balanced' ...

“I find it hard to believe that Speaker of the House John Boehner and new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had more worthy pursuits on Sunday than standing side-by-side with our French brothers and sisters … [skip] … I'm frankly floored that not one of the people who is contemplating running for president in 2016 has yet to even tweet on the subject … [skip] … Chris Christie, Scott Walker and Paul Ryan attended the Green Bay-Dallas football game Sunday … [skip] … And Jeb? Mitt? Crickets.”

Why headline the Commander-in-Chief as Deadbeat-in-Chief when our entire political establishment appears vapidly unexceptional at street theater.  Perhaps the President is busy at the moment - along with the rest of the administration.  The story that should have made headlines is this one:  MUSLIM MAN HAILED FOR LIFE-SAVING COURAGE DURING PARIS SIEGE:

“In the days after the bloody end of twin French hostage crises Friday, stories of life-saving courage are beginning to filter out. One of the most striking is the story of Lassana Bathily, a young immigrant from Mali who literally provided police with the key to ending the hostage crisis at the supermarket.

Bathily was in the store's underground stockroom when gunman Amedy Coulibaly burst in upstairs, according to accounts given to French media and to a friend of Bathily's who spoke to The Associated Press. Bathily turned off the stockroom's freezer and hid a group of frightened shoppers inside before sneaking out through a fire escape to speak to police. Initially confused for the attacker, he was forced to the ground and handcuffed.

Once police realized their mistake, he provided them with the key they needed to open the supermarket's metal blinds and mount their assault.”

Here is the story of a Muslim immigrant who put aside ethnocentric tribalism to save lives - Jewish lives.  More than ever, we need this story to counter bigotry, to help prevent a backlash against Muslim communities, and to stop the endless cycles of recrimination and revenge.  Now is not the time for self-serving narratives steeped in nationalism, exceptionalism and narcissism.  We need stories about heroes and positive role models such as Lassana Bathily - and less Jake Tapper claptrap.

Exodus

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
  South Pacific



When I read about resurgent antisemitism in America, my emotions are mixed.  On one hand the Klan, the people who read Jew Watch with swastikas tattooed on their necks -- and as Octopus suggests, the mainstream of the new GOP don't scare me personally. On the other hand the similarity of rhetoric with that fire hose of filth coming from Islamists worldwide does.  I'm suggesting that Europe and other parts of the world are no longer safe for Jews -- if in fact, they ever were.  Jewish exodus from France is escalating --doubling in 2014.

"There is no future for Jews in France as long as Europeans refuse to confront the tacit acceptance of violence by many of the continent’s Muslims."

Writes James Kirchick in The Daily Beast. If he's right that Europeans have trouble admitting or discussing it, perhaps it's true of us as well. From my personal experience it's quite impolitic to bring up anti-Semitism when discussing racism or bigotry with those insisting that there is no diminution of racism in America, yet just before I fled the North for Florida my town, a recent home of a Muslim community Center was enduring a well funded siege of its school board by irate Muslim parents insisting that neither events of European antisemitism nor the events some call the Holocaust should be taught in schools. Virtually all of those good folks were refugees from the Balkans seeking safety here while insisting we become just like the Balkans.

During the events in Paris far more was made of the attack on cartoonists than the innocent Jews murdered in a Kosher Grocery, killed for no apparent reason other than Islamic antisemitism.  French journalist Marc Weitzmann wrote from the scene of the grocery store siege:

“I spoke to a person who teaches history in a high school in one of the suburban Cités, He told me that this is a complete disaster. Teachers are afraid to mention the events. He told me that in his school, students are asking to debate the massacre—and they are justifying it. Thirteen-year-olds, 14-year-olds saying, ‘You shouldn’t insult the Prophet. The killing is justified.”

As per affluent Muslims in an affluent Chicago suburb raging against teaching the Holocaust 15 years ago, teachers in France are being made afraid to talk about this pathological hatred of Jews being preached from Mosques and Madrassas in Paris and all over Europe. According to Pew polls 72 percent of Frenchmen have favorable impressions of Islam and we see quite easily how one is automatically accused of "Islamophobia" by moderates and Liberals when connecting this weekend's events with massive outrages by Islamists all over the world.

You have to be carefully taught, goes the old song and yet we're all so reluctant to look for the teacher because it might seem that we're "profiling" or being otherwise illiberal. We'll say irrelevant things like "most Muslims are good" when that's hardly the point, or we'll blame it on poverty when that's hardly the case.  It isn't the poor or unemployed behind these attacks or preaching sermons and quoting scripture. It isn't the poor training and housing and funding terrorists, rapists and slaughterers of the innocent.  Is our "niceness" our open-mindedness" our very liberal principles greasing the ways as civilization slides back to the dark ages?

Perhaps France is not afraid of terrorists, but the question, I think, is whether they're too afraid to offend innocent moderate Muslims to protect innocent Jews, cartoonists or in some way only understandable to psychopathic Jihadists -- anyone who "insults the prophet?"

Vive la France!

Well, they're dead and I'm glad, but I have two regrets. One of course is that some Jewish hostages have been killed and the other that the murderers of God didn't have to endure an endlessly agonizing and humiliating death.  Jews and cartoonists. Just the sort of people Islamic leaders like to vilify and Islamic devotees like to kill.  God you see is very insecure and can't abide anyone doubting the words of the prophets as set down and interpreted by generations of Mullahs and Ayatollahs.  He also doesn't like Jews, or at least that's what his myriad mouthpieces say.

He has much in common with the American radical right who must feel frustrated that not everyone agrees just how dangerous those Jews are, how hated of God and how they control everything and oppose family values. Not that either of these tribes would admit their commonality, but both will be relieved that a few more of these evil Christ killers, stock market riggers, media propagandists and insulters of Allah are dead on a grocery store floor.

In Saudi Arabia, our moderate Islamic friends and members of the UN Human Rights Council, so intimate with our former president:  In Saudi Arabia where terrorists are doubtlessly protested against when I'm not looking, a blogger got a savage beating for insulting Islam. The Website Free Saudi Liberals, sounds just like the sort of place those locals with "I Am Not A Liberal"  and "Liberalism is a mental disease" bumper stickers would find repugnant too, if only they could read at an adequate level to peruse them.

50 lashes, in case you don't know, is a severe punishment, effectively removing your skin.  Not severe enough for our "moderate Muslim" friends pandered to by the US though, so he's going to get another one every week for 20 weeks.  That's a thousand! I doubt he will survive, but hey!  God will not be insulted.

But wait, there's more!  He gets to pay over a quarter million dollars in fines too, but they'd better get it up front.  As I said, I doubt he will survive.  Will there be a million protesters in the streets of Riad?  Of course not. Will the Saudi's rise up in arms and overthrow a murderous tyranny?  Will we rage against them at the UN? Am I asking rhetorical questions?  At best there will be some faint damnation somewhere and Americans will be too busy decrying Obama's tyranny to give a damn what goes on in the lives of a billion, two hundred million suffering human beings.  It's not good to criticize religion and next thing you know someone will be insulting Jesus  or religion in general and we can't allow that.  Religion doesn't kill people -- people kill people and since we're all people, who's to blame but us?

As liberals, we have to be tolerant of course and we always have to be conscious of how the guilt is really ours and no one else is really to blame but the actual perpetrators and even then, we have to remember they have issues and be sympathetic.  We can't assign any part in it to the preachers, the prelates, the prophets and all the people who assist, facilitate, coach, train, feed and comfort the murders of children. We can't blame those who look the other way, saying nothing, who hide fugitives, who make heroes of  suicide bombers and plane hijackers and gang rapists -- who slice up little girls and hang homosexuals and murder novelists and cartoonists in the name of God.

Sure, technically they could do something, but those silk robes stain so easily and why should we bother when after all the Christians sacked Jerusalem in 1099 and partitioned the Ottoman Empire a hundred years ago. It's our own fault and it's natural to take it our on some grocery shopper in Paris.

Guilt and innocence -- do those words mean anything?  What after all is truth but what we're told to believe?  What is truth if it erodes our piety? Can there be guilt when someone has some grievance against someone else or against society or against infidels or Liberals or Jews?  How can we even accuse when it would make us a bigot, a racist, a heretic?

It's over so lets get back to the game or to the missing airplane or to making fun of Republicans or Democrats according to our habits.

Living With Terrorism: My Life in Paris (1995-1999)

By (O)CT(O)PUS

The terrorist attack on Charlie Hedbo yesterday recalled my life in France during the 1990s. This brutal event is especially ironic for me:  It was virtually twenty years ago this week when I boarded a flight to Paris to begin life as an American expatriate for the next four years.  Six months after my arrival, a series of bottle bombs placed by Algerian terrorists menaced the city.

To put this story into context, a new and unknown terrorist cell called al-Qaeda had not yet made headlines. The attack on 9/11 would not occur for another six years.  Yet, the 1990s were by no means safe and carefree.  There were terrorist groups everywhere - combatants of the Bosnian conflict, the IRA, and the PLO - but none of these represented an imminent threat to life in Paris.  A civil war raging in Algeria had crossed the Mediterranean into France.

In July of 1995, the first terrorist bombing struck Saint-Michel Station during the evening rush hour. A gas-filled bottle bomb caused eight fatalities; 80 victims suffered serious injuries including loss of limbs.  It was summer, a season for vacations and family visitors from the United States.  My daughter and I passed through Saint-Michel Station literally hours before the first attack. For my family, it was our closest brush with terrorism until years later when my cousin Ruthie perished in the twin towers on 9/11.

Terrorists detonated a second bottle bomb near Arc de Triomphe wounding 17 people, followed by an explosive device tossed into a trash bin on Avenue des Champs Elysées.  Thereafter, all trash bins in the City of Paris were bolted shut, and litter filled the streets.  A French military unit encamped at Champs de Mars; gendarmes armed with automatic weapons patrolled streets and Métro stations; France had become a country under siege.

In late August, a large bomb was discovered on a high-speed rail line near Lyon, followed by an attack on a Jewish school that claimed 14 victims.  Finally, September brought a break in the case.  Fingerprints left on unexploded bombs identified the ringleader, who was apprehended and killed by gendarmes.  Yet, the bombings continued into October of that year. Another bottle bomb wounded 13 at Métro Maison Blanche. The last bombing occurred on October 17^th in the RER train station at Musée d'Orsay - leaving 29 casualties.

Unbeknownst to terrorists, terrorism did not terrify us or intimidate us or preoccupy our thoughts. Living in a city such as Paris, the constant threat of terrorism had as little impact as any event of low probability – death by crossing the street, or death by falling into an open elevator shaft. Random life-altering events can happen in any city at any moment – in the next arrondissement or a continent away. We did not hide nor tremble in fear. We lived day to day attending to the routines of modern life: Waking, working, shopping, cooking, eating, sleeping … routines that impacted daily life far more than any act of terror ever could.

Acts of terror become sensationalized media events (and parenthetically a burden borne by authorities who neither eat nor sleep until the villains are brought to justice). The actual loss of innocent life, the sheer brutality, the carnage … these do not matter to the depraved persons who commit such crimes.  What matters is the message inside the bottle bombs.

If anything, it was ‘Le Grève’ that impacted my life in Paris far more than any terrorist act.  Le Grève, or grievance, refers to the labor strikes staged each year in December by public transport workers just before the Christmas holiday rush. All air and ground transportation in France came to halt. With no buses, planes or trains to move people, private vehicles clogged every street and turned the entire city into a veritable parking lot. Tempers flared in the heavy smog-laden air. That year, I booked passage on the last Channel Tunnel train to Waterloo Station in London where I waited out Le Grève.

 

David Duke, Steve Scalise, and Resurgent Anti-Semitism

When is a racist no longer a racist?  How do you revise history and turn past lies into plausibly deniable claims?  How do you spin the words of a self-avowed Nazi sympathizer and turn him into a defender of the Faith and the American way?

Simple!  Just say it.  Words alone have the power to change reality and turn dross into gold.  Heated denials can make a tasty reduction sauce.  Throw in some red meat to feed hungry lynch mobs.  Add a pinch of tribalism.  And presto!  The Devil has become your Savior:

American Zio Media and ZioGov Vicious Attack on Family Values:

Anyone who doubted that the American government, media and “culture” has not been completely colonized and taken over by Jewish Supremacists and their sick ideological worldview, need look no further than …

In other words, look no further than David Duke, Steve Scalise, and their Zio-Apologist and Zio-Revisionist-in-Chief, John Boehner.  How ironic!  The GOP has chosen Steve Scalise (R, La) to hold the same position formerly held by Eric Cantor. Since it is no longer fashionable to be a racist (and since David Duke claims he is not nor has he ever been a racist), you can trade in your old bigotry for a real collectors’ item - the oldest scapegoat of them all - anti-Semitism.  Which reminds me.  Here is a comment from a notorious blogger who no longer plies the waters of civilized society:

Yes, indeed!  But they he failed to mention the nearly absolute control Jews exert upon A) the ENEMEDIA, B) the Entertainment Industry, and C) the Educational Establishment, and the hugely disproportionate influence Jews enjoy over The Courts, The Law in general, and their ever-growing numbers in the U.S. Congress. (Schumer, Boxer, Feinstein, Franken, Sanders, et al.)

No need to name names - the memes and themes should be recognizable to all.  David Duke and this voice from the Cringe Fringe appear to be reading off the same page, and you can still smell the stench of Zio-Protocols and Zio-taunts beneath their words.

Happy New Year (and welcome to the new GOP Congressional majority).  BTW, someone should inform former Texas Governor, Rick Perry, that the proper greeting during Hanukkah is ‘Mazel Tov,’ not ‘Molotov.’

Everything is going to Hell

Says the Devil.

A plane crashes in a storm on the other side of the world. For days afterward it's "breaking News!" on CNN and their website asks us if flying is getting more dangerous. Yes, of course it's a pattern. It's twice in one year out of only 36 million flights!  Someone gets shot by a psychotic in a theater and we're told, or rather CNN arranges for us to hear someone ask if it's safe to go to the movies any more.

As humans we're famously deficient when it comes to comparing relative risk and of course a very well funded industry is based on exploiting our irrational nature and steadfast unwillingness to do the math. How many of us will switch off the round the clock babble and endless pictures of airplanes and people looking out the window to make a graph of fatalities per passenger mile?  Basically none.

We don't know if police brutality is on the increase, whether it centers on a certain minority, on several minorities or whether it's random or whether factors not being discussed enter into the picture. Why should there be, the people upon whom we depend to inform us are as much a part of the entertainment industry as Disney or Sony Pictures. What we do is select opinions and fears and things to gloat about from the buffet and all according to our personalities and chosen affiliations -- and today's technology makes it possible for manipulators and exploiters to target us with things that we will buy into without question and that much of it is designed to scare and to outrage is no coincidence.

It doesn't have to be about politics or law or current events. It doesn't have to be real  They can scare you with fructose or gluten or lactose or fluoride or electric meters or preservatives and imaginary toxins and they can cash in as easily as collecting maple syrup from a tree.

Obviously X is rampant and getting worse and of course we won't stand for it any more and here are two or three incidents to prove it if we don't stop to think or look too close or ask too many questions.
And here's what we need to do and never mind the cost because there's no time to waste and no time for the niceties of due process. What do we want? ZEAL.  When do we want it?  Before you cool off.

Don't we love to tell stories about how the other guys are idiots, neurotics, liars and infinitely malevolent?  Of course we do and the result is to strengthen our commitment to "our side" and lessen the possibility of questioning ourselves and what we believe -- whether our nebulous remedies will work or make things worse. If we're against demons and monsters, what are the odds we're wrong?   If some court finds differently from our convictions, why they must be corrupt and we need to attack.  If there's the appearance of a cluster or a pattern in random events, of course it's a trend and we need to make noise and search for someone to punish, even if the apparent trend is the opposite to the statistical one. I mean how many kids have to die before we replace fruit sugar with cane sugar?  How may kids have to get "grain brain?"  How many kids will get fat if we don't ban slurpees and never mind the double bacon cheese chiliburgers with extra fries and special sauce?  Our solutions will work because the other guys are evil.

 Why bother to look it up?  Our side is right because the other side is wrong. If we make a mistake and lives are lost or ruined we shouldn't be worried unnecessarily, we're the good guys after all and it's better that all crimes are punished and all danger eliminated than that a few innocents are punished.  Just look at how bad the other side is! Just look at how dangerous life is these days.

Everything is going to hell because it needs to be for certain influences to do what they want to us. A building is blown up in New York, so we have to assume it's a trend and before long Caspar Wyoming will be in flames.  There goes our 4th amendment protection.  Drugs are killing our youth so oops there goes any protection from searches and seizures without probable cause or due process. Welcome swat teams with or without warrants crashing through your front door. Crime is on the increase so let's equip and train our police as Storm Troopers and let's stop "coddling" criminals and allowing judges some discretion and start trying 14 year olds as adults. Our schools are danger zones so let's make our kids criminals if they have a nail clipper or an aspirin. Our "rape culture" is on the rise so let's suspend any benefit of the doubt and of course racism is so rampant no white people should be trusted. And worst of all, the Devil is out there with his facts and figures and quoting scripture so we can't trust anyone.

And of course we wouldn't dare challenge any of it because that would just prove we're agents for the other side -- and did I mention just how bad they are?

Noel

Lessons from the Tahmooressi Case

This post is presented as written by New Mexico Governor, Bill Richardson, in an opinion piece of the same title printed in the November 20, 2014 issue of the San Diego Union-Tribune.  It is not available on-line except for subscribers to the U-T newspaper.  I have faithfully transcribed every word, including capitalizations,  made by the former governor of New Mexico, presumably to confer honor upon the recipients thereof.

I chanced upon this information only upon buying a day-old newspaper in a grocery store in Oceanside.  I shall dispense with the customary italicization meant to describe quotation.  Hence, the entire op-ed by Governor Richardson as transcribed by Yours Truly, Flying Junior:

Lessons From the Tahmooressi Case

As I reflect on the successful effort to bring former U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi home after 214 days in prison in Mexico, I am pleased that despite the differing border security concerns that loom high in public perception and national policy in both countries, we were able to find the common ground that ultimately resulted in Andrew’s release.

There are two concerns, however, that remain in the American public’s mind that I would like to address; first, what took so long for Andrew’s release and, second, why Mexico deserves credit.  By addressing the underlying foreign policy issues behind Andrew’s case, I hope to answer these questions and provide a better understanding of the complexities that had to be overcome for his release.

In 2008, then president George W. Bush signed into law an agreement with Mexico – with great political and financial support from congress – known as the “Merida Initiative” which the State Department defines as a “partnership between the U.S. and Mexico to fight organized crime and associated violence while furthering the rule of law.”  Two key objectives of this initiative for Mexico were curbing illicit arms trafficking and judicial reform.

As a former border governor, I am familiar with stories about people making the wrong turn and winding up in Mexico by mistake.  This one, however, was seriously exacerbated by the fact that Andrew had guns and ammunition in his vehicle.  Furthermore, misleading advice from Andrew’s first two legal defense teams had tainted and weakened the “innocent mistake – wrong turn” defense, which made it very difficult to advocate for his release through diplomatic channels.

Mexico was facing a serious dilemma:  It had to decide whether to be consistent with the rule of law as established by the Merida Initiative or undermine the judicial reform’s credibility by what would be perceived by the Mexican public as making an exception, for the very partner that was funding and urging a stronger rule of law.

With that in mind, I started my work on Andrew’s behalf in June by sending letters to officials in the Mexican justice system seeking his release on humanitarian grounds, based on his need to return home to receive treatment for his PTSD.  This was a legal argument – not a political one—that could be used in court as an alternative defense to the wrong turn theory.  A week later I was happy to learn that he had obtained a stellar new legal defense team – and I was subsequently delighted to learn it had adopted the PTSD treatment argument.  It became central in the case’s dismissal and Andrew’s release October 31.

Although it took a long time to accomplish, the most important lesson is that Andrew is free because Mexico’s judicial reforms sought by the Merida Initiative are beginning to work.  Though there were significant flaws in the way the two countries interacted on the case, and though a devoted network of supporters led by Andrew’s mother, Jill Tahmooressi, including myself, U.S. Representatives Ed Royce, Matt Salmon and television personality Montel Williams continued to advocate on behalf of Andrew with the Mexican government and by bringing media attention to his story, it was Mexican legal due process  that freed him, not political expediency spurred by pressure from Mexico’s neighbor to the north.  It should be remembered that the U.S. has a great deal to gain by a firm rule of law taking hold in Mexico – and this case was brought to a successful conclusion in a way that strengthened that concept.

Some have criticized me for praising the Mexican government’s handling of Andrew’s case, but this was an important part of the process.  It built the good will that moved forward his release and even gained me permission to personally deliver him clothing so that he wouldn’t have to go through the humiliation of entering the U.S. in prison garb and allowed me to spare him an additional day in custody by substantially shortening his immigration processing before being handed over at the border.

I recently attended President and Mrs. Obama’s Salute to the Troops event at the White House in advance of Veteran’s Day.  Several Marines in attendance took it upon themselves to thank me for my work on Andrew’s release.  That’s the kind of response that makes it all seem so very worthwhile.

Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was governor of New Mexico from 2003-2010.

Viva la Vida, Viva la Cuba, Viva Cohiba!

La resistencia es inútil

HOW CROMNIBUS THREW DEMOCRACY UNDER THE BUS

By (O)CT(O)PUS

Let me count the ways.  For argument sake, let’s say wage-earning citizens contribute an average of $10 each to the political candidates of their choice.  Under old campaign finance rules – before Cromnibus - the maximum allowable contribution per candidate was $32,400.  In simple arithmetic, it would take 3,240 citizens at $10 each to equal the contribution of ONE wealthy donor.

Under new campaign spending limits allowable under Cromnibus, the maximum contribution has been raised to $324,000.  It means 32,400 donors would be needed to offset the contribution of ONE rich benefactor – a tenfold increase!

In essence, the Cromnibus bill has diluted the political influence of the middle class by a factor of TEN.  It means average citizens will be forced to increase donations from $10 to $100 per candidate just to keep pace.  Under new rules of the game, the cost of participatory democracy has risen ten-fold, and only those who can afford to pay can afford to play.

The loss of citizen influence is even more dramatic when viewed in terms of  past economic trends.  After 3 decades of wage stagnation and rising gaps in income inequality, our shrinking middle class has even less discretionary cash to spend on candidates that best represent their interests.

Where money talks, your vote no longer counts: Under Citizens United, the Supreme Court broke precedent by conferring legal personhood status to non-voting, non-living entities.  The concept of "one citizen - one vote" now means "one dollar - one vote;" and those with the most bucks wield the most power.  Thanks to Citizens United, all branches of government – executive, legislature, and judiciary – and all political parties have now become wholly owned subsidiaries of Corporate America Inc. 

Cromnibus is a watershed moment.  A single corporation can now write the laws of the land, and a single CEO can lobby Congress and guarantee passage of corporate-friendly legislation – as the cost of citizen participation becomes increasingly out of reach. Cromnibus reverses a key provision under Dodd-Frank that protected the public from "too-big-to-fail" bank bailouts. 

What does this mean for us?  Shall we accept a future of creeping serfdom as our votes no longer count?  Or do we turn ourselves into angry villagers brandishing pitchforks?  Occupy or Octopy?

I say Octopy:  Our votes may no longer count but - as consumers - our money still does.  Boycott graft and corruption!  Boycott CitiGroup!  Boycott Morgan Stanley!  Boycott Walmart and Koch Industries and all national companies that place profit over public interest.  Support the middle class by patronizing small, family-owned businesses in your neighborhood.

Third party, anyone? Any other ideas?