Arrabal: New American Repertory Theater show explores legacy of Argentina's brutal military regime

John Weidman never imagined that his knowledge of modern Japan would prep him for Broadway.

Even with his broad background as a noted television and theater writer, Weidman's “Arrabal” - onstage at the A.R.T. through June 18 - brings its own challenges, including deeply serious source material.

The musical follows a woman’s search for information about her father, one of the thousands of “the disappeared” who were abducted by death squads in Argentina during the 1976-83 military dictatorship. Up to 30,000 disappeared; many were tortured, and others were never seen again.

“I got the call for ‘Arrabal’ because I was the guy who had written the book for ‘Contact,’” said Weidman, acknowledging the plays’ similar storytelling-through-movement design. “There’s a very short list of people who have done that — I am not even sure there is anybody else on it.”

In “Arrabal” - an Argentine term referring to working-class neighborhoods, which suffered the brunt of the Dirty War - almost every element of the story is generated by the movement onstage, with the exception of an occasional video or projection.

Fortunately, Weidman can rely on the show’s dancers, a talented team from Buenos Aires steeped in the tango tradition, as well as the five-member band Orquestra Bajofonderos, led by Academy Award-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla.

Blending tango, milonga, rock, hip-hop, electronic music, jazz, and classical into a unique sound, Santaolalla's score “sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before,” according to Weidman. “It sounded inherently theatrical.”

“My job was to try to be sensitive to what their story was,” said Weidman, who struggled with the historical brutality he encountered while researching the project. Still, the suffering, he acknowledges, is central to the show’s story line.

“It seemed to me that if we were going to touch this material, deal with it at all, there was an obligation, in a stylized way, to be direct about the events within which this girl’s story takes place.”

“Not to put some version of torture on stage — you couldn’t do that.”

At: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/05/arrabal-explores-legacy-of-argentinas-brutal-military-regime/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=05.18.2017.b+%281%29



‘Arrabal’ writer John Weidman: “My job was to try to be sensitive - to be direct about the events.”

Labour rounds off remarkable election with narrow win in Kensington

Labour has staged a major upset by taking one of the wealthiest constituencies in London, from the incumbent Conservative candidate Victoria Borwick, in a dramatic result 24 hours after polling closed.

Emma Dent Coad, the Labour candidate and local councillor, overturned Borwick’s 7,000 majority by just 20 votes. She took 16,333 (42.23%) of the vote compared with Borwick’s 16,313 (42.18%), representing a swing of 11.11% to Labour.

The results gave Labour a net gain of 32 MPs, and the Conservatives a net loss of 13.

At: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/09/labour-rounds-off-remarkable-election-with-narrow-win-in-kensington

Mays abusive top staff removed as recriminations grow over poll failure

Theresa May was forced to sacrifice her two closest advisers – Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy – on Saturday, as Tory recriminations grew over the party’s catastrophic general election performance.

The two aides, who were joint chiefs of staff, have been widely blamed for both strategic and policy failings during the campaign and had become increasingly unpopular among ministers and MPs for their abrasive styles and refusal to listen to advice even from cabinet ministers.

Gavin Barwell, a former minister ousted in the election, was named as their replacement on Saturday night. May said Barwell, who lost his Croydon Central seat on Thursday, would bring “considerable experience” to the job.

The removal of Hill and Timothy from Downing Street is a stark demonstration of May’s weakness in the aftermath of an election that has left the prime minister clinging to power after losing 13 seats, stripped of an outright majority, and lacking the mandate for Brexit that she sought.

She is now deprived of the two people she had trusted most and who were with her during her transition from the Home Office to N° 10.

At: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/10/theresa-may-top-advisers-quit-nick-timothy-fiona-hill-tory-recriminations-grow

General election 2017: DUP 'in positive talks' with Tories

The Democratic Unionist Party says it has had "positive talks" over a "confidence and supply" deal to support a Conservative government.

Theresa May was left eight seats short of an overall majority in the general election, while the DUP won 10 seats.

Tory chief whip Gavin Williamson went to Belfast on Saturday for talks with the Northern Irish party.

The DUP said talks would continue next week to "work on the details" and "reach agreement."

At: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40236152

Argentine presidential offices raided by investigators for first time in history

Argentine Federal Judge Sergio Torres ordered a massive raid on Wednesday at thirteen Buenos Aires offices belonging to President Mauricio Macri, his family conglomerate, and numerous officials in his administration.

The raid, pursuant to conflict of interest investigations over Macri's decision last year to open more domestic air routes, included three offices in the presidential office building known as the Casa Rosada - among them those of Chief of Staff Fernando de Andreis (a Macri relative) and Transport Minister Guillermo Dietrich.

This was the first such incident in the Casa Rosada's 131-year history.

Approved by Judge Torres in March, the investigation was triggered by a series of decrees signed by Macri beginning June 2016 that granted Colombian airline Avianca broad access to Argentina's air routes at expense of its own national airline, Aerolíneas Argentinas, and its domestic subsidiary, Austral.

Avianca was given access to Argentina's domestic air market two months after the Macri family's SOCMA conglomerate sold its small charter airline, MacAir, to Avianca Holdings.

The raid, which took place Wednesday, was kept secret; it was reported this Friday by the conservative Buenos Aires news daily La Nación.

The nation's largest daily, Clarín, and its cable news outlet, TN - whose support helped elect the right-wing Macri administration 18 months ago - has made no mention of the raids.

Members of Macri's administration and his family have also come under scrutiny over a bribery scandal involving Brazil's largest builder Odebrecht, which has admitted to paying nearly $800 million in bribes across Latin America - including at least $20 million to secure a lucrative Buenos Aires rail tunnel contract in partnership with the Macri family's contractor IECSA.

IECSA's offices were themselves raided for evidence on June 5.

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.diarioregistrado.com%2Fpolitica%2Fescandalo-avianca--allanaron-las-oficinas-de-la-casa-rosada_a593aa7f9d669e67b19cf680e&edit-text=



The Casa Rosada

The 81-year-old woman inspiring a nation to recycle

An 81-year-old who set up an all-woman rubbish collection team in her village in Lebanon now has a stream of visitors asking how she did it. For nine months in 2015 and 2016 rubbish piled up on the streets of the capital, Beirut, and even now a lack of landfill sites means some of the city's waste is being thrown in the sea.

Zeinab Mokalled has shown that when government fails, do-it-yourself local initiatives can work. "There used to be dirt everywhere and the kids were filthy," Mokalled says.

She is remembering the 1980s and '90s, when Israel occupied part of the south of the country for 15 years, and waste collection came to a halt in her village, Arabsalim. As the years went by, it piled up, and Mokalled went to the regional governor to ask for help.

Mokalled called on the women of the village to help, not the men - partly because she wanted to empower them, and partly because she thought they would do a better job.

They had no equipment, and no infrastructure. So how to begin?

Mokalled's friend Khadija Farhat bought a lorry out of her own pocket. Mokalled herself turned her back garden into a storage area for recyclable waste.

It didn't seem likely that the 10,000 villagers would pay to have their rubbish collected, so the volunteers paid for it themselves. Nineteen years later they still do, each of 46 members putting in about $40 each year.
"Household recycling was the best way forward," says Mokalled, who named the organisation Call of the Earth.

At: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40191270



Zeinab Mokalled

A Support Thread for Reality Leigh Winner

Putin didn't simply interfere in our elections - he stole them outright.

So here's to her, for letting us know what we most needed to know. A real winner, in my book.

Macri family firm IECSA raided by authorities in connection with Odebrecht bribery case

Argentine Federal Judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi ordered a raid on the Buenos Aires offices of construction firms IECSA (Argentina), Odebrecht (Brazil), and Ghella (Italy) in connection with charges that the three firms conspired to run a massive bribery scheme to secure a lucrative rail tunnel contract in Buenos Aires.

IECSA, Argentina's third largest public contractor, was founded by the Argentine president's father, Francesco Macri, and was led since 2007 by the president's first cousin Ángelo Calcaterra.

Amid mounting investigations, the Macri family sold IECSA to Marcelo Mindlin, a leading electric utility executive, in March for a reported $60 million.

Members of Macri's administration and his family have also come under scrutiny over a wider scandal involving Brazil's largest builder Odebrecht, which has admitted to paying nearly $800 million in bribes across Latin America.

Odebrecht e-mails from 2010, uncovered in Brazil in February, revealed that at least $20 million in bribes were arranged jointly with IECSA in a scheme to win the rail tunnel contract.

Among the beneficiaries was Macri's longtime adviser and current intelligence chief Gustavo Arribas. Leonardo Meirelles, a Brazilian “doleiro” (bag man) for Odebrecht, testified in May that Arribas had been bribed with $850,000 in 10 transfers to two Swiss bank accounts in 2013.

The controversial $3 billion project to convert the Sarmiento commuter rail line, which connects Buenos Aires to its western suburbs, into an underground line, was awarded in June 2016 to the IECSA-Odebrecht-Ghella consortium, and is the centerpiece of President Mauricio Macri's $7 billion federal public works program.

Odebrecht CEO Marcelo Odebrecht was sentenced by a Brazilian court to a 19-year prison term in March 2016 for his role in the scandal.

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politicargentina.com%2Fnotas%2F201706%2F21263-lava-jato-ordenaron-allanar-3-empresas-por-el-soterramiento-del-sarmiento.html&edit-text=

Air traffic control privatization: A risky corporate giveaway that will harm consumers

Current U.S. law states that "a citizen of the United States has a public right of transit through the navigable airspace." The central message is that our airspace should be viewed as valuable public resource to be maintained for the safety and benefit of the many, not the few.

Yet, in the last few weeks, United Airlines’ deplorable assault on a paying passenger can make us all wonder if passengers have any legal rights at all, and certainly has reminded us all of the need for more congressional oversight of the airlines.

Unfortunately, the big airlines are now pushing a risky air traffic control (ATC) privatization scheme that would do just the opposite. Under this proposal, the FAA would hand over control (for free) to an unelected, unaccountable non-profit corporation, likely to be dominated by the airlines themselves.

This would give the airlines nearly limitless power to raise taxes and fees on consumers without any congressional oversight or public accountability which has been a hallmark of our aviation system since its inception. In addition to likelihood of new fees and taxes, access to airports and gates for general aviation and low cost competitors would be driven by the airlines’ priorities over the common interests of the public who have invested tens of billions into the system.

Maintaining FAA oversight of our air traffic control system is likewise critical for national security.

The Department of Defense Policy Board stated that ending the FAA role in managing the ATC system “raises serious concerns” regarding shared infrastructure with the military given that “DOD relies on FAA’s command and control capabilities in the execution of the National Defense mission.”

According to the non-partisan GAO, privatizing air traffic control would also create problems with how the FAA and DOD cooperate on security. Another report raised serious questions about how easily safety roles and responsibilities could be split between a privatized entity and the FAA.

The airline oligopoly has resulted in record profits for the industry. And now, the industry wants even more power.

Unfortunately, those billions in profits have come at consumers’ expense. In 2015 alone, the Department of Transportation logged over 20,000 passenger complaints, and over 40,000 people are “bumped” out of their legally purchased seats every year. Passengers now even have to be concerned about being physically assaulted or literally dragged off of their flight.

Whether it is cramming more passengers into ever smaller spaces, losing baggage, cutting routes to small cities and rural communities, and endless fees ($6.8 billion in 2015); the airlines’ practices and customer satisfaction surveys demonstrate that passengers often come last.

At: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/330635-air-traffic-control-privatization-a-risky-corporate-giveaway

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