It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, January 06, 2023
US proposes stricter air quality standards for soot
The US EPA has proposed stricter air quality standards for microscopic particles.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed stricter standards on Friday for microscopic particles responsible for harmful air pollution.
The EPA proposal, which will be subject to public comment and hearings before it would take effect, would toughen the national air quality standard for fine particles, also known as soot.
Fine particle pollution can be caused by a number of sources including construction sites, smokestacks, wildfires, power plants and vehicles.
It causes respiratory illnesses such as asthma, heart attacks and disproportionately affects low-income and communities of color in the United States.
The EPA proposal would strengthen the air quality standard for fine particles from an annual average level of 12 micrograms per cubic meter to between nine and 10 micrograms per cubic meter.
"Our work to deliver clean, breathable air for everyone is a top priority at EPA," agency chief Michael Regan said in a statement.
"This proposal will help ensure that all communities, especially the most vulnerable among us, are protected from exposure to harmful pollution."
The EPA estimated that a strengthened air quality standard would prevent up to 4,200 premature deaths and 270,000 lost workdays per year.
The standards were last changed under the Obama administration in 2012. The Trump administration declined to do so in 2020.
Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association, expressed disappointment with the EPA proposal, saying that it did not go far enough in regulating fine particle emissions.
"Current science shows that stronger limits are urgently needed," Wimmer said.
"More protective standards are necessary to drive cleanup nationwide in communities that currently experience unhealthy levels of deadly particle pollution."
Beto Lugo Martinez, executive director of Clean Air Now, described the proposal as a "good step" but insufficient.
"Without strategic placing of regulatory monitors that can actually measure excessive pollution levels and the will to make polluters pay for violating the standard, this new 'recommendation' will not make a difference," Martinez said in a statement.
Gas stove pollution causes roughly 12.7% of childhood asthma in the United States, study finds
Gas-burning stoves in kitchens across America are responsible for roughly 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases nationwide — on par with the childhood asthma risks associated with exposure to secondhand smoke, according to a study
The peer-reviewed study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, adds fuel to a burgeoning debate over the potential threats that gas stoves pose to the planet and public health.
It comes as scientists and activists cheer the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s recent decision to weigh new regulations on indoor air pollution from gas stoves, even as the natural gas industry fights to keep the signature blue flames of the appliances in American homes.
Gas stoves, which are used in about 35 percent of U.S. households, can emit significant amounts of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant that can trigger asthma and other respiratory conditions. The appliances can also leak methane, a potent planet-warming gas, even when they are turned off, according to research published last year.
Asthma, a leading chronic condition globally, affects about 5 million children across the country. The study, which was led by the environmental think tank RMI, suggests that nearly 650,000 cases of childhood asthma can be attributed to gas stove use.
“It’s like having car exhaust in a home,” said Brady Seals, a manager at RMI who co-authored the research. “And we know that children are some of the people spending the most time at home, along with the elderly.”
The authors relied on 2019 Census data to determine the proportion of children exposed to pollution from gas stoves. They borrowed their methodology from a 2018 analysis that found 12.3 percent of childhood asthma cases in Australia were attributable to gas cooking ranges, and they used data from a 2013 analysis that found children in households with gas stoves were 42 percent more likely to experience asthma symptoms.
The burden of asthma falls disproportionately on children of color and those in lower-income neighborhoods. Black and Hispanic children are twice as likely as White children to be hospitalized for asthma, while poor households are more likely to have smaller kitchens that lack proper ventilation.
“This study’s findings are directly relevant to discussions about environmental justice,” said Rob Jackson, a scientist at Stanford University who has researched methane leaks from gas stoves.
“No child should have asthma from breathing pollution from gas stoves when safer electric options are available,” he added, referring to induction cooktops and other electric versions.
Gas industry pushback
The American Gas Association, a powerful trade group representing the U.S. natural gas industry, slammed the study’s methodology and findings, accusing the authors of pursuing a “headline-grabbing approach” that lacked scientific rigor.
“The claims made in this paper are clearly driven by simple advocacy-based modeling and hypotheticals over the deep and sophisticated analysis we should see in sound science,” Karen Harbert, the association’s president and chief executive, said in an emailed statement.
“The authors conducted no measurements or tests based on real-life appliance usage, emissions rates or exposures, and did not adequately consider other factors that are known to contribute to asthma and other respiratory health outcomes,” Harbert added.
Asked to respond to these criticisms, Seals said she stands by the soundness of the authors’ approach and conclusions. In particular, she noted that the 2013 analysis controlled for other factors that can cause asthma, including exposure to tobacco smoke, pets, mold and water damage. Potential regulations
Under the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate outdoor air pollution from cars, power plants and other sources. But the agency lacks the power to regulate indoor air pollution from gas stoves and other appliances.
For decades, advocates have urged the Consumer Product Safety Commission to fill this regulatory vacuum that persists inside people’s homes. The five-member commission is tasked with ensuring the safety of consumer products by addressing “unreasonable risks” of illness and injury.
Last month, Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. announced that the agency would issue a request for public comments by March on possible regulations on gas stoves, which he said “could be on the books” by the end of this year.
Trumka, the son of the late labor leader of the same name, called an outright ban on new gas stoves “a real possibility.”
Meanwhile, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm seized on the study to promote the tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act that offer households thousands of dollars to transition from fossil-fuel-burning heaters, stoves and cars to cleaner versions.
“We can and must FIX this,” Granholm tweeted Wednesday.
Brazil's new first lady says presidential palace a mess 06/01/2023
As Brazil's new government held its first meeting Friday, the new first lady got down to business too, dealing with what she called major damage, leaks, and
First Lady Rosangela"Janja" da Silva gave Brazil's biggest broadcaster, TV Globo, a tour of the Alvorada Palace, the presidential residence in Brasilia, to highlight what she described as its shoddy condition at the end of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro's four-year tenancy.
Da Silva, who married newly inaugurated leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in May, said important parts of the iconic modernist building were left in"deteriorated" condition.She showed the camera crew torn rugs, damaged floors, a broken window, a ceiling stained by water leaks, a massive banquet hall left bare of furniture and other issues that would leave normal outgoing tenants nervous over getting their deposits
Jair Bolsonaro wrecked Brazil’s presidential palace, TV report suggests
Journalist touring residence with new first lady is shown torn sofas, broken windows and art damaged by the sun
Photographs of the rundown Palácio da Alvorada in Brasília’s resembled images of dilapidated student accommodation more than a listed building.
photograph: Cro Magnon/Alamy
Tom Phillips in Rio de JaneiroFri 6 Jan 2023 16.09 GMT
Jair Bolsonaro’s wrecking of the Amazon made him a global outcast – but his acts of desecration were not limited to the rainforest.
A report by the Brazilian broadcaster GloboNews suggests that even the official presidential residence – a 1950s masterpiece by the architect Oscar Niemeyer – was defiled by the far-right politician during his four years in power.
One of the network’s leading political correspondents, Natuza Nery, took a tour of the Palácio da Alvorada (Palace of Dawn) on Thursday with Brazil’s new first lady, Rosângela Lula da Silva, and was unimpressed with what she saw.
“The overall state of the building, which is Brasília’s most iconic … is not good … and will require many repairs,” reported Nery, who was shown torn carpets and sofas, leaky ceilings, broken windows and jacaranda floorboards, and works of art damaged by the sun.
Photographs of the rundown palace more resembled images of dilapidated student accommodation than a listed building designed by one of the world’s most celebrated modernist architects.
A tapestry by Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, one of Brazil’s most celebrated 20th-century artists, had been damaged after being moved from the library and hung in the sun. “Unfortunately, it will have to be restored,” the first lady said.
Nery said several works of art had disappeared altogether from the palace, which was completed in 1958, two years before Brazil’s purpose-built capital was inaugurated by the then president, Juscelino Kubitschek.
The first lady, who is widely known as Janja, said she had felt “rather disappointed” and “shaken” by the state of disrepair of her new home. A Brazilian cactus planted by her husband, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, during his 2003-10 presidency had reportedly been removed. Bolsonaro left a disposable ballpoint pen – one of the symbols of his populist administration – on one of the palace’s desks.
Bolsonaro, who abandoned Brasília on the eve of Lula’s swearing-in last Sunday, looks unlikely to return soon. He is in Florida, and reportedly fears prosecution for alleged crimes including his anti-scientific response to a Covid pandemic that killed nearly 700,000 people in his country.
A report in the Brazilian magazine Istoé this week claimed the former president was pressuring the Italian government to grant his family citizenship and hoped to move there after a stint in the US to avoid jail. Bolsonaro reportedly believed Brazilian authorities would be unable to extradite him from the European country, from where his great-grandfather Vittorio Bolzonaro emigrated in the late 19th century.
Brazilian Amazon deforestation up 150% in Bolsonaro's last month
The Brazilian Amazon burns in southern Amazonas state in September 2022.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose 150 percent in December from the previous year, according to government figures released Friday, a final bleak report for far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro in his last month in office.
Satellite monitoring detected 218.4 square kilometers (84.3 square miles) of forest cover destroyed in Brazil's share of the world's biggest rainforest last month, according to the national space agency's DETER surveillance program.
The area—nearly four times the size of Manhattan—was up more than 150 percent from the 87.2 square kilometers destroyed in December 2021, according to the agency, INPE.
Bolsonaro, who was replaced on January 1 by leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, triggered an international outcry during his four years in office for a surge of fires and clear-cutting in the Amazon, a key resource in the race to curb climate change.
Under Bolsonaro, an agribusiness ally, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose by 75.5 percent from the previous decade.
"Bolsonaro's government may be over, but his tragic environmental legacy will still be felt for a long time," Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a coalition of environmental groups, said in a statement.
It was the third-worst December on record for the eight-year-old DETER program, after 2017 and 2015.
Deforestation in 2022 was also at or near record highs during the crucial dry-season months of August, September and October, when clear-cutting and fires often surge because of drier weather.
Experts say the destruction is mainly driven by farms and land grabbers clearing the forest for cattle and crops.
Lula presided over a sharp drop in deforestation when he previously led Brazil from 2003 to 2010.
He has vowed to reboot Brazil's environmental protection programs, fight for zero deforestation and ensure the South American giant stops being a "pariah" on climate issues.
Amazon rainforest deforestation is influencing weather in Tibet
Schematic view of the tipping elements of the Earth climate system, their connectivity and teleconnections. The numbered symbols show the potential tipping elements in the Earth system. The dashed yellow lines show the possible connections between these tipping elements and the solid red lines show teleconnection uncovered in this article. The arrows show the direction of the influence. Credit:Nature Climate Change(2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-022-01558-4
An international team of climate scientists has found evidence suggesting that deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is influencing weather in Tibet, more than 15,000 kilometers away. In their paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the researchers describe possible long-range impacts of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Valerie Livina, with the U.K.'s National Physical Laboratory, has published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue outlining the Hopf bifurcation theory and how it relates to climate tipping points and the work done by the team on this new effort.
The Amazon rainforest is considered to represent one of the world's tipping points, where small, gradual changes can eventually lead to a large, sudden, permanent change. As deforestation progresses, it edges ever closer to this tipping point, at which point scientists believe the rainforest cannot be returned to its natural state, even if all of the cutting was stopped and the trees replanted.
In this new effort, the researchers note that cutting down the forest has been going on for decades, and climate data has been gathered during the same time period. They wondered what impact the slowly diminishing rainforest might have on distant regions around the globe. To that end, they obtained and analyzed global climate data covering the years 1979 to 2019, looking for associations.
They were surprised to find that due to tree loss, warmer temperatures in the Amazon correlated with rising temperatures in Tibet and the West Antarctic ice sheet. They also found that when it rained more in the Amazon, there tended to be less precipitation in both of the other two regions.
The researchers were able to trace the route of climate change as the size of the rain forest grew smaller. Its approximate path, they saw, could be charted first to southern Africa, and then on up to the Arabian Peninsula and finally over to Tibet. The trip was found to take just a little over two weeks.
This finding, the researchers note, suggests that if a tipping point is reached in the Amazon, it could create a tipping point in Tibet, where temperatures and rainfall would be permanently impacted. They note that prior research has already shown that warming is proceeding faster in Tibet and the Arctic than the global average.
More information: Teng Liu et al, Teleconnections among tipping elements in the Earth system, Nature Climate Change (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-022-01558-4
Italian pleads guilty to manuscript scam that shook literary world
Fri, January 6, 2023
An Italian man admitted Friday to stealing more than 1,000 unpublished manuscripts, including from distinguished authors, solving a mystery that had rocked the literary world for years.
Filippo Bernardini, 30, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, federal prosecutors in New York announced in a statement.
Bernardini, who worked in London for publisher Simon & Schuster, impersonated agents and publishers over email to obtain novels and other works from writers and their representatives.
The scam had been known in literary circles for several years with Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan and Sally Rooney among the novelists reportedly targeted.
It became public knowledge in January last year when Bernardini was arrested by FBI agents at New York's JFK Airport.
Beginning in August 2016, and continuing up to his arrest, the Italian impersonated hundreds of real people in the world of publishing by sending emails from fake accounts.
The addresses resembled the domain names of legitimate publishers but with a letter changed here and there. Prosecutors say he registered more than 160 fraudulent domains.
"Filippo Bernardini used his insider knowledge of the publishing industry to create a scheme that stole precious works from authors and menaced the publishing industry," said Damian Williams, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY).
In 2019, Atwood's agent revealed that the manuscript for "The Testaments" had been targeted.
In 2021, New York Magazine reported that the Swedish editors of Stieg Larsson's "Millennium" series had been approached by a purported colleague in Italy who requested an advance copy so that it could be translated before release.
A New York Times investigation at the end of 2020 found that "Normal People" author Rooney, "Atonement" author McEwan, and actor Ethan Hawke had also been targeted.
Bernardini's motive has never been clear.
Alleged victims were baffled by the fact the thefts were never followed by demands for money, nor did the works ever seem to appear online or on the dark web.
Screenshots from Bernardini's LinkedIn profile shortly after his arrest described him as a "rights coordinator" at Simon & Schuster.
The publisher, which was not accused of wrongdoing, said at the time it had been "shocked and horrified to learn of the allegations."
Bernardini's profile also said he obtained a bachelors in Chinese Language in Milan and a masters in publishing from UCL in London owing to his "obsession for the written word and languages."
He initially pleaded not guilty. As part of his guilty plea, he agreed to pay restitution of $88,000, the SDNY said.
His crime carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Bernardini will be sentenced in Manhattan federal court on April 5.
pdh/bgs
Dismay in French Caribbean as Paris court dismisses pesticide case
Nearly 20 years after Caribbean islanders sued to hold the French government criminally responsible for the banana industry’s extended use of a banned pesticide in Martinique and Guadeloupe, a panel of judges has dismissed their case, ruling that it’s too hard to determine who’s to blame for acts committed so long ago.
The judges in Paris described the use of chlordecone from 1973-1993 as a scandalous “environmental attack whose human, economic and social consequences affect and will affect for many years the daily life of the inhabitants” of the two French Caribbean islands. But they also asserted that even in the 1990s, scientists had not established links between chlordecone and illnesses in people.
“How dare they write such a historical and scientific untruth,” Christophe Lèguevaques, an attorney involved in the case, said in a statement issued Thursday.
Chlordecone, also known as kepone, was patented in the 1950s by scientists working for Allied Chemical, a U.S. company based in New Jersey now called Allied Corporation, and millions of pounds of the pesticide were produced, nearly all of it exported for use outside the United States.
The US government banned the pesticide in 1976, a year after the Virginia health department permanently shut down a Life Science Products chemical plant in Hopewell, Va., whose workers developed slurred speech and other neurological problems blamed on the pesticide.
Other plaintiffs in the 2006 case include the Paris-based environmental group Générations Futures, which also plans to appeal.
INTERVIEW
'I'VE NEVER BEEN LEGITIMATE, I'VE GOT PRINCIPLES!'
Unrepentant old school NJ Jewish mobster sings like a canary in Amazon documentary
At 84, second-generation gangster Myron Sugerman was king of illegal slots and helped fund Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Now he tells all in the 2022 film ‘Last Man Standing’
Myron Sugerman during the filming of 'Last Man Standing.' (Courtesy) Jewish mobster Barney Sugerman in an undated photo. (Courtesy) Myron Sugerman in a still from 'Last Man Standing.'(Courtesy)
At almost 85, Myron Sugerman says he is the last “real” Jewish gangster: a one-of-a-kind outlaw, a self-made “king” of illegal slot machines, and a globetrotting adventurer whose clandestine missions included strategic and financial support for Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.
Still with his trademark aviators, he’s now the subject of the new Amazon Prime documentary “Last Man Standing: The Chronicles of Myron Sugerman.” The film tracks the life of Sugerman, who was born in 1938 in Newark, New Jersey, and almost immediately catapulted into a life of crime by his father Barney Sugerman, otherwise known as “Sugie” — a prominent gangster in the Roaring Twenties.
Sugie was a member of the New Jersey Jewish Mob along with such other infamous characters as Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Seigel, Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, Joe “Doc” Stacher, Abe Green and Abner “Longie” Zwillman, who was known as the Al Capone of New Jersey.
The younger Sugerman’s friends and associates were also all outlaws. “If somebody was ever to say to me, ‘Did you know anyone that was illegal?’ I never knew anybody that was legitimate,” Sugarman candidly says in the film. But, he adds, they were all solid guys who stood up to the violent antisemitism that was prevalent at the time.
Indeed, Sugerman’s first years coincided with the dramatic rise of the American Nazi movement, right on his doorstep. The German American Bund party was led by Fritz Kuhn, who proudly declared himself the “Hitler of the United States.” The group would meet in the local beer gardens and then, intoxicated, they would go into the old neighborhoods and beat up Jews.
Powerful archival footage of the infamous February 1939 Madison Square Garden Nazi rally in support of Nazism and fascism terrifyingly sets the scene of how European Jew-hatred was exported into the US.
Myron Sugerman poses in his Newark, New Jersey, home in this still from ‘Last Man Standing.’ (Courtesy)
The second-generation gangster recounts vividly how his father and other members of the Jewish mob responded to the surge in violence.
“There was always this question of Jewish pride,” Sugarman says in the film. “The Jewish gangster really had a psychological need to show that the Jews could be just as tough as any other ethnicity because they were going to break with the 2,000 years of our heads-down living in the ghetto, fearful. There was definitely no identity crisis.
These Jews were tough and were ready to prove it.”
This led to the Jewish Mob’s creation of The Newark Minute Men, based upon the “minutemen” of the American Revolution, who were ready at a minute’s notice to take on the Brown Shirts of Fritz Kuhn in Newark and the surrounding areas.
Sugerman recollects how Luciano, one of the prime members of the Italian Mob, had a close relationship with Lansky and offered to help thwart the attacks against the Jews. Lansky’s response was: “Charlie, thank you, I am grateful, appreciate it, this is a Jewish problem and this is going to be resolved with Jewish fists.” An undated photo of Barney Sugerman, center, and the Newark Minute Men. (Courtesy)
Growing up in this climate had a profound effect on Sugerman. Speaking to The Times of Israel via Zoom from his home in Montclair, New Jersey, Sugerman says that he’s always seen a chilling reminder of life’s destiny in the famous black and white photo of a young boy during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, his hands raised at gunpoint.
“By circumstances of birth that kid could have been born in America, and I could have been him,” Sugarman says.
This image, imprinted in Sugerman’s mind, became his raison d’etre to defend the Jewish people. The message was reinforced by his father who insisted that he and his brother take boxing lessons from a Jewish former professional, as was common at the time: “You are going to learn to defend yourself… you have that quiet weapon that nobody knows about.” Myron Sugerman, center, with his parents at his bar mitzvah celebration. (Courtesy) Fundraising for Wiesenthal
Jukeboxes, pinball, slot machines and other coin-operated amusements became his other calling when, fresh out of university, Sugerman joined forces with his father, Sugie. Not a violent gangster per se but rather an opportunist within a gang, Sugie started out in 1920 when the Prohibition Act took effect. He became known for bootlegging, racketeering, and the distribution of coin-operated machines within the US. His son, young, energetic and street-smart, traveled extensively across continents to become the largest supplier of illegal slot machines in the world.
The semi-retired outlaw chronicles his life frankly and with plenty of humor, even when describing the tough times. “What kind of life is it as an outlaw living outside the law?” he asks in the film. “It is extremely stressful. You don’t know where your enemy is going to come from — either from above, the law, or whether it’s going to be coming from other members of the organized crime-disorganized crime world. So you got to be on your toes at all times.”
The lure of financial success, however, did not deter the gangster from his other mission inspired by his father “to do more than just make money in life.” After the public trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel in 1961, Sugerman felt impelled to take action.
On a business trip to Austria in 1965, the 27-year-old showed up at the office of famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Their meeting, which took place against the backdrop of a world map highlighted with concentration camp locations, was the beginning of a firm friendship. He volunteered to help Wiesenthal raise funds for information, in particular in the hunt for the Angel of Death, Josef Mengele, who was living in Paraguay. Myron Sugerman, right, speaks with Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal in Wiesenthal’s New York City office. (Courtesy)
Sugerman’s Hebrew name is Meyer and he authored “The Chronicles of the Last Jewish Gangster: From Meyer to Myron.” He finally got to meet his namesake Lansky on a trip to Israel in 1970. The infamous Jewish mobster gave him one piece of crucial advice: “Son, when you see your name start to appear in the front pages of newspapers, pick your tuchus up and run.”
Stints in the joint
There were times in Sugerman’s life when he knew his “destiny did not have a good future,” but he was too inextricably involved to pick himself up and run. In the 1980s he was charged with copyright infringement for selling knock-off Pac-Man boards, which saw him locked up until he reached a plea bargain. Then, in 1993 the US government launched a federal investigation that resulted in his being imprisoned for 19 months
Sugerman has few regrets about his unlawfulness, commenting wryly that “I never did anything legitimate — I had principles.”
He was just responding to public demand, he says, noting that the goods and services he supplied were soon legalized by the government anyway.
“When they see something is profitable, they take it away from the mobsters and take it away for themselves… The big fish eat the little fish, and that is the way of the world,” Sugerman says.
Being locked up did not dampen his enthusiasm — on the contrary, he used the downtime to work on personal development.
“I got in good shape, read a book a night and became very knowledgeable,” he says. “If you approach life from a positive it is tremendous.”
An undated photo of a gala dinner for Jewish mobsters in Newark, New Jersey. (Courtesy) His son, the rabbi
Over the years, Sugerman has become increasingly committed to his Judaism, observing that “you cannot have Jews without Judaism.” A proud Zionist, Sugerman has three sons, one of whom is a Modern Orthodox rabbi with eight children, living in Boca Raton, Florida.
“He could have been a gangster, but instead he is a rabbi,” Sugerman jokes. “I am not going to be perfect, my son will be.”
He could have been a gangster, but instead he is a rabbi
The film ends with Sugerman visiting the graves of Jewish mafia men Zwillman and Green. In the emotional scene, he contemplates sadly how decades after the deaths of these proud defenders of Judaism the resurgence of antisemitism is greater today than it was before the 1930s.
Jewish mobster Abner ‘Longie’ Zwillman in an undated photo. (Courtesy)
All too resonant today
Director Jonny Caplan was drawn to Sugerman’s story as it showcased one man’s fight against antisemitism in a time when Jew-hatred has become very prevalent.
Using art deco and archival footage from the Roaring Twenties to the present day, the film brings viewers back into the Prohibition era, and its catchy klezmer-like soundtrack provides an apt background for Sugerman’s voiceovers.
“I was sold the moment I learned of Myron and the Sugermans’ contribution to fight antisemitism in the Western world, and his personal journey until this very day to connect, unite and educate others,” Caplan says.
The true crime feature documentary is initially viewable on Amazon Prime and will roll out to more networks and streamers in 2023. Caplan’s company Impossible Media has also purchased the rights to Sugerman’s story and is developing a dramatized television series based on his life.
Myron Sugerman reminisces in his Newark, New Jersey, home in this still from ‘Last Man Standing.’ (Courtesy)
Caplan is especially grateful for the success of the movie given the challenges encountered in its making. It nearly didn’t see the light of day, as production coincided with the height of the coronavirus pandemic when travel was restricted and infections sky-high.
Sugerman himself was hit with COVID, pneumonia and vertigo but fought through them, leaving Caplan doubly impressed by his relentless determination.
“He is the original life-sized iconic gangster — the accent, the hat and glasses, his manner, it’s all just so priceless. What I most appreciated is his strong character and energy, which resonates when you meet him,” says Caplan. “I fell in love with Myron the first time we talked.”
Celine Dion Fans Protesting Rolling Stone's Best Singers List Was January 6 for French Canada
The legendary music magazine left Dion off its Greatest Singers of All Time list—and her fans are not having it.
On Friday, fans of Celine Dion let Rolling Stone know in no uncertain terms that the publication had made a big mistake. A group of Dion devotees protested outside the mag’s New York office (on what just happened to be the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection) over the singer’s exclusion from Rolling Stone’s 200 Greatest Singers of All Time list, which published January 1.
"We are here to express ourselves in the name of Celine because obviously you made a big mistake forgetting her name on the big list you published last week" Celine Dion protesters pulled up to the Rolling Stone office
“We wanted to make sure you understand that you missed the best singer in the world on your list—should be at least in the 200 top or at least in the 500 top...at least the first name on your list!,” one of the protestors told a reporter from Rolling Stone. Variety reported that about 15 fans attended the protest, having driven south from Quebec. They reportedly chanted, “Justice for Celine,” blasted “That’s the Way It Is,” held signs (“Rolling Stone You’ve Hit an Iceberg,” read one, referencing Titanic, whose theme, “My Heart Will Go On,” is Dion’s signature English-language song), and, of course, sang:
The protest was the culmination of the biggest story to come out of the publication of Rolling Stone’s list. Outlets including CBS and Glamour noted the loud backlash to the snub. It was, after all, needlessly out of step with Dion’s current cultural appraisal, and ’90s-era rockism seemed to underpin the omission.
During that decade, Dion’s first in the American spotlight, the artist was largely regarded by the critical establishment as a schmaltzy facsimile of a soulful singer. The list’s introduction went out of its way to note that “this is the Greatest Singers list, not the Greatest Voices List. Talent is impressive; genius is transcendent. Sure, many of the people here were born with massive pipes, perfect pitch, and boundless range. Others have rougher, stranger, or more delicate instruments.” It further qualified: “In all cases, what mattered most to us was originality, influence, the depth of an artist’s catalog, and the breadth of their musical legacy.” The implication, then, was that what was more important than innate talent was what was done with it. Shady placements of powerhouses like Barbra Streisand (No. 147) and Christina Aguilera (No. 141) seemed to put this philosophy to practice.
Mariah Carey, however, placed at No. 5. She was regarded with much the same disdain by cool-fixated music writers in the ‘90s (“At full speed her range is so superhuman that each excessive note erodes the believability of the lyric she is singing,” reads part of Rob Tannenbaum’s review of 1991's Emotions), but has in the ensuing decades accrued a heap of critical good will. Certainly, Carey’s voice has undergone changes over the years, and I’d argue that her waning ability to stand onstage and simply open her lungs and unleash has made her singing more expressive and soulful. Dion’s voice, meanwhile, has stayed very much the same, as has the middle-of-the-road feel of her music, which means that those who have long dismissed her artistry may still be inclined to do so.
But Dion has undergone her own reappraisal, thanks in no small part to her larger-than-life persona. Her endless goofiness rounds out the gravity of her music nicely. The kinder way in which all forms of pop are regarded has been good to her adult-oriented catalog, which is full of bangers that themselves have the kind of exaggerated quality that only a voice a superhuman as Dion’s could serve adequately. Case in point: “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.”
Céline Dion - It’s All Coming Back to Me Now (Official Extended Remastered HD Video)
And anyway, the sturdiness of a voice that has been blaring at such intensity for a good four decades in public should be proof enough of Dion’s bonafides to make such a list. Retaining the ability to sound like herself after years and years of serving the public is something that a good singer does. Dion’s voice has reached across generations and cultures. In his brilliant examination of the contrasts between the critical establishment’s regard of Dion’s work and the general public’s love of her, Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, journalist Carl Wilson writes of “friends and acquaintances who’ve told me that in Kazakhstan, Japan, Argentina, wherever, when locals found out they were Canadian, they’d be me with, ‘Ah, Celine Dion!’” Her singing has effectively made her Canada’s premier cultural ambassador.
On top of all of that, the snub seems particularly cruel coming on the heels of Dion’s announcement that she has been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome. This is the kind of editorial error that will be swept under the rug when Dion is gone, and the fond remembrances flow. It’s far better to appreciate our greats while we have them.
As for Dion’s fans, they’ve taken the bait—these lists are compiled specifically to generate attention and outrage, which means making strange inclusions and key exclusions. That said, at least they got off their asses and really put some action behind their convictions. And they did it with the politeness we’ve come to expect from our neighbors up north.
Nate Thayer, rebel reporter who interviewed Pol Pot in the Cambodian jungle, has died
American journalist Nate Thayer sits bandaged in a hotel room on Oct. 15, 1989, in Aranyaprathet, Thailand, after he was injured in a land mine explosion. Thayer survived several brushes with death over decades covering conflict in Southeast Asia and was the last Western journalist to interview Pol Pot. He was found dead at his home in Falmouth, Mass., on Tuesday.
Nate Thayer, the last Western correspondent to interview the murderousKhmer Rouge leader Pol Pot after tracking him in the jungles of Cambodia for nearly a decade, has died at his home in Falmouth, Mass. He was 62.
Thayer had multiple ailments and died of natural causes, according to his brother Rob, who last saw Nate on Sunday. His body was found on Tuesday.
"He was a rebel at the core," Rob Thayer says, and "had decided that he wasn't going to the hospital anymore."
A life of adventure in Asia
The intrepid investigative reporter's ties to Asia were lifelong and began with his father, a diplomat whose posts includedChina, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Nate Thayer spent five years of his childhood in Taiwan, his brother says.
He studied at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, but dropped out to return to Asia.
In the late 1980s, Thayer worked as a stringer on the Thai-Cambodian border, contributing freelance reports to the Associated Press, the Far Eastern Economic Review, The Phnom Penh Post, Agence France-Presse and Soldier of Fortune magazine, among others.
Thayer was an imposing presence: tall and muscular, with a shaven head and often with a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth. He ripped the filters off the Marlboro Reds he smoked. On the surface, it could be hard to tell him apart from the soldiers of fortune he reported on.
"If you were going to have a bar brawl, you would want him on your side," recalls Francis Moriarty, a former Hong Kong-based foreign correspondent and fellow Massachusetts resident who was close to Thayer in his final years.
Thayer was hospitalized numerous times for malaria, and narrowly survived hitting a land mine while riding in a Cambodian guerrilla truck in 1989, leaving him with shrapnel damage. He was hard of hearing as a result of frequent exposure to explosions and gunfire.
Behind the bravado, an inquisitive and analytical mind
But while Thayer relished the role of raconteur of a life lived dangerously, this masked his investigative and analytical skills, and deep expertise in his field, says Nayan Chanda, longtime editor of the now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review and an associate professor at Ashoka University in India.
If you were going to have a bar brawl, you would want him on your side
Behind the swashbuckling, cowboy image, was "this very inquisitive mind," Chanda says. And even in those earliest years, he says, it was clear how "completely committed" Thayer was to finding Pol Pot, who led the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia's brutal Communist regime from 1975 to 1979.
Thayer shrewdly assessed the struggle within the Khmer Rouge, Chanda says, "who's gunning for whom, and how he could perhaps use this ... in getting access to the area."
Dogged persistence pays off
After years of reporting and cultivating sources, Thayer's big break came in 1997, when an internal Khmer Rouge power struggle ended in Pol Pot being ousted and put on a show trial.
Thayer and Asiaworks Television cameraman David McKaige were allowed into the Khmer Rouge jungle stronghold of Anlong Veng near the Thai border to cover the spectacle.
Later that year, Chanda received a phone call from a man with a message for Nate Thayer: "They said that 'the uncle' will see him," a signal from the Khmer Rouge that Pol Pot agreed to be interviewed by Thayer.
The Khmer Rouge's top leader was never turned over to the international tribunal that tried his subordinates and comrades (and eventually convicted three of them). And he had not been interviewed in nearly two decades, giving Thayer a rare opportunity to question the man about his reign of terror.
"What we wanted to know was whether, one, he acknowledged what he did was wrong," Thayer told NPR's Linda Wertheimer in 1997 on All Things Considered, "and two, whether he felt sorry for it, whether he would apologize to so many people who didn't deserve it, who suffered so terribly. And he refused to."
''I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people,'' the infirm, 72-year-old Pol Pot argued to Thayer. ''Even now, and you can look at me: Am I a savage person?" he asked, adding: "My conscience is clear.''
Nate Thayer / AP
In this 1990 photo taken by Thayer, a Khmer Rouge guerrilla with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher strapped to his back and Buddhist amulets on his neck passes by villagers on his way to the front in Banteay Meanchey province, Cambodia.
Pol Pot admitted to making mistakes and ordering the killings of political rivals, but also blamed many of the deaths in his country on Vietnamese agents who wanted to subjugate Cambodia.
The heralded scoop won Thayer a plethora of awards. It also led to a long and bitter feud with ABC journalist Ted Koppel and the show Nightline, whom he claimed violated the terms of their agreement to use his material. As a result, Thayer declined a prestigious Peabody Award.
"Thayer went from being the first journalist to meet up with Pol Pot in nearly twenty years to being the first to turn down a Peabody," Philip Gourevitch wrote in The New Yorker at the time.
He also reported on Thailand, North Korea and Iraq, among other countries.
To the end, 'a believer in principle'
In time, Thayer returned to the U.S. and bought a Maryland farmhouse in 2000, because "he wanted a breather in life," says his brother. Later, he moved to Cape Cod with his trusty canine companion – his "best pal" Lamont – by his side.
Thayer continued to write for Vice and other outlets about far-right extremist movements, including the Ku Klux Klan and the Oath Keepers.
Nate did not condone the groups or their cause, Rob Thayer says. "He wanted to get inside the heads of these people and understand them. And it was the same way that he operated with the Khmer Rouge," and managed to gain the trust of his interviewees.
Toward the end of Thayer's life, as he struggled with a variety of health issues, friends launched a GoFundMe campaign to help him pay his bills.
"He was impoverished, in certain ways, on principle," says Francis Moriarty, Thayer's friend. "He was just a believer in principle, and he was dogged and unyielding."
NPR international correspondent Anthony Kuhn is currently based in Seoul. Before joining NPR, he was the Beijing correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review from 2003 to 2004. NPR's Maureen Pao, who worked at the Review from 1998 to 2001, contributed to this report.
