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Tuesday, August 23, 2016

The following is the third edition of a monthly series chronicling the U.S. 2016 presidential election. It features original material compiled throughout the previous month after an overview of the month’s biggest stories.

In this month’s edition on the campaign trail: two individuals previously interviewed by Wikinews announce their candidacies for the Reform Party presidential nomination; a former Republican Congressman comments on the Republican National Convention; and Wikinews interviews an historic Democratic National Convention speaker.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

A man missing from a camping ground in southern Utah in the Western US since July 30 was found in Australia. His automobile was found in a campground of Dixie National Forest with a note that he would be back in a few hours. An extensive search and rescue operation was conducted to try to locate this hiker by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Utah.

Investigators in the Sheriff’s Office were able to track him down to Cairns, Queensland. Apparently before he was “missing”, he bought a one-way ticket to Australia. Bryan Butas, the missing hiker, apparently had been under a great deal of stress and “got sick of it all”, according to a telephone interview by the Associated Press.

Butas has been charged with insurance fraud, a second-degree felony, by Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap. This was because Butas plotted to obtain a $250,000 life insurance policy before faking his own disappearance. He has also been given a bill for $20,000 by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office for their search and rescue operations on his behalf.

His wife and children have since his disappearance moved to the wife’s parent’s home in Ohio. Butas’s parents came to Southern Utah to help in the search and were “embarrassed and shocked” to learn their son had merely run away from marital and financial difficulties, Washington County Sheriff Kirk Smith said.

Washington County Sheriff Sgt. Jake Adams said his investigation included tracing an application Butas made for a passport, his purchase of a one-way airline ticket to Australia, and the life insurance policy that names his wife and children as beneficiaries. On August 18, Adams said Butas’s mother called him to say her son had called home the evening of August 11, several days after the search was officially called off for the missing man. Butas asked his mother for money and an airline ticket home, which she sent.

Butas has since been checked into the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Brecksville, Ohio, according to Adams, but will shortly return to Utah.

Friday, September 28, 2007

Bat for Lashes is the doppelgänger band ego of one of the leading millennial lights in British music, Natasha Khan. Caroline Weeks, Abi Fry and Lizzy Carey comprise the aurora borealis that backs this haunting, shimmering zither and glockenspiel peacock, and the only complaint coming from the audience at the Bowery Ballroom last Tuesday was that they could not camp out all night underneath these celestial bodies.

We live in the age of the lazy tendency to categorize the work of one artist against another, and Khan has had endless exultations as the next Björk and Kate Bush; Sixousie Sioux, Stevie Nicks, Sinead O’Connor, the list goes on until it is almost meaningless as comparison does little justice to the sound and vision of the band. “I think Bat For Lashes are beyond a trend or fashion band,” said Jefferson Hack, publisher of Dazed & Confused magazine. “[Khan] has an ancient power…she is in part shamanic.” She describes her aesthetic as “powerful women with a cosmic edge” as seen in Jane Birkin, Nico and Cleopatra. And these women are being heard. “I love the harpsichord and the sexual ghost voices and bowed saws,” said Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke of the track Horse and I. “This song seems to come from the world of Grimm’s fairytales.”

Bat’s debut album, Fur And Gold, was nominated for the 2007 Mercury Prize, and they were seen as the dark horse favorite until it was announced Klaxons had won. Even Ladbrokes, the largest gambling company in the United Kingdom, had put their money on Bat for Lashes. “It was a surprise that Klaxons won,” said Khan, “but I think everyone up for the award is brilliant and would have deserved to win.”

Natasha recently spoke with David Shankbone about art, transvestism and drug use in the music business.

DS: Do you have any favorite books?

NK: [Laughs] I’m not the best about finishing books. What I usually do is I will get into a book for a period of time, and then I will dip into it and get the inspiration and transformation in my mind that I need, and then put it away and come back to it. But I have a select rotation of cool books, like Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés and Little Birds by Anaïs Nin. Recently, Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch.

DS: Lynch just came out with a movie last year called Inland Empire. I interviewed John Vanderslice last night at the Bowery Ballroom and he raved about it!

NK: I haven’t seen it yet!

DS: Do you notice a difference between playing in front of British and American audiences?

NK: The U.S. audiences are much more full of expression and noises and jubilation. They are like, “Welcome to New York, Baby!” “You’re Awesome!” and stuff like that. Whereas in England they tend to be a lot more reserved. Well, the English are, but it is such a diverse culture you will get the Spanish and Italian gay guys at the front who are going crazy. I definitely think in America they are much more open and there is more excitement, which is really cool.

DS: How many instruments do you play and, please, include the glockenspiel in that number.

NK: [Laughs] I think the number is limitless, hopefully. I try my hand at anything I can contribute; I only just picked up the bass, really—

DS: –I have a great photo of you playing the bass.

NK: I don’t think I’m very good…

DS: You look cool with it!

NK: [Laughs] Fine. The glockenspiel…piano, mainly, and also the harp. Guitar, I like playing percussion and drumming. I usually speak with all my drummers so that I write my songs with them in mind, and we’ll have bass sounds, choir sounds, and then you can multi-task with all these orchestral sounds. Through the magic medium of technology I can play all kinds of sounds, double bass and stuff.

DS: Do you design your own clothes?

NK: All four of us girls love vintage shopping and charity shops. We don’t have a stylist who tells us what to wear, it’s all very much our own natural styles coming through. And for me, personally, I like to wear jewelery. On the night of the New York show that top I was wearing was made especially for me as a gift by these New York designers called Pepper + Pistol. And there’s also my boyfriend, who is an amazing musician—

DS: —that’s Will Lemon from Moon and Moon, right? There is such good buzz about them here in New York.

NK: Yes! They have an album coming out in February and it will fucking blow your mind! I think you would love it, it’s an incredible masterpiece. It’s really exciting, I’m hoping we can do a crazy double unfolding caravan show, the Bat for Lashes album and the new Moon and Moon album: that would be really theatrical and amazing! Will prints a lot of my T-shirts because he does amazing tapestries and silkscreen printing on clothes. When we play there’s a velvety kind of tapestry on the keyboard table that he made. So I wear a lot of his things, thrift store stuff, old bits of jewelry and antique pieces.

DS: You are often compared to Björk and Kate Bush; do those constant comparisons tend to bother you as an artist who is trying to define herself on her own terms?

NK: No, I mean, I guess that in the past it bothered me, but now I just feel really confident and sure that as time goes on my musical style and my writing is taking a pace of its own, and I think in time the music will speak for itself and people will see that I’m obviously doing something different. Those women are fantastic, strong, risk-taking artists—

DS: —as are you—

NK: —thank you, and that’s a great tradition to be part of, and when I look at artists like Björk and Kate Bush, I think of them as being like older sisters that have come before; they are kind of like an amazing support network that comes with me.

DS: I’d imagine it’s preferable to be considered the next Björk or Kate Bush instead of the next Britney.

NK: [Laughs] Totally! Exactly! I mean, could you imagine—oh, no I’m not going to try to offend anyone now! [Laughs] Let’s leave it there.

DS: Does music feed your artwork, or does you artwork feed your music more? Or is the relationship completely symbiotic?

NK: I think it’s pretty back-and-forth. I think when I have blocks in either of those area, I tend to emphasize the other. If I’m finding it really difficult to write something I know that I need to go investigate it in a more visual way, and I’ll start to gather images and take photographs and make notes and make collages and start looking to photographers and filmmakers to give me a more grounded sense of the place that I’m writing about, whether it’s in my imagination or in the characters. Whenever I’m writing music it’s a very visual place in my mind. It has a location full of characters and colors and landscapes, so those two things really compliment each other, and they help the other one to blossom and support the other. They are like brother and sister.

DS: When you are composing music, do you see notes and words as colors and images in your mind, and then you put those down on paper?

NK: Yes. When I’m writing songs, especially lately because I think the next album has a fairly strong concept behind it and I’m writing the songs, really imagining them, so I’m very immersed into the concept of the album and the story that is there through the album. It’s the same as when I’m playing live, I will imagine I see a forest of pine trees and sky all around me and the audience, and it really helps me. Or I’ll just imagine midnight blue and emerald green, those kind of Eighties colors, and they help me.

DS: Is it always pine trees that you see?

NK: Yes, pine trees and sky, I guess.

DS: What things in nature inspire you?

NK: I feel drained thematically if I’m in the city too long. I think that when I’m in nature—for example, I went to Big Sur last year on a road trip and just looking up and seeing dark shadows of trees and starry skies really gets me and makes me feel happy. I would sit right by the sea, and any time I have been a bit stuck I will go for a long walk along the ocean and it’s just really good to see vast horizons, I think, and epic, huge, all-encompassing visions of nature really humble you and give you a good sense of perspective and the fact that you are just a small particle of energy that is vibrating along with everything else. That really helps.

DS: Are there man-made things that inspire you?

NK: Things that are more cultural, like open air cinemas, old Peruvian flats and the Chelsea Hotel. Funny old drag queen karaoke bars…

DS: I photographed some of the famous drag queens here in New York. They are just such great creatures to photograph; they will do just about anything for the camera. I photographed a famous drag queen named Miss Understood who is the emcee at a drag queen restaurant here named Lucky Cheng’s. We were out in front of Lucky Cheng’s taking photographs and a bus was coming down First Avenue, and I said, “Go out and stop that bus!” and she did! It’s an amazing shot.

NK: Oh. My. God.

DS: If you go on her Wikipedia article it’s there.

NK: That’s so cool. I’m really getting into that whole psychedelic sixties and seventies Paris Is Burning and Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis. Things like The Cockettes. There seems to be a bit of a revolution coming through that kind of psychedelic drag queen theater.

DS: There are just so few areas left where there is natural edge and art that is not contrived. It’s taking a contrived thing like changing your gender, but in the backdrop of how that is still so socially unacceptable.

NK: Yeah, the theatrics and creativity that go into that really get me. I’m thinking about The Fisher King…do you know that drag queen in The Fisher King? There’s this really bad and amazing drag queen guy in it who is so vulnerable and sensitive. He sings these amazing songs but he has this really terrible drug problem, I think, or maybe it’s a drink problem. It’s so bordering on the line between fabulous and those people you see who are so in love with the idea of beauty and elevation and the glitz and the glamor of love and beauty, but then there’s this really dark, tragic side. It’s presented together in this confusing and bewildering way, and it always just gets to me. I find it really intriguing.

DS: How are you received in the Pakistani community?

NK: [Laughs] I have absolutely no idea! You should probably ask another question, because I have no idea. I don’t have contact with that side of my family anymore.

DS: When you see artists like Pete Doherty or Amy Winehouse out on these suicidal binges of drug use, what do you think as a musician? What do you get from what you see them go through in their personal lives and with their music?

NK: It’s difficult. The drugs thing was never important to me, it was the music and expression and the way he delivered his music, and I think there’s a strange kind of romantic delusion in the media, and the music media especially, where they are obsessed with people who have terrible drug problems. I think that’s always been the way, though, since Billie Holiday. The thing that I’m questioning now is that it seems now the celebrity angle means that the lifestyle takes over from the actual music. In the past people who had musical genius, unfortunately their personal lives came into play, but maybe that added a level of romance, which I think is pretty uncool, but, whatever. I think that as long as the lifestyle doesn’t precede the talent and the music, that’s okay, but it always feels uncomfortable for me when people’s music goes really far and if you took away the hysteria and propaganda of it, would the music still stand up? That’s my question. Just for me, I’m just glad I don’t do heavy drugs and I don’t have that kind of problem, thank God. I feel that’s a responsibility you have, to present that there’s a power in integrity and strength and in the lifestyle that comes from self-love and assuredness and positivity. I think there’s a real big place for that, but it doesn’t really get as much of that “Rock n’ Roll” play or whatever.

DS: Is it difficult to come to the United States to play considering all the wars we start?

NK: As an English person I feel equally as responsible for that kind of shit. I think it is a collective consciousness that allows violence and those kinds of things to continue, and I think that our governments should be ashamed of themselves. But at the same time, it’s a responsibility of all of our countries, no matter where you are in the world to promote a peaceful lifestyle and not to consciously allow these conflicts to continue. At the same time, I find it difficult to judge because I think that the world is full of shades of light and dark, from spectrums of pure light and pure darkness, and that’s the way human nature and nature itself has always been. It’s difficult, but it’s just a process, and it’s the big creature that’s the world; humankind is a big creature that is learning all the time. And we have to go through these processes of learning to see what is right.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

David Tchappat, a popular housemate recently evicted from the television reality program Big Brother Australia, has spoken out critically of his childhood experiences in the controversial religious group “Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren“, referred to in Australian media as “Exclusive Brethren”. Tchappat was a participant in the edition Big Brother Australia 2008, and was voted off the show on May 25.

Tchappat, 33, a former police officer and presently a firefighter, left the controversial group at age 19. He says he attempted to leave at age 17 but was brought back by members of the group and “interrogated” by group leadership for months. Up until he left he had never eaten in a restaurant, listened to the radio or been to the movie theater. According to Macquarie National News, Tchappat’s former community numbers number approximately 15,000 in Australia. Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren is a sect of Protestant Christianity and a breakaway group from Exclusive Brethren.

Due to his departure from the group, Tchappat had to break off contact with family members still inside the organization, though at times he speaks with his parents. Members do not vote in elections because they feel it contradicts their belief that God should determine who is in power, but they provide finances to the Liberal Party of Australia. Tchappat’s cousin Andrew left the group a few months after he did.

After getting to know his fellow Big Brother Australia housemates for three weeks, Tchappat recounted some of his experiences in his former religious group. “Look, I don’t like to say it’s a cult, but it basically is. My whole life was controlled. I didn’t have a say in it myself,” he said on one episode. He grew up in the Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren community in Gosford, New South Wales, and explained: “It’s based on Christian values but it’s very strict. So I had no TV, no radio, no computer, never been to a movie or a restaurant or kissed a girl – you name it, I didn’t do it.”

In an interview Tuesday with former Big Brother Australia runner-up Tim Brunero on Macquarie National News, Tchappat said he is planning on releasing a book about his experiences growing up in the controversial religious group. “I’ve spent the last two years writing it. It just happened that I got into Big Brother in the tail-end of it. Obviously there’s a few more chapters to add, but I’m really pumped, it’s an interesting story,” he said. He plans to title the book Losing my Religion.

He was also interviewed by ninemsn on Tuesday, and said he does not regret discussing his experiences in Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren on Australian national television. “I’m an example of how you can go out and be successful. I say to people that if you are thinking about leaving, and you’re serious, take a punt and give it a go. You can always go back if you don’t like it.” Former members of the group were inspired by Tchappat’s comments and empathized with his experiences in posts to Big Brother Internet message boards.

Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd criticized the Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren group in August 2007. At the time he was leader of the Australian Labor Party, and requested that then-Prime Minister John Howard reveal what took place in a private meeting with senior members of the religious group. “I believe this is an extremist cult and sect. I also believe that it breaks up families,” said Rudd to reporters in Adelaide according to The Sydney Morning Herald. He noted that the organization was being investigated by the Australian Federal Police for prior election activities, and wanted to know how much funding had been given by the group to the Liberal Party.

During his election campaign Rudd called on Australian federal agencies including the anti-money laundering agency Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Taxation Office, and the Australian Electoral Commission to investigate the activities of Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren. In spite of Rudd’s criticism of Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren, the religious group was guaranteed AUD10 million in taxpayer funding for its school facilities in January 2008. Rudd had promised during his election campaign to maintain education funding levels for non-government schools if he became Prime Minister.

Australia media reported on May 18 that Rudd rejected a request from former members of Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren to investigate the group. 34 ex-members of the religious group had sent a letter to the Prime Minister’s office asking him to investigate how they were treated in the organization. A spokesman for Rudd said that the ex-members should instead take their request to the police, and that a government investigation would raise religious freedom issues. Rudd’s chief of staff David Epstein said that the Prime Minister “does not resile from the views he expressed last year” and “remains concerned about the reported imposition of doctrines that weaken family bonds”.

Australian Greens spokeswoman Christine Milne told Australia’s ABC News said that the well-being of children still in the group should be of primary concern. “The issue here is not about religious freedom, it is about what this cult is doing to destroy families and effectively to undermine the law,” said Milne.

Ex-member Peter Flinn, who wrote the letter sent to Rudd which was signed by 33 other former members, was disappointed by the Prime Minister’s response. “We just want to highlight other equally fundamental human rights, such as access to family who remain Brethren members, a right callously denied for decades,” he said in a statement in The Sydney Morning Herald. Senator Bob Brown of the Australian Greens party has proposed a government inquiry into the group’s public funding, tax concessions and possible practices that harm children.

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Pictou Island had 2,000 to 3,000 seals on it when struck by a “severe” storm that buried the tiny Canadian island in snow and created rough ocean effects Wednesday and Thursday.

Jane MacDonald, an island resident, said that she woke up Thursday morning to see “wall to wall seals” and their puppies “decimated” by the storm.

MacDonald commented, “The seal puppies were literally swept away into the water because their mothers couldn’t get them to higher ground. A wave would hit and the pup went under. The mother pushed it up with her nose, and then another wave would hit.”

“After the sixth or seventh wave, the pup didn’t come up,” MacDonald said. “The more you watched, the worse it got. The mothers struggled so hard to save their babies and it just couldn’t be done, I’d never seen anything like that.”

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

A report from the new US and NATO commander in Afghanistan says there is an urgent need for more foreign troops and civilians, more Afghan forces and a new strategic approach to reverse Taliban gains.

File:General Stanley A McChrystal 01.jpg

The assessment by US Army General Stanley McChrystal is still officially secret, but the Washington Post published an unclassified version on Monday, which it says has only a few deletions requested by the government.

In the document, the general, who arrived in Afghanistan in June, says “success is not ensured by additional forces alone, but continued under-resourcing will likely cause failure.”

He writes that the US and NATO effort has long been “under-resourced,” and that must change within 12 months or the coalition “risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.” He says a lack of even the “minimum” resources is “a recipe for failure” in a counterinsurgency,” and the Taliban and related groups have made significant gains in recent years as a result.

The report says that “failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term [next year] — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

General McChrystal says while the Afghan government and military “must ultimately defeat the insurgency,” the coalition can not wait for the Afghans to be capable enough to do the job alone.

Although the Washington Post published most of the document on its website, Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to discuss its details, calling it “pre-decisional” and “classified.”

“The national security team, to include the commander-in-chief, have it. They are reviewing it. They will use it to help them make decisions about the future. The secretary [of Defense] is absorbing the assessment along with the president. If there are decisions that flow from that, they will make them at the appropriate time,” the spokesman said.

Whitman would not say when McChrystal will make his expected detailed request for more troops, or when a decision might be made.

On the president’s aircraft Monday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that while the general may want more troops, he does not expect a formal request for a little while. “We are going to conduct that strategic assessment and do that in a way that lays out the best path forward before we make resource decisions, rather than having this go the other way around where one makes resources decisions and then finds a strategy,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs said any decision on troop levels will wait until the conclusion of a broader assessment of the way forward in Afghanistan, of which he indicated McChrystal’s document is only one part.

Last week, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates appealed for patience, saying these are extremely important decisions, and the president should be given the time to get them right. The secretary indicated he, the president and other senior officials have sent questions to McChrystal about his assessment, and are awaiting his answers.

In the document, the general was critical of NATO forces, saying that they are “poorly configured” to fight an insurgency. He says if NATO countries continue to be “pre-occupied” with protecting their forces rather than protecting the people and accomplishing the mission, they “run the risk of strategic defeat.” He said the coalition must operate “dramatically differently — even uncomfortably differently.”

He also repeated some of his earlier calls for more civilian help and a new approach by his troops that makes the security of the Afghan people their top priority. He said the coalition is in a “war of ideas,” in which he says it must demonstrate its commitment and its ability to deliver security without causing undue civilian casualties.

In an interview with Voice of America, Afghanistan Ambassador to the United Nations Zahir Tanin endorsed General McChrystal’s sense of urgency, and his view that while a comprehensive approach is needed, security comes first. “From a military point of view, I think without enough resources, without the ability to stop the Taliban’s advances, it would be very difficult to make any progress in other areas, including political progress in Afghanistan,” Tanin said.

Ambassador Tanin said McChrystal is in the best position to assess the security needs and if there is a need for more forces, the Afghan government must support such a request.

He also rejected concerns expressed by some, including Secretary Gates, that sending more foreign troops could alienate the Afghan people. The ambassador says the key for Afghans is not how many foreign troops there are or what strategy they implement, but whether they deliver security and defeat the insurgents.

In the report, McChrystal concluded that “while the situation is serious, success is still achievable.” But he said the effort needs “a fundamentally new approach” that is “properly resourced and supported” throughout the coalition and across military and civilian agencies.

Monday, March 30, 2009

At least eight people have been killed on Monday after a gunman entered a Carthage, North Carolina nursing home and opened fire on its residents.

Local police reported that Robert Stewart, a 45-year-old man, entered the Pinelake health and rehabilitation centre, which gives care to Alzheimer’s disease patients, and shot a nurse and seven patients to death. Six of the victims were killed at the scene. The others died later at a local hospital. The ages of the patients were between 78 and 98.

The alleged gunman also wounded two other people, among them a visitor and a policeman, who confronted the gunman in a hallway and stopped the rampage. The suspect himself was injured before being arrested by police. His condition is currently not known.

“He [the policeman] acted in nothing short of a heroic way today, and but for his actions, we certainly could have had a worse tragedy. We had an officer, a well-trained officer, who performed his job the way he was supposed to and prevented this from getting even worse than it is now,” said Maureen Krueger, the Moore County District Attorney.

“This is a small community built on faith, and faith will get us through,” said Chris McKenzie, the Carthage police chief. “It’s a horrible event in any size town, particularly, though, when you deal with a small town such as Carthage. It’s hard. This is my home, my small town. I was born and raised here so I take it to heart a little bit. All you can do is move forward.”

The victims of the shooting have been identified. They are: Bessie Hendrick, 78; John Goldston, 78; Jessie Musser, 88; Tessie Gardner, 88; Lillian Dunn, 89; Margaret Johnston, 89; Louise Decker, 98; and Jerry Avent, the nurse.

Carthage is located approximately sixty miles southwest of North Carolina’s capital of Raleigh. According to the 2000 census, it has a population of 1,871. The Pinelake nursing home, where the attack occurred, contains 110 beds and has both short and long term patients.