New York

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Standing for American Values

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Hilary Clinton’s latest book launch is well under way. She spoke to the Toronto Region Board of Trade yesterday (June 16, 2014) and participated in televised interviews with CBC and CTV.

In her book ‘Hard Choices’ and in an interview last week in New York, she revealed that decision making often pits U.S. strategic interests against bedrock U.S. values. The interviewer asked: “Where did you stand on that continuum when you began your job as secretary of state and where do you stand now?”

She responded, “I had hoped there was a way to more closely align them. We could do more to get our values and our strategic interests to be coinciding. I worked very hard to do that. But I also came to realize what generations of American diplomats and leaders understood before me: that often it’s not possible and often you have to make that hard choice – stand for your values and be ready to take the consequences.”

When, for example?  “In my book, I describe how we let blind [Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng] into our embassy. It was a perfect example of being forced to make a decision that was primarily a values decision and believing we had done enough to firmly ground our relationship with China in a broader discussion about where we could work together, where our disagreements would persist, that the relationship was strong enough to withstand what would be a difficult, confrontational experience for both sides.”

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/stand-for-your-values-on-the-hard-choices/article19175854/

Photo Source:  https://www.google.ca/search?q=hillary+clinton+images&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=wgefU5qCC5e2yASnxIG4BQ&sqi=2&ved=0CBsQsAQ&biw=1228&bih=589

 

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“NOTHING Says IT Better Than Shoes”

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Cold Warrior Nikita Khrushchev best captured the pugnacious power of footwear when he slapped his shoe in rage on the table at the United Nations’ New York headquarters during the politically frigid fall of 1960.

It occurred during a debate of a Russian resolution decrying colonialism. A Philippines’ representative charged the Soviets with employing a double standard, pointing to their colonial domination of Eastern Europe. In response, Khrushchev took off one of his shoes and began to furiously pound the table.

The chaotic scene finally ended when General Assembly President Frederick Boland (Ireland) broke his gavel calling the meeting to order. The image of Khrushchev as a hotheaded buffoon was indelibly etched into America’s collective memory.

Khrushchev has been imitated by boardroom bullies ever since.

 

Quoting sources:

http://www.thestar.com/news/2008/12/20/the_greatest_insult_of_all.html

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nikita-khrushchev-throws-a-tantrum-at-the-united-nations

 

For additional versions of this story, check out:

http://russiapedia.rt.com/on-this-day/october-12/

 

Photo source:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=shoe+tantrum+Khrushchev+United+Nations+images&es_sm=93&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=n6NNU6P0IMWu8AGygoDgDA&ved=0CCgQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=600

 

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Simple Steps to Selling a Brand

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AXA EQUITABLE, a French-based insurance company, is taking an axe to its name, trimming it to AXA in the USA.

After studying consumer needs in the complex financial marketplace, their publicity company (Publicis Kaplan Thaler) has devised a sharp new campaign.  Consumers can contemplate a simple message as they climb stairs in public places such as Grand Central Station in New York.

          “Reach your financial destination one small step at a time. AXA redefining standards.”

The staircase is both the medium and the message.

 

Adapted from and photo from:

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Dancing on the Tightrope between the Twin Towers

On the morning of August 7, 1974, 24-year-old Philippe Petit stepped onto a steel wire between the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan.

A police officer was dispatched to bring him down and observed in helpless amazement that Petit was dancing, and laughing. His feet left the wire as he bounced and resettled on it again. 

 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/newyork-tightrope/

Picture source:  https://www.google.com/#q=philippe+petit+photos

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Dancing Shoe Battery, Version Two

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http://www.q5x.com/products/wireless-transmitters/tapshoemic/

  

“Every Christmas for decades, the leggy, legendary Rockettes have tapped their way across the stage at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, stirring images of drummers drumming and lords a-leaping. But the dancers faced a perennial challenge – their tap rhythms were often muted in the 6,000-seat enormity of the world’s largest indoor theatre.

Efforts to boost the beat of the feet in their signature Twelve Days of Christmas number – using, say, directional microphones or body-pack transmitters – were ineffective, awkward, or too visible. Enter Quantum5X, a Canadian firm best known for developing rugged wireless technology to capture the crash of basketball giants and the cacophony of hockey hits and baseball slides.

The solution? To mount tiny microphone-transmitters onto the bottom of the Rockettes’ tap shoes, picking up the beat so faithfully it could be amplified over the theatre sound system. Call it Rockette science – a classic case study of how innovation is born of necessity and improvisation.”

 

“Boosting the beat of a famed dance troupe’s feet”   By Gordon Pitts, Globe and Mail. December 21, 2011

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/boosting-the-beat-of-a-famed-dance-troupes-feet/article4181584/