The Frank Wildhorn venture closed last month after playing its 33rd performance, and was completely shut out of the Tony Awards. That said, the actress, who has appeared on the Great White Way in Cabaret and Legally Blonde, notes the show had its loyal followers and she's extremely proud of the work she did. "The people who loved that show -- and there were more than a few -- really loved it. Intelligent, educated friends of mine said without hesitation that it was going to run for a long time, and that as soon and prom/graduation/first communion season was over, the families would be coming out of the woodwork," she explained.
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A litmus test of democracy is civilian control of the military enshrined in the constitution and exercised through representative institutions -- a test which to date no Arab state has passed. Tunisia appears to be on the verge of achieving this historic breakthrough, an outcome that paradoxically the military itself has made possible.
The Jasmine Revolution has followed a course heretofore unknown in the Arab world, but common in transitions to democracy elsewhere, especially in Eastern Europe. Mass protests there, for example, typically exacerbated tensions between security forces, on the one hand, and militaries on the other. Tunisian ex-President Zine al Abidine Ben Ali, just as many of his East European dictator equivalents, relied on the former to maintain control, while politically neutering the military, in part by encouraging development of professional norms. To this end he dispatched a remarkably high percentage of Tunisian officers for training in US military institutions, while inviting numerous US military training missions into the country. A standard objective of such US military training is development of professional norms for officers, a component of which is civil-military relations in democracies. It is interesting to note that the primary external source of training and supply for security forces was France, a fact possibly related to President Sarkozy's loyalty to Ben Ali virtually to the moment his plane appeared in French air space.
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Last Friday, December 3, marked the one year anniversary of Alan Gross' imprisonment in Cuba. At the time of his imprisonment, Gross was a subcontractor for DAI's civil society program in Cuba, funded by the United States Agency of International Development. It is now known that Gross was working with Cuba's small Jewish community, providing them with reading materials, access to information, possibly even internet access. During a week in which companies sold more than $1 billion on Cyber Monday, it is sad but true that the Cuban government's holiday wish list for its citizens excludes Wi-Fi access in homes, Kindles with global 3G or even the latest 4G smartphone with web-based gadgets.
Behind closed doors, Cuba has suggested a prisoner swap for Gross. Cuba will hand over Gross if the United States returns the "Cuban Five," a group of Cuban nationals who were convicted of espionage in the United States. Cuba admits the Five are intelligence officers who were, at minimum, gathering information for the Cuban government while living in the United States. The Obama administration denies that Gross was a spy and therefore refuses to discuss a prisoner swap. All of this, however, confuses the more fundamental issue.
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Talk, Listen, Connect (TLC) is a groundbreaking, bilingual (English/Spanish) multimedia outreach initiative designed to help military families with young children coping with challenging transitions in their lives. Through video, music, and print materials, beloved Sesame Street characters including Elmo and Rosita address issues such as deployment, a parent's return home changed due to combat related injury, and the death of a parent. TLC harnesses the power of the Sesame Street Muppets to aid the communication between adults and children through strategies and language that are child-appropriate and useful for the whole family.
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