Target cautious after weak holiday quarter, shares fall

this quarter and opening 124 Canadian stores, more than it has ever handled in a single year.

The Canada plans cut earnings by 48 cents per share in 2012 and should trim earnings by about 45 cents in 2013.

'LINKED WITH ECONOMY'

Target expects sales to rise about 2 percent this year, down from 5.1 percent growth last year, which had an extra sales week. Sales at stores open at least a year should rise in line with 2012's 2.7 percent increase.

The fourth-quarter marked Target's weakest holiday season performance since 2008, and some strength in January helped prop up what could have been even weaker numbers, said Sandy Skrovan, U.S. research director at Planet Retail.

"Walmart proved the victor over Target for the 2012 holiday season," Skrovan said, pointing out that Walmart U.S. same-store sales rose 1 percent in the quarter. "But Target won the year overall since, unlike Walmart, its affluent shopper base tends to be more insulated from economic swings."

While food and other basics sold well, shoppers held back from discretionary purchases like toys in an uncertain economy. Shoppers bought 0.7 percent more each time they shopped and the average spent was up 1.4 percent.

"Given the size of the company, anything that they do is linked inextricably with the economy," said Cowen & Co analyst Faye Landes. "In addition, they are in the fashion business and that business is clearly not without risk."

Target's holiday season included a disappointing showing for its collection of gifts sold in collaboration with high-end department store chain Neiman Marcus . The line that included designer dresses and dishes launched on December 1, and Target sharply discounted the goods even before Christmas.

Wal-Mart said last week that Walmart U.S. same-store sales were likely to be flat this quarter as consumers faced higher gasoline prices and smaller paychecks after the expiration of the U.S. payroll tax cut.

At Target, more shoppers used its credit and debit cards. The cards offer a 5 percent discount to foster customer loyalty, but the discount can also pressure margins.

Target said 15.5 percent of store sales during the quarter were paid with its cards, up from 14 percent in the third quarter and 10.8 percent a year earlier.

The fourth-quarter gross margin declined to 27.8 percent of sales from 28.4 percent a year earlier, due to the increased card usage, remodeling and markdowns on seasonal merchandise.

Target earned $961 million, or $1.47 per share, in the quarter, down from $981 million, or $1.45 per share, a year earlier. Target had fewer shares outstanding in the latest period.

Analysts, on average, expected earnings of $1.48 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Adjusted earnings per share, excluding items such as costs related to Canada, rose to $1.65 from $1.49 a year ago.

Target tempered profit expectations back in early January, when it said earnings would just meet or somewhat exceed the low end of its prior view for net earnings of $1.45 to $1.55 per share and adjusted profit of $1.64 to $1.74 per share.

For the current year, Target forecast adjusted earnings of $4.85 to $5.05 per share, which would exceed the $4.76 it earned last year. It forecast first-quarter adjusted earnings of $1.10 to $1.20 per share versus $1.11 a year ago.

It was not immediately clear how the company's profit forecast compared to analysts' expectations.

Target previously said fourth-quarter sales rose 6.8 percent to $22.37 billion, with same-store sales up 0.4 percent. Same-store sales missed analysts' average target of 0.8 percent.

Meanwhile, Dollar Tree Inc , which sells low-priced items, said fourth-quarter sales soared 15.4 percent as it opens more stores and sells more food. Its shares jumped 12.5 percent.

(Reporting by Jessica Wohl in Chicago; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/target-profit-slipped-winter-holiday-quarter-125132402--finance.html

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Parental Guidance: Snitch, Dark Skies, and Fun Size

News ? Columns ? Parental Guidance ? Parental Guidance: Snitch, Dark Skies, and Fun Size

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America's Moscow ambassador embroiled in Texas adoption row

Alexei Pushkov, the head of the State Duma's committee on international affairs, admonished US envoy Michael McFaul for refusing to attend parliament to discuss "the death of our children in the United States".

Mr Pushkov said on Twitter that the refusal showed the US was "not ready for serious dialogue on this question".

Mr McFaul, an active user of social media, shot back: "As a norm, US ambassadors to [sic] not participate in hearings of foreign parliaments. Do Russian ambassadors?" He then added: "Always happy to meet you and your colleagues to discuss all issues in US-Russian relations, including adoptions." The controversy is likely to be high on the agenda when Sergei Lavrov, Russia's veteran foreign minister, meets John Kerry, the new US secretary of state, in Germany next week.

Russia's children's rights ombudsman, Pavel Astakhov, announced on Monday that a three-year-old Russian boy, Maxim Kuzmin, had been murdered by his adoptive American mother in Gardendale, Texas.

The case is highly charged because President Vladimir Putin approved a ban on US parents adopting Russian children in December, citing cases of abuse and the death of 19 adoptees in America in the past decade.

The ban was also a response to US legislation introduced earlier the same month preventing alleged Russian human rights abusers from entering the country.

Pro-Kremlin politicians and officials have rushed to condemn the alleged murder of the boy in Texas, whom the Russian foreign ministry said had been beaten and given powerful drugs for adult schizophrenics by his adoptive mother, Laura Shatto.

Police in Texas have expressed surprise at Moscow jumping to conclusions, saying that an autopsy on the toddler ? known to his US family as Max Alan Shatto ? is not complete and no cause of death has been established.

The local sheriff said on Wednesday that the toddler had been playing outside with his brother before he was found unresponsive by his mother.

Mr Astakhov has called for the dead boy's two-year-old brother, who was also adopted by the Shattos, to be returned to Russia.

Source: http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568617/s/28cfe98f/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cnews0Cworldnews0Ceurope0Crussia0C98856420CAmericas0EMoscow0Eambassador0Eembroiled0Ein0ETexas0Eadoption0Erow0Bhtml/story01.htm

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Nexmo Raises $3M From Intel Capital For Mobile Messaging API Service, Signaling More Disruption For The Telcos

Nexmo has raised $3 million from Intel Capital for its mobile messaging API, carrier grade service. Also participating were NHN Investment Corporation and Initial Capital. Nexmo, founded in 2010, raised $500,000 in seed capital at the beginning of last year.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/L_fZ_nS58H8/

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Japan's Cautious Hawks

This island is my island: the governor of Tokyo on Okinotori Island, May 2005. (Issei Kato / Courtesy Reuters)

The Japanese have thought about foreign policy in similar terms since the latter half of the nineteenth century. The men who came to power after the 1868 Meiji Restoration set out to design a grand strategy that would protect their country against the existential threat posed by Western imperialism. They were driven not, as their American contemporaries were, to achieve what they believed to be their manifest destiny nor, like the French, to spread wide the virtues of their civilization. The challenge they faced -- and met -- was to ensure Japan's survival in an international system created and dominated by more powerful countries.?

That quest for survival remains the hallmark of Japanese foreign policy today. Tokyo has sought to advance its interests not by defining the international agenda, propagating a particular ideology, or promoting its own vision of world order, the way the United States and other great powers have. Its approach has instead been to take its external environment as a given and then make pragmatic adjustments to keep in step with what the Japanese sometimes refer to as "the trends of the time."

Ever since World War II, that pragmatism has kept Japan in an alliance with the United States, enabling it to limit its military's role to self-defense. Now, however, as China grows ever stronger, as North Korea continues to build its nuclear weapons capability, and as the United States' economic woes have called into question the sustainability of American primacy in East Asia, the Japanese are revisiting their previous calculations. In particular, a growing chorus of voices on the right are advocating a more autonomous and assertive foreign policy, posing a serious challenge to the centrists, who have until recently shaped Japanese strategy...

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Source: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138816/gerald-l-curtis/japans-cautious-hawks?cid=rss-rss_xml-japans_cautious_hawks-000000

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The GOP is fixin' to sell out gun owners

They will vote en masse for "universal background checks".* **

Of course, I called this a year ago:

And so, it is our civic duty to take a hit for our Country.? Put Obama back in office, unfettered.? The orgy of Progressive overreach by Regulation will be sporadically (and mostly ineffectively) resisted by a corrupt Big Government GOP.? The Agencies will rule the land, and the economy will remain seized up.

And rather than a million Tea Partiers taking to the streets, it will be two million, or three.? Rather than five or ten corrupt GOP Establishment crooks turned out of office, it will be thirty, or fifty.

And that will be the time when the calculators like Mitt Romney will get the idea that they will most likely advance their career by striking down the Progressive beast, again and again.

Remember the primaries, folks - those are the elections that count, and the ones you can win.? Remember that the local GOP Establishment has to get elected.? Organize fellow gun owners to throw them out and seize the Party.

Kill all their political careers.? As Voltaire's immortal words from Candide counsel us:

Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres

"In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others."

It's the Dread Pirate Roberts school of politics: Good night Wesley. Good work.? Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.? As I wrote last year, the GOP is not our friend:

We screwed up, and believed all this, and the government never got smaller under the GOP.? It got bigger, and more intrusive, and more remote from the people, yea even under St. Ron.? Maybe it's too late for us, but if it's not then the only way forward is to burn the GOP to the waterline.? The most expedient way is to keep the Tea Party energized, and a President Romney will cause many to fall away from that movement under the eleventh commandment (another Reagan philosophy).

Well screw that noise.? We f***ed up once, trusting him and the rest of the GOP team.? How's that working out?? Rebuilding a party that Reagan might actually recognize is what this country needs - and right now, damn it - and Mitt Romney isn't the man to do it.

Barack Obama is.

And right now, the GOP is taking its marching orders from him.? The game is afoot, the battle joined anew.? The foeman is not the Democrats - we'll get to them presently.? No, the foeman is the GOP, who thinks they can get ahead by screwing gun owners.? OK, then - let's see how that works in the next primary.

Call your CongressCritters and tell them that we'll see them, and raise them one opponent come next primary.? And then do it.? They're not our friends.? Any of them.

* Which will not be universal, duh.? You don't need to show ID to buy Meth, but you do to buy Sudafed.

** I wonder if I will comply.? Hard to see how this would be enforced effectively.

Source: http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-gop-is-fixin-to-sell-out-gun-owners.html

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Islamists attack Malian troops in Gao

French soldiers detonate three grenades in a controlled explosion in the area where a suicide bomber exploded at the entrance of Gao, northern Mali, Sunday Feb. 10, 2013. It was the second time a suicide bomber targeted the Malian army checkpoint in three days. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

French soldiers detonate three grenades in a controlled explosion in the area where a suicide bomber exploded at the entrance of Gao, northern Mali, Sunday Feb. 10, 2013. It was the second time a suicide bomber targeted the Malian army checkpoint in three days. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

French soldiers secure the area where a suicide bomber attacked, at the entrance of Gao, northern Mali, Sunday Feb. 10, 2013. It was the second time a suicide bomber targeted the Malian army checkpoint in three days. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

A French soldier secures the area where a suicide bomber attacked, at the entrance of Gao, northern Mali, Sunday Feb. 10, 2013. It was the second time a suicide bomber targeted the Malian army checkpoint in three days. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Tuareg soldiers in the Malian army mans a checkpoint at the entrance of Gao, northern Mali, Friday Feb. 8, 2013. Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed himself attempting to blow up an army checkpoint. It was the first time a suicide bomber operated in Mali. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

In this photo made Friday Feb. 8, 2013, A French helicopter flies towards the remote desert city of Tesalit, northern Mali. President of the government body representing the area of Tessalit, Aicha Belco Maiga confirmed by telephone on Friday from her home in Bamako that her town had been retaken by French forces. (AP Photo)

GAO, Mali (AP) ? Black-robed Islamic extremists armed with AK-47 automatic rifles penetrated the most populous city in northern Mali on Sunday, engaging the Malian army in combat in a surprise attack two weeks after French and Malian troops ousted the jihadists.

The attack in Gao shows the Islamic fighters, many of them well armed and with combat experience, are determined and daring and it foreshadows a protracted campaign by France and other nations to restore government control in this vast Saharan nation in northwest Africa.

The Islamic radicals fought against the Malian army for more than two hours and were seen roaming the streets and on rooftops in around the police headquarters in the center of Gao. Gunfire echoed across the city.

Families hid in their homes. One family handed plastic cups of water through the locked iron gate to others hiding on their patio. Piles of onions lay unattended where market women fled when the Islamists arrived.

The fighting appeared to center near the police headquarters, where Malian soldiers with rocket propelled grenades traded fire with the combatants believed to be from the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, or MUJAO. The only sound was gunfire and the bleating of goats. Soldiers were positioned at every corner in the neighborhood of mud-walled buildings.

Ever since French forces took the town, Islamists had clashed with security forces on its outskirts. This was the first time they succeeded in entering the city. On Saturday night, a suicide bomber detonated himself at a checkpoint at the entrance to Gao. A suicide bomber also blew himself up in Gao on Friday, killing only himself.

Besides Gao, French and Malian forces have also retaken the fabled city of Timbuktu and other places, pushing the Islamic extremists back into the desert where they pose a constant threat to Malian and allied forces. Several African nations have also contributed troops to the battle against the extremists, who imposed their harsh version of Islamic law in the north.

The armed Islamists seized the northern half of Mali in April, sending poorly disciplined and equipped Malian forces retreating in disarray. France launched its military intervention in its former colony on Jan. 11 when the Islamists, many of whom had fought for ex-Libyan leader Moammar Ghadafi, began encroaching on the south, threatening the capital Bamako which lies deep in southern Mali.

France has said that it wants to hand over responsibility to the Malian military and other African nations who have contributed troops and has raised with the United Nations Security Council the possibility of establishing a U.N. peacekeeping operation in Mali.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-10-Mali-Fighting/id-ff60ed9fc5604246b13ee15565a3a9ee

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APNewsBreak: Flaws found in US missile shield

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Secret Defense Department studies cast doubt on whether a multibillion-dollar missile defense system planned for Europe can ever protect the U.S. from Iranian missiles as intended, congressional investigators say.

Military officials say they believe they can overcome the problems and are moving forward with plans. But proposed fixes could prove difficult. One possibility has been ruled out as technically unfeasible. A second, relocating missile interceptors planned for Poland and possibly Romania to ships on the North Sea, could be diplomatically troublesome.

The studies are the latest to highlight serious problems for a plan that has been criticized on several fronts.

Republicans claim it was developed hastily in an attempt to appease Russia, which had opposed an earlier system. But Russia is also critical of the plan, which it believes is really intended to counter its missiles. A series of governmental and scientific reports has raised questions about whether it would ever work as planned.

At a time that the military faces giant budget cuts, the studies could lead Congress to reconsider whether it is worthwhile to spend billions for a system that may not fulfill its original goals.

The classified studies were summarized in a briefing for lawmakers by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' nonpartisan investigative and auditing arm, which is preparing a report. The GAO briefing, which was not classified, was obtained by The Associated Press.

Military officials declined repeated requests to discuss the studies on the record, noting they were classified. Even speaking on condition of anonymity, officials declined to say whether the GAO accurately had reported its conclusions. But the briefing had been reviewed by several Defense Department officials and the revisions they requested were incorporated. There was no indication they had objected to how the studies had been described.

The officials who spoke to the AP emphasized that the interceptor intended to protect the United States is in the early stages of development and its capabilities are not known. They said that the U.S. is already protected by other missile defense systems. Even if European-based interceptors are unable to directly defend the United States, they say they would protect not only European allies and U.S. troops stationed on the continent, but also U.S. radars there that are necessary for all U.S. missile defense plans.

Missile defense has been a contentious issue since President George W. Bush sought to base long-range interceptors in Central Europe to stop missiles from Iran. Some Democrats criticized the plans, saying they were rushed and based on unproven technology. Russia believed the program was aimed at countering its missiles and undermining its nuclear deterrent.

It might seem logical for the U.S. to want to have a defense against Russian missiles, but it's not that simple.

A new missile defense system aimed at Russia could undermine the balance between the nuclear powers, leading Moscow to add to its arsenal and build up its own defenses. It would undermine prospects for further cuts in nuclear weapons, which are a priority for President Barack Obama, and could hurt U.S.-Russian cooperation on other issues of international importance.

Obama reworked the plans soon after taking office in 2009, saying the threat from long-range Iranian missiles was years off. His plans called for slower interceptors that could address Iran's medium-range missiles. The interceptors would be upgraded gradually over four phases, culminating early next decade with those intended to protect both Europe and the United States.

The plans have gained momentum in Europe with the signing of basing agreements in Poland, Romania and Turkey, as well as backing by NATO.

Russia initially welcomed the plan, but now strongly opposes it, especially the interceptors in the final stage. Russia fears those interceptors could catch its intercontinental missiles launched at the U.S.

It is that fourth stage that is now at issue.

The GAO investigators said that the classified reports by the Missile Defense Agency concluded that Romania was a poor location for an interceptor to protect the U.S. It said the Polish site would work only if the U.S. developed capabilities to launch interceptors while an Iranian missile was in its short initial phase of powered flight.

But the administration is not pursuing that capability because it does not believe it is feasible, according to one senior defense official.

The military has considered deploying interceptors on ships, but the Navy has safety concerns that have not yet been resolved. The suggestion of attempting intercepts from ships on the North Sea probably would aggravate tensions with Russia. That could put it right in the path that some Russian ICBMs would use, further reinforcing Russia's belief that it, not Iran, is the target of the system.

The GAO investigators also took the administration to task for not conducting studies earlier that could have revealed the problems. Reports by the GAO and scientific bodies advising the government have raised other concerns about the missile shield, citing production glitches, cost overruns, problems with radars and sensors that cannot distinguish between warheads and other objects.

One report by the National Academy of Sciences recommended canceling the fourth phase of the system and deploying the interceptors to the East Coast.

The GAO study was requested by Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, who until recently led a panel that oversees missile defense. He said he is concerned that the interceptor in development might be useless in protecting the United States.

"This report really confirms what I have said all along: that this was a hurried proposal by the president," he said.

___

Online:

Missile Defense Agency: http://www.mda.mil/system/system.html

___

Follow Desmond Butler on Twitter: http://twitter.com/desmondbutler

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-flaws-found-us-missile-shield-081826501--politics.html

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At Least 4 Dead Following Big Pacific Quake, Tsunami (Voice Of America)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/283012106?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Monte Paschi source denies report of 920 mln euro derivatives loss

MILAN (Reuters) - A source at Italian bank Monte dei Paschi on Wednesday denied a report in an Italian newspaper that the lender would announce a derivatives loss of 920 million euros ($1.24 billion) at a board later in the day.

Il Sole 24 Ore daily said the bank would reveal losses of 920 million euros from three derivative trades, much higher than the previously announced amount of 720 million euros, plus a further loss of 120 million euros in "personnel costs."

The source declined to elaborate.

The three 2006-09 derivatives trades only recently came to light and are now at the center of an investigation against former executives at Italy's No. 3 bank.

(Reporting by Stefano Bernabei, writing by Jennifer Clark)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/monte-paschi-source-denies-report-920-mln-euro-071449859--finance.html

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Dressing Dad: A Daughter's Post-Mortem Reflection Part 1 of 3 ...

February 3, 2013

The Kairos Network Blog was nearly dormant in 2012. The reason? Well, my own father?s decline and death in November. The entire year for me was one of endings and closure. As my father declined, my children approached the rim of a much more empty nest, my marriage began to permanently change, I went through some depression, menopause wrote its final chapters in my body: my hair grew more grey, my eyesight dwindled and I got the first hints of a double chin. It was nearly impossible to distinguish these events in lived experience. Our inner lives and processes get intertwined with our parent?s physical death. How do we make meaning within the totality of our still unfolding lives? In support of that question I share highlights from my recent journals in the next three blogs. Part 1 below. Last two to follow. Check them out too if you dare.

Part 1: Journal notes from my last visit with Dad and return home.

Part 2: My post-death meditation encounters with my father.

Part 3: An account of dressing my father?s body at the funeral home and burial.

Dedicated to my father: Hugh Robert Denney

by Jeanne Denney

October 15

Dad is sleepy and non-communicative most of the day. In another world. Not so interested in things or news. Meanwhile I have a day of sadness and depression, weeping in trips to the bathrooms or bedroom. From here my life looks small, failed and illogical. I become aware of the difficulty of it, of how I look to them. We manage to go to Apple tasting for an hour with the wheelchair (this is an event at the family retail nursery). I breathe with effort trying not to remember.

Later I shop and cook dinner for Dad and Betty. I simply enjoy them with clear knowledge that is ending. Dad comes to the fully set dinner table to eat his soup, moving ceremonially slow in pressed jeans, with greater difficulty than my last visit. He focuses hard to get the noodles in his mouth so that he can barely listen to the talk, while Betty with round shoulders politely asks questions about my work and the children. Folded napkins, butter and salt. Everything just as it should be. The touching and implicit pride in this. It feels like we are trying not to break impossibly thin porcelain tea cups. While we eat my feelings range: I couldn?t possibly live this way and I want to live this way. I am ashamed of my crazy, chaotic life and I am proud of it. I hate New York and the East, and I can?t wait to get back to it. Two things always true. Which means, as usual, that my heart is probably open?and closed. That I am afraid to feel all that is here to be felt. How much I want them to be just as they are in this moment. Always.

October 16

Dad sleeps all morning. He asks no questions until tonight when he just asks: ?Things going ok for you?? I say ?Well enough?. Unlike any other visit of my life, that is all he asks and all I say. We collude to avoid the deeper questions. Don?t ask, don?t tell. What he doesn?t want to know and I don?t want to say: That I am suffering with depression and lost in life. My marriage is coming to some kind of an ill-defined ending and no one can see the future. That he is dying.

Dad in his chair gazes behind me at the window. ?What are you thinking Dad?? ?Nothing?, he says like a zen sage, ?Absolutely nothing?. What a relief.

October 17, 2012

Much progress today. We work on estate stuff. I arrange for a bath aide to help with dressing and showers. Cooking, shopping, lists of things like insurance policies, the lifeline replacement. Later respite in my father?s garden after the storm and wind. Small stems broken on the large heads of dahlias full of water, sunken to the ground. The candidates debate as I make bouquets out of dahlias and roses. Then the blaring Fox news spin. Dad for the first time is disinterested. The President looks old, not like someone who is going to confidently win, like someone just out of a foxhole. Like Lincoln in the middle of the civil war, heart heavy. Heartbroken. The sorrow of being human swallows me as I arrange the wet, broken flowers. I put them everywhere, on tables, counters, on either side of the TV.

Dad dozes next to me. He still gets up for the bathroom but has been having accidents on his way for several days. We aren?t sure when to challenge his independence. Later I ask him again what he is thinking as he gazes out the window again. ?Oh??.Life is good.? He says. ?Life is very good.?

October 18, 2012

On plane at the end of another hard day. Long. Today the men of businesscame: the accountant and the lawyer, my brother. We cornered him in his recliner. He is declining faster now and the checks needed to be written. The obvious and unspoken reason is that he is dying. It is time. He was confused at times. He understood, but it took time. He knew he wanted to do this some day but kept forgetting. He wrote them for the wrong amount at first. His hand trembled. He was so proud of his money. He struggled to keep the pen in his hand. But in the end just said graciously ?It is no problem. I don?t need it.? As he let it go he lightened. We took our checks and said thanks. It felt like an accomplishment, but somehow a weird, not so proud one.

Betty drives me to the airport for the red eye east. Dad gets up from his chair to hug me goodbye. The goodbye is poignant but not remarkable. It is just like it always is. I don?t think ?Oh this is the last goodbye.? I just think: ?This is the father who has always loved me, who has always hugged me and told me this?. This love, this staple of my life?I notice that I don?t think it is going anywhere. It isn?t.

October 19
It was wonderful to be met by Nick at the airport. He parked the car and met me coming out of security. Startled to see him standing in a suit at 6 a.m. We tear seeing each other like long separated siblings or neighbors after a hurricane, the eruption of gratitude can?t be explained. What do I do with this old and real love? Yet it has to change, is changing, is partly over. He sometimes blames himself as if the workaholism that has plagued our union could have been different. Still, we talk and joke all the way to his office, sharing war stories before he disappears into the revolving doors of his office building.

October 20
Back from Portland I find myself at home in a garden so unlike my father?s. Mine in midlife an essay on failures, his garden at 91 a burgeoning collection of abundance, color and grace. Largeness and bounty. Roses still overwhelm his front walks reaching up to the eaves of the house to bloom their last. Large tea roses mainly in pinks, oranges, whites and yellows. It reminds me of my mother?s house after she died which had so much residual order that it stayed in place for years after. My father?s gardens astound me with his love and perfection, administered through high quality soil, chemicals and the old horticulturist?s expertise with roots honed over 80 years of gardening. Wherever he lived there were gardens, his places of prayer and respite. Him coming in from the garden whistling or singing with armloads of broccoli, kohlrabi or flowers saying ?Look Mother, here. For you.? She greeted them with delight or dismay. Late in life more dismay, more mess in her perfect house. She would have to can, freeze, arrange or clean up after them. He didn?t stop.

This season Dad directed the gardener from his command post at the recliner, pointing with his cane and giving orders in bad Spanish. In the front of his house in October were still rows of copious peppers, red and green. Huge red and orange begonias burgeoning out of their planter boxes. The things he throws in the compost as dead would look good in my garden. In my yard: things hanging by a thread.

Writing this evokes deep sorrow. My failures as a caregiver swarm like a pestilence of flies. What was not received in the family: that is where I staked my flag. I therefore suffered. And suffer we have this summer and fall. The marriage cannot go forward, it can?t seem to end and it cannot return. We are crawling to the finish line of parenting bloodied and raw as war buddies. You will not be reminded of my parent?s well tended house and gardens here.

We are in pestilence and drought of spirit. As if to make it clear, the deer ate every flower that bloomed this year. Black mildews and white mildews erupted variously. There are gangly arms of petunia without flowers and overgrown butterfly bushes, a garden full of weeds, beds full of weeds, a long row of hostas mowed to nubs by deer, dry vertical stalks everywhere, signs of our undoing. I read them all as signposts of the failure to thrive. When I returned home from my last trip to Portland there was an invasion of every kind of fruit flies, black flies, all circling themselves the kitchen. Garbage overflowing. Cats fighting, stressed and peeing everywhere including the bathtubs sensing Paradise lost. This cacophony sets an alarm of anxiety through my system. It is still muffled, rhythmically moaning as if under a pile of laundry waiting to be discovered. It says ?Things are not well?.

Where did this embarrassing disarray or my parent?s intense order come from? Theirs wasn?t healthy, but it was something. My life isn?t healthy either, just maybe closer to some weird truth of what is human. Still, who wants to live here? My marriage is failing, or?maybe it isn?t. Maybe it is just blossoming into its own beautiful death and that death is a process full of embarrassment and riches.

Dad has numerous accidents in the bathroom a day now and forgets what everything you just told him five times. Still, he looks more peaceful than he ever has. He is no longer cursing Obama or interested in the election. He is not attached to his money or the judgments of people he had all his life. He is blithe and grateful. He takes in the sun saying ?It is so nice to have you here.? He reaches for my hand. How the mess and the release from all that we don?t need any more go together. Uncoupling things is a wild metamorphosis bringing you to the root of being, the place of pens and hives and bees. The place of honey and ink.

Dear father fading. You have taken your turn into the land of the white birds, your turn toward Canaan. He is in a boat now heading to sea relatively happy. If he is sad, he is not expressing it. Who would have thought this liberation, coming as it does with its dropped spoons and soiled clothes, would be so complete? Yesterday he was reading grocery store fliers. A month ago he would have been too proud, now he isn?t. Which opens the door to me owning my gardens, overgrown, gangly, dry, weedstricken, and poor. Poor gardens still hold something dying but real. Something waking. Something bringing its essence forward to fail in exuberance but to succeed in heart, in humble trying.

Here in this sunlight of failure I put my flag, hoping one day for tall, tall roses and the delights of wealth and the deeper order that falls from the skies and rises from the earth naturally.

Jeanne Denney is a therapist, hospice worker and death educator in the Greater New York area. Her website is http://www.rocklandmindbody.com and email is jeannedenney@gmail.com.

Source: http://jeannedenney.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/dressing-dad-a-daughters-post-mortem-reflection-part-1-of-3/

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Beating, torture fuel sense Egypt police unchanged

CAIRO (AP) ? The video outraged Egyptians, showing riot police strip and beat a middle-aged man and drag him across the pavement as they cracked down on protesters. The follow-up was even more startling: In his first comments afterward, the man insisted the police were just trying to help him.

Hamada Saber's account, which he has since acknowledged was false, has raised accusations that police intimidated or bribed him in a clumsy attempt to cover up the incident, which was captured by Associated Press footage widely shown on Egyptian TV.

"He was terrified. He was scared to speak," Saber's son Ahmed told The AP on Monday. Saber recanted his story on Sunday after his family pushed him to tell the truth and acknowledge that the police beat him.

The incident has fueled an outcry that security forces, notorious for corruption, torture and abuse under former President Hosni Mubarak, have not changed in the nearly two years since his ouster. Activists now accuse Mubarak's Islamist successor, Mohammed Morsi, of cultivating the same culture of abuse as police crack down on his opponents.

The outcry was further heightened Monday by the apparent torture-death of an activist, who colleagues say was taken by police from a Tahrir Square protest on Jan. 27 and held at a Cairo security base known as Red Mountain. Mohammed el-Gindy's body showed marks of electrical shocks on his tongue, wire marks around his neck, smashed ribs, a broken skull and a brain hemorrhage, according to a medical report.

Blatant abuses by security forces under Mubarak were one factor that fueled the 2011 revolt against his rule. The highly public nature of the new cases put new pressure on Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, which was long repressed by security forces, to hold security officials responsible for any abuses.

Egypt's presidency said it was following up on el-Gindy's death, adding that there will be "no return to violations of citizens' rights."

The Interior Ministry denied that el-Gindy was ever held by police. Morsi met with top police officials Monday, but the state newspaper Al-Ahram said the talks did not touch on the beating of Saber or el-Gindy's death. The paper said Morsi told officers he understood they operate under "extreme pressure" in the face of protests and that he would work for a political resolution to ease unrest.

Morsi's administration has said it is determined to stop what it calls violent protests that cause instability.

Morsi's prime minister, Hesham Kandil, admonished the opposition and media not to raise a public outcry against security officials. "This should not be used as a match to set fire to the nation ... to demolish the police," he said.

Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim warned that if the police "collapse," Egypt will become "a militia state like some neighboring nations."

Many activists believe Morsi sought a tougher police line when he removed the previous interior minister, Ahmed Gamal Eddin, and replaced him with Ibrahim.

According to officials close to Gamal Eddin, he was fired because security forces did not intervene against anti-Morsi protests outside the presidential palace in Cairo in December. Islamists attacked those protesters, prompting clashes that left around 10 people dead. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

In contrast, police struck back heavily when several firebombs were thrown into the palace grounds during protests Friday, part of a wave of nationwide anti-Morsi unrest that left more than 70 dead. Hours of clashes ensued, leaving at least one protester dead and dozens injured.

During Friday's clashes, Saber, a 48-year-old who works as a wall plasterer, was beaten.

Footage shows him writhing naked in the street after black-clad riot police yanked his pants around his ankles, kicked him and beat him with batons. They then dragged him by the legs across the pavement and bundled him into a police van.

But in interviews with Egyptian television from a police hospital the next day, a smiling Saber said it was protesters who shot him in the leg with birdshot, then stripped and beat him. He said the riot police were only trying to help him afterward.

He even blamed himself for any rough police treatment, saying that in his confusion he was resisting them.

"I was afraid. ... They were telling me: 'We swear to God we will not harm you, don't be afraid,'" Saber said, adding, "I was being very tiresome to the police."

His wife also praised the police, telling state TV, "they are giving him good treatment" at the police hospital.

But his children said their father spoke under duress.

"There are pressures on my mother to say that he is fine," daughter Randa told independent Dream TV. "The government is the one pressing him."

In a statement, the Interior Ministry voiced its "regret" about the assault and vowed to investigate.

Interior Minister Ibrahim echoed Saber's account, saying an initial investigation showed it was protesters who stripped and beat him. Ibrahim said riot police found Saber and were only trying to get him into the van, "though the way they did it was excessive."

On Sunday, Saber acknowledged that it was indeed police who beat and stripped him. Speaking to Al-Hayat TV, he said he gave his initial account because was afraid, then broke down in tears as he recounted begging the policemen for mercy.

"But no one gave me mercy," he wept. "My whole body was smashed." He has now been moved to a civilian hospital.

Rights activists say police intimidation of victims and their families to prevent complaints was rife under Mubarak and continues unabated. In a report last month, the Egyptian Initiative For Personal Rights documented 16 cases of police violence in which 11 people were killed and 10 tortured in police stations. Three died under torture during the first four months after Morsi took office on June 30, it said.

The rights group said officers increasingly act "like a gang taking revenge."

In one case it documented, police in the Nile Delta town of Meet Ghamr stormed a cafe and beat up patrons in September. When a woman who was beaten went to the police station to complain, the man accompanying her was arrested and tortured to death, the report said.

The sister of the slain man told AP that her brother's widow was paid the equivalent of around $25,000 to say that he was killed by a rock to his head during a protest.

"The main issue is that nothing has changed about the police. No change about accountability. There is just as much impunity as there was under Mubarak," said Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch. Over the past two years "we've seen an increase in the likelihood police will use lethal force ... in the context of regular policing activities."

In the case of el-Gindy, the activist who died Monday, fellow activists say he disappeared during a Jan. 27 Tahrir protest and they later learned from people who left the Red Mountain security camp that he was being held there. Soon after, el-Gindy was brought to a hospital in a coma and died Monday.

After his burial in his hometown of Tanta in the Nile Delta on Monday, angry mourners marched on police headquarters and clashes erupted, with protesters throwing firebombs and stones and police firing back tear gas.

At a funeral ceremony held earlier at a mosque in Cairo's Tahrir Square, there was widespread skepticism that anyone would be held accountable for el-Gindy's death.

"So this blood will be wasted so easily?" one woman in black screamed.

"It will be lost," an elderly man responded. "Like others were before."

___

AP reporter Amir Maqar contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/beating-torture-fuel-sense-egypt-police-unchanged-213233337.html

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