FROM HOSTILITY TO REVERENCE:100 YEARS OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN IMAGERY IN GAMES

Denis Mercier, Ph.D.
Of all the American popular genres using African-American imagery, children's games have been among the most uniformly negative. Only in the last twenty years or so have white game manufacturers softened their depiction of Blacks. And only when Black lobbying has forced the elimination of derogatory racial stereotypes or when Blacks have invented and marketed games themselves, have the images turned from racial satirization to respect.
Like other popular media and genres, games communicate through graphics and text, but their messages are further expressed through the thoughts, actions, and strategies required to play them successfully. Because most players of children's games are young and impressionable, the imagery and action in those games may well promote racial stereotyping and prejudice, and reinforce or sanction those same attitudes among adult players.
The portrayal of African Americans in games over the past century has undergone an evolution that reflects three distinct eras in American race relations. Board games, first developed in the 1830s, grew in popularity among American middle-class families during the late nineteenth century, at a time when racial prejudice and segregation were on the rise not just in the American South, but also in many of the northern states due to massive immigration from Europe and the migration of southern Blacks to northern cities. Anglo-American fascination with the newcomers, as well as their racial and ethnic prejudices, were reflected throughout popular culture: in music, literature, advertisements, theater, and games.
While images of other ethnic groups tended to soften during the first decades of the twentieth century, derogatory African-American imagery, often overtly hostile, was common in American games up to the Second World War. A transitional period, lasting from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, saw African- American imagery all but disappear from most genres of American popular culture, including games. The Civil Rights Movement marked the beginning of another era in toy imagery which continues to today in which both Black and white-owned companies have introduced new, more realistic, and often strongly positive images of Black Americans.
The Years of Hostility 
Games of the late 19th and early 20th centuries reflected racial attitudes ranging from the benign to the aggressively violent. Although some of the games of the first period stereotyped African Americans as comical entertainers, many revealed an intense white hostility towards Blacks. This hostility was legitimated, even celebrated, by making it appear as if the Blacks depicted enjoyed the victimization to which the games subjected them. Many target games of the period portrayed the Black targets as smiling broadly.
The unspoken message was that Blacks, unlike other people, felt no pain, so players could indulge in and enjoy aggressive assaults because no real pain was inflicted. The target games found in traveling carnival shows, seashore resorts and fairgrounds throughout the nation were among the most racially aggressive of all popular games. One popular carnival game which featured names like "Dump the Nigger," "African Dip," or "Coon Dip" did not require directly hitting a Black person, but hitting the target device attached to a delicately balanced plank upon which a Black person sat. The target, if hit squarely, caused the sitter to be dumped into the tank below.
An even more brutal cousin to "African Dip" was "Hit the Coon" or "African Dodger," also popular at resorts, fairs, and festivals. A painted canvas of a scene, usually a cotton plantation, had a hole through which a Black man stuck his head and tried to get out of the way of the ball. Small prizes were awarded for a direct hit. In 1878 the C.W.F. Dare Company of New York offered painted "Negro Head Canvases" and "Negro Heads" made of wood since live targets were not always easy to come by. Some operators provided human targets with protective wooden helmets covered with curly hair. Eventually such games grated against public sensibilities and were declared illegal.
Other target games of the era came in a wide variety of forms. A ring-toss called "Garden Aunt Sally" featured a mammy figure smoking a pipe. "The Game of Sambo," a standup target game produced by Parker Brothers in the early 1900s, had targets which were meant to be comic caricatures of African- American faces. "Bean-Em," was a beanbag game with Black figures as targets, and there were two ball-toss games: "Hit Me Hard," in which balls were thrown through the mouth of an incongruously mirthful and "cute" boy-child with an enormous smile, and "Chuck," in which two players attempted to toss discs shaped like watermelons into an open mouth.
Bagatelle games, the precursor of pinball, were another form of target game. Made of wood, with lithographed paper overlay and nail "pins," most games were designed to be used with marbles as balls. The "Gropper On. M. Co." of Brooklyn, New York made one featuring good luck charms (lucky stars, horseshoes, etc.) and "Rastus" and "Rufus," two "dandy dudes" eyeing each other suspiciously while preparing to shoot dice. (Another character on the game board, "Eruption," is apparently a stereotyped Irishman).
Under "latest novelty games," the 1914 Butler Brothers Catalog listed two target games in which racial aggression and sadism were blatantly obvious. The "Little Darky Shooting Gallery" with its "three comic cardboard targets," one of which was a heavy-set Black woman, came complete with "spring gun and vacuum rubber tipped arrows for $1.95 a dozen.”
"Darky Ten Pins" featured "ten 6-1/2 inch heavy cardboard litho coons on wood bases," each smiling and holding enormous watermelons. Numerous other companies made and distributed variations of bowling games. Two of the better known ones were "Jim Crow Ten Pins" with smiling minstrel-type figures, and "Zulu Tribe" ten pins with minstrel faces and exotic costumes.(1)
Parker Brothers, one of the few major manufacturers to market bowling sets, issued "Sambo Five Pins" in the early 1920s. The inside of the box tells a story which begins, "Sambo was a good ole Southern Darky...”
Black images in target games overtly demonstrated white hostility against African Americans. Yet Black images had been featured since the 1840s in a less violent genre of game-the card game. A relatively non-derogatory image of a Black servant appeared in the popular card game "Dr. Busby" (1843). "Old Maid," one of the most popular card games ever and the first to be learned by generations of American children, featured a veritable encyclopedia of derogatory stereotypes such as the Black characters "Lily White," "Jazzbo Jackson," and "Melon Moe”.
"The Game of Ten Little Niggers," introduced by Parker Brothers in 1895, was a variation of Old Maid that featured Black characters exclusively. The deck contained a pair of each of the ten "Little Niggers" plus one oddball to get "stuck" with. The Fireside Game Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, introduced "In Dixie Land," a similar game, two years later. This featured black-and-white photos of different "Southern characters," many of which appeared in postcards.
Jigsaw puzzles, initially limited to geographical subjects, came to the United States from England in the 1870s. Soon manufacturers introduced other subject matter, including Black stereotypes which appealed to the American middle-class market.
In 1874, the McLoughlin Brothers of New York manufactured a puzzle called "Chopped Up Niggers." Although the puzzle's images of Blacks were more sympathetic than many of the period, the blatant sadism of the name is clear. Around 1905 J.R. Brundage, Inc. "Things Unusual" of New York brought out a line of jigsaw puzzles, one showing Black men dancing madly in formal evening clothes entitled "Woozy Jig.”
Many of the images of African Americans in card games and puzzles stereotyped Blacks as comical. That stereotype was especially prevalent in mechanical games. In 1912 the page of "Popular Games of all Kinds" in the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog featured a game from "Timi-Tipp" of Germany:
Jolly Coon Race, 89 cents
 A new and very comical game for two or three people. Metal Figures of darkies with moveable arms, racing along three poles. Their comical actions are very funny. All start at the same time and it is exceedingly amusing to see the race...
Easing Into Transition
A growing population of Blacks in northern cities resulting from the great migration of southern Blacks after the First World War gradually developed the leadership and organization necessary to fight for civil rights and combat derogatory racial stereotypes.
In response, during the 1920s, white manufacturers began to tone down the broadest, most overdrawn Black caricatures. By the 1930s, manufacturers had by and large ceased to design new games which portrayed Blacks as "targets," and many of the "older" designs were produced in dwindling numbers. Although bowling games remained popular throughout the 1930s, the pins portrayed not just Blacks, but other "amusing" characters.(2)
In the Russel Manufacturing Company's "Goof Race and Ten Pins," three "goofs," a soldier, a clown, and a watermelon-eating Black figure, could be made either to "race" down an incline or to line up to be bowled over.
Snake Eyes Game Board games of the 1930s reflecting this decline in violent racial undercurrents included "Snake Eyes," a craps-like game by Selchow and Righter of New York, featuring Black faces with "roly-boly" eyes on its cover.
Various "--Amos 'n' Andy" games and puzzles were used as promotions by the Pepsodent Companv. the radio program's sponsor at the time.(3) Although these games contained no physical violence or hostility, they continued to trivialize Blacks and deny them dignity.
Trends towards improved depiction of Blacks in games during this period did not exclude the appearance of games containing old stereotypes. Currents of popular culture flow in many directions simultaneously. As late as 1928 the "African Dip" was still being advertised in various amusement catalogs, among them The Billboard of June 16:
An African Dip It'll get You The Bank Roll
The Game that Always Gets Top Money at Carnivals, Parks, Fairs, Picnics and wherever a Crowd is Gathered
Seeing is Believing!
Men you see an AFRICAN DIP working, take out your watch and time how many balls are being thrown. Figure the price paid for the balls, selling three for a dime. It is common to take in over $40.00 per hour, sometimes $50.00. Notice how pleased the people are that spent their money. Also the fun the onlookers had. 
In 1940, All-Metals Products Co. of Wyandotte, Michigan marketed a "Sambo Target" for use with their toy pistol set. A gap-toothed, bug-eyed young Sambo was the centerpiece of a brightly lithographed, metal target board.
As in the previous decade, broad caricature was more prevalent than overt violence in the 1940s. A "Pickaninny Jackpot" board and punchboard game featured cards portraying stereotyped Black children holding up watermelons with the "jackpot" figures printed on the melons. These images perpetuated the pickaninny- watermelon stereotype that persisted since antebellum times. In 1945, a game called "The Adventures of Little Black Sambo" used graphics heavily influenced by the illustrations in contemporary editions of the children's book: an African "native" with minstrel-like features and no hair. A "Deluxe" Old Maid game of the late forties by Playtime House of Rochester, New York, featured "Mamie (sic) Pamby" as pair number 13. "Mamie" was the archetypal Mammy. Although in the early 1950s Selchow and Righter reissued "Snake Eyes" without changing the graphics, as the decade progressed, and the political and economic clout of African Americans grew, Blacks ceased to be the literal and figurative targets of abuse and ridicule. As in nearly every other genre of popular culture, images of Blacks disappeared entirely from games during the turbulent civil rights years.
Images of African Americans simply became too "controversial" for the culture-makers to treat in overtly derogatory--or any other--ways.
Post-Civil Rights: 
Respect to Reverence 
African Americans remained invisible in the game genre long after they achieved de jure the equality of their rights. Mainstream game makers such as Selchow and Righter, Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers slowly integrated Black characters, issues and accomplishments into their offerings as they revised games or created new ones.
This study, despite much effort, has yet to discover any attempt by mainstream manufacturers to market "Black editions" of established games to the growing African-American market. As the Black consumer, game-playing market grew, it demanded games that encouraged Black pride. For the most part, Black entrepreneurs alone met this demand.
In 1974 a mainstream manufacturer, EDU-CARDS, a division of KPB Industries of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, offered a flash card set, "Famous Black People in American History." The game involved showing a charcoal portrait of a famous person, giving a clue, and asking, "Who am I?" The subjects ranged from Marian Anderson to Phyllis Wheatley.
More typical of the slow and deliberate pace of integration was the 1978 edition of Milton Bradley's "Chutes and Ladders," which included a young Black boy as one of the moveable game pieces. (The other game pieces depicted white little boys and girls.)
The phenomenally successful "Trivial Pursuit" series of games included numerous references to African Americans in the arts, media, sports and history. Marketed jointly by Horn Abbot and Selchow and Righter, all of the series-from the original Genus in 1981, the Silver Screen, All-Star Sports and Baby Boomer in 1983 to the Young Players in 1985 -liberally acknowledged Black participation in and contributions to U.S. and world events.
Among lesser-known manufacturers, the John N. Hansen Co. Inc. and TRIVIA GAMES INC. produced versions of "JUNIOR TRIVIA" (ca. 1985). The questions from the categories Entertainment/Famous People, Sports/Games, Science/Computers, Literature/Art/Words, Geography/Space, and History/Traditions include little about Black achievement and contribution beyond that of sports heroes such as "Dr. J." (Julius Irving).
Instead the questions ask about Fat Albert's favorite sport, the nickname of the 747 airplane ("Fat Albert"), the country in which Dr. Livingston worked (Africa), the Friday of the Wall Street Crash in 1929 ("black"), and the Ku Klux Klan. Hersch and Company's "Out of Context: Game of Outrageous Quotes" (1985) included quotes by Jesse Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Joe Louis, Richard Pryor, Andrew Young, Angela Davis, Wilt Chamberlain, Vanessa Williams, Sonny Liston, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Mr. T., Eddie Murphy and more. Game players could not help but realize the major role Blacks play in everyone's daily lives.
But it took Black entrepreneurs to celebrate and revere African Americans in games.
With U.S. Games Systems, Inc. of Stamford, Connecticut, educator Deloris L. Holt and illustrator Langley Newman, published the "Black Historv Playing Card Deck" (1977). It is a complete deck of cards divided into four suits: Human Rights, Adventure, Science and Industry, and the Arts. In the Arts suit, for example, the King is Paul Robeson, the Queen Lorraine Hansberry; the Jack is Louis Armstrong, the Ten Muhammad Ali, the Nine Bessie Smith, the Eight Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the Seven Jackie Robinson, the Six Henry Ossawa Tanner, the Five Jessie Owens, the Four Langston Hughes, the Three Henry Zino, the Two Ira Aldridge, and the Ace Edward Kennedy (Duke) Ellington. Each card features a color portrait and a separate booklet contains short biographies of each "notable black person in America's rich heritage." Developed in 1987, "Black Americana HIGH ACHIEVER" is patterned loosely on the "Trivial Pursuit" model. The game contains over 2500 questions on African-American history and culture. A sample question is "From what Black college did teacher-astronaut Sharon Christa McAuliffe graduate?"(4)
Over the past one hundred years or so the attitude toward African Americans in games has evolved from hostility to at least grudging respect. The evolution has been uneven, however. The most primitive period was by far the longest.
Furthermore, the recent and as yet much briefer dramatic turn toward reverence is due to Black initiative and participation.
Notes (1) Don Kader, "Collecting Black Memorabilia," Collectors' Showcase (Sept./Oct., 1982), 16. (2) William C. Ketchum, Jr., The Catalog of American Collectibles: A Fully Illustrated Guide to Styles and Prices (New York: A Rutledge/Mayflower Book, 1979), 298. (3) Richard Friz, "On the Air: The Amos 'n' Andy Show," Collectibles Illustrated (May/June, 1983), 82. (4) Answer: She received her Master of Education degree from Bowie State College in Maryland.
http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/links/games/

HOW LEBRON JAMES BROKE THE GOLDEN RULE OF SPORTS

OCCUPY WALL STREET: OUTING THE RINGERS

OAKLAND POLICE OFFICER THROWS FLASH BOMB IN TO CROWD HELPING AN INJURED MAN

WHY DO THE OCCUPIERS SO PREOCCUPY OUR MASTERS?

Ray Cassin October 24, 2011
THE City Square has mostly been noted as one of Melbourne's less successful public spaces. Crowds just don't throng there as they do to Federation Square or Bourke Street Mall. Then briefly, for a week, that all changed. About 100 protesters, a diminutive Melbourne outcrop of the ''Occupy'' protests that began in New York last month and have since mushroomed across the world, set up camp in the square. Some Melburnians actually chose to enter their city's notoriously dud space, and did so without the lure of free entertainment or an oversized, illuminated Christmas tree. The campers came to make a point. And other people came to hear it, or at least to gawk at them. No one was assaulted or obstructed in the course of their daily business. In truth, Occupy Melbourne didn't occupy very much, except public space. It didn't block Swanston Street or Collins Street. Nor did it threaten anyone, though some cafe and bar owners complained that their business had suffered because of the new presence in the square. This complaint, if true, suggests that Melbourne's vaunted cafe culture is not quite the pinnacle of urban sophistication it is sometimes claimed to be. Elsewhere in the world, watching the local street politics unfold is just one thing you might do while lingering over an espresso. But here, apparently, people who hawk short blacks and flat whites can't imagine that a politicised street carnival on their doorstep might be a business opportunity, with happy sippers to be found at least among the gawkers, if not the campers. So the campers antagonised local business, though not the kind of business they had in mind. Occupy Melbourne, like its international counterparts, is directed against corporate greed and the increasing disparities of wealth that have resulted from economic deregulation. The rage of the ''Occupiers'' - though ''rage'' seems like crazy hyperbole when applied to the less-than-strident lot who colonised our square - is a reflection of the fact that since the global financial crisis of 2008 none of the perpetrators has been held to account, though the livelihoods of ordinary people have become ever more precarious, or disappeared entirely. That, grossly oversimplified, was the point of the ''Occupation''. And if you believe the square's whiney cafe proprietors and Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, a week was more than enough time in which to make it. ''They've made their point and should move on'' was the message, and last Friday Victoria Police heeded it. The campers were evicted by police behind riot shields - the public order response team, to use the official euphemism - with mounted colleagues and the dog squad assisting. There were some bleeding heads, and drifts of pepper spray, without which no riot is complete these days. Except that it wasn't a riot, was it? It was a group of people sitting around and talking. Or it was until Doyle decided that a week is time enough to make a point. One imagines him in Colonel Kilgore mode as the riot police moved in: ''I love the smell of pepper spray in the morning … smelled like victory.'' Occupy Melbourne is not, of course, unique among the world's Occupations in having attracted the ire of civic authorities or in having been subjected to what Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana described as ''minimum force''. The early days of Occupy Wall Street were a rash of clashes between police and protesters. And yesterday, Occupy Sydney was pushed out of Martin Place, where the harbour city's campers had been doing their sitting and talking. Whether it was necessary to use force to move them on, however, is another question. People whose idea of changing the world begins with sitting around and talking are usually open to negotiations about voluntary relocation. Occupy Melbourne, for example, intends to pitch a new camp at the weekend, in Treasury Gardens. No baristas and bartenders to annoy there, and they can chat with the public servants over a sandwich at lunchtime. It's where the Occupiers might have been willing to go earlier, if they had been asked. So the Occupiers will decamp, and, provided the state government and the city council can get past their fear of revolution or whatever it was that brought about last week's bizarre overreaction, there will be no further wielding of minimum force. After all, we still believe in free speech and assembly, don't we? Well, we certainly think we do. But when I hear people who ought to know better insisting that a week is long enough to make a point, I wonder how deeply rooted our belief in these basic liberal freedoms really is. Occupy Wall Street and other Occupations around the world may have had some unsolicited intimate moments with their local constabularies, but they continue. And they continue simply because the Occupiers want to keep Occupying. In most of the countries with which we like to compare ourselves it is accepted that protest movements will either become absorbed into the political mainstream, and thereby transform it, or will gradually wither. That is the dynamic of democracy. Here, however, the notion of democratic debate has become so impoverished that people who have been sitting and talking for a week can be told their time is up.
Ray Cassin is a senior writer.
Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/why-do-the-occupiers-so-preoccupy-our-masters-20111023-1meem.html

DEFENCE INDUSTRY: KEEP PAYING US OR THE ECONOMY DIES

By Spencer Ackerman 

 

October 26, 2011 

Defense giant Lockheed Martin had a totally sweet quarter, raking in $700 million and looking forward to the same this time next year. So it raises eyebrows when Lockheed’s anointed mouthpieces predict mass economic disaster if Congress touches the defense budget.

On Tuesday, the aerospace industry put out a report saying that chopping the defense budget would put over a million Americans out of work. Cuts that could total up to a trillion dollars over 10 years would “devastate the economy and the defense industrial base and undermine the national security of our country,” said Marion Blakeley, president of the Aerospace Industries Association, which sponsored the report.

But while Blakeley’s group paid for research to draw that dire conclusion, some of her members reported a sunnier economic outlook to their shareholders. In its third-quarter earnings report, also released Tuesday, Lockheed – manufacturers of the F-22 and F-35 jets — told investors to expect that as long as Congress passes President Obama’s next defense budget, ”the Corporation expects 2012 net sales to be flattish as compared to 2011 levels, and that consolidated 2012 segment operating profit margin will remain at approximately 11 percent.” Boom: another $700 million in earnings, on its way.

While there’s no doubt that defense cuts will mean job losses, there’s also no doubt that a report prepared for an industry so reliant on defense cash will paint a stark picture of what happens if that cash is threatened. Congressmembers looking to get reelected pay attention, since fighting for defense money as a jobs program is easier than making a case for what a sensible, appropriately funded defense strategy ought to be. That’s the problem with reports like these: They make it easy to ignore structural economic and defense problems and imply that all will be well if the cash keeps flowing.

To see the report’s breathlessness, check out its methodology. (.pdf) The aerospace report draws a straight correlation between lost jobs and lost sales (the result of lower defense budgets for orders). But defense firms concerned about losing jobs have, like all businesses, other options for preserving them, like dipping into their earnings.

And those earnings, as evidenced by the third-quarter disclosures, are up. Lockheed’s $700 million net quarterly earnings are up sharply from its $56 million haul this time last year. Boeing’s net income during that time was $1.09 billion, up from $837 million. General Dynamics? $652 million in net earnings this quarter, slightly up from its $650 million last year.

Meanwhile, Lockheed paid CEO Robert Stevens $19.1 million in 2010. Boeing’s Jim McNerney made$19.7 million.

In other words, defense cuts won’t, by themselves, force firms to fire people. Companies will surely be stressed by the revenue loss, but their bright economic pictures give them some options.

Then there are some dubious assumptions in the report. It says job-providing “modernization” cash is 45 percent of the $550 billion annual defense budget, but as defense gadfly Winslow Wheeler emails, the Congressional Budget Office puts it at 29 percent. (.pdf) Wheeler adds that the study presumes a cost of $130,000 per lost job: “One seasoned observer opined to me that the total for salary, materials, etc. should be about twice that.”

Nor does the association report actually address the defense manufacturing base that so alarmed Blakeley. It drew its million-job-loss total from “across the breadth of the U.S. economy,” into ripple-effect industries like finance, health care and “retail trade, leisure and hospitality services.” Meanwhile, the structural effects of the shifting defense industrial supply chain go unstudied.

Now: America’s defense industrial base — the engineering and manufacturing sector of the economy that ensures the U.S. can build warships, planes and missiles — is in the midst of a decades-long globalization that policymakers have yet to come to terms with. A recent report from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) warns that the U.S.’ influence over that supply chain suffers from a key vulnerability: “its dependence upon relatively large defense procurement budgets.” (.pdf) Cut the budget too deeply, and the economic effects could cascade: the most expensive military program in history, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet family, is built in eight countries.

In fact, CNAS warns that engineering “large-scale, high-technology projects” domestically is a “dying art,” since “many of the nation’s best young people tend to avoid ‘old’ manufacturing industries — including the aerospace sector — opting instead for what seem to be more exciting (and potentially much more lucrative) prospects in startup ventures and ‘cutting-edge’ firms that appear to be at the technological frontier.”

In other words, it’s not just the prospect of declining defense budgets that ravage the most important nodes of the defense industrial base. On the low-pay end of the spectrum, it’s the fact that manufacturing plants have moved to low-wage places like China — which also erodes U.S. engineering know-how. On the high end, defense firms now have to compete with Apple, Google, Facebook and anything Y Combinator funds for bright tech engineers. All that is a problem that extends way beyond defense budgets, and into fundamental questions of how the U.S. structures its economy and values work.

And assume for a moment that all the aerospace industry’s lost-jobs estimates are accurate. Notice that’s an economic argument, not a national security argument. The explosion in defense spending since 9/11 was predicated on an emergency — all financed by borrowed money, contributing to the fiscal mess that cuts are meant to fix — that’s receding. U.S. troops will be out of Iraq on December 31; the Afghanistan war is beginning its own drawdown. Arguing for military spending primarily as a stimulus measure begs the question of why less capital-intensive industries — road repair, anyone? — shouldn’t get their own big checks from the government.

The answer — at least, one that ex-Defense Secretary Robert Gates proposed — isn’t to look at the military as a big jobs program. It’s to ask what the country wants defense strategy to be. If the U.S. is faced with the necessity of cutting defense, then it makes sense to ask what missions ought to be scaled back or jettisoned. In a series of reports this year, the most recent of which came out on Tuesday, the doves at the Project on Defense Alternatives have at least attempted that, even if not all their ideas are good ones. The aerospace industry? Not so much.

It’s natural for defense cuts to raise anxiety in a military-industrial complex that’s reaped a decade of cash windfalls. And it’s just as natural for defense companies to cherry-pick arguments to support their revenue. That’s all in the game. But unless they’re also willing to accept big tax hikes to finance their continued desired spending, then it’s hard to see how reports like this get around Winston Churchill’s (or maybe Sir Ernest Rutherford’s) famous aphorism: “Gentlemen, we have run out of money. Now we have to think.”

Photo: U.S. Navy Aviation

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/defense-industry-cuts-economy/

HOW TO DEFEND YOURSELF AGAINST TEAR GAS

By Cyrus Maximus · February 3, 2011 ·

With Iranian authorities increasingly using tear gas against democratic protesters, it’s important to know how not to be afraid, and how to defend against its use.
What to bring if you anticipate tear gas: (1) a bandana or paper towel soaked in lemon juice or cider vinegar, stored in a plastic bag; (2) swimming goggles or similar eye protection; and if desired (3) a glove to allow you to pick up a hot tear gas canister and throw it back at your attacker. Do not wear contact lenses if you anticipate a tear gas attack. The gas will destroy them.
The best defense against tear gas is a gas mask, but if you don’t have a mask there are still steps you can take to minimize damage from tear gas. If you think you might encounter tear gas you can soak a bandana or paper towel in lemon juice or cider vinegar and store it in a plastic baggie. You can breathe through the acidified cloth for several minutes, which should give you sufficient time to get upwind or reach higher ground.
Goggles are a great thing to have. You can use tight-fitting swim goggles if chemical safety goggles aren’t available. Don’t wear contacts anywhere you might encounter tear gas. If you are wearing contact lenses, immediately remove them. Your contacts are a loss as is anything else you can’t wash. You can wear your clothes again after you wash them, but wash them separately that first time. If you don’t have goggles or any sort of mask, you can breathe the air inside your shirt, since there is less air circulation and therefore a lower concentration of the gas, but that is counterproductive once the fabric becomes saturated.

First Aid

First aid for eyes is to flush them with sterile saline or water until the stinging starts to abate. Exposed skin should be washed with soap and water. Breathing difficulties are treated by administering oxygen and in some cases using medication that are used to treat asthma. Medicated bandages can be used on burns.

For more information on protecting against tear gas, see the following links:
About.com http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemicalweapons/a/teargasexposure.htm
Freedom Manual – Tear Gas http://freedommanual.blogspot.com/2009/12/tear-gas.html. Contains extra tips on how to defend against tear gas and pepper spray, along with warnings for people with health issues who should stay away from potential tear gas attacks.
http://iranchannel.org/archives/772

THE GILLARD CABINET AND MINISTERIAL TITLES

Some of these job titles are pretty interesting.
GILLARD MINISTRY
Prime Minister
Hon. Julia Gillard MP
Deputy Prime Minister, Treasurer
Hon. Wayne Swan MP
Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government
Hon. Simon Crean MP
Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations and Leader of the Government in the Senate
Senator Hon. Chris Evans
Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth
Hon. Peter Garrett AM, MP
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate
Senator Hon. Stephen Conroy
Minister for Foreign Affairs
Hon. Kevin Rudd MP
Minister for Trade
Hon. Dr Craig Emerson MP
Minister for Defence and Deputy Leader of the House
Hon. Stephen Smith MP
Minister for Immigration and Citizenship
Hon. Chris Bowen MP
Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Leader of the House
Hon. Anthony Albanese MP
Minister for Health and Ageing
Hon. Nicola Roxon MP
Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
Hon. Jenny Macklin MP
Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities
Hon. Tony Burke MP
Minister for Finance and Deregulation
Senator Hon. Penny Wong
Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Senator
Hon. Kim Carr
Attorney-General and Vice President of the Executive Council
Hon. Robert McClelland MP
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Manager of Government Business in the Senate
Senator Hon. Joe Ludwig
Minister for Resources and Energy and Minister for Tourism
Hon. Martin Ferguson AM, MP
Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency 
Hon. Greg Combet AM, MP
[The above ministers constitute the cabinet]