The Carlyle Group has been single-handedly fueling the private equity deal market this summer, sealing at least four blockbuster acquisitions with its latest announcement on Thursday that it would purchase E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co.’s global auto paint business for $4.9 billion in cash.
The DuPont deal has Wall Street buzzing because Carlyle appears to be increasingly active while its major peers are quiet. Blackstone Group, KKR and TPG Group have not been nearly as busy as Washington-based Carlyle.
The flurry also coincides with Carlyle’s much anticipated initial public offering, which occurred four months ago. Since its modest debut in June at an initial price of $22 per share, Carlyle stock has been on a slow and steady march upward, closing Thursday at $25.88.
The Carlyle dealmaker who engineered three of the four acquisitions said that borrowing money to buy companies is cheap, but the timing for the surge is coincidence.
“In three of these deals, we had been talking to these companies forever,” said Gregory S. Ledford, who heads Carlyle’s industrial and transportation team, which is responsible for three big deals in recent months. “It’s not like in April we just woke up and said it’s time to put money to work. These are businesses we’ve liked and had been in contact with for quite some time.”
Carlyle’s thesis has been to unearth non-core assets that parent companies seek to sell so they can concentrate their intellectual and financial firepower elsewhere. At DuPont, the chemical giant is zeroing in on the life sciences as its core business. Carlyle’s acquisition of Hertz and Dunkin’ Donuts, both several years ago, were done under the same approach.
“They are becoming the stealth Berkshire Hathaway,” said Michael Farr of Farr, Miller & Washington, a District-based investment firm. “You look at the last three to four deals that they’ve done, they are the nuts and bolts, and understandable companies.”
Berkshire Hathaway, headed by Warren Buffett, is known for acquiring businesses with clear and simple profit models, many of which are from old-line industries such as railroads, shoes, newspapers and manufacturing.
Carlyle’s recent deals have a similar flavor, with the company buying into industries ranging from pumps to paint to petroleum — even photographs.
Two weeks ago, Carlyle and Getty Images management paid $3.3 billion to buy Getty Images — the massive photo and digital archives library — from the San Francisco-based investment firm Hellman & Friedman.
Earlier this month, Carlyle Group acquired Los Angeles-based TCW Group, a diversified asset management firm, from Societe Generale for $700 million in cash, and some debt.
Last month, the private equity firm bought Hamilton Sundstrand’s industrial pumps business from parent United Technologies for $3.46 billion. Two days before that, Carlyle partnered with Genesee & Wyoming in a $1.4 billion acquisition of RailAmerica.
On July 2, Carlyle bought Sunoco’s more than 100-year-old refinery in Philadelphia, where it plans to build a rail terminal to transfer shale oil shipped from North Dakota to the refinery.
Observers said they aren’t surprised by the deals, especially given the availability of easy capital.
“That’s their business,” said Tim Loughran, a finance professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, referring to the recent spate of acquisitions. “So why would I be surprised?”
2012年8月30日星期四
2012年8月29日星期三
rookie Paralympian headed for 2012 Games
The incubators are covered in quilts, the monitors beep softly, the team of nurses quiets and feeds the tiny, premature babies, the worried moms and dads watch and wait.
In the neonatal intensive care unit at Royal Columbian Hospital, where Nathan DeWitt was born 21 years ago, not too much has changed, except DeWitt himself. He and twin brother Brenndon were born at 26 weeks, weighing less than three pounds each. DeWitt is now a strapping young athlete, headed for the 100-metre and 200-metre wheelchair sprints at the 2012 London Paralympic Games for the first time.
“It’s like I was just here yesterday,” said mom Linda as the family, including father Shane, youngest son Brody, 15, Brenndon and Nathan met the unit’s doctors and nurses, some of whom cared for the twins two decades ago.
The reunion was arranged so that DeWitt could thank the medical team that saved his and Brenndon’s life and hospital staff could congratulate him on his unexpected success.
Babies born before 24 weeks have a survival rate of about 60 per cent, and premature babies often have cognitive and physical disabilities, said pediatrician David Ou Tim, who remembered treating the twins and still works in the neonatal ICU.
Though his twin had no long-term complications from his premature birth, DeWitt has spastic diplegic cerebral palsy, which only affects the muscles in his legs, leaving his arms strong to power his wheelchair around the track. In his running shoes and Team Canada warm-up jacket, handing out autographs to the nurses, DeWitt looked every part the Paralympian.
“It’s amazing how well some of them respond,” Ou Tim said.
Doctors thought DeWitt would never walk, let alone run or ride a bike. He can do all three. “I can do all of them like a regular person,” he said. “I can outperform some of those able-bodied people.”
DeWitt has a natural confidence and a natural ability. The rookie Paralympian began racing only five years ago, and entered his first international competition just this year in Switzerland, where he easily made Paralympic qualifying times by racing a 17.14 in the 100-metre and 31.19 in the 200-metre sprints. He trains on the track at Surrey’s Holy Cross high school six days a week, sometimes twice a day, “to get those arm muscles firing fast,” with coach James Hustvedt.
His is father an avid sports fan and coach, and DeWitt grew up with athletics. He especially enjoys sledge hockey, which is played on a sled with two hockey sticks outfitted with picks that players use to propel themselves across the ice. It’s a sport he can play with his brothers.
Wheelchair racing began as a hobby, but DeWitt quickly learned he had the skills to win. “It started as recreation. They said I had some sort of talent, and a good chance of making it,” he said.
Of the stress associated with competing for Team Canada, DeWitt’s not afraid.
“I can naturally block it out. I have no hype to live up to. I just go, race my own race.” DeWitt is focusing on the first step, the semifinals, and on racing a personal best. His first sprint takes place Sept. 4.
Though he’s had health setbacks, mainly from a cerebral shunt that was replaced 19 times over the years after a bout of hydrocephalus (swelling in the brain) at three days old. His family has faith he will excel in London.
“He’s had health issues, but every time he comes back with a vengeance,” Shane said. “He has that internal passion you need to be successful in life, or in sport.”
In the neonatal intensive care unit at Royal Columbian Hospital, where Nathan DeWitt was born 21 years ago, not too much has changed, except DeWitt himself. He and twin brother Brenndon were born at 26 weeks, weighing less than three pounds each. DeWitt is now a strapping young athlete, headed for the 100-metre and 200-metre wheelchair sprints at the 2012 London Paralympic Games for the first time.
“It’s like I was just here yesterday,” said mom Linda as the family, including father Shane, youngest son Brody, 15, Brenndon and Nathan met the unit’s doctors and nurses, some of whom cared for the twins two decades ago.
The reunion was arranged so that DeWitt could thank the medical team that saved his and Brenndon’s life and hospital staff could congratulate him on his unexpected success.
Babies born before 24 weeks have a survival rate of about 60 per cent, and premature babies often have cognitive and physical disabilities, said pediatrician David Ou Tim, who remembered treating the twins and still works in the neonatal ICU.
Though his twin had no long-term complications from his premature birth, DeWitt has spastic diplegic cerebral palsy, which only affects the muscles in his legs, leaving his arms strong to power his wheelchair around the track. In his running shoes and Team Canada warm-up jacket, handing out autographs to the nurses, DeWitt looked every part the Paralympian.
“It’s amazing how well some of them respond,” Ou Tim said.
Doctors thought DeWitt would never walk, let alone run or ride a bike. He can do all three. “I can do all of them like a regular person,” he said. “I can outperform some of those able-bodied people.”
DeWitt has a natural confidence and a natural ability. The rookie Paralympian began racing only five years ago, and entered his first international competition just this year in Switzerland, where he easily made Paralympic qualifying times by racing a 17.14 in the 100-metre and 31.19 in the 200-metre sprints. He trains on the track at Surrey’s Holy Cross high school six days a week, sometimes twice a day, “to get those arm muscles firing fast,” with coach James Hustvedt.
His is father an avid sports fan and coach, and DeWitt grew up with athletics. He especially enjoys sledge hockey, which is played on a sled with two hockey sticks outfitted with picks that players use to propel themselves across the ice. It’s a sport he can play with his brothers.
Wheelchair racing began as a hobby, but DeWitt quickly learned he had the skills to win. “It started as recreation. They said I had some sort of talent, and a good chance of making it,” he said.
Of the stress associated with competing for Team Canada, DeWitt’s not afraid.
“I can naturally block it out. I have no hype to live up to. I just go, race my own race.” DeWitt is focusing on the first step, the semifinals, and on racing a personal best. His first sprint takes place Sept. 4.
Though he’s had health setbacks, mainly from a cerebral shunt that was replaced 19 times over the years after a bout of hydrocephalus (swelling in the brain) at three days old. His family has faith he will excel in London.
“He’s had health issues, but every time he comes back with a vengeance,” Shane said. “He has that internal passion you need to be successful in life, or in sport.”
2012年8月28日星期二
The danger is palpable in an inspired Go Back
This time around, we have six not-quite-so-ordinary Australians: former Howard government minister Peter Reith; columnist and comedian Catherine Deveny; former shock jock Mike Smith; actor and former swimsuit model Imogen Bailey; former rocker and aspiring Liberal MP Angry Anderson; and Allan Asher, the former Commonwealth Ombudsman who lost his job after penning questions for Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young to put to the government in question time. Roughly, a 50-50 split on the issue.
The first season was inspired, thought-provoking and, at times, cringe-inducing television that deservedly won huge ratings for SBS and major awards at home and abroad for production company Cordell Jigsaw. This season is even better.
The celebrity angle could so easily have gone wrong, but the casting is inspired. No one is here just to make up the numbers; even Bailey, who at first seems to have been selected just so the producers can show a photo of her on the cover of Ralph, quickly proves her relevance.
For eight years she was in a relationship with a Muslim, she tells us, and often found herself on the receiving end of a kind of inverse racism. More importantly, she's a skilled empath, putting Mike Smith on the spot over the disconnect between his hard-line send-them-back position and his heartfelt response to the plight of the refugee kids he meets in Africa.
As per last year, the six are split into two teams of three. Deveny, Reith and Anderson meet an Afghan Hazari refugee in Melbourne and then retrace his steps to Kabul, while Bailey, Smith and Asher get sent to Mogadishu in Somalia, the shell-shocked capital that the refugee whose Dandenong house they have visited had fled 20 years earlier at age 13.
For both groups, the danger is palpable. Deveny, Reith and Anderson arrive in Kabul just days after US troops have set copies of the Koran alight, and the natives are restless. Their fact-finding sessions are frequently cut short when their minders say "it's not safe here".
In Mogadishu, the Al Qaeda-aligned Al Shabaab is a constant threat on the ground, though the trio's escort, a former CIA man, assures them it's a lovely place to bring up a family. "I live here, with my wife," he says. No one finds it terribly reassuring.
As Deveny harangues Reith over his role in the Tampa crisis and the children overboard affair and Reith shows you can take the man out of politics but you can't take politics out of the man, it is Anderson who starts to melt first.
True, you have to wonder if the producers allowed their guinea pigs to think they were in more danger than they actually were, but the ends so clearly justify the means that I'm willing to forgive them if that was the case. I'm also quite ready to believe it wasn't.
The first season was inspired, thought-provoking and, at times, cringe-inducing television that deservedly won huge ratings for SBS and major awards at home and abroad for production company Cordell Jigsaw. This season is even better.
The celebrity angle could so easily have gone wrong, but the casting is inspired. No one is here just to make up the numbers; even Bailey, who at first seems to have been selected just so the producers can show a photo of her on the cover of Ralph, quickly proves her relevance.
For eight years she was in a relationship with a Muslim, she tells us, and often found herself on the receiving end of a kind of inverse racism. More importantly, she's a skilled empath, putting Mike Smith on the spot over the disconnect between his hard-line send-them-back position and his heartfelt response to the plight of the refugee kids he meets in Africa.
As per last year, the six are split into two teams of three. Deveny, Reith and Anderson meet an Afghan Hazari refugee in Melbourne and then retrace his steps to Kabul, while Bailey, Smith and Asher get sent to Mogadishu in Somalia, the shell-shocked capital that the refugee whose Dandenong house they have visited had fled 20 years earlier at age 13.
For both groups, the danger is palpable. Deveny, Reith and Anderson arrive in Kabul just days after US troops have set copies of the Koran alight, and the natives are restless. Their fact-finding sessions are frequently cut short when their minders say "it's not safe here".
In Mogadishu, the Al Qaeda-aligned Al Shabaab is a constant threat on the ground, though the trio's escort, a former CIA man, assures them it's a lovely place to bring up a family. "I live here, with my wife," he says. No one finds it terribly reassuring.
As Deveny harangues Reith over his role in the Tampa crisis and the children overboard affair and Reith shows you can take the man out of politics but you can't take politics out of the man, it is Anderson who starts to melt first.
True, you have to wonder if the producers allowed their guinea pigs to think they were in more danger than they actually were, but the ends so clearly justify the means that I'm willing to forgive them if that was the case. I'm also quite ready to believe it wasn't.
2012年8月27日星期一
The struggling young assistant coach at Ohio State
Showtime for Urban Meyer. What a perfect marriage, he and the Ohio State Buckeyes make.
But then, don't they all seem that way just after the wedding?
We'll have to see. A few curves, a few bumps, a few Michigan games. Then we'll know if this match is as made in heaven as it looks. So far, they seem to go together like chocolate and peanut butter in buckeyes.
"Am I ready for this?'' he was saying Monday, five days before his debut. "We'll judge that probably in the next week, or next two weeks, next two years.
"That's the kind of neat thing about where I'm at in my career. I don't care. I want to work on getting this team ready for Miami of Ohio (and a few bigger fish to fry after that). Everything I've got. I'm not worried about what's the legacy, what's this, what's that."
There are no happy endings among his recent coaching predecessors in Columbus. Jim Tressel was forced out. John Cooper, Earle Bruce, Woody Hayes. All under different circumstances, but the trend is stark enough.
Plus, there's the shadow of NCAA sanctions and the bowl ban this season, and the bad aftertaste of a 6-7 record, the most losses for Ohio State since the William McKinley White House in 1897.
It is assumed Meyer will change all the above, even though this is not Florida. No stable of Southeastern Conference speed. No Swamp. No Tim Tebow. But it's home. He grew up in northern Ohio, went to college in southern Ohio and now is in charge of the state's crown jewel in the middle, having taken his one-year sabbatical in the broadcast booth to rebalance himself.
At this moment, many images of Ohio State's new coach come through.
Urban Meyer, the little boy in upstate Ashtabula …
"Since I was 4 years old, or maybe I was 3?," he said of his first time he watched the Buckeyes. "It's going to be an emotional time (Saturday). Very much so.''
He said he'd be needing notes "to keep my face in the game … I have to do that because I'll be coming out of my shoes a little bit."
Urban Meyer, the struggling young assistant coach at Ohio State in the 1980s …
"I didn't eat if I didn't know where the happy hours were, or if Wendy's didn't have their $2 special on salads."
He said he's been fired twice, when staffs were let go here and Colorado State. He was 27 years old on the last one, with his wife seven months' pregnant.
"Makes you want to work that much harder,'' he said.
Now he has a six-year contract, reported to be worth at least $24 million.
But then, don't they all seem that way just after the wedding?
We'll have to see. A few curves, a few bumps, a few Michigan games. Then we'll know if this match is as made in heaven as it looks. So far, they seem to go together like chocolate and peanut butter in buckeyes.
"Am I ready for this?'' he was saying Monday, five days before his debut. "We'll judge that probably in the next week, or next two weeks, next two years.
"That's the kind of neat thing about where I'm at in my career. I don't care. I want to work on getting this team ready for Miami of Ohio (and a few bigger fish to fry after that). Everything I've got. I'm not worried about what's the legacy, what's this, what's that."
There are no happy endings among his recent coaching predecessors in Columbus. Jim Tressel was forced out. John Cooper, Earle Bruce, Woody Hayes. All under different circumstances, but the trend is stark enough.
Plus, there's the shadow of NCAA sanctions and the bowl ban this season, and the bad aftertaste of a 6-7 record, the most losses for Ohio State since the William McKinley White House in 1897.
It is assumed Meyer will change all the above, even though this is not Florida. No stable of Southeastern Conference speed. No Swamp. No Tim Tebow. But it's home. He grew up in northern Ohio, went to college in southern Ohio and now is in charge of the state's crown jewel in the middle, having taken his one-year sabbatical in the broadcast booth to rebalance himself.
At this moment, many images of Ohio State's new coach come through.
Urban Meyer, the little boy in upstate Ashtabula …
"Since I was 4 years old, or maybe I was 3?," he said of his first time he watched the Buckeyes. "It's going to be an emotional time (Saturday). Very much so.''
He said he'd be needing notes "to keep my face in the game … I have to do that because I'll be coming out of my shoes a little bit."
Urban Meyer, the struggling young assistant coach at Ohio State in the 1980s …
"I didn't eat if I didn't know where the happy hours were, or if Wendy's didn't have their $2 special on salads."
He said he's been fired twice, when staffs were let go here and Colorado State. He was 27 years old on the last one, with his wife seven months' pregnant.
"Makes you want to work that much harder,'' he said.
Now he has a six-year contract, reported to be worth at least $24 million.
2012年8月26日星期日
While having the park set up was the first step
Kids in the hamlet of Conklin are getting a chance to ride. A hockey rink has been converted to a summer skate park and, after some paperwork and sponsorship, Lantix Skateboard Training is up and running.
“A company out there put some equipment inside this dome. It’s a hockey rink in the winter time, but in the summer it’s for kids, but they didn’t really have anything so they put in these ramps,” said Jamie Whitfield, organizer and trainer of the lessons. “There’s a mini-ramp, half-pipe, a few other ramps, some rails.”
While having the park set up was the first step, Whitfield knew from experience that to get kids using the equipment they’d need some hands-on education.
“I gave them (the Conklin Community Association) a proposal,” said Whitfield. “I got a schedule made up, put a lot of work into it, and we started it last Thursday.”
Whitfield, a long time resident of the Wood Buffalo region, has been on and off boards for the last 15 years. Starting when he was 12, he spent about 10 years training hard and made it to a fairly high skill level. In the early 2000s he even helped organize a competition in Fort McMurray. He describes the group he skated with in his youth as being as close as family, and that’s an aspect of the skate culture he looks to bring to the kids.
“I know a lot of kids nowadays are getting in to more trouble. There’s not too much opportunity out in Conklin for these kids,” he said. “They have all the equipment now, I’m going to teach them how to properly ride a skateboard before they even get into the tricks.”
For the first few sessions he’s had 18 kids turn up, ranging in age from four to 16, both boys and girls. He’s broken them up into two groups, taking the younger ones earlier in the day while the older ones work summer jobs.
“Everything is free for the kids, from the board, helmet, elbow pads, knee pads and shoes,” said Whitfield. “It’s not me that hooked them up, it’s the companies that hooked them up.”
The first day included taking shoe sizes, since some of the kids didn’t have appropriate foot wear. While Whitfield has put the organizational energy into the program, he’s received sponsorship from some of the local companies.
“Without the generous donation from Kingdom Cats Ltd., T.J’s Oilfield, Tartan and Kazaam Skate and Snow, this wouldn’t have been possible,” he said. “All it take is a couple good ideas and people help for a good cause.”
“A company out there put some equipment inside this dome. It’s a hockey rink in the winter time, but in the summer it’s for kids, but they didn’t really have anything so they put in these ramps,” said Jamie Whitfield, organizer and trainer of the lessons. “There’s a mini-ramp, half-pipe, a few other ramps, some rails.”
While having the park set up was the first step, Whitfield knew from experience that to get kids using the equipment they’d need some hands-on education.
“I gave them (the Conklin Community Association) a proposal,” said Whitfield. “I got a schedule made up, put a lot of work into it, and we started it last Thursday.”
Whitfield, a long time resident of the Wood Buffalo region, has been on and off boards for the last 15 years. Starting when he was 12, he spent about 10 years training hard and made it to a fairly high skill level. In the early 2000s he even helped organize a competition in Fort McMurray. He describes the group he skated with in his youth as being as close as family, and that’s an aspect of the skate culture he looks to bring to the kids.
“I know a lot of kids nowadays are getting in to more trouble. There’s not too much opportunity out in Conklin for these kids,” he said. “They have all the equipment now, I’m going to teach them how to properly ride a skateboard before they even get into the tricks.”
For the first few sessions he’s had 18 kids turn up, ranging in age from four to 16, both boys and girls. He’s broken them up into two groups, taking the younger ones earlier in the day while the older ones work summer jobs.
“Everything is free for the kids, from the board, helmet, elbow pads, knee pads and shoes,” said Whitfield. “It’s not me that hooked them up, it’s the companies that hooked them up.”
The first day included taking shoe sizes, since some of the kids didn’t have appropriate foot wear. While Whitfield has put the organizational energy into the program, he’s received sponsorship from some of the local companies.
“Without the generous donation from Kingdom Cats Ltd., T.J’s Oilfield, Tartan and Kazaam Skate and Snow, this wouldn’t have been possible,” he said. “All it take is a couple good ideas and people help for a good cause.”
2012年8月23日星期四
Harry had to navigate working with the opposition
He was a career U.S. diplomat of the old school: polite and professional, an intent listener who never gave offense. But when Harry G. Barnes Jr. presented his credentials in 1985 to Chile’s dictator, Augusto Pinochet, he threw down a quiet challenge that eventually helped nudge the general from power.
“The ills of democracy can only be cured with more democracy,” the new American ambassador told Pinochet. Several days later, in an interview, the military ruler spluttered an angry retort. “Since when are some ambassadors arbiters of our internal problems?” he demanded. “We are not anyone’s colony or slave.”
Mr. Barnes’s mission was to convince both Pinochet and his demoralized opponents that the Reagan administration would no longer tolerate the general’s abusive grip on power. For three years, Mr. Barnes pushed steadily for political change in Chile – opening his embassy to opposition leaders, standing up publicly for victims of repression and making it clear that he had Washington’s blessing.
In 1988, after 15 years of military rule, Pinochet was peacefully defeated in a national plebiscite and forced to step down as president in 1990, ushering in an era of democratic governance and economic success that has become a model for Latin America. Mr. Barnes left Chile soon after the plebiscite and retired from the Foreign Service. He died Aug. 9 in Lebanon, N.H., at 86. His family said he had contracted an infection.
During 38 years in the Foreign Service, Mr. Barnes was posted in eight countries, learning to speak many of their languages, and he served as ambassador to India (1981 to 1985) and Romania (1974 to 1977) as well as Chile. In India, he plunged into negotiations on nuclear and arms issues after a generation of ideological estrangement.
After retirement, he worked for the Atlanta-based Carter Center as director of human rights and conflict resolution programs from 1994 to 2000, traveling often to global trouble spots.
But it was Mr. Barnes’s role in Chile that earned him a niche in history. A small country that loomed large in the ideological wars of the 1960s, Chile embarked on a chaotic socialist period under President Salvador Allende.
In 1973, Allende and Chile’s leftist aspirations were crushed by a military coup that was welcomed by the Nixon administration and reportedly abetted by the CIA. Pinochet, who was army chief, seized power and vowed to extirpate communism from Chilean soil. Over the next several years, thousands of political activists were detained, tortured or vanished in custody.
By the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration in Washington had soured on Pinochet and was looking for an antidote to its controversial anti-communist role in Central America and the Iran-contra scandal. Mr. Barnes was sent to Chile to push for a return to civilian rule. It was a delicate task, with powerful adversaries in both capitals, and he tackled it with characteristic and quiet determination.
“Harry had to navigate working with the opposition, the socialists and Christian Democrats, without becoming an enemy of the government or the Chilean right,” said Elliott Abrams, then the top State Department official for Latin America and now with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “He also had to navigate in Washington,” where the new policy on Chile was opposed by powerful conservatives such as the late Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). “I think he did a magnificent job.”
Mr. Barnes made few public pronouncements in Chile but many pointed gestures, such as participating in candlelight protest vigils. In 1986, he and his wife, Elizabeth, braved police tear gas to attend the funeral of Rodrigo Rojas de Negri, 19, a Chilean exile visiting from Washington who was burned during a protest in Santiago and dumped by a military patrol to die.
“If the United States was trying to be clear about our concern for human rights,” he said later, “the death had to be protested.”
Pinochet, infuriated by Mr. Barnes’s activities, barred the ambassador from his palace and ordered his image cropped from ceremonial news photos. But years later, with Pinochet an aging international pariah, Mr. Barnes was awarded Chile’s highest honor in recognition of his contribution to the restoration of democracy.
“He had a very hard time here in Chile,” Andres Zaldivar, a longtime Christian Democratic senator, wrote in a Chilean newspaper last week, noting that Mr. Barnes faced constant harassment from the regime but always “kept the embassy open to us in the opposition.” Without intervening in domestic politics, Zaldivar wrote, Mr. Barnes was “a very important factor in the democratic transition process.”
Harry George Barnes Jr. was born June 5, 1926, in St. Paul, Minn. After Army service, he graduated in 1949 from Amherst College in Massachusetts and joined the Foreign Service in 1950, pausing in mid-career to receive a master’s degree at Columbia University in 1968.
Besides his wife of 64 years, the former Elizabeth Sibley, survivors include three children, Douglas M. Barnes of Miami, Sibley A. Barnes of Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Pauline M. Barnes of Walpole, N.H.; a brother; and a grandson. A daughter, Adrienne Barnes, died in 2003.
Mr. Barnes made a mark during other postings beside Chile. In Nepal, he was remembered for commandeering a U.S. government plane to obtain rabies vaccines for some children who had been bitten by a dog.
In Romania, while he was deputy chief of the U.S. mission in the 1960s during the communist reign of Nicolae Ceausescu, it was discovered that Mr. Barnes’s voice was being picked up and broadcast from inside the embassy. In an oral history years later, he recalled a colleague handing him a note that said, “You’re on the air.”
After a little experimenting, the mystery was solved: A microphone had been planted in the heel of one of Mr. Barnes’s newly repaired shoes.
“I had sent them out with our maid,” he recounted. When they came back, something seemed amiss. “One heel felt a little bit higher, so I sent them back. When they came back they were OK, but that of course gave a clue to as to where to look.”
“The ills of democracy can only be cured with more democracy,” the new American ambassador told Pinochet. Several days later, in an interview, the military ruler spluttered an angry retort. “Since when are some ambassadors arbiters of our internal problems?” he demanded. “We are not anyone’s colony or slave.”
Mr. Barnes’s mission was to convince both Pinochet and his demoralized opponents that the Reagan administration would no longer tolerate the general’s abusive grip on power. For three years, Mr. Barnes pushed steadily for political change in Chile – opening his embassy to opposition leaders, standing up publicly for victims of repression and making it clear that he had Washington’s blessing.
In 1988, after 15 years of military rule, Pinochet was peacefully defeated in a national plebiscite and forced to step down as president in 1990, ushering in an era of democratic governance and economic success that has become a model for Latin America. Mr. Barnes left Chile soon after the plebiscite and retired from the Foreign Service. He died Aug. 9 in Lebanon, N.H., at 86. His family said he had contracted an infection.
During 38 years in the Foreign Service, Mr. Barnes was posted in eight countries, learning to speak many of their languages, and he served as ambassador to India (1981 to 1985) and Romania (1974 to 1977) as well as Chile. In India, he plunged into negotiations on nuclear and arms issues after a generation of ideological estrangement.
After retirement, he worked for the Atlanta-based Carter Center as director of human rights and conflict resolution programs from 1994 to 2000, traveling often to global trouble spots.
But it was Mr. Barnes’s role in Chile that earned him a niche in history. A small country that loomed large in the ideological wars of the 1960s, Chile embarked on a chaotic socialist period under President Salvador Allende.
In 1973, Allende and Chile’s leftist aspirations were crushed by a military coup that was welcomed by the Nixon administration and reportedly abetted by the CIA. Pinochet, who was army chief, seized power and vowed to extirpate communism from Chilean soil. Over the next several years, thousands of political activists were detained, tortured or vanished in custody.
By the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration in Washington had soured on Pinochet and was looking for an antidote to its controversial anti-communist role in Central America and the Iran-contra scandal. Mr. Barnes was sent to Chile to push for a return to civilian rule. It was a delicate task, with powerful adversaries in both capitals, and he tackled it with characteristic and quiet determination.
“Harry had to navigate working with the opposition, the socialists and Christian Democrats, without becoming an enemy of the government or the Chilean right,” said Elliott Abrams, then the top State Department official for Latin America and now with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “He also had to navigate in Washington,” where the new policy on Chile was opposed by powerful conservatives such as the late Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). “I think he did a magnificent job.”
Mr. Barnes made few public pronouncements in Chile but many pointed gestures, such as participating in candlelight protest vigils. In 1986, he and his wife, Elizabeth, braved police tear gas to attend the funeral of Rodrigo Rojas de Negri, 19, a Chilean exile visiting from Washington who was burned during a protest in Santiago and dumped by a military patrol to die.
“If the United States was trying to be clear about our concern for human rights,” he said later, “the death had to be protested.”
Pinochet, infuriated by Mr. Barnes’s activities, barred the ambassador from his palace and ordered his image cropped from ceremonial news photos. But years later, with Pinochet an aging international pariah, Mr. Barnes was awarded Chile’s highest honor in recognition of his contribution to the restoration of democracy.
“He had a very hard time here in Chile,” Andres Zaldivar, a longtime Christian Democratic senator, wrote in a Chilean newspaper last week, noting that Mr. Barnes faced constant harassment from the regime but always “kept the embassy open to us in the opposition.” Without intervening in domestic politics, Zaldivar wrote, Mr. Barnes was “a very important factor in the democratic transition process.”
Harry George Barnes Jr. was born June 5, 1926, in St. Paul, Minn. After Army service, he graduated in 1949 from Amherst College in Massachusetts and joined the Foreign Service in 1950, pausing in mid-career to receive a master’s degree at Columbia University in 1968.
Besides his wife of 64 years, the former Elizabeth Sibley, survivors include three children, Douglas M. Barnes of Miami, Sibley A. Barnes of Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Pauline M. Barnes of Walpole, N.H.; a brother; and a grandson. A daughter, Adrienne Barnes, died in 2003.
Mr. Barnes made a mark during other postings beside Chile. In Nepal, he was remembered for commandeering a U.S. government plane to obtain rabies vaccines for some children who had been bitten by a dog.
In Romania, while he was deputy chief of the U.S. mission in the 1960s during the communist reign of Nicolae Ceausescu, it was discovered that Mr. Barnes’s voice was being picked up and broadcast from inside the embassy. In an oral history years later, he recalled a colleague handing him a note that said, “You’re on the air.”
After a little experimenting, the mystery was solved: A microphone had been planted in the heel of one of Mr. Barnes’s newly repaired shoes.
“I had sent them out with our maid,” he recounted. When they came back, something seemed amiss. “One heel felt a little bit higher, so I sent them back. When they came back they were OK, but that of course gave a clue to as to where to look.”
2012年8月22日星期三
who attended the groundbreaking ceremony hours
MORE expressions of sympathy were offered yesterday by Cebu officials to the families of the late Interior and Local Governments Secretary Jesse Robredo and Capt. Jessup Bahinting, who died in last Saturday’s plane crash in waters off Masbate City.
Both Cebu Vice Gov. Agnes Magpale and Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Meinrado Paredes said anyone who would be appointed to succeed Robredo has big shoes to fill.
“I hope and I pray it will be somebody like Jesse. Robredo was very ‘accessible’ and would walk the extra mile. His integrity was beyond question. There was no fanfare in his arrival,” the vice governor said.
Magpale said she will support plans to name the new Philippine National Police Regional Training Center in Consolacion town, Cebu after Robredo, who attended the groundbreaking ceremony hours before the plane crash.
“I’m for it if only to perpetuate his memory and so that local officials won’t forget his advocacy,” Magpale said.
Judge Paredes said looking for Robredo’s replacement is an uphill climb.
He said he admired Robredo’s honesty and work ethic.
“Robredo was a model public servant. He lived a simple life. He was credible, honest, indefatigable, and a good family man,” Paredes said.
The Cebu City Council recalled that Robredo worked with the city government in helping urban poor families especially those involved in the 93-1 lot dispute and the Mahiga creek settlers whose shanties were demolished.
“We sincerely express the Cebu City Council’s deepest sympathy and condolence to the bereaved family of Secretary Jesse Robredo for this unfortunate demise of a beloved father and husband and to join our Fellow Filipino as the entire nation deeply grieves for the loss of the most highly respected and credible leaders the country has ever had,” said their resolution introduced by Councilor Alvin Dizon.
Robredo was cited one of the country’s exemplary leaders who helped transform Naga City into one of the most progressive cities in the Philippines.
He was known for his advocacies in people empowerment, ethical leadership and good government.
“This unfortunate and untimely demise of a well-respected public servant is a great loss to the country and to the Filipinos,” the council said.
Rep. Gabriel Luis R. Quisumbing of Cebu’s 6th district also condoled with Robredo’s family and hailed Capt. Bahinting for his selfless service to others.
Capt. Bahinting flew in anti-venom medicine from Camiguin province for a Cebu City zoo worker that was bitten by a King Cobra.
“We won’t forget the service Capt. Bahinting rendered for his community and his country.” Quisumbing said.
In Lapu-Lapu City, Mayor Paz Radaza said she knew what the Robredo family felt since she lost her brother-in-law, the father of her nephew Lapu-Lapu City Councilor Harry Radaza, in a plane crash.
“Our prayers are with him and his family. The country has lost a catalyst of good governance…To the two pilots and their families, our prayers are with them too,” Radaza said.
Both Cebu Vice Gov. Agnes Magpale and Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Meinrado Paredes said anyone who would be appointed to succeed Robredo has big shoes to fill.
“I hope and I pray it will be somebody like Jesse. Robredo was very ‘accessible’ and would walk the extra mile. His integrity was beyond question. There was no fanfare in his arrival,” the vice governor said.
Magpale said she will support plans to name the new Philippine National Police Regional Training Center in Consolacion town, Cebu after Robredo, who attended the groundbreaking ceremony hours before the plane crash.
“I’m for it if only to perpetuate his memory and so that local officials won’t forget his advocacy,” Magpale said.
Judge Paredes said looking for Robredo’s replacement is an uphill climb.
He said he admired Robredo’s honesty and work ethic.
“Robredo was a model public servant. He lived a simple life. He was credible, honest, indefatigable, and a good family man,” Paredes said.
The Cebu City Council recalled that Robredo worked with the city government in helping urban poor families especially those involved in the 93-1 lot dispute and the Mahiga creek settlers whose shanties were demolished.
“We sincerely express the Cebu City Council’s deepest sympathy and condolence to the bereaved family of Secretary Jesse Robredo for this unfortunate demise of a beloved father and husband and to join our Fellow Filipino as the entire nation deeply grieves for the loss of the most highly respected and credible leaders the country has ever had,” said their resolution introduced by Councilor Alvin Dizon.
Robredo was cited one of the country’s exemplary leaders who helped transform Naga City into one of the most progressive cities in the Philippines.
He was known for his advocacies in people empowerment, ethical leadership and good government.
“This unfortunate and untimely demise of a well-respected public servant is a great loss to the country and to the Filipinos,” the council said.
Rep. Gabriel Luis R. Quisumbing of Cebu’s 6th district also condoled with Robredo’s family and hailed Capt. Bahinting for his selfless service to others.
Capt. Bahinting flew in anti-venom medicine from Camiguin province for a Cebu City zoo worker that was bitten by a King Cobra.
“We won’t forget the service Capt. Bahinting rendered for his community and his country.” Quisumbing said.
In Lapu-Lapu City, Mayor Paz Radaza said she knew what the Robredo family felt since she lost her brother-in-law, the father of her nephew Lapu-Lapu City Councilor Harry Radaza, in a plane crash.
“Our prayers are with him and his family. The country has lost a catalyst of good governance…To the two pilots and their families, our prayers are with them too,” Radaza said.
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