Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
@davidrmoran, you are one of the hardest to decipher posters on this board. You write in code that I think only you understand. Short sentences and acronyms you think others should understand. Write in clear sentences and you will get your point across a little better.
So, one famous maker of blue jeans hired Vietnamese workers because they could be paid in peanuts. The jeans were manufactured, finished, ready to wear. Then they were shipped to Saipan.
Reread the article you cited. All the manufacturing was done in Saipan, USA.
The island of Saipan is in the US Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI). Beginning in the 1980s, many clothing manufacturers had their garments made in Saipan because such items could be labelled “Made in the USA”. ...
In 1999, three separate lawsuits were filed in US state and federal courts against numerous American retail apparel companies and Saipan-based garment factories.
That's a way of circumventing US labor laws; nevertheless, those workers were employed in the USA, which is all that the label "Made in the USA" communicates. It represents jobs, not wages or working conditions.
For a product to be called Made in USA, or claimed to be of domestic origin without qualifications or limits on the claim, the product must be "all or virtually all" made in the U.S. The term "United States," as referred to in the Enforcement Policy Statement, includes the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories and possessions.
Side note: I haven't been able to verify the statement that these were Vietnamese workers. The Business & Human Rights piece cited in turn cites an SFGate (SF Chronicle) piece saying that "The lawsuit claimed that thousands of workers, including many from China and the Philippines ...".
According to U.S. government reports and information contained in lawsuits, garment workers from China, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Thailand and elsewhere pay $2,000 to $7,000 per worker to obtain jobs in the Mariana Islands that frequently have them working 12 hours a day, seven days a week for $3.05 an hour, often without overtime pay. ... in 1998, then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt spoke of the relationship established between the U.S. Congress and the Mariana Islands in 1976 that was intended to provide a transitional economic stimulus but which has produced an experiment “gone horribly awry. It has created a plantation economy, dependent upon the massive importation on a continuing basis of low-paid, vulnerable, short-term indentured workers.” Babbit called the situation in the Northern Mariana Islands a “disgrace.”
Most of the garment workers in Saipan come from China.
That was then. Now:
The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 ... included a provision to apply U.S. minimum wage to the CNMI [Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands], increasing the CNMI’s minimum wage in periodic increments until it reached the federal minimum wage of $7.25, which it did on September 30, 2018
@msf I appreciate your remarks. No argument here. The original reference I made to Vietnamese workers were native Vietnamese, living and working in Vietnam, not Saipan. The way I heard the story, the already-finished product--- the blue jeans--- were shipped from Vietnam to Saipan simply to have the US flag and logo sewn onto them. So, even if the manufacturer could not in good faith claim that the jeans were American-made, the company was certainly communicating that impression.
That does indeed sound plausible to me. For-profit companies everywhere, since forever, are always looking for ways to circumvent regulations. If the particular details I offered are incorrect, then I do indeed stand corrected.
Yes, the CNMI were not subject to the laws and regulations that the States must obey, some several years ago. That's been corrected, for the sake of those foreign workers. That same sort of worker exploitation is just par for the course, a reality taken for granted--- still--- in many countries. Think of Qatar, on the run-up to the FIFA games. Also, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and elsewhere. I personally have cousins (through marriage) who are OFW workers. One fellow who works as an OFW in Macau has not seen his young son for 4 years--- until just recently. Their passports are taken from them!!! And from the other direction: rather than to work to create a more prosperous, legitimate business regime, the gov't of the Philippines just feeds the beast: offering to give orientation meetings and setting up an entire system by which their own people can find such employment overseas--- providing, of course, that they are willing to sign away their rights in order to do so. To say nothing of the fees and graft and built-in corruption which is normalized in that country.
@davidrmoran, you are one of the hardest to decipher posters on this board. You write in code that I think only you understand. Short sentences and acronyms you think others should understand. Write in clear sentences and you will get your point across a little better.
u k, bruh?
idk, looking back here and trying to see what you are talking about, not having luck ...
TJ was for Thomas Jefferson
[] was an inline flag for someone who cannot be bothered to get ' its ' right, ever, simply ever
nerde was a weak, nerd attempt at pointing out the error of getting merde wrong even in the pointed deployment of it (same person), as the French don't say
woke, crt, 1619, car audio, jfc, all should be figure-outtable, no? lmk, hth
@LewisBraham I don't want the following to be too detailed or political, but comments deserve a specific response.
I am deeply hurt that you believe my complaints about the original 1619 project are based on “prejudice” and are “foolish” and “worse”. I do not think these adjectives improve the tenor of our discussions here. Many other people share my concerns about the lead essay of 1619 for similar reasons, and these concerns limited it's impact considerably.
I was using 1619 as an example of the ideological and political agenda that seems to frame almost all media today, from the WSJ (whose editorials I occasionally read although they always seem to cherry pick facts that support their anti- Biden agenda) and the NYT on the left.
I was referencing the opinion of five well known professional historians (who I have read and greatly respect), about the statement of Nikole Hannah-Jones (1691 lead editor, a journalist, not a historian), that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery”.
These historians believe this key statement in the lead essay is “factually inaccurate” and a “displacement of historical accuracy by ideology”. This made a lot of people suspect ideology and inaccuracy might be common here, and made them suspicious of the motives around the entire effort. It ignited a controversy that was a significant distraction to the impact 1619 could have had.
Gordon Wood, James McPhearson and the other historians say in their letter
“We applaud all efforts to address the enduring centrality of slavery and racism to our history. Some of us have devoted our entire professional lives to those efforts, and all of us have worked hard to advance them. Raising profound, unsettling questions about slavery and the nation’s past and present, as The 1619 Project does, is a praiseworthy and urgent public service. Nevertheless, we are dismayed at some of the factual errors in the project and the closed process behind it.”
“These errors, which concern major events, cannot be described as interpretation or “framing.” They are matters of verifiable fact, which are the foundation of both honest scholarship and honest journalism. They suggest a displacement of historical understanding by ideology. Dismissal of objections on racial grounds — that they are the objections of only “white historians” — has affirmed that displacement.”
“On the American Revolution, pivotal to any account of our history, the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain “in order to ensure slavery would continue.” This is not true. If supportable, the allegation would be astounding — yet every statement offered by the project to validate it is false. “(end quote)
There are more detailed refutations available than this letter. Like most controversial subjects, it is not black and white, but it seems to me very unlikely that continued British rule would have abolished slavery more quickly, as it continued in Britain until 1833.
The Times says they did not assemble a group of experts on the Revolution to get differing views on this critical statement for a debate or analysis. None of the five academics they consulted is a Revolutionary War historian. Their research is focused on economics, poverty, evictions, injustice, racism and civil rights. The two who were trained in History, research the 20th century, not the Revolution.
A penetrating analysis of the Revolution’s origin with factual material on both sides would have eliminated much of the controversy about the original 1619 statement. But I have to agree with Wood et. al. that ideology seems to have take precedence over a debate about the facts.
Unfortunately, there are few sources that a reader can go to find both sides and facts of an issue without being filtered though a pre-existing viewpoint to score points with their “tribe”. One of the few I have found that tries to present both sides of an issue in a daily email, using material from pretty much mainstream media is www.theflipside.io. They focus on current issues and try to present both sides (without quoting Fox news). Here is their presentation of the original 1619 project.
@sma3 I'm sorry if what I said hurt you, but the mistake you're making is assuming I am talking about you specifically. I think it is wrong to generalize about the 1619 Project by anyone because it is a diverse compilation by different authors on many different subjects. I never mentioned you in particular in the above 1619 post. Nor did I have you necessarily in mind. My response is more inspired by the nonsense posted by virtually everyone from the right about so-called "wokeism" related to the 1619 Project. If anything that was particular, I was responding to the initial remark in this thread targeted at me written by a certain baseball fan, but my response goes beyond that.
I am well aware of the controversy over the Project, and it has generated critical responses from both leftwing and rightwing historians. I am, however, irritated by the fact that posting a single essay from the project, one not written by Hannah-Jones but someone else on a different subject, incites these generalized attacks. And DavidRMoran is right to say that the project has evolved significantly from its initial publication and the NYT has attempted to address any errors in its various historical texts.
It is the fake controversy over CRT, and the reductive conflation of it with the 1619 project, that particularly irks me. CRT is tought in colleges, law school in particular, not in elementary schools. The truth is guys like DeSantis don't what to talk about America's ugly history with race at all. I can understand that Hannah-Jones created controversy by a simple premise from the software industry--that slavery was a feature not a bug in the nation's founding, part of its essential design. I don't completely agree with that foundational argument. I think the founders had different viewpoints on the subject and while some certainly wanted to perpetuate the slavery institution, their views on the subject were not uniform. It is a mistake to generalize about them as well.
But isn't Hannah-Jones' foundational argument even worth discussing in schools instead of putting the founders on pedestals and pretending they're gods as many children's history books currently do? The controversy the 1619 Project has generated is a necessary one. It should be debated in schools, not summarily dismissed. If anything would teach children "critical thinking," the loss of which older generations constantly lament today, it would be analyzing and discussing these essays.
Possibly, if I was careful, I could add in material about the very neighborhood whither I moved at age 7 and grew up in thereafter, until heading East for college, the project of the father of redlining, whose work is here very gently described: tinyurl.com/56bh3hfk
America's tortured history of race indeed should be discussed in schools at all levels, including discussions about the motivations of slaveholders in the Revolution.
But I am trying to make the point that the approach to subjects like these needs to be done in a very careful, well researched manner that will encourage the people whose minds are perhaps still a little open to participate in the discussion.
By that I mean extreme care should be taken to avoid statements and opinions that either political extreme can pick up and run with, such as "one of the primary reasons ... was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery".
But I don't think extreme care was taken in the lead 1619 essay. Professor Leslie Harris was asked to fact check the essay before they published it and warned Hannah-Jones and the NYT this statement was inaccurate
"On August 19 of last year I listened in stunned silence as Nikole Hannah-Jones, a reporter for the New York Times, repeated an idea that I had vigorously argued against with her fact-checker: that the patriots fought the American Revolution in large part to preserve slavery in North America."
(The quote comes from the article below which is also a good summary of the rapid increase in the last 30 years in American Historical scholarship on slavery, which Harris applauds and has been part of and claims that Gordon Wood has not)
The NYT eventually backed down, sorta, " We stand behind the basic point, which is that among the various motivations that drove the patriots toward independence was a concern that the British would seek or were already seeking to disrupt in various ways the entrenched system of American slavery". Not very convincing is it?
I do not really know the NYT editors motivation in publishing the original statement, but ideology certainly seems to have payed a part, rather than a rigorous search for the truth.
The right wing has unfortunately used this to ban 1619 books, and now AP courses in African American history ( which does include sections that some parents would find inappropriate for high school), and now a few people and one right wing foundation are attempting to muzzle basic support for diverse viewpoints and LGBT people in any school n Michigan, because state law allows parents to opt their child out of "sex education".
You should look at it "Judd at popular information" on Substack, He does an immense amount of work tracking down dark money supporting these legislative movements, and tracks corporations spending on politics very carefully. Most corporations claim they support equal rights for women, LGBT, and election integrity but give lots of money to election deniers, and bigots. Their money has clearly been a major source of the divisive poisonous political atmosphere we find ourselves in.
It is unclear to me why US corporations believe that fostering these political confrontations will be positive in the long run or good for their business. I assume they are too scared not to cough up the cash, after seeing what happened to Disney in Florida.
Why, exactly, is the "Other Investing" section of MFO being misused for a conversation which has absolutely nothing to do with investing?
The Off-Topic section is specifically designated for conversations such as this. If we are not going to honor the MFO groundrules then perhaps we should all agree to forget the fundamental reason for MFO's existence and simply revert to a free-for-all chat group.
You are correct, but for some reason, I get all the categories under "discussions" so I can't tell what category it is, unless I look very carefully at the original post.
But when I click on "Off Topic" I see posts today that do not appear when I start looking at all of them under "discussions" like Super bowl and David Solomon's salary
... and select whichever I'm interested in. Years ago there was such dissension among MFO posters because of the extreme intrusion of political comments and agendas that the "Off-Topic" section was deliberately "sealed off" from the investment sections so that the posters who come to MFO strictly for financial information are not constantly looking at political controversy.
I believe that my social credentials are not exactly a secret here. Lifelong Democrat, West Coast center-left, totally repulsed by whatever remains of a once legitimate Republican party. And yes, at times I too cross the line in my posting. But I do respect the guidelines set out by David Snowball years ago, and believe that all of us have a responsibility to do that.
To continuously disrespect those guidelines, saying whatever we want, wherever we want, only emulates the behavior of the Trumpian Republicans and leads to the continued destruction of the social fabric.
I note that sma3 privately supplied me the same, through another source; this is from NBC.
As a teacher, parent, and grandparent, oh, and I forgot leftist, I myself find nothing to object to.
Sure, this thread can be relabeled. I did enjoy being called quasi-Marxist immediately after posting some arguably investing-pertinent economic data from Krugman.
Comments
Side note: I haven't been able to verify the statement that these were Vietnamese workers. The Business & Human Rights piece cited in turn cites an SFGate (SF Chronicle) piece saying that "The lawsuit claimed that thousands of workers, including many from China and the Philippines ...".
An extensive piece on this suit can be found here:
http://www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2001c/090701/090701a.htm That was then. Now: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-22-105271.pdf
That does indeed sound plausible to me. For-profit companies everywhere, since forever, are always looking for ways to circumvent regulations. If the particular details I offered are incorrect, then I do indeed stand corrected.
Yes, the CNMI were not subject to the laws and regulations that the States must obey, some several years ago. That's been corrected, for the sake of those foreign workers. That same sort of worker exploitation is just par for the course, a reality taken for granted--- still--- in many countries. Think of Qatar, on the run-up to the FIFA games. Also, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and elsewhere. I personally have cousins (through marriage) who are OFW workers. One fellow who works as an OFW in Macau has not seen his young son for 4 years--- until just recently. Their passports are taken from them!!! And from the other direction: rather than to work to create a more prosperous, legitimate business regime, the gov't of the Philippines just feeds the beast: offering to give orientation meetings and setting up an entire system by which their own people can find such employment overseas--- providing, of course, that they are willing to sign away their rights in order to do so. To say nothing of the fees and graft and built-in corruption which is normalized in that country.
idk, looking back here and trying to see what you are talking about, not having luck ...
TJ was for Thomas Jefferson
[] was an inline flag for someone who cannot be bothered to get ' its ' right, ever, simply ever
nerde was a weak, nerd attempt at pointing out the error of getting merde wrong even in the pointed deployment of it (same person), as the French don't say
woke, crt, 1619, car audio, jfc, all should be figure-outtable, no? lmk, hth
Yes SE CT Thanks for the correction
@LewisBraham
I don't want the following to be too detailed or political, but comments deserve a specific response.
I am deeply hurt that you believe my complaints about the original 1619 project are based on “prejudice” and are “foolish” and “worse”. I do not think these adjectives improve the tenor of our discussions here. Many other people share my concerns about the lead essay of 1619 for similar reasons, and these concerns limited it's impact considerably.
I was using 1619 as an example of the ideological and political agenda that seems to frame almost all media today, from the WSJ (whose editorials I occasionally read although they always seem to cherry pick facts that support their anti- Biden agenda) and the NYT on the left.
I was referencing the opinion of five well known professional historians (who I have read and greatly respect), about the statement of Nikole Hannah-Jones (1691 lead editor, a journalist, not a historian), that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery”.
These historians believe this key statement in the lead essay is “factually inaccurate” and a “displacement of historical accuracy by ideology”. This made a lot of people suspect ideology and inaccuracy might be common here, and made them suspicious of the motives around the entire effort. It ignited a controversy that was a significant distraction to the impact 1619 could have had.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-to-the-historians-who-critiqued-the-1619-project.html
Gordon Wood, James McPhearson and the other historians say in their letter
“We applaud all efforts to address the enduring centrality of slavery and racism to our history. Some of us have devoted our entire professional lives to those efforts, and all of us have worked hard to advance them. Raising profound, unsettling questions about slavery and the nation’s past and present, as The 1619 Project does, is a praiseworthy and urgent public service. Nevertheless, we are dismayed at some of the factual errors in the project and the closed process behind it.”
“These errors, which concern major events, cannot be described as interpretation or “framing.” They are matters of verifiable fact, which are the foundation of both honest scholarship and honest journalism. They suggest a displacement of historical understanding by ideology. Dismissal of objections on racial grounds — that they are the objections of only “white historians” — has affirmed that displacement.”
“On the American Revolution, pivotal to any account of our history, the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain “in order to ensure slavery would continue.” This is not true. If supportable, the allegation would be astounding — yet every statement offered by the project to validate it is false. “(end quote)
There are more detailed refutations available than this letter. Like most controversial subjects, it is not black and white, but it seems to me very unlikely that continued British rule would have abolished slavery more quickly, as it continued in Britain until 1833.
https://www.aier.org/article/fact-checking-the-1619-project-and-its-critics/
The Times says they did not assemble a group of experts on the Revolution to get differing views on this critical statement for a debate or analysis. None of the five academics they consulted is a Revolutionary War historian. Their research is focused on economics, poverty, evictions, injustice, racism and civil rights. The two who were trained in History, research the 20th century, not the Revolution.
A penetrating analysis of the Revolution’s origin with factual material on both sides would have eliminated much of the controversy about the original 1619 statement. But I have to agree with Wood et. al. that ideology seems to have take precedence over a debate about the facts.
Unfortunately, there are few sources that a reader can go to find both sides and facts of an issue without being filtered though a pre-existing viewpoint to score points with their “tribe”.
One of the few I have found that tries to present both sides of an issue in a daily email, using material from pretty much mainstream media is www.theflipside.io. They focus on current issues and try to present both sides (without quoting Fox news). Here is their presentation of the original 1619 project.
https://www.theflipside.io/archives/the-1619-project
I would look at their recent posts on Kevin McCarthy, Tax policy, and Classified Documents from last week.
I am well aware of the controversy over the Project, and it has generated critical responses from both leftwing and rightwing historians. I am, however, irritated by the fact that posting a single essay from the project, one not written by Hannah-Jones but someone else on a different subject, incites these generalized attacks. And DavidRMoran is right to say that the project has evolved significantly from its initial publication and the NYT has attempted to address any errors in its various historical texts.
It is the fake controversy over CRT, and the reductive conflation of it with the 1619 project, that particularly irks me. CRT is tought in colleges, law school in particular, not in elementary schools. The truth is guys like DeSantis don't what to talk about America's ugly history with race at all. I can understand that Hannah-Jones created controversy by a simple premise from the software industry--that slavery was a feature not a bug in the nation's founding, part of its essential design. I don't completely agree with that foundational argument. I think the founders had different viewpoints on the subject and while some certainly wanted to perpetuate the slavery institution, their views on the subject were not uniform. It is a mistake to generalize about them as well.
But isn't Hannah-Jones' foundational argument even worth discussing in schools instead of putting the founders on pedestals and pretending they're gods as many children's history books currently do? The controversy the 1619 Project has generated is a necessary one. It should be debated in schools, not summarily dismissed. If anything would teach children "critical thinking," the loss of which older generations constantly lament today, it would be analyzing and discussing these essays.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12/06/black-couple-home-value-white-washing/
Possibly, if I was careful, I could add in material about the very neighborhood whither I moved at age 7 and grew up in thereafter, until heading East for college, the project of the father of redlining, whose work is here very gently described:
tinyurl.com/56bh3hfk
Thank you for your kind response and discussion.
America's tortured history of race indeed should be discussed in schools at all levels, including discussions about the motivations of slaveholders in the Revolution.
But I am trying to make the point that the approach to subjects like these needs to be done in a very careful, well researched manner that will encourage the people whose minds are perhaps still a little open to participate in the discussion.
By that I mean extreme care should be taken to avoid statements and opinions that either political extreme can pick up and run with, such as "one of the primary reasons ... was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery".
But I don't think extreme care was taken in the lead 1619 essay. Professor Leslie Harris was asked to fact check the essay before they published it and warned Hannah-Jones and the NYT this statement was inaccurate
"On August 19 of last year I listened in stunned silence as Nikole Hannah-Jones, a reporter for the New York Times, repeated an idea that I had vigorously argued against with her fact-checker: that the patriots fought the American Revolution in large part to preserve slavery in North America."
(The quote comes from the article below which is also a good summary of the rapid increase in the last 30 years in American Historical scholarship on slavery, which Harris applauds and has been part of and claims that Gordon Wood has not)
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248
The NYT eventually backed down, sorta, " We stand behind the basic point, which is that among the various motivations that drove the patriots toward independence was a concern that the British would seek or were already seeking to disrupt in various ways the entrenched system of American slavery". Not very convincing is it?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/magazine/an-update-to-the-1619-project.html
I do not really know the NYT editors motivation in publishing the original statement, but ideology certainly seems to have payed a part, rather than a rigorous search for the truth.
The right wing has unfortunately used this to ban 1619 books, and now AP courses in African American history ( which does include sections that some parents would find inappropriate for high school), and now a few people and one right wing foundation are attempting to muzzle basic support for diverse viewpoints and LGBT people in any school n Michigan, because state law allows parents to opt their child out of "sex education".
https://popular.info/p/inside-the-audacious-new-scheme-to
You should look at it "Judd at popular information" on Substack, He does an immense amount of work tracking down dark money supporting these legislative movements, and tracks corporations spending on politics very carefully. Most corporations claim they support equal rights for women, LGBT, and election integrity but give lots of money to election deniers, and bigots. Their money has clearly been a major source of the divisive poisonous political atmosphere we find ourselves in.
It is unclear to me why US corporations believe that fostering these political confrontations will be positive in the long run or good for their business. I assume they are too scared not to cough up the cash, after seeing what happened to Disney in Florida.
? Cite ? You have seen contents ?
The Off-Topic section is specifically designated for conversations such as this. If we are not going to honor the MFO groundrules then perhaps we should all agree to forget the fundamental reason for MFO's existence and simply revert to a free-for-all chat group.
As if we need another one of those.
You are correct, but for some reason, I get all the categories under "discussions" so I can't tell what category it is, unless I look very carefully at the original post.
But when I click on "Off Topic" I see posts today that do not appear when I start looking at all of them under "discussions" like Super bowl and David Solomon's salary
Not sure why that is.
Do you look at the posts by category?
Absolutely. I keep two permanent tabs on my browser...
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussions/discussionsplus
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/categories/off-topic
... and select whichever I'm interested in. Years ago there was such dissension among MFO posters because of the extreme intrusion of political comments and agendas that the "Off-Topic" section was deliberately "sealed off" from the investment sections so that the posters who come to MFO strictly for financial information are not constantly looking at political controversy.
I believe that my social credentials are not exactly a secret here. Lifelong Democrat, West Coast center-left, totally repulsed by whatever remains of a once legitimate Republican party. And yes, at times I too cross the line in my posting. But I do respect the guidelines set out by David Snowball years ago, and believe that all of us have a responsibility to do that.
To continuously disrespect those guidelines, saying whatever we want, wherever we want, only emulates the behavior of the Trumpian Republicans and leads to the continued destruction of the social fabric.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23584340/ap-afam-syllabus-watermark.pdf
I note that sma3 privately supplied me the same, through another source; this is from NBC.
As a teacher, parent, and grandparent, oh, and I forgot leftist, I myself find nothing to object to.
Sure, this thread can be relabeled. I did enjoy being called quasi-Marxist immediately after posting some arguably investing-pertinent economic data from Krugman.
It is your thread, so please relabel it as you see fit and put it in Off topic, if you want to continue discussing this.
@Old_Joe
Thanks for the answer. I try not to remember the "nasty times" but guess I missed that "Off Topic isolation as the solution.