Tag Archives: Her Britannnic Majesty Queen Elizabeth

In this list I have the third installment of my list of people to watch in the  second decade after the 9/11 attacks. This is like all the others somewhat diverse but still somewhat predictable in its preferences and tendencies.  This is the third post in a series. Here is the link to the most recent  post which in turn has links to the two earlier posts:   https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/fifteen-more-people-to-watch-in-9112011-9112021/

1. Gaudencio Borbon Cardinal Rosales is the Cardinal Archbishop of Manila in the Philippines. Manila is the only majority Christian country in  the  historyEast Asia. There was time when there were numerous Christian countries in and around the Byzantine Empire in the Near East part of Asia but most of that legacy has been erased by Islam. The Cardinal Archbishop of Manila is a very important figure in the Roman Catholic Church and in geopolitics.  I met Bishop Rosales when he came down to Malaybalay in the province of Bukidnon   to be installed as the first Ordinary of the Diocese of Bukidnon. His predecessor had been the Bishop of the Prelature of Bukidnon.  Rosales was born in Batangas City in the Province of Batangas. Rosales come from the country’s elite. Not that there is absolute clarity in social rank but his family is near the top. His grandfathers were Julian Rosales, once mayor of the town of Batangas and Pablo Borbon, once a governor of Batangas province. Rosales’ father, Dr. Godofredo Dilay Rosales, was  among the earliest Filipino physicians to complete medical school and residency training entirely in the United States of America. In a country where many became part of the brain drain to go abroad  Dr. Rosales became a balikbayan instead and devoted himself  to practice in Batangas City. Rosales’ mother, Remedios Mayo Borbón, was the first cousin of the great Filipino nationalist, Claro M. Recto.  Gaudencio Rosales matriculated at the San Jose Seminary, and his classmates two other future bishops.  Ordained a priest by Bishop Alejandro Olalia on March 23, 1958, he was then assigned to teach for 11 years in seminary of the Archdiocese of Lipa (which was then merely a diocese). He became an auxillary bishop before in the Manila Archdiocese before I knew him in the eighties. We did get to know eachother pretty well and my parents knew him even better.  Like some on my list he is not a juvenile by any stretch of the term. But he is uniquely qualified and positioned to work and lead with certain challenges and transformations that may occur in the second post 9/11 decade.

2. Queen Sofia of Spain, Su Graciosa Majestad Sofia la Reina Catolica   is well-beloved by many in Spain and a decent number of people in Greece and Denmark. Her reputation and style in these countries in Egypt and in circles beyond these countries have formed  an extensive web of relations and connections which have made it possible for her to promote and embody a vsion of Constitutional Monarchy in Spain which is part of the secularizing and modernist European experience.  Princess Sophia of Greece and Denmark was born in Psychiko, Athens, Greece on 2 November 1938.   She is  the eldest child of the King Paul of Greece (1901–1964) and his wife, Queen Frederika (1917–1981), a former princess of Hanover. Queen Sofia is a a royal consort descendant of the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg dynasty and tied to such House and clan structure as it possesses. I would not say she is a member of that dynasty because her royal titles in effect are through her her husband Juan Carlos I (baptized as Juan Carlos Alfonso Víctor María de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilias who is the  monarch regnant and  King of Spain .  He is a true Bourbon (if I were wrting in Spanish I would say the French dynasts of the past were Borbon — I do not split them into two Houses).  She is then in the Spanish Bourbon or Borbon dynasty.  Under  the Spanish Constitution, Title II: the Crown, Article 56, Subsection 1, the Spanish monarch personifies and embodies the  Spanish nation. The crwoned head serves as  a symbol of Spain’s enduring unity and permanence; and as such, the monarch is the commander-in-chief of the Spanish Armed Forces as well as the head-of-state in the monarquia parlamentaria  (parliamentary monarchy). While these constitutional provisions are relatively recent all royalist systems have a tradtional element and the tradition in Spain is for Queens Consort such as Sofia to be relatively powerful and influential. Queen Sofia’s brother is the deposed King Constantine II of Greece and her sister Princess Irene of Greece and Denmark this family’s royal titles are no longer recognized by the Constitution of Greece. While her life included travels and exile which made her more cosmopolitan the family  returned to Greece from a World War II exile in 1946. She also renewed her Tetuonic heritage by studying at the Schloss Salem school. But was fully Greek in many ways before undertaking to become Spanish studying childcare, music and archeology in Athens and representing Greece in sailing at the 1960 Summer Olympics.

3. Oprah Winfrey is best known as host of The Oprah Winfrey Show and director of the associated corporate empire of spin-off shows, a magazine, numerous charities and a complex kind Book Club with both local and national aspects.  The Oprah Winfrey Show entered national syndication in 1986, becoming the highest-rated talk show in television history. In 1988, she established Harpo Studios, and joined predecessors Mary Pickford and Lucille Ball the third woman in American history to own her own studio. The Oprah Winfrey Show has remained the most watched talk show for 23 straight seasons.  Harpo Productions, Inc. which she owns has produced the show which is winding down now but is still seen  by an estimated audience and viewership 42 million a week in the United States in addition to other viewers in 145 countries. Coming from a difficult background which she has admitted involved family based abuse of various kinds and was rooted in a consciousness of the more unpleasant sides of rural African- American experience she  began her broadcasting career at WVOL radio in Nashville while still in high school.  At the age of 19, she was the youngest ever and the first black woman to anchor the news at Nashville’s WTVF-TV. Moving to Baltimore’s WJZ-TV Oprah began to co-anchor the Six O’Clock News and later the local talk show, People Are Talking.   She has made her name and fortune based in Chicago however and did not move their until 1984.  She came there to host WLS-TV’s morning talk show, AM Chicago, which became the number one local talk show beating oput the seemingly invincible Donahue within a month. Less than a year later the show had a one hour fromat  and was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show.  Her path with regards to race, sex (as a practice and a status), social order charity and personal rage and hurt has been a fascinating journey to watch. I think that the United States will either collapse into chaos or will change in some fundamental ways and if it does change Oprah will have a role to play in both midwifing the new consensus and helping to protect and propser the capital of negro American entrepreneurs in an America that may have to choose to become more formaly white supremacist or slip into the ranks of Haiti and Mozambique.  A cuatious and clever person without a husband or children and almost endless energy  she made two moves in 2008, she endorsed Barack Hussein Obama for Presisdent and Oprah and Discovery Communications announced plans to create  “OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network”.” The new multi-platform media venture will be designed to entertain, inform and inspire people to live their best lives. OWN will debut on January 1, 2011, in approximately 80 million homes.

4.  Bill O’Reilly is clearly a product and embodiment of of a New York, Irish Catholic background as is evident to those who follow his career.  Bill O’Reilly born in Manhattan and raised on Long Island. He has a Bachelor’s degree in History from Marist College, along with a Master’s in Broadcast Journalism from Boston University and then returned after a relatively full carreer to earn  another Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  The historic run of The O’Reilly Factor on the FOX News Channel continues. This program has remained the most watched cable news show for 11 straight years. More than 300 newspapers carry his column each week. His website generates hundreds of thousands of dollars annualy for charity. Bill’ O’Reilly’s six non-fiction books are all in print and have sold more than five million copies. Bill  O’Reilly’s differs from Rush Limbaugh and others like Beck in the age at which he came to his role as conservative firebrand, the education he brings to the job and also in the professional  experience which informs his current position. His broadcast career began in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Local reporter and news anchor positions of real basic and not so basic journalistic and broadcasting skills were established in other cities such as Dallas, Boston, and New York.  He achieved a national audience et Bill when he worked at CBS News, ABC News and the first version of Inside Edition.

5.  Julie Ann Yannatta is probably among the  two or three least known persons on this entire list from a global perspective. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Tulane Law School and been admitted to both the New York  and California bars as an attorney.  She lives and is involved in the entertainment industry in Southern California but has traveled to much of the world and lived in several very different parts of it. She is married and has one son.  She has been involved as a director in a secular humanist based open charity called Operation USA  which is 30 years old and in which she has played an important role. She has served as the General Manager of Shangri-La Music which united commercial and humanitarian interests in a recording enterprise.   She is among the founders of a firm called Artists First which enables musicians to use new media to directly market and sell their works  with the benefits of some kind of infrastructure. She was an executive producer for the Instant Karma  music project which was the centerpiece of the Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur. She has developed a network of significant relationships which include webs between people in the tradtions of past American Communism’s descendants, Scandinavians, Japanese musicians, feminists, the Democratic Party and    entertainment lawyers. All of this would not be enough to make this list. She is also very pretty. In objective terms she is a beauty with some lines that are preternaturaly perfect but beauty is also a cultural phenomenon. Julie’s appearance is of less cultural significance than it might be because it does not fit any of the major cultural parameters defining great beauty in our time. She is now in her very early forties and is shorter than either standard super models, Victoria’s Secret models and is not quite the  Hawaiian Tropics shape.  Her looks and her carreer together would still not be enough to make this list. Perhaps if I were a better man I would find a way not to include her in it as it may inconvenience her. However she is here because while at Tulane Law School she sort of collided (rather gently and minimally) with a whole web of institutions and people  she could never have anticipated. She became important to a key figure in this world within the world. She has remained significant. She did not handle it all that well in objective terms but she handled it thousands  of time better than could have been expected. It is possible that this will become important in the future.  

6. Vitaly Alexandrovich Lopota   is thePresident of the S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, General Designer, technical manager for flight tests of manned space systems, deputy chairman of the State Commission for flight tests of manned space systems.   Since 1991 he has been the director and chief designer of the Central Research and Development Institute for Robotics and Engineering Cybernetics .  In July of 2007 he  began heading S.P.Korolev RSC Energia in which his contributions and role have almost been too varied and complex to believe and which is  among the most strategically important companies in Russia. His firm is the prime organization in the country for development and operation of manned rocket and space systems as well as leading in the field of  launchers and robotic space systems, and the spin-offs of the current advanced space technologies to the marketplace and civil society in socially useful products.  V.A. Lopota is in many ways a mayor or governor for the  corporation’s community and infrastructure  which includes housing, transit and some security institutions.  RSC Energia is  Russia’s principal corporte player in meeting commitments to the International Space Station (ISS) program.  The ariety and dviersity of these commitments is vast and America is retiring the Shuttle and will be more dependent than ever on the Soyuz and other proven platforms which he has worked with for quite a while.  Energiya has  started on the project of a nuclear-powered space transportation module. The governor aspect of his work is also seen in his service as  the Chairman of the Council of Directors of companies based in Korolev, town of science.  Here this distinguished scientist and engineer  who is V.A. Lopota becomes the politician who  helps to manage urban development,  job creation,  and production facilities improvement issues in the space industry. His space program is not divorced from the need for the  construction of housing and buildings of social significance.  One of the highest priorities for Vitaly Lopota is to preserve and further develop the Korolev’s school of Russian rocket and space science. With his active participation, a full-time post-graduate courses and the council which can confer academic ranks have been re-established at the Company.  . Vitaly Alexandrovich Lopota was born on September 28, 1950, in Grozny.  His first real job was down and dirty stint as a fitter at an oil refinery in Grozny. After completing army service, he studied in Leningrad Polytechnical Institute (known as Leningrad University since 1990) and completed postgraduate studies  there in 1981. V. A. Lopota  rose through the ranks, starting off as a junior research associate, to eventually become a professor, chair a department and to head of an applied research laboratory later known as the Laser Technology Center. Vitaly Alexandrovich Lopota is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Science, Engineering. More than 200 scientific papers have been published and he holds over 50 patents for inventions. He is a member of Council for Science, Technologies and Education at the President of the Russian Federation, a member of the Council of general and chief designers, leading scientists and specialists in high-technology sectors of economy under the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation, a member of a number of councils of experts at federal and regional levels, scientific, academic and engineering councils.

7. Amy Grant   and I are not friends  but she is certainly a name I come to on a personal basis here.  She just turned fifty this Thanksgiving Day and still looks great. Her recent book Mosaic has had broad appeal and she is married to one of the most acclaimed Country music artists of all time in Vince Gill. One of her Christmas songs has just been covered by American Idol winner Danny Gokey. But Amy Grant  has been around a good while.  Amy Grant is just a tiny bit older than I am and I have been listening to her music about as long as she has had a record deal. I used to own My Father’s Eyes, Age to Age, Straight Ahead, Unguarded and several other albums in what was never a really large record collection. She is the most successful artist in the history of the genre called Contemporary Christian Music.  She has won several Grammy Awards and a plethora of Dove Awards. She has been part of my life and I have played tracks of her albums at prayer services, lectures and retreats.   I belonged to  (and still do belong to) a college household with a Hebrew name and have often celebrated Christian direct borrowings from the Sabbath Meal and the Pseder Supper. She made her mark with many songs but one of the early big hits was a song with a Hebrew  language lead line. I combined doing ministry and religious communications with involvement in secular media work. While she was a successful phenomenon it is still true that I could often see her working though decisions and difficulties that were the same as mine in that same process. Some challenges were identical, some very close and others just  resonant but it was a real bond. I also went to her concerts a couple of times and I felt I could invite a variety of friends who would not  form a group elsewhere. Although the actual groups were small and kind of unsuccessful the potential seemed to be their. With my own sisters and some other young girls I could use her as a role model for a real young woman struggling to survive and grow in faith and be herself. Amy Grant was part of a soundtrack in my personl life that included Otis Redding, Michael Doucet, Bruce Springsteen, The Bangles, Rush, John Michael Talbot,  the Carpenters, Michel W. Smith,  John Denver, Willie Nelson, George Straight, U2, Rafe Vaughn Williams, Ray Charles, Fats Domino and many other artists when I was young as well as lots of live worship music. However, Amy Grant’s music has more special stories than almost all of the others from the large pop culture world.  I have recently downloaded some of her music and interviews and it makes me remember watching her career progress. She has now been married to Vince Gill for years and I remember when that was topic of conversation as an upcoming event. The most important reason she is on this list is that if America is to become what America must become to survive thenthere must be key figures rooted in Evangelical Protestantism who can communicate with everyone and be forces for the change needed in that community. Amy Grant is well qualified to be such a force and she is not folding  up her life’s work yet.  She has kept working and I have seen some of her stuff on tv and  now can see that she is still working.   I still find the vibe associated with her fascinating. 

8. Ratan N. Tata  is the Chairman of the Board of Tata Motors, Ltd. in Mumbai, India. One of his achievements include designing and developing an indigenous Indian car – Indica – one of the leading products in its category in the car market.The biggest news ever from him is the recent development of  the Nano . ?The “people’s car” as it has been envisioned by Mr Tata was commercially launched in March 2009.  The car is billed as the fuel efficient, low-cost, ecologicaly friendlytransport needed in India and abroad . The Company was also awarded the Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award for the Tata Nano, in the transportation sector. Ratan N. Tata has broad business experience and is also or at least certainly has recently been a Director of Alcoa Inc. based out of New York which was formerly the Aluminum Corporation of America.  He has lived an impressive life and is now 73 years old.  Mr Ratan N Tata returned later in life to the  USA and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School where he built upon  earlier studies. Mr. Tata holds a B.Sc. (Architecture) degree in structural engineering from Cornell University. He joined the Tata Group in 1962. As Chairman of Tata Industries Limited since 1981, he helped transform the company into a strategy think-tank and he and the group became promoters of new  high technology businesses. In 1991, Mr Tata was appointed Chairman of Tata Sons Limited, the holding company of the Tata entities and currently holds the chairmanships of major Tata companies. Under Ratan N. Tata the  Group’s revenues have increased more than ten-fold to annualized revenues of $67.4 billion.  Mr. Tata has been recognized with poeitions of trust and honors by civil society and government in India and has received numeous high honors of varied kinds from institution across the globe.  

9.  Mark Zuckerberg  is the youthful self made billionaire and founder of Facebook who recently has been the subject of the movie The Social Network, almost all of 60 Minutes episode was listed by Barbara Walters as one of the years ten most interesting people.  He has been devoted full-time to his present position at the head of this internet behemoth since at least 2004.  Last year he gave away an enormous amount of money to various charities and especially to support public schools his giving is reported to be about half of his network. Facebook is a social network with about 600 million members.  Mark Zuckerberg is a native of White Plains, New York. His parents are  Karen, a psychiatrist, and Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist. Mark and his three sisters, Randi, Donna, and Arielle were reared in Dobbs Ferry, New York.  Zuckerberg was raised as a relatively observant  Jew, including having had a Bar Mitzvah when he turned 13 and although he has since described himself as an atheist it is unlikely that he rejects the Hebrew ethnic part of his background. Zuckerberg was involved with computing in a fairly sophisticated way even in middle school. His father began his instruction in programming in the 1990s, and then software hired developer David Newman to advance his private technical education  in about 1995. Zuckerberg actually took a graduate course in the subject at Mercy College near his home in the mid-1990s. He complimeted all this study with a variety of personal projects for fun and to meet business needs around him. He did show other interests at Ardsly High School but in his junior year transferring to one of America’s most exclusive schools the Phillips Exeter Academy and it was there his education and life began to become even more focused.  Zuckerberg won prizes in science (math, astronomy and physics) . But according to official records he continued to excel in Classical Studies and could read and write to some degree in English,  French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek. He was an athlete who became captain of the fencing team.  He was already a commercial success in high school but he chose to go to Harvard and continue his education. There he found even larger success in Facebook and up until now that has largely defined his subsequent activity. He also met his girlfriend Priscilla Chan in college and they are still together. He has been a vocal supports of Barack Obama and is a very strong and hard personality. In the days when people read faces (as recently as the eighties a study was ublished but ignored in a big way) he has many facial characteristics of a general. He may play a vital role if America is to prosper in the coming period of years in which there are so many challenges. 

10. Jean -Cristophe Niel serves and has served as the  Director General of the ASN  which is the French Nuclear Safety Authority since January 15, 2007.  He serves under a small but elite commission appointed by various very high political figures in France. However,  for a man in one of the technical disciplines on this list he is not so old and his experience yields him huge opportunities to develope as a world player.   The ASN is an agency in country which has a limited but serious nuclear military plan and arsenal and sees nuclear power as a vital part of economic strategy both from a point of view of societal development and national autonomy and survival. The Director General of the ASN, under the authority of the President, ASN, organizes and conducts the services of the ASN, composed of central services, as well as eleven territorial delegations. The ASN includes 420 employees in Paris and in the eleven territorial delegations. Its annual budget is approximately 50 million euros, of which 30 million is personnel costs. The ASN benefits from the expertise of the IRSN for an amount of 71 million euros.The ASN is a large organization with regional divisions that  conduct their activities under the authority of the regional representatives appointed by the ASN Chairman but with whom the Director General must interact in a variety of ways to be at all effective.   The divisions perform most of the direct inspections of BNIs, of radioactive material transport and of small-scale nuclear activities and contribute to ASN’s public information role.  ASN comprises the headquarters and 11 regional divisions with responsibility for one or more administrative regions operating in many capacities for emergency management and safety assurance. This organisation enables ASN to perform its regulation duties nationwide as well as in the overseas territories.  I have not found Dr. Niel’s exact age but he graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique (1980) and the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussés (1985), and has a doctorate in Theoretical Physics(University of Paris IV, 1990).  His work experience includes positions as chief engineer of bridges and Chaussés, and posts in the field of nuclear safety and radiation protection.  From 1991 to 1995, at ASN (formerly DSIN) he was in charge of the control of the  fuel cycle, radioactive waste and control facilities. From 1995 to 2005, he held  important functions at the Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN).  He worked there as head of the department of safety assessment, responsible for managing  majority of experiments and manyother tests requiring expert personnelle conducted by the IRSN for ASN, Jean Niel was director of the strategy, development and external relations.