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May 31, 2019 June 15, 2019 Paul Hemphill Leave a comment
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
America’s national bard set the song lines for a young nation, and what was seen at the time as its promise and its bold, independent identity. He reflected his country’s growing up and coming of age to his own personal awakening and awareness, in his seeing and being enlightened. “Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me, the long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose” (Song of the Open Road).
From his rural roots on Long Island, where, in youth and early adulthood, he lived and worked as an itinerant schoolteacher and newspaper editor, Walt Whitman would go on to become one of the most influential and significant American poets. He’s viewed today as a modern voice even though he lived two centuries ago, a poet of the people for the people, without pretension or pomp, who wrote verse that captured everyday speech, both its fluency and its clank. “The best writing,” Whitman would say, “has no lace on its sleeves.”
Whitman scholar Brenda Wineapple has written of how the poet was unequivocally declaring his own independence from poetic conventions and niceties:
”In 1855 no one had yet heard anything like the raw, declamatory, and jubilant voice of the self- proclaimed “American, one of the roughs, a kosmos” – Walt Whitman, who in Leaves of Grass, his dazzling poetic debut, announced, ‘I celebrate myself,/And what I assume you shall assume,/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you’.”
Whitman’s reputation as an innovator, she says, is partly based on Whitman’s then-radical use of free verse – poems that are not developed around a rhyming structure. “Every poet that comes along is looking for his new voice, and their own tradition and they look to Whitman to see how he did it”.
Regarding his “American-ness”, author Karen Karbenier asks us “… to approach Whitman and his work not as a hero or a villain but as a mirror. “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes),” announces the narrator of “Song of Myself.” Walt Whitman the man was as conflicted and complex as the country he sought to embody. He may still be regarded as a representative American — but representative of who we have been and continue to be, not just who we claim we are … When examining Whitman’s racial slurs alongside his most egalitarian poetic lines, we should feel discomfort and regret and the need for renewal and change. This complicated and conflicted American also envisioned, described and celebrated a truly democratic society that neither his era nor our own has yet realized. What could America need more right now than a poetic figure whose work spotlights the chaos and division that have long defined what it means to be an American?”
Celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of his birth, I republish here one of my favourite Whitman poems, Out of the Cradle Restlessly Rocking.
The poem contained three intertwined motifs: the boy, awakening to nature and himself; the bereaved mockingbird, futilely hopeful and lost in his loneliness; and the sea, it’s waves forever breaking on the shore. It is a bittersweet song, an aria transforming, expanding, transcending into a pantheistic opera. That encompasses the wheel of life: the child, the youth, the lover, the man, the poet awakening – discovering, uncovering, and learning, sensing and seeing and being.
When first published in 1859 (it was included in the 1860 and subsequent editions of Leaves of Grass), A reviewer called it “unmixed and hopeless drivel” and a disgrace to its publisher.
Such is the lot of the poet …
See also, Walt Whitman – Citizen Poet; and, in In That Howling Infinite, The last rains came gently – Steinbeck’s dustbowl ballad, and The Sport of Kings – CE Morgan’s “great American novel” ; and, listen to my musical tribute to Walt Whitman; Valances (early in the morning at break of day)
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower’d halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous’d words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.
Once Paumanok,
When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing,
Up this seashore in some briers,
Two feather’d guests from Alabama, two together,
And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,
And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,
And every day the she-bird crouch’d on her nest, silent, with bright eyes,
And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them,
Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.
Shine! shine! shine!
Pour down your warmth, great sun!
While we bask, we two together.
Two together!
Winds blow south, or winds blow north,
Day come white, or night come black,
Home, or rivers and mountains from home,
Singing all time, minding no time,
While we two keep together.
Till of a sudden,
May-be kill’d, unknown to her mate,
One forenoon the she-bird crouch’d not on the nest,
Nor return’d that afternoon, nor the next,
Nor ever appear’d again.
And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea,
And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather,
Over the hoarse surging of the sea,
Or flitting from brier to brier by day,
I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird,
The solitary guest from Alabama.
Blow! blow! blow!
Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok’s shore;
I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.
Yes, when the stars glisten’d,
All night long on the prong of a moss-scallop’d stake,
Down almost amid the slapping waves,
Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears.
He call’d on his mate,
He pour’d forth the meanings which I of all men know.
Yes my brother I know,
The rest might not, but I have treasur’d every note,
For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding,
Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows,
Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights after their sorts,
The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,
I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,
Listen’d long and long.
Listen’d to keep, to sing, now translating the notes,
Following you my brother.
Soothe! soothe! soothe!
Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,
And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,
But my love soothes not me, not me.
Low hangs the moon, it rose late,
It is lagging—O I think it is heavy with love, with love.
O madly the sea pushes upon the land,
With love, with love.
O night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?
What is that little black thing I see there in the white?
Loud! loud! loud!
Loud I call to you, my love!
High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves,
Surely you must know who is here, is here,
You must know who I am, my love.
Low-hanging moon!
What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow?
O it is the shape, the shape of my mate!
O moon do not keep her from me any longer.
Land! land! O land!
Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me my mate back again if you only would,
For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look.
O rising stars!
Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of you.
O throat! O trembling throat!
Sound clearer through the atmosphere!
Pierce the woods, the earth,
Somewhere listening to catch you must be the one I want.
Shake out carols!
Solitary here, the night’s carols!
Carols of lonesome love! death’s carols!
Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon!
O under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea!
O reckless despairing carols.
But soft! sink low!
Soft! let me just murmur,
And do you wait a moment you husky-nois’d sea,
For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me,
So faint, I must be still, be still to listen,
But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me.
Hither my love!
Here I am! here!
With this just-sustain’d note I announce myself to you,
This gentle call is for you my love, for you.
Do not be decoy’d elsewhere,
That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice,
That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray,
Those are the shadows of leaves.
O darkness! O in vain!
O I am very sick and sorrowful.
O brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea!
O troubled reflection in the sea!
O throat! O throbbing heart!
And I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.
O past! O happy life! O songs of joy!
In the air, in the woods, over fields,
Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved!
But my mate no more, no more with me!
We two together no more.
The aria sinking,
All else continuing, the stars shining,
The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing,
With angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly moaning,
On the sands of Paumanok’s shore gray and rustling,
The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching,
The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the atmosphere dallying,
The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously bursting,
The aria’s meaning, the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing,
The strange tears down the cheeks coursing,
The colloquy there, the trio, each uttering,
The undertone, the savage old mother incessantly crying,
To the boy’s soul’s questions sullenly timing, some drown’d secret hissing,
To the outsetting bard.
Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,)
Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?
For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping, now I have heard you,
Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake,
And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours,
A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.
O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,
O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you,
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there in the night,
By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there arous’d, the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me.
O give me the clew! (it lurks in the night here somewhere,)
O if I am to have so much, let me have more!
A word then, (for I will conquer it,)
The word final, superior to all,
Subtle, sent up—what is it?—I listen;
Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves?
Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?
Whereto answering, the sea,
Delaying not, hurrying not,
Whisper’d me through the night, and very plainly before day-break,
Lisp’d to me the low and delicious word death,
And again death, death, death, death,
Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous’d child’s heart,
But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet,
Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over,
Death, death, death, death, death.
Which I do not forget,
But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother,
That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok’s gray beach,
With the thousand responsive songs at random,
My own songs awaked from that hour,
And with them the key, the word up from the waves,
The word of the sweetest song and all songs,
That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet,
(Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet garments, bending aside,)
The sea whisper’d me.
Bob Dylan’s 116th Dream – a Jerusalem reverie
May 8, 2019 May 8, 2019 Paul Hemphill Leave a comment
The Kushner Peace Plan, the long awaited solution to the seventy year old – no, century old – conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is, so we are informed via leaks and leading articles (see those at the end of this post), is about to finally be plonked down on the rickety and sloping negotiating table.
What President Trump has dubbed “the deal of the century” – presumably the now twenty years gone by 21st Century – has been developed, with varying degrees of involvement and disdain from both Israel and the the Palestinians, and from several significant others, including the US’ exclusively autocratic and repressive Arab allies. But the primary architects have been presidential adviser Jared Kushner, special envoy Jason Greenblatt, and US ambassador to Israel David Friedman.
Whether this bird can fly is a subject for much current discussion and conjecture in mainstream and left of mainstream media; and we really can’t predict what will happen at this point in time.
But, if indeed we did need a person with Jewish genes to nudge the Israelis and the Arabs to realize peace in the Holy Land, then maybe Trump should have dispatched the Bobster to the Middle East instead of his ingenue and arguably disingenuous businessman son-in-law Jared Kushner and JK’s highly partisan, blinkered and thus discredited amigos.
You gotta serve somebody
Bob Dylan once sang “… there’s no success like failure, and failure is no success at all”. He also crooned: “it ain’t dark yet, but it’s getting there”. And to complete a trifecta of wisdom: “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”.
He has even worked out the Palestinians cannot be pushed to the negotiating table by the US and it’s corrupt, brutal Arab allies: “So many roads, so much at stake. So many dead ends, I’m at the edge of the lake. Sometimes I wonder what it’s gonna take to find dignity”.
And few could match Bob’s credentials for the gig. How’s this for resumé:
“I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains. I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways. I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests. I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans. I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard”.
And what will you do now, Mr Dylan?
“I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest where the people are many and their hands are all empty, where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison, where the executioner’s face is always well-hidden, where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten, where black is the color, where none is the number”.
And then?
“… I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, and reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it. And I’ll stand on on the water until I start sinkin’, but I’ll know my song well before I start singin’”.
And so, there’s Bob “flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight, flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight, an’ for each an’ ev’ry underdog soldier in the night”.
He’s “tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake, tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an’ forsaked, tolling for the outcast, burnin’ constantly at stake … tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail, for the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale, an’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail”.
And yes, “he’s tolling for the aching whose wounds cannot be nursed, for the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse, an’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe” …
But the question remains, will Palestinian youth, wild at heart and wired to the world, be “wishin’ and hopin’, and thinkin’ and prayin’”, to quote another zeitgeist philosopher, that one day they’ll be able to “gaze upon the chimes of freedom flashing”.
And will Israelis, with their weapons, walls and wire, their soldier boys and girls, and two millenia of yearning for for a place of greater safety, no longer be “condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting”.
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind ….
See also, in In That Howling Infinite, A Middle East Miscellany
Some FaceBook background
I’m finding The Independent’s Middle East correspondent Bel Trew’s reportst very worthwhile and insightful, alongside those of her colleagues Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn. Here is Bel’s take on the long awaited Kushner “Plan”, so succinctly encapsulated by Fisk himself:
‘How many times can you fit a South Sea Bubble into a Bermuda Triangle?’
He continued, in fine form:
“Trump’s fey and vain son-in-law, a supporter of Israel’s colonial expansion on Arab land, set off with Trump’s “special representative to the peace process” Jason Greenblatt (who says “West Bank settlements are not an obstacle to peace”) to work out the economic underpinning of Trump’s “deal of the century” …
… Kushner recently went to visit some Muslim killer-states, some of them with very nasty and tyrannical leaders – Saudi Arabia and Turkey among them – to chat about the “economic dimension” of this mythical deal. Middle East leaders may be murderers with lots of torturers to help them stay in power, but they are not entirely stupid. It’s clear that Kushner and Greenblatt need lots and lots of cash to prop up their plans for the final destruction of Palestinian statehood – we are talking in billions – and the Arab leaders they met did not hear anything about the political “dimension” of Trump’s “deal”. Because presumably there isn’t one …
… This very vagueness is amazing, because the Kushner-Greenblatt fandango was in fact a very historic event. It was unprecedented as well as bizarre, unequalled in recent Arab history for its temerity as well as its outrageous assumption … this was the first time in modern Arab history – indeed modern Muslim history – that America has constructed and prepared a bribe BEFORE the acquiescence of those who are supposed to take the money; before actually telling the Palestinians and other Arabs what they are supposed to do in order to get their hands on the loot”.
Read Bel Trew’s article here; and Robert Fisk’s, here.
The ghosts of Gandamak
February 2, 2019 February 20, 2019 Paul Hemphill Leave a comment
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
TS Elliot, The Hollow Men
It’s like the Hotel California. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
When in the wake of 9/11 the US and it’s allies invaded Afghanistan, critics and cynics invoked the long arm of history to declare that the venture was a forlorn hope. Many questioned latter day imperial hubris. Others asked what were the long term goals, and what was the exit strategy. Reference was made to the Soviet Union’s destructive, demoralizing and ultimately debilitating invasion and nine year occupation (some 15,000 Soviet soldiers died, and 35,000 were wounded whilst about two million Afghan civilians were killed) which left the land in the tyrannical thrall of competing warlords; and to America’s own Vietnam quagmire. And then there were the British history buffs who reminded the world that Afghanistan was indeed the graveyard of empires, so well illustrated in the famous painting of the last stand of the 44th Foot on the bleak hillside of Gandamak during the disastrous retreat from Kabul in 1842. Inevitably, we dust down Rudyard Kipling’s well worn rhyme:
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
After more than 17 years, Afghanistan is the longest war in American history, with over two thousand soldiers dead and some twenty three thousand wounded. And yet, US forces are no closer to defeating the Taliban, who ruled most of Afghanistan before 2001 – than they were a decade ago. Indeed, In fact, the proportion of the country under the full control of the elected, American-backed government is humiliatingly small. A war which has caused over 31,000 civilian deaths due to war-related violence and 29,900 wounded (over 111,000 Afghans, including civilians, soldiers and militants, are estimated to have been killed) has staggered to a bloody stalemate.
Whilst a American force that once reached 140,000 soldiers America could not wipe out the Taliban, a mere 13,000 troops bolstering the Afghan army today, seems capable keeping the Taliban more or less in check. Whilst the Taliban appear to control the arid, countryside But 10,000 Afghan police and soldiers, 3,400 civilians and an unknown number of insurgents died in 2017 alone.
The US is now endeavouring to come to a peace deal with the Taliban, and its efforts are all the more urgent in the wake of President Trumps decision to extricate American troops from this expensive and dangerous entanglement. The Taliban appears happy to deal – and may be willing to accede to the US’ conditions to rid themselves of the Americans knowing that if they renege on their word, the GIs are unlikely to return.
Before America toppled the Taliban regime, Afghanistan was a violent theocratic despotism. Women were not allowed out of their homes unless covered head to toe and accompanied by a male relative. Any departure from the Taliban’s barbaric version of Islam, such as dancing or shaving or educating girls, could earn floggings, imprisonment or even death. Ancient statues were dynamited as pagan idols. Keeping such zealots at bay, for as long as they try to impose their beliefs by force, is an incalculable benefit to the two-thirds of Afghans (about 24 million people) who live in government-controlled areas.
A US withdrawal could jeopardize all this If the Taliban were to overthrow the Afghan government after an American withdrawal, it would be a humiliation on a par with Vietnam when Nixon’s administration hung its South Vietnamese allies out to dry (read Max Hastings recently published Vietnam – an American Tragedy for a chilling account of the US’ cynical, cold-blooded duplicity).
Even if the Afghan government staggered on, a US withdrawal without a solid peace agreement would cause chaos. In a 21st century replay of The Great Game, neighbours India, Iran, and Pakistan, and regional powers China and Russia would be tempted take advantage of the vacuum for their own strategic and economic ends, but to would all struggle to fill it. There could be a surge in fighting, as warlords once again reassert their influence and as ISIS and al Qaeda take advantage of the situation. The whole region could be further destabilized, and America and its allies could be sucked back in – on other’s terms.
And Afghanistan, at war with itself for 40 years, would be condemned to continuing conflict and carnage.
Click on the picture below to read the New York Times’ commentary on the negotiations. And below that is a recent piece by David Kilcullen, Australian author, strategist and counterinsurgency expert. He argues that talks between the US and the Taliban are not new. He asks: “What’s different now? A cynic might say that one reason the war has dragged on so long is that most sides have been achieving their objectives by letting it continue”. In essence, he argues, three new factors are driving the latest set of developments. Donald Trump and the shifting, unpredictable nature of US foreign policy; the growth of Chinese influence and engagement in Afghanistan’s political and economic development; and the rise of Islamic State-Khorasan, the Afghan branch of Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State terrorist group, and now the Taliban’s is an arch-enemy. Kilcullen is, as ever, well worth reading.
In In That Howling Infinite, read also: The Devil Drives, and One Two Three what are we fighting for?
Ghost of a chance in talks with Taliban
David Kilcullen, The Australian, 16th February 2019
The recent announcement that US and Taliban negotiators had agreed a framework for peace talks was greeted as a breakthrough in the 18-year war. But the twin issues around which those talks will be framed — a withdrawal pledge by Washington in return for a Taliban promise to never again let Afghanistan become a threat to any other country — are far from new.
These have been consistent Taliban demands since December 2009, when (as part of the headquarters team in Kabul) I met insurgent leaders who asked for the same deal in almost the same words. Likewise, I have heard these demands from many Taliban-aligned elders in Afghanistan over the years, and Taliban representatives proposed the identical quid pro quo during talks with the Obama administration in 2011-14.
What’s different now? A cynic might say that one reason the war has dragged on so long is that most sides have been achieving their objectives by letting it continue.
Washington’s original war aims — destroy al-Qa’ida’s Afghan base in retaliation for 9/11 and overthrow the Taliban as punishment for protecting Osama bin Laden’s outfit — had already been achieved by mid-December 2001, less than eight weeks after the war began. All the effort since then has been about rebuilding Afghanistan, and that effort is founded on two assumptions: that leaving without first standing up a stable pro-Western government would trigger a Taliban return, and that a Taliban return would mean terrorist attacks emanating from Afghanistan.
Since rebuilding Afghanistan was always recognized as a multi-decade project (akin to the US presence in South Korea, Japan and Germany), Washington was effectively telegraphing an intent to never leave — US forces are still present, after all, in all three of those countries more than 75 years after occupying them.
For coalition partners, and allies including Australia, the aim has been to demonstrate commitment, strengthen ties to Washington and thereby increase access to the political, economic and security benefits these ties offer. This goal, too, was achieved as soon as coalition forces entered Afghanistan: our hypothetical cynic might observe that we gain “alliance points” simply by being there and doing a decent job.
No coalition partner would be fighting in Afghanistan without Washington, and none can win or lose the war on its own. Thus, for the allies, whether the war is won or lost is, strictly speaking, irrelevant: having succeeded in being seen as a valuable ally, the only thing that could now undo that success would be to leave before the US does. Winning the war is, of course, a real objective for coalition capitals as it is for Washington — but it’s a secondary one.
Thus, for the coalition, given the open-ended nature of the Afghan commitment, the focus has been on calibrating troop levels, expenditure and other inputs to make the effort sustainable for the long haul. There are about 14,000 American troops in country (less than half the number stationed in Korea for the past several decades) and US spending on Afghan security forces is tracking at about $US3.7 billion ($5.2bn) a year — a tiny fraction of the overall US budget).
On Australia’s part, after peaking during 2010-11 with reconstruction and stabilization forces in Oruzgan province and a special operations task group that achieved widespread respect for its professionalism, our commitment now stands at about 300 personnel.
Most Australians are in headquarters roles in Kabul, at Camp Qargha (the officer academy near Kabul), as advisers to the Afghan Air Force, and at the training, advisory and assistance command for Afghanistan’s southern region in Kandahar. There is no doubt the Australians are performing a valuable role and enhancing our reputation with Afghans and allies — but again, we would achieve this effect whether the war is won or simply drags on; the only thing we could do to undermine ourselves at this point would be to withdraw ahead of the allies.
Coalition casualties are also relatively low — the coalition lost 18 personnel last year, dramatically down from 2010, the worst year of the war, when 711 US and allied troops were killed. Australia has suffered 41 fatalities, with more than half killed in 2010 and 2011 at the peak of our commitment. Our last fatality occurred in July 2014, while our last combat casualty was in June 2013.
While any loss of life is a horrendous tragedy, in the harsh logic of defense planners the US casualty rate is sustainable. In short, at the current level of financial and human cost, there is no strictly military (as distinct from political or humanitarian) reason why the US could not simply continue the war indefinitely. Of course, for the Afghan military and police — which have lost 45,000 killed since September 2014, compared with the coalition’s 72 — the war is far from sustainable, and its impact on civilians is both horrific and increasing. So while the coalition can essentially keep this up forever, the Afghan military and ordinary Afghans can’t.
For the Afghan government, another key stakeholder, our imaginary cynic might say that the main goal is to maintain the benefits of international presence including military aid, funding, donor engagement and reconstruction effort. Again, although winning is a real objective for Kabul, until its capture of Kunduz in October 2015 the Taliban showed no ability to seize provincial cities or do deep damage to the capital, so losing to the Taliban seemed an impossibility. And under those circumstances, winning the war was desirable but continuing it was mandatory, since it was the war that guaranteed international engagement.
This is no longer the case: given rising civilian casualties, the high loss rate of Afghan forces, the deadly string of Taliban bombings now afflicting Afghan cities and the fact that the Taliban are now capturing and briefly holding provincial capitals every few months, the Kabul government wants to reduce the war to a far lower level of intensity.
Containing the Taliban as a remote, rural threat, grave enough to stop the international community abandoning Afghanistan yet able to be gradually overcome as a long-term national project (with international money and help) would be ideal.
On the Taliban side, winning has always been the ultimate goal but, like other stakeholders, the insurgents have been willing to let the war drag on without a resolution. In the first few years after 9/11 the Taliban was in disarray — its senior leadership group, the Quitta Shura, wasn’t even founded until October 2003, two years after the US-led invasion.
Then after a resurgence in 2005-06, it suffered severe setbacks in the south and east of the country and its fighters were forced to bide their time as they rebuilt, recruited and rearmed in Pakistan, and stealthily recaptured territory in remote parts of Afghanistan. Then Barack Obama, in announcing his surge in December 2009, also (very helpfully for the Taliban) announced its end date, later extended by NATO but still resulting in a rigid timetable for withdrawal.
As a result, Taliban leaders wisely decided their best course was to withhold most of their combat troops in Pakistan, do enough to stay in the public eye in Afghanistan, and wait for withdrawal, which duly took place right on schedule. After the International Security Assistance Force departed at the end of 2014, the Taliban immediately began ramping up its activity, and within a year it was gaining ground, taking the fight to Afghan cities, and projecting force into Afghanistan from its haven in Pakistan.
For Pakistan, which has historically seen India as its principal threat and feared encirclement by an India-Afghanistan alliance, keeping Afghanistan unstable is an important means of preventing that encirclement and achieving strategic depth. Pakistani decision-makers have long been extraordinarily open about this.
From their standpoint, the Afghan Taliban (as distinct from the Pakistani Taliban, which Islamabad sees as a real threat and has fought hard to contain) is an insurance policy, to be preserved in case of a need to crank up the pressure on Kabul and New Delhi. A Taliban victory would be problematic for Pakistan, as would an outright Taliban defeat, so keeping the war on a low boil and letting parts of Pakistan become a haven for the Taliban has made sense through much of the war since 2001.
This might be why, during the tentative talks in 2009-10 that I mentioned earlier, Pakistani intelligence officers arrested a key Taliban figure — Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, brother-in-law to Taliban founder Mullah Omar, a former deputy defense minister and a highly respected combat leader who had expressed willingness to talk with the coalition.
With Baradar out of the picture, the talks collapsed, but Pakistan now had a controlling hand in the resumption of talks, at a time and in a manner of its choosing. That’s why Baradar’s release by Pakistan last October — and his participation in the most recent talks in Doha last month, by far the most productive to date — was such a big deal. For the first time in years, the Taliban now has a negotiator at the table with the power to deliver on agreements, and the fact that Pakistan released Baradar to participate suggests that Islamabad, too, is serious about finding a path to peace in Afghanistan.
This brings us back to our original question: what’s different now? In essence, three new factors are driving the latest set of developments.
The first is Donald Trump.
I mentioned that two key assumptions have underpinned the enduring international presence, namely the fear of a Taliban takeover if we withdraw, leaving a weak Afghan government behind, and the expectation that such a takeover would result in terrorist attacks from Afghanistan. Trump doesn’t seem to care much about the first issue, and his answer to the second is that if an attack took place, he would order massive retaliation.
Given his generally mercurial approach to foreign policy and the fact that he has indeed ordered strikes in Syria and raids in Yemen and Africa, this threat is probably credible enough to give the Taliban pause — and, more importantly, reassure some in Kabul. The US President — who campaigned on getting out of Afghanistan as part of a broader policy of extricating America from its Middle Eastern wars of occupation — has been remarkably consistent in fulfilling his campaign promises. In his recent State of the Union address he repeatedly emphasized the need for a political solution in Afghanistan.
But while he seems entirely serious about settling (as he calls it) with the Taliban, his attitude is sharply at odds with that of the US foreign policy establishment, the Defense Department (where secretary James Mattis resigned in protest over the Afghan and Syrian withdrawals), the Democratic opposition, and even his own Republican Party in congress, which passed a bipartisan resolution calling on him to maintain forces in Afghanistan and Syria.
So, with a US presidential election next year and its guerrillas gaining ground, Taliban negotiators know that this is the best offer they are likely to get, while by January 2021 there could be a very different occupant in the White House and Washington’s Afghanistan “forever war” project could be back on.
A second factor is also preying on Taliban minds — the rise of Islamic State-Khorasan, the Afghan branch of Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State terrorist group. Having lost 98 per cent of its territory in Iraq and Syria, the group is looking for greener pastures in Africa, The Philippines, and particularly Afghanistan. IS-K has been very active since its first appearance in September 2015, launching a series of horrendously violent bombings and massacres, and the Taliban is an arch-enemy of the group.
Still, the group’s reach and influence are growing, leaving the Taliban with the choice to make peace this year under relatively favourable circumstances or face a war on two fronts with an emboldened IS-K in the future. Again, this puts pressure on Taliban negotiators to find a solution.
The final new factor is that Pakistan seems to have finally decided its interests are best served by peace in Afghanistan — hence the release of Baradar and the willingness to support talks.
The reason for this change might partly be the new, tougher line on Pakistan adopted by the Trump administration, or a policy shift by the civilian administration in Islamabad. But for my money, the most plausible explanation has to do with Pakistan’s major ally, China.
Chinese business and political influence in Afghanistan have been growing significantly in recent years through investments in mining and infrastructure, aid money, diplomatic activity and a limited military presence (with troops often disguised as security contractors working for Chinese companies in country).
Afghanistan is also an increasingly important market for Chinese goods. This matters to Pakistan because, if the key factor driving Islamabad’s behaviour has been fear of encirclement by India, then one solution is for a major Pakistani ally, China, to play an important role in Afghanistan and thereby counterbalance Indian influence.
This would reduce the requirement for Pakistan to tolerate the Taliban, since there would no longer be a strategic rationale to destabilise Afghanistan. While many in Washington see Chinese influence in Afghanistan as a threat, in fact a greater Chinese role in the region is probably inevitable in the long term and is likely to be quite constructive.
All this means that — after 18 years in which everybody wanted to end the war, but everybody also wanted some other objective even more and was willing to continue the war rather than risk that other goal — things might finally be changing for Afghanistan. While I am not as cynical about this as my hypothetical observer, I am very sceptical about the prospects for peace anytime soon. This is not the first time that talks have been mooted, it’s not the first time the stars have seemed to align for peace, and it’s clear that the Taliban is both far from defeated and incapable of winning outright.
There is also the not-so-minor matter of the sovereign independent government of Afghanistan, which strongly resents being cut out of negotiations, has defense and interior ministries led by highly competent hard-line adversaries of the Taliban, and is highly unlikely to acquiesce in its own abandonment.
So, time will tell, but at this point, colour me sceptical but not entirely cynical about prospects for peace in Afghanistan.
That was the year that was – the road to nowhere
December 31, 2018 December 31, 2018 Paul Hemphill Leave a comment
Well we know where we’re going
But we don’t know where we’ve been
And we know what we’re knowing
But we can’t say what we’ve seen
And we’re not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out
The Talking Heads
To borrow from Boz, these were the worst of times, these were the strangest of times. So disillusioned were we with our politics and our politicians, so dispirited by the sad state of the plant, so fissured and fractured as a society, with our intractable culture wars, we retreated into own private Idahos, pulled up the drawbridge and settled in with our iPads and iPhones and our Foxtel with the vino collapso and watched all the fun of the fair.
The mellifluous but perennially entertaining Donald Trump had a bad year, and a resolute Theresa May likewise. Confounding critics, she endeavours to persevere as she steers her foundering shipm of State towards Brexit and China’s Uighur Muslims. Barbaric Da’ish had a bad year (which was rather a good thing) , as did the unfortunate Rohinga of Myanmar, and the long-suffering people of Gaza.. Resilient Bashar Assad had a good year, with a little help from his Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah friends, but the wars of the Ottoman succession grind on. Vladimir Putin and the fat conductor Kim Jong Un had an excellent year, courtesy of POTUS. Angela Merkel lost her sparkle but royal Markle sparkled, and the luminous Taylor Swift, all legs and lipstick, emerged from her apolitical closet to swing the vote against the Donald in the US midterms. Her trim gluteus maximus starredin a court case that typified a year that saw women stand up strongly against years of aberrant male behaviour.
The Australian parliament devolved into a circus of tantrums and turncoats as the Liberal and National coalition devoured its own in a year book-ended by smutty sexual scandals, whilst canny Labor kept its powder dry for what bodes to be an whopping electoral victory in 2019. We wished that our rulers and representatives would stop behaving like children and start running the country and governing it for all of us.and then the children walked out of school en mass and told us that when they grew up they’d do a better job. The circus clowns huffed and puffed and denigrated the young ones – which only served to embarrass them more for their paucity of vision and partisan division.
And so, to the year in review:
During what was to many observers a dispiriting year of division and destruction, In That Howling Infinite maintained its watch with an eclectic mix of commentary, commemoration, culture and comedy. It was a big year – some forty posts in all. So many indeed that decided to reposted my favourite top five – those that I most enjoyed writing – on In That Howling Infinite’s Facebook page. See these at the conclusion of this review.
In a December post, Free Speech, One Each, we expressed disappointment with the ignorance, naivety, and self-absorption of electorates, left and right: their lack of historical knowledge and of curiosity, an unhealthy and self-defeating habit of accepting facts, narratives and theories based upon their preconceptions and prejudices. Nowadays, it often seems as if the reasonable middle has been excised from political discourse, drained out by the shrill voices of the extremes with their identity politics, virtue signalling, and vested interests. Social media has exacerbated the situation as folk lock themselves into their own echo chambers, listening only to those with whom they agree, ignoring or even avoiding contrary opinions and perspectives. It is a self-defeating, delusional, zero-sum form of groupthink that erodes trust and goodwill and prevents the development of consensus and cooperation. Meanwhile, opportunistic politicians and commentators build their constituencies by appealing to the particularistic, even atavistic wants and fears of their followers. Too often this reduces things down to atavistic lowest common denominators. They literally seize the low moral ground. Peoples problems and fears are real enough, and do need to be solved or allayed, but too often they are gulled, manipulated and recruited by modern-day snake-oil salesmen and show-tent shysters.
It was with this in mind that we caste a weary and cynical eye over Australian politics and society, particularly the ongoing history and culture wars, beginning in January with the self-explanatory We’ve Got The Australia Day Blues , and continuing with Conservatism in Crisis, Milo Downunder, an alt-right love story, and the ongoing angst about the Ramsay Centre and its proposed university course on western civilization. Never in recent memory have so many words been printed about so little – at least not until the right’s last holy war. And so, there is The long, dark teatime of The Australian’s soul and its sequel The Oz’s lonely crusade. By year’s end, both sides appear to have run out of puff and the course will most likely end up in small regional campuses rather than the prestigious halls of Sydney and Melbourne.
Southern Discomfort.
The year’s leitmotif was the ongoing fiftieth anniversary of 1968, a tumultuous year for the world, and a formative one for myself personally. Stories of the events of that year are interspersed my own recollections – what I was doing at at the time, and what was going through my youthful head. In Encounters with Enoch, I revisit English politician Enoch Powell’s controversial ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. Then it’s Springtime in Paris as I recall les Évènements de Mai. And thence to Prague and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia with Tanks for the memory – how Brezhnev changed my life. Finally, there was the year in review with Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold – 1968 revisited.
2018 was also the centenary of the armistice that ended The Great War. November 1918 – the counterfeit peace discussed how for many countries and peoples in Europe and beyond, the conflict and the bloodshed continued. We also shared a poignant, fitting tribute by Gerry Condon to all the “doomed youth” of all wars with Dulce et ducorem est – the death of war poet Wilfred Owen
There were other anniversaries. The Wild Wood and the Wide World revisited Kenneth Grahame’s riverbank pastorale The Wind in the Willows 110 years after it’s publication. Ghosts of the Gulag, which followed on from an earlier discussion of film The Death of Stalin released earlier in the year, looked at the contribution of Alexander Solzhenitsyn on the fiftieth anniversary of The Gulag Archipelago. The Russian theme continued with Whoar! And Peace – a light look at the BBC’s recent racey adaptation of Tolstoy’s celebrated house-brick.
The fiftieth anniversary of the death of John Steinbeck inspired The last rains came gently – Steinbeck’s dustbowl Blues. This featured the complete first chapter of The Grapes of Wrath, describing the unfolding of an environmental disaster. Two other posts also covered ecological bad news stories: The return of the forest wars in Australia, and Losing Earth – the decade we almost stopped climate change.
As always, the politics and people of the Middle East feature prominently in In That Howling Infinite. January kicked off with Ahed Tamimi – A Family Affair, a discussion about the young Palestinian activist and the first family of the resistance. Out of season, we visited the birthplace of the Christ child with O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie and tell the story of a border town that has existed since the beginning of recorded history. We considered whether an Israeli-Palestinian confederation was possible, and republished Israel author David Grossman’s A Fortess But Not Yet a Home, and a review of author Amos Oz’ Dear Zealots – letters from a divided land. Sadly, Oz passed on 28th December, his death and that of the indomitable Uri Avnery (see last September’s Seeing through the eyes of “the other’) in August saw the passing of two of the most forthright intellectual proponents of the receding ‘two state solution’. We also reviewed the intimations, imperfections and implications of Donald Trump’s “ultimate deal”, an ostensible end to the intractable Arab-Israeli conflict but which is effectively Throwing Abbas under the bus. The wider Arab and Islamic world features in Islam’s house of many mansions, and, in the wake of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the Yemen war, we consider the possibility of Sanctioning Saudi -1973 revisited.
Our history posts were as eclectic as ever. We continued our series of Small Stories with a profile of The Monarch of the Sea, Prince Roy of Sealand, the smallest country in the world, and The Odyssey of Assid Corban from a tiny village in Lebanon to a wine dynasty in Auckland, New Zealand. A video of University College Dublin’s celebrated Choral Scholars inspired a look at an old Jacobite song Mo Ghile Mear, whilst the anniversary of the Irish rebellion of 1798 recalled another song and a host of personal memories: The Boys of Wexford – memory and memoir. We reviewed two historical novels. In Cuddling up to Caligula, we discovered a soft side to the controversial Roman Emperor; whilst melancholy Martin Sparrow’s Blues shone fresh light on the travails of Australia’s early white settlers. And a review of Ulrich Raulff’s Farewell to the Horse, a history of man’s long relationship with our four-legged friend, galloped away from me as we sang the song of the horse with The Twilight of the Equine Gods – part history, part memoir, part prose-poem.
And that was the year that was.
And the top five?
Number five was that slap that resounded around the world – the story of young Ahed Tamimi and her family. Four, the tale of melancholy Martin Sparrow. Three, the Jacobite love song Mo Ghile Mear – Irish myth and melody. Two, the reverie of 1968. And, number one, my very, very favourite and indeed, a labour of love, The Twilight of the Equine Gods
Happy New Year. See you on the other side.
Our reviews of previous years: 2017; 2016; 2015
The last rains came gently – Steinbeck’s dustbowl ballad
December 26, 2018 May 24, 2019 Paul Hemphill 2 Comments
The highway is alive tonight
Where it’s headed everybody knows
I’m sitting down here in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad
In the last of our posts commemorating 1968, we pay tribute to author and Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck who died fifty years ago this month.
Back in the day, The Grapes of Wrath was included in our GCE A level curriculum, nearly thirty years after its publication and its iconic status. It was, to our formative minds, a pleasantly surprising choice. In the mid ‘sixties, before Vietnam became the quagmire that sapped America’s blood and treasure and trashed its post-war reputation as a force for good in the world, the land of the free and home of the brave was also was a beacon of bright consumerism, great movies, and pop music. The idea of an American novel in English Lit, so long the preserve of Britain’s literary canon, wonderful though it was, has a certain excitement to it. It gave to us a new literary language, a different sensibility, a fresh perspective.
But Steinbeck’s America was new to us, an America far removed from of the hope and glory that we’d been accustomed to in the years following what was seen as the US’ triumph in World War Two (the costly and critical contribution of the Soviet Union, now our ostensible foe, was singularly downplayed during these years). The Grapes of Wrath was a revelation, an eye-opener, a primer, indeed, for a youthful awareness and politicisation that would be further nurtured by the escalating war in Indochina and the rise and rise of the civil rights movement in the US.
The inevitable examination question in the summer 1967 was exactly that: why were studying an American novel? Any discerning reader taking in the opening pages of chapter one can answer this in a trice. The simple beauty, the lyrical and descriptive power, the gradual but relentlessly unfolding narrative is such that I can recite parts of it from memory over half a century later.
To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country.
I have reproduced chapter one in full below. In a few short pages, it describes how the the last rains fell on Oklahoma’s cornfields and how the searing summer sun rendered the land to dust, creating the dust bowl so chillingly portrayed by filmmaker Ken Burns in his singular documentary of that name, and propelling tens of thousands of destitute ‘Okies’ “on the long, hard road of flight” (as Bob Dylan would describe it in Chimes of Freedom) to California. As a literary record of an unfolding environmental disaster, it is without equal. It is poetical, powerful, and profoundly unsettling, and there’s worse to follow.
There are few books that strike such a chord with me – books that I reread in whole or in part once in a while, often aloud, just for the verbal and lyrical thrill. Moby-Dick is such a one, Herman Melville’s classic treatise on seafaring, whales and obsession – from which this blog takes its name – particularly chapter forty one which brilliantly describes the demented and doomed sea captain’s descent into madness.
Whilst few writers can lay claim to have written the “great American novel”, Steinbeck and Melville cracked the code. My own personal contender would also be CE Morgan’s Sport of Kings, a long and deep story about a old Kentucky horse-breeding family – the “kings” of the title. Like The Grapes of Wrath, it is a harrowing journey through America’s dark soul. Morgan’s debt to Steinbeck is transparent in her descriptive power.
Far across the road, cattle moaned with longing for a night coming in fits and starts. The air was restless and the crickets thrummed. The hot, humid breath of August was lifting now from the ground, where it had boiled all day, rising to meet the cooler streams of air that hovered over it. Airs kissed and stratified, whitening and thinning as the sun slipped its moorings and sank to the bank of the earth.
Following the excerpt from The Grapes of Wrath, I republish an informative essay from The Independent with regard to a new biography of Steinbeck on the anniversary of his death. He was a gifted, complex and at times, unpleasant man. His stories of the lives of migrants and workers during US’ Great Depression, most notably in The Grapes of Wrath, and his short stories Cannery Row and Of Mice and Men, resonate today, prefiguring as they do the mass migration of populations due to climate changes, infrastructure collapse, the heartless hypocrisy of trickle-down economics, the reluctance and even refusal of the powers-that-be to help those cast by the wayside or onto the scarp-heap, and the demonisation of those are forced to take to the roads and oceans of the world in search of a better, safer life for themselves and their children.
In a 1952 radio interview, Steinbeck said:
“People were starving and cold and they came in their thousands to California. They met a people who were terrified of Depression and were horrified at the idea that great numbers of indigent people were being poured on them to be taken care of when there wasn’t much money about. They became angry at these newcomers. Gradually, through government and through the work of private citizens, agencies were set up to take care of these situations. Only then did the anger begin to decrease and when the anger decreased, these two sides got to know each other and they found they didn’t dislike each other at all.”
I recall Tom Joad’s parting words in the 1940 film adaptation when he leaves his family to fight for social and economic justice:
“You don’t aim to kill nobody, Tom?”
“No. I been thinkin’, long as I’m a outlaw anyways, maybe I could — Hell, I ain’t thought it out clear, Ma. Don’ worry me now. Don’ worry me.”
They sat silent in the coal-black cave of vines. Ma said, “How’m I gonna know ’bout you? They might kill ya an’ I wouldn’ know. They might hurt ya. How’m I gonna know?”
Tom laughed uneasily, “Well, maybe like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but on’y a piece of a big one – an’ then -”
“Then what, Tom?”
“Then it don’ matter. Then I’ll be all aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be ever’where – wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’ — I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build – why, I’ll be there. See? God, I’m talkin’ like Casy. Comes of thinkin’ about him so much. Seems like I can see him sometimes.”
And now, let Steinbeck set the scene for why Tom Joad and his family abandon their farm, pile their possessions on on old truck and head into the west …
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter One
In the water-cut gullies the earth dusted down in dry little streams. Gophers and ant lions started small avalanches. And as the sharp sun struck day after day, the leaves of the young corn became less stiff and erect; they bent in a curve at first, and then, as the central ribs of strength grew weak, each leaf tilted downward. Then it was June, and the sun shone more fiercely. The brown lines on the corn leaves widened and moved in on the central ribs. The weeds frayed and edged back toward their roots. The air was thin and the sky more pale; and every day the earth paled.
In the roads where the teams moved, where the wheels milled the ground and the hooves of the horses beat the ground, the dirt crust broke and the dust formed. Every moving thing lifted the dust into the air: a walking man lifted a thin layer as high as his waist, and a wagon lifted the dust as high as the fence tops, and an automobile boiled a cloud behind it. The dust was long in settling back again.
When June was half gone, the big clouds moved up out of Texas and the Gulf, high heavy clouds, rainheads. The men in the fields looked up at the clouds and sniffed at them and held wet fingers up to sense the wind. And the horses were nervous while the clouds were up. The rainheads dropped a little spattering and hurried on to some other country. Behind them the sky was pale again and the sun flared. In the dust there were drop craters where the rain had fallen, and there were clean splashes on the corn, and that was all.
A gentle wind followed the rain clouds, driving them on northward, a wind that softly clashed the drying corn. A day went by and the wind increased, steady, unbroken by gusts. The dust from the roads fluffed up and spread out and fell on the weeds beside the fields, and fell into the fields a little way. Now the wind grew strong and hard and it worked at the rain crust in the corn fields. Little by little the sky was darkened by the mixing dust, and the wind felt over the earth, loosened the dust, and carried it away. The wind grew stronger. The rain crust broke and the dust lifted up out of the fields and drove gray plumes into the air like sluggish smoke. The corn threshed the wind and made a dry, rushing sound. The finest dust did not settle back to earth now, but disappeared into the darkening sky.
The wind grew stronger, whisked under stones, carried up straws and old leaves and even little clods, marking its course as it sailed across the fields. The air and the sky darkened and through them the sun shone redly, and there was a raw sting in the air. During a night the wind raced faster over the land, dug cunningly among the rootlets of the corn, and the corn fought the wind with its weakened leaves until the roots were freed by the prying wind and then each stalk settled wearily sideways toward the earth and pointed the direction of the wind.
The dawn came, but no day. In the gray sky a red sun appeared, a dim red circle that gave a little light, like dusk; and as that day advanced, the dusk slipped back toward darkness, and the wind cried and whimpered over the fallen corn.
Men and women huddled in their houses, and they tied handkerchiefs over their noses when they went out, and wore goggles to protect their eyes.
When the night came again it was black night, for the stars could not pierce the dust to get down, and the window lights could not even spread beyond their own yards now the dust was evenly mixed with the air, an emulsion of dust and air. Houses were shut tight, and cloth wedged around doors and windows, but the dust came in so thinly that it could not be seen in the air, and it settled like pollen on the chairs and tables, on the dishes. The people brushed it from their shoulders. Little lines of dust lay at the door sills.
In the middle of that night the wind passed on and left the land quiet. The dust-filled air muffled sound more completely than fog does. The people, lying in their beds heard the wind stop. They awakened when the rushing wind was gone. They lay quietly and listened deep into the stillness. Then the roosters crowed, and their voices were muffled, and the people stirred restlessly in their beds and wanted the morning they knew it would take a long time for the dust to settle out of the air. In the morning the dust hung like fog, and the sun was as red as ripe new blood. All day the dust sifted down from the sky, and the next day it sifted down. An even blanket covered the earth it settled on the corn, piled up on the tops of the fence posts, piled up on the wires; it settled on roofs, blanketed the weeds and trees.
The people came out of their houses and smelled the hot stinging air and covered their noses from it. And the children came out of the houses, but they did not run or shout as they would have done after a rain. Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men—to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men’s faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained. The children stood near by, drawing figures in the dust with bare toes, and the children sent exploring senses out to see whether men and women would break the children peeked at the faces of the men and women, and then drew careful lines in the dust with their toes. Horses came to the watering troughs and nuzzled the water to clear the surface dust.
After a while the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant. Then the women knew that they were safe and that there was no break. Then they asked, What’ll we do? And the men replied, I don’t know. But it was all right. The women knew it was all right, and the Watching children knew it was all right. Women and children knew deep in themselves That no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole. The women went into the houses to their work, and the children began to play, but cautiously at first. As the Day went forward the sun became less red. It flared down on the dust-blanketed land The men sat in the doorways of their houses; their hands were busy with sticks and Little rocks. The men sat still—thinking—figuring.
John Steinbeck: A flawed genius
Martin Chilton, The Independent 20th December 2018
It’s the 50th anniversary of the death of Steinbeck, who will be the subject of a new biography in 2019. The Nobel Prize-winning author of The Grapes of Wrath was a complicated and controversial man, explains Martin Chilton in The Independent 20th December 2018
“I have left a lot of tracks in my life,” said John Steinbeck, a giant of 20th-century literature, who died on 20 December 1968 at the age of 66. Novels such as Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden made him world famous, yet some of the truth about his past has taken half a century to come to light. Steinbeck was a complicated and contradictory man – and weirder than you might have thought.
Mad at the World is the title of a new biography to be published in 2019, and there is little doubt that Steinbeck was an angry man. He was outraged by injustice, poverty and prejudice, as his books make clear. He was also capable of more personal animosities, whether that was towards Adolf Hitler, his second wife or even book reviewers (“what lice they are”).
The quirkiness of his character was evident at a young age. Steinbeck was already dreaming about becoming a professional writer when he enrolled as an English major at Stanford University at the age of 17. He tried to sign up for a practical course in how to dissect corpses. “I want to learn about human beings,” he told a clearly unimpressed dean of the medical school. His application was rejected. Medicine’s loss was literature’s gain, and he went on to win a Pulitzer Prize in the novel category (1940), the Nobel Prize in Literature (1962) and the United States Medal of Freedom (1964).
Although he never got the chance to cut up bodies, he was to spend a lot of time in hospital, because illness and freakish accidents were a recurrent theme in his life. The pattern started at high school in Salinas, the Californian town where he was born on 27 February 1902. At age 16, Steinbeck contracted pleural pneumonia and came close to death. A doctor saved him by cutting through his rib cage to drain the fluid. Around a year later, he was seriously ill again and had to have his appendix removed.
Things were little better in adulthood. He had a serious kidney infection that required hospital treatment. He had an operation on a detached retina, an operation to remove varicose veins and another to repair a shattered knee cap after a balcony rail gave way on the second floor of his Manhattan home. In 1959 he suffered a stroke, in 1960 he had a suspected heart attack. At the end of his life, he was poleaxed by a back injury that required complicated surgery.
As fate would have it, an injury to a stranger was one of the decisive factors in pushing Steinbeck towards full-time writing. After leaving Stanford without graduating, he had spells working on farms and as a painter’s apprentice before moving to New York in the mid-1920s. In New York, he worked on a building site, ferrying wheelbarrows loaded with 100 pounds of cement, during the construction of Madison Square Garden. Six weeks into the job, a co-worker fell to a bloody death near where Steinbeck stood. The horrific sight made Steinbeck throw up. He quit his job that night.
His uncle helped him land a job as a reporter for the New York American, a William Randolph Hearst newspaper, but he quickly became disillusioned by journalism and returned to California. He worked as a tour guide and it was in that job he met his first wife Carol Henning. His wedding came shortly after the publication of his first novel, 1929’s Cup of Gold. It was the start of a career that would produce 16 novels and novellas, two sets of short stories, 11 non-fiction books, two plays, two screenplays and a large volume of letters.
Steinbeck sometimes played up to the image of a struggling writer whose upbringing was hard financially. Throughout the 1920s, however, Steinbeck was getting an allowance from his father, the treasurer of Monterey County, of $50 ($700 or £550 in today’s terms) a month. “Most people imagine that Steinbeck came from an impoverished background and was almost one of those workers in The Grapes of Wrath, but his family home in Salinas was a beautiful Victorian house with maids and servants,” said his biographer Jay Parini in 1994. “His was a self-conscious identification with working people, but he always travelled first-class and stayed in suites at the Dorchester in London and the Georges Cinq in Paris,” Parini added.
After a series of well-received novels, including 1935’s Tortilla Flat, Steinbeck won critical acclaim in 1937 for his novella Of Mice and Men, the moving portrait-in-miniature of 1930s California, seen through the friendship of oddball ranch workers George and Lennie. Two years later came The Grapes of Wrath, one of the defining novels of the 20th century, a work of rich descriptive power, in which Steinbeck showed his ability to summon poetry out of poverty in the lives of the “Okie” Joad family.
This deeply affecting story about the oppression of migrant workers, who were fleeing from the Dust Bowl states to California, struck a chord with an America reeling from the Great Depression. By February 1940, the novel was in its 11th printing, having sold nearly half a million copies. More than 15 million copies were bought in the next eight decades and around 50,000 copies are still bought in America every year.
The impact of Steinbeck’s work on the American people was momentous. When I met the singer and actor Harry Belafonte, he told me Steinbeck “was one of the people who turned my life around as a young man”, inspiring “a lifelong love of literature”. Arthur Miller wrote of Steinbeck, “I can’t think of another American writer, with the possible exception of Mark Twain, who so deeply penetrated the political life of the country.”
The 1940 film adaptation of the novel, starring Henry Fonda, is considered a Hollywood classic. Only a bitter legal dispute over the writer’s estate (between Steinbeck’s stepdaughter Waverly Scott Kaffaga and his daughter-in-law Gail Steinbeck) prevented Steven Spielberg from going ahead with his proposed remake of the movie in 2017.
Steinbeck rarely gave interviews, but in 1952 he spoke to the radio network Voice of America about how he had been “filled with anger” at the ill-treatment of migrant workers. “People were starving and cold and they came in their thousands to California,” Steinbeck said. “They met a people who were terrified of Depression and were horrified at the idea that great numbers of indigent people were being poured on them to be taken care of when there wasn’t much money about. They became angry at these newcomers. Gradually, through government and through the work of private citizens, agencies were set up to take care of these situations. Only then did the anger begin to decrease and when the anger decreased, these two sides got to know each other and they found they didn’t dislike each other at all.”
Many years later, it emerged that the FBI file had begun to keep files on the writer at this time, justifying it with claims that “many of Steinbeck’s writings portrayed an extremely sordid and poverty-stricken side of American life”. Thankfully, more enlightened minds than FBI director J Edgar Hoover were in positions of influence when Steinbeck won literature’s most illustrious award. It is notable that the Nobel committee praised his “keen social perception”.
The Grapes of Wrath was making Steinbeck world famous just as the 41-year-old began to fall for a 22-year-old nightclub singer called Gwyn Conger, whom he married in 1943. Three decades later, as a divorcee in her late fifties, Conger gave a series of interviews in Palm Springs to a show business writer called Douglas Brown. These interviews remained unpublished for more than four decades, until they were discovered in a loft in Wales in 2017.
Her recollections have been turned into a book by Bruce Lawson called My Life with John Steinbeck (Lawson Publishing, £19.99), published in September 2018. Conger’s memoir paints a picture of how awful it was being married to a writer she acknowledged as “a tremendously complex man”. Steinbeck was cruel to his wife, particularly during two difficult pregnancies, and the book portrays a man of boorish behaviour and bizarre habits. The only time she ever saw him cry was when his pet rat, called Burgess, died. “John was a sadistic man, of many emotions, but being sadistic was one of his many qualities,” Conger wrote. “And he would let the rat loose to frighten visitors, especially women.”
After they had two children together – Thomas, born in 1944, and John Steinbeck IV, born in 1946 – the acrimony became unbearable and she divorced him in 1948. “The impulse of the American woman is to geld her husband and castrate her sons,” Steinbeck wrote to a friend shortly after his marriage ended. “American married life is the doormat to the whorehouse.” He would exact his revenge a few years later when he based Cathy, the wicked alcoholic character in East of Eden, on Conger. He would also fight her in court throughout the next decade to avoid paying child support.
Steinbeck, a heavy drinker, was not blind to his own failings and mood swings. “I know of no sadder people than those who believe their own publicity,” he said. Steinbeck had suffered from bouts of depression in the 1940s and even after meeting and marrying his third wife, Elaine Scott, he was frequently brought low by what he called his “what-the-hell blues”. Steinbeck said he “hit the bottom” in October 1953, a year after the publication of East of Eden, when he was treated at Lenox Hill Hospital by psychologist Gertrudis Brenner. “A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ,” he remarked.
In this period of mental health problems, he produced some of the strangest work of his career. In 1955, he published a short story called The Affair at 7 Rue de M, a horror-like tale about a child who is unable to get rid of a piece of bubble gum. Wherever he puts it, the gum keeps finding its way back into the boy’s mouth. In desperation, the father cements the gum to a dining table and it takes a week for the piece of gum to die. Steinbeck later burned dozens of stories from this period. He also abandoned a novel about a man who watches one too many westerns on television and then puts on a cowboy hat and heads out to be an urban vigilante.
Poet Ezra Pound once dismissed accounts of a writer’s life as a mere “laundry list” and Steinbeck shared this disdain for focusing on the personal life of an author. Perhaps he has a point. What can we ultimately conclude from the knowledge that Steinbeck preferred writing with pencils (using up to 60 in a day), that he liked jazz, enjoyed playing the harmonica, laughed at jokes by Bob Hope, preferred smoking small cigars and regularly snacked on tuna-covered crackers, washed down by red wine?
“The fact that I have housemaid’s knees or fear yellow gloves has little to do with the books I write,” he said. He derided the public’s need to “create a Steinbeck out of its own imagination” and insisted there were more important matters on which to focus. In 1938, for example, shocked by reports of the Nazi looting and burning of Jewish homes and synagogues in Germany, he was among a small band of writers, including Dorothy Parker, who sent a telegram to President Franklin D Roosevelt urging him to cut all ties with Hitler. Steinbeck became a war correspondent for The New York Herald during the subsequent conflict, reporting from England, North Africa and Italy.
Steinbeck was certainly a progressive in a backward era of race relations. He asked for his name to be taken off the screenplay for the wartime Alfred Hitchcock film The Lifeboat, because he was furious that the “dignified and purposeful” black character he had created had been “distorted”. He wrote to 20th Century Fox to complain about the addition of “a stock comedy negro”, blaming them for “strange and sly obliquities”. Not only did the Fox bosses deny his request, they actively stepped up a publicity campaign that highlighted Steinbeck as the screenwriter. The Oscar nomination he received simply added salt to the wound.
Despite these laudable actions, he was not above his own dirty tactics. In 1958, he was asked by Adlai Stevenson’s fixer, William McCormick Blair Jr, to write a novel that featured a corrupt version of presidential candidate Richard M Nixon. Steinbeck rejected the idea and instead suggested attacks on Nixon’s character, “kidney punch” zingers as he called them, such as starting rumours about Nixon and wife-beating. “All of these are dirty, but as I said, the man who tries Queensberry against gutter fighting is going to get the hell kicked out of him,” Steinbeck wrote to Blair.
John Updike said that for most Americans in the post-war era, Steinbeck’s reputation was as “a best-seller as well as a Nobel Prize-winning author of high intent”, but during the 1960s Steinbeck’s politics moved away from the liberalism that had earned him a reputation as America’s social conscience. He became friends with President Johnson (helping him to write his acceptance speech) and reported sympathetically on the Vietnam war from late 1966 to early 1967.
Observers in Vietnam noted Steinbeck’s fascination for American weaponry, especially the Douglas AC-47 Spooky gunship, nicknamed “Puff the Magic Dragon”. It could fire a hundred rounds of 50-calibre bullets every second. The writer loved going target practice shooting with the same type of M16 rifle the troops carried. He even manned a US army outpost during a night of sporadic fire.
His sons Thomas and John were on active duty in the US army at the time of his visit. John later became a fierce opponent of the war, a stance that put him at odds with Steinbeck, who wrote publicly about how Vietnam peace protesters gave him “a shiver of shame”. Steinbeck derided the hippie demonstrators for their “dirty clothes, dirty minds and their shuffling drag-ass protests”.
It is a characteristically odd twist that the 64-year-old who was able to survive a night taking on the Vietcong – and an attack on a helicopter in which he was a passenger – did himself irreparable harm with the innocuous action of lifting some beer. In Hong Kong, travelling back from Vietnam with his wife Elaine, he helped a Chinese delivery man. As he lifted the case of beer, he ruptured a spinal disc. Six months later, still in agonising pain, he had a five-hour operation on his back. The last few months before his death from a heart attack at his East 72nd Street home in New York were deeply miserable.
Biographers Jackson Benson (1984) and Jay Parini (1995) have previously battled with the character of Steinbeck and that challenge has now been taken up by William Souder, whose biography Mad at the World: John Steinbeck and the American Century will be published by WW Norton & Company in 2019.
There is no shortage of fascinating material for Pulitzer finalist Souder to re-examine. As well as Steinbeck’s writing (the prize-winning novels and less-well known masterpieces such as Cannery Row, The Pearl and Sweet Thursday), there is his sometimes madcap life, such as his drunken treasure-hunting escapades in the Bahamas. Even his friend, the noted psychological novelist Sherwood Anderson, admitted that he couldn’t “figure out Steinbeck”.
With Steinbeck, the unexpected was the norm. When his New York house was burgled in 1963, for example, the police report listed the stolen items as “a television set and six rifles”. The writer enjoyed the idiosyncrasy of humans. When he was asked for his “rules for life” by a friend in Vietnam, Steinbeck replied with his four mottos: “Never make excuses. Never let them see you bleed. Never get separated from your luggage. Always find out when the bar opens.”
Souder says he is excited by the challenge of writing about such a complex figure. “One of the things that attracted me to Steinbeck is that he was far from perfect – as a man, a husband, a writer, he had issues,” Souder told the website Steinbeck Now. “He had a permanent chip on his shoulder. He got side-tracked by ideas that were a waste of his time and talent. Some of his work is brilliant and some of it is awful. That’s what you want in a subject – a hero with flaws. Steinbeck was a literary giant who wouldn’t play along with the idea that he was important. I love that. He was mad at the world because it seemed somehow mad at him.”
Steinbeck wasn’t always mad at the world, though. Ten years before his death, this conflicted genius wrote a memorable letter to Thomas Steinbeck (the full version is available here), after his 14-year-old son revealed he had fallen desperately in love with a girl named Susan.
“There are several kinds of love,” he wrote, signing the letter as “Fa”. “One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you – of kindness and consideration and respect – not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had … don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens – the main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.”
These tender and optimistic words of advice remain, like Steinbeck’s best writing, an absolute joy, despite the flaws of the man.
Here are other posts in In That Howling Infinite with regard to 1968: Things fall apart – the centre cannot hold; Springtime in Paris – remembering May 1968; Phil Och’s Chicago Blues ; and Tanks for the memory – how Brezhnev changed my life
And the ‘sixties: Encounters with Enoch; Recalling the Mersey Poets; The Strange Death of Sam Cooke; Looking for Lehrer; Shock of the Old – the glory days of prog rock; Window on a Gone World; Back in the day; and, The Incorrigible Optimists Club
Free Speech, One Each
December 18, 2018 December 19, 2018 Paul Hemphill 1 Comment
At the root of all this is freedom of speech. If we wish to preserve and extend our liberties or maintain our democracies, we need to understand this. We must equip ourselves to practice it well, educate our young to understand how unusual such liberty has been in human history and how difficult it is to maintain. Paul Monk
Every once in a while, The Australian commissions an articulate and respected conservative commentator to pen a piece on a topic dear to its editorial heart. He (these worthy souls are invariably old, white blokes) duly oblige, for kudos or cash or both, and yet are careful not to become ensnared in the NewsCorp echo-chamber that houses the more virulent and predictable of its opinionistas. Historian Geoffrey Blainey recently managed such as arabesque when writing about the controversial Ramsay Centre (see The Oz’s Lonely Crusade). Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson did likewise in a tribute to Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn (see Ghosts of the Gulag).
Australian author Paul Monk has done likewise when invited to ruminate on free speech in western universities. Instead of laying into left-wing uni students and the so-called Green Left, the bêtes noir of columnists like Chris Kenny, Gerard Henderson and Janet Albrechtsen, Monk refused to sing their song. Instead, he reminds us of our history and of our responsibility as democrats and reasonable folk to maintain dialogue with and endeavour to understand the reasoning (or its dearth) of our ideological opponents. History has shown us that once the shouting stops, the shooting often starts.
Often, I am disappointed, saddened even, by the ignorance, naivety, and self-absorption of electorates, left and right: their lack of historical knowledge and of curiosity, an unhealthy and self-defeating habit of accepting facts, narratives and theories based upon their preconceptions and prejudices.
Nowadays, it often seems as if the reasonable middle has been excised from political discourse, drained out by the shrill voices of the extremes with their identity politics, virtue signalling, and vested interests. Social media has exacerbated the situation as folk lock themselves into their own echo chambers, listening only to those with whom they agree, ignoring or even avoiding contrary opinions and perspectives. It is a self-defeating, delusional, zero-sum form of groupthink that erodes trust and goodwill and prevents the development of consensus and cooperation.
Meanwhile, opportunistic politicians and commentators build their constituencies by appealing to the particularistic, even atavistic wants and fears of their followers. Too often this reduces things down to atavistic lowest common denominators. They literally seize the low moral ground. Peoples problems and fears are real enough, and do need to be solved or allayed, but too often they are gulled, manipulated and recruited by modern-day snake-oil salesmen and show-tent shysters.
Monk’s piece is a timely reminder as he enjoins is to teach our children well.
Five Rules for Civil Engagement
Paul Monk, The Australian, 8th December 2018
There seems to be an extraordinary amount of confusion around these days regarding freedom of speech in our universities and more generally. But civil society and constitutional government require freedom of speech. And freedom of speech requires sound meta-rules regarding the way it is conducted.
Suppress freedom of speech and you move towards authoritarian government. Without sound meta-rules you move towards anarchy and violence.
Around the world right now we can see a disturbing drift in each of these directions.
What do I mean here by “meta-rules”? I mean the overarching political and civil rules that govern the conditions under which debates are conducted and dissent or protest permitted.
Ever since the Greek city-states pioneered democratic government and freedom of speech 2500 years ago, there has been a long struggle over the nature of the rules and how to uphold them.
Our present debates about freedom of speech, “hate speech”, censorship and “deplatforming” belong squarely within this tradition. It was, after all, the Athenian democracy that condemned Socrates to death for “impiety” and “corrupting the youth”; but we tend to admire him rather than those who condemned him.
The meta-rules we need now, in the interests of science as well as democratic governance and civil peace, are five in number. 1. That there is such a thing as truth and that the whole point of civilised and patient discourse is to elicit the truth. 2. That, since this may prove difficult and time-consuming, we agree to disagree while the inquiry and discourse are pursued, rather than simply insisting on our prior opinion being the truth. 3. That the search for truth itself be conducted according to workable principles of reason and evidence, not dogma or vehement assertion. 4. That we strive to see the distinction between opinion and truth and accept that truth, once grasped, will generally require that we alter our opinions. 5. That we agree to open contentious subjects up to discussion under the above four rules, not shut them down.
These are pretty basic ideas. One would have hoped that they would not be challenged in any 21st-century liberal democracy. Yet, as Michiko Kakutani has written in The Death of Truth, even the first rule — accepting that there is such a thing as truth — is now under challenge from a bewildering variety of sources.
Holding the scientific and philosophical line on this is made more difficult by the fact human beings generally are prone to confirmation bias and other cognitive weaknesses, which obstruct the search for truth even in the best and most important cases.
Anarchic social media exacerbates these problems, creating thought bubbles, viral “road rage” and avenues for the rapid dissemination of confused, mendacious or inflammatory claims.
There are also deliberate attempts to sabotage the factual and philosophical foundations of truth seeking. Michael Lewis’s latest book, The Fifth Risk, in his gentle and lucid manner, exposes the institutional vandalism of the Trump administration in this regard. Contempt for or shameless denial of fact and truth is endemic in undemocratic governments around the world in our time: Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia.
But our liberal democracies should be bastions of the meta-rules. This is especially so in our universities, which are supposed to be the schools of reason and the havens of open exploration of ideas. George Orwell famously wrote: “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
But that gets us only to the starting gate. All too often people insist on telling us things that we do not want to hear for the good reason that it is abusive, ignorant, banal, degraded or otherwise objectionable.
Are we obliged to listen, much less agree? And if we are not disposed to do so, what happens next?
That’s where the meta-rules have to come in. We must be prepared to uphold them and call our interlocutors on them when they are violated. That’s demanding work; but it is the indispensable work of democratic politics and a scientific culture.
It is for this reason and not because one has any sympathy for bigoted or harebrained ideas that many of us are dismayed by the rise of “grievance studies”, the insistence on “safe places”, “trigger warnings” and the suppression of lines of “hate speech” at all too many of our universities.
There seem to be a growing number of things one cannot be allowed to say publicly or teach, or say within teaching, at universities. Is this what the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s has come to at universities? Is this the proving ground for well-informed and articulate practitioners of free speech and democratic principles?
I attended university between 1977 and 1987. My purpose was to learn enough to be able to participate intelligently in public discourse about the forces shaping our world. I didn’t go to university to agitate but to inquire, though I was aware of the student radicalism of the 60s.
I encountered people, including teachers, of many different opinions and ideological or religious persuasions and read as widely and deeply as I could concerning where these different beliefs had come from and why anyone would adhere to them. No political correctness or ideological straitjacket was in evidence. That appears to have changed.
I did, however, encounter individuals with strong opinions. I recall a tutorial during the 1979 course Classical Social Theory (on Marx, Weber, Durkheim and other modern social theorists) in which a fellow student declared bluntly and humourlessly that “come the revolution” people who thought as individualists like me “will all be shot”.
He didn’t threaten to assault me on the spot, though, and it never occurred to me to insist that he be expelled from the class or the university for saying such a thing. The meta-rules were in place and I disagreed with his politics. I was bemused by what these days one might dub his “hate speech” but not intimidated. I knew perfectly well that my classmate’s attitude was not merely some strange fantasy on his part.
Pol Pot had been overthrown in Cambodia only very recently, after having huge numbers of his country’s educated elite tortured and shot. Deng Xiaoping had just crushed the Democracy Wall movement in Beijing and had Wei Jingsheng imprisoned for — as the trial judge put it — “using so-called freedom of speech to stir up trouble”. The ruthless practice of Marxist-Leninist tyrannies throughout the 20th century was well known to me.
But being at a university in a liberal democracy, I felt safe enough to absorb such violent language in the tutorial room.
This extended to public lectures. In 1980, I attended a forum in the famous Public Lecture Theatre at the University of Melbourne, at which several well-known speakers addressed an audience of hundreds on the subject of Malcolm Fraser’s economic policies and the problem of relatively high unemployment.
David Kemp (Liberal), Tom Uren (Labor Left), Don Chipp (Australian Democrats) and Albert Langer (Monash University Marxist radical) all spoke. None was shouted down. Langer, however, gave a decidedly inflammatory address. The first three had all advocated various competing approaches to macro-economics and unemployment relief. Langer declared openly: “Those are all bourgeois solutions. If you want to do something useful, go and learn how to use a rifle. What this country needs is a revolution.”
There’s freedom of speech for you: used to advocate violence rather than the deepening of inquiry and debate. Langer was not so much a far-right Proud Boy as a Proud Leninist.
Afterwards, I approached him and asked would he care for a coffee. He cheerfully agreed and, as we strolled over to the Student Union, I conducted an exercise in freedom of speech. “Albert,” I said to him, “let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that you were able to organise the revolution you’ve just called for and seize power in this country. What exactly would you then do?”
“That’s a good question,” Albert responded.
“Sure, it’s a good question,” I replied, “so what’s your answer?” He remained silent. “OK,” I went on, “let’s assume you pursued a standard policy of nationalisation, state planning and indoctrination, but things got gummed up and the economy hit the skids. What would you do then?”
“Oh,” he said airily, “we’d have to have another revolution … And why not? After all, if things worked out, it’d get boring. Revolutions are fun.”
We proceeded to the Student Union and ordered our coffees. He described himself as a “Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist”, which struck me as absurd and objectionable but not sufficiently so as to derail the conversation. I have never since, however, been able to take Langer seriously. He remained at liberty, carrying on with his ratbaggery for years. Fortunately, though, he wasn’t able to organise an armed revolution and I was able to pursue my studies without being purged or shot.
The year after that public forum, curious about student radicals such as Langer, I undertook an honours thesis on the student rebellion and general strike in France in May of 1968. The soixante-huitards (sixty-eighters), as they have been dubbed, had quite anarchic ideas about freedom of speech and social change. “All power to the imagination,” was one of their most fetching slogans.
From a conservative point of view, they were assorted imbeciles, suffering from various Castroite or Maoist fantasies and Marcusean delusions. Charles de Gaulle derided them as “bed wetters”.
I was interested in the wellsprings of their revolt and how it played out in advanced industrial society. My inquiry was unhindered and I drew my own conclusions, critically evaluating the full spectrum of ideological opinions about les evenements de Mai. It was a valuable learning experience.
The Free Speech Movement as such had arisen at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964-65 among restive students who had come to believe that learning at university was not enough. Agitation for social change was incumbent upon them and should be accommodated by the academic authorities.
There was a struggle over this. The FSM was part of a groundswell of such activism in the early 60s, not least through the nationwide American movement called Students for a Democratic Society. As the problems of war in Vietnam and racism heated up, elements of the SDS threw the meta-rules of democratic social order overboard and opted to attempt violent revolution. They formed the Weather Underground Organisation, inspired by the insurrectionism of Che Guevara and Carlos Marighella in Latin America. I studied all of this in the 80s when it was still a matter of recent history; during doctoral studies on American counterinsurgency strategy throughout the Cold War.
I identified to some considerable extent with Tom Hayden and the founders of the SDS and empathised with armed rebels in countries such as El Salvador and The Philippines. I was wary of the Marxist-Leninist brand of violent revolution, given its appalling history in the 20th century, but appalled by the death squads that plagued Central and South America in those years. My investigation itself, after all, required the meta-rules of liberal democracy.
Robert Redford’s 2012 film The Company You Keep, starring Redford, Susan Sarandon, Julie Christie, Nick Nolte, Stanley Tucci, Sam Elliott, Chris Cooper and Shia LaBeouf, romanticises the Weather Underground and its radical politics. The film’s worth seeing, but it’s not a good introduction to what happened back then.
Brian Burrough did a vastly better job in Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence(2015). Crucially, for our present purposes, he shows how the FSM and SDS struggled with the meta-rules regarding freedom of speech and civil society and how the impatient and “radical” wing threw away those rules and opted for violence of the kind Langer extolled.
Such would-be revolutionaries, like neo-Nazis or violent anarchists or religious fanatics, pose a direct threat to the meta-rules. It’s all very well, after all, to seek truth in congenial, intelligent, well-informed and professional company. But what do we do when we confront venom, ignorance, hostility, entrenched resistance — when we confront one kind or another of what Churchill called “the fanatic”: someone who cannot change his mind and will not change the subject?
Well, that’s exactly when defence of the meta-rules, including by police protection if necessary, is most important.
Nadine Strossen, the first female national president of the American Civil Liberties Union and professor of constitutional law at New York University, has just given us a fine reflection on this challenge: Hate: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship. She makes a powerful case that when we find ideas objectionable, we need to have the courage to stand up and challenge them, not merely shout them down or try to ban them.
An unimpeachable “liberal” on race, class and gender, she states forthrightly: “On many campuses … students complain that they have been ‘assaulted’ when they are exposed to ideas that offend them, or even if they learn that a provocative speaker has been invited to campus. This false equation between controversial ideas and physical violence fuels unwarranted calls for outlawing and punishing ideas, along with violence.”
For reasoned debate and fruitful inquiry to take place, it is necessary that violence be outlawed, but it is counter-productive for ideas to be outlawed. What’s required is to foster the opportunity for strenuous debate and what may often be painful and difficult learning. If we cannot agree on that, our political and intellectual culture is in trouble.
Unfashionable as it is to state this these days, the ideas of freedom (eleutheria), political equality (isonomia), equality of speech (isegoria), freedom of speech (parrhesia) and democracy (demokratia) derive from classical Greece. They were imperfectly realised in the ancient world and the Greek and Roman republics gave way to autocratic rule. But we derive our key modern ideas about freedom and responsible government from those beginnings.
Plato, Aristotle and the School of Athens
As Josiah Ober wrote in The Athenian Revolution: “Some 2500 years after the revolution that made it possible, democracy is widely regarded as the most attractive form of practical (as opposed to utopian) political organisation yet devised. Among democracy’s virtues is its revisability — the potential of the political regime to rethink and to reform itself, while remaining committed to its core values of justice, equality, dignity and freedom.”
At the root of all this is freedom of speech. If we wish to preserve and extend our liberties or maintain our democracies, we need to understand this. We must equip ourselves to practise it well, educate our young to understand how unusual such liberty has been in human history and how difficult it is to maintain. Doing these things itself demands that we adhere to the meta-rules that make it possible. And here’s the kicker: so will building any realisable “utopia” be worth striving after? Martin Luther King Jr knew that and spoke faithfully to it, calling for the American republic to live up to its founding meta-rules.
Paul Monk (paulmonk.com.au) is the author of 10 books. The most recent is Dictators and Dangerous Ideas: Uncensored Reflections in an Era of Turmoil (Echo Books, 2018).
November 1918, the counterfeit peace
November 10, 2018 November 12, 2018 Paul Hemphill 1 Comment
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son. John 3:16
The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 saw an end to four years of carnage on the western front and the end of of the First World War. The armies were demobbed and men went home to lives that were changed utterly: British and French, Austrian and German, Belgian and Italian, Serbs and Bulgarians, Turks and Arabs, and also, soldiers from across the ocean – Americans and Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, South Africans and Indians. Friends and foes.
The victors retired to a restless peace, but the vanquished, Germany, Austria, and Hungary, descended into revolution and civil war for a time as gangs of former soldiers fought on the left and the right. In eastern Europe, the crumbling of empires, the Russian revolution, civil war and the struggle to establish the borders of newly established states meant that armed violence continued, leaving deep scars and bitterness that many ways set the stage for the autocracies of the 1930s and further bloodshed.
The Polish-Soviet war lasted until 1921. The Russian Civil War, ending in 1923, raged across most of today’s Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the Baltic region. British, Australian, American and French soldiers were dispatched to Murmansk and Archangel to fight the Red Army; Poles fought Ukrainians and Lithuanians, and defeated the Soviets at the gates of Warsaw; pogroms were perpetrated against Jews just as they had been for years, decades, centuries prior, accelerating , with subsequent consequence, Aliyah to Palestine.
The Greek-Turkish war of 1919-1922, which saw the Greeks, with British and French support, endeavouring to seize Constantinople, led to terrible massacres, and a forced exchange of populations that uprooted one and a half million Greeks and Turks from towns and villages they had occupied for a millennium. Armies marched back and forth across the Great European Plain, bringing devastation and starvation and destroying millions of lives. Central Asia, the lands now covered by the once Soviet ‘’stans likewise became battlegrounds for Reds, Whites and local warlords.
And in ‘John Bull’s Other Island’, as expat GBS Shaw called it, a “terrible beauty was born” – WB Yeats’ exquisite words – the doomed intifada that was the rebellion of Easter 1916, launched, opportunistically yet quixotically whilst English eyes were elsewhere, led exponentially into open rebellion, a qualified victory, and a civil war and partition that rested, roused and then resurrected in Derry in 1968 and decades termed somewhat innocuously ‘The Troubles’.
For some, there was light at the end of the terrible territorial tunnel. Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Finns, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, achieved statehood, or the restoration of nationhood, as did, fleetingly, Ukrainians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Poland reappeared on the map after over a century of having been carved up by empires. Hungarians lost two-thirds of their territory and more than half of their population. “Little” Serbia, which had ignited the Balkan powder keg in 1914, with Gavril Princip’s famous shot that ricocheted through complacent, twitchy and mightily armed Europe, was united with its Slav but religiously fractured Balkan neighbours in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia – and we now know how well that worked out.
Beyond Europe too, a bitter ‘Peace’ sowed dragon’s teeth. Last year, we commemorated the centenaries of the infamous Sykes Picot Agreement, the first draft of a colonial dispensation that established borders that remained unchallenged until Da’ish assaulted the status quo in 2014, and the Balfour Declaration, which set in train the rise and rise of the state of Israel and the long descent of Palestinian hopes for a land of their own. Ironically, the most militant Zionist pioneers and later, soldiers, terrorists and statesmen, emigrated from Poland and the Tsarist empire. These many legacies resonate today.
The end of WW1 saw the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and left Britain in control of Palestine and Mesopotamia. The peace conferences that followed led to the creation of modern Turkey, and, though for decades under French and British colonial rule, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Jordan. The Kurds turned up at the conference table but were denied a seat and thereafter, a state.
The war changed more than maps, frontiers and regimes. The needs of modern warfare brought women into the workforce, galvanizing the movements that won them the vote in many democracies. The pace of technological change already underway in industrialized countries was quickened by the demands of war, and advances in land transportation and aviation continued exponentially, as did the development of weaponry, together with the insatiable demand for fossil fuels. Economic privation precipitated the first successful Communist revolution and many failed ones, whilst the peace, resentments, reparations, and recession prompted many to turn to far-right authoritarians in Italy and then Germany. The mass movements of populations helped spread the deadliest epidemic the world has ever known: the 1918 influenza virus or Spanish Flu, which quietly killed possibly up to a hundred million souls – more than both world wars combined.
In the last decades of the Twentieth Century, historians would observe with the benefit of hindsight how the Second World War rose ineluctably from the ashes of the first, just as the division of Europe and the Soviet enslavement (and I say this as a lifelong leftist) of those Eastern European countries that emerged after 1918 led to the Europe of today, and as the peoples of the Middle East reaped the whirlwinds of both conflagrations. Many look back on the tumultuous decades that followed the Great War, and sensing signals and signposts in contemporary temporal tea leaves, advise is to be afraid, be very afraid.
We like to identify patterns in history that help us understand and explain our contemporary world. But we should exercise caution. To continue the hindsight riff, remember that things we see in the rear view mirror appear closer than they really are. The world is very much different today, as is our knowledge, our perception, our hopes and fears, and so also, our prognostications and expectations. If we can do it all over again, we’ll do it differently, and much more dangerously and destructively. Having learned so much, we have, one fears, understood so little.
As we remember that moment in Western Europe and the Levant when the guns at last fell silent, let us contemplate melancholy mathematics of the human toll poignantly described by American economist and academic Patrick Chovanec in a fine article in the New York Review of Books, which I have reproduced below:
“In the Great War itself, over sixteen million people died, including almost seven million civilians. The US got off relatively lightly, with 117,465 people killed, just 0.13 percent of its population. In Serbia, somewhere between 17 and 28 percent of the country’s population was killed. But even numbers like these leave little concrete impression on our minds … people would (tell) me about a grandfather or great-uncle who fought and died in the war, and is forever twenty-four-years old in some field in France, or Turkey, or Italy, or at sea. For most people, that absence is what defined the war: someone left and never came home. The world that they shaped, by their presence and their absence, is the one that we live in, whether we realize it or not. And we, like them, can only grope our way forward, day by day, into an unknown future”.
Sacrifice – Rayner Hoff, Anzac Memorial, Sydney
On the occasion of the centenary, read also, Dulce et ducorem est – the death of Wilfred Owen, and A Brief History of the Rise and Fall of the West,
World War I Relived Day by Day
Patrick Chovanec, November 8, 2018,
Photo12/UIG via Getty Images
Gavrilo Princip arrested after his assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Sarajevo, June 28, 1914
Four years ago, I went to war. Like many of the people whose stories I followed in my daily “live-tweets” on World War I, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. What began as an impulsive decision to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand’s death at the hands of a Serbian assassin, in June 1914, snowballed into a blood-soaked odyssey that took me—figuratively and literally—from the rolling hills of northern France, to the desert wastes of Arabia, to the rocky crags of the Italian Alps, to the steel turret of a rebel cruiser moored within range of the czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. And like the men and women who actually lived through it, now that the Great War is ending I find myself asking what, if anything, I’ve learned from it all.
In the American mind, World War I typically occupies an unimpressive place as a kind of shambolic preamble to the great good-versus-evil crusade of World War II, a pointless slugfest in muddy trenches for no worthy purpose, and no worthwhile result. Its catchphrases—“The War to End All Wars,” “Make the World Safe for Democracy”—evoke a wry and knowing chuckle. As if. But the war I encountered, as it unfolded day by day, was far more relevant, passionate, and unpredictable.
Posting daily newspaper clippings and photographs, found mainly in books and online archives, I began to see the Great War as a kind of portal between an older, more distant world—of kings with handlebar mustaches, splendid uniforms, and cavalry charges—and the one that we know: of planes and tanks, mass political movements, and camouflage. It snuffed out ancient monarchies in czarist Russia, Habsburg Austria, and Ottoman Turkey, and gave birth to a host of new nations—Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan—that, in their struggles to survive and carve out an identity, continue to shape our world today. The British declared their intent to create a national homeland in Palestine for the Jews.
Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty Images
Russian infantry marching to battle, Poland, August 1914
The needs of the war brought women into the workforce, and helped win them the right to vote. The huge privations it inflicted triggered the world’s first (successful) Communist revolution, and the frustrations it unleashed prompted many, afterward, to turn to far-right authoritarians in Italy and then Germany. And finally—though many have forgotten it—the comings and goings of people caused by the war helped spread the deadliest epidemic the world has ever known: the 1918 influenza virus, which quietly killed an estimated 50–100 million human beings in their homes and in hospitals, more than both world wars combined.
I also encountered a cast of characters more varied and amazing than I thought possible. Rasputin, the dissolute Russian mystic who warned Czar Nicholas that going to war would destroy his dynasty, and was murdered in part because he was (falsely) suspected as a German agent. The Austrian Emperor Karl, who inherited a war he didn’t want, and tried fruitlessly to make peace. T.E. Lawrence, a scholarly young intelligence officer whose affinity for the Arabs helped turn them to the Allied cause, and shaped the modern Middle East. Mata Hari, a Dutch-born exotic dancer who played double-agent, seducing high-ranking Allied and German officers for valuable information, until she was caught and shot by the French as a spy.
Some of the names are familiar, and offer hints of future greatness—or infamy. A young anti-war journalist named Benito Mussolini, sensing the way the wind blows, changes his tune and aggressively advocates for Italy to enter the war, before signing up himself. A young Charles De Gaulle is wounded at Verdun and taken prisoner for the rest of the conflict. A relatively young Winston Churchill plans the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign and pays his penance by serving in the trenches, before making a political comeback. A young Harry S. Truman serves as an artillery officer on the Western Front, alongside (and outranked by) a young George C. Marshall (his future Army Chief of Staff and Secretary of State) and Douglas MacArthur (his future general in the Pacific and Korea). A young George S. Patton develops a fascination with tanks. A young Walt Disney doodles cartoons on the side of the ambulances he drives, in the same unit as a young Ray Kroc (the founder of McDonald’s). Another young ambulance driver, Ernest Hemingway, finds inspiration on the Italian Front for his novel A Farewell to Arms. A young Hermann Göring (later head of the Luftwaffe) becomes a dashing flying ace, while a young Erwin Rommel wins renown fighting at Verdun and in the Alps. Meanwhile, an odd young German corporal, who volunteered in the very first days of the war, is blinded by poison gas in its final days, and wakes up in hospital to the bitter news that Germany has lost. His name is Adolf Hitler.
General Photographic Agency/Getty Images
French troops under shellfire during the Battle of Verdun, 1916
The dramatic panoply of people, places, and events, however, only occasionally rises to the fore. For the most part, the war is a steady stream of ordinary people doing ordinary things: washing their clothes, attending a concert, tallying supplies, fixing a car. History books give us a distorted sense of time, because they fast forward to major events. A day may take a chapter, a month may be passed over in a sentence. In fact, there were periods where nothing much happened—plans were being made, troops trained, supplies positioned—and when you live-tweet, you experience that waiting. Sometimes, it led to intriguing surprises, like photographs of dragon dances performed by some of the 140,000 Chinese laborers brought over to France to lend muscle to the Allied war effort. Mostly, it was a matter of endurance. Each winter, the fighting came to almost a complete stop as each country hunkered down and hoped its food would last. The “turnip winter” of 1916–1917, when the potato crop failed, nearly broke Germany; the increasingly desperate craving for “bread and peace” did break Russia the following year.
The future president Herbert Hoover made his reputation by coordinating food relief shipments to German-occupied Belgium, and later as the US “food czar” ensuring Allied armies and populations were fed. The vast mobilization was effective: by 1918, the Allies were able to relax their food rationing, while Germany and its confederates, strangled by an Allied naval blockade, were on the verge of starvation. America’s war effort was accompanied by a vast expansion in the federal government’s power and reach. It nationalized (temporarily) the railroads and the telephone lines. It set prices for everything from sugar to shoes, and told motorists when they could drive, workers when they could strike, and restaurants what they could put on their menus. It seized half a billion dollars of enemy-owned property, including the brand rights to Bayer aspirin, and sold them at auction. The US government also passed espionage and sedition laws that made it illegal to criticize the war effort or the president. Some people were sent to prison for doing so, including the Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs, who ran for president for a fifth and final time from a cell.
A woman munitions worker operating a machine in an armaments factory, Britain, circa 1915
Winning the war, however, was far from a sure thing. For three years, the Allies threw themselves against an evenly-matched enemy on the Western Front, without making any breakthroughs, while the Eastern Front gradually crumbled. An early Allied foray to take out Turkey, at Gallipoli in 1915, ended in bloody disappointment. Inducing Italy to enter the war on the Allies’ side, that same year, was supposed to swing the entire conflict in their favor; instead, the catastrophic Italian rout at Caporetto, in the autumn of 1917, put the Allied effort in greater jeopardy. When Lenin seized power in Russia, at the end of 1917, he took it immediately out of the war and ceded immense land and resources to German control. True, the US had by then entered the war, in response to Germany’s submarine campaign against merchant ships and its clumsy diplomatic scheming in Mexico. But with the war in the East essentially won, the Germans saw a window in which they could shift all of their armies to the West and crush the exhausted British and French before enough American troops could arrive to make a difference. Their spring offensive, or “Kaiser’s Battle,” in early 1918 drove deep into Allied lines, prompting the French government to evacuate Paris.
The Germans’ big roll of the dice failed. The Allies held, and the US mobilized much faster than anyone expected. By the summer of 1918, a perceptible change had taken place. Hundreds of thousands of American troops were arriving every month at French ports, and their first units were taking part in battles, piecemeal at first, to push the Germans back. Even in September, however, nearly everyone expected the war to continue into 1919. That was when a huge US army of 3 million men would be ready to take part in a big Allied offensive that would drive all the way to Berlin. It never happened. That fall, the German army—and those of Turkey, Austria, and Bulgaria—first buckled, then collapsed like a rotten log. By November 11, the war was over.
The fact that nobody saw the end coming, the way it did, highlights the value of going back, a hundred years later, and reliving events day by day, as they took place. What may seem obvious now was anything but so then, and we do the people who lived through it, and our understanding of them, a real disservice when we assume that it was. “Life can only be understood backwards,” the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard observed, “but it must be lived forwards.” The British historian C.V. Wedgewood elaborated on the same idea: “History is lived forwards but is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was like to know the beginning only.” We can’t entirely forget that we know what happened next, but when we at least try to identify with people who did not know, we shed new light on them, and on what did happen.
Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images
Leon Trotsky with the Soviet delegation to negotiate a peace treaty with Germany, Brest-Litovsk, 1918
Take the Russian Revolution. We see it as the birth of a Communist superpower, and struggle to make sense of the seemingly half-baked, half-hearted effort by the Allies to intervene by sending troops, including Americans, to Russia’s ports in the far north and far east. People at the time, however, saw it almost entirely through the prism of the Great War. At first, the Allies welcomed the overthrow of the czar, and believed it would rejuvenate the failing Russian war effort. By replacing an infamous autocrat on the Allied roster with a fledgling democracy, it made “making the world safe for democracy” a more credible call to arms, and helped pave the way for the US to enter the war. When Lenin took over and made a ruinous peace with the Central Powers, he was seen as simply a German puppet. And when Bolshevik forces, augmented with released German and Austrian prisoners of war, attacked a unit of Czech soldiers crossing Siberia to rejoin the Allies on the Western Front, those suspicions blossomed into fear of a full-fledged German takeover of Russia. The Allies sent troops to key Russian ports to secure the war supplies stockpiled there and provide an exit route for the loyal Czechs. They considered trying to “reopen” the Eastern Front, but realized it would take far too many men. They assumed that when Germany was defeated, their proxy Lenin would eventually fall, and when the war ended, they naturally lost interest. It all makes sense, but only if you see through the eyes that people saw through at the time.
Did it really matter who won the war? In its aftermath, the Great War came to be seen as a colossal waste, a testament to the vanity of nations, of pompous older men sending foolish younger men into the meat-grinder for no good reason. War poems like “Dulce et decorum est” and novels like All Quiet on the Western Front have crystalized this impression. But this was not how people felt at the time. German atrocities in Belgium and on the high seas—some exaggerated, but others quite real—convinced many people that civilization, as they knew it, really was at stake. I was consistently and often surprisingly struck by the sincerity of support, not just on the home front, but among soldiers who had seen the worst of combat, for pursuing the war unto victory. The tone matures, but remains vibrant: these were, for the most part, people who believed in what they were fighting for. At what point the bitter cynicism set in, after the war ended, I cannot say. But at some point, that enthusiasm, and even the memory of it, became buried with the dead.
Bettmann/Getty Images
Boys wearing bags of camphor around their necks to ward off influenza, 1917
Though, in fact, in many places the war did not actually end. An armistice was declared on the Western Front, and the armies there were disbanded and sent home. But Germany, Austria, and Hungary all descended into revolution and civil war for a time, with gangs of demobilized soldiers fighting on all sides. In Russia, the Soviet regime and its multiple enemies would battle for several years, while trying to reconquer territory surrendered when it quit the war against Germany. The Greeks tried to reclaim Constantinople from the Turks, and would be massacred when the Turks succeeded in reconsolidating their country. The Poles fought wars with the Ukrainians and the Soviets to define the boundaries of their newly independent country. Jews and Arabs continue to fight over the new lands liberated from the Ottoman Empire to this day.
In the Great War itself, over 16 million people died, including almost 7 million civilians. The US got off relatively lightly, with 117,465 people killed, just 0.13 percent of its population. In Serbia, somewhere between 17 percent and 28 percent of the country’s population was killed. But even numbers like these leave little concrete impression on our minds. Some of the most touching parts of my experience live-tweeting were the times when people would tweet back to me about a grandfather or great-uncle who fought and died in the war, and is forever twenty-four-years old in some field in France, or Turkey, or Italy, or at sea. For most people, that absence is what defined the war: someone left and never came home. The world that they shaped, by their presence and their absence, is the one that we live in, whether we realize it or not. And we, like them, can only grope our way forward, day by day, into an unknown future.
Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images
British artillery at the Somme, France, 1916
November 8, 2018,
Phil Och’s Chicago Blues
August 28, 2018 August 28, 2018 Paul Hemphill 3 Comments
We’ve got too much money we’re looking for toys.
And guns will be guns and boys will be boys.
But we’ll gladly pay for all we destroy.
Cause we’re the Cops of the World, boys,
We’re the Cops of the World
In our continuing series of the events of 1968, here is the enthralling story of folk singer Phil Ochs and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago fifty years ago this month. Hubert Humphrey was selected as candidate to run unsuccessfully against Richard Nixon that fall, and Chicago’s Mayor Daley set the city’s finest upon the thousands who had gathered to protest the Vietnam War, racial injustice, and other social and political ills in what contemporary reports described as a “police riot”.
The serpentine storylines of American author Nathan Hill’s astonishing debut novel The Nix converge on the chaos and carnage of this convention. He sets the scene so lyrically, merits quoting in full:
“The day before the riots the weather turned. The grip of the Chicago summer loosened and the air was spring-like and agreeable…In the very early dawn there appeared on the ground a thin, slick dew. The world was alive and lubricated. It felt hopeful, optimistic, and therefore disallowable as the city prepared for battle, as National Guard troops arrived by the thousands on green flatbed trucks, as police cleaned their gas masks and guns, as demonstrators practiced evasion and self-defense techniques and assembled various projectiles to lob at the cops. There was a feeling among them all that so great a conflict deserved an nastier day. Their hatred should ignite the air, they thought. Who could feel revolutionary when the sun shined pleasantly on one’s face. The city instead was full of desire. The day before the greatest, most spectacular, most violent protest of 1968, the city was saturated with want”.
A reader’s comment in response to this essay declares: “1968! What a year! Everything was so groovy then. What happened in the following decades? Phil Ochs hung himself, Abbie Hoffman was arrested for drug dealing and later died of an overdose, Jerry Rubin turned into a corporate consultant and died in LA trying to cross Wilshire Boulevard while drunk and was hit by a car. Chicago is now a killing field and more segregated than ever thanks to the Yippies who morphed into the continuous white corporate America”.
But in reality, apart from the great music, 1968 was a sad year for the USA. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. Four students were shot dead by the National Guard in Ohio. The war in Vietnam continued to bleed out and divide the nation.
For more on 1968, see: Things fall apart – the centre cannot hold
And here are other posts in In That Howling Infinite with regard to the ‘sixties: Springtime in Paris – remembering May 1968; Encounters with Enoch; Recalling the Mersey Poets; The Strange Death of Sam Cooke; Looking for Lehrer; Shock of the Old – the glory days of prog rock; Window on a Gone World; Back in the day; and, The Incorrigible Optimists Club.
How the 1968 DNC protests in Chicago ‘killed’ protest folk singer Phil Ochs
Ryan Smith, Chicago Reader, 25th August 2018,
Phil Ochs during a 1967 Vietnam protest outside the UN building in New York.
It probably seemed like a gloomy joke when Phil Ochs put an image of his own tombstone on the cover of his 1969 album Rehearsal for Retirementwith an inscription that read: “Born El Paso, Texas; Died Chicago, IL, 1968.”
The grave, which also featured a black-and-white photo of Ochs—rifle slung over shoulder—standing in front of an American flag, was an obvious reference to the radical leftist folk singer’s role in the bloody protests outside the Democratic National Convention 50 years ago this week. Specifically, Ochs was in Chicago to help plan and participate in the Youth International Party’s (also known as Yippie) “Festival of Life” protest in Lincoln Park. He was among a core group of organizers arrested as they tried to publicize their own candidate for president, a pig.
Ochs witnessed all of the violence and chaos in Chicago while the Democratic establishment, guarded by a small army of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s troops, chose pro-Vietnam war candidate Hubert Humphrey. The singer saw it as the “final death of democracy in America.”
“It was the total, final takeover of the fascist military state—in one city, at least,” Ochs said in an interview in New York shortly after the DNC. “Chicago was just a total, absolute police state. A police state from top to bottom. I mean it was totally controlled and vicious.”
Certainly, Ochs didn’t perish. Nor was he one of the hundreds of anti-war protesters hurt in the ensuing melees with police and the National Guard that week. What he and many of his peers in the New Left instead suffered was a kind of spiritual death.
“I’ve always tried to hang onto the idea of saving the country, but at this point, I could be persuaded to destroy it,” Ochs said. “For the first time, I feel this way.”
The cover of Phil Ochs’s 1969 album Rehearsals for Retirement
If the music of Phil Ochs doesn’t ring a bell, you’re not alone. History has a way of sanitizing, obscuring, or just plain forgetting much of the protest music of the past. Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” for instance, was never intended to be a paean to our republic but a defiant Marxist response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” And the radical pro-labor and anti-war tunes contained in the Industrial Workers of the World’s Little Red Songbook (detailed in a recent Reader feature) are all but unknown today.
The same goes for Ochs. He wrote eight albums of fierce and fiery folk songs before he died by his own hand in 1976, but his legacy has been papered over when we think of the protest music of the tumultuous 60s. When Lady Gaga asked, “Anybody know who Phil Ochs is?” before covering his 1967 ballad “The War is Over” at a free concert during the 2016 Democratic National Convention, it got a lackluster response.
It’s no wonder: Ochs’s radical politics pulled no punches. When the Ohio State student newspaper refused to publish some of his pieces, he started his own underground magazine called the Word. During his early musical career—as part of a duo called the Singing Socialists and then as a solo artist—his songs often sounded like left-wing columns on current events set to music. Bob Dylan once famously once kicked him out of his car during an argument saying, “You’re not a folk singer, you’re a journalist.” Ochs didn’t totally deny it—his first album for Elektra in 1964 was even titled All the News That’s Fit to Sing, a play on the New York Times‘s tagline, and the songs were written about topics allegedly pulled from the pages of Newsweek magazine.
Many of his songs, as one might expect, take direct aim at reactionary conservatives and the architects of the Vietnam war: “We’ve got too much money we’re looking for toys. And guns will be guns and boys will be boys. But we’ll gladly pay for all we destroy. ‘Cause we’re the Cops of the World, boys,” he sang on “Cops of the World.”
Other tracks hold up a mirror to moderate liberals and implicate them in the excesses of American empire and systems of inequality and institutional racism. His scathing 1966 song “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” mocks hypocritical Democrats he described as “ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.” Sung from the perspective of a liberal, Ochs croons the lyrics: “I love Puerto Ricans and Negros, as long as they don’t move next door. So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.”
Mass-market success eluded Ochs his entire career. His most popular album, a 1966 live album, peaked at 150 on the Billboard charts. But he was an influential presence at folk festivals and at political rallies at college campuses all over the country. It was while visiting UC Berkeley to perform at a teach-in against Vietnam during the Free Speech Movement protests in 1965 that Ochs met and befriended Jerry Rubin, one of the founders of the Yippies.
It was Rubin who convinced Ochs to play music at the Festival of Life, the Yippies’ theatrical spoof of the DNC in Chicago. “[The Festival] was to show the public, the media, that the convention was not to be taken seriously because it wasn’t fair, and wasn’t going to be honest, and wasn’t going to be a democratic convention,” Ochs later testified in court.
To show their contempt for the American political system, they vowed to nominate their own Democratic candidate—one of the swine kind. Abe Peck of the underground paper Chicago Seed told the New York Timesthat after the nomination, they were “going to roast him and eat him. For years, the Democrats have been nominating a pig and then letting the pig devour them. We plan to reverse the process.”
Phil Ochs paid an Illinois farmer for Pigasis, the pig the Yippies tried to nominate as president.
Ochs and several other Yippies traveled to various farms in the Chicago area before the convention to pick out what Yippie Judy Gumbo, in her 2008 recollection of 1968, called “the largest, smelliest, most repulsive hog we could find.” The 145-pound black-and-white pig, dubbed Pigasus, was taken to the Chicago Civil Center for a press conference on August 23. Five Yippies were taken to jail at the press conference as they were taking Pigasis out of the truck—including Rubin and Ochs, while the presidential hog hopeful was taken to the Chicago Humane Society. All humans were released after posting a $25 bond.
The crowds at the five-day Festival of Life in Lincoln Park averaged between 8,000 and 10,000, nowhere near the 15,000 that organizers expected. Many were scared off by Daley’s saber rattling. A week before the convention, the city of Chicago turned downtown into a combat zone, with a special 300-strong CPD task force armed with riot gear. “No one is going to take over the streets,” said Daley. After the Yippies were denied a permit by the city, the Chicago Seed advised activists to avoid coming. “Don’t come to Chicago if you expect a five-day festival of life, music, and love. The word is out. Chicago may host a festival of blood,” the paper wrote.
“Daley’s preconvention terror tactics were a success in keeping out large numbers of people. For instance, his threats to set up large-scale concentration camps,” Ochs said. “Daley issued many statements like that, very threatening statements, and these and come succeeded in keeping a lot of people away. But the people who did show up were the toughest, really, and the most dedicated.”
Few countercultural artists and musicians came as well. Ochs invited Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Paul Simon, and others to perform but he was the only folk singer to show. As he sang “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore”, hundreds of protesters burned their draft cards.
The only rock band to appear were the MC5, a radical leftist group managed by John Sinclair, a Yippie who’d formed the White Panthers—an organization of white allies to the Black Panthers. MC5 played at the Festival of Life.
Ochs believed his peers didn’t see the DNC protests as a “worthwhile project.”
“There really hasn’t been that much involvement of folk people and rock people in the movement since the Civil Rights period except that one period where the anti-war action became in vogue and safe, you know, large numbers of people and all that publicity, and then they showed up,” Ochs said, while also acknowledging their fear. “I’m sure everybody was afraid. I was afraid.”
As it turns out, there was plenty to fear. Especially on Wednesday, August 28, the day that most people think about when they think about that convention in Chicago. That early morning, protesters agitated along the east side of Michigan Avenue across from the Conrad Hilton Hotel where the Democratic delegates were staying. That included Ochs, who wore a flag pin on his suit jacket.
“Phil was born in El Paso, Texas, and really loves America,” Gumbo later said. “Even when he’s being gassed along with the rest of us.”
He also tried to engage with the young National Guardsmen pointing their bayoneted rifles toward the sky, Gumbo recalled:
As we walk, Phil introduces himself to the impressed guardsmen and asks if they’ve ever heard his songs. Like “I Ain’t Marching Anymore.” Many nod.
“I once spent $10 to go to one of your concerts” one complains. “I’ll never do that again.”
In 1968, $10 was a lot of money. Phil stops and talks directly to the guy, explaining why he is opposed to the war. The Guardsman starts to smile, and even lowers his rifle a little bit, very appreciative that a celebrity like Phil is speaking to him like a real person.
But the smiles soon disappeared as about 3,000 protesters tried to march and the police didn’t let them and some of them started throwing rocks, sticks, sometimes feces. What ensued was a 17-minute melee in front of the hotel between the marchers and a force that included some of the 12,000 Chicago police in addition to 6,000 army troops and 5,000 National Guardsmen that had been called to protect Chicago on the orders of Mayor Daley. Officers beat activists bloody in the streets of Chicago with nightsticks—live on national TV. It was called the Battle of Michigan Avenue, a nickname used to describe a one-sided affair that a government commission later declared to be a “police riot.” In all, 100 protesters and 119 cops were treated for injuries and about 600 protesters were arrested.
A public poll taken two months later found that more people thought the police had used too little force rather than too much, 25 to 19 percent. Many Chicagoans were also on Daley’s side, a fact that disturbed Ochs.
“The Chicagoans were unable to recognize that this was a national convention. They literally, psychologically couldn’t. They kept thinking, ‘This is our city, our convention.’ When it’s a national election they’re talking about,” he said. “I’m really beginning to question the basic sanity of the American public . . . I think more and more politicians are really becoming pathological liars, and I think many members of the public are. I think the Daily News, Tribune poisoning that comes out is literally creating—and television—all the media are creating a really mentally ill, unbalanced public.”
But Ochs also left Chicago feeling unbalanced and disillusioned with the idea that the system could be repaired or reformed.
“Maybe America is the final end of the Biblical prophecy: We’re all going to end up in fire this time. America represents the absolute rule of money, just absolute money controlling everything to the total detriment of humanity and morals. It’s not so much the rule of America as it is the rule of money. And the money happens to be in America. And that combination is eating away at everybody. It destroys the souls of everybody that it touches, beginning with the people in power,” he said.
This sense of despondency was reflected in his music. Many of his politically charged anthems had been critical of American society but were nonetheless anchored in a kind of can-do optimism. But in mid-1969, the man who once sang “Can’t add my name into the fight while I’m gone / So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here” released Rehearsal for Retirement,” an entire album of what he called “despair music.”
In the funereal track “William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park,” Ochs sang about the bleak scene in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention: “They spread their sheets upon the ground just like a wandering tribe. And the wise men walked in their Robespierre robes. When the fog rolled in and the gas rolled out. In Lincoln Park the dark was burning.”
Ochs wouldn’t return to Chicago until almost a year after the Festival of Life to testify in the trial of the so-called Chicago Eight. They were the main organizers of the protests—including Rubin and Yippies cofounder Abbie Hoffman, and members of the Students for a Democratic Society, the National Mobilization Committee, and Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers—charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to incite a riot.
The trial was a circuslike spectacle, and Ochs’s testimony was no different. The defense lawyer William Kunstler asked him discursive questions about Pigasus (“Mr. Ochs, can you describe the pig which was finally bought?”), had Ochs deny that he’d made plans for public sex acts in Lincoln Park, and tried to get him to play his song “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore” in front of the judge and jury until the defense objected. The trial dragged on for months, and Ochs returned to Chicago in December 1969 to play the so-called Conspiracy Stomp, a benefit for the Chicago Eight, at the Aragon.
R. Crumb drew the poster for the Conspiracy Stomp
The criminal and contempt charges against the Chicago Eight were eventually overturned or dropped, but the FBI escalated its attempt to build a case against them and Ochs. “I’m a folk singer for the FBI,” he told an audience during one show. Special agents monitored his travels in person and received updates from foreign authorities when, for example, he flew to Chile to meet with supporters of Salvador Allende, a socialist elected in 1970. (After his death in 1976, the FBI declassified the 420-plus-page file they kept on him, with information including the claim that a lyric about assassinating the president from Rehearsal for Retirement‘s “Pretty Smart on My Part” was a threat against President Nixon.)
Ironically, the FBI had increasingly less justification to do so. Ochs considered leaving the country at the end of 1968, but instead moved to Los Angeles and drastically changed his act. The tactics of the Yippies, he came to believe, were ineffective at enacting change. He turned, believe it or not, to Elvis Presley.
In Gunfight at Carnegie Hall, a concert album recorded at Carnegie Hall in New York on March 27, 1970, Ochs dressed in a Elvis-style flashy gold- lamé suits and sang medleys of covers of the King and Buddy Holly. He laid out his new philosophy bare in a monologue to the audience:
“As you know, I died in Chicago. I lost my life and I went to heaven because I was very good and sang very lyrical songs. And I got to talk to God and he said, ‘Well, what do you want to do? You can go back and be anyone you want.’ So I thought who do I want to be? And I thought, I wanted to be the guy who was the King of Pop, the king of show business, Elvis Presley.
Phil Ochs in his Elvis suit.
“If there’s any hope for America, it lies in a revolution. If there’s any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley into becoming Che Guevera. If you don’t do that, you’re just beating your head against the wall, or the cop down the street will beat your head against the wall. We have to discover where he is, he’s the ultimate American artist.”
But Ochs’s Elvis-impersonator act bombed even as the singer begged the crowd to be more open-minded, pleading, “Don’t be narrow-minded like Spiro Agnew.”
Over the course of the 70s, the singer fell into mental illness, depression, and alcoholism. His death came at his own hands on April 9, 1976, at the age of 35. His real passing came almost exactly seven years after he announced his death on vinyl in early May 1969.
The tombstone wasn’t meant as a prophecy, it was a lament of the past
https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2018/08/25/how-the-1968-dnc-protests-in-chicago-killed-protest-folk-singer-phil-ochs
Still tangled up in Bob
August 19, 2018 August 20, 2018 Paul Hemphill Leave a comment
Bob Dylan is currently criss-crossing Australia on yet another circuit of his globe-trotting, decades-long Never Ending Tour. He played Sydney’s gorgeous art deco State Theatre the other night, at oure one-time local venu, the small but venerable Enmore Theatre in Newtown, to acclaim from fans young and old.
Veteran Australian folk music critic Bruce Elder wrote somewhat underwhelmingly: “… given the inevitable limitations (his voice is an ageing, husky, adenoidal instrument; he doesn’t talk to the audience; he always offers new interpretations of his old material; every song was delivered from behind his piano; he never tries to establish a rapport with his audience) this was a fascinating stroll through the “great American songbook” via an eclectic reinterpretation of twenty of his songs”. But friends of mine were much more enthusiastic. Stephane wrote me: “I thought of you last night. The show was great, it was fantastic to see him (he is still in good shape at 77!!). We even saw him smiling and dancing a bit at some stage on a fantastic version of “Gotta serve somebody”. Charles messaged: “It was really, really good. He was in top form. His voice sounded better than it has for quite a while. He played only piano but that with gusto and energy – and sometimes tenderness – throughout. The band cooked and arrangements were brilliantly re-imagined bringing new focus to the lyrics “. And this from Llew: “Started with It Aint Me Babe and Ballad of a Thin Man, so I was happy no matter what else happened. He did an encore of Blowin’ in the Wind and Don’t Think Twice. Not the old versions of course. He never said a word to the crowd”.
At a Bob Dylan concert – and I’ve been to many – we hear what we wish to hear, filtered through the memory of how we heard him all those years ago when we were young and idealistic and our world was new. To this day, I can never get enough of Bob – in all of his many guises. I listen to at least one or two of his songs every week and always discover something I hadn’t heard before. He has been a constant soundtrack to my ever-evolving, often revolving sense and sensibility. I wish that I’d been there in Newtown on Sunday night.
Bob in Newtown
Meanwhile, I have recently read classics professor Richard F Thomas’ scholarly frolic Why Dylan Matters. It is an entertaining and informative if ponderous and overwrought exegesis of the Bobster’s interaction with and intertextualizing (there’s a nice, fresh word for us all) of the old Greek and Roman poets and playwrights, and also poems, plays and folk songs of later vintage, including Rimbaud, of course, and Robbie Burns, and the hunter-collectors Cecil Sharp, Alan Lomax and the eccentric Harry Smith’s encyclopedic Anthology of American Folk Music so well analyzed in Greil Marcus’ insightfull Invisible Republic – Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes.
And then, last night, by chance I watched the Todd Hayes’s 2007 film I’m Not There, an imaginative and at times surreal biopic inspired by Bob Dylan’s life and music, in which six actors depict different facets of Dylan’s public persona. I first saw the film when it was release and recall being a tad disappointed at the time and unsatisfied – although I did think that Cate Blanchett was fabulous as electric Bob.
Second time around, however, thought it a marvelous film full of allusions and illusions, facts and fictions, follies and fantasies. The selection of songs was superb, particularly Memphis Blues Again during the many railroad sequences, Ballad of a Thin Man in a smokey Blonde on Blonde cabaret, and The Man in the Dark Black Coat as the leitmotif for the Billy the Kid parable. The mix of extracts from interviews, chronicles, and other stuff was fascinating, and with the lyrics of the songs, demonstrate just what a gifted poet and songwriter Dylan was and is – which is the message Thomas gives in his professorial take on the man.
Cate was, as before, peerless. A great choice if a daring one on the producer’s part. She has the voice, the gestures, the body language down to a tee. She got a global globe award for that, and an Oscar nomination. Ben Whishaw as French poet Arthur Rimbaud is also very good, as is gorgeous Frenchie Charlotte Gainsbourg as Susie/Sara. And, much to my surprise, Richard Gere was good as the aging Billy the Kid (he got away after Pat Garrett done him in).
The weirdest thing is that just that morning, I was reading the lyrics to Tombstone Blues. And the second song up in I’m Not There was Tombstone Blues, sung by the late Richie Havens and a little Marcus Carl Franklin who goes by the name of Woody. They didn’t sing the best verses, but there is a cut, later on, to a Vietnam era President Johnson saying “the sun is not yellow, it’s chicken”. How about that?
With Bob Dylan once more on our fair shores, critic and author Peter Craven explains how Dylan’s “way with words helped change our times”.
It is reproduced below to surmount News Corp’s paywall.
Other peices about Bob Dylan in In That Howling Infinite include: Legends, bibles, plagues – Bob Dylan’s Nobel Lecture; Blind Willie McTell – Bob Dylan’s Americana; and What’s Bob got to do with it?
Bob Dylan: rock poet’s way with words helped to change our times
Peter Craven, The Australian, 11th August 2018
For a lot of people who were young in the 1960s and starting to think of themselves as adults, Bob Dylan was a kind of god. And the funny thing is that this image of him as a sort of dynamised genius, a cross between Shakespeare and Marlon Brando, has never really gone away. We thought of him as a great songwriter who was also a great performer and, in a thrilling way, a great poet. And somehow this atmosphere of awe remains.
Dylan released what is probably his greatest album, Blonde on Blonde, in mid-1966 — 52 years ago — yet on his present Australian tour (his first was, you guessed it, in 1966) a lot of bright young kids, millennials aged 22 or so, who are a bit bored with Shakespeare and a bit vague about Brando, will be there along with contingents of their parents or grandparents.
Rock music is partly a domain of classic fashion and no one is going to shift Dylan’s status because, in its contemporary aspect, Dylan created it. As he said to Keith Richards, that old villain of the Rolling Stones, “I could’ve written Satisfaction but you couldn’t have written Desolation Row.” Is that why they gave him the Nobel Prize in Literature two years ago? The fact he could write a 12-minute rock song that could include lines such as:
And Ezra Pound and TS Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row
Is it that with Dylan, and especially the Dylan of those great records when the singer went electric (though Desolation Row is plucked out on an acoustic guitar with only the lamentation of the harmonica by way of accompaniment), rock music had thrown up a figure with the courage to trail the greatest artistic pretensions like a cloak?
Think of those mermaids in this long, deliberate monstrosity of a song, so lame with the limitations of musical talent and so grand and sepulchral in the way it overcomes them. Do the mermaids deliberately invoke TS Eliot’s Prufrock (“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. / I do not think that they will sing to me.”)?
Who knows? You could almost say who cares, as the logic of Desolation Row is annihilating because — whether by design or accident — it’s a pop-art replica of Eliot’s The Waste Land. It’s as if Dylan has revised and rewritten Eliot’s poem and turned it into his own.
All of which is weird beyond belief. Dylan is the singer-songwriter with the highest reputation in the history of rock music, if not the whole of popular music, yet this reputation depends pretty absolutely on a few hours of music that he wrote in the 60s — between his second LP, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, in 1963 and John Wesley Harding in 1967, where he is already tending towards lean meditations on the bare bones of country music.
The only other album for which the very highest claims continue to be made is Blood on the Tracks,which dates from 1975 and is venerated by many enthusiasts, but which to the diehards sounds a bit like Dylan imitating himself, whatever claims you make for songs such as Tangled Up in Blue and Idiot Wind, and however endearing it is to hear Dylan throw off lines like “Relationships have all been bad / Mine’ve been like Verlaine’s and Rimbaud”.
You can make a case that Dylan is very like Rimbaud — the French teenager who wrote some of the greatest poetry of the later 19th century — not in his relationships but in his relation to language. Like the French adolescent prodigy he took the poetic diction of our tradition — in its further reach, Western civilisation — and remade it in his own image.
So, in one way he’s like Rimbaud because he blazed so young, so briefly and so brilliantly, and lived to outlive his genius. Though it’s odd in a way to think that with Dylan, as with the casualties of rock 50 years ago (such as Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix), the reputation depends on the early work.
Then again, that’s some kind of norm, isn’t it? Think of how much the Rolling Stones trade on the vigour of what they wrote 50 or more years ago.
The 60s were when popular music upped its ante. Philosopher Raimond Gaita said to me once that before Dylan, anyone at a university was expected to educate themselves in classical music, according to their limits, but afterwards not. It helped of course that Dylan burst on the world in the early 60s with songs such as Blowin’ in the Wind, so that he’s still sometimes thought of as a folk singer and a protest singer.
Poet Robert Lowell, who thought Dylan wrote some great lines though not sustained poems, said he had “a Caruso voice”, and it’s true that he had a voice — and in some sense still does — of such overpowering individuality that it haunts or harrows the soul.
He created his early music by sounding the depths of what he could learn from Woody Guthrie and the blues, but he gave it a grave monumentality that was at the same time radically individual — it sounded like nothing on earth, it didn’t sound like anything that was ordinarily called singing — yet it seemed, too, to speak for the folk, so that when he says in With God on Our Side “The country I come from / Is called the Midwest”, you believe him.
In fact, as “the unwashed phenomenon, the original vagabond” — as Joan Baez, his one-time lover and very beautiful vocal interpreter once called him — Dylan crisscrosses the US. But in his work from the mid-60s — in particular in the great songs on Blonde on Blonde such as Visions of Johanna (“Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet? / We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it”) — he sings in a New York accent.
It’s the voice of the greatest of urban metropolises that enunciates that great line from Just Like a Woman — “I was hungry and it was your world”.
How could he dare to write with that kind of plainness and that kind of grandeur? And how could he create such an opalescent, allusive and elusive thing as the side-long, 11-minute Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands? Perhaps it’s an image of the eternally mourning woman, widowed by life: “And your magazine-husband who one day just had to go” — as much a transcendence of the popular culture it plays on as the very greatest of Warhol.
And that’s the trick with Dylan: he inhabits the form of an idiom he is re-creating. He sounds grounded in the deepest folk tradition yet the inimitable voice is the voice of something that a lifetime ago was a form of rock ’n’ roll. Think of the stately ravaged opening of Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues:“When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez / And it’s Easter time, too / And your gravity fails / And negativity don’t pull you through …” It sounds pretentious to say this sounds like Baudelaire, but it does.
Dylan’s idiom — a language that was at once streetwise and capable of literary reference — also had extraordinary emotional range. Think of the blistering invective of Positively 4th Street and then place it against the lyricism of Love Minus Zero/No Limit (“My love she speaks like silence / Without ideals or violence / She doesn’t have to say she’s faithful / Yet she’s true, like ice, like fire …”) There’s a dazzling simplicity in that but the juxtaposition of “ideals” and “violence” is completely new in the world of popular music.
The times were a-changing and there’s a symbolic sense in which Dylan changed them. Quite early on he could write a song such as The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll that had as its refrain “But you who philosophise disgrace and criticise all fears” where “philosophise” is used in the sense of rationalise but the upshot has a Shakespearean effect; it’s as if Dylan bypasses ordinary literary language to create a kind of sung poetry shorn of artifice.
And it’s there in the most lushly romantic and dreamy of Dylan’s songs, Mr Tambourine Man, perhaps the clearest example of why he is such a great songwriter, why he was once such a dazzling singer and why he is a poet.
In Ballad of a Thin Man Dylan derides someone who has been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books and is described as having discussed lepers and crooks with great lawyers.
I once discussed Dylan with one of the world’s great literary critics, Christopher Ricks — the man who did the knockout edition of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and who wrote the knockdown defence of Milton against his modernist critics. Ricks is one of Dylan’s most formidable admirers. He believes that when you put Dylan’s words together with music, he is an extraordinary maker of worlds out of words.
Dylan created for the rock music of the baby boomer generation a poetic language equal to its hubris in thinking it could discover a new heaven and a new earth, that it could encompass a radical new politics and some kind of derangement of the senses that might open up a new spirituality.
It may be that all these things were delusions or potential traps, but the language he used to shape and shade them has outlasted its occasion. That’s why it speaks to the millennials. That’s why they’ll be there in droves to see the grand old man of rock who is also so much more.
Dylan changed the language in which we think and feel.
Decades ago I gave up rock music and tried my way with classical music. But Dylan’s words and music have never left my mind.
When we shore up the ruins of what we have made Western civilisation, how could he not have a high and mighty place? Who do we think could compare with him?
I’ve read a lot about Dylan, and Peter Craven’s article is excellent, but the thing is, no words seem aver to come anywhere near accurately describing what seems to be a very personal and unique relationship / interpretation each fan of Dylan has with his work.
Here are some of the comments posted in respnse to Craven’s piece:
You make sweeping statements of Dylan’s relevance and output in the context of “decades ago I gave up rock music”. Making your critique of the greatest singer/songwriter’s career output rather shallow. “Tried my way with classical music” – good for you! In my experience, and in my own case, Dylan goes deep and has produced extraordinary work over decades, because of his singing and phrasing. The emotion, uniqueness and genius of his singing. Unfortunately his live voice has been off badly, imo, for about a decade now. The man is genius but it isn’t because of the songwriting. He should never have received a Nobel for Lit, that’s says more about the self important (why do we give it so much attention?) Nobel Academy than anything else. Dylan is rock n rolls greatest and most influential singer songwriter by a million miles. He is steep in rock, country, blues, folk and Americana. How predictable we get another tired article in a broadsheet newspaper misunderstandings & representing Dylan and from someone who “gave up Rock decades ago”. Why give up rock? And gave it up for classical, how worthy!!
He also wrote two of the most vicious put- down songs ever: “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Positively Fourth Street”.
Have seen him three times – each time was different. Would see him again. Love the fact that he constantly reinvents his classics and always has a sensational group of musicians with him. This concert is no exception – his piano playing is standout.
Dylan, in centuries to come, will not be so much seen as a singer song writer, but a written history of humans of the western world of the 20th century. Sent from the future to document and capture a deep understanding of the soul of humanity.
You get the impression of Dylan as an almost unsurpassed songwriter but reluctant performer, due to the brilliant cover versions of his songs. Think of Hendrix with All Along the Watchtower, Peter Paul and Mary with Too Much of Nothing (and Blowin’ in the Wind), Manfred Mann with Just Like a Woman and You Angel You, Bryan Ferry with A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, and UB40 with I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight.
l And you might add Simon and Garfunkel’s repertoire…The Sounds of Silence, Bridge Over Troubled Waters, and more thought-generating songs.
@Peter “reluctant performer”!!. No one in the history of rock n roll anywhere near is level of fame and influence has performed as many times. He is engaged in the “Never Ending Tour” that has been going essentially non-stop for two decades! Performance is the absolute essence of who and what Dylan is.
At 76 years of age I loved the good music of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Occasionally I would hear the radio commentator, mention the name Bob Dylan but that was it. Never knew his songs or was ever interested in them.
He’s my favourite songwriter of all time and undoubtedly a genius, but I gave up on his concerts years ago. There seemed little point when he’d be half way into a song before I could actually (sort of) recognise it. I’ll stick to my record collection – and there are quite a few stinkers in there too – and memories of the great concerts.
I don’t agree with much that Peter Fitzsimmons says, but he called Dylan an impressionist and I think that is the best description of him.
No mention of “Lay lady Lay”. my favourite love song. ” whatever colours you have in your mind, I’ll show them to you, you’ll see them shine” Of course ” lay across my big brass bed” is not too shabby either.
His concerts have been unattendable for 30 years. Still a genius.
He may well be a good poet and songwriter. I agree with Bob Rogers, he should leave performing to others.
f only van Gogh painted like da Vinci, imagine how much better his paintings would be!
Losing Earth – the decade we almost stopped climate change
August 9, 2018 August 9, 2018 Paul Hemphill 1 Comment
“Thirty years ago, we had a chance to save our planet. Almost nothing stood in our way – except ourselves”.
The New York Times recently devoted its weekly magazine to one article only, a lengthy feature by American novelist and essayist Nathaniel Rich.
Losing Earth is a historical narrative of the years 1979 to 1989, a decade when humankind first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of global warming and climate change. Complementing the text is a series of aerial photographs and videos taken over the past year by George Steinmetz. The article is based on 18 months of reporting and well over a hundred interviews. It tracks the efforts of a small group of American scientists, activists and politicians to raise the alarm and stave off catastrophe.
It will come as a revelation to understand how thoroughly they grasped the problem and how close they came to solving it.
As early as the mid ‘sixties, American scientists and intelligence experts were warning how increasing carbon emissions and what Rich describes as “the unwitting weaponisation of the weather” could alter weather patterns and wreak famine, drought and economic collapse. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee was its published its executive report on carbon dioxide warned of the rapid melting of Antarctica, rising seas, increased acidity of fresh waters — changes that would require no less than a coordinated global effort to forestall. In 1974, during Richard Nixon’s presidency, the C.I.A. issued a classified report on the carbon-dioxide problem. It concluded that climate change had begun around 1960 and had “already caused major economic problems throughout the world.” The future economic and political impacts would be “almost beyond comprehension.”
It was recognised that unless coal production and use was phased out and fossil fuel combustion dramatically reduced, the world was careering toward an existential crisis. And the all important questions were asked: Could the global warming trend be reversed? Was there time to act? How would a global commitment to cease burning fossil fuels come about,? And, crucially, who had the power to make such a thing happen?
The ritual repeated itself every few years. Industry scientists, at the behest of their corporate bosses, reviewed the problem and found good reasons for alarm and better excuses to do nothing. Why should they act when almost nobody within the United States government — nor, for that matter, within the environmental movement — seemed worried?
Why take on an intractable problem that would not be detected until this generation of employees was safely retired? Worse, the solutions seemed more punitive than the problem itself. Historically, energy use had correlated to economic growth — the more fossil fuels we burned, the better our lives became. Why mess with that?
In July 1883, National Academy of Sciences commissioned a 500 page report, ‘Changing Clinate’. Things were dire but there should be caution and not panic. Better to wait and see. Better to bet on American ingenuity to save the day. Yes, the climate would change, mostly for the worst, but future generations would be better equipped to change with it. America had solved every existential problem it had confronted over the previous generation; it would not be daunted by an excess of carbon dioxide.
The Washington Post called this “clarion calls to inaction”, loud-sounding nothing’s which the administration and the fossil-fuel industry willingly bought into.
Whilst acknowledging the phenomenon, scientists, politicians and fossil industry executives argued about the urgency and the means. President Reagan indeed appeared determined to reverse the environmental achievements of Jimmy Carter, before undoing those of Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy and, if he could get away with it, Theodore Roosevelt.
Because of the lag between cause and effect, it was unlikely that humankind would detect hard evidence of warming until it was too late to reverse it. At a congressional hearing in 1982, Melvin Calvin, a Berkeley chemist who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the carbon cycle, said that it was useless to wait for stronger evidence of warming. The time for action was past … “It is already later than you think.”
Three decades ago, the problem was recognized by scientists, industrial leaders and politicians of all parties. But then, it was if a stupid bomb dropped. As Rich writes in his epilogue, “Everyone knew — and we all still know. We know that the transformations of our planet, which will come gradually and suddenly, will reconfigure the political world order. We know that if we don’t act to reduce emissions, we risk the collapse of civilization. We also know that, without a gargantuan intervention, whatever happens will be worse for our children, worse yet for their children and even worse still for their children’s children, whose lives, our actions have demonstrated, mean nothing to us”.
Can we turn things around? The prognosis is not an optimistic one. It would appear that human beings, whether in global organizations, democracies, industries, political parties or as individuals, are incapable of sacrificing present convenience to forestall a penalty imposed on future generations. “ … we have trained ourselves, whether culturally or evolutionarily, to obsess over the present, worry about the medium term and cast the long term out of our minds, as we might spit out a poison”.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html
For more on our environment in In That Howling Infinite, see The Return of the Forest Wars; Tolkiens’s Tarkeeth – Images of Isengard: and Tolkien’s Tarkeeth – In the darkest depths of Mordor
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The Haridopolos Fumble
Florida has a hotly contested Senate race for 2012, in which several Republican candidates are competing for the opportunity to knock off sitting Democrat Bill Nelson. One of the candidates is Mike Haridopolos, currently the President of the State Senate. His campaign website presents him as “a conservative reformer who has transformed government in Florida,” and is “deeply concerned for the future of our nation.” He has an impressive list of legislative accomplishments, and won the support of Mike Huckabee, who called him part of “a new generation of proven fiscal and social conservative leaders.”
This makes Haridopolos’ disastrous performance on an Orlando radio show this week all the more puzzling and disappointing. The host, Ray Junior, asked how Haridopolos would vote on Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform proposals. This is a question with particular importance for a Florida politician, given the state’s high population of senior citizens, and their tendency to take the responsibility of voting very seriously.
Haridopolos stammered his way through a series of nine non-answers, prompting the frustrated host to throw him off the show.
Haridopolos was good enough to give Ryan credit for “having an honest discussion about how we balance the budget long-term,” and seemed to agree with some of the major features of Ryan’s proposal, such as leaving Medicare as-is for existing beneficiaries. Then he said he doesn’t think Ryan’s plan should be “the one at the end of the day,” although “it has a lot of merit.”
It’s hard to tell, because the entire response is a dense pile of inert boilerplate, clearly intended to evade a question Haridopolos was not prepared to answer. You can hear him performing long-form political division out loud, like a student faced with a tough math quiz he didn’t study for.
He tries to back away from the question by declaring “I’m not going to get into that today.” Sorry, but you have to get into that today. It’s one of the most important questions facing Americans. Hitting the campaign trail without clear positions on the Ryan budget and his Medicare reforms is simply not acceptable. Directing voters to check out your web site later, for a more detailed answer prepared at leisure, is not acceptable.
The Ryan plan enjoys the overwhelming support of the Republican Party. Democrats are using scare tactics to twist it into a weapon against every Republican candidate in every state. Paul Ryan has stepped out front and center to answer these scurrilous tactics, becoming a tireless defender of the plan 235 Republican members of the House went on the record to support with their votes. Every 2012 candidate owes it to Ryan to present a comprehensive rationale for opposing his plan, along with a detailed alternative proposal. It has to be something you care about enough to discuss fluently during major radio interviews.
Barack Obama and the Democrats will destroy Medicare, utterly and finally, by riding it into the ground like the bomb in Dr. Strangelove. Every GOP candidate should be ready to explain precisely what he will do to stop them. In Florida, Senate candidate Adam Hasner has embraced the Ryan plan, while George LeMieux says he would have voted “yes” in an up-or-down vote on Ryan’s proposals, but has his own preferred reforms. Agree or not, those are answers, not evasions.
Haridopolos eventually got around to posting a more coherent answer on his website, which he bills as the “Mike Haridopolos Statement on Protecting Florida Seniors.” In this statement, he applauds Ryan’s “leadership in actually putting forth a plan to tackle the deficit,” and says he supports “almost every provision of the Ryan Plan,” but “believes it must be amended to provide greater protections for seniors.” Greater than leaving Medicare untouched for every current beneficiary? What would such “protections” be? He doesn’t say, and that’s just not good enough.
Rep. Weiner Can’t Even Come to His Own Defense
Romney Declares
Written By John Hayward
John Hayward began his blogging career as a guest writer at Hot Air under the pen name "Doctor Zero," producing a collection of essays entitled Doctor Zero: Year One. He is a great admirer of free-market thinkers such as Arthur Laffer, Milton Friedman, and Thomas Sowell. He writes both political and cultural commentary, including book and movie reviews. An avid fan of horror and fantasy fiction, he has produced an e-book collection of short horror stories entitled Persistent Dread. John is a former staff writer for Human Events. He is a regular guest on the Rusty Humphries radio show, and has appeared on numerous other local and national radio programs, including G. Gordon Liddy, BattleLine, and Dennis Miller.
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Tag: Brain (Page 1 of 5)
By chasmmogamy
Many cells can reproduce but there are a few types of cells that are not able to reproduce. One of these types are nerve cells, the cells that cary messages from your brain to your body. There are many ways nerve cells can be destroyed or damaged, by trauma or drug use. Millions of people are effected by losing nerve cells and for so long no one could think of a way to recreate them; until the discovery of stem cells.
After fertilization, and when the newly formed zygote is growing, it is made up of a sack of cells. Some of these cells are stem cells which develop according to their environment. Because of the behavior of stem cells, scientists theorized that if they placed stem cells in the brain or spinal chord, two areas that have an abundance of neurons, the stem cells would turn into a neuron because of the environment it was in. But, when they tried introducing stem cells into the body, the immune system treated them as an foreign body, as it should. Our immune system has to treat anything that does not come from our body as an enemy or we could get extremely sick. However, the downside is organ transplants, blood transfusions, etc. are dangerous because they could cause a serious immune rejection.
Someone experiencing a spleen transplant rejection
Cells have a surface protein that displays molecular signals to identify if it is self or foreign. Removing the protein causes NK (natural killer) cells to target the cell as foreign. Scientist haven’t been able to figure out how to make a foreign cell not seem foreign until Lewis Lanier, chair of UCSF’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and his team found a surface protein that, when added to the cell, did not cause any immune response. The idea would be to use CRISPR/cas9 to edit the DNA of the stem cells, and in doing so would remove the code for the current surface protein and add the code for the new surface protein.
After the scientists had edited the stem cells, to have the correct signal protein, they released them into a mouse and observed that there was no immune rejection. Truly amazing. Maybe brain damage could be helped by this science one day. Tell me your thoughts on Stem Cells in the comments!
For more information, please go check out the primary source of this article.
Going into the Brain with CRISPR
By michaelcondria
CRISPR is a relatively new tool that allows the editing of genomes via cutting and editing through the Cas-9 protein. There are unlimited opportunities and potential with this tool, and scientists are seeing the capability of CRISPR on rat brains.
Despite the advances of CRISPR, it is still difficult to work on central nervous system. Yet, scientists are working on the expression of the genes of rats involved in learning and memory, plasticity, and neuronal development. This technique paves the way for researchers to probe genetic influences on brain health and disease in model organisms that more closely resemble human conditions.
CRISPR is important in the field of neuroscience because it helps scientists understand brain development and neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s. According to Harvard, CRISPR is the perfect technology to figure out if disrupting certain genes causes neurological disorders like OCD and autism.
In my opinion, the first step of understanding CRISPR’s effects on the mind is to test it out on similar, but less developed brains like rat brains. I do believe that CRISPR is the future of medicine and understanding the brain further and I can’t wait to work with this incredible piece of technology.
Using CRISPR to target neurons
By alanine
A rat brain stained with protein and DNA.
Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham have successfully used CRISPR to target neurons. With their novel approach, the team led by Jeremy Day was able to manipulate the function of neurons in vivo.
CRISPR, a self-defense system for bacteria against viral invaders, has become a very popular gene editing tool, as it allows researchers to make very targeted changes to an organism’s DNA. Normally using CRISPR-Cas9, the process involves a piece of guide RNA guiding Cas9 to the desired gene where it cuts it, rendering the gene inexpressible.
However, Day’s team used a different CRISPR mechanism, CRISPRa, which increases the expression of the desired gene. For their CRISPRa, they used CRISPR-dCas9, a CRISPR system with a deactivated Cas9, to which they attached transcriptional effectors. This allowed the guide RNA to guide the transcriptional effectors to a particular gene so it could be up-regulated, increasing its expression. In focusing on neurons, Day’s team targeted the promoter sequence for SYN genes, a common group of genes in the brain that code for proteins that regulate neurotransmitters, and designed their guide RNA accordingly.
After injecting their effector-coupled dCas9 system into live rats using viral hosts, the desired genes were successfully up-regulated, with the researchers viewing their new protein products after the fact through fluorescent markers in cell samples. Following this achievement, Day and his team expanded their CRISPR-dCas9 system, incorporating multiple guide RNAs into a single system to target multiple sections of DNA at the same time and using it analyze the complex Bdnf gene that has multiple promoters and plays a core role in brain function and development.
This innovative approach to targeting genes in the brain has far-reaching applications, allowing for versatile gene editing in live animals, which, in the words of Vanderbilt Brain Institute researcher Erin Calipari, “is going to give us an unprecedented view of the role of gene expression in behavior”.
From psychology to physiology and beyond, there is no doubt that this discovery’s molecular insight will give us a far greater understanding of the brain.
Loneliness Is Bad For The Brain
By holmesosapiens
This new study from the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia suggests that loneliness can have quite an impact on the brain. The study is based on the effects of social isolation on mice. The mice were raised together where they could play with each other and form social ties. Then they were separated from each other for months on end. The results were quite interesting.
Cross Section of Mouse Brain
After about a month of isolation, the mice developed more “spines” on their dendrites. This is peculiar because this development would usually happen as a response to a positive stimulus. The researchers theorize that the brain is trying to save itself from the loneliness. But this effort is not long lived. After three months of isolation, the brain returns to baseline levels of neural activity. The brain also has reduced amounts of a protein called BDNF, responsible for neural growth. They also found increased amounts of the stress hormone cortisol. Lonely mice also had more broken DNA than their socialite counterparts.
Although it is not known how the results of this study can relate to the brains of humans it may shed some light into the lesser known effects of loneliness on the brain. It also brings into question the effect incarceration could have on a person long term and whether or not it could be more harmful than rehabilitating. What do you think about this study? What could the results of a similar test on humans yield?
Can a Fox Be Your New Pet?
By eseffiegus
The big difference between your dog and a wild animal is the relationship that it has with humans. For example, both dogs and foxes come from the canidae family, however foxes are generally scared of humans while dogs are “ a man’s best friend”. So why is the fox’s response drastically different than a dogs?
Scientists may have figured it out. The study was originally started in Russia where a scientist wanted to see if he could domesticate foxes like people had domesticated dogs. He started to breed silver foxes with domestic traits: ones that were more tamed and friendlier towards humans. But at the same time he also bred foxes that were aggressive to humans in order to make an aggressive breed of foxes. He then started to compare the two breeds as the generations went on. He studied only 10 generations but 50 generations of silver foxes later Cornell did a study on the same foxes.
Cornell studied the tamed foxes’ brains in comparison to the fox’s brain that were aggressive towards humans. The scientist obtained brain tissue samples from 12 tamed foxes and 12 aggressive foxes looking for differences between the two brains. The particular part of the brain they studied was the prefrontal cortex and basal forebrain which are known for processing more complex information. The prefrontal cortex processes social behavior and personality expression, while the basal forebrain is a critical component to processing memories. The neurotransmitters from those regions were what the researchers mostly focused on. In particular, they focused specifically on the neurotransmitters that release dopamine and serotonin in the foxes brains which are responsible for feelings of happiness because they trigger the pleasure center of the brain.
Through the study of the neurotransmitters, the researchers found that genes from these sections of the brain from the tamed foxes were altered through the breeding of the foxes but not the ones that they expected. The variant genes in fact coded for alterations in the function of the serotonergic neurons and the glutaminergic neurons. Those neurons coincide with learning and memory. This shows that tamed animals learn and memorize differently than their aggressive equals. Now that we know this do you scientists through genetic modifications will be able to tame or domesticate any animal by simply changing a gene in their brain?
The More You Sit, The More You Forget!
By cytocourtnesis
Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles recently discovered a linkage between the memory of middle to older aged adults and their sedentary behaviors, actions that require little energy like sitting or lying down.
They concluded that long periods of sitting, like at a desk chair, affects the specific region of the brain that is involved in creating new memories, the medial temporal lobe. The UCLA researchers closely studied 35 people ages 45 to 75 years old, documenting their physical activity for two weeks prior to and during the study. After the three months of research, they used a high resolution MRI scan and quickly noticed similarities between the thickness of each adult’s medial temporal lobe who spent on average the same amount of hours sitting everyday. The more hours spent sitting, regardless of any physical activity, the more thin the medial temporal lobe. “The participants reported that they spent from 3 to 7 hours, on average, sitting per day. With every hour of sitting each day, there was an observed decrease in brain thickness, according to the study. ”
Even though the findings of this study are preliminary, it suggests that “reducing sedentary behavior may be a possible target for interventions designed to improve brain health in people at risk for Alzheimer’s disease.” Becoming more active is always a great thing, but becoming conscious of how much time you spend being inactive and working to decrease that, could help you out more than you think. There is still more research to be done on this matter but this is a step in the right direction for improving life for those with memory related diseases and improving overall brain health.
To read more check out the full article here!
The Science Behind Decision Making!
By gambinoacid
I consider myself, like most people, to be extremely indecisive. I also do not do very well when I find myself in stressful last minute decision making scenarios. A study done proves that it has to do with science!! According to a study done at Johns Hopkins University, it has been concluded that last-minute decision making and changing your mind is a complicated neural process involving complex neural coordination and communication among multiple brain areas.
Photo Credit: Affen Ajlfe (www.modup.net/)
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, (a technique that monitors brain activity in real time), the research group found that changing your mind about a decision requires ultrafast communication between specific zones of the prefrontal cortex and a region of your brain called the frontal eye field. The frontal eye field is involved in controlling eye movements and visual awareness. The study found that the longer a decision takes to make, the longer it is held in the brain, and therefore the harder it is to reverse. This means that we are less likely to change our minds about a decision we have thought long and hard about.
Kitty Xu, the leader of experiment says “If we change our mind about pressing the gas pedal even a few milliseconds after the original “go” message has been sent to our muscles, we simply can’t stop. If we change our minds within roughly 100 milliseconds of making a decision, we can successfully revise our plans. If we wait more than 200 milliseconds, however, we may be unable to make the desired change—”. This finding is used to explain why sometimes, with age, adults are more likely to fall. As we age, our neural communicators slow which contributes to a message not reaching our muscles, or elsewhere fast enough to change our behavior.
The study’s next goal was to identify the brain regions involved in canceling a decision entirely. Participants took part in a fMRI and were instructed to watch a screen and stare at a black dot when it appeared. After focusing on the black dot, a colored dot would appear. The addition of a new stimulus caused the participants to abandon the original directed plan. The researchers watched on the fMRI which parts of the brain lit up during the decision making step to disregard the directions and look at the new dot. They found the prefrontal cortex and the frontal eye fields were the most active brain regions.
Xu hopes that these insights on how difficult it is for the brain to quickly change original plans can eventually lead researchers to find a way to lead us, specifically seniors, to safer decision making!
The Human Brain vs. Chimpanzee Brains – The TH Gene
By bloomteria
Well let’s start off with, what is the TH gene? The TH gene is a “protein encoded by this gene is involved in the conversion of tyrosine to dopamine. It is the rate-limiting enzyme in the synthesis of catecholamines, hence plays a key role in the physiology of adrenergic neurons.” How does this even relate to human and chimpanzee brains?
However, here’s a little background to the dimensions of the human brain compared to the chimpanzee brain. Modern humans share about 95% of their genetic code with chimpanzees. Yet, human brains are three times larger, have many more cells, and would therefore have more processing power than a chimpanzee. Does this mean chimpanzees do not function as efficiently as the human brain or are there just some areas a human brain can be efficient on better as for the chimpanzee brain as well ?
According to two researchers from Yale University, Ying Zhu and André Sousa, TH was found highly expressed in human neocortex, but absent from chimpanzee neocortex. Sousa states, “The neocortical expression of this gene was most likely lost in a common ancestor and reappeared in the human lineage.” Since the gene is absent from the chimpanzee cortex, does this mean that they do not produce any dopamine? Do chimpanzees produce dopamine in a different way?
At the end of the day, we can conclude that human and chimpanzee brains do have a vast majority of similarities. Alternatively, there are certain aspects to the chimpanzee and human brain that allow us to differentiate the two and continue to allow for extensive research in such fields. I challenge you to discover something specific about the human brain and chimpanzee brain that are both extremely similar and different. What will you discover next?
Is Sleep Important?
By chiangreaction
Photoshop by Bryce Martin from google images.
The next time you decide to stay up at night to play video games or to watch Netflix, you might want to think twice!
Having enough sleep is essential to living a productive and healthy life. Without it, you will suffer in many ways. Sleep does not only make your body tired, but it also makes your brain cells tired. Sleep deprivation slows down brain function, which can result in mental lapses and loss of memory. Lack of sleep will cause the body’s neurons to slow down and not function as they should.
A study done by Dr. Itzhak Fried, professor of neurosurgery at UCLA, showed just how harmful sleep deprivation is.
To study the effects of deprivation, Fried recruited 12 patients with epilepsy, who already had electrodes implanted in their brains from a surgery unrelated to this study. These electrodes gave researchers access to their individual brain cells.
The people in the study stayed up for an entire night. During this time, the researchers measured the participants’ brain activity as they performed different tasks. For example, the patients were asked to categorize various images of faces, places and animals as fast as possible. Each image created a unique pattern of electrical activity in the brain. Specifically, the researchers focused on cell activity in the temporal lobe, which regulates visual perception and memory.
The researchers found that as the patients stayed up longer, they became more tired, and it became more challenging for them to categorize the images. Their brain cells were clearly beginning to slow down.
The results also showed that the people staying up all night were going through mental lapses because sleep deprivation affected different parts of the brain. For all of these people, parts of their brains were turned off even though the other parts were fully functional.
Fried’s research, in addition to other studies, proves that sleep deprivation is similar to being drunk. Insufficient sleep exerts a similar influence on our brains as drinking too much. Lack of sleep can prohibit people from doing many things such as driving safely. People who are tired are not as alert and cannot react and adapt to their surrounding environment. Kids cannot focus in school and participate in extracurricular activities without enough sleep. Kids will be putting their education at risk if they do not sleep.
Is the extra hour of Netflix really worth it? Absolutely…NOT.
Sleep is one thing that should never be sacrificed.
Clock Change is Actually Great For Your Brain!
By yurogenital
November this year, our clocks went back an hour, which accelerated the arrival or darker evenings and seemingly “shorter days”. It doesn’t actually make the days any shorter, in merely just shifted an hour of available daylight from the evening to the morning. Most people take lighter evenings as a priority over lighter mornings, arguments are always made over the benefits for easier travel in lighter evenings from clock changes. However, research suggests that holding onto lighter mornings could give more advantages. Having light in the morning, instead of any other time of the day, leads significant brain-boosting results. In fact, it helps us to function much better.
Credit: Attribution license: Porsche Brosseau
All living animals and plants on Earth revolve their lives around the 24-hour cycle of light and dark. For humans, we desire to sleep during the dark night, and our bodies are honed to environmental light via a biological chain reaction.
We, humans, detect light intensity by special cells in the retina, then the information is relayed to the internal body clock in the brain, called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. It is in the hypothalamus (which uses the endocrine system to regulate internal body processes), which is linked to hormone secretion, through the pituitary gland. These light messages’ job is to internalize information about light intensity in the surrounding environment.
The chain reaction continues with the brain driving the secretion of the hormone cortisol for a specific time of the day, it is in low levels in the dark and high levels in the light. Cortisol is a very important hormone that has very dramatic effects on the human brain and body. The cortisol is also known as the “Stress hormone” that keeps us healthy through its 24-hour pattern.
The cortisol awakening response(CAR) occurs the first 30 minutes of waking up, it is a strong burst in cortisol secretion. The lighter the mornings, the bigger the CAR. Which directly results in a better functioning brain throughout the day. In an experiment, people who have greater seasonal depression, stress, anxiety and lower arousal exhibited the lowest winter CARs. But when they are exposed to artificial light during their awakenings, their CAR was restored. Thus proving that morning light is the most effective treatment for the winter blues.
Other research has also shown that CAR in the morning is directly linked to better brain plasticity, better goal-setting, decision-making and executive function.
The burst of cortisol secretion in the morning sweeps throughout the entire body where it is recognized by receptors on all body cells. The receptors then generate the biological chain reaction to allow us to function better for the day ahead. A lack of light in the morning can make us feel not functioning fully, and an exposure to light in the morning is extremely beneficial.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-clocks-changing-are-great-for-your-brain/
Potential New Treatment Strategy for Brain Cancer!
By morganisms
Cancer is a disease characterized by the up-regulation of cell growth and it usually develops when normal cells are not able to repair damaged genetic material. New studies are revealing insights into the function of genetic mutations commonly found in a form of brain cancer, specifically the IDH mutation. Isocitrate Dehydrogenase(IDH) is a metabolic enzyme found in more than 70% of low grade gliomas and secondary glioblastomas, types of malignant brain tumors. In a normal cell, IDH enzymes help to break down nutrients and generate energy cells. When mutated, IDH creates a molecule that alters cells genetic programming and instead of maturing, the cell remain primitive. Studies have shown that cells holding this mutation also have an impaired ability to repair DNA. Strangely enough, low grade gliomas that have the IDH mutation are typically more sensitive to chemotherapy than those that lack the mutation. Why does this occur? We still don’t really know the answer. Yet, researchers have discovered a potential new treatment option for the glial cells harvesting the IDH mutation– PARP Inhibitors. A super cool future is waiting ahead.
When treating the IDH mutated cells with PARP Inhibitors, a substance in the form of a drug that blocks an enzyme called PARP, the cells were effectively killed. When the drug blocks PARP, it keeps the cancer cells from repairing their damaged DNA, and eventually they die off. The cells are extremely sensitive after the effects of the inhibitors, especially after taking the most common PARP drug called oliparib. PARP inhibitors are a form of targeted therapy–meaning the inhibitors work within a similar approach as radiation and chemotherapy– they simply damage or prevent the repair the DNA. Researchers have also found the up regulation of the unusual molecule called 2-HG(2-Hydroxyl-glutarate) within the IDH mutated enzymes. In a study with Dr. Brinda’s team at Yale, they found that 2-HG may be responsible for the defect, DNA repair inabilities, in these cells. When the production of 2-HG was blocked in these cells, the DNA repair defect was reversed and cells became unresponsive to the PARP inhibitor treatment. This finding further solidifies that PARP inhibitors may be the best new effective brain cancer treatment method. What do you think? I think this is pretty cool news!
Low grade glioma MRI scan. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
There are also many clinical trials occurring currently to observe 2-HG as a definite IDH biomarker for cells that are sensitive to treatment with PARP inhibitors. In addition, labs are also designing a clinical trial of olaparib and temozolomide, two PARB inhibitor drugs, in patients with low-grade gliomas. The results of these trials, are for sure going to make headlines within the Biology and Medical field! Even though, there are still many questions to answers and studies to conduct regarding brain cancer and the IDH mutation, we are definitely on the right track to cure the monster a.k.a “cancer.”
New Research Shows Possible Early Diagnosis of Autism
By carolenzyme
Normally autism in children is diagnosed at around ages two or three but studies have been done to try to predict autism before behavioral symptoms occur. University of North Carolina partnered with other universities to experiment with MRI machines to see if they could diagnose autism earlier than 24 months (2 years)
Autism is a big problem in our country and the rest of the world. About 3 million people have autism in the United States and millions more throughout the world. The study focused on hyper-expansion of brain surface area in children of 6-12 months of age. According to this article “Brain overgrowth was tied to the emergence of autistic social deficits in the second year.” They found that 8 out of 10 kids with a hyper-expanded brain as well as an autistic sibling would be diagnosed with autism in the future.
The fact that MRI’s can show enlarged surface area of the brain at such a young age is important in predicting whether or not a child will be later diagnosed with autism. This is an important experiment because if doctors can predict autism before symptoms occur there may be ways for them to intervene with brain growth before a child’s brain permanently has autism and behavioral changes occur at 24 months.
8 Genes That May Be Affecting Your Sleep Patterns
By ambinoacids
Have you ever wondered why you struggle to fall asleep at night, while your sibling has no issues sleeping soundly for eight hours? What causes your sleep patterns? While your sleep may occasionally be affected by a particularly stressful event, leading to irregular sleep patterns, for
While your sleep may occasionally be affected by a particularly stressful event, leading to irregular sleep patterns, for many, it is simply caused by the way their brains and bodies work. New research has identified for the first time eight specific genes that are linked to insomnia or excessive daytime sleepiness. The data also revealed that some of the genes associated with disturbed sleep identified in this study seemed to be linked to certain metabolic and neuropsychiatric diseases too, like restless leg syndrome, schizophrenia, and obesity.
Richa Saxena, one of the co-authors and assistant professor of anaesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard medical school, explained why this research was so important: while “it was previously known that sleep disturbances may co-occur with many diseases in humans, but it was not known that there are shared genetic components that contribute both to sleep problems and these conditions.” Furthermore, while studies have previously identified genes linked to some sleep disorders, this is the first study that has specifically linked genes to insomnia.
Link to Original Image
The study looked at the prevalence of insomnia, sleep problems and excessive daytime sleepiness in 112,586 European adults who had participated in a UK Biobank study. All participants had their genes mapped, as well as additional information like weight and diseases/chronic conditions. The results revealed fascinating linkages between certain genes. For example, the genes linked to insomnia were most strongly related to those associated with restless legs syndrome, insulin resistance, and depression, while the genes associated with excessive daytime sleepiness were also linked to obesity. Saxena remarked again that “it was not known until this study that there are shared genetic components- shared underlying biological pathways- that contribute to both sleep problems and these shared conditions.”
Of course, this study is not 100% conclusive- people who have trouble sleeping are not necessarily at higher risk for restless legs syndrome, schizophrenia, and obesity. In reality, it is likely that many different genes contribute to both sleep problems and these medical problems, Saxena said. But this new study does suggest that these problems share genes and underlying pathways.
So what does this research do for the average person? Well, not much. Right now, it’s just fascinating news that there may be a genetic reason people with these disorders are more likely to have troubled sleep. However, there is hope that in the future researchers will be able to design and test various drugs to target these genes. This would bring immense benefits to people who struggle to keep normal sleep patterns, as well as helping individuals proactively avoid diseases they may be more at risk for (for example, obesity).
Thylacine Brain Structure Reveals Predatory Lifestyle
By claireoplast
The thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian Tiger, was the largest carnivorous marsupial of modern times. Native to Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea, the thylacine quickly went extinct at the start of the twentieth century, following an increase of demand for its pelts. The last known thylacine died in 1936, in Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania, and little is known about the species’ natural behavior. New research however, gives humans a better glimpse into brains and programming behind one of Australia’s most fascinating predators.
Dr. Gregory Berns of Emory University and Dr. Ken Ashwell of the University of New South Wales scanned thylacine brains and reconstructed neural connections in an effort to better understand the specific functions of the thylacine brain and behavior. Only four surviving specimens of the brain exist, and their study gained access to two of them.
“One was provided by the Smithsonian Institution, taken from a male Tasmanian tiger after it died at the National Zoological Park in 1905. The other specimen, loaned to the researchers by the Australian Museum in Sydney, came from an animal that died during the 1930s.”, claimed researchers.
They compared the structure of Thylacine brains to those of Tasmanian devils. The researchers found that the thylacine brains had larger caudate zones than the Tasmanian devil brains. This suggests that thylacines devoted more of their brains to complex thinking, particularly action planning and decision making.
These findings match with what we know of the two animals. Tasmanian devils are known to be scavengers while thylacines were hunters. The neural rewiring done by the researchers provides anecdotal evidence that thylacines occupied a more complex predatory brain than their scavenger cousin, the Tasmanian devil.
These findings are fascinating because they give us new information regarding an animal less than 100 years extinct. It’s seems strange that we had never gathered much information about the thylacine prior to its extinction. However, the resurgence in fascination and curiosity about the animal is exciting to see. Hopefully new research and discoveries will be made in the near future, shedding more light on the thylacines life.
Source Article: http://www.sci-news.com/biology/thylacine-brain-structure-04549.html
MRIs Catch Autism Prior to Symptoms
By dnaitza
Mark Lythgoe & Chloe Hutton / Wellcome Images Image Link
By using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), researchers are now able to accurately study and predict which infants, among those with older autistic siblings, will be diagnosed by the age of 2. According to an article on Science daily, in the past couple of years, researchers have correctly predicted 80 percent of these infants who would later meet criteria for autism at 24 months of age.
A study published in Nature, shows how early brain biomarkers can be very beneficial in identifying infants at the highest risk for autism prior to any symptoms. Joseph Piven, professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, explains how typically autism cannot be detected in infants until they ages 2-4, but for infants with autistic siblings, it can be determined at an earlier age.
People diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), experience social deficits and demonstrate very specific stereotypical behaviors. According to this study, it is estimated that one out of 68 children develop autism in the United States and that for infants with older siblings with autism, the risk may be as high as 20 out of every 100 births. Despite these high numbers, it remains a difficult task to detect behavioral symptoms prior to 24 months of age.
Piven, along with a couple of other researchers, conducted MRI scans of infants at six, 12, and 24 months of age. They discovered that increased growth rate of surface area in the first year of life was linked to increased growth rate of overall brain volume in the second year of life. This meant that brain overgrowth was tied to the emergence of autistic social deficits in the second year. The researchers then took the information they had and used a computer program that classified babies most likely to meet criteria for autism at 24 months of age, and developed an algorithm that they applied to a separate set of study participants.
The researchers found that there were brain differences at 6 and 12 months of age in infants with older siblings with autism and infants with older ASD siblings who did not meet criteria for autism at 24 months.
Plans for the Future
This research and test would be very beneficial to a family who already has a child with autism and has a second child who may or may not be affected. The ideal goal would be to intervene and provide as much assistance to the infant and family prior to the emergence of symptoms. By intervening at early stages and when the brain is most susceptible, researchers hope to improve the outcomes of treatment.
In the nature study, Piven describes how Parkinson’s and Autism are similar in that when the person is diagnosed, they’ve already lost a substantial portion of the dopamine receptors in their brain, making treatment less effective.
One mother who has benefitted from this discovery and is extremely grateful is Rachel O’Connor. When interviewed by News12, she shared how early intervention “has brought out some language in [her] daughter,” and how her daughter “can now say what she wants and she desires. She makes better eye contact.”
Mouse Gut Research Could Save Your Brain
By sarahtonin
A new study in mice published by Nature Magazine suggests that a specific microbial balance results in a reduction of brain damage after a stroke. The severity of a stroke is determined by two types of intestinal cells: Regulatory T Cells and Gamma Delta T Cells. Regulatory T cells have a helpful inflammatory effect. However, Gamma Delta T Cells make a cytokine which results in harmful post-stroke inflammation.
Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center studied two different groups of mice in order to learn if gut cells could be altered in order to reduce stroke severity. One group of mice had gut bacteria that was unaffected by antibiotics, while the other group of mice’s gut bacteria was extremely vulnerable to antibiotics. The group of mice that was vulnerable to antibiotics had a higher ratio of good Regulatory T Cells to harmful Delta T Cells.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murinae#/media/File:House_mouse.jpg
The researchers then induced strokes in all of the mice, and the brain damage was 60% less devastating in the mice vulnerable to antibiotics than the other group. In order to ensure that the difference in stroke severity was solely as a result of the gut bacteria, the researchers took the feces of the mice with reduced stroke severity, and transplanted it into new mice. Those new mice also exhibited a resistance to brain damage, confirming the belief that the gut bacteria was responsible for the change.
These new findings in the research of mice may be able to benefit humans in the future. Antibiotics or a specific diet may be able to reduce the effect of stroke on the brain. However, the gut microbiome of a mouse is vastly different than the gut microbiome of a human, so it may be a while before new treatments are discovered.
When in doubt go with your gut!
The human gut has trillions of bacteria that help to regulate digestion and break down food. An extremely important function they have is to keep out bad bacteria and potential harmful microbes. The gut is a very important part of the body, because it affects not only your digestion and metabolism, but your brain too!
Often called your “second brain,” the human gut plays a big role in a human’s life. The gut produces about 95% of serotonin, which is the drug that affects emotion. An experiment with mice was done to see the effect that their gut had on their brain activity.
Each mouse received antibiotics, consisting of neurochemicals that enhanced mood, and were observed after this change occurred in their gut. The mice became more energetic. The article mentioned that even changing an animal’s gut by one bacteria can change their mood. In this case altering one bacteria was tested which caused the mice to be more cautious than normal.
This article went in depth on how the bacteria in your gut can cause anxiety. “Bacteria communicate with the brain via the vagus nerve: When the vagus nerve is severed, effects of gut bacteria on brain biochemistry, stress response and behavior evaporate.” They then went on to discuss how someone’s brain can affect the human gut, which was extremely fascinating.
They first did tests with monkey’s and found that mothers who were exposed to loud noises during pregnancy caused their offspring to have less beneficial bacteria. Another experiment was done with students in which they gave stool samples during exam week. The results showed that their was less good bacteria in their gut, called lactobacilli.
In general the human gut plays a huge role on the brain and vice versa. Stay healthy, don’t stress too much over school because you never know what anxiety could be doing to the good bacteria in your gut!
I chose this article because I have stomach issues and had to go gluten free. I didn’t realize what goes into your gut had such a large effect on the brain!
Gut Microbes and the Brain
By goldgi
Neuroscientists are studying the idea that intestinal microbiota might influence brain development and behavior.
Neuroscientist Knickmeyer is looking to study 30 newborns and how they have grown into inquisitive, curious one-year olds through a series of behavioral and temperament tests. She is eager to see their faecal microbiota, bacteria, viruses and other microbes that live in their guts.
Studies of animals raised in sterile, germ-free conditions showed that these microbes in the gut influence behavior and can alter brain neurochemistry and physiology. Some research has drawn links with gut bacteria and their interactions with the brain.
Escherichia coli, a species of bacteria present in the human gut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora#/media/File:EscherichiaColi_NIAID.jpg
Gut Reactions
Prior to recent research, microbes and the brain have rarely been known to interact, with the exception of when pathogens penetrate the blood brain barrier. When they do, there can be intense effects. For example, the virus causing rabies elicits aggression, agitation and a fear of water. The idea that gut microbes could influence neurobiology was not ever thought of, but this is changing.
One research study showed that IBS lead to issues such as depression and anxiety. This lead scientists to wonder if psychiatric symptoms are driven by inflammation or a whacky microbiome caused by infection.
One 2011 study showed that germ-free mice were less-anxious than mice with indigenous microbes. These studies also showed that many of these behaviors are formed during a critical period during which microbes have their strongest effects. Another problem is that “germ-free” is an unnatural situation. However, it allows for researchers to learn which microbial functions are important for development of organs or cell types.
Chemical Exploration
Recent studies have found that gut microbes directly alter neurotransmitter levels, enabling their communication with neurons.
Scientists are also studying whether or not altered serotonin levels in the gut trigger a cascade of molecular events, therefore affecting brain activity.
In 2015 research showed that myelination can also be influenced by gut microbes, at least in a specific part of the brain. Germ-free mice are protected from some conditions, for example multiple sclerosis, because it is characterized by demyelination of nerve fibers. These scientists wish to use these studies to help humans who suffer from MS.
A Move to Therapy
Tracy Bale, a neuroscientist, sought to study how microbes of pregnant mothers affect their offspring. Maria Dominguez-Bello, microbiologist, wants to see if babies born through Caesarean sections end up with microbiota similar to babies born vaginally if they are swabbed on the mouth and skin with gauze taken from their mothers’ vaginas.
For Knickmeyer, the amygdala and prefrontal cortex are the brain areas that interest her the most in her studies with the newborn infants. This is because both of these areas have been affected by microbiota manipulations in rodent models. Something she is worried might affect the study is the confounding factors such as diet, home lives and environmental exposure.
Source: http://www.nature.com/news/the-tantalizing-links-between-gut-microbes-and-the-brain-1.18557
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/microbes-can-play-games-mind
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/healthline-/gut-bacteria-and-the-brai_b_11898980.html
Tickle, Tickle!
You might be wondering, why am I ticklish? Or, why do I laugh if somebody else tickles me, but not when I try to tickle myself? The mystery of ticklishness has been sought after for decades, including by Darwin and Aristotle.
A recent study tested ticklishness on rats, and the results were astonishing! The rats reacted to human tickles with ultrasonic “laughter cells” and emitted various calls. While many humans are most ticklish on their armpits and stomachs, rats were found to be most ticklish on their bellies and underneath their feet. They performed “joy jumps” after being tickled, which is a behavior associated with joyful subjects in various mammals.
Researchers continued searching for answers, and sought to discover how being ticklish relates to the brain and whether or not it is a trick of the brain that rewards interacting.
When researchers Shimpei Ishiyama and Michael Brecht investigated the response of the rat’s brain to tickling, they observed nerve cells that responded strongly to tickling and they found very similar responses during play behaviors as during tickling- even without the scientist touching the rat. These nerve cells also worked in reverse. For example, if the rats were made anxious, they were less ticklish and the activity in these cells were reduced. It was discovered that activity in the trunk somatosensory cortex is what led to ticklishness.
The discovery of the connection between brain responses to tickling and play was incredible.
Other Articles About This Topic:
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/10/501447965/brain-scientists-trace-rat-ticklishness-to-play-behavior
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/11/11/watch-rats-giggle-and-jump-for-joy-at-being-tickled/
Number of strokes increased in children!
Intel Free Press Image Link
According to new studies, strokes have been affecting younger generations more than ever. The average age for people having a first stroke has dropped from 71.1 in 2000 to 69.3 in 2012.What’s interesting is that in general, the number of strokes in the U.S. has actually gone down over the last few decades, according to Chengwei Li, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. However, Li’s study, shows that the rate of strokes in people under the age of 65 have not gone down, and that the rate of strokes in people under the age of 55 has actually increased.
According to a study on WebMD, it is in some ways easier to treat the younger patients affected. People who get to the hospital within 4 and a half hours of their episode, or attack, can receive a drug that breaks up the clot in the brain and restores the blood flow. However, studies have shown that this treatment is more likely to benefit younger patients opposed to elder patients. Although this may be the case, young adults and females in particular, are often not eligible for the treatment because they ignore early symptoms or wait until the symptoms get severe, before they seek help.
As stated in an article from Live Science and a journal from NCBI, the increase in stroke incidents at younger ages has great significance because strokes in younger patients carry out for a greater lifetime burden of disability.
While the total number of strokes in the U.S. has decreased, the number and severity of strokes in younger generations has increased. As a result, researchers, doctors, and medical staff continue to work together in order to seek ways to treat the newer generation of stroke patients.
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John Upperton
Hello, I’m John Upperton.
Thank you for visiting my website!
I was born in Thorpe Maternity Hospital, County Durham and was raised as the middle of three brothers in a colliery village called Murton (where incidentally, we had an olympic-sized swimming pool which was run by the NCB – many, many happy summers were spent there). Although not from a professional music family (my father was a miner and my mother had various jobs, including working in a bakery, a shop, doing a milk round and running a pub), I was encouraged, initially with piano lessons, by my parents, to develop an interest in music.
My music teacher in secondary school was inspirational and I also learned percussion and trumpet as a result.
Though always hankering for a career on the stage (I was a member of the local Amateur Operatic Society), I diverted and went to Liverpool University to do a Music Degree. This was an academic-weighted course, involving style and free composition as well has having to present a dissertation; my chosen subject was The Brecht/Weill collaborations of the 1920s. That, plus my time playing the organ in the Working Men’s Clubs in the North-east, proved to be a valuable training ground for my ultimate career.
After graduating, I took the plunge and moved to London where I spent four years as a post-graduate at the Royal College of Music and afterwards began to eke out a living as a singer and piano teacher, amongst other things. ‘Other things’ included TV extra work, lecturing in opera appreciation, conducting a choir and session singing.
My Purcell Room debut was in December 1999, singing Janáček’s Zápisník Zmizelého (‘The diary of one who disappeared’) for which I made a special study of the Czech language. 2004 saw my Queen Elizabeth Hall debut with Rossini’s Ermione in which I sang the role of Pirro (Chelsea Opera Group). The following year, I sang my first principal roles at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (Dom Antonio and 1st inquisitor) in a concert performance of Donizetti’s Dom Sébastien. I returned to sing Gherardo in Gianni Schicchi in 2009.
In the meantime, from 2002, I’ve been understudying major roles at English National Opera, including Gregor Makropulos Case, Hermann Queen of Spades, Walter The Passenger, Lazarus The Gospel according to the other Mary, Herod Salome and more. My current operatic repertoire can be found here.
As well as opera, I’m very active on the oratorio front and I return to choral societies all over the UK; I’ve sung the Verdi Requiem more than 30 times and a particular favourite is The Dream of Gerontius. My current oratorio repertoire can be found here.
Recital work plays a large part of my career and I sing music from Schubert to Strauss, Fauré to Duparc as well as songs by British, Russian and Czech composers, including having had the privilege of composers writing songs and song cycles for me. In 2013, with the pianist Joan Taylor, I took a recital programme of Czech song cycles and English songs to Domažlice in the Czech republic; I was the first non-Czech resident to perform there.
On the international front, I’ve also worked in Italy, France, Holland, Spain, Serbia, Greece, The UAE and Israel.
Broadly speaking, after a period of singing character roles in my early career, then specialising in high bel canto music for a number of years, my voice developed into that of a dramatic tenor as you will see from my current operatic repertoire list here. Although it’s somewhat frowned upon by the fach system, I do on occasion revisit Mozart, Bellini and Donizetti in order to keep my voice flexible and agile.
I have a passion for languages, and I speak and sing in Italian, French, German, Czech, Russian (in order of competence) and of course English. I reserve my Greek for holidays!
My hobbies, which are very much a part of me, include the gym, cycling and riding my motorbike; all of which afford me valuable ‘me’ time, where I can reflect both on work and non-work matters.
© John Upperton, 2016
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Official Site - LEGATUM FOUNDATION is an international private investment organisation that promotes sustainable development throughout the world.
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Representative Curt McCormack
Chittenden-6-3
cmccormack@leg.state.vt.us
221 North Winooski Ave., Burlington, VT 05401
House Committee on Transportation
CURT McCORMACK was born in Queens, New York and moved to Vermont in 1971 and to Burlington, his present district, in 2008. He was a member of the Vermont House representing the City of Rutland from 1983 until 1996. He chaired the Committee on Natural Resources and Energy for five years; was chair of the Joint House/Senate Energy Committee; vice chair of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) Environment Committee and representative on the NCSL High Level Radioactive Waste Repository Task Force; co-chair of the New England Recycling Council; House representative of the Vermont Low-Level Radioactive Waste Commission; vice chair Vermont Rail Council. He was the sponsor of Act 78, Vermont's comprehensive solid waste law; the first-in-the-nation 1989 law that regulated Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), and the creation of the Ethan Allen Express Amtrak train service. He was the recipient of the New England Environmental Network Leadership Award from Tufts University. Since resigning from the Legislature, Rep. McCormack was Vermont Bicycle/Pedestrian Coordinator; Vermont Low Income Advocacy Council Advocate; Director of Advocacy Vermont Public Interest Research Group; an environmental consultant for the State of Vermont, City of Burlington, Peace Corps, USAID; electrical contractor and Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal.
Bills and Resolutions Sponsored by Representative McCormack
Roll Call Votes by Representative McCormack
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Cultural Trends of Urbanization in Salonica: Ottoman Poetic Genres of the Ritual Songs of the Ma’aminim
The “Ma’aminim,” known derogatorily as “Dönme,” followed in the footsteps of their messiah—Sabbatai Tsevi—and broke out of the boundaries of Jewish society by converting to Islam during the 1680s. They established their center in Ottoman Salonika. While outwardly being fully Muslim, the Ma’aminim secretly developed and observed a hybrid messianic religion consisting of ritual practices and beliefs that were a combination of their unique Sabbatian faith, their Sephardi Jewish origins, and elements appropriated from their non-Jewish Ottoman surroundings. The aim of this paper is to illuminate the songs of the Ma’aminim—perhaps the most crucial inner-communal source available to us—in light of the context in which they were created. The main tool for contextualizing will be the examination of two popular, previously unnoticed Ottoman poetic genres to which many of the Ma’aminim songs belong: şarkıand türkü. The paper claims that the extensive use of these genres reflects common cultural preferences among the Ma’aminim and wider cultural trends of the time in which the songs were created, trends that were related to changes in urban Ottoman society. This focus on these genres will demonstrate the importance of considering the Sabbatian mystical sources as a historical document and will offer a cross-cultural perspective for pursuing further research on these unique texts.
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Posts Tagged ‘two party’
17th, Alaska, amendment XVII, america, apportionment, article, article I, burgesses, campaign, colonies, confederation, Congress, constituency, constituent, Constitution, Corruption, Democrat, District, election, executive, first generation effect, founders, founding father, gerrymander, government, Hawaii, house, legislative, legislature, one vote, one-man, party politics, political class, political power, Politics, presidency, president, president pro tempore, public service, representatives, Republican, reservation district, revolution, Robert Byrd, ruling-class, safe district, second generation effect, Senate, Senator, speaker, spectre of death, state, Strom Thurman, Ted Stevens, two party, u-s, United States, usa, Vice President
How I Think The Constitution Can Be Fixed (Part III [a]: Article I – The Legislative Branch)
In Congress, Corruption, Democracy, Democrats, History, Law, Libertarian, Libertarian Politics, Politics, Republican, US Government on June 1, 2009 at 1:35 am
Congress, The Legislative Branch of The United States of America was, as ‘the people’s house‘, intended to be the most powerful of the three branches of government created by The Constitution… a ‘first among equals‘, as it were. Of the 4,543 words of The Constitution, the 2,312 words of Article I constitute just over half of the total (50.89%). Unlike Article II (The Executive Branch) and Article III (The Judicial Brach), Article I deals very much with the actual workings, duties, powers and authorities of Congress. A primary reason for this, I assume, is that the founders had a long history of experience with operating a working, functioning Congress or Legislature. They also had more trust of a strong legislative branch than they did of a strong executive branch.
The first representative legislative body established in the American Colonies, in fact, in ANY of the British Colonies, was Virginia’s House of Burgesses, which was created in 1619… 170 years before the creation of Congress under The Constitution. Before and during the Revolutionary Period, ALL of the American Colonies had functioning state legislatures and, at the national-level, the first Continental Congress had been called in 1765. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress ran the nation with a VERY weak Executive, who was appointed by Congress itself to preside over ‘A Committee of The States‘. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention well understood what a legislative branch could do, although, prior to The Constitution, members of Congress for any state were appointed by the legislatures of that state. As such, apportionment by census and direct elections of the members of The House of Representatives was their great experiment with a representative legislature. Members of The Senate, of course, continued to be appointed by each state’s own legislature until the passage of Amendment XVII, which was ratified in 1913 (although some states had been providing for the direct election of their Senators by the people of those states as early as 1907).
It was never the intention of the founders to create a permanently ruling political class. They envisioned men, who would, for a short period of time, leave their private lives, take up the burden of public service for the good of the nation and then go back to their private lives. This idea was only one of many visions of theirs that did not survive our national transition from our ‘first generation‘ to our ‘second generation‘ [see ‘Part I‘ of this article for an explanation of my theory of the first and second generational effects]. Many Americans have the mistaken belief that the founders created a two-party system. This is patently false, but still many of our children are taught it. The founders tried to create a NO-party system, with the idea that individual members of Congress would band together is short-lived coalitions for each separate issue that came before them. This is another idea which not only did not survive our nation’s first generation; it did not survive the Washington administration. This is probably the biggest reason that party politics dominates our government, because The Constitution did not provide any guidelines for or controls / limitations upon them.
Several of my suggested changes will be attempts show how I think that we can restore the founders’ original concept of public service to our government, and show a way to end or, at least, make it more difficult for the continuation of our professional and permanently ruling political class. These suggestions will be made to try to minimize the amount of time elected officials have to spend in their continuous cycle of staying elected, to maximize their learning curve and effectiveness in office, and to reduce their susceptibility to the corrupting effects of long-term office holding. They will also have a goal of wanting to breaking the stranglehold which the two major parties have on our government, at all levels, as well as minimizing the power and effect which those at the extreme ends of any political spectrum have on our government. This is crucial if we are to return our government to a rational level of moderation.
As a general change for ALL elected offices, no one would be allowed to campaign for one office while they are holding another. If people think that such an allowance is necessary, they could be allowed to run for as MANY offices at one time as they want, but they have to be campaigning on their own time (they, of course, could only accept election to one office if they should win more than one election at the same time… if they do win more than one, though, maybe they should have to pay for any special elections which they necessitate by winning an office they have intention of serving in). Since all elected officials are elected to serve their constituents by doing a specific job, and not to spend their time on that job trying to keep their current job or trying to get a new one at our expense, once a public office holder is officially a candidate for any national office (the point at which they start raising funds or operating a campaign), they will be REQUIRED to immediately resign any elected office, at ANY level, that they might hold at that time. This would also help keep the lengths of campaigns down to more reasonable amounts of time as elected officials would be less likely to give up an office in their hand too long before they run for the office in the bush that they want to seek.
Section 2 of Article I lays the groundwork for the composition of The House of Representatives. Paragraph 1 of Section 2 sets the term of office for members of the House of Representatives at 2 years. I would change this to 6 year terms, with one third of The House being elected every three years and a one term limit. This would allow an on-going House with regular turnover and without the turmoil of having to elect ever member of The House and recreating itself every election cycle. Former Representatives could be elected to additional terms by the people of any particular state that they have served when they have been out of The House for the length of a full term between each term.
Paragraph 2 sets the minimum age for eligibility for election as a Representative at 25. I would lower this to 20, although with the requirement that being a Representative is a full time job (i.e. – if someone is a student and is elected, they would have to leave their studies for the duration of their term of office). We allow citizens to vote at age 18, we let them serve in our military, we require them to pay taxes (which they have to do at ANY age when they earn any money), etc., there is no reason that citizens of that age should not be allowed to elect Representatives of their own age range if they are able to.
Paragraph 3 of Section 2 deals with apportionment of Representatives among the various states. As we have seen all too frequently, the abilities of modern computing to pinpoint every voter has given the supposedly forbidden practice of gerrymandering an even more frightening and insidious power than it has had in a long time. That same computing power can allow us to create congressional districts that are of the most compact size and even shape as possible without ANY regard to the politics, or any other discriminating factor, of the citizens of any particular district. Every state has corners and edges. All that would have to be done is to program the same computers to start at each corner and create evenly shaped and compact districts as they work in towards the middle of each state. Alternatively, the first district could start in the middle of a state and work outward. This would still allow for differing proposals, depending on starting points and merging points, but the test would still be which proposal presents the most precise and evenly shaped districts possible. Basically, if districts can be created within a smaller or more compact area of a state, you go for the most compact districts possible. This would not only prevent the parties from manipulating districts in the way that is most advantageous to them, it will prevent them from creating both ‘safe‘ districts (which protect members of either party), and ‘reservation‘ districts (which isolate and limit ethnic voting power overall to specific limited areas).
Paragraph 3 also provides for the total number of Representatives the House. Its original provision of “The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative;” has been modified by legislation passed in 1911, which capped the total number of Representatives in The House at 435. ‘One man, one vote‘ was NEVER an intention of the founders (as seen by their plan of equal apportionment of Senators, the guarantee of at least one Representative from each state, and the fact that Congressional districts must be fully contained within their home state) because it was never their desire to allow high population areas to dominate the government at the expense of the rural areas by the simple fact of having more people. However, it was also not their intention to let rural areas have excessive power by limiting the numbers of Representatives to be divided among the more populous states. As was seen when Alaska and Hawaii entered the union (the total number of members in Congress was temporarily increased by one for each state UNTIL the next apportionment, at which time it was returned to the 435 Representatives level), the current total is seen as a hard and fast one which is not increased by the admission of additional states. As a result, with each shift in population and a theoretical continuous expansion of the numbers of states in the Union, the single Representative for the states with the smallest population increase in their own proportional power within Congress. To counter this, I would propose that the total number of Representatives be equal to ten times the total number of states. This would mean that every time a new state is admitted, ten Representatives will be added to the total number of Representatives in The House. Right now, that would result in a total of 500 Representatives, with 50 being taken by guaranteed representation for each state and the other 450 apportioned according to state population sizes.
Paragraph 4 deals with vacancies within The House while Paragraph 5 creates the office of Speaker and allows for The House to create and choose its other officers. The only change I would make here is that ANY officer of The House (or The Senate) has a responsibility to the nation, as a whole, as well as to their own district’s constituency. As such, ALL officers of The House or The Senate, from any party, must equally accept feedback, requests, petitions, etc. from anyone within the nation as they do from anyone within their district.
Section 3 of Article I deals with The Senate. Paragraph 1 sets the length of term for a Senator at six years. As with the House, I would increase the lengths of their terms of office to twelve years, with a limit of one term and the passage of a length of time equal to one full term before they can be eligible to run again within their state. For those of my readers who have caught some of my specific wordings, by the way, these limits would only apply to a candidate in a single particular state if they want to run again in that state. If someone thinks that they can just pack up and move to another state to get elected again, they would be welcome to try it. I would love to see the spectacle of hordes of former Congressmen moving constantly between states while trying to convince the voters of their ‘new‘ home states that they are not carpetbaggers who are only looking out for themselves rather than for the citizens that they purport to serve.
Paragraph I also sets the numbers of Senators from each state at two. I would increase this to three for each state so that every state will have an election turnover of one Senator for every equal third of a term (i.e. – every four years), which is what is dealt with in Paragraph 2. Paragraph 3 sets the minimum age of a Senator at 35. As with The House, I would lower this age by five years to 25 in order to increase the chances for better representation of the younger population of the nation.
Paragraph 4 of Section 3 deals with the role of The Vice President as the President of The Senate. While I will deal with the larger issue of the office of Vice President when I discuss The Executive Branch, the primary constitutional duty of a Vice President is to be President of The Senate. This office needs to be a functional part of our government. [Please see my article on ‘The American Vice Presidency… Graveyard of the Constitution’.] While I would still give The Vice President no vote in The Senate except in cases of ties, I would give the office political power in The Senate equal to that of The Speaker in The House. I would also give The Vice President the freedom to address The Senate under the same rules as any Senator, but with the provision that they must temporarily give up the Presidency of The Senate while speaking on the floor, and maybe with the additional restriction that they must ask the permission of The Senate to be allowed to speak to it from the floor.
Paragraph 5 of Section 3 provides for the creation and selection of other officers for The Senate, including The President pro tempore. My biggest issue with how Section 5 is fulfilled is that The President pro tempore, the third person in line to the office of President of The United States, has become a meaningless ego job which is simply given to the oldest, most senile member of the majority party. This Constitutional office needs to be held by the person elected by the whole Senate to be its Floor Leader. Tell me, honestly, would you have wanted to see a 99 year-old Strom Thurmond succeeding to The Presidency? What about an 84 year-old Ted Stevens? Or a 92 year-old Robert Byrd? The President pro tempore should be the Senator who is leading the legislative agenda on the floor of The Senate, not the one singing ‘I’m a Little Teapot‘ with the Spectre of Death.
(This article will be continued in Part III (b), which will continue discussing Article I of The Constitution.)
Rhys M. Blavier
Romayor, Texas
“Truth, Justice and Honor… but, above all, Honor“
© copyright 2009 by Rhys M. Blavier
Thank you for reading this article. Please read my other articles and let me know what you think. I am writing them not to preach or to hear myself think but to try to create dialogs, debates and discussions on the nature of our government and how we can build upon and improve it based on what we have seen and learned over the course of the 225 years of The American Experiment.
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What the First Vision Means to Me
by kendalbhunter | Mar 15, 2018 | Joseph Smith: Mormon Prophet
The Mormon Church began with the First Vision. This is what we call the marvelous event where, in response to prayer, the Father and the Son appeared to the fourteen year-old Joseph Smith. Even though he had this vision in seclusion, it really belongs to everyone....
Joseph Smith, Jr. – The First Vision
by Candace | Nov 6, 2017 | Joseph Smith: Mormon Prophet
Joseph Smith, Jr. was born into a newly formed country, stumbling to its feet after winning its independence against Britain. Religious fervor was sweeping the nation and preachers from all factions of Christianity were calling the people to repentance. Like...
The Mormon White Horse Prophecy
by Terrie Lynn Bittner | Jan 31, 2012 | Joseph Smith: Mormon Prophet
A Personal Response Mitt Romney’s candidacy has once again caused the media to pull out the Mormon White Horse Prophecy. Despite its popularity among the media and other sources, the prophecy is nothing more than a fabrication, the work of a church member who told the...
Elizabeth Jane Manning Black Mormon Pioneer
by Terrie Lynn Bittner | Jul 14, 2011 | Joseph Smith: Mormon Prophet
Jane Elizabeth Manning is perhaps the most famous black Mormon pioneer. Mormon is a nickname for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was the daughter of Isaac and Elizabeth Manning and was born in the late 1810s or early 1820s. She was...
Mormon Polygamy
by Terrie Lynn Bittner | Jun 22, 2011 | Joseph Smith: Mormon Prophet
Mormon polygamy was discontinued more than one hundred years ago, but it is still associated with Mormonism and Mormon history, and sometimes incorrectly associated with modern Mormonism. Mormon is a commonly used nickname for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day...
Ezra Booth and the Dangers of Gossip
by Terrie Lynn Bittner | May 18, 2011 | Joseph Smith: Mormon Prophet
Ezra Booth, a former minister, became a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are often called Mormons, in 1831, when the church was still new. He had seen Joseph Smith heal the arm of a church member, and this was his reason for...
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Washed Away Again CIPHER drowning (12), happy (163), mournful (10), suicide (35), electronic (563), noisy (7), busy (4), crap (46), cipher (23), monkey (36), killer (13), midi (73)
Row, row, row your boat breezer boat (16), stream (6), river (30), lake (14), crowd (12), death (198), drowning (12), ghosts (27), strange (32)
Safe CIPHER Electronica (379), smooth (120), drowning (12), relaxing (65), consuming (1), waffles (35), crap (46), MIDI (73), cheese (30), cool (98), sweet (50), nice (100), mellow (151), Calgon (1), bath (2), Stephen Colbert (1), heaving (1), steelwork (1), new age (165)
Drowning borisluxx Drowning (12), suffocation (3), Boris Luxx (58), electronic (563), techno (472), dance club (18)
The Deep End jgurner Relationships (43), Drowning (12), Water (69), Diving (1), (0)
I've See It All Before jgurner Love (1469), Relationships (43), Doors (9), Horns (54), Drowning (12)
Mermaid (w/Electro Estate) The Orbiting remake (4), Mermaid (4), drowning (12), surviving (1), The Orbiting (28), Raygun Dreamdate (9), ledebutant (51), illuminati (33), Electro Estate (12), love (1469), electronica (379), collaboration (131), a lot has changed in almost four years (1)
Blondie tempie muhammad ali (1), sonny liston (1), drowning (12), waving (1), lipstick (4)
Drowning with MissRedd zallaz01 Drowning (12), zallaz (11), MissRedd (1), Toronto (5), Ontario (3), Canada (26), collaboration (131)
DROWNING Michael_J_Martin guitar (1349), Drowning (12), Michael (39), Martin (43), Contemporary Christian Music (6)
Invisible Light JakesterL Ocean (61), Ship wreck (1), drowning (12), fishing (10), sinking. (1)
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Monsters dreadmon dreadmon (53), Bing Futch (54), bombings (1), July 7th (1), terrorist (4), Bush (58), fear (60), rock (1959), dulcimer (56), (0)
What Do You Care eleveneyes what (39), do (20), you (195), care (16), 911 (5), pop (694), culture (3), terrorist (4), media (12), armpit (1), nosehair (1), bush (58), evil (52), cheney (1), more evil (1), pizza (10), hong kong (1), gay (11), coke (4), yolks (1), kim-chee (1), saurkraut (1), chemicals (3), beer (60), thong (2), grandma (3), fear (60), rock (1959), alternative (400), rap (311), (0)
How Dare You mccannmp1 war (168), protest (30), anti-war (16), pop (694), funk (357), liberal (1), terrorism (7), terrorist (4), islam (7), America (43)
Japanese Hot Rod retrolustmusic japanese (48), hot (64), rod (18), terrorist (4), racing (7), speed (36), driving (45), drive (15), animal (8), costume (1), wheel (7), samarai (1), saki (1), retrolust (7), retro (35), lust (18)
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„Berlin was the best time of my life”
INTERVIEW MARIAM SCHAGHAGHI
... he says, and then directs his first film in Bavaria. Rupert Everett on time travel and the ups and downs of his career
The 58-year-old British actor shone opposite Julia Roberts in the romcom My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997) and in Oscar Wilde adaptations, including The Importance of Being Earnest (2002).
Mr. Everett, You not only played the lead in your latest film, The Happy Prince, but directed it, too. Was it very difficult doing both at once?
I was the best director I ever had (he laughs). I was never particularly happy with my performance during the shoot because I kept having to jump back and forth between directing and acting. But during the editing process I was able to put the scenes together in such a way that I looked good. We actors like to complain about directors always using our weakest moments, but this time I was able to pick out the best ones myself.
You play Oscar Wilde in the final months of his life. Is there a spiritual kinship between the two of you?
There are parallels, of course: I am openly gay, and Wilde’s tragedy lay in his sexuality. If you’re gay, you still don’t really belong in Hollywood today. You’re an outsider who’s allowed to play the odd part but usually comes up against a brick wall.
You shot large parts of the movie in Bavaria. What was it like, working in Germany?
Absolutley fantastic! The boss of the Munich tourism office came up with the brilliant idea of showing me Upper Franconia. I discovered three crumbling castles there: Thurnau, Mitwitz and Schmölz. Perfect backdrops! They had millions of rooms, stood in for Paris and ghettos, and gave me dining halls and prisons – everything I needed, in fact. It was amazing fun, transforming Franconia into 19th-century France. They even silenced the church bells for me.
Everett (r., with Colin Morgan) as Oscar Wilde in "The Happy Prince"
© 2018 Concorde Filmverleih GmbH/ Wilhelm Moser
Seriously? They actually turned the church bells off for you?
We were staying at a guesthouse right next door to the church, and the bells rang every quarter of an hour. I was blazing mad and after the first night, begged the mayor to stop the bells. “But they’ve been ringing since 1498,” he protested. “Who cares!” (He laughs). What can I say? He turned them off at night. I am now on an equal footing with Lauren Bacall, the great actor who nearly left an English town because she couldn’t bear the bells. They were stopped for her, too.
Did having old friends like Colin Firth and Emily Watson on the set make your directorial debut easier?
Without them, I might have given up on the project! Ten years ago, when I wrote the script, they gave me scribbled notes saying they would play. Colin has meanwhile become a megastar, but I waved the note under his nose whenever we saw each other – even on the red carpet at the Oscars. As a man of honor, Colin naturally kept his word. And I was able to show off with my stars in front of potential sponsors.
Your career has been a roller-coaster ride. One of the high points was My Best Friend’s Wedding. But there were also lows. How do you cope with the ups and downs?
Film careers develop so fast today that it’s a wonder they even last more than two years. That uncertainty is the only downside to fame. To be always dancing on the edge of a volcano is okay when you’re 18, but it’s exhausting as an adult. In this game, you can’t be sure of anything, least of all at my age.
Would you like to be 25 again?
No, and I certainly wouldn’t swap places with a teenager, either. The pace of life is so crazy – so many changes that would once have taken 50 years now take place within just a few months!
In this game, you can’t be sure of anything, least of all at my age
Rupert Everett, Actor
frequently played roles
Everett has played four English kings of the 17th, 18th and 20th century, and is distantly related to three of them.
WORST CASTING
As a moustachioed, saber-wielding Kossack leader in the six-hour Russian TV epic And Quiet Flows the Don.
favorite place
Everett lives in London, New York and Santos, Brazil, but he’s happiest at his house in Wiltshire, “right next door to Stonehenge – a magical place.”
Everett strikes a typical pose in "The Comfort of Strangers" (1990)
© ddp images
Are you interested in history?
I most certainly am! My dog, Mo, and I have often been witness to historical events. We were in Berlin when the wall came down in 1989. Mo just looked bewildered, but I thought, “My God, this is history!” We saw the tanks outside the Kremlin in 1991 during the putsch against Gorbachev. And Mo and I were just a couple of streets away from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. My poor dog died shortly after – that was just too much modern history for him.
Do you plan to continue telling stories as a director?
I would like to, but I wonder whether at 58, I’m still in touch with the zeitgeist. I was in Berlin for the first time in 1976 and had the best time of my life. Millennials would have a heart attack if they knew what we got up to. Berlin was like New York in the 1970s – so free! I’m afraid that era had such a huge impact on me that I never really made it into the present.
These days, you act less like a diva and more like an elder statesman. Have you made your peace with the world?
Yes, I’m optimistic and I don’t understand why so many people are so dissatisfied. I think that on the whole, the world is developing for the better. It’s incredible what we have achieved in terms of human rights and progress in just 100 years compared with the millennia that went before. But that doesn’t mean we should stop fighting to achieve more, of course.
If you had a time machine, where would you go?
To Marie Antoinette’s Versailles! I would love to know how the court worked, what they ate, what life was like. And I would also like to travel back in time to the World Wars I and II …
All of the men in my family fought in World War II. Until I was 10, I thought I’d been born in the war because no one ever talked about anything else. I would also like to visit Charlemagne, Henry VIII, Bach, Mozart and Marie-Thérèse – and Ancient Rome …
… but you would need an eternity to do all that!
No, each trip would be over in the blink of an eye. I would be back before I had finished this sentence.
A foodie couple from Berlin embarked on a culinary road trip in the Middle Kingdom. Their goal: to rediscover Chinese cuisine
Utopia in pink
Rent one apartment in the residential complex La Muralla Roja
"I take my tea bags with me wherever I go"
Helen Mirren, British actor
Buddha’s tough hands
The Shaolin monastery is located in the Chinese province of Henan. The martial art of its monks attracts millions of visitors, and its students come from all over the world, in order to learn from the monks. But has the legend become a victim of its own success?
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Marcy puts herself in a near-death state to recover her lost memories from when she was reset. The memories she receives include those of the original host Marcy, showing that the host's intellectual disability was caused by Vincent/001 testing Simon's incomplete consciousness transfer technology on her. While she is out of commission, Mac and the rest of the team are ordered to provide Hall with backup in protecting the future 53rd President of the United States, who is currently a prepubescent girl.
The Big Easy turns the Big 3-0-0 this year, and in this city where the good times roll, the parties will be epic — think citywide art shows, supersized Mardi Gras parades, and a festival of lights using landmark buildings as backdrops. Thirteen years after Hurricane Katrina, there is much to celebrate: The Central Business District, once a dead zone after dark, now crackles at all hours thanks to four new hotels (the Ace, Troubadour, Catahoula, and NOPSI), each with its own rooftop bar. The neighborhood is also home to new restaurants like Maypop — a Vietnamese-Creole joint from acclaimed chef Michael Gulotta. Another area coming to life is the three-mile riverfront, where a renovated Spanish Plaza will reopen this spring. More riverfront updates, including a new Four Seasons Hotel, will roll out in the next few years. Toast the tricentennial at the Sazerac House, a French Quarter museum dedicated to the official cocktail of New Orleans, opening later this year. —Allison Entrekin
Until now, Zambia has had little recognition as one of Africa’s great safari destinations. Yet experts know it as the birthplace of the walking safari — as well as the home of some of the most highly trained guides on the continent. In South Luangwa National Park, visitors can expect to see more animals than baobab trees, while Liuwa Plain National Park is the setting for the world’s second-largest wildebeest migration, when tens of thousands of the creatures head across the plain from neighboring Angola. Last year saw the arrival of Liuwa’s first permanent camp: King Lewanika Lodge, a six-villa safari lodge overlooking a watering hole where hyenas and antelope gather. —Mary Holland
Travelers was founded in 1864 in Hartford. It was founded to provide travel insurance to railroad travelers at a time when travel was far more risky and dangerous than today, hence the name. Along the way it had many industry firsts, including the first automobile policy, the first commercial airline policy, and the first policy for space travel.[9] In 1954 it established the world's first privately owned weather research facility, the Travelers Weather Research Center, the first organization to make weather predictions using probabilities ("20% chance of rain"). By the early 1990s, Travelers was predominantly a general property and casualty insurer that also happened to do some travel insurance on the side, and it quietly exited its original business in 1994. What was left of Travelers' travel insurance business was acquired by three former employees and is now known as Travel Insured International, a Crum and Forster Company.
The first season of Travelers has a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes based on nine reviews with an average rating of 8.0/10.[9] Neil Genzlinger, writing for The New York Times, described the first season as "tasty", and "enjoyable science fiction", with "some attention-grabbing flourishes and fine acting".[10] Hanh Nguyen, writing for IndieWire, describes the series as "fun and freaky," finding the series' appeal "in how the core group of five travelers adjust to life in our present," noting the "human nature in the travelers".[11] Lawrence Devoe, of TheaterByte.com, called the series "tautly paced and suspenseful" with "well-developed characters", declaring that "Brad Wright has a real knack for creating futuristic series".[12] Evan Narcisse, reviewing the first five episodes for io9, appreciated the moral dilemmas offered by the series premise and the awkwardness presented by the characters' interactions with their hosts' friends, colleagues, lovers, or caretakers: "This is a superhero show in double disguise, offering up clever explorations of the secret identity concept that touch on the guilt and contortions that come with living a double life."[13] Netflix announced that the series was one of its "most devoured" series in 2017.[14]
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Fabric of the Land – Lonelady LP review
Hinterland. Edgelands. Wasteland. It seems to me that, for all my life (writes Andy Wood), these are the places I’ve played in, wandered, contemplated and explored. Brought up on the outskirts of the city there was no shortage of derelict sites, abandoned quarries, building sites, former factories and the ruins and relics of the distant…
Dreams Like That – Idlewild / C Duncan live
Idlewild / C Duncan – Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh – Monday 17th August 2015 Monday was our second show from the reactivated Idlewild this year (with a third to follow for MPK2’s birthday in November) and it did nothing to dispel the notion that the band have been re-energised by their break. If anything it was…
Nowhere At All – New Cathode Ray video
One of the best albums of the year so far has been The Cathode Ray’s ‘Infinite Variety’ (a rare MPT LP review here). The band have been active in promoting the record and have just released a video for ‘Nowhere At All’: The Cathode Ray are back on stage supporting labelmates the Band of Holy…
The Best Go-Betweens Song?
Since uncovering the double CD re-issue of ‘Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express’ in York the other week, I’ve been on a bit of a Go-Betweens kick, particularly the earlier albums. The first Go-Betweens record I ever bought was the 7″ of ‘Part Company’. And for all the great songs I’ve heard since, I…
Flying In The Face of Fashion – Julian Cope videos
‘World Shut Your Mouth’ from the ‘Saint Julian’ LP To mark last week’s Julian Cope show in York, here’s a handful of videos. Above one of the hits which got a surprising acoustic outing last week. Next a recent live version of the song that was stuck in my head for days after the York…
Pick The Great Tyrants – Julian Cope live
Julian Cope / Henry Raby – The Duchess, York – Sunday 2nd August 2015 There’s not many artists I’ve stuck with over the last, um, 35 years. But Julian Cope is one. Whilst contemporaries such as the Bunnymen seem to be releasing the same song over and over again now, Cope continues to plough his…
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Employment Law Daily Car salesman fired after complaining of racial harassment awarded $1.5M in damages
Car salesman fired after complaining of racial harassment awarded $1.5M in damages
According to the employee, as a result of the emotional trauma caused by his supervisor’s harassment, he has struggled through long periods of unemployment and even homelessness and has been unable to get his career back on track.
Awarding $1.5 million in damages to an African-American car salesman on his federal and state-law race discrimination claims, a federal court in Washington found his recounting of the emotional distress and accompanying harm caused by his working for and being terminated by the defendants—he alleged among other things that he was fired after complaining his supervisor had called him a “f*****g n****r”—warranted compensatory damages of $500,000. Further, finding he established that the defendants acted with malice or reckless indifference to his federally protected rights, the court awarded him $1 million in punitive damages (Thompson v. Smart Car & Leasing & Sales, LLC, January 15, 2019, Peterson, R.).
Shortly after the employee was hired, he alleged that his Caucasian supervisor questioned the need for a new worker and commented, “Oh boy, we got a brother.” During his first several days on the job, his supervisor told several inappropriate racial jokes and used the n-word on multiple occasions. After he complained, his supervisor began to threaten him, telling him he would “beat [his] skinny ass.” Once, while interacting with a customer, the employee claimed the supervisor screamed profane insults at him, causing the customer to leave and humiliating the employee. When he asked the supervisor why he was treating him that way, he purportedly responded, “I’m allergic to monkeys.”
Fired. When the employee told his supervisor he would no longer tolerate such behavior, the supervisor called him a “f*****g n****r” and fired him. The employee, believing the supervisor did not have the power to fire him, called one of the individuals who had hired him and told him what had happened. Several hours later, the employee, told that the company had to choose between him and the supervisor, was fired.
Summary judgment on most claims. He sued, asserting claims under Section 1981 and state law. Not only did he encounter problems accomplishing service on one of the individual defendants, the defendants’ attorney moved to withdraw as counsel. After that time, the defendants failed to participate in the case. The employee subsequently moved for summary judgment on all claims.
Granting his motion in part, the court, in a prior order, found he established Section 1981 discrimination, hostile work environment, and retaliation claims as well as racial harassment and racially hostile work environment claims under the Washington Law Against Discrimination. Because these claims demonstrated that other relief was available to the employee to protect against the discrimination and retaliation he experienced, the court granted summary judgment against his public policy wrongful termination claim.
Sanction of default judgment. The court also found that the sanction of default judgment against the defendants was appropriate as an alternate ground for finding the defendants liable. Their nonparticipation in the case was willful, said the court, noting that combative comments by the individual defendant to the employee’s counsel indicated they were aware of the proceedings and intended to flaunt the requirement that counsel represent a limited liability corporation. Further, they consistently refused to communicate, unreasonably delaying the litigation.
Damages. The employee then moved for damages, jointly and severally, against the defendants, requesting emotional distress damages “in an amount between $250,000 and $500,000″ and $1 million in punitive damages. Addressing compensatory damages first, the court observed that the employee declared under penalty of perjury in support of his motion for summary judgment that his experience of racial harassment at the defendants’ workplace “had a profound impact on all aspects of [his] life.” Not only was he emotionally traumatized by the events at work, he struggled to find another job, felt he had to leave the state, and, since relocating, has “not been able to get [his] professional career back on track” and has struggled through prolonged periods of unemployment and even homelessness. Thus, said the court, his recounting of the emotional distress and accompanying harm caused by his experience working for, and being terminated by, the defendants, all of which they either admitted or did not dispute, warranted a compensatory damage award of $500,000.
Further, the court found the supervisor’s discriminatory actions against the employee were not only egregious, the defendants knew about his conduct when they terminated him. In its prior order, the court found they admitted that race was a substantial factor in the termination decision and that there was a “causal connection” between his reporting his experience of racial harassment and his termination. In that order, the court also found the employee established that the hostile work environment he experienced was properly imputed to the defendants because they had full knowledge of the racial harassment before and on the day they fired him. Granting summary judgment to the employee on damages, the court held that these findings supported that the defendants acted with “malice or with reckless indifference to the federally protected rights” of the employee and justified the punitive damages award of $1,000,000.
Kathleen Kapusta
Employment Law Analyst
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10 Of The Most Shocking And Gruesome Things Ever Seen On Stage
T. Pikul May 7, 2015 0
Do you think going to see a play is boring? You won’t after learning about some of these theatrical productions, which utilized more fake (or real) blood, violence, and terrifying glimpses into the human psyche than most horror movies.
10 The Grand Guginol Theatre
If we were to visit Paris in the early part of the 20th century, we would almost certainly want to stop at the Grand Guginol Theatre, a tiny structure packed into a converted church that specialized in putting on horrific and bloody plays. The main themes of the Guginol’s performances were insanity and fear, featuring a range of subjects that were often ripped from the headlines of French society, including necrophilia, drug use, serial murder, and the ravages of disease.
The producers of the Grand Guginol took their work seriously and often pushed social and technical boundaries. One prominent playwright measured the success of his plays by how many audience members fainted and kept a doctor on hand just in case. The novelist Andre de Lorde, who wrote a number of plays for the Grand Guginol, collaborated with a psychologist on several of his works. Also, actress Paula Maxa might have been the original scream queen; she was called “the most assassinated woman in the world” because of all the different deaths that she acted out onstage.
Throughout its life, the Grand Guginol tangled with censors while struggling to maintain a consistent output of gore and terror. By the end of World War II, many felt the theater had fallen into self-parody, and it closed in the 1960s, no longer relevant to audiences who had experienced the horrors of war firsthand.
9 Hermann Nitsch
Hermann Nitsch is an Austrian artist, composer, actor, and playwright, who in the 1960s created a performance group called the Orgies & Mysteries Theater. Nitsch was inspired by his own experiences growing up during World War II, which directly exposed him to plenty of horror. As such, his art is very, very bloody. During performances, live animals are often slaughtered, and their entrails and blood are used. Guts are smeared everywhere and sometimes blood is even thrown on the audience. Nitsch combines this with deep religious themes, which, as you might expect, ticks off the usual suspects. Nitsch was arrested multiple times in the early days of the Orgies & Mysteries Theater.
In one three-day performance that involved 100 musicians and 200 actors, Nitsch oversaw the ritual slaughtering of live animals. The animals’ blood was then poured into the mouths of naked actors, who were laid out on stretchers in the form of a cross. A reporter who witnessed the whole gruesome event called it Nitsch’s “greatest performance.”
8 The Panic Movement
The Panic Movement (named for the Greek god Pan) was a theater collective formed by Fernando Arrabal, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Roland Topor in the 1960s. Jodorowsky had faced censorship in his native Mexico and gone to Paris, where he met the other two artists. The group dedicated their work to confronting the bourgeois, who had been responsible for censorship by sowing discord through the most absurd performances possible. Arrabal has said that the Panic Movement is, “the critique of pure reason, it is the gang without laws and with no control.”
In Sacramental Melodrama, which was performed just once, Jodorowsky slaughtered geese on stage, covered topless women in honey, performed a fake castration, had himself whipped, used a giant crucifix as a phallus, and shot live turtles at the audience out of a giant plastic vagina. Pandemonium ensued.
Jodorowsky would go on to become a well-regarded filmmaker, directing classic films like El Topo and The Holy Mountain. But he never quite left his penchant for panic behind. His film Fando y Lis, which was written by Arrabal, caused a riot when it premiered and was banned in Mexico.
7 Dziady
Dziady is a play that literally started a revolution. Written in the 19th century by well-known Polish writer Adam Mickiewicz, Dziady is one of the most popular Polish-language plays. The play concerns a Polish man, Gustav, who dies and returns in the form of Konrad, a revolutionary who fights against Russia for Polish nationalism.
In 1968, the Polish National Theater sought to stage a modern production of Dziady starring well-known Polish actors. The play’s political and religious themes had never been a problem in the past—it was anti-czarist, which normally pleased the Soviets—but this time, the Soviet authorities balked. They announced that Dziady would close at the end of January of that year.
This enraged the Polish public, which marched and circulated a petition in protest. This, in turn, prompted a crackdown from the Soviets, who attacked a student meeting at which the play was being discussed. This proved to be the flashpoint of the 1968 student revolt, during which anti-Soviet protests and riots spread to cities throughout Poland. However, the protests in the name of freedom had a dark side, as authorities were quick to blame the unrest on Poland’s Jews and used it as an excuse to enact a purge.
6 The Living Theatre’s The Connection And Frankenstein
Jack Gelber’s play, The Connection, set new standards for brutality and realism in theater when it premiered in 1959. Using a “play within a play” format, it dramatizes the conversation of a group of drug addicts who are waiting for their dealer. Utilizing free-flowing dialogue, it gives the audience the unnerving sense that they are not watching a play but actually standing there at the street corner, watching the addicts go about their everyday lives. To heighten the realism, actors go out into the audience, asking for drug money. Like many of the other plays on this list, The Connection divided critics. Some of them found it to be innovative, but others viewed it as trash.
The Connection was first produced by the Living Theatre, an experimental theater group that specialized in extreme, highly political plays that sought to challenge the comfort of the audience. They have performed in unusual venues, such as steel mills and Brazilian prisons.
One of the Living Theatre’s later productions was an adaptation of Frankenstein, which they made appropriately bloody and terrifying, dramatizing executions and other killings on stage. The bodies of executed men and women were then dismembered by Dr. Frankenstein with help from Sigmund Freud.
5 Playboy Of The Western World
J.M. Synge was already a well-known poet and playwright in his native Ireland when Playboy of the Western World opened there in 1907, but nothing could have prepared him for the reaction from the Irish public. In the play, a young psychopath kills his father with an axe and then brags about the murder, which endears him to the women of the town. Later on, he tries to kill again and is allowed to go free despite his crimes.
The story so shocked the Irish public that riots broke out in the streets, much of it spurned on by nationalists who were upset about how the play reflected on the Irish people and particularly the way it depicted Irish masculinity. Even some of the play’s own actors felt uncomfortable with their roles. Local councils throughout Ireland passed bans against it.
Playboy is now considered one of the great Irish plays, but Synge never lived to enjoy the acclaim. He died only two years later.
4 Gunter Brus
Actionism was a short-lived movement from Vienna that sought to combine art with political action. Gunter Brus took actionism farther than anyone else by making his own body part of the performance. This culminated in an impromptu performance called Kunst und Revolution in 1968. Brus, along with his associates Otto Muehl and Oswald Wiener, took over the student center at an Austrian university. Brus defecated on stage and masturbated while singing the Austrian national anthem, while the others threw beer around and talked about computers. All three were arrested, and Brus had to flee to Berlin with his family in order to avoid a jail sentence.
Although his part in Kunst und Revolution wasn’t as shocking as Brus’s, Otto Muehl would go on to eclipse Brus in notoriety. Muehl’s art always featured strong sexual overtones, and he eventually put his art where his mouth is (so to speak) and started his own commune dedicated to free love. Eventually, however, he was arrested for having sex with underage girls and went to jail.
3 Sarah Kane’s Blasted
Blasted dramatizes the lives of two characters (a racist, older journalist and his young lover) who are trapped in a hotel room together as a civil war rages outside. Despite its simple setting, the story incorporates a huge amount of gruesome violence. Multiple rapes, a bombing, suicide, eye-gouging, and the cannibalism of a dead baby are just some of the horrors inflicted throughout.
Blasted was Kane’s first play, and when it premiered in London in 1995, it caused a sensation. Critics decried it as trash and wondered how it could possibly have passed all the way through the production process and onto the stage in the first place. But Kane’s tragic suicide at age 28 (she wrote only four other plays) led to a reevaluation of her work, and some of the critics who had originally panned Blasted came around to admit that it is, in fact, a vital work of art that reflects the terror of modern times.
2 Edward Bond’s Saved
In a notorious scene in Edward Bond’s play Saved, a crying baby is found abandoned in a park by a gang of thugs. Instead of comforting the baby, the gang torments the baby, rubs their own excrement on it, and eventually stones it to death.
When the play first opened in London in the 1960s, it was decried by critics, who felt that the scene was played only for shock value. Even the fact that the throwing of stones was only mimed by the actors wasn’t enough to blunt the reaction to the scene. The government even tried to censor it to stop it from being shown, and the director was prosecuted.
But Saved also had its defenders, including the great actor Laurence Olivier, who found beauty in the brutal depictions of lower-class English life. Edward Bond has since had a long, enigmatic career in the theater, but Saved remains his most well-known work. He says that it is an important lens through which to view many of the troubles still afflicting Britain today.
1 The Bad Seed
The Bad Seed lacks the visual shocks and brutal realism of many of the other entries on this list, but it makes up for it with a terrifying plot: A mother comes to realize that her eight-year-old daughter, Rhoda, is a serial murderer. As the story progresses, she also discovers that her own mother was also a serial killer and that the so-called “bad seed” may be passed down from one generation to the next.
The Bad Seed was written by Maxwell Anderson and based on a novel by William March. It was a huge hit on Broadway in the 1950s, although the critic Harold Clurman found the dialogue to be flat and the play to be lacking in suspense. But Clurman was unsettled by the reaction of the audience, noting that the way that they applauded acts of violence strangely mirrored Rhoda’s own sociopathic inability to distinguish right from wrong.
The Bad Seed was later made into a film featuring much of the original cast, which has become well known. However, the Hollywood treatment was watered down and given a different ending.
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Top 10 Explorers Of The Ancient World
Mark Oliver April 22, 2017 0
Man explored the world long before the days of Columbus and Magellan. Even in the earliest moments of human history, when the known world was little more than what extended within sight, there were men who were sent out to explore the unknown.
When the first explorers set out into unknown parts of the world, they had no way of being prepared for what they saw. They saw parts of the world that were completely unlike anything they had ever imagined. Then, they had to come home and try to find a way to put the things they had seen into words.
10Hanno and the Burning Jungle
Around the sixth or fifth century B.C., a Carthaginian called Hanno the Navigator set out with 30,000 people in 76 ships and sailed along the western coast of Africa. It is believed that he made it as far as modern Ghana—at the time, the furthest anyone had gone into the continent.
Nobody in his world, at this time, had any idea of what to expect in West Africa, and Hanno came back with some strange reports about the people who lived there. He described people with almost mythic powers, claiming that there were a group of men living in caves who could run faster than horses.
His most harrowing story, though, comes from his exploration of an island. “In the daytime we could see nothing but the forest,” Hanno reported, “but during the night we noticed many fires alight and heard the sound of flutes, the beating of cymbals and tom-toms, and the shouts of a multitude.”
An oracle he had brought with him urged him to leave the island and soon as possible. When he was back on his boat and looked back at the island, it was on fire. “Large torrents of fire emptied into the sea, and the land was inaccessible because of the heat,” Hanno wrote. “Quickly and in fear, we sailed away from that place. For four days, we saw the coast by night full of flames.”
9Himilco and the Sea Monsters of Britain
While Hanno went south, down Africa, another Carthaginian, Himilco, traveled north, along the coastline of Europe and all the way up to modern England. He set up colonies along the way and opened trade routes with the people who lived there, who he called “a vigorous tribe” that were “proud spirited, energetic and skillful.”
The strangest part, though, is how Himilco describes his trip. According to Himilco, Britain was under a constant fog, with shallow waters so full of seaweed that it was nearly impossible to move a ship an inch. And, he claimed, it was filled up with “numerous sea monsters.”
It is not entirely clear what Himilco actually saw. He may have struggled with some animal he had never seen before and mistaken it for a monster—or he might have just lied. That is the most popular theory—that Himilco thought his discoveries in Britain were so valuable that he had to keep them secret from the world. When he came home, he told the Greeks there were killer sea monsters to keep them from exploring Britain for themselves.
8Necho and the Trip around Africa
Sometime in the sixth century B.C., the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho outdid Hanno’s trip. He sent men out down the Red Sea and had them follow the coast of Africa, heading all the way down to the tip of South Africa, up along the west, and back through the Nile. These were the first people in all of history to circumnavigate the continent.
The trip took more than two years to complete. Every autumn, the men would dock their ship wherever they were and set up farms to survive through the winter. Then, in the spring, they would head back aboard their ship and sail off again.
These people traveled further south than any Egyptian had before them—which made them the first to see the sky from the southern hemisphere. When they came home, they reported that they had seen the sun shine from the north.
To the people of the ancient world, though, the idea of a southern hemisphere was incomprehensible. They thought the men were delusional. Our main record of this trip comes from the Greek Herodotus, who scoffs at their claim that the sun was further north. “Some believe it,” he wrote, “but I do not.”
7Hecataeus’s Journey around the World
During the sixth century B.C., Hecataeus, a Greek geographer, explored as much of the world as he could. He had been to Egypt and parts of Africa, and was pretty sure that he had seen and heard enough to chart the whole world.
He tried to catalog every part of the world in a book called “Journey Around the World” and even made his own world map. His map showed the world as a round disc with Greece in the center. The world, he believed, stretched no further west than the Strait of Gibraltar, no further east than the Caspian Sea, and no further south than the Red Sea. Beyond these points, there was nothing but water.
Not every Greek believed him. Herodotus made fun of him, writing, “I laugh when I see that many have designed maps of the earth” that made it look “exactly circular” with “an ocean flowing round the Earth.” He was pushing his own map of the world—his, though, was pretty much the same, except that he made the earth a bit more of a misshapen blob, and he had helpfully written the word “cannibals” over northern Europe.
6Pytheas and the Frozen Ocean
Around 325 B.C., Pytheas became the first Greek to sail up the northernmost point of Britain and circle the islands. He came home and gushed about everything he had seen—and nobody believed him.
Almost every record we have of Pytheas’s journey is from somebody who thinks he is lying. The Greek Strabo wrote off his entire trip as a lie, referring to him as “Pytheas, by whom many have been misled.” In particular, he mocked Pytheas for saying that Britain had a coastline 4,545 miles (7314 km) long. To Strabo, that seemed impossibly big—but, if anything, Pytheas’s measurements were too small.
His reports include some descriptions that seem to suggest he reached the Arctic. He said that, north of Britain, there was a “frozen ocean” where the nights get so long that “on the winter solstice there is no day.”
Some of his word choices, though, make it pretty clear why the Greeks did not believe him. North of Britain, he claimed, “there was no longer either land properly so-called, or sea, or air, but a kind of substance concreted from all these elements, resembling a sea-lungs.” Nothing, he said, could cross the sea-lungs.
It sounds mythical and impossible, and kind of made-up—but he might just not have known how to describe what he was seeing. Some today think that he saw slaushed ice drifting in the sea and was just doing his best to try to explain it.
5Nearchus’s Violent Trip down the Indus River
Around the same time, Alexander the Great sent out a man named Nearchus to explore the Indus River, wanting to see if there was a safe path down the river. Nearchus was given men and ships and went out—and ended up getting into enough fights with natives to make the Spanish Conquistadors look peaceful.
As soon as he started, Nearchus was stopped by a monsoon. He had to spend a month waiting for the weather to calm down. The native people, though, attacked his camp so often that he ended up having to build a fortified base out of stone just to hold them off.
When he finally got going, he found another group of natives with stone age technology who tried to scare him away from landing. According to Nearchus, these people were completely covered in hair, with nails “rather like beasts’ claws.”
Nearchus immediately tried to kill them all, launching missiles at them from their boat and sending an armored phalanx in to slaughter the rest. He boasted, “They, astounded at the flash of the armor, and the swiftness of the charge, and attacked by showers of arrows and missiles, half naked as they were, never stopped to resist but gave way.”
He slaughtered or took captive every person he could run down, only complaining afterward that “some escaped into the hills.”
4Zhang Qian’s Journey to Mesopotamia
Around 113 B.C., the Emperor of Han sent an explorer named Zhang Qian out west, to find out who lived there, and, it seems, whether they could be added to his empire.
Zhang Qian made it into part of Mesopotamia, exploring parts of Parthian Persia and the Seleucid Empire that were tightly connected to the European powers. He came back with some of the first descriptions the Chinese ever heard of these places.
He was fascinated by Western coins. “They bear the face of the king,” he reported back. “When the king dies, the currency is immediately changed and new coins issued with the face of his successor.”
He came to the Seleucid Empire when it was collapsing after years of Civil Wars. In its weakened state, he saw it as a place “ruled by many petty chiefs,” subservient to the Parthians.
On the whole, though, he was not impressed. “All these states,” he reported back to the emperor, “were militarily weak.” With a few gifts from the Han Empire, Zhang Qian believed, every one of them could be made subservient.
3The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and the First Chinese Contact
Around A.D. 60, the Greeks wrote a book called “The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea.” It was their description of the Indian world—but it is particularly unique for having one of the first European descriptions of a Chinese person.
The unknown writer reported seeing a tribe he called the “Sêsatai,” believed to be Chinese, journey into India. He describes them as “short in body and very flat faced” and says that they came carrying massive packs “resembling mats of green leaves.”
The Sêsatai would lay out their great mats and hold a festival in India. Then, after days of celebration, these people would leave their mats behind and head back into China.
This was one of the first contacts between the European world and the Chinese—although not a single word was spoken. The Greek writer simply watched them celebrate and leave, writing them off as a primitive tribe—unaware he had made contact with a massive eastern empire.
2Gan Ying’s Journey to Europe
Shortly after, in A.D. 97, the Han Empire sent an explorer named Gan Ying out west to make contact with Europe. It is likely that they had heard stories about the empires to the west, and Gan Ying was to find out if these places were real.
Gan Ying made it out west to Parthia and spoke to the sailors there, but they convinced him not to go on to Europe. “The ocean is huge,” the sailors told him, warning him a trip across the sea could take up to three years. “The vast ocean urges men to think of their country, and get homesick, and some of them die.”
Instead, Gan Ying got them to describe Rome in as much detail as possible. He reported back that it was a massive kingdom with five palaces in the capital. “The people of this country are all tall and honest,” he reported back. “They shave their heads, and their clothes are embroidered.”
Rome, he learned, was aware of the Han Empire, and had tried to trade with them. The Parthians, though, had kept them apart to dominate Rome’s trade with the East.
1The Wei Zhi and the Tattooed People of Japan
In A.D. 297, explorers from the Chinese Wei Kingdom traveled around the Japanese islands and reported back what they had heard. They were not the first people to make contact with Japan, but they explored the eastern sea more thoroughly than ever before. If there is any truth to what they wrote, Japan has gone through some major changes.
“Men, great and small, all tattoo their faces and decorate their bodies with designs,” the Wei explorers reported back. The people of Japan, they claimed, covered themselves in these tattoos to “keep away large fish” when they go swimming.
They traveled south of Japan, too, where they claimed to have found an “island of the dwarfs where the people are three or four feet tall.” They put the Island of the Dwarfs about a year’s travel southeast of Korea, near the “Land of the Black-Teethed People” and the “Land of the Naked Men.”
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Girls high school wrestling could become reality in NJ this year
Adam Hochron
ATLANTIC CITY — For high school wrestlers in New Jersey there is no greater goal than making it to Boardwalk Hall for the individual state wrestling tournament. When the 2019 tournament kicks off next year it could mark the first time female wrestlers experience the rush of competing on the state's biggest stage.
For the past month, discussions have accelerated regarding the possibility of girls wrestling becoming its own sanctioned sport in the state, and having that process start with an individual state tournament.
Bill Bruno, assistant director for the NJSIAA, said the idea of girls wrestling has been floated for a while but really only started to gain momentum last month during a clinic at Princeton University.
Bruno said last year there were 128 girls wrestling in the state. The goal, he said, would be to see that number grow with the addition of the state tournament, and eventually having girls wrestling as its own sport.
"We're hoping to stimulate enough interest in the girls so the girls have a new sport to look forward to, I would hope within the next five years," he said.
The Red Bank Regional team had four girls wrestling at the junior varsity level this season, and athletic director Del Dal Pra said he sees that number only continuing to grow. Dal Pra said he can see girls wrestling progressing in a similar way to how girls ice hockey developed in the state. First with a few girls on the boys teams, then getting to the point where there are now girls hockey leagues and a state tournament for the sport.
"Just knowing that we have such a strong New Jersey wrestling community, I've got a feeling that this is going to kind of go like that," he said.
Princeton University wrestling coach Chris Ayres, who was one of the first people involved in the most recent discussions, said in the past year alone the number of states sanctioning girls wrestling has jumped from seven to 12.
Ayres said for him the plan is somewhat personal because his daughter wrestles, but it's something he is excited to see grow on a much larger scale as well.
"What we're seeing is just an incredible increase of popularity of the sport," he said. "There's really a lot of momentum behind the sport."
Bruno said the committee working to bring the plan to fruition will meet again in August before bringing their proposal to the NJSIAA executive board in September for a first reading. A second reading could come as soon as October, meaning the girls tournament could be held for the 2018-19 season. Girls would then compete in a regional tournament at the same time as their male counterparts with the winners qualifying to advance to the state championship in Atlantic City.
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Source: Girls high school wrestling could become reality in NJ this year
Filed Under: Monmouth County, Red Bank
Categories: New Jersey News
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Tag: Yorkshire Stingo Inn
Paddington & its transport systems – 3
Paddington & its transport systems – 3 The Great Western Railway This was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and it is interesting that his railway opened in the same year his canal bridge was built. It was in 1838 that these events occured. The railway itself was broad gauge of…
Paddington & its transport systems – 2 The canal – Brunel’s bridge: This was an early Brunel structure, predating the major works at Paddington Station by several years. The castings were made in Deptford and put together on site in 1838 and the structure officially opened in 1839. It was…
Paddington and its transport systems – 1
Paddington and its transport systems – 1 The building of the Grand Junction Canal between Braunston and Brentford brought the canal network to the River Thames, which in turn ran through the heart of London, giving direct access to the city’s wharves and industry. While this was intially an acceptable…
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@photoshot
London ranked sixth most expensive office location in the world
By LLP Reporter at 6:34 am February 4, 2019 Commercial, Offices, Property
New data released from GraphicSprings reveals the most expensive office locations in the world. Technology-rich markets and talent hotspots often attract significant corporate interest, leading to rising rental rates. So which cities have become a magnet for talent and tech, with the price tag to match?
GraphicSprings looked at the annual cost of office space, per square foot, in all of the major cities around the world. They then used the average space needed for each employee, as recommended by TMC, to calculate cost of office space needed for a single employee, each year, in the world’s major cities.
These are the top 10 most expensive office locations around the world:
Location Annual cost per employee in USD
1. Hong Kong, China $27,331
2. Beijing, China $25,821
3. New York, US $25,217
4. Silicon Valley, US $23,858
5. Shenzhen, China $23,405
6. London, UK $22,650
7. Tokyo, Japan $20,083
8. Shanghai, China $17,591.5
9. San Francisco, US $16,761
10. Singapore $16,308
Rental costs for space have continued to rise in major office markets over the past year, with costs growing by an average of close to four % in 2017, while the average amount of space per employee has fallen by 32% since 2010. Increasing recognition by business owners that their workspaces can be a key differentiator in the battle for talent has meant that well-located, premium space, with access to excellent amenities, is in strong demand around the globe.
So where are the most in-demand and expensive office locations?
Asia came out as the continent with the highest number of most expensive office locations, with China taking four of the top 10 spots, Japan taking one and Singapore taking the final spot. All six of these Asian cities are major financial centres and rank in the top 25 of the Global Financial Centres Index, so it’s perhaps not surprising that they are sought after office locations with the price tags to match.
In Beijing and Shenzhen, the annual cost of office space per employee is more expensive than domestic rents in the most expensive parts of the city. In Shenzhen, for example, employers pay over 20% more for a single employee’s office space than the average cost of an entire, furnished apartment.
It may not come as a surprise to see the US and UK in the top 10 most expensive office locations, as they are home to two of the world’s major financial centres and have booming tech industries. What is surprising, however, is that rent only accounts for around 80% and 62% of the total occupancy costs in the US and UK, respectively.
The remaining costs are made up of things like service charges and local government taxes. In fact, London has the highest proportion of additional costs of any city included in the top 50 office locations.
Evan Fraser, spokesperson for GraphicSprings said, “In business, location is everything but it’s important to find a balance between basing yourself as close to the epicentre of your market niche as possible, and finding office space you can actually afford.”
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Tag Archives: Portland
Ryan Gosling Rant
***Spoiler Alert***
I just visited Portland this past weekend, and saw the movie Drive with Ryan Gosling. The movie theatre we went to was incredible. It was in an old refurbished building that potentially used to be a brothel according to a friend. There were local brews, yummy nosh foods like cheese plates and Thai roasted nuts, and very cozy chairs. I was pretty excited to see a movie in such an awesome location. I would love to go back and see another movie there.
However, Drive was a major disappointment (and that is putting it nicely).
The throwback to the 80’s could have been fun with the synthesized music and hot pink lettering in the credits, but after a short while I had lost patience with the theme of the film, the treatment of women and ethnic minorities, and the lack of actual driving and plot points surrounding the title of the film.
Ryan Gosling with his 80's Jacket in Drive
My biggest problem with Drive was the underlying “White America” message which (perhaps accidentally, perhaps intentionally), permeated the entire film. In addition, not only was it also anti-Semitic at times, but the female characters were shown to be kind of flat and/or weak. The male and female protagonists are both blond Americans of European descent. Many of the most unsavory characters, on the other hand, are ethnic minorities. Hmmmmm….
For example, Ryan Gosling’s character (by the way he is never named, just called “Kid” or “Driver”) is falling in love with Irene (Carey Mulligan), a who is married to a Latino-American man named Standard, who is also in prison during the opening of the film and the subject of violence throughout the film.
Her husband is shown to not only be incapable of performing his “duties” as husband and father, but is also shown to be weak and cowardly in more than one scene. He eventually needs to ask Ryan Gosling for help. He, not surprisingly, also gets shot in the head during the movie.
I will not go into any symbolism here, but I felt that this whole patriarchal battle for Irene and her son Benicio between the White and Mexican man, even thought supposedly a subplot, was pretty obscene. Gosling also didn’t have to even try to “win” Irene in any way. He is shown by the filmmaker as the more stable option, who Irene also seems to prefer (or at least the option last standing).
He is usually the one controlling violence, not the subject of that violence, for example. He’s somehow shown to be “better than” or exempt from the violence until it finally catches up with him. And even then, he gets a long, drawn out death, and he gets agency in his death.
I didn’t understand why Ryan Gosling’s White male character was glorified and masculinized. Isn’t that formula kind of tired by now?
He’s a good driver- OK, so what?
Hey look- Ryan Gosling in a car. That doesn't happen much in this movie, considering the title.
He is also shown to be emotionally and socially off, violent towards women at times, potentially racist, and doesn’t seem to know how to shop for clothes. Ok, so we’re supporting That White guy again? Yet another example of White Male Exceptionalism.
I was pretty “on guard” after the comment in the movie made by Gosling’s character about a picture of her husband Standard. He asks, “What is he?” and she responds, “In prison.” At that point I was thinking, Ok, that was a gutsy script choice. I wonder what they will do with that moment.
However, instead of delving into any of the background, racial tension, ignorance, or potential racism on the part of Gosling’s character that elicited the comment, it was glossed over in the film as Gosling begins his slow usurpation of the role of Male Protector/Patriarch in the threesome’s familial structure.
The only way I can see the film attempting to take power away from Gosling’s character is in that he is a bit volatile, has little no emotional expression, and dies in the end (but still in a glorified and ambiguous way). Irene also seems a bit upset with him after seeing him crush someone’s skull in an elevator directly after kissing her.
Also, Irene’s character really pissed me off. She had no agency, and was always dependent on the men in the film. Her son was suffering, but he only seemed to get better once he had a White male father figure to hang out with. WTF.
I felt very glad there was alcohol available, because this movie annoyed me on many levels, and I was bummed to see the supposedly “feminist” man Ryan Gosling who has been the subject of the “Feminist Ryan Gosling” meme star in such a clueless and racialized film which propagates glorified White Americans and male violence.
I would not recommend this movie to my readers, ever.
Quite Annoyed,
9 Comments Posted in Feminism, Film, Gender, Masculinity, Patriarchy, Reviews Tagged America, Carrey Mulligan, Cars, clothes, Clothing, Drive, film, Latino, Masculinity, media, men, Movies, patriarchy, Portland, Portlandia, racism, relationships, Ryan Gosling, violence, White, Women
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He also made two capitals of molten bronze to set on the tops of the pillars; the height of the one capital was five cubits and the height of the other capital was five cubits. There were nets of network and twisted threads of chainwork for the capitals which were on the top of the pillars; seven for the one capital and seven for the other capital. So he made the pillars, and two rows around on the one network to cover the capitals which were on the top of the pomegranates; and so he did for the other capital. The capitals which were on the top of the pillars in the porch were of lily design, four cubits. There were capitals on the two pillars, even above and close to the rounded projection which was beside the network; and the pomegranates numbered two hundred in rows around both capitals. Thus he set up the pillars at the porch of the nave; and he set up the right pillar and named it Jachin, and he set up the left pillar and named it Boaz. On the top of the pillars was lily design. So the work of the pillars was finished. Now he made the sea of cast metal ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference. Under its brim gourds went around encircling it ten to a cubit, completely surrounding the sea; the gourds were in two rows, cast with the rest. It stood on twelve oxen, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east; and the sea was set on top of them, and all their rear parts turned inward. It was a handbreadth thick, and its brim was made like the brim of a cup, as a lily blossom; it could hold two thousand baths. Then he made the ten stands of bronze; the length of each stand was four cubits and its width four cubits and its height three cubits. This was the design of the stands: they had borders, even borders between the frames, and on the borders which were between the frames were lions, oxen and cherubim; and on the frames there was a pedestal above, and beneath the lions and oxen were wreaths of hanging work. Now each stand had four bronze wheels with bronze axles, and its four feet had supports; beneath the basin were cast supports with wreaths at each side. Its opening inside the crown at the top was a cubit, and its opening was round like the design of a pedestal, a cubit and a half; and also on its opening there were engravings, and their borders were square, not round. The four wheels were underneath the borders, and the axles of the wheels were on the stand. And the height of a wheel was a cubit and a half. The workmanship of the wheels was like the workmanship of a chariot wheel. Their axles, their rims, their spokes, and their hubs were all cast. Now there were four supports at the four corners of each stand; its supports were part of the stand itself. On the top of the stand there was a circular form half a cubit high, and on the top of the stand its stays and its borders were part of it. He engraved on the plates of its stays and on its borders, cherubim, lions and palm trees, according to the clear space on each, with wreaths all around. He made the ten stands like this: all of them had one casting, one measure and one form. He made ten basins of bronze, one basin held forty baths; each basin was four cubits, and on each of the ten stands was one basin. Then he set the stands, five on the right side of the house and five on the left side of the house; and he set the sea of cast metal on the right side of the house eastward toward the south. Now Hiram made the basins and the shovels and the bowls. So Hiram finished doing all the work which he performed for King Solomon in the house of the LORD: the two pillars and the two bowls of the capitals which were on the top of the two pillars, and the two networks to cover the two bowls of the capitals which were on the top of the pillars; and the four hundred pomegranates for the two networks, two rows of pomegranates for each network to cover the two bowls of the capitals which were on the tops of the pillars; and the ten stands with the ten basins on the stands; and the one sea and the twelve oxen under the sea; and the pails and the shovels and the bowls; even all these utensils which Hiram made for King Solomon in the house of the LORD were of polished bronze. In the plain of the Jordan the king cast them, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zarethan. Solomon left all the utensils unweighed, because they were too many; the weight of the bronze could not be ascertained. Solomon made all the furniture which was in the house of the LORD: the golden altar and the golden table on which was the bread of the Presence; and the lampstands, five on the right side and five on the left, in front of the inner sanctuary, of pure gold; and the flowers and the lamps and the tongs, of gold; and the cups and the snuffers and the bowls and the spoons and the firepans, of pure gold; and the hinges both for the doors of the inner house, the most holy place, and for the doors of the house, that is, of the nave, of gold. Thus all the work that King Solomon performed in the house of the LORD was finished And Solomon brought in the things dedicated by his father David, the silver and the gold and the utensils, and he put them in the treasuries of the house of the LORD. Christian Canvas Art
Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. ...
In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him. Then the king commanded that the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams. So they came in and stood before the king. And the king said to them, “I had a dream, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream.” Then the Chaldeans said to the king in Aramaic, “O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will show the interpretation.” The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, “The word from me is firm: if you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins. ... Bible Verse Wall Art
Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. What is desired in a man is steadfast love, and a poor man is better than a liar. The fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied; he will not be visited by harm. The sluggard buries his hand in the dish and will not even bring it back to his mouth. Strike a scoffer, and the simple will learn prudence; reprove a man of understanding, and he will gain knowledge. ... Christian Gifts
Glory of ChristOther BlindingChrist's Own GloryAgeControlling Your ThoughtsUnbelieversPerfection, DivineCommitment, to the worldChrist, Names ForSatan, Kingdom OfSatan, Titles ForThe Light Of ChristDarkness, As A Symbol Of SinCultsRevelation, In Ntevil, origins ofSpiritual Warfare, Causes OfHeart, Fallen And RedeemedBlindingSpiritual Blindness, Results Of Sin Bible Verse Wall Art
This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. ... Christian Gifts
Early Christian art survives from dates near the origins of Christianity. The oldest Christian sculptures are from sarcophagi, dating to the beginning of the 2nd century. The largest groups of Early Christian paintings come from the tombs in the Catacombs of Rome, and show the evolution of the depiction of Jesus, a process not complete until the 6th century, since when the conventional appearance of Jesus in art has remained remarkably consistent. Bible Verse Wall Art
"The house which I am about to build will be great, for greater is our God than all the gods. "But who is able to build a house for Him, for the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain Him? So who am I, that I should build a house for Him, except to burn incense before Him? "Now send me a skilled man to work in gold, silver, brass and iron, and in purple, crimson and violet fabrics, and who knows how to make engravings, to work with the skilled men whom I have in Judah and Jerusalem, whom David my father provided. Christian Canvas Art
Glory of ChristOther BlindingChrist's Own GloryAgeControlling Your ThoughtsUnbelieversPerfection, DivineCommitment, to the worldChrist, Names ForSatan, Kingdom OfSatan, Titles ForThe Light Of ChristDarkness, As A Symbol Of SinCultsRevelation, In Ntevil, origins ofSpiritual Warfare, Causes OfHeart, Fallen And RedeemedBlindingSpiritual Blindness, Results Of Sin Share Your Faith Products
Since the advent of printing, the sale of reproductions of pious works has been a major element of popular Christian culture. In the 19th century, this included genre painters such as Mihály Munkácsy. The invention of color lithography led to broad circulation of holy cards. In the modern era, companies specializing in modern commercial Christian artists such as Thomas Blackshear and Thomas Kinkade, although widely regarded in the fine art world as kitsch,[4] have been very successful.
Christian art, CHRISTIAN ART, Christian artwork, christian prints, CHRISTIAN ARTISTS, Christian Art Depot, framed Christian art, Christian framed art, pictures of Jesus, Christian artists, inspirational art, religious artwork, religious art prints, Christian, art gallery, art work, artwork, artworks, canvas prints, canvases, custom framed art, custom framing, decor, fine art, fine arts, giclee, giclees, giclee on canvas, home decor, images, inspirational, interior decorating, interior decorators, limited edition prints, limited editions, lithograph, lithographs, open edition prints, open editions, original art, paintings, paper, photographs, photography, photos, pictures, poster, posters, print, prints, reproductions, religious, spiritual, tapestries, tapestry, vintage originals Bible Verse Wall Art
“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know, and a nation that did not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, and of the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you. ...
“See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. And behold, I have appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. And I have given to all able men ability, that they may make all that I have commanded you: ... Share Your Faith Products
David built houses for himself in the city of David. And he prepared a place for the ark of God and pitched a tent for it. Then David said that no one but the Levites may carry the ark of God, for the Lord had chosen them to carry the ark of the Lord and to minister to him forever. And David assembled all Israel at Jerusalem to bring up the ark of the Lord to its place, which he had prepared for it. And David gathered together the sons of Aaron and the Levites: of the sons of Kohath, Uriel the chief, with 120 of his brothers; ... Christian Gifts
19 designers and 31 writers invested their energy and creativity to this collection, each riffing on the timeless, inspired words of Scripture. Each designer worked hard to capture the essence of each verse in its historical and cultural context, and to design in a way that makes clear the way in which the original readers would have understood it. Then, after each design was complete, a writer reflected on each piece of art and the verse that inspired it. The result is 100 pairs of art and devotional that illuminate the words of Scripture. Bible Verse Wall Art
“You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. Bible Verse Wall Art
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Walls can speak.
Recently, after a visit to the gorgeous Wallraf das museum in Cologne, Germany, I’ve been contemplating the colour of walls in museums and galleries. I’ve come to the decision that museums differ greatly from galleries in this matter, since the display of older works may need a backdrop that is of more relevance to the day and age in which they were created. The wallraf das is exquisite, with painfully rich stenciled walls boasting jewel tones from deep red, to emerald-green, to royal blue and purple (Images of which are featured above).
On that note, the Musee d’Orsay in Paris just underwent a tremendous renovation, spending a whopping 20 million euros, 8 of which went to the reconsideration of its gallery walls. A new gallery for the Impressionist collection included special lighting that emulates sunlight (in which most of the works of that time were conceived) as well as a specially formulated wall colour that can easily be mistaken for a basic light shade of grey. In fact, the wall paint changes (yes, changes) to tints of green-grey (an image of which is featured above) or red-grey, depending on how the light, artificial or actual sunlight, hits the piece. The Parisian architect who was consulted for the project, Jean-Michel Wilmotte, calls “Gris Vivant”, or “Lively Grey”. Of course.
It breaks my heart, this level of loyalty one can display towards artwork. We are eons behind (See: Ancient Egyptian museum). (See also: Museum of Modern Egyptian Art). (Both of which have miserable websites, last updated in 2003 and 2004 respectively. Oh just stab me. With a paintbrush in my heart).
Generally however, I’d say that coloured walls may not work as well for contemporary art galleries, where white allows viewers to digest the work presented. Having said that, the exact tone of white can be endlessly debated, but a loose guide would be to not go too bleachy and stop before you get into the vicinity of cream. A perfect example of white walls are those of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York (An image of which is featured above).
If however, a contemporary art gallery intends on painting its walls with every exhibition in an attempt to further enhance the viewing experience of the work, then alright. It may not always work, but it might prove to be an interesting, albeit expensive, initiative nevertheless. The latest gallery to open up in Zamalek, aptly called “The Gallery”, had its debut collection of collages on grey walls, and it seemed to work out well for the work. Depending on how their next exhibition will fare, one will discover whether it’s a sustainable colour or just a gimmick to appear different.
Moftah (discussed in the previous post) presented his work at the Palace of Arts (another Egyptian Public museum with wrist-cuttingly awful architecture and an equally horrible website) on an orange wall. It doesn’t work well. I would’ve prefered a white wall, so as to steer it away from the interior decorating feel, which makes the pieces an accessory and not the main focus. The colour is too overpowering and the work is not epic enough, so they fought it out and the wall colour won- a perfect example of how it can go wrong, even with great work (an image of his Moftah with his work at the Palace of Arts is featured above).
So. Even the walls on which Art hangs or set up against deserve a discussion and thorough research. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. Let it be me, please.
Previous Previous post: Mohamad Moftah
Next Next post: Masochistic much?
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Report: Electric Cars Could Cut Oil Demand by 8 Percent
More than a year after oil prices hit rock-bottom amidst a global supply glut, the cost of a barrel of crude is still stuck in the range of $50. The U.S. Energy Information Administration now estimates that prices will remain near current levels through at least the next year, with serious implications for the offshore industry. Adding to these persistent concerns, the biggest organizations in oil, energy and auto manufacturing are all upping their estimates of the future market share of electric cars, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEW).
BNEW predicts that plug-in vehicles will make up a third of the world's fleet by 2040, or about 530 million cars. If this development proves true, it would cut oil demand by as much as eight million barrels a day – about eight percent of the expected global total, and more than the entire export volume of Saudi Arabia.
The cause? Falling costs, BNEW says. It expects to see price parity between electric and conventional vehicles in just eight years, thanks in large part to economies of scale in lithium-ion battery production. The price of batteries has fallen by 70 percent since 2010, and it is expected to fall by half again by 2025.
Other organizations' forecasts of market uptake are more conservative, but they have risen sharply over the past year, Bloomberg reports. OPEC now foresees about 270 million electric vehicles by 2040, and ExxonMobil and BP both put the number at about 100 million.
Durability could also be a factor in estimates of the world's future electric fleet. Other than battery degradation, which can reduce the range and power of an electric car over time, there is little to go wrong in these vehicles' drivetrains - no internal combustion engine, no transmission and far fewer rotating parts. And data on long-term battery performance in Tesla vehicles suggests that they could retain 90 percent of their original capacity at 200,000 miles and up to 80 percent at 500,000 miles. If these predictions bear fruit, many electric vehicles built today could still be on the road in 2040, increasing their percentage of the world's total vehicle fleet as less-durable gas cars age out.
MarEx Corporate
Haifa Port's New Website Provides Full, Transparent Real-Time Data
Hyundai Global Service and Intellian Sign Satcom Partnership
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Media Decoder | MySpace Co-President Leaving Company
MySpace Co-President Leaving Company
By Brian Stelter
June 17, 2010 5:24 pm June 17, 2010 5:24 pm
Updated: 5:28 p.m.: Barely four months after becoming a co-president of MySpace, Jason Hirschhorn is leaving the company.
Mr. Hirschhorn confirmed his exit on Twitter, writing, “Yes i am moving back to NYC. Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.” He added, “I believe in MySpace, its leader Jonesy and its wonderful team.”
The exit was first reported by TechCrunch on Thursday afternoon.
Mr. Hirschhorn had shared the position with Mike Jones. Both were promoted in February after MySpace’s chief executive, Owen Van Natta, abruptly stepped down. (Mr. Van Natta had spent just 10 months at the Web site.)
Mr. Hirschhorn will not be replaced, the News Corporation, owner of MySpace, said in a statement.
“We fully respect Jason’s decision to leave and his personal desire to return to New York,” said Jon Miller, the chief digital officer of the News Corporation. “As many people know, Jason is like family to me, and as expected, he’s done everything we asked of him and more.”
Mr. Miller added, “Mike Jones has done an outstanding job leading MySpace into its next evolution and is the right person to take the reins.”
Mr. Hirschhorn’s departure is just the latest blow for the beleaguered social networking Web site, which the News Corporation bought for $580 million five years ago. MySpace has struggled to retain audience and relevance in the shadow of the much more popular Facebook. It averaged about 111 million visitors worldwide in April, while Facebook averaged 519 million, according to ComScore.
Starbucks Hopes There Is No Java Jive From Contest Results
Speed Read for Friday, June 18
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“O, let America be America again—The land that never has been yet—“ (Langston Hughes)
My anguish, my horror, my sense of complicity—these things keep me from writing. I don’t want to sound like the old (white) schoolmarm, or the bleeding heart (white) liberal, or the judgmental (white) bitch, or. . .
But I want you (my white friends and followers of my blog) to read the indictment below.
Please give the few minutes out of your (white) privileged day you will need to read this statement of truths you and I, the white dominators, need to hear.
We—you and I—can’t say it’s not our fault, that it was begun by our (white) ancestors and we are not to blame—we are to blame. My guess is not one African-American man is reading this. If you are, I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know the right thing, the helpful thing, or the self-aware thing that can possibly begin to right a centuries-old wrong.
So I will try my damnedest to hear Joshua DuBois. If his words are too hard, perhaps I can at least try to hear the lovely poetry of Langston Hughes I’ve copied at the end of Joshua DuBois’s writing.
I want you (my white friends and followers of my blog) to read the truths below.
[Note: Copyright of Newsweek Global: the property of Newsweek LLC and its content may not be copied . . . (I am breaking copyright laws. So be it. I’m willing to take the risk if you will read this)]
Joshua DuBois, “The Fight for Black Men”
There are more African-Americans on probation, parole, or in prison today than were slaves in 1850. It is not a crisis of crime. It is a crisis of people being left behind.
There is an easy way to meet Joe Jones, and a hard way. Let’s start with the easy way. If you and I were at a cocktail party, I’d introduce you to a tall, bald, black man, standing a shoulder above most everybody else. Knowing Joe Jones, he’d probably be wearing a tan suit and muted tie. Joe’s subdued, square-rimmed glasses fit nicely with his veiled intellect–he’s the kind of guy who readily drops six-dollar words without a hint of pretense.
I’d probably ask Joe to tell you about the nonprofit he runs, the Center for Urban Families on Baltimore’s West Side. CFUF is a national model for helping men and women who are confronting addiction, poverty, and despair turn their lives around, and teaching absent fathers how to reconnect with their kids. Joe’s a modest guy, so I’d have to brag on his behalf, about the bigwigs who have dropped by his center, and all the awards the organization has won.
Finally, I’d say in passing: “You know, Joe has a powerful personal story himself. His own father wasn’t around, he struggled in the streets for a while, and then pulled himself up, and made it out.” Nice and neat. Joe would nod and smile. You’d nod and smile. I’d nod and smile. We’d all be smiling–appropriately inspired.
That’s the easy way to meet Joe Jones. But there’s also the hard way. The hard way is to grapple with the fact that Joe’s family didn’t just emerge from some unseen ghetto thousands of miles away. No, his grandfather migrated to Baltimore from North Carolina, and started a business–a waste-management facility, one of the city’s more successful ones. His grandparents were “models of stability,” Joe told me. A few generations before that, Joe’s family were slaves.
It’s hard to figure out what happened to Joe’s dad, and thousands of other black fathers like him. Joe’s dad was training to be a teacher, but one day in the mid-’60s he hopped into the driver side of a Ford Thunderbird, visibly angry, slung his duffel bag on the passenger side, and drove off for good. Joe saw the whole thing from his upstairs window in the Lafayette Court housing projects; he thought his dad was going to the laundromat, and sat waiting for him, for hours.
It’s tough to stomach what happened later. How Joe, an adorable kid of 13–never a smoker, never a drinker–met a guy a couple years older than him. And this person put it into Joe’s young head that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing to stick a needle in his arm, and let a bit of heroin rush in. So, as a 13-year-old, he did. Joe’s two cousins shared the needle with him–their dad wasn’t around either–and his best friend, Barry, also fatherless, did too.
So now Joe’s an adolescent junkie, hanging out on Edmonson Avenue in West Baltimore and shooting up wherever he can find a shadow long enough to hide himself: sometimes in a bowling alley bathroom, sometimes in his aunt’s basement. He was 14 when he was busted for the first time for using drugs, along with his two cousins and Barry. The other boys’ parents bailed them out, thank God, but the police suggested that Joe, the ringleader, should stew for a little while to learn his lesson–you know, “tough on crime.”
Turns out, this wasn’t the best move for Joe. During his few extra days in jail, in the throes of heroin withdrawal that his young system wasn’t handling well, Joe met a local kingpin who taught him how to be a more efficient junkie, and a more effective criminal. Or as Joe puts it now (in his always-impeccable phrasing): “This man created a pathway for me to negotiate the street environment in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. It was the worst thing that could’ve happened to me.”
So in the span of a few years, Joe went from a stable household to a single-parent family. From a middle-school honor student to a street-corner addict. From the grandson of a businessman and great-great-great-grandson of slaves to the son of an absent father, and a future deadbeat dad himself. It was a jumble of inputs–bad parenting and bad policy, misguided culture and tragic history–resulting in one clear output: a woefully lost kid.
There is a lot more to Joe Jones’s story–more pain than most can bear; more beauty than you’d expect. We’ll get to all of that, including his fateful encounter with the president of the United States.
But first, a few words about the world Joe comes from: the world of low-income black men. Why talk about this world? After all, it’s simple enough to ignore. We can safely tuck these men away in our inner cities and allow them to interact largely among themselves. We can rush past them in front of the gas station, murmur silently when the nightly news tells us of a shooting across town, or smile when we meet a nice, inspiring man like Joe. We can keep them in these places. It’s safe and easy for us.
Yet if we’re honest, we’ll have to admit that when one single group of people is conspicuously left behind, it never bodes well for society as a whole. In many ways, black men in America are a walking gut check; we learn from them a lot about ourselves, how far we’ve really come as a country, and how much further we have to go.
I spent the past few months talking to dozens of experts who are working to address the crisis among black men. It was clear from these conversations that the reasons for this crisis are complex–as are the solutions. But it was also clear that the fight for black men, which is currently being waged by activists, politicians, celebrities, and everyday people alike, can indeed be won.
As with Joe Jones, it starts by understanding their history, and their stories.
THE EARLIEST chapter in that story is a tough one. I’d rather skip it. You’d rather that I skip it. But as Ralph Ellison once remarked, channeling Faulkner, our complicated racial past is “a part of the living present”; it’s a past that “speaks even when no one wills to listen.”
-The facts are a bit overwhelming, but not in much dispute. Africans were imported to the United States as purchased goods beginning around 1620. By 1770, when Crispus Attucks, a free black man, spilled the first drop of blood in the cause of the American Revolution, nearly 18 percent of the American population–almost 700,000 people–were slaves. By the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, that number had exploded to over 4 million.
Beneath these sterile facts lay a grisly reality. Blacks were systemically dehumanized for hundreds of years, a practice that had unique social and psychological effects on men. They were worked and whipped in fields like cattle. Any semblance of pride, any cry for justice, any measure of genuine manhood was tortured, beaten, or sold out of them. Marriage was strictly prohibited. Most were forbidden from learning to read and write. The wealth derived from their labor–the massive wealth derived from cotton, our chief export throughout much of the 19th and early 20th centuries–was channeled elsewhere.
But, because slavery ended 150 years ago, we often assume that this dehumanization is ancient history. It is not. As Douglas Blackmon of The Wall Street Journal meticulously documents in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Slavery by Another Name, blacks were kept in virtual bondage through Jim Crow laws, sharecropping, and, quite often, a form of quasi-slavery called peonage, which endured well into the middle of the 20th century.
Here’s how it worked: black men (it was usually men) were arrested for petty crimes or no crimes at all; “selling cotton after sunset” was a favorite charge. They were then assessed a steep fine. If they could not pay, they were imprisoned for long sentences and forced to work for free. This allowed savvy industrialists to replace thousands of slaves with thousands of convicts.
While some whites were caught up in this system, the forced labor camps were 80 to 90 percent populated by black men. This practice endured until 1948, when the federal criminal code was rewritten to helpfully clarify that the law forbade involuntary servitude.
Around that time, determined activists–from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Fannie Lou Hamer–organized to demand equal treatment. We know the civil rights story well: Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which overturned the separate-but-equal doctrine; the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed various forms of discrimination; and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which carved a clear path to the unfettered right to vote.
And that, we told black men, was that. Immediately following the civil rights movement, in the early 1970s, we assured these men, with fingers perhaps gently crossed behind our backs, that all the discrimination they had faced was behind them; that there would be no further barriers to opportunity, even unspoken ones; that it was time for them to wake up. Get a job. Get married, and start a family. Build wealth. Take hold of the American dream. We won’t stop you–we promise.
We focused our social investments in this period–our brief War on Poverty–on women and children, because men were supposed to figure it out. But in the 1970s and 1980s, many of these black men didn’t. Just like their great-grandfathers never fully figured out how to teach their sons about manhood while being lashed in a field. Just like their grandfathers never completely figured out how to pass on lessons about building wealth when theirs was stolen through peonage and sharecropping.
Their fathers tried to rally around Martin Luther King as a symbol of what they could be–but he was gunned down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. In the post–civil rights era, many of these black men, men like Joe Jones’s father, weren’t quite figuring it out either. And neither are many of their sons and grandsons, those bright if often scowling men we see on our streets.
Why not? The reasons are as complicated as the difficult history, and simple debates about government spending versus personal responsibility are woefully insufficient.
But one of the key reasons has to do with our criminal justice system. And it points the way toward one of the key solutions–perhaps the single most important thing government can do to help win the fight for black men.
No one has done more to shed light on this issue than Michelle Alexander. Alexander may be this century’s Harriet Beecher Stowe, the storied author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin about whom President Lincoln remarked, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this Great War?” But instead of making a war, Alexander wrote a book to end one.
Alexander was a young civil rights attorney working for the ACLU of California and trying to find a model plaintiff for a civil rights case against the Oakland Police Department, which at the time was rife with corruption. One day, a 19-year-old black man walked into her office, and he looked like the perfect case to prove that the Oakland PD had gone bad.
The man had been stopped and released dozens of times, for no reason at all. He had been forced to lie on the ground spread-eagle and been subjected to invasive searches, after which the police found nothing. And, important, he had taken meticulous notes of all this–every stop, every date, every badge number. “I was getting more and more excited,” Alexander told me, “because I thought this was our plaintiff.”
However, at the end of his presentation, the man shared one final fact: he had a felony record, having been busted for a drug offense years earlier and convicted as an adult. Alexander stopped him there. “I explained to him that I couldn’t take his case,” she told me. “It wouldn’t be fair to him or to us. With his felony record he’d have no credibility on the witness stand; he’d be cross-examined about his past.”
Alexander tried to explain to the young man that it wouldn’t work out, but he pushed back in protest. He said that the conviction was for a minor offense, and that he’d just taken a plea deal to avoid more jail time. He said his past should have no bearing on the repeated abuse he had experienced.
But Alexander didn’t budge, and eventually the young man had enough. Fighting back tears, he yelled at her, “You’re no better than anyone else! The minute I tell you I have a criminal record, you stop listening. I can’t get a job. I can’t feed my family. Where am I supposed to sleep? How long am I supposed to pay for my record?”
The man stormed out in a huff, leaving Alexander stunned. At that point, something clicked with her, something that pulled together all of her prior experience in civil rights law and history. Alexander realized that, not unlike the peonage system in the early 20th century, the “war on drugs” had created what she calls a “permanent under-caste” of men convicted of drug offenses. Men who, even after their release from incarceration for relatively minor crimes, would never again be able to navigate the world on equal footing with the rest of us. Men like the young man she met but could not serve.
The full explanation of this permanent under-caste of black men and the devastation it has wrought is meticulously and powerfully delivered in The New Jim Crow–Alexander’s book about the war on drugs, which was on The New York Times bestseller list for nearly a year and today can be found in the hands of decision makers across the country, from federal courtrooms to the halls of Congress. In the book, she describes the ramp-up of criminal-justice spending in the 1980s as the result of an intentional political strategy rather than a reasoned law enforcement response. The result has been the mass incarceration of African-Americans, mostly men, with little connection to actual rates of crime.
Alexander shows that there are more African-Americans in the corrections system today–in prison or on probation or parole–than there were enslaved in 1850. As of 2004, more black men were denied the right to vote because of a criminal record than in 1870, when the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, giving blacks the right to vote. In the three decades since the war on drugs began, the U.S. prison population has exploded from 300,000 to more than 2 million people, giving our country the highest incarceration rate in the world–higher than Russia, China, and other regimes we consider repressive. A significant majority of black men in some urban areas are labeled felons for life; in and around Chicago, when you include prisoners, that number approaches 80 percent.
But isn’t this just a function of more crime in black communities? Aren’t we arresting violent super-predators, the type we see on television? Alexander makes clear: in most communities, the answer is no.
“It has nothing to do with crime rates,” she told me. “Crime rates have fluctuated over time–we’re currently at historic lows–but incarceration rates have consistently soared.” People of color are arrested in large numbers for relatively minor offenses–four out of five drug arrests in 2005 were for possession, not sales–and then given sentences that outpace their white counterparts. In fact, in the 1990s, when the war on drugs was at its peak, almost 80 percent of the increase in drug arrests was for possession of marijuana.
The result of all of this is the “under-caste,” an apt if cringe-worthy term describing the massive numbers of black men who cannot access housing, who are screened out of employment, and who in many states are denied the right to vote. Facing severely limited options and few opportunities for rehabilitation, millions of these men re-offend, creating more victims in our communities and landing themselves back in jail.
These men are increasingly isolated from the rest of America–including from middle-class African-Americans. As the Rev. Al Sharpton, the nationally known civil rights activist and founder of the National Action Network, told me in an interview, “We’re in the best of times and worst of times, at the same time.” “It’s the best-time times,” Sharpton continued, “because we have a black president, black attorney general, black CEOs. But it’s the worst of times because millions of African-American men are being locked up and left out like never before.”
Ben Jealous, the president of the NAACP, agrees. In an interview, Jealous declared to me that “black men are the most incarcerated people on the planet warehoused in prison for nonviolent crimes that two decades ago would have resulted in little to no jail time.”
But Jealous is also hopeful. The NAACP is going state by state, attaching practical solutions to Alexander’s thesis. And because of strained prison budgets and concern about bloated government, they are finding receptive audiences not just among liberals but among conservatives too. For example, they are presently working with Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia, a Tea Party Republican, to, in Jealous’s words, “make their prison system dramatically smaller.” “Our allies on the right are beginning to think about criminal-justice reform,” Jealous says. “They are finally getting beyond ‘tough on crime’ slogans, and actually focusing on what works.”
In fact, bipartisan efforts on criminal-justice reform are growing. On the Democratic side, Attorney General Eric Holder has confronted the issue head on, spearheading an initiative to tackle youth violence and create new reentry programs for returning offenders, while working with Congress to reduce racial disparities in sentencing. He’s been joined on the right by Republican Congressman Frank Wolf, who has taken a particular interest in “smart on crime” approaches, driven by his relationship with Prison Fellowship, an evangelical Christian organization that believes in giving second chances to people who’ve been incarcerated.
Meanwhile, from the halls of Congress to statehouses across the country, people are reading Michelle Alexander’s book. On a recent afternoon, I drove to the office of U.S. Congressman Bobby Rush, sitting for an hour with this stalwart of the Congressional Black Caucus whose experience on the issue of black men in America spans from a stint in the Black Panther party to Christian pulpits to losing his own son to gun violence. Rush recently had a spat with a fellow Illinoisan, Republican Sen. Mark Kirk, who made headlines recommending that Chicago spend $30 million more to lock up young gang members. “I sent him a copy of The New Jim Crow,” Rush told me. “He promised me that he would read it.”
IF MICHELLE Alexander is worried about black men’s criminal records, John Hope Bryant is concerned with their wallets. “I believe that 99 percent of black leaders are digging in the wrong hole,” Bryant told me. “If you’re poor, your health care’s going to suck, your housing is going to suck, your infrastructure is going to suck if you’re poor, everything sucks.”
Bryant speaks like Martin Luther King on an auctioneer’s stand–a frenetic ball of energy and ideas, seamlessly mixing civil rights maxims with financial advice at 100 miles an hour. He started his first business in Compton, California, at the age of 10, when the corner store in his neighborhood stopped selling the type of candy kids wanted. He opened up his own store in his mother’s living room, and in three months was so successful that, in his words, “I put the corner store out of business.”
Since then, Bryant has been convinced that the way out for black men is through a burgeoning bank account, not a social service program. “The whole world pivots on economic issues. If you don’t solve that, you can’t solve anything else,” Bryant says. “But if you do solve that, you have a chance at solving everything else.”
Bryant has put his money–and substantial energy–where his mouth is. He runs the largest network of financial literacy centers in the country–HOPE Financial Dignity Centers–which help low-income Americans access credit for small businesses, manage their budgets, open bank accounts, and purchase homes.
Like Michelle Alexander and others, Bryant is concerned with the mass incarceration of young black men but from a slightly different angle. “There’s a very good chance that we’re actually locking up the only potential we’ve got to revitalize inner-city neighborhoods in America,” Bryant told me. “Drug dealers, gang organizers–they’re all natural entrepreneurs. They get up early, they work late, they hustle–but they have misplaced values and terrible role models.”
Bryant created the HOPE Business in a Box program to help troubled youth start, fund, and operate small businesses. He also thinks that black businessmen should help young black boys ditch the “rappers and ball players” that they currently hold up as role models, and look in a different direction for examples of success. “These young men are the best chance we have to create jobs and GDP in our neighborhoods,” Bryant says, “if we can just get them back on the right track.”
BRYANT’S EFFORT is just one of a growing number of innovative private and public programs that are making real inroads on this issue. Many of these initiatives are taking place under the umbrella of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which has created a Campaign for Black Male Achievement and a Leadership and Sustainability Institute to knit together previously disparate programs for black men and boys, and help the field outlast funding from any one source. The effort is led by Shawn Dove, a burly man who speaks with a thick New York accent that has hints of all five boroughs at once. In fact, he’s lived in all of them, but he cut his teeth mostly at 80th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
It was on that corner that Dove sold loose joints as a teenager, teetering between a strict Jamaican household, where his single mother ruled with an iron fist, and the warm glow of New York evenings and the allure that hustling brings.
One day some friends invited Shawn to a basketball game on the Upper West Side, and he met a guy named John Simon, who ran a youth program called DOME (Developing Opportunities for Meaningful Education). Simon told Shawn that he had the potential for greatness if he would only focus. “I took him up on his offer,” Shawn told me.
From there it was a fast track to Wesleyan University, a stint in the garment industry, and a career as a shining star among nonprofit executives in New York. But several years ago, Shawn received a call that would change his life.
It was from the Open Society Institute–now Open Society Foundations. They were looking for someone to start a project on low-income black men, and wondered if Shawn would be interested in the job. Shawn said yes, and six years later he has helped create an entire field of “black male achievement,” an ecosystem of organizations, programs, and leaders with one straightforward if daunting goal: give low-income African-American men and boys an opportunity to succeed, a pathway to the American dream.
Under this umbrella is a Black Male Achievement Fellows Program, which supports social entrepreneurs in urban communities, in partnership with the Echoing Green Foundation. Then there is “BMe,” a collection of thousands of video testimonials that allow black men to tell their story in their own voices. Dove’s institute has also partnered with Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York on the Young Men’s Initiative, a citywide effort to redirect black and Latino boys bound for prison to another path. Linda Gibbs, the deputy mayor of health and human services of New York, told me that the Young Men’s Initiative is about building a “continuum of services,” including job training, mentoring, and male-friendly health care to give troubled young men the best chance to succeed. In less than two years of running the program, Gibbs says they’ve seen a “dramatic reduction in the number of young men who are serving time,” as well as a reduction in re-arrests. (The program has sparked a similar effort in other cities called Cities United–in which Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans, Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, Casey Family Programs, and the National League of Cities are leading participants.)
Dove has also convened other major funders–including William Bell of Casey and Robert Ross at the California Endowment–into a new Black Male Achievement Funders coalition, each with a different approach to a previously intractable problem. Ross, the California Endowment’s president and a pediatrician from the South Bronx who took a three-month sabbatical to study the issue of young black men in America, focuses on behavioral health and education. The California Endowment is funding programs to close the achievement gap in third-grade reading scores and develop alternative approaches to suspension when dealing with troubled boys. “Overly harsh discipline and suspension marginalizes, stigmatizes, and criminalizes these boys,” Ross told me. “When an African-American male in eighth grade has defiant behavior in the classroom, it’s like seeing a burn on their body; we need to treat their behavior as evidence of a problem to be solved rather than a kid to lock up.”
There’s powerful work happening outside of Dove’s network as well. For example, Michael Curtin, CEO of D.C. Central Kitchen, believes the food industry can help to empower black men and women. Since 1989, the kitchen has served over 25 million meals to low-income people in the D.C. area–but don’t call it a food bank. Instead, Curtin, a former restaurateur, runs a rigorous culinary job-training program, using the process of meal preparation to help formerly homeless, addicted, and incarcerated men and women learn culinary skills and then find employment in the hospitality industry.
I visited D.C. Central Kitchen recently and saw lines of men and women who were previously on the streets chopping vegetables, barking orders, and managing a full-scale industrial operation. Curtin told me at the time, “When I look back on my personal experience, I recognized that I was incredibly fortunate–I had a phenomenal family, I grew up in safe communities, and went to good schools. I made reckless decisions, but always had someone there to put me back on track. Many of the men and women who come to us grew up in very different circumstances–when they messed up, they didn’t have someone to help get them back on track. What we’re trying to do at D.C. Central Kitchen is provide people with that opportunity.”
THE FIGHT for black men is being waged through policy and programs, as the work of Shawn Dove and Michelle Alexander shows. But there’s also a concurrent fight going on for their culture and soul–and in that battle, Ta-Nehisi Coates is at the forefront.
Coates, a senior editor at The Atlantic, is a reluctant spokesman. He has shut down his Twitter account more than once. After penning several landmark columns for The New York Times, he declined the Times’s offer of a permanent weekly slot. And he does not write solely, or even primarily, about race. His recent topics of interest range from the conflict in Syria to Kurt Vonnegut. He speaks fluent French, and analyzes the hit show Mad Men with gusto.
But try as he might, Coates cannot escape the mantle of leading cultural envoy. He writes in a way that’s inherently viral, moving fast from black hands to white and then around the world. What Henry Louis Gates says about race painstakingly, like an intricate symphony, and Cornel West declares elliptically, like a Pentecostal preacher or alto saxophonist, Coates offers straight up, with just a splash of hip-hop as a chaser.
Consider his New York Times essay “The Good, Racist People,” which summed up in nine paragraphs what black men have been trying to get off their chests for the last 30 years. Through personal stories, he cast racism in America as “invisible violence,” perpetrated by well-meaning folks all around. Or his landmark piece for The Atlantic, “Fear of a Black President,” about what he calls the “false promise and double standard of integration” in the era of President Obama.
Coates is at the fulcrum of a resurgent cultural conversation about black men, one that is advancing in a number of sectors. There is the painter Kehinde Wiley, who mixes classical techniques with contemporary subjects to create stunning portraits of blacks in America. There are rappers like Lupe Fiasco and Kendrick Lamar, who are using their lyrics to put new spins on old truths. In sports, Miami Heat great Dwyane Wade has teamed up with a cast of unlikely characters–including Grammy Award–winning artist Lecrae and conservative funder Foster Friess–to launch the “This Is Fatherhood” challenge, which encourages young people around the country, and particularly black men, to tell stories of what fatherhood means to them. In film, the talent agent Tamara Houston has launched a new organization, ICON MANN, to create a space for Hollywood’s leading black male actors to learn from one another and project their values to the world.
But Coates is in many ways this movement’s biographer. In an interview, he told me that the goal of his writing is not to “fix” race relations in America. “I have folks who write me and want me to help out with their racist uncle; I don’t want any part of that,” he said with light-hearted sarcasm. But when pushed, he admitted that he does see himself as “an agent in pursuit of the truth of this country, of which I’m a citizen, in which I was raised, which I love.” “I want to understand it,” he continued. “I want to explore it, and make that exploration as honest as I can.”
I asked Coates about the best way to help black men who are struggling, and he didn’t point to a particular program. Instead, he said, “If there’s one thing that’s missing in our country, it’s an acknowledgment of the broad humanity of black folks. Racism–and anti-black racism in particular–is the belief that there’s something wrong with black people and I mean something in our bones.” He continued, “In our own community, we’ve internalized this. We wonder if we lack moral courage.”
“I want the country to understand that there’s nothing wrong with us,” Coates says, with urgency in his voice. “Things have happened in this country, but there’s nothing wrong with us. My job is to help close the gap between what they see in us and who we actually are.”
“WHO WE actually are.” It took Joe Jones about two decades to figure that out. That’s how long he was strung out–after his dad pulled off in the Thunderbird, his mom went away to work, and he made a series of bad decisions on Edmonson Avenue; after jail made him more of a criminal and a junkie, not less. By 1986, Joe was spending $800 to $900 a day on a mixture of heroin and crack.
There were some bright moments–the birth of his son, a job at the Social Security Administration. But in one way or another, they all were deflated, pricked by the same needle that he regularly thrust into his arm.
Finally, facing a five-year prison sentence for drug possession, Joe argued and cajoled his way into an in-patient treatment program instead. He told me: “There was a six-month wait for the program, but I knew I needed to get in now. The only way you could get in was if you were crazy, so I acted as crazy as I could.”
It worked. And from the moment he got serious treatment, things kept working for Joe. I asked him how it all came together, and he told me it was pretty simple: people listened to him, got to know him, and they liked him.
There was the staff at the treatment center who grew to know Joe Jones as not just an addict but a man, “counselors and therapists who could help me understand why I did the things that I did.”
There was the dean at Baltimore City Community College, who admitted Joe despite his criminal record. He and Joe became so close that Joe ended up counseling the dean when the dean’s son was struggling with his own drug addiction. Joe graduated from the college with an accounting degree, at the top of his class. There was also the young woman Joe met in the financial aid office at this community college–she liked him so much that she later became his wife.
This phenomenon of knowing, and liking, was repeated over and over in my interviews with experts on troubled youth. As Geoffrey Canada, CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone–our country’s go-to model for turning around tough neighborhoods–told me, “First you have to know them, and then you have to like them, enough to respect what they’re going through but not accept responses that may be inappropriate.”
Canada continued, “You really do have to like them. Boys, when they’re threatened and angry, they act out in ways that make them difficult to deal with. They can become threatening, sullen, disrespectful. They learn to be frightening as a defense mechanism in the environments they have to navigate.”
“When you don’t like them,” he said, “those are reasons to get rid of them–to put them out of programs, put them out of schools, to call the police to deal with them, lock them up. But when they’re kids that you actually know, and actually like, they will listen to you, and you will listen to them. And that’s where change starts.”
A few people got to know Joe Jones, and then like him. And his life changed. Joe entered a series of nonprofit jobs, from HIV counseling to health care, and eventually began working for the Baltimore Health Department. He persuaded the city of Baltimore to start a fatherhood program, along with programs on maternal and child health. These efforts were so successful that the mayor of Baltimore at the time, Kurt Schmoke, helped Joe spin them off into a larger, independent organization, which became the Center for Urban Families, the organization that Joe runs today.
At CFUF, Joe uses evidenced-based models to help the same types of men and women he grew up around. Funded in part by Shawn Dove’s campaign, Joe’s center has a successful job-training program, including partnerships with major Baltimore employers. They have a fatherhood program, along with programs on maternal and child health. These efforts were so successful that the mayor of Baltimore at the time, Kurt Schmoke, helped Joe spin them off into a larger, independent organization, which became the Center for Urban Families, the organization that Joe runs today.
At CFUF, Joe uses evidenced-based models to help the same types of men and women he grew up around. Funded in part by Shawn Dove’s campaign, Joe’s center has a successful job-training program, including partnerships with major Baltimore employers. They have a fatherhood program that gives dads practical skills to reconnect with their kids and pay back child support. Joe also wrote state legislation called “Couples Advancing Together”; it’s based on a simple but powerful idea that low-income men and women who are romantically involved should develop life plans and financial goals together. Social programs focusing on job training and financial literacy have traditionally served these couples separately, instead of acknowledging that their goals and life plans are inherently intertwined. Joe’s couples-services concept has the potential to dramatically change how these programs work; it passed the Maryland legislature in April and was signed into law by Gov. Martin O’Malley in May.
And a few weeks ago, something special happened. The man who perhaps most radically symbolizes both the hope of black men in America and the challenges from which they spring stopped by to see Joe Jones. President Obama, himself a product of a single-parent household, visited the Center for Urban Families to say hello to Joe and the men he serves. Obama met with employers, people being trained for jobs, and dads getting back on track. His remarks were private, candid, and–based on accounts from those in attendance–had quite an impact on a bunch of guys from West Baltimore who were struggling to make it by.
Later that same weekend, Obama traveled to Morehouse College in Atlanta to deliver a speech to the black male graduates there. He was to talk about fatherhood and responsibility, and what African-American men must do to compete in the world. But in one brief, unscripted moment at Morehouse, the two dichotomized worlds of black men–Joe’s new one and his old one; the soaring heights of the presidency and the depths of the streets–briefly and powerfully collided.
I had been a small part of the planning process for the speech. Obama’s relationship with his father–years of absence and brief flickers of presence–is one of the defining aspects of his life. While I grew up with a strong and supportive stepfather, my own biological father had a beautiful, tragic, and deeply complicated story–a black man who received a Ph.D. from Cornell University, and ended his life in a federal penitentiary in North Carolina. Out of this common set of experiences, I worked for years with the president on his fatherhood initiative, an effort to help absent fathers around the country get back on the right track.
I had the text in front of me as Obama was delivering the speech. So it came as a surprise when, as the president neared his close, something pulled him away from the prepared remarks. He was supposed to be moving to a final story about one of the graduates, but instead started talking about men who had been left behind. I have to imagine he was picturing men like those he saw at the Center for Urban Families, men like those he had known his whole life. Men like Joe.
“Whatever success I have achieved,” the president said, “whatever positions of leadership I have held have depended less on Ivy League degrees or SAT scores or GPAs, and have instead been due to that sense of connection and empathy–the special obligation I felt, as a black man like you, to help those who need it most, people who didn’t have the opportunities that I had.”
He continued, “Because there but for the grace of God go I. I might have been in their shoes. I might have been in prison”–a jarring thing to hear from the president of the United States. “I might have been unemployed. I might not have been able to support a family. And that motivates me.”
Obama’s voice faded off into a trail of emotion and applause, and he returned to the text. But the point was made.
We have walked a winding road with black men in this country, with no small amount of pain and tears along the way. But all Americans have walked that road together. Our connection to each other is, as James Baldwin once said of the relationship between blacks and whites, “far deeper and more passionate than any of us like to think.” And it’s that connection, that empathy, that “there but for the grace of God go I” mentality, that must motivate our society’s efforts on behalf of low-income black men. Because our history, our present circumstance, and our humanity demand it. Because there are boys walking the streets of this country with the brightest of futures–the next Shawn Dove, the next Joe Jones, the next Barack Obama–if only they were given a shot.
JOSHUA DUBOIS was President Obama’s first director of the White House faith-based initiative, and is now an author, teacher, speaker, and CEO of Values Partnerships.
“Let America Be America Again,” by Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967)
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
[I should not put this picture here because we will all be so shocked we will say it’s too much, it’s too real, it can’t happen anymore. Ask Eric Garner’s widow about that.]
Filed under African American Men, Eric Garner, Joshua DuBois, Langston Hughes, Michael Brown, Racism Tagged with Eric Garner, Greenville TX lynching, Joshua DuBois, Langston Hughes, Michael Brown
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Honoring Dr. Du Bois
Posted by MLToday | Jan 17, 2014 | Struggles for Equality
The annual celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday has come and gone. As with Nelson Mandela, the opponents of King, after his death, still work to make his legacy safe for the status quo. One of the last speeches of King was the one delivered at Carnegie Hall on February 23, 1968 to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of W. E. B. DuBois. It cannot be read at the MLK Archive sponsored by the megabank JPMorgan Chase & Co. King’s memory is ill-served by an archive that censors him by omission.
The speech explains the importance of writing history against power, points to those for whom such writing is so very uncomfortable, and demands – demands – that criticism come with organizing for justice. It’s a speech that deserves to be far better known. Here it is, in its entirety.
By Martin Luther King, Jr.
Tonight we assemble here to pay tribute to one of the most remarkable men of our time. Dr. Du Bois was not only an intellectual giant exploring the frontiers of knowledge, he was in the first place a teacher. He would have wanted his life to teach us something about our tasks of emancipation.
One idea he insistently taught was that black people have been kept in oppression and deprivation by a poisonous fog of lies that depicted them as inferior, born deficient and deservedly doomed to servitude to the grave. So assiduously has this poison been injected into the mind of America that its disease has infected not only whites but many Negroes. So long as the lie was believed the brutality and criminality of conduct toward the Negro was easy for the conscience to bear.
The twisted logic ran if the black man was inferior he was not oppressed-his place in society was appropriate to his meager talent and intellect. Dr. Du Bois recognized that the keystone in the arch of oppression was the myth of inferiority and he dedicated his brilliant talents to demolish it.
There could scarcely be a more suitable person for such a monumental task. First of all he was himself unsurpassed as an intellect and he was a Negro. But beyond this he was passionately proud to be black and finally he had not only genius and pride but he had the indomitable fighting spirit of the valiant.
To pursue his mission, Dr. Du Bois gave up the substantial privileges a highly educated Negro enjoyed living in the North. Though he held degrees from Harvard and the University of Berlin, though he had more academic credentials than most Americans, black or white, he moved South where a majority of Negroes then lived. He deliberately chose to share their daily abuse and humiliation.
He could have offered himself to the white rulers and exacted substantial tribute for selling his genius. There were few like him, Negro or white. He could have amassed riches and honors and lived in material splendor and applause from the powerful and important men of his time. Instead, he lived part of his creative life in the South-most of it in modest means and some of it in poverty, and he died in exile, praised sparingly and in many circles ignored.
But he was an exile only to the land of his birth. He died at home in Africa among his cherished ancestors, and he was ignored by a pathetically ignorant America but not by history.
History cannot ignore W. E. B. Du Bois. Because history has to reflect truth and Dr. Du Bois was a tireless explorer and a gifted discoverer of social truths. His singular greatness lay in his quest for truth about his own people. There were very few scholars who concerned themselves with honest study of the black man and he sought to fill this immense void. The degree to which he succeeded discloses the great dimensions of the man.
Yet he had more than a void to fill. He had to deal with the army of white propagandists – the myth-makers of Negro history. Dr. Du Bois took them all on in battle. It would be impossible to sketch the whole range of his intellectual contributions. Back in the nineteenth century he laid out a program of 100 years of study of problems affecting American Negroes and worked tirelessly to implement it.
Long before sociology was a science he was pioneering in the field of social study of Negro life and completed works on health, education, employment, urban conditions, and religion. This was at a time when scientific inquiry of Negro life was so unbelievably neglected that only a single university in the entire nation had such a program, and it was funded with $5,000 for a year’s work.
Against such odds Dr. Du Bois produced two enduring classics before the twentieth century. His Suppression of the African Slave-Trade, written in 1896, is Volume I in the Harvard Historical Studies. His study The Philadelphia Negro, completed in 1899, is still used today. Illustrating the painstaking quality of his scientific method, to do this work Dr. Du Bois personally visited and interviewed 5,000 people.
He soon realized that studies would never adequately be pursued nor changes realized without the mass involvement of Negroes. The scholar then became an organizer and with others founded the NAACP. At the same time he became aware that the expansion of imperialism was a threat to the emergence of Africa.
He recognized the importance of the bonds between American Negroes and the land of their ancestors, and he extended his activities to African affairs. After World War I he called Pan-African Congresses in 1919, 1921, and 1923, alarming imperialists in all countries and disconcerting Negro moderates in America who were afraid of this restless, militant, black genius.
Returning to the United States from abroad, he found his pioneering agitation for Negro studies was bearing fruit and a beginning was made to broaden Negro higher education. He threw himself into the task of raising the intellectual level of this work.
Much later, in 1940, he participated in the establishment of the first Negro scholarly publication, Phylon. At the same time he stimulated Negro colleges to collaborate through annual conferences to increase their effectiveness and elevate the quality of their academic studies. But these activities, enough to be the life work for ten men, were far from the sum of his achievements.
In the six years between 1935 and 1941 he produced the monumental seven-hundred-page volume on Black Reconstruction in America, at the same time writing many articles and essays. Black Reconstruction was six years in writing but was thirty- three years in preparation. On its publication, one critic said: “It crowns the long, unselfish and brilliant career of Dr. Du Bois. It is comparable in clarity, originality and importance to the Beards’ Rise of American Civilization.”
The New York Times said, “It is beyond question the most painstaking and thorough study ever made of the Negroes’ part in Reconstruction,” and the New York Herald Tribune proclaimed it “a solid history of the period, an economic treatise, a philosophical discussion, a poem, a work of art all rolled into one.”
To understand why his study of the Reconstruction was a monumental achievement it is necessary to see it in context. White historians had for a century crudely distorted the Negro’s role in the Reconstruction years. It was a conscious and deliberate manipulation of history, and the stakes were high.
The Reconstruction was a period in which black men had a small measure of freedom of action. If, as white historians tell it, Negroes wallowed in corruption, opportunism, displayed spectacular stupidity, were wanton, evil, and ignorant, their case was made. They would have proved that freedom was dangerous in the hands of inferior beings. One generation after another of Americans were assiduously taught these falsehoods, and the collective mind of America became poisoned with racism and stunted with myths.
Dr. Du Bois confronted this powerful structure of historical distortion and dismantled it. He virtually, before anyone else and more than anyone else, demolished the lies about Negroes in their most important and creative period of history. The truths he revealed are not yet the property of all Americans but they have been recorded and arm us for our contemporary battles.
In Black Reconstruction Dr. Du Bois dealt with the almost universally accepted concept that civilization virtually collapsed in the South during Reconstruction because Negroes had a measure of political power. Dr. Du Bois marshalled irrefutable evidence that, far from collapsing, the Southern economy was recovering in these years. Within five years the cotton crop had been restored, and in the succeeding five years had exceeded pre-war levels. At the same time other economic activity had ascended so rapidly the rebirth of the South was almost completed.
Beyond this he restored to light the most luminous achievement of the Reconstruction-it brought free public education into existence not only for the benefit of the Negro, but it opened school doors to the poor whites. He documented the substantial body of legislation that was socially so useful it was retained into the twentieth century even though the Negroes who helped to write it were brutally disenfranchised and driven from political life. He revealed that, far from being the tragic era white historians described, it was the only period in which democracy existed in the South. This stunning fact was the reason the history books had to lie because to tell the truth would have acknowledged the Negroes’ capacity to govern and fitness to build a finer nation in a creative relationship with poor whites.
With the completion of his book Black Reconstruction, despite its towering contributions, despite his advanced age, Dr. Du Bois was still not ready to accept a deserved rest in peaceful retirement. His dedication to freedom drove him on as relentlessly in his seventies as it did in his twenties. He had already encompassed three careers. Beginning as a pioneer sociologist, he had become an activist to further mass organization. The activist had then transformed himself into an historian.
By the middle of the twentieth century, when imperialism and war arose once more to imperil humanity, he became a peace leader. He served as chairman of the Peace Information Bureau and, like the Rev. William Sloane Coffin and Dr. Benjamin Spock of today, he found himself indicted by the government and harried by reactionaries. Undaunted by obstacles and repression, with his characteristic fortitude he fought on. Finally in 1961 with Ghana’s independence established, an opportunity opened to begin the writing of an African Encyclopedia, and in his ninety third year he emigrated to Ghana to begin new intellectual labors. In 1963 death finally came to this most remarkable man.
It is axiomatic that he will be remembered for his scholarly contributions and organizational attainments. These monuments are imperishable. But there were human qualities less immediately visible that are no less imperishable.
Dr. Du Bois was a man possessed of priceless dedication to his people. The vast accumulation of achievement and public recognition were not for him pathways to personal affluence and a diffusion of identity. Whatever else he was, with his multitude of careers and professional titles, he was first and always a black man. He used his richness of talent as a trust for his people. He saw that Negroes were robbed of so many things decisive to their existence that the theft of their history seemed only a small part of their losses.
But Dr. Du Bois knew that to lose one’s history is to lose one’s self-understanding and with it the roots for pride. This drove him to become a historian of Negro life, and the combination of his unique zeal and intellect rescued for all of us a heritage whose loss would have profoundly impoverished us.
Dr. Du Bois the man needs to be remembered today when despair is all too prevalent. In the years he lived and fought, there was far more justification for frustration and hopelessness, and yet his faith in his people never wavered. His love and faith in Negroes permeate every sentence of his writings and every act of his life. Without these deeply rooted emotions his work would have been arid and abstract. With them his deeds were a passionate storm that swept the filth of falsehood from the pages of established history.
He symbolized in his being his pride in the black man. He did not apologize for being black and, because of it, handicapped. Instead he attacked the oppressor for the crime of stunting black men. He confronted the establishment as a model of militant manhood and integrity. He defied them and, though they heaped venom and scorn on him, his powerful voice was never stilled.
And yet, with all his pride and spirit he did not make a mystique out of blackness. He was proud of his people, not because their color endowed them with some vague greatness but because their concrete achievements in struggle had advanced humanity, and he saw and loved progressive humanity in all its hues, black, white, yellow, red, and brown.
Above all he did not content himself with hurling invectives for emotional release and then to retire into smug, passive satisfaction. History had taught him it is not enough for people to be angry-the supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.
It was never possible to know where the scholar Du Bois ended and the organizer Du Bois began. The two qualities in him were a single, unified force. This life style of Dr. Du Bois is the most important quality this generation of Negroes needs to emulate.
The educated Negro who is not really part of us and the angry militant who fails to organize us have nothing in common with Dr. Du Bois. He exemplified black power in achievement and he organized black power in action. It was no abstract slogan to him.
We cannot talk of Dr. Du Bois without recognizing that he was a radical all of his life. Some people would like to ignore the fact that he was a Communist in his later years. It is worth noting that Abraham Lincoln warmly welcomed the support of Karl Marx during the Civil War and corresponded with him freely.
In contemporary life the English-speaking world has no difficulty with the fact that Sean O’Casey was a literary giant of the twentieth century and a Communist or that Pablo Neruda is generally considered the greatest living poet though he also served in the Chilean Senate as a Communist. It is time to cease muting the fact that Dr. Du Bois was a genius and chose to be a Communist. Our irrational, obsessive anti-communism has led us into too many quagmires to be retained as if it were a mode of scientific thinking.
In closing, it would be well to remind white America of its debt to Dr. Du Bois. When they corrupted Negro history they distorted American history, because Negroes are too big a part of the building of this nation to be written out of it without destroying scientific history. White America, drenched with lies about Negroes, has lived too long in a fog of ignorance. Dr. Du Bois gave them a gift of truth for which they should eternally be indebted to him.
Negroes have heavy tasks today. We were partially liberated and then re-enslaved. We have to fight again on old battlefields, but our confidence is greater, our vision is clearer, and our ultimate victory surer because of the contributions a militant, passionate black giant left behind him.
Dr. Du Bois has left us but he has not died. The spirit of freedom is not buried in the grave of the valiant. He will be with us when we go to Washington in April to demand our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We have to go to Washington because they have declared an armistice in the war on poverty while squandering billions to expand a senseless, cruel, unjust war in Vietnam. We will go there, we will demand to be heard, and we will stay until the administration responds.
If this means forcible repression of our movement, we will confront it, for we have done this before. If this means scorn or ridicule, we will embrace it, for that is what America’s poor now receive. If it means jail, we accept it willingly, for the millions of poor already are imprisoned by exploitation and discrimination.
Dr. Du Bois would be in the front ranks of the peace movement today. He would readily see the parallel between American support of the corrupt and despised Thieu-Ky regime and Northern support to the Southern slave masters in 1876. The CIA scarcely exaggerates, indeed it is surprisingly honest, when it calculates for Congress that the war in Vietnam can persist for one hundred years.
People deprived of their freedom do not give up—Negroes have been fighting more than a hundred years, and even if the date of full emancipation is uncertain, what is explicitly certain is that the struggle for it will endure.
In conclusion let me say that Dr. Du Bois’ greatest virtue was his committed empathy with all the oppressed and his divine dissatisfaction with all forms of injustice.
Today we are still challenged to be dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied until every man can have food and material necessities for his body, culture and education for his mind, freedom and until rat-infested, vermin-filled slums will be a thing of a dark past and every family will have a decent, sanitary house in which to live.
Let us be dissatisfied until the empty stomachs of Mississippi are filled and the idle industries of Appalachia are revitalized. Let us be dissatisfied until brotherhood is no longer a meaningless word at the end of a prayer but the first order of business on every legislative agenda. Let us be dissatisfied until our brother of the Third World- Asia, Africa, and Latin America-will no longer be the victim of imperialist exploitation, but will be lifted from the long night of poverty, illiteracy, and disease.
Let us be dissatisfied until this pending cosmic elegy will be transformed into a creative psalm of peace and “justice will roll down like waters from a mighty stream.”
The Centennial Address delivered by Nobel Laureate Dr. Martin Luther King at Carnegie Hall in New York City, February 23, 1968. The occasion was the International Cultural Evening sponsored by FREEDOMWAYS Magazine on the 100th birthday of Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois and launching an “International Year” (1968) honoring his life and works
Courtesy Raj Patel.
http://rajpatel.org/2014/01/17/mlks-radicalism-muted-by-mlk-archives-sponsors-jpmorgan-chase-co/
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Top nine most interesting profiles on Instagram
Instagram is not merely about posts, uploading pictures and hashtags. It has some really motivating profiles with inspiring life stories. Not only are these stories interesting to read but also teach us many important lessons about life. They also enruch us with good quality images, videos and posts. It is hard to believe what these people have achieved within such short time periods. Here are the top ten impressive profiles on Instagram:
David SK Lee: He has a fleet of Ferraris, both old and new which are expected to be 30 in number by the end of this year. The owner of a jewelry shop, Lee accidentally became the centerpiece of fame in Instagram due to his amazing collection of cars.
He is very respectful to the moral principles and ethical values. He draws inspiration from his father and acknowledges the value of family, love and relationships in one’s life in spite of reaching the pinnacle of monetary success.
Cory Richards: The National Geographic Photographer and mountaineer Cory Richards uses his skills to make his Instagram profile quite impressive. The pictures he uploads receive a host of likes since most of them are based on his mountain expeditions.
Jason Stone: He is one of the most successful Internet Marketers and has come to the limelight courtesy his creative images and motivational videos. He started his own business during his college life by selling auto-parts in e-Bay. It is enchanting to hear how he used to get out in the freezing cold to gather car parts to sell them off. Today he has been able to invest in multiple businesses thanks to Instagram and to connect with some social and semi-famous people. He expects people to get motivation and inspiration from his account.
Manny Khoshbin: He is a real estate giant from Southern California. His family travelled to America all the way from Iran and was forced to live in a station wagon during the early years. After his father worked hard for years to gather some money, they could shift to a small apartment. Today Manny has more than 2 million square feet of commercial and residential real estate. The way he has struggled to make sure that his family does not have to go through those hardships again The story of Manny’s life is really inspiring.
Diego Luca: He is a seller and manager of super-yacht and yacht charters globally. He opened his Instagram account with the primary aim of posting photos and offering an insight to the world of luxury yachts. Instagram offered him networking opportunities and contacts which he uses for the development of his business.
Usain Bolt: We all know him. He is the fastest man alive. Naturally, most of the clicks and videos that he uploads feature him running, lifting weights and carrying sledges. He is also lucky enough to take photos with some of the most famous celebrities and politicians of the world and post them on Instagram.
Alexander Mijares: A great artist, Alexander Mijares started using Instagram as a platform to display his beautiful works of art. Most of the art-works that he sells today is from Instagram. Instagram allows him to sell of his works within unbelievably short time duration. He gets the majority of his foreign clients using Instagram. Just like the other impressive profiles of Instagram, the profile of Aleander Mijares was also created accidentally. Little did he know then that his Instagram profile will boost his business to this extent.
Daniele Zaccone: He shares his real life with the Instagram followers. This man is full of elegance and charm and uploads some great photos where he focuses on his attires rather than his face. He is a style icon from Italy with an impressive Instagram profile and a lot of followers.
Gil Antolin: He is the owner of a high profile travel brand. He didn’t join Instagram with a strategy of influencing people. Later on he decided to use Instagram as a platform for influencing people to follow his passion of travelling. He believes in appreciating the beauty of different tourist spots and exploring new places and wants to influence others to follow his dreams.
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Archive for the tag “Eustace Chapuys”
The story of a spirited Duchess of Norfolk….
The above illustration is by Hans Holbein the Younger – Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk (Royal Collection)
This post, about Edward IV’s daughter Catherine, prompted me to post this, about the husband of another of Edward IV’s daughter, Anne, Countess of Surrey. Thomas Howard, eventually 3rd Duke of Norfolk, was the grandson of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, who fell with Richard at Bosworth. I am not impressed with Thomas Howard, and whether or not he treated Anne well I do not know, but after her death, he certainly did not do right by his second wife. The marriage became a scandal second to none, and if Thomas thought he could do as he pleased with Lady Elizabeth Stafford, he soon learned better. She was made of stern stuff.
I have taken the following from the extremely interesting http://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Elizabeth%20Stafford%2C%20Duchess%20of%20Norfolk&uid=1575 , and make no claim to authorship. If you follow the link, you will find more information, and sources.
“Lady Elizabeth Stafford (later Duchess of Norfolk) (c.1497 – 30 November 1558) was the eldest daughter of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, and Lady Eleanor Percy. By marriage she became Duchess of Norfolk. Her stormy marriage to Thomas Howard, 3rd duke of Norfolk, created a public scandal.
“Before 8 January 1513, when she was only fifteen and he was thirty-five years of age, Elizabeth married, as his second wife, Thomas Howard, then Earl of Surrey. He had previously been married to Anne Plantagenet (2 November 1475 – 23 November 1511), the daughter of King Edward IV, by whom he had a son, Thomas, who died 3 August 1508.
“Elizabeth had earlier been promised in marriage to her father’s ward, Ralph Neville, 4th Earl of Westmorland. The young Elizabeth and Ralph Neville seem to have been mutually devoted, and years later, in a letter to Thomas Cromwell, dated 28 September 1537, Elizabeth recalled that,
“‘He and I had loved together two years, an my lord my husband had not sent immediately word after my lady and my lord’s first wife was dead, he made suit to my lord my father, or else I had been married before Christmas to my Lord of Westmorland’.
“Elizabeth’s father initially attempted to persuade Howard to marry one of his other daughters, but according to Elizabeth, ‘He would have none of my sisters, but only me’.
“Elizabeth brought Howard a dowry of 2000 marks, and was promised a jointure of 500 marks a year, although Howard apparently never kept that promise. In her later letters she asserted that she had been a dutiful wife, continuing to serve at court daily ‘sixteen years together’ while her husband was absent in King Henry VIII’s wars, and accompanying him to Ireland when he was posted there in 1520–22. She bore him five children, and according to Graves, as late as 1524, when he became 3rd Duke of Norfolk, ‘they appeared to be bonded by mutual love’.
“However, in 1527 Norfolk took a mistress, Bess Holland, the daughter of his steward, with whom he lived openly at Kenninghall, and whom the Duchess described variously in her letters as a bawd, a drab, and ‘a churl’s daughter’, ‘which was but washer of my nursery eight years’. It appears the Duchess’ anger caused her to exaggerate Bess Holland’s inferior social status, as her family were probably minor gentry, and she eventually became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne Boleyn.
“During the long period in which King Henry VIII sought to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled, the Duchess remained staunchly loyal to Queen Catherine and antagonistic towards her husband’s niece, Anne Boleyn, with whom the King was infatuated. Late in 1530 it was noted that the Duchess was secretly conveying letters to Queen Catherine from Italy concealed in oranges, which the Queen passed on to the Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, and at one time the Duchess told Chapuys that her husband, the Duke, had confided in her that Anne would be ‘the ruin of all her family’. In 1531 the Duchess was exiled from court at Anne Boleyn’s request for too freely declaring her loyalty to Catherine.
“According to Graves, the Duchess also quarrelled with Anne over Anne’s insistence that the Duchess’ daughter, Mary Howard, should marry Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy. When Anne Boleyn was crowned on 1 June 1533, the Duchess refused to attend the coronation ‘from the love she bore to the previous Queen’.
“Meanwhile, the Duchess’ own marriage continued to deteriorate. The Duke refused to give up his mistress, and resolved to separate from his wife. Both the Duke and Thomas Cromwell requested the Duchess’ brother to take her in, a suggestion he utterly rejected.The Duchess wrote of her husband’s abuse of her during this period, claiming that when she was recovering after the birth of her daughter, Mary, he had pulled her out of bed by the hair, dragged her through the house, and wounded her with a dagger. In three separate letters to Cromwell the Duchess repeated the accusation that the Duke had ‘set his women to bind me till blood came out at my fingers’ ends, and pinnacled me, and sat on my breast till I spit blood, and he never punished them’. Howard responded to the stream of allegations by writing that ‘I think the apparent false lies were never contrived by a wife of her husband that she doth daily increase of me’.
“Whatever the truth of the allegations, continued cohabitation was clearly impossible, and on 23 March 1534 Howard forced a separation. According to the Duchess, the Duke had ridden all night, and arriving home in a furious temper had locked her in a chamber and taken away all her jewels and apparel. She was sent to a house in Redbourne, Hertfordshire, from which she wrote a stream of letters to Cromwell complaining that [she] was kept in a state of virtual imprisonment with a meagre annual allowance of only £200. At first the Duchess attempted to reconcile with her husband, but when she received no reply to her ‘kind letters’ to the Duke, she declared to Cromwell in a letter dated 30 December 1536 that ‘from this day forward I will never sue to the King, nor to none other, to desire my lord my husband to take me again’. On his part, Norfolk refused to give up Bess Holland, and attempted to persuade the Duchess to agree to a divorce, offering to return her jewels and apparel and give her a great part of his plate and stuff of household, but she rebuffed his offers. She received little or no support from her family. Her eldest son and daughter became estranged from her, while her brother condemned her behaviour
“Forsaken by almost everyone, the Duchess remained obdurate. On 3 March 1539, she wrote to Cromwell that:
“I am of age to rule myself, as I have done these five years, since my husband put me away. Seeing that my lord my husband reckoned me to be so unreasonable, it were better that I kept me away, and keep my own house still, and trouble no other body. . . I pray you, my lord, take no displeasure with me, although I have not followed your lordship’s good counsel, and your letters, as touching my lord my husband for to come home again, which I will never do in my life.
“The Duchess’ entreaties to Cromwell ceased with his fall from power in 1540. She and her brother were eventually reconciled, and at some time before 1547 he sent one of his daughters to live with her, whom the Duchess treated very generously.
“During Henry VIII’s last years Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, and Henry’s last Queen, Catherine Parr, both of whom favoured the reformed faith, gained influence with the King while the conservative Duke of Norfolk became isolated politically. The Duke attempted to form an alliance with the Seymours through a marriage between his widowed daughter, Mary Howard, and Hertford’s brother, Thomas Seymour, but the effort was forestalled by the provocative conduct of the Duke’s eldest son and heir, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who had displayed in his own heraldry the royal arms and insignia. On 12 December 1546 both Norfolk and Surrey were arrested and sent to the Tower. On 12 January 1547 Norfolk acknowledged that he had ‘concealed high treason, in keeping secret the false acts of my son, Henry Earl of Surrey, in using the arms of St. Edward the Confessor, which pertain only to kings’, and offered his lands to the King. Norfolk’s family, including the Duchess, his daughter Mary, and his mistress, Bess Holland, all gave evidence against him. Surrey was beheaded on 19 January 1547, and on 27 January 1547 Norfolk was attainted by statute without trial. The dying King gave his assent to Norfolk’s death by royal commissioners, and it was rumoured that he would be executed on the following day. He was saved by the King’s death on 28 January and the Council’s decision not to inaugurate the new reign with bloodshed.
“Norfolk remained in the Tower throughout the reign of King Edward VI. He was released and pardoned by Queen Mary in 1553, and in Mary’s first parliament (October–December 1553), his statutory attainder was declared void, thereby restoring him to the dukedom. He died at Kenninghall on 25 August 1554, and was buried at St Michael’s Church at Framlingham in Suffolk. The Duchess was not named in his will.
“Elizabeth Howard died 30 November 1558 at Lambeth, and was buried in the Howard chapel in the Church of St Mary-at-Lambeth. Her brother wrote a brief but apparently heartfelt epitaph:
“Thou wast to me, both far and near, A mother, sister, a friend most dear.”
Posted by viscountessw in art, buildings, genealogy, religion and tagged Anne Boleyn, Anne Howard, art, Catherine Howard, Catherine of Aragon, Catherine of York, Edward of Buckingham, Eustace Chapuys, Hans Holbein, Henry VIII, Kenninghall, Lady Elizabeth Stafford, Mary Howard, St. Michael's Church Framlingham, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Howard 3rd Duke of Norfolk
http://royalcentral.co.uk/blogs/history/the-princes-in-the-tower-54459
“Richard was appointed to look after the children …” – which part of “Lord Protector and Defender OF THE REALM” does the writer not understand? Their maternal family, as was customary, was appointed to “look after” them. Carson’s latest book quotes the National Archives verbatim to demonstrate this point.
“Richard took the throne …” – no, it was OFFERED to him by the “Three Estates”, the nearest thing there could be to a Parliament until a King was crowned, on evidence from a witness to Edward IV’s bigamy that was quoted fifty years later by the Imperial Ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, despite the cover-up that followed immediately after Bosworth.
“Most historians have agreed that the motivations for Richard killing the boys are more likely than any other theory” – not those who have objectively analysed the evidence by the standards of modern science.
As for the remains, we addressed this just a few days ago in https://murreyandblue.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/the-seven-princes-in-the-tower/. Perhaps Edward IV was even more prolific than we thought in the sons he had by his mistress Elizabeth Woodville?
With Richard’s Y-chromosome now being confirmed, because the mtDNA of the same body helped to prove his identity, anyone who obtains permission to examine the contents of the urn could prove whether it contains the ex-Princes or not.
This “Royal Central” piece requires further improvement.
Posted by super blue in archaeology, battles, genealogy, Science and tagged Annette Carson, Battle of Bosworth, bigamy, Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, Eustace Chapuys, historians, Lord Protector of the Realm, mtDNA evidence, National Archives, Tower of London, Y-chromosome
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Home » Musicians » Carlos Dias
Carlos Dias
The Brazilian-born, Manhattan-based singer, actor, and model Carlos Dias has led a remarkably eclectic international career. He has appeared in many of Brazil’s highest-rated novelas (soap operas) and musical productions imported from Broadway; sung pop-jazz at top New York venues; worked as an acrobatic dancer; and recorded several CDs of dance music and American standards.
Born in São Paulo, Carlos graduated in 1998 from Teatro Escola (Theater School) Macunaíma, a center for artistic experimentation and freedom of expression. In his hometown he attended Escola Wolf Maya, another respected acting school; studied film acting at Studio Fátima Toledo; and joined the theater company Teatro Amador Produções Artísticas (TAPA). He also studied American and flamenco tap-dancing and capoeira. All the while he maintained a thriving career as a model, which made him a familiar face throughout Brazil and Australia.
But music is his greatest joy. Inspired by his grandfather, Clemente Capella - first violinist in the orchestra of São Paulo’s Teatro Municipal for 45 years - Carlos devoted much of his time to the study of piano and voice. He went on to costar as a singing actor in the Brazilian versions of Grease, Beauty and the Beast, and Chicago. For almost six years he sang backup for Brazil’s popular dance-music countertenor Edson Cordeiro. Carlos released several dance-music CDs of his own, including Recall (featuring his band of the same name) and This Is the Time (produced by dance/electronic artist Franco Junior).
He kept building his career as a dramatic actor. Carlos appeared in a long string of novelas broadcast by Globo, SBT, and Bandeirantes; the shows included Belíssima, Marisol, Eterna Magia, Paraíso Tropical, Pequena Travessa, Pícara Sonhadora, Água na Boca, and Cristal. He was also seen in JK, a Globo series about former Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek. In 2007, he costarred in Miguel Falabella and Maria Carmem Barbosa’s acclaimed stage comedy Querido Mundo (Dear World) at São Paulo’s Teatro Gazeta. Its director was the renowned playwright, actor, and journalist Rubens Ewald Filho. Carlos acts in the 2010 film VIPs, the story of a criminal who impersonates a variety of prominent people; the movie won four awards at the Festival do Rio, including best picture.
In 2014 he moved to New York to pursue a career as a singer of American pop-jazz standards as well as Brazilian classics. With singer Vanessa Falabella, Carlos began a two-year residency at B.B. King’s Blues Club & Grill, the prestigious Times Square music venue. The duo also performed at Iridium, one of the city’s top jazz clubs. In 2017 Carlos released the CD Copacabana Station, a Brazilian-flavored tribute to two of his heroes, Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.
Vocalist Jazz vocal Acoustic Guitar Michael Buble frank sinatra Nat King Cole Bossa Nova Carlos Dias Happiness Sexy Music
Copacabana Station
Instrument: Vocalist
Born: August 21, 1974
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Home » Musicians » Matt Brewer
Matt Brewer was born April 20, 1983, in Oklahoma City but spent most of his youth in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Born into a musical family, Matt was surrounded by music from an early age, both his father and grandfather being jazz musicians, and his mother an avid music lover and radio DJ (who, before Matt was born, would play classic jazz albums for him). He started playing drums at age 3, learning rudiments on a small practice pad, but didn't take music seriously until the age of ten, when he found the bass during a summer program at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. There he began studying classical bass from two world renowned bass instructors, Winston Budrow, and Lawrence Hurst, while learning about jazz from his father. Matt started gigging professionally at the age of twelve around the Albuquerque area and was soon winning awards from the top university jazz festivals, twice winning the festival's highest award which had never before been given to a middle school student. He continued his study of classical bass with the superb principal bassist of the New Mexico Symphony, Jean-Luc Matton, but soon realized that it would be necessary to be in an overall more creative and art appreciating environment. This led to the decision to attend high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy. Matt continued his study of classical bass, and took jazz performance classes. During his junior and senior years, Matt was selected from applicants across the country, to participate in the Grammy Band
. He then performed on the 2000 Grammy Awards telecast in a group that was the first ever to perform on the show without being nominated for a Grammy. After graduating the Interlochen Arts Academy, Matt attended the inagural class of The Juilliard Jazz Program and studied with bassists Rodney Whitaker and Ben Wolfe. After spending two years at Juilliard he decided to leave school to make time for his busy touring schedule. Since then he has worked with artists such as Greg Osby, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Lee Konitz, David Sanchez, Terence Blanchard, Aaron Parks, Jeff Tain Watts, and many others. He is features on dozens of recordings, including two on the Blue Note record label. Channel Three by Greg Osby, and Avatar by Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Matt has also led bands in New York, performing at venues such as the Jazz Gallery, Fat Cat, and the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. His band was also featured at the New Mexico international Jazz Festival. He is an adjunct faculty member at The New School, has been a guest artist/teacher at the Banff Center, and has taught lessons and masterclasses across the globe.
Unspoken by Andrew Luhn
Jul17Wed
Ben Wendel Seasons With Gilad Hekselman, Aaron Parks,...
Vortex Jazz Club
London, UK £20
Jul29Mon
Anat Cohen, Dafnis Prieto, Sheryl Bailey
Dinkelspiel Auditorium
Stanford, CA $15-62
Jul30Tue
Taylor Eigsti Group
Sep19Thu
Steve Lehman Trio With Matt Brewer & Damion Reid
Kuumbwa Jazz Center
Santa Cruz, CA $26.25
Steve Lehman Trio
Bop Stop
Cleveland, OH $20
Apr1Wed
SFJazz Collective
University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center Concert Hall
Amherst, MA $10-75
Apr4Sat
Manchester Craftsmen's Guild
Mario Pavone
Ben Street
Sharel Cassity
Alexis Cuadrado
Chuck Israels
bass, acoustic
Lisle Ellis
Keter Betts
Chris Lightcap
Jimmy Haslip
bass, electric
Last Updated: October 9, 2016
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Starbucks, Fiat ordered to repay millions in taxes in Europe
by Alanna Petroff @AlannaPetroff October 21, 2015: 12:53 PM ET
European officials have ordered Starbucks and Fiat to repay millions in taxes after they found the companies benefited from illegal deals with two countries.
The European Commission said the Netherlands gave Starbucks (SBUX) a sweetheart tax deal that allowed the coffee chain to avoid up to 30 million euros ($34 million) in taxes since 2008. It said the Dutch government will now have to recover those taxes from Starbucks.
The same goes for Fiat Chrysler (FCAM), whose finance division avoided up to 30 million euros ($34 million) in taxes through a deal with Luxembourg in 2012.
"Tax rulings that artificially reduce a company's tax burden are not in line with EU... rules. They are illegal," said Margrethe Vestager, Europe's top anti-trust official. "All companies, big or small, multinational or not, should pay their fair share of tax."
Starbucks and Fiat said they would appeal the decision.
"Starbucks shares the concerns expressed by the Netherlands government that there are significant errors in the decision," the company said in a statement.
The Netherlands said it was surprised by the decision. The government said it would take a careful look at the ruling before deciding next steps.
Fiat Chrysler said it had done nothing wrong, and reassured shareholders that the tax ruling would not have any effect on its earnings. Luxembourg also said it believed the EU ruling was flawed.
Related: End of the road for corporate tax cheats?
It's normal for European countries to agree tax deals with companies so they have a good idea about how much they will have to pay. But in these cases, the regulator said the companies had been allowed to avoid taxes through "artificial and complex methods ... [which did] not reflect economic reality."
The European Commission said Starbucks moved money between business units in different countries in a way that helped them lower their overall tax bill. And Fiat used calculations that allowed them to shrink their tax payments, it said.
Related: The world's top tax havens
Experts say this European tax ruling could be the first of many. Officials are looking at McDonald's (MCD) tax affairs in Luxembourg and have launched an investigation into Amazon (AMZN) and Apple's (AAPL) tax arrangements.
Countries around the world have been trying to work together to clamp down on corporate tax avoidance.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that loopholes allow companies to dodge as much as $240 billion in taxes per year.
A new package of international tax rules, which was drafted by over 60 countries, is set to be approved by world leaders next month.
They will require multinational firms based in 62 countries to disclose details about their business operations, global subsidiaries, sales, profits, tax payments and employee numbers.
This information will be shared between national tax authorities to ensure companies are being transparent about their operations and tax obligations.
This will help countries conduct audits, understand how companies are moving money abroad and levy appropriate taxes.
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Review: Piranha 3D
Posted on August 25, 2010 Updated on August 25, 2010
The Pitch: You had me at “Kelly Brook naked”…
The Review: One of the sad things about the decline of the local video store in favour of online rentals is the opportunity to browse the fine selection of B-movies (or worse) that generally clogged up the shelves at the back of the shop. A lack of money or resources never dented ambition, and watching many of these eighties and nineties classics is a guilty pleasure, just waiting for the next money shot of a dismembered limb or a cheesy action shot. So what justifies putting this kind of B-movie in cinemas these days?
There’s a few factors at work here. First of all, this is an update of the late Seventies classic Piranha, directed by Joe Dante and the sequel to which gave James Cameron his start. Then there’s the fact that it’s 3D, which automatically gets it entry to all the finest screens in the country so cinemas can make that little bit of extra money. There’s also the cast, which has a few recognisable names among it, primarily Elizabeth Shue as the sheriff of the backwater town with the biting problem and Ving Rhames as her sidekick.
There’s a raft of other cameos, including Richard Dreyfuss and Christopher Lloyd, who both get to ham it up in brief scenes. Eagle-eyed viewers will also spot Eli Roth in a small role, although he gets a higher billing than Jerry O’Connell and Kelly Brook, both of whom get more screen time in the main plot. O’Connell gets to have lascivious fun with his adult movie director role, but Brook is purely there for the eye candy, being acted off screen by two wooden children. Still, she’s very attractive and takes all of her clothes off, so that’s all right.
Because, let’s be honest, you’ll be watching this for the boobs and the gore, and there’s a fair amount of the former. On the latter, there are splashes of gore scattered throughout the first two acts, then the fish go to work and the last third of the film is a constant barrage of moderately inventive gory moments and the occasional shock. Piranha won’t win any awards for subtlety or originality, especially as most of the scares rely on the tried and tested “loud screech on the soundtrack at the same time the unexpected thing pops up” technique, but if you’re looking to recapture that feel of a cheesy Eighties B-movie with a few bigger names and don’t have high expectations, then step right in.
Why see it at the cinema: There’s a lot going on in some of the crowd scenes at the end, and the director hasn’t skimped on the detail. It’s almost like a Where’s Wally? of gore, so the big screen gives you a big advantage.
Why see it in 3D: Remember those View Master toys and their slightly odd 3D? It’s a bit like that. You get layers of 2D rather than a full 3D effect most of the time, due to the conversion. However, your ticket price will fund a sequel hopefully shot in proper 3D, with more C-list celebs being chowed down on.
This entry was posted in Reviews and tagged Alexandre Aja, cheap thrills, Christopher Lloyd, Elizabeth Shue, Kelly Brook, man-eating fish, nudity, Ving Rhames.
Review: Black Dynamite
Review: The Secret In Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos)
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Tagged: Battle: Los Angeles terrible
Movie Review – Battle: Los Angeles
Plot: When meteors hit around the world, an alien race breaks out and instantly attacks the Earth. SSgt. Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) leads a group of Marines to save civilians through the devastation. His troop are also one of the last remaining to save Los Angeles.
I hate this movie. I hate this movie. I hate this movie. This is an abomination to film, and one of the worst things I’ve seen in the last five years. The director (Jonathan Liebesman) should be embarrassed of the ridiculous chaos and lack of coherence he throws onto the screen. There are so many issues I have with Battle: Los Angeles, but the one thing I need to address right off the bat is the shaky cam.
I’ve never been so frustrated and angry with a filming technique. This is like trying to watch a movie while riding a roller coaster. I’m not kidding when I say this entire two hour mess is all shaky cam. Even when there are two guys talking across a desk, the director goes off his rocker with it. It’s like he was so afraid of making another run of the mill alien invasion movie he cops out and just says, “Ohhhhhhhh, if I use shaky cam, people will think this is artsy and different.” I wanted to leave ten minutes in because I was literally sick to my stomach at how much the camera was shaking. If I ever see shaky cam again, I’m leaving the theater. It’s a disgusting technique, and it needs to stop. ENOUGH!!!
What’s so bad about it is that it makes me hate the action scenes with a burning passion because I can’t decipher anything that’s going on! It’s just a bunch of random crap flying around the screen. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was easier to follow than this. I honestly couldn’t tell you what characters were dying or fighting. I really had no idea what the hell was going on in most of the action sequences. This leads me to the next flaw; the characters.
This was pathetic. I couldn’t tell you the name of one character with the exception of the lead guy, Michael Nantz. Part of this goes back to the shaky cam, in that I didn’t know when people died or not. They don’t even attempt to give these people personalities. And their quick attempt at the beginning to give them character distinctions was so lazy and cliché, I wish they didn’t even do it.
Oh hey, you have the guy who is getting married and picking out a ring right before he goes into battle. You have the loose cannon previously removed from duty but wants back in. You have the Staff Sergeant who was forced to leave men to die in his previous mission and feels bad about it. And the dialogue is just so blatant and half ass in introducing these themes. Actually, it’s worse than half ass; it’s more like one quarter ass.
I seriously had no idea who any of these people were throughout the entire movie. So why do I give a damn? And there is no passion in the acting. It is the definition of going through the motions. People want to give Independence Day a hard time? At least Independence Day had good actors who had distinctive personalities and energy to the roles. You cared about them. I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO SURVIVES AT THE END!
The predictability of these scenes was embarrassing. There’s one moment where the soldiers are storming a building and it’s really desolate and quiet. Uh-oh, something is coming out of the building, but it’s just a dog. Gee, I wonder if two seconds later the aliens are going to bust out and start shooting. Yup. Give me a break.
They also have to force in heroic moments to the point of stupidity. A lot of this happens towards the end. Look, there’s being movie heroic, but then there’s just being dumb. There’s one scene where Nantz attempts to do something alone, and there is just no way he’ll be able to survive the first five seconds of what he wants to accomplish. Oh, but it’s just a lame plot device to get the rest of the troops to join him as the crappy score blasts in the background. What unbelievably bad writing.
The score is just terrible. It’s the same damn score you hear in every action movie ever made. But it doesn’t even try to do anything different. It’s so over the top and dramatic that you might as well have a chorus of people singing “Cliché” in the background.
Was there anything I liked? There’s one halfway decent action scene taking place on the freeway where the camera calms down for five minutes, and there’s one watchable emotional moment when one of the characters dies. Aaron Eckhart is trying his best, but Marlon Brando in his prime couldn’t save this travesty.
Look, I didn’t have any expectations going into this movie. I just thought it would be solid action and an entertaining two hour alien romp. I wasn’t prepared to have my intelligence insulted by excruciatingly generic dialogue and two hours of vomit inducing camera movement. I was very upset when this movie ended, and it ruined my entire day. I guess the one good use Battle: Los Angeles could have is that if there’s a movie you are really hyped and excited for, but afraid it may not live up to your expectations, watch Battle: Los Angeles, and then any movie you see directly after will feel like The Empire Strikes Back, so I guess that’s something.
Rating: 2 out of 10 (A Complete and Utter Disaster)
Written by bagelcinemas 1 Comment Posted in Movie Reviews Tagged with Battle: Los Angeles annoying shaky cam, Battle: Los Angeles Bad, Battle: Los Angeles characters, Battle: Los Angeles hatred, Battle: Los Angeles Movie Review, Battle: Los Angeles opinions, Battle: Los Angeles Review, Battle: Los Angeles terrible, Battle: Los Angeles worst of year
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Hi reader in the U.S., this Sunday we need your help. As you probably know, unpaid volunteers contribute virtually all the content on Wikipedia. They write and edit because they want to contribute to knowledge. Nevertheless, the technology necessary to keep this service fast and reliable costs money to support. Would you be willing to make a donation in return for what Wikipedia has provided to you?
You can earn one Swagbuck for every dollar you spend at certain online retailers, too. According to the Swagbucks website, this is the equivalent of earning 1 percent cash back. With online surveys, you typically earn 40 to 200 Swagbucks (100 Swagbucks = $1), according to the site. You can also earn a few Swagbucks for watching videos, and the app will tell you how long you can expect to spend watching. You’ll spend about half an hour and earn a few points.
According to an article from New York Times, telecommuting now takes about 2.6 percent of the American workforce not including remote works like drivers. The article also mentions an experiment done by Nicholas Bloom. Nicholas Bloom is an economics professor from Stanford University. During this experiment, 250 workers were picked randomly from Ctrip to work either at home or at an office. Ctrip is a large China travel agency. The result showed that those who telecommuted worked longer hours than those who worked at an office. The telecommuters were also more productive and happier. Ctrip saved around 2K from telecommuting. Although the quitting rate decreased for telecommuters, the promotion rate also decreased. Many telecommuters asked to be back in the office at the end with reasoning like loneliness and desire for promotion. Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, came to the conclusion that most workers prefer telecommuting and office work combined. Telecommuting increases efficiency and workers’ flexibility.[116] America has an increasing trend of using teleworking due to its strong economics and multimedia services. Among the top 10 telecommuter countries, U.S is ranked number one;[117] however, developing countries like China is also catching up to the trend. An article from money.163.com states that the number of telecommuters in the Asia pacific region exceeds region like America, Europe, Middle East and Africa. Asia Pacific region has about 37% telecommuters while the others have about 23-4%.[dubious – discuss] Chinese citizens also favor the combination of telecommuting and office work due to reason like disturbance at work and increase in flexibility.[118] Not all workers have the chance to telecommute. One of the ethical issues behind telecommuting is who should have the chance to telecommute? One may have more chance to work at home because he/she has young children. The other one may argue he/she also has personal problems. It is favored by most workers to combine telecommuting and office work. Many think that telecommuting once or twice a week is a reasonable schedule. Businesses also favor this suggestion because workers are more satisfied and companies save money from it.
1. What They Do With Your Data: Find out what kind of data is collected, how that data is used, how long the company retains it and whom the company shares it with, Mr. Bischoff said. “Giving up your privacy to a data-collection company should not be done lightly,” he warned. “Both iOS and Android alert users when an app asks for a new permission.” That might be permission to access your location, photos or contacts, for example. “Think about whether that permission is really necessary for the app to work or if it’s just using that permission to mine more personal data,” he said.
Some subjects are much better paid than others, so although you may love the idea of writing about travel (badly paid) a better bet would be a niche like finance (much higher rates of pay). Check out the Pro Blogger job board for high paid freelance writing jobs – other places to look might be Textbroker or you can look at the “gigs” section on Craigslist.
Have you been spending hours upon hours searching through job boards for a legit work at home typing or data entry job but keep running into jokers asking you for money to work for them? Shouldn't it be the other way around? After all that's usually how a job works. Well if you're fed up with the scam artist lying to you, you should read the following article to discover companies ready to hire you for typing and data entry. Don't worry, it won't cost you a dime. And to help you further, I'll also reveal a way to make money at home that will pay you more than you've ever earned with a job if you're interested.
You can earn above average rates of return because peer-to-peer lending eliminates the bank function. That means that you participate in nearly the entire interest rate being paid by the borrower, rather than the less than 1% that you will typically earn on certificates of deposit. And you can reduce your risk by investing in slices of hundreds of different loans.
More and more companies and startups especially are embracing remote work—where you use online collaboration and communication tools to do your work from wherever you want. And you don’t have to be a 20-something hotshot designer or coder to reap the benefits of working remotely. Many remote positions are for customer support positions or other customer-facing positions that don’t require specialized skill sets.
Several critics noted the song's style is comparable with the musical style of the hip hop producer DJ Mustard.[38][39][40] In a review published by the staff of Idolator, Robbie Daw called the track worthy based on previous singles with the titular name a called it the group's "most solid single to date." In a mixed-positive review, Carl Williott initially called the track a "DJ Mustard ripoff" but complimented the group for managing to make the song "their own" with their "subtle harmonizations adding some texture", he adds. Mike Wass shared similar sentiments and called it a "sleek and sexy bop with on-trend production" and an "insidiously catchy chorus" while praising the group's musical evolution.[41] Several publications thought it was a strong contender for song of the summer.[42][43][44] However, other critics were not so positive. Christopher Bohlsen of Renowned for Sound gave a negative review, saying that while vocal melodies in the verses were "satisfying", the chorus just "doesn’t sound interesting enough", calling it an "utterly standard pop song". Bohlsen gave the song a two-and-a-half out of five rating.[45]
My 10-year-old son brought home a book from our park’s free library box. It was a biology textbook – teachers edition. He said it looked interesting and hey, it was free (having no idea you could sell it). I scanned it in my Amazon seller app and realized it was worth around $150. He was so excited. We listed it for sale for $130 and it sold! Going to tell him, he just made $130!
How to Get It:If you shot the video with your phone, open the YouTube app and hit "send." If you're uploading from a computer, visit YouTube, and click the "upload" button in the upper right corner of the screen. You'll see a place to drag your video file. To enroll in the partner program, click on YouTube settings, check the circle next to "Allow Advertisements," then click on "View Additional Features." On the YouTube monetization page, opt in. Generally, you must earn a minimum before you get paid, and YouTube pays monthly — if you don't earn enough in one month, the balance rolls over.
What It Is: Think Mary Kay (cosmetics), Pampered Chef (kitchenware), or Rodan + Fields (skincare) — over time, you build a base of clients to whom you sell a company's wares. "There are several reasons why I decided to become a consultant," says Rodan + Fields independent consultant Debbie Royer. "I had seen how much of a blessing the business had been to a friend of mine and my sister-in-law. Plus, everything can be done from my phone, and being a mom to a preschooler and an infant I don't have a lot of extra time to be sitting at a computer."
^ Matthews, H. Scott; Eric Williams (28 February 2012). "Telework Adoption and Energy Use in Building and Transport Sectors in the United States and Japan". J. Infrastruct. Syst. American Society of Civil Engineers. SPECIAL ISSUE: SUSTAINABILITY OF TRANSPORTATION AND OTHER INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS (11): 21–30. doi:10.1061/(ASCE)1076-0342(2005)11:1(21). ISSN 1076-0342.
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Texas laws would limit access to abortions and create grave risk to the public health
High Court will hear arguments on Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole in March; Decision expected in late June.
Nearly 60 leaders in the field of public health submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court last week arguing that two Texas laws restricting abortion clinics creates a ‘grave risk to public health.’ The Supreme Court is set to hear opening arguments March 2 on this landmark case, which is known as Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole. The public health brief filed Jan. 4, 2016 by the American Public Health Association (APHA), deans of schools of public health, and other public health leaders from across the nation argues that the laws would effectively shutter many clinics that now provide abortions in Texas and make it hard, if not impossible, for many women to obtain necessary and constitutionally protected health care, thereby violating the ‘undue burden’ test established by the Court in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
“If the High Court upholds the Texas laws women there will be forced to travel very long distances for abortion care or will lose access to this service altogether,” says Susan F. Wood, PhD, Executive Director of the Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health at Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University. “Without access to safe, legal abortion care, women of reproductive age will face sharply increased health risks,” says Wood, who is also an associate professor of health policy and management at Milken Institute SPH.
The amicus brief supports the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing an abortion provider in the state of Texas. At issue are two Texas laws, which require that physicians who provide abortions in clinics (one of the safest of all medical procedures) also have hospital admitting privileges; and that abortion clinics meet strict building standards designed for ambulatory surgical centers.
This brief argues that these requirements are unnecessary to protect women’s health and will lead to widespread clinic closure. The Center for Reproductive Rights has said that upholding Texas’ law would lead to the closure of all but 10 abortion clinics — leaving 500 miles between San Antonio and the New Mexico border without a single clinic.
The brief warns that if left in place, the state’s laws would disproportionately affect lower-income women, who are less likely to have access to either contraceptive services or transportation to a distant, safe abortion provider. “The Texas laws are the very definition of unconstitutional burden,” says Sara Rosenbaum, JD, the Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy at Milken Institute SPH and a coordinator of the brief.
“Abortion is a safe and critical component of comprehensive reproductive care,” Wood adds, saying: “If the Texas laws stand, women will face significant risks, not only in Texas but across the nation as other states follow its lead.”
‘Informed consent’ states often give women considering abortions inaccurate information
New project to help reduce unsafe abortion death rates in disaster zones
Are abortions painful?
What are the different types of abortion?
When do periods start again after an abortion?
Annual abortion statistics for England and Wales shows scales tipping to medical…
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Lesson from the Kabul Suicide Attack (Commentary)
Published On: June 20, 2016 05:02 PM NPT By: Akhilesh Tripathi
Nepali security guards receive treatment at a hospital following a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, June 20, 2016. (AP)
Akhilesh Tripathi
tripthakhilesh@gmail.com
The daughter of God
Time for regulation
The Indian trap
Reject or not to reject: CPN-UML in a Hamletian dilemma over federalism
Constitution Amendment: For Whom?
At least 12 Nepalis were killed and another five were injured in a suicide bomb attack by Taliban in war-stricken Afghanistan’s capital Kabul early Monday morning. Initial reports say that the Nepalis killed and injured in the attack were working as security guards for the Canadian Embassy in Kabul. The minibus they were travelling in to reach the embassy was attacked at 5:40 am (Afghan time), minutes after it came out of the camp they were living in.
It’s time to mourn the deaths and wish for the speedy recovery of the injured. However, it’s also the time to ask a few simple questions: Why are Nepalis being allowed to work in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq which are unsafe for anybody and everybody? What has the government done to prevent Nepalis from going to these countries and work there risking their lives?
Government officials say that the government allows only those Nepali migrant workers who will work as security guards, especially for UN and diplomatic missions, to go to Afghanistan and that Nepalis going there for other jobs are not allowed to go. They further argue that even those Nepalis aspiring to work as security guards in Afghanistan are allowed to go to only the “green zones” or in other words, areas that are safer from such attacks. This policy of the government is not satisfactory at all, to say the least.
According to our government, Kabul lies in the so-called “green zone!”
Afghanistan is a country where blasts or gunfights occur almost on a daily basis. Almost everybody in Nepal, the government included, knows that even suicide attacks are quite common there. In fact, such attacks, as illustrated by today’s bombing, have become the norm there. Today’s attack was the first attack in Kabul since the start of the holy fasting month of Ramadan two weeks ago. The last attack in the Afghan capital on 19 April left 64 dead and more than 340 wounded.
Almost all such attacks in Afghanistan are carried out by the Taliban, who have been waging an insurgency against the Western-backed Kabul government since they were ousted from power by a US-led invasion in late 2001. If the past 15 years are anything to go by, it would be wise to expect such attacks in the future as well. Because what the West calls terrorism is in fact patriotism for the brainwashed Taliban fighters. So, the conflict there is unlikely to come to an end anytime soon.
That leaves the choice with the Nepal government. According to reports, most of the Nepalis working as security guards in Afghanistan are former soldiers or security personnel. So, the argument that they are familiar with war-like situations and are ready to risk their lives may hold true. But this argument doesn’t mean that the government can shy away from its responsibility of preventing its citizens from going to countries like Afghanistan which have death traps lying in wait for anyone, anywhere and anytime.
In short, the message from today’s Kabul attack is loud and clear: Stop sending Nepalis there under any pretext. There are manpower companies in Nepal that are supplying security guards to foreign private companies which are stationing them at UN and diplomatic missions in war-stricken countries. The government should, without any delay, ask these companies to stop doing that or face action. Besides, the government should also launch awareness campaigns in the country that countries like Afghanistan are unsafe for any kind of job. Similarly, it should make arrangements for the safe return of those Nepalis who are already there.
Let’s hope everybody has learnt the lesson from today’s suicide attack.
kabul attack
nepali killed
nepali security guard
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When were cats first kept as pets?
How can you create a cat-friendly home?
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Andy Warycka· August 1, 2014
Ah, the domestic house cat. Loyal companion, cuddly, cute, strong-willed, independent, and clever, these furry little fiends friends are pets to many millions worldwide.
Though many say that cats have domesticated humans, from a scientific perspective, how did the little guys we know and love as pets came to be domestic animals?
When did cats first become domesticated?
As simple as the question seems, there is no definitive answer — but many clues, and an abundance of theories.
“The process and timing of cat domestication has been terrifically difficult to document,” Melinder Zeder, a curator of Old World archaeology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, told National Geographic News.
As researchers noted in a 2013 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, cat remains rarely are found in ancient archaeological sites, and, therefore, little is known about how they were domesticated.
Cats were thought to have first kept as pets in ancient Egypt, some 4,000 years ago — but more recent research suggests close relations with humans may have occurred much earlier, including the 2004 discovery of a wild cat buried with a human about 9,500 years ago on the island of Cyprus — about 250 miles north of Egypt.
While that cat may have been a wild cat that bonded with a person, “In the absence of a collar around its neck, the deliberate interment of this animal with a human makes a strong case that cats had a special place in the daily lives, and in the afterlives, of residents of Shillourokambos,” says Zeder.
Egypt and beyond
Elaine A Evans, the Curator/Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee’s McClung Museum writes:
Evidence so far for the domesticated animal in Egypt does not date before the Middle Kingdom, circa 2000 BC, when we learn of them from tomb paintings and cat mummies produced at that time. By the early New Kingdom, circa 1500 BC, more representations are found in wall paintings and reliefs. In the Late Dynastic Period, a highpoint is reached in the appreciation of the domestic cat, and ancient authors, such as the Greek historian Herodotus (484?-425? BC) noted their importance. Images were being produced on papyri, as bronze and wood figurines, on sherds, as amulets in various materials, and in quantities as mummies. Such representations had special magical properties and communicated religious beliefs.
According to this article, published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, tomb paintings of the Egyptian New Kingdom, dating to 3600 years Before Present (B.P. — roughly 1600 BC) clearly show that the Egyptians kept house cats as pets.
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However, the article goes on to point out that there is evidence of cat taming dating as far back as 8700 B.P. in Jericho and to approximately 9500 B.P. in Crete. This gives us a broad range of roughly 11,000 to 4,000 years ago for the possible domestication of the cat.
How the process likely began
While little will explain the modern-day feline’s fascination with computer keyboards, wild cats may have first started coexisting with people around the time agriculture became commonplace, resulting in permanent human settlements.
Brave and opportunistic cats would creep into this new environment that was rich in food and largely free of predators. As a result, cats that could more easily live around — and with — people were more likely to be fruitful and multiply in this sort of ecological niche.
While it had often been argued that cats were attracted to rodents and other food in early farming villages and domesticated themselves, there had been little evidence for this theory until scientists found found proof of such a scenario in ancient China.
Their study, published in 2013, used radiocarbon dating and isotopic analyses of carbon and nitrogen traces in the bones of cats, dogs, deer and other wildlife unearthed near the agricultural village of Quanhucan. The research team demonstrated how a breed of once-wild cats carved a niche for themselves in a society that thrived on the widespread cultivation of the grain millet.
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“Results of this study show that the village of Quanhucun was a source of food for the cats 5,300 years ago, and the relationship between humans and cats was commensal, or advantageous for the cats,” says Fiona Marshall, PhD, a professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St Louis.
“Even if these cats were not yet domesticated, our evidence confirms that they lived in close proximity to farmers, and that the relationship had mutual benefits.”
In short, it seems that as people first began grouping together in settlements, cats would come into town and feast on the rodents and the scraps left by humans — along with other such items — as it was easier than hunting. Cats learned to coexist with people, and people found that cats would help with their vermin and pest problems. The arrangement worked for Felis catus and Homo sapiens alike, and the cat as we know it today was well on its way to household pet status.
No precise date for domestication
As scholars at the University College London point out, “It is not possible to distinguish domesticated and wild forms from skeletal remains. The domestication (better: taming) of the cat seems to have started only in the New Kingdom (about 1550-1069 BC). Earlier depictions (an uncertain example: UC 14323 [shown at right], from Koptos [in Upper Egypt]) perhaps only show wild animals.”
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A 2008 genetic study, involving more than 11,000 cats seems to confirm that domestication of the cat originated about 5,000 to 8,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, a region located today in the Middle East, and including Egypt.
The power of knowledge
Outside of being interesting to know about where your purring companion came from, what good is it to know about the history of the kitty?
Recent DNA studies suggest that most of the estimated 600 million domestic cats now living around the globe are descendants most directly of the Near Eastern Wildcat, one of the five Felis sylvestris lybica wildcat subspecies still found around the Old World.
Leslie Lyons, an authority on cat genetics and principal investigator on a 2008 study, said, “More than 200 genetic disorders have been identified in modern cats, and many are found in pure breeds. We hope that cat breeders will use the genetic information uncovered by this study to develop efficient breed-management plans and avoid introducing genetically-linked health problems into their breeds.”
This article is by Andy Warycka, and was posted or last updated on August 1, 2014
Based on/Source: Top cat group photo by Hery Zo Rakotondramanana / Cat on laptop photo by Byron Chin
Filed under: Animals & pets, History, Science, Society & culture
animalscatshistorypetsscience
Andy Warycka
Andy Warycka has been writing professionally since 2009. His work has appeared on sites such as SheKnows.com, Match.com, ClickAmericana.com and other top online properties.
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Home History Titanic II to Set Sail in 2022 Retracing the Original Route
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Titanic II to Set Sail in 2022 Retracing the Original Route
Artists impression of Titanic II leaving New York Harbor. Photo by Roderick Eime CC BY 2.0
Titanic II is on the way, but it’s not a movie. A replica ship is being made in China and aims to give passengers a luxury traveling experience with a historical flavor.
Since its spectacular sinking after hitting an iceberg in 1912, the Titanic has become a morbid but intriguing aspect of popular culture.ADVERTISING
Movies, memorabilia and even a musical have emerged from the tragedy. But this is arguably the ultimate tribute.
The original RMS Titanic preparing to leave Portsmouth, England, 1912.
The recreation is the brainchild of billionaire Clive Palmer. As quoted on the BBC News website, he said “For over a century Titanic’s legend has been powered by mystery, intrigue and respect for all she stood for… Millions have dreamt of sailing on her, seeing her in port and experiencing her unique majesty. Titanic II will be the ship where those dreams come true.”
Blue Star Line in Brisbane are undertaking the work, which hasn’t been without its setbacks.
Clive Palmer, chairman of the Blue Star Line. Photo by Jw Mcdonald 81 CC BY-SA 4.0
Titanic I faced a dangerous iceberg, whereas Palmer’s project was tied up in a legal battle. First announced in 2012, the operation ground to a halt in 2015 after what are described as “disputed royalties from a Chinese conglomerate.”
With that matter resolved, Titanic II is expected to set off from Dubai in 2022, taking a 2 week maiden voyage to Southampton.
After that it will sail to New York, mirroring the original journey. It was on this leg, out in the North Atlantic Ocean, that the ship had its fateful encounter.
This iceberg was pictured in the morning of 15 April 1912 and is thought to be the one that the Titanic had struck.
As the clock ticked toward midnight on April 14th, an iceberg was spotted. While RMS Titanic had time to avoid a head on collision, it was sliced open under the waterline by what History.com calls “a jagged underwater spur.” It was big and powerful enough to tear a 300ft hole along the hull.
Titanic II. Photo by MS Titanic II CC BY-SA 4.0
The Titanic took approximately three hours to sink. It contained “2,240 passengers and crew — or ‘souls,’ the expression then used in the shipping industry, usually in connection with a sinking — on board.” Only 705 survived the night.
A product of fierce competition between maritime industries, it’s believed in some quarters that the boat was rushed into the water by the White Star Line. They sought to challenge rival company Cunard.
The Fall of Titanic.
According to the book What Really Sank The Titanic by Jennifer Hooper McCarty, “metal experts contend the vessel’s manufacturer, Harland and Wolff, was under great pressure to secure enough iron to make three million rivets to stitch the ship’s metal plates. In the rush to beat competition from Cunard, the White Star liner was supplied with a vessel that was made using substandard materials.”
Other factors that contributed to the disaster included a lack of planning with regards lifeboats. History.com also draws attention to the hull design, which at the time was thought to be “unsinkable.”
It writes that “Titanic was doomed from the start by a design that many lauded as state-of-the-art.”
View of the bow of the RMS Titanic photographed in June 2004.
This included “15 watertight bulkhead compartments equipped with electric watertight doors that could be operated individually or simultaneously by a switch on the bridge.”
However, it “contained a flaw that was a critical factor in Titanic’s sinking: While the individual bulkheads were indeed watertight, the walls separating the bulkheads extended only a few feet above the water line, so water could pour from one compartment into another, especially if the ship began to list or pitch forward.”
These factors have passed into legend and were no doubt considered by Clive Palmer and his team.
Titanic’s propellers and rudder.
Titanic II has proved a controversial proposition. Yet that was nothing compared to a similar idea, again taking place in China.
This version of the Titanic is part of a theme park attraction, and at one point was going to include what the Evening Standard calls “a simulation of it hitting the iceberg.”
Source www.thevintagenews.com
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Abbas says Israel hinders development at G77
Palestinian leader speaks at ceremony marking his country's chairmanship of the biggest UN bloc of developing countries.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas addresses the UN Group of 77 and China.
UNITED NATIONS - Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas told the United Nations on Tuesday that Israel was hindering development in the Middle East with the occupation of Palestinian territories and again called for an independent state of Palestine.
Abbas spoke at a ceremony marking the handover of the chair of the Group of 77 and China from Egypt to the observer-state of Palestine, raising the Palestinians' profile by leading the biggest UN bloc of developing countries.
"Israel's continued colonization and occupation of the state of Palestine undermines our development and capacity for cooperation, coordination and obstructs the cohesive future development of all peoples of the region," Abbas told the gathering.
The Palestinian leader said he was committed to a "peaceful solution that brings an end to the occupation and the realization of the independence of the state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side-by-side in peace and security with the state of Israel."
The Palestinians reacted furiously to President Donald Trump's decision in December 2017 to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, breaking with the international consensus that the status of the city would be decided in negotiations.
Abbas has broken off ties with the Trump administration and has vowed to oppose any US peace proposal that he has warned would be biased in favor of Israel.
The Trump administration is preparing to roll out, possibly in the coming months, its much-awaited peace proposals -- although Israeli elections scheduled for April could once again delay that plan.
The United States has also cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for the Palestinians including funds to the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), which was forced to scale back its education and health programs.
The General Assembly last year adopted a resolution granting the observer-state of Palestine additional rights to act as chair of the G77, a bloc of 134 countries at the United Nations.
The United States voted against that measure, arguing that the Palestinians should not be allowed to take the chair of the G77 because it is not a full member-state.
The Palestinians have non-member observer state status at the United Nations, which grants them certain privileges such as joining international treaties, but they do not have voting rights at the General Assembly.
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Home News Arrested hacker to work for Derbyshire organisation he targeted
Arrested hacker to work for Derbyshire organisation he targeted
A hacker who was arrested after targeting an organisation in Derbyshire will be working with them to help bolster their security.
Detectives from the Derbyshire Cybercrime Unit were contacted by a business in the county after they believed that their networks had been breached by cybercriminals.
Following an investigation, a 24-year-old man from London was arrested for computer misuse by the Metropolitan Police.
The man admitted accessing email accounts by using information found on social media sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook to identify targets and bypass their security questions. This then gave him access to information held by the organisation, which has asked not to be identified.
Instead of pursuing a prosecution, the victims agreed to a ‘restorative justice’ option whereby the hacker will now be giving advice to the organisation about cyber security and some of the methods used to breach networks.
Detective Constable Mick Donegan, Derbyshire Cybercrime Unit Investigator, said:
When the man was questioned in relation to the network breach, he admitted his actions but was unaware that he had broken the law. As a result of a successful investigation working with the business and the Metropolitan Police, he will now be working with the affected company to assist them in strengthening their network security.
It is important to raise awareness of these types of activities as regardless of computer skills, curiosity or good intentions, Computer Misuse Act offences are still being committed. Police and the National Crime agency take cybercrime very seriously and action will be taken against offenders.
Earlier this week, the National Crime Agency have re-released their #CyberChoices film to help to raise awareness of similar issues such as this, particularly parents and carers of those likely to become involved in this criminality.
The film shows two overly naïve parents talking about their son’s skills with a computer without knowing exactly what they’re talking about, or, more crucially, what their son has actually been up to.
This comes as part of an ongoing project which sees the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit working alongside colleagues in the FBI and Europol to target those involved in hacking activity.
Published – 20th December 2016
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Interpreting the 2018 Election
by Niskanen Center
What are the implications of the 2018 election results? Julia Azari and Rachel Bitecofer are two political scientists who followed it closely and know how it compares to prior cycles. Azari is an election analyst and party scholar who finds that politicians claim electoral mandates for action based on the results of elections. We talk about early interpretations of 2018 as a referendum on Trump and why we simplify election results with stories. Bitecofer is an election analyst and a forecaster of the 2018 election who finds that demographics and partisanship are now destiny. We talk about why negative partisanship makes election results easier to foresee as partisans choose clear sides but shift turnout.
Studies: “Delivering the People’s Message” and “The Unprecedented 2016 Presidential Election”
Interviews: Julia Azari, Marquette University and Rachel Bitecofer, Christopher Newport University
Grossmann: This week on Political Research Digest, interpreting the 2018 elections. For the Niskaen Center, I’m Matt Grossmann. On this special edition, we review the implications of the 2018 midterms. I’m joined by two political scientists who both followed it closely and know how it compares to other cycles. Julia Azari of Marquette University is the author of Delivering the People’s Message, about how politicians claim electoral mandate for action based on the results of elections. We talk about early interpretations of 2018 as a referendum on Trump and why we simplify election results with stories. Rachel Bitecofer of the Wason Center at Christopher Newport University, is the author of the Unprecedented 2016 Presidential Election, and was a forecaster of the 2018 election.
We talk about why negative partisanship makes election results easier to foresee as partisan choose clear sides, but shift turnout. So what did we learn from the 2018 midterms? Azari says it’s difficult to have a big swing when partisans are so dug in to their side.
Azari: What we learned, number one, identity is on the ballot, but not always how you think. The other one is that this was an election of national sorting, but again, not in a completely simple or straightforward way. We saw things happened that consolidated the major geographical and partisan divisions within the country, and told us more about what those are. Those are the major takeaways for me, and I’ve been thinking a lot and I put this question to my students yesterday. What does a change election in a divided country? Is that even possible? Was this a change election? Was it not? I think that that’s to some degree an open question. Those are the big things that I’m looking at.
Grossmann: She says the early interpretations this year have focused on looking ahead to 2020.
Azari: I’ve been tracking this closely and I’ve been trying to think about how to compare this with previous midterms, and in terms of the volume of interpretation, and in terms of the immediate translation from last Tuesday’s results into some kind of story about what the Democrats should do in 2020. It seems to me like the 2020 campaign is looming even larger over this than 2012 did over Obama after the 2010 midterm, or other previous elections like that.
The interpretations I’m seeing, I see a lot of interpretations about the degree to which this was a referendum on Trump. I think this is really interesting, because that is not … If you were to just look at the data, you wouldn’t really need a referendum on Trump. You just look at raw data and you say, “Okay, here’s a president who is elected in a surprising election, but lost the popular vote.” He’s been remarkably unpopular, given the state of the economy. He was unpopular as a candidate. His opponent was unpopular, too, and it’s entirely possible she’d be unpopular if she were the president, but you look at that, you look at the response to some of the administration’s top-line policy, which have particularly in the area of immigration, I think has been especially interesting because they’ve lost even high profile Republicans.
You say, “Okay, let’s have a referendum on this president, and it’ll come out, and it’ll be split.” That doesn’t actually make any sense. You don’t really need a referendum on Trump. You have a lot of different pieces of data to tell you this is a president who is divisive. This is a president who’s unpopular. This is a president … When I say divisive, I mean not just that his behavior can be divisive, but that this is someone who’s polarizing. Some people feel very strongly in favor. Republicans overwhelmingly favor. Democrats, I think his approval among Democrats has been in the single digits since September. You don’t really need an election to read the tea leaves and tell you where the nation is.
Grossmann: Azari’s book, Delivering the People’s Message, focuses on how presidents claim mandates in a polarized era.
Azari: When presidents have been in a situation where they’ve treid to expand their power into new realms, they try to push at the boundaries of their power, they’ve often drawn on the concept of a presidential mandate to do so, and this goes back into the 1830s and even before. In that sense, it’s developed into a very distinctly presidential concept, because that’s something presidents have done. Particularly, I note that in the post Watergate era, presidents are always in that moment of pushing at the boundaries of their power because there’s always someone pushing back at the very legitimacy of executive power, and the concept of expansive modern executive power is always politically contested.
One way for presidents to respond to that is to say, “Well I’m doing what I was elected to do.” What’s exacerbated that is the polarization of that same era. One of the things I found in my book … My book came out in 2014. I sent my final stuff in in 2013, but didn’t include Obama’s second term, so Obama’s first term is my last case. But Obama and George W. Bush in his second term really demonstrate a turning point and how much they rely on this rhetoric just as a sheer proportion of the number of speeches that they give, and messages that they issue.
They make reference to the election, to the rejection of our opponents, to following our campaign promises. That’s one of several pivotal turning points in the ways the presidents use elections to bolster what they do, and that’s at a time when the country’s becoming hyper polarized.
Grossmann: Donald Trump has been unabashed and repeatedly claiming a mandate.
Azari: He talks quite frequently about his election victory, about how he won the electoral college, what he ran on. One of the things that I found when I started looking more closely at things like the radio addresses is that actually he used a lot of mandate rhetoric that’s pretty toned down relative to what he says on Twitter, but actually it’s a high volume of what we would see from other presidents which is like, “I am responding to the people who elected me. I am responding to my campaign promise.” He’d especially trot this out talking about immigration, so Trump really fits the pattern.
In some way this is … I don’t know how many other social scientists have run into this problem where you publish a book and then your best case happens two years after you write the book, the most interesting and most illustrative of the dynamics that you’re talking about. Some of that is compensating for legitimacy challenges. I think it is fair that Trump has faced a lot of pushback from members of the media. He’s unpopular, which is something else I found to be correlated with mandate claims. That’s real. When the defensiveness that his rhetoric displays is in response to real challenges, using mandate rhetoric in that defensive posture is very much predicted by the decades of presidential rhetoric that come before.
Grossmann: His first take on 2018 was decidedly self-centered, but Azari says it does have precedent.
Azari: The people I campaign for, the whole … the line about Mia Love and Whatney Love, that’s not standard presidential discourse. Usually these ego moments, and come out maybe in private exchanges. They don’t make their way into the first press conference. I will say it’s true. Obama talked with a shellacking in 2010. I also have a paper with Justin Vaughn. It’s floating around. It got accepted somewhere. I think it’s somewhere in the publication backlog where he looked at Obama’s rhetoric after 2014, and his rhetoric after 2014 was not totally in the shellacking vain.
He did say things like, “Look, the 2012 election still counts.” It’s not unusual for presidents to have a bad midterm and to say something along those lines. The presidential election still counts. I’m still president. We’re going to work together. I think if I’m remembering right, Clinton said things after ’94 that were very much, “The message we have is against gridlock. What this was was a rejection of gridlock. Not a rejection of me, but a rejection of the overall problematic nature of partisanship, and so what this really is is a call to bipartisanship.”
Rhetoric is rhetoric. A lot of that is trying to polish, I won’t use a crude expression about what we might be polishing after a midterm election, but trying to polish a pretty bad result. That’s on the one hand relatively transparent, and on the other hand, what are presidents going to say? They’re not wrong. They’re still president. The previous election still counts, but I will say that while Trump’s personally immodest rhetoric is new, it’s not uncommon for presidents to push back a little bit on that interpretation of a midterm that this was just a total rejection of what they stood for.
Grossmann: Usually the collective interpretation of an election takes a while to form, but coalesces by the spring following it.
Azari: The stories often are, there’s a whole bunch of stories immediately after an election, and then they narrow into one clearer narrative. What I found was that presidents typically stop talking about their election somewhere between April and June. The logic of the thing moved on. Typically at that point, they had pushed the agenda items they wanted to push early on. Sometimes it was successful, sometimes it wasn’t. Going into that first summer of being president, right outside the first 100 days, that becomes a different political environment.
The president’s relationship with Congress is starting to take shape. New events have happened, and so the political conversation has shifted and moved on. That’s honestly been less true with Trump. One of the things that I notice about him was he kept talking about his election victory well into 2017 and 2018.
Grossmann: Midterm interpretations are sometimes less clear and can evolve based on the president’s later performance.
Azari: In 2006, 2014, and 1994 are an interesting group of elections to compare for a look at recent midterms. On the one hand, ’94 is another one that other mandate scholars talk about as unexpected, and it also had a clear national … It was really in some ways the first truly nationalized congressional election where Newt Gingrich was, for lack of a better word, a congressional ringleader of the conservative movement in the House. You had the Contract with America, you had some clear policy agendas like, “Okay, what is this about? It’s about this.”
It just made for a narrative. 2006, I think, though, was not less clear in the policy issue that it was about. 2006 was very much about a turn in public opinion in the War in Iraq. You can see that in the way that Bush even responded to it. It’s at points defensive and at points making actual changes. I think that was clearly the issue. 2014 may be not as clear what the issue was, but the other difference is that you need more of an explanation when it’s an earlier midterm as a presidency goes on if that president gets reelected. You n a story what that means.
To some degree, ‘6 was like, “Okay, this is a repudiation of the Iraq War,” but at this point, Bush is only-
This is a repudiation of the Iraq War, but at this point Bush is only going to be in office for two more years, and it’s the same thing with 2014. I could really feel the end of Obama’s presidency coming about when he gave his State of the Union Address in 2015, and essentially went back to all of these promises he had made in his inaugural and even in his 2004 DNC speech about finding common ground. He kind of said, “Well, maybe we can’t find common ground, maybe we can at least agree on this other thing” and you kind of feel these presidencies winding down.
Grossmann: In 2018 we’re immediately asking if it’s a wave election with unclear definitions.
Azari: A wave election is really an interesting phrase. It dates back earlier than this, but I remember it being used a lot in 2014. And to some degree here’s what I think about a wave it’s sort of similar to a mandate, if you have to ask, it probably wasn’t. But the most common definition … Let’s talk about what’s fairly obvious in front of us. The most common definition I think of the wave is that Democrats or Republicans, or whoever did well in areas you wouldn’t expect, and did well in places where they wouldn’t normally have much business doing well.
That’s a tall order in a divided country, and it also fails to take into account the highly varied and dynamic nature of partisan trends.
Grossmann: Azari says elections often feature blunt demographic interpretations like this year’s focus on suburban educated women.
Azari: Leading up to 1996 … I recently had to explain this to my undergraduates because they had never heard the phrase soccer mom and they thought I was out of my mind. But in 1996 you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about soccer moms, it was never clear if that was really a thing. We probably will hear about that, and I think demographic interpretations of elections are likely to be an emerging part of this story.
This is, I think, dangerous because election narratives tend to pretty blunt. And you do see some election narratives on the losing side. In the ’70s and ’80s from Democrats that essentially are about we focused too much on “special groups”, meaning women and minorities and not enough of on ordinary Americans. You kind of see echoes of in 2016, and I think that, that’s … Election narratives, as they’re cast, are very bad at dealing the complexity of the way that people’s identities intersect. So, we got women as a group, but women have different educational levels, they have different racial identities, they have different geographical faces, that’s kind of I think dangerous particularly when you have a situation in which you have a growing non white population, but still a majority white population. You have to really be careful about how you talk about constructing majorities. And so, that’s something I would encourage people as they’re kind of spinning out election narratives is to be a little bit nuanced about that kind of complexity, and be careful about how use words like ordinary, or special groups.
Grossmann: But this years elections did not have obvious policy implications.
Azari: There is research that shows that politicians do what they say they’re going to do, and that’s important. My sense is that the election narrative often takes on a totally different issue than the one that the campaign actually emphasized. That might be harder in an era of more nationalized congressional elections, and in an era in which ads go viral, and so like everyone is seeing all the ads from all around the country, and it’s so clear, at least to people who are thinking about this stuff, it’s so clear that Democratic candidates emphasized healthcare. I think that if they didn’t take that up that would probably end badly for them.
I do think from a policy perspective we’re looking at a split chamber, and a divided government under those conditions, we’re probably not looking at a terrifically policy productive period, and the stuff that will be on the agenda will be stuff that can fly under the partisan radar. So, it would surprising to me if there was a real shift on healthcare, but maybe.
Grossmann: Even though everyone is looking ahead to 2020, mid-term elections do not usually tell us much about the next nominee.
Azari: I think it’s really telling that after … So, 2010 you have this Tea Party movement that helps bring the Republicans to majority in the House, and also takes down encumbrance, it takes down like long time politicians, and never the less in 2012 the Republicans nominate Mitt Romney. I wouldn’t say a terribly good example of a mobilizing candidate, and there’s other people that they maybe could have recruited for that, but they don’t, and you see that in 2012. And you see a similar dynamic from ’94 to ’96 where maybe you want kind of new conservative firebrand, but instead it’s Bob Dole. Same Bob Dole from 20 years ago.
So, I think in some ways parties are really … I’m running with this right now, if parties are kind of intrinsically conservative institutions they’re risk adverse, their coalitions don’t move very fast.
Grossmann: Meanwhile, Rachel Bitecofer has been trying to predict the 2020 elections with her own race ratings and model based on turn out surges from negative partisanship.
Bitecofer: My model is completely different. What I’m doing in my model is I’m looking at each district, and I’m using a couple of key variables, it’s very partisan harmonious, partisan voter index, the rate of college education, the diversity and the urbanicity of the district, and using that to get an estimated white hat for Democratic party to party vote share. And then I used that to isolate districts that would be most vulnerable to a surge of Democratic voter turnout, which under my theory of negative partisanship, and that’s what my model’s called The Negative Partisanship Model, we were going to see a new electorate emerge, especially in suburban areas with high concentrations of college educated voters.
I wanted to anticipate which ones would be competitive, and in my post-op, which should be up now, it will show just when we started off in July first I had isolated 20 or 30 districts that really had a probability of producing a turnout surge for Democrats, and the other handicappers and forecasts. I’ve heard that FiveThirtyEight wasn’t out yet, but there was a new kid on the block The Crosstab done by Elliot Morris that had probabilities for districts, and they were still debating can they make it to 20, 30, and I was coming out and saying, “No. No. No. It’s probably going to be close to 40 if not more.” And the reason why I was able to account for what was going to happen in that composition, the demographic composition, or the electorate via my model.
Grossmann: She was inspired by thinking the other models were too timid after 2016.
Bitecofer: What inspired me, I think, was coming out of the November election with the upset for Clinton. I just kind of expected, I thought, like the political class to start talking about Democrats being fired up, and just kind of assume this wave was going to be coming. And then, instead, I saw that people were very tepid about it. And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that people were too bold, maybe, about Clinton’s prospects, and the classic human response to something like that is to take it way to the other side.
Through the 2017 … I’m in Virginia. I’d be polling in Virginia for the 2017 cycle I found that when I was doing analysis, or media events, or whatever I was the only one saying, “No. No. No. This is going to hit the Democrat pretty heavily.” Everyone else is like, “No. No. It always ends up close.” I was like, “Yeah, but what we don’t appreciate, I think, is that this data journalism era that has brought like the lay person, the political lay junkie, into the process is really grounded in the last eight years, and because of that the assumptions that it operates on is assumptions that were built under the Obama presidency.” And given that we both studied political polarization, I think, probably have a special insight to just how much American politics has changed over the last couple of decades. And it just seemed obvious to me that polarization was going to have a massive effect on these mid-terms, and on last years Virginia elections. And so, when nobody else was doing that lane I said, “You know what? I’m just going to do it myself.”
Grossmann: Bitecofer uses mostly quantitative data, but does add some qualitative ratings of candidates strength.
Bitecofer: I added a qualitative element just like FiveThirtyEight does. They have their initial aggregate model on generic ballot and what have you, and then they add in data for polling. I don’t use polling, but they use polling, and fundraising, and candidate quality, and things like that to make ultimate judgements that acquire, because they were cases like Virginia seventh, I think is a great example of this.
In the case of Virginia seven that was something that no one else had listed as will flip to Democrats on July one, and I was very bullish on that district partially because of the changing northern end of the district, which is a growing suburb of rich men, which is a very Democratic strong Democratic stronghold here in Virginia, and not only that though … So, there’s that potential for that suburban surge from not just white college educated women but college educated voters in general, but what made that district enough to get it over the top … Because my two party vote share, I can’t remember for sure, but it was probably like 47%, and that’s obviously not 15. So, what made me handicap it as a will flip was the candidate. The Democratic nominee was superb. She was immensely politically talented, and it was clear that she was going to be a contender. Going through to Democrats … I mean, they were raising more than a million dollars in like more than 60 districts. It’s just an astounding data point that you don’t normally see in these House elections.
Another person that I qualitatively pushed beyond my model for was Beto O’Rourke. Texas, as a competitive state, was one of the things I got the most pushback for when I released on July one, because I said, “Oh, and by the way, Texas is going to be a toss up. Yes. Texas.” Even people that really liked what I did, like Larry Sabato, were like, “I like what you did, but Texas?” And I never said it was going to flip, but I said it was going to get within that high 40 range, and be competitive, and ultimately that’s exactly what happened.
Bitecofer: So, I don’t know exactly how I’m going to handle the qualitative aspect when I go for academic publication, because the role model was great on the seat chair, but I think it’s an important element.
Grossmann: Dee was one of the few to foresee that Democrats might not need a huge national vote share to pick up major gains in House seats.
Dee: Beause it’s based on this concept of what Democratic limitation was in the suburbs, the whole time with the analysis that were coming out about, “Oh, they need to be at 14 points to get 30 seats.” I wasn’t buying it, and the reason why is that, yes, Democratic voters are concentrated in these metro areas, and there’s that structural disadvantage, and of course the gerrymandering on top, but the basis of that assumes a certain level of competition between the parties and the suburbs. And what I was arguing fundamentally … And I think this is a key point that separates me from other people, I mean, not just in the forecasting community, but probably almost everybody in the analyst community, is that I’m not arguing Democrats had a banner day, because they went out there and swayed Republican soccer mom-
Bitecofer: There are and swayed Republican soccer moms over from the Republican party because they’re uncomfortable with Trump, though I’m sure there are some cases that fit that description. What I’m arguing that is driving the change is latent democrats, women, primarily, who didn’t vote or maybe voted only casually and were really given a wake up call, I think, in November on that election when Trump won and the last two years underneath his leadership. And they’re agitated. So I said, these latent democrats that sit out these off year elections, now they’re running around, forming grassroots, organizing groups and …
Grossmann: She says elections have changed in an era of negative partisanship and polarization.
Bitecofer: What I my theory is arguing is that not only can we explain this election, we can explain the last two, even the last four, all the way back to 2006, really, where polarization finally starts to peek up in the public. And Mo Fiorina’s famous book, Culture War, purports to say, look, Americans are totally fine. Well, the data set that he’s using for that is just when the public starts to kind of lose their mind and my dissertation looked at that, too. So you see this big change in the public and in elites coming after 2006. That’s when we start to see these like Jekyll and Hyde outcomes.
As I move forward to the academic book version of this, it’s gonna be looking backwards at this idea of negative partisanship and who is motivated and demobilized by in. And then, in terms of 2020 and 2019, here in Virginia, since I live in the best place on earth, it’s always election year. My model’s gonna be used to predict the outcome of next year’s state legislative races and the 2020 Presidential election.
And then, beyond that, assuming we get a seat change in Washington, I would expect the negative partisanship variable will be helping Republicans and hurting Democrats. So, I think this is a new way of thinking about voting behavior. It pushes back at some of the most long-standing assumptions about how people behave electorally. It really pushes heavily back on the idea that we have a persuadable electorate. That these midterm effects are just purely a product of independents moving. I mean, definitely independents move in midterm effects. But what I think what’s understudied and undervalued is the base.
Grossmann: Bitecofer did miss a couple of races because it’s hard to gauge qualitative differences in candidates.
Bitecofer: My model did really, really well. Especially at picking out districts that were not on other people’s radar, even up to election day. But, there are two districts that I got wrong. Kentucky 6 is one of them. Kentucky 6 is a district with a history of flipping back and forth.
Amy McGrath ran a great campaign she raised like $6 million. And the party and committees were giving her support, so I anticipated they must be seeing something on the ground there that gave them a good sense that she could win. And then, she ultimately didn’t even come close to winning that. And I’ve had that district as will flip from day one, July 1. So that’s obviously a major blow call for me.
And then, the other one is Virginia’s second. And, Virginia’s second, I was a victim of my own knowledge. I am connected to that district, so I know a lot of the people involved on both sides. And I let that cloud my judgment. So my model had it as a very likely Democratic pick up. And I qualitatively overwrote it to push it, lean Republican based on not only other people’s survey data, but mine, which I trust a lot more. Very few polls, but what I do is high quality and it showed Scott Taylor up by … outside of the margin of the error. So, I just … I missed that one.
Grossmann: She also saw the Senate races not going Democrats way for the same basic reasons.
Bitecofer: I said, look, Democrats are facing a hostile map. And the evidence of a blue wave and negative partisanship is gonna be primarily viewable in things that don’t happen. By that, I mean, the Midwest not being the battleground. Those states were written off and seemed very obvious to be either Democratic pick ups or safe Democratic seats pretty early on. And the battlegrounds had moved to places that it should not be in. Georgia, Texas, Arizona. Right? Factor that Arizona and Nevada went to the Democrats, I anticipated based on the level of diversity, the tendency of those … especially of Nevada to kind of break weight for Democrats.
But, yeah, the Senate map, everybody was guessing. Everybody. There was nobody who had a good forecast for that. And I think, ultimately, the state level PBI scores that I created for my forecast ended up being extremely predictive. I just followed the Cook Methodology to create those PBI scores for the states. And in doing so, found that North Dakota, for instance, had a 14 … R plus 14 PBI score. As soon as I saw that, I was like, oh, there’s no way Heitkamp is gonna be able to overcome that no matter how much incumbency helps, no matter how much negative partisanship helps, because there’s no urban suburban … there’s not a really large urban or suburban population for her to get a surge out of.
And then, Tennessee, everyone was, oh, this is gonna be competitive. And the reason they think it’s competitive is they think that Republicans could break and vote for Bredesen because it happened before or while the Southern realignment was still in progress. But that state, too, had a Republican score of 14 points. And I just knew that wasn’t gonna be overcome. And I think the exit poll data bears this out. I mean, when we look through the exit poll data, the only person … there’s three people in the country that are able to get votes from the other party in a significant way. That’s Joe Mansion of West Virginia, and Larry Hogan in Maryland, and the Governor of Massachusetts. Those are the three states that have a long history of doing that.
Grossmann: She’s bullish on Democrats for 2020, pointing to their strength in the Midwest.
Bitecofer: I think we can’t understate the importance of Scott Walker’s loss in Wisconsin. Scott Walker survived a recall, two elections. The fact that he lost in an off year, midterm cycle is a real testament to how riled up Democratic voters are, even though it was a close loss, he still lost. And then, the fact that Ohio Senate, Michigan Senate, Pennsylvania Senate, those races were not competitive. And, that didn’t surprise me at all.
And the blue wall, for me, in 2020, based on my model, is looking pretty solid for Democrats, assuming that they don’t come out of the nomination process too disadvantaged in that area. I think there’s many candidates that will be fine in the Midwest, and maybe there’s a couple that will make it a little bit harder.
But the reason why I am much more bullish on the Midwest for Democrats than other analysts is because I wrote a book on the 2016 election, and in it, I show that, actually, the Midwest … this idea that the Midwest was, oh, Trump, populism, we like him. We’re gonna cross over and jump ship. And I do know that there’s people that did that. They’re Obama Trump voters for sure. But, when you look at the actual electoral results in those states, the story of what happened there is pretty obvious. What happened was white, idealistic, mostly Millennial young people who were Sanders supporters in the Primary either sat out or voted a protest ballot. And in Wisconsin, which was less than 1% between Clinton and Trump, Wisconsin’s normal two party defection rate, so people who vote but don’t vote for one of the two party nominees, is about one and a half percent. And that’s pretty standard across the country, with some exceptions like Idaho, which tend to like third party candidates more. But one and half percent. In 2016, it was six and a half percent.
And that’s true across the entire Midwest. In my analysis, I show the main predictor of defection, of a high defection rate, is being a Sanders primary state. There’s no relationship like that for Trump states versus Cruz states or what have you. A product of Democrats becoming complacent because they were in power and they didn’t have the threat of Republican policy and Republican governance …
Grossmann: Azari says the lesson was that candidates getting national energy are not necessarily those that sell well to swing voters.
Azari: The quiet people won and the charismatic people lost. That’s one of my other take aways in terms of Democratic challengers against Republic incumbents. You had Jackie Rosen, that computer programmer, Tony Evers here in Wisconsin, a former science teacher. These are not the people that made the viral ads. The people that got a lot more national attention and kind of were more telegenic, Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum and Beto O’Rourke did not fare as well. I know some of those races are not resolved exactly. But, to me that would seem like a sensible narrative coming out of 2018. But it’s not clear that that will be the direction the party will go, either. I think that’ll much more reflect internal coalition dynamics rather than the 2018 narrative.
Grossmann: But she warns us not to oversell any stories. We always seem to need a cleaner narrative than we get.
Azari: What’s really important here is how much we need a narrative. Elections solve certain kinds of problems. They install people in power. This election has, as I said, it sort of shifted the power dynamic to more closely reflect the partisan landscape of the country. It’s put in a number of new faces in power with new ideas, people who bring new demographics. It’s shifted, again, some Senate seats probably closer to the demographics and preferences of their states. Those are all kind of real and concrete outcomes.
Why we need a narrative so badly is … really tells us more than any election ever … any election returns ever could.
Grossmann: There’s a lot more to learn. Political Research Digest is available bi-weekly from the Niskanen Center and on iTunes. I’m your host, Matt Grossmann. Thanks to Julia Azari and Rachel Bitecofer for joining me. Please check out their books, Delivering The People’s Message and the Unprecedented 2016 Presidential Election. Then join us next time.
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Kodak Retirement Services Team
Michael D. Ross, AWMA®
Mike@Northlandingfp.com
Mike serves as a T.R.U.E. Financial Guide for individuals and businesses as an Accredited Wealth Management AdvisorSM at NorthLanding Financial Partners. His personal practice is focused on investment management and financial planning for current and former Eastman Kodak employees, and he worked alongside former Kodak benefit counselors as an advisor at his prior firm. If you are a current or former Eastman Kodak, Kodak Alaris, OnSemi, Carestream, Johnson & Johnson, Eastman Chemical, Harris Communications or RED employee, start your retirement planning now with Mike. He also has a focus consulting with businesses on their Qualified Retirement plans, providing objective advice auditing Qualified Retirement plan designs, DOL compliance, investment monitoring and selection processes. Mike previously served as vice president of business development for High Falls Advisors Inc. from 2011-2016 as well as a registered representative with Wall Street Financial Group from 2011-2013 and Leigh Baldwin LLC from 2013-2016. He holds an AWMA® from the College for Financial Planning, an Advanced Certificate in Strategic Leadership from Canisius College, a Masters of Architecture from the University of Buffalo and a Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude, for Political Science & International Studies from SUNY Brockport.
Mike resides in Hilton, New York, with his wife and two children. He is an active member at Hope Lutheran Church in Greece, New York.
Sara Bodine
Sara@Northlandingfp.com
Sara joined NorthLanding Financial Partners, LLC in May of 2014 bringing with her a decade of client services experience. She supports the day-to-day activities and client servicing needs of two of the firm's financial advisors, Eric M. Garsin, CFP®, CLU®, ChFC® and Michael Ross AWMA®. Sara is principally responsibly for client support, preparing reports for review meetings and scheduling appointments.
Sara graduated from the State University of New York at Cortland, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business Economics & Sports Management.
Outside of work, Sara dedicates her life to her family and enjoys interests that include travel, music, and sporting events. She’s involved in her community as a member of the St. Benedict Roman Catholic Church Parish Council, St. Mary’s School Parent Teacher Organization and Treasurer for the Marcus Whitman Junior Wildcats Youth Football Team.
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PIG Covers Prince, Kylie Minogue, Olivia Newton-John, Hall & Oates, The Spice Girls, and More!
PIG HAS CANDY FOR YOU
Tastes Like Heaven When You’re in Hell.
Featuring Covers of Kylie Minogue, The Spice Girls, Olivia Newton-John, Lee Marvin, The Righteous Brothers, Prince, Elvis and More!
“I chose CANDY as the album title because the songs may seem sweet, inviting and harmless at first glance, but ‘candy’ suggests there’s something sinister beneath,” says the patron saint of pain Raymond Watts of post-punk stalwarts <PIG> about the new covers album that will be released on June 21, 2019 via Armalyte Industries. “It’s like a lure or precursor to something dark and dreadful. What is the interest due on that sinful pleasure and what is the true cost? A bit of a metaphor for our times.”
CANDY indulges the listener with covers of Prince (“Kiss”), Frankie Goes To Hollywood (“The Power of Love”), INXS (“Never Tear Us Apart”), among many others and blindsides you with surprisingly poignant and swanky versions of “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” (Kylie Minogue), “Two Become One” (Spice Girls), and “I Can’t Go For That” (Hall & Oates).
Aside from the standard CD and digital download version, there will be four additional and highly-collectible vinyl editions. The vinyl (which will only be available viawww.armalyte.com) will come in the “Fur Edition” (numbered and signed by Raymond Watts and Eden Martin; quantity 30), the “Sand Paper Edition” (signed by Raymond; quantity 40), the “Candy Stripe Edition” (numbered and signed by Raymond; quantity 60), and the “Standard Deluxe Edition” (gatefold vinyl with a die cut sleeve on double, heavyweight vinyl with insert; quantity 170). In addition, track listing between the CD/digital version will differ slightly from the vinyl versions. Full track listing below.
Pre-order for CD and digital is now available at Bandcamp:
https://armalyte.bandcamp.com/album/pig-candy
Limited Edition vinyl will be available while supplies last at:
https://armalyte.com/candy_vinyl.htm
“Making an album of covers was a natural progression from the single I did with Sasha Grey last year [‘That’s The Way I Like It’] and the charity EP of Christmas songs I did for International Rescue Committee,” says Watts. He wasn’t drawn to the obvious but the overlooked… the songs that he loves. “My versions are like a new takedown of the old order. I wanted to pull the originals apart to find a different foundation of exactly what lies beneath. The fact that these songs not only survive but thrive with this rebirth, reconstruction and reinterpretation shows their inherent greatness.”
“The song choice was very quick and easy,” he explains about the diverse track listing. “I’d either suggest something to Eden [Martin, producer and arranger] or he’d throw something into the mix, and we’d give it a go. Instead of following the cliched ‘American songbook’ route, we chose the ‘cheesy’ pop of Kylie and The Spice Girls because there is another layer and language in those songs the reveal the nature of obsession and longing that hasn’t really been explored. A song like ‘Can’t Get You Out My Head’, for example, could be as much the internal dialogue of an addict as it could be the tortured rambling of the freshly broken-hearted … or even the toe-tapping tune of the condemned.”
CD Track Listing
1. Hopelessly Devoted To You (Olivia Newton-John)
2. One Day I’ll Fly Away (Randy Crawford)
3. You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling (The Righteous Brothers)
4. The Blower’s Daughter (Damien Rice)
5. Kiss (Prince)
6. Love Is In The Air (John Paul Young)
7. That’s The Way (I Like It) (KC & The Sunshine Band)
8. If You Go Away (Damita Jo)
9. Help Me Make It Through the Night (Kris Kristofferson)
10. I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do) (Hall & Oates)
11. The Power Of Love (Frankie Goes To Hollywood)
12. If He Swing By The String (Marlene Dietrich)
13. Wand’rin’ Star (Lee Marvin)
14. If I Can Dream (Elvis Presley)
Deluxe Vinyl Track Listing
4. Two Become One (The Spice Girls)
7. Never Tear Us Apart (INXS)
10. Can’t Get You Out Of My Head (Kylie Minogue)
11. Help Me Make It Through the Night (Kris Kristofferson)
14. At Seventeen (Janis Ian)
15. Wand’rin’ Star (Edit) (Lee Marvin)
17. That’s The Way (I Like It) with Sasha Grey (KC & the Sunshine Band)
18. If He Swings By The String (Marlene Dietrich)
CANDY will be released digitally on June 21, 2019 on all standard DSPs and the vinyl will be available exclusively via Armalyte.com. Reflecting on the expansive and exhaustive process of putting this collection together, Watts concludes, “It’s not been a labor of Hercules making this record. It’s been a labor of love.”
Raymond Watts
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STITCHED UP HEART Premieres New Song “Lost” Featuring Sully Erna of...
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The Queen’s Bar
27-29 North Frederick Street, Glasgow
Queens Bar 1960s.
There’s been a pub on this site since 1845.
There has been licensed premises here since 1845, Mr James Penden was licensee and stayed in the family until the 1860s.
Wine and Spirit Merchant Alexander Gillon acquired the premises in 1872, business prospered and by the 1880s he was also trading at 130 Woodlands Road (Arlington Bar,) he was living at that time in Cessnock, Govan before moving to better accommodation at The Glen, Uddingston.
Robert Bowes a well-known and respected wine and spirit merchant and a Director of the Scottish wine and spirit merchants Benevolent Institution, took over the pub in 1884. Mr. Bowes also had a licensed grocer’s business at 79 Elderslie Street, 212 Sauchiehall Street, he was living at 140 Mains Street.
In 1899 Robert paid an annual rent of £115,00 for the premises in North Frederick Street, he also had pubs at 614 Rutherglen Road, 160 Caledonia Road, and a grocer’s at 212 Sauchiehall Street, he was then living at 134 Holland Street, off Sauchiehall Street.
Mr. Robert Bowes celebrated his Silver Wedding Anniversary in July 1898. He passed away in January, 1916, leaving an estate valued at £66,122. William George McFadden, acquired the premises in Elderslie Street only a year before his death.
William McFadden continued to run the pub until the 1960s.
Queen’s Bar near the corner of George Square.
Pub price veto delays property development.
The development of a site in the centre of Glasgow may be threatened because the Scottish Office are against the price negotiation for part of the property involved, a public house at North Frederick Street.
After discussions going back several years, Glasgow Corporation planning committee, who own the rest of the block covering North Hanover Street, George Street and North Frederick Street, offering £65,000 to Mr A. W. Sinclair for the Queen’s Bar, at 27-29 North Frederick Street, where his wife, Mrs. M. V. Sinclair, is licensee.
“They wanted to buy and asked my price,” Mr Sinclair said at the weekend. “I asked £70,000 but we settled on their offer of £65,000. “On the strength of that I bought other property at South Frederick Street and got a licence for it, conditional on handing over the licence for the Queen’s Bar.”
Deal Off
Mr Sinclair considered that all that was needed was the final sanction of the corporation, which he thought would be a formality. The corporation, however sent him a letter stating that the deal was off as the Scottish Development Department would not allow them to offer £65,000. The Department said the figure of £45,000 put up by the district valuator was sufficient
“We are in a cleft stick,” Mr. Sinclair said, “We can take the £45,000, or sit tight and hope something else turns up. We cannot extend the Queen’s Bar because the corporation keep saying it has a short life.
“If I don’t get into the new premises by March, when the licensing court sit, I may well lose the new licence.
“If I sit here, it is holding up any possible corporation development. I do not want to be the man in the middle but I think I have had a raw deal. “The corporation want to buy. I want to sell. Their own estates department agreed on the figure. Why should the Development Department step in like this?”
Mr Sinclair added: “We could negotiate. I would look at a lower figure, together with compensation for the interest on my over draft for the premises at South Frederick Street.” Councillor Donald McColl, convener of the corporation planning committee, said, “We are in a cleft stick too. This is a problem the new administration inherited after the May elections.
“It is rare for the Development Department to veto a price like this. We are worried about the whole block of property becoming an eyesore.”
Possible projects
The block is beside the North British Hotel and Queen Street railway station, and diagonally opposite the City Chambers in George Square and because of its central position may be developed for a prestige project. A report suggesting possible projects is understood to have been prepared by corporation officials and to be going before the planning committee later this month.
No development would be likely to go ahead if part of the property were still occupied. Councillor McColl said he recognised this danger and was searching for an acceptable way out of the predicament. One possibility being quietly explored behind the scenes is the feasibility of a form of voluntary arbitration, where both sides would put their case and their price to an independent authority of such high repute that the Development Department would be able to accept whichever solution was offered.
Queen’s Bar advert 1974.
Queen’s Bar, 1976 advert a bottle of whisky £3.42.
Other Pubs on North Frederick Street…
Ark the. 42
George the. 41
Inverness Vaults. 46
Old Printwork’s. 36
Queen’s Bar. 27-29
Filed Under: Q
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Nicotine Patches Encourage Teenagers to Smoke – Late Night With Jan Harayda
Filed under: Quotes of the Day — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 10:09 pm
Tags: Adolescents, Autos, Books, Cars, Cigarettes, FDA, Nicotine, Nicotine Gum, Nicotine Patch, Public Health, Quotations, Safety, Seat Belts, Smoking, Teenagers, Teens, Tobacco
Tim Harford’s The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World (Random House, 272 pp., $15, paperback) came out in paperback recently, and if the Food and Drug Administration gains power to regulate tobacco products as seems likely, regulators might learn from it. William Grimes wrote in a New York Times review of the book:
“Nicotine patches and nicotine gum, intended to wean smokers from their dangerous habit, actually seem to encourage teenagers to take the first puff, for reasons that any economist might have predicted. Since there are now products to help smokers quit, it becomes less risky, as a purely rational proposition, to pick up the habit.”
Steven E. Landsburg makes a related point his entertainingly contrarian The Armchair Economist (Free Press, 1995), a book that with a catchier title might have become the Freakonomics of its day. In a chapter semi-facetiously called “How Seat Belts Kill,” Landsburg describes what happened in the 1960s when federal legislation for the first time required Americans to wear seat belts:
“The number of auto accidents increased. The reason is that the threat of being killed in an accident is a powerful incentive to drive carefully. But a driver with a seat belt and a padded dashboard faces less of a threat. Because people respond to incentives, drivers are less careful. The result is more accidents.”
Landsburg goes on:
“An interesting question remains. How big is the effect in question? How many additional accidents were caused by the safety regulations of the 1960s: The regulations tend to reduce the number of driver deaths by making it easier to survive an accident. At the same time, the regulations tend to increase the number of driver deaths by encouraging reckless behavior. Which effect is greater?”
In the mid-1970s, University of Chicago researcher Sam Peltzman studied the question and found that two effects were of about the same size and cancelled each other out, Landsburg says:
“There were more accidents and fewer diver deaths per accident, but the total number of deaths remained essentially unchanged. An interesting side effect appear to have been an increase in the number of pedestrian deaths; pedestrians, after all, gain no benefit from padded dashboards.”
“Late Night With Jan Harayda” is an occasional series of posts about books that appear after 10 a.m. Eastern time that may include commentary but do not include reviews, which typically appear earlier in the day.
www.twitter.com/janiceharayda
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John Green’s ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ – Cancer-Stricken Teenagers in Love
Filed under: Fiction,Novels,Young Adult — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 9:00 pm
Tags: Book Reviews, Books, Cancer, Indianapolis, John Green, Teenagers, The Fault in Our Stars
“I’m gonna die a virgin” and other worries of gravely ill 12-to-18-year-olds
The Fault in Our Stars. By John Green. Dutton Children’s Books, 313 pp., $17.99. Ages 13 and up.
Sixteen-year-old Hazel Lancaster has metastatic thyroid cancer and wears a nasal cannula attached to a rolling oxygen cart, but former basketball player Augustus Waters thinks she looks like Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta. Gus has lost a leg to osteosarcoma, but Hazel knows he’s “hot” even if, as she says, he “HAD FREAKING CANCER.”
Will Hazel and Gus get together before the Big C kills one or both of them? Sentimentalists need not fear. A cheery message of this breezy cross between a teen weepie and a romantic comedy –- and one that will no doubt comfort millions of teenagers — is: You’re never too sick to get into someone’s pants.
Hazel and Gus meet in a support group for cancer-stricken 12-to-18-year-olds in the basement of an Episcopal church in Indianapolis. Sparks fly, but in the tradition of old-school romance novels, the teenagers do not lose their virginity until late in the book, when Gus persuades a charity that grants the wishes of sick children to let him take Hazel to Amsterdam to meet her favorite author. Hazel’s mother — who has come along to Holland as a chaperone — stays conveniently out of the way at any moment that might seem to require her services.
But John Green has more on his mind in his fifth young-adult novel than showing that when you have cancer, it’s natural to think, “I’m gonna die a virgin.” The title of The Fault in Our Stars points to its theme, which inverts Cassius’ message to Brutus in Julius Caesar: When tragedy strikes, the fault often lies not in ourselves but “in our stars.” In developing this idea, Green goes beyond absolving teenagers of blame for their cancers and asks: What does it mean to lead a good life? Hazel and Gus wonder as their health worsens: Is the purpose of life to “repay a debt to the universe” for the gift of having been born, as Hazel believes? Or is to “to leave a mark on the world,” as Gus thinks?
Both teenagers have had cancer long enough to have smart answers and wry familiarity with some of the absurdities of the American view of serious illness. Hazel speaks matter-of-factly about what she calls “cancer perks” — “the little things cancer kids get that regular kids don’t: basketballs signed by sports heroes, free passes on late homework, unearned driver’s licenses” and more. She understands the paradox of “the Last Good Day” cliché in stories about children with cancer, a convention that describes hours “when for a moment the pain is bearable”: “The problem, of course, is that there’s no way of knowing that your last good day is your Last Good Day. At the time, it is just another good day.” And she sees the contradictions in certain aspects of the support groups into which therapists and others push the afflicted. Is it realistic to expect all young cancer survivors to find comfort in praying, as her group does, for members who have died?
Such questions are so worthy that you wish Green had developed them through more believable characters and fewer plot contrivances. Hazel narrates the story in a voice that alternately resembles that of a down-to-earth teenager and an elderly lawyer drafting a will. One moment she’s complaining that “cancer books suck.” The next she’s talking about “my aforementioned third best friend” or an incident “wherein I put my hand on the couch.” Gus, although slightly more credible, uses so many high-flown metaphors that you can’t square his language with his account of himself as an ordinary Hoosier basketball fan who used to be “all about resurrecting the art of the midrange jumper.” The plot veers from reasonably realistic into something close to farce when the teenagers land in Amsterdam and Hazel’s favorite author turns out to be a cruel and drunken misanthrope.
Perhaps most baffling from an award-winning novelist are the dropped storylines, including one that involves a heavy religious motif introduced in the first pages by Patrick, the well-intentioned but hapless leader of Hazel and Gus’ support group. At meetings the members sit “in the middle of the cross, where the two boards would have met, where the heart of Jesus would have been.” They are “literally” in Jesus’ heart, Patrick says. Hazel later invokes that description often. And yet, she and Gus talk about the meaning of life in secular terms: They don’t raise the possibility — even to dismiss it — that a sense of purpose might include God. Jesus, it turns out, was simply wallpaper. Of course, teenagers are growing up in a secular world, but The Fault in Our Stars punts on a paraphrase of the wartime question: Is it true that there are no atheists in the Intensive Care Unit?
This is not to suggest that Green should, in the words of the Protestant hymn, “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus.” It is rather to say that his book violates Chekhov’s dramatic principle: “Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.” Support groups meet in many places, including hospitals, and Hazel and Gus’ group could have gathered in a spot less freighted with symbolism than “in the middle of the cross” in a church. For all the virtues of his novel, Green is trying to have it both ways — to saturate his book with religious motifs without having to explore their implications for his characters.
Best line: “He looked like he was dressed for a colonial occupation of Panama, not a funeral.”
Worst line: Hazel’s “my aforementioned third best friend,” “wherein I put my hand on the couch,” that “eponymous album” and similar phrases.
Second opinion: Another review of The Fault in Our Stars calls it a “mawkish” and “exploitative” example of a genre that some call “sick list,” which deals with the plight of gravely ill childrem.
Reading Group Guide: A Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guide to The Fault in Our Stars appeared on One-Minute Book Reviews on Sept. 9, 2013, in the post that directly preceded this one.
Read an interview with John Green about The Fault in Our Stars on his website.
Learn about the movie version of The Fault in Our Stars.
Jan is an award-winning journalist and former book editor of the Plain Dealer. You can follow her on Twitter at @janiceharayda.
www.janiceharayda.com
A Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guide to the ‘The Fault in Our Stars,’ a Young-Adult Novel by John Green
Filed under: Fiction,Reading Groups,Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides,Young Adult — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 9:00 pm
Tags: John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
10 Discussion Questions for Book Clubs and Others
The Fault Our Stars
By John Green
Source: One-Minute Book Reviews
http://www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com
This guide for reading groups and others was not authorized or approved by the author, publisher or agent for the book. It is copyrighted by Janice Harayda and is only for your personal use. Its sale or reproduction is illegal except by public libraries, which may make printed copies for use in their in-house reading programs. Other reading groups that wish to use this guide should link to it or check the “Contact” page on One-Minute Book Reviews to learn how to request permission to reproduce it.
Sixteen-year-old Hazel Lancaster has metastatic thyroid cancer and wears a nasal cannula attached to a rolling oxygen cart, but former basketball player Augustus Waters thinks she looks like Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta. Gus has lost a leg to osteosarcoma, but Hazel knows he’s hot. Sparks fly when the two meet in a support group for 12-to-18-year-olds with cancer in John Green’s fifth young-adult novel. But will Hazel and Gus live long enough to get together? As they explore their feelings for each other in this cross between a teen weepie and a romantic comedy, they also must come to terms with a central question of human existence: What does it mean to live a good life?
The questions below include spoilers. Please stop here if you would prefer not to see them.
10 Questions for Discussion:
1. Many critics have raved about The Fault in Our Stars. Others have found it “mawkish” and “exploitative.” Where do you stand?
2. Which characters did you find most believable? Why?
3. Which characters did you find least believable? Why?
4. Hazel, the narrator, sounds like a teenager when she says things like: “We said this stupid mantra together — LIVING OUR BEST LIFE TODAY.” She also says things like “my aforementioned third best friend” or “wherein I put my hand on the couch” (which, you could argue, make her sound more like an elderly lawyer drafting a will). Did her shifts in tone make her voice less convincing? Why or why not?
5. One critic said that her main complaint about The Fault in Our Stars was that at times “it’s a little too slick”: “The dialogue between Gus and Hazel is to clever it felt like I was watching an adorable indie comedy.” Do you agree? Did the breezy dialogue clash with the serious subject? How effective was the dialogue overall?
6. Hazel dislikes some of the ways Americans treat people with cancer, which she finds “bullshitty.” What does she implicitly or explicitly fault? Which, if any, of her criticisms did you find valid?
7. The Fault in Our Stars has many references to water, a major symbol in the book. Do any stand out in your mind? Why is water so important in a book about life and death? (Green gives his answer on his website.)
8. John Green foreshadows that Gus will die first in The Fault in Our Stars. Where in the novel does he do this most clearly?
9. Were all aspects of the plot equally well-developed? Or did Green handle some better than others? (Did you buy, for example, that Peter Van Houten would fly to Indianapolis for Gus’ funeral? Or that Hazel’s mother would hide her graduate school plans?)
10. Green has said that a central question of The Fault in Our Stars involves “what constitutes a full and well-lived life”: “I wanted to argue that a good life need not be a long one.” Hazel and Gus differ on what makes for “a full and well-lived life.” How would you describe each of their views on it? Did the book reconcile their views? Are your views closer to those of Hazel or Gus?
1. Many references to Jesus appear early in the story (when Hazel and Gus’ support group meets “in the middle of the cross, where the two boards would have met, where the heart of Jesus would have been”). These references might lead you to expect to find religious or explicitly Christian themes in the novel. But Green doesn’t really follow up on them, except in passing references by Hazel to the “Literal Heart of Jesus.” How did you react to this? (A fuller discussion of this point appears at the end of the One-Minute Book Reviews review of The Fault in Our Stars.)
The Fault in Our Stars. By John Green. Dutton Children’s Books, 313 pp., $17.99. Ages 13 and up. Published: January 2012.
A review of The Fault in Our Stars appeared on One-Minute Book Reviews on Sept. 9, 2013 https://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2013/09/09.
Jan Harayda is a novelist and award-winning critic who has been the book columnist for Glamour, book editor of the Plain Dealer and a vice-president of the National Book Critics Circle. You can follow her on Twitter at @janiceharayda.
Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides are a free alternative to publishers’ guides, which are not unbiased analyses but marketing tools designed to sell books. One-Minute Book Reviews does not accept free books from editors, publishers or authors, and all reviews and guides offer an independent evaluation of books. Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides appear frequently but not on a regular schedule. To avoid missing them, please bookmark this site or subscribe to the blog.
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India launches satellite for new navigation system
Scientists from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) work in the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System (IRNSS) control room at the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) near Bangalore,May 28, 2013. India has launched the first of seven satellites for its domestic satellite navigation network, in the first step to creating a scaled down version of the US GPS.
India launched the first of seven satellites for its domestic satellite navigation network Tuesday, its space centre said, in the first step to creating a scaled down version of the US Global Positioning System.
A rocket took off in the early hours from a site in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh and injected the 600-kilogramme (1,300-pound) satellite into orbit 20 minutes later.
Once fully operational in 2015, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) will provide accurate positioning services for civilian and military users across India and up to 1,500 kilometres (937 miles) beyond its borders.
"The remaining six navigational satellites will be launched at every six months over the next 30-36 months," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K. Radhakrishnan said after the launch.
The United States' GPS is the most widely used network by consumers with 24 satellites, but other countries including Russia, the European Union and most recently China have developed rival positioning systems.
China's Beidou, or Compass, navigation system started providing services in the region in December, and is expected to offer global coverage by 2020.
Beijing began building the network in 2000 to avoid relying on the US GPS system. Reports have said Pakistan, which has fought three wars with India, was set to become the fifth Asian country to use the Chinese system.
The IRNSS will provide commercial and public navigational services such as helping with disaster management as well as movements of India's military, including those of ships and aircraft.
Indian officials estimate the project will cost 14.2 billion rupees ($238.6 million.)
India has a well-established space programme which is a source of strong national pride, but its cost has attracted criticism as the government struggles to tackle poverty and child malnutrition.
India to launch satellite navigation system
Citation: India launches satellite for new navigation system (2013, July 2) retrieved 16 July 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2013-07-india-satellite_1.html
Pakistan adopts Chinese rival GPS satellite system
China's satellite navigation system live
China launches rival GPS satellite system (Update)
China satellite navigation starts services to Asia
China launches navigation satellite: Xinhua
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Revolutionizing the jet fuel industry with biofuel made from oilseed
by Susan Bell, University of Southern California
Alumnus Steve Fabijanski on the tarmac at LAX with the Qantas airplane bound for Melbourne, Australia, that was partially powered by biojet fuel developed by his company, Agrisoma. Photos courtesy of Steve Fabijanski. Credit: University of Southern California
The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner roared down the runway before sailing serenely up into the skies over Los Angeles International Airport. The recent Qantas flight, heading for Melbourne, Australia, seemed like any other leaving LAX, except for the fact that this plane was partially powered by biojet fuel, making for a reduced carbon footprint.
That this—the world's first United States to Australia biofuel flight—happened at all, is thanks to USC Dornsife alumnus Steve Fabijanski.
While less than 5 percent of flights are currently powered by blending biofuel with traditional jet fuel, he is optimistic that eventually half of the more than 79 billion gallons of fuel used by the airline industry will be replaced by biofuel.
Fabijanski, who earned his Ph.D. in biology in 1981, is the CEO and president of Agrisoma Biosciences Inc., the company he founded in 2001 in Quebec, Canada, to provide a solution for more sustainable commercial transportation.
The answer, he found, lay in a mustard-like oilseed called carinata. Closely resembling kale in appearance, the plant, a combination of canola and mustard, has long been eaten as a vegetable in North Africa.
Fabijanski's team used plant-breeding techniques to develop carinata into a non-GMO seed-producing crop containing high levels of oil and protein. The chemical composition of the oil makes it particularly well-suited to being refined into jet fuel. Once processed, carinata is chemically identical to conventional, fossil-fuel derived jet fuel.
In fact, Fabijanski says, anyone examining a gallon of jet fuel and a gallon of carinata-derived biojet fuel would be hard pressed to tell them apart.
But that's not all, he argues. Carinata offers a win-win-win situation: for the environment, for the world's food supply and for farmers.
Not only does biojet fuel reduce our carbon footprint, the protein contained in carinata seeds can be used for animal feed. The plant also has the capacity to rejuvenate and enrich the soil.
His company's mantra, he stresses, is to grow this crop without taking food out of production.
"We want to add to the overall food supply through this animal feed product so we can produce energy and more food, but not increase the footprint of farming," he said. "That's one of the big challenges—how to feed and power the planet without taking away natural prairie and pasture."
The answer? Fabijanski developed carinata to flourish in areas where typical food crops won't grow or during a season where a food crop cannot be grown due to crop rotation.
"The company we formed was built on the idea that we can do better with what's available and we can do more with less," Fabijanski said of Agrisoma.
Born in 1960s Chicago to a machinist and a housewife, Fabijanski's upbringing during a politically turbulent era not only helped forged his belief that it was possible to change things for the better, but also sharpened his determination to do so.
"I remember Civil Rights riots, Watergate, the Vietnam War—all these areas where, if you had enough people focused in the right direction, you could actually change things," he said. "Part of that philosophy rubbed off on me."
Fabijanski originally wanted to be a marine biologist, attending the University of Miami for his undergraduate degree, but his growing interest in genetics and protein chemistry and his desire to work with Maria Pellegrini, formerly professor and chair of biology and dean of research, brought him to graduate school at USC Dornsife.
There, Fabijanski said he found freedom to be creative and to think differently.
"Those were the best years of my life. Biology, at that point, was throwing out surprises that nobody could see six months before. It was a very exciting time to be part of that."
Fabijanski's first focus after earning his doctorate was how to use technology to increase crop yields in order to feed the world.
The solution—creating hybrid seeds, which provide better crop performance and overall yield—came to Fabijanski and a group of fellow scientists over beers in a Toronto bar. Originally sketched out on a cocktail napkin, this pioneering concept underpinned Fabijanski's first company, Paladin Hybrids, one of the first companies to apply techniques of biotechnology to the production of hybrid seeds.
To invigorate self-pollinating plants, their thinking went, they could make them into male or female plants, then combine them to create hybrid seeds.
Fabijanski filed the patent for the idea—one of 96 he currently holds. It's the one that makes him happiest. It's also the one, he notes, that's underpinning the 22-million-acre-strong Canadian canola seed industry.
"To see an invention go to a patent, and then see that patent show up in regular commerce was a huge accomplishment, both from a patent and a development perspective," he said.
However, of all his achievements to date, Fabijanski is most proud of his degree from USC Dornsife. It inspired him, he says, to try to change the world.
"It's a lofty goal, but I think we've made an impact in terms of demonstrating there are ways to create positive change that don't require you to wear organic cotton T-shirts and Birkenstocks. You can actually work within a well-established industry to bring about some meaningful change so it becomes more sustainable."
First solely-biofuel jet flight raises clean travel hopes
Provided by University of Southern California
Citation: Revolutionizing the jet fuel industry with biofuel made from oilseed (2018, June 25) retrieved 16 July 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2018-06-revolutionizing-jet-fuel-industry-biofuel.html
Bioprocessing engineers recover glucosinolate from oilseed meal
World's first biofuel jet flight to take off in Canada
Airline industry could fly thousands of miles on biofuel from a new promising feedstock
Biofuel from desert plants grown with seawater
Scientists engineer crops to conserve water, resist drought
Better genome editing for bioenergy
Nature plants review explores the current state and future of CRISPR technology in crops
Patterns in DNA reveal hundreds of unknown protein pairings
Ancient defense strategy continues to protect plants from pathogens
LuckyExplorer
Meanwhile it is known that bio-fuel from oilseeds and especially oil-palms based bio-fuel is an ecological and cultural desaster! - It causes lots of issues: It is neither ecologically a sustainable solution (just another business based on a green lie) nor is it beneficial for the citizens of the countries where oil palms are grown. These seeds might be a better solution, but how many square kilometers of this monoculture are necessary, reducing the space for food production? Seen in the right dimension, in a global view, reducing the energy consumption is finally the only reasonable solution. Only then such attempts can be helpful additional measures, but just as a second step and not with the current energy consumption policy. In th ecurrent situation, they are just a trappy measure shifting the problem to other people, other countries and our children and grand-children.
greenonions1
Seen in the right dimension, in a global view, reducing the energy consumption is finally the only reasonable solution
And how did you arrive at the conclusion that there is only one solution? Here is an example - https://www.green...rg/team/
Bren Smith calculates that we could feed the world on a 3D ocean farm the size of Washington State. This is just one example. You could look at 'Greening the Desert' - https://www.youtu...I6vnWZmk
I don't see the problem as lack of options. I see it as lack of imagination on the part of homo stupidus. Few seem interested in breaking out of religious tribalism - into exploring better ways of organizing ourselves in more sustainable ways.
Eikka
While less than 5 percent of flights are currently powered by blending biofuel with traditional jet fuel, he is optimistic that eventually half of the more than 79 billion gallons of fuel used by the airline industry will be replaced by biofuel
79 billion gallons isn't nearly enough.
https://www.index...oduction
World production of jet fuel is 5.3 billion barrels a year. That's more than 200 billion gallons.
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Now You Tell the Story: Paying Tribute to the Past Without Drowning in Respect
Real Life Rock Top 10: Greil Marcus on Bikini Kill and Burkini bans, Donald Trump and the Sex Pistols, and American music’s racial history and racial present.
by Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus' Real Life Rock Top 10
Pop/R&B
1. Fantastic Negrito, The Last Days of Oakland (Blackball Universe) He could be inventing blues for the first time. With a guitar that has a pick-up that catches people talking as they pass the street corner where he’s playing—talking in time. In a city where the huge old Sears building is the new world headquarters of Uber.
Fantastic Negrito: "Working Poor" (via SoundCloud)
2. “FRENCH COURT TO RULE ON BURKINI BANS” (Financial Times, August 25) Story: “Demonstrators held a protest outside the French embassy in London on Thursday against the banning of so-called burkini swimsuits on beaches in more than a dozen coastal towns in France.
“The State Council, France’s highest administrative court, is due to publish an initial ruling on a claim by human rights groups that the ban contravenes civil liberties.
“The burkini, labelled as a provocative political symbol by critics, was barred in the wake of recent Islamist terrorist killings in France. Photos showed armed police ordering a Muslim woman to remove her burkini in Nice this week.
“Prime Minister Manuel Valls defended the ban, saying the burkini symbolised women’s enslavement.”
The photo with the report showed Muslim and non-Muslim women with multi-colored, well-drawn posters on clean white paper—ISLAMOPHOBIA IS NOT FREEDOM, WEAR WHAT YOU WANT, and MISTER! HANDS OFF MY SISTER. In the background was a rough piece of cardboard with black lettering that by comparison looked like a scribble:
WE ARE BURKINI KILL + WE WANT REVOLUTION GRRRL STYLE NOW!
OH ISLAMOPHOBIA UP YOURS!!!
Protestors rallying against the burkini ban at the French Embassy in London on August 25. Photo by Tolga Akmen/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.
With its references to Bikini Kill and its 1991 cassette, its first release, and X-Ray Spex’s 1977 “Oh Bondage Up Yours!”—Poly Styrene’s clarion call, and her band’s first single—that placard was a pure punk no, pure because it was doubled: that crude sign was a critique of the burkini ban, but it was also a critique of the demonstration.
The next day the French high court overturned the ban.
Corin Tucker, who a not so long ago played both a suburban mom and Poly Styrene in a video for her band’s single “Neskowin”: “Who knew 25 years later those words would take on a totally new meaning?”
3. Cyndi Lauper, “Money Changes Everything (Live in Romania 2001)” (YouTube) A great performance, and her best haircut ever.
4. James Parker, “Donald Trump, Sex Pistol” (Atlantic, October) A piece that makes its point without showing off, though many lines are so good they feel as if they’re shot out of a cannon. As on Trump’s “followers—about whom one should not generalize, except to say that most of them would rather be waterboarded than sit through an episode of Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”
5. “The Night Of,” Episode 6: “Samson and Delilah” (HBO, August 14, Kier Lehman, music supervisor) An afternoon scene in a bar, with attorneys John Stone and Chandra Kapoor discussing the hopeless murder trial they’ve taken on. Chandra is unraveling—she just broke up with her boyfriend, she’s panicking over the opening statement she can’t write. As Stone stops her from ordering a fourth drink, you hear a song playing deep in the background on the bar sound system, maybe a radio, all broken up, impossible to place, and for a moment it can take you right out of the scene. It turned out to be “I’m Just an Ordinary Man” by Benny Latimore (Atlantic, 1969): a soul singer with a strong voice that he seems to want to hide, to take down, so each breath comes out crying. There’s so much yearning and regret in every syllable it’s hard to take—and as the song deepens the characters’ misery, you can believe neither Stone or Chandra are hearing a word, and feeling every note.
6. Eric Clapton, Sessions for Robert J (Reprise DVD and CD, 2004) Aren’t tribute albums terrible? Yes, especially when they’re drowning in respect, as with Clapton’s notoriously dull 2004 Me and Mr. Johnson, an offering to the 1930s Mississippi blues singer and guitarist who had been an inspiration and nemesis since Clapton was a teenager. But in this little noticed follow-up—with a film made of band rehearsals for the tour that followed—a sense of freedom only builds. “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day” might jump out first, its rolling-and-tumbling riff syncopating it right out of the room, then “Stones in My Passway,” then the ineffable “From Four Until Late,” then anything else. It’s as if Clapton finally heard Johnson speaking plain: “I’m dead, man. All my records have disappeared and no one can hear me. You tell the story.”
7. “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee” (TBS, September 19) On Jimmy Fallon’s buddy act with Donald Trump on “The Tonight Show” four days before: “There were no cutaway shots to the Roots.”
8. “I Feel Loved in #MyCalvins,” featuring Frank Ocean (Carrer de Pelai, Barcelona, September 17) On a huge billboard entirely dominating a triangle intersection. Ocean, with a slightly confrontational cast in his eyes, wearing a white T-shirt, is clasped by a small woman—she comes up to his neck. She’s a secondhand Christina Aguilera dressed in a white gown, a white fur, full length white gloves—her eyes closed, her head tilted down against Ocean’s chest, as if to say, I know it’s shame for a white woman like me to love a black man like him—but I can’t help myself. You’re supposed to feel a sense of violation, and a sense of racism itself put to shame. In a city where interracial couples are as common as well dressed and seriously tattooed older women, the message could hardly fall more flat, or seem more cynical.
9. Vivien Goldman, “Private Armies,” from Resolutionary (Staubgold) From 1979 to 1982 the music journalist made dub music in London and Paris. None of it is ordinary, but nothing really touches this six-minute cultural travelogue, one of her first tracks, about how you can no longer walk down your own, suddenly racialized street. With Vicky Aspinall of the Raincoats on violin, Keith Levene of PiL on bass and guitar, John Lydon producing, and Goldman singing in a voice that can’t quite believe what it’s describing, snakes slither through the rhythms, then turn into rhythms; you can see the notes bend.
10. The Color Line: Les artistes africains-américains et la segregation 1916-1962 (Frémaux & Associés) For decades, Frémaux has compiled three-CD concept anthologies, and this, linked to an exhibition opening at the Musée de Quai Branly in Paris on October 4, is as ambitious as any. It begins by running the unmistakably white blackface vaudeville star Harry C. Browne’s “Oh! Susanna” (“Killed five hundred nigger”) straight into Marcus Garvey’s 1921 speed-rapped sermon “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands Onto God,” with women screaming with excitement around him; it heads toward its end with Louis Armstrong’s 1958 version of “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” providing no preparation at all for Bo Diddley’s terrifyingly uncharacteristic “The Great Grandfather,” a rewrite from the following year of the 1840s black minstrel song “Old Dan Tucker” (“He wore the same suit all his life”) that seems to suck the whole of slavery and its aftermath into a two-and-a-half-minute moan. The 60 tracks here aren’t a history lesson, they are history—a history that isn’t remotely over, especially given the looming possibility of a president whose father may well have been a proud member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Thanks to John Stewart and Richard Price.
Pitchfork Music Festivals: Chicago / Paris
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Donations down, volunteering up
January 4, 2010 | Sandra Cyr
While charitable donations are taking a hit during the economic downturn, more people say they are willing to volunteer their time, a new survey says.
Almost half of respondents say the downturn means they are less likely to donate money, but almost a third plan to volunteer more, says the survey from Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund.
About four in 10 adults have volunteered within the past year and, among them, half volunteer once a month or more, with volunteerism increasing with education and income.
The act of volunteering appears to bring about larger donations, the survey says, with those who have donated their time within the last year contributing an average of 10 times the amount non-volunteers give.
And about a third of those volunteers plan to give more money to charity in 2010, compared to quarter of non-volunteers.
Almost three-quarters volunteer to support a cause they care about, while almost as many participate because they believe it’s the “right thing to do.”
More than half of volunteers focus on the mission and work of an organization when considering where to give their time, and about the same number look for a group that is serving needs in the local community.
Among those who do not volunteer, almost half say they don’t have enough time, and one in three say they can’t find a cause that matches their needs or interests.
Sarah C. Libbey, president of the Gift Fund, says the data show a “tremendous opportunity to tap the American spirit of volunteering and giving.”
Fundraising and Giving, Philanthropy Journal, Resources
Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, Fundraising/giving, Sarah C. Libbey
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Issue # 13 | March 2014
Life Online: Canadian students are more connected, more mobile and more social than ever
By Matthew Johnson
(The following article was published as provided)
It goes without saying that eight years is a long time on the Internet. Between 2005, when MediaSmarts published Phase II of our Young Canadians in a Wired World research, and 2013, when we conducted the national student survey for Phase III, the Internet changed almost beyond recognition: online video, once slow and buggy, became one of the most popular activities on the Web, while social networking became nearly universal among both youth and adults. Young people’s online experiences have changed as well, so we surveyed 5,436 Canadian students in grades 4 through 11, in classrooms in every province and territory, to find out how. Our first report drawn from this survey, Life Online, focuses on what youth are doing online, what sites they’re going to and their attitudes towards online safety, household rules on Internet use and unplugging from digital technology. (Future reports based on this data will look at students’ habits, activities and attitudes towards: privacy, digital permanence, bullying, commercialization, offensive content, online relationships and digital literacy in the classroom and in the home.)
One finding that’s unlikely to be a surprise is that nearly all youth are going online. In fact, 99 percent of students surveyed have access to the Internet outside of school using a variety of devices. The biggest change since our last survey is the proliferation of mobile and portable devices, such as tablets, smartphones and MP3 players, which give youth constant – and often unsupervised – online access.
Not only are students getting connected, they’re staying connected: more than a third of students who own cell phones say they sleep with their phones in case they get calls or messages during the night. Students do try to balance their online and offline activities: nearly all say that they sometimes choose to go offline in order to spend more time with friends and family, go outside or play a game or sport, read a book or just enjoy some solitary quiet time. More worryingly, one in six students has gone offline in order to avoid someone who is harassing them.
What are Canadian youth doing when they’re online? For one thing, they’re looking for information – primarily about things like news, sports and entertainment, but also physical and mental health issues, relationship advice and sexuality. Two-thirds of students play online games, though the games they play differ significantly: boys in grades 4-6 choose Minecraft, a game in which players build virtual environments, while girls prefer virtual worlds such as Webkinz, Moshi Monsters and Poptropica, which contain chat and social networking features. Social networking is also a popular activity: while rates are highest for older students, a significant number of younger students – one-third in Grade 5 and almost half in Grade 6 – have a Facebook account, despite the site being closed to users under 13.
Another major change involves household rules regarding online activities. Although our 2012 focus groups with parents and youth showed parents were more concerned than ever about what youth were doing online, the average number of household rules has actually declined since 2005: for example, in the earlier survey two-thirds of students had a rule at home about meeting people whom they first met online, while only one-half now do.
Consistent with our previous research, household rules have a significant positive impact on what students do online, reducing risky behaviours such as posting their contact information, visiting gambling sites, seeking out online pornography and talking to strangers online. In general, though, the number of household rules takes a sharp dive after Grade 7 and at all ages girls are more likely to report having rules about their online activities than boys. The greater number of rules placed on girls may be based on a sense that girls are more vulnerable in general, but this may also relate to the fact that the Internet is a very different place for girls than for boys: girls are less likely to agree with the statement that “the Internet is a safe place for me” and more likely to agree that “I could be hurt if I talk to someone I don’t know online”. Despite these differences, both boys and girls feel confident in their ability to look after themselves, with nine out of ten agreeing with the statement “I know how to protect myself online”.
How often students say they have an adult or parent in the room with them while online has also changed since the 2005 survey, but surprisingly – especially considering the decline in household rules and the proliferation of mobile devices – this figure has risen. As with household rules, however, the rate is higher for girls. One in five Grade 4 students never has a parent or adult with them when they are online at home, and by Grade 8 – a time when students are most at risk of encountering and getting involved in trouble online – four out of ten students never go online with a parent or other adult in the room.
Students do see their parents as a valuable resource for learning about the Internet: nearly half of students say they have learned about issues such as cyberbullying, online safety and privacy management at home. As students get older, they’re less likely to report having learned about these issues from parents and more likely to learn from teachers. A worrying number of students haven’t learned about these topics from any source: more than half of students in grades 4-6 have not learned any strategies for authenticating online information either at home or at school.
Life Online has raised many issues that call for more in-depth study. However, the evidence is clear at this early stage that despite their confidence with digital tools – or perhaps because of it – Canadian youth, and particularly elementary-aged children, need instruction in digital literacy skills and parents and teachers need to be given tools and resources to help them provide that instruction.
Click here to read the full Life Online report: mediasmarts.ca/ycww.
“Young Canadians in a Wired World – Phase III: Life Online” was made possible by financial contributions from Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of of Canada and The Alberta Teachers’ Association.
Matthew Johnson is the Director of Education at MediaSmarts.
What is Quality Education?
The Land of the Blind
CTF’s International Program: Teachers’ Action for Learning
Taking issue with PISA
The Canadian Journal for Teacher Research
When Education and Legislation Meet: Teacher Collective Bargaining in Canada
What Have We Got Against Our Grandchildren? (Or children for that matter)
A Challenge to Retired or Close to Retired Teachers
Sensification… “Why are we doing this, Teacher?”
Canadian Teachers’ Federation
2490 Don Reid Drive
Ottawa, ON K1H 1E1
Perspectives web magazine is published by the Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF), a national alliance of provincial and territorial teacher organizations that represent over 238,000 elementary and secondary school teachers across Canada.
Editor In Chief: Francine Filion | Translation and Editing: Marie‑Caroline Uhel and Marie‑Hélène Larrue
Proofreading: Denise Léger
Graphic Design: Nathalie Hardy and Jean-Louis Lauriol | Web Design: Greg Edwards
Requests for permission to reproduce any part of this publication for academic, professional, or commercial purposes should be sent to info@ctf-fce.ca. Articles and advertisements do not necessarily reflect the views of the CTF.
Comments: info@ctf-fce.ca
© 2014 Canadian Teachers’ Federation
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The School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University is pleased to announce the availability pending funding (to be determined soon) of three postdoctoral fellowships in philosophy of cosmology. Fellows will be appointed in the Department of Philosophy in association with the multi-university Project in Philosophy of Cosmology. We hope to appoint one fellow in each of the following areas of concentration: 1) philosophy of physics, 2) cosmology, 3) philosophy of religion, metaphysics or philosophical theology. For more information about the kinds of research that could be supported under these fellowships, please see the summaries of current project members’ research interests and aims here.
Requirements for the fellowship include i) PhD in the last 5 years in a relevant area, ii) acquaintance with recent developments in cosmology and issues in philosophy of cosmology, iii) a research project related to the research of the Philosophy of Cosmology Project, iv) strong background in one of the three fields mentioned above.
The primary responsibility of a Fellow will be to conduct research on his/her project. Fellows will also be responsible for teaching one course per year in their area of expertise. Fellows will be expected to participate in all of our conferences, seminars, and a summer school in the summer of 2013; they will work with faculty mentors in the organization, planning, editing and the other aspects of our project.
Fellows will be appointed for one year with the possibility of renewal for a second year. Appointments will be effective September 1, 2012 or January 1, 2013. Fellows will receive a stipend of $50,000 annually as well as an annual research allocation of $2,000; they will also receive Rutgers University health benefits.
Requests for more information or applications, consisting of a CV, a research proposal, a writing sample, and the names of 3 references should be sent by email to Professor Barry Loewer at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Review of applications will commence on July 8 and continue until the positions are filled.
Rutgers University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. The institution values diversity in its faculty, staff, and students and especially encourages applications from women and underrepresented minorities.
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Deaths in Large Truck Crashes Are Increasing – Here’s Why…
Fatalities from accidents with tractor trailers have been climbing in the United States. Since 2016, at least 4,300 people died in commercial vehicle crashes. This is an increase of 5.4% from 2015, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The NHTSA also found that advanced safety features such as forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking systems are reducing the number of crashes in passenger vehicles.
The problem is that these important safety features are not yet widely available in commercial vehicles. Many of the rigs are more than 10 years old and were manufactured before the new technology was invented. According to a report published by Securing America’s Future Energy, a Washington, DC, think tank, only approximately 15% of large commercial trucks in the United States had collision mitigation systems as of 2015.
The sad thing is that many of the serious crashes with big rigs and other commercial vehicles could be prevented if these safety systems were being used. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety states that 107,000 crashes in the U.S. each year, including approximately 28% of those that involve commercial vehicles, could have been prevented or reduced with collision prevention systems (systems for forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking, blind spot warning and lane departure).
Experts contend that these advanced driver safety systems that are becoming commonplace on cars are even more needed on commercial trucks. Big rigs can weigh as much as 80,000 pounds, and the consequences of a crash with a commercial truck can be devastating.
Some of the advanced safety features, including forward collision, lane departure and blind spot warning, are intended to alert you to an immediate danger. Others, including emergency braking automation and lane keeping assistance, are intended to prevent crashes.
Many industry experts and safety advocates, such as Consumer Reports, argue that tractor trailer manufacturers need to do a better job immediately in adding essential safety systems to new trucks. Safety advocates also suggest that older trucks should be equipped with newer safety technologies.
Naturally, many trucking companies and organizations are resistant to updating equipment due to the cost. They also resist government mandates. Some truckers argue that while they favor more safety systems on their trucks, new technology will never substitute for skilled drivers.
There is some truth behind the idea that better drivers create safer roads. More than 90 percent of all crashes on our roads are caused by driver error. However, it’s worth noting that these safety technologies are intended to reduce the impact of human error.
In an Accident with a Tractor Trailer? Contact Neale & Fhima Today
Crashes with tractor trailers can result in horrifying injuries and often death. If you or your loved one was hurt by a tractor trailer driver, you may be able to file a personal injury lawsuit for compensation. The attorneys at Neale & Fhima can help you to obtain compensation from the truck driver and/or trucking company. Please contact our law offices today for a free legal consultation.
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byMedMaven
Tell Your PSA Story: Has the PSA test helped in your prostate cancer journey? Its Prostate Cancer Awareness month-share your story.
Thanks for sharing; HIFU looks to be a promising new option for many C
Shelly Gordon
As the Wife of a Prostate Cancer Survivor I’m Eternally Grateful for Colorado’s Early Blood Draw
By Sharie Lisowski
As we approach the season for expressing gratitude and good wishes to friends and family, I have one important thing among many to be thankful for: Colorado’s Early Blood Draw program.
Why would I focus my gratitude on that?
Because it may have saved my husband’s life!
My husband, Les, was able to get a basic blood panel workup in Gunnison, CO through the Early Blood Draw program, which was covered by our health insurance. One of the things they checked was his PSA level. Doctors use the level of a man’s PSA – which stands for prostate-specific antigen – as one of the screening tools for diagnosing prostate cancer. When he was first checked in 2016, his PSA was at 3, which is towards the normal end of the scale. But then, with later blood tests, it started going up and up and up. By March of 2017 it hit 9.77!
During that year, Les was advised to see a urologist who did a biopsy that came back negative the first time. But as his PSA level kept rising the doctors did an MRI and saw a tumor. By May of 2017 they did the biopsy again and it was positive.
My active, healthy husband of 27 years was now a man facing a diagnosis of prostate cancer.
It’s a disease that affects almost three million men in our country. But it usually shows up for most men after they’re past age 65. Les was 56 – and had no history of cancer on his side of the family.
After we got the diagnosis, we had a lot of soul-searching to do. We’ve always been an active family, camping in the summer and snowshoeing in the winter. We love hiking in the mountains and our motto for campfire dinners is “If it can’t be on a stick, we probably won’t be eating it!” We’re also very fortunate that we get to spend time with family, since our daughters and their husbands – along with our three amazing grandchildren – live only a few hours away and we all get together whenever we can.
So, when we had to look at all of the options for treating prostate cancer, we knew it was an important decision that could affect the quality of life for Les. We hoped he’d be able to keep taking part in all of the outdoor sports he enjoys, like hunting, and riding his dirt bike.
We met with Dr. Craig Peterson, a urologist at San Juan Urology in nearby Montrose. He is a straight shooter with a great sense of humor. Dr. Peterson gave us several options to consider.
Maybe it’s because I’m the practical one in the family or maybe it’s because I’ve worked at the Gunnison Bank for ten years, but once we learned about the five options from Dr. Peterson, I made a big spreadsheet with three columns for each treatment. Then we did our own research, plus I went to the websites Dr. Peterson recommended and I listed the pros and cons, and questions for each option.
Les and I discussed the choices and ruled out radiation as well as cryotherapy which could have left him with side effects for the rest of his life. We narrowed down the list to two main options, and considered radical prostatectomy surgery because it would remove the tumor. But it would also remove the entire prostate, making it highly likely that Les would have to deal with side effects of incontinence and impotence. I remember Les was also concerned about what would happen during surgery if the wrong nerves were cut, so he was not a big fan of that choice.
The second option at the top of our list was a procedure called high intensity focused ultrasound, or HIFU. Because his cancer was in the early stages and Les was healthy – and still relatively young – Dr. Peterson said he was a good candidate for HIFU and he was trained to do the procedure. In fact, San Juan Urology is the only urology practice in all of Colorado that offers HIFU.
When I dug into the research for HIFU, I learned a lot of new terms and information, such as the fact that the FDA had cleared HIFU for something called “prostate tissue ablation.” That means the urologist directs ultrasound waves at precise points in the prostate to “ablate” or burn only the diseased tissue.
Although it’s been successfully used in Europe and around the world on more than 50,000 patients, the FDA requires 10 years of data before they approve certain treatments for cancer. We weren’t going to wait that long, and the more we learned about the safety of the treatment, the more it made sense. On top of that, the international studies show that the risk of impotence and incontinence is greatly reduced for HIFU patients.
After Les went through the HIFU procedure, which was done on an outpatient basis, Dr. Peterson had to put in a catheter but it was out in less than a week and he didn’t experience any incontinence. But Les had accumulated a month’s worth of sick leave from his job as an Equipment Operator with the Streets Department of the City of Gunnison, so he was able to take his time recovering, both mentally and physically.
Les underwent the HIFU procedure in July of 2017 and I can report that he’s had no side effects that have interfered with our sex life! Ha ha!
The only downside to HIFU is that it is not covered by our insurance because Les hasn’t reached Medicare age, so we had to take out a loan that we’re paying off over time. I don’t mind that, because it’s much more costly if you don’t have your health. We also know that if his cancer recurs someday, we still have the other options available to us, including repeating the HIFU procedure if necessary.
All in all, we feel very lucky. We have a great doctor who gave us straightforward information about the choices available to us. My hope for others facing the same diagnosis is that they too will do the research and check out all of their options.
Our story could have turned out differently if Les’s cancer had not been caught in the early stages. That early detection would not have happened without a simple test – which is why I count the Colorado Early Blood Draw program among my many blessings!
LibertyBell
My father had an abnormal PSA detected very early and lived 18 years without prostate cancer. It would be great to have a PSA type test for all kinds of cancer
Long-term statin use protects against prostate cancer death - Harvard Health Blog
www.health.harvard.edu
Harvard Study on Statins lowering risk of prostate cancer.
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What Is Intelligence?
There is no agreed definition or model of intelligence. By the Collins English Dictionary, it is ‘the ability to think, reason, and understand instead of doing things automatically or by instinct’. By the Macmillan Dictionary, it is ‘the ability to understand and think about things, and to gain and use knowledge’.
In seeking to define intelligence, a good place to start might be with dementia. In Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, there is disturbance of multiple higher cortical functions including memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language, and judgement. I think it significant that people with dementia or severe learning difficulties cope very poorly with changes in their environment, such as moving into a care home or even into an adjacent room. Taken together, this suggests that intelligence refers to the functioning of a number of related faculties and abilities that enable us to respond to environmental pressures to avoid danger and distress. Because this is not beyond animals and even plants, they too can be said to be possessed of intelligence.
We Westerners tend to think of intelligence primarily in terms of analytical skills. But in a close-knit hunter-gatherer society, intelligence might be defined more in terms of foraging skills, or social skills or responsibilities. Even within a single society, the skills that are most valued change over time. In the West, the emphasis has gradually shifted from language skills to analytical skills, and it is only in 1960, well within living memory, that the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge dropped Latin as an entry requirement. In 1990, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer published the seminal paper on emotional intelligence, and E.I. soon became all the rage. In that same year, 1990, Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser. Today, we cannot go very far without having some considerable I.T. skills (certainly by the standards of 1990), and computer scientists are among some of the most highly paid professionals. All this to say that what constitutes intelligence varies according to the needs and values of our culture and society.
Our society holds analytical skills in such high regard that some of our leaders repeatedly mention their ‘high I.Q.’ to lend themselves credibility. This Western emphasis on reason and intelligence has its roots in Ancient Greece with Socrates, his pupil Plato, and Plato’s pupil Aristotle. Socrates held that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. He typically proceeded by questioning one or more people about a certain concept such as courage or justice, eventually exposing a contradiction in their initial assumptions and provoking a reappraisal of the concept. For Plato, reason could carry us far beyond the confines of common sense and everyday experience into a ‘hyper-heaven’ of ideal forms. He famously fantasized about putting a geniocracy of philosopher-kings in charge of his utopic Republic. Finally, Aristotle argued that our distinctive function as human beings is our unique capacity to reason, and therefore that our supreme good and happiness consists in leading a life of rational contemplation. To paraphrase Aristotle in Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics, ‘man more than anything is reason, and the life of reason is the most self-sufficient, the most pleasant, the happiest, the best, and the most divine of all.’ In later centuries, reason became a divine property, found in man because made in God’s image. If you struggled with your SATs, or thought they were pants, you now know who to blame.
Unfortunately, the West’s obsession with analytical intelligence has had, and continues to have, dire moral and political consequences. Immanuel Kant most memorably made the connection between reasoning and moral standing, arguing (in simple terms) that by virtue of their ability to reason human beings ought to be treated, not as means to an end, but as ends-in-themselves. From here, it is all too easy to conclude that, the better you are at reasoning, the worthier you are of personhood and its rights and privileges. For centuries, women were deemed to be ’emotional’, that is, less rational, which justified treating them as chattel or, at best, second-class citizens. The same could be said of non-white people, over whom it was not just the right but the duty of the white man to rule. Kipling’s poem The White Man’s Burden (1902) begins with the lines: Take up the White Man’s burden/ Send forth the best ye breed/ Go bind your sons to exile/ To serve your captives’ need/ To wait in heavy harness/ On fluttered folk and wild/ Your new-caught, sullen peoples/ Half-devil and half-child. People deemed to be less rational—women, non-white people, the lower classes, the infirm—were not just disenfranchised but dominated, colonized, enslaved, murdered, in all impunity. Only in 2015 did the U.S. Senate vote to compensate living victims of government-sponsored sterilization programs for the ‘feeble-minded’. Today, it is the white man who most fears artificial intelligence, imagining that it will usurp his status and privilege.
According to one recent paper, I.Q. is the best predictor of job performance. But this is not entirely surprising given that ‘performance’ and I.Q. have been defined in similar terms, and that both depend, to some extent, on third factors such as compliance, motivation, and educational attainment. Rather than intelligence per se, genius is defined more by drive, vision, creativity, and opportunity, and it is notable that the minimum I.Q. necessary for genius—probably around 125—is not all that high.
William Shockley and Luis Walter Alvarez, who both went on to win the Nobel Prize for physics, were excluded from the Terman Study of the Gifted on account of… their modest I.Q. scores.
For the story, in later life Shockley developed controversial views on race and eugenics, setting off a national debate over the use and applicability of I.Q. tests.
Salovey P & Mayer JD (1990): Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 9(3):185–211.
Rees MJ & Earles JA (1992): Intelligence is the Best Predictor of Job Performance. Current Directions in Psychological Science 1(3): 86-89.
Saxon W (1989): Obituary William B. Shockley, 79, Creator of Transistor and Theory on Race. New York Times, August 14, 1989.
Author Neel BurtonPosted on November 28, 2018 November 28, 2018 Categories Philosophy, Psychiatry/psychologyLeave a comment on What Is Intelligence?
The Secrets of Inspiration
Think back to your favourite teacher: for me, a French teacher who wept as he read out from a novel by Marguerite Duras. The teachers whom we hold in our hearts are not those who taught us the most facts, but those who inspired us and opened us up to ourselves. But what is inspiration and can it be cultivated?
The word ‘inspiration’ ultimately derives from the Greek for ‘God-breathed’, or ‘divinely breathed into’. In Greek myth, inspiration is a gift of the muses, the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (‘Memory’), though it can also come from Apollo (Apollon Mousagetēs, ‘Apollo Muse-leader’), Dionysus, or Aphrodite. Homer famously invokes the muses in the very first line of the Iliad: ‘Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans…’
Similarly, the Church maintains that inspiration is a gift from the Holy Ghost, including the inspiration for the Bible itself: ‘For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost’ (2 Peter 1:21).
The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘inspiration’ as ‘a breathing in or infusion of some idea, purpose, etc. into the mind; the suggestion, awakening, or creation of some feeling or impulse, especially of an exalted kind’. Going with this, there appears to be two aspects to inspiration: some kind of vision, accompanied by some kind of positive energy with which to drive or at least sustain that vision.
‘Inspiration’ is often confused with ‘motivation’ and ‘creativity’. Motivation aims at some sort of external reward, whereas inspiration comes from within and is very much its own reward. Although inspiration is associated with creative insight, creativity also involves the realization of that insight—which requires opportunity, means, and, above all, effort. In the words of Thomas Edison, genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration—although you may not get started, or get very far, without the initial one percent.
Other than creativity, inspiration has been linked with enthusiasm, optimism, and self-esteem. Inspiration need not be all artistic and highfalutin: I often feel inspired to garden or cook, to plant out some bulbs for next spring or make use of some seasonal ingredients. Such inspired tasks feel very different from, say, writing a complaint or filing my accounts. If I could be paid to do what inspires me, and pay others to do what doesn’t, I should be a very happy man.
Despite its importance to both society and the individual, our system of education leaves very little place for inspiration—perhaps because, like wisdom and virtue, it cannot easily be taught but only… inspired. Unfortunately, if someone has never been inspired, he or she is unlikely to inspire others. That is a great shame. The best education consists not in being taught but in being inspired, and, if I could, I would rather inspire a single person than teach a thousand.
But where, in the first place, does inspiration come from? In Plato’s Ion, Socrates likens inspiration to a divine power, and this divine power to a magnetic stone that can not only move iron rings, but also magnetize the iron rings so that they can do the same. This leads to a long chain of iron rings, with each ring’s energy ultimately derived from that of the original magnetic stone. If a poet is any good, this is not because he has mastered his subject, but because he is divinely inspired, divinely possessed:
For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles.
Socrates compares inspired poets to the Bacchic maidens, who are out of their minds when they draw honey and milk from the rivers. He asks Ion, a rhapsode (reciter of poetry), whether, when he recites Homer, he does not get beside himself, whether his soul does not believe that it is witnessing the actions of which he sings. Ion replies that, when he sings of something sad, his eyes are full of tears, and when he sings of something frightening, his hairs stand on end, such that he is no longer in his right mind. Socrates says that this is precisely the effect that a rhapsode has on his audience: the muse inspires the poet, the poet the rhapsode, and the rhapsode his audience, which is the last of the iron rings in the divine chain.
In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates argues that madness, as well as being an illness, can be the source of our greatest blessings. There are, he continues, four kinds of inspired madness: prophecy, from Apollo; holy prayers and mystic rites, from Dionysus; poetry, from the muses; and love, from Aphrodite and Eros.
But if a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane companions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.
All human beings, says Socrates, are able to recollect universals such as perfect goodness and perfect beauty, and must therefore have seen them in some other life or other world. The souls that came closest to the universals, or that experienced them most deeply, are reincarnated into philosophers, artists, and true lovers. As the universals are still present in their minds, they are completely absorbed in ideas about them and forget all about earthly interests. Humdrum people think that they are mad, but the truth is that they are divinely inspired and in love with goodness and beauty. In the 20th century, the psychoanalyst Carl Jung echoed Plato, arguing that the artist is one who can reach beyond individual experience to access our genetic memory, that is, the memory, such as the memory for language, that is already present at birth. It is perhaps no coincidence that, in Greek myth, the mother of the muses is Mnemosyne/Memory.
The idea that ‘madness’ is closely allied with inspiration and revelation is an old and recurring one. In Of Peace of Mind, Seneca the Younger writes that ‘there is no great genius without a tincture of madness’ (nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtuae dementiae fuit), a maxim which he attributes to Aristotle, and which is also echoed in Cicero. For Shakespeare, ‘the lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact’. And for Dryden, ‘great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide’. As I argued in a book called The Meaning of Madness, our reservoir of madness is a precious resource that we can learn to tap into.
For the modern writer André Gide,
The most beautiful things are those that are whispered by madness and written down by reason. We must steer a course between the two, close to madness in our dreams, but close to reason in our writing.
7 simple strategies to encourage inspiration
So it seems that inspiration is some kind of alignment or channelling of primal energies, and that it cannot quite be summoned or relied upon.
Nonetheless, here are seven simple strategies that may make it more likely to alight upon us:
1. Wake up when your body tells you to. No one has ever been tired and inspired at the same time. To make matters worse, having our sleep disrupted by an alarm clock or other extraneous stimulus can leave us feeling groggy and grouchy, as though we had ‘woken up on the wrong side of the bed’.
2. Complete your dreams. REM sleep, which is associated with dreaming, is richest just before *natural* awakening. Dreaming serves a number of critical functions such as assimilating experiences, processing emotions, and enhancing problem solving and creativity. In fact, the brain can be more active during REM sleep than during wakefulness. Many great works of art have been inspired by dreams, including Dali’s Persistence of Memory, several of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and short stories, and Paul McCartney’s Let it Be.
3. Eliminate distractions, especially the tedious ones. Clear your diary, remove yourself from people, take plenty of time over every small thing. You want to give your mind plenty of spare capacity. You want it to roam, to freewheel. Before going to bed, I check my calendar for the next day’s engagements, and am never happier than when I see ‘No Events’. Don’t worry or feel guilty, the sun won’t fall out of the sky. Many people are unable to let their minds wander for fear that uncomfortable thoughts and feelings might arise into their consciousness. If they do, why not take the opportunity to meet them?
4. Don’t try to rush or force things. If you try to force inspiration, you will strangle it and achieve much less overall. There may be ‘on’ days and ‘off’ days, or even ‘on’ hours and ‘off’ hours. If you don’t feel inspired, that’s fine, go out and enjoy yourself. Your boss may disagree, but it’s probably the most productive thing you could do. If you can, try not to have a boss.
5. Be curious. The 17th century philosopher John Locke suggested that inspiration amounts to a somewhat random association of ideas and sudden unison of thought. If something, anything, catches your interest, try to follow it through. Nothing is too small or irrelevant. Read books, watch documentaries, visit museums and exhibitions, walk in gardens and nature, talk to inspired and inspiring people… Feed your unconscious.
6. Break the routine. Sometimes it can really help to give the mind a bit of a shake. Try new things that take you out of your comfort zone. Modify your routine or your surroundings. Better still, go travelling, especially to places that are unfamiliar and disorienting, such as a temple in India or a hippy farm in the Uruguayan pampas.
7. Make a start. When I write an article, I make a start and come back to it whenever I next feel inspired. The minute I start flagging, I stop and do something else, and, hopefully, while I do that, the next paragraph or section enters my mind. Some articles I write over three or four days, others over three or four weeks—but hardly ever in a single day or single sitting. When I write a book, the first half seems to take forever, while the second half gets completed in a fraction of the time. Small accomplishments are important because they boost confidence and free the mind to move on, establishing a kind of creative momentum.
If you have any other thoughts on inspiration, please put them in the comments section.
Author Neel BurtonPosted on November 22, 2018 November 22, 2018 Categories Philosophy, Psychiatry/psychologyLeave a comment on The Secrets of Inspiration
What Is Wisdom?
Every time I utter the word ‘wisdom’, someone giggles or sneers. Wisdom, more so even than expertise, does not sit comfortably in a democratic, anti-elitist society. In an age dominated by science and technology, by specialization and compartmentalization, it is too loose and mysterious a concept. With our heads in our smartphones and tablets, our pay slips and bank statements, we simply do not have the mental time and space for it.
But things were not always thus. The word wisdom occurs 222 times in the Old Testament, which includes all of seven so-called ‘wisdom books’: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, the Book of Wisdom, and Sirach. ‘For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence: but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it’ (Ecclesiastes 7:12).
The word ‘philosophy’ literally means ‘the love of wisdom’, and wisdom is the overarching aim of philosophy, or, at least, ancient philosophy. In Plato’s Lysis, Socrates tells the young Lysis that, without wisdom, he would be of no interest to anyone: “…if you are wise, all men will be your friends and kindred, for you will be useful and good; but if you are not wise, neither father, nor mother, nor kindred, nor anyone else, will be your friends.” The patron of Athens, the city in which the Lysis is set, is no less than Athena, goddess of wisdom, who sprung out in full armour from the skull of Zeus. Her symbol, and the symbol of wisdom, is the owl, which can see through darkness.
In fact, ‘wisdom’ derives from the Proto-Indo-European root weid-, ‘to see’, and is related to a great number of words including: advice, druid, evident, guide, Hades, history, idea, idol, idyll, view, Veda, vision, and visit. In Norse mythology, the god Odin gouged out one of his eyes and offered it to Mimir in exchange for a drink from the well of knowledge and wisdom, thereby trading one mode of perception for another, higher one.
And the very name of our species, Homo sapiens, means ‘wise man’.
Wisdom in perspective
So what exactly is wisdom? People often speak of ‘knowledge and wisdom’ as though they might be closely related or even the same thing, so maybe wisdom is knowledge, or a great deal of knowledge. If wisdom is knowledge, then it has to be a certain kind of knowledge, or else learning the phonebook, or the names of all the rivers in the world, might count as wisdom. And if wisdom is a certain kind of knowledge, then it is not scientific or technical knowledge, or else modern people would be wiser than even the wisest of ancient philosophers. Any 21st century school-leaver would be wiser than Socrates.
Once upon a time, Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi whether there was anyone wiser than Socrates, and the Pythian priestess replied that there was no one wiser. To discover the meaning of this divine utterance, Socrates questioned a number of men who laid claim to wisdom—politicians, generals, poets, craftsmen—and in each case concluded, ‘I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.’ From then on, Socrates dedicated himself to the service of the gods by seeking out anyone who might be wise and, ‘if he is not, showing him that he is not’. He offended so many people with his questioning that, eventually, they condemned him to death—which served his purposes well, since it made him immortal.
The Bible tells us, ‘When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom’ (Proverbs 11:2). Socrates was the wisest of all people not because he knew everything or anything, but because he knew what he did not know, or, to put it somewhat differently, because he knew the limits of the little that he did know. Shakespeare put it best in As You Like It, ‘The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.’
Still, there seems to be more to wisdom than mere ‘negative knowledge’, or else I could just be super-skeptical about everything and count myself wise… Or maybe wisdom consists in having very high epistemic standards, that is, in having a very high bar for believing something, and an even higher bar for calling that belief knowledge. But then we are back to a picture of wisdom as something like scientific knowledge.
In Plato’s Meno, Socrates says that people of wisdom and virtue seem to be very poor at imparting those qualities: Themistocles was able to teach his son Cleophantus skills such as standing upright on horseback and shooting javelins, but no one ever said of Cleophantus that he was wise, and the same could be said for Lysimachus and his son Artistides, Pericles and his sons Paralus and Xanthippus, and Thucydides and his sons Melesias and Stephanus. And if wisdom cannot be taught, then it is not a kind of knowledge.
If wisdom cannot be taught, how, asks Meno, did good people come into existence? Socrates replies that right action is possible under guidance other than that of knowledge: a person who has knowledge about the way to Larisa may make a good guide, but a person who has only correct opinion about the way, but has never been and does not know, might make an equally good guide. Since wisdom cannot be taught, it cannot be knowledge; and if it cannot be knowledge, then it must be correct opinion—which explains why wise men such as Themistocles, Lysimachus, and Pericles were unable to impart their wisdom even unto their own sons. Wise people are no different from soothsayers, prophets, and poets, who say many true things when they are divinely inspired but have no real knowledge of what they are saying.
Aristotle gives us another important clue in the Metaphysics, when he says that wisdom is the understanding of causes. None of the senses are regarded as wisdom because, although they give the most authoritative knowledge of particulars, they are unable to discern the distal causes of anything. Similarly, we suppose artists to be wiser than people of experience because artists know the ‘why’ or the cause, and can therefore teach, whereas people of experience do not, and cannot. In other words, wisdom is the understanding of the right relations between things, which calls for more distant and removed perspectives, and perhaps also the ability or willingness to shift between perspectives. In the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero cites as a paragon of wisdom the pre-Socratic philosopher Anaxagoras, who, upon being told of the death of his son, said, “I knew that I begot a mortal”. For Cicero, true sapience consists in preparing oneself for every eventuality so as never to be overtaken by anything—and it is true that wisdom, the understanding of causes and connexions, has long been associated with both insight and foresight.
So wisdom is not so much a kind of knowledge as a way of seeing, or ways of seeing. When we take a few steps back, like when we stand under the shower or go on holiday, we begin to see the bigger picture. In every day language use, ‘wisdom’ has two opposites: ‘foolishness’ and ‘folly’, which involve, respectively, lack and loss of perspective. For some thinkers, notably Robert Nozick, wisdom has a practical dimension in that it involves an understanding of the goals and values of life, the means of achieving those goals, the potential dangers to avoid, and so on. I agree, but I think that all this naturally flows from perspective: if you have proper perspective, you cannot fail to understand the goals and values life, nor can you fail to act on that understanding. This chimes with Socrates’ claim that nobody does wrong knowingly: people only do wrong because, from their narrow perspective, it seems like the right thing to do.
In cultivating a broader perspective, it helps, of course, to be knowledgeable, but it also helps to be intelligent, reflective, open-minded, and disinterested—which is why we often seek out ‘independent’ advice. But above all it helps to be courageous, because the view from up there, though it can be exhilarating and ultimately liberating, is at first terrifying—whence, no doubt, the giggles and the sneers.
Courage, said Aristotle, is the first of human qualities because it is the one which guarantees all the others.
Author Neel BurtonPosted on November 14, 2018 November 16, 2018 Categories Philosophy, Psychiatry/psychology1 Comment on What Is Wisdom?
The Five Enemies of Reason
If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles. —Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The enemies of rational thought can take one of several overlapping forms, including formal fallacy and informal fallacy, cognitive bias, cognitive distortion, and self-deception. If these are difficult to define, they are even more difficult to distinguish.
A fallacy is some kind of defect in an argument, and may be either intentional (aimed at deceiving) or, more commonly, unintentional. A formal fallacy is an invalid type of argument. It is a deductive argument with an invalid form, for example: Some A are B. Some B are C. Therefore, some A are C. If you cannot see that this argument is invalid, complete A, B, and C with ‘insects’, ‘herbivores’, and ‘mammals’. Insects are clearly not mammals!
A formal fallacy is built into the structure of an argument, and is invalid irrespective of the content of the argument. In contrast, an informal fallacy is one that can be identified only through an analysis of the content of the argument. Informal fallacies often turn on the misuse of language, for example, using a key term or phrase in an ambiguous way, with one meaning in one part of the argument and another meaning in another part (fallacy of equivocation). Informal fallacies can also distract from the weakness of an argument, or appeal to the emotions rather than to reason.
As I argued in Hide and Seek, all self-deception can be understood in terms of ego defence. In psychoanalytic theory, an ego defence is one of several unconscious processes that we deploy to diffuse the fear and anxiety that arise when we who we truly are (our unconscious ‘id’) comes into conflict with who we think we are or who we think we should be (our conscious ‘superego’). For example, a person who buys a $10,000 watch instead of a $1,000 watch because “you can really tell the difference in quality” is not only hiding his (unrecognized) craving to be loved, but also disguising it as an ego-enhancing virtue, namely, a concern for quality. Whereas formal and informal fallacies are more about faulty reasoning, self-deception is more about hiding from, or protecting, oneself.
Cognitive bias is sloppy, although not necessarily faulty, reasoning: a mental shortcut or heuristic intended to spare us time, effort, or discomfort, often while reinforcing our image of the self or the world, but at the cost of accuracy or reliability. For example, in explaining the behaviour of other people, our tendency is to overestimate the role of character traits over situational factors—a bias, called the correspondence bias or attribution effect, that goes into reverse when it comes to explaining our own behaviour. So, if Charlotte omits to mow the lawn, I indict her with forgetfulness, laziness, or spite; but if I omit to mow the lawn, I excuse myself on the grounds of busyness, tiredness, or bad weather. Another important cognitive bias is confirmation, or my-side, bias, which is the propensity to search for or recall only those facts and arguments that are in keeping with our pre-existing beliefs while filtering out those that conflict with them—which, especially on social media, can lead us to inhabit a so-called echo chamber.
Cognitive distortion is a concept from cognitive-behavioural therapy, developed by psychiatrist Aaron Beck in the 1960s and used in the treatment of depression and other mental disorders. Cognitive distortion involves interpreting events and situations so that they conform to and reinforce our outlook or frame of mind, typically on the basis of very scant or partial evidence, or even no evidence at all. Common cognitive distortions in depression include selective abstraction and catastrophic thinking. Selective abstraction is to focus on a single negative event or condition to the exclusion of other, more positive ones, for example, “My partner hates me. He gave me an annoyed look three days ago (even though he spends all his spare time with me).” Catastrophic thinking is to exaggerate the consequences of an event or situation, for example, “The pain in my knee is getting worse. When I’m reduced to a wheelchair, I won’t be able to go to work and pay the mortgage. So, I’ll end up losing my house and dying in the street.” Cognitive distortions can give rise to a chicken-and-egg situation: the cognitive distortions aliment the depression, which in turn aliments the cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortion as broadly understood is not limited to depression and other mental disorders, but is also a feature of, among others, poor self-esteem, jealousy, and marital or relationship conflict.
Are there any other enemies of rational thought? Please name them in the comments section.
Author Neel BurtonPosted on November 9, 2018 November 9, 2018 Categories Philosophy, Psychiatry/psychologyTags cognition, logicLeave a comment on The Five Enemies of Reason
The Psychology and Philosophy of Imagination
Einstein held that imagination is more important than knowledge: “Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
I define imagination as the faculty of the mind that forms and manipulates images, propositions, concepts, emotions, and sensations above and beyond, and sometimes independently of, incoming stimuli, to open up the realms of the abstract, the figurative, the possible, the hypothetical, and the universal.
Imagination comes in many forms and by many degrees, ranging from scientific reasoning to musical appreciation, and overlaps with a number of other cognitive constructs including belief, desire, emotion, memory, supposition, and fantasy. Belief, like perception, aims at according with reality, while desire aims at altering reality. Emotion also aims at according with reality, but more particularly at reflecting the significance of its object, or class of object, for the subject—an aspect that it shares with many forms of imagination. Like imagination, memory can involve remote imagery. But unlike imagination, it is rooted in reality and serves primarily to frame belief and guide action. Memories are often more vivid than imaginings, which are, in turn, more vivid than suppositions. Suppositions tend to be cold and cognitive, and lacking in the emotional and existential dimensions of imagination. Finally, fantasy may be understood as a subtype of imagination, namely, imagination for the improbable.
I say the improbable rather than the impossible, because there is a theory that, just as perception justifies beliefs about actuality, so imagination justifies beliefs about possibility (or at least, metaphysical as opposed to natural possibility). To quote Hume, ‘It is an established maxim in metaphysics, that whatever the mind clearly conceives, includes the idea of possible existence, or in other words, that nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible.’ Could ghosts, the devil, time travel etc. really be possible? I think inconceivability may be a better guide to impossibility than conceivability to possibility. But what does it mean for something to be conceivable or inconceivable, and by whom?
It has to be said that, until very recently, most human societies did not mark a strict divide between imagination and belief, or fiction and reality, with each one informing and enriching the other. In fact, it could be argued that, in many important respects, the fiction primed over the reality—and even that this has been, and perhaps still is, one of the hallmarks of our species. Today, there are pills for people who confuse imaginings and beliefs, but back then no one ever thought that life, with its much harder hardships, might be meaningless—which I think tells us quite a bit about imagination and its uses, and also about mental illness.
The uses of imagination are many, more than I can enumerate. Most children begin to develop pretend play at around 15 months of age. What are children doing when they pretend play? And why are they so absorbed in works of imagination? When I was seven years old, I would devour book after book, and plead with my parents for those not already on the shelves. By playing out scenarios and stretching themselves beyond their limited experience, children seek to make sense of the world and to find their place within it. This meaning-making is joyful and exciting, and has an echo in every act of creation.
When we look at the Mona Lisa, we see much more than just the brushstrokes. In fact, we barely see the brushstrokes at all. In imagination as in our dreams, we ascribe form, pattern, and significance to things, and then reflect them back onto those things. Without this work of interpreting and assimilating, the world would be no more than an endless stream of sense impressions, as it might sometimes seem to those who lack imagination, with no hope of escape or reprieve.
More than that, by imagination we are able to complete the world, or our world, by conjuring up the missing parts, and even to inhabit entirely other worlds such as Middle-earth or the Seven Kingdoms. Imagination remains highly active throughout adulthood, and what is chick lit or even pornography if not an aid to the adult imagination? In one year (2017), Pornhub recorded 28.5 billion visits, equivalent to about four times the world population—and that’s just on the one site.
If imagination enables us to feel at home in the world, it also enables us to do things in the world. Science progresses by hypothesis, which is a product of imagination, and philosophy makes frequent use of thought experiments such as the brain in the vat, the trolley problem, and up to Plato’s Republic. Imagination makes knowledge applicable by forming associations and connections. It opens up possibilities, and guides decision-making by playing out those possibilities. So many of our failures, and some of our successes, are in fact failures of the imagination.
Imagination also enables us to talk to one another, understand one another, and work together. Without it, there could be no metaphor, no irony, no humor, no past or future tense, and no conditional. Indeed, there could be no language at all, for what are words if not symbols and representations? By imagination, we can put ourselves in other people’s shoes, think what they think, and feel what they feel. Problems in autism, which can be interpreted as a disorder of imagination, include abnormalities in patterns of communication, impairments in social interactions, and a restricted repertoire of behaviors, interests, and activities.
I’m lucky to have received a decent education, but one thing it didn’t do is cultivate my imagination. In recent years, I’ve been trying to recover the bright and vivid imagination that I left behind in childhood.
I’ve been doing just three things, all of them very simple—or, at least, very simple to explain.
Being aware of the importance of imagination.
Making time for sleep and idleness.
Taking inspiration from nature.
I’ll conclude with these few words from William Blake, which hint at the significance of the natural world and the transcending power of imagination,
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
Author Neel BurtonPosted on November 2, 2018 November 2, 2018 Categories Philosophy, Psychiatry/psychologyLeave a comment on The Psychology and Philosophy of Imagination
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Languages of the Balkans
Victor A. Friedman
Historical Linguistics, Language Families/Areas/Contact
The Balkan languages were the first group of languages whose similarities were explained in modern linguistic terms as a result of language contact rather than as a result of descent from ... More
The Balkan languages were the first group of languages whose similarities were explained in modern linguistic terms as a result of language contact rather than as a result of descent from a common ancestor. Nikolai Trubetzkoy coined the term Sprachbund ‘linguistic league’ (as opposed to Sprachfamilie ‘language family’) to describe this relationship. Balkan linguistics, as both a subset of and precursor to contact linguistics, is, at its base, an historical linguistic discipline. It seeks to explain similarities among the relevant languages as the result of diffusion rather than of either transmission or of putative universal, typological properties of human language (which latter assumes parallel developments whose causation is ahistorical, i.e., unconnected with either contact or ancestry). The relevant languages are, with the exception of Turkic, all part of the Indo-European language family, but they belong to five distinct groups that are known to have been separated for a significant length of time (presumably millennia). Moreover, for four out of five Indo-European groups as well as for Turkic, there exists documentation that goes back more than a millennium, and in some cases several millennia. The Balkan languages are thus the oldest example of a well-documented and still living Sprachbund.
The primary questions that Balkan linguistics seeks to answer are these: What are the results of language contact in the Balkan languages, and how did they come about? The Balkan languages are traditionally defined as Albanian, Modern Greek, Balkan Romance (Romanian, Aromanian, and Meglenoromanian), and Balkan Slavic (Bulgarian, Macedonian, and the southernmost dialects of the former Serbo-Croatian). In recent decades, it has been recognized that the relevant dialects of Romani, Judezmo, and Turkish and Gagauz also participate in at least some of the convergent processes that are taken as definitive of the Balkan linguistic league. While the language family is defined by regular sound correspondences, which in turn help define shared morphology and a core lexicon, the Balkan linguistic league is defined principally by shared morphosyntactic developments and a shared lexicon of borrowings often called “cultural.” In the Balkan linguistic league, phonological developments are sometimes shared among different languages at the dialectal level, but there are no such features that characterize the Balkan languages as a group. Just as in the language family not every diagnostic item is represented in every branch, so, too, in the Balkan linguistic league not every feature is equally represented in all languages and dialects.
Among the most characteristic morphosyntactic features are the following: (1) replacement of infinitives by analytic subjunctives, (2) the use of a particle derived from etymological ‘want’ to mark the future, (3) replacement of synthetic gradation of adjectives with analytic constructions, (4) replacement of conditionals by anterior futures, (5) resumptive clitic pronouns for certain direct and indirect objects, (6) various simplifications in the declensional system, (7) postposed definite articles (for Balkan Slavic, Balkan Romance, and Albanian), (8) grammaticalized evidentials (Balkan Slavic, Albanian, Turkic, and to some extent Balkan Romance and Romani). While some of these convergences began in the ancient or medieval periods, the Balkan linguistic league took its definitive modern shape during the centuries of the Ottoman Empire (14th to early 20th centuries).
Languages of the World
William R. Leben
Language Families/Areas/Contact, Sign Languages, Sociolinguistics
About 7,000 languages are spoken around the world today. The actual number depends on where the line is drawn between language and dialect—an arbitrary decision, because languages are ... More
About 7,000 languages are spoken around the world today. The actual number depends on where the line is drawn between language and dialect—an arbitrary decision, because languages are always in flux. But specialists applying a reasonably uniform criterion across the globe count well over 2,000 languages in Asia and Africa, while Europe has just shy of 300. In between are the Pacific region, with over 1,300 languages, and the Americas, with just over 1,000. Languages spoken natively by over a million speakers number around 250, but the vast majority have very few speakers. Something like half are thought likely to disappear over the next few decades, as speakers of endangered languages turn to more widely spoken ones.
The languages of the world are grouped into perhaps 430 language families, based on their origin, as determined by comparing similarities among languages and deducing how they evolved from earlier ones. As with languages, there’s quite a lot of disagreement about the number of language families, reflecting our meager knowledge of many present-day languages and even sparser knowledge of their history. The figure 430 comes from Glottolog.org, which actually lists them all. While the world’s language families may well go back to a smaller number of original languages, even to a single mother tongue, scholars disagree on how far back current methods permit us to trace the history of languages.
While it is normal for languages to borrow from other languages, occasionally a totally new language is created by mixing elements of two distinct languages to such a degree that we would not want to identify one of the source languages as the mother tongue. This is what led to the development of Media Lengua, a language of Ecuador formed through contact among speakers of Spanish and speakers of Quechua. In this language, practically all the word stems are from Spanish, while all of the endings are from Quechua. Just a handful of languages have come into being in this way, but less extreme forms of language mixture have resulted in over a hundred pidgins and creoles currently spoken in many parts of the world. Most arose during Europe’s colonial era, when European colonists used their language to communicate with local inhabitants, who in turn blended vocabulary from the European language with grammar largely from their native language.
Also among the languages of the world are about 300 sign languages used mainly in communicating among and with the deaf. The structure of sign languages typically has little historical connection to the structure of nearby spoken languages.
Some languages have been constructed expressly, often by a single individual, to meet communication demands among speakers with no common language. Esperanto, designed to serve as a universal language and used as a second language by some two million, according to some estimates, is the prime example, but it is only one among several hundred would-be international auxiliary languages.
This essay surveys the languages of the world continent by continent, ending with descriptions of sign languages and of pidgins and creoles. A set of references grouped by section appears at the very end. The main source for data on language classification, numbers of languages, and speakers is the 19th edition of Ethnologue (see Resources), except where a different source is cited.
Learnability and Learning Algorithms in Phonology
Anne-Michelle Tessier
Computational Linguistics, Phonetics/Phonology
Phonological learnability deals with the formal properties of phonological languages and grammars, which are combined with algorithms that attempt to learn the language-specific aspects of ... More
Phonological learnability deals with the formal properties of phonological languages and grammars, which are combined with algorithms that attempt to learn the language-specific aspects of those grammars. The classical learning task can be outlined as follows: Beginning at a predetermined initial state, the learner is exposed to positive evidence of legal strings and structures from the target language, and its goal is to reach a predetermined end state, where the grammar will produce or accept all and only the target language’s strings and structures. In addition, a phonological learner must also acquire a set of language-specific representations for morphemes, words and so on—and in many cases, the grammar and the representations must be acquired at the same time.
Phonological learnability research seeks to determine how the architecture of the grammar, and the workings of an associated learning algorithm, influence success in completing this learning task, i.e., in reaching the end-state grammar. One basic question is about convergence: Is the learning algorithm guaranteed to converge on an end-state grammar, or will it never stabilize? Is there a class of initial states, or a kind of learning data (evidence), which can prevent a learner from converging? Next is the question of success: Assuming the algorithm will reach an end state, will it match the target? In particular, will the learner ever acquire a grammar that deems grammatical a superset of the target language’s legal outputs? How can the learner avoid such superset end-state traps? Are learning biases advantageous or even crucial to success?
In assessing phonological learnability, the analysist also has many differences between potential learning algorithms to consider. At the core of any algorithm is its update rule, meaning its method(s) of changing the current grammar on the basis of evidence. Other key aspects of an algorithm include how it is triggered to learn, how it processes and/or stores the errors that it makes, and how it responds to noise or variability in the learning data. Ultimately, the choice of algorithm is also tied to the type of phonological grammar being learned, i.e., whether the generalizations being learned are couched within rules, features, parameters, constraints, rankings, and/or weightings.
Lexical Acquisition and the Structure of the Mental Lexicon
Eve V. Clark
Psycholinguistics, Semantics
The words and word-parts children acquire at different stages offer insights into how the mental lexicon might be organized. Children first identify ‘words,’ recurring sequences of sounds, ... More
The words and word-parts children acquire at different stages offer insights into how the mental lexicon might be organized. Children first identify ‘words,’ recurring sequences of sounds, in the speech stream, attach some meaning to them, and, later, analyze such words further into parts, namely stems and affixes. These are the elements they store in memory in order to recognize them on subsequent occasions. They also serve as target models when children try to produce those words themselves. When they coin words, they make use of bare stems, combine certain stems with each other, and sometimes add affixes as well. The options they choose depend on how much they need to add to coin a new word, which familiar elements they can draw on, and how productive that option is in the language. Children’s uses of stems and affixes in coining new words also reveal that they must be relying on one representation in comprehension and a different representation in production. For comprehension, they need to store information about the acoustic properties of a word, taking into account different occasions, different speakers, and different dialects, not to mention second-language speakers. For production, they need to work out which articulatory plan to follow in order to reproduce the target word. And they take time to get their production of a word aligned with the representation they have stored for comprehension. In fact, there is a general asymmetry here, with comprehension being ahead of production for children, and also being far more extensive than production, for both children and adults. Finally, as children add more words to their repertoires, they organize and reorganize their vocabulary into semantic domains. In doing this, they make use of pragmatic directions from adults that help them link related words through a variety of semantic relations.
Lexicalization in Morphology
Martin Hilpert
The term lexicalization describes the addition of new open-class elements to a repository of holistically processed linguistic units. At the basis of lexicalization are word-formation ... More
The term lexicalization describes the addition of new open-class elements to a repository of holistically processed linguistic units. At the basis of lexicalization are word-formation processes such as affixation, compounding, or borrowing, which are a necessary precondition for lexicalization. Still, lexicalization goes beyond word formation in important respects. First, lexicalization also involves multi-word expressions and set phrases; second, it includes a range of processes that follow the coinage of a new element. These processes conjointly lead to holistic processing, that is, the cognitive treatment of a linguistic element as a unified whole. Holistic processing contrasts with analytic processing, which is the cognitive treatment of a linguistic unit as a complex whole that is composed of several parts. Lexicalization is usefully contrasted with grammaticalization, that is, the emergence of new linguistic units that fulfill grammatical functions. Finally, lexicalization is also a concept that lends itself to the study of cross-linguistic differences in the types of meaning that are lexicalized in specific domains such as, for example, motion.
Lexical Semantic Framework for Morphology
Marios Andreou
Morphology, Semantics
The central goal of the Lexical Semantic Framework (LSF) is to characterize the meaning of simple lexemes and affixes and to show how these meanings can be integrated in the creation of ... More
The central goal of the Lexical Semantic Framework (LSF) is to characterize the meaning of simple lexemes and affixes and to show how these meanings can be integrated in the creation of complex words. LSF offers a systematic treatment of issues that figure prominently in the study of word formation, such as the polysemy question, the multiple-affix question, the zero-derivation question, and the form and meaning mismatches question.
LSF has its source in a confluence of research approaches that follow a decompositional approach to meaning and, thus, defines simple lexemes and affixes by way of a systematic representation that is achieved via a constrained formal language that enforces consistency of annotation. Lexical-semantic representations in LSF consist of two parts: the Semantic/Grammatical Skeleton and the Semantic/Pragmatic Body (henceforth ‘skeleton’ and ‘body’ respectively). The skeleton is comprised of features that are of relevance to the syntax. These features act as functions and may take arguments. Functions and arguments of a skeleton are hierarchically arranged. The body encodes all those aspects of meaning that are perceptual, cultural, and encyclopedic.
Features in LSF are used in (a) a cross-categorial, (b) an equipollent, and (c) a privative way. This means that they are used to account for the distinction between the major ontological categories, may have a binary (i.e., positive or negative) value, and may or may not form part of the skeleton of a given lexeme. In order to account for the fact that several distinct parts integrate into a single referential unit that projects its arguments to the syntax, LSF makes use of the Principle of Co-indexation. Co-indexation is a device needed in order to tie together the arguments that come with different parts of a complex word to yield only those arguments that are syntactically active.
LSF has an important impact on the study of the morphology-lexical semantics interface and provides a unitary theory of meaning in word formation.
Lexical Semantics
Dirk Geeraerts
Lexical semantics is the study of word meaning. Descriptively speaking, the main topics studied within lexical semantics involve either the internal semantic structure of words, or the ... More
Lexical semantics is the study of word meaning. Descriptively speaking, the main topics studied within lexical semantics involve either the internal semantic structure of words, or the semantic relations that occur within the vocabulary. Within the first set, major phenomena include polysemy (in contrast with vagueness), metonymy, metaphor, and prototypicality. Within the second set, dominant topics include lexical fields, lexical relations, conceptual metaphor and metonymy, and frames. Theoretically speaking, the main theoretical approaches that have succeeded each other in the history of lexical semantics are prestructuralist historical semantics, structuralist semantics, and cognitive semantics. These theoretical frameworks differ as to whether they take a system-oriented rather than a usage-oriented approach to word-meaning research but, at the same time, in the historical development of the discipline, they have each contributed significantly to the descriptive and conceptual apparatus of lexical semantics.
Linguistic Landscape of Ethiopia
Elizabeth Lanza and Hirut Woldemariam
Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics
The linguistic landscape (henceforth LL) has proven to be a fruitful approach for investigating various societal dimensions of written language use in the public sphere. First introduced ... More
The linguistic landscape (henceforth LL) has proven to be a fruitful approach for investigating various societal dimensions of written language use in the public sphere. First introduced in the context of bilingual Canada as a gauge for measuring ethnolinguistic vitality, in the 21st century it is the focus of a thriving field of inquiry with its own conference series, an increasing number of publications, and an international journal dedicated exclusively to investigating language and other semiotic resources used in the public arena. The scholarship in this domain has centered on European and North American geographical sites; however, an increasingly voluminous share of studies addresses the LL of sites across the world through both books and articles. African contributions have added an important dimension to this knowledge base as southern multilingualisms bring into question the very concept of language in that speakers and writers draw on their rich linguistic repertoires, avoiding any compartmentalization or separation of what is traditionally conceived of as languages. The LL of Ethiopia has contributed to this growing base of empirical studies in the exploration of language policy issues, identity constructions, language contact, and the sociolinguistics of globalization. A new language policy of ethnic federalism was introduced to the country in the 1990s following a civil war and through a new constitution. This policy was set to recognize the various ethnolinguistic groups in the country and the official use of ethnic/regional languages to satisfy local political and educational needs. Through this, languages previously unwritten required a script in order for speakers to communicate in them in written texts. And many regions have chosen the Latin script above the Ethiopic script. Nonetheless, some languages remain invisible in the public sphere. These events create an exciting laboratory for studying the LL. Given the change of language policy since the late 20th century and the fast-growing economy of Ethiopia (one of the poorest countries on the continent) the manifest and increasingly visible display of languages in the LL provides an excellent lens for studying various sociolinguistic phenomena.
Linguistics in Premodern India
Émilie Aussant
Indian linguistic thought begins around the 8th–6th centuries bce with the composition of Padapāṭhas (word-for-word recitation of Vedic texts where phonological rules generally are not ... More
Indian linguistic thought begins around the 8th–6th centuries bce with the composition of Padapāṭhas (word-for-word recitation of Vedic texts where phonological rules generally are not applied). It took various forms over these 26 centuries and involved different languages (Ancient, Middle, and Modern Indo-Aryan as well as Dravidian languages).
The greater part of documented thought is related to Sanskrit (Ancient Indo-Aryan). Very early, the oral transmission of sacred texts—the Vedas, composed in Vedic Sanskrit—made it necessary to develop techniques based on a subtle analysis of language. The Vedas also—but presumably later—gave birth to bodies of knowledge dealing with language, which are traditionally called Vedāṅgas: phonetics (śikṣā), metrics (chandas), grammar (vyākaraṇa), and semantic explanation (nirvacana, nirukta). Later on, Vedic exegesis (mīmāṃsā), new dialectics (navya-nyāya), lexicography, and poetics (alaṃkāra) also contributed to linguistic thought.
Though languages other than Sanskrit were described in premodern India, the grammatical description of Sanskrit—given in Sanskrit—dominated and influenced them more or less strongly. Sanskrit grammar (vyākaraṇa) has a long history marked by several major steps (Padapāṭha versions of Vedic texts, Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini, Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali, Bhartṛhari’s works, Siddhāntakaumudī of Bhaṭṭoji Dīkṣita, Nāgeśa’s works), and the main topics it addresses (minimal meaning-bearer units, classes of words, relation between word and meaning/referent, the primary meaning/referent of nouns) are still central issues for contemporary linguistics.
Nigel Fabb
The linguistic study of literature addresses the ways in which language is differently organized in verbal art (literature): form is added to language, altered, attenuated, and differently ... More
The linguistic study of literature addresses the ways in which language is differently organized in verbal art (literature): form is added to language, altered, attenuated, and differently grouped. These different kinds of organization are normatively subject to limits, some derived from limits on general linguistic form or language-specific linguistic form. However, linguistic form can in principle be altered in any way at all, for example, in avant-garde texts or to produce artificial languages for literature; this possibility raises the general question of whether some organizations of literary language are cognitively transparent and others are cognitively opaque.
Of the various added forms, the most extensively studied has been metrical form, which requires the words of the text to be grouped into lines. Metrical form combines a non-linguistic counting system with a rhythmic system that adapts the rhythmic systems of ordinary phonology; most accounts of meter have focused on the rhythms as these are of greater linguistic interest than counting (which plays no significant role in language in general). The metrical line may have a special status, as a cognitively privileged level of grouping, possibly because it is fitted to working memory. Rhyme and alliteration are two common kinds of added form; most linguistic interest has been in what counts as “similarity of sound” between two words, whether at a surface or underlying level. Rhyming and alliterating words are distributed relative to the grouping into lines and other constituents. The other major kind of added form is parallelism, where two sections of text are structurally similar, usually in syntax and vocabulary. The various added forms may allow for variation (e.g., every line in an English sonnet can be in a different rhythmic variation of iambic pentameter), and can be intermittently present; there is no clear equivalent to ‘grammaticality’ in literary linguistic form. This may be because literary linguistic form holds as a presumption about a text, derived by inference, rather than as a constitutive structural device.
All literary texts have a discourse structure, which includes division into various types of group or constituent, including the division of a narrative into episodes, exploiting verbal cues of episodic boundaries. Narratives also require the tracking of referents such as people and objects across the discourse, which draws on the study of pronominals. Literary texts may also have a distinctive vocabulary, borrowing or inventing words to an unusual degree, and engaging in various kinds of wordplay.
Literary texts have ‘style’ and ‘markedness’, ways in which the language varies in noticeable ways but without coding a different linguistic semantics. These stylistic variations are sometimes treated as having determinate interpretations, but there are also approaches to stylistic variations in literature that treat them as having a non-determinate relation to meaning. Literature cannot have a different semantics or pragmatics from ordinary language, but meaning can be ‘difficult’ in literature in ways not characteristic of much ordinary language (but in common with ritual speech and other ways of speaking).
A major mode of linguistic investigation involves corpora, over which statistical analyses are undertaken. This has a relation to the question of whether our literary-linguistic knowledge has a probabilistic basis, a question that ties the study of language to questions of expectation in aesthetics (e.g., music) more generally. Literature exists in various modalities—writing, oral literature, and signed literature—and linguistic approaches to literature have been sensitive to this, as well as to the special questions about how texts are set to music in songs.
Locality in Syntax
Adriana Belletti
Linguistic Theories, Psycholinguistics, Syntax
Phenomena involving the displacement of syntactic units are widespread in human languages. The term displacement refers here to a dependency relation whereby a given syntactic constituent ... More
Phenomena involving the displacement of syntactic units are widespread in human languages. The term displacement refers here to a dependency relation whereby a given syntactic constituent is interpreted simultaneously in two different positions. Only one position is pronounced, in general the hierarchically higher one in the syntactic structure. Consider a wh-question like (1) in English:
(1) Whom did you give the book to <whom>
The phrase containing the interrogative wh-word is located at the beginning of the clause, and this guarantees that the clause is interpreted as a question about this phrase; at the same time, whom is interpreted as part of the argument structure of the verb give (the copy, in <> brackets). In current terms, inspired by minimalist developments in generative syntax, the phrase whom is first merged as (one of) the complement(s) of give (External Merge) and then re-merged (Internal Merge, i.e., movement) in the appropriate position in the left periphery of the clause. This peripheral area of the clause hosts operator-type constituents, among which interrogative ones (yielding the relevant interpretation: for which x, you gave a book to x, for sentence 1). Scope-discourse phenomena—such as, e.g., the raising of a question as in (1), the focalization of one constituent as in TO JOHN I gave the book (not to Mary)—have the effect that an argument of the verb is fronted in the left periphery of the clause rather than filling its clause internal complement position, whence the term displacement. Displacement can be to a position relatively close to the one of first merge (the copy), or else it can be to a position farther away. In the latter case, the relevant dependency becomes more long-distance than in (1), as in (2)a and even more so (2)b:
a Whom did Mary expect [that you would give the book to<whom >]
b Whom do you think [that Mary expected [that you would give the book to <whom >]]
50 years or so of investigation on locality in formal generative syntax have shown that, despite its potentially very distant realization, syntactic displacement is in fact a local process. The audible position in which a moved constituent is pronounced and the position of its copy inside the clause can be far from each other. However, the long-distance dependency is split into steps through iterated applications of short movements, so that any dependency holding between two occurrences of the same constituent is in fact very local. Furthermore, there are syntactic domains that resist movement out of them, traditionally referred to as islands. Locality is a core concept of syntactic computations. Syntactic locality requires that syntactic computations apply within small domains (cyclic domains), possibly in the mentioned iterated way (successive cyclicity), currently rethought of in terms of Phase theory. Furthermore, in the Relativized Minimality tradition, syntactic locality requires that, given X . . . Z . . . Y, the dependency between the relevant constituent in its target position X and its first merge position Y should not be interrupted by any constituent Z which is similar to X in relevant formal features and thus intervenes, blocking the relation between X and Y. Intervention locality has also been shown to allow for an explicit characterization of aspects of children’s linguistic development in their capacity to compute complex object dependencies (also relevant in different impaired populations).
Mande-Atlantic Contacts
Konstantin Pozdniakov, Guillaume Segerer, and Valentin Vydrin
The Atlantic family includes 40 to 50 languages spoken in the coastal countries of West Africa, from southern Mauritania to Liberia; the Fula language of the Fulbe people is dispersed over ... More
The Atlantic family includes 40 to 50 languages spoken in the coastal countries of West Africa, from southern Mauritania to Liberia; the Fula language of the Fulbe people is dispersed over Sahelian Africa up to Sudan and Eritrea. The Proto-Mande (second half of the 3rd millennium bc) homeland can be hypothetically localized in the Southern Sahara; following the progressive drying up, speakers of Mande languages gradually migrated to the south, southwest, and southeast, and they created two medieval empires, Ghana and Mali, whose respective languages, Soninke and Manding, exerted considerable influence on their neighbors. Fula (Pulaar/Fulfulde) and Wolof, being languages of large polities, influenced Mande languages in the areas of their dominance. Smaller languages served as sources of substrata for the dominant languages.
In the study of Mande and Atlantic language contacts, the major interest is represented by lexical borrowings that can be subdivided into recent (2nd millennium ad) and ancient ones.
Among the recent borrowings, those from Mande to Atlantic languages are more numerous. The most visible layers are the following:
– from Soninke to Fula; these loans are quite numerous and date back mostly to the period of the mighty Wagadu/Ghana medieval polity (before the 12th to 13th centuries); the dispersion of Fulbe over West Africa took place afterward;
– from Soninke to Sereer. These loans are much scarcer; they go back to the period of coexistence of the ancestors of Soninke and Sereer in the Southern Mauritania or the lower Senegal, before the Sereers moved further to the south;
– from Mandinka to numerous Atlantic languages of the Southern Senegambia, since the end of the 1st millennium ad;
– from Maninka to Atlantic languages of Guinea (especially those of the Tenda and Jaad groups, but also to the Futa-Jallon Fula);
– from Kakabe to Pular, since the 18th century, when Kakabe (and probably other varieties of the Mokole group) served as substrata for the dominant Pular language;
– from Susu (and probably Jalonke) to Atlantic languages of the Maritime Guinea: Baga Fore, Baga Pukur (Mboteni and Binari), Nalu, Basari, but also to the Futa-Jallon Fula.
The main groups of Atlantic loans into Mande are the following:
– Fula loans in Kakabe constitute up to 30% of the vocabulary of the language (with the exception of the southeastern dialects, much less influenced by Fula);
– there are numerous Fula loans in Soninke dating back to the same period of coexistence of the ancestors of Fulbe and Soninke in Takrūr and Futa-Toro;
– much less numerous Sereer loans in Soninke, most probably dating back to the same period as Sereer > Soninke borrowings;
– borrowings from Wolof to Soninke, but also to Bambara and Mandinka, dating back mainly to the colonial or postcolonial periods;
– Mandinka words from the substrata of minor Atlantic languages of Senegambia.
Cases of chain borrowing (e.g., Soninke > Fula > Kakabe) are attested.
Ancient borrowings are often difficult to distinguish from the common Niger-Congo stock, and it is not evident, in many cases, in what direction the borrowing occurred.
In the phonology and morphosyntax, several important features of Soninke may be due to the Fula or Fula-Sereer influence: the 5-vowel (instead of 7-vowel) system, initial consonant alternation, presence of geminated consonants. There are instances of borrowing of derivational suffixes from Fula to Soninke and from Soninke to Fula. In Kakabe, massive Fula loans have resulted in borrowing of implosive consonants ɓ, ɗ, ƴ and in the emergence of geminated consonants. In the northwestern dialect of Kakabe, a suffix of passive voice has been borrowed from Fula.
Mande Languages
Valentin Vydrin
Mande is a mid-range language family in Western Sub-Saharan Africa that includes 60 to 75 languages spoken by 30 to 40 million people. According to the glottochronological data, its ... More
Mande is a mid-range language family in Western Sub-Saharan Africa that includes 60 to 75 languages spoken by 30 to 40 million people. According to the glottochronological data, its genetic depth is between 5,000 and 5,500 years. The Proto-Mande homeland can be presumably localized in the western part of the southern Sahara. Lexical data suggests that the Mande family belongs to the Niger-Congo macrofamily, but some scholars doubt it, mainly because of the lack of morphological cognates.
The first division of Mande is binary, into Western and Southeastern branches. Further on, the Western branch is subdivided into nine groups: Manding, Mokole, Vai-Kono, Jogo-Jeri, Southwestern, Susu-Jalonke, Samogho, Soninke-Bozo, and Bobo. The Southeastern branch consists of Southern and Eastern groups. The biggest Mande languages, Bambara, Maninka, Mandinka, and Jula, belong to the Manding group.
Practically all Mande languages are tonal (two to five level tones), and the tones fulfil both lexical and grammatical functions. The typical syllable structure is CV; in many languages the type CVN is also attested, while CVC is rare (Soninke, Bisa). The metrical foot is a relevant unit for many Mande languages.
The typical basic word order in a verbal clause is Subject—Auxiliary—Direct Object—Verb—Oblique. Omission of a subject is possible in some Southern and Southwestern languages, where subject pronouns have merged with auxiliaries into Personal Pronominal Markers; otherwise an overt subject is obligatory.
Inflectional morphology is almost missing in some languages, mainly innovative in some others. Noun classes and grammatical genders are lacking. In most languages, there is only one plural marker (sometimes two); agreement in number is usually missing. Morphological case is most often absent, although it is attested in some pronominal systems; noun declination is emerging in Dan (Southern Mande). In Southern, Southwestern, and Eastern groups and Bobo, there are multiple series of personal pronouns expressing case, communicative status, and often verbal categories as well (aspect, mode, polarity).
Verbal lability (mainly P-lability) is highly productive in many Mande languages, including typologically rare passive lability.
Derivational morphology is relatively rich, only suffixal for nouns, but either suffixal or prefixal for verbs. In many languages, preverbs are still separable. Reduplication is productive in many languages for pluriactionality and intensity, sometimes for nominal plurality. Word compounding is highly productive.
The structure of noun phrase is N2 + N1 + Adj + Det (N1 is head noun, N2 is dependent noun). In most Mande languages, alienable and inalienable nouns are formally distinguished; the former are connected to the possessor by auxiliary words, and in some languages, they require a special possessive series of personal pronouns.
Nominative-accusative alignment is predominant; in the Southwestern group, split semantic or ergative alignments are attested.
For relativization, varieties of correlative strategy are mostly used.
At the beginning of the 21st century, Roman-based alphabets are used for nearly all languages of the family. Arabic-based writing systems (Ajami) are of limited use for Mandinka, Jula, Susu, and Mogofin. An original syllabic writing has existed since the 1820s for Vai; since the 1950s, an original alphabet, N’ko, is broadly used for Manding languages.
Nora C. England
Language Families/Areas/Contact, Morphology, Phonetics/Phonology, Semantics, Syntax
Mayan languages are spoken by over 5 million people in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, and Honduras. There are around 30 different languages today, ranging in size from fairly large (about a ... More
Mayan languages are spoken by over 5 million people in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, and Honduras. There are around 30 different languages today, ranging in size from fairly large (about a million speakers) to very small (fewer than 30 speakers). All Mayan languages are endangered given that at least some children in some communities are not learning the language, and two languages have disappeared since European contact. Mayas developed the most elaborated and most widely attested writing system in the Americas (starting about 300 BC).
The sounds of Mayan languages consist of a voiceless stop and affricate series with corresponding glottalized stops (either implosive and ejective) and affricates, glottal stop, voiceless fricatives (including h in some of them inherited from Proto-Maya), two to three nasals, three to four approximants, and a five vowel system with contrasting vowel length (or tense/lax distinctions) in most languages. Several languages have developed contrastive tone.
The major word classes in Mayan languages include nouns, verbs, adjectives, positionals, and affect words. The difference between transitive verbs and intransitive verbs is rigidly maintained in most languages. They usually use the same aspect markers (but not always). Intransitive verbs only indicate their subjects while transitive verbs indicate both subjects and objects. Some languages have a set of status suffixes which is different for the two classes. Positionals are a root class whose most characteristic word form is a non-verbal predicate. Affect words indicate impressions of sounds, movements, and activities. Nouns have a number of different subclasses defined on the basis of characteristics when possessed, or the structure of compounds. Adjectives are formed from a small class of roots (under 50) and many derived forms from verbs and positionals.
Predicate types are transitive, intransitive, and non-verbal. Non-verbal predicates are based on nouns, adjectives, positionals, numbers, demonstratives, and existential and locative particles. They are distinct from verbs in that they do not take the usual verbal aspect markers. Mayan languages are head marking and verb initial; most have VOA flexible order but some have VAO rigid order. They are morphologically ergative and also have at least some rules that show syntactic ergativity. The most common of these is a constraint on the extraction of subjects of transitive verbs (ergative) for focus and/or interrogation, negation, or relativization. In addition, some languages make a distinction between agentive and non-agentive intransitive verbs. Some also can be shown to use obviation and inverse as important organizing principles. Voice categories include passive, antipassive and agent focus, and an applicative with several different functions.
Meanings of Constructions
Laura A. Michaelis
Linguistic Theories, Pragmatics, Semantics, Syntax
Meanings are assembled in various ways in a construction-based grammar, and this array can be represented as a continuum of idiomaticity, a gradient of lexical fixity. Constructional ... More
Meanings are assembled in various ways in a construction-based grammar, and this array can be represented as a continuum of idiomaticity, a gradient of lexical fixity. Constructional meanings are the meanings to be discovered at every point along the idiomaticity continuum. At the leftmost, or ‘fixed,’ extreme of this continuum are frozen idioms, like the salt of the earth and in the know. The set of frozen idioms includes those with idiosyncratic syntactic properties, like the fixed expression by and large (an exceptional pattern of coordination in which a preposition and adjective are conjoined). Other frozen idioms, like the unexceptionable modified noun red herring, feature syntax found elsewhere. At the rightmost, or ‘open’ end of this continuum are fully productive patterns, including the rule that licenses the string Kim blinked, known as the Subject-Predicate construction. Between these two poles are (a) lexically fixed idiomatic expressions, verb-headed and otherwise, with regular inflection, such as chew/chews/chewed the fat; (b) flexible expressions with invariant lexical fillers, including phrasal idioms like spill the beans and the Correlative Conditional, such as the more, the merrier; and (c) specialized syntactic patterns without lexical fillers, like the Conjunctive Conditional (e.g., One more remark like that and you’re out of here). Construction Grammar represents this range of expressions in a uniform way: whether phrasal or lexical, all are modeled as feature structures that specify phonological and morphological structure, meaning, use conditions, and relevant syntactic information (including syntactic category and combinatoric potential).
Metrical Structure and Stress
Matthew K. Gordon
Metrical structure refers to the phonological representations capturing the prominence relationships between syllables, usually manifested phonetically as differences in levels of stress. ... More
Metrical structure refers to the phonological representations capturing the prominence relationships between syllables, usually manifested phonetically as differences in levels of stress. There is considerable diversity in the range of stress systems found cross-linguistically, although attested patterns represent a small subset of those that are logically possible. Stress systems may be broadly divided into two groups, based on whether they are sensitive to the internal structure, or weight, of syllables or not, with further subdivisions based on the number of stresses per word and the location of those stresses. An ongoing debate in metrical stress theory concerns the role of constituency in characterizing stress patterns. Certain approaches capture stress directly in terms of a metrical grid in which more prominent syllables are associated with a greater number of grid marks than less prominent syllables. Others assume the foot as a constituent, where theories differ in the inventory of feet they assume. Support for foot-based theories of stress comes from segmental alternations that are explicable with reference to the foot but do not readily emerge in an apodal framework. Computational tools, increasingly, are being incorporated in the evaluation of phonological theories, including metrical stress theories. Computer-generated factorial typologies provide a rigorous means for determining the fit between the empirical coverage afforded by metrical theories and the typology of attested stress systems. Computational simulations also enable assessment of the learnability of metrical representations within different theories.
Cynthia L. Allen
Middle English is the name given to the English of the period from approximately 1100 to approximately 1450. This period is marked by substantial developments in all areas of English ... More
Middle English is the name given to the English of the period from approximately 1100 to approximately 1450. This period is marked by substantial developments in all areas of English grammar. It is also the period of English when different dialects are the most fully attested in the texts. At the beginning of the Middle English period, the sociolinguistic status of English was low due to the Norman Invasion, and although religious texts of Old English composition continued to be copied and updated, few original compositions are extant. By the end of the period, English had regained its status as the language of government, law, and literature generally.
Although some notable changes to the phonemic inventory of consonants date from the Middle English period, the most dramatic phonological developments of the period involve vowels. The reduction of the vowels of unstressed syllables, one of the changes that marks the beginning of the Middle English period, is a phonological change with substantial morphological effects, as it substantially reduced the number of distinctive inflectional forms. Constituent order replaced case marking as the primary means of signaling grammatical relations. By the end of the Middle English period, subject-verb-object order had become established as the norm.
The lexicon of English was transformed in this period by an enormous influx of French words. The role of derivational morphology declined as its functions were to some extent replaced by the adoption of French words. Most Scandinavian loans in English first appear in the texts of this period. The Scandinavian loans are typically everyday words, while the words adopted from French are more often in areas of government, law, and higher culture, reflecting the nature of the contact between English speakers and the speakers of these languages.
The density of the Scandinavian population in the northern part of England is generally held to be responsible for the earlier appearance of changes in the north than in the south. The replacement of the third person plural personal pronoun hie by the Scandinavian they is an example of a development which is apparent only in the north early in Middle English but became general in English by the end of this period.
An important phonological development of later Middle English is the beginning of the Great Vowel Shift, which affected long vowels and involved successive changes and was implemented differently in different dialects, the north-south divide being the most evident.
Early Middle English is a language that cannot be understood by Modern English readers without special study, while the language of the late Middle English period, especially that coming from the London area, can be understood with the heavy use of explanatory notes.
Missionary Dictionaries
Otto Zwartjes
Missionary dictionaries are printed books or manuscripts compiled by missionaries in which words are listed systematically followed by words which have the same meaning in another ... More
Missionary dictionaries are printed books or manuscripts compiled by missionaries in which words are listed systematically followed by words which have the same meaning in another language. These dictionaries were mainly written as tools for language teaching and learning in a missionary-colonial setting, although quite a few dictionaries have also a more encyclopedic character, containing invaluable information on non-Western cultures from all continents. In this article, several types of dictionaries are analyzed: bilingual-monodirectional, bilingual and bidirectional, and multilingual. Most examples are taken from an illustrative selected corpus of missionary dictionaries describing non-Western and languages during the colonial period, with particular focus on the function of these dictionaries in a missionary context, the users, macrostructure, organizational principles, and the typology of the microstructure and markedness in lemmatization.
Missionary Grammars
Missionary grammars are printed books or manuscripts compiled by missionaries in which a particular language is described. These grammars were mainly written as pedagogical tools for ... More
Missionary grammars are printed books or manuscripts compiled by missionaries in which a particular language is described. These grammars were mainly written as pedagogical tools for language teaching and learning in a missionary-colonial setting, although quite a few grammars have also a more normative character. Missionary grammars contain usually an opening section, a prologue, in which the author exhibits the objectives of his work. The first part is usually a short introduction into phonology and orthography, followed by the largest section, which is devoted to morphology, arranged according to the traditional division of the parts of speech. The final section is sometimes devoted to syntax, but the topics included can vary considerably. Sometimes word lists are appended, containing body parts, measures, counting, manners of speaking, or rhetorical figures. The data presented in the grammar are mainly based on an oral corpus, whereas in other cases high registers from prestigious texts are used in which the eloquence or elegance of the language under study is illustrated. These grammars are modeled according to the traditional Greco-Latin framework and often contain invaluable information regarding language typologies, semantics, and pragmatics. In the New World, Asia, and elsewhere, missionaries had to find an adequate methodology in order to describe typological features they had never seen before. They adapted European models to new linguistic realities and created original works which deserve our attention within the discipline of the history of linguistics alongside contemporary pedagogical works written in Europe. This article concentrates on sources written in Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin during the colonial period, since these sources outnumber the production of missionary grammars in other languages.
Mixed Languages
Felicity Meakins
Language Families/Areas/Contact, Sociolinguistics
Mixed languages are a rare category of contact language which has gone from being an oddity of contact linguistics to the subject of media excitement, at least for one mixed language—Light ... More
Mixed languages are a rare category of contact language which has gone from being an oddity of contact linguistics to the subject of media excitement, at least for one mixed language—Light Warlpiri. They show considerable diversity in structure, social function, and historical origins; nonetheless, they all emerged in situations of bilingualism where a common language is already present. In this respect, they do not serve a communicative function, but rather are markers of an in-group identity. Mixed languages provide a unique opportunity to study the often observable birth, life, and death of languages both in terms of the sociohistorical context of language genesis and the structural evolution of language.
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HomeMore Than Bricks & Mortar
More Than Bricks & Mortar
67-year-old Abdul Manan has lived in Gara Pathar village in KP most of his life. He is aware of the critical need of an access road and how it facilitates access to social services. “We had been struggling for decades, this road has given us hope. we faced a lot of problems, especially in the rainy season. we had to carry patients on our shoulders right up to the main road to get them to hospitals. There are many tribes in the village but they unanimously agree that roads and streets are a common need. We are very happy that the government has constructed this access road, although we also need to build adjacent streets as it is hard to come out from houses in the rain. The streets become so muddy, it’s impossible to step in the muddy water”.
Surat Khan, a 76-year-old village elder, happily carries fodder for his animals along the newly-built access road. “We are grateful to the government for this road. Before this, it was difficult for us to get to adjacent villages, especially in the rain. Getting basic facilities in this village has been a dream for decades. Thank God it came true”.
Young Said Khan is an auto-driver. For him, the road has opened livelihood opportunities “The road has brought economic activity to the village. I have purchased a ‘chingchi (auto rickshaw) and go back and forth from the village to the main road and sometimes up to the main city Tank. This all-weather road means people are connected. I have my own source of income and earn a handsome amount for myself and my family”.
Access to social services has been a widely acknowledged benefit of the new road. “More people can go to the hospital for treatment because people have a safe road that can be used in all weather conditions. People once suffered at home, or died in transit. They can now reach a medical facility” says Attaullah, Chairperson of community-based organization (CBO) Star Community. Pregnant women prefer to deliver in the hospital, this has reduced maternal and infant mortality rates in the village."
Abdur Rasheed, CBO General Secretary adds “Poor connectivity has been the main cause of poverty, impeding economic growth in rural areas. Earlier, inhabitants of this deprived village faced a lot of difficulties while carrying patients to the hospital in the city and a number of people died on the way.”
Muhammad Rizwan is a grade four student in Government Primary School for Boys, Gara Pathar. He smiles as he appreciates the benefits “I am very happy as students can go to school in all weather conditions. It was almost impossible for us to step out from our houses in the rain because of the muddy water outside. We would miss school in the rainy season but now attend school regularly and in a clean uniform.”
Ghulam Shabir appreciates the connectivity "The road has connected rural communities to markets, district headquarters, and other centers of economic activity leading to the socio-economic development of this area. Earlier, many relied on earth tracks, unsuitable for motorized traffic and impassable during the rainy season. But, now we have a road and life has become much easier for us.”
Others resonate the sentiment “This is the first development activity we have seen in the last fifty years. It was really very hard for us to even go to the mosque to offer prayers in the rainy season. Due to faster access to the market, I can get a better price for my crops. With frequent trips, I can feel the pulse of the market and sell my goods only if I get a good price." says Razi Khan, a 58-year-old local farmer.
The construction of the new road has enabled people to find jobs, commute to work and school and access healthcare quickly and safely. It has also encouraged farmers to grow high-value crops, and enabled them to transport their produce to the market, keeping it fresh and in good condition. Public transport has been provided to connect villages. The road has opened new avenues for the villagers and has meant much more to them than just bricks and mortar.
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Alexandria, Virginia Crime Report
posted on Mar. 19, 2015 at 2:45 pm
Image by Adam Gerard, on Flickr
Here’s the latest Alexandria Virginia crime report. These are incidents reported by the Alexandria Police Department and published in the weekly Washington Post Alexandria/Arlington Extra.
REMINDER: You can track these crimes yourself using the new RAIDSOnline.com database. You can also view the crime map 24/7 through this link.
SEXUAL ASSAULTS
Reynolds St. S., 300 block, 9:44 p.m. March 11. A sexual assault was reported.
Armistead St. N., 400 block, 3:29 a.m. March 11. An assault was reported.
Braddock Rd. W., 3800 block, 1:14 p.m. March 10. An assault was reported.
Duke St., 2800 block, 9:03 p.m. March 9. Snowballs were thrown at a vehicle. A door was damaged.
Duke St., 4500 block, 2:12 a.m. March 7. An assault was reported.
Duke St., 4600 block, 12:16 p.m. March 9. An assault was reported.
Duke St., 5400 block, 7:52 a.m. March 6. Two people fought. An arrest was made.
Elbert Ave., 3900 block, 9:27 a.m. March 10. An assault was reported.
Highview Lane N., 1400 block, 2:52 p.m. March 5. A person pointed a gun at a man from a third-floor window of a building.
Iverson St. N., 800 block, 4:11 p.m. March 8. Two people fought. An arrest was made.
Madison and N. Fayette streets, 8:01 p.m. March 8. An assault was reported.
Park Center Dr., 3000 block, 12:34 a.m. March 6. Threats were reported.
Usher Ave., 4100 block, 2:06 a.m. March 6. Two people fought.
Van Dorn St. S., 100 block, 4:47 p.m. March 10. An assault was reported.
Pickett St. S., unit block, 1:22 a.m. March 3. Two people assaulted a person and took cash.
Van Dorn St. N., 900 block, 1:08 a.m. March 11. Two people robbed a female pedestrian of a purse.
THEFTS/BREAK-INS
Century Pl., 200 block, 8:05 p.m. March 6. A theft was reported.
Chetworth Ct., 1300 block, 1:21 p.m. March 3. Two vehicles were entered. Nothing was reported missing.
Colonial Ave., 1100 block, 10:21 a.m. March 4. A debit card was stolen from a vehicle.
Diagonal Rd., 1700 block, 2:18 p.m. March 6. An office was entered. Nothing was reported missing.
Diagonal Rd., 1700 block, 2:30 p.m. March 6. A theft was reported.
Duke St., 3100 block, 11:09 a.m. March 10. A theft was reported.
Duke St., 3100 block, 7:17 p.m. March 4. A shoplifting incident was reported.
Duke St., 4600 block, 6:30 p.m. March 3. An exhaust pipe was stolen from a vehicle.
Duke St., 5700 block, 9:46 p.m. March 7. A shoplifting incident was reported. An arrest was made.
Dunster Ct., 5700 block, 8:54 a.m. March 10. A theft was reported.
Edgehill Dr., 2900 block, 10:55 a.m. March 6. A license plate was stolen from a vehicle.
Edsall Rd., 6100 block, 4:50 p.m. March 9. A vehicle was entered by breaking a window. Nothing was reported missing.
Eisenhower Ave., 2200 block, 8:57 p.m. March 10. A theft was reported.
Essex Ct., 5300 block, 7:26 p.m. March 11. A theft was reported.
Fayette St. N., 1200 block, 5:44 p.m. March 7. A theft was reported.
Four Mile Rd., 800 block, 12:33 p.m. March 4. Gas and a parking permit were among items stolen from a vehicle.
Hampton Dr. N., 3100 block, 4:54 p.m. March 11. A theft was reported.
Jefferson Davis Hwy., 2000 block, 8:06 a.m. March 5. An attempt was made to enter a vehicle.
Jefferson Davis Hwy., 3100 block, 7:30 p.m. March 9. A shoplifting incident was reported. An arrest was made.
Jefferson Davis Hwy., 3400 block, 7:58 p.m. March 4. A cellphone was stolen from a purse at a restaurant.
Jefferson Davis Hwy., 3100 block, 11:03 p.m. March 5. A shoplifting incident was reported. An arrest was made.
John Carlyle St., 500 block, 3:54 p.m. March 3. A cellphone at a store was stolen.
King St., 1000 block, 3:28 p.m. March 3. Three juveniles attempted to steal a tip jar from a restaurant, and when an employee shouted, they dropped the jar and fled.
King St., 1400 block, 2:48 p.m. March 4. A bottle of juice was stolen from a store.
King St., 3300 block, 9:43 a.m. March 11. A theft was reported.
Maris Ave., 5100 block, 6:31 p.m. March 8. A tire and rim were stolen from a vehicle.
Monroe Ave. E., 400 block, 3:30 p.m. March 6. A shoplifting incident was reported.
Normandy Hill Dr., 100 block, 4:38 p.m. March 9. A catalytic converter was stolen from a vehicle.
Paxton St. N., 500 block, 6:13 p.m. March 9. Four tires and rims were stolen from a vehicle.
Pickett St. N., 200 block, 11:59 a.m. March 6. A cellphone was among items stolen from a work van.
Pickett St. S., 200 block, 11:32 a.m. March 3. Wedding rings were stolen from an apartment.
Pitt St. N., 1100 block, 6:43 a.m. March 9. A theft was reported.
Portner Rd., 1100 block, 3:45 p.m. March 3. A TV and a jacket were stolen from a vehicle.
Portner Rd., 1200 block, 8:55 a.m. March 3. A vehicle was entered. Nothing was reported missing.
Prince St., 1600 block, 8:37 a.m. March 10. A theft was reported.
Quantrell Ave., 5800 block, 1:53 p.m. March 7. A catalytic converter was stolen from a vehicle.
Reynolds St. S., 200 block, 10:26 a.m. March 3. A property was entered. An arrest was made.
Reynolds St. S., 300 block, 7:31 p.m. March 4. A property was entered. An arrest was made.
Seminary Rd., 4300 block, 12:31 a.m. March 8. A property was entered. An arrest was made.
Seminary Rd., 4600 block, 3:05 a.m. March 8. A theft was reported.
Seminary Rd., 4600 block, 4:23 a.m. March 4. A TV was among items stolen from an apartment.
Seminary Rd., 5000 block, 10:38 a.m. March 3. Cash was stolen from an apartment.
St. Asaph St. N., 900 block, 6:08 p.m. March 4. A bottle of scotch was stolen from a store.
St. Asaph St. S., 300 block, 10:35 a.m. March 11. A theft was reported.
Timber Branch Dr., 700 block, 9:11 a.m. March 10. A theft was reported.
Valley Dr., 2800 block, 1:16 p.m. March 11. A theft was reported.
Van Dorn St. N., 900 block, 5:40 p.m. March 9. A theft was reported.
Van Dorn St. S., 100 block, 3:03 p.m. March 6. A book bag was stolen from a vehicle entered by breaking a window.
Whiting St. S., 200 block, 1:53 p.m. March 6. A front grille of a vehicle was stolen.
Whiting St. S., 300 block, 4:55 a.m. March 7. A shoplifting incident was reported.
Wythe St., 1200 block, 2:31 p.m. March 3. A cellphone at a gym was stolen.
MOTOR VEHICLE THEFTS
Bragg St. S., 100 block, 6:11 a.m. March 4. A vehicle was stolen from a parking lot of a hotel.
Dawes Ave., 5400 block, 7:39 a.m. March 3. A vehicle was stolen after it was left with its motor running.
Pickett St. N., 2300 block, 6:50 p.m. March 8. A vehicle was stolen from a lot.
Prince St., 400 block, 5:45 p.m. March 11. A vehicle was stolen.
Prince St., 500 block, 2:52 p.m. March 7. An attempt was made to steal a vehicle by removing the ignition.
Union St. S., 300 block, 8:46 a.m. March 9. An attempt was made to steal a vehicle by damaging the ignition.
Union St. S., 300 block, 10 p.m. March 9. An attempt was made to steal a vehicle by removing the ignition.
Wythe St., 300 block, 3:11 p.m. March 7. An attempt was made to steal a vehicle by damaging the ignition.
Canterbury Sq., unit block, 3:43 p.m. March 11. Property was damaged.
Derby Ct., 5600 block, 9:29 p.m. March 4. A door of a building was damaged.
Duke St., 5700 block, 6:46 p.m. March 7. A man used his fist to bang on the hood of a vehicle.
Edsall Rd., 6100 block, 8:58 a.m. March 10. Five BB-like holes were found in a vehicle windshield.
King St., 4700 block, 4:03 p.m. March 4. Graffiti was sprayed on a building.
Tags:Alexandria PoliceAlexandria Virginiablotterreport
Bella Found a Home in Alexandria
Virginia Approves Clean Up Plan for Power Plant Site in Alexandria
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Topics » Back to Work Issues
Pregnant Employee On Graveyard Shift
Myla Reyes - April 15
Do pregnant women can refuse being scheduled on the graveyard shift?
Melissa - October 9
I don't think "refuse" is the right word. You can request to work another shift...but to my knowledge, working graveyards doesnt have anything to do with the well being of your pregnancy. Sure....it sucks and might be tiring on your body.....but it is anyways without being pregnant. If it is really bothering you..talk to your boss or a coworker and see if someone is willing to switch you shifts until the end of your pregnancy. Good luck
Lily - October 11
I think it's cruel to make pregnant women working graveyard shift. You are already brave enough to keep working while being pregnant, don't stress yourself out too much!
my1stboy - October 14
I am 34 wks and have been working graveyard the entire time. Harder to sleep during the day pregnant or not. All is well and we have had no problems.
letgo0527 - May 9
I was working the graveyard shift when I found out I was preggers. I worked it until I was 3 1/2months preg. It was hell. And very tiring. Not to mention that the smell of my workplace (a long term care facility) made my job even harder due to morning sickness. I think it is horrible to make a pregnant woman work during the night. Especially in the later months. Its hard enough to get asleep when your preg let alone do it in the day time.
JLO - May 13
i worked the graveyard shift until two weeks before my baby due. it really does help the time go a lot faster and also it helps the bad syploms not seem so bad. maybe it was just me but it is just like any other job and my doc said it was fine as long as i was getting enough sleep during the day. if you have no other obligations in the day you should be fine
aubergine76226 - May 8
Working Night Shift, but Not Heavy Lifting, Is Risk Factor for Preterm Birth By Katrina Woznicki, Published: December 09, 2005 Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; a__sistant Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco . Click here to provide feedback Action Points Inform pregnant patients who work jobs requiring hours of standing and/or heavy lifting that this study did not find an effect on the risk for preterm birth or reduced gestational size. However, this study found a significant increased risk between night-shift work and premature delivery. HOUSTON, Dec. 8 - Pregnant women who work the graveyard shift face a significantly higher risk of preterm delivery, yet long hours, standing all day, and heavy lifting were not risk factors, investigators here reported. Working between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. during the first trimester raised the risk by at least 50% (relative risk 1.5, 95% confidence interval 1.0-2.0), according to Lisa A. Pompeii, Ph.D., of the University of Texas School of Public Health here. The risk persisted into the second trimester (RR 1.6, 95% CI 1.0-2.3), the study of 1,908 pregnant women found, Dr. Pompeii and colleagues reported in the December issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology. And working at night during weeks 28 to 31 of pregnancy was a__sociated with a two-fold increased risk for preterm birth (odds ratio, 1.8, 95% CI 0.8-3.9). Surprisingly, there were no significant a__sociations between preterm delivery and standing on the job for at least 30 hours a week or performing repeated heavy lifting, compared with women who stood six to 15 hours every week or those who did not lift, respectively. These activities were also not a__sociated with any increased or decreased risk in small-for-gestational-age births. Interestingly, women who worked at least 46 hours per week during the first trimester showed a 40% risk reduction (RR 0.6, 95% CI 0.4-0.9), compared with women who worked 35 to 45 hours, regardless of the period of work exposure during their pregnancy. These findings suggest several possibilities, wrote Dr. Pompeii and colleagues. First, night-shift work may interfere with the circadian rhythm and ultimately affect hormone levels, they speculated. Secondly, women who worked longer hours also tended to have more education, were older, and were married. "An extended work week has been a__sociated with higher monetary income among U.S. workers, which is reflected in our study findings," they wrote. People from higher socioeconomic status tend to have better health outcomes. The findings were based on data from the Pregnancy, Infection, and Nutrition study, a prospective cohort study that included 1,908 pregnant women who were recruited during prenatal visits that occurred from January 1995 to April 2000. The women were at 24 and 29 weeks gestation at the time of recruitment. Interviews were conducted both by telephone and then nested case-control participants, a total of 444 women, were interviewed in-person after delivery. The participants were asked about their occupation, work schedules, and job duties. The women were also asked about smoking, v____al bleeding, and whether they vigorous leisure activities, such as exercise, during the first and second trimesters. Preterm birth was defined as delivery before 37 weeks gestation. Fetal growth restriction was defined as infants whose birth weight fell below the 10th percentile. Contrary to earlier beliefs, standing on the job all day and heavy lifting did not affect the risk for preterm delivery or reduced gestational size. It is possible, the authors said, that women who perform these kinds of jobs are already physically fit. However, night-shift work remained a significant risk factor although the reasons weren't entirely clear. The investigators said it is possible that working the graveyard shift may affect "nocturnal surges in uterine activity." Another theory is that the secretion of melatonin, involved in sleep cycles, may be suppressed in nighttime workers, which may also affect uterine activity. The researchers also pointed out that few women in this study worked the night shift during their third trimester; 166 women reported night-shift work during their first trimester compared with 126 women in their second trimester and only 26 women in their final trimester. So the findings, they said, should be interpreted with caution. Primary source: Obstetrics and Gynecology Source reference: Pompeii L. et al "Physical Exertion at Work and the Risk of Preterm Delivery and Small-for-Gestational Age Birth," Obstetrics & Gynecology, Dec. 2005; vol. 106, No. 6; p.1279-1288.
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Health Medicine Website Pg1331483549
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MICKEY GUYTON WILL MAKE HER NATIONAL TELEVISION DEBUT ON GOOD MORNING AMERICA ON FRIDAY!
Mickey Guyton
Nashville, TN (March 2, 2015) – Capitol Records Nashville’s Mickey Guyton will make her national television debut on ABC’s Good Morning America with a performance of her first single “Better Than You Left Me” on Friday, March 6th. Mickey co-wrote the single which made Country Aircheck history as the highest one-week add total for a debut first single. Mickey was recently selected as a featured artist in the VEVO DSCVR Series. The series currently is featuring two acoustic performances that can be viewed here and here.
Mickey will head out on tour with Brad Paisley this summer on his CRUSHIN’ IT WORLD TOUR which kicks off May 15 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Texas native has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and appeared on several Who To Watch for in 2015 lists including NPR, Billboard, Rolling Stone Country, Spotify, Yahoo! Music, Huffington Post, Mashable, Taste of Country and Nashville Lifestyles. She is currently putting the finishing touches on her debut album.
www.MickeyGuyton.com/| facebook.com/MickeyGuyton| twitter.com/MickeyGuyton| instagram.com/MickeyGuyton
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Positive Liberty vs. Liberty
Posted on March 25, 2011 by Loquitur Veritatem
There is a special kind of liberty known as “positive liberty,” which is inimical to “liberty,” as that term is properly understood. To show why, I begin by expanding on an earlier post, where I offer the following definition of liberty:
peaceful, willing coexistence and its concomitant: beneficially cooperative behavior
Liberty, thus defined, is liberty — full stop. It is neither negative nor positive. It is a modus vivendi that is accepted and practiced by a social group, in keeping with the group’s behavioral norms. There is no liberty if those norms do not include voice and exit, because willing coexistence then becomes problematic. (For a further elaboration, see “On Liberty” and scroll down to “What Liberty Is.”)
However, peaceful, willing coexistence is likely (and perhaps only) to be found where a close-knit social group lives by the Golden Rule:
One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself….
The Golden Rule can be expanded into two, complementary sub-rules:
Do no harm to others, lest they do harm to you.
Be kind and charitable to others, and they will be kind and charitable to you.
The first sub-rule — the negative one — is compatible with the idea of negative rights, but it doesn’t demand them. The second sub-rule — the positive one — doesn’t yield positive rights because it’s a counsel to kindness and charity, not a command.
I call the Golden Rule a natural law because it’s neither a logical construct … nor a state-imposed one. Its long history and widespread observance (if only vestigial) suggest that it embodies an understanding that arises from the similar experiences of human beings across time and place. The resulting behavioral convention, the ethic of reciprocity, arises from observations about the effects of one’s behavior on that of others and mutual agreement (tacit or otherwise) to reciprocate preferred behavior, in the service of self-interest and empathy. That is to say, the convention is a consequence of the observed and anticipated benefits of adhering to it.
I must qualify the term “convention,” to say that the Golden Rule will be widely observed within any group only if the members of that group are generally agreed about the definition of harm, value kindness and charity (in the main), and (perhaps most importantly) see that their acts have consequences. If those conditions are not met, the Golden Rule descends from convention to admonition.
Self-governance by mutual consent and mutual restraint — by voluntary adherence to the Golden Rule — is possible only for a group of about 25 to 150 persons: the size of a hunter-gatherer band or Hutterite colony. It seems that self-governance breaks down when a group is larger than 150 persons. Why should that happen? Because mutual trust, mutual restraint, and mutual aid — the things implied in the Golden Rule — depend very much on personal connections. A person who is loathe to say a harsh word to an acquaintance, friend, or family member — even when provoked — often waxes abusive toward strangers, especially in this era of e-mail and comment threads, where face-to-face encounters aren’t involved. More generally, it’s a human tendency to treat acquaintances differently than strangers; the former are accorded more trust, more cooperation, and more kindness than the latter. Why? Because there’s usually a difference between the consequences of behavior that’s directed toward strangers and the consequences of behavior that’s directed toward persons one knows, lives among, and depends upon for restraint, cooperation, and help. The allure of doing harm without penalty (“getting away with something”) or receiving without giving (“getting something for nothing”) becomes harder to resist as one’s social distance from others increases.
When self-governance breaks down, it becomes necessary to spin off a new group or to establish a central power (a state) to establish and enforce rules of behavior (negative and positive). The problem, of course, is that those vested with the power of the state quickly learn to use it to advance their own preferences and interests, and to perpetuate their power by granting favors to those who can keep them in office. It is a rare state that is created for the sole purpose of protecting its citizens from one another and from outsiders, and rarer still is the state that remains true to such purposes.
In sum, the Golden Rule — as a uniting way of life — is quite unlikely to survive the passage of a group from community to state. Nor does the Golden Rule as a uniting way of life have much chance of revival or survival where the state already dominates. The Golden Rule may have limited effect within well-defined groups (e.g., parishes, clubs, urban enclaves, rural communities), by regulating the interactions among the members of such groups. It may have a vestigial effect on face-to-face interactions between stranger and stranger, but that effect arises mainly from the fear that offense or harm will be met with the same, not from a communal bond.
In any event, the dominance of the state distorts behavior. For example, the state may enable and encourage acts (e.g., abortion, homosexuality) that had been discouraged as harmful by group norms; the ability of members of the group to bestow charity on one another may be diminished by the loss of income to taxes and discouraged by the establishment of state-run schemes that mimic the effects of charity (e.g., Social Security).
The attainment of something that all Americans would recognize as liberty is next to impossible. The United States does not comprise a single, close-knit social group, nor even a collection of close-knit social groups. It is a motley, shifting conglomeration of (mostly) loose-knit groups with widely varying social norms and conceptions of harm. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that America is a nation of strangers.
It follows that the only kind of state-sponsored liberty which is possible in America is so-called negative liberty, that is, a regime of negative rights:
freedom from force and fraud (including the right of self-defense against force)
property ownership (including the right of first possession)
freedom of contract (including contracting to employ/be employed)
freedom of association and movement.
But we are far from such a regime:
[M]ost government enactments deny negative rights; for example, they
compel the surrender of income to government agencies for non-protective purposes (violating freedom from force and property ownership)
compel the transfer of income to persons who did not earn the income (violating freedom from force and property ownership)
direct how business property may be used, through restrictions on the specifications to which goods must be manufactured (violating property ownership)
force the owners of businesses (in non-right-to-work-States) to recognize and bargain with labor unions (violating property rights and freedom of contract)
require private businesses to hire certain classes of persons (“protected groups”) and undertake additional expenses for the “accommodation” of handicapped persons (violating property rights and freedom of contract)
require private businesses to restrict or ban smoking (violating property rights and freedom of association)
mandate attendance at tax-funded schools and the subjects taught in those schools, even where those teachings run counter to the moral values that parents are trying to inculcate (violating freedom from force and freedom of association)
limit political speech through restrictions on political contributions and the publication of political advertisements (violating freedom from force and freedom of association).
On top of that,
[s]uch enactments also trample social norms. First, and fundamentally, they convey the message that government, not private social institutions, is the proper locus of moral instruction and interpersonal mediation. Persons who seek special treatment (privileges, a.k.a. positive rights) learn that they can resort to government for “solutions” to their “problems,” which encourages other persons to do the same thing, and so on. In the end — which we have not quite reached — social institutions lose their power to instruct and mediate, and become merely sources of solace and entertainment.
There is much more in the pages of this blog (e.g., here and here). The sum and substance of it all is that liberty is a dead letter in America. It has succumbed to a series of legislative, executive, and judicial acts that have, on the one hand, suppressed and distorted voluntary social and economic relationships and, on the other hand, bestowed positive rights on selected groups to the general detriment of liberty. Positive rights are grants of privilege that can come only at the expense of others, and which are therefore incompatible with the “willing” aspect of liberty.
The clamor for positive liberty ought to set off alarm bells in the minds of libertarians because positive liberty, wrongly understood, justifies positive rights. The last thing this nation needs is what passes for a philosophical justification of positive rights. The first thing this nation needs is a lot fewer positive rights.
Positive liberty is nevertheless on the agenda of the philosophers who blog at Bleeding Heart Libertarians. What is it? According to Wikipedia:
Positive liberty is defined as the power and resources to act to fulfill one’s own potential (this may include freedom from internal constraints); as opposed to negative liberty, which is freedom from external restraint….
…Specifically, … in order to be free, a person should be free from inhibitions of the social structure in carrying out their free will. Structurally speaking classism, sexism or racism can inhibit a person’s freedom….
In other words, it is not enough to have “peaceful, willing coexistence and its concomitant: beneficially cooperative behavior.” That kind of liberty — liberty in the fullest sense — encompasses the acts of love, affection, friendship, neighborliness, and voluntary obligation that help individuals acquire the “power and resources” with which they may strive to attain the fruits of liberty, insofar as they are willing and able to do so.
That should be enough to satisfy the proponents of positive liberty at Bleeding Heart Libertarians, but I suspect otherwise. I would be more sanguine were they proponents of a proper definition of liberty, but they are not. Thus, armed with an inchoate definition of liberty, they are prepared to do battle for positive liberty and, I fear, the positive rights that are easily claimed as necessary to it; to wit:
A lack of “power” entitles certain groups to be represented, as groups, in the councils of government (a right that is not extended to other groups).
A lack of “resources” becomes the welfare entitlements of various kinds — for personal characteristics ranging from low intelligence to old age — which threaten to suck ever more resources out the productive, growth-producing sectors of the economy.
The exercise of “free will” becomes the attainment of certain “willed” outcomes, regardless of one’s ability or effort, which then justifies such things as an affirmative-action job, admission to a university, a tax-subsidized house, etc.
“Classism,” “sexism,” “racism,” and now “beauty-ism” become excuses for discriminating against vast swaths of the populace who practice none of those things.
With respect to the final point, a certain degree of unpleasantness inevitably accompanies liberty. Legal attempts to stifle that unpleasantness simply spread injustice by fomenting resentment and covert resistance, while creating new, innocent victims who are deemed guilty until they can prove their innocence.
In sum, the line between positive liberty and positive rights is so fine that the advocacy of positive liberty, however well meant, easily becomes the basis for preserving and extending the burden of positive rights that Americans now carry.
This entry was posted in Constitution - Courts - Law - Justice, Political Movements & Theories and tagged bleeding heart libertarian, libertarian, liberty, negative rights, positive liberty, positive rights. Bookmark the permalink.
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Tag: Steven Tyler
Aerosmith Launches Global Warming Tour Starting in June
From the official Aerosmith website
Aerosmith Announces The Global Warming North American Summer Tour
Tour Kicks-Off June 16 in Minneapolis, MN Tickets on Sale March 30 & 31
LOS ANGELES (March 26, 2012) – Aerosmith, America’s greatest rock and roll band, will start your summer sizzling and have you dancing around the fires of rock n’ roll again. After blowing away audiences in South America and Japan, the Bad Boys from Boston are back to rock America’s soul, with The Global Warming Tour playing 18 markets beginning on June 16 in Minneapolis, MN.
“The old Aerosmith is back with a new vengeance and we will kick your ass and make out with yur mothers,” says Steven Tyler.
Joe Perry adds, “Can’t wait to bring this band back home. It feels like we’ve been away too long.”
Live Nation is the national tour promoter for Aerosmith’s North American tour. This summer’s hottest ticket will go on sale March 30 and 31 at Ticketmaster.com and LiveNation.com. The first round of tour dates are below with additional dates for a second leg to be announced shortly. Beginning on Thursday, March 29, fans that visit www.livenation.com/aerosmith and RSVP to the presale will have early access to tickets.
The band celebrated their fortieth anniversary in 2010 and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. This quintessential live act truly defined rock and roll as we know it, bringing their heart-pounding sound and millions of fans to their feet over the past four decades. Never succumbing to the trends and fads in music, Aerosmith blazes their own path and remains as ground-breaking as they were when they first formed in 1970.
Bassist Tom Hamilton says, “After touring Japan and South America last year we’re psyched about bringing it all back for the hometown fans. We’re going to break out the classics, the hits and maybe even some of the new ones we’ve been banging out in the studio. Can’t wait to get to Minneapolis!”
Aerosmith are a living piece of American music history, having sold over 150 million albums worldwide and been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They are the recipients of countless awards including four GRAMMYs, eight American Music Awards, six Billboard Awards and 12 MTV Video Music Awards among many other honors. Proving that they can cross genre-boundaries with ease, these rock legends have even taken home a Soul Train Award for Best Rap Single for their remix of Run DMC’s “Walk This Way.” With scores of multi-platinum albums, Aerosmith continues to inspire generations to get their wings, get a grip and just push play. It is no wonder why they are one of the most beloved bands of all time.
American rock band and musical institution Cheap Trick will open the announced shows.
For VIP ticket packages, including opportunities to meet band members, backstage tours, great tickets and more, visit www.Aeroforceone.com
The Global Warming Tour
North American Dates
Date City, State Venue Presale On Sale
June 16 Minneapolis, MN Target Center Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
June 19 Cleveland, OH Quicken Loans Arena Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
June 22 Chicago, IL United Center Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
June 27 Toronto, ON Air Canada Centre Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
July 1 Uniondale, NY Nassau Coliseum Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
July 3 Bristow, VA Jiffy Lube Live Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
July 5 Detroit, MI The Palace of Auburn Hills Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
July 7 Milwaukee, WI Marcus Amphitheater, Summerfest Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
July 17 Boston, MA TD Garden Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
July 21 Philadelphia, PA Wells Fargo Center Tue. 3/27 Fri. 3/30
July 24 East Rutherford, NJ IZOD Center Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
July 26 Atlanta, GA Philips Arena Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
July 28 Dallas, TX American Airlines Center Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
July 30 Houston, TX Toyota Center Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
August 1 Denver, CO Pepsi Center Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
August 4 Oakland, CA Oracle Arena Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
August 6 Los Angeles, CA Hollywood Bowl Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
August 8 Tacoma, WA Tacoma Dome Tue. 3/27 Sat. 3/31
American Idol Season 11 Recap Week 2: The Top 12 That Was Really 11
Only 11...where's Jermaine?
This week’s American Idol created news almost a day before the live show aired. On Tuesday night, American Idol contestant Jermaine Jones tweeted on his official American Idol Twitter account: “Awww I will no longer b on the show.” Later, both the tweet and Jones’ Twitter account were deleted. A spokeswoman for Fox declined to comment on the tweet. No official confirmation was offered about Jones’ departure from the competition until the show aired but video obtained by TMZ shows Jones at the airport. The video can be seen here.
At the beginning of the Idol performance, Ryan Seacrest started off with a speech about how Idol has its share of controversies. Ryan explains that with the cooperation of law enforcement agencies they found out about a contestant’s criminal record, never mentioning Jones’ name. He says that unfortunately the contestant has been eliminated from the competition and promises more on the elimination later in the show. Continue reading “American Idol Season 11 Recap Week 2: The Top 12 That Was Really 11”
American Idol Season 11 Top 13 Recap: Boys vs. Girls
It’s that time of year again. The competition on American Idol begins with the Top 13. This time around, with the beginning of the finals, new rules are in place. Even though I do not like when they make up new rules on the spot, this one seemed to make it an interesting night. The rule that Ryan decreed was that it was boys against girls and tonight it would be revealed who received the lowest votes among the boys and the girls. From there, the judges would decide if it is the boy or the girl who would be sent home. With the guys taking on the songs of Stevie Wonder and the girls paying tribute to the recently departed Whitney Houston, the Top 13 competition show looked promising. As it was last year, Interscope Records exec/ producer, Jimmy Iovine and the guest mentor, Mary J. Blige, helped the contestants with their song choices. For more on each contestant, click on their picture. Continue reading “American Idol Season 11 Top 13 Recap: Boys vs. Girls”
iHeartRadio Music Festival Coming to Las Vegas, September 23 and 24
Yesterday morning, it was announced online and on the local television stations here in Las Vegas that iHeartRadio was bringing their first ever music festival to Las Vegas at the MGM Grand. This festival promises to be a one-of-a-kind experience with many of the top performers in the music industry. Already the line-up for the two-day festival is looking like a who’s who in music with Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Steven Tyler, Bruno Mars, Carrie Underwood and many more. The full lineup so far is here with more being announced throughout the summer.
I am really excited about this because this is as big as the Billboard Music Awards or Grammys. I emailed the person in charge of press passes in the hope that I will be able to cover this event. I will keep all of you updated on this.
My Thoughts on the American Idol Finale 2011
Okay after watching the two-hour long American Idol finale, I have to conclude that this seemed like it was the longest finale in Idol history. It was good in some spots but for the most part it was bad. Here are the thoughts I wrote during the show in chronological order:
Continue reading “My Thoughts on the American Idol Finale 2011”
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November 27, 2018 December 4, 2018 EnlaceLeave a Comment on Stop Prison Industry Firms from Housing Immigrant Parents, Children & Families!
Stop Prison Industry Firms from Housing Immigrant Parents, Children & Families!
Via Prison Legal News
Prison industry companies should not profit from housing immigrant families, and families should not be separated, period.
Summary of the issue
For-profit prison companies CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corp. of America or CCA) and GEO Group operate immigrant detention centers across the U.S.
This campaign, by the Human Rights Defense Center, will introduce shareholder resolutions with both companies that would prohibit them from housing any immigrant children separated from their parents, any immigrant parents separated from their children, and any immigrant detainee families whether they have been separated or not.
The goal of the campaign is to ensure the two largest companies that house immigrant detainees cannot hold families or separated parents and children, should the Trump administration’s separation policy be renewed in the future.
Our associate director already owns enough stock to file the resolutions with CoreCivic and GEO, and has filed other activist resolutions previously. We already have pro bono counsel lined up. All we need is your support!
A more detailed description
For-profit prison companies CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corp. of America) and GEO Group operate a network of immigrant detention centers across the U.S. Even though immigrant detainees awaiting hearings and asylum evaluations are technically in civil detention, they are typically held in prison-like conditions.
Recently, the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant parents from their children has made headlines across the nation and internationally. Critics have rightfully condemned the practice of separating families pending immigration proceedings. There have been disturbing news accounts of the impact this policy has had on children, as well as reports that children have been involuntarily drugged, subjected to sexual abuse and used as leverage by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to force parents to agree to deportation in order to be reunited with their children.
This is unacceptable in a country that prides itself on liberty, democracy and justice. It is also unacceptable for private companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group to profit from immigrant detention – particularly the detention of parents and children, whether they have been separated or not. Both companies operate “residential centers” in Texas that house immigrant families – in Dilley and Karnes.
Even Ivanka Trump has described her father’s family separation policy as a “low point.” Although the Trump administration has stopped separating immigrant families and is in the process of reuniting them due to litigation, that may change in the future.
So what are we going to do about it?
Both CoreCivic and GEO Group are publicly-traded companies, and shareholders can submit resolutions to try to change corporate policies. Since 2012, the Human Rights Defense Center’s associate director, Alex Friedmann, who owns a small amount of stock in CoreCivic and GEO, has filed shareholder resolutions with both firms.
Among other issues, Alex’s past resolutions have called on the companies to report on what they are doing to reduce incidents of rape and sexual abuse in their facilities; to reduce the cost of phone calls made by prisoners to family members; to require the companies to spend five percent of their net profit on rehabilitative and reentry programs; and to require independent audits of their detention facilities.
While such activist resolutions rarely succeed, they draw attention to significant problems in private prisons and expose their reluctance to remedy those problems.
Alex has personal experience with for-profit prisons, having served six years in a then-CCA operated facility in the 1990s prior to his release in 1999. He is now a national expert on the private prison industry. Just Google his name and “private prisons.”
This year he will introduce resolutions with both CoreCivic and GEO to prohibit the companies from housing any immigrant children separated from their parents, any immigrant parents separated from their children, and any immigrant detainee families whether they have been separated or not.
Draft copies of the resolutions are posted here (for CoreCivic) and here (for GEO Group).
***UPDATE: As of November 27, 2018, the shareholder resolutions to prohibit CoreCivic and GEO Group from holding immigrant children separated from their parents, and parents separated from their children, were filed with both companies. See the final filed resolutions here (for CoreCivic) and here (for GEO Group).***
By prohibiting the nation’s two largest companies that operate immigration detention centers from housing immigrant families, whether separated or not, we hope to dramatically alter how ICE and the Trump administration handle family detention going forward.
We also hope to directly impact CoreCivic and GEO Group’s business operations. Immigrant detention is big business; both companies engage in extensive lobbying on the federal level to obtain and retain lucrative contracts. CoreCivic receives around 25 percent of its gross revenue from ICE, while GEO receives almost 20 percent.
Simply put, we believe that incarcerating people for the purpose of generating corporate profit is immoral and unethical.
So what does the shareholder resolution process entail?
The shareholder resolution process is very scripted. Resolutions must relate to a relevant shareholder concern and can be no more than 500 words. After a resolution is filed, the company can file objections with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to have the resolution excluded from its proxy materials – information sent to stockholders in advance of annual shareholder meetings.
The shareholder filing the resolution can respond, and the SEC then issues a letter stating the company can either exclude the resolution (take “no action”), or the resolution meets the requirements to be presented to shareholders and thus should be allowed to proceed.
Alex already has pro bono legal counsel to handle the SEC process. While shareholder resolutions generally cannot address issues related to a company’s “ordinary business operations,” there are exceptions for “significant policy” issues. He will argue that the separation of immigrant children from their parents is a significant policy issue that trumps the ordinary business exclusion. GEO and CoreCivic will likely argue otherwise.
If the resolutions are cleared by the SEC, they will then be included in proxy materials for both CoreCivic and GEO Group, and will be presented for a vote at the next annual shareholder meetings. The meetings will be held around May or June of 2019.
Prior to the shareholder meetings, the Human Rights Defense Center will coordinate a campaign to target and pressure the largest owners of stock in CoreCivic and GEO – institutional investors like the Vanguard Group, Blackrock, Inc., State Street Corp. and Fidelity. Mailings will be made to all investors, as well as proxy advisory services like ISS and Glass Lewis, to urge them to vote in favor of the resolutions.
For a list of the largest private prison investors, click here for CoreCivic and here for GEO Group. The resolutions should be filed by mid-September or early October 2018.
What will the funds be used for?
The main expenses in this campaign will be mailing materials in support of the resolutions to all CoreCivic and GEO Group shareholders; that process is handled by a third-party company, which charges to conduct the mailings. Any excess funds will be used to cover staff expenses and to support the Human Rights Defense Center’s work on behalf of people held in detention facilities in the United States.
About the Human Rights Defense Center
The Human Rights Defense Center is based in Lake Worth, Florida, with satellite offices in Nashville, TN; Seattle, WA; and Washington, D.C. HRDC’s mission is to advocate for the rights of people held in prisons, jails and other detention facilities, including immigrant detention centers. HRDC was founded in 1990 and has 19 full-time employees, including four staff attorneys.
In addition to advocacy, we engage in litigation, book publishing and publishing our monthly magazines, Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News. We are engaged in a number of projects related to criminal justice reform and oppose the privatization of correctional services by for-profit companies. See, for example, our websites on the private prison industry and Stop Prison Profiteering.
If you’d like more information on what we do, please check out our past annual reports, or articles like this one or this one. Thanks!
Previous Documents reveal Law Enforcement partners with private companies to surveil schools
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Damion Square Sports NFL football Professional football Football Sports transactions Sports business Athlete contracts
Chargers re-sign defensive lineman Square to 1-year contract
COSTA MESA, Calif. (AP) — The Los Angeles Chargers re-signed defensive lineman Damion Square to a one-year deal Monday.
Square was a key part of the Chargers defensive line last season. He made a career-high 11 starts last season (seven at defensive end, four at nose tackle) and had 55 tackles, three sacks and five tackles for loss.
Square will be going into his fifth season, He was been with the Chargers since being claimed on waivers from Kansas City during the 2014 season. He entered the league in 2013 after signing as an undrafted free agent with Philadelphia. Square has played in 59 games during his career and made 19 starts.
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Peyton Manning Rahm Emanuel Sports Fairs and festivals Recreation and leisure Lifestyle Professional football Football NFL football NFL Super Bowl
Chicago Bears Green Bay Packers Denver Broncos
Honoring rivalries: Packers-Bears to open 2019 NFL schedule
By BARRY WILNER - Apr. 11, 2019 08:55 AM EDT
Hans Schroeder, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of NFL Media, speaks during the annual NFL football owners meetings, Monday, March 25, 2019, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Matt York)
PHOENIX (AP) — As part of the celebration of its 100th season, the NFL will break from tradition and feature the Packers vs. the Bears in its season opener Sept. 5.
Usually, the Super Bowl champion is the home team for the prime-time opener, but the league wants to salute historic rivalries in 2019. None fits better than Chicago-Green Bay. The teams have met 198 times since 1921, when the Bears were the Chicago Staleys. Green Bay leads the series 97-95-6, including the clubs splitting two postseason games.
Staging the Thursday night game at Chicago's Soldier Field — even if it is a modernized version of the stadium — adds to the theme. There will be a free fan festival and concert in nearby Grant Park and, for the first time, the league has approved a free viewing event of the game in the park.
"We see that around other sports," said Peter O'Reilly, the NFL's executive vice president for league events. Such viewings, for example, have been a staple of the World Cup for decades, and hockey also has adopted the practice. "It will create a big festival environment."
This will be the first time since 2003 the Super Bowl champion has not played in the opener. New England instead will open at home in the prime-time game Sunday night, Sept. 8. The opponent has not yet been determined. The full schedule will be announced next month.
"With the 100th season, we want to do something to kick it off in a special way," said Hans Schroeder, the league's chief operating officer of media. "We're celebrating the Bears, one of the original member clubs, in their 100th season, and the Packers are in their 101st. It's an iconic matchup."
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel invoked the name of George Halas, the team's founder, in welcoming the news.
"George 'Papa Bear' Halas and the NFL's co-founders probably didn't imagine the federation they established 100 years ago in cities and towns across the Midwest would one day be the most successful professional sports league in the world," Emanuel said in a statement. "But that's what their vision achieved. Chicago — the most American of American cities — is the perfect venue for this game."
Schroeder and Brian Rolapp, the NFL's chief media and business officer, outlined other plans for the 100th season: NFL Films will produce a series that selects the 100 greatest teams, plays, games, characters and game changers; an all-time team is being chosen and will be featured in a TV series; and Peyton Manning will talk to fans around the country about the history of the NFL for another television series.
The league also disclosed plans for next month's draft that will supplement the proceedings in Nashville. Teams will make selections in eight of the original 13 towns that comprised the NFL for its first season. In Dayton, Ohio, the field used back then, Triangle Park, still exists, and a selection will be made there. The NFL also has committed to installing new turf on the field.
"This is a really special moment for our city," Dayton mayor Nan Whaley said. "We're excited that the NFL is recognizing the places that were there in the very beginning and that they are celebrating Dayton's special history in paving the way for the league with a donation that will leave a lasting impact in the community."
Each of the 32 clubs will stage a "Fantennial Weekend" during the regular season in which it will work in conjunction with local high school football teams on a Friday, stage a fan festival on Saturday, and then have former players from the NFL club at the game on Sunday. The home team also will reveal the greatest moment or play in its history that day.
Rolapp said the league is talking to DIRECTV about expanding the digital presence for its popular Sunday Ticket option that makes available all out-of-market games. The NFL could opt out of its contract with DIRECTV after next season.
"The world has really changed and how people consume games has changed," he said. "How do we broaden these rights, deliver more easily to digital platforms?"
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Mackinac National Park
Happy 100 Years National Park Service
August 24, 2016 August 24, 2016 promotemi Father Marquette National Memorial, Isle Royale National Park, Keweenaw National Historical Park, Mackinac Island State Park, Mackinac National Park, Motor Cities National Heritage Area, North Country National Scenic Trail, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, River Raisin National Battlefield Park, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
Just three years after Congress established Yellowstone National Park in the Rocky Mountain territories of Montana and Wyoming (in March, 1872), Mackinac National Park was established—becoming just the second National Park in the U.S. After 20 years, in 1895, it was transferred to state control and recognized as Mackinac Island State Park—the first state park in Michigan.
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Device-related Complications
In Conversation With... Barbara Drew, RN, PhD
Alert and Alarm Fatigue, May 2016
Dr. Drew is the David Mortara Distinguished Professor of Physiological Nursing and Clinical Professor of Medicine in Cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco. We spoke with her about the perils and prevalence of alert fatigue.
In Conversation with…Sanjay Saint, MD, MPH
Prevention of Urinary Tract Infections: Lessons for Patient Safety, November 2008
Sanjay Saint, MD, MPH, is Professor of Medicine at the University of Michigan and the Ann Arbor VA Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dr. Saint's research has focused on reducing health care–associated infections, with a particular focus on preventing catheter-related urinary tract infections (UTIs). We asked him to speak with us about how research on UTI prevention provides broader lessons for patient safety.
In Conversation With...Donald A. Norman, PhD
Human Factors, November 2006
Don Norman, PhD, is well known for his books "The Design of Everyday Things" and "Emotional Design." Although not focused on health care, his work introduced many in health care to the concepts of human factors engineering and to the importance of thoughtful design in ensuring that technology is used for its intended purposes. He is cofounder of the Nielsen Norman Group, professor at Northwestern University, and former vice president of Apple Computer. Dr. Norman is now writing "The Design of Future Things," discussing the role that automation will play in our everyday lives. We asked Dr. Norman to speak with us about human-centered design.
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Category: Energy
Most British Columbians Agree with Ottawa’s Pipeline Decision
July 3, 2019 July 2, 2019 By Mario Canseco
Three-in-five residents are unconvinced that the re-approved expansion will bring lower gas prices to the province.
Vancouver, BC [July 3, 2019] – A majority of British Columbians believe the federal government made the right call in re-approving the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion, but a similar proportion voice dissatisfaction with Ottawa’s overall performance on this file, a new Research Co. poll has found.
In the online survey of a representative provincial sample, 56% of British Columbians (+4 since May 2018) agree with the federal government’s decision to re-approve the pipeline expansion.
One third of British Columbians (33%) disagree with the decision, and 11% are undecided.
Agreement with Ottawa’s course of action is highest among men (66%), British Columbians aged 55 and over (also 66%), residents of the Southern Interior (67%) and BC Liberal voters in the 2017 provincial election (72%).
Almost three-in-five British Columbians (59%) say they are disappointed with the way the federal government has handled the expansion.
“As expected, dissatisfaction with the way Ottawa handled this issue is practically universal among strong opponents (95%) and moderate opponents (73%) of the project,” says Mario Canseco, President of Research Co. “But 50% of British Columbians who moderately or strongly support the expansion are also unhappy with the federal government.”
More than seven-in-ten British Columbians (71%) think the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline will create hundreds of local jobs.
Respondents are evenly divided on whether the pipeline expansion threatens the health and safety of British Columbians, with 46% agreeing with the statement and 44% disagreeing with it. Two-in-five (41%) believe the provincial government should do anything necessary to ensure that the expansion does not happen.
Only 30% of British Columbians recall seeing advertisements in favour of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion over the past few weeks. Among those who were exposed to the ads, 32% said they made them “more likely” to support the expansion.
Only 39% of British Columbians think gas prices will be lower in the province now that the expansion has been re-approved—one of the key messages of the ad campaign undertaken by the Government of Alberta. Three-in-five residents (61%) either disagree with this thought (33%) or are not sure (28%).
Results are based on an online study conducted from June 22 to June 26, 2019, among 800 adults in British Columbia. The data has been statistically weighted according to Canadian census figures for age, gender and region in British Columbia. The margin of error—which measures sample variability—is +/- 3.5 percentage points, nineteen times out of twenty.
Energy, Environment, Politics, Public Policy
Four-in-Five Canadians Support Resource Development Projects
The majority of Canadians (61%) say they are tired of nothing getting built in the country.
Vancouver, BC [March 12, 2019] – A significant proportion of Canadians and British Columbians are in favour of resource development projects, a new Research Co. poll conducted on behalf of LNG Canada—a liquefied natural gas project currently under construction in Kitimat, B.C.—has found.
In the online survey of representative samples, 79% of Canadians and 71% of British Columbians express support for resource development projects. In addition, 61% of respondents across the country and 51% of those located in the westernmost province agree they are “tired of nothing getting built” in Canada and British Columbia—a proportion that rises to 67% in northern B.C.
Seven-in-ten Canadians (70%) believe the “national economy will suffer if we can’t build resource projects.” In British Columbia, 63% feel this way about the possible effect on the provincial economy, including 74% of those in northern B.C.
More than half of Canadians (54%) believe the country’s reputation “is harmed by protests against resource development projects.” In British Columbia, 52% express the same sentiment about the effect of protests against resource development projects, and fewer than a quarter (23%) think it’s possible to have unanimous support for resource development projects.
“When asked what would make them more likely to support resource development projects, a majority of British Columbians (57%) want assurances that the impact on the environment is limited,” says Mario Canseco, President of Research Co. “Other important considerations are guaranteeing that Canadians will get the first opportunity to work on the project (53%) and providing training and apprenticeship opportunities for young Canadians (46%).”
Seven-in-ten British Columbians (70%) foresee a positive economic impact from LNG Canada’s liquefied natural gas export project in Kitimat, B.C., which is scheduled to deliver its first LNG cargo before mid-next decade. Broken down by region, over half of Vancouver Island residents (56%), two thirds of Metro Vancouverites (67%) and 86% of those in northern B.C. anticipate a positive economic impact from the project.
“LNG Canada has received significant support from First Nations at the facility and along the shipping route, as well as from northern communities overall,” says Susannah Pierce, LNG Canada’s Director, External Relations. “We are committed to these supporters. A project like ours is vital to the creation of training, employment and contracting opportunities, and we’re pleased to see that British Columbians and Canadians recognize the importance of resource projects as drivers of the Canadian economy.”
The poll also revealed that at least three-in-five Canadians have a positive opinion of four energy sources: wind (80%), hydropower (76%), natural gas (69%) and geothermal (61%). Canadians are divided on oil, with 43% having positive views and 46% having a negative opinion. The lowest ranked energy source for Canadians is coal, with 24% of residents expressing a positive view.
Three-in-five Canadians (60%) believe Canada has a responsibility to “export natural gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in other countries.” LNG exported from LNG Canada’s facility can displace the use of coal for power generation, reducing global GHGs by 60 to 90 mtpa, which is the equivalent of all GHGs produced in British Columbia annually.
Seven-in-ten Canadians (70%) believe the “national economy will suffer if we can’t build resource projects.” In British Columbia, 63% feel this way about the possible effect in the provincial economy, including 74% of those in northern B.C.
“When asked what would make them more likely to support resource development projects, a majority of British Columbians (57%) want assurances that the impact in the environment is limited,” says Mario Canseco, President of Research Co. “Other important considerations are guaranteeing that Canadians will get the first opportunity to work on the project (53%) and providing training and apprenticeship opportunities for young Canadians (46%).”
Seven-in-ten British Columbians (70%) foresee a positive economic impact from LNG Canada’s liquefied natural gas export project in Kitimat, B.C., which is scheduled to deliver first LNG cargo mid-next decade. Broken down by region, over half of Vancouver Island residents (56%), two thirds of Metro Vancouverites (67%) and 86% of those in northern B.C. anticipate a positive economic impact from the project.
Results are based on an online study conducted from February 21 to February 24, 2019, among 1,000 adults in Canada; and an online study conducted from February 16 to February 18, 2019, among 800 adults in British Columbia. The data has been statistically weighted according to Canadian census figures for age, gender and region in Canada and British Columbia. The margin of error—which measures sample variability—is +/- 3.1 percentage points for the sample of Canadians and +/- 3.5 percentage points for the sample of British Columbians, nineteen times out of twenty.
Find our full Canada data set here, our full British Columbia data set here and download the press release here.
LNG Canada Media Relations
[e] media@lngcanada.ca
Energy, Environment, Public Policy Canada
Almost One-in-Five Canadians Say Global Warming is a Theory
January 3, 2019 June 8, 2019 By Mario Canseco
Half of Canadians say the federal government is paying “the right amount” of attention to the environment.
Vancouver, BC [January 4, 2019] – A large majority of Canadians believe in human-made climate change, a new Research Co. poll has found.
In the online survey of a representative national sample, three-in-five Canadians (60%) think global warming (or climate change) is a fact and is mostly caused by emissions from vehicles and industrial facilities.
An additional 15% of Canadians think global warming is a fact and is mostly caused by natural changes.
Almost one-in-five respondents (18%) refer to global warming as a theory that has not yet been proven—a proportion that includes 22% of Canadians aged 55 and over and 36% of those who voted for the Conservative Party in the 2015 federal election.
Across the country, two thirds of Canadians (66%) say it is more important to them to protect the environment, even at the risk of hampering economic growth.
A significantly smaller proportion of respondents (22%) say they would prefer to foster economic growth, even at the risk of damaging the environment.
“Political allegiance plays a big role in the struggle between environmental stewardship and economic development,” says Mario Canseco, President of Research Co. “While more than three-in-five Canadians who voted for the Liberals or the New Democrats in 2015 believe environmental protection is paramount, the proportion falls to 47% among Conservative voters.”
Half of Canadians (50%) think the current federal government is paying the right amount of attention to the environment, including 59% of Liberal voters.
Conversely, 31% of Canadians believe Ottawa is not paying enough attention to the environment, including 40% of New Democrat voters in 2015.
About one-in-six Canadians (14%) think the federal government is paying too much attention to the environment, including 43% of Conservative voters.
Results are based on an online study conducted from December 17 to December 20, 2018, among 1,000 adults in Canada. The data has been statistically weighted according to Canadian census figures for age, gender and region. The margin of error—which measures sample variability—is +/- 3.1 percentage points, nineteen times out of twenty.
Energy, Environment, Public Policy, Technology Canada
Ottawa’s Pipeline Actions Affect Views in British Columbia
May 31, 2018 June 7, 2019 By Mario Canseco
Three-in-four residents are uncomfortable with using taxpayer money to subsidize a foreign company, half say they are now “less likely” to vote for the Liberal Party at the federal level, and a majority believes the provincial government has made the right decisions.
Vancouver, BC [May 31, 2018] – Many British Columbians appear disappointed about the way Ottawa has handled Kinder Morgan’s oil-tanker-pipeline proposal, a new Research Co. poll has found.
In the online survey of a representative sample of British Columbians, three-in-four residents (76%) say they are uncomfortable with the idea of the federal government using taxpayer money to subsidize a foreign company.
The survey was conducted from May 25 to May 28, 2018, after the federal government expressed its willingness to “indemnify the Trans Mountain expansion against unnecessary delays”, but before Ottawa announced on May 29 that it was purchasing the existing pipeline and its expansion project for $4.5 billion.
Across the province, 57% of residents think the federal government made the wrong decision in announcing it would use taxpayer money to indemnify Kinder Morgan’s backers for any financial loss, and 49% say they are “less likely” to vote for the governing party in the next federal election—a proportion that includes 36% of residents who cast a ballot for Liberal candidates in 2015.
“British Columbians are evidently concerned about specific aspects of the pipeline proposal, but there are no conflictive views when it comes to the performance of the federal government,” says Mario Canseco, President at Research Co. “The federal Liberals, who had one of their best performances in the province in 2015, now stand to lose more than a third of their support base.”
Across the province, 52% of residents say they agree with Kinder Morgan’s proposal to build new oil tanker-pipeline structure, while 44% disagree with it. However, 54% agree with the B.C government’s stance that Kinder Morgan’s oil-tanker-pipeline proposal threatens the health and safety of residents.
In addition, 50% of British Columbians believe the provincial government has made the right decision by filing a case in the B.C. Court of Appeal asking if the province has jurisdiction to regulate the transport of oil through its territory, and 51% disagree with the notion that the federal government should do “anything necessary to get the pipeline built”.
Results are based on an online study conducted from May 25 to May 28, 2018, among 1,255 adults in British Columbia. The data has been statistically weighted according to Canadian census figures for age, gender and region in British Columbia. The margin of error—which measures sample variability—is +/- 2.8 percentage points, nineteen times out of twenty.
Photo Credit: Peter Graham.
Energy, Environment, Public Policy British Columbia
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Published April 16, 2019 2:00 pm, Via NYC
Via and King County Metro Deploy Microtransit Service Connecting Seattle and Tukwila Residents to Public Transit
The new first- and last-mile service will support five major Sound Transit Link light rail stations
April 16, 2019 (Seattle, WA) — Via, the world’s leading provider and developer of on-demand shared mobility solutions, announced today a new microtransit deployment in Seattle, Washington aiming to connect more residents to public transportation. In partnership with King County Metro, Sound Transit and the City of Seattle, the new service brings on-demand connections to five transit hubs, offering first- and last-mile service in southeast Seattle and Tukwila at no additional charge.
Starting April 16, Via will offer service to five Sound Transit Link light rail stations: Mount Baker, Columbia City, Othello, Rainier Beach, and Tukwila International Boulevard. Customers also have the choice to hop on board one of the many Metro bus routes that connect to the Link light rail stations, further connecting the residents of King County.
“Via’s technology is redefining mobility across the globe, and we are thrilled to partner with King County Metro, an innovation-forward agency, to provide residents with a convenient, affordable, and congestion-reducing dynamic transportation alternative,” said Daniel Ramot, Co-founder and CEO of Via. “Via’s powerful passenger matching and vehicle routing algorithm is the solution to solving the first-and-last mile challenge, seamlessly integrating into the existing public transit infrastructure to connect residents to transit hubs in their communities.”
The year-long pilot project is partly funded by $2.7 million from the voter-approved Seattle Transportation Benefit District. Sound Transit also successfully applied for a Mobility on Demand Sandbox grant from the Federal Transit Administration to test the effectiveness of providing on-demand ride-share connections to transit stations.
“We are making it more convenient than ever to hop on board our high-capacity regional transit system,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine. “The on-demand service we are bringing to southeast Seattle and Tukwila reflects our commitment to outstanding customer service, making it easy to take transit to work, school, or play, and back home again.”
Commuters, students, and visitors can download the Via app or call 206-258-7739 to book a ride. All ORCA public transportation passes are accepted upon boarding Via vehicles and will automatically apply as a transfer toward a Metro bus or Link light rail trip. Standard Metro fares apply.
Via to Transit will make it more convenient for customers to connect with the region’s growing transit system. On-demand services like this make it easier for commuters who do not own a car or prefer not to drive and park, live within a long walking distance of a transit hub, or can’t find open spaces at park-and-rides to take transit.
Via has been tapped by cities and transportation players around the world to help re-engineer public transit from a regulated system of rigid routes and schedules to a fully dynamic, on-demand network. Via now has more than 60 launched and pending deployments in more than 15 countries. To learn more about Via, visit www.platform.ridewithvia.com.
About Via
Via is re-engineering public transit, from a regulated system of rigid routes and schedules to a fully dynamic, on-demand network. Via’s mobile app connects multiple passengers who are headed the same way, allowing riders to seamlessly share a premium vehicle. First launched in New York City in September 2013, the Via platform operates in the United States and in Europe through its joint venture with Mercedes-Benz Vans, ViaVan. Via’s technology is also deployed worldwide through dozens of partner projects with public transportation agencies, private transit operators, taxi fleets, private companies, and universities, seamlessly integrating with public transit infrastructure to power cutting-edge on-demand mobility. For more information, visit www.platform.ridewithvia.com.
King County Metro Seattle Sound Transit Tukwila
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You searched for +publisher:"University of Arizona" +contributor:("Beezley, William H."). Showing records 1 – 30 of 35 total matches.
1. Merriam-Castro, Kelley Kathleen. Cantando La Madre Patria: Mexican Musical Heritage in Tucson, 1939-1983 .
Degree: 2017, University of Arizona
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/626745
► The maintenance, performance, and practice of Mexican music formed part of a resistance effort against cultural, political, economic, gendered, and geographic marginalization throughout the course… (more)
▼ The maintenance, performance, and practice of Mexican music formed part of a resistance effort against cultural, political, economic, gendered, and geographic marginalization throughout the course of the twentieth century in Tucson, Arizona. This project defines iconic, popular Mexican music as música cósmica, a term inspired by José Velasco’s raza cósmica, and which refers to the music’s role as a unifying cultural expression for individuals of Mexican descent in Tucson and other diaspora communities. This project draws from new and archived interviews, newspapers, recorded performances, radio programs, and other ephemera of Tucson’s musical past to outline how la música cósmica formed part of an organic cultural expression of the people of the U.S. southwest, one that informed and was informed by the corpus being developed and promoted out of Mexico City. The process of maintaining la música cósmica in Tucson as a source of collective identity and resistance involved a deep commitment to maintaining musical places, spaces, and talents in the face of political, social, and geographic marginalization, including the physical destruction of Mexican homes and businesses in the name of urban renewal. Community leaders and music teachers viewed the teaching of música cósmica to Tucson youth as part of a social justice educational revolution, yet to teach the music they first had to overcome the internalization of anti-Mexican sentiment that viewed Mexican cultural expressions as inferior and overtly feminine. They reclaimed pride in this marginalized identity, the feminized fatherland or madre patria, through reframing the interpretation of the music as a cultural expression requiring precision, excellence, and that held monetary value. Music teachers employed a commitment to excellence and an insistence on paid performances to transform the perception of the music from that of an expression of inferior culture to one worthy of pride, respect, and admiration. Tucsonans approached the teaching and performing of la música cósmica with a profound sense of duty, one that inspired heroic acts of dedication and united Tucsonans of Mexican descent in spite of otherwise deep and painful divisions over political ideologies, popular tastes, skin color, personal experience, and the process of social change. The deep scar left by urban renewal, neighborhood demolition, and family relocation left many bitter divisions among members of Tucson’s community of Mexican descent. Nonetheless, la música cósmica continued to play a unifying role, and Tucsonans came together across these differences to ensure its survival, and to ensure their own cultural survival in the city´s public narrative as a result. By the 1980s, Tucson boasted numerous youth mariachi programs and hosted the first annual International Mariachi Conference, converting a city that continued to struggle with its collective identity into a global center for the teaching and performing of Mexican music. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Beezley, William H. (committeemember), Sturman, Janet (committeemember), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Culture; Identity; Mexican-American; Music; Southwest; Tucson
Merriam-Castro, K. K. (2017). Cantando La Madre Patria: Mexican Musical Heritage in Tucson, 1939-1983 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/626745
Merriam-Castro, Kelley Kathleen. “Cantando La Madre Patria: Mexican Musical Heritage in Tucson, 1939-1983 .” 2017. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/626745.
Merriam-Castro, Kelley Kathleen. “Cantando La Madre Patria: Mexican Musical Heritage in Tucson, 1939-1983 .” 2017. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Merriam-Castro KK. Cantando La Madre Patria: Mexican Musical Heritage in Tucson, 1939-1983 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2017. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/626745.
Merriam-Castro KK. Cantando La Madre Patria: Mexican Musical Heritage in Tucson, 1939-1983 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2017. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/626745
2. Herrera, Ricardo. Transnational Immigration Politics in Mexico, 1850-1920 .
► The current historiography on Mexican immigration from 1850 through 1920, has neglected to seriously study the forgotten migration of American citizens, not big capitalists as… (more)
▼ The current historiography on Mexican immigration from 1850 through 1920, has neglected to seriously study the forgotten migration of American citizens, not big capitalists as those have been well documented, seeking their American Dream in Mexico. Thus, my work seeks to understand how a very unstable international border dominated by constant Indian raids and filibuster attempts, led to transnational migration. A direct consequence of transnationalism is that it created a xenophobia mentality among the masses, and in some instances, a fetishism for anything foreign, especially among elites and the new breed of young politicians under President Diaz. I focus my analysis on the wave of American citizens, mostly former Civil War veterans, who in the 1860s decided to go to Mexico because President Benito Juarez offered them generous incentives such as tax exemptions and large land grants for colonization purposes, if they decided to join his military efforts to rid his country of the French invaders. Beyond just those white American immigrants, the dissertation also looks at the experience that black colonists encountered in a country that proudly boasted that it welcomed anyone, regardless of their skin color, so long as they adhered to the law. So I argue, that after analyzing the experience of several ethnic groups, such as the Italian immigrants in Cordoba, Veracruz, or the colonies of those immigrants seeking religious freedom such as the Mormons and Mennonites in northern Mexico, that indeed, Mexico was the Land of God and Liberty. This was the popular term used by runaway slaves from Texas in the 1850s and by many African Americans from Alabama who sold everything they had in 1895 to pay for their transportation cost to Mexico in search of a better life not found in the United States. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Beezley, William H. (committeemember), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Few, Martha (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Immigration; Late Nineteenth Century; Mexico; Transnationalism; History; Early Twentieth Century
Herrera, R. (2013). Transnational Immigration Politics in Mexico, 1850-1920 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/311468
Herrera, Ricardo. “Transnational Immigration Politics in Mexico, 1850-1920 .” 2013. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/311468.
Herrera, Ricardo. “Transnational Immigration Politics in Mexico, 1850-1920 .” 2013. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Herrera R. Transnational Immigration Politics in Mexico, 1850-1920 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2013. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/311468.
Herrera R. Transnational Immigration Politics in Mexico, 1850-1920 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2013. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/311468
3. Montaño García, Diana Jeaneth. Electrifying Mexico: Cultural Responses to a New Technology, 1880s-1960s .
► Electricity played a central role in imagining and crafting Mexico's path to modernity from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Since the late 19th… (more)
▼ Electricity played a central role in imagining and crafting Mexico's path to modernity from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Since the late 19th century, Mexican officials pursued the goals of order and progress, enrolling science and technology to help rationalize and modernize the nation, its economy, and society. The electrification of the country's capital was seen as a crucial step in bringing it to the level of modern European and American cities. Electricity as a primary engine of modern society permeated all aspects of life traversing histories of the city, transportation, labor, business, engineering, women, agriculture, medicine, death, public celebrations, nightlife, advertising, literature, architecture, to name a few. Taking technology as an extension of human lives, I argue that in their everyday life, in public and private spaces, government officials, technocrats, lawyers, doctors, business owners, housewives and ordinary citizens both sold and consumed electricity. They did so by crafting a discourse for an electrified future; and by shaping how the new technology was to be used. I examine newspapers, cookbooks, novels, women's magazines, traveler's accounts, memoirs, poems, songs, court, government and company records to show how by debating, embracing, rejecting, appropriating and transforming this technology, Mexicans actively shaped their country's quest for modernity. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Barickman, Bert J. (committeemember), Beezley, William H. (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: History
Montaño García, D. J. (2014). Electrifying Mexico: Cultural Responses to a New Technology, 1880s-1960s . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/560857
Montaño García, Diana Jeaneth. “Electrifying Mexico: Cultural Responses to a New Technology, 1880s-1960s .” 2014. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/560857.
Montaño García, Diana Jeaneth. “Electrifying Mexico: Cultural Responses to a New Technology, 1880s-1960s .” 2014. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Montaño García DJ. Electrifying Mexico: Cultural Responses to a New Technology, 1880s-1960s . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2014. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/560857.
Montaño García DJ. Electrifying Mexico: Cultural Responses to a New Technology, 1880s-1960s . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2014. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/560857
4. Alexander, Ryan M. FORTUNATE SONS OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION: MIGUEL ALEMÁN AND HIS GENERATION, 1920-1952 .
► Miguel Alemán, who in 1946 became the first civilian president to represent Mexico's official revolutionary party, ushered into national office a new generation of university-educated… (more)
▼ Miguel Alemán, who in 1946 became the first civilian president to represent Mexico's official revolutionary party, ushered into national office a new generation of university-educated professional politicians. Nicknamed the "cachorros (puppies) of the revolution," these leaders were dismissed as slick college boys by their opponents. Despite this objection, the rise to power of this new cadre represented a major turning point in the nation's political history. The prior ruling generation, composed of military officers who had faced calamitous violence during the Revolution, had carried out a decades-long social program that sought to address social-economic inequalities, redistribute resources, and draw previously marginalized groups into a politically, culturally, and ethnically unified nation. The members of the Alemán administration, by contrast, dedicated federal resources to promoting industrial development by implementing protectionist measures and constructing massive public works. Powerful hydroelectric dams and expansive irrigation networks supported large-scale commercial agriculture, while ambitious urban projects, including modernist housing complexes, planned suburbs, and the sprawling University City, symbolized the government's middle-class orientation. Despite these advances, their program came with high social costs: suspended redistributive policies and suppressed political liberties led many to accuse them of abandoning the legacy of social revolution they had inherited, an accusation bolstered by rampant corruption. While their policies fomented impressive economic growth over the next three decades, their focus on urban industry ultimately contributed to a debt crisis and a capital city overburdened by rapid inward migration. This controversial policy agenda and ambivalent legacy reflected their collective social formation. Their experiences as politically active students and as career politicians inculcated a sense of pragmatism that set them apart from their military predecessors. Once in office, Alemán and his colleagues exploited the geopolitical circumstances of the early Cold War period to solicit foreign loans as well as private investment, especially from the United States. These leaders fashioned a new image of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Carlos Denegri, a journalist during the Alemán years, captured the essence of this transformation best: "The Revolution," he lamented, "has gotten off its horse and into a Cadillac." Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Barickman, Bert J. (committeemember), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Beezley, William H. (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Mexican Revolution; Miguel Alemán; PRI; Technocrat; History; Civilian; Generation
Alexander, R. M. (2011). FORTUNATE SONS OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION: MIGUEL ALEMÁN AND HIS GENERATION, 1920-1952 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/216972
Alexander, Ryan M. “FORTUNATE SONS OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION: MIGUEL ALEMÁN AND HIS GENERATION, 1920-1952 .” 2011. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/216972.
Alexander, Ryan M. “FORTUNATE SONS OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION: MIGUEL ALEMÁN AND HIS GENERATION, 1920-1952 .” 2011. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Alexander RM. FORTUNATE SONS OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION: MIGUEL ALEMÁN AND HIS GENERATION, 1920-1952 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2011. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/216972.
Alexander RM. FORTUNATE SONS OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION: MIGUEL ALEMÁN AND HIS GENERATION, 1920-1952 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2011. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/216972
5. Coronado Guel, Luis Edgardo. Dios, Patria y mis Derechos: The Secularization of Patriotism and Popular Legal Culture in Revolutionary Mexico, 1917-1929 .
► Although secularization has early antecedents in Mexico's history, the generation who embodied the Constitutionalist faction of the 1910 Revolution undertook an unprecedented campaign to achieve… (more)
▼ Although secularization has early antecedents in Mexico's history, the generation who embodied the Constitutionalist faction of the 1910 Revolution undertook an unprecedented campaign to achieve it. Strong anticlerical provisions proclaimed in the 1917 Constitution were implemented and gradually escalated in intensity by the administrations of Presidents Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elias Calles. This ignited an armed uprising known as the Cristero Rebellion that arose in rural Mexico in 1926. Beyond the armed conflict, this dissertation analyzes the cultural effects caused by the implementation of such a legal and institutional agenda that reveal a substantial confrontation in the public sphere between two opposed concepts of society-religious and non-religious. As a result, society became highly polarized while the government pushed its secularization aims to the extreme as never before. New laws intervened more intensely on private rights, transforming people's everyday ideas about religion, nation, law, justice and citizenship. By looking at citizens' experiences with such law enforcement, this work elucidates how the state finally neutralized radical Catholicism by stigmatizing it as non-patriotic in the public sphere. This phenomenon that happened between 1917 and 1929 can be conceptualized as the secularization of patriotism and the transformation of people's notions of the legal system- defined as the legal popular culture- that was central to Mexico's social and cultural Revolution. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Beezley, William H. (committeemember), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Barickman, Bert J. (committeemember), Sturman, Janet L. (committeemember), Jenkins, Jennifer (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Cultural; Intellectual and Legal History; Mexican Revolution & Cristero Rebellion; Modern Mexico; Popular Legal Culture; Film and Music; Secularization; History; Church & State
Coronado Guel, L. E. (2016). Dios, Patria y mis Derechos: The Secularization of Patriotism and Popular Legal Culture in Revolutionary Mexico, 1917-1929 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/621436
Coronado Guel, Luis Edgardo. “Dios, Patria y mis Derechos: The Secularization of Patriotism and Popular Legal Culture in Revolutionary Mexico, 1917-1929 .” 2016. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/621436.
Coronado Guel, Luis Edgardo. “Dios, Patria y mis Derechos: The Secularization of Patriotism and Popular Legal Culture in Revolutionary Mexico, 1917-1929 .” 2016. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Coronado Guel LE. Dios, Patria y mis Derechos: The Secularization of Patriotism and Popular Legal Culture in Revolutionary Mexico, 1917-1929 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2016. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/621436.
Coronado Guel LE. Dios, Patria y mis Derechos: The Secularization of Patriotism and Popular Legal Culture in Revolutionary Mexico, 1917-1929 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2016. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/621436
6. Wysocki, David James. Exercising the Cosmic Race: Mexican Sporting Culture and Mestizo Citizens .
► Since the achievement of independence, Mexican officials looked for ways to bring together a country of many disparate parts into a single modern nation. Indeed,… (more)
▼ Since the achievement of independence, Mexican officials looked for ways to bring together a country of many disparate parts into a single modern nation. Indeed, like their neighbors to the north, many officials supported programs to forge disciplined, productive, and selfless citizens capable of guiding the country in the future through cutting-edge educational programs. When a nearly fifty-year period of civil war and instability came to an end with the rise of dictator-president Porfirio Diaz (1876-1911), the general promoted the first sports programs to toughen up and straighten out a citizenry his cabinet believed had weakened in the country's many refurbished cities. These programs were, nevertheless, exclusionary in practice. The "Indian Problem," as many public officials called it, remained a primary concern as the supposed natural backwardness of the masses was interpreted as a societal disease that, for many, had no known cure. Diaz's presidency, which directed money and attention to wealthy urban centers to the detriment of the countryside, came to end when the masses rose with workers and women to take the government. This social revolution, which began in 1910, was the first in the world and brought to power a generation of idealistic leaders from all walks of life. These leaders took on the country's most desperate problems with creative cultural programs that were often guided by science. For revolutionaries, sports became a primary means of transforming the disparate masses into ideal athlete-citizens under a mestizo-aesthetic that were enlightened by science and willing to sacrifice personal ambition for the greater good. Officials from the military, public health, and education sectors crafted plans to mold citizens based on their visions of the revolution, but women and indigenous people did as well. In some ways these programs failed to meet the lofty expectations of the most idealistic leaders. In others, the revolutionary sports programs were among the most successful government programs created. The work completed between 1920 and 1946 in sports culture and physical education set the stage for some of the country’s greatest sports accomplishments that followed, including winning the right to host the Pan-American Games in 1955 and the Olympics in 1968. Scholars have debated the importance of sports in politics and society for decades, but even though Mexican historians have extensively analyzed revolutionary cultural programs, study on sports has been relegated to a footnote. This dissertation argued that sports were, in fact, considered a primary means of transforming the supposedly backwards masses into ideal citizens for officials in nearly all official departments. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Beezley, William H. (committeemember), Pieper-Mooney, Jadwiga (committeemember), Pérez, Erika (committeemember), Gonzales, Patrisia (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Ideal Citizens; Jose Vasconcelos; Mexico; Physical Education; Revolution; Sports
Wysocki, D. J. (2017). Exercising the Cosmic Race: Mexican Sporting Culture and Mestizo Citizens . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/625658
Wysocki, David James. “Exercising the Cosmic Race: Mexican Sporting Culture and Mestizo Citizens .” 2017. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/625658.
Wysocki, David James. “Exercising the Cosmic Race: Mexican Sporting Culture and Mestizo Citizens .” 2017. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Wysocki DJ. Exercising the Cosmic Race: Mexican Sporting Culture and Mestizo Citizens . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2017. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/625658.
Wysocki DJ. Exercising the Cosmic Race: Mexican Sporting Culture and Mestizo Citizens . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2017. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/625658
7. Gomez, Rocio. Poisoning the Well: Mining, Water, and Public Health in Zacatecas, Mexico (1880-1942) .
► After the Mining Code of 1884, Zacatecas residents saw the mining industry encroach on their water sources and menace the public health of the city.… (more)
▼ After the Mining Code of 1884, Zacatecas residents saw the mining industry encroach on their water sources and menace the public health of the city. The Code allowed for the privatization of land by foreign nationals, denouncements of mines, and water rights to local sources. Municipal officials and residents soon faced a shortage of drinking water and firewood as severe drought settled in the region, along with a devastating monetary crisis. Residents voiced public health concerns with cholera, floods, and abattoirs and pushed for investment in water infrastructure, rabies vaccines, and drainage projects. Miners established unions to represent their claims in injuries and to have silicosis-tuberculosis recognized as an occupational disease. Using public and private archives, newspapers, union documents, and government correspondence, this study demonstrates how municipal officials and mining companies understood public health and occupational health, and to what extent residents tolerated the industry's hold on water. While the historiography of the city emphasizes the economics of colonial silver mining, this study examines the social and environmental links between the industry and the city as mining companies blocked union activity and water management efforts. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Beezley, William H. (committeemember), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Barickman, Bert J. (committeemember), Morrissey, Katherine (committeemember), Weiner, Douglas (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Modern Mexican History; Occupational Health; Porfiriato; Water; Zacatecas; History; Mining History
Gomez, R. (2014). Poisoning the Well: Mining, Water, and Public Health in Zacatecas, Mexico (1880-1942) . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/332848
Gomez, Rocio. “Poisoning the Well: Mining, Water, and Public Health in Zacatecas, Mexico (1880-1942) .” 2014. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/332848.
Gomez, Rocio. “Poisoning the Well: Mining, Water, and Public Health in Zacatecas, Mexico (1880-1942) .” 2014. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Gomez R. Poisoning the Well: Mining, Water, and Public Health in Zacatecas, Mexico (1880-1942) . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2014. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/332848.
Gomez R. Poisoning the Well: Mining, Water, and Public Health in Zacatecas, Mexico (1880-1942) . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2014. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/332848
8. Henson, Elizabeth. Madera 1965: Obsessive Simplicity, the Agrarian Dream, and Che .
► On September 23, 1965, a small group of campesinos, teachers, and students attacked the army base in Madera, Chihuahua. In Mexico, this attack is widely… (more)
▼ On September 23, 1965, a small group of campesinos, teachers, and students attacked the army base in Madera, Chihuahua. In Mexico, this attack is widely considered to be the first of the socialist armed movements of the late 1960s and‘70s, inspiring the 23rd of September League and others. Nearly all the existing literature focuses on the group’s turn to armed struggle - but is this what we should remember them for? The attack was preceded by five years of public mobilizations in support of the agrarian struggle and broader demands, involving vast numbers throughout the state, in a movement that transcended political parties and engaged in direct action. It was this broad social movement that nourished and gave birth to the armed movement; it was as innovative as Arturo Gámiz’s application of Che’s Guerra de Guerrillas to the sierra. I further argue that the armed struggle itself, which developed in the remote backlands, derived as much from a long tradition of armed self-defense endemic to the region as it did to the Cuban example. I also look at the participation of women, both voluntary and involuntary, in these events and the uses to which the assault on the base has been put in recent times. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Womack, John R., Jr. (committeemember), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Lanza, Fabio (committeemember), Beezley, William H. (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Agrarian struggles; Chihuahua; Revolutionary movements; History; 1960s
Henson, E. (2015). Madera 1965: Obsessive Simplicity, the Agrarian Dream, and Che . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/560861
Henson, Elizabeth. “Madera 1965: Obsessive Simplicity, the Agrarian Dream, and Che .” 2015. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/560861.
Henson, Elizabeth. “Madera 1965: Obsessive Simplicity, the Agrarian Dream, and Che .” 2015. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Henson E. Madera 1965: Obsessive Simplicity, the Agrarian Dream, and Che . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2015. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/560861.
Henson E. Madera 1965: Obsessive Simplicity, the Agrarian Dream, and Che . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2015. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/560861
9. Huntley, Allison. The Children of the Cosmic Race: The Planning and Celebration of the 1968 Cultural Olympics in Mexico City .
► In his seminal 1925 essay, Mexican educator José Vasconcelos argued that his nation was a product of the biological and cultural union of the indigenous… (more)
▼ In his seminal 1925 essay, Mexican educator José Vasconcelos argued that his nation was a product of the biological and cultural union of the indigenous and the European after whom he named his work: the cosmic race (la raza cósmica). This idea became the backbone of national identity in the years to come, and it influenced art, education, and architecture in the country. A generation later, those who were born, received their educations, and began their professional lives in that cultural milieu planned the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City where they sought to put this vision of their identity and nation on display. As a part of this effort, the Organizing Committee of the XIX Olympiad held a yearlong festival called the Cultural Olympics that brought dancers, musicians, architects, artwork, and scientific exhibits to Mexico from around the world. The goal of the cultural program was to allow participants the opportunity to present their national histories, art, and research to a global audience in an atmosphere of cooperation and friendship. With these events, the planners sought to establish their contributions to the Olympic Movement as well as to the international community. Thus, understanding them offers a way to consider the lasting impact of Vasconcelos’s work and contextualize the legacies of the 1968 Games that occurred in a year fraught with political and social upheaval. My research focuses on archival and published sources such as the brochures, pamphlets, and reports produced by the Department of Artistic and Cultural Activities. I also utilized periodicals, published research, and an interview that capture the reactions of coordinators, participants and spectators. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Lanza, Fabio (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: 1968; Cold War; Mexico; Olympics
Huntley, A. (2018). The Children of the Cosmic Race: The Planning and Celebration of the 1968 Cultural Olympics in Mexico City . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/630250
Huntley, Allison. “The Children of the Cosmic Race: The Planning and Celebration of the 1968 Cultural Olympics in Mexico City .” 2018. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/630250.
Huntley, Allison. “The Children of the Cosmic Race: The Planning and Celebration of the 1968 Cultural Olympics in Mexico City .” 2018. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Huntley A. The Children of the Cosmic Race: The Planning and Celebration of the 1968 Cultural Olympics in Mexico City . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2018. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/630250.
Huntley A. The Children of the Cosmic Race: The Planning and Celebration of the 1968 Cultural Olympics in Mexico City . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2018. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/630250
10. Macias, Marco A. Imagining Villa: An Examination of Francisco “Pancho” Villa through Popular Culture and Collective Memory, 1910-2015 .
► Villa’s memory still permeates the fabric of Mexican society throughout popular culture and collective memory. Why Villa survives through myth continues relatively unexplored. To analyze… (more)
▼ Villa’s memory still permeates the fabric of Mexican society throughout popular culture and collective memory. Why Villa survives through myth continues relatively unexplored. To analyze the origins of the myth and it construction over time provides an understanding of how ordinary people participated in fashioning their own ideas of nationalism. This dissertation traces the myth of Villa as a social construct of ongoing inventions of traditions started in the 1910's and preserved in the 1920's by veterans that formed collective memories premised in the creation of the División del Norte. It further describes and analyses how from the 1930's onward, these collective memories were transplanted to a wider audience by mass media; further shaping imagined perceptions that in one way or another persist until our day. In crafting this discourse, I examine newspapers, music, political cartoons, comic books, movies, and ephemera to show how Villa’s image is a social/cultural construct brought together by the synergy of popular culture and collective memory that over the twentieth century produced a carefully woven, multi-faceted narrative. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Jenkins, Jennifer (committeemember), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Collective Memory; Mexico; Pancho Villa; Popular Culture; Revolution
Macias, M. A. (2018). Imagining Villa: An Examination of Francisco “Pancho” Villa through Popular Culture and Collective Memory, 1910-2015 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/628477
Macias, Marco A. “Imagining Villa: An Examination of Francisco “Pancho” Villa through Popular Culture and Collective Memory, 1910-2015 .” 2018. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/628477.
Macias, Marco A. “Imagining Villa: An Examination of Francisco “Pancho” Villa through Popular Culture and Collective Memory, 1910-2015 .” 2018. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Macias MA. Imagining Villa: An Examination of Francisco “Pancho” Villa through Popular Culture and Collective Memory, 1910-2015 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2018. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/628477.
Macias MA. Imagining Villa: An Examination of Francisco “Pancho” Villa through Popular Culture and Collective Memory, 1910-2015 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2018. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/628477
11. Howard, Sarah E. La Verdad Cómica: Rius, La Contracultura Mexicana, y Una Ficción Fundamental No Oficial .
► Eduardo del Río (known as Rius) proved a fierce political activist and prolific comic book creator. He challenged the successes of the Revolution, exposed weaknesses… (more)
▼ Eduardo del Río (known as Rius) proved a fierce political activist and prolific comic book creator. He challenged the successes of the Revolution, exposed weaknesses in the government, and provided a voice willing to say something aloud. Unlike most in the comic book industry, del Río held strong leftist political inclinations and campaigned against, among other things, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, U.S. policies in Mexico, and the Catholic Church. Comic books, along with other forms of popular culture, hold an important role in the cultural identity of the nation’s people. Del Río’s work became a part of the continual comic book exchange of its period. His series, Los supermachos (1967-1981) and Los agachados (1968-1977), solidified his role in national identity construction. Comics hold a place in cultural memory and identity construction far more lasting than the inexpensive paper they are printed upon. It is in part because of the persistent nature of comics that an eighty-three-year-old virtual recluse could be considered not only culturally relevant but esteemed. There is no correct way to study popular culture. The closest a scholar can come is to approach the topic openly and from all directions. Popular culture derives power from its fluid, ever-changing, unmeasurable nature. A close study of the work of a man who challenged the status quo provides entry into a field of study that itself questions hundreds of years of history awash in timelines, memorized dates, and military history. Pick up a comic book and dive into the possibilities. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Tatum, Charles (committeemember), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Comics; History; Latin American History; Modern Mexico; Poplar Culture
Howard, S. E. (2019). La Verdad Cómica: Rius, La Contracultura Mexicana, y Una Ficción Fundamental No Oficial . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/631282
Howard, Sarah E. “La Verdad Cómica: Rius, La Contracultura Mexicana, y Una Ficción Fundamental No Oficial .” 2019. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/631282.
Howard, Sarah E. “La Verdad Cómica: Rius, La Contracultura Mexicana, y Una Ficción Fundamental No Oficial .” 2019. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Howard SE. La Verdad Cómica: Rius, La Contracultura Mexicana, y Una Ficción Fundamental No Oficial . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2019. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/631282.
Howard SE. La Verdad Cómica: Rius, La Contracultura Mexicana, y Una Ficción Fundamental No Oficial . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2019. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/631282
12. Ronald, Rachael Leigh. Becoming Guatemalan-De Refugiada a Guatemalteca: The Counterinsurgency War and the Politics of Gender and Memory .
► Spanning 1982-1985, the Counterinsurgency War was the violent period of the county's thirty-six year civil war. The army under General Efrian Rios Montt targeted the… (more)
▼ Spanning 1982-1985, the Counterinsurgency War was the violent period of the county's thirty-six year civil war. The army under General Efrian Rios Montt targeted the Maya villages and communities throughout the Guatemalan Highlands with more than 400 recorded massacres in just a three year span. At the center of this study is the population of Guatemalans that left their country as refugees and later came back as retornados. The term retornado, reflected an emerging identity that stemmed from the new and transformative experiences of exile in Mexico. Their direct negotiations with the government reflected the new skills, organizational ability, and political capital that challenged the distribution of power in the family, community, and nation upon their return. The emergence of women's organizations demonstrated not only a shift in the politics of citizenship rights and inclusion, but also Latin American women's unique contributions to the development of feminist discourse. Advisors/Committee Members: Pieper-Mooney, Jadwiga (advisor), Beezley, William H. (committeemember), Oglesby, Elizabeth (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Mexico; Refugee; History; Feminism; Guatemala
Ronald, R. L. (2012). Becoming Guatemalan-De Refugiada a Guatemalteca: The Counterinsurgency War and the Politics of Gender and Memory . (Masters Thesis). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/228466
Ronald, Rachael Leigh. “Becoming Guatemalan-De Refugiada a Guatemalteca: The Counterinsurgency War and the Politics of Gender and Memory .” 2012. Masters Thesis, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/228466.
Ronald, Rachael Leigh. “Becoming Guatemalan-De Refugiada a Guatemalteca: The Counterinsurgency War and the Politics of Gender and Memory .” 2012. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Ronald RL. Becoming Guatemalan-De Refugiada a Guatemalteca: The Counterinsurgency War and the Politics of Gender and Memory . [Internet] [Masters thesis]. University of Arizona; 2012. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/228466.
Ronald RL. Becoming Guatemalan-De Refugiada a Guatemalteca: The Counterinsurgency War and the Politics of Gender and Memory . [Masters Thesis]. University of Arizona; 2012. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/228466
13. Kiddle, Amelia Marie. La Politica del Buen Amigo: Mexican-Latin American Relations during the Presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, 1934-1940 .
► Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940) did more than any other president to fulfill the goals of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, by nationalizing the oil industry, establishing… (more)
▼ Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940) did more than any other president to fulfill the goals of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, by nationalizing the oil industry, establishing rural schools, distributing an unprecedented amount of land to peasants, and encouraging the organization of workers. To gain international support for this domestic reform programme, the Cardenas government promoted these accomplishments to other Latin American nations. I argue that Cardenas attempted to attain a leadership position in inter-American relations by virtue of his pursuit of social and economic justice in domestic and foreign policy. I investigate the Cardenas government's projection of a Revolutionary image of Mexico and evaluate its reception in Latin America. In doing so, this dissertation expands the analysis of foreign policy to show that Mexico's relations with its Latin American neighbours were instrumental in shaping its foreign relations. I argue that the intersections between culture and diplomacy were central to this process. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Barickman, Bert J. (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Cardenas; Lazaro; 1895-1970; Latin America - Foreign Relations - 20th Century; Mexico - Foreign Relations - 1910-1946; Mexico - History - 1910-1946; Mexico - History - Revolution; 1934-1940 - Diplomatic History; Popular Culture - Mexico
Kiddle, A. M. (2010). La Politica del Buen Amigo: Mexican-Latin American Relations during the Presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, 1934-1940 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193655
Kiddle, Amelia Marie. “La Politica del Buen Amigo: Mexican-Latin American Relations during the Presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, 1934-1940 .” 2010. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193655.
Kiddle, Amelia Marie. “La Politica del Buen Amigo: Mexican-Latin American Relations during the Presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, 1934-1940 .” 2010. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Kiddle AM. La Politica del Buen Amigo: Mexican-Latin American Relations during the Presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, 1934-1940 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2010. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193655.
Kiddle AM. La Politica del Buen Amigo: Mexican-Latin American Relations during the Presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, 1934-1940 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2010. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193655
14. Mehas, Shayna Rene. Religious Devotion: Piety, Print, and Practice in Mexico City, 1750-1821 .
► Mexico City experienced a dramatic increase in the publication of religious devotionals that promoted individual prayer in the late eighteenth and into the nineteenth century.… (more)
▼ Mexico City experienced a dramatic increase in the publication of religious devotionals that promoted individual prayer in the late eighteenth and into the nineteenth century. These publications reveal a focus on the individual's internal spirituality, a characteristic of enlightened thinking, and the emphasis on a new form of piety being disseminated by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Simultaneously, they were directed at a new readership among ordinary men and women, more of whom were literate, a product of recent reforms in primary education. This increase in the distribution and availability of these libritos and the growth of a new readership were indicative of a boom in print production and culture (coinciding with an ease in book censorship) and the influx of Enlightenment thinking (and subsequent reforms) on both an official and unofficial level. This dissertation examines the trends in religious devotion, print culture, education and literacy that were established during the second half of the eighteenth century through the struggle for Independence (1750-1821). It has been claimed that studying such practices, especially as they were experienced in the nineteenth century, is practically impossible due to their hidden nature, a claim rooted in the idea that characteristics of religiosity are inherently individual and familial, and so evaded documentation. I argue against this notion and demonstrate that sources on religious devotions and practices for this period, have not yet been closely examined. At the same time, I explore the shift in the prominence of religious practice from a baroque Tridentine form of Catholicism to a new form of piety (new piety) and how this new piety was extended to women and children as Bourbons confronted their place in society. Advisors/Committee Members: Gosner, Kevin (advisor), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Few, Martha (committeemember), Beezley, William H. (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Education; New Piety; Print; Religion; Women and Children; History; Colonial Mexico
Mehas, S. R. (2016). Religious Devotion: Piety, Print, and Practice in Mexico City, 1750-1821 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/620855
Mehas, Shayna Rene. “Religious Devotion: Piety, Print, and Practice in Mexico City, 1750-1821 .” 2016. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/620855.
Mehas, Shayna Rene. “Religious Devotion: Piety, Print, and Practice in Mexico City, 1750-1821 .” 2016. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Mehas SR. Religious Devotion: Piety, Print, and Practice in Mexico City, 1750-1821 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2016. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/620855.
Mehas SR. Religious Devotion: Piety, Print, and Practice in Mexico City, 1750-1821 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2016. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/620855
15. Ralston, Tyler Andrew. Social Change and Populist Politics in Brazil: The Baixada Fluminense and the Legendary Tenorio Cavalcanti, 1945-1964 .
► This project examines the Baixada Fluminense (or simply the Baixada), in metropolitan Rio. It specifically analyzes how rapid urbanization affected political and social change during… (more)
▼ This project examines the Baixada Fluminense (or simply the Baixada), in metropolitan Rio. It specifically analyzes how rapid urbanization affected political and social change during Brazil's reasonably democratic 1945-1964 period. More specifically, I analyze how local-level populist politics, the accelerated social transformation resulting from industrialization, urbanization, violence, the press, and changes in the countryside not only affected the areas residents, but reflected trends, transformations, and major shifts on the national level as well as in Latin America as a whole. In effect, I argue that national issues became local issues, and vice-versa. This project, through a close textual analysis of both archival and printed sources, analyzes the political career of Tenório Cavalcanti, the region's dominant politician and strongman (known as the "Man in the Black Cape") as a an entry point into various aspects political and social climates on both the local and national levels. The Baixada, previously an agricultural area, became a center of industry with a population of nearly one million by 1960. The new arrivals to the Baixada included impoverished migrants from the countryside as well many of the urban poor from nearby Rio de Janeiro who sought both employment and living accommodations within their financial means. Tenório, whose career as a populist politician spanned this entire period, reflected the demographic, social and political changes in his electorate. His gradual shift from right to left (as a result of an increasingly radical and organized lower class constituency in both the city and the countryside) exemplified this phenomenon. I also challenge the notion of the "Populist Republic"- the nickname commonly given to the 1945-1964 period. By fully acknowledging that populism existed on a large scale, and that it is generally viewed in a negative light from both the left and the right, I argue that many of the problems of the democratic period (and the populist politics that dominated the era) resulted as much from systemic limitations and an incomplete transition to democracy as it did from corruption and demagoguery (by-products of these very limitations). Advisors/Committee Members: Barickman, Bert J (advisor), Beezley, William H. (committeemember), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Ortiz, David (committeemember), Barickman, Bert J. (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Brazil; Cavalcanti; Rio de Janeiro; Tenório; urbanization; History; Baixada Fluminense
Ralston, T. A. (2013). Social Change and Populist Politics in Brazil: The Baixada Fluminense and the Legendary Tenorio Cavalcanti, 1945-1964 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/299108
Ralston, Tyler Andrew. “Social Change and Populist Politics in Brazil: The Baixada Fluminense and the Legendary Tenorio Cavalcanti, 1945-1964 .” 2013. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/299108.
Ralston, Tyler Andrew. “Social Change and Populist Politics in Brazil: The Baixada Fluminense and the Legendary Tenorio Cavalcanti, 1945-1964 .” 2013. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Ralston TA. Social Change and Populist Politics in Brazil: The Baixada Fluminense and the Legendary Tenorio Cavalcanti, 1945-1964 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2013. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/299108.
Ralston TA. Social Change and Populist Politics in Brazil: The Baixada Fluminense and the Legendary Tenorio Cavalcanti, 1945-1964 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2013. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/299108
16. Vogt, Wendy Alexandra. Ruptured Journeys, Ruptured Lives: Central American Migration, Transnational Violence, and Hope in Southern Mexico .
► This dissertation examines the processes by which Central American women and men face unprecedented forms of violence and exploitation as they migrate through Mexico. Central… (more)
▼ This dissertation examines the processes by which Central American women and men face unprecedented forms of violence and exploitation as they migrate through Mexico. Central Americans are regularly subject to abuse, extortion, rape, kidnapping, dismemberment and death as multiple actors profit off of their bodies, labor and lives. In turn, the political economy of violence and security along the migrant journey permeates into local Mexican communities, creating new tensions and social ruptures. Going beyond a simple accounting of abuse, I engage ethnography as a lens through which to understand the social effects of historical and contemporary processes of war, displacement, economic restructuring and social dislocation as people move through local spaces. Throughout the journey, the logics of migration and violence rework social relations based on race, gender and nationality where migrants are both victims of and agents within the often de-humanizing processes of human mobility. I use a lens of gender in particular to understand the ways larger processes impact the intimate spaces of people's lives and the intimate labors they perform as parents, migrants, partners, laborers and activists. I also examine the ways violence is not simply destructive, but also generates new possibilities for solidarity and political action through social movements around humanitarianism and migrant rights. In particular, I examine the emergence of a movement of Catholic-based migrant shelters and a transnational feminist movement of mothers and families of disappeared migrants. Advisors/Committee Members: Green, Linda B (advisor), Briggs, Laura J. (committeemember), Sheridan, Thomas E. (committeemember), Beezley, William H. (committeemember), Green, Linda B. (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Migration; Transnational Feminisms; Violence; Anthropology; Gender; Mexico and Central America
Vogt, W. A. (2012). Ruptured Journeys, Ruptured Lives: Central American Migration, Transnational Violence, and Hope in Southern Mexico . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/238677
Vogt, Wendy Alexandra. “Ruptured Journeys, Ruptured Lives: Central American Migration, Transnational Violence, and Hope in Southern Mexico .” 2012. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/238677.
Vogt, Wendy Alexandra. “Ruptured Journeys, Ruptured Lives: Central American Migration, Transnational Violence, and Hope in Southern Mexico .” 2012. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Vogt WA. Ruptured Journeys, Ruptured Lives: Central American Migration, Transnational Violence, and Hope in Southern Mexico . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2012. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/238677.
Vogt WA. Ruptured Journeys, Ruptured Lives: Central American Migration, Transnational Violence, and Hope in Southern Mexico . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2012. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/238677
17. Alexander, Anna Rose. Quotidian Catastrophes in the Modern City: Fire Hazards and Risk in Mexico's Capital, 1860-1910 .
► During the last half of the nineteenth century, Mexico City residents started to experience an increase in the frequency and intensity of fires. Residents cited… (more)
▼ During the last half of the nineteenth century, Mexico City residents started to experience an increase in the frequency and intensity of fires. Residents cited the presence of fossil fuels, the introduction of large factories and electrical apparatuses, and the growing population density as the primary reasons that urban fires became more prevalent. Fire hazards acted as catalysts for social change in Mexico's capital. They created a ripple effect across society, altering everything from city planning to medical advancements to business endeavors, shaping the ways that people experienced a period of significant urban growth. Fire forced people to adjust the ways that they lived their lives, the ways that they conducted business, and the ways that they thought about their city. Rather than looking at one great fire, this study contributes to a growing branch of disaster studies that examines the effects of much smaller, but far more frequent hazards. By drawing on the experiences of residents from different social groups (business owners, firemen, engineers, city officials, entrepreneurs, insurance agents, and physicians), this study shows how residents reacted differently to fire and how they feared and coped with the nearly constant presence of risk. Prevailing historiography of this time period in Mexico is often characterized by studies of the top-down projects of the dictator Porfirio Diaz, but this project shows how social actors collectively transformed their city in response to an environmental threat. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Beezley, William H. (committeemember), Few, Martha (committeemember), Morrissey, Katherine (committeemember), Barickman, Bert J. (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Mexico City; Porfirio Diaz; Risk; Urban; History; Fire; Hazards
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Alexander, A. R. (2012). Quotidian Catastrophes in the Modern City: Fire Hazards and Risk in Mexico's Capital, 1860-1910 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/238871
Alexander, Anna Rose. “Quotidian Catastrophes in the Modern City: Fire Hazards and Risk in Mexico's Capital, 1860-1910 .” 2012. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/238871.
Alexander, Anna Rose. “Quotidian Catastrophes in the Modern City: Fire Hazards and Risk in Mexico's Capital, 1860-1910 .” 2012. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Alexander AR. Quotidian Catastrophes in the Modern City: Fire Hazards and Risk in Mexico's Capital, 1860-1910 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2012. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/238871.
Alexander AR. Quotidian Catastrophes in the Modern City: Fire Hazards and Risk in Mexico's Capital, 1860-1910 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2012. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/238871
18. Moss, Zahra Marie. The Golden Treasures of Monte Alban: Mexican Representation and Exhibition Controversy, 1933-1936 .
► In 1932, Alfonso Caso, a rising professor of anthropology and employee of the Mexican National Museum of Anthropology and History made a huge archeological discovery;… (more)
▼ In 1932, Alfonso Caso, a rising professor of anthropology and employee of the Mexican National Museum of Anthropology and History made a huge archeological discovery; a centuries old tomb in the ancient citadel of Monte Alban located in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. In the months that followed the discovery the find was excavated, cleaned, cataloged and put on display. Altogether the cache consisted of hundreds of objects made of gold, precious stone, sea shells and human remains. Dubbed the Monte Alban Treasure by its discoverer, the find soon became a worldwide sensation. Public interest in a travelling exhibition exacerbated demands for the treasures public display in the United States. This dissertation traces the discovery, exhibition and consequences of the display of Monte Alban Treasures in the United States following the end of the armed phase of the Mexican Revolution. I argue that as the Revolution was in full swing, the existing new leadeship used archeology and art to dictate the cultural monikers that represented the country after the civil war. Defining the national character, establishing a cohesive cultural history and developing a visual narrative that coalesced with the governments aspirations informed the basis of the social changes fomented between 1921-1936. I argue that a series of popular art and archeological shows in Mexico and the United States in the late 1920's primed audiences for a revolutionary re-interpretation of Mexico's past that integrated indigenous populations into the history of the nation. This narrative minimized the impact and influence of European colonial powers and instead focused upon emphasizing the origins of Mexico's independent cultural identity. The display of Monte Alban Treasures in Mexico and the United States between 1922 and 1934 was part of this emergent revolutionary rhetoric. This research project explores the popular audience responses to the exhibit, but also charges alleging that the artifacts selected for display were fabricated. This twist demonstrates some of the major problems associated with using art and archeological evidence to represent broader political agendas. In this case, the Mexican government appropriated the Monte Alban Treasures, assigned them a narrative of indigenous appreciation and inclusivity and used their subsequent display to promote this abroad. This project will show how science and art were not contradicting fields of study, but fused to forge the public Revolutionary identity of Mexicans in the mid twentieth century. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Pieper-Mooney, Jadwiga (committeemember), Moore, Sarah J. (committeemember), Beezley, William H. (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: treasures; World's Fair; History; Alfonso Caso; Monte Alban
…Peasants and Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997)…
Moss, Z. M. (2012). The Golden Treasures of Monte Alban: Mexican Representation and Exhibition Controversy, 1933-1936 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/242379
Moss, Zahra Marie. “The Golden Treasures of Monte Alban: Mexican Representation and Exhibition Controversy, 1933-1936 .” 2012. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/242379.
Moss, Zahra Marie. “The Golden Treasures of Monte Alban: Mexican Representation and Exhibition Controversy, 1933-1936 .” 2012. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Moss ZM. The Golden Treasures of Monte Alban: Mexican Representation and Exhibition Controversy, 1933-1936 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2012. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/242379.
Moss ZM. The Golden Treasures of Monte Alban: Mexican Representation and Exhibition Controversy, 1933-1936 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2012. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/242379
19. Berger, Dina Michele. Pyramids by day, martinis by night: The development and promotion of Mexico's tourism industry, 1928-1946 .
► This dissertation on the development and promotion of Mexico's tourism industry reconstructs the making of what is today that nation's third most profitable industry. Forged… (more)
▼ This dissertation on the development and promotion of Mexico's tourism industry reconstructs the making of what is today that nation's third most profitable industry. Forged by Mexico's government in late 1928 as the cornerstone of state-led modernization programs, tourism became official business by 1929 when government officials, private investors, bankers and transportation companies agreed that it offered their nation an ideal vehicle toward progress once they began to rebuild after a long history of political violence and instability, shaky relations with the United States, economic underdevelopment and social revolution. Tourism suggests another framework for examining culture, politics and economics in Mexico following the revolution and during this period of intense nation building. More than just an economic solution, tourism fit into the state's broader cultural program to both modernize and unite Mexicans after the 1910 revolution. Tourism fostered nationalism and national unity. It encouraged the formation of tourist associations whose members pooled their resources to promote their nation's beauty and to finance infrastructure for the sake of national progress, peace and prosperity. Through tourism, government and private individuals debated and defined mexicanidad, or Mexicanness. In the end, promoters packaged a holiday in Mexico to U.S. tourists as a destination that embodied a harmonious convergence of modernity and antiquity – where one could visit the pyramids by day and drink martinis by night. By analyzing the formation, membership, activities and debates of official and private tourist groups between 1928 – 1946, this project reveals that to develop tourism the government relied on cooperation and capital from an elaborate network of promoters in Mexico and abroad. Moreover, Mexican financiers almost exclusively funded the construction of tourist infrastructure that visibly transformed Mexico by 1946 from a provincial, undeveloped nation to an urban, modern one. Scholars have examined these transformations as a product of President Miguel Aleman, 1946 – 52 whose administration was marked by corruption and U.S.-directed development. This research uncovers early origins of Mexican-led progress, and demonstrates how tourist development between 1928 – 1946 decidedly paved the way for Mexico's economic "miracle," and its era of political and social stability after World War II. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor).
Subjects/Keywords: History, Latin American.; Business Administration, Marketing.; Economics, Commerce-Business.
Berger, D. M. (2002). Pyramids by day, martinis by night: The development and promotion of Mexico's tourism industry, 1928-1946 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/279951
Berger, Dina Michele. “Pyramids by day, martinis by night: The development and promotion of Mexico's tourism industry, 1928-1946 .” 2002. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/279951.
Berger, Dina Michele. “Pyramids by day, martinis by night: The development and promotion of Mexico's tourism industry, 1928-1946 .” 2002. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Berger DM. Pyramids by day, martinis by night: The development and promotion of Mexico's tourism industry, 1928-1946 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2002. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/279951.
Berger DM. Pyramids by day, martinis by night: The development and promotion of Mexico's tourism industry, 1928-1946 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2002. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/279951
20. Rankin, Monica Ann. !Mexico, la patria!: Modernity, national unity, and propaganda during World War II .
► During the 1930s, Mexico was in the middle of a healing process after three decades of revolutionary turmoil and reform. The outbreak of revolution in… (more)
▼ During the 1930s, Mexico was in the middle of a healing process after three decades of revolutionary turmoil and reform. The outbreak of revolution in 1910 had created friction between various interest groups such as the Church, the labor movement, peasants, industrialists, and politicians. In the following decades, divisions among those groups intensified as the country struggled to resolve revolutionary conflict and, in the process, looked for someone to blame. As World War II approached, divisive domestic conditions prompted Mexican government officials to develop their own internal wartime agenda. World War II became a major turning point in the legacy of the Mexican Revolution. It gave the country an opportunity, for the first time since the revolution, to unite against a common external enemy, and to militarize as a united nation against that enemy. The government-sponsored propaganda campaign became an important tool for reuniting Mexicans. The government took advantage of the unity achieved during World War II to promote a modernization and industrialization program during and after the war. A close examination of wartime propaganda reveals aggressive calls to unity mixed with a subtle promotion of modernity and industrialization. In contrast to outside propaganda produced primarily by the United States, the Mexican government's wartime messages used nationalist rhetoric and symbols to defend the country's internal interests during and after the war. U.S. propaganda promoted the idea of the "American Way of Life," a concept which glorified a middle-class consumer lifestyle, led by the United States. While U.S. wartime messages frequently provoked resentment among Mexicans, they also largely succeeded in creating a demand for the consumer goods advertised in the propaganda campaign. Avila Camacho used that demand to solidify popular support for his industrialization agenda. By the end of the war, divisive revolutionary factions that had dominated in the 1930s found themselves significantly weakened by the government's wartime measures. Through a combination of policy and propaganda, President Manuel Avila Camacho put together a wartime program that allowed him to unite the country against a common, external enemy and to pursue an aggressive industrialization program. Most importantly, World War II allowed him to justify his industrialization program as a new direction for the Mexican Revolution. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor).
Subjects/Keywords: History; Latin American.
Rankin, M. A. (2004). !Mexico, la patria!: Modernity, national unity, and propaganda during World War II . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280531
Rankin, Monica Ann. “!Mexico, la patria!: Modernity, national unity, and propaganda during World War II .” 2004. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280531.
Rankin, Monica Ann. “!Mexico, la patria!: Modernity, national unity, and propaganda during World War II .” 2004. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Rankin MA. !Mexico, la patria!: Modernity, national unity, and propaganda during World War II . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2004. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280531.
Rankin MA. !Mexico, la patria!: Modernity, national unity, and propaganda during World War II . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2004. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280531
21. Kentnor, Julia Hartt. Vintage Matters: The Political Economy of Wine Cooperatives in San Rafael, Argentina .
► The wine industry in Mendoza exemplifies the ways that cooperatives in Latin America cope with globalization and neoliberal economic reform. Cooperatives are economic organizations that… (more)
▼ The wine industry in Mendoza exemplifies the ways that cooperatives in Latin America cope with globalization and neoliberal economic reform. Cooperatives are economic organizations that bridge social, political and economic worlds for their members, and also escort their members from the past into the present. In the wine industry, technological advancement is necessary to compete in a global market, but many local cooperatives resist investing in this type of change. The regional cooperative faces the challenge of providing a buyer for its member cooperatives while also selling a quality product to consumers. The financial success of the regional cooperative position it to provide its members economic support and possibly to foster a restructuring of wine production in Argentina. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor).
Subjects/Keywords: Cooperatives; Wine; Argentina; Mendoza
Kentnor, J. H. (2006). Vintage Matters: The Political Economy of Wine Cooperatives in San Rafael, Argentina . (Masters Thesis). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193259
Kentnor, Julia Hartt. “Vintage Matters: The Political Economy of Wine Cooperatives in San Rafael, Argentina .” 2006. Masters Thesis, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193259.
Kentnor, Julia Hartt. “Vintage Matters: The Political Economy of Wine Cooperatives in San Rafael, Argentina .” 2006. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Kentnor JH. Vintage Matters: The Political Economy of Wine Cooperatives in San Rafael, Argentina . [Internet] [Masters thesis]. University of Arizona; 2006. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193259.
Kentnor JH. Vintage Matters: The Political Economy of Wine Cooperatives in San Rafael, Argentina . [Masters Thesis]. University of Arizona; 2006. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193259
22. Mericle, Michele Jeanine. IMAGININGS AT THE JUDAS TREE: THE PARDON TALES OF "MISS MEXICO" .
► Imaginings at the Judas Tree: The Pardon Tales of "Miss A1exico " details the life story of Maria Teresa de Landa, winner of the "Miss… (more)
▼ Imaginings at the Judas Tree: The Pardon Tales of "Miss A1exico " details the life story of Maria Teresa de Landa, winner of the "Miss Mexico" pageant in 1928. Landa was to achieve yet greater notoriety when she was acquitted for the crime of killing her bigamous husband in a sensational jury trial held November, 1929. Using Natalie Zemon Davis's concept of the "pardon tale" as a window onto prevailing social mores, this study examines contestations regarding the feminine ideal; specifically, debates regarding the honor of "modem" women in 1920's Mexico City. The transitional nature of the legal system is also investigated. Throughout these investigations are woven themes of gender, modernity, tradition, law, and honor before the colorful and contentious backdrop of revolutionary Mexico City. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor).
Mericle, M. J. (2003). IMAGININGS AT THE JUDAS TREE: THE PARDON TALES OF "MISS MEXICO" . (Masters Thesis). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/627665
Mericle, Michele Jeanine. “IMAGININGS AT THE JUDAS TREE: THE PARDON TALES OF "MISS MEXICO" .” 2003. Masters Thesis, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/627665.
Mericle, Michele Jeanine. “IMAGININGS AT THE JUDAS TREE: THE PARDON TALES OF "MISS MEXICO" .” 2003. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Mericle MJ. IMAGININGS AT THE JUDAS TREE: THE PARDON TALES OF "MISS MEXICO" . [Internet] [Masters thesis]. University of Arizona; 2003. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/627665.
Mericle MJ. IMAGININGS AT THE JUDAS TREE: THE PARDON TALES OF "MISS MEXICO" . [Masters Thesis]. University of Arizona; 2003. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/627665
23. Toth, Castorila Unda. Pampa, Puchero, Petrona: An Argentine Culinary Trilogy .
► Argentina's emerging gastronomic cultures in the twentieth century have been the result of three fundamental ingredients: (first) abundance of meat and wheat (second) large and… (more)
▼ Argentina's emerging gastronomic cultures in the twentieth century have been the result of three fundamental ingredients: (first) abundance of meat and wheat (second) large and diverse immigrant populations, and (third) a highly influential cookbook writer. This thesis explores the development of Argentine cuisine over fifty years, from 1935 to present. This culinary series focuses on meat consuming habits, immigrants' contributions, and Dona Petrona de Gandulfo in integrating and restructuring the cuisine. Certain subjects such as the beginning of the television industry and changes in women's political rights are also considered. The thesis thus explains how Dofia Petrona' s example opened doors for the next generation of career women to challenge social and economic barriers. This thesis argues that the present cuisine can be characterized as the evolutionary process of a decentralized society. The gastronomic traditions are the cultural expression of a powerful middle class society fused with the elite's taste in food preferences. The amalgamation of those elements has produced the cuisine that is known today. This study is based upon an analysis of some of Dofia Petrona's cookbooks located in the Biblioteca Nacional de Buenos Aires, supplemented with popular periodicals such as El Hogar and printed materials obtained at the Escuela de cocina de Belgrano as well as interviews with chefs and culinary students, ~thnographic narrations from immigrant followers of Dona Petrona, and three culinary professionals who worked with her. The last part of this thesis deals briefly with the new gourmet attitude in that country. Others writers have deeply and amply addressed the matter of women's political rights; hence, I devote most of my attention to middle-class women and culinary patterns as the new hybrid expression of culture. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor).
Toth, C. U. (2007). Pampa, Puchero, Petrona: An Argentine Culinary Trilogy . (Masters Thesis). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/627661
Toth, Castorila Unda. “Pampa, Puchero, Petrona: An Argentine Culinary Trilogy .” 2007. Masters Thesis, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/627661.
Toth, Castorila Unda. “Pampa, Puchero, Petrona: An Argentine Culinary Trilogy .” 2007. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Toth CU. Pampa, Puchero, Petrona: An Argentine Culinary Trilogy . [Internet] [Masters thesis]. University of Arizona; 2007. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/627661.
Toth CU. Pampa, Puchero, Petrona: An Argentine Culinary Trilogy . [Masters Thesis]. University of Arizona; 2007. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/627661
24. Lopez, Amanda Marie. EL MANCO Y EL MARTIR: FUNERALS, THE FAMILY,AND POPULAR MEMORY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF ALVARO OBREGON, 1928-1929 .
► This thesis explores the aftermath of the assassination of President-elect Alvaro Obregon in Mexico City on July 17, 1928. It recounts the details of his… (more)
▼ This thesis explores the aftermath of the assassination of President-elect Alvaro Obregon in Mexico City on July 17, 1928. It recounts the details of his funeral ceremonies and the execution and funeral of his assassin, Jose de Leon Toral. The funerals present an opportunity to see how issues of nationality and gender are negotiated in cultural events. Furthermore, the thesis examines correspondence surrounding the assassination, including condolences and pardon requests, to demonstrate how men and women understood and accepted the concept of the reified Revolution. Finally, it discusses the memory of the assassination as expressed in corridos, literature, and commemorative events. This thesis demonstrates the effect of the assassination on the construction, reception, and memory of the myth of the Mexican Revolution and considers how issues of gender relate to the myth. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor).
Lopez, A. M. (2004). EL MANCO Y EL MARTIR: FUNERALS, THE FAMILY,AND POPULAR MEMORY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF ALVARO OBREGON, 1928-1929 . (Masters Thesis). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/628200
Lopez, Amanda Marie. “EL MANCO Y EL MARTIR: FUNERALS, THE FAMILY,AND POPULAR MEMORY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF ALVARO OBREGON, 1928-1929 .” 2004. Masters Thesis, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/628200.
Lopez, Amanda Marie. “EL MANCO Y EL MARTIR: FUNERALS, THE FAMILY,AND POPULAR MEMORY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF ALVARO OBREGON, 1928-1929 .” 2004. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Lopez AM. EL MANCO Y EL MARTIR: FUNERALS, THE FAMILY,AND POPULAR MEMORY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF ALVARO OBREGON, 1928-1929 . [Internet] [Masters thesis]. University of Arizona; 2004. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/628200.
Lopez AM. EL MANCO Y EL MARTIR: FUNERALS, THE FAMILY,AND POPULAR MEMORY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF ALVARO OBREGON, 1928-1929 . [Masters Thesis]. University of Arizona; 2004. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/628200
25. Salvato, Amy Baker. Recasting a nation: The reburial of Agustin de Iturbide .
► Agustin de Iturbide's countrymen proclaimed him the "Hero of Iguala" for securing Mexico's independence in 1821. By 1824, he lay in a humble tomb, executed… (more)
▼ Agustin de Iturbide's countrymen proclaimed him the "Hero of Iguala" for securing Mexico's independence in 1821. By 1824, he lay in a humble tomb, executed as a traitor. In October 1838, the government consummated the re-acceptance of Iturbide into the pantheon of heroes with an elaborate public reburial in the National Cathedral of Mexico City. Iturbide's reburial was less about forgiving past indiscretions than about bringing legitimacy to the current political party in power. In the mid-1830s, conservative forces regained control of the government from liberals led by Valentin Gomez Farias. Conservatives faced internal political and financial chaos, and the external threat of war in 1838. Through the ceremony, secular, ecclesiastic and military conservatives strengthened their political power and legitimacy, while reaffirming conservative national values and traditional social hierarchy. By incorporating religious and sociopolitical aspects, ceremony organizers hoped to bring order and stability to Mexico once again. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor).
Salvato, A. B. (1999). Recasting a nation: The reburial of Agustin de Iturbide . (Masters Thesis). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/291380
Salvato, Amy Baker. “Recasting a nation: The reburial of Agustin de Iturbide .” 1999. Masters Thesis, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/291380.
Salvato, Amy Baker. “Recasting a nation: The reburial of Agustin de Iturbide .” 1999. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Salvato AB. Recasting a nation: The reburial of Agustin de Iturbide . [Internet] [Masters thesis]. University of Arizona; 1999. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/291380.
Salvato AB. Recasting a nation: The reburial of Agustin de Iturbide . [Masters Thesis]. University of Arizona; 1999. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/291380
26. Matthews, Michael Alexander. Railway Culture and the Civilizing Mission in Mexico, 1876-1910 .
► The rapid growth of Mexico's railway networks represented the crowning achievement of the Porfiriato – that is, the regime headed by Porfirio Diaz, who ruled between… (more)
▼ The rapid growth of Mexico's railway networks represented the crowning achievement of the Porfiriato – that is, the regime headed by Porfirio Diaz, who ruled between 1876 and 1911. Having succeeded in bringing the internal stability needed for the growth and development of the economy, government officials repeatedly used the railroad as a symbol to highlight the accomplishments of Porfirian modernization and to legitimate the regime that had shed its liberal ideals and grown increasingly authoritarian. Boosters emphasized the ability of the government's railway project to bring civilization, to promote national unity, to increase commerce, and, even to whiten the population. At the same time, opposition groups, although not opposed to railway development per se, objected to the national costs and social hardships that resulted from the railway boom. Opponents, many of whom played influential roles in the Revolution (1910), exploited the symbolic and rhetorical power of the railroad to underscore the more negative aspects of Porfirian modernization and to question the so-called universal truths that defined the regime's civilizing mission. This study offers a radically different interpretation of how Porfirio Diaz maintained control of the country, stressing the importance of his supporter's success at exploiting the iconic power of the railway – the ultimate symbol of material progress – in literature, art, and pageantry. It offers a unique perspective on the outbreak of the 1910 Revolution, arguing that opponents of the regime used the railway as a metaphor to highlight the failures of the government's modernizing and civilizing mission, ideas also disseminated among the population in a myriad of cultural expressions. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Barickman, Bert (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Mexico; railways; social aspects; cultural aspects
Matthews, M. A. (2008). Railway Culture and the Civilizing Mission in Mexico, 1876-1910 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193985
Matthews, Michael Alexander. “Railway Culture and the Civilizing Mission in Mexico, 1876-1910 .” 2008. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193985.
Matthews, Michael Alexander. “Railway Culture and the Civilizing Mission in Mexico, 1876-1910 .” 2008. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Matthews MA. Railway Culture and the Civilizing Mission in Mexico, 1876-1910 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2008. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193985.
Matthews MA. Railway Culture and the Civilizing Mission in Mexico, 1876-1910 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2008. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193985
27. Pierce, Gretchen Kristine. Sobering the Revolution: Mexico's Anti-Alcohol Campaigns and the Process of State-Building, 1910-1940 .
► This dissertation examines the intimate connection between the State-building process and the temperance movement and asserts that neither project was merely imposed from the top… (more)
▼ This dissertation examines the intimate connection between the State-building process and the temperance movement and asserts that neither project was merely imposed from the top down, but rather, involved input from a variety of actors. As presidents worked to rebuild the federal government during the Mexican Revolution of 1910 to 1940, they also strove to rid the country of alcoholism. In particular, utilizing prejudiced notions of class, ethnicity, and gender, they targeted working-class and indigenous men, who they tried to transform into pacifistic patriarchs, efficient workers, and sober, responsible citizens. However, the case study of Sonora demonstrates that this federal project did not go uncontested. Presidents relied on governors and legislators to mandate temperance, mayors to enforce these laws, and citizens to follow them, but these people did not always willingly comply and thus policies often had to be modified. In other instances, ordinary people supported the anti-alcohol campaign, creating unofficial temperance leagues, petitioning the president to close more cantinas, or demanding that corrupt authorities obey alcohol legislation. Governors', mayors', and especially citizens' contributions to the anti-alcohol campaign and the State-building process may not have been equal to those of federal leaders, but both projects certainly benefited from the input of a diverse cross-section of society.This present research adds to and combines three historiographical fields on the history of alcohol, State-building, and the social and cultural components of revolutions. It is the first, full-length study of the anti-alcohol campaign during the Mexican Revolution and the only work about Mexico as of yet to examine temperance from the national, state, municipal, and popular perspective. This work also corroborates the argument of recent political scholars, demonstrating that the process of State formation was shaped by input from individuals on a variety of planes. Finally, this dissertation shows that the government's cultural policies, which included promoting high art, distributing propaganda, and carrying out campaigns such as the temperance movement, should not be seen as trivial. Rather, attempts to form a new, modern citizenry through these projects were a vital part of the State-building process and of social revolution in general. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Barickman, Bert (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Alcohol; Temperance; State-Building; Revolution; Mexico
Pierce, G. K. (2008). Sobering the Revolution: Mexico's Anti-Alcohol Campaigns and the Process of State-Building, 1910-1940 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194341
Pierce, Gretchen Kristine. “Sobering the Revolution: Mexico's Anti-Alcohol Campaigns and the Process of State-Building, 1910-1940 .” 2008. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194341.
Pierce, Gretchen Kristine. “Sobering the Revolution: Mexico's Anti-Alcohol Campaigns and the Process of State-Building, 1910-1940 .” 2008. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Pierce GK. Sobering the Revolution: Mexico's Anti-Alcohol Campaigns and the Process of State-Building, 1910-1940 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2008. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194341.
Pierce GK. Sobering the Revolution: Mexico's Anti-Alcohol Campaigns and the Process of State-Building, 1910-1940 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2008. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194341
28. Toxqui Garay, María Aurea. "El Recreo de los Amigos." Mexico City's Pulquerias during the Liberal Republic (1856-1911) .
► By 1909, Mexico City had a little more than 720,000 inhabitants, 250 schools, and almost 1,000 pulquerías -drinking establishments serving pulque, a fermented beverage made… (more)
▼ By 1909, Mexico City had a little more than 720,000 inhabitants, 250 schools, and almost 1,000 pulquerías -drinking establishments serving pulque, a fermented beverage made of the maguey plant. Today, pulquerías have almost disappeared; but just a century ago, people enjoyed gathering there. Since their beginnings in the 1530s, pulquerías became an integral part of the life of Mexico City’s inhabitants. These taverns offered pulque to take out, but far more importantly, a space where men and women drank, talked, danced, and enjoyed themselves as a part of their daily social life. These spaces represented an important place in the city’s lower-class culture and daily life. In this dissertation, I explore the social and cultural development of these businesses. I focus my discussion on the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century when there was a constant effort of making of Mexico a modern nation like England, France, or United States. Under the influence of liberalism, authorities increasingly sought to control the behavior of the population, especially in the public arena with the goal of creating hardworking and moral citizenry. They saw pulque as the core of social evils, and pulquerías, as centers where inebriated urban masses abandoned their daily routine, procrastinated, and fought. Consequently, authorities strictly regulated schedules, facilities, and all activities taking place in pulquerías. Patrons and owners resisted those regulations in different ways; especially customers, through their everyday practices, developed a vigorous and multi-faceted response to the processes of modernization. 13 Within these places, alcohol consumption fostered an environment of free interaction and gave men and women a platform in which they could demand and contest explanations about the behavior of their neighbors, partners, and coworkers. Their discussions and fights prove to be significant to the understanding of the regulation of the neighborhood dynamics as well as valves of escape during changing times. By analyzing the historical intersections of popular culture, nation building and modernization programs, and lower class responses to these reforms this dissertation contributes to the study of the cultural and social history of Mexico. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Barickman, Bert (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: popular culture; social interaction; alcohol consumption; community formation; pulque
Toxqui Garay, M. A. (2008). "El Recreo de los Amigos." Mexico City's Pulquerias during the Liberal Republic (1856-1911) . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194973
Toxqui Garay, María Aurea. “"El Recreo de los Amigos." Mexico City's Pulquerias during the Liberal Republic (1856-1911) .” 2008. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194973.
Toxqui Garay, María Aurea. “"El Recreo de los Amigos." Mexico City's Pulquerias during the Liberal Republic (1856-1911) .” 2008. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Toxqui Garay MA. "El Recreo de los Amigos." Mexico City's Pulquerias during the Liberal Republic (1856-1911) . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2008. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194973.
Toxqui Garay MA. "El Recreo de los Amigos." Mexico City's Pulquerias during the Liberal Republic (1856-1911) . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2008. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194973
29. Munoz, Maria L. O. "We Speak For Ourselves": The First National Congress of Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Indigenismo in Mexico, 1968-1982 .
► In the midst of a violent decade where the Mexican government used force to suppress insurgent and student unrest, the Indian population avoided such a… (more)
▼ In the midst of a violent decade where the Mexican government used force to suppress insurgent and student unrest, the Indian population avoided such a response by operating within official government parameters. The 1975 First National Congress of Indigenous Peoples of Mexico, though convened by the federal government, gave Indians an opportunity to claim a role in the complex political process of formulating a new version of national Indian policy while demanding self-determination. Through the congress, indigenous groups attempted to take the lead in shaping national programs to their needs and interests rather than merely responding to government initiatives. The congress marked a fundamental change in post-revolutionary politics, the most important restructuring and recasting of the relationship between local and regional indigenous associations and the federal government since the 1930s. Its history provides an important context for understanding more recent political disputes about indigenous autonomy and citizenship, especially in the aftermath of the Zapatista (EZLN) revolt in 1994. The 1975 Congress marked a watershed as it allowed for the advent of independent Indian organizations and proved to be momentous in the negotiation of political autonomy between indigenous groups and government officials. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Barickman, Bert J. (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Citizenship; Identity Politics; Indigenismo; Indigenous Mobilization; Nation-State Formation; Social Movements
Munoz, M. L. O. (2009). "We Speak For Ourselves": The First National Congress of Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Indigenismo in Mexico, 1968-1982 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194145
Munoz, Maria L O. “"We Speak For Ourselves": The First National Congress of Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Indigenismo in Mexico, 1968-1982 .” 2009. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194145.
Munoz, Maria L O. “"We Speak For Ourselves": The First National Congress of Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Indigenismo in Mexico, 1968-1982 .” 2009. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Munoz MLO. "We Speak For Ourselves": The First National Congress of Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Indigenismo in Mexico, 1968-1982 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2009. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194145.
Munoz MLO. "We Speak For Ourselves": The First National Congress of Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Indigenismo in Mexico, 1968-1982 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2009. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194145
30. Neufeld, Stephen. Servants of the Nation: The Military in the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876-1911 .
► The twilight of a tempestuous nineteenth-century saw the rise of a new order and a newly defined nation in Porfirian Mexico (1876-1911). Given the martial… (more)
▼ The twilight of a tempestuous nineteenth-century saw the rise of a new order and a newly defined nation in Porfirian Mexico (1876-1911). Given the martial background of General Porfirio Diaz, and the warfare that marked the times, military involvement in the modernizing country was not altogether surprising. But relative stability and technological advances now enabled a much reduced army to exert itself in unprecedented ways. Far out of proportion to their size, the armed forces absorbed half the national budget and penetrated every area of society with military officers making up, among other things, many of the most important politicians, engineers, and writers. Thousands of young men, often forcibly conscripted, entered a national army that extended the State into regions previously beyond centralized influence or surveillance. Yet the regime's ostentatious public rituals of parade and manoeuvre stood in stark contrast to the violent eradication of bandits, dissidents, and indigenous rebels. Hatred of Porfirian brutality and decadence has obscured the truly significant contributions the military made to the nascent Mexico.By devising and enacting their particular visions of the nation, and embodying it through practices that ranged from crime and duels to parades and battle, the military proved integral to the formation of nationalism and its constituent identities of gender, class, and racial organization. I contend that the role of the military offers important clues to the making of the modern nation. Both the history of its impact as an institution and the role of soldiers in civil society shed light on the historical roots of Mexican cultures and politics that persisted into the twentieth century, and offer insights into the roots of some persisting challenges – machismo, corruption, and distrust of public institutions. The military comprises both lens and exemplar of how the process of becoming modern shapes the foundations of what is understood as the nation. Advisors/Committee Members: Beezley, William H (advisor), Gosner, Kevin (committeemember), Barickman, Bert J (committeemember).
Subjects/Keywords: Mexico; military; modernity; nation; soldadera
Neufeld, S. (2009). Servants of the Nation: The Military in the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876-1911 . (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Arizona. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194184
Neufeld, Stephen. “Servants of the Nation: The Military in the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876-1911 .” 2009. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Arizona. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194184.
Neufeld, Stephen. “Servants of the Nation: The Military in the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876-1911 .” 2009. Web. 16 Jul 2019.
Neufeld S. Servants of the Nation: The Military in the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876-1911 . [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2009. [cited 2019 Jul 16]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194184.
Neufeld S. Servants of the Nation: The Military in the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876-1911 . [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Arizona; 2009. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194184
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Power Punk: Leo Koenig
By Shazia Ahmad • 12/15/03 12:00am
New Old-World art dealer; gallery royalty; young fogey
“Leo is 26 going on 40,” said collector Norman Dubrow, 76, gesturing toward Leo Koenig, a tall, fresh-faced man dressed in a fogeyish brown corduroy suit. One of Mr. Koenig’s artists, Eric Parker, agreed. “He’s a gentleman’s art dealer,” he said. “He’s not trying to be hip.” Mr. Dubrow then paid Mr. Koenig his highest compliment: “He has an eye,” he said.
It was a cold December evening, and Mr. Koenig was playing host at a private viewing at his Tribeca gallery. He looked like a kid who’d crashed his parents’ soirée in his father’s favorite circa-1970’s suit, hobnobbing with an A-list crowd of collectors and artists who’d come to check out the show-a mishmash of ancient sculpture and contemporary painting, with third-century marble statues (and two Andy Warhol drawings) squashed next to the work of current art-world darlings like John Currin and Nicole Eisenman.
It was clear that Mr. Koenig, the son of renowned German curator Kasper Koenig (his mother, Ilke, is an art-book dealer), was right at home. Even if the logic behind the show was not entirely comprehensible (what was with the Roman statuary, exactly?), it had a combination of daring and gravitas.
Over the last four years, Mr. Koenig has become a presence downtown due to his impeccable eye and businessman’s M.O.: spotting promising new artists, then driving up the prices using his exclusive list of collectors. Conservative, with an early-to-bed work ethic, he is an irritant to the fashion-forward downtown art scene.
There is plenty of grumbling that Mr. Koenig’s family connections and money are the real engine behind his accomplishments. The name Koenig in the art world is akin to Coppola in the movies. The Koenigs were key players in the New York and German art scene in the 60’s and 70’s, counting Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Gerhard Richter as part of their circle.
Mr. Koenig, who has not accepted money from his parents-“That is a common misconception,” he said in German-accented English-admits that his name opened doors, “but you still have to convince the people behind the doors that what you are saying is valid,” he said. “I’ve just stuck to my own ideas, sometimes against everyone’s advice.”
Mr. Koenig was born in New York but grew up in Munich, returning here at the age of 19 to escape mandatory military service in Germany. “I couldn’t fathom the idea of being in the army for a year and a half,” he said, sitting in his tidy, art-book-filled office at the back of the gallery. “My ambition stood in the way of the German Army.” After apprenticing with Soho dealers David Zwirner and Brooke Alexander for a year and a half, Mr. Koenig decided to go it alone. “People around me-including my family-wanted me to get investors and open a big space in Chelsea and go nuts, but I decided I was going to do it by myself.”
At 21, he opened in a Williamsburg garage. His first opening, with Lithuanian sculptor Aidas Bareikis, drew crowds despite the fact that the wrong date was printed on the invitations. “The only thing I got right that night was getting Brooklyn Lager to sponsor it. We had a truckload of beer,” Mr. Koenig said. In May of 2000, Mr. Koenig opened his first Manhattan gallery on lower Broadway. It was partially destroyed on 9/11, so in late November 2001, the gallery moved to its current location, opposite the old police headquarters on Centre Street, taking advantage of cheap post-9/11 rents.
Mr. Koenig said he is uninterested in being part of a “young gallery-owners” scene. He sticks to a rather Teutonic regimen, allowing himself one party a month besides his own openings. “I stopped drinking six months ago,” he said. “It was bad for me.” Setting up shop within the borders of Chinatown, Mr. Koenig separated himself from the art scene’s creative hub-and the exorbitant Chelsea rents. “I wanted to be in a neighborhood I could actually live in,” Mr. Koenig said. He lives above his gallery with his 32-year-old girlfriend of five years, artist Debora Warner, and is determined to vanquish the trend-obsessed, party-addled competitors who sneer at his Old-World model. “If I can’t outsmart them, I will outlive them,” he said.
-Shazia Ahmad
Filed Under: Lifestyle, Andy Warhol, Leo Koenig Inc., Norman Dubrow, Kasper Koenig
SEE ALSO: An Art Lover’s Guide to Beirut
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bcain1992
New Entertainment Weekly Cover with the Twilight Trio
Twihards have long been anticipating seeing Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) honeymoon on Isle Esme and consummate their marriage amid flying feathers. And as audiences will see when The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1 arrives in theaters this Friday, the love scene does not disappoint. But, according to the stars of the movie, things could have been even more steamy — if it weren’t for director Bill Condon needing to keep the action PG-13. “There’s a version where it was really intense,” recalls Pattinson in this week’s EW. “Cinematically, cut all together, it’s awesome,” says Kristen Stewart. “But we didn’t really do that scene. ” “And when we did,” adds Pattinson, “they kept telling us to stop.” The PG-13 rating also limited things with regard to the climactic birth scene, which takes place at the end of the film. “That’s what I’m really disappointed about — and I’ve talked about it with Bill,” says Stewart. “It was more sympathetic or something when I played the scene with less energy, and it made it easier for him to tell the story. But in the book, Bella is screaming, ‘NOOOOO!’ [Stewart stands and demonstrates.] And I did it like that — crazy and Exorcist-like. I was going for this weird mix of turning into the most feral mother you can imagine and also fighting for my own life. I mean, I was a nutcase. I was an absolute nutcase. “I do still love the birth scene,” says Lautner. “I know it’s frustrating that some things aren’t in there.” “Yeah,” says Stewart, “I still love it too.” For more on Breaking Dawn – plus Kristen Stewart talking about punching Chris Hemsworth in the face on the set of Snow White and the Huntsman – pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, on stands Nov. 18.
Tagged: kristen stewart, robert pattinson, taylor lautner, twilight
angel_dust_fury
ia. I saw her in Speak and she was pretty good.
jdnightghobhadi
That was one of the first movies I saw her in - before the Twilight films even existed. She wasn't bad.
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shop / Further Reading / Histories / The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller
The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) by Carlo Ginzburg
Through a study of the trial records of a 16th-century miller accused of heresy during the Inquisition, Carlo Ginzburg explores the religious and social conflicts of the time.
Buy from Amazon*
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The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History
In Search of Sir Thomas Browne: The Life and Afterlife of the Seventeenth Century’s Most Inquiring Mind
The Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture
The Dark Side of Nature: Science, Society, and the Fantastic in the Work of Odilon Redon
Natural Histories: Extraordinary Rare Book Selections from the American Museum of Natural History Library
The Search for the Perfect Language
Alchemy & Mysticism
The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World
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Tag Archives: Trina Vargo
Mitchell Scholars 2018: Prestige, Support for Recipients…and Applicants
Editor’s Note: The following information comes from the U.S.-Ireland Alliance, sponsors of the prestigious Mitchell Scholarship.We applaud the program’s support for both applicants and winners of the award.
November 19, 2016–The US-Ireland Alliance selected the 12 members of the 2018 Class of George J. Mitchell Scholars following interviews held Washington, D.C.
Members of the class include a military veteran; a young man working for the City of Flint; a young woman working to combat food insecurity in Kansas; a quarterback for an NCAA Division 1 football team; a future doctor who seeks to provide quality healthcare services to transgender people; and a future economist who serves as a research assistant in the White House Office the National Drug Control Policy.
The selection committee includes Frank Bruni, New York Times Op-Ed Columnist and the author of three bestselling books, including Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania. One of his columns, “A Prudent College Path,” presented a very positive view of public university honors programs. The Mitchell program is very interested in applicants from honors students.
The scholarship program was created nearly 20 years ago by Trina Vargo, founder of the US-Ireland Alliance. This year, the nationwide competition attracted 323 applicants (up 14% from the previous year) for the 12 scholarships named in honor of the former Maine Senator’s contributions to the Northern Ireland peace process. Recipients are chosen on the basis of academic distinction, leadership and service and spend a year of post-graduate study at institutions of higher learning in Ireland.
Carolina Chavez, the new Director of the Mitchell Scholarship Program, worked previously for ten years on the Fulbright program at the Department of State. Chavez noted that in all of her experience, “I can tell you that the Mitchell Scholar network is exceptionally strong. Our alumni are involved and important to each other, to the Program, and to Ireland.”
Current sponsor of the Mitchell Scholarship program include Ireland’s Department of Education and Skills, Morgan Stanley, CRH and the American Ireland Fund.
“There are numerous applicants who are incredibly talented,” Ms. Vargo said. “While we can’t offer them all a scholarship, we recognize the major effort entailed in simply applying, and we wanted to find ways to help increase their opportunities….This year, we have initiated a process whereby the resumes of applicants may be shared with our major sponsors. This is a win-win given that recruitment of top talent is a priority for many companies.”
Those selected today will begin their studies in Ireland in September 2017.
George J. Mitchell Scholarship, Class of 2018
Joel Arnold graduated from Michigan State University with a double major in Social Relations/Policy and Urban and Regional Planning. A native of Flint, Michigan, Joel is currently a Blight Management Analyst for the City of Flint and administers the Love Your Block Program, which provides residents and local organizations with no-cost resources to perform major beautification efforts….He will study Urban Policy Stream at University College Dublin.
Margaret Born is a senior at Michigan State University, double majoring in Arabic and Comparative Cultures and Politics. Born to American aid workers in South Africa, Margaret grew up in Mozambique and moved to Wyoming for high school. Interested in issues of diversity and inclusion, she founded Project Nur at MSU in 2013, a student-led organization focused on combating Islamophobia on campus….Margaret aspires to work on international refugee policy and she will study International Development, Environment, and Conflict at Dublin City University.
Theodore L. Caputi is a senior majoring in Mathematics and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Interested in the factors that contribute to drug and alcohol addiction since high school, Theodore is currently a White House research assistant in the Office of National Drug Control Policy where he conducts analysis of the nation’s drug prevention and treatment strategies. Theodore has published several papers in peer-reviewed journals…. He will study Public Health Promotion at University College Cork.
Donovan Hicks is a recent graduate of Wofford College where he double majored in Government and Finance. A native of South Carolina, Donovan became attuned to the inequities in his community at an early age. As a college freshman, he began a long-term internship with South Carolina Legal Services, providing legal assistance to persons well below the poverty line…. He will study Race, Ethnicity, and Conflict at Trinity College Dublin.
Meghan Hind is a senior at Harvard majoring in Neurobiology. Her interests lie in the brain circuitry behind decision-making and how beliefs and behaviors affect the decision-making process. She has organized and executed several wellness programs for her Harvard classmates, most recently serving as the Director of Workshops for LifeHack Improvitas, which brought prominent figures to campus to discuss self-improvement… She will study Values and Knowledge at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Peter Kiernan is a senior majoring in Political Science at Columbia University. Raised on Long Island, Pete joined the U.S. Marine Corps shortly after high school and became the youngest Marine to serve in the elite Special Operations Command in Afghanistan. After six years of service, Pete enrolled at Columbia where he founded the Ivy League Veterans Council, a not-for-profit dedicated to provide veterans equal access to top colleges and universities….He will study Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation at Trinity College Dublin.
Miranda Klugesherz obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Sociology/Communication Studies from Hastings College and is currently a Master’s degree student in Communications Studies at Kansas State University. Concerned with food insecurity for much of her life, she currently serves as the Chair of the Junction City Food Policy Council, which advises the City Commission on matters related to the local food system…. She will study Social Policy at University College Cork.
Elizabeth (Ellie) Sell is a senior Chemistry student at Princeton University and an Emergency Medical Technician with the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad. As a research assistant at Children’s National Medical Center, Ellie used data from a trauma registry and GIS mapping to identify neighborhoods where certain types of injuries were more prevalent, giving her fellow health educators information to better hone their outreach efforts….An aspiring physician, she will study Gender, Sexuality and Culture at University College Dublin.
Lacey Smith is a recent graduate of Loyola Marymount University where she majored Health and Human Sciences. A native of the Los Angeles area, Lacey is currently working in Haiti as a Global Health Fellow with Medical Missionaries, a US-based volunteer organization….She will study Immunology and Global Health at Maynooth University.
Tyler Swafford is a senior at Eastern Kentucky University majoring in Globalization and International Affairs. He is the starting quarterback of the Division I EKU football team and serves on the EKU Student-Athlete Advisory Committee as the liaison between the team and the EKU administration. He has twice received the Ohio Valley Conference Academic Medal of Honor for having the highest GPA (4.0) on the football team…. An aspiring human rights attorney, he will study Geopolitics and Global Economy at University College Dublin.
May Treuhaft-Ali is a senior at Wesleyan University majoring in Theater Studies. With a belief that theater has the power to question and deconstruct systems of power, May has written and directed plays for Wesleyan’s Theater Department and Second Stage. Her plays were selected twice by the LA-based Blank Theatre Company’s Young Playwrights Festival, a national competition for young writers…. She will study Theatre and Performance at Trinity College Dublin.
Kathleen White is a graduate of Manhattan College and holds a degree in History and Peace Studies. A social justice advocate, Kathleen joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps after college and served as Outreach Coordinator for the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth where she worked on abolishing juvenile life without parole….Kathleen will study Sociology at University College College Cork.
Posted in Prestigious Scholarships | Tagged Carolina Chavez, George J. Mitchell Scholarship, Mitchell Scholars 2018, Trina Vargo, U.S.-Ireland Alliance
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How It Feels to Have a Dad
On Wednesdays, I pick Waylon up from school at 2:45. I have fifteen minutes to walk him to the car, feed him a snack, hydrate him, and deliver him to his occupational therapy appointment a mile away. If all goes exactly according to plan, we can just make it.
Last Wednesday, Waylon was in the backseat, munching a bagel. I had my right turn signal on and was waiting for an opening in the late afternoon traffic.
“Sometimes,” he said, apropos of nothing, “I just wish I could kind of, you know, ditch you guys and live with some other family.”
My first reaction was guilt. It’s the clutter, I thought. We’ve finally driven him crazy with all of our books and papers. Now he wants to live in a family with tidy surfaces.
“Well,” I said, grasping for equanimity, “Mommy and I would certainly miss you if you went away.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s just, sometimes I really want to know how it feels to have a dad.”
A car paused to let me in. I waved my thanks and went straight into fix-it mode. “Well, that’s one reason why we wanted you to spend so much time with Adam and Flynn this summer. So you could know what it was like to be around a dad.”
“I want to know what it feels like to have a dad at night,” he insisted.
“You’ve had sleepovers,” I countered. I knew I was grasping at straws. I couldn’t stop myself.
“I just want to know how it feels to have a dad love me like a dad,” Waylon said.
“Oh,” I said. I was chastened by his persistence and clarity. “I can understand that.”
Still searching for solutions, I did a quick mental inventory of Waylon’s grandfathers: (1) 83-year-old retired coach who never leaves the bed. Great for watching football and collecting photos of Waylon on his bureau. (2) Younger, gay grandpa. Affectionate and sweet as long as he’s not distracted with booze and boys. Prone to disappearing on mysterious “business” trips for weeks at a time.
“Waylon,” I said, turning left at a green arrow. “I can really understand how you feel. I used to sometimes wish I had different parents too.”
“You did?” he sounded excited, enlivened.
“Yes,” I said. “I think every kid wants to know how it would feel to have different parents some times.”
“They do?” he was suddenly chipper. “Mom?”
“You know that part on Harry Potter Wii where Harry has to defeat the troll?”
We pulled into the parking lot of the occupational therapy center. Our journey was over, but I hoped that this conversation was not. I hoped I hadn’t silenced Waylon’s feelings with my knee-jerk problem solving. I wanted to do it all over, to ask Waylon what kind of dad he imagined, to let him know that his yearning was fine and wouldn’t hurt me.
Freud coined the term “family romance” to describe the childhood fantasy that your parents are not your real parents. He hypothesized that such stories are a normal way of dealing with separation and Oedipal jealousy. But a romance is also just a type of story. As a queer family, we’re making up our own story. I hope we can tell it in ways that make room for all kinds of feelings–even if it means we have to go back and tell it again and again.
family, gay parent, LGBT parent, parenting
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Home Ed Beat NH Executive Council confirms Phil Nazzaro to Board of Education
Executive Council confirms Phil Nazzaro to Board of Education
The Executive Council confirmed Newmarket town councilman and former state Senate candidate Phil Nazzaro to the State Board of Education on February 7, according to Seacoast Online:
“Nazzaro previously served on the Newmarket Town Council where he said he aimed to be as non-partisan as possible. He said he often opted to “build bridges instead of burn them.” Aside from his municipal responsibilities, Nazzaro has worked with Teach for America and Bridge International Academies. Both groups work to make fair education affordable and accessible to students who otherwise would not have had access to resources as such.
‘I’ve always had a passion for education,’ Nazzaro said.
Nazzaro said all people have a passion, personal or professional, and he’s lucky enough that he can use his passion for education in both his professional and personal life. “It’ll become even more personal when I have a son who will be in the (public schools) system,” he added in reference to his infant son…
Nazzaro hopes to remain a strong independent voice on the board and to make education accessible to all regardless of socioeconomics. He said he plans to visit schools and speak with people who have knowledge and opinions on the inner workings of the education system. He will most frequently visit schools from District 3, of which he is a representative.”
As a Town Councilman in Newmarket, Nazzaro sponsored a resolution expanding the town’s nondiscrimination laws to gender identity and expression. During his Senate campaign, he advocated for prioritizing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) in schools:
“New Hampshire can be a national leader when it comes to preparing our students for the technology-based economy that continues to grow each year, but that begins with creating a talent pipeline today. The better we plan, the better chance we have for a prosperous future.”
Source: Nazzaro appointed to the Board of Education | Seacoast Online
Phil Nazzaro
Questions remain as Department of Education works on finalizing Learn Everywhere rules
State Board dismisses Merrimack parent’s appeal over homework protocol
State Board re-refers Grantham parent’s manifest education hardship case
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By on Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - 10:26
What follows is a long and very detailed 11,000 word expert legal analysis of the Litvinenko inquiry by Russia Insider's International Affairs Editor, who was a practicing lawyer for 12 years at the Royal Courts of Justice, the venue of Litvinenko inquiry.
It is the most comprehensive and definitive analysis to date. The author's conclusions are summarized in the first few paragraphs of the article.
This analysis shows why the Litvinenko Inquiry was a farce and why its report is in the end worthless.
The Judge who headed the Inquiry was obsessed with proving the Russian state murdered Litvinenko. In order to prove what he always believed he threw legal procedure out of the window and interpreted the evidence how he wanted.
In the end even he could not prove that the Russian state murdered Litvinenko, which is why he could only say they “probably” did.
In reality the facts - if looked at objectively - show the Russian state almost certainly did not murder Litvinenko and played no part in his death.
The Inquiry and its report actually say more about the pathological hostility to Russia of some sections of the British establishment than they do about the Litvinenko case.
The first point to grasp about the Public Inquiry that has now delivered its verdict in the Litvinenko case is that it should never have happened at all.
The second point is that Inquiry’s decision that the Russian authorities were “probably” behind Litvinenko’s murder is unsustainable and makes no sense.
A TRIAL NOT AN INQUIRY
The Public Inquiry was in all essentials a murder trial. Any legal proceedings which examine a case of murder and which pronounce on the guilt or innocence of the individuals accused is in effect a trial.
The Public Inquiry into Litvinenko’s death has ended in a pronouncement of guilt for the crime of murder against two individuals: Lugovoi and Kovtun. That makes it a trial of those two men, regardless of what it is called.
THE RIGHT TO FAIR TRIAL
In Britain a trial for murder is conducted in open court with the defendant present and represented by lawyers of his or her choice.
The defendant is entitled to cross-examine the witnesses and to look at - and challenge - all the evidence.
The final verdict of guilt and innocence is delivered by the jury - twelve citizens selected at random - after they receive directions on legal questions from the judge.
Strict rules apply on what evidence can be presented to the court and how the court is to decide how the evidence is proved. As a general principle only evidence actually presented to the court at the trial can be considered, and only witnesses who physically come and give their evidence to the court - and are cross-examined on it - are heard, though it is now becoming more and more common for evidence to be given by video link.
A court cannot convict on the basis of evidence given anonymously by witnesses who do not disclose their identities to the defendants save in very exceptional circumstances.
The burden of proof lies on the prosecution to prove its case, and it must do so beyond reasonable doubt.
It is a fundamental legal principle that anyone accused of a crime is deemed by the law innocent until the verdict of the court is delivered.
Once the verdict is delivered, a defendant who is found guilty has a right to appeal.
VIOLATION OF THE RIGHT TO FAIR TRIAL
The Public Inquiry that has now delivered its verdict in the Litvinenko case has thrown all this out of the window.
There was no jury.
Part of the evidence was secret and the defendants and their lawyers were denied sight of it. Some of the witnesses gave their evidence to the Judge in secret and their identities were not disclosed to the defendants.
Since technically it was not a trial and the Public Inquiry is not a court there is no right of appeal.
Since the defendants - Lugovoi and Kovtun - were denied sight of part of the evidence, they refused to take part. The judge who tried the case - Sir Robert Owen - commented at length in his judgment about their refusal to take part, but failed to state the reason for it.
The trial nonetheless proceeded in the absence of the defendants though that is almost unprecedented in Britain. Moreover no lawyers were appointed to represent their interests in their absence as it is perfectly possible to do, and as happens from time to time in other kinds of proceedings.
The result is that the evidence of what we must call the prosecution went entirely unchallenged.
Moreover since what happened was technically speaking not a trial but a Public Inquiry, the Judge felt free to look at evidence that was not produced to the court, including especially the possible evidence of potential witnesses who did not attend the court, but which was provided to him at second hand, whilst engaging in all sorts of speculations on the evidence that he would not have been able to engage in in a proper trial.
Needless to say any notion that the guilt of the accused had to be proved beyond reasonable doubt went out of the window.
VIOLATION OF PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE
This extraordinary process has ended in a clearcut verdict of guilt.
With it any pretence of adherence to the principle of the presumption of innocence has gone out of the window. Lugovoi and Kovtun have been declared guilty of murder by a judicial body set up by the British state despite the fact that there has been no proper trial.
This is the single most important thing to say about this Inquiry.
I hold no brief for Lugovoi or Kovtun. There is a possibility they did murder Litvinenko.
However the procedure the British state has used to declare them guilty is profoundly and completely wrong, and has forever prejudiced the possibility of their having a fair trial in Britain - or indeed anywhere else - on this charge in the future.
That is why this Public Inquiry should never have been set up in the first place.
ARE WE CLOSER TO THE TRUTH?
Do the findings of the Public Inquiry - for all the fundamental problems in how it carried its work - take us any further forward in establishing the truth about Litvinenko’s death?
In my opinion they do, though only to a very limited degree, and in ways that actually contradict the final conclusions of the Inquiry.
RUSSIAN REJECTION OF EXTRADITION REQUEST
Firstly, though it is not directly pertinent to the issue of Litvinenko’s death, an entirely overlooked fact is that the Inquiry has fully endorsed the reason the Russian authorities gave for refusing to extradite Lugovoi and Kovtun to Britain.
When the British authorities in 2007 demanded Lugovoi’s and Kovtun’s extradition to Britain, the Russian authorities refused to extradite them on the grounds that this was contrary to Russia’s constitution.
The Russian government was widely ridiculed in Britain for saying this, and the British government imposed sanctions on Russia because of the Russian government’s refusal to extradite Lugovoi and Kovtun.
The Inquiry Judge has now said the Russians were right all along:
“Refusal of extradition requests
Russia has refused requests made by the British authorities to extradite Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Kovtun to face criminal charges in the UK. No inferences can be drawn from this. Article 61(1) of the Russian constitution provides that, “A citizen of the Russian Federation may not be deported from Russia or extradited to another state””.
Needless to say, in all the flood of commentary that has followed the verdict in Britain, no one has admitted this or said that the sanctions Britain imposed on Russia in 2007 should not have been imposed because the Russians were right on this point all along.
LITVINENKO WAS KILLED BY POLONIUM POISONING
Secondly, it is now conclusively established Litvinenko was killed by polonium poisoning.
Whilst this may seem obvious, one of the unanswered mysteries of the case is why the British authorities delayed for so long to make the evidence of Litvinenko’s poisoning with polonium public. They did not for example release the autopsy report until the Judge demanded it.
The evidence that was submitted to the Inquiry - including the autopsy report - has now put the question beyond doubt. Litvinenko died from polonium poisoning and from no other cause.
LITVINENKO WAS MURDERED
Thirdly, the Inquiry has shown that Litvinenko was almost certainly murdered.
I have never found the various claims of polonium smuggling, accident and suicide various people have come up with to explain Litvinenko’s death very convincing. There has never been anything that looked to me remotely like evidence to substantiate any of them.
The one part of the Inquiry report where I fully agree with the Judge - and find his reasoning convincing - is the section where he rejects these theories.
The only convincing explanation for Litvinenko’s death is that someone deliberately poisoned him with polonium. That is why he died, and that makes his death murder.
THERE IS A CIRCUMSTANTIAL CASE AGAINST LUGOVOI AND KOVTUN
Fourthly and lastly, there is a circumstantial case that Lugovoi and Kovtun murdered Litvinenko.
Again this has been denied by many people - including of course by Lugovoi and Kovtun - but that there is a case against them on the basis of the traces of polonium they left behind them as they moved around London, and which were found in the Pine Bar at the Millennium Hotel where Litvinenko was probably poisoned, seems to me unarguable.
The case is however entirely circumstantial and is based wholly on the so-called polonium trail. In the absence of a properly contested hearing in which lawyers acting for Lugovoi and Kovtun could challenge and test this evidence, it is impossible to say how strong the case against them is.
WHAT A FAIR DECISION BY THE INQUIRY WOULD HAVE BEEN
If the Inquiry had stopped at this point and had said that Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium, which caused his death, and that this polonium was administered to him intentionally and maliciously in order to cause his death, and that his death was therefore a murder, and that there is a circumstantial case that Lugovoi and Kovtun are the guilty parties, that would have been a good and proper result, and a worthwhile outcome to the Inquiry.
It would have resolved many of the doubts and speculations about the case, and might have set the scene for a future prosecution of Lugovoi and Kovtun in Russia (see below).
Unfortunately the Inquiry, or rather the Judge, did not stop at this point, and from this point on I am afraid it is downhill all the way.
SPECULATION AND DOUBTFUL EVIDENCE
Since the Inquiry ended with a finding that Lugovoi and Kovtun murdered Litvinenko despite their absence and lack of representation and despite the case against them being circumstantial, the obvious point to start in order to illustrate the problems is to look at the way the Judge handled the case against them in order to reach his verdict of guilty.
The Judge appears to have convinced himself of Lugovoi’s and Kovtun’s guilt right from the start of the Inquiry, and indeed practically from the moment when he was appointed the coroner to head the inquest which preceded the Inquiry. The result is that in their absence he was unable to resist the temptation to ginger up the case against them by engaging in speculations and using evidence that in my opinion had no place in his report.
(1) The Judge places far too much reliance on the evidence of a German witness identified as D3. This person told the German police that Kovtun asked him for help to find a cook whose help he needed to poison someone. The Judge accepted the truth of this evidence, and treated what D3 told the police Kovtun had told him as an admission of guilt.
In my opinion D3’s evidence should never have been considered at all. D3 refused to come to the Inquiry to give his evidence there. The Judge only knew of what he had said to the German police from transcripts of his interviews provided by the police.
People tell all sorts of stories to the police to make themselves appear important, and it is surely possible that that is all that D3 was doing. His refusal to come to the Inquiry to give evidence strongly suggests it. Since he refused to give his evidence to the Inquiry, and since he obviously was not questioned by the Inquiry on it, no reliance should be placed on what he said.
I would add that the idea that a cold-blooded FSB assassin - which is what the Judge says Kovtun is - would ask a friend who was not a member of the FSB - which is what D3 is - to suggest someone else - also not a member of the FSB - to help him commit a high profile political murder in London seems to me frankly bizarre.
If Kovtun really did try to find a cook to help him poison Litvinenko then in my opinion it is evidence against FSB involvement.
In the event Kovtun did contact a cook in London. There is no evidence he brought up the subject of poisoning with this person. The Judge ridicules Kovtun’s claim he was looking for a cook to help him set up a restaurant in Moscow, which is what Kovtun claims. Isn’t that however a far more likely reason to want a cook than to have his help to poison someone?
(2) The Judge admits Litvinenko did not initially think Lugovoi and Kovtun had poisoned him, and that it took him a very long time to come to that conclusion. He explains this by saying Litvinenko felt professionally humiliated by the fact the murderers - who he supposedly always knew were Lugovoi and Kovtun - had got to him, and that he maintained his silence in order to lure them back to London.
Nothing Litvinenko ever said supports this theory. I do not think it is right or proper to try to enter the mind of a dying man. I also think this theory is farfetched.
I would add in passing that the Judge - rather grudgingly - has confirmed the truth of what the US journalist William Dunkerley has always said about Litvinenko’s famous death-bed statement.
It did not originate with Litvinenko but was put together by others who got him - as he was dying - to sign it.
The Judge has nothing to say about the ethics - or lack of them - of this behaviour, though they weighed on some of the people involved, including his widow.
The fact Litvinenko’s famous death-bed statement - long accepted as his own words - is in reality the concoction of someone else should make one especially wary of attempts to read Litvinenko’s mind as he lay dying.
(3) The Judge treats as evidence against Lugovoi the fact Lugovoi sent Berezovsky a provocatively worded T-shirt that referred to nuclear poisoning. The Judge treats this as a threat and sees it as an admission of guilt.
Whilst that interpretation is possible, so are other interpretations. The T-shirt could for example have been intended to taunt Berezovsky if Lugovoi thought Berezovsky was responsible for the crime and had set him up - as Lugovoi has claimed. Without hearing from Lugovoi himself on this issue how is it possible to form a view?
(4) In Lugovoi’s and Kovtun’s absence the Judge reconstructed their answers to specific points on the basis of things they have said in media interviews.
He repeatedly cast doubt on the truth of things they have said and drew attention to various discrepancies he claims to have seen in their comments.
This is to elevate what Lugovoi and Kovtun have said to the media to the level of court testimony.
People speak more freely to the media than they do in court. There is also always the worry the media is not reporting words properly. When discussing the evidence of Dr. Yulia Svetlichnaya (see below) the Judge found the media had misreported some of the things she had told them. Why might the same not be true of things Lugovoi and Kovtun have told the media as well?
If defendants or witnesses say things in court that contradict what they say to the media, it is right and proper to question them about the discrepancy. In their absence it is wrong - and so far as I know unprecedented - to try to reconstruct what might have been their court testimony from what they have said on television and what the media say they have said.
(5) The Judge admits Lugovoi’s behaviour at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel - the place where Litvinenko was probably poisoned - is not fully consistent with his being the poisoner.
Lugovoi showed indifference to whether Litvinenko drank the poisoned tea or not. He also introduced to Litvinenko his young son, which he presumably would not have done if he thought there was danger to his son from the polonium.
The Judge gets round this by saying (1) Lugovoi would have felt under no time pressure to poison Litvinenko in the Pine Bar because - if the attempt failed - he could poison Litvinenko later somewhere else; and (2) Lugovoi probably hadn’t been told by his FSB controllers how dangerous the polonium was.
Perhaps so, but again these are pure guesses and it is easy to construct contrary arguments.
Would Lugovoi really feel happy chasing after Litvinenko in London with a vial of polonium in his pocket day after day? Would he not be afraid he might be caught? Would he not want the murder over and done with as quickly as possible so he could make his escape?
Would the FSB really send two agents on a secret assassination mission to London without briefing them about the dangers of the poison they were carrying?
Ultimately, since Lugovoi’s behaviour depends on his state of mind, how can one reconstruct it without hearing from him?
I don’t make these points to prove Lugovoi and Kovtun’s innocent. However I think it is wholly wrong in their absence to say they are guilty on the strength of what can only be guesses and on the basis of “evidence”, which I don’t think is really evidence at all.
RUSSIAN STATE INVOLVEMENT
If the Judge’s conduct of the case against Lugovoi and Kovtun was troubling to say the least, the same was far more true of the part of the case where he decided the Russian authorities were “probably” guilty of Litvinenko’s murder, and that Lugovoi and Kovtun were acting on their behalf.
SECRET EVIDENCE
The evidence the Judge saw in secret, and which has not been disclosed to the public or the Russians, apparently bears mainly on this issue. There is it seems a whole secret section of the Inquiry report about it, which has not been made public.
That it is wholly wrong for a Judge in what is actually a trial to say that someone or some people are guilty of a crime on the basis of evidence they are not allowed to see should by now be obvious.
It should be said that the British government is in a different position. Since the British government has no judicial role, it is fully legitimate for it to say that on the basis of secret information in its possession, which it cannot disclose because that would compromise intelligence sources, it thinks the Russian authorities were probably involved in the murder of Litvinenko.
Others might wonder how strong that evidence really is, and might question whether the British government is right to form such a view, but that is another matter.
The Judge however, as is clear from the Inquiry report, was performing a judicial or at least a semi-judicial role. His Inquiry not only looked into the facts of Litvinenko’s death in much the same way a court would do, but it ended in a clear verdict of guilty against the two men involved in the crime - Lugovoi and Kovtun. That puts anything he says in a different position.
Since we do not know what the secret evidence is, it is impossible to comment on it. However the Judge said in the Inquiry report that his conclusion that the Russian state was “probably” responsible for Litvinenko’s death is made out by the publicly disclosed evidence.
It is on that evidence therefore that his conclusions stand or fall, and it is to that evidence - and the Judge’s handling of it - that I shall now turn.
DID THE RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES OBSTRUCT THE INVESTIGATION
The British police were unhappy that the Russian authorities did not give them the full cooperation that it seems they wanted. The Judge however was in the end unable to see in this evidence of actual obstruction, and decided that the Russian authorities’ guilt could not be inferred from it.
What the Judge does not say is that the reason the Russians have given for their lack of cooperation with the British investigation is that the British refused to cooperate with them.
Specifically the British refused to let the Russian investigators question Litvinenko’s friend, the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
They also refused Russian requests for the polonium evidence and declined Russian suggestions that Lugovoi and Kovtun be tried in Russia on the basis of evidence provided by the British.
There are rumours that the Russians even suggested that Lugovoi and Kovtun be tried in Russia in a British court with a British Judge and jury that had been physically transported to Russia (there are actually precedents for this).
The reason the British gave for their refusal to consider a trial of Lugovoi and Kovtun in Russia was apparently that the prosecution witnesses would refuse to travel there.
This is to put the wishes of the witnesses above the rights of the defendants. Besides it is not clear why the evidence of witnesses unwilling to travel to Russia could not have been given by video link.
The Russian offer of a trial of Lugovoi and Kovtun in Russia shows what might have happened if the British authorities had been willing to work with the Russian authorities - as opposed to criticising them and looking for ways to declare them guilty. Since however the Judge made no inferences from any seeming lack of cooperation on the part of the Russian authorities, there is nothing more to say about this.
2006 RUSSIAN LAWS AUTHORISING LITVINENKO’S MURDER?
In 2006 - shortly before Litvinenko was killed - the Russian parliament passed two laws that authorise Russia’s security agencies to take action against persons involved in extremism and terrorist activities.
One of these laws gives legal authority to the Russian President to order the Russian security services to kill persons who are abroad beyond the reach of Russian justice and who are undertaking terrorist acts against Russia.
These two laws are commonly cited by believers in the theory of Russian state involvement as giving the FSB the legal authority it needed to kill Litvinenko.
Two experts on Russian law consulted by the Inquiry - one of them Russian - flatly contradicted this view, and the Judge accepted their advice:
The only legal route to extra-territorial action against Mr Litvinenko was therefore under the Terrorism Law. However, action could only have been taken against Mr Litvinenko under this law had he been involved in, or no doubt suspected of involvement in, some form of terrorist activity. Article 3 of the Terrorism Law contains definitions of terrorism and terrorist acts that are broadly conventional, and certainly not as expansive as the definition of ‘extremism’ in the second of the 2006 laws. Mr Batmanov’s letter (above) states that, “Alexander Litvinenko did not make part of a terrorist organization and was not accused by Russian law enforcement bodies of having committed a terrorist crime.” That accords with my understanding of the evidence
On the basis of the evidence currently before me, and in light of the considerations set out above, I am therefore not persuaded that any action could have been taken by the FSB against Mr Litvinenko in 2006 under the terms of either of the 2006 laws.”
In other words the two laws have no bearing whatsoever on Litvinenko’s death. They did not authorise it or give the green light for it, and they would not have made his killing legal under Russian law.
Though this is a useful finding, something must be said about the strange discussion that followed.
Having heard from two jurists expert on the interpretation of Russian law, and whose opinion ought to be final on such a subject, the Judge also solicited the opinion of Professor Robert Service, a historian who has written a book on Soviet history, and whose qualifications to give advice on how Russian law should be interpreted are not obvious.
I will have more to say later about the extraordinary role Professor Robert Service has played in the Inquiry.
Professor Service appears to be a believer in the theory that though the laws do not actually authorise the FSB to murder someone like Litvinenko, given the political atmosphere in Russia they could be interpreted by the FSB as giving it the green light to do so.
The Judge sets out Professor Service’s speculations on this point at length and without comment, giving the strong impression he agrees with them.
This theory is no more than a guess. It is very unlikely to be true.
If the FSB really were the sort of criminal organisation that routinely murders its enemies why would it need the green light of two laws that do not in fact authorise it to take that action? There is no logic here and the “green light” theory is absurd.
LUGOVOI’S AND KOVTUN’S BACKGROUNDS - A LINK TO THE RUSSIAN STATE?
The entire case of Russian state involvement in the murder of Litvinenko rests on either Lugovoi or Kovtun or preferably both of them being agents of the Russian state - specifically of the FSB. If neither Lugovoi nor Kovtun are agents of the FSB the whole case for Russian state involvement collapses.
The Judge decided that Lugovoi's and Kovtun's backgrounds do show a link between them and the Russian state.
On the contrary, one of the most interesting things that came out of the Inquiry is what unlikely people Lugovoi and Kovtun are to be agents of the FSB, and what unlikely assassins they are for the FSB to employ.
The first and obvious is that there is no evidence - and no suggestion - that either man ever killed anyone before Litvinenko was killed.
Would the FSB send two inexperienced men to carry out a complicated high-profile assassination in a foreign capital? Doesn’t the FSB have more professional and experienced people to carry out such a complicated killing?
The picture that emerges of Kovtun is of a shiftless character, characterised by his German family as a charming rogue with a fondness for gambling, women and drink. His only known service for the Russian government was as a soldier in the Soviet army.
Since most Russian men serve in the Russian army nothing can be made of this.
More relevant is the fact Kovtun deserted from the army and fled to West Germany where he claimed asylum - a fact which in itself makes Kovtun a most unlikely person to be an FSB agent.
Life in West Germany was apparently not to Kovtun’s liking and he returned to Russia. He has followed an erratic career as a sometime businessman ever since.
Though the Judge has nothing to say about it, there is in fact no evidence the FSB ever recruited Kovtun, no information he ever attended any of its special schools where the FSB trains its operatives, no blank spaces in his life such as might be expected of a secret agent, no information he has ever carried out anything that looks remotely like a secret mission, and nothing to suggest that prior to meeting with Litvinenko he ever killed anyone.
As the Judge rather grudgingly admits, this hardly looks like the profile of a cold-blooded killer - much less of an FSB agent.
Lugovoi is a more impressive character. He did join the KGB and did rise within its ranks to a senior position in its special protection unit, continuing in that unit after it was separated from the KGB right upon to his eventual retirement in 1996.
Though the Judge does not mention it in his report, it seems that whilst working for this unit Lugovoi provided bodyguard services for various senior Russian politicians.
After leaving the special bodyguard service Lugovoi set up various private security companies providing security and bodyguard services to various high-profile Russian individuals and companies - first and foremost the oligarch Boris Berezovsky. At some point he seems to have become almost entirely dependent on Berezovsky, providing security services for Berezovsky’s television station ORT.
Lugovoi is now a successful businessman, as well as a member of Russia’s parliament for the opposition Liberal Democratic Party.
Lugovoi has however had no visible connection to the FSB at any time since it was established shortly after the KGB was disbanded in the early 1990s. Contrary to some reports he has never been formally employed by the FSB.
Any claim Lugovoi was an FSB agent therefore requires him to have been recruited into the organisation or employed by it in a covert way.
There is no evidence of it and is it likely?
The fundamental problem with thinking the FSB might have sought to recruit Lugovoi is that his closest and most visible connections since the 1990s were not with the FSB but with the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, whose relations with the FSB were already very bad whilst Berezovsky was a major figure in the Russian politics in the 1990s (as the Judge notes, Berezovsky with Litvinenko’s support, at one point even accused the FSB of plotting to kill him).
After Berezovsky left Russia in 2000 he became an opponent and critic of the Russian government and of President Putin in particular.
A close associate of Berezovsky’s after this time is not someone one would naturally assume to be an FSB agent. Lugovoi was such an associate. The Judge admits Berezovsky continued to think of Lugovoi as his friend right up to the moment when Litvinenko was killed.
It also turns out that Lugovoi not only had a close association with Berezovsky right up to the moment of Litvinenko’s death, but was also convicted by a Russian court shortly after Berezovsky fled Russia of trying to arrange the escape of Nikolai Glushkov, one of Berezovsky’s close associates, from a hospital where he was in pre-trial detention on a fraud charge. It seems that Lugovoi spent 15 months in prison for the crime.
These facts make it very unlikely Lugovoi was an FSB agent.
The Judge tries to cast doubt on Lugovoi’s prison sentence, citing Glushkov who says he knows nothing about it, and who also says his attempted escape - supposedly arranged by Lugovoi - was an FSB set-up.
Alternatively, the Judge refers to speculation the FSB might have recruited Lugovoi in prison.
In the absence of information from Russia’s prison records the Judge has no grounds to question the hereto publicly acknowledged fact of Lugovoi’s prison sentence.
Glushkov’s evidence anyway is open to challenge. If he really thought the escape attempt had probably been an FSB set-up why did he not warn Berezovsky about Lugovoi who had arranged it?
It is unlikely Glushkov did warn Berezovsky about Lugovoi. As the Judge admits, Berezovsky continued to trust Lugovoi right up to the moment when Litvinenko was killed. Would he have done so if Glushkov had warned him that he was involved with the FSB in setting up a fake escape attempt?
Glushkov is a former friend of Berezovsky’s, is a critic of the Russian government and is a believer in the theory of Russian state involvement In Litvinenko’s murder. Given that this theory requires Lugovoi to be an FSB agent, that is a good reason to treat with caution his evidence that the escape attempt was a probably fake.
As for Glushkov’s doubts about whether Lugovoi ever went to prison, how would Glushkov know whether Lugovoi had been to prison or not given that he presumably has no access to Russia’s prison records?
As for the suggestion Lugovoi might have been recruited by the FSB whilst in prison, that again is no more than a guess and there is no evidence for it whatsoever.
There is in fact no evidence Lugovoi was ever an FSB agent, and on the face of it, it is very unlikely.
What of the possibility that Lugovoi might have been turned and become an FSB informer?
There is no evidence for that either. The fact Berezovsky continued to trust Lugovoi right up to the moment of Litvinenko’s death argues against it.
Here perhaps it is worth pointing out that if Lugovoi really had been turned he would have been a priceless intelligence asset for the FSB at the heart of Berezovsky’s organisation.
Would the FSB have risked blowing the cover of such an asset by having Lugovoi murder a secondary character like Litvinenko? If they really had resolved to kill Litvinenko would they not have sought to protect Lugovoi’s cover by employing someone else?
In the absence of any actual evidence Lugovoi was an FSB agent, the Judge was forced to fall back on cliches (“once a KGB man, always a KGB man”), and the fact Lugovoi has frequently appeared on television in Russia, has been elected to parliament, has received a state decoration, and has had a successful business career.
The Judge sees in all this evidence that “Putin backs him”. Is this however really true?
One of the big problems of the Inquiry is the Judge’s obvious and profound ignorance of Russia, and here we have a good example.
The media in Russia - including the television media - are nowhere near as controlled as the Judge thinks they are. It is in fact normal for all sorts of people - including opponents of President Putin - to appear on it.
The fact Lugovoi had a known connection to Berezovsky and had served a prison sentence would not have prevented him from having a successful business career in Russia. Many other associates of Berezovsky still live in Russia and their businesses thrive.
Lugovoi’s expertise in bodyguard services - obtained whilst serving in the KGB - would have made him an obvious person for wealthy Russians seeking such services, and it is not difficult to see why despite his prison term and his connection to Berezovsky his security business might have prospered.
Given Lugovoi’s extraordinary celebrity after the British authorities accused him of murdering Litvinenko with polonium, it is completely understandable the Russian media queued up to interview him.
It is also completely understandable - and entirely unsurprising - that Lugovoi has revelled in the attention, and has cashed in on his celebrity by getting himself elected to parliament and wangling for himself a state decoration. Russia is hardly the only country where such things happen.
The fact Lugovoi appears so regularly on Russian television, and gives so many unscripted interviews - including to the foreign media - is in fact a strong reason to doubt he is an FSB agent.
Would the FSB really let an agent who has carried out a top secret assassination mission loose to roam freely the television studios and meet the media - including the foreign media - telling them whatever he wants to say?
Would any secret service anywhere in the world allow that sort of behaviour by one of its agents?
There is a circumstantial case Lugovoi and Kovtun murdered Litvinenko.
The case that either man is an FSB agent is in Kovtun’s case non-existent and in Lugovoi’s case threadbare. The facts if anything argue against it.
It is difficult to avoid the impression that the reason the Judge thinks Lugovoi and Kovtun are FSB agents is not because there is any evidence that they actually are, but because that is the only way the FSB could have been involved in the murder of Litvinenko.
In truth the improbability Lugovoi or Kovtun are FSB agents is so great that - if they really did kill Litvinenko - it is actually a strong reason to doubt the FSB or the Russian state were involved.
THE POLONIUM EVIDENCE - SOURCE OF THE POLONIUM
The single strongest reason up to now for thinking the Russian authorities might have been responsible for Litvinenko’s murder is that he was poisoned with polonium.
The story as it is usually told is that polonium comes exclusively from Russia where it is produced at a single tightly controlled government facility. It has been claimed it contains a trace element that enables it be traced back to this facility.
It has also been said that polonium is extremely expensive. The lawyer representing Litvinenko’s widow claimed the cost of the amount used to kill Litvinenko would have run into millions of dollars.
Moreover it has been claimed that the history of Lugovoi’s and Kovtun’s movements in London made it impossible for them to have polonium in their possession unless they brought it with them from Russia.
If all these claims were true then the case for Russian state involvement in Litvinenko’s murder would be compelling.
It turns out that none of them are true.
It seems polonium can be produced - and probably is being produced - in any number of facilities outside Russia.
It turns out that commercially produced polonium contains no trace elements such as would make it possible to identify the facility it comes from - be that facility in Russia or anywhere else.
It turns out polonium is not expensive at all, with a police officer telling the Inquiry that an amount of polonium much greater than the amount used to poison Litvinenko sold in New York for just $20,000.
Lastly the Judge himself decided that there is simply insufficient information about Lugovoi’s and Kovtun’s movements in London to say definitely that they must have brought the polonium with them from Russia and could not have obtained it in London.
All this information demolishes the keystone of the case for Russian state involvement.
It turns out that it was not solely the Russian state that could have provided the polonium to murder Litvinenko. Anyone with the right contacts and a few thousand dollars to spare could have obtained it.
The Judge’s frustration and disappointment is all too obvious from this truly remarkable comment:
“Although it cannot be said that the polonium 210 with which Mr Litvinenko was poisoned must have come from the Avangard facility in Russia, it certainly could have come from there.” (Underlining in the original)
Of course in a sense this statement is true. The polonium could have come from Russia. It could also however just as well have come from any of the other places where it is being produced. This comment is neither here nor there and I at this point register my surprise to see a Judge saying it.
Even if the polonium did come from Russia what does that prove? Given how inexpensive polonium turns out to be there is no reason why it could not have passed through any number of different hands before it poisoned Litvinenko.
The case for Russian state involvement because Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium simply cannot be made, and this part of the case - the part that has attracted the most attention - has collapsed.
The way it has collapsed shows something else.
The polonium evidence collapsed because the Inquiry heard the advice of more than one expert.
One expert - Professor Dombey - was instructed by the supporters of the theory of Russian state involvement. Unsurprisingly he supported the claim the polonium could only have come from a single closely guarded facility in Russia and could be traced back there.
The other expert - identified only as A1 - flatly contradicted this advice. Her view is that it is impossible to trace the source of the polonium and that it could have been produced in any one of various facilities around the world.
It is quite clear that A1 - whoever she is - is the more senior scientist, and the Judge was obliged to defer to her.
This gives a glimpse of what might have happened in a proper trial if all the evidence and not just the polonium evidence had been contested in the same way.
MOTIVE - DID THE RUSSIAN STATE HAVE A MOTIVE TO KILL LITVINENKO?
Given the collapse of the polonium evidence, and the lack of any evidence definitely linking Lugovoi or Kovtun to the FSB, the only evidence the Russian authorities were involved in Litvinenko’s murder is that they supposedly were the only party with a motive to kill him.
It is because the case against the Russian authorities ultimately depends on motive that the Judge was only able to say that the Russian authorities were “probably” involved.
This has been widely - and rightly - ridiculed.
However it was the only thing the Judge could say given his determination to say the Russian authorities killed Litvinenko, and the absence of any evidence - apart from motive - to show that they did.
It is in fact impossible to the read the text of the Inquiry report without being struck by the extent to which the Judge has absorbed and internalised the typically negative Western view of Russia.
Thus the Judge refers to the Russian government as “Putin’s regime”. He calls a book of Litvinenko’s placing responsibility for the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings “well-researched”. He reels off Litvinenko’s allegations that President Putin is a paedophile, a criminal associate of the Tambov gang, and a heroin smuggler, without comment. He repeats Litvinenko’s claim the FSB has supplied arms to Al-Qaeda, also without comment. He casts doubt on the reality of Lugovoi’s prison sentence purely on the strength of the testimony of an accomplice in the crime. Whilst he admits the claim the Russian government was involved in the murder of various of its opponents has not been proved, he claims nonetheless to see a pattern and says Litvinenko’s murder must be considered in the context of that pattern.
Amazingly, he uses the killing of known or suspected terrorists like the notorious jihadi terrorist Ibn Khattab and the Chechen militant Zelimkhan Yandarbiev to draw inferences about Russian state involvement in the killing of Litvinenko, who was not a terrorist.
As we have seen, he also believes the Russian government tightly controls Russian television and that Lugovoi’s various appearances on Russian television could not have happened without the Russian government’s consent.
In this deeply negative view of Russia he meets his match in Professor Robert Service, the expert the Inquiry consulted about the Russian political scene, who not only shares the Judge’s bleak view of today’s Russia but who actually lends his weight to it.
Professor Service is a historian and well-recognised authority on Soviet history. However his strongly negative view of contemporary Russian realities is not one everyone would share. I can think of various equally well-regarded scholars of Russian affairs who might for example take issue with his claims that Litvinenko’s book on the Moscow apartment bombings is “credible” and “well-researched”, that the Russian government has become more secretive since President Putin came to power (for the record I think the opposite), or that Berezovsky’s former associate Alex Goldfarb is a generally reliable witness.
The trouble however is not so much that the Inquiry heard from Professor Service. It is that on the gigantic subject of the state of politics and society in today’s Russia it didn’t hear from anyone else.
In saying this I should say that I do not know whether the Inquiry solicited alternative opinions about this subject from other people. Perhaps it did, and perhaps they declined to come. It is however troubling that on this key issue only one view was heard, and one which moreover is not Russian.
The Judge decided that Litvinenko’s association with Berezovsky, the circumstances of his leaving the FSB (after supposedly exposing an FSB plot to have Berezovsky killed), his opposition activity in London, his two books about the supposedly criminal practices of the FSB - including its alleged role in the Moscow apartment bombings and in arming Al-Qaeda, and his relentless personal attacks on Putin - whom he has variously called a paedophile, a gangster and a heroin smuggler - would have made him a traitor in FSB eyes, and would have given the Russian authorities the motive to kill him.
An alternative and arguably much better informed view, is that Putin has had to put up with an enormous of criticism - much of it highly personal - ever since he became President, both in Russia and outside, and that the wild and wholly unsubstantiated allegations made by Litvinenko together with his well-known connection to Berezovsky meant that scarcely anyone in Russia took Litvinenko seriously until he was killed.
An alternative view might also question whether the FSB really is the vengeful and ruthless organisation the Judge - and apparently Professor Service - think it is. There are after all any number of former KGB and FSB defectors critical of the Russian government alive and active both in Russia and the West. One of them actually gave evidence to the Inquiry.
An alternative view might also question the degree to which Litvinenko within the FSB was regarded as a traitor.
Litvinenko’s work for the FSB was crime investigation. He was - as his family has said - essentially a policeman. He was not a spy or an intelligence or counter-intelligence officer, and he does not seem to have had access to classified material. He was not in possession of any information that might compromise Russian security or an intelligence asset. He was hardly in a position to be a traitor.
The Judge made much of Litvinenko's role in supposedly exposing an FSB plot to kill Berezovsky. The Judge appears to think that exposing this plot would have made Litvinenko a traitor in the eyes of his colleagues in the FSB.
Litvinenko was involved in a bizarre rumpus in 1998 when he accused his colleagues in the FSB of plotting to have Berezovsky killed. Contrary to what the Judge - and some other people - appear to believe, this murder plot was almost certainly an invention of Berezovsky's intended to discredit the new Primakov government that had just come to power in Russia.
Primakov was a known enemy of Berezovsky's who made no secret of his wish to have Berezovsky arrested. He was also a person with a long background in intelligence work who had headed Russia's foreign intelligence agency, the SVR. It suited Berezovsky's purposes at the time to play up Primakov's connections to Russia's intelligence and security establishment by hinting that Primakov was planning to use to them in order to have him killed.
Though some members of the FSB have subsequently claimed that there was indeed some talk in the organisation of having Berezovsky killed, it is clear that there was no formal order, and the gossip of former operatives should be treated with caution.
The whole episode was farcical and embarrassing, but was hardly unusual in the baroque politics of 1990s Russia.
Though Litvinenko's involvement would undoubtedly have annoyed many people within the FSB - and led directly to his dismissal - the problem in seeing in it a motive for his murder is that Litvinenko was under the FSB's control until he eventually left Russia in 2000. No attempt to murder him was made in that time, and nor was such an attempt in the six years he lived afterwards in Britain. It is not obvious why if the FSB considered Litvinenko a traitor because of this episode it waited for so long.
It is in fact most unlikely that this episode did cause Litvinenko's death. In the end it did no damage to the FSB and by 2006 it was receding into the past and was almost forgotten.
No doubt Litvinenko was unpopular with his former comrades in the FSB, but if they thought him a traitor the facts suggest they can’t have thought him a very important one.
As for the idea the FSB systematically murders opponents of the Russian government, an alternative view might question whether this is true, and might say that the evidence in the trials of the murderers of Sergey Yushenkov and Anna Politkovskaya - whose killings were mentioned by the Judge - does not implicate the Russian authorities, whilst the facts of the death of Yuri Shchekochikhin - whose death was also mentioned by the Judge - suggest a violent allergic reaction to drugs mistakenly given during medical treatment for a viral infection.
VIKTOR IVANOV AND THE ‘DUE DILIGENCE’ REPORT - THE MOTIVE AT LAST?
Perhaps because of doubts Litvinenko’s public activities really were sufficiently damning to provoke his murder, a theory was floated in December 2006 - shortly after his death - that he was killed in revenge for a Due Diligence report he had provided which was highly critical of Viktor Ivanov, a senior Russian official who now heads Russia’s anti-drugs force.
The theory is that Litvinenko showed or gave the report to Lugovoi who passed it on to Ivanov and the Kremlin, who were in turn so furious they ordered Litvinenko killed.
As with so many other theories that have floated around the Litvinenko case, this theory is exactly that: just a theory with no evidence behind it.
The Inquiry report shows that there is some evidence from some things Litvinenko is reported to have said that he showed or gave the report to Lugovoi, who had helped him with other Due Diligence reports.
There is no evidence however that Lugovoi passed the report on to Ivanov or the Kremlin or told them about it or that they in response ordered Litvinenko killed.
In the end the Judge was reluctant to place much reliance on this theory. The fact Lugovoi could only have forwarded the report - or news of it - to Ivanov and the Kremlin a few short weeks before Litvinenko was killed - leaving them very little time to arrange Litvinenko’s murder - argues strongly against this theory - a fact the Judge admitted.
Without hearing from Lugovoi or Ivanov this is all just anyway just a line of speculation, and claiming to see in it a motive for the Russian authorities to want Litvinenko killed is unwarranted.
For the record, Viktor Ivanov has categorically denied any role in Litvinenko's case. Everything I have heard about him suggests he is telling the truth.
BEREZOVSKY - NO MOTIVE TO KILL LITVINENKO?
What of the Judge’s argument that it must have been the Russian authorities who killed Litvinenko because only they - and no one else - had any motive for wanting him killed.
The short answer to that is that though the Judge argues otherwise, the facts show if anything an over-abundance of motive on the part of lots of other people to want to have Litvinenko killed.
Though the Judge tries to downplay the fact, it is clear for example that Litvinenko and Berezovsky had a major quarrel shortly before Litvinenko was killed.
There is some dispute about what this quarrel was about - despite what some of the witnesses said it was probably about money - but that the quarrel happened is beyond doubt.
The Judge tries to get round this by saying that Berezovsky and Litvinenko had patched up their quarrel before Litvinenko was killed.
Possibly, but the evidence for that is hardly compelling. Besides might not Berezovsky - if he had decided to have Lugovoi killed - want to appear to have made up with him, if only to give himself an alibi and to draw attention away from himself?
Here it is worth saying that though the Judge - backed by Professor Service - apparently believes the FSB routinely murders people, and that Lugovoi is an FSB agent, the evidence that Berezovsky was involved in political killings and that Lugovoi - the presumed assassin - was his agent, is actually far more compelling.
Berezovsky for example admitted financing elements of the Chechen insurgency against the Russian government, whilst Lugovoi’s long and close association with Berezovsky is a matter of public record.
Then there is the well-substantiated fact that in the months before his death Litvinenko was talking about blackmailing people.
This evidence of this was provided by Dr. Yulia Svetlichnaya, a postgraduate student at Westminster University, who interviewed Litvinenko no fewer than 6 times before he was killed. She says that during these meetings Litvinenko harped on continuously about the blackmail he was going to carry out.
This evidence provides a good example of the way in which investigation of Litvinenko’s murder has been thrown off-course by the obsession with Russian state involvement.
Though Dr. Svetlichnaya’s evidence has been known about since just after Litvinenko’s death, her evidence has been largely ignored, with some casting doubt on the truth of it.
The Inquiry report shows that Dr. Svetlichnaya was closely questioned by the Inquiry, and it is clear from the report that she came through the cross-examination well. The Judge never casts doubt on her truthfulness, and there is no reason to doubt therefore that her story is true.
We know therefore that in the months leading up to his death Litvinenko was talking about blackmailing someone.
Unlike the nebulous claims of motive that have been made against the Russian authorities, blackmail is a classic motive for murder. If one chooses to use motive as a guide to the solution of a murder, then the obvious thing to do in Litvinenko’s case would be to try to identify the person or persons he was blackmailing or intending to blackmail.
The obsession with the issue of Russian state involvement means this has not been done.
The Judge in the end decided that Dr. Svetlichnaya’s evidence is irrelevant since Litvinenko’s talk of blackmail cannot explain his murder. The reason the Judge gave for this is that Litvinenko’s words show he never put his threat to blackmail someone into practice.
The Judge also rejected the theory the person Litvinenko was intending to blackmail was Berezovsky on the grounds that Litvinenko gave the impression that more than one person was involved and that those persons had some connection to the Kremlin, which Berezovsky at the time did not.
Again it is very easy to construct contrary arguments.
Would Litvinenko really tell Dr. Svetlichnaya that he was actually blackmailing someone - as opposed to just intending to do so? It is already astonishing that he told Dr. Svetlichnaya that he was intending to blackmail someone. Would he have taken her so far into his confidence as to tell her he was actually doing it?
The Judge said that at the time he was killed Litvinenko was looking for alternative sources of income following a reduction of the funds he was getting from Berezovsky. Might that not give him a motive to blackmail someone? Might that not mean he was actually doing it?
As for Berezovsky, given that it was Berezovsky who had put Dr. Svetlichnaya in touch with him, would Litvinenko have told her it was Berezovsky he was blackmailing? Might he not have tried to disguise the fact it was Berezovsky he was blackmailing by hinting that he was blackmailing more than one person?
As for Berezovsky having no connection to the Kremlin, a book was published which called him “The Godfather of the Kremlin” (its author - the US journalist Paul Khlebnikov - was subsequently killed).
As it happens, if one wants to construct a theory it was Berezovsky Litvinenko was blackmailing, the timing of some of the events in the last months of Litvinenko’s life might actually support it.
Litvinenko appears to have first told Dr. Svetlichnaya that he intended to blackmail someone in April 2006. At some point that spring or summer he had a major row with Berezovsky. Might that have been because he was blackmailing Berezovsky - as he might have been hinting to Dr. Svetlichnaya that he was?
OTHER POSSIBLE SUSPECTS
Alternatively, if it was not Berezovsky Litvinenko was blackmailing, he might have been blackmailing any number of other people, any one of whom might have wanted him killed. Litvinenko’s previous work as a policeman might have given him knowledge about all sorts of people he might try to blackmail.
One possibility is the now destroyed Tambov gang in St. Petersburg, whose activities Litvinenko had investigated in the 1990s. If he was trying to blackmail them then their reputation suggests they would not have hesitated to kill him.
In 2004 - two years before Litvinenko was killed - a St. Petersburg businessman called Roman Tsepov with a shady reputation and alleged links to organised crime died suddenly showing symptoms that seem suspiciously like polonium poisoning. As in Litvinenko’s case Tsepov’s postmortem found he had died from poisoning by a radioactive material, which might have been polonium.
Contrary to claims that are sometimes made Tsepov was not close to Putin, and there is no reason to think the Russian authorities killed him. Though Tsepov’s case has never been solved, it seems likely he was killed by some of his criminal associates in St. Petersburg.
If Tsepov was killed with polonium, then that might suggest polonium poisoning was a favoured method for eliminating enemies in the mid 2000s in the underworld in St. Petersburg, the city where the Tambov gang was based. That might connect Litvinenko’s murder to St. Petersburg and to his previous work there.
The Judge also mentioned work Litvinenko carried out - or was in the process of carrying out - preparing Due Diligence reports that touched on individuals like the alleged Russian gangster Semion Mogilevich (an individual also without links to Putin despite numerous claims to the contrary). On the eve of his death Litvinenko was also helping the British and Spanish authorities investigate various Russian gangsters or alleged gangsters in Spain.
The Judge doubts these people could have known anything about this work because none of the people Litvinenko was working for would have leaked it to them.
The obvious answer to that is that of course they would have known about it if Litvinenko had told them about it because he was blackmailing them.
Then there is the Chechen connection. As the Judge himself admits Litvinenko had got very close to the Chechen independence movement, which he was actively supporting for some years before his death. Supposedly he even converted to Islam just before he died.
The Chechens have a reputation for ruthless action against people they fall out with. If Litvinenko was unwise enough to try to blackmail them - or betray them in some other way - then it is not difficult to believe they might have taken steps to put him out of the way.
Last but not least there is Lugovoi himself.
The Judge dismissed the possibility that Lugovoi - the presumed killer - might have been acting on his own behalf, saying Lugovoi had no possible motive to kill Litvinenko.
Again it is difficult to understand how the Judge can be so sure.
Lugovoi has a long history of close association with Litvinenko, who would have presumably known a great deal about him. Lugovoi’s background is shady and he has a criminal past. He has a record of providing bodyguard services to senior Russian politicians so to say he is connected to the Kremlin might not be too much of a stretch. Lastly, at the time of Litvinenko’s death he was a successful businessman and a wealthy man.
On the face of it Lugovoi seems to fit rather well the profile of the persons Litvinenko told Dr. Svetlichnaya he was blackmailing.
Lugovoi’s trips to London to meet with Litvinenko might in that case have been to discuss the blackmail. If so that might explain why he brought his trusted friend and sidekick Kovtun with him - to support him in the meetings with Litvinenko where they discussed the blackmail.
The Judge was baffled at what went on at the various meetings Lugovoi and Litvinenko had together - many of which appear to have been rather aimless. He also questioned the reasons for Kovtun’s trips to London.
If Litvinenko was blackmailing Lugovoi at these meetings that might explain why they happened and why there is so little information about them and why Kovtun was coming to London and attending some of these meetings.
As it happens Lugovoi’s meetings with Litvinenko in London do have the look of a negotiation about them. If Lugovoi was not being blackmailed at these meetings, then it is not impossible he was acting as the representative of someone else who was.
If Lugovoi was being blackmailed by Litvinenko, then his wealth and security connections might have made it possible for him to get hold of the polonium he needed to get Litvinenko out of the way. If he was representing someone else, then presumably that person could have obtained it.
All this of course is sheer speculation. How is it more so however than the speculation the Judge has himself indulged in to prove Russian state involvement?
As speculation goes, I would suggest that any one of my speculations is altogether more plausible than the Judge’s speculations that Litvinenko was killed because he said some bad things about Putin and the FSB - things which were said and repeated by lots of other people many other times both in Russia and elsewhere before Litvinenko was killed.
I do not know whether Litvinenko was blackmailing anyone, or if he was blackmailing someone whether the person or persons he was blackmailing were any of the persons I have mentioned.
Perhaps Litvinenko was killed for some completely different reason unconnected to blackmail at the behest of somebody whose identity is completely unknown.
The point is that the Judge was wrong to say only the Russian authorities had a possible motive for Litvinenko’s murder, just as he was wrong to use motive as a means to identify his killer.
Motive can only be used safely as a guide to the identity of the killer in very straightforward cases. As should by now be obvious, this is not a straightforward case.
SHOULD THE RUSSIANS HAVE COOPERATED WITH THE INQUIRY DESPITE ITS FLAWS?
All this begs the question whether anything could have been done to make the outcome of the Inquiry different?
Throughout the Inquiry report the Judge repeatedly laments Lugovoi’s, Kovtun’s and the Russian authorities’ refusal to participate in the Inquiry. Might the outcome have been different if they had participated as the Judge says he wanted them to?
Unfortunately the short answer is almost certainly no. If Lugovoi, Kovtun and the Russian authorities had been present, they might have been able to challenge the evidence. It is well-nigh impossible however to believe they would have changed the outcome.
The US journalist William Dunkerley has described Sir Robert Owen - the Judge in the case - as a “man with a mission” and in the light of how he conducted the Inquiry it is impossible to disagree.
The mission the Judge set himself - obvious to anyone observing him from the moment he was first appointed coroner - was to do, as he saw it, justice to Litvinenko’s widow by exposing the murderers of her husband - who it is quite clear he always believed were the Russian authorities acting through Lugovoi and Kovtun.
The Judge has pursued this objective with a single-mindedness worthy of a better cause, despite the British government’s attempts to rein him him.
It was the Judge - not the British government - who decided to convert what was originally an Inquest into a Public Inquiry, and who then converted the Public Inquiry into what amounts to a trial.
It was the Judge - not the British government - who insisted on looking at the secret evidence - denying it to Lugovoi, Kovtun and the Russians - in order to help him decide that they were guilty.
I have already spoken of the extent to which his report shows the Judge has internalised the typically bleak Western view of Russia.
What is perhaps even more striking is his extreme partiality towards anyone who believes in the theory of Russian state involvement.
Thus the extraordinary action of presenting a concocted death-bed statement to a dying man goes by without censure. The evidence of people like Goldfarb, Glushkov and Shvets is accepted uncritically and called reliable despite their obvious interest as opponents of the Russian government in a finding that the Russian state was responsible for Litvinenko’s death.
Theories about Litvinenko’s and Lugovoi’s state of mind coming from these people are eagerly seized on when they offer ways out of evidential difficulties that stand in the way of what the Judge believe is the truth. Even Berezovsky - a person whom the Judge admits Mrs. Justice Gloster in the High Court found had no regard for truth - receives posthumous recognition as a reliable witness.
As for Litvinenko himself, he can do no wrong.
His history of moonlighting for Berezovsky whilst working for the FSB, his bizarre claims that Putin is a paedophile, a heroin smuggler and a gangster, his peculiar death-bed conversion to Islam, and his repeatedly stated intentions to blackmail people (explained away as just wild talk) count for nothing.
In the Judge’s eyes he is a truth-teller (his book on the subject of the Moscow apartment bombings is “not just a political tract” but is “well-researched”), a man “remarkable for his devotion to his adopted country” (ie. Britain) and someone who the Judge clearly thinks is a fearless fighter against crime and tyranny who has paid a fearsome price for his ideals.
The Judge even repeats with seeming approval the claim of a witness that Litvinenko was not financially acquisitive - a comment which in light of Litvinenko’s longstanding association with Berezovsky would in Russia raise a hollow laugh.
Given such opinions it is completely understandable that Lugovoi, Kovtun and the Russian authorities decided to have nothing to do with the Inquiry fearing that their presence would simply legitimise a process that was fundamentally flawed and which was predestined to find them guilty.
THE WAY FORWARD FROM HERE?
Since the Inquiry is not a court there is no appeal against its findings.
Lugovoi and Kovtun might conceivably try to get the European Court of Human Rights to set the findings of the Inquiry aside on the grounds that the Inquiry has violated the presumption of innocence and was conducted in a way that has violated their rights to a fair trial.
The problems involved in doing that seem to me overwhelming, and if I was them I wouldn’t bother.
Having said that one should not overstate the political importance of what has happened.
Far from welcoming the Inquiry’s report the British government is deeply embarrassed by it, as the tepid tone of the statement from Home Secretary Theresa May purporting to welcome it shows.
Though there has been a predictable flood of angry commentary in the British and US media, the only action the British government has taken is to protest to the Russian ambassador, and to impose asset freezes on Lugovoi’s and Kovtun’s non-existent assets in Britain.
As for the British public - now hardened by US and British drone attacks to state sponsored killings - the Litvinenko affair is for them simply a real life James Bond story. It has if anything enhanced their cynical but nonetheless real respect for Putin and Russia as a man and a country not to be trifled with.
The Russian government for its part has simply shrugged its shoulders at an outcome it always expected.
That does not mean that the Litvinenko affair is entirely without significance.
What it has revealed - not for the first time - is the pathological Russophobia of a large part of the British establishment - including not just the media and the political class but as it turns out a part of the British judiciary and legal establishment, which has willingly set aside some of its most cherished principles in order to find Russia guilty of the murder of a single man.
It is in fact the British legal system which has come out worst from this affair.
As for who murdered Litvinenko, I am fairly sure the Russian authorities by now know the truth, though I doubt the British authorities do.
One day we may find out from the Russian archives what the truth is. I suspect that will be a long time in the future, when it will only be of interest to historians.
Until then the only thing we can say with reasonable confidence is that the Russian authorities almost certainly had nothing to do with Litvinenko’s murder, even if Lugovoi and possibly Kovtun perhaps did.
That is not perhaps a very satisfactory conclusion to this case, but it is the most we can say as we finally draw down the curtain on the whole affair.
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Transnistria: Dilemmas of Peaceful Settlement
RIA Novosti / Sergey…
RIA Novosti / Sergey Kuznecov
Operational group of Russian Forces
in the Transnistrian region of Moldova
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Topic: Russia's Foreign Policy
Region: Russia, Europe, Post-Soviet space, North America
Type: Articles
(votes: 2, rating: 5)
Sergey Markedonov
Ph.D in History, Leading Researcher of the Euro-Atlantic Security Center at the MGIMO Institute, RIAC Expert
Aleksandr Gushchin
PhD in History, Associate Professor, Department of Post-Soviet Countries, Russian State University for the Humanities, RIAC expert
Short version of the article
Full version of the article
The significance of the Transnistrian conflict is derived from three basic factors. The first is putting an end to the standoff between the Republic of Moldova and the unrecognized Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) by resolving political status issues and bringing about political stabilization in the region. Second is the potential creation of an additional instrument to help solve the Ukraine crisis and normalize Russia–Ukraine relations. Third is the potential impact of the Transnistria conflict on relations between Russia and the European Union. The latter has a special interest in minimizing instability in regions close to its borders.
After the armed confrontation on the Dniester culminated in the July 21, 1992 signing of the Agreement on the Principles of Peaceful Settlement, the Transnistria problem was pushed to the political margins for a considerable time [1].
However, in the last two years it has come to the forefront as an important element on the international agenda in the context of the Ukraine crisis and sharpened confrontations between Russia and the West in the post-Soviet space. In addition to the deteriorating geopolitical situation for the PMR due to the Ukrainian blockade, since January 2016 there has been a threat that the European Union may lift (or change) its trade preferences for Transnistrian goods, which could greatly aggravate the socioeconomic situation in Transnistria. At the same time, however, the preservation of these trade preferences squarely ties the PMR economy to those of the European Union and Moldova [2]. Meanwhile, the United States, the European Union and the OSCE – observers and mediators in the peaceful settlement process – are turning a blind eye to the actions of Ukraine, which is violating its status of guarantor nation by isolating Transnistria (by building defense fortifications and making it more difficult for Russian citizens to cross the Ukrainian border).
A Unique Conflict
The United States, the European Union and the OSCE – observers and mediators in the peaceful settlement process – are turning a blind eye to the actions of Ukraine, which is violating its status of guarantor nation by isolating Transnistria.
The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic and the Transnistria conflict have some unique features.
First, the conflict between the unrecognized PMR and the Republic of Moldova arose without a pronounced ethnic component. The consolidation of the Transnistrian people occurred on an inter-ethnic and anti-Romanian basis. It developed in the absence of an ethnocratic leadership and an official declaration of “leading” ethnic groups, and maintained a state building approach [3]. The process of Romanianization on the right bank of the Dniester in 1988–1989 triggered a civil conflict. The Moldovans in Transnistria who feared Romanianization backed the creation of the Transnistrian state [1].
Second, the armed conflict that ended in August 1992 was far smaller in scale compared to confrontations in other parts of the former USSR (for example, in the Republics of Transcaucasia and Tajikistan). It produced no refugees.
Third, in spite of mutual mistrust, setbacks in and even suspensions of the negotiation process, the parties to the conflict maintained bilateral contacts on a fairly high level, as compared to any other format of relations between the de facto entity and Chisinau [5].
Fourth, Transnistria does not have a shared border with Russia, a country that supports it. It does, however, have a border with Ukraine. In spite of the tensions between Kiev and Moscow, the PMR has managed to maintain their cooperation in the peace process, with both Russia and Ukraine as its guarantors, as well as cooperate with the United States, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) [6].
Thus, in 1992–2014, despite occasional outbursts of political confrontation, followed by more peaceful periods of hope for a final settlement, the situation in Transnistria remained largely stable. Thus this status was regarded as a kind of durable resolution, and the whole situation a near model of “frozen” conflict. The presence of Russian peacekeepers in the region deterred the use of force by Moldova and its Western supporters and in addition bolstered Moscow’s political influence.
However, the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis has given the problem of Transnistria a new meaning and greater political significance.
EPA / Stringer / Vostock Photo
Igor Istomin:
Ukraine is Intensifying the Transnistria Conflict
Transnistria: Positions of the Main Players
Traditionally, Russia has played a multifaceted role in the Transnistria conflict. On the one hand, it was involved in the negotiation process of a settlement understood as not a victory for Chisinau, but rather a political compromise between the conflicting parties. On the other hand, Moscow saw pro-Russian Transnistria as an outpost for its interests, a counterweight to the attempts of the United States and the European Union to minimize Russia’s influence in the post-Soviet space and to ensure European security [7]. The PMR was seen as an instrument to prevent rapprochement between Moldova and NATO and to keep Chisinau neutral. As a result, a repeat of the Abkhazia–South Ossetia scenario was rejected in favour of a status quo in Transnistria [8].
The sharp deterioration of relations between Moscow and Kiev has created serious problems for Transnistria in terms of transportation logistics, politics and economy. The Kremlin fears an “unfreezing” of the conflict, which could entail a military confrontation and a collapse of the negotiation process, since Russia would be forced to react assertively and therefore expose itself to additional risks, ranging from economic sanctions to armed engagement. Under the new conditions, Russia seeks to leave some room for maneuver, tailoring its actions to possible moves of the “5+2” partners [9].
Russia seeks to leave some room for maneuver, tailoring its actions to possible moves of the “5+2” partners.
During the process of political settlement, Kiev’s position flip-flopped between political mediation and economic pressure on Transnistria to force it to reintegrate with Moldova [10]. Today, however, Kiev perceives the PMR as a pro-Russian enclave that Moscow may use as a bridgehead for an attack on the southern regions of Ukraine. Kiev’s resultant actions aimed at isolating the PMR and weakening its ties to Russia have had negative consequences for the economic and socio-political situation in the unrecognized republic, which can only be mitigated by continued preferential treatment of Transnistrian goods shipped to the European Union [11].
One sign of the new trend in the relations between Ukraine and Transnistria is the appointment of former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili as Governor of the Odessa Region. The appointment has implications beyond the Transnistria issue. Saakashvili is a symbol of American influence in Ukraine, and his appointment as the head of a key region is an indicative and significant Ukrainian move. Its repercussions were felt in Transnistria, whose leadership saw as a hostile act the appointment of such a controversial political figure to head a neighbouring region of Ukraine [12]. Evidently, the Transnistria problem helps the Ukrainian authorities keep up the image of the Russian threat. Moreover, the actions of the Ukrainian side are aimed not only at Transnistria, but also at Russian troops and peacekeepers stationed in the region.
Unlike Kiev, Chisinau is interested in preventing a showdown with Moscow.
Despite differences among parties in Moldova, there is a consensus within the country’s political elite with regard to Transnistria, in spite of the sharpening divisions within the Moldovan establishment (between the ruling pro-European coalition and the left, represented by the communists and socialists). Even the political forces thought to be pro-Russian, such as the Socialist Party, are at most in favour of the federalization of Moldova [13].
A change of power in the Republic of Moldova is unlikely to bring about fundamental changes to the country’s foreign policy or the settlement of the Transnistria conflict. However, unlike Kiev, Chisinau is interested in preventing a showdown with Moscow. This is due, firstly, to the existence of a broadly pro-Russian electorate (those who vote for the left do so to a large extent because they want to see an improvement in relations between Russia and Moldova) [14], and secondly, to the wish to prevent an aggravation of relations with Gagaúzia, which is in favour of Eurasian integration [15]. Even so, the steady pro-European and “unionist” stance would not allow any, even a hypothetical left-wing, cabinet to make an about face and renounce coordination of its actions with Kiev or its backers, the United States and the European Union.
panoramio.com
Russia and the EU – Looking for Ways of
Cooperation in the Common Neighbourhood:
the case of the Republic of Moldova and
Transdniestria
The United States and the European Union
Transnistria is not a priority for Washington and Brussels these days. The West supports the “reintegration of Moldova” and its territorial integrity. At the current stage, it prefers indirect pressure when the rhetoric about Russian “revisionism” in the post-Soviet space is advanced by claims of expanded integrating links with Moldova. Today, neither Washington nor Brussels want to dump the “5+2” format. They invoke it, which means that a common political stance has been worked out. No party, for various reasons, is apt to raise the stakes in a contest of influence. The European Union and the United States are ready to let go of the Transnistria situation, considering that the crisis is forcing Tiraspol to seek an agreement with Brussels and Chisinau. Moscow, for its part, is holding its trump card (recognition of the PMR) close to its chest until the conflict escalates.
The European Union has changed its approach to the Eastern Neighbourhood countries, emphasizing the need to prevent destabilization close to the European borders, enhance security along these borders, and stop the Union’s enlargement [16].
The Official Journal of the European Union announced that, as of January 1, 2016, all economic agents in the Republic of Moldova, including the Transnistria region, export goods to EU countries on the same free trade basis. The two-year negotiations on the issue were successful: trade between Transnistria and the European Union will continue. The Transnistrian authorities agree to a two-year transitional period, after which the new trade regime – similar to the one that the European Union has with Moldova – will come into effect. Goods arriving from Europe will not be subject to customs duties, while Transnistrian producers will have to provide certificates with information about where goods came from and comply with the EU requirements on food security. The losses in customs revenue will be offset by the introduction of VAT [17]. The agreement with the European Union is likely a forced step, as external factors— including isolation from Ukraine, physical distance from Russia and decreasing trade volumes with that country, as well as the marked changes in structure and flow of exports that took place during the grace period— made its prolongation crucial and even necessary.
The West supports the “reintegration of Moldova” and its territorial integrity.
With regard to Transnistria, Romania has been more active than any other EU member country. Under President Traian Basescu (2004–2014), the thesis positing a single Romanian people artificially divided by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and thus a contemporary need for reunification under the aegis of the European Union, was promoted by the media [18].
However, Bucharest has adjusted its priorities under the new president Klaus Iohannis. Instead of promoting the idea of “great unification”, the Romanian authorities have set about building up economic links not only with the Republic of Moldova, but also with the unrecognized PMR [19]. According to the State Customs Committee of Transnistria, since the beginning of 2015, Transnistrian enterprises have shipped $170 million worth of goods to the European Union, half of which went to Romania. For comparison, it has shipped a mere $42 million to the countries in the Eurasian Economic Union, with Russia accounted for $39 million of that figure. It should be added that Romania’s approach is changing under strong influence of the European Union. Following the events in the Middle East that have triggered the flow of migrants to Europe, Brussels does not welcome any changes in the proximity of its borders [20].
Instead of promoting the idea of “great unification”, the Romanian authorities have set about building up economic links not only with the Republic of Moldova, but also with the unrecognized PMR.
The idea of unification certainly does exist, and not just in theory, but also as a concrete project. However, this project clearly cannot be realized in the medium term, never mind by 2018 (the 100-year anniversary of Bessarabia becoming part of Romania). A plan was presented in Brussels on February 18 – a strategy for unification that was prepared by the National Liberal Party of Romania (PNL) led at the time by Klaus Iohannis before he was elected President [21]. The project envisages the creation and development of a cultural, socioeconomic and informational space. In the context of creating such a strategy, Iohannis’ statement— that the issue of unification can only be broached after the situation on both banks of the Prut is more stable (which in Romania’s case refers to economic conditions)— is rather interesting [22].
In the context of mutual rapprochement, Romania will provide Moldova with the first tranche of a concessional loan in the amount of 60 million euros of a total loan of 150 million euros to shore up its budget after the country takes its first steps towards implementing the promised reforms and approving the Road Map with the International Monetary Fund. In order to receive the first tranche of the loan from Romania, Moldova must meet the conditions relating to improved governance in the banking sector, ensured independence of the courts and an approved Road Map with the International Monetary Fund.
At the present time, the resources of the OSCE, which is acting as a mediator in the conflict, are exceedingly limited
At the present time, the resources of the OSCE, which is acting as a mediator in the conflict, are exceedingly limited. Its mandate is built around a comprehensive settlement of the conflict based on the territorial integrity of the Republic of Moldova, giving special status to the PMR, and its recognition by the people of Transnistria [24]. This position was reaffirmed at the OSCE Ministerial Council in Belgrade on December 3–4, 2015 [25]. Settlement was identified with ensuring Moldova’s territorial integrity, without firm guarantees of the interests of Russia and the people of Transnistria. The legal aspects of the “special status” of the PMR still need some clarification.
Meanwhile, the past two years have brought a number of new factors to the conflict: a marked change of the de facto situation on the border between the PMR and Ukraine; the changed role of the Ukrainian state in the settlement process; continued confrontation between Kiev and Moscow, and between Russia and the West.
All these factors combined, and taken individually, greatly complicate the resolution of status issues. As a matter of fact, the complexity has turned the OSCE from being an effective mediator, into being instead a mere transmitter of information on the positions of the parties. If these positions are considered outside the context of normalization of relations between Moscow and Kiev, as well as outside the normalization of those between Russia and Ukraine, the European Union and the United States, it turns out that they are practically incompatible with each other.
Igor Delanoë:
Military Balance in the Black Sea Region
The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic: Internal Challenges
The evolution of the Transnistria problem has been accompanied by complicated internal developments inside the PMR.
First, the republic is living through a serious economic crisis caused by objective factors (lack of full recognition and integration into the world economy), as well as subjective ones (isolation that increased with the start of the Ukraine crisis). For the first ten months of 2015, the economic decline in industry, which gripped 8 out of 10 industrial sectors, amounted to 16per cent in dollar terms. The decline was particularly steep in the steelmaking and construction materials industries. Debts are growing, and it is impossible to cover the budget deficit out of the so-called gas account. GDP dropped by 19per cent in 2015, much more than in Ukraine. The economic outlook is fairly bleak. The industrial optimism index is very low; representatives of the real sector expect a further slump and for the conditions of their production units and enterprises to worsen [26].
Russia, which is rendering colossal financial and technical assistance to the PMR, has started to lose ground in a number of key areas.
Russia, which is rendering colossal financial and technical assistance to the PMR, has started to lose ground in a number of key areas. A paradoxical situation has emerged: on the one hand, Transnistria’s economy and infrastructure depend on Russia; on the other hand, Russia’s share in the PMR’s trade, as witnessed by export and import figures, is falling. In 2011, Russia accounted for 23.6 per cent of Transnistria’s exports and 46.3 per cent of its imports. Its trade surplus in the region dropped by 24per cent in the first half of 2015 [27]. Exports were down 20per cent, and imports 25per cent, on 2014. Half of the goods from the Transnistrian region are sold on the right bank of the Dniester in Moldova. At the same time, the export of products from Transnistria to Romania is nearly double the amount of exports to the Russian market. In March 2015, the PMR introduced a special procedure for paying wages and pensions in the amount of 70per cent of the due and payable sums (the rest is considered to be arrears). The withdrawal of big Russian business from Transnistria is an important indicator of the future status of the republic [28].
The withdrawal of big Russian business from Transnistria is an important indicator of the future status of the republic.
Second, another serious risk for the PMR, on top of its dire economic situation, is the state of its elites. Today, the republic is ruled by an elite, which grew up professionally, and psychologically, during the years of de facto independence. For them, the future of the region and its statehood is a special issue that is important in itself, even outside its Soviet past context. However, there is a rift between the Sheriff Group, the biggest holding of private companies in Transnistria that generated 52per cent of the PMR’s aggregate budget in 2014, and the administration of President Yevgeny Shevchuk [29]. The rift widened just before the elections of the Republic’s Supreme Council. As a result of parliamentary elections, the opponents of the incumbent president won a majority in the legislature [30]. The President’s Revival party thus suffered a serious setback.
Considering the current situation, events may develop in one of two ways. Under the first scenario, Sheriff will put forward and secure the appointment of its prime minister and then coordinate the presidential candidacy with Moscow, while Shevchuk serves out his term. Under the second scenario, Moscow, by agreement with Yevgeny Shevchuk and Sheriff, will propose its own candidate for prime minister. Impeachment is a possibility, but not any time soon. The parties may try to find a compromise and preserve the current political configuration with a new prime minister and the old president, who has lost a key political battle for parliament, until the next presidential election. However, we should bear in mind that the new members of parliament (from the opposition) and the new prime minister will face a considerable challenge because of objective factors, above all the grave economic situation [31].
The Future of Transnistria: “Freezing” Or “Unfreezing?”
Lack of trust between Russia and the West prevents them from acting in concert, and thus both parties’ confidence in the initial agreements is put into question.
As of today, events in and around Transnistria may develop according to one of three scenarios.
1. Integration.
A fundamental agreement between Russia (which is interested in having sanctions eased and restoring relations with the West) and the PMR on one side, and the United States, the European Union, Ukraine and Moldova on the other, would pave the way for the incorporation of Transnistria into a single Moldovan state. However, the following conditions must be observed: the country’s neutrality, non-bloc status and independence from Romania must be preserved; and guarantees of the power and business interests of the present-day elite in Transnistria, including influence in shaping a common foreign policy, must be provided. This scenario, if implemented, would, in theory, enable Russia to simultaneously wield great influence on Moldova’s domestic politics as a whole and link these factors in its relations with the West in other areas in the post-Soviet space.
This scenario, however, has several flaws.
The United States and its allies see the process of settling the Transnistria conflict as a minimization Russian influence on the Dniester and in the post-Soviet space as a whole.
First, the Moldovan elite is categorically against the transformation of its state project into a federation, while for Transnistria, “broad autonomy” is too minimal a starting point, even for a theoretical discussion of integration.
Second, the lack of trust between Russia and the West prevents them from acting in concert, and thus both parties’ confidence in the initial agreements is put into question. This is particularly true of the neutrality of Moldova. Traditionally, the West has encouraged the post-Soviet countries to join NATO, arguing that such a course is their unalienable right, regardless of Russia’s interests and fears.
Third, unlike the “People’s Republics” of Donbass, the PMR has 25 years of experience building its own identity and existing as an entity that is separate from Moldova, even in the absence of recognition.
“A large deal” on integration is problematic, even if Transnistria intensifies pragmatic interaction with the European Union in defiance of the Kremlin’s tough directive.
Fourth, the United States and its allies see the process of settling the Transnistria conflict as a minimization Russian influence (especially its military influence) on the Dniester and in the post-Soviet space as a whole. And they are not prepared to discuss in a substantive manner the compensatory mechanisms in the event that Russia agrees to actively assist the integration of Moldova and Transnistria. In this process, the interests of Russia and the PMR are regarded as an inherently important, but rather destructive factor that impedes the quick Europeanization and democratization of Moldova.
Given this set of issues, “a large deal” on integration is problematic, even if Transnistria, seeking to minimize the harm caused by the crisis, intensifies pragmatic interaction with the European Union in defiance of the Kremlin’s tough directive. That said, the scenario may be implemented, but not in the short term, and only if relations between Russia and the West are fully normalized. At present, the chances of this coming to pass are slim.
2. “Unfreezing” the Conflict: Possible Options
Today, neither Russia nor the West seek to bring about an abrupt change in the current balance of forces in Transnistria.
If “unfreezing” is interpreted as attempts to change the format of peaceful settlement, then this process began much earlier in Transnistria than 2014 (in at least 2006, when Kiev and Chisinau forced Tiraspol to register its products as Moldovan to gain access to foreign markets) [32]. The start of the Ukraine crisis deepened the isolation of Transnistria. So far, however, such attempts have been limited to the socioeconomic sphere.
Moldova’s resources are far more limited than those of Transnistria. This is a unique case in the post-Soviet space, where the “mother country” looks weaker than the breakaway territory. If force were used against the PMR, Ukraine, whose resources are greater than those of Moldova, would greatly multiply the risks in Donbass. And the situation there, although showing some signs of de-escalation, is not quite yet “frozen”. For the West, economic pressure on Transnistria is currently the best option.
Thus, a repeat of the Transcaucasian scenarios on the Dniester is unlikely. But if that does happen, Moscow will most probably revise its approach to Transnistria (non-recognition as an independent state, but recognition as a party to the conflict and a party to the negotiating process) and may recognize the independence of the PMR.
It is vital that Moscow play an active role in Moldova.
However, a more probable scenario is “soft unfreezing” in the shape of increased integration cooperation between Chisinau and the West and attempts to create an attractive image of Moldova, which has chosen the European Union over Russia. These actions may be accompanied by demands for final compliance with the terms of the OSCE Istanbul Document of 1999 on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Transnistria, while peacekeeping forces would be criticized and the activities of the Joint Control Commission would be openly or tacitly sabotaged [33]. All these factors could, if not bring about an armed confrontation then put a wrench in the works of the negotiation process. We cannot rule out the fact that peaceful settlement could stagnate and the talks themselves could be suspended. However, if the dynamics in Donbass and other parts of the post-Soviet space improve and the confrontation between the West and Russia eases, the pause in the negotiations may be replaced with a resumption of the peace process, something that has happened in Transnistria before.
3. No Integration, No Independence
Today, neither Russia nor the West seek to bring about an abrupt change in the current balance of forces in Transnistria: on the one hand, there are no attempts to repeat the Crimean scenario, and on the other hand there are no attempts to use force to “gather lands back together” while the parties to the conflict are not prepared to sever relations completely. Therefore, the most likely outlook is to preserve the “suspended” status of the PMR and continue negotiations without much hope for an early breakthrough.
This scenario has its positive sides – ensuring peace and a balance of forces in the region – but it looks problematic without stronger Russian economic influence in Transnistria, and with Ukraine’s increasingly confrontational mood over the PMR. Changes in Moldova’s foreign policy (renunciation of neutrality and a final choice in favour of joining NATO) set additional obstacles in the way of implementing this model.
With regard to Transnistria Russia should identify, together with the PMR leadership, the spheres of possible interaction with the European Union and the spheres in which such interaction is premature or unacceptable.
Right now, it is critical for Moscow to continue playing an active role in the settlement of the Transnistria issue. This ensures its influence in the region as a whole and has an indirect bearing on relations with the West. And this is a significant, if not a priority, policy direction. The Russian leadership cannot afford to ignore the new challenges (the change in Ukraine’s approach to the PMR, expanding cooperation between the European Union and Moldova) and the worsening internal problems in Transnistria and rely on rhetoric about “eternal friendship”, ”kindred spirits” and “Eurasian values.”
For all these reasons, it is vital that Moscow play an active role in Moldova (keeping in mind the Transnistria issue), i.e., it must interact with various political forces in that country. However, the Moldovan political field today is highly volatile, with new platforms and groups appearing all the time. However, even taking into account the loyalty of the Socialists and the supporters of the populist politician Renato Usatii, Moscow should not take a one-dimensional view of the situation. This way, it will avoid the mistakes that were made in assessing former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych (he was mistakenly seen as “pro-Russian”).
With regard to Transnistria, in consideration of growing economic difficulties, Russia should identify, together with the PMR leadership, the spheres of possible interaction with the European Union and the spheres in which such interaction is premature or unacceptable. It is also necessary to optimize the format of economic aid to the republic. Failure to do that, in addition to the mounting migration problem and the fatigue caused by the persistent economic crisis may lead to a more critical perception of Russia’s role in the region.
With regard to Ukraine, much would depend not on the PMR factor but on the settlement of the Donbass conflict. A “freezing” of the conflict in South-Eastern Ukraine would ease tensions on the de facto border between Ukraine and Transnistria.
Development in Donbass would go a long way in determining the attitude of Russia and the West to the settlement of Transnistria. In that regard, it is highly important to preserve the “5+2” format and maintain the negotiation process, even if it does not yield tangible results in the near future.
One of the most important issues is the problem of economic cooperation between Russia and Transnistria, as well as between the Eurasian Economic Union and Transnistria. The Transnistrian economy is in dire straits. The pricing policy of previous governments had mostly negative consequences, which persist into the present. And, according to the project, the government’s budget deficit is greater than 1 billion roubles [34]. The preferential trade regime is not a panacea, however. It is, of course, an important measure for minimizing the crisis that has taken hold of Transnistria. In the short and medium term, this economic vector does not weaken the political orientation towards Moscow. In the long term, should relations between Moscow and the West normalize and cooperation in the 5+2 format continue, then an economy that is oriented towards both the East and the West could have a big hand in transforming the region into one of cooperation.
More than political will is needed to build such a configuration, however. Comprehensive work to correct the mistakes that were inherent in economic relations between Transnistria and Russia is also required. Industrial cooperation needs to be developed – production that is based on those sectors of Transnistrian industry and agriculture whose products may be in demand in Russia, particularly in terms of import substitution. With limited investment opportunities because of the economic crisis and the sanctions regime, it is important to develop direct cash infusions, build up industrial cooperation (primarily at the international level) and set up joint ventures— Russian economic agents with a high degree of involvement from the Transnistrian side. This means that Transnistria must ensure that the policies of various government branches are coordinated with regard to finding a way out of the financial crisis, raise the quality of economists in the country significantly, and implement policies to support exporters, on whom the welfare of the republic depends to a significant extent.
1. Moldova: Regional Tensions over Transnistria, June 17, 2004. Crisis Group Europe. Report No. 157. Chisinau/Brussels, p. 3. URL: http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/europe/157_moldova_transdniestria_tensions_rus.pdf (in Russian).
2. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Transnistria: EU to keep Trade Preferences for EXPORTERS. URL: http://point.md/ru/novosti/ekonomika/zamglavi-mid-pridnestrovjya58-es-sohranit-torgovie-preferencii-dlya-eksporterov (in Russian).
3. Chamberlain-Creangă R. “Transnistrian People”? Citizenship and Imaginings of “the State” in an Unrecognized Country // Ab Imperio. 2006. No. 4, pp/ 371–399; Babilunga N. V. A Brief History of the PMR // Transnistria in the Macro-Regional Context of the Black Sea Coast. Collection of Articles. Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, 2008 (in Russian). p. 49.
4. The ethnic component of the Moldova–Transnistria conflict was touched upon at a conference in Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina) on April 11, 2011. URL: http://mfa-pmr.org/ru/GTm (in Russian).
5. Transnistria: Who is the Boss Now? URL: http://totul.md/ru/newsitem/838005.html (in Russian).
6. In this format, Moldova and Transnistria were the parties to the conflict, Russia and Ukraine were guarantor countries, the OSCE was the mediator and the European Union and the United States were observers.
7. Nina Shtanski: Interaction between Russia and the EU in Transnistria Settlement: From Consultations to Coordination. URL: http://regnum.ru/news/1572044.html (in Russian).
8. Moldova // Proceedings of the Eastern Europe Institute / Ed. A.L. Pogorelsky. Issue 2. Moscow, 2008 (in Russian).
9. On October 20, 2014, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov had this to say in a public lecture on foreign policy: “… If Moldova loses its sovereignty and is absorbed by another country, or if Moldova changes its neutral military and political status by joining a bloc, the people of Transnistria will every right to decide their future independently. And we will uphold this basic position, with which everyone has agreed and with which everything began.” (Lavrov: If Moldova Gives up Non-Bloc Status Russia will Recognize Transnistria. URL: https://ruposters.ru/news/20-10-2014/lavrov_esli_moldaviya_otkazhetsya_ot_vneblokovogo_statusa_rossiya_priznaet_pridnestrovje, in Russian).
10. In 2005, Kiev put forward the “Yushchenko Plan”, whereby the parliament of Moldova was to pass a law on the special status of Transnistria. Under the law, the region would have its own flag, emblem and three official languages – Russian, Ukrainian and Moldovan. If Moldova ceased to be an independent state, Transnistria would have the right to secede from it. The Yushchenko Plan would have allowed the world community to deal directly with the PMR, without Moldovan participation. For more detail see: Kulik V., Yakushik V. Yushchenko Plan for the Settlement of the Transnistria Conflict and Problems of its Implementation. // Transnistria in the Macro-Regional Context of the Black Sea Coast. Sapporo, 2008. pp. 160–191 (in Russian).
However, in March 2006. Ukraine and Moldova, in keeping with an inter-government agreement, introduced new rules for goods crossing the border. Under Resolution No. 112-R of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, Ukrainian customs posts on the border between Ukraine and Transnistria started to allow only those cargoes custom-cleared by the Republic of Moldova into its territory. See: Our History: Full-Scale Economic Blockade of Transnistria Begins on 3 March 2006 // Vesti PMR, March 3, 2015. URL: http://vestipmr.info/articles/2015/03/03/nasha-istoriya-3-marta-2006-goda-nachalas-polnomasshtabnaya (in Russian).
11. Transnistria is Conducting Consultations with the EU on Preserving Trade Preferences. URL: http://www.noi.md/ru/news_id/70064#close (in Russian).
12. The Time of Frozen Conflicts is Drawing to a Close. URL: http://www.ng.ru/editorial/2015-06-08/2_red.html (in Russian).
13. The Socialist leader Igor Dodon declares: “Only federalization can form the basis for resolving the dispute. We have worked out a relevant bill that may be the basis for resolving the problem (Socialist Party of Moldova: The Transnistria Conflict Can Be Solved through the Federalization of Moldova. URL: http://www.noi.md/ru/news_id/57160, in Russian).
14. Komarov N. If Elections Were to Be Held Tomorrow: Instructions for Dodon. URL: http://tiras.ru/tema-dnja/44362-nikita-komarov-esli-by-vybory-byli-zavtra-instrukciya-dlya-dodona.html (in Russian)
15. A consultative referendum was held in Gagaúzia on February 2, 2014. The issues put to the vote included Moldova’s foreign policy and the right to self-determination in the event that the Republic of Moldova loses its sovereignty. More than 98per cent of voters backed Moldova’s entry into the Eurasian Customs Union. Only slightly less than 2per cent voted against it. Integration with the European Union was backed by 2.77per cent of the population, and opposed by more than 97per cent. Almost 99per cent backed the right of Gagaúzia to exercise its right to self-determination if Moldova loses its sovereignty, meaning possible unification with Romania. The turnout was in excess of 70per cent. According to Gagaúzia’s Central Election Commission, there was not a single community where less than half of the eligible voters came to the polls. See: Referendum in Gagaúzia. Eurasian Integration Space Expands. URL: http://www.rosinform.ru/politics/494112-referendum-v-gagauzii-prostranstvo-evraziyskaya-integratsii-rasshiryaetsya/ (in Russian).
16. The Fifth Floor: EU Revises Eastern Neighbourhood. URL: http://www.bbc.com/russian/international/2015/03/150305_5floor_eastern_partnership (in Russian).
17. http://www.capital.ua/ru/publication/61446-pridnestrove-povorachivaet-na-zapad (in Russian).
18. Traian Băsescu la TVR: Următorul proiect pentru România trebuie să fie «Vrem să ne întregim ţara!». URL: http://stiri.tvr.ro/traian-basescu-la-tvr--urmatorul-proiect-pentru-romania-trebuie-sa-fie-vrem-sa-ne-intregim-tara-_37653.html (in Romanian); Traian Basescu: The Divided Romanian People will Unite in the Framework of the EU. URL: http://forum.md/ru/733261 (in Russian).
19. The new Romanian leader stresses the need to encourage Chisinau’s European aspirations, rather than unification with Moldova: “We should teach Moldovan bureaucrats how state institutions work in a European country, and teach Moldovan politicians how to build relations in the European Union.” See: Mospanov A. Romania and Moldova: A Little German? URL: http://www.ritmeurasia.org/news--2014-11-27--rumynija-i-moldova-nemnogo-nemeckogo-15670 (in Russian).
20. Gamova S. Brussels Shuffles Bucharest’s Cards. URL: http://www.ng.ru/cis/2015-12-10/1_brussels.html (in Russian).
21. http://ru.euronews.com/newswires/3154945-newswire/ (in Russian).
22. http://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/2685990 (in Russian).
23. https://news.mail.ru/politics/23906370/ (in Russian).
24. OSCE Mission to Moldova. URL: http://www.osce.org/ru/moldova (in Russian).
25. OSCE Council of Ministers offers Transnistria special status within Moldova. URL: http://vestipmr.info/articles/2015/12/06/sovmin-obse-predlozhil-pridnestrovyu-osobyy-status-v-sostave (in Russian).
26. Industrial output dropped by nearly 10 per cent on the previous year in the first nine months of 2015. URL: http://novostipmr.com/ru/news/15-10-20/obyom-promproizvodstva-za-9-mesyacev-2015-goda-upal-pochti-na-10 (in Russian).
27. Transnistria Trade Balance. URL: http://vestimd.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=36422:saldo-pridnestrovya&catid=50:sodrujestvo&Itemid=152 (in Russian).
28. Safonov: Is Transnistria Being Set up for Default? URL: http://dniester.ru/node/12302 (in Russian).
29. Transnistria Government to Sue Sheriff. URL: http://mbc.md/rus/news/politics/pravitelstvo-pridnestrovya-obratitsya-v-sud-na-firmu-sherif/ (in Russian).
30. 34 out of 43 seats went to the Renewal (Obnovleniye) opposition party, which is linked with the Sheriff Holding. The elections were marked by a very high turnout. The figure of 47per cent (4per cent more than in the 2010 campaign) need not mislead anyone. Much of the PMR’s adult population works abroad, most notably in Russia. See: Results of Parliamentary Elections in Transnistria. Minsk 3 Moves to the Banks of the Dniester. URL: http://wpristav.ru/news/itogi_parlamentskikh_vyborov_v_pridnestrove_minsk_3_perebiraetsja_na_berega_dnestra/2015-12-11-13615 (in Russian).
31. Guschin A. Transnistria Elections: Executive Branch Defeated. URL: http://politcom.ru/19355.html (in Russian).
32. These actions violated Article 3 of the Memorandum on the Basic Principles of Normalization of the Relations between the Republic of Moldova and Transnistria dated May 8, 1997, which read: “Transnistria has the right to independently establish and maintain international contacts in the economic, scientific, technical and cultural fields, and, by agreement between the parties, in other fields.” See: Memorandum on the Basic Principles of Normalization of the Relations between the Republic of Moldova and Transnistria (Moscow, May 8, 1997). URL: http://base.garant.ru/2561064/ (in Russian).
33. The Commission was formed on July 27, 1992 by representatives of the conflicting parties and the Russian Federation in order to ensure security and prevent incidents in the conflict zone. See: Background and Analytical Information “On the Special Features of the Conduct of the Peacekeeping Operation in Transnistria”. URL: http://www.okk-pridnestrovie.org/spravka.htm (in Russian)
34. http://novostipmr.com/ru/news/15-12-10/pravitelstvo-utverdilo-proekt-byudzheta-na-2016-god (in Russian).
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Uganda: UTB Watches on Water Transport Tourism
Lilly Ajarova, who is a chief executive officer of Uganda Tourism Board (UTB), said in her first public speech since being appointed that she will be looking after making water transport tourism a priority resource as government seeks to build on the gains so far reached.
Talking about the inaugration of the MV Vanessa boat in Entebbe, Ms. Ajarova said that water bodies in of Lake Victoria were under-utilized in terms of tourism.
“This is the beginning of utilising Lake Victoria and other water bodies for the benefit of Ugandans and the international community,” she said.
MV Vanessa is a lavish boat with capacity of 54 passengers to sit and is seeking to tap into the current void in the water transport tourism potential in Uganda.
According to online sources, the boat costs between $200,000 (Shs741m) and $350,0000 (Shs1.2b).
The Nyanza Evergreen Waterways director, Mr. Maxime Van Pee said that the investment was informed by the tourism potential in water transport. He also added that the boat will start with scheduled routines on water frontiers in Jinja and Entebbe.
“We are starting with Jinja-Entebbe for now because we are still finishing documentation and we are waiting for another boat to arrive,” he said, adding they anticipate to broaden operations in future.
Lake Victoria that is Uganda’s largest fresh water body is estimated to cover about 68,000 square kilometres that too with more than 84 islands, which are scattered all over East Africa.
These factors are helpful in boosting tourism numbers across the country. Uganda is attempting to increase tourism numbers to 2.1 million by the end of this year and four million by 2020.
The Great Lakes Safaris founder, Mr Amos Wekesa, said that government should sufficiently market Uganda beyond the primate experience. Apart from this, he also argued that the nation is blessed with abundance of natural and man-made resources such as water bodies that should be leveraged by the government to grow the tourism sector.
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Locke & Key: Alpha & Omega Vol. 6 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez
Paperback, 192 pgs.
Locke & Key: Alpha and Omega Vol. 6 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez, is where all the dark forces come alive at the same time, and the Locke family is even more distant from one another. Tyler is trying to forget the darkness and move on, while Bode is still not himself and Kinsey has started to fit in at school and wants to join in. Their mother has stopped drinking and seems to be more sober in her thinking and parenting, while uncle Duncan is still trying to be a guiding force for the kids who have had to deal with the death of their father and more. The illustrations continue in the same style in this volume as in most of the other volumes, and bring to life Joe Hill’s story in a way that is both gruesome and terrifying.
The dark lady has all the keys she needs to unleash her demon brethren on the world, but her plans have changed, as she’s seen how powerful family can be. She wants to create her own, make a family of demons beholden to only her. Of course, there is still a place for slaves in this new kingdom. Kinsey, Tyler, and Bode are up against all the darkness behind the black door, and they must outsmart the dark lady if they hope to win.
Locke & Key: Alpha and Omega Vol. 6 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez, is a wonderful conclusion to this series of graphic novels. The tug of war between good and evil is frightening, especially when readers realize that the fate of goodness is in the hands of teenagers. Overall, Hill has created a series of graphic novels that will keep readers entertained, horrified, and guessing about whether good will win out. Rodríguez is a talented artist, and his artistry is on full display in these novels.
Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft Volume 1
Locke & Key: Head Games Volume 2
Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows Volume 3
Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom Volume 4
Locke & Key: Clockworks Volume 5
Joseph Hillstrom King is an American writer of fiction, writing under the pen name of Joe Hill. Hill is the the second child of authors Stephen King and Tabitha King. His younger brother Owen King is also a writer. He has three children.
Hill’s first book, the limited edition collection 20th Century Ghosts published in 2005 by PS Publishing, showcases fourteen of his short stories and won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection, together with the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection and Best Short Story for “Best New Horror”. In October 2007, Hill’s mainstream US and UK publishers reprinted 20th Century Ghosts, without the extras published in the 2005 slipcased versions, but including one new story.
About the Illustrator:
Architect, artist and illustrator. He started his career with myth based illustrations for card games, and then jumped into the world of professional comics working with IDW Publishing. In addition to his current work in Locke & Key, his collaborations with IDW include Clive Barker’s The Great and Secret Show, Beowulf, George Romero’s Land Of The Dead, as well as several CSI comics and some covers for Angel and Transformers.
Filed Under: borrowed copy, fiction, graphic novel, Read in 2015, reviews Tagged With: Gabriel Rodriguez, IDW Publishing, Joe Hill, Locke & Key: Alpha & Omega Vol 6
Locke & Key: Clockworks Vol. 5 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez
Locke & Key: Clockworks Vol. 5 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez, is a whirlwind adventure into the past as the Locke family discovers the timeshift key for the grandfather clock in the house. This key enables them to go back to 1775 to find out what happened to their ancestors in colonial Massachusetts during the British occupation of Lovecraft, which was not an integral part of the revolution. The presence of the British in this area signifies a search for an advantage in the war, though it is not really expanded upon. The Locke children learn the source of the keys and how the demons cam to live in Lovecraft and make their way into the well house. But there has always been magic here, with or without the discovery of the black door.
The illustration in this volume is consistent with the tale, in which the time shifts to 1775 have a old-world feel compared to the present day. Hill has a great backstory reveal in this volume, and the Locke kids are up against something that even their father did not fully understand. There is more death and mayhem in this one, and there is a disturbing image of a possessed goat that left an impression even on me.
Locke & Key: Clockworks Vol. 5 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez, provides a backstory on the ancestors and the Locke children’s father, and it’s good to see that these characters are evolving amid all the horror, death, and mayhem created by the demon and the misuse of the keys. Even their mother has stopped her destructive behavior, but it is clear that there is more devastation to come.
Filed Under: borrowed copy, fiction, graphic novel, Read in 2015, reviews Tagged With: Gabriel Rodriguez, IDW Publishing, Joe Hill, Locke & Key: Clockworks Vol. 5
Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom Vol. 4 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez
Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom Vol. 4 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez, is a crazy mishmash of events that flash forward and back, which is less effective than the narration in previous books. It’s almost as though the author wanted to tell too many events in one graphic novel. The graphics in this one also are all over the place, transforming from a cartoonish quality at the beginning to the normal style and then to a more gritty military style found in comic books.
The Locke family is about to meet the threats of the dark lady head on in this book, and there are lasting consequences for this segment of the battle. The keys to the kingdom are at stake, and while the family may feel like they are making progress, she’s always a few steps ahead of them. Kinsey is still without fear, and some of her decision-making becomes very skewed as a result, while Tyler is battling his own guilt and the betrayal of two people he trusted. Bode, meanwhile, continues to play with objects he doesn’t fully understand.
Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom Vol. 4 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez, has some great battles in it, and the characters are forced to face not only the dark lady’s advances, but the effects of the keys. These keys were hidden for a reason, and uncovering them and using them may not have been the best idea.
Filed Under: borrowed copy, fiction, graphic novel, Read in 2015, reviews Tagged With: Gabriel Rodriguez, IDW Publishing, Joe Hill, Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom Vol 4
Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows Vol. 3 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez
Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows Vol. 3 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez, introduces more keys and more trouble for the Locke family. As their mother spirals further into her depression and strives to fix things while still drinking herself into oblivion, the kids continue to rebel against her. Even as they strive to be more like adults where she is concerned, they are still mixed up teenagers, failing to deal with their grief about the loss of their father in volume 1. As Kinsey continues to operate without her fears and sadness, Tyler continues to feel his guilt, which only gets stronger. Bode is still the curious boy who finds the keys accidentally, but in this case, one key saves them from certain death, while another nearly pushes their mother over the edge when it fails to fix the one thing that cannot be fixed — the death of her husband.
There are more than just magical keys in this house, as the kids soon find that a crown of shadows can be used to move dark forces in the house. They are still unaware of the wellhouse woman’s true identity, but she makes a reappearance in this volume to terrify even the youngest Locke, Bode. Light is their only weapon until the breakers in the house are shut off and the house is plunged into darkness — a darkness that comes alive with the crown of shadows.
Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows Vol. 3 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez, is a strong third volume in the series and definitely reveals a lot more about the mysteries behind the keys, the wellhouse woman, and the Locke children’s father. The illustrations are as engaging as ever, and readers will look forward to each horrifying installment.
Filed Under: borrowed copy, fiction, graphic novel, Read in 2015, reviews Tagged With: Gabriel Rodriguez, IDW Publishing, Joe Hill, Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows Vol 3
Locke & Key: Head Games Vol. 2 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez
Locke & Key: Head Games Vol. 2 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez, continues the story and reveals even more of the house’s secrets. There are more keys, even ones that can crack open your head — what’s inside some of these kids’ brains will unsettle you. Memory and imagination meld together in their minds to create even more gruesome threats. Tyler, Bode, and Kinsey are excited to find the key that opens their minds, and like many teens, they abuse the magical key.
Without fear Kinsey becomes less emotional and eager to face danger, but will that lead to her death? Tyler is happily using the magic to get ahead with girls and schools, while Bode is left on the sidelines. But sharing these secrets of the house and its keys could be the most detrimental of all. The illustrations are fantastic, realistic, and engaging. There is so much to take in visually, as well as through the text.
Locke & Key: Head Games Vol. 2 by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez, is a solid series with many secrets yet to be revealed. The dark forces are still making their way out of the depths of the well and the house, but these kids are blissfully unaware that the keys they find can be used for evil. While they believe the danger has subsided, readers will soon realize that this is only the beginning and that these kids may be left on their own in the battle of their lives.
Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft Vol. 1
Filed Under: borrowed copy, fiction, graphic novel, Read in 2015, reviews Tagged With: Gabriel Rodriguez, IDW Publishing, Joe Hill, Locke & Key: Head Games Vol. 2
Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez
October 22, 2015 by Serena
Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez, is part one in a series of graphic novels about a mysterious house and its locked rooms. Keyhouse is an unlikely mansion in the Massachusetts town of Lovecraft, and it sits on an island separate from the rest of the town. It’s a clear set up for a horrifying tale. The three Locke children are left with their barely functioning, alcoholic mother when their father is murdered at their summer cabin outside San Francisco. The family starts over across the country, only to be caught in a web of darkness they can’t see until it’s too late.
Tyler is struggling because he blames himself for his father’s murder. He never could please his father, and they often argued, but he did not really want his father to die. Bode is the youngest, and he escapes the sorrow through his imagination, flying around the Keyhouse as a ghost, while his sister, Kinsey, struggles to remain unseen by everyone in their new school. What these kids are unaware of are the childhood antics their father and uncle used to get up to as children in Keyhouse, and even their mother is only mildly aware of some stories. Rodriguez’s artistry is gritty and the violent scenes are well rendered. The ghost-like characters are gorgeous, swirling as they move from place to place.
Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez, is a great opener to this dark fantasy series, and the twists and turns are unraveled a little at a time to keep readers on their toes. There are dark forces at work in this house, and they will stop at nothing to open all of the locked doors.
Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, fiction, graphic novel, New Authors Challenge, Read in 2015, reviews Tagged With: Gabriel Rodriguez, IDW Publishing, Joe Hill, Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft, RIP X
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Steroid hormone regulation of specific messenger RNA and protein synthesis in eucaryotic cells.
Evidence is presented that the induction of specific proteins in the chick oviduct by the steroid hormones estrogen and progesterone, involves a primary effect at the level of gene transcription. The intracellular levels of mRNA's which code for the synthesis of the egg-white proteins, ovalbumin and avidin, have been quantitated in a heterologous protein synthesizing system. It is demonstrated that these levels are directly dependent upon the inducing steroid, estrogen or progesterone, respectively. Ovalbumin mRNA has been purified to apparent homogeneity. This ovalbumin mRNA was then used as a template for the synthesis of a complementary DNA copy catalyzed by the enzyme reverse transcriptase which was isolated from avian myeloblastosis virus. This radioactively labeled complementary DNA was used to demonstrate, by means of DNA excess hybridization, that the ovalbumin gene is represented only once in each haploid genome of the chick cell. Next the complementary DNA copy of the ovalbumin mRNA was used as a genetic probe to determine the precise number of sequences of ovalbumin mRNA present at any one time after the administration of estrogen. It was demonstrated that the unstimulated chick contained no sequences of ovalbumin mRNA. Within a very short period of time after estrogen is administered the ovalbumin sequences begin to appear and reach a steady state level of 140,000 molecules per tubular gland cell. It could also be calculated that each ovalbumin molecule is probably translated some 50,000 times during its life which explains why ovalbumin comprises some 60% of the total protein in the oviduct cell. Following withdrawal of the oviduct from estrogen treatment, ovalbumin mRNA sequences again drop to undetectable levels. However, following a single injection of estrogen to these withdrawn animals, new ovalbumin mRNA sequences could be detected within 30 minutes. These data suggest that estrogen controls the activity of the ovalbumin gene via a pure transcriptional control mechanism. It is also demonstrated that the efficiency of the complementary DNA as a means of quantitating specific mRNA sequences is some 1,000 times more sensitive than the best available in vitro translation system. Finally, the efficacy of four popular translation systems is compared. It is suggested that for initial studies involving hormonal control of mRNA levels, the translation system derived from wheat germ is the simplest and most sensitive.
Means, Anthony Ross
O'Malkey, BW; Woo, SL; Harris, SE; Rosen, JM; Means, AR
Journal of Cellular Physiology
85 / 2 Pt 2 Suppl 1
Ovalbumin
Oviducts
Protein Biosynthesis
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Cortico-striatal Regulation Of Striatal Activation Is Disrupted In Psychopathy
Psychopath’s brains are wired in a way that leads them to over-value immediate rewards and neglect the future consequences of potentially dangerous or immoral actions, a new study reports. The study relies on brain scans of nearly 50 prison inmates to help explain why psychopaths make poor decisions that often lead to violence or other anti-social behavior.
Corresponding author Josh Buckholtz, Harvard University Associate Professor of Psychology, said:
“For years, we have been focused on the idea that psychopaths are people who cannot generate emotion and that’s why they do all these terrible things. But what what we care about with psychopaths is not the feelings they have or don’t have, it’s the choices they make. Psychopaths commit an astonishing amount of crime, and this crime is both devastating to victims and astronomically costly to society as a whole.
And even though psychopaths are often portrayed as cold-blooded, almost alien predators, we have been showing that their emotional deficits may not actually be the primary driver of these bad choices. Because it’s the choices of psychopaths that cause so much trouble, we’ve been trying to understand what goes on in their brains when the make decisions that involve trade-offs between the costs and benefits of action.,” he continued.
“In this most recent paper…we are able to look at brain-based measures of reward and value and the communication between different brain regions that are involved in decision making.”
Obtaining the scans used in the study, however, was no easy feat – where most studies face an uphill battle in bringing subjects into the lab, Buckholtz’s challenge was in bringing the scanner to his subjects.
Mobile Scanner
The solution came in form of a “mobile” scanner – typically used for cancer screenings in rural areas – that came packed in the trailer of a tractor trailer.
After trucking the equipment to a two medium-security prisons in Wisconsin, the team – which included collaborators at the University of Wisconin-Madison and University of New Mexico – would spend days calibrating the scanner, and then work to scan as many volunteers as possible as quickly as possible.
“It was a huge undertaking,” he said. “Most MRI scanners, they’re not going anywhere, but in this case, we’re driving this inside a prison and then in very quick succession we have to assess and scan the inmates.”
The team ultimately scanned the brains of 49 inmates over two hours as they took part in a type of delayed gratification test which asked them to choose between two options – receive a smaller amount of money immediately, or a larger amount at a later time. The results of those tests were then fit to a model that allowed researchers to create a measure of not only how impulsive each participant’s behavior was, but to identify brain regions that play a role in assessing the relative value of such choices.
Ventral Striatum Activity
What they found, Buckholtz said, was people who scored high for psychopathy showed greater activity in a region called the ventral striatum – known to be involved in evaluating the subjective reward – for the more immediate choice.
“So the more psychopathic a person is, the greater the magnitude of that striatal response,” Buckholtz said. “That suggests that the way they are calculating the value rewards is dysregulated. They may over-represent the value of immediate reward.”
When Buckholtz and colleagues began mapping which brain regions are connected to the ventral striatum, it became clear why.
“We mapped the connections between the ventral striatum and other regions known to be involved in decision-making, specifically regions of the prefrontal cortex known to regulate striatal response,” he said. “When we did that, we found that connections between the striatum and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex were much weaker in people with psychopathy.”
That lack of connection is important, Buckholtz said, because this portion of the prefrontal cortex role is thought to be important for ‘mental time-travel’ – envisioning the future consequences of actions.
Prefrontal Modulating Influence
There is increasing evidence that prefrontal cortex uses the outcome of this process to change how strongly the striatum responds to rewards. With that prefrontal modulating influence weakened, the value of the more immediate choice may become dramatically over-represented.
“The striatum assigns values to different actions without much temporal context” he said. “We need the prefrontal cortex to make prospective judgements how an action will affect us in the future – if I do this, then this bad thing will happen. The way we think of it is if you break that connection in anyone, they’re going to start making bad choices because they won’t have the information that would otherwise guide their decision-making to more adaptive ends.”
The effect was so pronounced, Buckholtz said, that researchers were able to use the degree of connection between the striatum and the prefrontal cortex to accurately predict how many times inmates had been convicted of crimes.
Ultimately, Buckholtz said, his goal is to erase the popular image of psychopaths as incomprehensible, cold-blooded monsters and see them for what they are – everyday humans whose brains are simply wired differently.
“They’re not aliens, they’re people who make bad decisions,” he said. “The same kind of short-sighted, impulsive decision-making that we see in psychopathic individuals has also been noted in compulsive over-eaters and substance abusers. If we can put this back into the domain of rigorous scientific analysis, we can see psychopaths aren’t inhuman, they’re exactly what you would expect from humans who have this particular kind of brain wiring dysfunction.”
Hosking, Jay G. et al.
Disrupted Prefrontal Regulation of Striatal Subjective Value Signals in Psychopathy
Neuron, Volume 95 , Issue 1 , 221 – 231.e4
Image: Jason Snyder/Flickr
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African Performance–Review
Posted on May 19, 2009 by fangirlinbondage
I like the front image of Africa that leads to the different links, it was clever and it emphasizes the idea of how cultural forms can differ so widely from region to region. Just on a technical note, the group used the Tumblr engine but didn’t really take advantage of what it had to offer in terms of picture blogging.
The section on West Africa contained many videos which is awesome because, as the author mentions, it is important to see these things live. This section showed a variety of dances but lacked any analysis. What do these dances tell us? What do these videos of dances tell us?
In the Moroccan section, I like the discussion on dance as performance—I think it is an interesting addition to Screening Africa—is a dance performance always a screening of “Africa” or “African culture”? When tourists visit, for example, these dances are one of the few aspects of Africa that they get to see and they are shown as an “authentic” dance, a “true” Africa. I also like how the author positioned themselves to the dances; it’s important to understand our role as American viewers coming to these materials. The revelation that these dances were not meant as entertainment was particularly poignant. I wonder when some of these dances do become “entertainment”, when certain towns are forced to create tourist attractions out of their cultural traditions. I do think this section could be improved by separating it into shorter, separate sections. Apart from that, it was fantastic and brought up a lot of questions. I’m amazed that they found all these videos!
The section on South African Theater was very interesting as well, but it would have been great to see some videos since theater is meant to be performed and viewed. What would our relationship be to a “real-life” enactment of the issues presented in these plays? I understand these videos would be really hard to find, though. I think this section also needed a discussion on what makes theater distinct from other forms of performance and why it’s important to look at it.Focusing on Fugard was a good choice, it gives the reader an in-depth portrayal of what South African theater can look like. The discussion of Fugard’s race in terms of the accessibility and dissemination of his work was given due importance. It makes me think about Dave Egger’s authorship of What is the What. Was Fugard trying to speak for the experiences of others as well?
The Ghanian short film was great and brought up many questions. I wondered what makes a Ghanian dance a “Ghanian dance”? There have to be drums apparently, sometimes costumes as well. But what if a Ghanian is dancing to Soulja Boy? Where does that fit? Another thing I thought about was that most videos on Youtube don’t have any sort of context, whether they are from Ghana or anywhere else. It’s interesting that these videos are also added as part of this new media repository, showing that Africa is part of this whole technological revolution as some of these videos (though not the majority) were uploaded by Ghanians themselves. It also made me think of Youtube as an all-consuming eye. Youtube always needs more, newer videos; it has to explore every recess of the world. The interview with Kwadwo was interesting, but I think it needed more justification than “he’s Ghanian”.
Overall, I think it was a great project on materials that are hard to find and hard to show. I think the project as a whole could have used a little more analysis (except for the Morocco section), but I enjoyed it a lot. I also think they had a good conversation among the sections about the materials, how to find them and what was at stake in their availability on Youtube or other video networks.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »
John Ryle: Wrap Up
Posted on May 17, 2009 by ljackson12
John Ryle’s “The Many Voices of Africa” shows how music has helped to create a “modern” Africa. He uses Jal, a Sudanese ex-child soldier to illustrate how music has transformed into a form of activism for African youth. Ryle also discusses how the music’s language influences the international community and draws attention to Africa. Many musicians from Africa fuse their native languages with colonial languages such as French, and also Arabic. These artists have the advantage of communicating with wide audiences and spreading awareness abroad. Thus, Rhyle states that the best mechanism for creating a modern, progressive Africa is through music. He even states that music is Africa’s most valuable export. In addition to being Africa’s most valuable export, music is also where Africa and Europe are on “equal footing”. This is a valid statement. Collaborations between artists such as MIA and Afrikan Boy are evidence to Ryle’s point.
Blood Diamond: Leonardo DiCaprio
Blood Diamond would have been a successful if it wasn’t for Leonardo DiCaprio’s accent. I watched the movie when it first came out, and I absolutely loved it. I felt that the movie was informative and very conscious of a current crisis. I first took interest in conflict diamonds when I read an article in a magazine, then I heard Kanye West’s song “Diamonds are Forever”. Both of these media forms shaped my knowledge. Therefore, when I watched Blood Diamond for the first time, the movie appeared authentic. Watching Blood Diamond for the second time was difficult. The visuals worked for me. The scenes of people running, dust, smoke, and the entire landscape made the movie appear genuine. When I heard Di Caprio’s accent, the visuals no longer worked. His accent seemed forced and lacked connection to the place in which he lived. Perhaps his status as a star made him seem less authentic. Needless to say, I was not convinced by his role.
Global Shadows: Culture and Political Economy
I really enjoyed reading the “Letter to America” included in James Ferguson’s piece titled Global Shadows. The letter discussed global racism and demanded African membership in a new world order. The letter was written by a Zambian journalist who stated that global racism limited Africans’ access to quality education, healthcare, and inclusion in international affairs. According to the author, Africa has been left behind while the international community continues to develop. Unlike the first letter that Ferguson discusses, the Letter to America demands inclusion and compensation from the west. He demands global citizenship. Relating his letter to our discussion on culture and political economy, the author sheds light on the absence of global citizenship for African nations. As we know, many African nations are economically handicapped due to organizations such as IMF and World Bank, (ironically, two institutions that are supposed to help develop African nations). The Zambian journalist articulates why African nations have been neglected.
Forest Whitaker:Jason’s Lyric/Last King of Scotland
Forest Whitaker portrayed Idi Amin very well in the Last King of Scotland. I doubt that any other actor could have executed the role any better than he did. However, I remember a role that Forest Whitaker played in the film Jason’s lyric. Whitaker played an alcoholic and abusive husband in Jason’s lyric. Like Idi Amin, he had crazed tendencies. As I watched Last King of Scotland, I realized that Whitaker’s earlier role as a drunken father influenced my reading of his portrayal of Idi Amin. I actually began to critique him according to his role in Jason’s Lyric. Still, I believe that Whitaker’s earlier role helped him earn his role as Idi Amin. Concerning reading representation, I struggled with the cliché representation of the African dictator. I think that showing movies such as Last King of Scotland, has conditioned people to believe that dictatorships are the only forms of leadership in Africa. This notion furthers the stereotype of a lack of civilization in Africa. In spite of how inaccurate it may be, Idi Amin’s character is a permanent representation of African government.
Lumumba:Death of a Prophet
The first film about Lumumba, “Lumumba: Death of a Prophet”, did not help me frame a clear definition of Lumumba as a leader. I learned about Lumumba in high school, but I have never seen a documentary about his life. Lumumba: Death of a Prophet was awkward. The narrator spoke about Lumumba but the camera showed random people on the street. The narrator’s tone seemed prosaic, and throughout the film I was inclined to sleep. Still, I finished the film and concluded that it did not give me a clear definition of Lumumba. The style of the film did not compliment the content of the film. The second film entitled “Lumumba”, did a better job of framing my knowledge and connecting both the visual and oral. Unlike the first film, this film appeared more structured and centered. Although the first film showed clips of the real Lumumba, it did not appear real because of the random clips of people perusing the streets. Even though Lumumba: Death of a Prophet was a documentary, it felt like I was watching a fictional film. The film’s style made the line between fiction and non-fiction less distinguishable.
Frantz Fanon: The Fact of Blackness
Frantz Fanon’s piece entitled “The Fact of Blackness” describes the realization of otherness for a Black male. Fanon states that a Black man among his own will not know what moment his inferiority comes into being through the other. Fanon recalls how he realized his inferiority through the gaze of the white man. He describes this experience as traumatic. The bodily schema of a Black man is unfamiliar and signifies a ‘third body consciousness’. According to Fanon, a Black man is responsible for his body, race, and ancestors. I agree with Fanon’s claims. As a female, I have been instructed to conduct myself a certain way at all times. I am instructed to have my legs closed, my shoulders high, my back straight, my head up, and an appropriate stride at all times. As a Black female, I am also expected to behave a certain way. These standards are similar to Fanon’s claims about Black men. If a Black male does not carry himself in a manner that is deemed socially acceptable, he is stereotyped. He also shames his race. I believe that Fanon described this experience as traumatic because it places a burden upon Black males which is sometimes unbearable.
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New Moon Review
by Vic Holtreman
– on Nov 19, 2009
in Movie Reviews, 2.5 star movies
Short version: Like Twilight, New Moon is strictly for fans of the book - for the rest of us, it's actually worse than the first film.
Screen Rant reviews The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Well, maybe the third time will be the charm.
In an earlier article we speculated whether New Moon might turn out to be a good movie not just for fans but for general audiences (maybe even guys!). With the replacement of Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke with Chris Weitz on New Moon, many people were hoping for a more exciting film this time around. Unfortunately, if anything what we've gotten is a film that is even slower than the first one.
As New Moon opens things seem to have fallen into as close to normalcy as they can get in Forks, where Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) are a couple, even though Bella's circle of friends still finds him and his family creepy. Bella hasn't seen Jacob (Taylor Lautner) in quite a while and is shocked to see how he's beefed up when he turns up. There's a rivalry between Edward and Jacob, but nothing compared to what it will be by the end of the movie.
Bella still (idiotically) wants to be "turned" - be bitten so she can become a vampire and live forever with Edward at the physical age of 18. Edward refuses because obviously he's smarter than she is - he's 109 years old and with that apparently has come some wisdom. They actually joke about the fact that an 18 year old girl is dating a 109 year old guy - while it may seem silly, it's actually true and quite creepy. You'd think he'd be (as a 109 year old) more interested in hooking up with a woman in her 30s, who's actually experienced more of life and matured.
Edward tells Bella that the Cullens are leaving, ostensibly to protect their identities, but in reality he believes that as long as he's around her he puts her in danger. Before he leaves he tells her not to do anything reckless - and the only reason to say something as non-sequiter as that is to set up what comes up later in the movie. Saying she doesn't take it well would be an understatement. Bella is depressed and morose, doing nothing but sitting in her bedroom moping for months.
Eventually she pretends to snap out of it, just to make her dad happy, and while out with a friend discovers that if she contemplates doing something dangerous, risky (or hey, reckless!), Edward appears to her to tell her not to do it. So she becomes a bit of an adrenaline junkie, looking for dangerous things to do just so Edward will appear to her to tell her NOT to do it. This is a major point in the film, and frankly the more I thought about it, the more it seemed pretty stupid. First, let's just reverse what I said earlier about Edward being wise - appearing to her ONLY when she's about to do something risky, with the fact she misses him so much, guarantees she will engage in that behavior. Second, isn't Bella the only person who he's not able to "read?" He can't read her thoughts, can't tell what she's planning on doing, etc? Then how the HECK does he appear to her when she's about to do something stupid? Of course if he's not appearing to her and she's imagining it, then she's having pretty vivid hallucinations and has even bigger problems than we thought.
Meanwhile back on the (Indian) ranch, there are a bunch of guys who hang together and seem to worship the gang leader. This particular fellow seems to be waiting for Jacob to join them even though Jake isn't interested. Of course there's a reason they're called the "Wolf Pack" and soon enough Jacob will be joining them (once he joins them, he spends the rest of the film shirtless just like them). He comforts Bella, who takes advantage of their friendship because it's obvious he has serious feelings for her, and she allows things to progress as far as closeness and some physical affection, but keeps him at arm's length. Eventually he, too tells her he can't be friends with her any more and Bella is now 0 for 2 on people who said they'd never leave her - and do.
2.5 out of 5 (Fairly Good)
Tags: 2 star movies, twilight, new moon
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Venom: 20 Behind-The-Scenes Photos That Change Everything
by Hanne Low
With a healthy dose of the buddy-cop formula and a dash of antiheroism, Venom drew in global audiences to the tune of more than $850 million. The film opened with the odd combination of unfavorable reviews and record-breaking box office revenues. Even though it turned out to be Sony Pictures' biggest hit this year, Venom was still a miss for many critics.
While reviewers were underwhelmed by the movie's CGI and confused tone, audiences were thrilled to find one of their favorite villains/antiheroes in theaters. Venom was first introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man comics in the late '80s as the Wall-Crawler's dark counterpart, but he eventually evolved into a more morally ambiguous character. Despite his ethical flailing, Venom's origin story and trajectory was intimately intertwined with Peter Parker. The studio's decision to produce a Venom feature film without any overt connection to Spider-Man was a daring, albeit controversial, move.
Viewers will have to decide for themselves whether or not Venom manages to stand on its own. Jam-packed with dark humor, thrilling chases, and anchored by a big, lovable performance by Tom Hardy as both Eddie Brock and Venom, the movie certainly does not fail to entertain. As with most comic book productions, Sony pulled out all the stops and invested in impressive stunts and on-location shooting. These behind-the-scenes photos reveal what went into the making of Venom, letting you learn more about how it came to be and making it possible to enjoy the film in a new light.
Here are 20 Behind-The-Scenes Photos From Venom That Change Everything.
20 Day One
Venom's premiere was preceded by an extensive marketing campaign and a strong social media presence. The movie's official Twitter account started to create buzz early by posting a blurry photo from the first day of shooting.
Not much can be deduced from the picture, but it certainly got fans talking. Leading man Tom Hardy looks especially delighted to be on set, which is perhaps not so strange considering that he was obsessed with his character in the months leading up to filming. Most of Hardy's earlier work is much starker fare, so he was probably eager to bite into a more comedic role. He later revealed that he accepted the part because he wanted to work on a film that his son could watch.
19 All eyes on Eddie
During production, Hardy's Instagram feed treated followers to several behind-the-scenes snapshots. One of the pictures he put up showed him in a cage-like structure surrounded by cameras. An eagle-eyed follower noticed that technicians used Raspberry Pi’s to synchronize and control the equipment.
Raspberry Pi is an ethically driven tech company that produces low-cost computers. The devices can be purchased online for a moderate price and enable users to learn about computing. This technology allows aspiring filmmakers to try out some of the techniques used to make Venom, even if they do not have a $100 million budget.
18 An Eager Fan Made A Visit
Michelle Williams got to hang out with more than one pup while filming Venom. This adorable photo shows the two leads cuddling up with a four-legged visitor on set. Both Williams and Hardy have a soft spot for animals and have often spoken about the role they play in their lives.
Williams has admitted that her daughter fills their home with finned and furry creatures, while Hardy has often used his fame to advocate for rescued animals. The star had a profound connection with a homeless dog he met and adopted while filming Lawless and has since then been involved in a PETA campaign promoting animal adoption.
17 Old-School Stunts Meet CGI
A surprising amount of Venom's motorcycle chase was actually created with practical effects. The memorable shot of Eddie flying off his bike, for example, was made by using a combination of visual and practical effects. The motorcycle jump was filmed on location in San Francisco with the help of a ramp and a stunt driver, and close-ups of Eddie's flight was captured in studio using green screens and wires.
Filming on location was not without its challenges; all of the scenes were shot at night and the pavement was sometimes slippery from the rain. Capable stunt drivers like Robbie Madison and Jimmy Roberts, as seen in this photo by Stunts Unlimited, made sure everything came together safely and smoothly.
16 Focus on the rooftop
Venom did not only have a powerful ensemble in front of the cameras; many of the people who worked on the film are esteemed professionals in their respective fields. Composer Ludwig Göransson, director of photography Matthew Libatique, and editors Alan Baumgarten and Maryann Brandon are only a few of the celebrated creatives who worked on the movie.
In this photo posted by Tom Hardy, Libatique is taking a picture of the lead with his phone. The DOP is best known for his work on Darren Aronofsky's movies, but he has previous experience from the superhero genre through his work on Iron Man.
15 Hardy's Physical Transformation
Tom Hardy often takes on physically challenging roles, so an iconic comic book character was right up his alley. To prepare for the role, Hardy reportedly worked out twice a day, five times a week. To make sure that he was not only in top form but also ready to learn fight choreography, his exercise regimen included boxing, kick-boxing, and jiu-jitsu. In this photo, Hardy demonstrates how he has put his training to good use.
Starring in Venom did not only require physical preparation; Hardy also sought out sources of inspiration that he could use to build his character. In an interview with Esquire, he says he drew his inspiration for Venom from Conor McGregor and the rapper Redman.
14 Crew Members Dressed For The Occasion
Hardy made headlines when he showed up to the filming of Stars In Cars wearing a Venom hoodie. One of his old Instagram posts reveal that he idea behind this innocent publicity stunt may have come months earlier. While Hardy was still filming the movie, he posted a photo of an enthusiastic crew member wearing a Venom sweater.
It seems by all accounts like the cast and crew had a great time making Venom, and this photo shows how widespread the love for the Marvel villain was among the crew's ranks. Hardy has also been caught wearing Venom-attire while doing press for the movie, so this is probably not the last time we will see him pull out his Venom hoodies.
13 The Lobster tank scene
Eddie Brock stepping into the lobster tank of an upscale San Francisco bistro has become one of Venom's most iconic scenes. Fans of the movie may be surprised to discover that the act was improvised by Tom Hardy and not part of the original script.
Fleischer revealed to Collider that the idea came to Hardy when they were rehearsing the scene the day before shooting. They only had a day to prepare the necessary changes, so the crew had to scramble to get everything in place overnight. Production designers had to rush to figure out how to reinforce the tank and the crew had to get their hands on fake lobsters to fill the tank.
12 Venom Concept Art
When the official trailer for Venom was released, fans started to worry. The brief video featured a whole lot of Tom Hardy, but next to nothing of the Marvel anti-hero. Suspicions went into overdrive when a blog claimed that Venom only showed up towards the end of the film.
Now that the movie is out, fans can breathe a sigh of relief. Venom, in his original form, was the very first character introduced in the picture and it would not take long until he merged with Eddie Brock. This black and white concept art by Mikkel Frandsen reveals that the filmmakers had a clear idea about where they were going with Venom from the start.
11 Switching Between Two Characters
In this photo, Hardy is seeing a reflection of himself as Venom for the first time. For the making of Venom, the actor actually had to step into the shoes of two separate characters. Hardy didn't just play Eddie Brock-- he also voiced and performed the alien symbiot who merged with Brock's body.
While Hardy was performing, a few extra cameras would be placed around him to track the movement of his limbs and clothing in each individual scene. This footage was later used by the VFX team to build Venom's gooey body around Hardy's frame.
10 On location
Venom's chase scene may look quintessentially San Franciscan, but most of it was actually filmed in Atlanta. VFX supervisor Paul J. Franklin has explained that his team spent a lot of time editing street signs to make the footage look more like San Francisco. Atlanta is home to both CNN and Coca Cola's headquarters, and their presence is often reflected across the city's streets.
This picture from VFX Online gives a glimpse into the magnitude of the films production crew. When this many players are involved, workers often end up spending a lot of time waiting around until they are needed. Fortunately, they had a spectacular view to take in while they waited.
9 Hardy Feeling Homesick
Hardy has stated that the biggest drawback to starring in Venom was the time he spent away from his wife and kids. This selfie posted on Venom's Twitter captures the actor looking a little gloomy under the caption "Home." Hardy was likely feeling homesick at this point during filming. If he returns for a sequel, he will hopefully be able to bring his family along.
During the credits, Venom teased that Woody Harrelson might play a big part in the movie's sequel. According to Fleischer, Harrelson and Hardy got along swimmingly during a dinner the three had. If a second film is confirmed, the two can help lift each others' spirits on set.
8 Up close and personal
Most of Venom's plot follows Eddie Brock's conflict with the Life Foundation and his struggle to accept the symbiote living inside his body. Besides his internal struggle, Eddie is also often challenged by the people who surround him. In addition to Hardy, Venom's stellar cast showcases the talents of actors such as Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Jenny Slate, and Reid Scott.
This behind-the-scenes photo captures a cameraman following Scott, Slate, and Hardy inside a medical facility. The operator is working with a Steadicam, which is a type of camera that can easily be mounted onto your body. Directors and DOP's usually discuss which equipment to use before they start shooting a film, since this can have a big impact on the finished product.
7 Bullit Hill stunt
San Francisco is one of the most iconic places to stage a car chase. Classic movies like Vertigo, Big Trouble In Little China, and Bullit have all used the city's unique layout to create interesting driving sequences. One of the locations that can be seen in Venom is actually nicknamed "Bullit Hill" after the '60s action flick.
This photo posted by Stunts Unlimited shows stunt-driver Jimmy Roberts riding a motorcycle atop a delivery truck. His job might seem exciting to most onlookers, but Roberts admitted that months of filming and preparations had left him itching to get out of the saddle. “I’m so tired of riding a motorcycle right now. I’m gonna take a break and go surfing for a while or something,” he told IGN.
6 Hardy Comes Into Focus
Hardy is known for going all in on his performances and for seamlessly incorporating wildly different characters. He has extensive knowledge of the craft, but refuses to confine himself to a certain method or approach. As seen from behind the screen, this photo gives us a director's view to one of his impassioned performances.
Despite Hardy's natural knack for acting, he has recently contemplated stepping away from the trade. The British performer currently writes and produces the television series Taboo, which he also stars in, and he's considered taking up directing as well. However, viewers do not have to worry about Hardy disappearing from the screen anytime soon. He is still signed on for two more Venom movies, and, judging by the film's success, Sony will likely follow it up with a sequel.
5 Tom Hardy's personal make-up artist
One of the perks of being a movie star is getting to travel around with your own hand-picked entourage. Hardy might not have many Hollywood quirks, but he does have a trusted co-worker whom he brings with him to every movie. The co-worker in question is makeup artist Audrey Doyle, who has worked as Hardy's personal makeup artist on most of his projects.
Doyle recently received a BAFTA award for her talents, so it is not surprising that Hardy feels secure in her capable hands. This black and white photo from Twitter shows the two working together on the set of Venom.
4 Taking A Break From Filming
Two weeks into filming, Venom's Twitter account posted an update from the set; Tom Hardy is seen taking a quick break on the bed of what looks like a trailer wagon. The photo gives off a tenser vibe than the one from the first day of production and shows that the hard work has begun.
Sleeping in a trailer does not always look inviting, but Hardy has had worse accommodations. During his teenage years he struggled with addiction and often ended up spending the night in jail. Hardy eventually checked into rehab in 2003 and has been sober ever since.
3 Controlling Dangerous Stunts
In this photo from VFX Online, we can see what filming on location looks like without the magic of post-production. In Venom, the streets of San Francisco look dimly lit, but this photo demonstrates how much light is needed to film at night. The production crew has also set up traffic cones to make sure that bystanders, crew members or motorists do not accidentally walk out into the area where they are filming.
The SUV's that are seen jumping in the movie actually performed the stunts in real life by speeding over ramps. When a 4000-pound car comes flying through the air, it is extremely important that no one tries to cross its path.
2 Tensions Flare During Production
Tensions tend to flare during the production of big-budget films. An extra day of shooting can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra expenses, which adds pressure on both actors and filmmakers. In this behind-the-scenes photo, Hardy can be seen discussing with a co-worker. Hardy may have just been looking for directions to the bathroom in this snapshot, but he would later fall victim to online gossip about his behavior on set.
According to The Daily Mail, the prolific actor reportedly stormed off set one day during filming and refused to come back until his lines were re-written. Complex performers like Hardy are often wrongly accused of diva behavior, but so far no one else has backed these claims up.
1 Actor And Director On Set
In an interview with Film Journal, director Ruben Fleischer singled out casting choices as a fundamental part of a film's success. Fleischer certainly managed to attract big names to Venom and picking Hardy for the lead turned out to be a perfect fit. This photo from the set reveals a pensive moment between the actor and director, who look like they are working out how to approach a scene-- or perhaps simply waiting for the coffee to boil.
Fleischer was a longtime fan or Hardy before he got on board and he has often raved about the actors abilities after their time together. "(Hardy's) always gonna elevate the material, and the scene that you’ve imagined, he’s gonna make it better," he told Collider, "That’s just what he does."
What's your favorite thing about Venom? Let us know in the comments!
Tags: venom
Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman: 10 Hidden Details You Never Noticed
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Named Louis Roederer International Wine Publication of the Year three years running (2010, 2011 and 2012), The World of Fine Wine is an award-winning magazine, website and app speaking to an international readership of discerning individuals who each share a passion for wine.
We take a sophisticated approach to the assessment of fine wine that is neither dominated by fad or fashion, nor one individual palate, nor the latest over-hyped wines. The publication appeals to a broad spectrum of wine lovers because of the range of subject matter we cover and the quality and depth of the articles written on these academic topics. Working with some of the world’s most respected wine writers, we offer authoritative editorial content that is seeing us become the go-to place for the global fine wine aficionado. We are a quarterly publication with subscribers extending across 30 countries.
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• Ch’ng Poh Tiong
Edition 64– June 2019
Elin McCoy, Is Wine Art?
David Schildknecht, Inspiration Ancienne: How History Informs Winecraft
Roger Morris, The Decolonization of Coombsville
Jacqueline Dutton, The Wine Merchants of Venice: Outsiders, Foreigners, and Vines in the Lagoon
Hugh Johnson, A Slather of Adjectives
Alice Feiring, The End of the Age of Innocence?
Julian Jeffs QC, The Three Balladeers
Margaret Rand, Savoring Sauternes
Anne Krebiehl MW, 2008 Bollinger Grande Année
Essi Avellan MW, 2006 Krug and 2006 Dom Pérignon Rosé
Michael Edwards, Billecart-Salmon 2002 Clos St-Hilaire
Panos Kakaviatos, Château Rauzan-Ségla 1994–2018
Simon Field MW, Château de Beaucastel 1989–2015
Sarah Ahmed, Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon 1998–2017 and Old Patch Shiraz 2007–2017
Sarah Kemp, Alpha Estate: Amid the Terroir Nymphs
Miquel Hudin, How Garnatxa Blanca Regrew a Region
Tastings: Champagne Dosage Trial Part II, 2018 Bordeaux, 2014 Brunello di Montalcino, Condrieu
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A Guide to The World of Fine Wine
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The World of Fine Wine magazine, published quarterly, was launched in 2004 and now has subscribers in 35 countries around the world. It is the brainchild of Dr Laurence Orbach, the chairman of Quarto Publishing Inc., who appreciates fine wine and felt that there was no magazine in English that catered for it satisfactorily – nothing that was adequately narrow in one way (concentrating on fine wine), broad enough in other ways (covering the culture and history of wine), or sufficiently serious in its treatment. Through our first publisher he recruited to the cause our Editorial Adviser Hugh Johnson, Contributing Editor Andrew Jefford, and the rest of the editorial team, all of whom identified with the original vision and wanted to make it a reality. So too did the distinguished wine figures around the world who have generously agreed to be on our editorial board or tasting panel. The goal of the magazine is to offer an alternative perspective on fine wine, in terms of subject, treatment and values. We hope to produce something that is not dominated by fad or fashion, nor one individual’s palate, nor the latest over-hyped wines; something that is much more than a ratings magazine, even though our own tastings play an important role; something that subscribers will want to keep on their shelves because it has lasting value. As Hugh Johnson kindly put it: “The World of Fine Wine takes wine journalism in a new, more sophisticated direction. It is not a consumer magazine, but the first cultural journal of the wine world. It acknowledges that wine-lovers have other interests, too, and the same high standards in whatever they do. The first 20 issues have been a remarkable demonstration of new possibilities. I know I don't want to read the same old marketing jargon ever again”. Or as David Schildknecht asked, “Which other magazine would dare to treat intoxication, synaesthesia, linguistic muddle, arrested fermentation, Champagne riots, Rabelais’s laughter, van Gogh’s madness, and gout?”
There is no room for another magazine in English that attempts to compete on the “broad middle ground”. But we believe strongly that there is still a place for a magazine that fills in some of the gaps that the others choose to leave. The biggest distinguishing features are the range of the subject matter and the depth of the treatment. We will publish articles ranging from the Ancient Chinese or Greeks or Romans right up to the latest en primeur releases. We will also have articles by authoritative writers who are given the space to treat the subject seriously. Of course an article doesn’t have to be long to be worthwhile, any more than a wine has to be old to be fine; but there are some fairly complex subjects that require space if they are not to be superficial. While some of the articles are shorter, our major features are up to 10,000 words long – that’s several times longer than those in other magazines.
The way we organize our tastings is also different. We make every effort to source all of the best bottles, regardless of price or rarity. We have only three tasters for each tasting – an acknowledged “specialist” on the subject and two experienced “generalists” – selected from a fixed panel of about 30 (including Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson MW, Andrew Jefford, Michel Bettane, Michael Schuster and Tom Stevenson). This allows all comments and scores to be attributed individually and reproduced in full (so no composite notes). And in the few cases where the personal preferences of the tasters are not already well known, they will quickly become so. The system combines the advantages of a highly respected single taster with the benefits of an established, expert panel, where a range of views can be expressed or mutually reinforced. To guarantee the accuracy and integrity of the process, all comments and scores from our blind tastings are entered simultaneously onto a computer database. We are conscious, however, that while blind tastings and scores have their uses, so too do open tastings and the free exchange of ideas. When wines appear as themselves, as they do in our One Bottle, Per Se, and Standing Up sections, we can establish a more immediate and intimate rapport with the wines and reach a deeper understanding of them, without the need for a score.
While the preferences of our tasters varies widely, of course, I think it would still to be true to say that they prize most highly the qualities that have been rather underestimated in recent years – balance, elegance, and harmony. There are people who enjoy concentrated, highly extracted, lavishly oaked, powerfully structured, very rich, ripe wines – and that’s fine. But there have always been at least as many wine lovers who get more pleasure from less demonstrative, more naturally expressive, more food-friendly wines, who appreciate complexity, finesse and subtlety. Their preferences have not always been adequately catered for, so we again try to fill that gap. I’m convinced that part of the problem has been that balance, aurea mediocritas (‘the golden mean’) has become less attractive – conceptually, emotionally, intellectually – than it has been for most of the time since Horace coined the phrase. Many people now find extremes more exciting. Which is why I asked Professor Roger Scruton, a highly regarded English philosopher and historian of ideas, to explain the value that most cultures have attached to the idea of moderation. But the pendulum has started to swing back: consumers are starting to tire of being bludgeoned into submission, of being overwhelmed, and many producers all over the world are beginning to recognize that they often went too far in terms of ripeness, extraction and new wood.
Each quarterly issue of the magazine is 216 pages long (and because we depend more on subscriptions than on advertising, very few of these pages are ads). The range is very wide.
We cover contemporary news and events in sections such as Nouveau, Preview, Review, Auctions and Calendar.
We include the most recent en primeur offers or new releases in Laying Down (for example, 2005 Bordeaux, 2005 Burgundy, 2001 Barolo, 2001 California Cabernet, 1999 Tuscan Sangiovese), as well as tastings of older wines in Per Se and Savor (Prestige Cuvée Champagne, Gevrey-Chambertin Grands Crus, Volnay Premiers Crus, Barolo 1996-1997, Vintage Port 1970–2000).
We have highly individual, personal pieces: Memorable Wine (where interesting individuals are described and their most special wine experiences explained in the context of their lives); Underground (where notable collectors and their collections are discussed); Symposium (impressive private tastings); Bordeaux Portrait (a detailed profile of a château owner or winemaker, including those at Ausone, Cheval Blanc, L’Eglise-Clinet, Margaux, Léoville-Barton, Pichon-Baron); and On the Vine (a detailed profile of a producer in other regions, such as DRC, Leroy, Conterno, Ridge).
We also have very general, large subjects in our three major features (authenticity in wine, how to define quality in wine, wine and synaesthesia, regional studies of terroir); an historical piece, Then & Now (Ancient Chinese wine poetry, the Champagne riots of 1911, the American Founding Fathers and wine, Rabelais and wine, harvest festivals); an artistic or architectural piece, Palette or Vitruvius (Van Gogh’s Red Vineyard, Caravaggio’s Sick Bacchus, Wine in Dutch Golden Age Still Lifes, winery architecture in different parts of the world); and Vintage (where we take a famous vintage and wine, and then discuss what was happening in other areas of the arts in that year). We also have regular features on food and travel: Room Temperature (looking at the best fine wine restaurants in major cities and wine regions worldwide, including London, New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore, Alsace, Burgundy, Champagne, and Piedmont); Matchmaker (where a respected chef or sommelier discusses a particular food or wine and the best matches); and Vin Voyage (where a resident of a particular wine region describes how best to explore it).
The authors are as authoritative as we can find anywhere in the world, and unusually we will commission work in a language other than English then have it professionally translated. Where we depart from wine (to look at culture or history, art, literature or philosophy) then we get leading academics or experts in the field. The style is scholarly but not academic, serious but not stuffy. The articles assume a certain level of wine knowledge, and will certainly be of interest to professionals, but are also accessible by any intelligent and interested lover of wine anywhere in the world. The magazine certainly offers advice on buying wine, but also provides stimulating reading for those who are looking to learn more about the astonishingly rich traditions that have surrounded wine for millennia.
We try to make sure that the magazine looks the part, that it is attractive to read and produced to a high standard. We know that subscribers keep the magazines for reference, and often have them bound. But it is far from being a “coffee-table” book – there are up to 150,000 words in each quarterly issue – and it is a “lifestyle” magazine only in the sense that (as Randall Grahm said in issue 2), “wine must be lived with”.
I absolutely adore your publication, and would be honored to contribute to it in any way.
Congratulations on the wonderful magazine; it is certainly the most literate wine magazine out there. Keep up your high standards.
Randall Grahm, owner-winemaker Bonny Doon Vineyards, Santa Cruz, CA
The World of Fine Wine is a different sort of wine journal. Which other magazine would dare to treat intoxication, synaesthesia, linguistic muddle, arrested fermentation, Champagne riots, Rabelais’s laughter, van Gogh’s madness, and gout?
Thanks for Jamie Goode’s informative and stimulating articles in the latest issue of The World of Fine Wine. Through articles such as these you are performing a great service for the vast majority of us wine merchants, wine writers and consumers who lack the time and the scientific background to peruse a literature that is in fact of great significance to our activities.
David Schildknecht, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate
An upmarket, quite expensive but admirably serious bi-monthly glossy magazine about top-quality wine.
Jancis Robinson OBE MW, award winning wine journalist, TV presenter, and wine correspondent for The Financial Times
I think this is a first rate new wine magazine, and I enjoy reading it enormously. It combines authoritative, stimulating writing on wine and related cultural issues (art, music, gastronomy, history...) with production and illustrations of a very high order. At the price of a bottle of modest premium wine per issue, it represents excellent value - both as a long–term reference and a long term pleasure.
Michael Schuster, award winning wine writer and educator
In the world of wine communication, far too many newspapers and specialist reviews struggle to maintain their independence of the advertisers who make them viable. This makes it necessary to underline the highest editorial standards of The World of Fine Wine. As well as offering complete freedom of expression and opinion to the prestigious writers whose services they secure, the editors manage to strike a remarkable balance of coverage on the many different subjects they treat, in a completely impartial spirit. Certainly they limit themselves to fine wines and great terroirs, to the altogether exceptional. But it is precisely this that the real wine lover seeks: a unique approach to the mystery of wine, where the detail and relevance of background knowledge informs the culture, the dreams and the myths. If one had to describe this sumptuous review in one word, it would be: indispensable.
François Mauss, founder-president of the Grand Jury Européen
The best way to explain fine wine and to protect it from the lobbies (so strong in my country) aiming to convince people it is a devil drink, is to insist on its cultural values and to my knowledge no other magazine on wine I know is doing it as well as The World of Fine Wine. I hope that many more wine growers or wine lovers will support such an unrivalled fighter!
Michel Bettane, leading French wine critic
More than a wine magazine. It covers a huge range of interest and is certainly more intellectual than any other wine and food magazine I have read.
Len Evans AO OBE, vineyard owner, and writer, lecturer and broadcaster
The World of Fine Wine takes wine journalism in a new, more sophisticated direction. It is not a consumer magazine, but the first cultural journal of the wine world. It acknowledges that wine-lovers have other interests, too, and the same high standards in whatever they do. The first 12 issues have been a remarkable demonstration of new possibilities. I know I don't want to read the same old marketing jargon ever again.
Hugh Johnson, renowned and award winning wine writer, and editorial adviser to The World of Fine Wine
What I admire the most about The World of Fine Wine magazine are the different, detailed and often quirky articles – written by an impressive pool of varied and respected writers. Deliberately non-mainstream and specialised (not elitist!), it delves deeper and wider, yet with awareness, sensitivity. A high hit-rate of fully-read articles, and a ‘when’s the next one going to arrive’ expectation surely imply impact, satisfaction & relevance!!! More please!
Peter Gago, Chief Winemaker, Penfolds, South Australia
This is a really beautiful wine magazine, completely different to anything ever done before. The quality of the writing and the design and layout of the pages are all exceptional. The World of Fine Wine complements the world's great wines perfectly, looking at the wines in great detail, as well as exploring related subjects that make fascinating reading. I feel that each edition will be kept by most readers, it is not a magazine to discard.
Paul Symington, owner Symington Family Estates, Oporto, Portugal
In a world where wine is so often reduced to clipped phrases, scores and sound bites, The World of Fine Wine magazine puts wine in the widest cultural context and, above all, makes a refreshingly good read.
Richard Mayson, award winning wine writer
Unsolicited comments on the bulletin board of the Robert Parker website:
For those with more disposable income, I would strongly recommend it as it's the finest wine mag I've ever seen.
It is a lovely magazine, both visually and in content. I believe the depth with which wine issues are covered makes it unlike anything out there. For the serious wine geek, this magazine is nirvana.
It is an excellent magazine, very erudite articles (they even do footnotes!). I would not hesitate to recommend subscribing.
It is easily the classiest wine publication out there – indeed probably the nicest magazine I have ever seen of any kind – and the writing is extremely high quality.
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Головна / Консульські питання / Перелік консульських дій / Засвідчення документів / Апостиль
Certification of public documents
The Convention, abolishing the requirement of consular legalization for foreign public documents came into force for Ukraine on December 22, 2003.
The present Convention shall apply to public documents which have been executed in the territory of one contracting State and which have to be produced in the territory of another contracting State. Special certification called “Apostille” (hereinafter - apostille) is affixed to these documents.
Documents completed with an apostille certification must be submitted directly to a member nation to the Convention without any further action or certification (consular legalization).
The present Convention shall not apply to:
a) documents executed by diplomatic or consular agents;
b) administrative documents dealing directly with commercial or customs operations.
According to the Instruction of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine of 18/01/2003 # 61 “On Authorization for Apostille certification for public documents” an apostille for the documents issued in Ukraine is placed by:
the Ministry of Education and Science, Youth and Sport of Ukraine – for public documents issued by the educational institutions, state bodies, enterprises, offices and organizations in the field of education and science.
the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine – for documents issued by the judicial bodies and courts and also for the documents issued by the public notaries in Ukraine.
the State Register Service of Ukraine – for documents issued by this Service and its structural devisions of regional bodies of the Ministry of Justice which provides the realization of State Register Service powers.
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine – for all other types of documents.
Аpostille is placed to:
documents issued by a state court of Ukraine;
for the documents issued by the prosecutors’ offices, judicial bodies of Ukraine;
administrative documents;
for the documents on education and academic status;
documents executed before a notary public;
official certificates which are placed on documents signed by persons in their private capacity, such as official certificates recording the registration of a document or the fact that it was in existence on a certain date and official and notarial authentications of signatures.
Terms for submission to place apostille on the documents is up to 5 working days. In case the documents are submitted by its owner, apostille is placed in the same day. In case submissio
Легалізація
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Purchase of Crown Lands for Construction of Municipal Infrastructure
MD of Greenview
4 - Northern
Municipal Governance and Finances
Intent Not Met
WHEREAS the Sustainable Resources Department of the Province of Alberta has, since 2005, transferred Crown Lands to municipalities for a nominal sum transfer fee; and
WHEREAS the Province of Alberta has recently mandated that all Crown Lands purchased by municipalities must be transferred at full market value; and
WHEREAS although some Crown Lands may have been sought by Alberta municipalities for the purpose of pursuing or performing development activities, Crown Lands purchased for a nominal sum were intended only for the purpose of constructing municipal infrastructure works; and
WHEREAS in instances where Crown lands are held under lease by private interests, municipalities are also required to pay the leaseholder significant sums to obtain lands for infrastructure works, which amounts to double payment; and
WHEREAS lands purchased from the Crown for the purpose of constructing municipal roads ultimately revert to ownership by the Crown once construction has been completed, with the municipality as manager; and
WHEREAS Alberta municipalities obtain funding from the Province to assist with the cost of construction of municipal infrastructure; and
WHEREAS the increased cost of purchasing Crown Lands will increase the cost to municipalities to construct and install needed infrastructure works; and
WHEREAS the increased cost to municipalities for land purchase will negatively impact the ability of municipalities to provide the needed infrastructure works, and will increase the funding assistance requested of the Province;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the AAMDC request the ministry of Sustainable Resources Development of the Province of Alberta return to a policy of nominal sum fee transfers for municipalities for Crown Lands which are required for construction of municipal infrastructure works.
Nominal Sum Fee Transfers have only been available to municipalities since 2005. Prior to 2005, the “low end of agricultural value” was typically used for market value assessments as part of transfers of Crown land for a long time.
The “Nominal Sum Fee” transfers were available to municipalities for core public works infrastructure but could also be obtained for other public use projects such as parks, community halls etc. Private Public Partnerships were also never eligible.
A moratorium and policy review requirement was triggered by Treasury Board. The decision to suspend all applications came to SRD in April after the provincial budget. The official date that Treasury Board gave for a moratorium on “Nominal Sum Disposals” was July 20th, 2009 and there was no “grandfathering” of applications in the queue. SRD is not in charge of the policy review and is only a resource for the Treasury Board in the process.
According to the Treasury Board there is no active review underway and the moratorium will continue for 2 or 3 years or until the Province’s finances improve dramatically. The estimated cost of all Nominal Sum Disposals was estimated at between $50-100 million per year depending upon the activity each year. Disposals include not only Crown lands through SRD, but encompass other Departments such as Infrastructure, Social Housing and Parks.
Typically purchases of land and legal surveys are not eligible for grant funding, so the change in policy is a direct increase in cost to municipalities for construction of infrastructure.
The AAMDC has no active resolutions directly related to this issue.
Sustainable Resource Development:
The government has suspended the sale of public lands to municipalities for public works and the transfer of tax recovery land to municipalities for the nominal sum of $1.00. This suspension is in effect until further notice. Sustainable Resource Development honoured written commitments with several nominal sum land sales negotiated before the policy review and decision. These sales will proceed and have been approved by Orders-in-Council.
Municipalities are not required to purchase land for developing municipal public roads. When a municipality applies for a proposed road on public land, a land-use review is completed to determine suitability. Once the land is found suitable and the road is surveyed and registered at a Land Titles Office, the road is transferred to the municipal jurisdiction and is no longer considered public land.
Sustainable Resource Development does not provide funding for municipal infrastructure development.
In its initial response to this resolution the Government of Alberta noted that it had suspended the sale of public lands to municipalities for a nominal sum, and indicated no intention of reversing this decision. This topic was addressed at a recent meeting with the Minister of Envirionment and Sustainable Resource Development where the AAMDC was advised that this change came into effect in 2011 with the intent to review the process every five years, making the next review in 2016. This resolution status will remain unsatisfactory and the AAMDC will continue to advocate for this change in future meetings with government.
Environment and Sustainable Resource Development
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Tag Archives: Dennis Hastert
Dirty money, Roy Blunt, Denis Hastert and the Kander effect
Posted by willykay in Uncategorized
campaign finance, corruption, Dennis Hastert, Jason Kander, Roy Blunt
Steve Benen remarks today that:
It took a surprisingly long time, but Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) yesterday finally agreed to forgo a donation from disgraced former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. The Missouri Republican gave the contribution he received from Hastert to a local charity.
Benen may be surprised by Blunt’s reluctance to return Hastert’s money, but I’m not. Actually, I agree with Blunt’s earlier position. If politicians felt they had to give back tainted money, they’d all be broke.
Money from Wall Street? Fossil fuels? Real estate developers? Communications? You name it, and if you look carefully enough, you’ll find lots of dirty deeds behind the dough – and, even worse, there’s usually an intent to influence the politician who is the recipient. Do you really think that money cajoled from ruthless corporate favor seekers is somehow nastier because the person who extracted it sexually abused children? Nobody says Blunt should give back his Montsanto money although it reeks of corruption.
Occasionally you find folks like the Bernie bros (and sisters) who say they won’t vote for a politician, in this case Clinton, because she took Goldman Sachs money or some such. While the desire for purity is understandable, sane folks know that unilateral disarmament is suicide. (And why is it usually the left that is determined to jump off a cliff?) Until the system changes, and the Blunts of the political world are barred from receiving, say, AT&T’s nearly unlimited financial blessings, politics will operate on tainted money.We just have to vote for politicians whom we trust to try to work for change in the way we finance our politicians.
In the meantime, can we call Blunt’s change of heart the Kander effect? You can’t blame him for not wanting to let his unexpectedly strong Democratic challenger use his name in the same sentence as the words “convicted sex offender.”
Does Hastert’s money really have cooties?
campaign finance, corruption, Dennis Hastert, missouri, quid pro quo, Roy Blunt, Zephyr Teachout
Republican Senator Roy Blunt was in the news recently because he made it known that he had no intention of returning money donated to his campaign coffers by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert who, although now retired, is mired in an emergent scandal:
“Returning donations gives some sense that you are going to look at the behavior of everybody who gives money to a campaign,” Blunt, R-Mo, told reporters during his weekly press call. “I don’t know if I have time to do that, and I would expect not to be returning donations to anybody.”
Hastert allegedly resorted to illegal means to pay off a blackmailer who had the goods on him for the sexual abuse of a student back when he was a highschool wrestling coach. Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, while withholding judgement, described the money as tainted, while the Democratic Party immediately claimed that keeping it was in some way corrupt.
I have to say that for the first time in just about ever, I’m with Blunt. Money is money, and as long as it isn’t taken in return for political favors – which is clearly not the case with Hastert’s donation – it doesn’t represent corruption. Like Blunt, I see no reason for politicians to be held accountable for the personal lives of their donors.
But, I have heard folks object, in 2006 Blunt not only got rid of $8,500 from lobbyist Jack Abramoff by donating it to charity, but was emphatic that other politicians should either return the money or similarly donate it. But, I respond to those folks, the situations are very different. Abramoff was a lobbyist who was convicted of buying favors from politicians. Keeping money he donated left the donee, by implication, very suspect. Especially a donee like Blunt, who, as one of the GOP moneymen in the House at that time, essentially a “liason” to K-street lobbyists, was already somewhat tainted by association with Abramoff. So, see – not the same thing at all.
But what boggles my mind is that anyone would be debating whether or not Roy Blunt should return paedophile Dennis Hastert’s piddling little gift, but nobody would think to demand that he return the massive amounts that he collects from representatives of the communications, energy, tobacco, etc. industries, industries to the welfare of which he devotedly ministers. In a sane world, soliciting and accepting money and returning favors to the donors is corruption pure and simple. And there’s no doubt that Blunt is really good at getting those corporate dollars. Similarly, there’s no doubt that he’s one of the most reliable go-to boys when it comes corporate favors.
Everybody knows that Senator Blunt, selected in 2010 by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) as one of Wasington’s most corrupt politicians, might have a difficult time passing the smell test. It’s difficult to even keep count of the questionable favors Blunt has done for his corporate cronies. The industries noted above reward his hard work very reliably, though he isn’t averse to taking on any entity willing to pay. Most of us remember his attempt to slip an unrelated rider meant solely to benefit Montsanto into some sundry piece of legislation – which is why Mother Jones dubbed him Montsanto’s man in Washington. Or, to take a more recent example, consider his work on behalf of the for-profit education sector. Just a couple of months ago he managed to make an ass of himself by blaming students of predatory institutions like Corinthian Colleges and Vatterot College – both big campaign contributors – for borrowing to finance their educations.
But enough about ol’ Roy’s dirty deeds. Nobody cares. Unless you can get secret surveillance video of Roy hammering out the quid pro quo in person, it doesn’t seem to count as corruption. At least not in the same way that taking money from a sex abuser who told the FBI some fibs in order to hide the fact he was paying off a blackmailer inspires the indignant pointing of fingers.
In a 2014 Politico article, Zephyr Teachout, author of the excellent Corruption in America, notes the flaws in such a restrictive definition of corrupton as regards quid pro quo:
In McCutcheon v. FEC, the landmark case that threw out aggregate limits on campaign spending last week, Chief Justice John Roberts made clear that for the majority of this current Supreme Court, corruption means quid pro quo corruption. In other words, if it’s not punishable by a bribery statute, it’s not corruption.
This is a reasonable mistake to make at a dinner party. But it’s a disastrous mistake to make for democracy, when the stakes are so high. Essentially, Roberts used a criminal law term-of recent vintage and unclear meaning-to describe a constitutional-level concept. It is as if he used a modern New York statute describing what “speech” means to determine the scope of the First Amendment.
It is misunderstandings of this sort, and the promulgation of same by a frequently ideologically befuddled conservative Supreme Court majority that is responsible for the success of money grubbers like Blunt. To be clear, it has also forced politicians who would prefer not to grovel for dollars to do so in order to compete, since only patsies advocate unilateral disarmament. But no matter who the offender is, we all pay the price. As Teachout concludes in her book’s introduction:
What America now faces, if we do not change the fundamental structures of the relationship of money to legislative power, is neither mob rule nor democracy, but oligarchy.
So let Blunt keep Hasterts offerings. But, please, let’s do something about the money he takes in from AT&T, Goldman Sachs, Montsanto, Murray Energy, et al.
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Callum Maycock
Position: Central Midfielder
Age: 21 *
At Club Since: N/A (Academy Graduate)
Total Club League Appearances (Goals): 4(0) *
Having been around the first-team squad for a couple of years, Callum Maycock finally picked up regular football last season during a loan spell at struggling Macclesfield Town in League Two. A regular for much of the season, Maycock struggled to impose himself on games enough to be particularly fondly remembered by Macclesfield fans. While this isn’t an indication that Maycock can make an impact at a higher level now that he’s back with us, that experience will have been useful in toughening him up and may help him in the longer run.
He is clearly someone rated by Mark Robins, as evidenced by the relatively long-term contract he is on, Maycock could well be a regular part of the first-team squad this coming season. With there being little cover for Liam Kelly, Maycock’s style of play in the centre of the park – deeper-lying and ball-playing – is likely to make him the back-up for our current captain. How many opportunities he’ll have to play remains to be seen, emphasising the importance of Maycock being more aggressive in asserting himself on games than he has shown thus far at Coventry City.
*As of 01/07/2019
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Onde nos Emirados Árabes Unidos verifica o preço da prata
Prata preço nos Emirados Árabes Unidos
(Emirates Dirham)
Emirates Dirham Preço de prata ponto 24 horas
1 dia de ouro preço por onça em Dirham dos Emirados Árabes Unidos
1 dia de ouro preço por grama em Dirham dos Emirados Árabes Unidos
1 dia de ouro preço por quilograma em Dirham dos Emirados Árabes Unidos
1 dia de prata preço por onça em Dirham dos Emirados Árabes Unidos
1 dia de prata preço por quilograma em Dirham dos Emirados Árabes Unidos
Emirates Dirham Gráficos de histórico de prata preço
30 Day Silver Price History in Arab Emirates Dirham per Ounce
1 Year Silver Price History in Arab Emirates Dirham per Ounce
10 Year Silver Price History in Arab Emirates Dirham per Ounce
All Data Silver Price History in Arab Emirates Dirham per Ounce
Silver Price United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates, often referred to as UAE for short, is a federal absolute monarchy. The nation is located at the southeast end of the Arabian Peninsula along the Persian Gulf, and borders Oman and Saudi Arabia. The UAE has a population of approximately 9.2 million, and covers a land area of about 32,000 square miles. The UAE became independent in 1971 and it is comprised of a federation of seven emirates. The various emirates include Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al-Quwain. Each of the separate emirates is governed by a monarch, and together they form the Federal Supreme Council. One of the monarchs acts as president of the federation.
The UAE has the second largest economy in the GCC after Saudi Arabia, and it ranks highly for business. The economy of the UAE has become more diversified, although the region still remains heavily reliant on oil. In fact, most of the emirates still derive the vast majority of revenues from energy. Dubai, however, has been more aggressive in its diversification strategy. This makes sense due to the fact that this emirate has significantly smaller oil reserves. Dubai has become one of the top tourist destinations in the Middle East, and is responsible for a substantial portion of the UAE’s tourism revenue.
The official currency of the UAE is the United Arab Emirates Dirham. The currency is sometimes referred to as the Emirati Dirham, and can be subdivided into 100 smaller units of currency called fils. The UAE Dirham was introduced in 1973 to replace the Qatar and Dubai Riyal. The value and numbers on dirham coins are written in Eastern Arabic numerals and any text is written in Arabic.
The UAE Dirham is issued and controlled by the nation’s central bank, known as the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates. Like other global central banks, the bank has additional responsibilities in addition to currency management including conducting monetary policy and oversight of the banking system. The central bank was founded in 1980, and is headquartered in Abu Dhabi.
For those looking to buy silver in the UAE, quotes will be in the local currency. Spot silver prices are often also available in other major global currencies as well, including the Japanese Yen, Great British Pound, euros or U.S. Dollars. The metal is most often quoted by the ounce, gram or kilo, although other local units of measure may also be used.
The Central Bank of the UAE has minted a variety of commemorative coins over the years designed to celebrate important events, figures and rulers of the region. One such coin is the 2000 25th Anniversary of Dubai Islamic Bank silver coin.
Collectible coins like the above can make a great addition to any collection or portfolio. Collectible coins often times, however, carry significantly higher premiums compared to bullion coins or bars due to their limited limited mintage, relative scarcity and other factors. For those looking to acquire as many total ounces of silver as possible, bullion bars, coins and rounds may offer the most cost effective solution.
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David Lloyd George
OM PC
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
6 December 1916 – 19 October 1922
H. H. Asquith
Bonar Law
Leader of the Liberal Party
14 October 1926 – 4 November 1931
Herbert Samuel
Secretary of State for War
6 July 1916 – 5 December 1916
The Earl Kitchener
The Earl of Derby
Minister of Munitions
25 May 1915 – 9 July 1916
Office created
Edwin Montagu
Chancellor of the Exchequer
12 April 1908 – 25 May 1915
Reginald McKenna
President of the Board of Trade
10 December 1905 – 12 April 1908
Henry Campbell-Bannerman
The Marquess of Salisbury
Father of the House
31 May 1929 – 13 February 1945
T. P. O'Connor
The Earl Winterton
for Carnarvon Boroughs
10 April 1890 – 13 February 1945
Edmund Swetenham[1]
Seaborne Davies
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
1 January 1945 – 26 March 1945
Hereditary peerage
peerage created
The 2nd Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor
(1863-01-17)17 January 1863
Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, Lancashire, England
Tŷ Newydd, Caernarfonshire, Wales
Llanystumdwy, Gwynedd, Wales
Liberal (1890–1916 and 1924–45)
National Liberal (1922–23)
Margaret Owen
(m. 1888; died 1941)
Frances Stevenson
(m. 1943)
5, including Richard, Gwilym and Lady Megan
William George
Elizabeth Lloyd
solicitor, politician
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor,[a] OM, PC (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was the British Prime Minister during the last half of World War I. He was Prime Minister for six years, between 1916 and 1922.
Early life[change | change source]
Lloyd George was born in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, Lancashire, England to Welsh parents. His father, who died before Lloyd George was two-years old, was a teacher and a farmer. When he was young, he lived with his mother and his brother. When he was 21, Lloyd George became a lawyer and opened an office in the back of his brother's house.
Political career[change | change source]
Lloyd George's law practice was a success. Shortly after opening it, Lloyd George became interested in politics. He began working with the Liberal Party. He was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) on 13 April 1890. Lloyd George would serve as an MP until 1945. In the House of Commons, Lloyd George worked to promote Welsh issues, fought against the Second Boer War and campaigned for education reform.
In 1905, Lloyd George was selected to become a cabinet minister. He served as President of the Board of Trade (1905–1908) and Chancellor of the Exchequer (1908–1915). After World War I started, he held the positions of Minister of Munitions (1915) and War Secretary (1916).
By the end of 1916, the war was going badly for Great Britain. Lloyd George gathered together a coalition (a type of political team) of Liberal and Conservative MPs to form a new government. On 5 December 1916, Prime Minister H. H. Asquith resigned, and Lloyd George took his place. Lloyd George's government introduced conscription (forcing men to join the armed forces) and rationing (placing limits on the amount of food someone can buy) by the end of the war.
After the war, Lloyd George represented Britain at the Versailles Peace Conference and helped create the Irish Free State. By 1922, Lloyd George's coalition was breaking apart. In October 1922, the Conservative Party led by Andrew Bonar Law won the election. Lloyd George remained an MP, however, until 1945.
In 1945, he was given the titles Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor and Viscount Gwynedd. He was to take a seat in the House of Lords, but he died before he could do so.
David Lloyd George by William Orpen
↑ "David Lloyd George Exhibition". National Library of Wales. March 1995. Retrieved 14 February 2016.
↑ Under the rules governing titles within the peerage, Lloyd George's name in his title was hyphenated even though his surname was not.
Prime Ministers of Great Britain and Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom
Walpole | Wilmington | Pelham | Newcastle | Devonshire | Newcastle | Bute | G Grenville | Rockingham | Chatham | Grafton | North | Rockingham | Shelburne | Portland | Pitt the Younger |
Pitt the Younger | Addington | W Grenville | Portland | Perceval | Liverpool | Canning | Goderich | Wellington | Grey | Melbourne | Peel | Melbourne | Peel | Russell | Derby | Aberdeen | Palmerston | Derby | Palmerston | Russell | Derby | Disraeli | Gladstone | Disraeli | Gladstone | Salisbury | Gladstone | Salisbury | Gladstone | Rosebery | Salisbury | Balfour | Campbell-Bannerman | Asquith | Lloyd George | Bonar Law | Baldwin | MacDonald | Baldwin | MacDonald | Baldwin | Chamberlain | Churchill | Attlee | Churchill | Eden | Macmillan | Douglas-Home | Wilson | Heath | Wilson | Callaghan | Thatcher | Major | Blair | Brown | Cameron | May |
Retrieved from "https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Lloyd_George&oldid=6552826"
Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom
Chancellors of the Exchequer
People from Manchester
Privy Councillors (UK)
United Kingdom Earls
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Chamber Celebrates U.S. Supreme Court Ruling
June 26, 2015 / Chamber News
The following is a statement from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce on today’s historic ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the rights of all couples to marry:
“This is a historic day for the basic human right to marry the one you love,” said Bob Linscheid, President and CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. “The Chamber has long supported the business case for eliminating marriage discrimination as we support policies and laws that are inclusive.”
“Moreover, we know that discriminatory laws that ban same-sex marriage harm the ability of businesses to attract and retain a diverse and talented workforce, which are key to business development and economic growth,” Linscheid said.
The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce was among nearly 400 companies and business organizations that in March asked the U.S. Supreme Court to declare a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. The Chamber told the court in a friend-of-the-court brief that inconsistent marriage laws nationwide create “a fractured legal landscape” that increases their administrative costs and makes it hard to attract the best workers.
“The case for marriage equality goes beyond what’s best for business,” Linscheid said. “It’s what’s best for individuals and couples and we celebrate the diversity that makes our city, and now our country, so strong.”
Marshall Wilson
Vice President, Strategic Communications
mwilson@sfchamber.com
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'SEARCH TERMS'
– #spectre #spectrevision #spectrerealty –
SEXUAL BLACKMAIL in GOVERNMENT
Posted on 2016/10/14 by secret santa
MUTUAL BLACKMAIL UBER ALLES
http://aanirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/epsteins-black-book-names-listed.html
http://aanirfan.blogspot.com/2015/01/mossad-blackmail-ring-linked-to-prince.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/trump-needs-threats-to-stop-republicans-from-abandoning-him/503579/
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/485529/Special-Branch-funded-Paedophile-Information-Exchange-says-Home-Office-whistleblower
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/governments-gather-evidence-child-pornography-blackmail-officials.html
“The Express reported: “British security services infiltrated and funded the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange in a covert operation to identify and possibly blackmail establishment figures, a Home Office whistleblower alleges. The former civil servant has told detectives investigating the activities of paedophiles in national politics that the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch was orchestrating the child-sex lobbying group in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The whistleblower … says he was also warned off asking why such a notorious group was being handed government money. Whistleblower Mr X, whose identity we have agreed to protect, became a very senior figure in local government before retiring a few years ago.
Mr X recalled: “I raised my concerns, but he told me that I was to drop them. Hindley gave three reasons for this. He said PIE was an organisation with cachet and that its work in this field was respected… “He said PIE was being funded at the request of Special Branch which found it politically useful to identify people who were paedophiles… Hindley didn’t give me an explicit explanation of what Special Branch would do with information it gleaned from funding PIE, but I formed the belief that it was part of an undercover operation or activity. I was aware a lot of people in the civil service or political arena had an interest in obtaining information like that which could be used as a sort of blackmail.”
This has been going on in the UK for some time. Specifically, Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 made gross indecency a crime in the United Kingdom, which included male gay sex. The Amendment was so frequently used to blackmail gay Brits that it was dubbed the “Blackmailer’s Charter“. It’s not just the UK.
There is widespread speculation that Pope Benedict resigned because of sexual blackmail. And the American government has a long history (i.e. J. Edgar Hoover and many others) of blackmailing people – including high-level officials – with knowledge of their sexual peccadilloes.
Wikipedia notes: “The Lavender Scare refers to the fear and persecution of homosexuals in the 1950s in the United States, which paralleled the anti-communist campaign known as McCarthyism. Because the psychiatric community regarded homosexuality as a mental illness, gay men and lesbians were considered susceptible to blackmail …. Former U.S. Senator Alan K. Simpson has written: “The so-called ‘Red Scare’ has been the main focus of most historians of that period of time. A lesser-known element . . . and one that harmed far more people was the witch-hunt McCarthy and others conducted against homosexuals.”
FBI head Hoover was famous for blackmailing everyone … including politicians. The New York Times reports: “J. Edgar Hoover compiled secret dossiers on the sexual peccadillos and private misbehavior of those he labeled as enemies — really dangerous people like … President John F. Kennedy, for example.” Alfred McCoy – Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison – provides details: “Upon taking office on Roosevelt’s death in early 1945, Harry Truman soon learned the extraordinary extent of FBI surveillance. “We want no Gestapo or Secret Police,” Truman wrote in his diary that May. “FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail.” After a quarter of a century of warrantless wiretaps, Hoover built up a veritable archive of sexual preferences among America’s powerful and used it to shape the direction of U.S. politics.
He distributed a dossier on Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson’s alleged homosexuality to assure his defeat in the 1952 presidential elections, circulated audio tapes of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philandering, and monitored President Kennedy’s affair with mafia mistress Judith Exner. And these are just a small sampling of Hoover’s uses of scandal to keep the Washington power elite under his influence.
“The moment [Hoover] would get something on a senator,” recalled William Sullivan, the FBI’s chief of domestic intelligence during the 1960s, “he’d send one of the errand boys up and advise the senator that ‘we’re in the course of an investigation, and we by chance happened to come up with this data on your daughter…’From that time on, the senator’s right in his pocket.” After his death, an official tally found Hoover had 883 such files on senators and 722 more on congressmen.
With a few hundred cable probes and computerized decryption, the NSA can now capture the kind of gritty details of private life that J. Edgar Hoover so treasured and provide the sort of comprehensive coverage of populations once epitomized by secret police like East Germany’s Stasi. And yet, such comparisons only go so far. After all, once FBI agents had tapped thousands of phones, stenographers had typed up countless transcripts, and clerks had stored this salacious paper harvest in floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, J. Edgar Hoover still only knew about the inner-workings of the elite in one city: Washington, D.C.
To gain the same intimate detail for an entire country, the Stasi had to employ one police informer for every six East Germans — an unsustainable allocation of human resources. By contrast, the marriage of the NSA’s technology to the Internet’s data hubs now allows the agency’s 37,000 employees a similarly close coverage of the entire globe with just one operative for every 200,000 people on the planet.
In the Obama years, the first signs have appeared that NSA surveillance will use the information gathered to traffic in scandal, much as Hoover’s FBI once did. In September 2013, the New York Times reported that the NSA has, since 2010, applied sophisticated software to create “social network diagrams…, unlock as many secrets about individuals as possible…, and pick up sensitive information like regular calls to a psychiatrist’s office, late-night messages to an extramarital partner.”
By collecting knowledge — routine, intimate, or scandalous — about foreign leaders, imperial proconsuls from ancient Rome to modern America have gained both the intelligence and aura of authority necessary for dominion over alien societies. The importance, and challenge, of controlling these local elites cannot be overstated. During its pacification of the Philippines after 1898, for instance, the U.S. colonial regime subdued contentious Filipino leaders via pervasive policing that swept up both political intelligence and personal scandal.
And that, of course, was just what J. Edgar Hoover was doing in Washington during the 1950s and 1960s. According to James Bamford, author of two authoritative books on the agency, “The NSA’s operation is eerily similar to the FBI’s operations under J. Edgar Hoover in the 1960s where the bureau used wiretapping to discover vulnerabilities, such as sexual activity, to ‘neutralize’ their targets.”
The ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer has warned that a president might “ask the NSA to use the fruits of surveillance to discredit a political opponent, journalist, or human rights activist. The NSA has used its power that way in the past and it would be naïve to think it couldn’t use its power that way in the future.” Even President Obama’s recently convened executive review of the NSA admitted: “[I]n light of the lessons of our own history… at some point in the future, high-level government officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily sensitive private information is there for the plucking.”
Indeed, whistleblower Edward Snowden has accused the NSA of actually conducting such surveillance. In a December 2013 letter to the Brazilian people, he wrote, “They even keep track of who is having an affair or looking at pornography, in case they need to damage their target’s reputation.” If Snowden is right, then one key goal of NSA surveillance of world leaders is not U.S. national security but political blackmail — as it has been since 1898.
And the NSA tracks people’s porn-viewing habits in order to discredit activists. The NSA also keeps nude and suggestive photos of people in order to blackmail them. The Associated Press notes: “The stockpiling of sexually explicit images of ordinary people had uncomfortable echoes of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” where the authorities — operating under the aegis of “Big Brother” — fit homes with cameras to monitor the intimate details of people’s home lives.
The collection of nude photographs also raise questions about potential for blackmail. America’s National Security Agency has already acknowledged that half a dozen analysts have been caught trawling databases for inappropriate material on partners or love interests. Other leaked documents have revealed how U.S. and British intelligence discussed leaking embarrassing material online to blacken the reputations of their targets.
Bill Binney – the high-level NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, a 32-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency, the senior technical director within the agency and managed thousands of NSA employees, an expert on spying by the Soviets, interviewed by virtually all of the mainstream media, including CBS, ABC, CNN, New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, PBS and many others – told Washington’s Blog: “This is just one of the ways to make controlling people possible. Standard KGB/Stasi tactics.”
FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds alleged under oath that a recently-serving Democratic Congresswoman was secretly videotaped – for blackmail purposes – during a lesbian affair. There have been allegations of blackmail of gay activities within the U.S. armed forces for years.
And Yahoo News reported in 2010: “A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation into the purchase of child pornography online turned up more than 250 civilian and military employees of the Defense Department — including some with the highest available security clearance — who used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations. But the Pentagon investigated only a handful of the cases, Defense Department records show.
But the DCIS opened investigations into only 20 percent of the individuals identified, and succeeded in prosecuting just a handful. Without greater public disclosure of how these cases wound down, it’s impossible to know how or whether any of the names listed in the … papers came in for additional scrutiny. According to the records, DCIS prioritized the investigations by focusing on people who had security clearances — since those who have a taste for child pornography can be vulnerable to blackmail and espionage. At least some of the people on the … list with security clearances were never pursued and could possibly remain on the job…”
PENTAGON PILLOW TALK
http://watergate.com/Military-Spy-Ring/Military-Spy-Ring.aspx
http://watergate.com/John-Dean/White-House-Call-Girl.aspx
http://web.archive.org/web/20131212055937/http:/whitehousecallgirl.com/
http://jimhougan.com/wordpress/?p=11
http://jimhougan.com/wordpress/?p=230
http://www.watergateexposed.com/articles-menu/174-crimson-rose-and-the-secret-of-the-two-keys.html
http://shermsays.blogspot.ru/2010/11/watergate-part-two.html
“Some claim White House Counsel John Dean ordered the second break-in because he believed that the Democrats had records on a call girl ring that was operating out of the Columbia Plaza Apartments, and wanted to obtain certain documents that could damage the reputation of a friend connected to the ring [like his girlfriend Mo].
Phillip Bailley, a young lawyer accused of having a role in the operation of the service, claimed the Democratic party was arranging sexual liasons for politicians. Bailley represented many prostitutes and seemed to have a business relationship with Heidi Rikan, aka “Erika” or “Cathy” Dieter, who ran the call girl ring at Columbia Plaza. She had previously been a stripper at the Blue Mirror. The service eventually had many Democrat clients and serviced one astronaut, South Korean and US intelligence people, and a Saudi prince, who came from the nearby Saudi Arabian embassy.
Alfred C. Baldwin, who was to work for James McCord during the Watergate break-in, seems to have been tape recording the call girl ring’s telephones. He was using equipment purchased by one Louis James Russell, who initially used McCord funds to buy equipment to spy on columnist Jack Anderson. He had once worked as a stringer for Anderson.
Russell hung out at Columbia Plaza, acting as a customer, bouncer, and friend to the girls, who often crashed at his apartment and shared sad stories with him. Russell had been bounced out of the F.B.I. due to drinking problems and spent years as an investigator for the House Un-American Activities Committee. For a time, he was a watchman for the Committee to Re-Elect the President.
After the scandal broke, he went on the payroll of Security Associates, a detective agency owned by McCord. In that capacity, he did some work in George McGovern’s headquarters. Russell also worked for another firm that was doing some work for George H.W. Bush. He was a good friend of man who would later become head of Senator Sam Erwin’s investigative staff, Carmione Bellino.
Cathy/Heidi’s roommate was Mo Biner, known by the codename “Clout.” We do not know what role “Clout” played, but her name and code name turned up in Bailley’s address book along with the names of Heidi’s employees. Mo Biner was dating John Dean at the time. In 1972, Bailley visited the DNC headquarters and succeeded in soliciting some business for the prostitution ring. The arrangement was attractive to the DNC because the Watergate was not far from Columbia Plaza.
Bailley, an active Democrat, thought communications between the DNC and the prostitution operation were made on DNC official Spencer Oliver’s telephone line. Oliver travelled frequently,so his office could be used for private telephone conversations. Bailley later claimed that Maxine Wells showed photographs of female sex workers to people who were interested in entertainment. In a 1996 deposition, Robert Strauss said he had been told that some state party chairmen used Oliver’s phone to make dates.
After the DNC started using the Columbia Plaza bordello, the former F.B.I. agent told lawyer Bernard Fensterwald and two of his employees that he was recording conversations between Democrats and the girls; he added that the ladies did not mind. Russell sometimes worked for Fensterwald, who also served as his attorney. Republicans, including White House people, also frequented the brothel. Sometime near when Bailley was making visits to the DNC, John W. Dean became interested in the layout of those offices and sent Tony Ulasewicz to visit the offices and diagram the layout. Dean wanted to get information on Democratic sexual activities, and must have suspected the Democrats were using services other than those provided by Heidi.
On April 6, 1972, Bailley was arrested for a a Mann Act violation, but it had no connection to Heidi’s ring. The case was given to prosecutor John Rudy, who was soon visited by Louis James Russell, who tried to steer Rudy away from the Columbia Plaza operation and toward another brothel frequented by judges and local politicians. The problem involved in the Bailley case was that the F.B.I. obtained his two address books. At the apartment they obtained films, photographs, a whip, and other sexual apparatus.
The Washington Star eventually ran a story stating that Bailley was involved in a sex ring that could involve a White House lawyer and that that ring’s activities were not mentioned in Bailley’s indictment. Dean acted quickly and summoned Rudy and his superior to his office on Friday, June 9, 1972. Dean demanded to keep the notebooks over the weekend, but the prosecutors only permitted him to photocopy them. On Monday, Jeb Magruder told G. Gordon Liddy to break in to the DNC for the second time to repair the O’Brien bug. Recently, Magruder, now a clergyman, admitted that Dean – not Mitchell— had ordered the break-in.
Bailley’s case went to Judge Charles R. Richey, a Nixon appointee, who sent Bailley to St. Eliozabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital, where he spent 15 days and only received 45 minutes with an analyst. He was committed on the basis of sexual photographs the prosecution showed Richey. In Bailley’s second hearing, the Judge then instructed both sides to dispose of the case. Bailley, now completely demoralized, accepted a plea bargain that resulted in getting him 5 years in federal prison. He was now thoroughly disgraced. For some reason, the paperwork on his two hearings was sealed and subsequently lost. By settling the case without a hearing, the judge made it impossible to bring up the material on the sex ring. But all of this took some time, and it was not certain how much evidence needed to be buried.
The second break-in occurred on the night of June 16-17, two days after Dean talked to the prosecutors. It was ostensibly being done to change the bugs placed on Larry O’Brien’s telephones. However, just before that, AT&T had swept the offices and found no bugs. James McCord, on the pretext of delivering a typewriter, stuffed and taped open the lock on a door accessing the building. The team knew that the tape had been found and removed, but Gordon Liddy thought it was still safe to go ahead with the operation. He reasoned that a maintenance man might have removed the stuffing and simply gone home. After all, there were no police on the scene. This time Gonzales probably taped the door again and the operation went ahead at 1:30 AM. It was McCord’s job to remove the tape once they were in, but he did not do so.
Subsequently, James McCord and five Cubans were arrested in the DNC headquarters. Also arrested were Liddy and Hunt, who were monitoring the break-in at a distance. The F.B.I. arrested Alfred E. Baldwin at his listening post. Baldwin was supposed to be listening to DNC phone calls for about twenty days. He recorded nothing, but supposedly took some notes. Some now think there were no bugs in the DNC. If that was the case, it is likely he was only listening to phone calls and bugs in the bordello down the street.”
BEST LAID HONEYTRAPS
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2015/10/19/the-peoples-campaign-the-real-hastert-case-all-in/
http://www.tristarmedia.com/bestofrussia/kgb3.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20100704125103/http://www.foreignpolicy.com/node/222456?page=full
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/12/the_spy_who_said_she_loved_me.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20070420062637/http://harpers.org/archive/2007/04/sb-sex-and-the-cia
“…So when does sex become a security problem? The CIA conducts background checks and administers periodic polygraph tests to try to ferret out anything that might make undercover officers vulnerable to blackmail. Until the mid-1990s, homosexuality was considered an immediate cause for dismissal. And “close and continuing contact with a foreign national,” a euphemism for a sexual relationship, was deemed to be another major vulnerability. Any such relationship had to be reported and failure to do so could also lead to dismissal.
In fact, during the Cold War, the KGB (and allied services, including the East German Stasi under Markus Wolf, and Cuban intelligence) frequently sought to entrap CIA officers. The KGB believed that Americans were sex-obsessed materialists, and that U.S. spies could easily be lured with the prospect of an easy lay.
CIA officers in Russia were strongly warned about “swallows,” the term for the beautiful women the KGB deployed to try to seduce Americans, which was a constant danger at Moscow station. (One former CIA official told me that he and his friends joked that they longed to be given the job of “sexual entrapment training officer.”)
The Russians did have some modest success with this strategy. Back in 1940, the FBI discovered that “single U.S. employees in Moscow frequented a prostitution ring linked to Soviet intelligence and that classified documents were handled improperly and may have been obtained by Soviet workers.” It’s also been reported that the CIA’s first Moscow station chief fell for a swallow — his maid — and returned home in disgrace.
The Russians and their allies also targeted American military personnel stationed abroad. The best-known case was Clayton Lonetree, a hard-drinking Marine stationed in Moscow who was seduced by a swallow named Violetta Seina, a translator at the U.S. Embassy. Seina hooked up Lonetree with “Uncle Sasha,” his KGB handler, whom he provided with valuable information. Lonetree continued to spy for the Russians after he was transferred to the American embassy in Vienna, but ultimately turned himself in. The only American Marine ever convicted of espionage, Lonetree was released after serving nine years of a 30-year sentence.
Sex wasn’t just used by the Russians as a recruitment tool, but also as a means of compromising CIA officers. One source told me: “Let’s say a guy has a girlfriend and he decides not to report it. The Russians take pictures of him but don’t approach him right away. Five years later, though, when he’s stationed in another country, a KGB officer shows him old pictures of him and the girlfriend, and newer pictures of the girl with a young kid. The guy doesn’t know for sure if it’s his kid or if the girl was working for the KGB, but he’s dead, especially because he never revealed the relationship at the time. So he turns down the recruiting pitch but has to go back to the office and write the whole thing up, including what he didn’t report five years earlier. He’s probably of no further use in that country and he may not be of use anywhere else.”
I asked the former officials if the CIA used sex as a lure to entrap foreign intelligence officials. “Not often,” one told me. “Coercive recruitment generally didn’t work. We found that offers of money and freedom worked better.” However, several of the sources said that if the CIA found that a KGB official had a girlfriend, they’d try to recruit her as an access agent who could then be used to turn the Russian. “There was a woman who was promiscuously involved with the Soviet community in Beirut and we put her on the payroll,” one former Middle East hand told me. “I’m not aware that it ever led to anything, but we paid her for quite a while.”…
One former CIA officer said that while sexual entrapment wasn’t generally a good tool to recruit a foreign official, it was sometimes employed successfully to solve short-term problems. For example, this officer was once stationed in a Middle Eastern country and wanted to shut down a known spy from a neighboring state who was also posted there. To make a long story short, the CIA obtained video footage of the man in intimate embrace with his local girlfriend. When the man turned down a recruiting pitch, the agency mailed the images to his wife. What happened next was never precisely clear, but the man was soon recalled to his home country. This source also said the CIA routinely kept prostitutes on the payroll in Third World countries. “It might cost you $500 a month, which was nothing, and you’d get a wealth of information about who’s who and who’s doing what to who,” he said. “You were always looking for people like that who could give you visibility into the dark side of the city.”
Back to Dusty Foggo. In addition to stories in Hettena’s new book, I’ve previously reported that Foggo had behaved very badly while based in Honduras in the early-1980s, when the CIA was using the country as a base for covert programs in Central America. He was said to be a regular at a Tegucigalpa bar named Gloria’s and at a casino at the Maya Hotel, both places known at the time as hooker hotbeds. Whether Foggo had official dealings with prostitutes in Honduras or not, this was clearly a big problem. “Dusty would have been the perfect target of a counter-intelligence operation,” said one official who worked in Honduras at the time. “He had access and knowledge, and was reckless and visible. You’re only vulnerable if you make yourself vulnerable, and that’s what Dusty did.”
This person, and several others, have told me that Foggo continued to display poor judgment throughout his career and had been reprimanded over his personal conduct–and that all of this was well known to Goss before he installed Foggo as executive director. “When we heard Dusty had been picked, we figured we were doomed,” he said. “And we were right.” All of which leads to one of the great, unanswered questions surrounding Foggo: why would Goss possibly have picked him for such a senior position at the agency? I asked the CIA press office if Foggo’s personal conduct had ever raised red flags at the agency. Spokesman Mark Mansfield replied by email, saying, “Given that legal proceedings are underway, it would not be appropriate to comment, other than to point out that Mr. Foggo left the CIA last year and the position he held, Executive Director, doesn’t exist any more.”
MIGHT BE HAUNTED
https://spectrevision.net/2016/06/16/might-be-haunted/
SECRET AGENT CROWLEY
https://spectrevision.net/2016/08/13/the-occult-war/
LISTENING IN
https://spectrevision.net/2012/07/06/listening-in/
HUMAN COMPROMISE
KOMPROMAT
HOW to IMMEDIATELY DISPROVE RUSSIAN HACKING
OH CHEER UP
INTERAGENCY RIVALRIES
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How does hybridization affect multiple metrics of fitness in fragmented populations of brook trout under moderate climate warming?
Wells, Zachery (2016) How does hybridization affect multiple metrics of fitness in fragmented populations of brook trout under moderate climate warming? Masters thesis, Concordia University.
Text (application/pdf)
Wells_MSc_F2016.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Spectrum Terms of Access.
As a population’s genetic makeup is often attributed to the combined fitness of its individuals, the adoption of deliberate hybridization practices is an area of interest for many hatchery and conservation programs. Using a common garden experimental design involving eight wild populations of Salvelinus fontinalis (brook trout), we studied how effective population size (Ne), divergence (QST, km), and environmental dissimilarity (pH, temperature) may influence hybridization outcomes for fitness related traits under moderate climate warming. Additionally, we looked at the ability of six of these populations to tolerate acute thermal warming, and whether or not this tolerance could be altered by hybridizing populations. Critical thermal maximum (CTmax) assays were conducted on juveniles from each population to assess thermal tolerance, and agitation temperature (a behavioural metric quantifying temperature at the onset of refugia-seeking behaviour) was recorded for assessing behavioural changes to elevated temperatures. Gametes were collected from different-sized, isolated populations of brook trout, and crossed in the lab. Fitness-related traits were compared between pure and F1 hybrid crosses via common garden experimental design. We had the unique opportunity to jointly investigate how these factors influence multiple metrics of hybrid fitness in wild, isolated, and varyingly-sized populations of a vertebrate species inhabiting a relatively undisturbed environment. Although population size and environmental dissimilarity were found to significantly affect hybrid fitness, these relationships were biologically weak. Although significant differences in CTmax were found between populations, this difference was at most 0.68 °C (29.11-29.79 °C), and no effect of hybridization was seen despite varying thermal regimes between these populations’ wild streams. These results will provide guidance to small population and captive-breeding conservation programs, as the lack of a strong relationship between hybridization and fitness encourages population-specific approach to genetic rescue projects. Additionally, this study highlights the level to which thermal tolerance is conserved between isolated populations of a vertebrate species, in the face of climate warming.
Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science
Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > Biology
Thesis (Masters)
Wells, Zachery
Degree Name:
Thesis Supervisor(s):
Fraser, Dylan J.
outbreeding, hybridization, brook trout, conservaiton, genetics, thermal tolerance, critical thermal maximum
ZACHERY WELLS
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How the Stars' 6-1 win over the Wild means more than bragging rights in growing feud
Tom Fox/TNS
The Dallas Stars' Jamie Benn (14) tries to break free from the Minnesota Wild' Ryan Suter (20) during the third period at the American Airlines Center in Dallas on Saturday, Feb. 3, 2018. The Stars won, 6-1. (Tom Fox/Dallas Morning News/TNS)
By Mike Heika , Staff Writer Contact Mike Heika on Twitter: @MikeHeika
If the Stars have a real rival, it has to be the Minnesota Wild.
After all, the team moved from Minnesota to Dallas in 1993 - a fact celebrated Saturday at Retro Night as part of the Stars' 25th Anniversary in Dallas season.
And you can pile onto the battle the fact fans squabble over who owns rights to the North Stars logo, whether Minnesota snubbed the Stars for a potential outdoor game, and the importance of Norman Green in this world.
Cold facts: Kari Lehtonen's strong start in goal lifts Stars to a 6-1 win over Minnesota
These guys don't like each other.
So it was nice on a night dedicated to looking back that the Stars took a 6-1 win over the Wild.
It was extra nice because the two teams are battling for the same ground in the standings, and Dallas was able to keep its hold on the first wildcard playoff slot in the Western Conference. The Stars move to 30-19-4 (64 points), three points ahead of the Wild (28-19-5, 61 points). They also keep pace with the Blues, who moved to 32-19-3 (67 points) and sit in third place in the Central Division.
It's still very early in the process, but these are the points that are going to be pretty important come April when the playoff spots are decided.
"We'd be lying if we said we're not looking at the standings. It's the reason that we play," said defenseman Stephen Johns, who scored a goal. "We knew tonight was going to be a playoff atmosphere and we need to take playing at home and use that to our advantage. The crowd was great tonight, and I think we used that."
The Stars wore throwback sweaters during warm-ups, and honored Dave Gagner, Russ Courtnall, Paul Cavallini and Craig Ludwig, members of the original 1993-94 team, by having them drop the opening puck. They dressed the scoreboard up to look like Reunion Arena, played old commercials and Jumbotron bits from the 1993 season, and had PA man Bill Oellermann announce the game. It was truly a transformation to the golden days.
"I loved it, I thought the jerseys were awesome," said center Tyler Seguin, who had a goal and two assists.
Of course, it helped that the Stars also played much better than they have in two recent home losses. The players were dialed in from the start and goalie Kari Lehtonen helped keep the game scoreless through the first period. Then, when he drew a high stick penalty from Minnesota's Jason Zucker midway through the second period, the game changed.
Mattias Janmark scored on a tipped shot, and Johns scored 39 seconds later on an unassisted blast off the rush. Jamie Benn then tallied a power play goal and set up Seguin for his 25th goal of the season, and the game went from scoreless to 4-0 Stars in five minutes.
"It feels good when you're able to make a difference out there," Lehtonen said of his third start at home this season. "It was a tight game for 30-some minutes, and our guys just took over and that was really nice to see and fun to be back there."
Photos: The Stars use a big second period in blowout win over the Wild, 6-1
Of course, doing it against the Wild was extra nice. If the team is going to have a rival, then this one seems like a natural.
"I would say there is healthy respect. I know there is. And with respect goes rivalries," Stars coach Ken Hitchcock said. "They are a longstanding playoff style team that knows how to play the game the right way, and we could learn a lot from them. But now we have to beat them. If we want to make the playoffs, this is one of the teams, at the end of the day, we're going to have to jump over."
On Saturday, they did it in a lot of different ways.
"I think they were one point behind us before tonight, so it doesn't get any bigger than that at this point of the year," Lehtonen said. "It was good, good test for us, and we passed that one."
Twitter: @MikeHeika
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You are here: Home > Uncategorized > Best in Amateur Sport Celebrated at Awards Night
Best in Amateur Sport Celebrated at Awards Night
It’s been a banner year for Yukon athletes, and they were recognized Thursday for their accomplishments at the 39th Annual Sport Yukon Awards Night.
This past year saw local athletes of all ages and skill levels compete in four major events, and two Yukoners competed in the Winter Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. A total of 14 athletes, one team, one coach and two administrators were nominated for Major Awards this year.
In addition to the Major Awards, Sport Yukon members and Sport Governing Bodies presented 150 awards of distinction to their athletes and volunteers.
“It’s the biggest night of the year to celebrate Sport excellence in the Yukon,” said George Arcand, President of Sport Yukon. “We have an amazing number of athletes and officials who are making their mark on regional, national and international levels. We are incredibly proud of our membership and enjoyed celebrating their achievements at the awards night.”
The Government of Yukon’s Sport and Recreation Branch also presented Awards of Excellence, Awards of Recognition and Community Recreation Awards to athletes, coaches, officials, administrators and volunteers throughout the territory who dedicate their time to the development and promotion of sport, recreation and active living.
“This awards night gives us the opportunity to recognize our outstanding sport and recreation community. We are pleased to work with Sport Yukon to co-host this important annual event,” Minister of Community Services, Brad Cathers said. “The Government of Yukon is committed to supporting and promoting sport, recreation and active living in Yukon.”
Lists of all award recipients, including winners of the Sport Yukon Major Awards, are attached below.
Major Award Winners
Awards of Recognition
Community Recreation Awards
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Bratislav Gasic
Head of Serbian Gov't Proposes Defense Minister Candidacy
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has proposed to appoint a former deputy defense minister as the head of the ministry, the government's press service said in a statement.
Serbian PM Wants to Dismiss Defense Minister Over Sexist Remarks
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic sent a letter to the parliament with a request to dismiss Defense Minister Bratislav Gasic over his sexist remarks, a statement published on the official government website said on Saturday.
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Belgrade and Moscow have signed a preliminary agreement for the sale of two helicopters, for which the Serbian side has already made advance payments, Serbian Minister of Defense Bratislav Gasic said Thursday.
Slavic Brotherhood: Russia, Belarus, Serbia to Hold Joint War Games
Russian and Belarusian units will take part in a major war game to be held in Russia later this year, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced on Sunday.
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The helicopters due to be delivered are perfectly equipped for search and rescue operations, the Serbian defense minister said.
Serbia Not Seeking Full Membership in NATO - Defense Minister
Serbia is not seeking full membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the country's defense minister said Thursday.
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Home News Fundraiser for an urban farm icon
Fundraiser for an urban farm icon
Melissa Komar
Greensgrow calls on community for support covering Milkshake’s medical costs
Milkshake brings all the fun to the farm: Milkshake enjoys some sun in his pen prior to his recent illness. PHOTO: GREENSGROW FARMS
By Melissa Komar
One of the icons at Greensgrow Farms needs some help bringing home the bacon for medical bills.
Milkshake, the Kensington farm’s 6½-year-old Yorkshire, pot-bellied pig, fell ill on Monday and needed immediate medical attention.
Deirdre Sheehy, head farmer at Greensgrow, knew something was wrong when he didn’t come out to greet her as usual.
“I came in Monday morning and the first thing I do is feed the animals. He’s usually out and about running around in his pen,” she said. “And I didn’t see him and when I tried calling to him in his hut, he didn’t come out. And so, I went inside and I found him lying on his side and he had been vomiting. And, he was shaking. It was pretty scary.”
Sheehy immediately called several area veterinarian hospitals to find medical treatment for Milkshake and quickly found out the situation would be complicated.
“No one could actually come out to us and we were tasked with getting a 250-pound pig on a truck and transporting him to New Jersey,” she said. “We ended up using a forklift.”
Sheehy took Milkshake to Mount Laurel Animal Hospital, a facility that doesn’t normally see pigs as patients, but “they went above and beyond.”
After discovering Milkshake had ingested something he wasn’t supposed to, which was causing the gastrointestinal irritation, the hospital recommended transferring him to a facility that could better care for his condition.
Sheehy transported Milkshake to New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, where he remained for a day and a half before returning to his home, sweet, home on Wednesday night.
Preparing for the final trip, Sheehy and two staff members swaddled him and hoisted him and the crate onto her pick-up truck — without any heavy machinery.
“You don’t know what you can do until some person or some pig you care about needs help,” she said, laughing.
Although he’s much improved, Milkshake is receiving medication three times daily.
And, the verdict is still out on the final cost for all his care.
Sheehy created a GoFundMe to cover his medical costs on Tuesday, with a goal of $5,000.
“We reached out to the best vets to provide him with the best care and they were incredible and we’re happy to support them,” she said, “But, it is expensive, so we need the community’s support. We’re a nonprofit, so we really don’t have funds for emergency vet visits.”
While Milkshake’s emergency vet visits prompted the fundraiser, there had been talks among staff of creating one prior to this week.
“We had two sick chickens thrown over our fence this week, too,” Sheehy said. “We’re not an animal sanctuary, but we are a space for animals, so we have to care for them. We’re a farm.”
And, what’s a farm without a pig?
Executive director Ryan Kuck picked up the pig for former executive director Mary Seton Corboy after she had seen a Craigslist ad for a mini pig, but as the months passed, it become clear Milkshake was no little pig.
And as he grew, so did the community’s love for him, according to Sheehy.
“He provides a sense of wonder,” she said. “There are kids in this community who get to grow up in Philly and walk by and see a pig. He’s a character. He’s a friend. And, he’s an ambassador for the farm. He brings people in and he’s a symbol of what we do at Greensgrow.”
Donations for Milkshake’s medical costs can be made at www.gofundme.com/savemilkshake. Joe’s Steaks, 1 W. Girard Ave., will host Milkshakes for Milkshake on Monday, April 16, with 100 percent of proceeds of all milkshakes sold going to Milkshake’s medical costs.
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